Christ in Egypt The Twelve Followers

The twelve apostles, supposedly chosen by Jesus Christ as his circle of followers, present one of the most interesting themes discussed in Christ in Egypt regarding whether Christianity has mythical origins.

A number of ancient sources, notably the historians Josephus and Philo, and the early Christian theologians Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus of Lyon, recognised the linkage between the Jewish themes of twelve tribes or apostles and the twelve months of the year, represented by the signs of the zodiac. Herodotus, the father of history, said “the Egyptians first brought into use the names of the twelve gods, which the Greeks took over from them.” (p263)

D.M Murdock observes in her chapter on this topic (pp 261-281) that there is abundant ancient evidence of gods and heroes accompanied by twelve followers, from Horus to Hercules to Christ, apparently symbolising the sun and the twelve months of the year.

Josephus and Philo are generally among the most reliable of ancient sources as empirical historians. Josephus and Philo both said the twelve jewels on the breast plate of the high priest of Israel symbolized the twelve signs of the zodiac. (p261n) This is an immensely controversial observation, although entirely factual, and it is worth considering why Christians react to it with fear and loathing.

Christianity and Judaism are deeply hostile towards any hint of star worship, based on the direct condemnation of star worship in the Torah. The book of Deuteronomy is attributed to Moses but was actually written hundreds of years after the claimed time of Moses for King Josiah. It contains a direct condemnation of star worship as idolatry, suggesting that worship of nature deflects the focus of the believer from the universal transcendental one God Yahweh, who is heard in the word rather than seen in images. So ‘Moses’ says in chapter four of Deuteronomy “Yahweh spoke to you out of the midst of the fire: you heard the voice of words, but you saw no form … Lest you corrupt yourselves, and make yourself an engraved image in the form of any figure … and lest you lift up your eyes to the sky, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of the sky, you are drawn away and worship them, and serve them … Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of Yahweh your God, which he made with you … For Yahweh your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.”

So, when Christians see that Josephus and Philo say that the high priest’s breast plate symbolized the zodiac, or that Job 38:32 mentions the zodiac, the Pavlovian dogma reflex kicks into gear, with automatic denial of this ‘graven image’. They don’t like it that ancient Jews somehow saw the stars as sacred, so they think it can’t be true. But it is. The Judeo-Christian tradition emphasizes the transcendence of God. Recognizing the existence of natural symbols shows that this dominant other-worldly spiritual tradition distorts the reality, namely that religion has always been grounded in how our lives reflect the larger whole of the universe we see. Traditional views embed a pathology, with the idea of transcendence alienating us from the nature that is the source of life.

Murdock sets out the Egyptian origins of the twelve apostles in some detail, citing Massey’s observation that “the twelve of Horus” are found millennia before Christ. So, it is hardly surprising that this motif found its way into early theology, and that Clement and Irenaeus found it necessary to attack the ‘heresy’ that the twelve disciples are symbols of the twelve signs of the zodiac. As so often happened, this material in the Fathers caused a brain explosion among later pietists, who censored from view even the fact that the orthodox found it necessary to talk about such a topic. Clement’s statement that “according to the Valentinian Gnostics, ‘the apostles replaced the signs of the zodiac, for as birth is governed by the stars, rebirth is governed by the apostles’” (p262) was therefore deleted from Dark Age editions of his works.

Irenaeus said there are four gospels because there are four cardinal points of the compass, an interesting piece of cosmic logic. The logic of Irenaeus here reminds me somewhat of Monty Python’s holy hand grenade of Antioch “thou shalt count unto three, thou shalt not count unto two unless thou thence proceed unto three, and shall not count to four. Five is right out.” The numerology of why Irenaeus insisted there must be four gospels has an intriguing zodiac origin, which Murdock only alludes to. She mentions that the four sons of Horus “represented the four cardinal points, just like the four evangelists” and are represented by a man, a baboon, a jackal and a hawk. (p273) The interesting thing is that this myth found its way into the books of Ezekiel and Revelation, with the man, bull, lion and eagle based on the four cardinal constellations of the zodiac, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. So when Irenaeus says there are four evangelists, in light of these same ‘four living creatures’ serving as the symbols of the evangelists across Christian iconography, together with the cognate sons of Horus, we directly see the Egyptian astrotheological roots of Christianity.

Murdock mentions that the symbol of Christ and apostles as the sun and the zodiac occurs in later Christian imagery, for example with the English saint the venerable Bede. Why couldn’t even Bede help himself from supporting this naturalistic heresy? It is in fact a major esoteric hidden tradition, seen very prominently in church windows and literature. I claim to have solved the Da Vinci Code by proving that Leonardo’s The Last Supper is a clear depiction of the twelve constellations of the zodiac, but this material remains so subterranean that my work on this topic is ignored.

