http://www.amazon.com/Christ-Egypt-The- ... 0979963117
http://www.bol.com/nl/p/christ-in-egypt ... 006730707/
Goede recensies, waaronder die van Robert M. Price:
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/ ... _egypt.htm
Dan moet het wel een goed boek zijn, of niet Rereformed?
Ik zal jullie in de komende tijd ongetwijfeld 'lastig gaan vallen' met de inhoud van dit boek.
het is een hele lap tekst, maar onderstaande amazon-book-review (zie link hierboven) zal ik in het achterhoofd houden bij het lezen van dit boek, onder het motto: skepticisme is nooit verkeerd. Ik heb dit boek gekocht vanuit de behoefte om een en ander eens een keer in alle detail op een rij te krijgen, aangezien het internet daarbij alles behalve behulpzaam is. Je wordt daar namelijk bedolven onder apologetische vooringenomenheid enerzijds en Blavatski-achtig new-age spiritualisme anderzijds (uit die hoek komt de schrijfster trouwens welzeker, volgens de schrijver van onderstaande review), maar vooral ook mis ik op het internet enige onderbouwing voor de vermeende parallellen tussen de (demi)god Jezus en andere (half)goden, zoals je die daar zo vaak tegenkomt als zijnde een vaststaand gegeven. Voor wat betreft de onderbouwing zit je met dit 600 bladzijden tellende boek, met 2400 verwijzingen, wel goed, verwacht ik.
Een mythicist als Price zit grotendeels op de lijn van de schrijfster en een mythicist als Carrier niet zo zeer, aangezien hij zijn kaarten inzet op een voornamelijk op greco-romaanse mythologie gebaseerde origine van in ieder geval het nieuwe testament. Aangezien de Egyptische beschaving echter de Greco-Romaanse ruimschoots voorafgaat, is er natuurlijk veel voor te zeggen dat de Greco-Romaanse mythologie hierdoor toch wel op zijn minst indirect beïnvloed is (Price, Doherty), zoals de Judaïsche direct, maar dat terzijde.
Één ding is zeker en dat is dat het niet geloofwaardig is voor iemand (lees: apologeten) om het doordrongen zijn met Egyptische (astrotheologische) mythologie van het judeo-christendom (nog langer) achteloos te verwerpen.
Horus focus or Horus bogus? Can parallels in religions and myths imply direct influences?
By Roo.Bookarooon 9 november 2011
In her book on Akhenaten (1940), Savitri Devi had issued a warning, when comparing myths, about assuming influences after detecting parallels: "Without systematically denying the possibility of such early influences, it seems to us that one should not overestimate them. Parallels are easy, and any two solar symbols, if not too far-fetched, are bound to have something in common."
"Christ in Egypt" came out close on the heels of Tom Harpur's " The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light " (2004), a huge popular success in Canada. Harpur is a Canadian priest turned theologian, questioning the existence of Jesus (the Christ Myth, of Arthur Drews), now considered the most famous religion writer in Canada.
Harpur was reviving the themes of three forgotten writers -- Godfrey Higgins, Gerald Massey and Alvin Boyd Kuhn -- who saw Christian beliefs influenced by Egyptian myths.
The controversy also revived a general interest in the lost civilization of Ancient Egypt, which was for nearly 3,000 years a major center of cultural and political power around the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean. Until Egypt was conquered by Alexander in 332 BC (who called himself the "son of Zeus-Amun") and colonized by Octavian in 30 BC, when Egypt became a Roman province.
Murdock was faithfully following this long tradition originated by two pioneers:
- Godfrey Higgins (1771-1834), who ultimately privileged India as the origin;
- and Robert Taylor (1784-1844), who theorized that the Therapeuts -- a Jewish sect first mentioned by the Jewish scholar Philo of Alexandria (20 BC-50 AD) -- had been the original propagandists of Christian beliefs in the form of secret brotherhoods.
This thesis was then picked up by Kersey Graves (1813-1883), Helena Blavatsky (1831-1891), the priestess of Theosophy, and her disciples Gerald Massey (1828-1907) and G.R.S. Mead (1863-1933).
Down the line, in the 20th century, the tradition was reinforced by Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880-1963), a fervent Theosophist, and finally Tom Harpur (b. 1929).
