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Christ in Egypt: Introduction

#98: Aug. - Sept. 2011 (Non-Fiction)
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Robert Tulip

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Christ in Egypt: Introduction

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The Introduction to Christ In Egypt contains the following sections:

A Word about Primary Sources
Egyptian Language Translations
God, Man or Myth?
Who Is Gerald Massey?
Timeline of Destruction
The Art of Mythmaking

This post summarizes some main points in the first two sections.

Murdock sets out her goal to show the Egyptian influence on Christian faith. Her epigraphs for the chapter include comments from the second chapter of the New Testament, Matthew 2:15 "out of Egypt I have called my son"; from Augustine, who says true religion existed before Christ; and from Eusebius, who says Christianity was 'neither new nor strange'.

Each of these quotes is well chosen to illustrate the continuity of Christianity with its broader cultural context. Exploration of this context demonstrates how the popular received wisdom of a special Christian revelation deposited in the New Testament is utterly unfounded. Matthew's reference to Egypt at the beginning of his Gospel may well represent a hidden Egyptian influence on his whole text. Heavyweight theologians Augustine and Eusebius recognize the strong continuity between Christian dogma and earlier thought.

Murdock starts by pointing out that Egyptian religion was big, forming a 'matrix of culture' lasting thousands of years, for millions of people, that would have been difficult to overturn. The success of Christianity in obliterating knowledge of Egypt from the face of the earth for nearly two millennia is therefore a testament to the power of Christian methods. But it is not a testament to Christian truth; rather, Murdock suggests it reflects Christian readiness to resort to censorship and abuse. The cultural genocide of Egypt was culture war on a grand scale. Murdock says Christians advanced ridiculous ideas in a transparent play to usurp and disparage Egyptian religion. If this fact is established, it makes untrustworthy all the Christian claims that are founded on this original deceit. But it leads immediately to the big question, what was it about Egypt that the Christians found both so useful and so threatening?

Egyptians held large scale public mystery rituals that have what Murdock calls 'obvious parallels' in Christianity. But exploring these parallels requires careful scholarship. The well has been poisoned by Christians who resort to all sorts of apologies to deny the truth. Ancient Christians tried to conceal their fraud by burning the magnificent ancient library of Alexandria, and every non Christian book they could get their hands on, in what Murdock calls "a censorship rampage [of] ... criminal destruction on the part of the devout". Even today, Christians try to deny their debt to Egypt by claiming the records are too scanty. Unfortunately for them, enough of Egyptian culture survived the Christian onslaught to enable reconstruction of key themes in the evolution of culture from Egypt to Christianity. Christian apologism continues in the work of scholars and encyclopedists who distort the historical record through a faith prism. Even great Egyptologists such as Budge are guilty of this mistake.

The surprising thing is that "hieroglyphic texts can be read today almost as easily as those of any other language" (Dr James P Allen, Professor of Egyptology at Brown University - quoted CIE p8). Many people assume the code is inscrutable, but there was actually a massive successful effort by scholars in the nineteenth century to read what the Egyptians had to say. Many of these readings, such as the work of Gerald Massey, produced a fundamentalist Christian backlash, and ever since Egyptology has cowered in fear before the power of the church. Now that Christianity is regarded with some derision, it is again possible to consider this material objectively.
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Re: Christ in Egypt: Introduction

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Robert Tulip wrote:and from Eusebius, who says Christianity was 'neither new nor strange'.
While I can agree with the usage of the Augustine quote, the Eusebius quote I am a bit apprehensive about, since in the context of the quote he is referring to the Old Testament instead of something more ambiguous and applicable in a general sense such as Augustine's quote from 'Retractions' is. Nevertheless, I suppose that doesn't really change anything, as Judaism itself, as even admitted countless times via the Old Testament stories, bears much influence from Egypt, and so if xianity is heavily influenced by Judaism, and Judaism heavily influenced by Egypt, then by extension, you have Egypt influencing xianity. You can't escape it, the influence of Egypt on almost every culture of the ancient Mediterranean world was widespread and deeply ingrained. Much like how Herodotus, although sorely mistaken, claimed that the Greeks got pretty much all of their culture from Egypt. He claimed all their gods came from Egypt, all their philosophy, etc., all came from Egypt. Everybody wanted to somehow tie their heritage into Egypt because of the great legacy Egypt has. And evidently, as Exodus lets us know, the Jews were no exception to this desire.
Even great Egyptologists such as Budge are guilty of this mistake.
Another reason why using Budge is two edged sword. He even held to the now outdated position that the Egyptian view of resurrection was not bodily & corporeal, as did Massey. As I have shown in another thread on this site, this is easily debunked by more modern scholarship, such as that of Lois V. Zabkar or Bob Brier.

