Pagan Jesus

The poet and spiritualist Gerald Massey wanted people to believe that Christianity was an entirely derivative belief system stolen from ancient pagans. His colossal work, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, released in the early twentieth century, insisted that the story of Jesus (among other biblical narratives) had been essentially plagiarized from Egyptian mythology. Jesus, he taught, was a thinly veiled reworking of Horus.

He was hardly alone in this belief. As higher criticism took the Western world by storm over the course of the nineteenth century, it became popular to dismiss the biblical narrative as unreliable. In the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, who excised anything he personally deemed doubtful in the New Testament,[1] skeptical scholars spent much time picking the Bible apart in a determined effort to discredit much of its content. The idea that Christianity is little more than rebranded paganism was one popular theory that emerged from this effort.

Most people today have never heard about Gerald Massey, but his work still occasionally re-emerges in popular media. Bill Maher is a well-known American comedian and talk show host, notorious for his critiques of religious faith, many of which were strung together in a 2008 documentary he named Religulous: a contraction of “ridiculous” and “religion.”

Jesus = Horus?

At one point in the work, Maher resurrects Massey’s work by sharing the following narrative:

“Written in 1280 B.C., the Book of the Dead describes a god, Horus. Horus is the son of the god Osiris, born to a virgin mother. He was baptized in a river by Anup the Baptizer, who was later beheaded. Like Jesus, Horus was tempted while alone in the desert, healed the sick, the blind, cast out demons, and walked on water. He raised Asar from the dead. ‘Asar’ translates to ‘Lazarus.’ Oh, yeah, he also had twelve disciples. Yes, Horus was crucified first, and after three days, two women announced Horus, the savior of humanity, had been resurrected.”[2]

If you’re not of a mind to dig deeper, it sounds persuasive. Some might even be motivated not to check any deeper, because if the story of Jesus is nothing more than the Horus legend retold, the moral claims of the Bible become suspect—and no longer binding. In other words, if you accept that Jesus is a fabrication, you’re off the hook. You don’t have to respond to the conviction that people invariably feel when confronted with Christ. (It is, I have often stated, nearly impossible to see Jesus and not respond somehow.)

There’s just one little flaw in Maher’s story: It’s utter nonsense. There is such a thing as the Book of the Dead—in fact, there’s more than one—but Horus is never described the way Maher tells it. His version is a fabrication.

Horus was the son of the Egyptian goddess Isis, who was . . . well, let’s just say she was anything but a virgin. The ancient fable tells us that she was impregnated by her husband, whom the Egyptians claim was dead at the time. That makes the birth of Horus unusual, but that’s precisely where the similarity with the nativity of Christ stops. It doesn’t track with the Bible’s account of Joseph, Mary, and the virgin birth—at all.

Additionally, there is no ancient Egyptian record of an “Anup the Baptizer.” It seems that Gerald Massey was the first to mention him, borrowing and modifying the name Anpu from the Coptic name for the Egyptian god Anubis:[3]

“Entrance into the eternal city was preceded by baptism, with Anup, the father of the inundation, as the baptiser and sprinkler both in one.”[4]

This creates another problem: Anubis, the god to which Anup was tied, never baptized anybody. He wasn’t beheaded, either. It seems as though Mr. Massey was stretching the details more than a little bit to make it fit his skeptical narrative.

Was Horus tempted by the devil in the wilderness? No. The Egyptian tale tells us that Horus battled an evil god named Set—the god of the wilderness—but there is no story of Horus being tempted by the devil. At best, we have the story of Horus enduring a trial in the wilderness. Furthermore, in Egyptian myths Horus makes peace with Set, the opposite of what happened between Jesus and the devil.

If you accept that Jesus is a fabrication, you’re off the hook: You don’t have to respond to the conviction that people invariably feel when confronted with Christ.

Did Horus raise a man named Asar from the dead? No. He also never had 12 disciples (or any disciples that we know of), he never walked on water, and he was never crucified. At best, there is apparently a picture of Horus with his arms spread out. I’ve never seen it; Horus is usually shown with his arms crossed. But even if such an image did exist, it’s not exactly a crucifixion.

