“What the chart about Horus got right: Nothing. There is absolutely nothing in the column about Horus that is correct. Not one single thing. It is all made up.”

For your consideration.

#10 hawkgrrrl & #18 Peter, points well made. I’d like to touch on the idea of “an alternate speculative view of Mormonism”. I read that as “an alternate, speculative view held within Mormonism”. My understanding when reading the Book of Abraham is that the Book specifically asserts the role of Pharaoh in the unauthorized adoption / adaptation of the Adamic / Enochic / Noachic Gospel, Priesthood, etc. This assertion seems hardly like a speculation but a point of Restoration scriptural history. Peter’s right to associate this view with the temple version.

On the point of “not much evidence to pre-Christ Christology”, I also find some exception. Christ is Messiah. Messiah is the Annointed One. There is plenty of coverage of the Messiah in the Bible. Much of the Christian world sees the Hebrew Bible (OT) the way Handel captured it in his oratorio. Paul’s letters (especially Hebrews) adapt the Hebrew Bible to make the case for Christ. It may be a matter of interpretation, but those interpretations find plenty of “evidence”. Margaret Barker has written extensively on this subject. Whether you agree with her or not, I think the “not much evidence” point needs some re-consideration.

Peter, “eggs with random chickens” is pure genius. Your verbiage can be quirky but it’s sometimes poetic and always thought-provoking.

Best regards to all.

This is a chicken and egg argument. If you believe in the temple version of creation and truth, then all types and shadows and parallels come from a common thread of Adamic religion replete with the gospel in a Savior. If you are a Darwainist that see only eggs with random chickens you’ll follow the Joseph Campbell line that men in diverse cultures find similar Chritological myths in the birth and death cycle, astronomy, weather, etc. Or could say it was a conspiracy. Fine. I wonder if the sane and reasonable Bill Maher would admit to conspiracy of post-modern cultural liberalism in our government, business, and post-secondary eduational sytems. Pish posh, this is the just the authentic truth of Heiddeggar, right?

Appears similar to Joseph Smith adapting what he read in the bible, and the View of the Hebrews, to his own theology and creating his own systems of Gods and Godhood.

Andrew good points but I know for a fact that they wouldn’t be able to present on the Internet if it weren’t true

You mentioned “The Book of the Dead” didn’t mention Meri but their look like about 35 similarities. Can you recall if it mentioned most of them or were they bogus not primary sourced!

Of course the real question is whether the authors of this sort of thing are being knowingly disingenuous or if they are just extremely ignorant and incapable.

These authors were absent from class the day they went over balanced research and reporting in ethical scholarship.

There is a difference between what Campbell or Eliade or Nibley was doing and this sort of thing (or the Mithras parallels people draw, don’t get me started).

Of course the real question is whether the authors of this sort of thing are being knowingly disingenuous or if they are just extremely ignorant and incapable.

Or both. Which is too often true of many.

You might also be interested in seeing how scholars who don’t share the agenda of drawing tenuous links to Jesus describe Horus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus

By the way, according to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the mother of Horus is Isis, not “Meri,” as stated in the chart above. My glossary for the Book of the Dead makes no mention of any “Meri” at all.

Also notable on the above chart is the lack of any citation at all for several of the assertions it contains.

That said, with a Google search you can find several thorough critical analyses of Harpur’s book, which at $10.71 seems like a real bargain for debunking the whole idea of Jesus Christ. See here for example: http://www.tektonics.org/harpur01.html

Could be but unsubstantiated I wouldn’t be sure of this unless you checked all the references.http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcpa5.htm

They have listed the two where their is doubt: virgin birth and the 12 apostles.

As far as I’m aware religious tolerance has no axe to grind with any religion.

Chesterton puts it well:

When a well-known critic says, for instance, that Christ being born in a rocky cavern is like Mithras having sprung alive out of a rock, it sounds like a parody upon comparative religion. *There is such a thing as the point of a story, even if it is a story in the sense of a lie.* And the notion of a hero appearing, like Pallas from the brain of Zeus, mature and without a mother, is obviously the very opposite of the idea of a god being born like an ordinary baby and entirely dependent on a mother. Whichever ideal we might prefer, we should surely see that they are contrary ideals. It is as stupid to connect them because they both contain a substance called stone as to identify the punishment of the Deluge with the baptism in the Jordan because they both contain a substance called water. Whether as a myth or a mystery, Christ was obviously conceived as born in a hole in the rocks primarily because it marked the position of one outcast and homeless.

An interesting post and a very nice graph. As you probably are aware there is other “Parallels” both before and after Jesus life. Bart Ehrman has a short discussion in “Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium”.

Each gospel is written from a theological point of view. Mark and John do not include the “virgin” birth. Matthew and Luke each include the virgin birth but one mentions angels and one mentions Shepherds, but neither mention both. Original Mark had no resurrection, only an empty tomb. What does it all mean in connection with Horus? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know if the legends of Horus were common to first and second century Christians. My way of thinking is this would be the only way a person could infer influence.

That being said, I know practically nothing of Horus, Osiris, Isis, or any of the other Egyptian gods and goddesses. What interests me more are the unanswerable questions “How much Egyptian mythology and religion did the historical Jesus of Nazareth pick up as a child growing up in Egypt?”, “How much did he position himself to literally live out during his lifetime (sermons on mounts, gospel message of peace, baptism, disciples, crucifixion)?”, and “How familiar were the Gospel authors with Egyptian mythology and religion, which might cause them to describe Jesus’ birth, life, ministry, and death with many or all of the characteristic markers of Horus’ story?” In regard to question #2, if the historical Jesus actually cured ailments, raised the dead, and resurrected, those acts would indeed be difficult to effectuate without some supernatural assistance.