Customer Reviews

The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ: Natural Genesis and Typology of Equinoctial Christolatry

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Massey is always very adamant and almost ruthless in approach. That is NOT why I think this is an excellent book, though. Using his immense skill as an Egyptologist, Massey shows us incredible links to the Jesus story. Like other books I have read on paganism, the linkage is unignorable. One must read this to gain a perspective on the links between ancient religions and Christianity.

Gerald Massey is a scholar's scholar. He has disected not just the important aspects about Jesus the myth, but has gone to every little insignificant things and showed how it relates to some other world myth. This ranges from the 12 followers, to Jesus the bibical myth spreading the fish and bread among 5 thousand people. It is important to realize that the beggining formula for the christ myth, as well as many others began in Egypt. I will use the example from the book, in that Jesus doesn't appear until he is 12 in the tabernacle. In Egypt boys wore the Horus tail until they were 12. Also Jesus didn't appear again until 30 years of age. In Egypt boys became men at about the age 30. These are just a few I will say to give you a feal of what the book is about. To learn more, open your minds beleievers and nonbelievers, and just unmask this book.

Great book on the subject, with an authoritative author on the subject. Much more in depth than Harpur, the only one I like even more is 'Lost Light: An Interpretation of Ancient Scriptures' by Alvin Boyd Kuhn. Massey does an excellent job of showing the correlations between Ancient Egyptian texts and the Bible. An eye opener to say the least, more people need to educate themselves on the subject so the truth shine through the darkness.

The book was originally published over a century ago, and it shows. And I am not just talking about the ghastly, stilted language (which by the way is really, really awful).

It's the scholarship that's so flawed.

This book was part of what came to be known as the "History of Religions" school in biblical scholarship. It was a theory that Christianity borrowed doctrines from ancient pagan religions. This theory flourished for a century (from about the Victorian era through about 1920)before it was put to death by thousands of scholars doing research. Not to mention archaeological discoveries that proved much of the claims to be bogus.

The author, Massey, was born in 1828, to give you an idea of just how long ago all this was.

The theory is now so dead that not a single biblical scholar, atheist or not, will touch it. Anyone interested in the "History of Religions" theory should read "The Jesus Legend" by Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd. This is a book you could order today from Amazon, and it gives a good overview of the "History of Religions" theory and explains what refuted it. On a popular level, try "The Gospel and the Greeks" by Nash, a fine summation of what modern scholarship has revealed. For deepest scholarship, try Martin Hengel's "The Son of God".

Massey, some people have claimed, was a Chief Druid. I am not making this up. He believed that Christianity had been more or less invented by the Egyptians. Scholar W. Ward Gasque points out that actual Egyptian scholars have refuted Massey's points, one by one.

There are hundreds of books on this subject. Thousands upon thousands of research papers. Other scholars who have written on the topic: Edwin Yamauchi, C H Dodd, Gunter Wagner, and many others.

It is embarrassing that this book is being reissued. Apparently the publisher believes there's one born every minute, since the information in the book is utterly refuted.

If you have any questions about just how well refuted it all is, check out the "History of Religions" theory in any library.

It's not like it's a secret.