However, Budge does get too much flack. When I hear people saying his translations are outdated, I don't think they understand that this doesn't mean his works are useless. From what I've read from modern Egyptologists, Budge's translations aren't useless, but just inferior to translations which have come along since, but when they have no other translation on hand, they will use Budge, but with a grain of salt. I suppose you can liken it to how people today can still use the King James version of the Bible. Yes, it is highly outdated and has been surpassed by many translations that have come along since, but if you have no other translation, the King James will do fine, just take it with a grain of salt. But you can still get the jist of the Bible from using that translation alone. And so it is with Budge.
And for many, and I mean MANY pieces of Egyptian literature, Budge's translations are still the only translations available in English. So what else is a "lay scholar" to do aside from learning the various Egyptian dialects for his/her self?
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Another thing Murdock gets some flack for, which is addressed by the book, is her "credentials" and her usage of nineteenth century scholarship. But as Dr. Robert M. Price has stated in one of his articles, nineteenth century scholarship has for the most part just been pushed aside and forgotten without ever having been refuted. Much of it gets dismissed simply on account of being from the nineteenth century and nothing else. And that coming from someone whose "credentials" are beyond dispute.
And on that note, I recall there being quite a list of several credentialed scholars who have given CIE favorable reviews, so that criticism fails as well. Maybe Tat or Robert or someone can find that list and post them here if they can find it before I do. But getting back to the nineteenth century thing, in my own personal research, I've found that, like I mentioned with Budge, many, MANY pieces of Egyptian literature are ONLY recorded or translated by 19th century scholars, so it's not like modern scholarship has come along and done a complete and thorough overhaul, and until they do, like I said, what else do they expect the laymen to do? Just NOT bother with their interest in Egyptology?
One example of what I mean is, Mariette's recordings of the inscriptions at the Denderah temple. He discovered and recorded these inscriptions in the mid 19th century, and in FRENCH, and yet after all these years, to my knowledge, NO ONE else has come along yet and either updated his inscriptions & commentaries or even published an English translation of his work. So, in that particular area, we still must rely on Mariette's 19th century works if the layman wants to get as close to the primary source as possible. And it's frustrating that modern scholarship IS so neglectful at times with updating old works and yet still being so critical of the laymen who use those old works which THEY have for whatever reason not taken up the task to update. What else are we to do? We are essentially FORCED to rely on these so-called "outdated" works.
And this criticism really is another area that exposes many of the critics of Murdock and shows that they really have not done any research in this area of their own, but are simply repeating apologetic taglines, because whenever I encounter someone repeating this claim that she uses "outdated" scholarship, they typically only use it to do a hand wave dimissal. When you ask them what specifically in work X or Y is "outdated" and has been "refuted" my modern scholarship, and press them to cite a modern work stating as much, they can never do it. They typically just respond with something to the effect of "oh, come on, NO modern scholar takes nineteenth century works seriously". Yet they can't offer details to verify this. They just don't understand the situation at all.

