Freethought Nation

"In the flesh" means it was actual history, not a myth. But it was not actual history. The Bible is wrong.

The Gospel incarnation story is made up. There were no "wise men in the flesh". The story was invented on the basis of various inputs, such as the Egyptian myth of three kings at the birth of Horus. In Egypt there are pictures of three kings with baby Horus. These three kings are just as much "in the flesh" as the Bible kings (remembering the Bible does not even say there were three). Both relate to cosmic archetypes, but exactly what the detail of the star stories might be remains speculative. My view is that the manger is seen in Argo, the constellation of Noah's Ark.

The same sentiment and sense of triumph are reflected in "A Real Case Against the Jews" by Jewish writer Marcus Eli Ravage, published in The Century Magazine, v. 115, no. 3, The Century Co., NY, 1928, p. 346ff:

"Our tribal customs have become the core of your moral code. Our tribal laws have furnished the basic groundwork of all your august constitutions and legal systems. Our legends and our folk-tales are the sacred lore which you croon to your infants. Our poets have filled your hymnals and your prayer-books. Our national history has become an indispensable part of the learning of your pastors and priests and scholars. Our kings, our statesmen, our prophets, our warriors are your heroes. Our ancient little country is your Holy Land. Our national literature is your Holy Bible. What our people thought and taught has become inextricably woven into your very speech and tradition, until no one among you can be called educated who is not familiar with our racial heritage.

"Jewish artisans and Jewish fishermen are your teachers and your saints, with countless statues carved in their image and innumerable cathedrals raised to their memories. A Jewish maiden is your ideal of motherhood and womanhood. A Jewish rebel-prophet is the central figure in your religious worship. We have pulled down your idols, cast aside your racial inheritance, and substituted for them our God and our traditions. No conquest in history can even remotely compare with this clean sweep of our conquest over you."

The use of the three kings/magi motif is several fold. Imagine being a priest or scribal writer with a working knowledge of popular mythology. Perhaps living in Alexandria or Antioch in a heavily hellenized environment. And you're trying to work out a Judaized version of the royal kingly birth sequence or nativity. The stars that are referenced in the ancient nativities are addressed to Orion's belt stars, Sirius, and Virgo, etc. They are observed rising on the eastern horizon starting at sun down and serve as a way of marking the general area that the sun will rise the following morning after the winter solstice is over.

You think, well this ancient motif is addressed to the eastern horizon so why not present the belt stars as Zoroastrian magi from the east and have them paying homage to the new God-Man on the block? You get creative with it. You layer several manifold meaning into the presentation. By the time you're done it's turns out to be pretty catchy with a lot of the trappings of previously popular myth (George Lucas did this very thing). As time goes on it gets to the point where not very many people remember the older motif's and how they point back at star processions and instead take the story completely at face value - thinking that it's in reference to literal kings or magi from the east who really traveled west to give three kingly gifts to a real infant God-Man.

But that isn't really what it was about in the first place. Thus enters the mass confusion that we now find surrounding the Judeo-Christian myths and the question of origins...

A lot of what I'm reading here requires a lot more effort to believe than just believing the gospels were myths independent of Egyptian myth.

From Hatshepsut to the gospels

“The outline of the “Out of Egypt Theory” as concerns the gospel nativity cycle is quite simple:

1. Hateshepsut (d. 1458 BCE) created a nativity scene, with an inscription that included some “sexy” bits.

2. Amenhotep III (fl. 1386/8 to 1351/49 BCE) copied the nativity scene and parts of the inscription, leaving out the bulk of the “sexy” parts.

3. Birth houses or mammisis were built for numerous pharaohs and Greco-Roman rulers right into the common era, including scenes of a similar nature as the earlier nativities, without the “sexy” inscriptions.

4. These mammisis – as well as the earlier Amenhotep birth cycle at the popular tourist spot of Luxor – could have served as inspirations for the gospel writers, whose efforts, the evidence indicates, occurred significantly at Alexandria, Egypt.

The bottom line is that we have in the Egyptian birth-cycle imagery up to and into the common era some very suggestive parallels to the gospel birth narrative, and ignoring these facts in a comparative religion study itself ranks as poor scholarship.”

What Egyptologists (and other scholars) say about Egypt's role in Christian origins

In this contentious field, there are those who - apparently absent of serious study of the subject - continue to insist unscientifically that Egypt, the massive culture that essentially dominated the Mediterranean for centuries, had little to no influence on Christianity.

As we know from the enormous amount of evidence I collected in my book Christ in Egypt, there are many parallels between the Egyptian religion and Christianity - some of them quite stunning. Those who have read my work also know that many Egyptologists themselves have noted these correspondences, and some of them were so certain of a relationship that they tried to prove the Egyptians had anticipated Christianity.

