Skeptic Mangles ZEITGEIST
(and Religious History)
by Acharya S aka D.M. Murdock
It is a curious fact that
writers who toss around the words “sloppy," "garbled" and "nonsense"
are often guilty of these very things themselves. Case in point is the critical review of the first
part of the internet movie "ZEITGEIST" [see video below] by Skeptic magazine book editor Tim Callahan (Eskeptic, 2/25/09).
Callahan proclaims "ZEITGEIST Part 1"--for which I was a source and
last-minute consultant on the official version--to be "sloppy" and
"garbled," and he proceeds to give his opinion as to its supposed
errors.
First of all, his
declaration that much of the material in ZG is "plainly and simply
bogus" is false. Callahan has evidently not even studied the sources meticulously cited on the
ZG website to see from where this material comes. Instead, he gives the
impression that the movie's creator, Peter Joseph, simply "made it
up." Secondly, ZG is a simple summary
of the thesis that Jesus is a rehash of the popular sun gods of the Roman
Empire and beyond. The 25-minute segment was not meant to serve as a thorough
scholarly analysis, so Callahan's talk about "greater scholarship"
and "spurious scholarship" constitutes a mere snooty red
herring.
As concerns his much-ado
about the Jewish milieu of the gospel tale, stating that Joseph
"ignores...the powerful current of messianic apocalypticism prevalent in
first century Judea," if Callahan had studied ZG's sources, he would have
discovered that some of them, such as I, very much incorporate the fervent
"messianic apocalypticism" of the era into our analyses. Indeed, it
is my thesis that this fervor drove messianic Jews to fabricate a fictional messiah in order
to compete with the reigning gods of other cultures, many of whom were solar in nature. Hence, Jews, Hebrews,
Samaritans and other Israelites took sun gods, rolled them into one, and then
historicized and Judaized them in the gospel story.
When one closely analyzes
the situation, peeling away the mythological layers of the gospel story, there
remains no core to the onion and no "actual historical
Jesus" to whom to point.
In reality, the
myriad "historical Jesuses" of scholarship--Callahan's
included--usually represent products of the writer's most cherished qualities,
not of serious scientific fact. As professor of Judaic and Religion Studies at
Brown University Dr. Shaye Cohen remarks, "Modern scholars have routinely
reinvented Jesus or have routinely rediscovered in Jesus that which they want
to find..." ("From Jesus to Christ")
The Cross and
Crucifix
As concerns the cross as
a pre-Christian solar symbol, the point is not what shape the "real" Jesus was allegedly
placed on, as detailed by Callahan, but that the classic imagery of a god on a
crucifix or in cruciform with arms outstretched existed in pre-Christian times,
as did the cross itself as a sacred symbol, long before Christ was supposedly
crucified on it, thereby purportedly giving it significance. As stated in
my book The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold
(218):
The cross and crucifix
are very ancient symbols found around the world long prior to the supposed
advent of the Christian savior. In the gospel story Jesus tells his disciples
to "take up the cross" [Mt 16:24] and follow him. Obviously, the
cross already existed and was a well-known symbol, such that Jesus did not even
have to explain this strange statement about an object that, we are led to
believe, only gained significance after Jesus died on it.
The fact of the
pre-Christian god affixed to a cross is admitted by Church fathers
Tertullian and Minucius Felix, as I relate in my book Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ (243):
...centuries before
Christ himself was ever represented in art as crucified, Church father
Tertullian (c. 160 to 230?)...discussed an image of a crucified Roman god:
The body of your god is
first consecrated on the gibbet. [Apology,
12]
Again in his Apology (16), Tertullian raises the
subject of Roman gods in the shape
of a cross or in cruciform:
We have shown before that
your deities are derived from shapes modelled from the cross. But you also
worship victories, for in your trophies the cross is the heart of the trophy.
The camp religion of the Romans is all through a worship of the standards, a
setting the standards above the gods. Well, as those images decking out the
standards are ornaments of crosses. All those hangings of your standards and
banners are robes of crosses.
Hence, Tertullian
attested that the Romans bore images of not only a man but also gods on crosses, that they additionally
possessed gods themselves in cruciform and that these images were objects of
worship.
Furthermore, as also
related in Who Was Jesus?:
...early Church father
Minucius Felix (c. 250 AD/CE) made similar comparisons--unfavorably, of
course--between Christianity and pre-Christian religion, specifically as
concerns the cross and the image of a man
on a cross, or crucifix. Addressing the Romans in his
apology Octavius [29], Felix
remarked:
You, indeed, who
consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods.
For your very standards, as well as your banners; and flags of your camp, what
else are they but crosses gilded and adorned? Your victorious trophies not only
imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but also that of a man affixed to it.
