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Since the word "myth" occurs quite often when dealing with the subject of the Ancient Sun-gods, it is necessary to define it so that we may the better glimpse the nature of the subject. To the modern mind the word carries with it a derogatory implication. To reduce any subject matter to the status of a myth is the "kiss of death" to most people and immediately renders the subject at hand as worthless. This comes from growing up in a modern culture that is "literalistic" to the core and has either forgotten or never learned that the medium of "myth and legend" was the very genius of the Ancients to capture Divine Truths for all eternity. Just think for a moment; here we live some 15,000 yrs removed from Ancient Egypt but the myths of Osiris, Horus, and Isis are yet worldwide in our day and as should be expected the myth of Osiris, Horus and Isis can be found upon study to be the very underpinnings of almost all world religions today. We have heard of these names but few know that the very substrate of their religious worship today, regardless of the name of their religion, come from this origin of Divine Spiritual Concepts which were originally represented by Egypt in their myths of Osiris, Horus, and Isis. The irony is that our "Jesus Story" which is the center of our Western Occidental thinking finds its origin right there in Egypt with Osiris, Horus, and Isis as well. Instead of an allegorical understanding of God expressed through the vehicle of myths as was done by these Ancient Spiritual Masters of the Orient or Eastern hemisphere who were not nearly as "literal" as we "westerners" and were more subjective in their thinking and thereby shrouded their wisdom in symbols, methaphors, legends, and myths, we living in the Western hemisphere usually regard everything "literally" and consider such religious myth of Egypt and "pagan" as a worthless fiction and a falsity. To show that a theory or a belief is only a myth, is to relegate it to the world of non-reality, and dismiss it from further consideration as a thing of value. This is sad for such is not the case at all as I was to find in doing my studies over the years.
I found the above idea of the worthlessness of a religious myth as viewed by the Occidental (Western) Hemisphere today to be a serious miscalculation and misjudgment of the facts at hand and this terrible misunderstanding can and should be laid at the feet of Christian biases once again since most Egyptologists today and for the last one hundred or so years have ties with Christianity and their own writings make clear that they are out to prove the "truth of Christianity" from their evaluation of Ancient Egyptian artifacts and religious studies. The only problem with this is not the link with Christianity, for it is there without a doubt, but the denial by leading Egyptologists today of the fact that Ancient Egypt found the genesis of their spiritual myths being influenced by areas such as Astronomy and Astrotheology as well as the role of these "religious" myths held sacred by them which came from these celestial observations and which were the origins and genesis of such Egyptian religious figures of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, etc., which also can be shown to be the very pattern for the "life and sayings of the New Testament Jesus. I don't know about you but when the reader sees these hundreds and hundreds of existing parallels between the life events of Osiris and Horus with the New Testament Jesus of Nazareth and as well as Isis (contrasted with Mary, the mother of Jesus) and then see these same identical "wisdom teachings" and "wisdom sayings" from the myths of Osiris and Horus later put into the mouth of the New Testament Jesus Christ then to be alarmed is understatement considering that this "historical Jesus" has been taught as the only way to Heaven and that trust and faith in the "Jesus Story" is necessary for Eternal Life. Such plagiarism of the Ancient Osiris and Horus myths when contrasted with the "Jesus Story" must not be ignored. But current Egyptologists today seem to take little if any note of such identical parallelism. I believe we have to consider the implications that hit us in the face that comes from contrasting these Ancient Egyptian Myths with the "Jesus Story".
With the Ancients, take for example the Egyptians, a myth was a valuable instrumentality of knowledge. It was an intellectual, even a spiritual, tool, by the aid of which truth and wisdom could at one and the same time both be concealed from the unworthy and expressed for the worthy. Again when considering "religious myths" we find the concept so often mentioned of the "Inner Mysteries" and the "Outer Mysteries" of which I so often speak. We as Christians and followers of "the Christ" grew up in the "Outer Mysteries" in America since having for our main source of knowledge concerning "the Christ" basically only "one book", the Christian Bible and New Testament which was given us by Rome who won the war over the Jews, which presented everything concerning "this Christ" as an assumed "historical narrative". We as obedient parishoners, never knowing that we needed to study the origin of this New Testament before we attached our emotions to it let alone an almost unbreakable faith in its "inerrancy and infalliblity", never studied one scholarly book on how we got this New Testament let alone its 600,000 discrepancies. We never studied scholarly books which showed us that the hundreds and hundreds of quotes in it are purposefully misquotes, purposeful mistranslations, and pure inventions of the Hebrew Scriptures. We never knew to study comparative religions and contrast the Ancients "Jesus stories" with the one Rome gave us. We were NEVER aware that behind the mundane historical narratives of "the Christ" and this "Jesus" lie a wealth of Ancient Egyptian myths and legends from which the "Jesus Story" was later "carnalized" and "literalized". We grew up NEVER aware that these same "logia" and "wisdom sayings" of "the Christ" which we find put into the mouth of an assumed historical Jesus and which seem to us as "apples of gold in pictures of silver" (Prov. 25:11) are first found in Egyptian sacred writings coming from such characters as Osiris, Horus, Toth, Isis, etc., some 10,000 years B.C.E. or earlier. Once you see this for yourself then you will never be the same again.
Alvin Kuhn, one of my favorite authors in these types of categories of studies and the author of The Lost Light says it best:
"The ancients rightly regarded spiritual truth and experience as being incapable of expression or impartation by means of words simply. A myth or an allegory could be made the better means of conveying subtly and with a certain added force, the truth veiled under a set form of dramatic presentation. The myth would enhance spiritual truth as a drama reinforces moral situations. It was all the more powerful in its message precisely because it was known not to be outwardly a true story. No one was caught by the literal falsity of the construction. Attention could therefore be given wholly to the hidden import, which was not obscured by the outward occurrence. The myth was known to be a fiction; therefore it deceived nobody -- until the third century (more on that later). But at the same time it was most ingeniously designed to instruct in the deepest of spiritual truths. It was a literary device to embalm lofty wisdom in the amber of a tradition that could be easily remembered, in the guise of a human story. It was truth incarnated in a dramatic occurrence, which was known to be untrue. Outwardly fictitious, but inwardly the substance of a mighty truth, was the myth. And as such it was the universal dress in which ancient knowledge was clothed".
I hope you heard that and understood what Kuhn meant when saying that things will change in the 3rd century, especially after the Council of Nicea, when Rome takes control of "early Christianity" and drives almost out of existence the early Gnostics who safeguarded, preserved, and cherished this Ancient Spiritual "gnosis" and knowledge which they had inherited from Egypt. The Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of thirteen ancient codices containing over fifty texts, was discovered in upper Egypt in 1945. Understand that this knowledge of "the Christ" has been absent from the minds of men for some almost 2000 years....almost the same time as the assumed existence of a "historical Jesus".
Answer for yourself: Can you estimate the importance of such a discovery and the uniqueness of the time that these writings have remained absent from the minds of men and have been almost obliterated out of existence by Rome?
This immensely important discovery includes a large number of primary Gnostic scriptures -- texts once thought to have been entirely destroyed during the early Christian struggle to define "orthodoxy" -- scriptures such as the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, Pistis Sophia, and the Gospel of Truth. The discovery and translation of the Nag Hammadi library, completed in the 1970's, has provided impetus to a major re-evaluation of early Christian history and the nature of Gnosticism. My Seminary never taught me about these let alone my church and when you look into them you will see why Orthodox Christianity cannot handle such a "hot-potato" for it shows that the earliest Christians were not followers of an "assumed historical person" but rather knew beyond any doubt that "the Christ" is a "Spiritual Concept" only which resides in the bosom of every man and woman and child of God.
I continually have my breath taken away by such wisdom of the Ancients cloaked in the disguise of their spiritual myths which today receive but laughter and denigration by the ignorant. I used to be such a one, being conditioned by Christianity, until my associated studies into Biblical Judaism and my beginning search for a "Jewish Jesus" opened to me, my eyes, and my mind repeatedly to the "African roots" to Judaism which seemed to me of greatest interest. That being so I had to go find out what lay behind these "African origins of Judaism" since I tried to never leave any promising road of knowledge untraveled in my studies since beginning my quest for the truth behind my Faith as a former Christian. I found the "motherload" when I set foot into Egypt and their religious myths but that was only after I had studied sufficiently to learn the "keys" necessary to interpreting these "myths" for as you read closely they also were written in the "guise of a human story" as was the "Jesus Story". Being conditioned you have the tendency to think in "literal" and "historical" parameters but I come to realize beyond any doubt that such an approach to Egyptian religion will never lead me to the truth concerning the Egyptian religion and its "spiritual concepts". A year or so had passed in my scholarly and earnest Egyptian studies where I studied 4 or 5 hours a day as if my life depended upon it and I had come to find no historical Osiris, no historical Horus, no historical Isis. What I had seen beyond any doubt was the hundreds of parallels between these Egyptian myths of Osiris, Horus, and Isis and the "Jesus Story". These parallels existed both in in events and the sayings and teachings in the mouth of this New Testament Jesus. At that time in my life I was beginning to question the "unthinkable". I had to in all honesty ask myself before God that if these same "stories" and same "sayings" which I had come to see paralleled the life of "Jesus Christ" in the New Testament which had their origin with Osiris, Horus, and Isis were but Egyptian "myths" teaching "Divine Spiritual Concepts" (usually about the soul) then was I to even dare to think that my "assumed historical Jesus" might possibly be a nothing more than another replay of prior "religious myths" but in this case designed to appear as if a "historical person". As a Christian Pastor I challenge you to try to understand the crisis which faced me at that time in my life having a very successful ministry at a mega-church in Dallas, Texas. I would have to stop right there and investigate with all my might the evidence for and against the existence of a "historical Jesus" and this information was the most unsettling thing that I have every had to confront as a human being.
In order to arrive at such a point in my studies I had to get beneath the negativity of Christian writers to such topics as Egypt; such negativity which had conditioned me to not seriously consider Egypt earlier in my studies since so much is written negatively about it in the Hebrew Scriptures. It would be later that I would find out that Ezra, himself a Persian and not a Jew, re-wrote basically the Old Testament before and after the return of the Jews from Persia following their conquering of Bablyon. In would be in this rewriting of the history of these Jews where Ezra would give these "black Jews" a different history as a people in order that they would not look to "black Egypt" and their biological "black" parents. Archeology today is teaching us that these Jews were the offspring and children of these Egyptians through their intermarriage with Semites. We should also note the fact that Persia at that time was at war with these returnees' Egyptian parents. The puzzle pieces were coming together and now I understood this negativity toward Egypt in the Hebrew Scriptures especially when I learned the truth about the 18 Dynasty in Egypt and just how these Pyramids were actually built "voluntarily" contrary to the depiction in the Old Testament. Surely I came to see why Persia did not want these black Jews returning home to ever get the idea that their parents were the Egyptian opponents of Persia for if they did then Persia could not count of them be an "outpost" for them in the fertile cresent. I never could understand how this Moses, whom many believe to be one of the head Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, who led a religious revolution and rebuilding and unification of Egypt, would turn his back on his land and people and write so derogatorily about them in his writings. Now I knew where this negativity came from; namely Ezra a Persian with both political and religious agendas. Because his efforts as well as Rome we as Christians and followers of "the Christ" are taught not to look toward not only Judaism but surely not Egypt as well.
Answer for yourself: Why is that again? Because if we do then we find not only the beginning of the Jewish Roots there but the very genesis of Christianity as but a pure allegory with Horus, the Son of God, the earlier prototype for the later "Jesus". Rome has reinterpreted everything "literally" and intended the world do the same since they won the wars and controlled the documents and rewrote the history of the world and in such arrogance and deception gave the world their version of religion and history and we read it only only in their New Testament but the writings of the early Church Fathers as well which only fueled the later development of the New Testament.
When I began to read about the Egyptian religion from authors like James Bonwick, Moustafa Gadalla, Ahmed Osman, Robert Bauval, Graham Hancock, John G. Jackson, Colin Wilson, etc., my eyes and heart opened to new depths in my understanding of God and my Creator and "His Christ". This depth of this understanding of the Creative Energy of the Cosmos whom we call God far eclipsed anything I was ever taught or understood that came from my previous Christian perspective including Southwestern Theological Seminary where I earned my Masters Degree. Understand my prior depth of my understanding of the Creative Energy of the Cosmos whom we call God derived from my Jewish studies was wonderful and I cherish it today but it pails in comparison to what I learned of God when doing my Egypt studies. So enlightening over the earlier years of my studies was what Egypt knew of this One Cosmic Unity, this One Creative Energy, that I often had to stop and thank God for letting me see these truths. Judaism for me was liberating as a Christian pastor but what I found in Memphis, Heliopolis, Hermopolis, and Thebes was beyond my wildest imagination as my closeness to this God became greater and greater as I saw and understood wisdom that outshines the very Sun if possible; wisdom that today is being re-ignited by the light being shown on the resurrection of Egyptian truths concerning Amen...the Hidden One which was represented as the Sun. To my amazement when comparing Judaism with Egyptian religion I began to see unbelievably that Judaism is but a modified continuation of Egyptian religion as mentioned above and I found the parallels to be striking and most of the religious concepts in Judaism maintained the integrity of their Egyptian origins as seen in their love for the Torah and Laws of God. There is not "literal God-man" in Judaism as in idolatrous Christianity and this is only the beginnings. Christianity cannot make such a claim since they re-make God after the image of a man. Egypt wrote similar stories of God-men but as stated before they were in the beginning NEVER to be understood to be historical personages like what was done with this "Jesus" and were understood by Egyptians as but myths and allegories and personifications of various forces, powers, and energies (neteroo) that comprised what we call God and Creator of the whole Cosmos as understood by Egypt.
Things were to change and not for the better and God would raise up Moses to deal with it. Let me explain. It would be much later that there would come a division even in Egypt whereby these earlier and deeper metaphysical understandings of God would be hidden in Egypt's "Inner Mysteries" and the laymen given similar to what we have inherited today....a "watered down" version of earlier Spiritual truths in the form of a "god-man" which began to rob the worship intended for Only this One Great God. Osiris worship was at its highest point ever in the 18 Dynasty of Egypt; the same Dynasty which produced Akhenaton, whom many believe to be the Egyptian Moses who will return the nation to the worship of Aten whom was again the visible manifestation of the Sun which was understood to be ONLY symbolic of the Uncreated Energy of the Universe....whom we call God.
Before Moses Egypt, like Constantine Christianity, fell prey to a terrible misunderstanding of earlier Spiritual Concepts; concepts which were never intended to be taken "literally". With this loss of "gnosis" and proper knowledge of just whom and how to worship this Cosmic Unity over time came an over-emphasis on the "god-man" as we find no differently with Jesus today as recorded in the New Testament as well and established for all time by the Council of Nicea when this "assumed historical person" was declared to be of the same essence as God. Jesus was made God at the Council of Nicea. This perversion of truth, allegory being mistaken as "literal history", is the very thing that Moses reacted against in his religious revolution in the 18th dynasty for it was then that Osiris (the Egyptian god-man) worship was at its highest in the history of Egypt. Moses set out to reverse this since he knew that such a view and worship of the "god-man" is incorrect and idolatry. Moses knew what Christians don't; that the "god-man" and the "Sun-god" is only an allegory and that behind such myths and allegories of the Sun-gods and "god-men" were but Spiritual concepts, principles, patterns, and cycles of energy, and missing from all of them is any "historical fleshly personage". It it time for this truth to be renewed through education and repentance from erroneous concepts which has come into being basically due to ignorance and neglect of the Ancients wisdom. What was true for Moses in the 18th dynasty is true for Christianity today as we must deal with our inherited "god-man" in the New Testament in the same way.
To indicate the universality of the Sun-god myth it is only necessary to enumerate some thirty of the chief figures known as Sun-gods amongst the nations about the Eastern Mediterranean, before the advent of Jesus. There were in Egypt, Osiris, Horus, Serapis, Hermes or Taht (Thoth), Khunsu, Atum (Aten, Adon, the Adonis or Phrygia), Iusa, Iu-sa, Iu-em-hetep; in Syria, Atis, Sabazius, Zagreus, Kybele (feminine); in Assyria Tammuz; in Babylonia, Marduk and Sargon; in Persia, Mithra, Ahura-Mazda and the Zoroasters; in Greece, Orpheus, Bacchus (Dionysus), Achilles, Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, Jason, Prometheus; in India, Vyasa, Krishna, Buddha; in Tibet the Boddhisattvas; besides many others elsewhere. And as indicated by one of the last articles sent by Bet Emet Ministries concerning the hidden mystery in our alphabet concerning the etymology of the earliest word or words for God ("I", "O" and "A"...."IO", "IAO", etc.) we saw conclusively that all nations at one time or another understood this "same God" as symbolized by the Sun by these same letter, or letters, consonants and vowels; the name and names only translated differently due to different dialects as the languages differed according to the various nations down through time.
Answer for yourself: What is the implication and conclusion we can draw from the above?
Simply that this means that all nations, at their very core, had a religious belief in the "same God" but only called Him by different and various names and expressed this "same Divine Concept" (God, the Uncreated Energy of the Cosmos) by different symbols and myths such as we findin Egypt in the neteroo as Osiris, Horus, Serapis, Hermes or Taht (Thoth), Khunsu, Atum (Aten, Adon, the Adonis or Phrygia), Iusa, Iu-sa, Iu-em-hetep and as others enumerated above.
Likewise we find in the ancient Mystery dramas the central character of these dramas and stage plays that were performed for the initiates into this secret and "Inner Mysteries" was always the Sun-god which had his role "played out" by the candidate for initiation into this secret wisdom and higher knowledge which was always reserved for those who "desired to go deeper beneath" the mundane story of a Sun-god that was much later told for those laymen who were content to remain within the "Outer Mysteries" down through history. Unlike those in the beginning who knew the stories of these Sun-gods were but allegories and myths expressing Divine Truths, those who came centuries and thousands of years later, take Rome for example, having not been given or possessing the secret "gnosis" concerning these Sun-gods (also like Christians today), could and often did think that these prior Sun-gods had been literal persons like themselves (for example a literal Jesus); never knowing that they were but allegories and myths intended to exist forever as a vehicle for these metaphysical Divine Truths concerning the One High God and His relationship to matter (the human being). You can burn books and libraries and Rome certainly has done that often but you cannot destroy an "idea" or a memory of a "myth". These religious ideas live today thousands of years later and have survived attempted purge after purge to eradicate this knowledge and many attempts to eradicate such knowledge from this world only because they were burned in the memory of mankind as "myths" and "legends".
