Defending the faith: a pagan's christ

By W. Ward Gasque

• Tom Harpur: The Pagan Christ, Thomas Allen, 2004.

The Pagan Christ focuses mainly on Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880 ­ 1963), who argued that the key ideas of Judaism and Christianity came mainly from Egyptian religion. Harpur maintains that Kuhn "towers above all others of recent memory in . . . his understanding of the world's religions." He declares himself "stunned at the silence with which [Kuhn's] writings have been greeted by scholars."

Kuhn wrote that Christ's life "is paralleled in the lives of the 20 or more 'World Saviours,' including Thoth, Orpheus . . . Buddha, Krishna, Dionysus, Osiris, Zoroaster [and] Apollonius." Originally, he contended, no one believed the Bible to be literally true; the narratives in the Hebrew and Greek scriptures were interpreted as myth or symbol, not history. However, he maintained, toward the end of the third century AD, the leaders of the church began to misinterpret the Bible.

For Kuhn, the key concept was the incarnation, which meant that every person could have Christ within them. He believed that the leaders of what became Christian orthodoxy made a tragic mistake by identifying this religious experience with a historical event ­ namely, the birth, life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

According to Harpur, there is no evidence that Jesus ever lived. He claims that virtually all the details of the life and teachings of Jesus have their counterpart in Egyptian religious ideas; he also maintains there are strong parallels between Christ's life and Greek, Hindu and Buddhist myths. Harpur claims:

• 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 12 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 incarnation "is in fact the oldest, most universal mythos known to religion. It was current in the Osirian religion in Egypt at least 4,000 years BCE."

I consulted 10 expert Egyptologists, and the consensus of opinion was that there is no evidence for the idea that Horus was virgin born. Further, the New Testament Mary was certainly not a goddess, like Isis. There is no evidence for the idea that Horus was 'a fisher of men' ­ or that his followers, the king's officials, were ever 12 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 BCE, 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.

Virtually none of the alleged evidence in The Pagan Christ is documented by reference to original sources. The notes ­ which frequently refer to long-out-of-date works ­ abound with errors and omissions. Many quotations are taken out of context and clearly misinterpreted.

The book is chock full of questionable claims, such as: that "Christianity began as a cult with almost wholly Pagan origins and motivations in the first century"; that nearly all of the most creative leaders of the earliest church were pronounced heretics and reviled by "those who had swept in and grabbed control of [church] policies"; that "apart from the four Gospels . . . and the Epistles, there is no hard, historical evidence for Jesus' existence coming out of the first century at all."

Harpur claims that "the greatest cover-up of all time" was perpetrated at the beginning of the fourth century; and that thousands of Christian scholars have a vested interest in maintaining the myth that there was an actual Jesus who lived in history.

Presumably, the Jewish, Unitarian, secular and very liberal Christians who happen to be recognized scholars have no axes to grind regarding whether or not Jesus actually lived, or whether most of the ideas found in the Bible stem from Egyptian or other Near Eastern religions. It would be unlikely that you could find more than a handful who believe that Jesus of Nazareth did not live and walk the dusty roads of Palestine.

Harpur's book is based on the work of self-appointed 'scholars,' who seek to excavate literary and archaeological resources of the ancient world the way a crossword puzzle enthusiast mines dictionaries and lists of words ­ rather than by primary scholarship.

W. Ward Gasque is a co-founder of Regent College and a historian of early Christianity.