Zeitgeist

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Thank you Lettinga, I did miss that in a moment of distraction and hurry. I just printed it out for both my son and his friend. And if anyone else has more keep it coming! Thanks.
 
excerpt from:
ZEITGEIST: REFUTING THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE [TRANSCRIPT]

In Part 1 of the film Zeitgeist, nearly 200 sources are cited in the transcript. Yet, many of these sources are used more than once.
In fact, when the transcript for this film is examined in further detail, we see that less than 25% of these sources are original.
The idea that Jesus is a copycat Solar Deity has been propagated by the self-taught Egyptologist and practicing druid Gerald Massey (wikipedia); homosexual activist and philosopher Edward Carpenter (wikipedia); atheist professor John Allegro; and authors Peter Gandy & Timothy Freke and Acharya S.
Another source cited in the film was occultist and mystic H.P. Blavatsky and her book The Secret Doctrine. Blavatsky was the founder of the Theosophical Society, one of the most powerful occult organization in the world that has perhaps had more influence on the United Nations than any other religious society.
The Nazi movement was founded on Theosophy and her writing. Blavatsky’s book The Secret Doctrine, which was cited in the film Zeitgeist, was known to be an inspiration to Adolf Hitler, specifically towards his ideas about superior and inferior races. (Spielvogel; wikipedia). In The Secret Doctrine she wrote,
“In antiquity and reality, Lucifer or Luciferus, is the name of the angelic Entity presiding over the light of truth as over the light of the day. Lucifer is divine and terrestrial light, the “Holy Ghost” and “Satan” at one and the same time.(512, 513)”
She also wrote,
“And now it stands proven that Satan, or the Red Fiery Dragon, the “Lord of Phosphorus” . . . and Lucifer or “Light Bearer,” is in us . . . it is our mind . . . [our] Redeemer, our intelligent liberator and Saviour from pure animalism. (513)”
Gerald Massey, cited 30 times, wrote for the Theosophical magazine entitled Lucifer published by H.P. Blavatsky.
Also cited: Godfrey Higgins, Albert Churchwood, and Manly P. Hall were all members of the Freemasons’ secret society. Manly P. Hall, a 33rd degree Mason, wrote on page 48 of his book Lost Keys of Freemasonry:
“When a Mason learns that the key is the proper application of the dynamo of living power, the seething energies of Lucifer are in his hands.” (Hall, 48).
First of all, there are no original citations from Egyptian records pre-dating the New Testament to support these ideas listed in books by authors including Albert Churchwood, Acharya S, Gerald Massey, and Thomas Doane. Secondly, this is a far too simplistic representation of the myths surrounding Horus. In reality, there are many versions. There were originally several different gods known by the name Horus (Miller).
As for resurrections, academic scholars of religion acknowledge that there is no evidence for the belief that any of these mythical deities were believed to have risen from the dead prior to the time of New Testament and Jesus.
Dr. Walter Burkert, a Greek religion scholar and author stated, “There is no evidence for a resurrected Attis, even Osiris remains with the dead (Burkert).”
Dr. Norman Geisler wrote, “The only known account of a god surviving death that predates Christianity is the Egyptian cult god Osiris. In this myth, Osiris is cut into fourteen pieces, scattered around Egypt, then reassembled and brought back to life by the goddess Isis. However, Osiris does not actually come back to physical life but becomes a member of a shadowy underworld. . . This is far different than Jesus’ resurrection account where he was the gloriously risen Prince of life who was seen by others on earth before his ascension into heaven. . . even if there are myths about dying and rising gods prior to Christianity, that doesn’t mean the New Testament writers copied from them.” (Geisler).
Even atheists and non-Christian scholars have rejected this idea that Christianity has been borrowed from ancient myths. The well respected Sir Edward Evans Pritchard wrote, “The evidence for this theory. . . is negligible.” (Ankerberg, Weldon).
In sum, skeptic claims of Christianity being borrowed from ancient Egypt, India, Greece, and Persia can be disregarded as false because there are no primary sources for these parallels pre-dating A.D. 150. This is more than 100 years after the origin of Christianity!

