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In modern phraseology a statement is sometimes said to be mythical in proportion to its being untrue; but the ancient mythology was not a system or mode of falsifying in that sense. Contrary to what you or most Christians might believe "Religious Myths" and its fables were the means of conveying facts as understood by the Ancients; they were neither forgeries nor fictions but representations of higher truths as they understood them. Nor did mythology originate in any intentional double-dealing whatever, although it did assume an aspect of duality when direct expression in words had succeeded the primitive mode of representation by means of things as signs and symbols. Gerald Massey, a famed Egyptologist, gives us a great example: "For example, when the Egyptians portrayed the moon as a Cat, they were not ignorant enough to suppose that the moon was a cat; nor did their wandering fancies see any likeness in the moon to a cat; nor was a cat-myth any mere expansion of verbal metaphor; nor had they any intention of making puzzles or riddles to mislead others by means of such enigmatical sign-language, at a time when they could not help themselves, having no choice in the matter. They had observed the simple fact that the cat saw in the dark, and that her eyes became full-orbed and grew most luminous by night. The moon was the seer by night in heaven, and the cat was its equivalent on the earth; and so the familiar cat was adopted as a representative, a natural sign, a living pictograph of the lunar orb!". To the Ancients these "symbols" were but a representative of the "real" which often defied proper understanding or explanation since involving the Divine. These "Divine Truths" were captured for mankind by the Egyptian priesthoods through the use of symbols, natural signs, and metaphors, as a living pictograph of the Cosmos that they witnessed both above their heads, around them in God's nature, and within their very own physiology as understood as the "temple of God". Thus the Ancients understood that they, as God's highest creation, was made in the image of God that they observed above them and around and within them. Egypt, as I contend, has left us the means of determining the original nature and significance of these Religious Myths that we find in almost all world religions; especially Christianity. (Gerald Massey's Lectures, Luniolatry, Ancient and Modern).
Scholars and thinkers through the years have offered their views on how myth can be used to understand both the sacred and mundane world. Prior to 1725 CE, myths of non-Christian religions were seen simply as distorted Biblical narratives. No doubt individuals with strong prejudices used this line of reasoning as a way to explain the vast similarities that appear in mythologies of radically different cultures, like the abundance of flood narratives. Giambattista Vico was one of the first scholars to argue against this view. He saw myths as imaginative attempts to solve the many mysteries of life and the universe. From there, scholars have developed an abundance of ways to interpret myth and modern scholarship today, with the aid of the restoration of the Egyptian language, has enabled the scholar to have a better understanding of the use of religious myths down through history and how they undergird the very story line of the "crucified savior" found in the New Testament so familiar in Christianity in the world today.
Some methods of interpretation of the ancient myths are better than others in my opinion. We must understand that the ancients intended myths to be but stories, usually, about gods and other supernatural beings. They are often stories of origins, how the world and everything in it came to be as understood by the sages and priests of antiquity of Egypt for example. They are usually strongly structured and and their meaning is only discerned by linguistic analysis and by those who possess the "gnosis" to properly understand the symbolism contained within. Indeed, they often reveal the archetypes of the collective unconscious that is common in all mankind. But on a more literal level that are symbolic and metaphorical in content expressing in metaphor and symbol higher Divine Truths often beyond the ability of man to verbalize. They orient people to the metaphysical dimension, explain the origins and nature of the cosmos, validate social issues, and, on the psychological plane, address themselves to the innermost depths of the psyche. Some of them are explanatory, being prescientific attempts to interpret the natural world. As such, they are usually functional and are the science of primitive peoples. Often, they are enacted in rituals. Religious myths are to be understood as sacred histories, and distinguished from the unsacred.
The terms legend and folktale are sometimes used interchangeably with myth. Technically, however, these are not the same.