This old Taylor/Massey/Kuhn Egyptian thesis, championed by Murdock -- that Alexandria with its Therapeuts was the incubator and birth place of the Christian gospels -- remains a viable contention that no biblical research can ignore.
The old pioneers all used a list of parallels between the Egyptian God Horus and Jesus, claiming that some essential components of the Jesus Christ story derived from ancient Egyptian religion.
Predictably, this thesis has met with virulent criticisms from theologians. In his 2-star review of Harpur's book, W. Ward Gasque claimed polling 20 "leading" Western Egyptologists (although disclosing only 2 names) and finding no support for Massey's ideas -- these parallels being dismissed by all as pseudo-scientific, even as "fringe nonsense."
Murdock followed suit, producing her own huge compilation in two years. She reviewed the literature, using the same themes and the same parallels, ferreting out relevant quotes from known Egyptologists, past and modern, to support the same overall thesis. She ended up building one final grand story -- clear in its main lines, but still very blurry in its practical details.
The crucial problem faced by the huge claim in "Christ in Egypt" is: What value can be ascribed to some 10 to 15 parallels between the god Horus and Jesus?
First, are those parallels accurate, or just weak resemblances?
Second, "proof" remaining unattainable in history, even strong similarities are not enough evidence of real influences. Can it be shown that those perceived parallels have resulted from a direct, intentional influence?
And how and where? A "demonstrable borrowing" requires a historical "bridge" for effective communication and transfer of ideas between two different cultures.
The book is devoted to unraveling the "obvious connections" assumed between both myths.
Murdock has bravely retrieved Massey's ideas (with the lateral support of Wallis Budge). It is a healthy reprise of old-fashioned ideas, but one that has drawn the expected volley of skepticism from the cautious specialists of the the establishment.
The meaningful parallels between the Horus/Isis/Osiris myth and the Jesus story are those revived from Massey's list:
- Confusion between father god Osiris and son god Horus;
- son of god;
- birth date on winter solstice ("Dec. 25th");
- royal descent;
- virgin birth from mother Isis/Mery (Mary?);
- announcement by an Eastern star and homages from 3 "magi" (?);
- teaching in the Temple at 12;
- baptism (?) at 30;
- baptizer beheaded;
- 12 disciples (?);
- "signs and wonders": miracles, healing the sick, exorcisms, raising Osiris from the dead; walking on water;
- crucifixion (???);
- fighting the evil one (Seth, the bad guy who kills Osiris and dismembers him, throwing the 14 parts all over Egypt);
- resurrection on the 3d day (thanks to Isis's success in recovering 13 of the parts of Osiris's body; but, lo, the penis is missing, and refashioned with a piece of wood);
- ascension into heaven;
- mystical addresses: "The Way," "The Truth," "The Anointed, etc...
This is by far Murdock's most heavily researched book. Some (like Robert Price) find its erudition too heavy. Obviously, Acharya is advancing in this minefield of Egyptology prudently, protecting every assertion under a shield of quotations from "highly credentialed authorities", or "luminaries", as she likes to term them.
Her exact referencing of each quotation makes her ready to stand up to the usual expected salvo of criticisms.
And her popular success is certain to make her the target of invidious scholars who have never thought of exploiting that field. She is always ready to accuse her male critics of "knee-jerk reactions", "jealousy," and "misogyny".
Even when Murdock gives the impression of stretching a point, or indulging in speculation to make a parallel work (with key words like "obviously", "evidently", etc...), it is not a reason to dismiss her out of hand. She devotes many pages to each parallel, armed with a mountain of quotations from learned scholars, modern and less modern, to establish a strong presumption in her favor based on their consensus, especially on the big items:
- For instance, about the crucifixion: Horus, a divine falcon, is spreading his wings, or opening his arms against the Heavens -- in "cruciform" fashion, yes, but still a far cry from the Roman crucifixion as a cruel punishment for criminals. Horus, truth be known, was never crucified.
- Or about the virgin nativity: In a lengthy discussion of the famous ancient engravings in the court of Amenhotep III at the Luxor temple, which depict the birth of the god Ra-Horus, who would become identified with the reigning pharaoh, Amenhotep III (ruled ca 1388-1351 BC), or his son Akhenaten (born ca. 1365 BC), Murdock follows those 19th-century Egyptologists who wanted to see in those panels the very model of the virgin nativity of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, even better, a model of "immaculate conception" (?) to the loud screams of protest from historian Richard Carrier.
