Jesus, the Gospels, Gnosticism and Historical Revisionism (Part 3)

(Continued from Part Two)

One common misconception about the Gnostic gospels is that they portray a purely human Jesus, whereas the four Canonical Gospels make Him more "godlike." This piece of historical revisionism is somewhat ironic given the actual facts regarding Gnosticism and the content of the Gnostic gospels

What must be remembered about the Gnostics is that they held to a dualistic view of the world; for them, physical matter is evil and spirit is good. Thus, when they wrote about Jesus, they actually tended to downplay His humanity or deny it altogether. Docetism, a heretical viewpoint that denies Jesus' humanity, claiming that He only appeared to have a physical body (hence the term Docetic, from the Greek δοκέω, meaning "to seem.") and thus incapable of feeling pain and other feelings. By contrast, the Canonical Gospels fully acknowledged Christ's human nature, while simultaneously affirming that He also has a divine nature.

Below are a couple of quotes from the Gospel of Thomas. It is to be noted that unlike the rest of the writings quoted, the Gospel of Thomas came much earlier than most of them and is not fully Gnostic. In fact, some of the sayings in Thomas are variations of what Jesus really said in the Canonical Gospels, and thus may be considered orthodox. Now, some people have erroneously claimed that Thomas presents an unadorned portrait of Jesus as being merely human. This, however, is not the case. There are statements in Thomas that portray Christ as being much more than an ordinary human being. For example, there is the exchange between Jesus and Thomas in saying 13:

Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to something and tell me what I am like." Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a just messenger." Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher." Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like." Jesus said, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended." And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?" Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you."

(The Gospel of Thomas. Saying 13.)

And then there is this statement in saying 77:

Jesus said, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."

(The Gospel of Thomas. Saying 77.)

The Gnostic texts that come later than Thomas go even further than this. For example, in the Apocalypse of Peter, distinction is made between the human being who is nailed to the cross and the heavenly Christ. The former is nailed to the cross, while the latter raises Himself above the human being, laughing:

When he had said those things, I saw him seemingly being seized by them. And I said "What do I see, O Lord? That it is you yourself whom they take, and that you are grasping me? Or who is this one, glad and laughing on the tree? And is it another one whose feet and hands they are striking?"

The Savior said to me, "He whom you saw on the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness. But look at him and me."

(The Apocalypse of Peter.)

And then there is the Gospel of Philip. In this gospel, Jesus is portrayed as a shape-shifter who is able to change His appearance at will. This accords well with the Docetic view that Jesus didn't really have an actual physical body:

Jesus took them all by stealth, for he did not appear as he was, but in the manner in which they would be able to see him. He appeared to them all. He appeared to the great as great. He appeared to the small as small. He appeared to the angels as an angel, and to men as a man. Because of this, his word hid itself from everyone. Some indeed saw him, thinking that they were seeing themselves, but when he appeared to his disciples in glory on the mount, he was not small. He became great, but he made the disciples great, that they might be able to see him in his greatness.

(The Gospel of Philip.)

And there is the Gospel of Truth, which affirms the eternality of the Jesus as the Son, and bestows exalted titles upon Jesus, such as "the name:"

And the name of the Father is the Son. It is he who, in the beginning, gave a name to him who came forth from him - he is the same one - and he begat him for a son. He gave him his name which belonged to him - he, the Father, who possesses everything which exists around him. He possess the name; he has the son. It is possible for them to see him. The name, however, is invisible, for it alone is the mystery of the invisible about to come to ears completely filled with it through the Father`s agency. Moreover, as for the Father, his name is not pronounced, but it is revealed through a son. Thus, then, the name is great.

(The Gospel of Truth.)

There are many more such texts that present similar views, but it will suffice to present these as sufficient evidence that the Gnostic Gospels are too slender a reed to support the weight that is being accorded to them by modern conspiracy theorists and historical revisionists.

Conclusion

In summary, it has been shown that 1) the deity of Christ is not a late invention, but is an apostolic tradition dating to the earliest days of Christianity, 2) the fourfold Gospel is also an apostolic tradition, and cannot reasonably be said to have originated in Nicaea in any way, and 3) the so-called "Gospels" that were written by the Gnostics do not portray Christ in a the manner that popular conspiracies would have you think. It would do the reader well to do more careful research on this matter and see what the truth behind the Christian faith really is. For more information, books such as The Missing Gospels and Reinventing Jesus are very helpful in presenting clear and accurate information on these topics.

In Christ,

Fisher.

Jesus, the Gospels, Gnosticism and Historical Revisionism (Part 2)

(Continued from Part One)

Not many people are aware of the history of the New Testament documents. It is thus not too surprising that skeptics and conspiracy theorists would want to capitalize on the general ignorance of the masses by claiming all sorts of strange, unhistorical ideas regarding the formation of the biblical text. The conspiracy theories center around 1) The books that make up the New Testament, and 2) the actual text of the aforementioned books. So we shall concentrate on these two things

First off, there are two main reasons why we consider the four gospels to be the canonical gospels. First, there is the issue of dating: All four gospels are dated to around the second half of the first century, which makes them very close to the time when Jesus walked the earth, and situates them within the apostolic age. This means that they reflect the actual teachings and beliefs of Jesus' apostles better than any gospel text that has come afterward. By contrast, all of the apocryphal gospels (with the possible exception of portions of the Gospel of Thomas) are dated to later centuries, and some have even been found to be modern forgeries (eg. Secret Mark).

Second is the fact that the first four gospels have an identifiable Vox Dei due to their reflecting what the church has believed all along even before these traditions became "enscripturated." This is in contrast to many of the apocryphal gospels, that contain obvious legendary developments (eg. a talking cross) and lack any historical background (some of these apocryphal gospels don't even have a narrative, but are just "sayings" texts eg. The Gospel of Thomas).

Against this, it is claimed that the four canonical gospels really are on the same level or even inferior to the apocryphal gospels, and that it was only during the Council of Nicaea that they became canonical. First, there is the obvious problem that Nicaea had nothing to say on the canon of scripture. Second, there is plenty of evidence that the ante-Nicene church considered the four gospels to be the canonical gospels.

There is the muratorian fragment, which is widely considered to have been written around the late 2nd century due to internal cues within the text of the fragment itself. The text mentions Luke as the third gospel, and John as the fourth. The names of the first two gospels are cut off from the preserved fragment of the text, though there is very little doubt that it is Matthew and Mark.

There are also the writings second century church fathers Papias, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus. Papias refers to both Mark and Matthew, identifying them as accepted apostolic writings. Justin Martyr quotes from the gospels, though he doesn't mention them by name, and refers to them as the "memoirs of the apostles" (link). The most explicit statement, however, comes from Irenaeus. In Against Heresies, he writes,

It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the “pillar and ground” of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh.
(Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies. III:XI:8)

All of this furnishes abundant proof that the fourfold gospel was already well in place long before the fourth century. There is no historical evidence for the assertion that the four gospels did not become canonical until Nicaea.

Now that we have that out of the way, there is also the claim that the text of the New Testament has been deliberately tampered with, "embellished" as Dan Brown puts it, in order to make Jesus "godlike." Of course, this simply ignores the mountains of manuscript and patristic evidence to the contrary. We have dozens of manuscripts from the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and all of the major texts asserting the deity of Christ (eg. John 1:1 John 1:18, John 20:28, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:8, 2 Peter 1:1, etc.) are there, exactly as we have them in our present day New Testament text.

And even if we didn't have these manuscripts, we can still extrapolate these passages from the patristic quotations. Various early church fathers such as Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, etc. have commented on the scriptures in question and we can validate our current reading of the scriptures from their writings.

Given these two lines of evidence, there is no justification whatsoever for the claim that the modern day Christian New Testament is not the same text that the first and second century Christian Church had received from the apostles.

(Continue to Part 3)

Jesus, the Gospels, Gnosticism and Historical Revisionism (Part 1)

Because Constantine upgraded Jesus' status almost four centuries after Jesus' death, thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man. To rewrite the history books, Constantine knew he would need a bold stroke. From this sprang the most profound moment in Christian history... Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ's human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned.
(Brown, Dan. The Da Vinci Code. Doubleday, 2003. p. 234)

The above quote, taken from the popular (and controversial) Da Vinci Code, echoes a popular sentiment that has been oft-stated by conspiracy theorists, skeptics, certain liberal theologians and even Muslims (the Islamic propaganda video The Divine Book quotes the above passage nearly verbatim, as though Dan Brown was somehow a scholarly source). Yet pretty much every single statement that has been packed within that single paragraph is fraught with historical errors, and almost none of it is factually accurate.