Even earlier than both
these sincere Christian writers came the admissions by Justin Martyr (c. 150
AD/CE):
And when we say also that
the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and
that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and
ascended into heaven, we propound nothing
different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.
[First Apology, 21. Emphasis
added.]
An interested scholar
might inquire which of these "sons of Jupiter" was crucified? And would it not be a very
strange coincidence that the Jewish godman just happened to be likewise hung on
a cross? Callahan appears completely oblivious to all these facts in his desire
to find a "historical Jesus" crucified somewhere, with no hard
evidence of such an event.
Despite the pedantic
exercise concerning the shape of the cross or stauros that Jesus might
have been placed upon, the important fact will remain that the cross of varying
shapes was a sacred object long before it gained significance with
Christianity. Indeed, anyone trying to create a new religion would be
negligent in ignoring the cross--and not only the cross but also an image of a
man/god upon it. Hence the point is that Christianity borrowed the iconography
of older religions. It would be a simple matter of merging Judaism with
Paganism and making up a story of a Jewish messiah affixed to a cross. As an
important related aside, the word Stauros is another name for the
Egyptian-Gnostic divinity Horos,
a subject discussed in depth in my book Christ
in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection.
The Egyptian
Connection
After addressing the
resurrections of the gods Osiris and Dionysus-- and agreeing that these represent pre-Christian
dying-and-rising gods--Callahan asserts, "However, beyond the resurrection
of Osiris, the main parallels between the Egyptian myth and the New Testament
are iconic." He next gives examples of such iconography, including the well-known
Mother and Child imagery later adopted by Christianity. The idea that the main
parallels between Christianity and the Egyptian religion are only iconic is
false, however, as practically every concept found within Christianity also
appeared within the Egyptian faith centuries to millennia earlier. As respected
Egyptologist Dr. Erik Hornung says concerning the Egyptian mortuary literature
or "Books of the Netherworld":
Private tombs and
sarcophagi of the Late Period were also decorated with copies of these works,
and it is not improbable that even early
Christian texts were influenced by ideas and images from the New Kingdom
religious books. (Hornung, The
Valley of the Kings, 9)
What a passionate scholar
might be inclined to do with such a tantalizing comment as, "it is
not improbable that even early Christian texts were influenced by ideas and
images from the New Kingdom religious books," would be to
delve into research to discover these influences from Egyptian books on early
Christian texts. That's precisely what I have done, producing a massive,
well-documented tome in Christ
in Egypt.
And Egyptologist Hornung
is far from being alone in his assessment as to the influence of the Egyptian
religion on Christianity: Christ in
Egypt is packed full of such suggestions from many different
scholars. Indeed, in CIE, I
use primary sources and the works of highly credentialed scholars in relevant
fields to show that the Horus-Jesus comparisons and other Egyptian elements
appearing in ZEITGEIST are in fact true.
Not actually studying the subject in depth--but simply reading sanitized
mainstream resources and shallow encyclopedia entries--will neither reveal
these facts nor make an expert of anyone.
In raising the
contention in ZG of Horus being "crucified," Callahan
reveals he is not an expert in Egyptian religion and does not know that
Osiris and Horus are often
"conflated" or interchanged in the massive Egyptian literature. Yet,
ZG is in reality not "conflating" Horus with Osiris, because Horus
too was murdered by Set. Indeed, in describing Horus's death and resurrection, pre-Christian writer
Diodorus Siculus uses the precise term later utilized by the gospel writers to
depict Christ's resurrection, as also demonstrated in Christ in Egypt. Apparently Callahan is
unaware of this important pre-Christian portrayal of the death and resurrection
of Horus, as he goes into a
digression concerning the death of Osiris and the impregnation of Isis.
Callahan is also
evidently unaware of the fact that there are different versions of the
various myths, such as concerns the impregnation of Isis, who in ancient
texts is called the "Great Virgin." As Dr. James Curl says in The Egyptian Revival, "[Isis] was
the sacred embodiment of motherhood, yet was known as the Great Virgin, an apparent
contradiction that will be familiar to Christians." (Curl, The Egyptian Revival, 13) In this same
regard, the Theological Dictionary of the
Old Testament relates:
In a text in the Abydos
Temple of Seti I, Isis herself declares: "I am the great virgin."
(Botterweck, 338)
As we can see, there is
much more to the story than is implied by both Christian apologists and
skeptics alike. The discussion of Horus's mother as "The Virgin
Isis-Mery" can be found in full in Christ
in Egypt, in a chapter 77 pages long.
