Freethought Nation

Christ or KRST?

People tend to get confused on its meaning because the meaning changes slightly depending on the determinative in Egyptian. A determinative is the symbol, usually in red, placed at the end of a word, phrase, hieroglyph etc, imparting further meaning and clarification. KRST can mean several things relating to funeral preparations for the deceased such as “embalmment,” “mummy,” meaning “to wrap up in bandages,” among other things. But, one pertinent point to make here is that mummification also includes anointing the body with oils and spices, which include frankincense and myrrh - precisely as was said of Jesus.

"KRST is quite possibly the derivation of Christ." "Osiris was an anointed figure called KRST long before Jesus. In Hebrew and Syrian messiah, meshihha, in Arabic masih, signify anointed."

"In the Pyramid Texts (e.g., PT 576:1511a/P 518), the Osiris is anointed with oil, essentially making him a “messiah” or “Christ,” as those two words both mean “anointed one.” We have also seen that in BD 145 it is Horus who is anointed, thus rendering him likewise a Christ."

This subject is highly detailed in Christ in Egypt, 313 to 321.

Below I'm re-posting Acharya's comment from Booktalk:

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

Discussion at Vridar blog

Christ among the Messiahs — Part 4
http://vridar.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/ ... hs-part-4/

Names of comment authors are at the bottom of each block of text, or it can be read more easily at the link.

3.
The idea of Christ as the Anointed of God is from Egypt. And the idea of “in Christ” goes back to the Pyramid Text: “Horus, who is in Osiris” http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/pyt05.htm

Jesus Christ is a title. Jesus means Savior, while Christ means Anointed, so Christ Jesus means Anointed Savior. This is a mythical idea with clear roots in Egyptian belief from thousands of years before Christ, well explained in the book Christ in Egypt by DM Murdock.

WR Cooper says that the Egyptians called Horus the ‘Beloved Son of the Father’ and ‘Word of the Father Osiris’ (p309). Perhaps this will give a shiver of deja vu for anyone familiar with the Christmas Carol O Come All Ye Faithful, whose concepts almost all seem to have been written in stone in Egypt long before the Gospel era, as Murdock observes in long lists of titles for Horus and other Gods (p320 and 329).

As Murdock states, “many people remain unaware of these facts regarding the worship and religiosity of prior so called Pagan cultures… such an attitude has allowed for the massive and tragic destruction of cultures around the world.” (p309-10)

Horus, Osiris and Ra were routinely understood as good shepherd and saviour. Murdock notes the interesting comment from Egyptologist Gerald Massey that the Egyptian term for mummy is krst, so “Christ the anointed is none other than the Osiris-karast” (p313). Murdock checked Massey’s assertion in Dictionaries of Hieroglyphics, since such research is taboo for Christian theologians, and found that “Massey is correct in his contentions and did not innovate his transliteration and definition of the Egyptian words karas … krst etc…” (p316). Such findings are routinely passed over in embarrassed silence by mainstream academia, due to their cowardly fear of the church.

Further, we find that the Egyptian krst links to the Christian idea of embalming or anointing with oil, as in the Christian motif of the 23rd Psalm, which is redolent with Egyptian resonance, as are the gifts of the three kings to the baby Jesus.

In fact, Murdock points out that the title ‘Christos’ is used 40 times in the Greek Old Testament, applied to David, Solomon and Samuel, signifying God’s anointed one. The Egyptian link appears again, with Murdock noting that this ‘Christing’ or anointing, also appears with the term ‘masu’, equivalent to messiah, so that “Osiris and Horus were Christs and Messiahs” (p319).

The famous Egyptologist EA Wallis Budge notes that Horus and Thoth are equated to the Word (p321) in ancient Egypt, an idea that carried over into early Christian belief, before the origins of Christian myth in Egypt was banned from discussion. So it is unsurprising that early Christian amulets showed belief in both the old Egyptian deities and the new faith of Christ (p321).