- She also spends a lot of ink on the resurrection (or was it resuscitation?) of Osiris, which is crucial for her claim. Bruce Metzger had pointed out that the texts concerning the actual death and resurrection of Osiris are "meager and reticent, no more than mere allusions." The reassembly of Osiris's 13 body parts (the phallus is missing) by Isis takes place in the Underworld, where Osiris becomes "Lord and Ruler of the Dead" and does not seem a smooth comparable to Jesus's unexplained whole-body resurrection. Similar skeptical view in Tryggve Mettinger's Riddle of Resurrection: "Dying and Rising Gods" in the Ancient Near East (2001).
Similarly, pro and con arguments have raged concerning the birth date of 25th of December, the 3 wise men (magi in Egypt?), the baptism at 30, the 12 apostles, the miracles and exorcisms, the resurrection on the 3d day, etc...Too often, these comparisons seem forced and far-fetched, more wishful thinking than fact.
The debates about assumed borrowings or derivation have been intense, and never conclusive. Murdock had to face a maelstrom of controversies where she has been holding her own by answering critics with copious dissertations.
One fact seems established: Once the Gospels were out, the iconic image of Isis nursing baby Horus in her arms was borrowed for the Christian images of Mary breast-feeding the baby. And that is the very illustration Murdock has chosen to put on the cover of "Christ in Egypt".
This book is impressive, and Murdock's craft seems to be improving one notch or two with every new book. She started heavily influenced by the sweeping generalizations of Barbara Walker's intuitive approach to mythology and religion.
She also picked up ideas from James Frazer, Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, popular authors who easily nourish New Age mysticism and magical speculations, in which Murdock has retained an intense interest. Her debunking of Christianity has gone hand in hand with promoting New Age speculations.
She has also been following the trail in the field of comparative mythology and religion blazed by some notable female writers.
For instance Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), of noble Russian descent, who founded the Theosophical Society of New York in 1875 as a center for spiritualism. She wrote " The Esoteric Character Of The Gospels " (1888), where she claimed that "every religious dogma the world over, may be traced to, and located in, the Zodiacal signs and the Sun," and lauded " the immortal Divine Spirit in man, whether it be called Horus, Krishna, Buddha, or Christ."
Spirited Blavatsky is a pure apostle of "astrotheology," and Murdock her frank disciple.
Also extraordinary is Savitri Devi (1905-1982), an English-Greek woman born in France, who lived in India, became a Hindu, married a Brahmin and adopted a Sanskrit name, setting a precedent for Acharya. She wrote profusely about Egyptology, Hinduism, and against Judeo-Christianity. She also became, bizarrely, a fervent theoretician of Nazism ("Memories and Reflections of an Aryan Woman", 1976), idolizing in Hitler an embodiment of Kalki, the heroic avatar of Vishnu, savior of a decadent world through its destruction.
Savitri Devi published " Son of the Sun: Akhnaton, King of Egypt " in Calcutta (1940). Akhenaten (b ~ 1365, ruled ~ 1351-1334 BC) was the son of the great Amenhotep III, whose reign (1388-1351 BC) is seen as the peak of the Pharaohs' splendor and power. The birth in the form of the god Ra-Horus, who would become the ruling pharaoh Amenhotep III (or perhaps his son Akhenaten), is the subject of those famous Luxor temple panels lengthily discussed by Acharya in her book.
Akhenaten is a fascinating figure, even more so in our modern age thanks to his supremely beautiful queen, Nefertiti, and his son, Tutankhamun (reigning ca 1333-1323 BC), discovered in his fabulous tomb and golden mask in 1922.
Akhenaten was a radical reformer, who promoted a new, nearly monotheistic, religion, the worship of Aten, that he dared place above the old solar god Amun-Ra and his traditional, and crowded, pantheon of diverse Egyptian gods. Aten was defined as a new universal form of the sun-god, also revered as a creator, "the Principle of Radiant Energy, source of all life", whose personification was the pharaoh himself, Akhenaten, officially called the "Son of Aten". The whole Egyptian religious structure was remodeled to glorify this new cult of Aten.