A lot of this material is rather speculative, but still interesting. For example, Murdock cites the claim that the Dendera Zodiac is based on the sky of 10,000 BC, when the sun was in Leo at the spring equinox, hooking in to the speculation that Egyptian civilization is much older than is known. (p265) This is a very difficult question to have any certainty on, given the absence of archaeological records before the dynastic period began in about 3000 BC. But there is support from Budge, who said “we are fully justified in assuming that the earliest forms of the zodiac date from an exceedingly primitive time.” One image that I find fascinating in this regard is the stela between the paws of the Sphinx of Giza, depicting Leo and Aquarius, like a rough slumbering beast, pointing to the emerging axial alignment of precession of the equinox as a time of celestial harmony.

The Gnostics, whose works were formative for Christianity, made extensive reference to cosmic themes, hence the vitriol directed at them by the orthodox. One early text, the Pistis Sophia (Wise Faith), describes twelve governors in the circle of the dragon of darkness, an image Budge says was borrowed from Egyptian myth, and which Murdock and others have suggested is a zodiac reference that evolved into the myth of the twelve apostles. In summary, she contends that “Christianity represents Gnosticism historicized and Judaized” as “a synthesis of Egyptian, Jewish and Greek religion and mythology.” (p278)

This theme of religious synthesis appears most vividly in the ancient cult of Serapis, a God combining Osiris with Apis the Bull, invented by Alexander the Great to unite Egyptians and Greeks in the Hellenistic Empire in the fourth century BC. Roman Emperor Hadrian thought in the early second century that Christians worshiped Serapis, and were all astrologers. This is hardly surprising, and probably true, in view of the imagery of Serapis in which he looks exactly like conventional portraits of Jesus. Murdock notes that Serapis morphed into Jesus as one of the factions rolled together to make Christianity. The drawing on page 284 of Serapis surrounded by the signs of the zodiac shows his similarity to Christ.

It's interesting this business of the twelve.

I look at the clock on the wall and see the 12 circling the 13th in the centre

Then think of christ in the centre of the 12 apostles

Then think of the sun and the 12 constellations.

All metaphors for us, our core consciousness surrounded by 12 aspects of living in time and space that need to be brought into harmony so that the spirit can fly so to speak unhindered by imbalance in the various aspects of being in matter.

Metaphor seems to be the key

All is metaphor it seems, the moon with it's 28 day cycle, the sun with it's life giving potency, perfect metaphors for female and male etc etc silver and gold blah blah blah

But to what is the metaphor pointing, what is the transcendant reality that can only be referred to with such metaphor, and can it be experienced by mere mortals.

I'm with Blake on this one, if the doors of perception were cleansed, we would see everything as it truly is - infinite!

It's such good news, a direct experience that transcends the secondary interpretation of the brain.

A life before death, and an answer to the absurdity of the bullshit we are fed in the dark.

They all say the same thing those who found their way through the metaphorical labyrinth, something along these lines

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDAcbxz0fuQ&ob=av3e

Hi youkrst, thanks for joining the discussion. Tat and I previously debated the role of the infinite that you raise here in reference to Blake with his infinity in a grain of sand. I am of the view that reality is finite, and any talk of the infinite is irrelevant speculation. So, in the examples you give, the sun and twelve months are not metaphor, but reality, framing the actual physical structure of terrestrial time. Christ and the apostles are a metaphor for the sun and the months, which are real.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHuebHTD-lY

that is a link to the sublime tune black and gold where of course black is a metaphor for matter and gold is a metaphor for consciousness

in the tune there is a line

if vision is the only validation then most of my life isnt real

the view that reality is a single 5 sense perception in time and space is anathema to me, on a daily basis i prove the transcendant can break through any time at all (as the beatles would say)

reality is a word that means different things to different people much like the word mexico or the word god

i am just greatly relieved that those who lied through their teeth at me were proved to be liars and truth is justified in her children

viva la metaphor

and chocs away

And they are also metaphorical of the mystery underlying the very existence of the sun and months too. The question of the ancients is more along the lines of that these finite observable objects in space exist in what? An endless realm of existence that has no end? In that way the finite objects of time and space represent the finite and infinite together in unity. The finite object (including man) is essentially formed out of the realm of existence which is itself necessarily infinite and unbound. The man is two things - a finite form and mere existence (the fabric and structure thereof) which is necessarily infinite.

"I and the Father are one."