Answer for yourself: How should we distinguish them? Donna Rosenberg, in her book Folklore, Myth, and Legends: A World Perspective, offers some useful guidelines:
As a dedicated student of the Bible and as an ordained Minister I found through the years of my exhaustive study of the "Jesus Story" that all roads led to Egypt where I found the precursor of the "Jesus Story" hidden in the mythology of Egypt as taken from Astronomy and the study of Nature (which is influenced by the Sun and Cosmos). My interest in mythology intertwines with my interests in astronomy, archaeology, Biblical languages, comparative religions, gnosticism, church history, manuscript evidences and their alterations down through history, etc. In other words without a proper understanding of the role of "myth" in religion, especially Christianity, then it is impossible to approach the "Jesus Story" and gather the truth behind each of the narratives. Once one begins such a study in earnest he will understand of what I speak. Such a study will reveal to the dedicated student the universality of certain themes which had an astronomical basis, primarily in the procession of the equinoxes. It is from the observance of the precession of the equinoxes and the further study of the Sun and its path across the sky and through the twelve houses of the Zodiac that the ancient story of the birth, life, death, and rebirth of a personified savior originated. Many nations who looked to the stars as the face of God reasoned such stories and down through recorded history immortalized their observations not only in holy writ but captured them for eternity in stone. It is from these observations, for example beginning with the Priests of Egypt, that the substrate from which is molded later the "Jesus Story" given to us in the Age of Pisces.
It serves our purpose to give one more example of the use of myth by the Ancient Egyptians in capturing and relating a "Divine Truth" to all mankind. The dung-beetle in Egypt was a type of Khepr-Ptah, the creator by transformation, who is said to have been begotten by his own becoming, and to have been born without a mother, through repetition of himself. Khep, the root of the name, signifies "to transform". To observant Egyptian Priests and sages external nature was the scene of eternal transformation and never-ending metamorphosis. And it had been observed that Khepr, the beetle, was likewise a transformer, inasmuch as it laid its eggs in dung found on the banks of the Nile, rolled it up into a ball, and buried itself deep in the dry sand along with its seed, where, it transformed, the old beetle into the young one, and so continued as the same beetle by transformation!
Thus the beetle served to typify that being or existence which could not be expressed, but which was seen to continue forever by self-repetition in phenomenal manifestation. They knew nothing of beginning, and did not pretend to know, but only of becoming, and of repetition or "renewal coming of itself." So the beetle was adopted as a type of transformation. This "type of renewal" or "resurrection" or "rebirth" was understood as a "pattern" or "repetitive cycle" that occurred in other manifestations of God's handiwork in the Cosmos. Whether considering the phases of the moon as it transformed from an old moon into the new one, or the sun as it traveled a path in the sky from its lower regions to the upper regions of the sky or heavens, they witnessed God's creative endeavor expressed in the eternal cycle of "birth, sustaining of that live, destruction of that life, and rebirth of the 'same" life". Thus you see and understand Egypt's great emphasis in "life after death" and the elaborate centricity of in its religion. Hor-Apollo says the scarabaeus deposits his ball of seed in the earth for the space of 28 days, the length of time during which the moon passes through the 12 signs of the zodiac, and on the 29th day it opens the ball. The day on which the conjunction of sun and moon occurred was the day of resurrection for the new life. The beetle in heaven had once more transformed, and there was another new moon! They had witnessed the cycle of "birth, life, death, and rebirth" of the "same moon" and this recurrent pattern was witnessed and expressed in both God's Cosmos and God's Nature and was expected to occur in man since they understood themselves created in the unforged image of God above them and around them. As the ancient Egyptians observed Scarab beetles rolling their balls of dung in which they lay their eggs, and burying them underground, they likewise reasoned that the sun was rolled around the sky in the same way, and like the ball of dung, the sun descended down into the under world each night. As the ball of dung gave birth to another generation of beetles so the sun was reborn each morning bringing warmth and life to the earth. The Egyptians called Scarab beetles Khepera. He was the god representing regeneration, new life, virility and resurrection. They reasoned that the God who was the "same, yesterday, and forever" would bring the same pattern of transformation to bear in their lives if they lived by the same order exhibited by God's Cosmos and the Laws and Patterns observed within it. This is but one such use of myth to convey higher Divine Truths for all mankind by the Egyptian priests and the Egyptian religion. This use of myth must be understood if we are ever hope of understanding the Egyptian myth of the Egyptian "messiah" and "godman" which we find rehashed in the "Jesus Story" in the New Testament.
