331 of 430 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Did Christianity Get All of Its Good Ideas From Pagans?, July 30, 2004
Tom Harpur began his career as an (evangelical) Anglican priest and professor of New Testament at Wycliffe College, Toronto. Just over 30 years ago, he moved from academia into journalism. Today, he is perhaps the leading religion writer in Canada.
"The Pagan Christ" is the story of his discovery of the writings of one Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880-1963) and two earlier writers (Godfrey Higgins [1771-1834] and Gerald Massey [1828-1907]), who argued that all of the essential ideas of both Judaism and Christianity came primarily from Egyptian religion.
Toward the end of the third Christian century, the leaders of the church began to misinterpret the Bible. Prior to this, no one ever understood the Bible to be literally true. Earlier, in keeping with all other religions, the narrative material of the Hebrew and Greek Bible was interpreted as myth or symbol, read as allegory and metaphor rather than as history.
According to Harpur, there is no evidence that Jesus of Nazareth ever lived. He claims that virtually all of the details of the life and teachings of Jesus have their counterpart in Egyptian religious ideas. He does not quote any contemporary Egyptologist or recognized academic authority on world religions nor appeal to any of the standard reference books in Egyptology or to any primary sources. Rather, he is entirely dependent on the work of Kuhn (and Higgins & Massey).
Who is Alvin Boyd Kuhn? He is given the title `Egyptologist' and is regarded by Harpur as "one of the single greatest geniuses of the twentieth century" [who] "towers above all others of recent memory in intellect and his understanding of the world's religious."
As it turns out, Kuhn was a high school language teacher who was an enthusiastic proponent of Theosophy, a prodigious author and lecturer, who self-published most of his books.
Not being myself an expert in Egyptian religion, I consulted those who are about their views of contribution that Kuhn, Higgins and Massey have made to Egyptology and whether they thought some of the key ideas of "The Pagan Christ" well grounded. So I sent an email to twenty of the leading Egyptologists - in Canada, USA, UK, Australia, Germany, and Austria.
I noted as a sample the following claims put forth by Kuhn (and hence Harpur):
That the name of Jesus was derived from the Egyptian "Iusa," which means "the coming divine Son who heals or saves".
That the god Horus is "an Egyptian Christos, or Christ.... He and his mother, Isis, were the forerunners of the Christian Madonna and Child, and together they constituted a leading image in Egyptian religion for millennia prior to the Gospels."
That Horus also "had a virgin birth, and that in one of his roles, he was 'a fisher of men with twelve followers.'"
That "the letters KRST appear on Egyptian mummy coffins many centuries BCE, and ... this word, when the vowels are filled in., is really Karast or Krist, signifying Christ."
That the doctrine of the incarnation "is in fact the oldest, most universal mythos known to religion. It was current in the Osirian religion in Egypt at least four thousand years BCE"
Only one of the ten experts who responded to my questions had ever heard of Kuhn, Higgins or Massey!
Professor Kenneth A. Kitchen of the University of Liverpool pointed out that not one of these men is mentioned in M. L. Bierbrier's "Who Was Who in Egyptology" (3rd ed, 1995), nor is any of their works listed in Ida B. Pratt's very extensive bibliography on Ancient Egypt (1925/1942).
Another distinguished Egyptologist wrote: "Egyptology has the unenviable distinction of being one of those disciplines that almost anyone can lay claim to, and the unfortunate distinction of being probably the one most beleaguered by false prophets. He goes on to refer to Kuhn's "fringe nonsense."
The responding scholars were unanimous in dismissing the suggested etymologies for Jesus and Christ.
Ron Leprohan, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Toronto, pointed out that while "sa" means "son" in ancient Egyptian and "iu" means `to come," but Kuhn/Harpur have the syntax all wrong. In any event, the name `Iusa' simply does not exist in Egyptian.
The name `Jesus' is Greek from a universally recognized west Semitic name ("Jeshu'a"), born not merely by the central figure in the New Testament but also by many other people in the first century.
While all recognize that the image of the baby Horus and Isis has influenced the Christian iconography of Madonna and Child, this is where the similarity stops. There is no evidence for the idea that Horus was virgin born.
There is no evidence for the idea that Horus was `a fisher of men' or that his followers (the King's officials were called `Followers of Horus") were ever twelve in number.
KRST is the word for "burial" ("coffin" is written "KRSW"), but there is no evidence whatsoever to link this with the Greek title "Christos" or Hebrew "Mashiah".
There is no mention of Osiris in Egyptian texts until about 2350 BC, so Harpur's reference to the origins of Osirian religion is off by more than a millennium and a half. (Elsewhere Harpur refers to "Jesus in Egyptian lore as early as 18,000 BCE" and he quotes Kuhn as claiming that "the Jesus who stands as the founder of Christianity was at least 10,000 years of age." In fact, the earliest extant writing that we have dates from about 3200 BCE.)
Kuhn/Harper's redefinition of "incarnation" and rooting this in Egyptian religion is regarded as bogus by all of the Egyptologists with whom I have consulted. According to one: "Only the pharaoh was believed to have a divine aspect, the divine power of kingship, incarnated in the human being currently serving as the king. No other Egyptians ever believed they possessed even `a little bit of the divine'."
Virtually none of the alleged evidence for the views put forward in "The Pagan Christ" is documented by reference to original sources. The notes refer mainly to Kuhn, Higgins, Massey, or some other long-out-of-date work.