Horus and the
12
When Callahan makes
such comments as, "I have absolutely no idea where Joseph got
the notion that Horus
had 12 disciples or that he was ever crucified," he is revealing
again that he did not even look at the sources for ZEITGEIST before presenting
himself an expert on the subject. This sentence betrays Callahan's shallow
knowledge of the subject--he has no
idea where this information
came from, because he has not studied the subject in depth; therefore, ZG must
be wrong! If Callahan had checked with me first, I could have steered him in
the right direction as to where to find these various aspects of the Egyptian
mythos. For example, he could have read the work of Dr. Hornung, in which he
produces this wonderful image from the Book of Amduat of Horus heading the 12:
Horus enthroned before the Twelve,
Seventh Hour of the Amduat.
(Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of
the Afterlife, 48)
From the Egyptian texts,
images and artifacts themselves--that
is where we get these notions!
In my various
books, I include an extensive discussion of the mythical motif of the
"Twelve Followers," devoting an entire chapter to it in Christ in Egypt. That the 12 became an
astrological theme in religions of the Roman Empire is a proven fact not only
with the cults of Mithra and the Egyptian hybrid god Serapis but also with the
12 Tribes of Israel. As I relate in Christ
in Egypt (261):
As is the case with other
major characteristics of the Egyptian gods that have been associated with
Jesus, the claim that Horus had 12 "disciples" cannot be found easily
in modern encyclopedias or mainstream books. In reality, the association of the
sun god with "the Twelve" constitutes a common motif, based on both
the months of the year and the 12-hour divisions of day and night. Indeed, we
find the theme of "the Twelve" in a number of other cultures,
including the 12 Olympian gods of Greece, as well as those of the Romans, along
with the 12 adventures of Gilgamesh, the 12 labors of Hercules and the 12
Tribes of Israel, all of which symbolize the months of the year and/or the
zodiacal signs.
In a footnote to this
paragraph, I write:
See Exodus 39:9-14:
"...they made the breastplate... And they set in it four rows of stones...
And the stones were according to the names of the children of Israel,
twelve...according to the twelve tribes." As Josephus says (Antiquities, 3.8): "And for the
twelve stones, whether we understand by them the months or whether we
understand the like number of the signs of that circle which the Greeks call
the zodiac, we shall not be mistaken in their meaning." (Josephus, 75.)
Earlier than Josephus, Philo ("On the Life of Moses," 12) had made
the same comments regarding Moses: "Then the twelve stones on the breast,
which are not like one another in colour, and which are divided into four rows
of three stones in each, what else can they be emblems of, except of the circle
of the zodiac?" (Philo, 99.)
As we can see, by the
first century it was well known that the theme of "the 12" was
astrological in nature.
In Christ in Egypt I provide the
evidence for the rest of the Egyptian claims in ZG, including an entire 32-page
chapter entitled "Was Horus 'Crucified?'" There was in reality
no need for the mystification that unfortunately indicates ignorance of the
subject matter. In CIE, I
show that not only is Horus associated with the sacred cross in a number of
ways but that, in an important pre-Christian icon, he was also placed
on the cross of the vernal equinox, between two "thieves."
Born on
December 25th
Callahan has mistakenly
reviewed the wrong version of ZEITGEIST, which was let out of the bag before I consulted on it. In the final cut, Krishna is not
listed as born on December 25th. Nevertheless, as an incarnation of the sun god
Vishnu, who was logically
depicted as "rising" at the winter solstice, a case could be made for
such a contention, as discussed in my book Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled, which is listed as one of the sources for Part 1
of ZG. In any event, we are interested in the official version of ZG, so bringing up the Krishna info in
order to refute it constitutes a straw man.
Not only was Mithra born
on December 25th or the winter solstice--as is proper for sun gods--but so too was Horus, and
this point is also thoroughly proved in Christ
in Egypt. Contrary to popular misconception, December 25th is not
an erroneous date for the winter solstice but represents the end of a triduum or three-day period beginning at midnight on
December 21st and ending at midnight on December 24th. The adoption of this
date into Christianity reveals that the creators and promulgators of that faith
were indeed interested in usurping the powerful solar mythology and
astrotheological religion that permeated the Roman Empire.
The Nativity
Scene at Luxor
In addressing the
nativity scene at Luxor and its relationship to the gospel story, Callahan refers to
"Joseph's confusion." After making this disparaging comment,
Callahan himself goes on to state, "This is probably the source of Luke's Nativity."
But he wants to split hairs that in fact reveal once more a shallow
knowledge of the subject matter. In the first place, many people over the centuries since
the temple's discovery have raised the comparison between the Luxor birth
narrative and the gospel nativity, including associating its characters with
Isis and Horus, so this contention has nothing to do with "Joseph's
confusion."