Usually I use the Sun to express many of these "Ancient Divine Truths" and precepts inherent in the Egyptian Religion that we find so misrepresented in Christianity and the "Jesus Story" today but I wish to something different this time. I wish to reveal these "same Divine Truths" in the Egyptian myths regarding another orb of the sky; namely, the moon. What we should expect to see is the same "Divine Pattern" of truths expressed in a similar Egyptian myth regarding their understanding of the moon as they expressed in their understanding of the Sun.
Answer for yourself: Is it possible that Egypt heard God's same message repeated to them in not one but two different avenues; one regarding the Sun and the other the moon? If we can prove such a thing this just goes to show you that the Egyptian understanding of God and what He was speaking to them from the Heavens is correct: That God's message to mankind is the same and He truly is "the same yesterday, today, and forever". Now let us dig in.
The orb of the moon with its changes night after night, its complete darkness at the end of its cycle, and the transformation into the new life of light in the beginning, presented the earliest form of the primitive theatre, which offered its celestial show in heaven, complimentary to all eyes that gazed up from below. The moon, along with the Sun, must have been one of the earliest educators of primitive man in his natural environment as he witnessed the phenomena associated with the Sun and the moon. We know that the proper time for prayer for the Ancients, wishing or invoking aid of the power behind the heavenly orb, was at first sight of the new moon, just as it started visibly on the way to fulfillment, the mental attitude being, "May my wish be fulfilled like the light in thy orb, oh moon! May my life be renewed like thy light!" Such was the prayer of the earliest of man as he emerged in ancient Africa. The full moon being the mother-moon, the metaphorical "eye" in the sky that mirrored or reproduced the light of the sun.
An eclipse, like the Winter solstice, projected the shadow of coming calamity. Following the emerging darkness and the fear that darkness brought to man as darkness was his mortal enemy the renewed light of the old moon was like a promise of eternal life and everlasting youth. Over time man began to personify the forces and powers that he witnessed around him. This was no different from the Sun or the moon. When personified the moon, for example, was the healer, the saviour, an image of very life (since providing the reflected light of the Sun at night). The first-born from the dead, the first-fruits of them that slept in the graveyard of sunken suns, and cemetery of old dead moons, was reproduced visibly in external phenomena, as the new moon which was personified as the male moon-god Thoth, called the eighth, and lord of the eighth region, as the place of rising again from the dead in the orb of the moon. This "rising from the dead" was simply the Divine principle witnessed over and over again of the moon going through its phases of darkness into light repeatedly. Death, being the great darkness for man, was again personified in both the Sun and the moon and in the phases of the moon man say that as the life of the moon was renewed following its death then the Creator was speaking to them of this higher principle as well. This Divine principle of "eternal life" was reinforced by what the same laws of "rebirth" in Mother Nature around them. In the mouth of two or more witnessed God had spoken to them of "life from the dead".
There was a lunar mythology extant long before it was known that the lunar orb was a reflector of the solar light. There was a time also when it was not known, and could not be divined, that the moon which dwindled and died down visibly was the same moon, not a different moon, that rose again from the dead. Hence there were two different messages conveyed from heaven to the primitive men on earth. In the earliest message and in one of these versions the moon declared that, as it died and did not rise again from its grave, even so was it with man, who went down to the earth and came back no more. But, when man reasoned and come to understand that it was the "same moon" that returned as the same old orb renewed, the nature of its revelation was reversed from how it was originally understood. This God, who was the same yesterday and forever, had spoken a higher revelation to man than he had first thought or understood. The Creator's message now contained a doctrine of the resurrection from the dead for man as well as moon. The re-arising and transforming orb at last proclaimed that even as it did not die out altogether, but was renewed from some hidden spring or source of light, so was this renewal to be expected with the human race, who were likewise renewed to re-live on hereafter like the moon.
In a myth of the Caroline Islanders it is said that at first men only quitted this life on the last day of the dying moon, to be revivified when the new moon appeared. But there was a dark spirit that inflicted a death from which there was no revival. This dark spirit, with its fatal message, was primary in fact, and the true assurance of survival, like the moon, depended on its being identified as the same moon which rose again. It is in this way that we can re-think the primitive thought, by getting it re-thinged in the physical realities of natural phenomena. It is from such observations, as well as others made in the Heavens above and in Mother Nature, that the Ancients understood the Creator speaking to them of a life after death.
