Even after I had shed the superstitions instilled in my childhood, I believed a man named Jesus once roamed the Middle East.
Though not the supernatural offspring of any god, I figured he was a drifter who became popular because he was both a ladies’ man – really hot and super sweet, and a man's man – a guy who liked his wine and told good jokes. He was also perhaps a little on the schizophrenic side and had the accompanying delusions of grandeur that can go with it. And those twelve male apostles trailing faithfully after him, well you probably know where I’m going with that one.
Turns out I was wrong on all counts.
Searching for Evidence
Ever since I was a child one of my joys in life was to seek out information in search of the truth, so my natural course of action was to begin some fact-checking on this man who was said to have coaxed the skies into drizzling food, turned water into an alcoholic beverage, cured the blind and lepers, rehabilitated the dead, etc.
Why was a man capable of performing the most astounding miracles known to civilization not mentioned other than in the Bible and derived religious writings? Why did none of what would have been his contemporaries, even the most prolific writers, even hint at his existence?
Although there are thousands of historical records, artifacts and writings of that period referencing notables like King Herod, there is no indication of anything as heinous as a mass murder of male infants writers of the New Testament claimed he ordered. Pontius Pilate is also recorded in history, but no word of anything that would have been akin to the trial of the century in prosecuting a talented and charismatic celebrity as Jesus was rumored to be.
Some will refer to the New Testament to prove Jesus existed, but that was written centuries after he was said to have lived with no eyewitness accounts and besides, not only does this Iron Age tome make numerous references to unicorns (as in the KJV version – conveniently changed in translation to ‘wild oxen” for American Standard and New International Version audiences),(1) but to offer as proof a book that only affirms itself is known as circular reasoning, a logical fallacy that cannot be taken seriously.
Others will point to the Shroud of Turin as proof that Jesus lived, but radiocarbon dating revealed the cloth’s origins to be between 1260 and 1390 CE.(2)
So how did these claims about his existence and exploits begin, and why do so many people still buy into them?
After all, as scientists like Bill Nye and Victor Stenger have asserted, it is only reasonable to expect extraordinary claims to be backed up by extraordinary evidence.
Crucifixion = Crucifiction?
What I eventually did discover was there is indeed evidence for the origins of the Jesus legend, but the origins of that evidence are anything but mystical.
The smoking gun appeared while I was surfing the web, in a fascinating excerpt from a book by Gerald Massey. In it, this lay Egyptologist concluded the Jesus story was just one of the last of a long line of sun gods and god men found in religions peculiar to that part of the world.(3)
Apparently his findings were not unique. Many historians, philosophers, secular and church leaders before – and after – Massey had reached the same conclusions.
Forking over the References
So where are these references to these similarities, many will demand in a fist-pounding moment. After all, “extraordinary claims,” and all that…
And it does turn out the origins of the Jesus story are extraordinary – though not in a mystical sense but in a sense that the Old and New Testaments are teeming with tales mirroring narratives of earlier religions. The Catholic Encyclopedia refers to these similarities as “exact counterparts”(4) and claims, as in the case of the Krishna tales, they were hijacked from Christianity – never mind the fact that Hinduism, as well as the other myths cited in this section, predated Christianity by many hundreds or thousands of years.
Egypt was a cultural hub with a vast reach, hence the commonalities with religions featuring Krishna and Buddha.
The table above is incomplete, with parallel features each belief system has to the biblical Christ numbering literally into the hundreds. But my focus here is mainly on a handful of those pertinent to the resurrection story.
Question marks indicate that I was unable to locate the reference at this time. For example, Krishna was said to have walked on water, but I was unable to footnote this conclusively from the sources I used for this blog. Note that since these are mythologies, not real histories, there is typically more than one version of a story associated with the protagonist in question.