First off, Constantine lived three centuries after Jesus walked this earth. He did not "upgrade Jesus' status." In fact, Constantine didn't even care what the results of the council of Nicaea would be to begin with. He just wanted the clergy to agree. As Philip Schaff notes,

In the year 325, as patron of the church, he summoned the council of Nice, and himself attended it; banished the Arians, though he afterwards recalled them; and, in his monarchical spirit of uniformity, showed great zeal for the settlement of all theological disputes, while he was blind to their deep significance.

(Schaff, Philip. History of the Christian Church, Volume III: Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity. A.D. 311-600.)

Also, the deity of Christ did not originate with Constantine, or with Nicaea. It has always been affirmed by the early church. For example, within the epistles of the apostle Paul, one may find multiple affirmations of Christ's deity:

For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.
(Colossians 2:9, ESV)

...waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ...
(Titus 2:13, ESV)

Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
(Philippians 2:6-8, ESV)

And lest anybody object to the citing of Paul, it must be remembered that Paul was actually in contact with the other apostles. The apostle Peter, for one, approved of Paul's writings (2peter 3:15-16), and even made his own affirmation of the deity of Christ:

To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.
(2 Peter 1:1, ESV)

Also keep in mind that Paul wasn't really adding any innovations, but was rather repeating what had already been handed down to him by the Jewish Christians he met in Antioch and Jerusalem. In fact, it has been recognized that Philippians 2:5-11, also known as the Carmen Christi, is actually from a tradition that predates Paul's conversion. It is most likely an early Christian hymn. If so, this is strong evidence that Jesus was acknowledged as God in human flesh from the very beginning. (For more information on this one, I strongly recommend getting a copy of The Forgotten Trinity by Dr. James White.)

Aside from the New Testament epistles, the writings of the early church fathers also provide strong evidence for the antiquity of the belief in deity of Christ. For example, there is the testimony of Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 35-108 or 117 AD). In his epistles, he writes:

There is one Physician who is possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first passible and then impassible,— even Jesus Christ our Lord.
(Ignatius of Antioch. Epistle to the Ephesians. ch. 7.)

Hence every kind of magic was destroyed, and every bond of wickedness disappeared; ignorance was removed, and the old kingdom abolished, God Himself being manifested in human form for the renewal of eternal life.
(Ignatius of Antioch. Epistle to the Ephesians. ch. 19.)

If any one says there is one God, and also confesses Christ Jesus, but thinks the Lord to be a mere man, and not the only-begotten God, and Wisdom, and the Word of God, and deems Him to consist merely of a soul and body, such an one is a serpent, that preaches deceit and error for the destruction of men.
(Ignatius of Antioch. Epistle to the Philadelphians. ch. 6.)

For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. For our God, Jesus Christ, now that He is with the Father, is all the more revealed [in His glory].
(Ignatius of Antioch. Epistle to the Romans. ch. 3.)

(Important note: There are quite a few forged epistles floating around that are alleged to have been written by Ignatius of Antioch. For this reason, I have taken care to quote only from those epistles which are considered to be his real writings.)

And then there is ante-Nicene epistle known as 2 Clement. Admittedly, this is not regarded as a genuine epistle of Clement, as Clement died around the end of the first century, whereas 2 Clement was written until around 140-160 AD. Nevertheless, this epistle is still early enough to be considered a valid witness to the faith of the Apostolic church. In it, the author writes,

Brethren, we ought so to think of our Lord Jesus Christ as of God, as of the judge of quick and dead, and we ought not to think meanly concerning our salvation.
(2nd Clement. 1:2.)

And then there is the witness of Justin Martyr (Ca. 100-165 AD), who is considered to be one of the first of the great Christian apologists. In his First Apology, he writes,

Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judæa, in the times of Tiberius Cæsar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third, we will prove.
(Justin Martyr. First Apology. ch. 13.)

It is interesting to note that the quotation above is an early expression of the Holy Trinity. Although the structure of the doctrine did not fully develop until the fourth century, we can see that primitive strands of Trinitarian thought already existed in the earliest days of the church.

And finally, we have Melito of Sardis (? -180 AD). Much of his work has been lost, though we have been able to locate one of his sermons, which is now known as the Peri Pascha. This sermon is quite significant, as it displays an elevated Christology:

The one who hung the earth in space, is himself hanged; the one who fixed the heavens in place, is himself impaled; the one who firmly fixed all things, is himself firmly fixed to the tree. The Lord is insulted, God has been murdered, the King of Israel has been destroyed by the right hand of Israel.
(Melito of Sardis. Peri Pascha. v. 96.)

He continues,

This is the one who made the heavens and the earth, and who in the beginning created man, who was proclaimed through the law and prophets, who became human via the virgin, who was hanged upon a tree, who was buried in the earth, who was resurrected from the dead, and who ascended to the heights of heaven, who sits at the right hand of the Father, who has authority to judge and to save everything, through whom the Father created everything from the beginning of the world to the end of the age.

This is the alpha and the omega. This is the beginning and the end–an indescribable beginning and an incomprehensible end. This is the Christ. This is the king. This is Jesus. This is the general. This is the Lord. This is the one who rose up from the dead. This is the one who sits at the right hand of the Father. He bears the Father and is borne by the Father, to whom be the glory and the power forever. Amen.
(Melito of Sardis. Peri Pascha. vv. 104-105.)

Thus, we can see that the proof is irrefutable that Christ has always been acknowledged as God. This was not an invention of the 3rd or 4th centuries, but is the apostolic witness, and is thus part and parcel of the faith which has been delivered to the saints.

So much for the "thousands of documents already exist[ing] chronicling His life as a mortal man."

(Continue to Part Two)

When Liberty is Too Much

This is an in-class essay that I wrote for my grade 12 English class earlier this month. My teacher vehemently disagrees with my position, yet has conceded that my essay is "undeniably well written" and that I have well-supported my position with my citations. For posterity, I have transcribed the essay and am posting it here on Epagonizesthai, with some minor changes in form, including a few minor revisions suggested my teacher.

When Liberty is Too Much
When Individualism Reaches Excess

"It's my own life and I'll live it how ever I want." This is (arguably) the rallying cry of our age. Many in our generation do not like being told what to do, and would prefer to set themselves as their own final authority. If anyone says that there are higher standards and virtues that we are to be held accountable to, let him be anathema!

Of course, this is not to say that we are one hundred percent self-centered all of the time. No sane person could live such a way. As writer John Langone has pointed out,

If you always thought only of yourself, chances are you wouldn’t think about being loyal to anyone. You might betray those around [you], and be betrayed by them. There would be no reason to distinguish between right and wrong because whatever you felt was right would be right.[1]

This kind of attitude is what inevitable takes us to moral relativism, which is defined as the belief that there are no absolute moral standards, that right and wrong are relative to the individual (or group if you have that herd mentality), and eschews the notion that moral judgments can be grounded in any way, so that moral reasoning becomes a completely subjective endeavor.[2]

This brings to mind one particular incident when the popular writer and thinker Ravi Zacharias was speaking at Oxford University. At that time, some students came up to him and insisted that absolute values don’t exist. As Zacharias recounts,

I asked one of them whether it would be wrong for me to take a butcher knife and cut to pieces a one-year-old child for sheer delight. There was a pause, and then he said, to an audible from those listening, “I would not like what you did, but I would not honestly say that it would be wrong.”[3]

It sounds sick, doesn’t it? And yet the student in that encounter was being logically consistent in his beliefs. How indeed can we say that it is wrong? When Pol Pot murdered millions of his countrymen and claimed, “My conscience is clear,” we may protest at his grotesque depravity, but do we have any solid basis for even making such a judgment? A consistent moral relativist would have to say no. This is what happens when we turn ourselves as individuals into our own personal “ground of all being.” If we follow this paradigm to its logical conclusion, we end up with Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil.” Like Nietzsche, we would dismiss caring for the “little guy” as utter folly, saying that those who do, “have preserved too much that which should have perished,” and be, “work[ing] for the deterioration of the European [or in our case the human] race.”[4]