If we understand Jesus as allegory for the Sun, and the Father as allegory for Existence (I was, am, will be), then yes, the two are essentially one. There's no possible way of saying otherwise. They can not be separated from one another - the sun and mere existence as the realm in which the sun exists. This brings the enlightenment doctrines of eastern and western mystical thought into a Judaized setting...

To add even more historical context to the theme of the 12 in Christ in Egypt, Acharya has created a thread on this subject with a long list of both biblical and Pagan examples of the 12 theme.

The Twelve in the Bible and Ancient Mythology

I thought it was very well done and worth posting here for others to see.

This chapter (pp. 261 ff) brings together tantalizing fragmentary clues to show that the Christian archetype of Christ and the twelve disciples exhibits strong continuity with Egyptian tradition in which a solar deity is accompanied by twelve followers who represent the twelve signs of the zodiac as the path of the sun through the months of the year.

The introductory quotes include a statement from the book Egyptian Belief and Modern Thought by James Bonwick that Osiris had twelve companions who were the signs of the zodiac, and by Gerald Massey, from Ancient Egypt: Light of the World, that Horus similarly had twelve followers.

Murdock points out how this information has been suppressed, as I noted in the opening post. For example (262n), Church Father Clement of Alexandria criticize the Gnostic view that "the apostles replaced the signs of the zodiac", but this comment was deleted by a Christian translator of Clement, Rev. William Wilson, in a typical fit of bigoted censorship. Similarly, encyclopedias who are sensitive to the prejudices of the pious tend to ignore material that indicates the antiquity of knowledge of the zodiac.

But such knowledge can be found, although the sources are fragmentary and hard to find. One easy source is Herodotus, who Murdock cites as saying "the Egyptians first brought into use the names of the twelve Gods, which the Greeks took over from them." (p263) At this same point (2.4), Herodotus also said "The Egyptians, they said, were the first to discover the solar year, and to portion out its course into twelve parts. They obtained this knowledge from the stars."

The authoritative Egyptologist Budge says "we are fully justified in assuming that the earliest forms of the zodiac date from an exceedingly primitive time." (265)

Murdock also illustrates the antiquity of Jewish reverence for the zodiac, citing Josephus and Philo (261n) who both say the breastplate of the high priest of Israel symbolised the twelve signs of the zodiac. Job, probably the oldest book in the Bible, mentions the zodiac and calls it the Mazzaroth, Enoch's eighth heaven. Job has similarities to even older texts.

It seems also (p265) that Egypt knew of precession of the equinox well before the purported discovery by Hipparchus, as they realigned their temples over centuries to point to stars that shifted due to precession. Norman Lockyer's wonderful book The Dawn of Astronomy has a lot of information on this finding.

It would be great to go to Egypt and check out some of the sources that Murdock cites from inaccessible old books. For example, the wonderful temples at Luxor apparently contain "symbols corresponding to zodiacal signs in most of the halls and chambers in which medieval astrology would have assigned them."

This material is difficult, and Murdock expresses caution regarding Massey's speculation on it, while recognising his ideas present "an intriguing hypothesis for further study." (p269)

In a tomb at Thebes, Budge says Horus is accompanied by twelve gods who protect the tomb of Osiris. (270) Murdock finds this an important antecedent for Christ and the twelve disciples as assistants and helpers. However, the Egyptian use of this motif appears to be veiled in priestly secrecy, so the clues remain rather tantalizing. There is enough there though, to show that this astral theme was central.

It may be asked why twelve? As I see it, the reason we have twelve months in the year is not just to track the moon, but because there is probably a natural division of orbital time into twelve, one that science has not yet been able to fully explain. The prejudice against this material in Christian sources also carries over to science, with the result that analysis of such questions is very preliminary. We see that Pythagoras emphasised the number twelve, and the scientific tendency these days is to say that is just irrational numerology. However, the fact is that the division of a musical scale into twelve semitones arises from the simplest harmonic, the cycle of fifths, with a tiny error known as the Pythagorean comma. A while ago I proposed an experiment in fluid dynamics to explore how the four turning points, the solstices and equinoxes, generate a clock face of twelve hours as the simplest next level. I have not yet conducted this experiment, but it would be interesting if I can find time.

That's interesting Robert. And certainly something worthy of deeper investigation.

Hi FTL, many thanks for linking to this brilliant article. I hope others will read it. It is somewhat peripheral to the thread on Isis and Mary, so I am replying here, as this thread is the one that most closely discusses how myth symbolises the cosmos. Murdock points out in her article that the ancients were not stupid, and that the common theme of seven Gods, for example in Babylon and Sumer, symbolises the seven visible planets, including the Sun and Moon.