Full transcript available:
beitshalomministries.org/blog/?page_id=197
 
Thank you Brother Elliott!😃 I shall print that out too.
My son talked to his friend. It seems Matt was just as confused about Zeitgeist as my son. He assured Ky he is not an atheist, and looks forward to hearing the opposing information, which he did not know existed. with much appreciation for the help~ Jen
 
Somebody just gave me a link to this video. I have NO clue how to refute garbage like this. Of course, then I get called out because since I can not defend against these conspiracy theories, apparently that makes Catholicism false
 
ZEITGEIST REFUTED VIDEO

available at:
beitshalomministries.org
or
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9143353429196792376&q=zeitgeist+refuted&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

This film refutes the following claims made in the film Zeitgeist:
-Christianity was borrowed from pagan myths?
-The Bible was plagiarized?
-Jesus wasn’t a historical figure?
-Christianity was created for social control?
-The Bible is based on astrology?

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all [these things] must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
All these [are] the beginning of sorrows.
Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.
And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
–Jesus (Matthew 24:6-14)

God bless you. May the Holy Spirit lead you into all truth and holiness.

Love,

Brother Elliott

MORE INFO VISIT:
www.beitshalomministries.org
 
Well, the refutation of the points made in the Zeitgeist video were great, but just like you set out to correct misrepresentations of Christianity brought forth in Zeitgeist, you also conveyed some misrepresentations of your own about the Catholic Church.

Maybe someone needs to make a refute video to refute this video? :confused:
 
No, I’m sorry but your statement about the conception of the sun-god Horus is incorrect. You are close, but you are incorrect, through an act of magic, she had sex with osiris’ body, as the only piece that she could not find was his phallus, which in turn, makes Horus immaculately concieved (by way of magic from gods).
The movie is meant to make you think. they are right about a lot of things in it, and they do jump to some unsound conclusions. do some research.
That’s the point
Stop asking for a way to defend the argument you want to make on a forum for catholocism, that’s backwards logic. You gather evidence first, then make your final conclusions.
 
sublime << No, I’m sorry but your statement about the conception of the sun-god Horus is incorrect. You are close, but you are incorrect, through an act of magic, she had sex with osiris’ body, as the only piece that she could not find was his phallus, which in turn, makes Horus immaculately concieved (by way of magic from gods). >>

You are not even close, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and in addition you are incorrect. 😛

Horus is not primarily a sun-god. He is the Egyptian falcon god whose good or sound eye is the sun. He takes many forms in fact. Re (or Ra) is the sun-god of Egypt.

Horus was not immaculately conceived nor virginally conceived. “Magical conception” I’ll give you since it involves Isis reviving her dead husband, Osiris. This has nothing to do with the virginal conception of Jesus in the Bible (Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-38).

Immaculate Conception is a Catholic teaching that means Mary was conceived without original sin. So it’s not that.

A Virginal Conception / Virgin Birth involves no sex and no phallus. So it’s not that either. Jesus’ birth and conception involved “no natural father, no sexual intercourse, and no male seed in any form.” Horus’ birth, if you spend the time to look into it, which you clearly have not done, involves both sexual intercourse and male seed. Horus was neither immaculately conceived nor a virginal conception.

“…drawings on contemporary funerary papyri show her [Isis] as a kite hovering above Osiris, who is revived enough to have an erection and impregnate his wife.” (Lesko, Great Goddesses of Egypt, p. 162)

“After having sexual intercourse, in the form of a bird, with the dead god she [Isis] restored to life, she gave birth to a posthumous son, Horus.” (Dunand / Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, p. 39)

“Through her magic Isis revivified the sexual member of Osiris and became pregnant by him, eventually giving birth to their child, Horus.” (Richard Wilkinson, Complete gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt, p. 146)

“Isis already knows that she is destined to bear a child who will be king. In order to bring this about, she has to revive the sexual powers of Osiris, just as the Hand Goddess aroused the penis of the creator to create the first life.” (Pinch, Handbook of Egyptian Mythology, p. 80)