Secondly, Callahan sloppily and confusedly garbles two different
nativity scenes, not realizing that it is the birth narrative of the pharaoh Amenhotep III which appears at Luxor,
not that of the female Hatshepsut, which is in fact at Deir el
Bahari. Once again Callahan could have come to me to read my extensive
online excerpt from CIE on the Nativity Scene
at Luxor. This section in my book constitutes some 24 pages
of discussion. In any event, to say as Callahan does that the birth scene of
the divine pharaoh--who is the living
Horus--has nothing to do with
Horus, Isis and Osiris reflects an ignorance of Egyptian culture. To quote
from Christ in Egypt:
During a long period of
Egyptian history--in fact, "throughout the existence of Pharaonic
Egypt"--the king or pharaoh, the son of the sun, was...identified with
Horus and was given a "Horus name."... Dr. Frankfort remarks:
Each king, at death,
becomes Osiris..., just as each king, in life, appears "on the throne of
Horus"; each king is
Horus.
Indeed, as related by Dr.
Murnane, Horus is "the primary identity of the pharaoh." (CIE, 50)
Identifying the mother as
"Isis" is also not erroneous but would be logical, since she is
Horus's mother. Concerning the role of the king as Horus and his mother as
Isis, Hornung describes a scene in the burial chamber of Tuthmosis III of
"a stylized tree offering its breast to the pharaoh," underneath
which is the inscription: "He sucks [on the breast of] his mother
Isis." The "Royal Mother Isis," Hornung continues, is the pharaoh's
"real mother." The Swiss Egyptologist further remarks upon the fact
that Tuthmosis thus "had an Isis as his earthly mother," while
"[a]t the same time, the king as Horus on earth is able to return to his
heavenly mother Isis…" Hornung also relates that the king, like Horus, is
"the loyal son born to Isis…."
Moreover, in various of
the hymns to Isis in her temple at Philae, built beginning centuries before the
common era, appear references by the king to his "mother" Isis,
identifying the Ptolemy who is the hymn's subject as the "beloved
son" of the goddess. As Žabkar relates:
Thus Isis, mother of
Horus, is also mother of the king, not only because she addresses him as
"my beloved son," or "my son, Horus, my beloved," but
because his royal function and character are coextensive with those of Horus,
her son, who long ago had become the mythical prototype of the Egyptian king,
with whom the Ptolemies tended to identify themselves.
In discussing the
"Egyptian royal rites," Griffiths also relates that the king's mother
is Isis:
…In the coronation rites,
attention is naturally focused on the new king, who is equated with Horus, but
since Isis is the mother of Horus (in his forms as Horus the Child and Horus
the Elder), she figures in the retrospective aspect of such rites, as indeed
does Osiris as his father.
Therefore, the divine
child is essentially Horus, while his mother is identified with Isis,
a perpetual virgin.... (CIE,
178)
At another point,
Callahan returns to his contention that Luke's Nativity is based
on the Egyptian birth narrative at Luxor, which he once again erroneously
claims to be that of Hatshepsut and to have nothing to do with Isis. Yet,
he next nonsensically says, "So Mary could relate to the
constellation Virgo, but also took on the iconography of Isis," leaving us
confused as to what he is
intending in this garbled
writing. First he ridicules Peter Joseph for thinking that the queen and
divine child in the sacred Egyptian birth scene could represent Isis and Horus;
then, he gives the impression of associating Hatshepsut and/or Mary with
Isis.
The Star and
Three Kings, etc.
As concerns the various
astronomical, astrological and astrotheological aspects contended in ZG, Callahan lumps them together
under the heading of "nonsense." What is in fact "nonsense"
here is the lack of knowledge of the subject matter on the part of the writer.
He seems to have no concept of the true nature of religious worship in the
ancient world--astrotheological worship being proved on practically a daily
basis by advanced archaeoastronomical finds at ancient temples in numerous
places worldwide.
In specific, again,
Callahan evidently has no idea that this comparison between the Star of
Bethlehem/Wise Men pericope and Sirius/Orion's "Three
Kings" did not originate with the creator of ZG but can be found in
numerous writings dating back at least to the 18th century with the voluminous
works of Charles Francois Dupuis, a muse for Count Volney, who did extensive
research on the astrotheological nature of ancient religions. Nor does Callahan
have any concept of the intense reverence with which Sirius and the
three "kings" or "wise men" in Orion's Belt were held by
the Egyptians for many centuries before the common era. Indeed, these
stellar objects heralded the annual birth of the Egyptian messiah.
