D.M. Murdock (Acharya S.),
Christ in
Egypt: The Horus-Jesus
Connection.
Stellar House
Publishing.
Reviewed by Robert M. Price
Yes, she published it herself. So did Hume. Nuff
said.
Some
may think to accuse Ms. Murdock of committing the fallacious appeal to
authority because she peppers her text with information ascribed to
various scholars and includes their professional titles or academic
posts. But she is not thereby trying to lend a weight to her thesis
which it would not possess on its own. Rather, she is trying to help us
place the specialists whose work she is discussing. I am no
Egyptologist, so it helps me to know who I am “listening to” here and
that it is never just some convenient crank.
This
is no doubt the best book by this controversial author. Any and every
fault, real or perceived, that one might have detected in The Christ
Conspiracy was already absent from Suns of God, and it is
hard even to remember them while one is reading Christ in Egypt.
Just so no one will suspect Acharya paid me to puff this thing, I
suppose I ought to supply a couple of minor criticisms. My main one is
that, as in the case of the great Robert Eisenman, she seems to me to
over-document her case, almost to the point that I fear I will lose
track of the argument. But, like all good teachers, she periodically
pauses to draw the threads together. And of course the danger is implied
in the scope of the subject. She quotes a previous scholar concerning
this occupational hazard: “Unhappily these demonstrations cannot be made
without a wearisome mass of detail” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt:
Light of the World, p. 218, cited p. 313).
The
book is more extensive and encompassing than many dissertations I have
read, containing over 900 sources and nearly 2,400 citations in several
languages, including ancient Egyptian. The text abounds in long lost
references many of them altogether new to English rendering, including
de novo translations of difficult passages in handwritten German.
This is the kind of thing that gives me, as a researcher, a migraine as
soon as I see them coming in the distance!
Besides random judgment calls re this or that proposed parallel or
conclusion, my only continuing disagreement with the Acharya is on her
model whereby a committee of creators sat down to formulate the
Christian religion. Such a scenario is by no means impossible, but it
seems unnecessary to me. I prefer the old Romantic idea of Hölderlin and
the early form-critics of an anonymous and nebulous “creative
community.” It is hard to track down rumors, myths, or ascendant
religious symbols to specific names. But this difference hardly matters.
We are in agreement on the thoroughly syncretic character of primitive
Christianity, evolving from earlier mythemes and rituals, especially
those of Egypt. It is almost as important in Christ in Egypt to
argue for an astro-religious origin for the mythemes, and there, too, I
agree with the learned author. Let me outline the main argument that
persuades me, some of it learned here, some already assimilated and
facilitating my acceptance of much that Acharya offers.
First, I find it undeniable that, as Ignaz Goldziher (Mythology among
the Hebrews) argued, following the lead of “solar mythologist” Max
Müller (yes, the great historian of comparative religion and world
scripture), many, many of the epic heroes and ancient patriarchs and
matriarchs of the Old Testament were personified stars, planets, and
constellations. This theory is now ignored in favor of others more
easily made into theology and sermons, but it has never been refuted,
and I find the evidence overwhelming. And once you recognize these
patterns in the Old Testament, you start noticing them, albeit to a
lesser degree (?), in the New. Hercules’ twelve labors surely mark his
progress, as the sun, through the houses of the Zodiac; why do Jesus
circumambient twelve disciples not mean the same thing? And so on.
Second, for Egyptian influence to have become integral to Israelite
religion even from pre-biblical times is only natural given the fact
that from 3000 BCE Egypt ruled Canaan. We are not talking about some
far-fetched borrowing from an alien cultural sphere. The tale of Joseph
and his brethren is already transparently a retelling of Osiris and Set.
The New Testament Lazarus story is another (Mary and Martha playing Isis
and Nephthys). And so is the story of Jesus (Mary Magdalene and the
others as Isis and Nephthys). Jesus (in the “Johannine Thunderbolt”
passage, Matthew 11:27//Luke 10:21) sounds like he’s quoting Akhenaten’s
Hymn to the Sun. Jesus sacramentally offers bread as his body, wine as
his blood, just as Osiris offered his blood in the form of beer, his
flesh as bread. Judas is Set, who betrays him. Mourning women seek for
his body. The anointing in Bethany (“Leave her alone! She has saved the
ointment for my burial!”) is a misplaced continuation of the women
bringing the spices to the tomb, where they would raise Jesus with the
stuff, as Isis raised Osiris. In fact, Jesus “Christ” makes more sense
as Jesus “the Resurrected One” than as “Jesus the Davidic Scion.” In the
ritual reenactments, three days separate the death and the resurrection.
Jesus appears on earth briefly, then retires to the afterworld to become
the judge of the living and the dead—just as Osiris does.
Osiris is doubly resurrected as his son Horus, too, and he, too, is
eventually raised from the dead by
Isis. He is pictured as
spanning the dome of heaven, his arms stretched out in a cruciform
pattern. As such, he seems to represent the common Platonic astronomical
symbol of the sun’s path crossing the earth’s ecliptic. Likewise, the
Acts of John remembers that the real cross of Jesus is not some piece of
wood, as fools think, but rather the celestial “Cross of Light.” Acharya
S. ventures that “the creators of the Christ myth did not simply take an
already formed story, scratch out the name Osiris or Horus, and replace
it with Jesus” (p. 25). But I am pretty much ready to go the whole way
and suggest that Jesus is simply Osiris going under a new name, Jesus,”
Savior,” hitherto an epithet, but made into a name on Jewish soil. Are
there allied mythemes (details, really) that look borrowed from the
cults of Attis, Dionysus, etc.? Sure; remember we are talking about a
heavily syncretistic context. Hadian remarked on how Jewish and
Christian leaders in Egypt mixed their worship with that of Sarapis
(=Osiris).
Third, Eusebius and others already pegged the Theraputae (Essene-like
Jewish monks in Egypt) as early Christians, even Philo the Jewish Middle
Platonist of Alexandria) as a Christian! Philo and various Egyptian
Gnostic sects experimented with the philosophical demythologizing of
myths such as the primordial Son of Man and the Logos. Philo equated the
Son of Man, Firstborn of Creation, Word, heavenly High Priest, etc., and
considered the Israelite patriarchs, allegorically, as virgin-born
incarnations of the Logos. All, I repeat, all, New Testament
Christological titles are found verbatim in Philo. Coincidence? Gnostic
texts are filled with classical Egyptian eschatology. Christian magic
spells identified Jesus with Horus. It seems hard to deny that even
Christians as “late” as the New Testament writers were directly
dependent upon Jewish thinkers in
Egypt, just like the
Gnostic Christian writers after them. And if the common Christian
believer saw no difference between Jesus and Horus in Egypt (or between
Jesus and Attis in the Naasene Hymn), why on earth should we think they
were innovators?
I
find myself in full agreement with Acharya S/D.M. Murdock: “we assert
that Christianity constitutes Gnosticism historicized and Judaized,
likewise representing a synthesis of Egyptian, Jewish and Greek religion
and mythology, among others [including Buddhism, via King Asoka’s
missionaries] from around the ‘known world’” (p. 278). “Christianity is
largely the product of Egyptian religion being Judaized and
historicized’ (p. 482).