But don't get the wrong idea about Murdock's book. She hardly relies on just nineteenth century works, the book is also FULL of countless citations from modern works, as well as primary source material to boot.
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Re: Christ in Egypt: Introduction

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Yeah, some critics have sought out the 19th century scholarship dismissal card. Especially as concerns Massey and others. That's really a lot of the motivation behind CiE. Here we find Murdock addressing these issues head on. Especially in setting the record straight on Massey's peer review. I like how she explains the destruction attempts of Christians in Egypt over the years which involved a method of trying to simply stucco over the glyphs that they couldn't chip away manually (p.5). It merely served to preserve the very glyphs which they were so eager to cover over and hide. It really wasn't until the last few centuries that scholarship had the opportunity to get into Egypt and do some in-depth research. The Rosetta Stone was pivotal as well. But sure enough, in the midst of Egyptian culture being brought back to the light of day as it were, we find people like Massey and others who were raised in Christian dominant Europe and the US and could therefore readily recognize how strikingly similar these ancient motifs were to what we understand as original to Christianity as of the first few centuries of the common era. And of course such observant, freethinking people are expected to be dragged through the mud by defenders of the faith.
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Re: Christ in Egypt: Introduction

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It is pretty extraordinary that science in the nineteenth century produced such ferment and progress, ranging from Darwin's Theory of Evolution to Maxwell's work on thermodynamics to Lyell's work on geology, to the development of chemistry. I think that Massey's work on Egypt should be seen in that context, as groundbreaking empirical analysis that overturns previous concepts.

Why hasn't Massey's work been widely recognised? The big reasons are all about culture and religion. Proving that religion is grounded in myth is a far less clearcut quantitative matter than the hard sciences. There is a lot of material in myth that is pretty woo woo, and it is fairly easy to tarnish empirical scholars with the errors of the speculators. There is prejudice among scientists about the legitimacy of mythology (think about the phrase 'its a myth'). The fundies got so burnt by Darwin that Massey proved an easy target for their fury, especially since to suggest Christ did not exist presents a far more fundamental challenge to Christian integrity than the scientific refutation of creation stories, devastating as Darwin's work was for conventional faith. Add that Egyptology has close links to Christian theology among the scholarly community, and you have the recipe for empirical work on this topic to be denigrated, and then for the smears to be reinforced as grounds to ignore the whole topic. Murdock is outside the establishment because careerism still corruptly demands that academics toe the line and avoid 'heresy'.

For example, I recently came across an Egyptologist who said the work of Norman Lockyer on Egypt was discredited. Now, Lockyer founded the Journal Nature, and discovered helium. He was no intellectual lightweight. But the scientists and the theologians find his interest in Egypt, published in The Dawn of Astronomy, to be embarrassing. They pick on small errors to then wrongly claim his overall message is unreliable. The same happened with Massey. It is a tried and true rhetorical tactic by unscrupulous bigots to denigrate any evidence that casts doubt on their dogmas. So it is really valuable to go back and read the works of great scholars such as Massey and Lockyer, to see that the criticisms of them are largely unfounded, and that Egypt studies is still a big untilled field.

Christ in Egypt shows empirical analysis of myth can be done, taking forward Budge's call for study of the relation between Egypt and Christianity. Murdock has argued (in Suns of God) that much of the older work on Egypt has excellent standards of scholarship, and that this topic has been unfairly neglected. The result has been that false Christian myths have been allowed to flourish unquestioned, while scientific analysis of religion is prevented by the power of faith. Hopefully this is now changing.
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Re: Christ in Egypt: Introduction

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Well, it's changing on small scale. For instance right here and now at BT. People see the book up front along side of Dawkins, Campbell, Harris, etc. I'm greatful to Chris for allowing this discussion regardless of how it's viewed as fringe by some. This is a topic that needs open discussion and public view.
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God, Man or Myth?

In this section, Murdock outlines some key epistemological problems that beset efforts to understand mythology. The traditional literal historical version of the Gospels, claiming that Jesus Christ was a real man, has entrenched deep confusion within religious debate. Murdock points out that "the majority of popular deities have constituted mythical entities who never were real people but who often largely represented natural and astronomical phenomena." (p11) This is a rather mind-bending assertion for people who have grown up with the close association between religion and the supernatural. It means that religious claims arise from an originally natural perspective that has been distorted by dogma. We see that ideas originated as metaphor, but over the course of transmission the metaphor got solidified into literal, but false, assertion, such as the panoply of Christian fundamentalist teachings.

She shows how the ancient writer Plutarch got stuck into Evemeros, for his theory that gods are built up by imaginary embroidery from history. Plutarch says Evemeros just didn't get it that the divinity of gods is mythical. He goes on to call Evemeros a deceitful atheist for dumbing down religion by popularising myths as historical fables. And this is just what Christianity did with Christ! Christianity started as a stellar myth and turned it into fictional history.

Dogmatists have a defective theory of knowledge (epistemology). For example (p10), one Renouf says it is 'generally agreed' that Osiris was an ancient king. This is rubbish. Renouf's theory just fails to engage with the Egyptian cosmic vision of Osiris as a metaphor for forces of nature. By turning the metaphor into imagined history, Renouf is actually atheist, because he ignores the cosmic source of myth.

And so, Murdock concludes that "the most scientific and valid evidence points to an origin for Jesus Christ as mythical and fabulous". (p12) 'Fabulous' is one of those words that have changed their meaning - here it means the story is a fable, not that it is very good. Seeing Jesus as myth actually restores to him the dignity that has been stripped by the fraudulent assertion that he was an actual man. This debate must have been part of why ancient pagans regarded Christians as atheist, because Christians made the absurd claim that the eternal truth of the universe could be incarnate in a single individual, and so reduced God to a material idol for worship.

Calling something a myth does not always just mean it is false. Writing off myth as error ignores the fact that "myth can be very profound and possess much meaning." (p12)

Murdock ends the section with a quote from a professor of Classics who contrasts 'the mystical and metaphysical' with 'reason and rationality'. These words are very slippery. Taken on face value, they imply that metaphysics is irrational. That is true for most metaphysical arguments, especially those that defend spurious claims about supernatural miracles. But part of the point of Egyptian religion is that they had a rational metaphysics, recognising that their god symbols were allegories for real observable natural events.
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Re: Christ in Egypt: Introduction

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I see a danger of letting down one's guard completely with what appears to be a non-critical attitude toward pre-Christian religion in Egypt. That this religion was in fact rational and at the same time myth-based stretches credibility. If it was all about aspects of the natural world, what then was the rational need for all the mythical actors themselves? All of these took on lives of their own, despite what we might call their 'natural' origins. Are we talking about Egyptian religion as practiced by the people, or some cognoscenti version understood by a few? There will always be an exoteric/esoteric split, whatever the religion being discussed. I'm getting the impression that the claim is that in Egypt, this wasn't the case.

I know I'm butting in here, but I'd like to see the discussion focus on Murdock's scholarship rather than on the misdeeds of the Christian fathers regarding the culture they borrowed from. The origin of xtianity in Egypt is a provable case, but the motivations and acts of the men who received and reshaped those traditions, much less so.
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Re: Christ in Egypt: Introduction

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DWill wrote:I see a danger of letting down one's guard completely with what appears to be a non-critical attitude toward pre-Christian religion in Egypt. That this religion was in fact rational and at the same time myth-based stretches credibility. If it was all about aspects of the natural world, what then was the rational need for all the mythical actors themselves? All of these took on lives of their own, despite what we might call their 'natural' origins. Are we talking about Egyptian religion as practiced by the people, or some cognoscenti version understood by a few? There will always be an exoteric/esoteric split, whatever the religion being discussed. I'm getting the impression that the claim is that in Egypt, this wasn't the case.
My understanding is that the esoteric/exoteric split between secret and public teachings in ancient Egypt was strong. Greek visitors commented how jealously the priests hid their secrets. This secrecy was part of the reason why Christianity was able to destroy Egyptian culture so comprehensively. It is impossible to fully reconstruct this lost material after the orgy of Christian destruction, but it is possible to analyze available material to ask what the most plausible explanations may have been for Egyptian beliefs. Any culture that lasted more than three thousand years and built such amazing monuments has to have some rationality.

