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Now, Horus...
Again, the list from the (submitted) website:
Horus was born of a virgin on December 25th.
He had 12 disciples.
He was buried in a tomb and resurrected.
He was also the Way, the Truth, the Light, the Messiah, God's Anointed Son, the Good Shepherd, etc.
He performed miracles and rose one man, El-Azar-us, from the dead.
Horus' personal epithet was "Iusa," the "ever becoming son" of "Ptah," the "Father."
Horus was called "the KRST," or "Anointed One," long before the Christians duplicated the story
Let's look at these:
Horus was born of a virgin on December 25th. [We have already seen that Horus was NOT born of a virgin at all. Indeed, one ancient Egyptian relief depicts this conception by showing his mother Isis in a falcon form, hovering over an erect phallus of a dead and prone Osiris in the Underworld (EOR, s.v. "Phallus"đ. And the Dec 25 issue is of no relevance to us--nowhere does the NT associate this date with Jesus' birth at all.
Indeed, the description of the conception of Horus will show exactly the sexual elements that characterize pagan 'miracle births', as noted by the scholars earlier:
"But after she [i.e., Isis] had brought it [i.e. Osiris' body] back to Egypt, Seth managed to get hold of Osiris's body again and cut it up into fourteen parts, which she scattered all over Egypt. Then Isis went out to search for Osiris a second time and buried each part where she found it (hence the many tombs of Osiris tht exist in Egypt). The only part that she did not find was the god's penis, for Seth had thrown it into the river, where it had been eaten by a fish; Isis therefore fashioned a substitute penis to put in its place. She had also had sexual intercourse with Osisis after his death, which resulted in the conception and birth of his posthumous son, Harpocrates, Horus-the-child. Osiris became king of the netherworld, and Horus proceeded to fight with Seth..." [CANE:2:1702; emphasis mine] [BTW, the Hebrew word 'satan' is not a 'cognate' of the name 'seth' by any means: "The root *STN is not evidenced in any of the cognate languages in texts that are prior to or contemporary with its occurrences in the Hebrew Bible" DDD, s.v. 1369f]
He had 12 disciples. [This would be so incidental as to be of no consequence--even if I could verify this fact!
But again, my research in the academic literature does not surface this fact. I can find references to FOUR "disciples"--variously called the semi-divine HERU-SHEMSU ("Followers of Horus"đ [GOE:1.491]. I can find references to SIXTEEN human followers (GOE:1.196). And I can find reference to an UNNUMBERED group of followers called mesniu/mesnitu ("blacksmiths"đ who accompanied Horus in some of his battles [GOE:1.475f; although these might be identified with the HERU-SHEMSU in GOE:1.84]. But I cannot find TWELVE anywhere... Horus is NOT the sun-god (that's Re), so we cannot use the 'all solar gods have twelve disciples--in the Zodiac' routine here.]
He was buried in a tomb and resurrected. [We have already seen that the DARG pattern simply cannot be demonstrated in ANY case. And the data is against this "fact" even being true. I can find no references to Horus EVER dying, until he later becomes "merged" with Re the Sun god, after which he 'dies' and is 'reborn' every single day as the sun rises. And even in this 'death', there is no reference to a tomb anywhere...The massive difference between this metaphor of life/death, and the claims of the apostolic band about the real death and bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth should illustrate why the 'numerous, complex, and detailed' and 'non-superficial' criteria have to be insisted on by scholars in this field... ]
He was also the Way, the Truth, the Light, the Messiah, God's Anointed Son, the Good Shepherd, etc. [We saw above that the commonality of religious terms means almost nothing.]
