Thursday, March 19, 2009

Egyptian Symbols within Christianity

Besides the obvious crosses and crucifixes in many religions across the world that predated Christianity, there are also other non-Christian symbols found within Christianity. As I’ve been focusing on Egypt lately, I’ll give two examples from that culture. But realize there are many other such symbolic similarities that can also be shown. I also chose the following quote because the author demonstrates that early Christians (including Augustine) were aware of these symbols and their meaning.

The Pagan Christ, Tom Harpur

pp 88-89: The Egyptian Christ, manifested in the sign of Pisces, was fore-ordained to be Ichthys (Greek word for “fish”), the fisherman and to be accompanied by fishermen followers. Doctrinally, he was the “fisher of men”. Horus, the best-known Egyptian Christ figure was associated from time immemorial with the fish, and Massey’s Natural Genesis features a reproduction of an Egyptian engraving showing Horus holding a fish above his head. Several of the early Christian Fathers refer to Christ also as Ichthys, or “that great fish,” and the mitre worn by succeeding popes “in the the shoes of the fishermen” is shaped exactly like a fish’s mouth. It’s well known that the Greek word ichthys forms an acrostic meaning “Jesus Christ the Son of God (Our) Savior.” Having been in Rome numerous times during my dozen years covering religion around the world for the Toronto Star, I have seen first-hand how frequently the outline of a fish occurs in catacombs as a Christian symbol. It also doubled as a sign of the Eucharist. Prosper Africanus, an early Christian theologian, calls Christ “that great fish who fed from himself the disciples on the shore and offered himself as a fish to the world.” Commenting on this same passage from the end of John’s Gospel, St. Augustine says that the broiled fish in the story “is Christ.” The art found in ancient Egyptian tombs commonly shows fish, fishermen, nets, and fishtraps of varying kinds. All have the same spiritual meaning.

Much more important, however, is the fact that the Egyptian texts bear witness to an “only begotten god” (meaning begotten of one parent only), whose symbol was the beetle because in ancient science this creature was thought to be “self-produced, being unconceived by a female.” Massey says, “The only begotten god is a well-known type [symbol], then, of divinity worshipped in Egypt. In each cult, the Messiah-son and manifestor was the only-begotten god. This, according to the Egyptian text, is the Christ, the Word, the manifestor in John’s Gospel.” In fact, in one early version of the Greek text of the New Testament’s Gospel of John, the phrase “the only begotten son of God” actually reads “the only begotten god”! Its very unorthodoxy makes it likely that it is the preferred, original reading.

The truth thus came forcefully home to me that this Egyptian Christ is indeed the express image of the Christ of John’s Gospel, who begins in the first chapter without father or mother and is the Word of the beginning, the opener and the architect, the light of the world, the self-originated and only-begotten God. I found that the very phraseology of Jonh often echoed the Egyptian texts, which tell of he who was “the Beginning of the becoming, from the first, who made all things but was not made.” Some of the Fathers of the Church knew that the beetle was a symbol of Christ. Augustine, indeed, writes, “My own good beetle, not so much because he is only begotten (God), not because he, the author of himself, has taken on the form of mortals, but because he has rolled himself in our filth and chooses to be born from this filth itself” - like the dung beetle.

When the god Osiris came to the earth as a savior, he came as his own son, the child Horus. He was born “like or as a Word.” The Egyptian text says that he came to earth as a substitute. Indeed, an ancient Egyptian festival celebrating the birth of Horus was called “The Day of the Child in His Cradle.”

When Horus comes to earth in the Egyptian story, he is supported or given bread by Seb, who is god of the earth, “the father on earth.” He is thus the divine father on earth of the messiah-son, who manifests in time. Just as Joseph, the adoptive father of Jesus, provides shelter and food for his son, so Seb (Jo-seph) cares for Horus. The consort of Seb is the mother of heaven, named Nu; Meri (Mary) is another name for the mother of the messiah. Massey concludes, “Thus Seb and Meri for earth and heaven would afford the two mythic originals for Joseph and Mary as parents of the divine child.” There are seven different Marys in the four Gospels. They correspond with uncanny fidelity to seven Marys, or Hathors in the Egyptian stories.

Egyptian Christianity: Origins and Destruction

Osiris-Dionysus- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term Osiris-Dionysus is used by some historians of religion[1] to refer to a group of deities worshipped around the Mediterranean in the centuries prior to the emergence of Jesus. It has been argued that these deities were closely related and shared many characteristics, most notably being male, partly-human, born of virgins, life-death-rebirth deities and other similar characteristics.

The Egyptian god Osiris and the Greek god Dionysus had been equated as long ago as the 5th century BC by the historian Herodotus (see interpretatio graeca). By Late Antiquity, some Gnostic and Neoplatonist thinkers had expanded this syncretic equation to include Aion, Adonis, Attis, Mithras and other gods of the mystery religions. The composite term Osiris-Dionysus is found around the start of the first century BC, for example in Aegyptiaca by Hecateus of Abdera, and in works by Leon of Pella.