Comment by Robert Tulip — 2012/07/08 @ 11:51 am | Reply



Robert Tulip: “Such findings are routinely passed over in embarrassed silence by mainstream academia, due to their cowardly fear of the church.”

That sounds like conspiracy theory to me. Why would non-Christian scholars like Ehrman pass over such findings?

Robert Tulip: “Murdock notes the interesting comment from Egyptologist Gerald Massey that the Egyptian term for mummy is krst, so “Christ the anointed is none other than the Osiris-karast””

Did Massey propose any actual connection (e.g. etymological) between the words “karast” and “Christ”, or is it just an interesting coincidence?

Comment by GakuseiDon — 2012/07/08 @ 2:18 pm | Reply




Robert, ignore GDon. He’s only using the conspiracy theory thing as a substitute for the issues. He sees conspiracy theories everywhere because he is wearing his “conspiracy theory world” glasses. A general fear is not a conspiracy but his glasses make him see it as one.

But I think there are points to be addressed in your post. You do attribute motives overmuch. So while “cowardly fear of the church” is not a conspiracy, it does strike me as a careless generalization. I don’t believe anyone can verify that this is their motive. If we make unsupportable or unverifiable claims then we undermine our whole argument. It is important to stick to what we know are facts. Nothing will be lost by doing this.

I think some of the details Murdock notes have been pointed out in the past are of interest and worth investigation. But we can’t assume connections between one culture and another across time. We need to have reasons for making the connections. And we need to balance them against other explanations, too. I think there are many questions that we will never have answers for simply because of the state of the remaining evidence. I am happy to live with not knowing such things, or shelving many such things until we do have more evidence or understanding to know what to make of it all.

Comment by Neil Godfrey — 2012/07/08 @ 4:54 pm | Reply




4.
Neil: “So while “cowardly fear of the church” is not a conspiracy, it does strike me as a careless generalization.”

To Robert Tulip: Regardless of whether it is conspiracy or careless generalization: Why would non-Christian scholars (like say Ehrman) pass over such findings as “Osiris the karast or krst”? It doesn’t make sense.

Comment by GakuseiDon — 2012/07/08 @ 6:04 pm | Reply



Don, we’ve been through all this before. You’re repeating yourself. People who have dedicated their careers to a certain model would never have an issue discovering everything they did was based on a faulty assumption?

Part of the answer is within this comment: http://vridar.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/ ... ment-14993

What doesn’t make sense is your assumption that everyone is a completely autonomous mind without any other influences upon them apart from a simple desire to open-mindedly explore wherever the evidence may lead.

Comment by Neil Godfrey — 2012/07/08 @ 6:35 pm | Reply




The neglect of Egyptian roots of Christianity is a matter of intellectual fashion. The nineteenth century discovery of Egyptian antecedents of Christianity following Champollion’s decoding of the hieroglyphics was the object of a massive reaction by the church, who saw this material as an easy target in the context of their inability to refute Darwin and modern science more generally. Thechurch sought to intimidate and exclude scholars who challenged orthodoxy, leading to the frequent timidity of archaeologists when it comes to material that touches on religious faith. But science proved no friend of comparative religion and mythology, a topic that has proven something of an intellectual orphan.

The Egyptian term KRST means ‘anoint’, the same term and same meaning as the forty references to Christ in the Septuagint, but long predating it. The KRST process is used to convey the provision of eternal life for the mummified dead king, much as Jesus was thought to bring eternal life in his role as anointed Christ. This identity of pronunciation and meaning for Christ as a central religious idea, eternal life through anointing, is strong prima facie evidence for the connection between the longstanding neighbouring religions of Israel and Egypt.

Why then are the links between Egyptian religion and Christianity neglected in academic scholarship? Again, this touches on deeply felt prejudices. The association between Egyptian religion and magic, the fragmentary nature of the evidence, Biblical aspersions on Egypt as a land of indolent fleshpots and tyranny, the complete suppression of Egyptian writing for more than a millennium, and the whole context of mythicism as an atheistic critique of supernatural faith, have helped make assertions of Egyptian origins of Christian myth repugnant to both Christians and rational moderns. Nineteenth century scholars such as Gerald Massey who investigated this material were easily calumnated, and allowed to fall into obscurity, regardless of the merit of their work.