To argue against this idea - especially if one is supposedly a mythicist who contends that Jesus Christ is a mythical figure - represents ignorance of the subject matter, including the numerous opinions of these Egyptologists about supposed "Christian" ideas appearing in the Egyptian religion and mythology.

Here I will present a sampling of commentary by a number of well-known and respected Egyptologists (and others) dating back a couple of hundred years to the present.

Let me begin:


Dr. Erik Hornung, a professor of Egyptology at the University of Basel from 1967 to 1998, has been called "the world's leading authority" on the ancient Egyptian religious texts.

At this point, need I really say more? Nevertheless, I will...

Another Egyptologist Dr. Siegfried Morenz, a director of the Institute of Egyptology at the University of Leipzig, is likewise to the point (Egyptian Religion, 251):


Furthermore, in his book The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West (73), Dr. Hornung summarizes:


I cited this book in CIE over 40 times - there's much more there about the relationship between Christianity and the Egyptian religion. Notice the subtitle: "Its Impact on the West" - the entire book is designed to demonstrate how Egypt influenced "the West," i.e., Christendom.

As part of this impact on the West, which includes Rome, Hornung (SLE, 70) discusses the Egyptian religion's inroads into the highest strata of Roman society during the time of the Christian effort:


There is much more about the Egyptian influence throughout the Roman Empire during the period in question, a substantial amount of which I provide in Christ in Egypt.

In Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (115-6), respected German Egyptologist Dr. Jan Assman - a professor of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg from 1976 to 2003, currently at the University of Konstanz - remarks:


Note the phrase "Christian myth" here. Dr. Assman appears to know what he is looking at. But, how dare he engage in such comparative-religion speculation! Let us excoriate him and sully Assman's good name! How sloppy! What method is he using?! [/sarc]

Regarding the title of his article "The Baptism of the Pharaoh," Sir Dr. Alan H. Gardiner, one of the "premier" British Egyptologists of his day, remarks:


Let us castigate this esteemed Egyptologist for making such a comparative-religion analogy! Quel parallelomaniaque! (Note the apologetic tone, however, that even this highly regarded Egyptologist must make to NT scholars and theologians, so as not to offend the sensibilities of the faithful.)

To insist that such a correlation in important doctrine between these highly intertwined religious cults is either non-existent or unimportant ranks as unscientific.

In his book Akhenaten and the Religion of Light (13-14), in discussing earlier renowned Egyptologist Dr. James H. Breasted and amateur Egyptologist Sir Arthur Weigall, Hornung remarks:


(Note that Hornung's comment about Mann "succumbing" to Christian parallels concerns only the biographical material about Akhenaten, not the whole field of Christian origins vis-a-vis Egyptian religion, as his numerous other comments concerning associations demonstrate).

On p. 15, Hornung discusses Sigmund Freud:


As we can see, there is abundant precedent from numerous quarters suggesting Egyptian influence on Christianity (and its precursor Judaism). What's this? Egyptologist Dr. Assman evidently concurs!


We see what happens to those who do acknowledge a more significant influence - the ranks close and the insults are hurled.

As concerns an earlier generation, Sir Dr. E.A. Wallis Budge was a well-respected Egyptologist who ran the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum. Some of his work is naturally outdated, as much has happened since his time. This outdated material largely revolves around dictionaries and discoveries that have occurred in the past century. Budge's work was voluminous, and his tackling of the Egyptian religion remains quite valuable. He is one of the scholars who was so astonished by the Egypto-Christian parallels that he thought the Christian religion was the fulfillment of the Egyptian promise.

Here is just one quote out of many that Budge made concerning the blatantly obvious correspondences between the Egyptian religion and Christianity (Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life, 48:


Here's another quote by Egyptologist Budge (Egyptian Tales and Romances, 12):


And again, we hear from Budge (The Gods of Egypt, I, xv-xvi):


Budge's Egyptoparallelomania continues ("The Cult of Isis and the Worship of the Virgin Mary compared,” Legends of Our Lady Mary, 1):


Here is yet another Egyptologist who points out Egyptian priority of "Judeo-Christian" concepts: Dr. Ogden Goelet, a professor of Egyptian language and culture at New York and Columbia Universities. In his well-known edition of (The Egyptian Book of the Dead, 18), Goelet states:


To assert that Judaism and Christianity "embraced" the notion indicates Goelet believes the idea was passed along from the Egyptian religion to Judaism and Christianity.

In this same regard, Dr. James S. Curl, a professor emeritus at the Queen's University of Belfast, remarks (The Egyptian Revival, 66):


(Curl is not an Egyptologist, but since he has a PhD he must be right, according to the "logic" of credentialists.)

In this same regard, another professional scholar, Dr. Richard A. Gabriel, concludes (Jesus the Egyptian, 2):


(Gabriel is a historian, so also by credentialist "logic," we must believe him uncritically.)

