December 8, 2014

Debunking the Jesus Debunkers

I first heard the claim that Jesus was a copycat of the Egyptian god Horus when I watched the so-called documentary Religulous. Horus supposedly walked on water, was born from a virgin, healed the sick, etc. Naturally, I was skeptical and tried doing some research but found only biased opinions that weren’t backed by much evidence. So what’s the deal?

As for the crucifixion and resurrection, the party involved wasn’t Horus but Osiris, as per the above. Except Osiris wasn’t crucified—Seth initially had him nailed into a coffin. And he wasn’t really resurrected, just revived long enough to be a sperm donor, after which he died again.

Then again, there really isn’t a canonical version of the Horus story. Browsing through the stelae, I find a variant in which the child Horus is stung to death by a scorpion, then restored to life by the god Thoth. So OK, are there points of similarity between Jesus and Horus? I’ll be big about it and say sure. Is one copied from the other? Get out.

But let’s not fixate on Horus. The real difference between Egyptian mythology and the story of Jesus is that the former is clearly a fable full of beings with super powers, whereas the latter is told in realistic terms with the occasional miracle thrown in. The simplest explanation for this is that the New Testament is largely about a real person, with embellishments added to impress the rubes or make a doctrinal point. I venture to say this was the working assumption among a sizable fraction of scholars for a long time, and many still hold to it. But I’d also say there’s a hardening realization that, setting aside obvious supernatural elements, we’ll never know which if any parts of the Gospel describe actual events and which are made up.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/42717/straight-dope-debunking-the-jesus-debunkers/