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Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection Paperback – February 28, 2009
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Drawing from thousands of ancient Egyptian texts in an assortment of translations along with the original language, as well as modern research in a number of other languages, controversial independent scholar of comparative religion and mythology D.M. Murdock puts together an astonishing amount of fascinating information that shows many of our most cherished religious beliefs and concepts did not appear suddenly out of the blue but have long histories in numerous cultures found around the globe, including and especially in the glorious Land of the Pharaohs.
As stated, this book focuses on the correspondences between the Egyptian religion and Christianity, especially as concerns Horus and Jesus. The chapter titles are:
- Introduction
- Horus, Sun of God
- Horus versus Set
- Born on December 25th
- The Virgin Isis-Mary
- The Star in the East and Three Kings
- Horus at the Ages of 12 and 30
- "Anup the Baptizer"
- The Twelve Followers
- Performing Miracles, Walking on Water, Healing the Sick and Raising the Dead
- "The Truth, the Light and the Good Shepherd"
- Was Horus "Crucified?"
- Burial for Three Days, Resurrection and Ascension
- The Alexandrian Roots of Christianity
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- Print length592 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherStellar House Publishing, LLC
- Publication dateFebruary 28, 2009
- Dimensions6 x 1.32 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100979963117
- ISBN-13978-0979963117
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My name is Ken Feder. I am an archaeologist, and I play one on TV, as a talking head in various documentaries on the National Geographic Channel, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, ScFi, BBC Horizon, and, as it turns out, even the Weather Channel. Having conducted research and written extensively over the course of the last thirty years, I think I have developed a good eye for recognizing valuable research that is worthy of serious consideration when I see it. And the research conducted by D.M. Murdock concerning the myth of Jesus Christ is certainly both valuable and worthy of consideration.
Everyone who reads Murdock's Christ in Egypt should understand that the sources she cites are anything but marginal or questionable. In fact, her sources are, at least as far as I can tell, entirely within the Egyptology mainstream and many are, in fact, revered, and deservedly so, within the community of Egyptologists. The fact that these sources are mainstream, highly respected, or even seminal does not, of course, make them right about the origins of the Christ story. However, it does make them, and Murdock's thesis in which she incorporates their work, impossible to dismiss out of hand.
Read her book. Criticize it if you believe it deserves criticism. But to dismiss it or get apoplectic about her thesis simply because it shocks you is plainly foolish. --Kenneth L. Feder, PhD, Frauds, Myths and Mysteries
I find myself in full agreement with Acharya S/D.M. Murdock.
We are in agreement on the thoroughly syncretic character of primitive Christianity, evolving from earlier mythemes and rituals, especially those of Egypt. It is almost as important in Christ in Egypt to argue for an astro-religious origin for the mythemes, and there, too, I agree with the learned author.
I find it undeniable that...many, many of the epic heroes and ancient patriarchs and matriarchs of the Old Testament were personified stars, planets, and constellations.
...for Egyptian influence to have become integral to Israelite religion even from pre-biblical times is only natural given the fact that from 3000 BCE Egypt ruled Canaan. We are not talking about some far-fetched borrowing from an alien cultural sphere.
Murdock ventures that "the creators of the Christ myth did not simply take an already formed story, scratch out the name Osiris or Horus, and replace it with Jesus" (p. 25). But I am pretty much ready to go the whole way and suggest that Jesus is simply Osiris going under a new name, Jesus, "Savior," hitherto an epithet, but made into a name on Jewish soil.
I find myself in full agreement with Acharya S/D.M. Murdock: "we assert that Christianity constitutes Gnosticism historicized and Judaized, likewise representing a synthesis of Egyptian, Jewish and Greek religion and mythology, among others [including Buddhism, via King Asoka's missionaries] from around the 'known world'" (p. 278). "Christianity is largely the product of Egyptian religion being Judaized and historicized" (p. 482). --Robert M. Price, PhD, The Pre-Nicene New Testament
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Stellar House Publishing, LLC (February 28, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 592 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0979963117
- ISBN-13 : 978-0979963117
- Item Weight : 1.89 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.32 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #543,609 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #784 in Comparative Religion (Books)
- #2,429 in History of Christianity (Books)
- #3,089 in Christian Church History (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
D.M. Murdock, also known by her pen name, "Acharya S," is the author of several books on comparative religion and mythology, including "The Christ Conspiracy," "Suns of God," "Who Was Jesus?" and "Christ in Egypt." She is also the author of "The Gospel According to Acharya S," which seeks to answer some long-held questions concerning the nature of God, religion and humankind's place in the world.