Horus, Isis and Osiris, the key players in Murdock's story, were left on the wayside for a while, to return once Akhenaten had died, ca 1334 BC, and his new cult of Aten, distant and impersonal, had been repudiated by the established priesthood of the kingdom eager to restore Amun-Ra to his former pre-eminence.
Freud was so impressed by Akhenaten that he wrote " Moses And Monotheism " (1937), making Moses a follower of Akhenaten.
Murdock, to her credit, buttresses her argument by quoting a contingent of established Egyptologists such as Breasted, Hornung, Assman, thus giving her work an allure of better scholarship. The entry in this arcane field of a newcomer suspected of New-Ageism is not easy.
Egyptology still remains unsettled, with no consensus established on many key points, no comprehensive encyclopedia or authoritative textbook of the Egyptian religion, and key texts still open to many interpretations.
The actual knowledge of the Egyptian religion has been established by a sheer accumulation of bits and fragments of texts and artifacts fastidiously gathered from a multitude of inscriptions, sculptures, sarcophagi, temples, monuments, and papyri, both in hieroglyphs or hieratic script.
Gods were incredibly numerous, starting as local deities, then merging with one another, gaining a national presence, worshipped in larger territories, with varying and confusing names, and variable appearances, across a history of 4,000 years. To keep track of such a complex universe is an impossible challenge, and no encyclopedia can ever encompass it.
In short, the "Egyptian religion" covers an immensity of gods and places, necessitating a herculean job of decipherment of papyri, tablets and stone inscriptions spread all over the territory.
Which aspect did directly influence the formation of Christianity?
How can direct influence, if any, be demonstrated? Where? By whom? And how? What was the physical bridge that allowed the transmission of beliefs?
No wonder that any generalization has to be documented with an abundance of citations, pictures and careful evaluation of different translations. No wonder that outsiders like Higgins, Taylor, and self-made Egyptologists like Massey did come up with some highly controversial interpretations.
The 19th century was the age of the pioneers of modern Egyptology. It started in 1824 with the deciphering of the hieroglyphs of the famous Rosetta Stone by Champollion, followed by new archeological excavations, and an explosion of scholarly studies.
It also led to a public fascination, an Egyptomania that intensified interest in the study of religions and mythology, their history and reciprocal influences.
The Egyptian belief in the afterlife of souls blended well with the spiritualism of Swedenborg spreading in Europe and the US, claiming communication with spirits. This movement attracted romantic imaginations among the cultivated classes, especially women, who were able to play major public roles.
This passionate belief in psychological and spiritual influences - "spiritualism" -- was presented as a pseudo-religion opposed to Christianity, and became an international rage in the second half of the 19th century. It was linked to a recrudescence of interest in the occult, ghosts, magic, and astrology.
It gave rise to Blavatsky's Theosophy, claiming a link between astrology and primitive religions, and in the 20th century, to the New Age version of spiritualism.
Some "astrotheology" had in fact emerged among the Ancient Greeks, after they had lost their primitive trust in the Olympian gods (Gilbert Murray, " Five Stages of Greek Religion ", 1912)
Murdock follows as guide Gerald Massey, a self-taught 19th-century pioneer of Egyptology, who remains a controversial reference. He was a gifted English linguist, who started with writing poetry. Massey was obsessed with theology, astrology, and spiritualism. He believed in cultural evolution, trying to combine Darwin's natural evolution and fashionable spiritualism into "spiritual evolution". Christianity as a "phase" of such development was a natural.
Around age 40, he got interested in Egyptian mythology and its similarities with the Gospels. He educated himself in things Egyptian at the British Museum, but never became a professional Egyptologist.
Massey established in " The Natural Genesis " (2 vol., 1883) a long list of significant parallels between the Egyptian cults of Horus and Osiris and early Christianity, supporting his intuitions of a Gnostic Jesus being informed by the Egyptian religion. Massey's enthusiasm led him to see in Ancient Egypt the source of modern civilization and religions.
In his final work, " Ancient Egypt - The Light of the World " (1907), the last book, #12, deals with the final culmination of his immense Egyptian studies, "The Jesus Legend Traced in Egypt for 10,000 Years".
However, Massey's work is labeled "pseudo-scientific" and no longer respected among modern Egyptologists. He has suffered the ignominy of being ignored in the reference books of Egyptology.
