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The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light

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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.

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.

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

Tom Harpur's "The Pagan Christ" is well researched---something to be expected from a Rhodes Scholar and one who has spent his life in a deeper search for truth.

It is curious that here we are in the year 2006 and people still attempt to crush what they consider heresy with unsubstantiated lies. I was raised in the Methodist Church and even in that decidedly non-dogmatic protestant sect; there was pressure not to think of Christ outside of what we were told. Tom Harpur has been breaking through the cloud for much of his career. In this book he encourages us all to look at the deeper and more profound spiritual truths of the Christ mythology----that we all have the ability to tap into that deep spiritual richness of the Christian Faith.

With all the madness in the world now over religion, we should all take a fresh look at these various fundamentalist groups in the world and the damage they are now bringing us all, be they Islam, Judaism or Christianity.

Thank you Tom Harpur.

Tom Harpur's "Pagan Christ" takes the necessary first step (or at least popularizes it) in freeing us from mindlessly superstitious literal and fundamentalist interpretations of the Christian tradition. In tracing the entirety of the Gospel narratives to similar stories thousands of years older in Egypt, Persia, and Greece, it becomes obvious that the biblical accounts are indeed reinterpreted myths, allegories pointing to universal truths, and not literal historical accounts. Examined from this perspective, the Bible takes on a new deeper meaning, its parables and principles become newly invigorated, contradictions are sorted out, and universal spirituality becomes experienced.

But how much more so, had Harpur but continued his analysis to its logical conclusion? For after pointing out that "all scripture is by nature allegorical" and that a literal interpretation leads to "serious error," he then falls into the same trap himself and takes a literal interpretation of the concept of "soul," and misses the fact that it too is metaphor. And thereby perpetuates the fundamentalists' error.

To explain: literalists (and Harpur) speak of the soul as if it were a "thing," existing in time and space and history, with attributes such as size, position, shape, and colour, as do all other "things;" it's just that this one is invisible and non-material. As a "thing," a literal soul, divine or otherwise, can leave a literal heaven and incarnate literal flesh, and after the death of the body, can leave for greener pastures. But by taking this literal view of the soul, Harpur makes what Gilbert Ryle calls a category mistake, the serious error of confusing literal and metaphoric existence, as in "the child sat in the corner playing with his trucks, his teddy bears, and his mental blocks." We all make this error all the time; we see someone acting in a friendly fashion, we describe her behaviour as friendly, then make the nominal fallacy of confusing a description with an explanation, and conclude she has a "friendliness" spirit in her soul, causing her to act in a friendly way, thus ending with an erroneous circular argument. Which, as Harpur himself would say, is a lot of serious errors resulting from a literalist interpretation.

To truly understand "soul" or "spirit" or "mind," we must see them too as metaphors. A "mental block" is not a literal explanatory CAUSE of the child being unable to retrieve remembered information; it is simply a metaphoric DESCRIPTION of the fact that the child cannot remember it. The soul or divine spirit is not a literal existence that innervates or incarnates animal matter; it is a metaphoric device used to describe what that animal matter is doing. The soul is a concept, not a thing, just as justice, beauty, and marriages are concepts. They have no existence independent of matter. It is not justice that CAUSES the bad guy to be arrested, tried, and jailed; justice is a DESCRIPTION of the fact that he was. Beauty does not (in the Platonic sense) cause Aphrodite to appear beautiful; it is simply a description of the fact that she is. The soul and its attributes do not cause human behaviour; they are a description OF that behaviour. If you don't believe in a literal Santa Clause, Virginia, but you do believe in the "spirit" of Santa, just how exactly are you using that word?

So Harpur's book is a great first step, but he needs to complete his analysis; and to truly free ourselves, we must not only understand that the scriptures are metaphoric but so too are spirits and souls. And the proper level of analysis of the universal truths revealed in myth and allegory is not divine, but indeed, psychological.

In his tenth book, The Pagan Christ, former Anglican priest and religious scholar, Tom Harpur, investigates the shadowy and distorted history of the Christian world in an attempt to illuminate what really lies at the heart of Christian belief. He presents a new image of Christian faith that begins with the assertion that Jesus of Nazareth was not born to a virgin, did not perform miracles, and did not die on the cross only to rise again in three days. The flesh and blood Jesus never really lived.
The historical veracity of the person of Jesus Christ is integral to the doctrine of every established Christian church. It is only by God becoming man, and dying that human beings can be forgiven of our sins, and our souls be saved. If Jesus never existed then it is all bunk. Harpur, however, argues that it is only by recognizing the metaphorical and ahistorical nature of the Jesus myths that one can understand what the Bible is all about.
The Pagan Christ was inspired by the work of three Egyptologists, most significantly Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880-1963). After the Rosetta Stone was used to decipher the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics these scholars argued that before Jesus was Jesus he was the Egyptian god Horus. Harpur draws out the likenesses between the images, characters, and events in the lives of Jesus and Horus. His argument for the mythological origins of Jesus is a strong blow to belief in a historical Jesus. He also examines the history of Christian thought to show that our contemporary ideas of Christianity were arrived at through editing, censorship, and accusations of heresy that were aimed at the expansion of Church control.
In the midst of this theological chaos what then is the true meaning of the Christ story? According to Harpur the story of Jesus is the story of the human soul; that the god-man is not a historical person, but the true nature of all beings. I do not appreciate overblown spiritual jibber-jabber, and the direct simplicity of this message was welcome.
The information that Harpur presents is powerful, and the new vision of Christianity that he offers has the potential to speak deeply to those who are disillusioned by the closed mindedness, believe-this-or-see-you-in-hell nature of mainstream Christianity. He can be repetitive, and sometimes seems to only be skimming the surface. He aims for accessibility, but he could still afford to raise the intellectual standard without the risk of alienating any readers. He writes with enthusiasm, but he comes too close to an evangelical zeal that gives me the willies, because it is precisely the kind of thing that has kept people like myself out of church since the age of twelve. These are elements of Harpur's book that are not to my taste, but the historical and textual analysis of the Bible in The Pagan Christ is still an exciting new vision of the world's most influential figure of the past two thousand years.