At http://www.booktalk.org/post96651.html#p96651 Murdock comments as follows, summarising her contention in Christ In Egypt. I have edited for length, readers can consult the link and book for more detail.

“The Christ-KRST comparison is one of the controversial contentions made by mythicists. On pp. 313-9 of CIE, I go into a detailed discussion of the Egyptian word transliterated as “krst,” providing the Egyptian hieroglyphs. As “lord of the tomb,” Osiris was called “Christ,” since one Egyptian term for tomb, funeral, corpse or mummy is krst.

“The work of Gerald Massey was peer-reviewed by renowned Egyptologists and archaeologists of his day. Says Massey: “Christ the anointed is the Osiris-karast, and the karast mummy risen to its feet as Osiris-sahu was the prototypal Christ. The Egyptian word for mummy is ges, which signifies to wrap up in bandages…. [The word] ges or kes, to embalm the corpse or make the mummy, is a reduced or abraded form of an earlier word, karas. The original word written in hieroglyphics is krst, whence kas, to embalm, to bandage, to knot, to make the mummy or karast (Birch, Dictionary of the Hieroglyphics; Champollion, Gram. Egyptienne). The mummy was the Osirian Corpus Christi, prepared for burial as the laid-out dead, the karast by name. The process of making the mummy was to karas, the place in which it was laid is the karas, and the product was the krst, whose image is the upright mummy=the risen Christ. Hence, the name of the Christ, for the anointed, was derived from the Egyptian word krst.”

http://truthbeknown.com/images/krstchampollion80.jpg shows the hieroglyph signifying KRST or Mummy from Champollion, Grammaire Egyptienne.
http://truthbeknown.com/images/krstbirch416.jpg shows the term karst meaning embalmment or mummy from Birch, Dictionary of Hieroglyphics.”

Comment by Robert Tulip — 2012/07/08 @ 7:28 pm | Reply



Robert Tulip: “The church sought to intimidate and exclude scholars who challenged orthodoxy, leading to the frequent timidity of archaeologists when it comes to material that touches on religious faith.”

I see. But you wrote “Such findings are routinely passed over in embarrassed silence by mainstream academia, due to their cowardly fear of the church”. So is this still happening today? And why doesn’t Richard Carrier see this? He is hardly likely to have a fear of the church!

Robert Tulip: “The Egyptian term KRST means ‘anoint’, the same term and same meaning as the forty references to Christ in the Septuagint, but long predating it. The KRST process is used to convey the provision of eternal life for the mummified dead king, much as Jesus was thought to bring eternal life in his role as anointed Christ.”

I don’t see the connection. Did Jews take the Egyptian word KRST to create the Greek word “Christos”, and — hundreds of years before Christianity — imbue it with a meaning of “eternal life”? Because the Septuagint “Christos” appears to be a translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah”, which is nothing like KRST.

How do you see it going from “KRST” to “Messiah” to “Christos”?

Comment by GakuseiDon — 2012/07/08 @ 9:52 pm | Reply



GD: is this still happening today? And why doesn’t Richard Carrier see this? He is hardly likely to have a fear of the church!

RT: You may have seen Carrier’s recent vituperative attack on DM Murdock accusing her of “parallelomania” for her analysis of Egyptian antecedents of Christian myths. These parallels are actually abundant, such as Seth and Horus as types for Jesus v Satan in the wilderness, Osiris, Isis and Nephthys as types for Lazarus, Mary and Martha, etc. Carrier deprecates the entire hypothesis of Egyptian sourcing and perplexingly ignores non Judeo-Greek sources of Biblical myth.

I can only speculate that Carrier’s motive may be a fear of association with astrology and other irrational folk cults of Egypt, because he wants to present as a rational scientist in order to serve his concept of academic credibility, and sees all linking between Egypt and Christian myth as harmful for this agenda. Carrier is not scared of ridicule by the church but by historians and scientists. Fear of church shunning and slander tends to be seen more within religious studies and theology.