And yet, those who espouse this view become “moralists” in denouncing those who defend the notion of absolute right and wrong. These pundits will preach and pontificate on their paradigm, even though they have no real basis for doing so, As Philip Yancey has observed,

The pioneers of unmorality [sic] have practiced a blatant contradiction… the new moralists first proclaim that morality is capricious, perhaps even a joke, then proceed to use moral categories to condemn their opponents… These new high priests lecture us solemnly about multiculturalism, gender equality, homophobia and environmental degradation, all the while ignoring the fact that they have systematically destroyed any basis for judging such behavior [as] right or wrong. The emperor so quick to discourse about fashion happens to be stark naked.[5]

This has also been the critique on our education system, as Robert Nielsen (in his review of writer Allan Bloom’s book, “Closing the American Mind” writes:

Literate or not, earnest or trifling, rich or poor, nearly every student… enters university with one fixed belief—that truth is relative. Students assume that areas are valid only for their time and place, or perhaps only for the individual holding them; that there are no universal and eternal verities for people to learn and live by. This leaves everyone free to think and do as they please, without worrying about right and wrong, so long as they don’t infringe on others’ freedom to do otherwise. The only sin is intolerance.[6]

What if we had a math class where every individual is free to decide for himself what the sum of two plus two is, and anybody who claims that any answer other than four is wrong is immediately branded as “close-minded” and “intolerant.” It sounds like a surreal scenario, yet that is the kind of logic that is being propagated by schools and by popular culture today. It is no wonder that many of our youth end up broken and disillusioned as they grow older. We need to break out of this individualistic mentality of relativism. It is my contention that we have lost our grounding on matters of truth and morality, and must bring ourselves to the consequences of our ideas, not to mention those higher standards of absolute truth and right and wrong that we have so foolishly relinquished. Then, and only then may we be able to find our way, rather than spinning our own heads around hopelessly in circles.

End Notes

1. Langone, John. Thorny Issues: How Ethics and Morality Affect the Way We live. Little, Brown and Company, 1981. p. 9-10.
2. Spinello, Richard. “Relativism.” Ethics: Revised Edition, Volume 3. Salem Press, 2005. p. 1252.
3. Zacharias, Ravi. Light in the Shadow of Jihad: The Struggle for Truth. Multnomah Publishers, 2002. p. 21.
4. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. PlanetPDF.com, 1886. p. 95-96.
5. Yancey, Philip. “Biological Imperative Does not Cause People to Act Ethically.” Ethics: Current Controversies. Greenhaven Press, 2000. p. 38.
6. Nielsen, Robert. “The Closing of the (North) American Mind.” Echoes: Fiction, Media and Non-Fiction. Oxford University Press, 2002. p. 327.

Of Jesus Myths and Pagan Christs - Urban Philosophy

I recently wrote a short piece for Urban Philosophy on the topic of whether or not Jesus existed as a historical figure. In the article, I dispelled the hypothesis that the early Christian Church borrowed from Pagan religions, the same thesis that Tom Harpur brought up in The Pagan Christ. In fact, a little bit of the article comes from a portion of my Examining the Pagan Christ series, although a majority of it is based on some more original research.

The article may be viewed here:

• Of Jesus Myths and Pagan Christs

Examining The Pagan Christ: Conclusion

I would like to continue my examining the Pagan Christ series, but I don't think I can devote any more time to refuting the claims written by Tom Harpur in his book. Suffice to say, he makes a lot of of unsubstantiated claims and assertions that simply do not hold up to scrutiny. He misrepresents history, the early church fathers and the actual beliefs of other religions. For further information regarding these claims, I would like to recommend the following resources to better equip my brothers and sisters in Christ to defend the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints against the claims of the skeptics and mythicists:

Articles

• Gary Habermas - Recent Perspectives on the Reliability of the Gospels
• J.P. Holding - A Critical Look at Tom Harpur's "The Pagan Christ"
• J.P. Holding - Answering Copycat Charges

Books

• F.F. Bruce - The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
• Gary Habermas - The Historical Jesus
• Lee Strobel - The Case for the Real Jesus
• Various - Reinventing Jesus

Examining The Pagan Christ: Part Six

This is a dissection of certain sections of chapter eight of the book. At this point, Mr. Harpur begins to exhaust his information, as a lot of the chapter basically repeats the same claims he has already made numerous times in earlier chapters of his book. Thus, I will concentrate mainly on the claims that are more specific to this chapter. First:

As scholars of the controversial California-based Jesus Seminar have pointed out, some twenty gospels of various kinds have come down to us either in whole or in pieces from the first three centuries of the common era, but only four ended up included in the New Testament. The seminar, founded in 1985 by Robert Funk, now consists of a group of over seventy-five internationally recognized biblical scholars who are experts in a wide variety of fields, from ancient history to archaeology. Sifting through the Gospels and the Book of Acts, grading the various sayings and deeds of Jesus according to their probability of authenticity, they have produced a very different “man” from the figure that is the icon of orthodox Christianity. In their findings, Jesus had a human father whose name may not have been Joseph; he was born not in Bethlehem but in Nazareth; he was an itinerant sage who liked the company of social outcasts; he healed many psychosomatic illnesses; he did not walk on water, feed the crowd with miraculous meals, change water into wine, or raise the dead. In their view, there was no empty tomb; belief in the Resurrection is based on the visionary experiences of Peter, Mary and later, Paul. Jesus did not, in their view, preach that he would come again. [1]

The Jesus Seminar is pretty far out there when it comes to biblical scholarship (though to be fair, they're nowhere near as bad as some of the really, really fringe writers I've encountered). If you're not familiar with their "scholarship" methods, they basically vote on the authenticity of the Gospel texts using different coloured beads, with the different colours representing different views as to each verse's authenticity. The texts that they identify as "authentic" are based on preconceived ideas that Jesus could not have done such-and-such an act or have said such-and-such a saying, and thus you arrived at a very skewed position that doesn't even reflect the views of the consensus of scholars. [2]

Of course, this does not bother Mr. Harpur at all, as he is willing to grasp at anything he can in order to try and vindicate his ideas regarding Jesus and the Gospels. Funny enough, he praises the Jesus Seminar when their findings support his conclusions, but he reproaches them when they disagree with him on the historicity of Christ:

The chief flaw in the entire Jesus Seminar approach, however, is that like the fundamentalists, the scholars of the Jesus Seminar seem stuck with the mistaken view that they are ultimately dealing with history. If they could only strip away all accretions and get back to the kernel or core1 But myth treated as history invariably falls apart. Instead of a powerful spiritual message, they have ended up with scraps of “stones for bread.”

The truth is that the earliest documents available to the seminar scholars are some tiny fragments of a papyrus copy of John’s Gospel, dating to about 130 C.E. The first substantial physical evidence for the four Gospels comes from near the end of the second century C.E., about 170 years after Jesus’ demise. But even then, as the seminar’s leaders point out, “hard information” is lacking as to how, when, and by whom they were actually composed or edited. [3]

Mr. Harpur, does it not bother you that the majority of scholars--even these supposedly far-left liberal ones who scoff at the idea of a supernatural Jesus--admit that Jesus Christ really is a historical figure? This is the reason why I find the Jesus Mythicist position to be so untenable: There is simply no foundation for it, historical or otherwise. Only by stretching the facts beyond any reasonable interpretation can somebody even come close to the kind of position that Mr. Harpur is espousing, and rebuttals to his work such as these bear witness to that fact.

