Is Jesus a knockoff of the Egyptian god Horus?

Horus, Bill Maher, and Gerald Massey

My buddy Jon Sorensen is out visiting this weekend, so he’s not around to stop me from posting the beginning of his awesome article on how Jesus is not a knockoff of the Egyptian god Horus. (Take that, Bill Maher!)

Here goes . . .

 

Horus Manure: Debunking the Jesus/Horus Connection

This article was published in the Nov-Dec 2012 issue of Catholic Answers Magazine.

Many atheists, neo-pagans, and other disbelievers of Christianity claim the story of Jesus Christ was borrowed from earlier mythologies. In recent years, a claim has been making the rounds that Jesus is based on the Egyptian god, Horus.

Who was Horus?
Horus is one of the oldest recorded deities in the ancient Egyptian religion. Often depicted as a falcon or a man with a falcon head, Horus was believed to be the god of the sun and of war. Initially he appeared as a local god, but over time the ancient Egyptians came to believe the reigning pharaoh was a manifestation of Horus (cf. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Horus”).

What about Jesus?
The skeptical claims being made about Jesus are not always the same. In some versions he was a persuasive teacher whose followers later attempted to deify him by adopting aspects of earlier god-figures, while in others he is merely an amalgamation of myths and never really existed at all. Both versions attempt to provide evidence that the Gospel accounts of the life of Christ are rip-offs.

In the 2008 documentary film Religulous (whose name is a combination of religion andridiculous), erstwhile comedian and political commentator Bill Maher confronts an unprepared Christian with this claim. Here is part of their interaction.

Bill Maher: But the Jesus story wasn’t original.
Christian man: How so?
Maher: 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.

Maher is only repeating things that are and believed by many people today. Similar claims are made in movies such as Zeitgeist and Religulous and in pseudo-academic books such as Christ in Egypt: The Jesus-Horus Connection and Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth.

Often Christians are not prepared for this type of encounter, and some are even swayed by this line of argumentation.  Maher’s tirade provides a good summary of the claims, so let’s deconstruct it, one line at a time.

KEEP READING.

P.S. Don’t forget to subscribe to Jon’s awesome blog and to Catholic Answers’ awesome Magazine.

 

Talking about rape: What pro-life politicians desperately need to know

Ethel Waters was conceived by rape. Should she have been killed by abortion?

Recently  a couple of pro-life political candidates have made dramatic, embarrassing statements about rape.

The first was Todd Akin of Missouri (no relation, as far as I know), who referred to the odds that a woman will have a baby if she has been subjected to “legitimate rape.”

GAH!

More recently, Richard Mourdock of Indiana seemed to suggest that sometimes “God intended” rape.

GAH!

It’s clear that some pro-life politicians need to learn better how to talk about this subject. So let’s take a look at it and see what lessons there are . . .

 

“Legitimate Rape”???

Reportedly, when asked if women who became pregnant as the result of a rape, Todd Akin replied:

Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.

Akin’s first problem–or at least the first huge problem–is that he used the phrase “legitimate rape.” This appeared to suggest that there is such a thing as legitimate rape, which is morally repugnant.

Of course, a moment’s reflection would lead one to realize what he actually meant. By “legitimate rape” he presumably meant actual rape–forcing sex on an unwilling participant.

A contrast to this, presumably, would be cases that are sometimes classified as “statutory rape,” in which the statutes of the local criminal code classify an act as rape because one of the parties is not old enough to legally consent to the act. In fact, both of the parties may be willing participants (or one may not be), but in any event one party is deemed unable to legally consent by reason of age.

Akin may also have had in mind situations in which a woman is ambiguous about consent or where she later decides to repudiate her involvement in the act.

All of this leads to Akin’s second huge problem: Political opponents and people coming from a pro-abortion perspective will not go through the mental exercise of trying to figure all this out. They will simply attack.

If they do acknowledge that he wasn’t actually asserting that some forms of rape are morally legitimate then they will paint him as dismissing what happens to women in other situations (i.e., that statutory rape, ambiguous consent, or repudiated consent “don’t matter”)–or even just accusing rape victims of lying.