In The Christ Conspiracy, the Greatest Story Ever Sold (Adventures Unlimited Press, 1999) author D.M. Murdock, then writing under the pseudonym Acharya S., catalogues over three dozen “saviors and sons of god” that “predate the Christian myth,” which have most of the above stories in common.(22) This “incomplete list” includes
• Mithra – Persia/India
• Attis - Phrygia
• Dionysus/Bacchus – Egypt/Greece
• Zoroaster/Zarathustra - Persia
Wait a minute, many will say, I was never taught Dionysus had these “savior” attributes in school! But what counts is that the masses at the time believed this god man to be real along with his associated legend. The records of this are submerged under centuries of meticulous censorship, and this blog has hopefully made the task of locating them easier.
Why the Similarities?
It has become general knowledge that Christianity’s celebrations of what is now called “Christmas” and “Easter” are merely continuations of celebrations spanning back thousands of years originating in the worship of the sun and other celestial bodies.
In their power struggle with the Pagans, Christians co-opted their celebrations to make the transition to Christianity easier and their bid to bring the populace under one religion thereby consolidating power.
It’s easy to see how the sun and celestial bodies became revered in most parts of the world. The sun with its life-giving force was indeed the savior of mankind. And constellations were a way of monitoring the seasons, which people depended upon for their food supply.
It is less well-known why specific dates targeted for festivities appear to be universal – at least to that section of the globe. December 25 was one such date because it came three days after the winter solstice (solstice means “sun standing still”), when it became noticeable that the days were getting longer again and winter was releasing its grip. A multitude of cultures all over the world celebrated the winter solstice – with those in the Middle East particularly having their sun gods and god men born on that day.
Cultures around the world also celebrated another date in connection with the heavens, one that is still known today in Japan as Vernal (Spring) Equinox day, or what Christians call “Easter.” According to the historian Bede the English name “Easter” comes from a Pagan celebration of the vernal equinox. It is generally held to have originally referred to the name of the goddess, Ēostre.(23)
Equinox means “equal night” and when night and day are roughly the same lengths. It was symbolic of the changing seasons and signaled spring was officially in play and food supplies would soon be restored.
Various Christian cults celebrated the vernal equinox at different times around its original date of March 20 or 21 until 325 CE when Pope Gregory XIII in The First Council of Nicaea(24) changed Easter celebrations to the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox in a push to bring the sects together.
The number twelve is more than just the favored number of disciples in mythology, it is another indication of Christianity’s astrological, better termed astrotheological, origins. Twelve appears to symbolize the 12 hour divisions of day and night, in addition to the months of the year and corresponding zodiacal signs. If you’ll take a look at Genesis 49, where Jacob calls on his twelve sons, you’ll see the twelve described largely in terms of the zodiac.
Bribing the Gods
The sacrifice theme associated with the cross is also not unique. Ancient cultures around the world offered sacrifices to the god(s) to entice them into doing their bidding. Sacrifice, whether it be by the Aztecs or the Egyptians and later cults in the Levant (Including Israel and Palestine), typically necessitated presenting the god(s) with a valuable offering. And what can be more valuable than a human life? Presenting a freshly picked dandelion just wouldn’t carry as much weight.
In the Eastern Mediterranean and surrounding regions sacrifices commonly occurred around the vernal equinox, though this did not entail handing over the neighborhood virgin but rather the sun god or god man in vogue, who could rise again, typically after a period of three days. This recovery from death occurred not on a Saturday (Saturn day) or a Monday (Moon day) but on a Sunday.
Censorship’s First Steps
Christianity’s correlations to earlier myths are voluminous and found in historical artifacts, writings, books, articles and reports that could engender a whole new sort of World Book Encyclopedia – so why are so many Americans still ignorant of this information and why are scholars illuminating the Pagan origins of Christianity still sometimes considered “fringy” or “controversial?”Although modern right-wing Christians no longer have the luxury of slaughtering the opposition and rampaging through the streets leaving trashed Pagan relics in their wake, their efforts have had an enduring impact as illustrated with the Serapis connection. After the Council of Nicaea, Christians were given the green light to ramp up censorship, leading to a “centuries-long orgy obliteration millions of texts, setting civilization back at least 1000 years.”(25) It is probably also one of the reasons roughly one-third of the world still holds Christian beliefs.