From the Egyptian Coffin Texts, Spell 148:

“TAKING SHAPE AS A FALCON. The lightening flash strikes, the gods are afraid, Isis wakes pregnant with the seed of her brother Osiris. She is uplifted, (even she) the widow, and her heart is glad with the seed of her brother Osiris. She says: ‘O you gods, I am Isis, the sister of Osiris, who wept for the father of the gods, (even) Osiris who judged the slaughterings of the Two Lands. His seed is within my womb, I have moulded the shape of the god within the egg as my son…I am Isis, one more spirit-like and august than the gods; the god is within this womb of mine and he is the seed of Osiris.’” (Spell 148, see translation found in The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, volume 1, p. 125-127, by R.O. Faulkner; another translation with commentary in Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt by R.T. Rundle Clark, p. 213-217)

Clear enough for you? That is not a virginal conception / virgin birth. Here is my article with scholarly bibliography which reduces the nonsense of “Zeitgeist” Part I to a big pile of rubble: 😃

All About Horus: An Egyptian Copy of Christ?

sublime << The movie is meant to make you think. they are right about a lot of things in it, and they do jump to some unsound conclusions. do some research. >>

Ah, hello? I have. A lot of it. I spent a day at the university library, and spent a few days writing the Horus article above.

There is not one darn thing they get right in Part I. I only responded to Part I since I am not interested in 9/11 conspiracies (Part II) or whether the New World Order is going to take over with a One World Government (Part III).

The movie is garbage, period. It does not make you think. It makes you throw up especially after a bad meal. 😛 It is an illogical, non-sensical, factually incorrect, conspiracy-mongering, unhistorical piece of trash with totally uncool techno music. And those are its good points. :rolleyes: 👍

Here’s a challenge: can you tell me one detail the “Zeitgeist” movie gets right on Horus? I can’t think of anything. Other than that Horus is Egyptian, I can’t think of any detail in Part I of the movie that is factual.

Phil P
 
i’m not exactly sure what’s going on in your head, but you just repeated what i said, then called it false…

Horus has got many reincarnations, as he is the primary symbol and embodiment of the sun for many different pagan cultures… this proves nothing… i know this and i don’t really understand why you would feel the need to repeat it. And yes, there is quite a lot they have right in the first segment of the movie. They are looking for patterns that occur over many civilizations in order to make the argument that religion is the same recycled idea. And i’m not sure where you are getting your “research” as you said yourself, there are many different time periods where Ra and horus were worshipped in many different civilizations. The only real distinction between them is whether Horus was seen as the Sky falcon god he originally was, or associated with the sun-god Ra.

in the case of virginal conception, you say it is without a phallus, and that is exactly how “horus” in the case of the egyptians was concieved, depending on which myth text you look at. seeing as how his mother could not find the phallus of osiris in many. you can’t cite specific texts and say that those are the ones that the movie is talking about, it’s irrelavant. so i don’t know how, again, you can take what i say, repeat it and say that it’s false on some pretense i didn’t even make…

The movie references Horus’ many battles with Set, a metaphor for dark vs. light ending in darkness each day as Set wins, this is all factual…
And if you consider Images from the temple at Luxor described as associating Amenhotep III’s relationship with his wife, Great Royal Wife Tiye by depicting a legend of the birth of Ra, in which (reading from left to right) the ibis-headed Thoth announced to Neith, the primordial waters, that she would become pregnant with Ra (the new king of heaven). In the next image, the impregnation of Neith was achieved by Kneph (on her left) and Hathor (on her right) applying the ankh, thereby leaving Neith “ever virgin”. To the right are images of the subsequent birth over a birth brick, as well as the praise raised to the child by Neith’s courtiers and fellow deities. The form of Ra at this point was Ra-Amun, who was becoming identified as Horus. The child of Tiye, who consequently is described as being Ra/Horus through this association with the legend, went on to become Akhenaten, when pharaoh.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/LuxorAmenhetep.gif
The birth of Ra was fortold, his mother was “kept virgin”… suddenly this is sounding more and more familiar.
I’m not attacking your faith, i’m simply attacking the organization by which it masquerades, and this is what zeitgeist does. you do not neccesarily have to believe what it’s telling you, but you can not argue with the fact that these patterns appear.
 