He performed miracles and rose one man, El-Azar-us, from the dead. [Miracle stories abound, even among religious groups that could not possibly have influenced one another, such as Latin American groups (e.g. Aztecs) and Roman MR's, so this 'similarity' carries no force. The reference to this specific resurrection I cannot find ANYWHERE in the scholarly literature. I have looked under all forms of the name to no avail. The fact that something so striking is not even mentioned in modern works of Egyptology indicates its questionable status. It simply cannot be adduced as data without SOME real substantiation. The closest thing to it I can find is in Horus' official funerary role, in which he "introduces" the newly dead to Osirus and his underworld kingdom. In the Book of the Dead, for example, Horus introduces the newly departed Ani to Osirus, and asks Osirus to accept and care for Ani (GOE:1.490). ]
Horus' personal epithet was "Iusa," the "ever becoming son" of "Ptah," the "Father." [Again, a case of religious epithets without any force for this argument.
This fact has likewise escaped me and my research. I have looked at probably 50 epithets of the various Horus deities, and most major indices of the standard Egyptology reference works and come up virtually empty-handed. I can find a city named "Iusaas" [GOE:1.85], a pre-Islamic Arab deity by the name of "Iusaas", thought by some to be the same as the Egyptian god Tehuti/Thoth [GOE:2.289], and a female counterpart to Tem, named "Iusaaset" [GOE:1.354]. But no reference to Horus as being "Iusa"... ]
Horus was called "the KRST," or "Anointed One," long before the Christians duplicated the story [This is still yet another religious name or symbol, without import for our topic. Anointing of religious figures was a common motif in ANE and AME religion anyway. I cannot find this anywhere either.]
Most of the above 'similarities' simply vanish, become irrelevant, or contribute nothing to the argument for some alleged 'identical lives' assertion for Horus and Jesus. To further highlight this, let's look at the thumbnail sketch of Horus' life given in Encyclopedia of Religions, s.v. "Horus":
"In ancient Egypt there were originally several gods known by the name Horus, but the best known and most important from the beginning of the historic period was the son of Osiris and Isis who was identified with the king of Egypt. According to myth, Osiris, who assumed the rulership of the earth shortly after its creation, was slain by his jealous brother, Seth. The sister- wife of Osiris, Isis, who collected the pieces of her dismembered husband and revived him, also conceived his son and avenger, Horus. Horus fought with Seth, and, despite the loss of one eye in the contest, was successful in avenging the death of his father and in becoming his legitimate successor. Osiris then became king of the dead and Horus king of the living, this transfer being renewed at every change of earthly rule. The myth of divine kingship probably elevated the position of the god as much as it did that of the king. In the fourth dynasty, the king, the living god, may have been one of the greatest gods as well, but by the fifth dynasty the supremacy of the cult of Re, the sun god, was accepted even by the kings. The Horus-king was now also "son of Re." This was made possible mythologically by personifying the entire older genealogy of Horus (the Heliopolitan ennead) as the goddess Hathor, "house of Horus," who was also the spouse of Re and mother of Horus.
"Horus was usually represented as a falcon, and one view of him was as a great sky god whose outstretched wings filled the heavens; his sound eye was the sun and his injured eye the moon. Another portrayal of him particularly popular in the Late Period, was as a human child suckling at the breast of his mother, Isis. The two principal cult centers for the worship of Horus were at Bekhdet in the north, where very little survives, and at Idfu in the south, which has a very large and well- preserved temple dating from the Ptolemaic period. The earlier myths involving Horus, as well as the ritual per- formed there, are recorded at Idfu."
Notice how "almost identical lives" Horus and Jesus had (smile):
There is no mention of the more striking claims of similarity made by the CopyCat authors (such as resurrection of El-Azar-us), even though such items would surely be noteworthy in books in the Western world(!);
This sketch does not even REMOTELY look 'almost identical' to the life of Jesus Christ! To look at this and make claims of 'majority overlap' would be ridiculous in the extreme.
The alleged similarities (which much MUST be present to even START the argument about borrowing, remember) are so weak and so dwarfed by the differences between the two figures, as to leave us wondering why anyone brought this argument up in the first place...
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The Horus of Christianity
08 Jan '09 04:113 edits
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