To quote another respected Egyptologist, Dr. John Gwyn Griffiths:
"Sothis [Sirius] was
the harbinger of the annual inundation of the Nile through her appearance with
the rising sun at the time when the inundation was due to begin. The bright
star would therefore naturally become, together with the conjoined
constellation of Orion, the sign and symbol of new vegetation which the Year
then beginning would infallibly bring with it." (Griffiths, The Origins of Osiris and His Cult,
157)
As I relate in Christ in Egypt (200):
The coming of Osiris--the
savior of Egypt--was
associated with the "Star in the East" because the Egyptians
recognized that the rising of Sirius with the sun, or "heliacally,"
occurred around the summer solstice, the time of the Nile flooding....
....Hence, the "Star in the East" heralded
the birth of the Egyptian Messiah thousands of years before the Christian era.
As we can see from this
and much more research I provide in Christ
in Egypt, there is nothing nonsensical about suggesting that the
very similar--virtually identical--motif as found in the much later
Christianity is a rehash of this popular aspect of Egyptian religion.
What is nonsensical is to believe, as Callahan apparently does, that the Star
of Bethlehem was an actual event, rather than a common mythical motif.
In this discussion,
Callahan also raises another straw man: To wit, the number of the "wise
men" or "kings," at the same time splitting hairs and nitpicking
by stating that "kings" and "wise men" are not the same
thing. It is not, as Callahan complains, the "nonsense" of films like
ZG that give Christian apologists ammunition but the ridiculous and meaningless
nitpicking engaged in by skeptics that hands them ammo.
This latter point about
the wise men/kings would be important only to a pedant but not to the public,
who could and did easily alternate these dignitaries, which is why we do in
fact find them interchangeably within Christian tradition itself. The number of
these dignitaries is also not important, although in the Bible their gifts are three and Christian tradition holds
them as three, in evident
emulation of the popular motif from Egypt. It would be a simple matter for the
Jewish imitators of the Egyptian myth to leave out the number of the "wise
men" or "kings."
As concerns
Callahan's discussion of the Old Testament texts that may have been used
as a blueprint for this NT pericope, firstly we have no evidence that these
OT texts reflect "real history." Moreover, the fact that the Jewish
creators of Christianity used the Old Testament as a blueprint--which I show
extensively in Who Was Jesus?--does not preclude
them from also incorporating in their myths the astrotheological motifs of
their neighbors, including naming their towns such as Bethlehem after mythical
places representing sacred sites.
The
Celebration of Easter
At one point, Callahan
claims that "Easter [as] related to the sun's triumph over darkness at or shortly following the
Vernal Equinox" constitutes an "astrological fantasy."
Astonishingly, it appears that Callahan has no idea of the real meaning of the
word "Easter"
and its significance in the pre-Christian world! Indeed, he gives the
impression that "Easter" really is the term for when Christ was
crucified. It isn't a question of "simply relegating Easter to a
celebration of the Vernal Equinox." Easter
is the celebration of the vernal equinox or Spring, dating back
thousands of years. Christ's crucifixion was placed at that time in order
to usurp this very popular celebration of the yearly renewal or resurrection of life. Even the ancient
Church fathers themselves were aware of this purposeful juxtaposition. (See,
e.g., the Chronicon Paschale.)
Callahan repeatedly uses
the term "Christ myth," as in: "However, the solar
associations of the cross, while adding solar connotations to the Christ myth,
do not militate against it also being a symbol of the Crucifixion." Such
statements, of course, will not please believers
who wish to use his writing to "debunk" ZG. Also, while ridiculing
and dismissing the solar association of Christianity identified in ZG, Callahan
confusedly suggests that there are
"solar connotations to the Christ myth!" Yet, somewhere under all
these myths, Callahan insists he can find a "real, actual and historical
Jesus" who was definitely crucified, regardless of the lack of
evidence for such a person. To paraphrase a wise man, "A composite of 20
people is no one."
At one point,
Callahan engages in blatant circular reasoning by saying, "It is
the historiscity [sic] of Jesus that will tell us whether the Crucifixion was
real or merely symbolic of the sun descending..." Even if we could find
some "historical Jesus" in this amalgam of myths, his mere existence
does not prove that he was crucified! Nor does it negate the adoption into
Christianity of an obvious and popular solar symbol, i.e., the cross. Nor
does it nullify the admissions of such early Church fathers as Justin Martyr
and Tertullian about non-Christian or pre-Christian
gods on crosses. In the end, Christ is just another of the long line of gods,
godmen and goddess on crosses or in cruciform. In the face of the absolute
dearth of evidence for his existence, there is no reason to suppose that
Christ's crucifixion is any less mythical than the passions of other gods such
as Osiris and Dionysus.