A big coup was the annihilation of artifacts relating to a sun god/god man hybrid named Serapis, who was the immensely popular entity around the Roman Empire, even extending into Britain, before and after Jesus was said to be born.(26)
Serapis (Egypt circa 3 BCE-4 CE) was apparently the long, dark-haired, bearded prototype for the Jesus Christ character. Writes author Thomas Doane in Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions “There can be no doubt that the head of Serapis, marked as the face is by a grave and pensive majesty, supplied the first idea for the conventional portraits of the Savior.”(27)
Serapis also appeared to serve as a blueprint for the adventures of the later Jesus incarnation. He was said to be born of a virgin (Isis), considered a savior, lead souls into the light and raised the dead.(28) He was also identified with the cross(29) and an empty tomb after burial.(30)
Variously named IE, IES, Ieud, Judas, Joshua, Jason, Iesous, Iesios, Iasios or other variant, which signified a healer, Serapis was apparently created to roll the various savior cults into one.(31)
The records show he also went by the name of “Christos” and “Chrestos.”(32) In a letter to Servianus around 134 CE, Emperor Hadrian wrote, “The worshippers of Serapis are Christians, and those are devoted to the God Serapis, who…. call themselves the Bishops of Christ are devoted to Serapis.”(33) Another translation of this letter substitutes “Christians” with “Chrestians.”(34)
Although the mystery of both Isis and Serapis are today still part of Masonry, a Christian-based cult, there is a relative dearth of information concerning Serapis. A rabid mob of Bible-thumpers helped see to that in 385 CE when they destroyed the temple of Serapis as well as the Serapeum, a branch of the famed library of Alexandria.
Why did Christian emperor Theodosius the First order this destruction “… if not to destroy the evidence it contained of the spurious nature of the Christian religion and its heathen philosophical origin?” asked editor J.M. Roberts, in his book Antiquity Unveiled.(35)
Censorship Comes of Age
Widespread attempts to extinguish the evidence concerning the mythological roots of the Christianity continued over the years but on a much more subtle basis, “via the world’s greatest forgery mill.”(36) And this mill had its work cut out for it since there was a plethora of evidence to censor.
Much of this comes from the one country religious fanatics have not been able to get their hands on to any large extent – Egypt – which was a dominant power in the area for centuries and difficult to colonize and pillage to the same extent as other countries by the Christian Europeans.
The discovery of the Rosetta stone by Napoleon’s troops in the early 1700’s was one such artifact not destroyed. This ancient translation guide helped scholars decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics and brought to light something that had puzzled Europeans for centuries – why the images on Egyptian monuments and tombs depicted many of the major stories of both Old and New Testaments – only these inscriptions had been created thousands of years before.
The debate over the existence of Jesus began almost at the onset of Christianity, since the similarities to earlier stories were noticed, but it later became confined to hierarchical circles of which the public was largely unaware. At a gathering for the ecclesiastically elite in the 1500’s, Pope Leo X is quoted as saying, “What profit hath not that fable of Christ has brought us.”(37)
If you take a look at many websites today, it will be ardently rationalized why this quote did not come from the Pope, and there are many other ways the public has been successfully kept in the dark.
Hiding tell-tale evidence also meant taking advantage of the fact that these ancient cultures had for millennia been exchanging and borrowing information, much of it orally, which lead to an amalgamation of gods and their stories. The Old and New Testaments are not immune to this, as can be seen in aspects such as the hundreds of contradictions found on those pages.
This came in handy to ideologically-driven mythologists, who would pick and choose which version of a myth to acknowledge and which to ignore. The answer was a no-brainer – recognize the one with the fewest associations to the Christian account.
