Zeitgeist: The Movie, Part 3: Jesus the Copycat

In our third look at the online documentary called Zeitgeist where we are responding to the allegations that are brought up in the first third of the movie about Jesus and religion, we will look at the most vicious and serious attacks the the documentary brings against Christianity. Remember, you can watch the movie by clicking here. Also, check in with parts 1 and 2 of this discussion below. Here we go.

The documentary claims that Jesus is a copycat of a number of other religious figures whose stories are remarkably similar, either Horus, or Mithra, or whoever (there are hundreds). In fact, when you list the essential events of Horus' life, who dates to 3000 BC, 3000 years before Jesus, they are very similar to the essential events in Jesus' life. For example:

Horus was

Born on December 25th in a cave/manger with his birth being announced in the east and attended by three wisemen.

He is of royal decent

At age 12, he was a teacher in the temple and baptized at age 30

He had 12 disciples

He did many miracles, including walking on water

He was crucified between two thieves, buried for three days, and resurrected

He was called "The Way, the Truth and the Life," "The Messiah," and "the Word Made flesh" among others

Do these things sound familiar? Yes, they all existed in the life of Jesus. And, if these elements really were in a common astrological, Egyptian mythical religion that predates Christianity by thousands of years, that would be very suspect. This part of the video troubled me more than any other. So, I went to work to find the truth.

The first step was to talk to a friend who is smarter than me. Here is my question and the response of Dr. Wave Nunnally, professor of Theology from Evangel University:

What is your response to the mentioning of, for instance, the Egyptian god Horus, who dates to 3000 BC, and has very much in common with the birth, life and death of Christ? In fact, there seem to be many examples of this; figures whose stories are very similar to that of Jesus, some of which seem to be older. Your thoughts?

As you learned here, there were many dying and rising god myths in the ancient world. In his NT intro, Robert Gundry dismisses any true parallels with the Jesus event by noting that these stories are all about events that supposedly happened in eons past, for which there was no eyewitness testimony. Also, their deaths were not true, but rather ethereal, quasi-deaths. Finally, their dying and rising were actually ways to personify seasons and other forces in nature. None of these things can be said of the death of Jesus, so the "parallels" are more or less over-generalizations that don't really work out when the details are analyzed.

Interesting response. However, it was too general. I wanted specific evidence of the claims being false. So, I kept going, and there seem to be several issues in play.

My first clue to this should have been the first quote that flashes up on the screen of the documentary: "They must find it difficult, those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority." The author of that quote was listed as G. Massey, or Gerald Massey. Massey was an English poet and (supposedly self taught) Egyptologist who was a somewhat famous conspiracy theorist and Christ-myther (this is a label you will probably see again, there seem to be a whole fraternity of these guys, including the makers of Zeitgeist). If you did a quick search of his name on amazon, you would find many of the books he wrote, but the 2 most notable are The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ, and Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World. Also notice that though he has been dead for like 100 years, that these books have been re-released recently (because religious conspiracies are so huge right now!).

This is all just background to the point I want to make. Massey is the source used by Acharya S, a female author of the book The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. She is the source of most Christ-mythers today and the primary source for this documentary, as cited on the sources page. So, if you are following the trail, Zeitgeist uses Acharya S, Acharya S uses Massey. Massey never sites a source. Aparantly Massey made all this up, because we find no evidence of this before him. The lies are passed on and on.

All of these sources and all of these Christ-mythers make the same mistake. As I debunked on this website a few years ago, you have probably heard of the similarities often cited between Abraham Lincoln and JFK. Upon further scrutiny, however, it is pretty easily seen that the similarities they claim that exist are either not spectacular, distortions of the truth, or flat out lies. This is exactly what has happened with the list given on Zeitgeist.

This is a great list, looking at the similarities between Horus and Jesus, as cited by Massey and taken from the Egyptian Book of The Dead (which, by the way, you can find at any Barnes and Noble. But, be warned, it is very weird). Using the website, it is not hard to debunk the list that is above, like so.

Horus was

Born on December 25th in a cave/manger with his birth being announced in the east and attended by three wisemen.

Let’s take this one apart and deal with each separate issue:

Horus’ mother was not a virgin. She was married to Osiris, and there is no reason to suppose she was abstinent after marriage. Horus was, per the story, miraculously conceived. Seth had killed and dismembered Osiris, then Isis put her husband's dead body back together and had intercourse with it. In some versions, she used a hand-made phallus since she wasn't able to find that part of her husband. So while it was a miraculous conception, it was not a virgin birth.

