Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection

D.M. Murdock could well be the most brilliant, insightful and rigorous theologian writing today. Her tour-de-force, Christ in Egypt - The Horus-Jesus Connection, sets an explosive challenge to the cowardly toadies of conventional theology, by simply applying the same modern standards of evidence and reason to Christian sources as scientific research applies to any normal topic.Of course, Christianity is not a normal topic, and is beset by taboos, vested interests and emotional doctrinal barriers. Murdock is a heretic, a class of thinker often regarded with disapproval. Heretics have traditionally been persecuted by the church as beyond the pale of civilized discourse. However, if heresy is truth, it is unethical and fallacious for the church to reject heretical findings on the sole ground that they differ from received opinion. The heresy of Egyptian origins of Christian dogma offends deeply felt Judeo-Christian prejudice about the separation of God and nature. But, as Christ in Egypt abundantly proves, dogmatic mainstream Christian prejudices lack any mandate in logic or evidence.Murdock's ostracism by the appointed keepers of mainstream discourse is a scandal, reflecting a gross lack of scholarly integrity on the part of those who vilify and exclude her work. Such exclusion is thoroughly corrupt, but this is the depth to which debate on religion has sunk. Murdock is leading a transformation in the nature of religious understanding, in an emerging movement of creative destruction that will restore integrity and logic to theological discourse. However, like the flat-earthers who condemned Galileo and Giordano Bruno, true believers in Christian dogma are frightened of change and dismissive of evidence, and hide behind institutional walls of circular reasoning. Murdock's writing is a major contribution to breaking down these walls in order to put religion on a new basis of observation and logic. Perhaps her work will even help Christianity to achieve its redeeming potential and escape its current lack of spiritual vision.The scientific detective story of Christian origins has foundered on the lack of evidence to confirm Gospel accounts. Christ in Egypt, in looking for this evidence, provides a major forensic advance for Christian history. Sadly for the church, the evidence reveals a litany of fraud, lies, delusion and oppression by Christian authorities. Murdock invites her readers to think seriously about the most plausible psychological and political explanations of the actual evidence, against the context of the wholesale destruction of ancient sources by the Christian bigots of the Dark Ages. As the Roman Empire expanded its oppressive attack on Egyptian religion, what would have happened to the adherents of the ancient faith? Would they have meekly accepted the cultural genocide sought by the Empire, or would they have tried to adapt to the new violent dispensation? Of course, adaptation is the obvious strategy of response.Isis, Horus and Osiris were immensely popular divinities in the ancient West. Their adherents surely had the wit to continue the ritual observance of their mythic traditions by re-badging them. This is just what happened. Osiris was resurrected as Lazarus, Isis turned into Mary, and their sister Nephthys found a niche as Martha. Similarly, Horus, Egyptian God of the morning sun, morphed into Jesus Christ. These evolutionary interpretations of Christian mythology have a compelling explanatory value in material, etymological and cultural terms. Such memetic analysis can rescue Christianity from its pigeonhole as a stagnant irrational curiosity and open the potential for the church to be reconciled with the rest of human life, if only it can show some humility about its errors.Among the numerous facts in Christ in Egypt, one I found intriguing, as a way of setting orthodoxy within a larger theoretical framework, is a quote from the book Against Heresies by Irenaeus of Lyon, where he attacks the Gnostic heresy of the `Duodecad of the Aeons' (p223). This obscure heresy, the idea that there are twelve Ages, is informative for Murdock's interpretation of religious formation. The cosmic framework in which ancient theology emerged is claimed by Christianity to come from a supernatural God, but is actually grounded in the astronomical observation of precession of the equinox around the zodiac, known as the Great Year. Precession provides the scientific basis to interpret Christian symbolism against its mythic context. It is a matter of astronomical fact that the cycle of time establishes twelve zodiacal ages in the Great Year. There are numerous references to the Great Year throughout the Bible. The twelve foundation stones of the holy city are the twelve Aeons, Christ as Alpha and Omega is the turning point of time between two Great Years, the end of the Aeon or Age discussed by Christ is the end of the Age of Pisces, and the various fish and lamb symbols indicate the natural temporal shift of the sun from the Age of Aries (the lamb) to the Age of Pisces (the fish) at the time of Christ. Murdock comments that rather than being a real person, Jesus Christ symbolizes the mythical avatar of the Piscean Age (p457).Such ideas were viewed by the church as heresy. The Gnostics were condemned for seeking to explain in natural terms how eternal truth could be manifest in human life. Their cosmic framework of twelve ages, with Christ symbolizing the turning point of time, provided a purely empirical explanation for Jesus as a symbol of the connection between humanity and eternity. Precession explains how our planet is evolving against what Ezekiel called the `wheels within wheels' of the cosmos and what Plato, in the Timaeus, called the relation between the same (the cosmos) and the different (the solar system) (p227). This Gnostic heresy of the twelve ages provides an accurate scientific basis to understand the real nature of Christ.The problem was that Gnostic cosmology, for all its scientific basis, would struggle to inspire a mass movement. The cosmic Gnostic vision was too large and slow and obscure and real to provide the basis for a political church. What the church needed was a single believable historical myth, so it set out to mangle all available material against this finite practical goal. The Gnostics saw face to face, but the ignorance of the church, requiring simple popular dogma, could only read the Gospels through a glass darkly. Gnosticism interpreted Christ in spiritual or Docetic terms as the avatar of the Great Year and the Age of Pisces, but such cosmic vision conflicted with the historical claim of an incarnate saviour, and therefore had to be condemned as heresy, even though it was entirely true.This explanation of the suppression of ancient wisdom about the Great Year is just one example of how Christ in Egypt gives us eyes to see the Bible against an empirical scientific framework. Similar examples throughout the book enable us to see the Bible as a cosmic detective story. We can imagine how the original enlightened authors of the Gospel texts struggled against a corrupt priesthood to retain references to the big slow cosmic story of human redemption. The Therapeuts of Alexandria, the real authors of the Gospels, were not a single unified movement. Cosmic Gnostic visionaries among them gave the story its real power and direction, based in Egyptian theology of the Great Year. Cosmic ideas were anathema to the monotheist dogmatists who proved ultimately triumphant in the church, but the dogmatists could not totally suppress the natural theory of time that provides the Gospels with its redemptive truth.As we move now towards the end of the Age of Pisces and the dawn of the Age of Aquarius, a new Aquarian cosmic faith is emerging that can see the Bible with new eyes. Magical visions such as the Apocalypse of John can now be revealed as having a continuity with ancient visions from the millennia before the time of Christ, and as pointing towards the rediscovery of a natural theology. Murdock's Christ in Egypt helps set the foundation for this transformation of human consciousness, finding the concealed fragments of truth within the Gospels in order to reconstruct our continuity with the perennial philosophy of Thoth and Horus, as above so below.