Murdock is an alumna of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, where she studied Classics, Greek Civilization. She has lived in Greece and is also an alumna of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece. Acharya has excavated at Corinth, Greece, where tradition has St. Paul addressing the Corinthians, as well as at a Paleo-Indian site in the U.S. She speaks, reads and/or writes to varying degrees English, French, Spanish, ancient and modern Greek, Latin, German and other languages.
Acharya/Murdock has several websites, including TruthBeKnown.com, StellarHousePublishing.com, TBKNews.blogspot.com and FreethoughtNation.com.
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Of course, Christianity is not a normal topic, and is beset by taboos, vested interests and emotional doctrinal barriers. Murdock is a heretic, a class of thinker often regarded with disapproval. Heretics have traditionally been persecuted by the church as beyond the pale of civilized discourse. However, if heresy is truth, it is unethical and fallacious for the church to reject heretical findings on the sole ground that they differ from received opinion. The heresy of Egyptian origins of Christian dogma offends deeply felt Judeo-Christian prejudice about the separation of God and nature. But, as Christ in Egypt abundantly proves, dogmatic mainstream Christian prejudices lack any mandate in logic or evidence.
Murdock's ostracism by the appointed keepers of mainstream discourse is a scandal, reflecting a gross lack of scholarly integrity on the part of those who vilify and exclude her work. Such exclusion is thoroughly corrupt, but this is the depth to which debate on religion has sunk. Murdock is leading a transformation in the nature of religious understanding, in an emerging movement of creative destruction that will restore integrity and logic to theological discourse. However, like the flat-earthers who condemned Galileo and Giordano Bruno, true believers in Christian dogma are frightened of change and dismissive of evidence, and hide behind institutional walls of circular reasoning. Murdock's writing is a major contribution to breaking down these walls in order to put religion on a new basis of observation and logic. Perhaps her work will even help Christianity to achieve its redeeming potential and escape its current lack of spiritual vision.
The scientific detective story of Christian origins has foundered on the lack of evidence to confirm Gospel accounts. Christ in Egypt, in looking for this evidence, provides a major forensic advance for Christian history. Sadly for the church, the evidence reveals a litany of fraud, lies, delusion and oppression by Christian authorities. Murdock invites her readers to think seriously about the most plausible psychological and political explanations of the actual evidence, against the context of the wholesale destruction of ancient sources by the Christian bigots of the Dark Ages. As the Roman Empire expanded its oppressive attack on Egyptian religion, what would have happened to the adherents of the ancient faith? Would they have meekly accepted the cultural genocide sought by the Empire, or would they have tried to adapt to the new violent dispensation? Of course, adaptation is the obvious strategy of response.
Isis, Horus and Osiris were immensely popular divinities in the ancient West. Their adherents surely had the wit to continue the ritual observance of their mythic traditions by re-badging them. This is just what happened. Osiris was resurrected as Lazarus, Isis turned into Mary, and their sister Nephthys found a niche as Martha. Similarly, Horus, Egyptian God of the morning sun, morphed into Jesus Christ. These evolutionary interpretations of Christian mythology have a compelling explanatory value in material, etymological and cultural terms. Such memetic analysis can rescue Christianity from its pigeonhole as a stagnant irrational curiosity and open the potential for the church to be reconciled with the rest of human life, if only it can show some humility about its errors.
Among the numerous facts in Christ in Egypt, one I found intriguing, as a way of setting orthodoxy within a larger theoretical framework, is a quote from the book Against Heresies by Irenaeus of Lyon, where he attacks the Gnostic heresy of the `Duodecad of the Aeons' (p223). This obscure heresy, the idea that there are twelve Ages, is informative for Murdock's interpretation of religious formation. The cosmic framework in which ancient theology emerged is claimed by Christianity to come from a supernatural God, but is actually grounded in the astronomical observation of precession of the equinox around the zodiac, known as the Great Year. Precession provides the scientific basis to interpret Christian symbolism against its mythic context. It is a matter of astronomical fact that the cycle of time establishes twelve zodiacal ages in the Great Year. There are numerous references to the Great Year throughout the Bible. The twelve foundation stones of the holy city are the twelve Aeons, Christ as Alpha and Omega is the turning point of time between two Great Years, the end of the Aeon or Age discussed by Christ is the end of the Age of Pisces, and the various fish and lamb symbols indicate the natural temporal shift of the sun from the Age of Aries (the lamb) to the Age of Pisces (the fish) at the time of Christ. Murdock comments that rather than being a real person, Jesus Christ symbolizes the mythical avatar of the Piscean Age (p457).