The
Non-Biblical Testimony
Callahan, like many
uncritical Christian apologists, bases his "historical" Jesus on a handful of
sentences from the end of the first century to the beginning of the second
century--secondhand testimony at best that, when scrutinized, does not hold up
to the light. It should be noted firstly that the list of historians and other
writers of the 1st century that appears in ZG is from my book Who Was Jesus? (85). Not one of these
many writers says anything about Christ, Christians or Christianity, although
some of them traveled in the very area of the gospel story and knew the Jewish
culture well. Not a word from contemporary historians, despite the fact that,
according the New Testament in some two dozen scriptures, Jesus was famed far
and wide! (See WWJ, 85)
The fact of this material
in the writings of Jewish and Roman historians Josephus, Pliny, Suetonius and
Tacitus constituting little to no evidence as to the existence of a
"historical" Jesus has been understood for decades to centuries, but
these counterarguments are apparently completely unknown to Callahan. I have
presented these arguments against the value of this supposed "testimony"
extensively in my writings, such as in Suns
of God and Who Was Jesus?
Following are some relevant excerpts from Suns of
God:
The Jesus
Forgery: Josephus Untangled
Pliny, Tacitus
and Suetonius: No Proof of Jesus
Callahan wisely avoids
the larger passage in Josephus called the "Testimonium Flavianum,"
which has been shown repeatedly over the centuries to be a forgery in toto, although there are, of
course, those who cling to a partial interpolation theory or who insist it
to be genuine in its entirety. Yet, Callahan is ignorant of the arguments
against the authenticity of the "James passage," which I outline in Suns of God and Who Was Jesus?
As concerns in
particular Tacitus, whom Callahan singles out as "evidence"
of Christ's existence, in Who Was
Jesus? (94-96) I write:
Although dated by
scholars to between 107 and 116 AD/CE, the vaunted passage in Roman senator and
historian Tacitus's Annals
(15:44) does not appear in the literary record until the 14th century, while
the earliest extant manuscript possessing book 15 dates only to the 11th
century. Hence, the authenticity and value of the Annals remain dubious....
In the Latin manuscript
that is the basis of this particular translation, Tacitus refers to a
"Christus," with an "i," but he claims the "class
hated for their abominations" were called "Chrestians," with an
"e," meaning "the good" or "the useful," etc.,
rather than "followers of Christ." However, the manuscript tradition
of the Annals also reveals that the word "Christus" has been interchanged
with "Chrestus," presenting yet another difficulty in discerning an
original, and reflecting that the text has been altered.
Moreover, Tacitus's
assertion that these Chrestians constituted a "vast multitude" at
Rome by Nero's time (64 AD/CE) is incorrect, and, despite the repeated claim to
the opposite, there is no other evidence
of a massive Neronian persecution of Christians for setting the fire at Rome....
In addition, if there
were a "vast multitude" of Christians in Rome by Nero's time, why
would Suetonius write some 40 to 50 years later that Christianity was a
"new" superstition? Particularly if these multitudes of Christians
had notoriously been blamed for the fire and persecuted thereafter?...
Other arguments against
the authenticity of this text include that it is written in different and
rougher Latin than Tacitus's other, more well-known works. Furthermore, in all
of Tacitus's other works, no mention is made of Christ, Christians or
Christianity--how do we account for this fact, if there were already a
"vast multitude" of Christians at Rome...who Nero supposedly had
blamed for the infamous fire that almost destroyed Rome?...
Also, this passage
constitutes the only Pagan
reference that specifically associates Pontius Pilate with Christ. In
describing Pilate, Tacitus anachronistically uses the term
"procurator," when it has been asserted that Pilate was a prefect and that there were no
procurators until after his era....
And so on, through more
pages of argumentation against the value of this passage, including that in the
third century Roman historian Cassius Dio (163-229 AD/CE) wrote a fairly
lengthy account of the conflagration at Rome and made "no mention of
Christians in relation to the event, let alone 'in great numbers.'" One
would think that a meticulous writer like Dio would have before him the account
of the famous senator Tacitus, if such an account existed. After studying these
various sources and the rest proffered by apologists, such as Thallus, Phlegon
and Mara Bar-Serapeion, it is not possible honestly to conclude, as Callahan
does, that "the evidence for Jesus as a real, historical personage, though
meager, is solid."
Astrotheological
Religion
Callahan sets up yet
another straw man by stating that ZG makes "the assertion that both Moses and Jesus based
their words and actions on a belief in astrological ages of roughly 2,000 plus
years dominated by a specific sign of the Zodiac." In actuality, that is
not at all what ZG contends, as ZG does not presume, as does Callahan without
any evidence, that Moses and Jesus were "real people" who had words
and actions to base on anything. What ZG and some of its sources do claim
is that the priests who created these characters--in the case of Moses, long
after his purported existence--did so in order to fabricate figureheads
for these various ages based on the precession of the equinoxes.