sublime << I’m not attacking your faith, i’m simply attacking the organization by which it masquerades, and this is what zeitgeist does. you do not neccesarily have to believe what it’s telling you, but you can not argue with the fact that these patterns appear. >>

You said (along with Zeitgeist) the birth of Horus was a virginal birth / virginal conception. It was not. I’ve demonstrated that from Egyptology scholars and direct quotes from the Coffin Texts, Spell 148. The birth of Horus involves sexual intercourse and male seed. The phallus was reproduced by Isis, but there was a phallus there. Period. End of story. See my article for full details, my sources and bibliography.

You said (along with Zeitgeist) that Horus is the sun-god. That is technically incorrect. Horus is the falcon god (his oldest image), whose “sound eye” later becomes the sun, and injured eye the moon. Re (Ra) is the sun god of Egypt symbolized by the mid-day sun. Later Re (Ra) was associated with Horus and then Horus becomes known as Re-Harakhty (or Ra-Harakhti) and is identified with such Greek forms as Harakhti = “Horus of the horizon” and Harmachis (-khis) = “Horus in the horizon.” That is more accurate.

I am not repeating what you said. I am stating things accurately. BTW, this has absolutely nothing to do with ancient Judaism and historical Christianity which vehemently rejected “sun” worship (and “moon” and “star” worship). Sun does not equal Son. See my article, especially the summary of biblical scholar Ben Witherington’s points.

Your (and the Zeitgeist movie’s) depiction of the battle between Horus and Seth (or Set) is inaccurate and not complete. The battle lasted 80 years, Seth was never sent to the underworld. It was Osiris who became “lord of the underworld” (the dead) while Horus became king of the living. In one tradition of the Egyptian myth, Seth was Horus’ rival (and usurper of Egypt’s throne), in others, his balance (a bipolar, balanced embodiment of kingship). Since the beginning of the 20th century in Egyptological research, much debate has ensued over whether the struggle between Horus and Seth was primarily historical/geo-political, or cosmic/symbolic. None of this is mentioned in Zeitgeist.

I am not repeating what you said. I am being more complete and more accurate. This too has nothing to do with ancient Judaism or historical Christianity. See my article.

You are also wrong on the Luxor inscription. Skeptic and historian Richard Carrier presents the full story on that. To repeat: Horus’ conception and birth was not a virginal conception nor virgin birth. Period, end of story. Debate over on that point. 😛

Until you can quote me something from the following sources below, I will not consider anything you say as being backed up with scholarship:

The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian gods and goddesses by George Hart (Routledge, 2005)
Dictionary of Ancient Egypt edited by Toby Wilkinson (Thames & Hudson, 2005)
Gods and Men in Egypt, 3000 BCE to 395 CE by F. Dunand and C. Zivie-Coche (Cornell Univ Press, 2004)
The Complete gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt by Richard H. Wilkinson (Thames & Hudson, 2003)
Handbook of Egyptian Mythology by Geraldine Pinch (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002)
The Ancient Gods Speak: A Guide to Egyptian Religion edited by Donald B. Redford (Oxford Univ Press, 2002)
The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt edited by Margaret Bunson (Oxford: Facts of File, 1991, 2002 revised)
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt edited by Donald B. Redford (Oxford University Press, 2001)
The gods of Egypt by Claude Traunecker, trans by David Lorton (Cornell University Press, 2001)
Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt by Jan Assmann, trans by David Lorton (Cornell Univ Press, 2001)

Wikipedia will not do. I have backed myself up with scholarhip, you have not. You get yourself to a university library like I did. Spend a full day there like I have, and respond to my article in detail. The Zeitgeist movie is garbage and will still be garbage even after you educate yourself on Horus, ancient Egypt, ancient Israel, the historical Jesus, and astrology.