Murdock also uses quotes from a supporter of some of Massey's ideas, Wallis Budge (1857-1934). Budge was a true pioneer of scholarly Egyptology, who also started with a passion for languages, and became the Keeper of the Dep't of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum.
Budge's unorthodox theory held that the Egyptian religion originated in central Africa. Like other bright minds of the 19th century, he was fascinated by spiritualism and the occult. Budge fuelled that popular interest with his important translation of " The Egyptian Book of the Dead " (1895), which was also used by the movement as material against Christianity.
Budge leveraged his prestige in Egyptian studies to express his views in the field of comparative religion. In the spirit of Massey, Budge, too, saw a strong influence of the cult of Osiris on Christian beliefs.
Budge was a rare generalist in a field of extreme area specialists, who didn't or couldn't keep up with recent research. He was a dedicated popularizer, quickly producing an amazing number of books, mostly large syntheses and generalizations which made him famous.
He mixed factual knowledge with his personal opinions, often jumping to premature conclusions, without doing much fact-checking with other key experts, and without divulging his primary sources, rendering verification impossible.
Experts considered that his impatient style led him to presenting a huge number of errors. The British Museum currently considers his books, many more than 120 years old, outdated, excluding them from its recommended reading list, as only experts can separate the few remaining solid kernels from the "nonsense" of Budge's fanciful opinions.
Remarkably, these books are prized by amateur Egyptomaniacs and New Agers engaged in occultism and religious magic. No longer under copyright, they are now very cheap (Dover editions).
Otherwise, there are few affordable introductions to Egyptology, where sound knowledge requires years of specialized study, and up-to-date scholarly publications are of limited circulation and expensive.
A vigorous debate has ensued online between the Massey/Murdock fans and skeptics -- both atheists and Christian apologists amusingly united for once in this common cause -- arguing the validity of the fine points.
As these controversial claims have already been presented in the Internet movie Zeitgeist (2007), partisans on both sides have arisen, with more passionate conviction than expertise.
In the case of the Gospel writers, how could the enigmatic information in the remote images on some dark walls of a remote Luxor temple (or other temples with similar nativity scenes), get transferred to some learned Jews of Alexandria, and directly influence their writing of the story of Jesus, nearly 1,500 years later?
Serious objections have been raised from all sides -- Murdock crossing swords with Richard Carrier, a historian specializing in the ancient Greco-Roman period.
Many professional Egyptologists have stated that the similarities are superficial and are not evidence of direct lineage or borrowings. Some detractors have resolutely claimed that: "not only can [the borrowing] not be substantiated on the extant evidence, but it is also intrinsically most improbable." (Bruce Metzger, Samuel Brandon, for instance.)
For big differences remain between the parallels, beyond the similarities. For instance, the Egyptian nativity was a cyclically recurring event, at the birth of each new pharaoh, with the conception being played out at the level of the gods and the infant produced being Horus, who was to take the form of the current pharaoh.
Thus the reigning pharaoh was always projected as a "son of god," legitimizing his rule on earth. The divinity of the Egyptian pharaoh was essential to the continuity of the cycle of natural forces controlled by the gods, guaranteeing the smooth cycle of Nile floods and the stability and prosperity of the nation. It was never questioned.
Whereas the birth of Jesus was meant as a unique, historical event precursor of the end of times, and it has been questioned ever since. And only Luke mentions the annunciation to Mary, while Matthew brings in the Eastern star and Magi.
A huge amount of literature has been published on the interpretation of the Luxor scene, as well as on more nativity scenes in other temples, where the gods and the living pharaohs are intimately fused.
The inscriptions never give a complete tale, a lot is left unsaid, the variations are multiple, the gods' names often changing, as well as their physical representations, so that the final story written in English is manufactured from an amalgam of many fragments of different inscriptions and pictorial scenes.
It is disturbing that such over-detailed parallels are drawn from a few stone inscriptions, and the few texts reconstructed by modern interpretations. They seem too precise to be true. And the reading of the famous Luxor panels plays too big a part. They do not seem to relate a Christian story. We have to discount exaggeration.
The parallels are based on readings of the panels and hieroglyphs that depend very much on the ability of the scholars to reconstruct the story sketched on walls. Those interpretations are rationalizing products of modern readers, which then seem to be retrojected back at the origins of Christianity.