Furthermore, Harpur's notes abound with errors and omissions. If you look for supporting evidence for a particular point made by the author, it is not there. Many quotations are taken out of context and interpreted in a very different sense from what their author originally meant (especially the early church fathers).
In short, "The Pagan Christ" tells us more about Tom Harpur's spiritual pilgrimage than about the origins of Christianity.
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35 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book to change lives!, June 15, 2006
This review is from: The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light (Hardcover)
This is one of the most important books I've ever read. It gave me the tools I needed to renew my Christianity. I could not recomend it more highly.
The Pagan Christ is a very important book. The conclusions are excellent the Christianity it points to, profound. It should be noted in light of some of the reviews that Harpur's comparison of Jesus to Horus and other resurrecting gods is nothing new and has been well substantiated by leading scholars. What Tom Harpur and his sources do that is so useful in today's world is explore what this means to modern Christianity. It is a hopeful message and a profound one.
The statement made by an earlier reviewer that his sources could not be found in a who's who of egyptology is peculiar. I can find no such book, except the Who's Who of Ancient Egypt, which is about the characters of ancient egypt, not modern scholars; but more importantly because neither Harpur nor his three main sources ever purport to be major scholars of egyptology. They are inspired amateurs who see a larger picture that Christians desperately need to see.
The importance of Harpur's three main sources, indeed of Harpur's book, is the discussion of one of the many dying/resurrecting man gods of ancient religion and the comparison to Jesus. It is an apt comparison. But would be no less so had these writers and Harpur chosen to focus their attention on Mitrhus, Hercules or Wodan. The stories of Horus which the book employs in this study are by no means obscure or difficult to find. It is not material which necessitates a major egyptologist. Nor would that be the point.
The point is that the myth of Jesus is one of a great many such myths of the solar deity or dying and resurrecting god. The tragedy of Christianity is that this myth, so rich in inspiration has been cemented into "reality." The belief that the Jesus story really happened rather then it being a metaphor for the spiritual life has condemned Christianity to become but one more hot bed of fanatical fundamentalism. It is a tragedy. A tragedy that has sent man and women to the stake, has sent Medieval European soldiers stampeding into Jerusalem to recapture the Holy Land and has sent uncounted millions of Jews to their deaths, in every era for the "crime of killing God."
This is the "rich" heritage of Christianity. Literalism has made Christianity a brutal religion. How tragic for us all. The Prince of Peace, in every era of history and prehistory, has taught us tolerance and bid us "peace be still." We would do well to read Tom Harpur's book with great care. It is an invitation to a Christianity that is deep and profound. It is the Christianity for which we all long.
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24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review - The Pagan Christ, December 13, 2007
This review is from: The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light (Hardcover)
Recently the CBC in Canada aired a program which examined the views put forward by Theologian Tom Harpur in his bestselling book - The Pagan Christ. Harpur's book challenged the literalist view of Christianity and it is not the first time this position has been brought to light.
The mythological figure of the dead and resurrected god-man have long been exposed as universal myth motif that has been enshrined by a long list of cultures predating Christianity as we know it today. The universality of this motif has been meticulously documented, not only by Harpur and one of his main references Gerald Massey, but also the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and more recently Joseph Campbell. Jung wrote a detailed account of the origins of Christian myth motifs in "Symbols of Transformation" first compiled in 1920. He was later followed by Joseph Campbell whose most recognized work amongst many was "The Hero With A Thousand Faces".
Massey's comparative examination of Christian religon and Egyptian myth produced a staggering number of points of comparison - roughly two hundred in number. His entire volume works are freely available online for examination. While the documentary focused mainly on the Egyptian figures of the Horus and Isis, they could have extended the list to many more mythological figures that share the same characteristics. A detailed comparative examination is included in Harpur's book and reveals a list that includes Tammuz, Adonis, Mithras, Dionysus, Krishna, amongst many others shared these key characteristics that are attributed exclusively to Christ - miraculous births, turning water into wine, death and resurrection, a spiritual leader accompanied by twelve deciples, to name only a few. Many of these motifs are not only confined to the Mediteranean cultures but can been seen in north american myths as well pointing to the fact that they products of human imagination that attempt in symbolic form to enshrine the immeasurable value of the human spirit.
This spirit is myopically viewed as the life force found in the human emotion of love and is in many cultures extended to be the source of a broader range of qualtities that include creativity, memory and in some instances the very "the seat of intelligence". The journey of the archetypical hero in all of these myths was an attempt to enshrine the journey of self-discovery in stories so that they would inspire this inward journey and in turn draw the power of this force outward to the benefit of society.
The path of literalism has left humanity and our collective psyche in a state of fragmentation by obsessing over the tribal peacock feathers of cultural forms and lead us to our present deplorable state that can nowhere be seen more clearly in the eternal Greek tradgedy of the middle east where the world's great religons face off in the endless insanity of war while they defend mythological belief structures that were originally intended to unite humanity by recognizing the common element of the human spirit, or as Joeseph Campbell aptly put it "they're dying for metaphors".
Harper's work is an attempt to draw those people whose adoration of the beauty and power of the human spirit has been lost in the outward projected symbolic forms of religon. The release of the outer forms is the first step in the journey to rediscover what myths were originally intended to represent - the inward journey of self-discovery. To inspire this journey is the goal of Harpur's book. The book is not anti-christian and the idea that it is anti-christian leaves one with great concern as to whether his critics even opened it. Harpur is not requesting that readers dismiss the human spirit, but embrace it on the hopes that as a species we can more forward united and in peace.
Steve - Toronto
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