GD: Did Jews take the Egyptian word KRST to create the Greek word “Christos”, and — hundreds of years before Christianity — imbue it with a meaning of “eternal life”? Because the Septuagint “Christos” appears to be a translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah”, which is nothing like KRST. How do you see it going from “KRST” to “Messiah” to “Christos”?

RT: It appears most likely that the term Christos came from the Egyptian word for anointing the mummy directly to Greek, and not through the Hebrew term Messiah, and that the Egyptians already thought of anointing the mummy in terms of eternal life.

As a comparable example, Black Athena by Martin Bernal of Cornell University argues that Athena derives from the Egyptian Goddess Neith, and that the direct influence from Egypt on Greece was immense, but has been systematically neglected and denied by academia due to the racist assumptions within the field of classics. Egyptian influence is cited by Plato.

Comment by Robert Tulip — 2012/07/08 @ 10:42 pm | Reply





Even if I accept all the points you enumerate, I still stumble at your final sentence where you say “Hence, the name of the Christ, for the anointed, was derived from the Egyptian word krst.” I do not understand the logic of that “hence”. How does one get from the Egyptian krst to the Jesus Christ we see in the NT evidence? I am not saying that there was no link. I cannot say that. But I don’t know of any evidence or reason to make that link.

I can read all of your points, but then when I look at the NT evidence I see much more direct and simple explanation for the Christian “Christ”. That is, it is the Greek word for one anointed. Is that not a much simpler explanation of the word?

Further, even though KRST looks like it could be pronounced much like our Christ, do we really know that it did have a similar pronunciation? How many syllables were there? How many vowel sounds in between those consonants? How do we know if there was a similarity to the pronunciation of the Greek word Christ in the first century?

Now there may be links of some sort, but I don’t know how to explain them or how to support any argument for them. Who knows what went on in the reliigious discussions in Alexandria? We only have speculation.

Maybe some day there can be a rigorous cultural-mythical-anthropological study that can provide a strong theoretical basis for establishing links to Christianity. I think we will need either something like that or new evidence or a new way of understanding our evidence to be able to explain the exact relationships you are suggesting here.

Comment by Neil Godfrey — 2012/07/08 @ 9:57 pm | Reply



Neil: How does one get from the Egyptian krst to the Jesus Christ we see in the NT evidence? I am not saying that there was no link. I cannot say that. But I don’t know of any evidence or reason to make that link.

RT: This is where I consider Murdock is an important pioneer, for the detailed arguments she presents in Christ in Egypt indicating the range and depth of links. With the KRST-Christ example, the prima facie evidence is that both words have the same consonants and meaning relating to anointing of the holy king, and that Gnostic thought involved a deep interpenetration between Egyptian and Greek culture, including through the Serapis cult. So crossover of core concepts is to be expected.

The alphabetical consonants of Egyptian hieroglyphics are well established from the decoding of the Rosetta Stone.

Neil: When I look at the NT evidence I see much more direct and simple explanation for the Christian “Christ”. That is, it is the Greek word for one anointed. Is that not a much simpler explanation of the word?

RT: No, Greek isolationism is not simpler. The Egyptians had a word KRST for anointed, so parsimony says the Greeks probably got their word Christ from Egypt, since the consonants and meaning are the same. Ignoring the links between Greek and Egyptian is a widespread academic prejudice with roots in Victorian times. As I mentioned in my reply to Don, these links are widespread but have been systematically denied in modern academia with its colonial imperial racist roots that see Greek as the cradle of civilization, despite the abundant evidence of transmission of earlier civilization from Phoenicia and Egypt rather than the old fashioned northern Aryan hypothesis.

Neil: even though KRST looks like it could be pronounced much like our Christ, do we really know that it did have a similar pronunciation? How many syllables were there? How many vowel sounds in between those consonants? How do we know if there was a similarity to the pronunciation of the Greek word Christ in the first century?