Also, Mr. Harpur tries to make much of the fact that the earliest complete codices we have of the Gospels appear nearly two centuries after Christ. If you compare this with other ancient works that have an even greater age disparity (not to mention fewer manuscripts to back them up), the reliability of the Gospel texts is actually very impressive. As biblical scholar K.A. Kitchen writes:

Among works of classical (Greek and Latin) literature, the writings of the New Testament--4 gospels, 21 letters, the history of Acts and visions of Revelation--have a manuscript attestation second to none, and superior to most. No one blinks an eyelid at depending for the Latin text of Julius Caesar's Gallic Ware (Composed within 58-56 BC) upon manuscripts all of which are 900 years later than Caesar's time, only nine or ten of the manuscripts being good textual copies. No-one doubts that we still read the real text of the works of Herodotus or Tucydides (450 BC), even though the oldest available full manuscripts (only eight or so) date from 1,300 years later! For the New Testament, how different and how vastly superior is the manuscript evidence. Some 5,000 Greek MSS (whole or fragmentary) are known, not a mere eight or ten. The most notable MSS are the Codexes Vaticanus and Sinaiticus of c. 350 AD--only 250 years after the end of the New Testament period (100 AD), not 900 or 1,300 years! Older still are the Chester Beatty and Bodmer biblical papyri, including six new Testament MSS of the second and third centuries AD, only 150 years after the New Testament period. Further back still, there is a Rylands fragment from a manuscript of John's Gospel (18:31-33, 37f.) datable by its script to about 130 AD--little more than a generation after the New Testament period itself. As this fragment came from Egypt, it is evident that John's gospel had been composed, recopied and begun to circulate well beyond Palestine before 130 AD. Hence, on this evidence alone, it must have been composed (at latest) by 90/100 AD, and more probably earlier. [4]

If you are going to cast doubt on the Gospel texts, you might as well be completely consistent and cast doubt on pretty much everything else that had also been written during that time period. Next:

Notice that the Gospel of Thomas, discovered with other Gnostic writings at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, was purely made up of sayings attributed to Jesus. It had no Passion or Resurrection story. The same is true of the hypothetical “Q,” a “sayings” source believed to have been used by both Matthew and Luke. [5]

As Mr. Harpur has himself just admitted, "Q" is just a hypothesis. We have no manuscript evidence of such a writing actually existing, so one can hardly make a good case out of it. Also, most of the so-called "Gnostic Gospels" are written way after the canonical gospels. The Gospel of Thomas is dated to around the middle of the 2nd century. The other Gnostic gospels are much later than that. It should be obvious from reading these "gospels" that they contain a lot of late (not to mention heretical) ideas, speculations and blatant mythologizing that is conspicuously absent from the canonical gospels. Finally, Tom Harpur takes issue with the Gospels being biographies:

The point is that while on the surface the Gospels appear to be a form of biography combined with proclamation, closer examination reveals that they are not biographies at all. They are extraordinarily imprecise or vague just at the places where we would most expect explicit details. We know nothing about Jesus’ appearance from these texts—the colour of his skin or his eyes, his approximate height or size, whether he was bearded or clean-shaven, whether he had long hair or was balding, and so on. We’re left wholly guessing about his date of birth and the year he died, even about whether he was married or single. Because of the vast silence about the years between his birth and the beginning of the ministry (apart from Luke’s legend-like story about Jesus’ visiting the temple at the age of twelve for his bar mitzvah), volumes have been filled with speculations that grow wilder with passing time. There are legends about supposed visits to England; mystical sojourns in Egypt, Tibet, India; and much more. Credulous souls who have great difficulty discerning evidence from fanciful conjecture flock to buy each latest embroidery on this theme.[6]

That's how they wrote biographies back then. The writers didn't feel the need to represent every detail of every part of a person's life, or even place the events of their lives in chronological order. They only concentrated on those important details that they wanted to highlight and make known to readers. The plain fact of the matter is that the Gospel writers only wrote as much as was necessary for them to convey. [7]

Also, The last sentence of this paragraph I can actually agree with. A lot of people nowadays are very gullible, and will buy into the latest fad theories that they encounter (case in point: The movie "Zeitgeist"). That aside, I'm still not seeing a solid case being presented by Mr. Harpur. If there is any compelling reason why anybody should accept his thesis, I have yet to see it.

End Notes
1. Harpur, Tom. The Pagan Christ. 2004. p. 138.
2. Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ. Zondervan, 1998. p. 114-118.
3. Harpur, Tom. The Pagan Christ. 2004. p. 138-139.
4. Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. The Bible and Its World. InterVarsity Press, 1977. p. 131.
5. Harpur, Tom. The Pagan Christ. 2004. p. 140.
6. Ibid, p. 144.
7. Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ. Zondervan, 1998. p. 25-26.

Further Reading

• Sophia De Morgan - Gnostic Nonsense: A Critical Review of Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels
  
• Sophia De Morgan - Beyond Credibility: A Critical Review of Elaine Pagels’ Beyond Belief

(Since Mr. Harpur cites Elaine Pagels as a source in this chapter of his book, I thought I'd post a couple of critiques on her work as well.)

Examining The Pagan Christ: Part Five

I have just recently gone through the seventh chapter of Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ. At this point, he gets into the historicity of the bible in general, and ends up dismissing most -if not all- of the stories in the old and new testaments as pious myths. Here are the statements made by Tom Harpur in that chapter:

The lead article in the March 2002 issue of the prestigious Harper's magazine, titled "False Testament," bluntly stated that archaeology now refutes the Bible's claim to history. Over the past several years, dispute over biblical historicity has marked scholarly conferences and been the focus of articles in The New York Times and U.S. News and World Report, a cover story in the December 2002 issue of Maclean's magazine, and a hard-hitting piece by the archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. But the Harper's expose, by the journalist Daniel Lazare, was the most trenchant, current account I have seen yet.

Citing the most recent evidence (or rather, for the most part, the lack of it), Lazare pulled the foundation out from under almost every major historical beam in the edifice of accepted wisdom about everything from the existence of Abraham and the other biblical patriarchs to the Exodus from Egypt, the supposed gories of Kings David and Solomon, and even the reputed conquest of the Promised Land (Canaan).[1]

The way it is written sounds very sensationalistic, especially when you get to the part where he talks about Lazare "pulling the foundation out from under every major historical beam in the edifice of accepted wisdom". The fact that these things are being published in popular (oftentimes Liberal) magazines and newspapers rather than scholarly scientific journals should already be enough to raise some red flags. Further on, he writes:

Lazare stated baldly that on the basis of his research and a survey of current scholarship, he'd concluded that all of this is "bosh." In the past quarter century, he said, archaeologists have seen "one settled assumption over who the ancient Israelites were and where they came proved false." Instead of a band of invaders who conquered Canaan, "the Israelites are now thought to have been an indigenous culture that developed west of the Jordan River around 1200 B.C.E."

The epic stories of Abraham, Isaac, and the other patriarchs "appear to have been spliced... out of various pieces of local lore." The whole account of David's empire is now viewed as "an invention of Jerusalem-based priests in the seventh and eighth centuries B.C.E. who were keen to burnish their national history," he wrote. (By the way, a study of comparative religions shows that all ancient peoples did the same.)

According to Lazare's findings, Jewish monotheism--that is, the exclusive worship of a Semitic deity called YHWA--didn't fully "coalesce" until sometime between an Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 B.C.E. and the Babylonian conquest of the southern kingdom of Judah in 586. The Bible indicates this happened much earlier. As we shall discover, the true origins appeared in Egyptian religious thought.

The situation gets even more problematic for the traditionalists in every camp. Abraham, as Kuhn had long insisted, was utterly mythological. "Not only is there no evidence that any such figure as Abraham ever lived but archaeologists believe that there is no way such a figure could have lived given what we now know about Israelite origins," Lazare wrote. In other words, as Kuhn said much earlier, he was a leading figure in the larger myth.[2]

Just so you know folks, it's YHWH, not YHWA. There is no Hebrew equivalent for the letter A, or any of the vowels, for that matter. Also, if the Exodus never occurred, that just makes you wonder how "Egyption religious thought" could have influenced the religious thought of the Israelites.

Now, he claims that there is no archaeological evidence that Abraham was a real historical figure, a position that is held only by a small minority of historians and archaeologists, not to mention certain sensationalistic journalists. In reality, we do have extra-biblical corroboration for the existence of Abraham. In particular, there is a record that comes from the reign of Pharaoh Sheshonq I, whom many scholars equate with the biblical Shishak (1 Kings 11:40, 14:25-26). In an inscription found in the Temple of Amun in Karnak, there is a mention of "The fort [or fortified town] of Abraham," which is located in the Negev desert, and has been equated by some scholars with Beersheba, a city founded by Abraham (Genesis 21:32-33). This is due to the fact that both are found in the Negev, it is unexplainable that a city as prominent as Beersheba could have been omitted from the Pharaoh's records, unless it is the very same city that is called Fort Abram by the Egyptians. [3]

Moving on, we have Harpur quoting Lazare to further disprove the Exodus, as well as the existence of David and Solomon. Here he says:

And Lazare didn't stop there. The Exodus never occurred, he asserted, a conclusion he based upon a growing body of evidence about ancient Egyptian border defences, desert sites where the fleeing Israelites allegedly camped, and so on. The Old Testament description of Canaan thus "turns out to be fictional as well."