Just to note one small error in the article, Barbara Walker says Mars was regarded as the second crystalline sphere. Actually it was the fifth, as shown in the image at the bottom of this post. The Moon is the closest to earth, while Mercury and Venus come next, as they travel with the Sun, which is the fourth sphere. The outer planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, appear to be outside the orbit of the sun from a geocentric cosmology.

Here is a quote from Murdock's article on the planets as gods, to whet the appetite for readers to consider the whole article, linked in your post.


http://www.thebigview.com/spacetime/universe.html

Great stuff as always. I wanted to reiterate a few things here that I find to be fascinating and that need some clarification. I will be including this discussion of the upcoming revision of my book The Christ Conspiracy.

The Holy Twelve

As I demonstrate in the chapter in Christ in Egypt called "The Twelve Followers" (CIE, 261-284), like the Greeks and Romans with their pantheons of 12 gods, the Egyptians likewise possessed a configuration of the "Holy Twelve," with either a god as part of a group of 12 or as a leader of 12 followers. This Egyptian 12 motif is found in Herodotus, for one, dating to the fifth century BCE, but he is clearly reflecting a much older tradition, as can be found in Egyptian architecture, such as the Horus temple at the side of Tharu in the Sinai along the Horus Road. This 3,000-year-old temple "houses a dozen rooms," and in consideration of the 12 configuration on earlier tomb paintings, I would not be surprised if it represents a much older tradition.

For example, from the Book of the Amduat, which dates to the New Kingdom (16th-11th cents. BCE), comes the following image:



The above image is of Horus enthroned before his twelve "helpers," from the Seventh Hour of the Amduat. (Hornuning, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, 48)

There's an interesting discussion of the back and forths of this specific subject at my forum:

Horus and the Twelve 'Disciples'

It would seem that in earliest times the Egyptian Twelve represented the hours of day or night, rather than the months or zodiac signs, although these latter were undoubtedly associated with Egyptian deities centuries before the common era. Indeed, in CIE (265ff), I recount an interesting study of the rudiments of the zodiac in Egypt possibly 3,000 or more years ago.

The Motif of the God and the 12

The point, of course, is not whether or not the Christian version of this motif is exact in all particulars - including calling the 12 "disciples" - but that the configuration of the god/godman and the 12 "helpers" and "followers," or even as part of a group of 12, long predates the Christian era by centuries, as an aspect of mythology, not history. Most people who believe in a historical Jesus are not aware of this pre-Christian "Holy Twelve" configuration, even though early Church fathers themselves - as does the New Testament (Mt 19:28) - identified Jesus's 12 with the 12 tribes of Israel, which in turn were associated by Josephus and Philo with the 12 signs of the zodiac, an association that likely preceded the Christian era by several centuries, if not more.

See Exodus 39:9-14:


As Josephus says (Antiquities, 3.8 ):


Earlier than Josephus, Philo ("On the Life of Moses," 12) had made the same comments regarding Moses:


Some have debated whether or not the 12 zodiacal divisions were in existence when the 12 Israelite tribes were created. However, there is little evidence that the biblical tale represents 'history" of events that really occurred at that time. Indeed, although some parts of biblical tales undoubtedly represent old oral traditions, there is no evidence for a written Bible before the 7th century BCE or so, per the scholarship of Israel archaeologist Dr. Israel Finkelstein in The Bible Unearthed. Moreover, there remains a debate as to when the 12-division zodiac was actually devised, even if it concretely emerges in the extant archaeological/historical record in Babylon only around the 7th century. Some scholars and researchers push the zodiac's origin back to some 5,000 or more years ago, and, as earlier stated, there is some interesting research examining possible zodiacal rudiments in Egypt before the Babylonian development.

In the Bible, the term "Mazzaroth" appears in the Book of Job (38:22) - one of the oldest biblical texts but still dated by most scholars only to the 6th-4th centuries BCE) - a word commonly accepted by mainstream scholarship to refer to (Strong's H2416) "the 12 signs of the Zodiac and their 36 associated constellations."

If one factors in the second-century association of the Christian 12 with the signs of the zodiac, an idea that persisted for many centuries, we can see that this identification comes from Jews and Christians themselves, not from modern scholars.



Above is a mosaic of the zodiac with the Greek sun god Helios in the middle, found on the floor of a Jewish synagogue (6th cent. AD/CE) at Beit Alpha, Israel. There are several other such representations, the earliest extant of which is from the fourth century of the common era.

