Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Murdock's scholarship is relentless!My name is Ken Feder. I am an archaeologist, and I play one on TV, as a talking head in various documentaries on the National Geographic Channel, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, ScFi, BBC Horizon, and, as it turns out, even the Weather Channel. Having conducted research and written extensively over the course of the last thirty years, I think I have developed a good eye for recognizing valuable research that is worthy of serious consideration when I see it. And the research conducted by D.M. Murdock concerning the myth of Jesus Christ is certainly both valuable and worthy of consideration.Everyone who reads Murdock'sChrist in Egyptshould understand that the sources she cites are anything but marginal or questionable. In fact, her sources are, at least as far as I can tell, entirely within the Egyptology mainstream and many are, in fact, revered, and deservedly so, within the community of Egyptologists. The fact that these sources are mainstream, highly respected, or even seminal does not, of course, make them right about the origins of the Christ story. However, it does make them, and Murdock's thesis in which she incorporates their work, impossible to dismiss out of hand.Read her book. Criticize it if you believe it deserves criticism. But to dismiss it or get apoplectic about her thesis simply because it shocks you is plainly foolish. --Kenneth L. Feder, PhD,Frauds, Myths and MysteriesI find myself in full agreement with Acharya S/D.M. Murdock.We are in agreement on the thoroughly syncretic character of primitive Christianity, evolving from earlier mythemes and rituals, especially those of Egypt. It is almost as important in Christ in Egypt to argue for an astro-religious origin for the mythemes, and there, too, I agree with the learned author.I find it undeniable that...many, many of the epic heroes and ancient patriarchs and matriarchs of the Old Testament were personified stars, planets, and constellations....for Egyptian influence to have become integral to Israelite religion even from pre-biblical times is only natural given the fact that from 3000 BCE Egypt ruled Canaan. We are not talking about some far-fetched borrowing from an alien cultural sphere.Murdock ventures that "the creators of the Christ myth did not simply take an already formed story, scratch out the name Osiris or Horus, and replace it with Jesus" (p. 25). But I am pretty much ready to go the whole way and suggest that Jesus is simply Osiris going under a new name, Jesus, "Savior," hitherto an epithet, but made into a name on Jewish soil.I find myself in full agreement with Acharya S/D.M. Murdock: "we assert that Christianity constitutes Gnosticism historicized and Judaized, likewise representing a synthesis of Egyptian, Jewish and Greek religion and mythology, among others [including Buddhism, via King Asoka's missionaries] from around the 'known world'" (p. 278). "Christianity is largely the product of Egyptian religion being Judaized and historicized" (p. 482). --Robert M. Price, PhD,The Pre-Nicene New Testament