King David, said by the Bible to have been a mighty potentate and empire builder, "was rather a freebooter who carved out what was at most a small duchy in the southern highlands around Jerusalem and Hebron." In fact, there are some archaeologists today who maintain, because of the absence of concrete evidence, that he too never existed. The name of David appears on one lone inscription on a stone block, or stele, from the ninth century B.C.E., and that's all there is. As Lazare points out, "If David and Solomon had been important regional power brokers, one might reasonably expect their names to crop up on monuments and in the diplomatic correspondence of the day. Yet, once again, the record is silent.

Fundamentalists once took delight in evidence from the 1930s that the walls of Jericho had on one occasion fallen down, much as the Book of Joshua describes. However, Lazare reminds readers that the British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon, in more recent times, has demonstrated from pottery shards in the ruins that the destruction occurred no later 1300 B.C.E., almost a hundred years before the conquest (if there was one) could have happened. Joshua may well not have "fit the battle of Jericho" after all.[4]

The argument from silence is not a very good one. Besides, one inscription alone should be enough to prove that there was a historical David. Remember that archaeological records from the bronze/iron age aren't always well preserved. For example, the writings of certain figures as Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.), Thucydides (460-395 B.C.E.) and Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.E.) are only preserved in a few manuscripts (no more than 5-10 in number each), and these manuscripts are from anywhere between nine to fourteen centuries after these characters lived, yet we do not question that they existed as historical figures. [5]

Thus, it would be too biased if anybody was to apply a different standard on the Bible and the figures mentioned therein. If we were to apply such a standard consistently, then we don't know what anybody from back then said or did, and we wouldn't know if any of the major historical figures of that period even existed!

Also, if the archaeological findings on Jericho disprove anything, it is only that Jericho fell later than 1300 B.C.E. We do not have a definite date for the conquest, so it could well have occurred before the aforementioned date. In fact, archaeology does support the idea of an Israelite conquest. According to Dr. David Livingston, "Cultural changes favor an early (1400 BC) Conquest." He quotes Frederic Brandfon, one of the staff at the Beer-Sheba excavation, who makes this statement:

. . . most of the [Iron Age] villages were established prior to the destruction of the urban centers on the nearby tells. . . . Villages so characteristic of the Israelite settlement period began at a time when the Late Bronze Age cities had not yet been destroyed. The resulting archaeological picture is one of cultural overlapping, with urban and rural settlements existing side by side. . . . Sites typical of the Late Bronze Age -- the Canaanite cities -- and sites characteristic of the Iron Age -- the Early Iron Age villages are now known to have been contemporary. In relative terms, the Iron Age appears to have begun earlier than previously suspected. The excavations of the village sites has raised the date for the beginning of the Iron Age, while the Lachish and Tel Sera inscriptions have lowered the date for the end of the Late Bronze Age. The result is a broad range of overlap between what is commonly known as the "Late Bronze Age" and the "Early Iron Age" lasting almost 100 years, from about 1230 to 1150 B.C.E. [6]

"This," according to Dr. Livingston, "admirably addresses the situation of Israel living in the countryside in tents while the towns and cities remained Canaanite, but were gradually taken over by Israelites." (link)

Moving on, we have a rather ridiculous assertion coming from Kuhn, who is quoted extensively by Mr. Harpur:

In The lost Light, Kuhn makes some startling comments on Abraham, who he says categorically was never a historical figure. Kuhn even unlocks the meaning of the patriarch's name, A-Brahm, arguing it is a combination of the alpha privative (as in the words "armoral" and "anoxia" and Brahm (as in Vedic or Hindu), and means, therefore, "not Brahm." He writes that "Abraham the patriarch, or oldest of the emanations, was not Brahm, the Hindu supreme deity, Brahma, the absolute, but the first emenation from Brahm. He was the first life that was not Absolute, but from the Absolute, a kind of demi-god, or sun God." [7]

This theory of emanations sounds like something out of Gnosticism. That aside, the problem with the assertion made by Kuhn (and Harpur by quoting him) is that Abraham is a Hebrew name, while the alpha privative is a feature of the Greek language, and Brahm comes from the Hindus, who lived way too far away to have possibly exerted any influence on Jewish religious thought. It is way too much of a stretch to assert that these two somehow influenced the Hebrew tongue to produce the name "A-brahm".

The same method is used again by Harpur on the names of Lazarus and of the town of Bethany (John 11:1 ff). Notice the amount of grammatical stretching and amalgamating of different (sometimes unrelated) languages that he resorts to in his "scholarly analysis:"

Consider this a form of detective work for a few moments and see how scholarly analysis reveals the true meaning of what is going on. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Anu, called Heliopolis in Greek (meaning "city of the sun"), was the theological name of an actual Egyptian city where the rites of the death, burial, and resurrection of Osirirs of Horus were enacted each year. The name is a combination of nu, the name for "mother heaven", or primal, empty space, "the abyss of of nothingness," and the alpha privative--hence, A-Nu, or "not nothingness," a world of concrete actuality, the world of substantial manifestation. In other words, Anu was precisely a place where units of divine consciousness (or souls) go to their symbolic "death" in every human (incarnation) and later rise again to glory. Anu was called, among other things, the place of "multiplying bread." (Significantly, Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, means "the house of bread." We will not stop here, tempted though we may be, to show the intimate connections between this concept and the Gospel Christ who multiplies loaves and fishes for the crowds.) The Hebrews added their prefix for "house," beth, to Anu and produced Beth-Anu, or the House of Anu. But because the u and the y were interchangeable in antiquity, we ended up with the New Testament counterpart Bethany. The point here is that when we read the Egyptian text, we find that the Egyptian Christ, Horus, performed a great miracle at Anu, or Bethany. He raised his father, Osiris, from the dead, calling unto him in the cave to "rise and come forth."

These clues help us solve the question of who Lazarus was originally. According to the great Egyptologist Sir Wallis Budge, as well as my major sources and other eminent authorities on the texts, one ancient name for Osiris was Asar. The Egyptians reglurarly expressed their reference by place the definite article "the" before the names of their gods. Just as Christians say, or should say, "the Christ," the Egyptians say "the Osirirs." But that was the equivalent of saying "Lord Osiris". When the Hebrews took up the name of the Osiris, or Lord Osiris, they used the Hebrew word for "lord," el--hence El-Asar. Later on, the Romans, speaking Latin, of course took El-Asar and added the us ending used for most male names. The result was El-Asar-us. In time, the initial e "wore off," as linguists describe it, and the s in Asar changed to z, its constant companion in language. Thus, we have Lazarus, the Osiris of the Beth-Anu story. So it is that, beginning with massey, these scholars convincingly conclude that Jesus' raising of Lazarus at Bethany is "but a rescript of the old Egyptian dramatic mystery in which Horus, the Christ, raised his 'dead' father Osiris from the grave." It is written in the hieroglyphics that Horus followed the divine Meri to the place where Asar (Orisirs) lay buried in his tomb, just as Jesus followed mary, who had come forth to meet him on the way to Bethany. The most important point is that this Egyptian recital was in the papyri perhaps as long ago as five thousand years B.C.E. [8]

To even the semi-unbiased person, the verbal gymnastics and constant reading into the text should be plainly obvious. I would like to see where Harpur found the alleged text where Horus resurrects Osiris (I already covered Horus and Osiris in part three of this series, and no mention is ever made of such an event).

Also, I guess it is irrelevant to Mr. Harpur that there is an actual historical city named "Bethany", and that the actual meaning of its name is "house of dates". Besides, how do you get "Beth-anu" out of the original Greek word "βηθανιας" (Bethanias)?