I, for one, could not be convinced that those unknown Luxor panels, created 1,500 years before, located on a dark wall 500 miles from Alexandria, played any part in the formation of Christianity. It sounds more like wishful thinking of modern interpreters. No way these obscure and hidden panels could have influenced any scholars in Alexandria or Palestine. It is pretty safe to assume that Philo never made the trip, never saw the panels. He never learnt hieroglyphs, a cryptic language reserved by the priests to speaking about gods and pharaohs.
In addition, and this is a crushing counter-argument, there's a vast current of valid historical biblical research by the most learned experts, that has strikingly shown that the basic Christian texts, Paul's letters and the Gospels, use continual borrowings and adaptations of various Jewish texts (Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel, Enoch, etc..). "Midrash" has become the key word to analyze the NT.
Still, the parallels between the Horus cult and the Jesus myth are too striking to be ignored, in spite of the huge distance in time and space.
The very existence of similarities illustrates the fact that many themes were common currency in the mental landscape of the ancient Mediterranean world where a certain uniformity of civilization prevailed. The ancient Greco-Roman cultures gave rise to similarities in myths and religious beliefs, in which the essential ideas of men who were also gods or gods who appeared as men or loved consorting with human females, seemed commonplace, even if we, in the modern West, have long since lost this spontaneous belief.
Many of those myths emerged within countries with similar social and physical conditions. The stories of gods were often connected to those of the temporal rulers. Those gods encountered similar events and accidents -- births, deaths, rivalries, the "journeys of a hero" -- that we now see as analogous elements in their myths, but often without finding any detectable evidence of direct influences.
This influence of the common beliefs in the characters of gods in antiquity cannot be denied. And Egypt's antiquity must have made it the source of legends and mythemes that spread all over the Near East and the Mediterranean basin. Egypt promoted belief in immortality and after life. It was perceived as the source of most mystical beliefs and magic. How those beliefs spread is now practically untraceable.
At the bottom of the controversy is a huge difficulty of interpretation in Egyptology. Hieroglyphs were "holy characters", reserved by the priests to communications with gods, and to relate aspects of the pharaohs' lives. They were studied and taught in temples. Outsiders and the general population were incapable of reading them.
Even the discovery of the Rosetta Stone didn't make the decryption of inscriptions immediate. And translating the old inscriptions is still a huge challenge, requiring a lifetime of experience to achieve expertise.
How could Murdock, publishing her new book on Egypt in two years, claim to become an authority in such a complex field? Materially, she could only produce a book as a vast compilation of texts and authors.
Known hieroglyphs can be grouped in unusual fashion, producing various ideas that can be contradictory.
The clear concepts of ancient Greek or modern English are not easily correlated to the variety of Egyptian ideas that modern Egyptologists work so hard to extract and interpret from fragments of inscriptions, papyri and engravings, in hieroglyphs and hieratic, mostly about gods and kings.
The correspondence of the Egyptian data with the English concepts (virginity? resurrection?) in each case seems elastic, approximate, often vague, if not forced.
The ancient Egyptians didn't think exactly along the chains and neat distinctions of our modern concepts, derived from the clarity of ancient Greek and Latin. The meanings of our abstract ideas, such as "god", "living", "dead", "heaven", "underworld", "soul", "body," "afterlife", depend on the network of connotations attached to them. Ancient Egyptians didn't have the same set of connotations for the ideas we translate into our own words. "God" and "pharaoh" fused smoothly into each other, as an "eternal soul" was linked to an "eternal body".
Perhaps ancient Egyptians would not have understood what is meant by our concept of "immaculate conception", as it is hard enough for our modern brains. Identifying those unknown networks of ancient connotations has been the big conundrums facing Egyptologists in their effort to decipher what Egyptian inscriptions meant to ancient Egyptian minds.
Many translations by experts of a given text fragment are possible, and different meanings can be attached to the same hieroglyphs or engravings, making a selection by outsiders nerve-racking. Some texts are even considered untranslatable. Serious misunderstandings, incomprehensions, gross errors, and fanciful guesswork remain possible.
Bruce Metzger has emphasized that there's always the lure of more precision in the modern retelling in our languages (Greek, English) than the vague and less defined Egyptian data provide.