Then there is the matter that Akin was trying to assert, which is that a woman’s body has certain in-built defenses such that, if she is forcibly compelled to have sex, make it unlikely she will have a baby.

Although some pro-life leaders have asserted that this is true, others have challenged the claim.

This leads to Akin’s third huge problem: By citing a medically disputed claim he gets the issue off the need to protect children conceived of rape and onto the merits of the claim, with other pro-lifers taking a contrary position.

This allows the enemies of life to dismiss pro-lifers (including Akin) as scientific illiterates who are so driven by ideology that they make preposterous claims repudiated by others of their own camp.

KEEP READING.

The Dark and Difficult Passages of Scripture

This is a post linking to pieces that are part of an ongoing series I’m working on about the “dark passages” of Scripture–passages that tend to take modern readers aback (for example, because of the violence contained in them).

I’m also including passages that some find difficult even if they aren’t “dark.”

Here I’ll link to the individual posts in the series at their current locations. That will make it easier for me to link each one of those posts individually back to this one to provide a continually-updated post to help people find what they’re looking for.

Here are what I’ve written so far:

  1. Pope Benedict on the “dark passages” of Scripture
  2. The Principle of Voice
  3. Does God Approve of Rape?
  4. Does God Expect Women to Marry Their Rapists?
  5. Is It Okay to Force a Woman You’ve Captured to Marry You?
  6. Was it okay for Jacob to lie to his father, Isaac?
  7. The Biblical Hero Who . . . Killed His Daughter???
  8. How the accounts of Jesus’ childhood fit together
  9. Was the Star of Bethlehem a myth, a UFO, or something else?
  10. Did God Deceive Jeremiah?
  11. MORE TO COME!

Did Matthew *Invent* A Prophecy About Jesus?

The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth

Matthew 2:23 says that Jesus was raised in Nazareth “that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene.'”

But this statement does not appear in anywhere in the Old Testament.

Does this mean that Matthew just invented the prophecy?

Recently a Muslim author responded to me by claiming just this.

Let’s look into the matter . . .

 

The Background

Recently I made a video posing the question “Did the New Testament Authors Feel Free to Make Stuff Up?” (click here to watch it).

I looked at several lines of evidence showing that they did not feel free to simply invent material about Jesus, unlike the authors of the Gnostic gospels that were written in the second and third centuries.

The British blogger and convert to Islam Paul Williams posted a response on his blog, Exploring Life, the Universe, and Everything (he’s also apparently a Douglas Adams fan, which I can appreciate), where he wrote:

Yes Jimmy, there is evidence they did [make stuff up] from time to time. Consider Matthew 2 for example:

“There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean.’”

There is no such prophecy anywhere in the Bible [emphasis in original].

 

Lost Prophecies?

I became aware of Matthew 2:23 when I read through the New Testament at age 20. The Bible I was reading had footnotes revealing where various quotations from the Old Testament could be found, and I was surprised to see that there was no Old Testament reference for the prophecy given here.

What did this mean?

What was Matthew quoting?

Was it a source that had been lost?

We know that there were many prophets in ancient Israel who genuinely spoke for God, even though their prophecies are not recorded in the Old Testament. 1 Kings even indicates that there were as many as a hundred prophets at once!

And Ahab called Obadi’ah, who was over the household. (Now Obadi’ah revered the LORD greatly; and when Jez’ebel cut off the prophets of the LORD, Obadi’ah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifties in a cave, and fed them with bread and water) [1 Kings 18:3-4].

Could it be that some of this material was passed down in the form of oral tradition, and this is what Matthew was referring to?

Possibly, but there is another option . . .

KEEP READING.

Are Scary Halloween Costumes Okay?

Are scary costumes okay?

Many people of conscience view Halloween with some suspicion, and the way it is often celebrated today, that’s understandable.

Some have chosen not to celebrate Halloween at all, and that’s a respectable choice.

Others have chosen to invert the popular celebration by dressing up–or having their children dress up–as entirely wholesome figures, like doctors, nurses, and firemen or even as historical figures, like saints.

But what about scary Halloween costumes? Are those okay?

 

“Oh, No! It’s a Clown!”

Drama is a human universal. It’s something that people in all cultures appreciate, and it’s something that we participate in from our earliest days.

