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

by John E. Remsburg

“Captivated, ravished, enamoured, enraptured, they have loved him. Rendered insensible by love, they have trampled cruelly upon the broken hearts of fathers and desolate mothers; they have listened, tearless, to the woeful beseechings of those who desire them for companions; they have followed to Carmel the unique lover, the immortal husband.”

The ancient adoration of Adonis survives in this modern adoration of Jesus. We see here the same strange commingling of superstition and fanaticism, of love and sorrow, of ecstasy and agony, of chastity and lust. The religion is the same; the worship is the same. The divine lovers only have been changed. The beautiful Pagan has been supplanted by the Ideal Man.

Writing of the Protestant women of his day, Thomas Jefferson says: “In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and praying parties, where, attended by their priests, ... they pour forth their love to Jesus in terms as amatory and carnal as their modesty would permit to a mere earthly lover” (Jefferson’s Works, Vol. IV, p. 358, Randolph’s ed.).

Osiris.

One of the most ancient and one of the most renowned of all the gods was Osiris, the Savior of Egypt. He was the son of Seb (earth) and Nu (heaven). He appears in the hieroglyphics of Egypt as early as 3427 B. C. Two thousand years before Christ his worship was universal in Egypt, and during the succeeding centuries spread over much of Asia and Europe, including Greece and Rome. Its priests looked confidently forward to the time when all men would be brought to Osiris, just as Christian priests today look forward to the time when all men will be brought to Christ.

Osiris was slain by Typhon (Satan), but rose again and became the ruler of the dead. He presides at the judgment of the departed where the good are rewarded with everlasting life, and the wicked are destroyed. The Osirian Bible is called the “Book of the Dead.”

Christians are indebted to this religion largely for their views concerning immortality and a bodily resurrection. They believe that through the death and resurrection of Christ they have inherited eternal life, that when their earthly career is ended they will live again in him. Regarding the Egyptians’ belief, the “International Encyclopedia” says: “Just as Osiris died and lived again, so the spiritual personality of the deceased lived again and was merged in Osiris.” Of Osiris the Rev. Dr. Charles Gillett, of Union Theological Seminary, says: “The belief in him and in the immortality which he symbolized was the deepest in Egyptian religious thought.” Sir John Gardner Wilkinson, one of the most eminent Egyptologists, says: “The peculiar character of Osiris, his coming upon earth for the benefit of mankind, with the titles of ‘Manifester of Good’ and ‘Revealer of Truth’; his being put to death by the malice of the Evil One; his burial and resurrection, and his becoming the judge of the dead, are the most interesting features of the Egyptian religion.” John Stuart Glennie, another English writer, notes the following analogies between the religion of Osiris and the religion of Christ: “In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, we find the worship of a divine mother and child. In ancient Osirianism as in modern Christianism, there is a doctrine of atonement. In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, we find the vision of a last judgment, and resurrection of the body. And finally, in ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, the sanctions of morality are a lake of fire and torturing demons on the one hand, and on the other, eternal life in the presence of God” (Christ and Osiris, p. 14).

Referring to Osiris, McClintock and Strong’s “Cyclopedia” says: “He was regarded as the personification of moral good. He is related to have been on earth instructing mankind in useful arts; to have been slain by his adversary Typhon by whom he was cut in pieces; to have been bewailed by his wife and sister Isis; to have been embalmed; to have risen again, and to have become the judge of the dead, among whom the righteous were called by his name and received his form—a wonderful fore-feeling of the Gospel narrative” (Art. Egypt).

Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, was the greatest of female divinities. Her worship was coexistent and coextensive with that of her divine brother and husband. We have the following picture of her in the Apocalypse: “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars” ([Revelation xii, 1]). The worship of Isis existed in Rome and Alexandria during the formative period of Christianity and Christians borrowed much from it.