Today as Christians we don't know the real truth behind the "Jesus Story" we are taught our whole lives. Few Christians ever studied to the level necessary to see behind the "Jesus Story" and consequently it never dawns on them to ever think that something could be amiss with the "Jesus Story" as we have received it. I believe all good Christians should desire to know what really lays behind the supposed "Historical Jesus". If one takes such a challenge to study as objectively as possible the origins of his faith and what lies behind the "Jesus Story" then he will be confronted with facts that will show him that there is not a shred of legitimate historical evidence anywhere that the "Jesus Story" originated as the biography of a man named Jesus, and quite a lot of evidence that it did not. Such scholarly study of the "literal historical Jesus Story", found in this provable forged book, the Roman Bible and the New Testament, reveals that there exists not one piece of unforged or unadulterated evidence for the historical existence of this man from Galilee. An unbiased through study of Comparative Religion reveals that the basic plot of the "Jesus Story", from beginning to end, event after event, including the motif of a crucified savior, already existed in many other religions thousands of years prior to the alleged time of Jesus. If you continue such dedicated studies into Astronomy and Solar Mythology one finds not only that the "sayings" of "the Christ" can be found in the wisdom sayings of Osiris and Hours over 10,000 years B.C.E. but also that beyond any doubt the "Jesus Story" is nothing more than an allegory for what would naturally be the oldest and most important story humans would notice and write down, that of the annual passage of the seasons of the year and the path of the Sun through the celestial sphere and the 12 Houses of the Zodiac during the year. Personification of the Sun through the sky as found in the story of ancient solar and lunar gods follow in chronological procession through the year the exact chronology of the "Jesus Story" when personified from Matthew chapter 1 through chapter 28 at the end of the book. Such knowledge escapes the casual Sunday Church attendee who is taught since childhood to have "belief" in Jesus as found in a supposed "God-breathed" book; a book which few if any have every submitted to intense scrutiny necessary to determine its reliability.
The facts you gather in such study indicate that this "initiate" into the "Higher Mysteries" went through the several initiations where he was himself the type and representative of the solar divinity in the field of human experience just like Osiris and Horus patterned for him. One can see when having done the comparative studies involving the "Jesus Story" that this initiation is not very different from one following in the footsteps of another "Solar Hero" like Jesus of Nazareth. Having failed to study out these "hidden mysteries" concerning "the Christ", so many today are unknowing of the fact that ironically we walk in the same path as the Ancients only the "names" and "types" have been changed. Behind our Christian Myth and "Jesus Story" is the same God symbolized by the Sun and its path through the Heavens whom can be shown to be personified in the life, events, and sayings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.
From the study of a mass of the ancient material, beginning with a through study of Osiris and Horus of Egypt and working down through recorded history regarding the chronological secession of other "Sun-gods", the sincere student who "cracks" the books and does the necessary research becomes strongly convinced of the fact that the "Jesus figure" of the Gospels, although portrayed as a historical person in the Gospels, is just another in the long list of the solar gods which were but personifications of the Sun and its path through the Heavens and especially the 12 houses of the Zodiac. I can make that statement because I have seen and studied thoroughly the overwhelming evidence and read these same "Jesus Stories" in the Egyptian archives and the Egyptian Book of the Dead; stories ascribed to Osiris and Horus who were but intended symbolic representations of the Sun and its movements; movements which were seen in a spiritual sense by the Ancients and which conveyed a deep spiritual knowledge of the soul within man and his responsibilities before God. These Egyptian parallels to the "Jesus Story" are there for anyone to read if they have the interest and devote the time. Gerald Massey's books are full of these parallels. They only have to know that these same parallel stories "exist" between Osiris and Horus and Jesus and that the same "sayings" or the "Logia of the Lord" as taken from the Egyptian Karast (Christ)" are echoed in the sayings and teachings of the New Testament Jesus. These sayings of Jesus can be shown to come right out of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the rituals contained in them. These Egyptian wisdom sayings were only later put into the mouths of later "Sun-gods" that were modeled on the previous types that originated in Egypt - the culmination of which was the last of a long line of "Sun-gods" which we find down through history with the Roman depiction of the New Testament "Jesus". Let us not miss the point; these Sun-gods were figured by ancient poetic genius as embodiments of divine solar glory living among and within men and which were presented through the medium of the mythical constructions of the Ancient allegorists. These Sun-god characters, none of whom can it be said positively that they were living personages, were, it must be clearly noted, purely typical figures in the national epics of the several nations. They were only symbols, one might say for Divine realities which were captured in the medium of myth.
Bennoah1@airmail.net