"Christ in Egoypt" shows that even if you do believe in astrology, Jesus Christ is just a "jonnie came lately."I mean if all you want to do is prove that Jesus Christ never existed one could say, "o.k. what are the primary sources?" Philo and Paul; what do they say? Either nothing(Philo) and that he's combining Plato's "just man(see Plato's republic book 2, section 361d) and 'logos' theology with Judaism(if that's not a clue I don't know what is!), and Paul says "I derived him from scripture"(see throughout Pauline epistles). There, done! The gospels are 'jonnie come lately.' They are not primary sources, so the gospels don't even matter! But hey! It's fun showing all these analogies between Jesus Christ and Egyptian 'sungods' thousands of years before.Acharya S here has found some greeks like Herodotus who notes that the Egyptians came up with the twelve divisions of the year first and 'personified' them; that's making gods and people stand for the twelve constellations for the christians who might be reading this review. That's like you know the twelve followers of Jesus Christ just like Horus and Osiris at various times had "twelve followers." And then, She finds Egyptian Pyramid and Coffin texts which contain 'book of the dead' amongst other books writings all over them; and what are they saying? Things like 'virgin births', 'resurrections', born on 25th of december and so on and so forth. See, Herodotus notes that he's not suppose to tell you what these 'mystery' schools are saying; and, so we have proved that it's kind of hard to find writings saying we made up this or that god; but, Acharya and others have found these coffin and pyramid texts that give it all away - at least from the Egyptian perspective.I found a couple of references that were off; i had to go searching for them. There's a reference to Josephus about the twelve tribes of Israel are the twelve constellations; i'd have to go look up my notes, but either there was a typo, or she got the reference wrong.There's times when I felt like just speeding through the book; i mean she doesn't just give one pyramid or coffin text per gospel/jesus christ phenomenon, she gives every reference she can; it just seemed to me that I could have just gone and bought a copy of the pyramid/coffin texts and just found a coffin/pyramid text note per chapter/issue(like the twelve followers or virgin births) and I could be done with it in an hour or so. But, I found each time I started just skimming through the book, something would pop up. Bottom line, the book is packed with information showing the pervasive astrotheology of the past.I was hoping she'd go through the twelve constellations of Jesus Christ; but, I can only assume(she doesn't note this) that figures she's covered this part already in other books; still, for completness, I would think she should have found corresponding coffin/pyramid texts of twelve followers/disciples of Jesus Christ and horus/osiris. It's already long, what could it have hurt to go ahead and finish it off?I didn't bother finishing reading the concluding chapter; sure, she might have noted some more juicy tidbits, but I felt like I got through the meat of the book. My motivation for continuing through the destruction derby of Jesus Christ was to get to the chapter about Alexandria; i was hoping maybe we could say for sure who made what; but, she mostly just shows that we can pretty much say that the Gospel of John was written to usurp the Gnotic christians. Not that this matters(see the first things I said in this review), but it seems the mystery of who made up what gospel remains; but, she does note all kinds of interesting facts. I mean if you want to read a book that gets as close as it can to say the Gospel of Mark, read James brother of Jesus.The value of this type of work is not the destroying of the historicity of Jesus Christ - but that of mythology being poetry, poetry being analogy(metaphor, simily). Human beings are the thinking animal; we figure out nature; when we first started, we hadn't hit on a method of how to actually figure out how to figure out the universe; so, people made up mythology; mythology was the science of the day; it makes sense that they had mythology of the sun and stars and so on. This is part of our history; it should be put in its place and left there.What's more, when they didn't have much real mathematical science; people took advantage of that fact to conrol the populace. Plato is quoted by Eusebius in his "Principia Evangelica" to the affect of 'if they want to be fooled for emotional medicine, let's go ahead and do so.(just read the books chapter titles! I think it's chapter 31, book ten).But back to the point about analogy. Mathematics has aspects of analogy. Two pears and two apples are analogous for the number two. But, mathematics has found a way of being constructive and consistent. In 1931, Kurt Godel showed that a finite set of axioms cannot prove an infinity of truths. It can if they are inconsistent. Supernatural mythology is an inconsistent statement that allows people to just sweep problems under the rug; "God works in mysterious ways." God and Jesus Christ are essentially algebraic X's standing for "I don't know", and "I don't want to know." This is the real reason why people believe in god; none of Acharya's books or anybody elses books like "James brother of Jesus" is going to change the mind of these folks; it's not what they are in it for. As Tertullian says, "I believe because it is rediculous."(you can find it by google searching).People don't reason, they fear monger it seems to me. Gangs are fear support groups; they are bound together by fear mongering. They all say we love our members, but if they leave, I'll cut their balls off; this is the substance of the Bibles ten commandments and even what Jesus Christ is made to say; believe or go to hell. Nowhere, does the bible say criticise me, wonder about the universe(well, in the old testament, they note that they were astrologers, but then they tell each other to stop watching the heavens at the same time; when watching the heavens might reveal the truths about religion). God and Jesus christ are inconsistent statements, and they will cut your balls off(or whatever they have to do) to make you believe blindly. You will pay the church or die.Finally, while Paul derives Jesus Christ from scripture, this is done in an inconsistent way, and likewise for the rest of the bible. The bible is a kind of psuedo, mathematical religion. It's astrology. It may be psuedo mathematical, but it is more Ptolemaic theory than the real underlying reality of the universe that mathematics finds. Ptolemaic theory views the world from the observation that the Earth appears to be the center of the universe; but, this is a false assumption. Ptolemaic theory goes on to derive the motions of the planets from this false assumption which leads to ever more epicycles to account for every discrepency, instead of getting rid of the real discrepency; the false assumption.Why is this point about Ptolemaic theory and vague axioms(assumptions) important? People refuse to admit that they don't know everything; they'll lie to cover it up; they'll get into ever more trouble, and then they'll start killing to cover up if they have to. And, I've noted some other things about people who play vagueness games and form gangs and terrorism and so on above. You see, the church is just a big gang, a big cult.Why did christianity spread and stomp out mathematical science? Because it was easy. Christianity was the easy way out; beleive and your in. The people who made up christianity figured this out; if they make it easy to be in, they get more money, more people means more power. Christianity is the religion for the coffee table crowd.