Such ideas were viewed by the church as heresy. The Gnostics were condemned for seeking to explain in natural terms how eternal truth could be manifest in human life. Their cosmic framework of twelve ages, with Christ symbolizing the turning point of time, provided a purely empirical explanation for Jesus as a symbol of the connection between humanity and eternity. Precession explains how our planet is evolving against what Ezekiel called the `wheels within wheels' of the cosmos and what Plato, in the Timaeus, called the relation between the same (the cosmos) and the different (the solar system) (p227). This Gnostic heresy of the twelve ages provides an accurate scientific basis to understand the real nature of Christ.
The problem was that Gnostic cosmology, for all its scientific basis, would struggle to inspire a mass movement. The cosmic Gnostic vision was too large and slow and obscure and real to provide the basis for a political church. What the church needed was a single believable historical myth, so it set out to mangle all available material against this finite practical goal. The Gnostics saw face to face, but the ignorance of the church, requiring simple popular dogma, could only read the Gospels through a glass darkly. Gnosticism interpreted Christ in spiritual or Docetic terms as the avatar of the Great Year and the Age of Pisces, but such cosmic vision conflicted with the historical claim of an incarnate saviour, and therefore had to be condemned as heresy, even though it was entirely true.
This explanation of the suppression of ancient wisdom about the Great Year is just one example of how Christ in Egypt gives us eyes to see the Bible against an empirical scientific framework. Similar examples throughout the book enable us to see the Bible as a cosmic detective story. We can imagine how the original enlightened authors of the Gospel texts struggled against a corrupt priesthood to retain references to the big slow cosmic story of human redemption. The Therapeuts of Alexandria, the real authors of the Gospels, were not a single unified movement. Cosmic Gnostic visionaries among them gave the story its real power and direction, based in Egyptian theology of the Great Year. Cosmic ideas were anathema to the monotheist dogmatists who proved ultimately triumphant in the church, but the dogmatists could not totally suppress the natural theory of time that provides the Gospels with its redemptive truth.
As we move now towards the end of the Age of Pisces and the dawn of the Age of Aquarius, a new Aquarian cosmic faith is emerging that can see the Bible with new eyes. Magical visions such as the Apocalypse of John can now be revealed as having a continuity with ancient visions from the millennia before the time of Christ, and as pointing towards the rediscovery of a natural theology. Murdock's Christ in Egypt helps set the foundation for this transformation of human consciousness, finding the concealed fragments of truth within the Gospels in order to reconstruct our continuity with the perennial philosophy of Thoth and Horus, as above so below.
Along these same lines, historians of this caliber don’t necessarily need to occupy the halls of academia. And it is this light that the author of this exceptional book should be judged. The discussion of the parallels between the stories of Horus in ancient Egypt and that of the New Testament Christ are thought-provoking and worthy of examination, and it is clear that the author has spent a considerable amount of time and effort in reviewing the work of professional historians, both known and unknown, in order to present her case. The references are meticulously documented for readers to consult if they have the time to do so.
And in that respect it is definitely best to view this book as an introduction to the research on the influence of Egyptian religious ideas on Christianity. To accept its conclusions without further research and analysis would not work to the benefit of those readers who have a sincere desire to be exposed to the raw, naked truth about the origins of Christianity, and not simply a desire to “refute” Christianity as a religious doctrine. It will take a lot of time-consuming perusal of the references in order for a sensible conclusion to be reached regarding Christianity’s history as originating in Egypt. The author has given the reader an excellent start in this regard, and the reviewer is deeply saddened by the fact that she is no longer around to continue her work in this area.
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Immanuel Kant said that we cannot apprehend the thing-in-itself. What we do is to build representations of a thing. Kant also said that we apprehend ourselves through a representation. The representation is not the thing which is represented.
What Advaita Vedanta says? Without the representations about my own self, there is only I AM. That is, I am already the thing-in-itself of myself. I AM THAT I AM. In order to see the thing-in-itself of myself, it’s enough that the representations quiet down. Seeing, in that case, is being.
What Buddha says? Becoming is a movement of what-is-not to what-is-not. It’s a movement from one mental construction, which is not the thing-in-itself, to another mental construction. The end of this is nirvana.