Images like the following became fairly common after the seventh century or so:


Miniature zodiac, with Helios (Sun) as Christ in his solar chariot drawn by four horses, surrounded by the apostles, corresponding to the zodiacal signs; 813-820 AD/CE; Vaticanus graecus 1291

At the link previously provided by FTL, there's a long list I compiled about the 12 motif in biblical and pagan religion and mythology - here is again reproduced for your ease of reference.

Biblical examples:

The 12 Princes of Ishmael (Gen 17:20)
The 12 Sons of Jacob (Gen 35:22)
The 12 Tribes of Israel (Gen 49:28)
The 12 Prophets and Kings of Israel
The 12 Wells of Water (Exd 15:27)
The 12 Pillars of the Lord (Exd 24:4)
The 12 Stones of the Breastplate (Exd 39:14)
The 12 Cakes of the Tabernacle (Lev 24:5)
The 12 Princes of Israel (Num 1:44)
The 12 Oxen of the Tabernacle (Num 7:3)
The 12 Chargers of Silver, Bowls of Silver and Spoons of Gold (Num 7:84)
The 12 Bullocks, Rams, Lambs and Kids of the Offering (Num 7:87)
The 12 Rods of the Princes of Israel (Num 17:6)
The 12 Stones of Joshua (Jos 4:8)
The 12 Cities (Jos 18:24, 19:25, 21:7, 21:40)
The 12 Judges of Israel (Jdg 3, 4, 6, 10, 12, 13)
The 12 Pieces of the Concubine (Jdg 19:29)
The 12 Servants of David (2 Sa 2:15)
The 12 Officers of Solomon (1 Ki 4:7)
The 12 Lions of Solomon (1 Ki 10:20)
The 12 Pieces of Jeroboam‘s Garment (1 Ki 11:30)
The 12 Stones of Elijah (1 Ki 18:31)
The 12 Bronze Bulls of Solomon (Jer 52:20)
The 12 Disciples/Apostles of Jesus (Mt 10:1-2)
The 12 Baskets of Bread (Mt 14:20)
The 12 Thrones in Heaven (Mt 19:28)
The 12 Legions of Angels (Mt 26:53)
The 12 Patriarchs of Israel (Acts 7:8)
The 12 Stars of the Woman‘s Crown (Rev 12:1)
The 12 Gates, Angels and Pearls of Holy Jerusalem (Rev 21:12, 21)
The 12 Fruits of the Tree of Life (Rev 22:2)

Pagan examples:

The 12 Ahhazu or Demons of the Sumerians
The 12 Tablets/Adventures of Gilgamesh
The 12 Gods of Egypt
The 12 Divisions of the Tuat
The 12 Companions of Horus/Osiris
The 12 Olympian Gods
The 12 Tasks of Hercules
The 12 Daughters of Priam
The 12 Children of Amphion and Niobe
The 12 Daughters of Boeotia and Metope
The 12 Gods of the Romans and Etruscans
The 12 Sons of the Etruscan Mother Goddess
The 12 Shields of Mars
The 12 Altars of Janus
The 12 Aeons of the Gnostics
The 12 Devas of India
The 12 Names of the Indian Sun God Surya
The 12 Terrifying Aspects of Shiva
The 12 Adityas of the Indian Mother of Worlds
The 12 Labors of the Virgin-Born Arjuna
The 12 Generals of Ahura-Mazda
The 12 Aesir of the Norse
The 12 Berserkers of the Norse
The 12 Mountains of Ebhlenn
The 12 Horse-Children of Boreas
The 12 White Horses of the Polish Sun God
The 12 Stones of Cenn Cruiach
The 12 Rivers of the Elivagar
The 12 Horses and Hounds of Gwydion
The 12 Moons of China
The 12 Generals of the Japanese Divine Physician
The 12 Yiyantsinni of the Navaho, Pueblo, Iroquois
The 12 First People of the Navajo

(Murdock, ZEITGEIST Sourcebook, pp. 65-68, #33)

As we can see, this motif has been extremely important for thousands of years! There is little reason to suggest the "Holy Twelve" motif represents "history," although people certainly could have emulated this sacred configuration by deliberately creating 12 tribes or organizations headed by 12 elders or "apostles."

One of the highlights of our other discussion is the apologetic response of trying to pull up the whole inscription with a total of 24 persons, as if that debunks Horus and the 12:

But, of course, the inscription that was chosen in the first place was chosen because 12 male helpers are clearly facing Horus - the 12 hours of day. The next order of 12 helpers are female and represent the nocturnal hours facing away from Horus and towards Set. Which simply further expands and outlines the motif of 12 helpers in mythology. That just goes to show the type of knee-jerk reactions apologists are having when confronted with this material...