As soon as children are able to play, they start playing pretend, and their games involve drama.

My own earliest memory–or my earliest clear one–is of such a game.

I was four or five years old, and I put on a clown mask and jumped out to scare my parents.

Playing along, my mom clutched my dad and said, “Oh, no! It’s a clown!”

Watch the video for more!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE.

What Now?

If you like the information I’ve presented here, I’d invite you to join my Secret Information Club.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Secret Information Club is a free service that I operate by email.

I send out information on a variety of fascinating topics connected with the Catholic faith.

In fact, the very first thing you’ll get if you sign up is information about what Pope Benedict says about the book of Revelation.

He has a lot of interesting things to say!

If you’d like to find out what they are, just sign up at www.SecretInfoClub.com or use this handy sign-up form:

Just email me at jimmy@secretinfoclub.com if you have any difficulty.

In the meantime, what do you think?

The Weekly Benedict: 14 October, 2012

This version of The Weekly Benedict covers material released in the last week from 8 October 2012 – 21 October 2012  (subscribe here; get as an eBook version for your Kindle, iPod, iPad, Nook, or other eBook reader):

Angelus

General Audiences

Homilies

Speeches

Did the Gospel Writers Feel Free to Make Stuff Up?

Did the gospel writers feel free to make stuff up?

Some people hold the view that the writers of the four gospels felt free to basically make stuff up, to freely shape the narratives they were writing about Jesus’ life by either manufacturing stories about his deeds or making up teachings and putting them on his lips.

The idea is that they used the figure of Jesus as a vehicle for their own ideas, and they made up material to serve the perceived needs of their local Christian communities.

It’s easy to show that by the second century there were a lot of people identifying themselves as Christians who did exactly this. That’s why there were so many Gnostic gospels dating from the second to the fourth century.

But what about the first century, canonical gospels?

Let’s take a look . . .

 

What We’re Talking About

I should say a word about what I mean and what I don’t mean.

I’m talking about making stuff up out of whole cloth–the kind of things that the authors of the Gnostic gospels did, telling stories and making up sayings that have absolutely no relation to the historical Jesus and what he said and did.

I’m not talking about paraphrasing what Jesus said–using different words to express the same thing. Or simplifying a story by choosing not to record certain details about what happened. Or telling a story from a certain point of view or bringing out an implication, nuance, or meaning that others might not have brought out. Or using a bit of literary artistry or reorganization in how the material is presented.

The gospel authors did all of those things, as is easy to show. John did a bit more of them than the other three.

What I’m talking about is fundamentally different. I’m talking about making stuff up.

While the Gnostics may have been into that kind of thing, there are very good reasons to think that the authors of the canonical gospels weren’t.

Let’s look at two reasons why . . .

Watch the video for more!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE.

 

What Now?

If you like the information I’ve presented here, I’d invite you t to check out my Secret Information Club.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Secret Information Club is a free service that I operate by email.

I send out information on a variety of fascinating topics connected with the Catholic faith.

In fact, the very first thing you’ll get if you sign up is information about what Pope Benedict says about the book of Revelation.

He has a lot of interesting things to say!

If you’d like to find out what they are, just sign up at www.SecretInfoClub.com or use this handy sign-up form:

Just email me at jimmy@secretinfoclub.com if you have any difficulty.

In the meantime, what do you think?

If the Number of the Beast is 666, what is the Number of Jesus?

The number of the beast is 666, but what is the number of Jesus?

We’ve all heard that, in the book of Revelation, the number of the Beast is 666.

Whatever does this mean?

And if the Beast has a number, do others?

Does the name of Jesus have a number?

Does the name of God have a number?

Here’s the story. . . .

 

Modern Numbers

Today we are used to having a different set of characters to represent letters and numbers.

Our alphabet of letters runs from A to Z, and our system of numbers–or basic numbers–runs from 0 to 9.

But in the ancient world they didn’t have two sets of characters for these. Instead, the letters of their alphabets doubled as characters representing numbers.

 

Latin Numbers

That’s why, for example, Roman numerals are composed of letters.

In Latin, some of the letters did double duty as numbers, so I meant 1, V meant 5, X meant 10, L meant 50, C meant 100, D meant 500, and M meant 1,000.