RT: As I mentioned, the Rosetta stone indicates the Egyptian consonants. We do not know the vowels, but having the same consonants and meaning of such a core religious term presents a strong hypothesis.

Neil: Who knows what went on in the religious discussions in Alexandria? We only have speculation. Maybe some day there can be a rigorous cultural-mythical-anthropological study that can provide a strong theoretical basis for establishing links to Christianity. I think we will need either something like that or new evidence or a new way of understanding our evidence to be able to explain the exact relationships you are suggesting here.

RT: Yes, these are sound points, although I think that there is existing historical analysis which is stronger than mere speculation. This analysis has not broken through into academic debate for similar reasons to why mythicism is a public taboo.

My view is that the evidentiary basis of the mythological sources of Christian ideas in Egypt is emerging, but is subject to strong resistance by the old paradigms, especially Christ historicism. For example, the concept of astrotheology meets visceral reactions of denial, ridicule and suppression, indicating how it touches on cultural debates that people find difficult.

Comment by Robert Tulip — 2012/07/08 @ 11:12 pm | Reply




> Why would non-Christian scholars (like say Ehrman)

Because they maybe arent completely non-Christian even though they claim it?

In an NPR interview about DJE?, Ehrman said:

“Jesus’ teachings of love, and mercy and forgiveness, I think, really should dominate our lives. On the personal level, I agree with many of the ethical teachings of Jesus and I try to model my life on them, even though I don’t agree with the apocalyptic framework in which they were put.” [1]

I think that he still is a so called “cultural christian” and maybe fears that accepting that there never was a single founder would maybe endanger the long-term existence of the cultural framework that he is fond of. His supernatural beliefs may be gone, but there obvious still is an emotional attachment to “baby Jesus”. Compare to how many non-religious Jews emotionally protect the ritual genital surgery on male children even though they do not believe any more that it is a “covenant with the god of Abraham”. You do not have to be religious to be biased, any emotional attachment suffices, and Bart very obviously _is_ emotionally attached to a person named Jesus he grew up with.

[1] http://m.npr.org/news/front/149462376?singlePage=true

Comment by muuh-gnu — 2012/07/08 @ 7:48 pm | Reply



All may be true, but why would Ehrman care whether Osiris was known as “KRST”? Ehrman doesn’t believe that Jesus was the Christ, regardless of how the word originated. Or take Richard Carrier. Why would he “pass over such findings as “Osiris the karast or krst””? It doesn’t make sense.

Comment by GakuseiDon — 2012/07/08 @ 10:05 pm | Reply



The present discussion on KRST is fascinating – and I’d say, rather compelling. Why wouldn’t Carrier mention or stress it? As a sometimes- Cross-Cultural Mythologist, I’d like to note that cross-cultural Mytholography is an enormously complex undertaking; trying to summarize and then cross-reference thousands of ancient texts, written in thousands of obscure languages … is as complex as it gets. No single human being is up to the task: Mythography probably won’t fully come into its own until things are fully computerized, and we are given quality time on something like the new Sequoia supercomputer, with 20 Petaflops per second. In the meantime though? Someone here should probably say, drop Carrier a line, with a link to the present discussion?

Comment by woodbridgegoodman — 2012/07/09 @ 2:53 am | Reply



There are lots of intriguing coincidences in the sounds of various words between languages, most of which have no significance. Also, the sounds K and KH (CH) in Greek are quite different sounds.
LSJ (a detailed dictionary of Ancient Greek) gives an early use of χριστός (as an adjective meaning “for anointing”) in Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, and derives it from the verb χρίω “anoint” which is used often in Homer. Also, there are apparently Indo-European cognates found in Latin and Greek.

Comment by Eric — 2012/07/09 @ 5:35 am | Reply



Sorry, I meant to say “cognates found in Latin and Sanskrit.” The root in Latin gives us “friable” and “friction” in English.

Comment by Eric — 2012/07/09 @ 5:45 am | Reply



[Some VERY quick and jumbled thoughts: 1) "Out of Egypt I will call my son" (Mat. 2.15): there's loads and loads of evidence of Egyptian influence on Judaism, from 2) the exile in Egypt. 3) For example "Moses" is part of an Egyptian name or title (Tut-moses etc.). And 4) both Hebrew, Aramaic, Egyptian and Arabic, are related "Hamito-Semetic" languages. An 5) hypothecized etymological relation between many Hebrew and Egyptian/Arabic words - given similarity in meaning and pronunciation TOO - seems quite likely. Though? 6) In the OT, "Messiah" is said by some to be the original Hebrew - and "Christ" only the Greek. So here we need to find ties between the languages of Egypt, and Greece. Still, 7) perhaps the Egyptian borrows from the Greek. Or vice-versa. (Not unheard of in Coptic times?). Or possibly all come from a common Sanscritic root. The OT Hebrew here, Messiah might seem irrelevant; but seems to mean to "RUB," or anoint; the Greek "Christ" reflects that exactly it is said. And the Latin "friction" fits too. So the meaning of the Egyptian and Greek and Latin here, seem to be related.... But all this needs more research. It might be existing literature doesn't resolve this; but a competent lexicographer could resolve this with some original research? Or someone with deep knowledge of both Greek, and various Egyptian languages]

Comment by Brettongarcia — 2012/07/09 @ 6:50 am | Reply



I have no knowledge of Egyptian, so all I can say is that the origin of the term Christ is sufficiently explained as coming from an ordinary word χρίω found in some of the oldest materials we have in the Greek language. This word has no “st” in it (that just comes from a common process of nominal derivation in Greek) so that part of the seeming correspondence between Christ and KRST seems unimportant. It certainly wouldn’t be surprising if there were late borrowings into Coptic from Greek, but I would be very surprised to find such borrowings in the “Dictionaries of Hieroglyphics” mentioned above. Glancing through the discussion in Massey’s book I can find no serious philological discussion of any of these words, so his conclusion that “there is no other origin for Christ the anointed than for Horus the karast or anointed son of god the father” is ridiculous.
(The etymological connection I mentioned above with “friction” and “friable” is apparently not accepted now. But one interesting cognate to χρίω suggested in Pokorny’s dictionary is English “grime”)

Comment by Eric — 2012/07/09 @ 7:48 am | Reply



Sorry, I should have said “adjectival derivation”. Just as an example of adjectives derived with -στος, I find γελάω “laugh” giving καταγελάστος “laughable”.

Comment by Eric — 2012/07/09 @ 7:57 am | Reply




5.
I’ll learn to check my comments better before posting, I hope! That’s καταγέλαστος “ridiculous, absurd”, derived from καταγελάω “laugh/jeer/mock at”.

Comment by Eric — 2012/07/09 @ 8:01 am | Reply

A potentially useful referral to Dr. Christopher Rollston at Johns Hopkins from Dr Brettongarcia

Some more comments

Thanks for doing that Robert.


This is incorrect, it does NOT say that the word "christ" meant "ointment." The very link provided by J.Quinton says: "to be rubbed on, used as ointment," which is what we've been saying all along. So, to be "christed" one is rubbed with assorted ointments, which makes one anointed. The Egyptians just happened to use frankincense and myrrh among others, same as was said of Jesus.

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

It is said that the first occurence related to the Greek use of 'christos' is linked to the related verb for 'to rub', or 'to grease' found in Prometheus Bound. Max Muller derives "Prometheus" from Sanskrit Pramantha, "fire drill", regarding the fire said to be first started by Prometheus and which, in other accounts, was stolen from heaven by his wife (Esa, or Eve). "Pramantha' is the younger form of Sanskrit and Prakrit 'Pramatha'.

The Sanskrit word for "rub",or 'anoint', usually takes the form of 'ghrsti', from a Sanskrit word for butter, or, 'ghrita', of which several pre-Christian Buddhist kings, such as Asoka, were said to be "annointed" with.

In the Yajurveda, dated to around the time Alexander's sophists met the gymnosophists of India, Agni had already recieved the name 'Ghrita', and it is well known that many ancient Indians thought that he was annointed with butter before he became the sacrificial man. It appears that once again the Buddhists had to trump the association with butter (also called Sarpi, calling to mind how the statutes of Serapis were anointed with oil) because in certain Mahayana sutras the true follower of Buddha is likened to the "best medicine', which is said to be 'ghrita', Prakrit 'ghata'.

This association with anointing the sacrificial man seems clearly derived from the myth of ghrita, in the form of 'amrta,' the ambrosia of immortality, being churned, or, agitated, to the top of the primordial ocean.

The verb here for "churned", or, "agitated" is Sans. 'math' which is also spelled 'masa' ( as in 'misa' the fermented soy paste first popularized by Buddhists in China, around the same time they would introduce yoghurt, or yagu-hoti, to the Turks). Masa is related, by language only, to the Hebrew name for the Egyptians, the Miz-r, or "mixed race", a group of Indian Mleccha, said to be bablers, or barbarians, the Amelakites whom Moses had to invoke the Indian practice of holding a plank of wood (in Moses' case his staff) above his head without sitting down until the sun went down (this is the practice Arrian quotes Megesthenes on, he states that a Brahmin would hold a plank above his head, with "both hands" while standing on one leg durring the whole day). As we may gather from the biblical story Moses was not much of an ascetic because his two helpers had to slide a rock under him so that he would not sit on the ground (meanwhile his men were said to be engaged in serious battle)

Although the name Maitreya, or Metteya, is usually derived from, metta, or "friend', which is also spelled, "mithra" and also signifies "a secret" (Sans. gudha), Knowing that the Messiah was translated by Christos, and that the "S" can stand in for "T" in the Prakrits and in Sanskrit, as in many other languages (Zeus, or Seus/Theos, Tamara [Egypt], or, Samara), and that the Book of Daniel, which has many Buddhist allusions, is the only OT book to use Messiah in the sense of a future god-man, I suspect another Buddhist vox-mistica and I believe that Messiah can be restored to Messeya, or, Metteya, who is not only said to be a friend, but also a mediator (Metatron, Virgil's hero in his 4th eclouge), a measurer (Sans. 'matra', or, 'mitra', Gospel of Phillip Jesus etymologizes "Messiah" to mean "a measurer").

Regarding Osiris, Sir William Jones was one of the first to suggest that his identity is to be sought for in several epic Indian heros such as Rama (who was said to have ruled the world) and Natyacharya, or " the Dr [acarya]of performance [natya]", based on many parallels shared between the two and others. He probably first made this assumption based on the belief that Osiris (the Sesostris of Isaac Newton), and Dionysus (the god of gnosis, that is knowledge of life and death) were all said to have invaded India. I believe he fails to mention that Hercules, the followers of Alexander identifies with the India Sibi (of Siva), and Bacchus (baga, "blessed") were also said to have invaded India.

I think in my book, "Jesus Godama Sources", I show that the Egyptian tale of Bata and Anubis cannot date to before the time of Buddha, and that, like all the other Buddhist fables which have spread to distant lands (from Josaphat to Brer Rabbit), traces of Buddhist terminology can be found in this story (ex. two drops of blood falling is taken from the legend of the first Gotama where the two drops of blood from the crucified Godama mixed with sperm to form the progenitors of the Sakaes, to which Buddha was born.

Hi Daniel, thank you very much for all this informative material.

I have heard suggestions that the Hindu myth of the churning of the milky ocean is related to precession of the equinox. Have you heard of that link? Also, do you see a link between Messiah and the Indian term masa for churning, linked through the common idea of measurement? So is the Messiah the one who tells the measure of the stars?

Agni is the root for 'ignite', and 'igneous'. So the link of the god Agni to Christ is interesting in terms of the holy flame of Pentecost and the blazing eyes of Rev 19.

Max Muller was heavily criticised by Martin Bernal for imposing a racist Aryan theory of European influence on India.