Even a brief moment of reflection would suggest that Massey’s story has been fabricated. Why would the Bible roundly condemn Egyptian idolatry on one hand (the story of the golden calf, for example), but then quietly make that idolatry the platform on which to construct the rest of its story? It doesn’t make sense. Gerald Massey’s—and Bill Maher’s—claims are preposterous.

What About Mithras?

But, someone protests, perhaps the early Christians plagiarized their account from the Roman cult of Mithras instead. This is one of the most popular “pagan Jesus” theories. The Roman cult of Mithras was a reworking of Persian myths. It was very popular from the first to the fourth centuries, along with a number of other mystery religions, which places its heyday well after the close of Jesus’ earthly ministry. If there was any thematic borrowing, it seems more likely that the direction of plagiarism flowed from early Christianity into Mithraism instead.

(Of course, the presence of similar themes doesn’t necessarily suggest borrowing at all. We all live on the same broken planet, and we all have similar questions about the nature of our painful existence. The fact that other religious systems have struggled with such concepts as death, purpose, and suffering is a product of broad human experience, not an indication that someone was pirating content.)

Mithras, as skeptics like to tell the story,[5] is said to have been born to a virgin on December 25. He had 12 disciples, performed miracles, was dead for three days, and then came back to life. Again, there’s just one problem: The story isn’t true. There is no record of Mithras being born on December 25. Even if there was, it wouldn’t mean much, because December 25—one of the first days after the winter solstice, when the lengthening of daylight hours was perceptible—was a popular date for many pagan cultures. Remember, the Bible never says Christ was born that day; the authors of the Gospels clearly didn’t borrow it from the story of Mithras’ winter birth. Mithras also wasn’t born to a virgin; ancient artwork has him emerging from a rock with a sword in his hand.[6] Did he have 12 disciples? Again, no: All we really have is an image of Mithras surrounded by the 12 signs of the zodiac[7]—the only similarity being the number 12 (Taurus, Leo, and Scorpio are hardly Peter, James, and John).

Was Mithras raised from the dead on the third day? No.

Why Be Rid of Christ?

The same holds true for many of the other supposed pagan sources for the Christ story. There are others who insist that Jesus is just a retelling of the Hindu god Krishna—but the only thing that Krishna and Jesus seem to have in common is a vague similarity between the words Krishna and Christ. Others would have us believe that the story of Jesus is a retelling of the Phrygian god Attis; still others say that He’s really Dionysus.

Even minimal scrutiny demolishes these theories quickly.

So again: why? Why try to be rid of Christ? If you’re reacting to the abysmal behavior of the Western church in the medieval period, not understanding that it was an aberration, I can see why someone would adopt the Horus tale. Or if you’ve been hurt by religious people, it might help assuage hard feelings to pretend that there’s nothing to the faith. Or if your picture of God is distorted, it’s understandable. But the biblical Jesus? A God who loves fallen humanity enough to sacrifice Himself in order to save them? A Savior who “went about doing good” (Acts 10:38)?

I was once faced with a skeptic in Europe who attended an entire evangelistic series and then challenged me with the idea that the Bible was nothing more than a pagan rehash. “We don’t know that Jesus really existed!” he sputtered. I fell quiet and prayed for the right answer. After a few heartbeats I gently nudged my Bible across the table in his direction.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But let me ask you this. Do you hope this Book is true, or do you hope it isn’t?”

Tears welled up in his eyes. “I’d have to be a fool to not want Jesus to be real,” he answered softly.

Exactly.

[1] His rewrite of the Scriptures, still in print, is often termed the Jefferson Bible.

[2] You can see the clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1V6AjUT6fg.

[3] Anubis is a Hellenized version of the name. See Charles Russell Coulter and Patricia Turner, Encyclopedia of Ancient Deities (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000).

[4] Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (Mansfield, Conn.: Martino Publishing, 2014),p. 364.

[5] I do not wish to direct readers to such nonsense online; if you are determined to see it, however, a simple Google search will reveal that these ideas are still being circulated widely, the most recent versions being distributed through memes.

[6] You can see an example at: https://www.mithraeum.eu/monument/312.

[7] Ibid.