Horus and Jesus in *Religulous*
December 31, 2008 at 10:43 am 7 comments
I finally got a chance to see Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous. Its high entertainment value made the time fly buy, leaving me with the desire for more. Thumbs up for that.
It also made some important points, such as the fact that Christians often engage in the same kind of strained re-interpretation effort of the Bible as some Moslems do with the Qu’ran. Or that we don’t need the Ten Commandments to know that we shouldn’t go around murdering each other.
On the negative side: For a documentary, the movie has an amazingly low degree of accuracy. It starts with little things like Maher not getting the name of the last book of the Bible right (calling it “Revelations” instead of “Revelation”) and progresses to much bigger issues such as the alleged link between the Egyptian god Horus and Jesus Christ. If Religulous were to be believed, the writers of the Gospels copied all the essentials of their (fictional) Jesus from earlier Egyptian sources.
But is that true? Here is what Wikipedia says about it:
As one of Ancient Egypt’s oldest gods, Horus was worshipped at least as early as the Early Dynastic Period, thousands of years before the first century CE, when Jesus was in Palestine. However, there have been many parallels drawn between the life of Jesus and the stories of Horus’ life.[15][16]
Theologian Tom Harpur studied the works of authors who wrote about ancient Egyptian religion: Godfrey Higgins, Gerald Massey and Alvin Boyd Kuhn. In his book Pagan Christ, Harpur argued that all of the essential ideas of both Judaism and Christianity came primarily from Egyptian religion.[17] Harpur noted that Massey uncovered almost two hundred instances of “immediate correspondence between the mythical Egyptian material and the allegedly historical Christian writings about Jesus”.[18]
The 2008 documentary Religulous reiterates the alleged link between Jesus and Horus, claiming that both were born of virgins, fought the devil in the desert and healed the sick and blind. W. Ward Gasque has written that Egyptologists have rejected many of the specific claims made by Harpur and Massey as fallacious, pointing out that there is no evidence of a virgin birth for Horus, and that Harpur’s main source, Alvin Boyd Kuhn, was a Theosophist whose books are mainly self-published and that his other sources are in the main not ancient Egyptian texts but out-of-date authors.[19]
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1.
Edward T. Babinski | December 31, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Hi Jacob,
I just discovered you and your work tonight while googling “deconversion.” I read the free excerpt of your book on C. S. Lewis and found it interesting. Also looked at what else I could dig up about your other books.
I left the Christian fold and became an agnostic. I also edited, Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists (a third of the people in the book left fundamentalism but retained either a more moderate or liberal Christian belief, while others joined other religions or became agnostics or atheists).
We’re both avid readers. Click on my name to read my online testimony.
On Maher, Jesus & Horus, I agree, it’s a bad hypothesis, since at most it shows that similar religious themes are found in both religions, not that one religion came directly from another. Neither do I think it wise for atheists to rely on such arguments when there’s plenty of questions worth raising via other means. But I suppose the “parallel theme argument” is easier for the public to grasp. Most of the public can’t even name the four Gospels, let alone study theology wholesale and read and appreciate all the arguments in Dr. Price’s list of books,
Classics of Criticism,
Or the
Higher-Critical Hit Parade
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/study_list.htm
2.
Edward T. Babinski | December 31, 2008 at 2:57 pm
By the way, I think you would really enjoy a book titled, “God Talk” but Ruth Tucker, who discusses C. S. Lewis and other apologists and questions whether any apologetic system works, and whether God is indeed talking to anyone. The author is a Christian and quite rational in her critique of all the apologists and evangelists who claim to talk with God, about God, and for God. She doesn’t think of faith as something “easy” or “self evident” at all. She also wrote a book about Christians who leave the fold. Check her out on the web.
3.
Edward T. Babinski | December 31, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Speaking of the “mythical Jesus” argument as portrayed in Maher’s film, take a peek at the three-way debate at
opposingview.com
Was Jesus an Historical Figure?
John Loftus, a former student of Christian apologist William Lane Craig, and now author of the new book, Why I Am An Atheist, does not employ the “Jesus myth” argument of fellow atheist Frank Zindler, but instead agrees a Jesus of Nazareth probably lived and died in 1st century Palestine. However as Loftus explains, Jesus was probably an apocalyptic prophet, and he and his followers may have indeed believed the end as near.
4.
jacobschriftman | December 31, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Hi Edward,
You won’t believe how pleased I am to have you snow in on my blog, as I actually have your name on my (German) Amazon wish list. I’ve been wanting to read “Leaving the Fold” for some time now, but other books have always gotten in the way (and its availability in Germany is limited).
I must say I often feel much closer to agnostics and even atheists than I do to many believers, but I find that considering myself as “being on a journey” in matters of God and faith is a much truer picture of who I really am than labeling myself as anything. Of course, this refusal to label myself is in itself a sort of label.
Thanks also for the other info. Yes, I have read Ruth Tucker, and I greatly appreciate the honesty in her work. And I completely underline the question mark she puts on apologetics. As a Christian apologist who relies on logic and rhetoric to make a case for faith, you always have to reduce reality to a few options – when, in fact, there might be millions of options.
I’m in the middle of work at the moment, so I have to leave it at that for now, but I hope this was not the last time I talked to you.
Happy New Year,
Jacob (aka Jokim Schnoebbe, which is my real name)
5.
jacobschriftman | December 31, 2008 at 8:39 pm
“Jesus was probably an apocalyptic prophet, and he and his followers may have indeed believed the end as near.”
Yes, I agree that’s a very plausible possibility, and one that weakens Lewis’ Trilemma. I actually discuss this in greater detail in “The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible.”
As you are no doubt aware, Bart Ehrman, too, makes this point repeatedly, and in fact Albert Schweitzer said something similar back in the early 20th century. And now that we have such a wealth of Jewish Apocalyptic writings from around the time of Christ, historians have a lot of concrete information to work with, don’t they? Not specifically for Jesus, but for re-constructing a very likely context of Jesus’ mission.
6.
Roxane | March 10, 2009 at 4:38 pm
My only real criticism begins with your ‘source’. Wikipedia can be modified by any idiot with a computer and should not be used for accuracy.
7.
jacobschriftman | March 10, 2009 at 6:50 pm
A valid point, Roxane. But I do know a little bit about the topic myself apart from Wikipedia, having a degree in historical Biblical studies. I primarily used Wikipedia because it was pre-formulated there and I could post the point I wanted to make very quickly.