Also, the Hebrew word for Lord is actually "Adonai". "El" (short for Elohim) actually means God, so that exposes another one of the grammatical errors of Mr. Harpur. That aside, the rest of Mr. Harpur's eisegesis involves way too much stretching to be considered credible (especially the part where he alleges that a Hebrew prefix and a Latin suffix are both arbitrarily added to an Egyptian word. Besides, the New Testament was written in Greek, not Latin, so the name actually reads as "λαζαρος" (Lazaros).

All of this is used by Harpur to justify his "esoteric" interpretation of the scriptures, where we who have "the Christ within" must symbolically "die and rise again" in this life.

Finally, I must deal with one last objection from chapter seven of the book. This is a rehashing of an old argument raised time and time again by skeptics against the historicity of the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. Here, Harpur writes:

Luke tells how a decree went out from Augustus that "all the world should be registered." The trouble is that there is absolutely no trace--in a well-documented period--of such a decree. It's simply a means of getting Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem for theological reasons. The messiah had to be of Davidic descent, and thus from Bethlehem. Luke says the birth occurred while Quirinius was governor of Syria. That means it could not have happened before 6 C.E., the year we know he took office. At the same time, Matthew says Jesus was conceived while Herod the Great was in power in Judea. But Herod died in 4 B.C.E.! The author of The Jesus Mysteries points out that Mary's real miracle, if both references are taken as genuinely historical, was "a 10-year pregnancy." For Matthew, Jesus' hometown was Bethlehem. For Luke, it was Nazareth.

As we have already seen, the stories of the angels and the shepherds, in Luke, and of the wise men, in Matthew, are rewrites of Egyptian mythical themes from at least two thousand years earlier. They are portrayed in the art at Luxor. There is no historical record of Herod's alleged edict regarding the "slaughter of the innocents" either. Common sense tells us that such an order was an impossibility in any case. Did Herod intend to kill the children of his friends, his soldiers, his civil servants, tourists passing through, and so on? You know for certain the whole matter is symbolic once you realize that an attempt to slaughter a holy child appears in all the ancient hero myths, from Moses to Horus to Sargon to Hercules. As noted earlier, the threat to the newly born Horus, the Egyptian Christ, came from Herut, the serpent. [9]

Actually, such decrees were quite common during the time of the Roman empire, and there is plenty of papyrus evidence to back that up. For example, one decree dated to around 104 C.E. reads:

Gaius Vibius Maximus, Prefect of Egypt [says]: Seeing that the time has come for the house to house census, it is necessary to compel all those who for any cause whatsoever are residing out of their provinces to return to their own homes, and they may both carry out the regular order of the census and may also attend diligently to the cultivation of their allotments. [10]

Notice the mention of "the regular order of the census". This shows such orders were quite commonplace at the time, so it is well within reason that such an event would have taken place. Mr. Harpur also claims that Matthew makes Bethlehem Jesus' hometown, but this is just another argument from silence. Just because Matthew does not explicitly state what Luke states doesn't mean that Matthew was proposing a different origin for Joseph and Mary.

Also, Mr. Harpur claims that common sense tells us that it was impossible for Herod to have ordered the slaughter of the innocents (Matthew 2:16). I guess Mr. Harpur's "common sense" does not take into account the fact that Herod was a very murderous man who had no qualms about condemning even his own relatives to death. The account of his ordering the execution of his own sons is well documented by the Jewish historian Josephus:

As for Herod, if he had before any doubt about the slaughter of his sons, there was now no longer any room left in his soul for it; but he had banished away whatsoever might afford him the least suggestion of reasoning better about this matter, so he already made haste to bring his purpose to a conclusion. He also brought out three hundred of the officers that were under an accusation, as also Tero and his son, and the barber that accused them before an assembly, and brought an accusation against them all; whom the multitude stoned with whatsoever came to hand, and thereby slew them. Alexander also and Aristobulus were brought to Sebaste, by their father's command, and there strangled; but their dead bodies were in the night time carried to Alexandraum, where their uncle by the mother's side, and the greatest part of their ancestors, had been deposited.

And now perhaps it may not seem unreasonable to some, that such an inveterate hatred might increase so much as to proceed further, and overcome nature; but it may justly deserve consideration, whether it be to be laid to the charge of the young men, that they gave such an occasion to their father's anger, and led him to do what he did, and by going on long in the same way put things past remedy, and brought him to use them so unmercifully; or whether it be to be laid to the father's charge, that he was so hard-hearted, and so very tender in the desire of government, and of other things that would tend to his glory, that e would take no one into a partnership with him, that so whatsoever he would have done himself might continue immovable... And this temper he showed in what he did afterward, when he did not spare those that seemed to be the best beloved of his friends that were left, wherein, though the justice of the punishment caused those that perished to be the less pitied, yet was the barbarity of the man here equal, in that he did not abstain from their slaughter also. But of those persons we shall have occasion to discourse more hereafter. [12]

Given this murderous nature of King Herod, it would have been well within his reason to kill all the infants in the little town of Bethlehem in order to preserve his own kingship, and such an action would have been so characteristic of him that it would have seemed redundant for anyone to record such a commonplace event. It might seem strange to the modern mindset, but it fits well with the bloody landscape of 1st century Palestine.

End Notes
1. Harpur, Tom. The Pagan Christ. 2004. p. 116.
2. Ibid, p. 117.
3. Dailey, Timothy J. Ph.D. and David M. Howard, Jr. Mysteries of the Bible. Publications Internatonal, Ltd., 1998. p. 35-36.
4. Harpur, Tom. The Pagan Christ. 2004. p. 117-118.
5. Kitchen, Kenneth Anderson. The Bible and Its World. InterVarsity Press, 1977. p. 131.
6. Herzog, Ze'ev. Beer-Sheba II: The Early Iron Age Settlements. Tel Aviv University: Institute of Archaeology, 1984.
7. Harpur, Tom. The Pagan Christ. 2004. p. 121.
8. Ibid, p. 133-134.
9. Ibid, p. 125-126.
10.McRay, John. Archaeology and the New Testament. Baker, 1991. p. 155.
12. Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews. Book 16, Chapter 11.

UPDATE (July 13, 2009)

Those who have read an earlier revision of this article might be wondering why a citation has been dropped from it. The reason behind this is that I realized that the information presented therein is not as accurate as I had hoped it to be. For a clarification on this, check out this blog post.

Further Reading

• Archaeology and the Bible
• Bible History Online
• Dr. David Livingston - Israel's Origins

Examining The Pagan Christ: Part Four

I'm not going to make this post very long. I will deal with a few more quotes from the fifth chapter, as well as some from the sixth.

Significantly, both Horus and Jesus were accompanied by twelve disciples, as were Mithras and Dionysus. After reading Massey and Kuhn, I discovered that this has a deeper spiritual meaning than appears at first sight. A vast flood of light is let in upon Gospel interpretation if it is understood that the twelve disciples of Jesus symbolized the twelve powers of spiritual light energy to be unfolded by man in twelve labours (or stages) of growth, all imaged by the twelve signs of the zodiac. [1]

Too bad the early Christians never accepted astrology/the zodiac. Also, all this talk of "spiritual light energy" makes no sense at all, and is completely foreign to the meaning of the scripture. It would make more sense to say that the there were twelve apostles (not disciples, there's a difference) because they correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel.

Also, there is no evidence that Horus had twelve disciples. This is the problem when you are relying on spurious secondary sources. Next:

Egypt gave the twelve followers a more definitive name and function. The twelve were astronomical powers, rulers or "saviours of the treasure of light".[2]

See above. Next:

In the New Testament the angel of the Lord says to Joseph, "Arise and take the young child and his mother and flee into Egypt." At the birth of Horus, the god That says to the mother, "Come, thou goddess Isis, hide thyself with thy child." She is told to take him to a secluded spot in the marshes of lower Egypt, called Kheb (or Khebt). Interestingly, the Sumerian sun god, Sargon, had to be hidden, like Moses, in a reed basket by a river also to avoid being killed. [3]

Another undocumented quote. Horus did not say the quote attributed to him above. Also, I have found three kings/emperors by the name of Sargon, but no sun god, and no mention of being hidden in a reed basket by a river. So I can safely say that we can discount that claim as well. Next:

Jesus, all four Gospels declare, was baptized in the River Jordan by his cousin John, who was dubbed "the baptizer". John as later beheaded by the tetrarch Herod Antipas (4 B.C.E. - 39 C.E.)--after Salome's famous dance--at the whim of his wife, Herodias, and his death signalled the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. Horus, as we have seen, was baptized in the River Eridanus (or Arutana) by the Egyptian John the Baptist, Anup, who was also later beheaded. Kuhn says that Horus in his baptism was "transformed from the word made flesh to the word made truth"--a change from the natural to the wholly spiritual.[4]

I'm not going to quote the rest of the section on Anup (whom Harpur identifies with Anubis). The difference is simply bogus: Anup was not a "baptizer", nor was he beheaded.

And one more:

Jesus' Nativity will always be associated with the ox and the ass because of the stable and the manger. But these two animals were also with the Egyptian Iusa, ages upon ages before. What this earthy feature of the birth story is really about, in the true esoteric sense, is the coming of the divine into the basic animal nature to create that wholly new reality--the human being (part animal, part divine). Significantly, both these animals are in a way asexual, or "crossovers", which suggests that ultimately Christ in us is a melding of the male and female principles. Indeed , the Christ of Revelation has the breasts of a woman! [5]

Wow, I never heard that interpretation before. I guess when you try to come up with "esoteric" approaches to the scriptures, you can get away with practically any eisegesis for it.

Now, Harpur mentions "Iusa" here, as well as elsewhere in the book. This is another farce: Ron Leprohan, of the University of Toronto, pointed out that while sa means 'son' in ancient Egyptian and iu means 'to come,' Kuhn and Harpur have the syntax all wrong. In any event, the name Iusa simply does not exist in Egyptian. The name 'Jesus' is Greek, derived from a universally recognized Semitic name (Jeshu'a) borne by many people in the first century. (link)

Finally, the female breasts part seems to be based on Revelation 1:13. The King James Version uses the word "paps" here, but modern translations simply put in "chest". So, it would appear that this claim by Mr. Harpur is based a misunderstanding of the KJV's text, and we can discard this claim.

End Notes
1. Harpur, Tom. The Pagan Christ. 2004. p. 86.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid, p. 93.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid, p. 92.

Examining The Pagan Christ: Part Three

I've finished chapter five of Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ, and am now at the beginning of chapter six. So for this installment of my series dissecting his book, I will focus on the fifth chapter, which is where Mr. Harpur brings out all his alleged proofs for an Egyptian Christ. Unfortunately, I'm not that well versed in Egyptian mythology (though I do know the story behind some of them), so I do my best to present what limited information I have here.

Like the Christians many millennia later, the ancient Egyptians believed in one God who was self-created, self-existent, immortal, invisible, eternal, omniscient, almighty, and inscrutable; he was the maker of the heavens and the earth, sky and sea, men and women, animals, birds, fish and creeping things, trees and plants, and the incorporeal beings who were the messenger (angels) that fulfilled his wish and word. [1]

This is only part true. In reality, the Egyptians' conception of their gods has evolved quite a bit through the passing of the dynasties. Mr. Harpur is referring to a specific stage in the development of Egyptian mythology, which was around the time of the Middle Kingdom, and the religion was truly polytheistic during other stages in its history. Ancient Egypt only became truly monotheistic (actually, henotheistic might be more accurate) during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten during the 14th century BC, when he instituted the worship of only one deity, the sun god Aten. This was a short-lived development, however, as the traditional polytheistic religion was in fact reinstated 20 years after Akhenaten abolished it.

Osiris was divine, yet in the myth he became a human who lived on the earth, ate, drank, and suffered a cruel death, then triumphed over death through help of the gods (Horus) and attained everlasting life. Budge adds, "But what Osiris did, they could do, and what the gods did for Osiris they must also do for them.... They like him would rise again and inherit life everlasting." Horus was so closely associated with Osiris that at times they were virtually interchangeable We are reminded at this point of the Jesus of John's Gospel. He said "I and the Father are one". [2]

The main problem is that the Egyptians didn't believe in any sort of "incarnation". There just isn't any evidence that they had that sort of thing in their religion.

Now, the actual story is really a lot less edifying. Though variations of the story exist, the basic plot is the same: During a party, Osiris was tricked into lying down on a chest that was specially designed to fit him. At that point, the chest was nailed shut, trapping him in it. The chest floated in the Nile for a while until it found its way back to Egypt. Set then hacked the pieces of Osiris' body into pieces (The number of pieces varies between 14 and 16). Now, what happens next varies: Either Isis sewed/waxed the body parts back together, or they were buried, and Osiris descended into the underworld to become god of the dead. In any case, the stories are completely different from that of Jesus, save for a few minor similarities, such as one variation of the story where Osiris is called a "saviour of man". (link 1) (link 2) (link 3)

Oh, and one more thing: Budge wrote back 1934. Our knowledge on Egyptology has advanced in the seven decades since he published his works. Better get your facts updated.

The body was the vehicle for the divine spirit. Just as it was soaked in various medications and spices to preserve it, so too each individual is "steeped" in, or anointed with, soul energies that will endure to everlasting life. This is why the mummy was called a Karast or Krist (KRST): The concept of Christ iself comes from a root word meaning "to anoint." The Hebrew word Messiah stems from a similar root. [3]

It's been said before, but I'll repeat it here, just for good measure: KRST is the word for “burial” (“coffin” is written “KRSW”), but there is no evidence whatsoever to link this with the Greek title “Christos” or Hebrew “Mashiah”. (link)

The Egyptian Christ, manifeseted in the sign of Pisces, was fore-ordained to be Ichthys (the Greek word for "fish"), the fisherman, and to be accompanied by fishermen followers. Doctrinally, he was the "fisher of men." [4]

I wonder where Mr. Harpur got this. There is no evidence that Horus was ever called "fisher of men". See the previous link.

(Will be continued in part four.)

End Notes
1. Harpur, Tom. The Pagan Christ. 2004. p. 68
2. Ibid, p. 70-71.
3. Ibid, p. 75.
4. Ibid, p. 88.

Examining The Pagan Christ: Part Two

This is the second installment of my series critiquing Tom Harpur's "The Pagan Christ". I am currently at the beginning of the fifth chapter, and Mr. Harpur has already begun towing out all the alleged parallels between Christianity and other religions, and even takes the time to take jabs at quite a few of the early church fathers. I will provide here some rebuttals to various assertions made by Mr. Harpur in the 3rd and 4th chapters of his book.

This first paragraph is a citation from Oliver Wendell Holmes' introduction to "The Life of Asia", a biography of Buddha by Sir Edwin Arnold.

If one were told that many centuries ago a celestial ray shone into the body of a sleeping woman, as it seemed to her in her dream, that thereupon the advent of a wondrous child was predicted by the soothsayers; that angels appeared at this child's birth; that merchants came from afar bearing gifts to him; that an ancient saint recognized the babe as divine and fell at his feet to worship him; that in his eighth year the child confounded his teachers with the amount of knowledge, while still showing them true reverence; that he grew up full of compassionate tenderness to all that lived and suffered; that to help his fellow creatures he sacrificed every worldly prospect and enjoyment; that he went through the ordeal of a terrible temptation in which all the power and evil were let loose upon him, and came out conqueror of them all; that he preached holiness and practiced charity; that he gathered disciples and sent out apostles to spread his doctrine over many lands and peoples; that this "helper of the worlds" could claim a more than earthly lineage and a life that dated long before Abraham was---of whom would he/she think the wonderful tale was told? Would he/she not say that this must be another version of the story of the One who came upon our earth in a Syrian village during the reign of Augustus Caesar and died by violence during the reign of Tiberius? What would this person say if told that the narrative was between five and six centuries older than that of the Founder of Christianity? Such is the story of this person [the Buddha]. Such is the date assigned. The religion he taught is reckoned by many to be among the most widely prevalent of all beliefs.[1]

I don't know about you, but it seems a bit of a stretch to connect the story of a celestial ray shining on a sleeping woman and an angelic visit announcing to a wide awake young woman that she is to become pregnant through the Holy Spirit. There isn't even any mention of whether or not the mother was a virgin or not. Also, after having gone through the story of the birth of Siddhartha Gautama, I can find no references to angels appearing. The part about merchants from afar bearing gifts and of an ancient saint worshipping him are based on some rather broad generalities and superficial similarities. Here is the actual story:

In the first few days after his birth, many people came to the palace to see the new baby. One of these visitors was and old man named Asita. Asita was a hermit who lived by himself in the distant forests, and he was known to be a very holy person. The King and Queen were Surprised that Asita would leave his forest home and appear at their court, "We are very honored that you have come to visit us, O holy teacher," They said with great respect. "Please tell us the purpose of your journey and we shall serve you in any way we can."Asita answered them, "I thank you for your kind welcome. I have come a great distance to visit you because of the wonderful signs I have recently seen. They tell me that the son recently born to you will gain great spiritual knowledge for the benefit of all people. Since I have spent my entire life trying to gain such holy wisdom, I came here as quickly as possible to see him for myself."The King was very excited and hurried to where the baby Prince lay sleeping. He carefully picked up his son and brought him back to Asita... (link)

The story goes on, but you will not see any references to merchants bearing gifts, or of the aforementioned old man "worshipping" the child. Only by distorting the actual stories and exaggerating the details can you come even close to painting the nativity story as a copy of this legend. The same goes for the rest of the alleged similarities presented in the aforementioned paragraph. Next:

The parallels in the birth and life of Lord Krishna, the Hindu Christ, are now well known. The Persian god Zoroaster was born in innocence and of a virgin birth, from a ray of divine reason (Logos). Eventually, he was suspended from wood or "from the tree"--the cross or tree of the later Calvary. There is also the story of Salivahana, a divine child born of a virgin in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). He was the son of Tarshaca, a carpenter. His life was threatened in infancy by a tyrant who afterwards was killed by him. His story shows such close affinity to that of Jesus that it would be hard to deny a common source for both. [2]

On Krishna: Harpur does not mention what the parallels are. The closest I could find are some references to Krishna being born without sexual union, apparently from the Hindu text known as the Bhagavata Purana. However, it should be noted that this is not a universal belief of Hindus (though I may have to talk to a couple of Hindu acquaintances just to be sure),

On Zoroaster: He wasn't even a god, he was a prophet. The closest I could find to a parallel between Zoroaster's birth and that of Jesus is a reference to the glory of Ahuda Mazda descending from Heaven and entering the house of Zoroaster's mother. (link) While a few similarities in detail could be found here, the similarities are not incredibly great. Also, he wasn't suspended from a piece of wood or a tree. According to certain sources, he was murdered at the altar by Turanians during the storming of the city of Balkh.[3]

On Salivahana: There is very little evidence that such a figure exists, and virtually none to support the idea that he was either a divine child or that he was born of a virgin mother. Finally, one source by the name of "Captain F. Wilford" dates the stories of Salivahana to sometime around the seventh century after Christ. More info can be found on this here.

Well, that pretty much debunks the idea of Christ being copied from Eastern religious figures. Next:

Consider this: comparative religions studies reveal that almost every traditional faith the world over rests on a central story of the son of a heavenly king who goes down into a dark lower world, suffering, dying and rising again, before returning to his native upper world. Acted out in a moving, multi-faceted dramatic ritual, the story tells how this king/god wins a victory over his enemies, has a triumphant procession, and is enthroned on high Comparative religions scholars have made lists of thirty to fifty such avatars or saviour, including Osiris, Horus, Krishna, Bacchus, Orpheus, Hermes, Balder, Adonis, Hercules, Attis, Mithras, Tammuz of Syria, Thor (son of Odin), Beddru of Japan, Deva Tat of Siam, and many more. Kersey Graves, in his book The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours, quotes a prophecy of the Persian divinity Zoroaster: A virgin should conceive and bear a son, and a star would appear blazing at midday to signalize the occurrence."[4]

Umm, no. Hinduism, Buddhism, the Egyptian and Greco-Roman mythologies, Zoroastrianism, etc. do not have these supposed elements in them. To tackle just some of the figures listed: Osiris was a fertility god who was chopped into pieces, thrown into a river, and pieced back together. Hercules was a demi-god who performed ten labours for a king as punishment for murder. I already tackled Krishna. Adonis was killed by a wild boar, and has not done anything characteristic of a saviour or king. Beddru doesn't even exist (some have speculated that this is just a variant of Buddha, but I already tackled him). If you don't believe me, read up on the mythologies for yourself.

Also, I would like to add that Kersey Graves' works are highly questionable. Even the folks behind the Secular Web and the anti-Christian documentary "The God Who Wasn't There" have advised against using his book as a source. That said, I don't know much of the supposed quotes that Harpur draws from him, but unless he can back up his claims with a more reliable source, I will treat these quotes with a high level of suspicion.

Next, we find Harpur slamming a few of the early church fathers, in particular Eusebius, the father of church history. He quotes from Charles Waite:

Charles B. Waite, in his History of the Christian Religion to the Year 200, tells how Eusebius, whose Ecclesiastical History is the principal source for the history of Christianity from the apostolic age until his own day, was a most conspicuous liar. What's almost equally bad is that Eusebius frequently made many sloppy mistakes. "No one has contributed more to Christian history, and no one is guilty of more errors." Waite charges. "The statements of this historian are made, not only carelessly and blunderingly, but in many instances in falsification of the facts of history. Not only the most unblushing falsehoods, but literary forgeries of the vilest character darken the pages of his... writing." I had heard not a word about any of this during any of this during my years of training for the Anglican priesthood.

Waite cites authorities who confirm this scandal by asserting that Eusebius had "a peculiar faculty for diverging from the truth." He was always ready to supply by fabrication what was wanting in the historical record. In other words, this great world religion actually rests on a foundation of falsehood and forgery. [5]

I will grant that Eusebius was not the most reliable of historians, and had clear biases (as is the case with many historians of all stripes). However, I think that Tom Harpur has greatly exaggerated the claims that are made against Eusebius and his honesty. See here for a fair treatment of this. And finally:

The greatest preacher of the early Church, John Chrysostom (the golden mouth), who lived from about 347 to 407 and was both bishop of Constantinople and a famous doctor of the Church, observed in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 9:19, "Great is the force of deceit, provided it is not excited by a treacherous intention." Few today can read this without some recoil and surprise. [6]

I shall note with interest that this quote has been attributed to other people. For example, Islamic apologist Abdullah Smith attributes this quote to St. Jerome in one of his articles against Christianity. (link) But does St. John Chrysostom actually say this? Fortunately, we have access to his writings, thanks to CCEL. Here is the actual homily on 1 Corinthians 9:19:

“For though I was free from all men, I brought myself under bondage to all, that I might gain the more.”

Here again he introduces another high step in advance. For a great thing it is even not to receive, but this which he is about to mention is much more than that. What then is it that he says? “Not only have I not received,” saith he,” not only have I not used this right, but I have even made myself a slave, and in a slavery manifold and universal. For not in money alone, but, which was much more than money, in employments many and various have I made good this same rule: and I have made myself a slave when I was subject to none, having no necessity in any respect, (for this is the meaning of, “though I was free from all men;”) and not to any single person have I been a slave, but to the whole world.”

Wherefore also he subjoined, “I brought myself under bondage to all.” That is, “To preach the Gospel I was commanded, and to proclaim the things committed to my trust; but the contriving and devising numberless things beside, all that was of my own zeal. For I was only under obligation to invest the money, whereas I did every thing in order to get a return for it, attempting more than was commanded.” Thus doing as he did all things of free choice and zeal and love to Christ, he had an insatiable desire for the salvation of mankind. Wherefore also he used to overpass by a very great deal the lines marked out, in every way springing higher than the very heaven. (link)

Great is the force of deceit indeed, Mr. Harpur. I do not see the supposed quote where it is supposed to be. Anyway, I will continue reading this book, and then provide a continuation of my dissection in the next installment.

End Notes
1. Harpur, Tom. The Pagan Christ. 2004. p. 31-32.
2. Ibid, p. 34.
3. Jackson, A. V. Williams. Zoroaster, the prophet of ancient Iran. New York, 1899.
4. Harpur, Tom. The Pagan Christ. 2004. p. 37.
5. Ibid, p. 54.
6. Ibid, p. 58.