The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of His Existence

by John E. Remsburg

Horus.

This popular Egyptian god was the son of Osiris and Isis. Osiris and Horus were both solar deities; Osiris was the setting sun, Horus the rising sun. Christ, it is claimed, existed before his incarnation; and Horus, it was claimed, existed even before the incarnation of his father. Christ when an infant was carried into Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod; Horus when an infant was carried out of Egypt to escape the wrath of Typhon. To avenge the death of his father he afterward vanquished Typhon. He was the last of the gods who reigned in Egypt. Festivals and movable feasts similar to those celebrated in honor of Christ were held in his honor.

In India and Egypt, ages before the appearance of Christianity, the doctrine of the Trinity prevailed. Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva constituted the principal trinity of India, while the most important Trinity of Egypt was Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Even the Christian doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, an absurdity which Christianity alone is supposed to have taught, was an Egyptian doctrine. Samuel Sharp, in his “Egyptian Mythology” (p. 14), says: “We have a hieroglyphical inscription in the British Museum as early as the reign of Sevechus of the eighth century before the Christian era, showing that the doctrine of Trinity in Unity already formed part of their religion and that * * * the three gods only made one person.”

Dr. Draper says: “For thirty centuries the Egyptians had been familiar with the conception of a triune God. There was hardly a city of any note without its particular triads. Here it was Amum, Maut, and Khonso; there Osiris, Isis, and Horus” (Intellectual Development, Vol. I, p. 191).

Dr. Inman affirms the Egyptian origin of the Christian trinity: “The Christian trinity is of Egyptian origin, and is as surely a Pagan doctrine as the belief in heaven and hell, the existence of a devil, of archangels, angels, spirits and saints, martyrs and virgins, intercessors in heaven, gods and demigods, and other forms of faith which deface the greater part of modern religions” (Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism, p. 13).

There are two myths connected with Horus analogous to stories found in the Old Testament, and which were old when these stories were written. The hiding of Horus in a marsh by his mother undoubtedly suggested the myth of the hiding of Moses in a marsh by his mother. When Horus died Isis implored Ra, the sun, to restore him to life. Ra stopped his ship in mid-heaven and sent down Thoth, the moon, to bring him back to life. The stopping of the sun and moon by Isis recalls the myth of the stopping of the sun and moon by Joshua.

The deification and worship of the Virgin had its origin in the worship of Isis, and the adoration of the Virgin and Child is but the adoration of Isis and Horus transferred to Mary and Jesus. Describing the Paganization of Christianity Dr. Draper says: “Views of the Trinity, in accordance with Egyptian tradition, were established. Not only was the adoration of Isis under a new name restored, but even her image standing on the crescent moon reappeared. The well-known effigy of that goddess, with the infant Horus in her arms, has descended to our days in the beautiful artistic creations of the Madonna and Child” (Conflict, p. 48).

That the Virgin Mary of the Roman Catholic church was borrowed from Egypt is shown by the fact that in the earlier representations of her, she was, like Isis, veiled. Concerning this Draper, in his “Intellectual Development” (Vol. I, p. 361), says: “Of the Virgin Mary, destined in later times to furnish so many beautiful types of female loveliness, the earliest representations are veiled. The Egyptian sculptors had thus depicted Isis; the first form of the Virgin and Child was the counterpart of Isis and Horus.”

Dr. G. W. Brown, author of “Researches in Oriental History,” writes: “Mural illustrations of this mother and child are not confined to Egypt, but are scattered all over Asia Minor, and are numerous in Italy, while many temples and shrines are yet found which were erected to their memory. [Matthew ii, 15], claims to be a quotation from one of the prophets: ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son.’”

Writing of the ancient Gnostics, C. W. King, a noted English author, says: “To this period belongs a beautiful sard in my collection, representing Serapis, * * * whilst before him stands Isis, holding in one hand the sistrum, in the other a wheatsheaf, with the legend: ‘Immaculate is our lady Isis,’ the very term applied afterwards to that personage who succeeded to her form, her symbols, rites, and ceremonies” (Gnostics and Their Remains, p. 71).

Regarding the transference of the attributes of Isis to Mary, Newton, in his “Assyrian Grove and Other Emblems,” says: “When Mary, the mother of Jesus, took the place in Christendom of ‘the great goddess,’ the dogmas which propounded her immaculate conception and perpetual virginity followed as a matter of course.”

“The ‘Black Virgins,’” says King, “so highly reverenced in certain French cathedrals during the middle ages, proved, when critically examined, basalt figures of Isis.”

Mrs. Besant believes that Christianity was derived chiefly from Egypt: “It grew out of Egypt; its gospels came from thence [Alexandria]; its ceremonies were learned there; its Virgin is Isis; its Christ Osiris and Horus.”

Of the antiquity of Egypt’s religion, and the mutability of the gods, that brilliant young Englishman, Winwood Reade, thus writes: “Buried cities are beneath our feet; the ground on which we tread is the pavement of a tomb. See the pyramids towering to the sky, with men, like insects, crawling round their base; and the Sphinx, couched in vast repose, with a ruined temple between its paws. Since those great monuments were raised the very heavens have been changed. When the architects of Egypt began their work, there was another polar star in the northern sky, and the southern cross shone upon the Baltic shores. How glorious are the memories of those ancient men, whose names are forgotten, for they lived and labored in the distant and unwritten past. Too great to be known, they sit on the height of centuries and look down on fame. * * * The men are dead, and the gods are dead. Naught but their memories remain. Where now is Osiris, who came down upon earth out of love for man, who was killed by the malice of the evil one, who rose again from the grave and became the judge of the dead? Where now is Isis the mother, with the child Horus in her lap? They are dead; they are gone to the land of the shades. To-morrow, Jehovah, you and your son shall be with them.”