Customer Reviews

Gerald Massey's Lectures

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a distillation of Massey's ideas.It is a good introduction, as his main works such as "Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World", are massive tomes.Massey was a pioneer in giving a coherent interpretation of ancient mythology.He shows how the teachings of Christianity originated in ancient Egypt.Horus, the Egyptian saviour,was the prototype for Christ.He shows how the story of Christ is a retelling of the story of Horus.The parallels are so obvious once they have been explained.Massey relates how many of the alleged sayings of Christ first appeared in other places such as the Talmud, and ancient Egypt.The works of Massey go a long way in explaining the true origins of Christianity.

Mixed ratings on this subject and these types of books are usually the result of folks who bought the book and loved it and rated it high, and those (like "Jeri") who go on a personal crusade to attack anything they see as eroding their blind faith and rating it low. Sometimes you see the same attacks over and over again when you look at similar books on the subject. So first off - ignore the ratings if it looks 50/50, that's why. Now for Gerald Massey's work. The knowledge and references to back it up is very detailed and compelling. I can't put the books down. I have read his books and many many more by other authors. I have done as "contrary" reviewers suggest and read the counter-argument books as well. All I can say is the counter argument texts are nonsense, have flawed logic, and worst of all refer to the Bible scripture as a historically accurate reference to support their claims. Botom line, all of these stories existed WELL before christianity was crafted at the council of Nicea in 325. Before 325, the words Jesus and Christ were never used together. Not sure you want to make the investment? Check out the basics for free. Just type in "Horus" in Google and the first word association that usually comes up is "Jesus". The entire history was stolen from Ancient Egypt and early creators of Christianity didnt even bother to change the names. Satan=Set, Mary=Meri, Joseph=Seb, John=Aan, and so on. Birth, wise men, manger, healing the sick, raising the dead, the cross, resurection, and on and on. Every detail is identical. If you want to understand where Christianity (and the other religions) really came from, get this book. If you are a devout Christian and you have blind faith, go ahead and write your review now - you aren't going to buy the book before unleashing a faith-based attack anyway. Just look at the "tags" that have been added to describe this book (idiotic, history of religions, silly, stupid, poor scholarship, antichristian, folly, fantasy, risible). Since when is pro-truth the same as anti-Christian? WARNING: If you are a Christian now and do ANY serious reading on Horus, you will never be a Christian again.

This is a good collection of essays by the early Egyptologist Gerald Massey. Much of it deals with the more negative aspects of Christianity, particularly its effects on the poor, and it's ties with Egyptology. Personaly, I've always felt that the Horus/Jesus connection was somewhat of a stretch, but this is balanced out by some commentary that's worth reading, even if you don't agree with it.

Massey was born in 1828, to give you some idea of how old this book is. He was a self proclaimed Egyptologist, not to mention Chief Druid, at least by some claims.

The book is dated and the language stilted, and, much more important, the scholarship it contains is only considered of historical interest since, without a single exception, all Massey's points have been long refuted.

Massey's books were part of the 'History of Religions' debate among biblical scholars, which lasted from about 1880-1920. Part of the debate centered on whether or not Christianity had borrowed dogmas from other religions. The debate ended after thousands and thousands of books had been published by various people, and is now considered a dead issue in modern biblical scholarship.

Essentially, it was proven that Christianity never borrowed any dogmas. It was a rather silly idea to begin with, given how saturated all the New Testament is with quotations and references from the Old Testament. In one epistle Paul quotes from the OT over fifty times. The number of times he quotes from Greek or Roman authors...never.

And besides, why would Jews borrow from other cultures when the Old Testament was so full of mysterious promises and mysterious prophecies? What was the point?

From Jonathan Z Smith's famous essay "Dying and Rising Gods" which you can buy on Amazon today: "The category of dying and rising gods, once a major topic of scholarly investigation, must now be understood to be largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions."

Also, from Nash's "The Gospel and the Greeks" which you can buy on Amazon today: " The tide of scholarly opinion has turned dramatically against attempts to make early Christianity dependent on the so-called dying and rising gods of Hellenistic paganism" (p 162).

From Gunter Wagner"That Paul modeled his Christ 'myth' on the myths about other 'dying and rising gods' is now no more seriously held than is the derivation of the observance of Sunday and of the resurrection on the third day from the mystery cults" from "Pauline Baptism" p 266.

For a good background on this subject, you can buy two current books on Amazon that explain it. One is "The Jesus Legend" by Boyd and Eddy, and the other is "The Gospel and the Greeks" by Nash.

All of Massey's claims have been utterly refuted by real scholars.

Personally, I love his claim about how Christianity was only one of many religions that had virgin births. The reason the idea was rejected: because none of those virgins that Jove seduced or raped claimed to be a virgin after they had sex and became pregnant!

Besides, none were claimed to be in real, historical time, as was the case in Christianity. And let's not forget the hilariously wrong 'virgin birth' of Krishna. As any Hindu will tell you, Krishna's mother had had a number of children, perhaps as many as seven, before she conceived Krishna. Pretty hard to claim to a virgin when giving birth to your 8th child.

If you are interested enough in the subject to want to read one of the major books that refuted the claim that the Egyptian religion influenced Christianity, see if you can find a copy of Gunter Wagner's very famous "Pauline Baptism and the pagan mysteries".