The other similarity not yet discussed here is Christ and Krishna. At http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/o ... ianity.pdf Acharya provides a detailed discussion.

Dear Robert,


It may be that the original, or main, signification, of butter rising to the top of the cosmic ocean is alchemical and was meant to express the idea of the 'cream rising to the top', that is, I believe, compared to the smelting of a smith which hammers out impurities form metal. This action, usually, is said to be brought about by the fighting between the Devas and Asuras but there are also variations. In the same way Christians may claim that without the devil, or sin, Jesus cannot be any sort of hero, because he needs a battle to earn his godhood, the idea may be that an agitator is needed. In this sense Jesus is the Masher.




“The antagonism of the Buddha and Devadatta is that of Good and Evil, which appear again in the persons of Osiris and Seth, Ahura Mazda and Angro-Minyus, Christ and Satan, the Devas and Asuras"

However, after reading most of your posts, as well as with Tat's, I would not be surprised if the movement of the sun/son is somehow connected. In my book I give a fair amount of evidence showing that Mercury, the measurer (of the heavens; Job's God), was first a "great thief", or, the Buddhist Mahacora (Mahacora = Mercury; Jesus' "thief in the night"), the R only appearing as a natural retroflex.

Regarding Muller's claim of an Aryan influence on India, alothough he speaks of Aryans as being distinguished only by language, it is hard not to detect another meaning in his use of this word as, although he is addressing English speakers, he speaks of Aryans as being "our" ancestors. I have read most of his work and Imust also relate that Muller, as with others of his generation, were not as heavily influenced to paint a history in which Aryans were superior as some may believe now. Muller, like Sir William Jones just before his untimely death, did face blowback for advancing eastern studies because they were both revealing an eastern influence on the West.

In my book I spend some time on the prejudices seen in Muller's, and others, scholarship. The partialities of Christians who covered the question of a borrowing between the Buddhism and Christianity is ultra obvious. When writing on the possibility of a Christian borrowing from Buddhism, Max Muller states; “our natural inclination would be to suppose that the Buddhist stories borrowed from our Christian sources and not vice versa. But here the conscience of the scholar comes in. Some of these stories are found in the Hinayana Buddhist Canon and date, therefore, before the Christian era." This is not the only subtle form of Christian favoritism, the most obvious being language itself.



Supporting that Krishna’s name meant “black” ( Pali ‘kanha’, Prakrit ‘kisan ’) is the Buddha’s etymologizing his name as such in the Ambattha sutta, and also that, although the Buddhist authors falsly etymologized just as much, if not more, than others, the teacher of the first Gotama, ancestor of Buddha, is said to be a “black” sage. Several European languages preserve the Sanskrit form ‘krsn’ as a word for black. In different ancient Sanskrit works, the word ‘krsna’ can either carry with it the meaning of “blackish”, or “black with blue”, or “dirty”. It is possible that the color blue references the skin color of sages who would consume silver. How ‘krsna’ took on the sense of “dirty” may reveal an ancient prejudice against people with “darker” skin. It must also be mentioned here that our word “dark” has similar meanings and I would not hesitate to guess that this word speaks of a similar type of old prejudice against, what some people have termed, “persons of color”, a term which probably was popularized in order to combat the term “dark skinned”, which unfairly carried with it a negative meaning. It is also mentioned here that the Greek ‘melos’, Latin ‘malus’, Sanskrit ‘mala’ and ‘malina’, also carry the meanings of “dirty”, “black” and, “bad” and the similarity of these associations may only be the ancients associating bad acts with the darkness of nightor of a enclosed room or cave. The Greek ‘mauros’, another word for “dark”, may also be the name given to the Moors of Morocco. Positive and negative variations of the Sanskrit ‘maulin’, another name for the aboriginal Indians and is related to the Sanskrit word for ink (‘mela’), are found in different dialects and this also supports the idea of racism in ancient India based on the tone of skin.

<---- ahem

particulars come and go, universals on the other hand...