The movement to set apart these half-breed superheroes from the biblical edition also entailed substituting verbiage such as
• “parthenogenesis” for “Virgin Birth”
• “demi-god” for “Son of God”
• “lord” rather than “Savior”
• ruling over the “netherworld” rather than over “Heaven”
• “rising up” instead of “Resurrection”
Other ways of downplaying Christianity’s Pagan foundations include acts of omission, hefty editing, tip-toeing around or vaguely alluding to the similarities, and of course flagrant censorship. The aftershocks for those who dared make too much of the resemblances included censure by Christian apologist colleagues, shunning by family and friends, having their reputations demolished and getting the ax at work.
Out of Censorship’s Reach
One scholar’s work seemingly untouched by the sweeping hand of censorship is where I also finally found a good, reliable, centralized source of references. Comparative Mythologist D.M. Murdock is independent which is key – it allows her the freedom to state the results of her research candidly without fear of losing funding from a major institution or benefactor.
She was a contributor to the phenomenally popular Zeitgeist documentary (Part I), which cast a spotlight on the research exposing Christianity’s Pagan origins. It is therefore not surprising she would attract some negative publicity and in this regard Murdock is in good company, joining the legions of other researchers in this field that were maligned, disparaged and demonized, typically by overzealous Christian detractors.
Just as the standard fare of criticisms have been leveled against her – “she’s wrong” – so too have kudos from scholars such as Dr. Robert M. Price, The Pre-Nicene New Testament: “I find myself in full agreement with Acharya S/D.M. Murdock... I find it undeniable that... many, many of the epic heroes and ancient patriarchs and matriarchs of the Old Testament were personified stars, planets and constellations...” Pastor David Bruce, M.Div, North Park Seminary, Chicago apparently agrees: “I've known people with triple Ph.D’s who haven't come close to the scholarship in Who Was Jesus?”
There are many more where that came from but I had to see for myself, so I read through my first Murdock text Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection with a judgmental eye. What I eventually realized after moving on to other texts was that there was no other scholar to my knowledge that has organized such massive amounts of data from and about that area of the world to the extent Murdock has.
Whether it be original language of ancient texts with an assortment of translations provided by a myriad of credentialed authorities, or data collected from excavations and artifacts analyzed in the lab – Murdock has managed to order this information into thousands of well-written and grammatically immaculate footnoted pages.
Just Enough Evidence
In addition to double-checking information, my background in journalism also calls for me to be as objective as possible, but being objective doesn’t mean conjuring up data to counterbalance actual facts – which is what would have to be done since there is no historical proof the biblical Jesus Christ existed. None.
Some scholars of Egyptology and comparative mythologies say nothing in the Jesus stories were original with all biblical accounts merely plagiarisms of earlier mythologies. To that I wouldn’t be able to testify. But my research did leave me with the impression that it’s as if the word “Jesus” was largely cut-and-pasted over the names of other mythological gods preceding the tale.
We will never know the entire scope of correspondences due to the scrupulous destruction of the evidence, but enough of it remains to have influenced our present.
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Thomas Paine have all remarked on the likenesses the Jesus story had with those of earlier “saviors,” with Paine, in his treatise Origin of Freemasonry, concluding “The Christian religion and Masonry have one and the same common origin: Both are derived from the worship of the Sun.”
This is possibly a reason why the Founding Fathers, many of them not Christian but Deist, felt the need to incorporate into the Constitution the prohibition against government-sponsored religion by way of the very first sentence of the First Amendment.
These days, Christianity’s ties to Paganism as well as the archaeological disproof of all four foundational stories of the Bible are being made public to a greater extent and perhaps just some of the many reasons why secularism continues to grow and outpace all other ideologies not only in the US but the rest of the world.
To the doubting Thomases, before you issue a knee-jerk criticism of this blog, I invite you to launch your own investigation, looking elsewhere than mainstream books and modern encyclopedias. Also check out the references below and take the time to peruse the photos found in the Murdock books referenced.
Because with all the awe and wonder life has to offer, doesn’t the seeking and uncovering of truth count right along up there with the rest of it all?