Horus was supposedly born on the last day of the Egyptian month of Khoiak, which corresponds on our calendars to November 15th.

Horus was born in a swamp, not a cave/manger. Acharya's footnotes for this point only make the claim that Jesus was born in a cave, and say nothing about Horus being born in one.

Horus' birth was not announced by a star in the east

There were no “three wise men” at Horus’ birth, or at Jesus’ for that matter (the Bible never gives the number of wise men, and they showed up at Jesus’ home, not at the manger, and probably when Jesus was a year or two old).

Acharya's source for the last two claims appears to be Massey, who says "the Star in the East that arose to announce the birth of the babe (Jesus) was Orion, which is therefore called the star of Horus. That was once the star of the three kings; for the 'three kings' is still a name of three stars in Orion's belt . . . " Massey's apparently getting mixed up, and then the critics are misinterpreting it. Orion is not a star, but a constellation, of which the 'three kings' are a part. And even if there is a specific star called 'the star of Horus', there's no legend stating that it announced Horus' birth (as the critics are claiming) or that the 'three wise men' (the three stars in Orion's belt) attended Horus' birth in any way.

He is of royal decent

This one’s true! But it's not really a comparison to Jesus. When followers speak of Jesus being of 'royal descent', they usually mean His being a descendant of King David, an earthly king. Horus was, according to the myth, descended from heavenly royalty (as Jesus was), being the son of the main god.

At age 12, he was a teacher in the temple and baptized at age 30

He never taught in any temple and was never baptized.

He had 12 disciples

Horus had four disciples (called ‘Heru-Shemsu’). There’s another reference to sixteen followers, and a group of followers called ‘mesnui’ (blacksmiths) who join Horus in battle, but are never numbered. But there’s no reference to twelve followers.

He did many miracles, including walking on water

He did perform miracles, but he did not walk on water.

He was crucified between two thieves, buried for three days, and resurrected.

Horus was never crucified. There’s an unofficial story in which he dies and is cast in pieces into the water, then later fished out by a crocodile at Isis’ request. This unofficial story is the only one in which he dies at all.

He was called "The Way, the Truth and the Life," "The Messiah," and "the Word Made flesh" among others.

The only titles Horus is given are “Great God”, “Chief of the Powers”, “Master of Heaven”, and “Avenger of His Father”. None of the above titles are in any Egyptian mythology.

Upon further scrutiny, it is clear that these supposed similarities are not that at all. Few are true, but those are very general (miracles, royal decent). Some are distortions, and others are flat out lies. If you click the link that compares Jesus and Horus, it gives more comparisons and goes deeper in the explanations. Here is the root site, that goes into more depth about this issue and also tackles the comparisons between Jesus and dozens of other god myths, in which you find the same issues at play. The site is a fantastic source. I think a quick look at it will pretty much settle the Jesus/copycat issue. It has for me.


While I was in the process of researching this and writing about it, I stumbled across Lee Strobel's new book called The Case for the Real Jesus, which is a response to the attacks that have come against Jesus in the past few years through sources like The Da Vinci Code and The Jesus Family Tomb. One of the issues he discusses in the book is the idea that "christian beliefs about Jesus were copied from pagan religions." Strobel addresses this issue very well. He interviews two experts about this issue and they weigh in on the validity of the argument. Perhaps the most revealing quote in this section is by Dr. Michael Licona who states "I know of no highly respected scholar today who suggests that these vague fables are parallels to the resurrection of Jesus. We only hear this claim from the hyper-skeptical community on the Internet and in popular books that are marketed to people who lack the background to analyze the facts critically." The Case for the Real Jesus p163. To be clear, this is exactly what we are dealing with: the highly skeptical community on the Internet as well as a production marketed to the laymen who typically don't have the background to argue with the claims.

If this has not convinced you, grab Strobel's book and read his chapter on this issue. It is very worth the $22 as it deals with a number of other scholarly issues that Christianity is facing today.

One more resource I should mention briefly is this page on the Always Be Ready website. It is simply a list of scholarly quotes that respond to many of the issues in Zeitgeist. It is worth a quick read, and the site as a whole is a good resource to bookmark as well.

This has been a very long post. Perhaps I should have made it two parts. Nonetheless, it is good info. Next time we will look at the documentary's attack of Josephus. Stay tuned!

-NF