The interpretation of the Egyptian physical evidence, assembled from so many fragmented hieroglyph and hieratic texts, and the reconstruction of a system of thoughts that is so far removed from ours, is still more of an art than a strict science, where experience and skill are paramount.
Significantly, the historian Richard Carrier doubts the existence of a direct transmission of ideas from an Egyptian myth that is not explicitly found anywhere in full form. He points out that the Gospel writers were all superbly educated in ancient Greek and in Greek culture, and must have been much more familiar with Greek models of nativity than distant and obscure Egyptian ones, that they would never have had a chance to see in those remote temples, nor understood if they had ever seen them, even if these writers were located in Alexandria.
If the Gospel writers had been based in Antioch, also a very plausible location, instead of Alexandria, the connection to antique Egyptian carvings and hieroglyphs would seem totally unlikely.
Carrier much prefers to privilege the direct influence of the many nativity scenes of Hellenistic kings known to all well-schooled Greeks, such as the famous birth of Alexander the Great, in which his mother Olympias dreamt that she was struck by a thunderbolt of Zeus on her wedding night. And Carrier cites numerous examples of resurrection within the Greek mythological universe (Attis, Aninna) that made more immediate sense to the Gospel writers than the far remote, mysterious and unclear "resurrection" of Osiris by Isis in the Underworld.
But Earl Doherty, the famous author of " The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus ", is very partial to mythical origins of the Jesus story. He retorts that even the traditional Greek themes of nativity, resurrection, and immortality, may well have been influenced in the far past by Egyptian religion, because of the antiquity and power of the Egyptian culture around the Mediterranean. So that all those stories and themes must have all been circulating "in the air" (?) of the ancient world, and may well have originated in Egypt or be borrowed from Egyptian myths.
In any event, any solid case of a direct borrowing of mythemes seems impossible to establish, as Murdock strikingly demonstrates, since she is desperately seeking to do exactly so in her book.
But does it really matter? asks Earl Doherty. Perhaps the borrowings didn't come directly from the Luxor engravings, but were passed on by longer chains of transmission, with the same result. The Jesus myth does owe something to the Horus, Isis and Osiris myth, even if a direct transmission cannot be incontrovertibly traced.
Murdock's strenuous efforts to establish irrefutable connections between the Osiris/Isis/Horus reconstituted tales and the Jesus Gospels, and her insistence on the close correlations of all the minute items in her list (magi?), have been systematically challenged and have not met with acceptance among historians and professional Egyptologists. She now is put in the same category as Massey, and her new defense of the old ideas is most likely not the final word on this puzzle.
But there's no study of mythology or religion that does not involve some stretching and speculating in places, and Egyptology offers ample opportunity for guessing. That is where the fun is, along with the exotic and magnificent Egyptian illustrations, and the heated arguments that ineluctably follow.
Who was then writing in Alexandria, Matthew (preferably assumed to be located in Antioch) or Luke, or both? What about Mark then? Was he in Rome?
It is only a crying shame, which can never be forgiven as long as the West endures, that the great library of Alexandria was ruthlessly destroyed by Christian fanatics and its invaluable books burnt and lost for ever. They may have held the solution to the enigma.
Justinian, the most fanatical of Christian Emperors (483-565), was bent on abolishing paganism, and issued edicts expressly terminating the last remnants of worship of Amun, Isis, Osiris, and all Egyptian gods. So the Luxor panels, if they had any real influence on the Gospel writers, exerted an unexpected curse 2,000 years after their creation. Jesus vanquished Horus in the end, with no resurrection this time.
It is invigorating to take the investigation of Christian origins for a bit of fresh air along the Nile, outside the stale atmosphere of continual academic debates and away from those eternal librarian discussions of the same stock-in-trade Bible quotes, and be exposed to the fireworks following this excursion in ancient Egypt.
By creating such commotion with her big tome, Murdock is sharing in Tom Harpur's popularity. Halfway between compilation and popularization, her book is boosting her overall credibility and public recognition.
And nobody can ignore the warm review Robert M. Price has produced here. His pertinent criticisms are those of a mentor happy to applaud the progress of a favorite protégée.
However, in spite of Price's avuncular endorsement, the issue is far from settled -- as strongly argued by historian Richard Carrier -- and many doubts and serious questions remain.