I know books with titles such as this can easily be passed over as being part of the weird world of various people who tend to appear on the TV in scurilous documentaries. I hope to have a level head about ancient Egypt, and do not go with the nonsense churned out by people who have $ in their eyes. This book is well researched and has an undeniable ring of truth about it. We have been subjected to a particular point of view for 2 millenia, it is ingrained in our culture that what the Bible says is the only truth. This, to me, always seemed false and deeply suspect. So, cast off the shackles of millenia and read this book, open your mind to at least the possibility that much of what we call Christianity, is actually the worship of Ra, Ra-Horakhty, Horus, Isis, Aten etc etc

This is an important book.It should be recommended reading for those interested in the history of Christianity, the Abrahamic religions,and comparative religion.The book is based on extensive research and the resulting references to be found within the complete sphere of the Egyptian Ra-Horus-Osiris-Isis religion that describe the parallels with Christianity.The facts are presented in a common sense approach describing the adoption of ideas used in the construction of a (new) religion. These ideas illustrate, from astrotheology, and the Horus - Osiris sun gods myths the similarities to Christianity, originating thousands of years earlier. Scientifically, the conclusions appear obvious. In the latter part of the book we are presented with the development of Christianity from the subsequent Egyptian-Greek-Hebrew religion complex, from Philo and the library at Alexandria, and from the Therapeuts and others. D.M.Murdock must be congratulated on her very convincing reference book.

An interesting and illuminating account of the evolution from Ancient Egypt to Modern times of the main Common Religious Myths.It is obvious from the historical evidence presented that there is no such thing as "an original religion".The commonly held religions and faiths can be traced back in the book to their forbears and prototypes in the earlier societies,and ancient religions,and myth structures of the ancient world.A most enjoyable book.

nice

Because of the detail and in-depth knowledge expounded this is excellent for the academic in this field. But bit too heavy-going for the lay person.