W. Ward Gasque, Ph.D., “The Leading Religion Writer in Canada … Does He Know What He’s Talking About?,” History News Network, August 17, 2004 AD.
The one time Anglican priest Tom Harpur wrote a book titled, “The Pagan Christ” which “is the story of his discovery of the writings of one Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880-1963)…who argued that all of the essential ideas of both Judaism and Christianity came primarily from Egyptian religion”:
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 [Godfrey] Higgins [1771-1834 AD] & [Gerald] Massey [1828-1907 AD])…
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 The notes refer mainly to Kuhn, Higgins, Massey, or some other long-out-of-date work.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). [emphasis added for emphasis]
“Who is Alvin Boyd Kuhn? He is given the title ‘Egyptologist’” by Tom Harpur yet, “As it turns out, Kuhn was a high school language teacher who was an enthusiastic proponent of Theosophy” who “self-published most of his books.” Theosophy is an occult cult which did what? Attempted to mix and match the world’s Pagan myths.
W. Ward Gasque contacted “twenty leading Egyptologists” from six countries and asked them about claims made by Kuhn, Harpur, et al. specifically various claims that have been parroted by Bill Maher, Raphael Lataster, Dan Brown, the Zeitgeist propaganda film, etc. which I will relate one by one below.
University of Liverpool’s Prof. Kenneth A. Kitchen noted that Kuhn, Higgins and Massey are not even listed in M. L. Bierbrier’s Who Was Who in Egyptology and they also are not named in Ida A. Pratt’s “very extensive bibliography on Ancient Egypt (1925/1942).”
One Egyptologist noted that anyone can claim the title of “Egyptologist” or themselves which leads to various and sundry claims that “Egyptologists” claim this or that—especially, I would add, those pseudo-Egyptologists that are unknown to scholarly Egyptologists and self-publish that which they will (sans quotations, citations, references to primary source materials, etc.): “He goes on to refer to Kuhn’s ‘fringe nonsense.’”
On the note of self appointing, note:
Tom Harpur has based The Pagan Christ on the work of self-appointed “scholars” who seek to excavate the literary and archaeological resources of the ancient world the same way an avid crossword puzzle enthusiast mines dictionaries and lists of words.
Now to the specific claims:
That the name of Jesus was derived from the Egyptian “Iusa,” which means “the coming divine Son who heals or saves”.
Generally, “scholars were unanimous in dismissing the suggested etymologies for Jesus and Christ.”
Specifically Professor of Egyptology at the University of Toronto, Ron Leprohan, noted that “iu” means “to come” and “sa” means “son” yet, the syntax is erroneous as “Iusa” is unknown in Egyptian. Also, the name “Jesus” is a Greek form of the Hebrew name Yehoshua or Y’hoshua (as in Joshua) and is generally known as Yeshua or Y’shua (Josh).
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 there is iconography of Isis holding Horus as a baby and the later Mary holding Jesus as a baby is as significant as a photo of your mom holding you as a baby. Gasque noted, “There is no evidence for the idea that Horus was virgin born” and, in fact, there is evidence that he was not.
In Legends of the Gods – The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations, Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge, the Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient Near East, noted the following in chap V which is titled (with emphasis added for emphasis) “Legend Of The Birth Of Horus, Son Of Isis And Osiris. “Attention was first called to” a stele “by Chabas” in 1857 AD, “The hieroglyphic text was first published by Ledrain in his work on the monuments of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and I gave a transcript of the text, with transliteration and translation, in 1895” it was “probably composed under the XVIIIth Dynasty.”
“The last paragraph of the text contains an allusion to Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, and mentions the legend of the birth of Horus…Set succeeded in killing Osiris” moreover, “the Pyramid Texts state that the body of Osiris was hurled to the ground by Set…Isis, and she at once set out to find his body…she took the form of a bird…late form of the legend goes on to say that Isis fanned the body with her feathers, and produced air, and that at length she caused the inert members of Osiris to move, and drew from him his essence, wherefrom she produced her child Horus.”
Thus, his relevant body parts “the inert members” began to animate, to “move” and she “drew from him his essence, wherefrom she produced her child Horus” which is a reference to the physical act of seed passing from a male sex organ into a female one.
Furthermore, the Pyramid Texts contains a hymn to Osiris which states, “Thy elder sister” keeping in mind that Isis was his sister and wife, “clasped thee to her breast [when] she found thee…Thy sister Isis cometh to thee rejoicing in her love for thee. Thou hast union with her, thy seed entereth her. She conceiveth in the form of the star Septet (Sothis). Horus-Sept issueth from thee in the form of Horus…Horus, the son who avenged his father …Horus, son of Isis, the flesh and bone of Osiris.” Well, this just gets expliciter and expliciter.
Other versions of the myth include/add details such as that Set tore Osiris’ body into fourteen pieces and scattered them. Isis manages to find them all except for his schmekel—the key portion, shall we say. Thus, she magicks up a replacement which, some claim, is represented by the obelisk although some claim that the obelisk represents a petrified Sun ray.
In other words, no matter how the myth plays out: physical interaction result in Horus’ birth.
That Horus also “had a virgin birth, and that in one of his roles, he was ‘a fisher of men with twelve followers.’”
W. Ward Gasque notes, “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.”
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”
On this point, the following is noted:
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’.”
Lastly is one more that deals with etymology:
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.” [ellipses in original]
The reply to this one is as follows:
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.)
Let us end with a succinct statement by W. Ward Gasque, “In short, Harpur’s book tells us more about himself than it does about the origins of Christianity (or Judaism).”
And yet, utterly discredited texts such as “The Pagan Christ” may not be quoted or cited anymore but they are certainly paraphrased to no end by pop-pseudo-“researchers.”
For another debunking of Harpur, see J.P. Holding’s Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ: A Critique.
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