This research did not
originate with Peter Joseph and ZG but dates back centuries. When one actually
studies this research regarding the astrotheological and astrological creations
of the priesthood extending into antiquity, there is good reason to suspect
that there was indeed a method to their madness. That the ancient priesthoods
of the time were aware of the zodiac and the precession is clear, and no
priesthood worth its salt would ignore these mystical and magical symbols. Nor
does the addition of writings from the genre
of apocalypses negate the influence of the precession upon the Christian
effort. Not knowing these important facts, Callahan simply waves his hand and
makes it all go away.
The
ancient priestcraft, in reality, was well honed by the time it engaged in
the creation of Christianity. That the ancient religions were largely based in
astrology or astrotheology is a fact that any person presenting himself as an
"expert" on ancient religion ignores to his own detriment. By the
time of the creation of Christianity, in fact, astrological religion was highly
refined and constituted the leading spiritual ideology, as exemplified in
Mithraism and many others throughout the Roman Empire. Without extensive study
of the astrotheology and solar mythology, as found in my books, especially Suns of God and Christ in Egypt, one will not
understand or present a proper perspective of the ancient world during the
alleged advent of Jesus Christ. Indeed, in studying the subject, it becomes
clear that Christ was from the earliest times the "Sun of
Righteousness" and "Sol Noster" ("Our Sun") the
former of which the messiah is called in the biblical book of
Malachi, directly preceding the New Testament, and the latter of which
Christ was labeled by early Church fathers. By the second century, so
prevalent was the contention of Christian sun worship that Tertullian was
compelled to retort to the Pagan critics, "You say we worship the sun--so
do you!" (As paraphrased in the Catholic
Encyclopedia, "Tertullian," XIV, 521.) As I write in Suns of God (447):
...In Ad. Nationes, Tertullian addressed and
denied the contention that Christians were just another sect of sun
worshippers:
Chapter XIII.-The Charge
of Worshipping the Sun Met by a Retort.
Others...suppose that the
sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that we pray
towards the east, or because we make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do
you do less than this?....
In The Apology (Ch. XVI), Tertullian
provided the following comeback to the charge of sun worshipping:
Others...believe that the
sun is our god. We shall be counted Persians perhaps, though we do not worship
the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth, having himself everywhere in
his own disk...
The solar symbolism and
imagery within Christianity is pervasive--and has been noticed since antiquity.
As the great philosopher
Thomas Paine said:
The christian religion is
a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call
Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was
originally paid to the Sun. (Paine, 87)
After having studied the
subject in depth, including the characteristics of the numerous sun gods or
solar heroes around the Mediterranean beginning thousands of years ago and
continuing into the common era, it is difficult to ignore such remarks and to
dismiss them as "nonsense." What is nonsensical is the tortured
reasoning used by skeptics and believers alike to deny this rich panoply of
religious and spiritual thought dating back millennia.
Bibliography
Acharya S, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold,
AUP, IL, 1999.
--Suns of God:
Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled, AUP, IL, 2004.
Botterweck, G. Johannes, ed., Theological
Dictionary of the Old Testament, I, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, MI,
1974.
Catholic Encyclopedia, XIV,
The Encyclopedia Press, NY, 1913.
Chronicon Paschale, ed. J.P.
Migne, Patrologia Graeca,
vol. 92, Paris, 1860.
"Commentary on Tacitus and Cassius Dio,"
groups.yahoo.com/group/Christ_Conspiracy/message/12723
"From Jesus to Christ," Frontline, PBS, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/searching.html
Griffiths, John Gwyn, The Divine Verdict,
E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1991.
Hornung, Erik, The Ancient Egyptian Books
of the Afterlife, tr. David Lorton, Cornell University Press, NY,
1999.
--The Valley of
the Kings, tr. David Warburton, Timken Publishers, NY, 1990.
Josephus, The Works of Flavius Josephus,
tr. William Whitson, Kregel Publications, MI, 1981.
Murdock, D.M., Christ in Egypt: The
Horus-Jesus Connection, Stellar House Publishing, Seattle, 2009.
--Who Was Jesus?
Fingerprints of The Christ, Stellar House Publishing, Seattle,
2007.
Paine, Thomas, Life and Writings of Thomas Paine, Vincent Parke & Co.,
1908.
Philo, The Works of Philo,
tr. C.D. Yonge, Hendrikson Publishers, 2000.
Zabkar, Louis V., Hymns to Isis in Her
Temple at Philae, Brandeis University Press, 1988.