The Maories have a tradition of the first children of earth, in which they relate that the earliest subject of human thought was the difference between light and darkness; they were always thinking what might be the difference betwixt light and darkness. Naturally, the primary conditions of existence observed by primitive men were those that were most observable, and, foremost amongst these, were the phenomena of the day and the dark, which followed each other in ceaseless change. Mythology begins with this vague and merely elemental phase of external phenomena, alternating in night and day.
In a secondary stage, it was observed that this battle field of this never ending warfare of daylight and darkness was focused and brought to a definite point in the orb of the moon, where the struggle betwixt the two personified powers of light and darkness went on and on for ever, each power having its triumph over the other in its turn,--these being depicted in one representation as the solar light (sun) and the serpent of darkness, in another by the lion and the unicorn, etc. Different nations had different symbols for this light and this darkness in their eternal battle. In Christianity we are familiar with the role of the serpent as personified evil which was associated with this darkness. Now what I say next is important. These phenomena of light and darkness were at first set forth and represented by means of animals, reptiles, birds, and other primitive types of the elemental powers; and lastly the human type was adopted, and the cunning of the crocodile, or the jackal of darkness, is represented by the Egyptian Set, the Norse Loki, the Greek Hermes, or the Christian Jesus, and to-day, we find Christianity engaged in defending in the full and perfect belief that their New Testament "Jesus" was a human being, and not a personification of an earlier Divine Concept; that being "the Christ within". Whereas, he was no more a person than was Set-Anup in Egypt. The human form, like that of the earlier animal type, was only representative of some power manifested in natural phenomena. This mode of representation was known when these sacred stories were first told of mythical characters; it was afterwards continued and taught in the so-called "mysteries" by means of the Gnosis. When the art or Gnosis was lost to the world outside, the ancient histories were ignorantly supposed to be "human in their origin"; mythology was euhemerized (that is, the ideal was mistaken for the real), and Egyptian mythology was converted into Hebrew miracles and Christian history.
When Herodotus went to Egypt, he recognized the originals of the gods that were adored, amplified, and worshiped by home in his Greece. They had begun in Egypt; the birthplace of all gods. It is the same with us and failing to possess this knowledge we are incapable of recognizing in the "Jesus Story" the higher Divine Concepts that were later "literalized" when those who gave us these same concepts never intended they be understood in such a manner.
When we are told by the Roman Catholic Egyptologist, Renouf, that "Neither Hebrews nor Greeks borrowed any of their ideas from Egypt," we can only think of such a dictum as an intentional blind, or as a result of putting up the glass to an eye that cannot see. It is simply impossible for the typical and normative Christian who has been fed a steady diet of "inspired, infallible, inerrant" New Testament rhetoric and who is devoid of such Egyptian knowledge to recognize, interpret or to understand the mythology of Egypt as he reads it in the "Jesus Story" in his Bible. Its roots go deep, and its branches spread too far, for their range of thought.
And now, let me offer a remarkable example of the modes in which the Egyptians expressed their thoughts, by means of external phenomena. The sun-god Ra is represented as possessing fourteen spirits or kas, the living likenesses and glorified images of himself. These are portrayed as fourteen personages at Edfu and Denderah. In one text it is said,--"Hail to thee and thy fourteen spirits fourteen times." These are also mentioned in the tablet of Ipsambul, as the fourteen kas of Ra, which "Thoth has added to all his ways."