To get other numbers you had to combine these in various ways, like using II for 2, III for 3, and IV for 4.

What about the number of the Beast and the number of Jesus?

Watch the video for more!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE.

 

What Now?

If you like the information I’ve presented here, you might want to check out my Secret Information Club.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Secret Information Club is a free service that I operate by email.

I send out information on a variety of fascinating topics connected with the Catholic faith.

In fact, the very first thing you’ll get if you sign up is information about what Pope Benedict says about the book of Revelation.

He has a lot of interesting things to say!

If you’d like to find out what they are, just sign up at www.SecretInfoClub.com or use this handy sign-up form:

Just email me at jimmy@secretinfoclub.com if you have any difficulty.

In the meantime, what do you think?

Was St. Peter the Greatest Disciple?

"And an argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest" (Luke 9:46).Was it St. Peter the greatest of Jesus’ original Twelve disciples?

St. Peter is certainly the most commonly mentioned of the original Twelve. He always stands at the head of the list whenever the names of the Twelve apostles are listed in the Bible. And he was clearly part of Jesus’ inner circle, even within the Twelve. He is, unquestionably, the most prominent of the Twelve.

But did Jesus give him a special role among the Twelve, a special position, or was he just more active than the others?

Jesus gives us an answer to this question, and in an unexpected place . . .

 

Who Is the Greatest? Round 1

Jesus took three disciples with him to the Transfiguration: Peter, James, and John. These three were uniquely privileged to witness the Transfiguration, and they–together with Peter’s brother Andrew–formed Jesus’ inner circle within the Twelve.

After these three received the special privilege of seeing their Master’s glory, it’s not surprising that a dispute broke out among the Twelve concerning their relevant ranks. This provided Jesus with an occasion to give them both a lesson in humility and a lesson in true leadership. In Luke 9, we read . . .

Luke 9

[46] And an argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest.
[47] But when Jesus perceived the thought of their hearts, he took a child and put him by his side,
[48] and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me; for he who is least among you all is the one who is great.”

 

Lessons Learned

It’s possible for us to learn several lessons from Jesus’ response to the disciples’ quarrel.

One is that it was foolish–although still very human–for the disciples to be concerned with rank in this way.

A second is that, as so often is the case, the nature of Christian truth is paradoxical. The one who is great in God’s eyes is not automatically the one who is great in man’s eyes. It can even be the one who is least in the eyes of man, like a little child.

That is why it is important to receive even the least of God’s people with Christian love, for to do so is to receive Christ and to receive his Father.

 

Another Lesson?

But there is another lesson that some may be tempted to draw out of this passage, which is that the apostles weren’t just foolish to question who was the greatest among them because it revealed a preoccupation with pride and position rather than service to others.

Instead, this view would hold, it was foolish for them to ask the question because there simply was no greatest among them, that they were all equals, with none having any special position.

That would be a little hard to square with the fact that Jesus had just taken three, who we know from other passages were members of his inner circle, to witness the Transfiguration.

Indeed, Jesus himself indicates that some are greater than others in God’s eyes, and who they are have to do with who serve others.

But we don’t have to leave the matter there, surprisingly, it comes up again in Luke’s Gospel, and the second time, Jesus gives a specific answer to the question.

Watch the video for more!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE.

What Now?

If you like the information I’ve presented here, I’d invite you t to check out my Secret Information Club.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Secret Information Club is a free service that I operate by email.

I send out information on a variety of fascinating topics connected with the Catholic faith.

In fact, the very first thing you’ll get if you sign up is information about what Pope Benedict says about the book of Revelation.

He has a lot of interesting things to say!

If you’d like to find out what they are, just sign up at www.SecretInfoClub.com or use this handy sign-up form:

Just email me at jimmy@secretinfoclub.com if you have any difficulty.

In the meantime, what do you think?

The Weekly Benedict: 14 October, 2012

This version of The Weekly Benedict covers material released in the last week from 3 October 2012 – 11 October 2012  (subscribe here; get as an eBook version for your Kindle, iPod, iPad, Nook, or other eBook reader):

Angelus

General Audiences

Homilies

Special