For more information,
please see:
From Stellar House
Publishing @ http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/skeptic-zeitgeist.html
And see Caesar's Messiah: How Rome Created Christianity @ http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/caesars-messiah-how-rome-created.html
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Both went to their
temples at the age of twelve, where they are said to have astonished all with their wisdom. Both
supposedly fasted in solitude for a long time: Buddha for forty–seven days and
Jesus for forty. Both wandered to a fig tree at the conclusion of their fasts.
Both were about the same age when they began their public ministry:
According to Bhagavata
Purana some believe that Krishna was born without a sexual union, by “mental transmission”
from the mind of Vasudeva into the womb of Devaki, his mother. Christ and
Krishna were called both God and the Son of God. Both were sent from heaven to
earth in the form of a man. Both were called Savior, and the second person of
the Trinity. Krishna’s adoptive human father was also a carpenter. A spirit or
ghost was their actual father. Krishna and Jesus were of royal descent. 
Homeric tales about
Odysseus emphasize his suffering life, just as in Mark Jesus said that he, too, would suffer
greatly. Odysseus is a carpenter like Jesus, and he wants to return his home
just as Jesus wants to be welcomed in his native home and later to God’s home
in Jerusalem. Odysseus is plagued with unfaithful and dim-witted companions who
display tragic flaws. They stupidly open a magic bag of wind while Odysseus
sleeps and release terrible tempests which prevent their return home. 
Romulus is born of a
vestal virgin, which was a priestess of the hearth god Vesta sworn to celibacy. His mother
claims that the divine impregnated her, yet this is not believed by the King.
Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, are tossed in the river and left for dead.
(A “slaughter of the innocents” tale which parallels that of Matthew 2:13-16).
Romulus is hailed as the son of god. He is “snatched away to heaven” by a
whirlwind (It is assumed that the gods took him), and he makes post mortem
appearances. In his work Numa Pompilius, Plutarch records that there was a
darkness covering the earth before his death (Just as there was during Jesus’
death according to Mark 15:33). He also states that Romulus is to be know
afterwards as ‘Quirinus’; A god which belonged to the Archiac Triad (a “triple
deity” similar to the concept of the Trinity).
Dionysus was born of a
virgin on December 25
and, as the Holy Child, was placed in a manger. He was a traveling teacher who
performed miracles. He “rode in a triumphal procession on an ass.” He was a
sacred king killed and eaten in an eucharistic ritual for fecundity and
purification. Dionysus rose from the dead on March 25. He was the God of the
Vine, and turned water into wine. He was called “King of Kings” and “God of
Gods.” He was considered the “Only Begotten Son,” Savior,” “Redeemer,” “Sin
Bearer,” Anointed One,” and the “Alpha and Omega.” He was identified with the
Ram or Lamb. His sacrificial title of “Dendrites” or “Young Man of the Tree”
intimates he was hung on a tree or crucified.
Heracles is the Son of a
god (Zeus). It is recorded
that Zeus is both the father and great-great- great grandfather of Heracles,
just as Jesus is essentially his own grandpa, being both “The root and
offspring of David” (Revelation 22:16) as he is part of the triune God which is
the father of Adam and eventually of Jesus. Both are doubly related to the
Supreme God.
In the middle of the 100s
AD, out along the south coast of the Black Sea, Glycon was the son of the God Apollo, who: came to
Earth through a miraculous birth, was the Earthly manifestation of divinity,
came to earth in fulfillment of divine prophecy, gave his chief believer the
power of prophecy, gave believers the power to speak in tongues, performed
miracles, healed the sick, and raised the dead.
Zoroaster was born of a
virgin and “immaculate conception by a ray of divine reason.” He was baptized in a river.
In his youth he astounded wise men with his wisdom. He was tempted in the
wilderness by the devil. He began his ministry at age 30. Zoroaster baptized
with water, fire and “holy wind.” He cast out demons and restored the sight to
a blind man. He taught about heaven and hell, and revealed mysteries, including
resurrection, judgment, salvation and the apocalypse. He had a sacred cup or
grail. He was slain. His religion had a eucharist. He was the “Word made
flesh.” Zoroaster’s followers expected a “second coming” in the virgin-born
Saoshynt or Savior, who is to come in 2341 AD and begin his ministry at age 30,
ushering in a golden age.
Born of a virgin, Isis.
Only begotten son of the God Osiris. Birth heralded by the star Sirius, the morning star.
Ancient Egyptians paraded a manger and child representing Horus through the
streets at the time of the winter solstice (about DEC-21). In reality, he had
no birth date; he was not a human. Death threat during infancy: Herut tried to
have Horus murdered. Handling the threat: The God That tells Horus’ mother
“Come, thou goddess Isis, hide thyself with thy child.” 