Answer for yourself: What are to seeing here? Thoth is the moon-god, and this gives us a clue to the fourteen spirits, which, I think, no Egyptologist has yet suspected. But Thoth is the god of the first fourteen days of the moon's lunation. The next fourteen nights of the new moon reproduced the likeness of the solar god in light fourteen times over. From any location on the Earth, the Moon appears to be a circular disk which, at any specific time, is illuminated to some degree by direct sunlight. Like the Earth, the Moon is a sphere which is always half illuminated by the Sun, but as the Moon orbits the Earth we get to see more or less of the illuminated half. During each lunar orbit (a lunar month), we see the Moon's appearance change progressively from not visibly illuminated through partially illuminated to fully illuminated, then back through partially illuminated to not illuminated again. Both these manifestations of the moon, each taking 14 days, these were designated as the Creator's apparition or shadow or representation seen nightly in the moon! The Egyptians, when regarding the moon in its dark half, likened it as a mummy or the un-illuminated body of the sun-god, who, as the sun, is described as coming to visit the darkened moon, to comfort it, to beget upon it, in the under-world. This lunar body of the solar soul is represented by the ass-headed god Aai (upon which the sun-god rode), who is found mummified on the tomb of Rameses 6th. Thus, the dark orb or body of the moon was the mummy of the sun, and its fourteen days of growing light were thought of as fourteen manifestations of the solar-god in spiritual apparition, visible by night in the moon; hence it will be seen how natural it was that the lunar orb should be looked up to as the home of spirits, as when the Egyptian prays that his soul may ascend to heaven in the disk of the moon! In other words they saw the action of the Creator God in the moon and desired to go to where they believed to be the above of the Creator. Another fable of the dark half of the lunation has been preserved by Plutarch, who relates that when Typhon, the evil power (personified darkness known as Set in Egypt), was hunting by moonlight, he by chance came upon the dead body or mummy of Osiris prepared for burial, and, knowing it again, he tore it into fourteen parts, and scattered them all about. These fourteen parts typify the fourteen days of the lessening light, during which the devil of darkness had the upper hand. The twenty-eight days made one lunar month according to Egyptian reckoning.
Now let us go a little deeper into the Ancient's understanding of the eternal battle between light and darkness. The earlier and simpler representation of the lunar light and dark is portrayed in the myth of the Two Brothers, who always contend for supremacy over each other. The most ancient and primitive myths are found to be the most universal; and this of the twin brothers is extant all over the world. It is the myth of Set-Horus in Egypt; the Asvins or Krishna and Balarama in India; the Crow and the Eagle of the Australian blacks; Tsuni-Goam and Gaunab among the Hottentots; Jack and Jill, etc. There are over twenty forms of this same myth concerning the tension and contest between personified light and darkness and Jesus and Satan is not excluded from this list by any means. On only has to consult G. Massey's Natural Genesis. It is that struggle of two brothers in the beginning which is represented in the Hebrew book of Genesis as the murderous conflict of Cain and Abel. Cain as the victor is the same character as the Egyptian Khunsu, Khun or Khen, meaning to chase, hunt, beat, be the victor, and therefore I take it that the name of Cain is one with the Egyptian Khun. Abel is the dark little one that fades and falls and passes away, the one who becomes a sacrificial type, because of the nature of the phenomena. The conqueror of this darkness is portrayed as the killer. The Gnostic Cainites, however, maintained truly that Cain derived his being from the power above (God), and not from the evil power below. They knew the Mythos. The contention of Jacob and Esau for birth and for the birth-right is another form of the same myth. Esau, the red and hairy one as previously described in the origin of the myth with the Egyptian Set, is really the lord of light in the new moon.
Gen 27:12 12 My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing. (KJV)
Jacob is the child of darkness, hence the deceiver by nature and by name. A Jewish tradition relates that Esau, when born, had the likeness of a serpent marked upon his heel. This shows he was a personification of the hero who bruised the serpent's head, and that Jacob, who laid hold of Esau's heel, was a co-type in phenomena with the serpent of darkness. There is nothing moral or immoral in mere physical phenomena themselves. No fratricide is actually committed by the conquering Cain, nor fraud by the dark and wily Jacob. But when these same phenomena are dramatized, and the characters are made human, or inhuman, as the case may be, the un-moral becomes immoral, and the human image is disfigured by the most wilful flaw, or wanton brand of degradation. Cain is made the murderer of his own brother, in the beginning, and that red stain is supposed to run through all human history, as a first result of Adam's fall, and to burn on the brow of man until it is washed out at last in the blood of a redeeming Saviour--who is equally mythical. (G. Massey's Lectures, Luniolatry, Ancient, and Modern).
Answer for yourself: Why have I shown you such examples in this article?