Excellent Book. The only problem is, Christians do NOT want to know the truth. Fraud, forgery and deciet keep this dying institution hanging on by its finger nails. Wake up "christians".

Following the advice of Socrates: "an unexaminied life is not worth living," I read all I can get my hands on for years now. But so much of what passes for religious writing has an agenda, usually made obvious from the first page. It's either for or against Christianity. If it's for, it's almost always an apologia. If against, it often strays way too far from psychological truth. But I've been searching for the source of Christianity. I want to know what excited people all those years ago. And this book, like the work of Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, is somewhat of a revelation. Not that that I didn't suspect some such might be the case (or something very like)...after all, so much of it is obvious if one does NOT have an agenda, but still--to have it laid out with chapter verse is so satisfying. Of course, this is not to say I agree with Harpur completely. I certainly don't. But he's opening boxes that need to be opened. It's been so long since people (of the West) understood their own myths. It's been so long since they even knew they were myths, and not literal truths as both the Catholics and Protestants would have us believe. By not knowing either of these things, few understand the deep symbolic truth behind the myth that drives their world. If they did, life would be so much richer and "safer" and fulfilling. Sad really. Now, having said all this, the strongest way to get to grips with myth and its meaning is not in endless discussion--but in story. Storytelling is our truest truth-telling. Like silent movies used to, story speaks to everyone, not just scholarly types. I recommend a book I just read, one that absolutely stunned me...The Secret Magdalene: A Novel by Ki Longfellow. This book takes material from everywhere and weaves together a spell-binding story about Mary Magdalene, Jesus, Judas, John the Baptist, Philo of Alexandria, Gnosticism, even Apollonius of Tyana, into a fascinating unput-downable tale of an astonishing woman ("who knew the All"). I can't recommend it highly enough. Eat your heart out, Dan Brown.

And of course, I recommend Harpur's books, as well as Gandy and Freke. Dandy stuff.

I applaud Mr. Harpur and the discussion that The Pagan Christ promotes about the origins of all organized religions. It is interesting to hear people talk about why they believe what they believe, as Mr. Harpur does. The book is worth reading for this alone.

Then, Harpur offers the reader a 128 source bibliography, 3 appendices with more background on research, a glossary, and detailed notes. There are many references to modern Egyptology and religious studies. In fact, 71 of the sources date from 1980 to 1999 and 18 of the sources date from 2000 to 2004 when the book was published. Harpur admittedly says that his book is an "investigation" into the history of Christianity, not intended as an attack but a "sincere and earnest search for spiritual truth".

Egyptologists and archeologists have ongoing debates as to dates of origin and the various methods of calculating dates. Can you blame them? We are talking about ancient times here, thousands of years, back to the Sumerians and invention of the wheel! So I can forgive Harpur and others for fudging a date. Etymology too is fraught with debate as we look at ancient languages with multiple meanings for one word depending on how it is used. I am not going to toss out the baby with the bathwater because there are minutia left to debate, as many of the Amazon commenters suggest.

WHAT IF it is true? That ancient Christianity and the Bible was intended to be allegorical, spiritual, and mythical rather than a literal interpretation? We have the right to ask the questions.

This book is an introduction to a journey that is truly monumental. The author admits that this book is for the public and not academia. It focuses on the roots of Christianity being in the immediate predecessor solar metaphor based religions from Egypt. I encourage the reader to read the works of the three cited authors relied on in the book, especially Massey. By going to the works of the primary sources for this book, the reader will find religious roots that go far deeper than what is discussed in this book. The reader will also find human history that goes back farther in time than most modern people have ever dreamed. The meticulous proof is in these source works. There are other key sources that the reader may discover by embarking on this journey. The beauty of this book is that it's an easy and inspiring read. The material in this book and the cited works is ancient and, at the same time, far ahead of its time. Figure that one out. My warning is that once you see this, there's really no turning back. Some aren't ready for it.