He said straight out that he didn’t want to read the Bible anymore. He’d had a bad week, he said, and was disillusioned by the whole thing. He’d seen a documentary on YouTube that proved Christianity was based on ancient mythologies: the facts were all there, they’d copied the whole thing, and that was it. He was done with the Bible, the Torah, and doubted Jesus ever existed.
I remembered an old podcast by Jeannie Constaninou, in which she battered these ideas - so pulled out some of the things she said: like the fact that the comparisons with mythology were very general - about a savior coming to heal the world, a god being resurrected from the dead etc - which are normal things for gods to do. So it’s hardly surprising that Christianity shares some similarities with other beliefs. The crucial difference, however, is that Christ was a real person, who really did come to save the world, and who really did die and was resurrected. He’s not a myth - he’s the one true God.
I also talked about Josephus and other non-Christian historians from the time who mentioned Jesus; and urged him to read NT Wright.
But he wasn’t having any of it. He couldn’t remember any concrete examples from the documentary, and the debate was going nowhere, so I asked him to send me a link of the video and cut the meeting short. This time he suggested we say a prayer at the end, which was nice. We hugged again before saying goodbye.
I tried to watch the YouTube documentary he sent me later that afternoon me with an open mind. It starts by introducing Horus, the Egyptian god of the sun, who, it claims, was “born on December 25 of a virgin, was the star in the east, adored by three kings upon his birth, he was a teacher at the age of 12, and baptized and began his ministry at 30, he had 12 disciples, performed miracles, he was called the lamb of god and the light, he was crucified, was dead for three days, before being resurrected.”
I have to admit, that took me aback a little bit. But on closer inspection, I could happily dismiss most of it: December 25 - that’s the winter solstice, which would be a natural day for the sun god to be born, and everyone knows Jesus wasn’t really born on that day; the star of the east - not surprising for a sun god; adored by kings, a teacher, miracle performer, “light” and so on fall under the same category.
But the claim that Horus was crucified did catch my eye, because I didn't know the Egyptians did crucifixion, and I don't know of any other gods who were killed in that humiliating way. I looked it up on Horus's wikipedia site, which says he’s the god of the sky, and contains the sun and moon, but doesn’t mention crucifixion. Then I checked a large PDF document with academic references, that he later sent me, which backs up the claims in the movie. And I also found the book on which the movie was based: "Christ in Egypt" by D.M. Murdock.
Murdock goes to pains to say that the above story of Horus (which looks so like Christ’s story) isn’t a “linear” narrative: it’s been put together with different “motifs” and “symbolic” references. A closer look at the "crucified" claim makes it clearer what that means. By “crucified” she doesn’t mean the normal definition of "nailed to a cross", but "cruciform" as in "holding your hands outstretched". Then she mentions some stuff about "crosses" in the sky, like where the sun "crosses" at the equinox, how the sun sits in the middle of the “cross” of the zodiac, and the Southern Cross constellation. Finally, there’s a picture of Horus with his arms outstretched across the sky (normal behavior for the sky god you would think) - which put together apparently means Horus was "crucified in the heavens"! There's 30 pages of this bullshit in her book! Surely it’s easier to believe in Christ than this childish nonsense?
I sent my old boss an email, with the above rebuttal and some links to more serious research on the historical Jesus, like Gary Habermas’s book, but didn’t get a reply yet. Perhaps the podcast I attached was too big for his inbox, but he probably has other things on his mind. I read in this morning’s paper that he went to the high court yesterday. He just changed lawyers, so the judge begrudgingly gave him another month to read the documents. I hope we can go back to reading the Bible this Thursday.