On the natural basis of myth, as we will discuss in relation to later chapters, there are Egyptian texts which appear to equate Ra with the sun, for example. My understanding is that popular religion was often contradictory on this score, both accepting and not accepting the equation between Gods and forces of nature. This is all material that is open for critical analysis. It also illustrates that current use of some philosophical ideas in relation to myth is similarly open to critical analysis.
I know I'm butting in here, but I'd like to see the discussion focus on Murdock's scholarship rather than on the misdeeds of the Christian fathers regarding the culture they borrowed from. The origin of xtianity in Egypt is a provable case, but the motivations and acts of the men who received and reshaped those traditions, much less so.
The motivations and acts of the church fathers are a big part of the story of Christ in Egypt. Their denigration of Egypt, after basing their myths on old Egyptian stories, together with their destruction of information, serves to make it far more difficult, both practically and culturally, to get at the truth. This baleful influence of the church fathers continues today. Apologists assert that Massey has been 'debunked' and is 'out of date' when it just appears that these slurs are designed to exclude the Christ Myth Theory and astrotheology from public debate. Murdock points out that despite this prevailing climate of censorship and slander there is far more information about Egypt available than people might assume, and that the available information supports the Christ Myth Theory and astrotheology. The controversial content of this claim is a main theme in Christ in Egypt.
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Re: Christ in Egypt: Introduction

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Who Is Gerald Massey?

The section in the Introduction to Christ in Egypt titled Who Is Gerald Massey? sets out D.M. Murdock's main thesis in the book, while also analyzing the cultural pathology surrounding modern perceptions of ancient Egypt. This pathology uses literal Christian faith as an irrational shield to ignore major truths in human history.

Noting that England retained its old blasphemy laws on the statute books until 2008, and actively used these laws to jail and suppress scholars who enquired into the truth of Christian origins, Murdock sees Massey as a brilliant pioneer who was undeterred by this pervasive climate of ignorant intimidation and cowardice. Massey's work on Egypt was peer-reviewed by Samuel Birch, Keeper of the Department of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum and founder of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. Massey wrote that Birch "answered my questions, gave me his advice, discussed variant renderings, read whatever proofs I sent him, and corrected me where he saw I was wrong." (p15). It appears that Massey was utterly scrupulous in his statements, and extremely well informed about Egyptian and Christian religion.

So why is Massey routinely derided as "debunked" and "out of date" by Christian apologists? Murdock says "his conclusions as to the nonhistoricity and unoriginality of the Christian religion do not sit well with his detractors." Roman Catholics (who believe the absurd story of the literal virgin birth) called Massey a lunatic, basically because he exposed their delusions and hypocrisy. Massey's response was that "the time has passed for denunciation to be mistaken for disproof." Sadly, this statement assumes that reason has a higher status than it actually does.

We see here a classic battle between evidence and authority. Massey and Murdock are on the side of evidence and science, while their critics are on the side of authoritarian error. Massey called these critics "Bibliolaters first and scholars afterwards." (p16)

Another great scientist and contemporary of Massey, Sir Norman Lockyer, called the study of mythology "vital" for "knowledge of the thoughts and actions of the ancient Egyptians", as myth is "one of the poles of existence of every nation". Lockyer called for study of the astronomical basis of myth, especially through analysis of the cosmic alignment of monuments, founding the science of archaeoastronomy.

What rapidly emerges from this scientific method applied to historical research is that modern society also has its myths, such as the existence of Christ, and is unwilling to see these myths examined by the objective methods of science.

Murdock concludes that "Egyptian gods are reflective of ... natural phenomena", such as "cycles and characteristics of the sun, moon, planets, stars and so on, a fact demonstrated repeatedly by Gerald Massey, for one, to reveal the true meaning behind not only the Egyptian but also the Christian religion." (p19)

All this material encounters what Murdock astutely describes as an "academic blind spot". (p20) The problem is that institutionalized scholars "absorb attitudes as well as subject matter in the learning process", with "oversights and biases" constrained by "expedient ... motivations and financial considerations." Essentially, the university system is thoroughly corrupt, suffering from group-think induced by the influence of vested interests.

Murdock concludes this section by summarizing her thesis: If Egyptian myth is largely astronomical and highly influenced Christianity, then Christianity is astrotheological. (p23) Christ in Egypt is devoted to exploration of this claim, which if proven presents a seismic refutation of many false beliefs that are still widely held today.
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