These examples should make you stop and think long and hard about how we are to approach Ancient religious literature, like the Bible, and how we are to interpret what we read especially in light of the fact that we are born "literalists" today and normally approach everything we read as if it is a "literal" and "historic truth" when in fact it might not be. This has unbelievable implications when applied to the "Jesus Story".
In presenting these pieces of information is my hope that you can see that many of the stories we read in our Bibles were never meant to be understood as a literal history of "this" person or a "that" person but that they were but vehicles carrying "Divine Truths" about God's Cosmos to generations of hearers and later readers. Devoid of the "gnosis" and hidden keys to understanding what we are reading we are certainly led astray in trying to interpret what we are reading when filtering everything through the "literal-historic" glasses we wear in the Western Hemisphere today. We end up making huge mistakes in our understanding; taking the "ideal" as the "real" when nothing could be further than the truth. We must, if we desire to extricate ourselves from the idolatry of Christianity in worshipping and praying to a presumed "godman" that is no more than the personification of the Sun through the sky and its path through the Heavens and the Zodiac. But to understand the previous statement one has to study for himself to see these hidden myths in Egypt for what they are and trace their overlap down through successive Gentile nations and lastly as they come to rest as found in the "Jesus Story". Please understand there is lot of "Divine Truths" expressed in this "Jesus Story" but the reality of a historical being is largely in doubt once one examines the evidence which shows that there is not a shred of legitimate historical evidence anywhere that the "Jesus Story" originated as the biography of a man named Jesus who lived in Nazareth in the first century, and quite a lot of evidence that he did not. You have to take that "fable" up with the antisemitic Roman Fathers of the early Gentile Church that used their "Jesus Story" to break away from Biblical Judaism and create a replacement religion that we have today. Until you see these things for yourself then you too will have fallen prey to the darkness of Biblical ignorance and the lack of understanding of the true origins for your Christian faith. Isaac Asimov states: "The Bible must be seen in a cultural context. It didn't just happen. These stories are retreads from stories before. But tell a Christian that---No, No! What makes it double sad is that they hardly know the book, much less its origins".
As alluded to above this lunar representation of God's light as reflected in His sun in the moon and the eternal contest and battle between this light and darkness has several shapes in Egyptian mythology, where the Twin Brothers are Set and Osiris, Set and Horus, the two Horuses, Taht and Aan, or Khunsu and Typhon. This cosmic battle between light and darkness, and man's fear of the darkness behind this imaginative battle, is recorded down through history and in successive Gentile nations; only the names are changed. I want to thank G. Massey for his life-long dedicated work as an Egyptologist for gathering and bringing forward such information in order to help truth seekers come to the true understanding of not only what they are reading when studying Egypt but when they are reading their Bibles and I am indebted to him and the Gerald Massey's Lectures for the adaptation of the above material.
As we draw to a close I hope these few examples have shown you that Egyptian Mythology is the ground-work of all our theology and it lies as the very bedrock of Christian Christology, and it is only by mastering the original plan and "mythos of Egypt" that we can learn how the superstructure has been built and how it undergirds our "Jesus Story". What we find in such a study is the facts behind the "Jesus Story"; namely that the depiction of the "New Testament's Jesus" and the "Jesus Story" is the representation of the immortal principle in all of mankind, the "Spiritual Christ Within" portrayed via the same vehicle of myth that reflects the struggle between "light and darkness" in battles with darkness who we find personified as "Satan" within and without. It is the oldest story known to the Ancients and they witnessed it every day of their lives and fearing the darkness and perceiving the light as their "savior" they then dramatized their struggle for their very own existence in legend and myth as these powers that contested around them were given "life" in the stories we read in world religions today. Christianity is not immure to such a synthesis. It is the same old story however; only the names have been changed from culture to culture and nation to nation but the players are the same: light and darkness.
Gen 1:1-5 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. (KJV)
We can call it "Set" or "Horus" or we can call it "Jesus" or the "Devil [darkness=evil; dark=evil; d=evil; the DEVIL" and we can create all the theology we desire and man surely has but when we get to the original mythos then the truth rushes to the surface and we see that behind all the "boogey men" down through history which man has feared, behind them all, is Genesis chapter 1, verse one. Just as we have seen in the phases of the moon and as we had previously with the Sun early man saw Divine Principles and Divine Concepts in the observation of God's Garden of Eden, the stars and constellations above his head and in God's Garden of Mother Nature around him. These repeating patterns spoke hope to him a life beyond the eternal darkness that awaits him at his death. In fashioning such myths that captured these "Divine Truths" of life from darkness man personified his observations and the result was a mythos of a man, like himself, being raised from the dead and thus we myths that line the corridors of history of crucified and resurrected godmen like Jesus.