BTW, not only is “Zeitgeist” movie wrong on Horus, it is wrong on Attis, Krishna, Dionsyos, and Mithras. See my very detailed article on Parallel Pagan Gods.

What do I have to do? Go around this board finding all the pro-Zeitgeist threads and obliterate, annilhilate, and demolish each one? Believe me, I’ll do it if I have to. :whacky: That’s what’s in my head at least for now.

sublime << but you can not argue with the fact that these patterns appear. >>

BTW, what “patterns” are you talking about? Be specific. But first, print out and read my fully-documented article with excellent modern scholarship on Horus. not the bogus, pseudo-historical, outdated sources used by Zeitgeist. 👍 😃

Phil P
 
Lol. That is all I have to say. i’m sorry.
you see, I have done the research also, and, just as I said before, you reference a specific instance of the falcon-god horus. I am arguing about the patterns in ancient pagan religions and the different evolutions of those religions, not the first incarnation of the god Horus and whether or not he was the sun god. Also, I never gave any sort of description of the battle of Horus and set. I simply said they battle, which by the way, the movie does also, but again, i said nothing about this, and I did also refer to how the move makes a couple mistakes, which I do believe it says they return to the underworld.
Yet again, I never tried to claim that sun=son. I AM claiming however, that there are quite a few properties of your “christ” (such as the specific miracles he performs, his resurrection, even the symbols surrounding his worship) that have been seen quite a few times throughout history, applied to quite a few gods (As in a few instances of Horus 😉 ).
Now, I am not going to waste any more of my time arguing with someone who finds a couple sources about the begining of the worship of Horus by early eqyptian society, calls that all of religion, then outlines that these sources alone are the only ones that backup anything “scholarly”
You also take the word of one historian, and call it all historical evidence…
continue on in researching the point you are trying prove… continue on.

oh, and If i wanted to post random articles online quoting very narrow research, I could. anyone could… as you have shown…

but here are a few… all pointing to the same thing.
entheology.org/pocm/index.htm , more importantly,
entheology.org/pocm/scholarship_getting_started.html

and “The Pagan Christ” is a good book on such things.
 
I watched this film about a month or two ago. I’m not going to lie, when I first watched Part I, it caught my interest. I still didn’t believe its claim that Christianity was a plagiarized. However, I did admit that it showed a very interesting theory and a was a very well done presentation. Unfortunately, something like this could do some damage to someone’s faith.

Part I made me think about some things, but Part II completely changed my opinion on this filmmaker. I’m sorry but I think all of the “9/11 inside job conspiracies” are complete garbage and an absolute slap in the face to the families that lost their lives in that tragedy. Then came Part III, and that’s where I decided that this guy was a complete lunatic. The idea of the entire planet becoming a One World Government is completely insane. Added to that, the idea that whole plot is based off of Christianity is honestly just too much.

I’m surprised that there is not a movement by any Christian groups to make a rebuttal toward this film. There is one film on youtube that offers a rebuttal to “The God That Wasn’t There” which is similar to part 1 of Zeitgeist. youtube.com/watch?v=q2VH-T-Xcuc
However, the rebuttal is a very armature film, a lot of it shot on a web cam it seems. But, the guy who made it has a website claiming to be working on a more professional version of the film. He will be talking about Zeitgeist in the future as well.

Recently I watched it again because I decided I wanted to begin trying to disprove the film’s claims on Christianity. I think I might be spending some late nights at the library, but this actually sounds like fun.

One problem with the theory that I found right off of the bat was the claim that Jesus being God’s Son is based off of the sun being looked at as a god by other cultures and that confusion comes from “sun” and “son” sounding similar. The problem with that is, though it’s true that this coincidental mishap can occur in English due to the similarity of the sound of the words, when you go back to The Bible’s original languages, the words “sun” and “son” do not sound the same in Greek. So that can already disconnect some things right there.

What do you guys think?
 
People will often draw a line of similarity between Jesus and the Egyptian God Horus. I’ve done alot of reading on Egyptian mythology, and I can tell you I think for the most part it’s very inaccurate. I’ll try to explain it in brief here…

Horus is the son of the God of the underworld Osiris and the Goddess Isis. Shortly before Horus’s conception, Osiris and Isis’ brother Set (yes, Osiris and Isis were also siblings) became enraged with Osiris because his brother had slept with his sister/wife Nepthys (which resulted in the birth of the God Anubis). After tricking Osiris, Set murdered him and cut the body into seven pieces and scattered them across Egypt. Isis gathered the pieces of her husband’s body, and through an act of magic had sex with the corpse before it went to the underworld. The result of this union was Horus.

Horus and Isis were persued by Set’s followers when he was a child. There’s alot of Egyptian iconography of Isis and child together, which some compare to images of Mary and Jesus. I think this is errant, because the images are very different in style and mood. But anyways, Horus grows up and does battle with Set to avenge the murder of his father. In a battle scene that’s downright disturbing (Horus and Set sodomize each other in turns), he eventually kills Set and casts him into oblivion.

Sometimes Horus, Isis and Osiris are viewed as an Egyptian trinity, but again I think that’s a errored comparison. However, if you want to read it for yourself, it’s all in “The Book of the Dead”. I read the Budge translation and ost libraries have it. It’s kind of like the Kementic (ancient Egyptian) Bible in a loose sense.

Faulkner’s translation is preferable - though the Budge has the advantage, such as it is, of being out of copyright - I think.​

 
<< but here are a few… all pointing to the same thing. >>

entheology.org/pocm/index.htm

Oh THAT site? The guy has changed his mind on various things. There may be other versions of this site, but I remember one that had a “kid with a beanie” symbol (meaning childish or immature opinion, etc), and he would use this symbol on himself when he changed his mind on a topic, etc. He thus admits his scholarship was very poor when he started the site, but has since tried to improve with better sources, etc.

Overall his scholarship is still poor. He needs to write in complete sentences. He also needs to be more serious about the topic. The site for the most part is a joke. Virtually everything he says about Adonis, Attis, Baal, Bacchus/Dionysos, Horus, Krishna, Mithras, Orpheus, Osiris, Tammuz, Zoroaster etc is completely debunked on my page here.

But he does list a few decent sources. I discovered the book by T.N.D. Mettinger (Riddle of Resurrection) from his site which offers a contrary opinion on the “dying and rising god” theme, but still agrees modern scholarship totally debunks the main premise of the site:

“There is now what amounts to a scholarly consensus against the appropriateness of the concept [of dying and rising gods]. Those who still think differently are looked upon as residual members of an almost extinct species…The situation during the last half of the century was thus one when it seemed fairly clear that there were no ideas of resurrection connected with Dumuzi / Tammuz, and that the ideas of a resurrection in connection with Adonis are very late. The references to a resurrection of Adonis have been dated mainly to the Christian Era…Frazer’s category was broad and all encompassing. To Frazer, Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis were all deities of the same basic type, manifesting the yearly decay and revival of life. He explicitly identified Tammuz and Adonis. The category of dying and rising deities as propagated by Frazer can no longer be upheld.” (T.N.D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East [2001], page 7, 40, 41)

Jonathan Z. Smith in articles for the scholarly Encyclopedia of Religion, also totally debunks and discounts the “pagan parallel” kind of pseudo-“scholarship”:

“The category of dying and rising gods, once a major topic of scholarly investigation, must now be understood to have been largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts…In most cases, the decipherment and interpretation of texts in the language native to the deity’s cult has led to questions as to the applicability of the category. The majority of evidence for Near Eastern dying and rising deities occurs in Greek and Latin texts of late antiquity, usually post-Christian in date.” (“Dying and Rising Gods”, volume 4, pages 521, 522 article by Jonathan Z. Smith, from The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by Mircea Eliade)

The only “scholarship” that supports the “pagan parallel” thesis of such sites are outdated sources such as James G. Frazer, other books from the 19th century, and Joseph Cambell’s old books on the “power of myth.” You won’t find it supported today, except on amateur web sites like the one above. An extreme example is Kersey Graves 1875 “World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors” which is debunked by skeptic and historian Richard Carrier here.