Egyptologist Dr. Bojana Mosjov summarizes the Christian effort nicely, bringing it all back to Alexandria, which is, I contend, the crucible of Christianity (Osiris: Death and Afterlife of a God, xii):


As we can see, there is quite a bit of opinion by Egyptologists that Christianity was significantly influenced by the Egyptian religion.

To insist there is no such influence and to single me out with bilious anti-Egypt attacks - as if I just made it all up - represents not scholarship but petulance.

As another example, on p. 75, Hornung writes:


On p. 60, Hornung states:


On p. 76, Hornung comments:


So, why are the Coptic Christian legends of Jesus in Egypt "natural enough?" Could it be because there is so much correspondence between Christianity and the Egyptian religion?

Notice how Hornung considers Smith's research to be "careful" - will we hear shrieks and rants about how sloppy the scholarship of these various scholars is, or is that irrational and false smear strictly reserved for me, because I dare follow up on these scholars' leads and dig even deeper?

(Funny how people who make egregious errors turn around and attack the individuals who discover their errors, calling them "sloppy!" Note also how meticulously I cite my research, with numerous sources, including primary sources as well as a variety of translations - apparently that's considered "sloppy," but making erroneous contentions about subjects one could find even on Wikipedia, that's not "sloppy!" You know the old adage about the three fingers pointing back at you when you are pointing at someone else?

Here's another opinion: "D.M. Murdock is a genius. Her scholarship on this subject is impeccable and has conducted the most thorough research I've ever read." --David Kim. Note the phrase "I've ever read" - he's actually read my work before pretending to be an expert on it.)

Tying this all into my next project - an almost-finished lengthy review/summary of Buddhist scholar Dr. Michael Lockwood's anthology Buddhism's Relation to Christianity - in SLE (3), Hornung states:


Neith-Isis's perpetual virginity and the Sais inscription

And here we go again with all the fracas over the pre-Christian virgin birth - seems to be a difficult concept to comprehend. I would highly recommend the fantastic scholarly study by Dr. Marguerite Rigoglioso entitled, Virgin Mothers of Antiquity, in which she discusses the virgin-mother status of the goddess Neith, whose temple of Sais has been discussed many times here and elsewhere. In any case, Budge is an Egyptologist who likewise perceived the Neith-Isis temple inscription at Sais to reflect the perpetual virginity of that goddess. Highlighting a Budge quote provided above:


(This subject is Comparative Religion 101, folks)

Here's a great quote from Jan Assman, concerning the story by Diodorus and Plutarch of Isis inseminating herself with Osiris's replaced phallus. In Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt (25), Assman says:


And then there's this old standby, from Egyptologist Dr. Reginald E. Witt, a professor at the University of London (Isis in the Ancient World, 273):


Again, I provide much more information on the VIRGIN-MOTHERHOOD OF ISIS, for those who care to follow up on this subject. This beaten horse is already long dead, however.

Elsewhere, Dr. Witt dares to make many other comparisons - horrors! - as I relate in Christ in Egypt (166-7):



[To be continued - as anyone who has read CIE knows, there is much more of the same... I can go on all day like this - it's like eating peanuts!]

Excuses to Christ mythology: "Differences outweigh the similarities!" 1 of 7

part 1


part 2


part 3


part 4


part 5


part 6


part 7

As usual, it's wise to actually read the article that is the subject of this thread: The Star in the East and Three Kings

I see the story of the "wise men" as being a Jewish addition to the story of Marcion's Isu Chrestos.

The birth story was added to Marcion's Euangelion gospel story in order to make the son of the Gnostic god into the son of the Jewish god. Connections to legendary King David and King Solomon were made to give the Jesus character a Jewish lineage. King Solomon was honoured by the queen of Sheba with expensive gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The only place that frankincense and myrrh are found was in the land of Sheba, which was approximately modern day Yemen. By having wise men bring gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus would have been a recognition that he was a great "king" like Solomon, and thus would have inherited the right to rule like Solomon.

The story about "following a star" would have been difficult because the stars move across the sky from the eastern horizon to the western horizon.

There is one star that does stand still in the sky, and that is the North Star. If one were to "follow" the North Star, then they would have been traveling northward.

If wise men were supposedly traveling northward toward the North Star from the land of southern Arabia with gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the land of Sheba, then the story makes more sense. Why would Magi allegedly have brought frankincense and myrrh from the east where it is not even available?

Of course the story is just fiction to make Marcion's Isu Chrestos into the alleged biblical Jesus, a son of the Jewish god with lineage to ancient,legendary Jewish kings.

Acharya recently commented in the thread I started on Earl Doherty and Astrotheology that it is impossible to understand Christian myth if we don't recognise the cosmic parallels. So spinning fables about actual wise men is really a red herring, taking us away from the real source in the stars.

it is possible that stories about astrological signs and events were more convincing to the people of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, but I would find stories about actual persons to be more believable