The investigation of the whole movement brings one to silence, in which the mental constructions have their own place. This is intelligence.
Be still, and know that I AM is God. This is the perennial wisdom.
Many people have never realised that much of the most important researches regarding comparative religion and mythology were done in French, German and other foreign languages, with very little ever translated into English for the English-speaking public. Of course much of the most important sources were still undeciphered and remained in Egyptian hieroglyphics. But Murdock has attempted to illustrated how easily Egyptian hieroglyphics can be open to so many different interpretations, being composed of root words, and Murdock has taken great efforts to illustrate how a combination of root words, without qualifiers, could easily mystify its modern interpreters (or unscrupulous misinterpretation if so conspired.)
The Egyptians were not so primitive and naive as once believed. They were deeply interested in "life and death' and made great strides to understand it as best they could, without the aid of modern scientific technology that exists in the 21st century. Thus it is important that we condition our minds to the conditions of that era while attempting to appreciate their limitations and their brilliance of analysis. Firstly, the Egyptians realised the importance of the Sun, the giver of life, of warmth, of light energy without which there would be no life (photosynthesis). The Egyptians studied the precise regularity of the soltice and equinox of the Sun. The setting Sun signifying the death of the Sun at the end of the day and the rebirth of the sun at dawn. So important was the winter solstice because it indicated the birth of Horus signifying the resurrection of Osiris on December 25. The birth of Horus was so important to the Egyptians, who observed it on December 25, which was the Roman winter solstice upon establishment of the Julian Calendar that this date has remain honoured for thousands of years. Was it sheer coincidence that Christians have also adopted this very same date to honour the birth of Jesus? They established the equinoxes and soltices that determined the change of the seasons and that in turn determined the life-cycle of the Nile. The Nile was the other source of life for the Egyptians. Is there any wonder that the Egyptians studied the Sun and the Moon and the Stars and ritualised their lives around the Sun? Is there any wonder that this fascination with astrotheology developed or evolved into Egyptian icons of worship? Is there any wonder that the Egyptian religion and daily life revolved around the Sun who became their Sun God, Ra? The Sun, the source of energy and life for the early Egyptians must therefore be seen as the giver of life and to be worshipped and venerated as a god.
But the Egyptians also considered their pharaohs as powerful and omnipotent on earth as gods above and found a way to associate the Sun God with the Pharaohs by accepting that the Pharaoh were empowered/born by the Sun god and thus acquired his attributes. The Pharaoh became the representative of the Sun god on earth. The Egyptian religious beliefs centered around the legendary lives of Osiris, Isis and Horus. Osiris, representing the Sun God, Ra, his wife "Isis-meri" the virgin mother of Horus, and Horus who was the reborn of Osiris during the winter solstice, and specifically 25th December represented the resurrection of Osiris, the son of the Father. Through the legends of Osiris, Isis, and Horus the book explains in detail the perception and acceptance of, "the virgin birth," "the resurrection," "the crucifixion," "the eternal life" "the human spirit," "the Trinity," all that was a part of the Egyptian religious cultural ideology centuries before the Common Era (CE) pre-dating the appearance of Christianity by millenia. That Christianity "evolved" directly from the Egyptian religion and its mythology is without any doubt and profusely illustrated in this book. But these facts have been mercilessly suppressed for thousands of years but has now been clearly documented in these chapters. Let me quote:
"....the study of Egyptian mythology will throw more light upon the restrictive customs of the Jews, the allusions of the prophets, and the early history of the Christian church than that of any other country." [William R Cooper, the Serpent Myths of Ancient Egypt (73)]
"....the principles and precepts of the Osirian theology of Egypt are virtually identical in content and application to the principles and precepts of Christianity as they present themselves in the Jesus saga." [Dr. Richard A. Gabriel, Jesus the Egyptian (2)]
"....it would seem that in Egypt we had the first truly Christian people, without record of an initial struggle between heathenry and the Gospel. The blessed Mary had replaced Isis, the little babe Jesus had replaced Horus, the passion of Christ had superseded the suffering and dying of Osiris, the Christian cross had been set up instead of the "Tet' or fourfold cross with flail and crook in right and left...." [Rev. Dr. William Norman Guthrie, The Gospel of Osiris (II)]
So detailed and comprehensively has the book illustrated the above statements that it would take a real bigot to dismiss the probabilities of such connections off-hand. But the probability that the historicity of the Bible is dismissed as a consequence of these findings is the real significance of this book. It is a book worth owning so that one could re-read or refer to it from time to time.