Man began in a dark womb of God and emerged into God's saving light and fearing the darkness as his mortal enemy man saw God's light as his savior. Over time this natural phenomena was personified into stories and myths that captured the real truth in the form of myth and emerges the "Set/Horus" and other such myths like the one we are most familiar with in the Western Hemisphere; the "Jesus/Satan" or the "Jesus/Devil" myth. Man's savior has always been the God of light and this salvation sent him was personified again as God's savior who gave his life for mankind that they might have life and life abundantly. The "truth" behind the myth is very real; only the myth is not historical. I hope you have the wisdom to see this difference.
Thus emerged the stories of these personified saviors who had virgin births, whose births were announced by a star, annunciations by Heavenly angels, were born in caves or mangers, were born in a "city of bread", who had 3 wise men who attended their birth, who were given the same 3 gifts, who had to flee a king who was to destroy the new infant savior, who were found teaching their Fathers' message when 12 years old in a temple at high noon, who were mysteriously absent from the scene until they were 30 years old, who were then immersed and baptized with a dove or some bird landing on them before encountering a temptation by the Devil with always lasted it seems 40 days, who chased the demons and darkness from lunatics into swine, who was transfigured on a high mountain, who raised the dead after 3 days in the form a a Lazarus, who turned water into wine, who had 12 disciples, who performed miracles with loaves and fish, who were challenged by opposing religious authorities, who sent out 72 disciples, who rode 2 asses, who had a "last supper", who was betrayed for 30 coins of "silver", who were crucified between 2 thieves, who had darkness at their deaths, who wore a crown of thorns, who had 3 women at their crucifixion, who were pierced with a spear, who was crucified on a cross, who was buried for 3 days and was raised, who battled the Devil (personified darkness at the Winter solstice for those 3 days, and who ascended after 3 days, etc. I could go on but to think that each of these events is unique to the "Jesus Story" is asking too much of any "thinking believer". If you heard the above then you should realize that there is a common "mythos" to this whole story and account of Jesus and other crucified saviors. If you were like me when realizing this I had to know the truth behind this "Jesus Story". This desire birthed Bet Emet Ministries where one pastor found the courage to resign a mega church and teach the truth to others who were as hungry for true God as himself.
It might sound simple but it does get involved when one begins to chronicle the path of this Sun and moon in more detail. I am preparing a website to do just that. You can find enough written by the Ancients to fill a book and that is exactly what has been done; we have the New Testament. The rest of the story is but "filler" from the personified path of the Sun through the Zodiac and the Heavens and then you have it all; the life of Jesus which we read on the pages of our New Testaments never knowing it is the retelling of the Ancient's story of the path of the Sun through the Heavens. It truly is the most amazing study that I have ever undertaken. It is our hope at Bet Emet Ministries that the desire for truth and the desire to offer God the the purest of worship devoid of idolatry will hopefully motivate you in such a study as it has me.
“All Indo-Germanic nations have worshipped crucified Saviors and overwhelming proof was obtained that the sun-myths of the ancient Aryans were the origin of the religion in all the countries which were peopled by the Aryans”…Charles Morris, Aryan Sun Myths; The Origin Of Religion.
Mythology is what grown-ups believe, folk-lore is what they tell their children, and religion is both (Cedrin Whitman, letter to Edward Tripp, 1969).
Let us study to show ourselves approved unto God. It is time that we as Christians and followers of "the Christ" come to the truth concerning this New Testament Jesus in the "Jesus Story" we inherited in America.
Answer for yourself: Want to get to the bottom of this "Jesus Story" once and for all? Well you might want to read and study these books as I have over the years. Blessings..Craig Lyons M.Div.
Anyone wanting to look into this subject, the truth behind the "Jesus Story", might consult the following as I have:
