Christ in Egypt: The Twelve Followers
Posted: Wed Aug 10, 2011 9:09 am
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.
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.