Should we be alarmed if there weren’t similarities between the gospel stories and myths like those of ancient Egypt? Were ancient Egypt’s myths of a ‘dying, resurrected god’ a pre-echo of events to come?

Many in Christianity insist, nonsensically, on the total uniqueness of Bible concepts - the creation story and the tragedy of the dying god in particular, as if these ideas came to us freshly minted by inspired biblical authors. But I am in the C.S. Lewis camp. I cannot help but see ‘pre-echoes’ of Christianity in mythology - most especially in that of ancient Egypt. While there are crucial differences, the pattern is there. Examples of the startling similarities between Egyptian religion and Christianity are too numerous to ignore. Both Osiris and Jesus died after a Last Supper or Banquet, involving a conspiracy, where they were betrayed, Osiris by his evil brother Seth and Jesus by his disciple Judas. Both died on the tree, so to speak, Osiris sealed alive in a wooden coffin and Jesus nailed to a cross. Then there is the parallel resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of Osiris. The symbols of both dying gods are almost identical. Each had a cross. The Egyptians had the ankh, symbol of life-eternal, Christianity the cross of Calvary. Certain psalms in the Bible are almost identical to ancient Egyptian Wisdom Texts and to hymns written in adoration of the god Aton, thousands of years older than the Bible, yet the Bible is considered to be the font of all spiritual inspiration. You can see Egypt’s religious legacy today in the living traditions, symbols and practices of Catholicism. Is it simply synchronicity that the Pope wears a trinitarious mitre much like a pharaoh’s triple crown and carries the shepherd’s crozier like the crook of pharaoh? That both Mary and Isis are called the ‘Mother of God’? Egypt also invented trinities. Isis, Osiris and Horus were the precursors of Mary, Joseph and Jesus. There is the same story of deity creating the world out of the formless void through the agency of the word. As the Gospel writer John said: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through Him. Compare this with earlier Egyptian mythology that said: The world itself came into existence through the utterance of a word by Thoth. Most telling of all is the ‘myth of the dying god’ Osiris and pre-echoes of Jesus. That’s not to say that Christianity ‘stole’ from Egyptian mythology. By no means. These similarities are ‘pre-echoes’ as C.S. Lewis described them. It would be alarming if these similarities were not there, he asserted. You see, I just can’t believe in a God who suddenly stumbled out of a sleep when Israel happened along. No, his spirit must have been at work in earlier civilizations like ancient Egypt’s that dominated the Eastern Mediterranean. After all, Egypt’s neighbours could scarcely have avoided its impact. No people described so fully in written descriptions and illustrations their ideas about religion and the afterlife. There is a pattern in the development of spiritual consciousness, I believe – and believe that symmetry is the language of god to humankind.

Jesus just a copy of the ancient Egyptian god Horus? The Horus-Jesus heresy. There is an old Horus heresy that the ancient Egyptian god Horus was the template for Jesus of Nazareth. Horus was the symbol of kingship, a sky god depicted as a “blade-winged falcon” or a man with a falcon’s head. Horus on high, ‘the Distant One’ is one of the most famous icons in Egypt along with his mother Isis whose image holding the baby Horus on her lap prefigured Mary and Jesus icons. Atheists and neo-pagans like to compare Horus with Jesus and claim Jesus was just a copy of the ancient god. Whole books have been devoted to the spurious theory, not to mention a good chunk of the Internet, citing parallels – asserting that both Jesus and Horus were born of a virgin, had twelve disciples, walked on water, delivered a 'sermon on the mount', performed miracles, were executed beside two thieves, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. Apart from healing and ‘miracles’, stock in trade of all ancient gods, there is no support for these fabrications in ancient Egyptian texts. Not that we should be surprised by similarities and earlier myths of dying and resurrected gods such as Horus and Osiris. As C.S. Lewis pointed out. It would be alarming if they were not there. He called them “pre-echoes” of what was to come. There are many myths of dying gods in antiquity. Ancient texts like the Turin King's List, records the lifespans and the deaths of Egypt’s gods and goddesses. All things died, the Egyptians believed, all gods, all men, all animals, all except for the High God. Legends of tombs of gods and goddesses also crop up in Egypt. Archaeologists have located several mythical tombs of Osiris, the father of Horus, the suffering son of a murdered father. The importance of Horus persisted into the Christian era in Egypt. Horus turns up in Coptic magical healing spells and the Lamentations of Horus to this day. Horus is the healer and magical saviour of a sort, but not of souls. Carved stone stele of the child Horus, known as healing cippi, showing him standing on snakes and crocodiles. They were a feature of ancient Egyptian magical medicine, believed to cure poisonous snake and scorpion bites. There is a fine example in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, called the Metternich Stela. Myths are truths in a divine language of symmetry.

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