The JesusMysteries - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Freke and Gandy base the Jesus Mysteries thesis partly on a series of parallels between their suggested biography of Osiris-Dionysus and the biography of Jesus drawn from the four canonical gospels. Their suggested reconstruction of the myth of Osiris-Dionysus, compiled from the myths of ancient dying and resurrected “godmen,” bears a striking resemblance to the gospel accounts. The authors give a short list of parallels at the beginning of the book:

Osiris-Dionysus is God made flesh, the savior and “Son of God.”
His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin, 7 month pregnancy.
He is born in a cave or humble cowshed on December 25 before three shepherds.
He offers his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism.
He miraculously turns water into wine at a marriage ceremony.
He rides triumphantly into town on a donkey while people wave palm leaves to honor him.
He dies at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
After his death he descends to hell, then on the third day he rises from the dead and ascends to heaven in glory.
His followers await his return as the judge during the Last Days.
His death and resurrection are celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine, which symbolize his body and blood.[1]

Later chapters add further parallels, including Mary’s 7 month pregnancy.

Serapis- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Serapis (Latin spelling, or Sarapis in Greek) was a syncretic Hellenistic-Egyptian god in Antiquity. His most renowned temple was at Alexandria,[1]. Under Ptolemy Soter, efforts were made to integrate Egyptian religion with that of their Hellenic rulers. Ptolemy’s policy was to find a deity that should win the reverence alike of both groups, despite the curses of the Egyptian priests against the gods of the previous foreign rulers (i.e Set who was lauded by the Hyksos). Alexander the Great had attempted to use Amun for this purpose, but he was more prominent in Upper Egypt, and not as popular with those in Lower Egypt, where the Greeks had stronger influence. The Greeks had little respect for animal-headed figures, and so a Greek-style anthromorphic statue was chosen as the idol, and proclaimed as the equivalent of the highly popular Apis.[2]It was named Aser-hapi (i.e. Osiris-Apis), which became Serapis, and was said to be Osiris in full, rather than just his Ka (life force).

Water into Wine, Tom Harpur

p 242: When it comes to the widespread first-century cult of Serapis, Barb explains: “Serapis is fundamentally Osiris/Horus… and he serves as the expression of monotheistic tendencies: [there is] one god, Serapis,” it says on numerous monuments.

Christ in Egypt, D.M. Murdock

pp 31-32: As in Christianity, within the Egyptian solar religion the sun god’s power is illustrated by the divine qualities of omnipresence, omnipotence and oniscience, typically defining the god of the cosmos within monotheism. For example, demonstrating his omnipresence, the God Sun is contained in everything, as in the Great Hymn,” which addresses the sun as “you create millions of incarnations from yourself, the One.”6 In a section about the god “Re-Horakhty,” Dr. Assman entitles a selection of hymns, “oOmnipresence of the Light: God-Filled World.’ This material reflecting omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience includes scriptures such as: “Every way is full of your light”; “Are you not the leader on all ways?”; and “There are no limits to the field of his vision and no place hidden to his ka.”1 The ka is defined by James Allen as the “force of conscious omniscience in its worshippers - called in the texts the “sun-folks”3 - as highlighted in this line from a sun hymn: “The morning sun which enables one to know all things.”4

This concept of the “omniscience of light” is part of the “new solar theology” in which “the unattainably distant sun comes palpably near to earth creatures,” providing ” the idea of the simultaneous remoteness and proximity of god…”5 The German scholar next says:
The idea of proximity of god arises not from the sensual experience of light, but from the transcendental idea of a divine omniscience and omnipresence, in which god is right next to the heart “that turns to him.”6

As we can see, the Egyptian concept of God here is highly reminiscent of that found in Judeo-Christianity. The Egyptian God Sun is also depicted as hearing “the prayers of all who call him.”7

pp 53-54: Regarding the Egyptian and Christian trinities and scriptural parallels, Morenz is prompted to conclude, “The multifarious links between Egypt and Judeo-Christian scriptures and trinitariantheology can already be traced with some degree of plausibility.”5 In his discussion of “Egyptian trinities,” as he terms them, Morenz includes a section addressing the idea of “unity in plurality.”6 The German scholar also points out that a “trinity” can likewise be created out of the “primordial One” and “the first pair of gods to be begotten”7 Regarding the motif of the trinity, Morenz further states:

…thus three gods are combined and treated as a single being, adressed in the singular. In this way the spiritual force of Egyptian religion shows a direct link with Christian theology.