Phil P
 
<< and “The Pagan Christ” is a good book on such things. >>

Nope, The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur is also complete garbage. I talk about that book as well, summarizing the points of W. Ward Gasque. Here they are since you won’t read my article on Horus:

“According to Harpur, there is no evidence that Jesus of Nazareth ever lived. He claims that virtually all of the details of the life and teachings of Jesus have their counterpart in Egyptian religious ideas. He does not quote any contemporary Egyptologist or recognized academic authority on world religions nor appeal to any of the standard reference books in Egyptology or to any primary sources. Rather, he is entirely dependent on the work of [Alvin Boyd] Kuhn [1880-1963] (and [Godfrey] Higgins [1771-1834] & [Gerald] Massey [1828-1907]).” (from "The Leading Religion Writer in Canada: Does He Know What He’s Talking About?")

Gasque sent an email to “twenty leading Egyptologists – in Canada, USA, UK, Australia, Germany, and Austria” in order to examine the following claims:

– That the name of Jesus was derived from the Egyptian “Iusa,” which means “the coming divine Son who heals or saves”

– That the god Horus is “an Egyptian Christos, or Christ…He and his mother, Isis, were the forerunners of the Christian Madonna and Child, and together they constituted a leading image in Egyptian religion for millennia prior to the Gospels.”

– That Horus also "had a virgin birth, and that in one of his roles, he was ‘a fisher of men with twelve followers.’ "

– That “the letters KRST appear on Egyptian mummy coffins many centuries BCE, and…this word, when the vowels are filled in, is really Karast or Krist, signifying Christ.”

– That the doctrine of the incarnation “is in fact the oldest, most universal mythos known to religion. It was current in the Osirian religion in Egypt at least four thousand years BCE.”

What Gasque found in response is the following:

– Professor Kenneth A. Kitchen of the University of Liverpool pointed out that not one of these men (Kuhn, Higgins, or Massey) is mentioned in M. L. Bierbrier’s Who Was Who in Egyptology (3rd ed, 1995), nor is any of their works listed in Ida B. Pratt’s very extensive bibliography on Ancient Egypt.

– Only one of the ten experts who responded to my questions had ever heard of Kuhn, Higgins or Massey.

– The responding scholars were unanimous in dismissing the suggested etymologies for Jesus and Christ.

– Ron Leprohan, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Toronto, pointed out that while “sa” means “son” in ancient Egyptian and “iu” means “to come,” but Kuhn / Harpur have the syntax all wrong.

– In any event, the name “Iusa” simply does not exist in Egyptian. The name “Jesus” is Greek from a universally recognized west Semitic name (“Jeshu’a”), borne not merely by the central figure in the New Testament but also by many other people in the first century.

– There is no evidence for the idea that Horus was virgin born.

– There is no evidence for the idea that Horus was “a fisher of men” or that his followers (the King’s officials were called “Followers of Horus”) were ever twelve in number.

– 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.”

– There is no mention of Osiris in Egyptian texts until about 2350 BC, so Harpur’s reference to the origins of Osirian religion is off by more than a millennium and a half.

– Elsewhere Harpur refers to “Jesus in Egyptian lore as early as 18,000 BCE” and he quotes Kuhn as claiming that “the Jesus who stands as the founder of Christianity was at least 10,000 years of age.” In fact, the earliest extant writing that we have dates from about 3200 BCE.

– Kuhn / Harper’s redefinition of “incarnation” and rooting this in Egyptian religion is regarded as bogus by all of the Egyptologists with whom I have consulted. According to one: “Only the pharaoh was believed to have a divine aspect, the divine power of kingship, incarnated in the human being currently serving as the king. No other Egyptians ever believed they possessed even ‘a little bit of the divine’.”