Deconstructing Jesus, Robert M. Price

p 26: Egypt presents us with the same picture yet again. The first attested workers for Christ there were the Gnostics Valentinus, Basilides, Apelles, Carpocrates, and his son Isidore. Phlegon preserves a letter attributed to Hadrian noting that all Christian priests in Egypt worshipped Serapis, too! The leading gospels in Egypt, the Gospels according to the Hebrews and according to the Egyptians, as far as we can tell from their extant fragments, were Gnostic or heretical in color. Bauer could detect no trace of Demetrius. But does not tradition make the gospel-writer Mark the first bishop of Egypt? Indeed it does, but like the letters of Jesus and Abgarus, this legend seems to be but another spurious “orthodox” origin for Egyptian Christianity (assuming Mark and his gospel could themselves be judged orthodox!).

pp 26-27: About the Nag Hammadi library - “What makes this discovery all the more astonishing is that associated documents show the collection of leather-bound volumes to have been from the monastic library of the Brotherhood of Saint Pachomius, the first known Christian monastery. Apparently when the monks received the Easter Letter from Athanasius in 367 C.E., which contains the first known listing of the canonical twenty-seven New Testament books, warning the faithful to read no others, the brethren must have decided to hide their cherished “heretical gospels, lest they fall into the hands of the ecclesiastical book burners. We may perhaps take that monastery as a cameo, a microcosm of Egyptian Christianity in the fourthcentury, diverse in doctrine, though soon to suffocate beneath the smothering veil of catholic orthodoxy.

Christ in Egypt, D.M. Murdock

pp 23-24: [Dr. Richard A. Gabriel in Jesus the Egyptian] tersely recounts this disturbing history:

In 356 C.E. ConstantiusII ordered the Egyptian temples of Isis-Osiris closed and forbade the use of Egyptian hieroglyphics as a religious language. In 380 C.E. Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity to be the official Roman state religion and all pagan cults were thereafter forbidden. These edicts were devastating to the Egyptian culture and religion, both of which had been preserved over millennia through the Egyptian language and the writing systems of Egyptian priests. In 391 C.E., the patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilus, summoned the monks to arms and turned them against the city of Memphis and the great shrine of Serapis, the Serapeum, the main temple of the Osiran-Isis religion. The attack was akin to ordering the destruction of the Vatican. Egyptian priests were massacred in their shrines and in the streets. The ferocity of the violence consumed priests, followers, and the Egyptian intellectual elite of Alexandria, Memphis and the other cities of Egypt who were murdered and their temples and libraries destroyed. The institutional structure of Egyptian religion, then more than four millennium old, was demolished in less than two decades.”

The Love of Truth vs. the Sophistry of Apologetics

A major reason I blog now is because apologists annoy me. I used to post on discussion boards, but the discussions tend to get dragged down to the lowest common denominator.

Apologists are annoying in that they can often be anti-intellectual, but not always. Sometimes they’re quite intellectually capable even when their focus is very narrow. It can even take a while to realize you’re dealing with an apologist because many believers prefer to not express their beliefs openly. That is even more annoying because I can sense that the person is filtering everything they think, but it takes effort to realize they’re not actually open to new viewpoints. The most intelligent apologists have a knack for creating convoluted arguments and false herrrings.

What is even worse is when they demand you defend your argument when they can’t defend their own. I’ve spent years studying religion, and it’s a complex field. Why would I want to deal with people who’ve only read very narrowly? Why would want to try to spoonfeed information to those who have no respect for knowledge? And apologists can be persistent, going around and around with the same tired ploys.

Beyond all of that, what really annoys me is that apologists are very talented at perverting the truth. To me, truth is my faith. When someone uses rational logic falsely or deceptively, then it pisses me off. I just don’t understand how someone can act rationally while at the same time having little respect for rationality.

I’m not criticizing faith. I’m all for faith, but faith and rationality are not the same thing. Rationality limited by unquestioned beliefs is not rational at all. Certainly, it’s acceptable for one’s faith to inform one’s rationality, but one is no longer in the realm of rationality when one’s rationality is limited to one’s faith. As such, rationality should also inform one’s faith. No belief should be held back from the gaze of curiosity, questioning, doubt and general intellectual inquiry. Also, I’d even go so far to say that faith without doubt is no faith at all.
Apologetics has been a major component of our society for centuries that so much of our culture has been limited to the context of Christian assumptions. It’s so subtle that we usually don’t even notice it.

A simple example is a reference work such as a dictionary. I have a Sharp electronic dictionary that uses the New Oxford American Dictionary. It doesn’t have entries for Basilides, Valentinius, or Marcion. These three were the earliest Christians to write commentaries on New Testament scriptures. All of them had all or most of their works destroyed by later Christians, and the latter two were labelled heretics some decades after they left the Catholic Church. On the other hand, there are entries for all of the later apologists and heresiologists. Irenaeus has an entry and he was the very one who called Marcion and Valentinius heretics.

So, why is a mainstream scholarly dictionary limiting the information shown to the public according to the decrees of Catholic orthodoxy? How did the Catholic Church gain such influence over secular scholarship? Why would a scholar choose to follow Church orthodoxy? Was there a Christian majority in the committee that decided what made it into the dictionary?

This is the same with all other references. When you do an internet search about Christianity, some of the best sources of info get buried beneath the numerous apologetic sites. When you go to Wikipedia, many of the articles have very clear religious biases.

Here are some discussions with and articles about apologists:

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_paradigm_shift.htm

http://www.jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/ctvadvert.htm

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=2255

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=2349

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=2366

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=2434

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=2063

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=1502

http://forums.truthbeknown.com/viewtopic.php?t=1158