– Virtually none of the alleged evidence for the views put forward in The Pagan Christ is documented by reference to original sources; the notes refer mainly to Kuhn, Higgins, Massey, or some other long-out-of-date work.

W. Ward Gasque holds a Ph.D. from Manchester University (UK). A graduate of Harvard University’s Institute for Educational Leadership (1993), he is President of the Pacific Association for Theological Studies.

See my bibliography in my article on Horus for proper modern and scholarly Egyptology sources.

Phil P
 
faith44 << I’m surprised that there is not a movement by any Christian groups to make a rebuttal toward this film. There is one film on youtube that offers a rebuttal to “The God That Wasn’t There” which is similar to part 1 of Zeitgeist. >>

Making a full nicely edited movie would be great and probably reach more people, since most people don’t like to read or can’t read. 😃 But many people like me are not that advanced with Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas, or whatever they use on the Mac, and/or Microsoft Movie Maker just yet. 👍

"Zeitgeist" movie (Part I) utterly demolished and here on “parallel pagan” gods by me.

"The God Who Wasn’t There" movie utterly demolished by Mike Licona.

I don’t know how much further these “movies” can be obliterated 😛 but my and Mike Licona’s article does the demolition job.

faith44 << Recently I watched it again because I decided I wanted to begin trying to disprove the film’s claims on Christianity. I think I might be spending some late nights at the library, but this actually sounds like fun. >>

It is somewhat fun learning about this stuff and debunking, but it does take time, and some driving and copying ability. 👍 You’ll want to find the best books at your local university (or seminary) library on Horus, Egyptology, the historical Jesus, and the history of astrology, preferably scholarly stuff published by University presses, and make sure it is up to date. Photocopy the relevant pages, and then summarize. I’ve done the hard work already on Horus, and evangelical biblical scholar Ben Witherington has some excellent points on ancient Israel and astrology which I also summarized in my article (at the end).

See also this CA forums thread for “Zeitgeist” debunked on astrology based on Witherington’s points.

Phil P
 
Hey Phil.

Not sure if you get comments like this enough, but thanks a lot for compiling all this information - your site should get referenced a lot more, and it’s nice to have such a resource available at the ready.

The net really needs more ‘e-ministry’ and the like.
 
nulla << Hey Phil. Not sure if you get comments like this enough, but thanks a lot for compiling all this information - your site should get referenced a lot more, and it’s nice to have such a resource available at the ready. >>

Thanks much. Hopefully it will get linked by all the other Zeitgeist debunking pages. One of the better debunking pages (“Truth Decay” site) already puts it at the top of his links. Fantastic, people are finding it since I didn’t Email this person:

See this guy’s page and links at bottom

Phil P
 
As far as the child propeller beanie pages I mentioned, this is what I’m talking about:



Apparently, the guy realizes his site used to be nonsense, and he’s tried to rectify his early mistakes:

“I first wrote this page back the late 1990s. New to the subject, I was naive about Christian origins scholarship. I figured anybody who took the time to fill a book with hundreds of pages about Jesus would take the time to check the facts. My bad. Turns out Christian origins scholarship, amateur or academic, isn’t given much to rigor. When I tried to do what I thought everyone did – check the facts – I discovered the ‘facts’ here are not actually facts. They are earnest amateur legend, some of it repeated generation to generation back into the 1800s. I’ll clean this up at the end of the ongoing POCM rewrite. Rather than just take it down I’ve decided to leave it up for now, as an example of how well meaning amateurs can get tricked. Watch out.” (from this page Pagan Christ Mithras)

Hint: the site is still amateurish and based on poor scholarship and poor research, but I guess it’s a lot better than it was. Which isn’t saying much. Other people have apparently copied the pages and HTML of the site with other domains, but the main domain is www.POCM.info

Here is the response to POCM like sites – And I won’t have to be re-writing mine since I used good scholarship to begin with, and can tell the difference.

Phil P
 
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