Tom Harpur's false choices

Catholic New Times, July 4, 2004 by Scott M. Lewis

The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light by Tom Harpur. Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2004. pp. 244. $34.95

The title hints at the enormous task that Mr. Harpur has undertaken, which is nothing less than the radical transformation of Christianity as we know it.

His thesis is that there is nothing original in Christianity, since it was copied or plagiarized from the ancient Egyptian religion. He adduces an impressive list of parallels between the life and teachings of Jesus and the primordial mystery religion, that, if true would silence most skeptics.

For Harpur, the gospels were originally intended to be mythological, expressing deep spiritual truths flowing from the ancient religion. A combination of the machinations of fanatical ecclesiastics and colossal blunders resulted in the gospels being interpreted in historical fashion, thereby robbing Christianity of much of its spiritual power. In a fraud unparalleled in history, the evidence of this deceit was destroyed or covered up in the early centuries of the Christian era, and the pagan roots of Christianity repudiated. The historical Jesus never existed; he is a mythological expression of the god in every person. The events related in the gospel stories describe archetypal interior experiences common to all humanity, and the Jesus story is a spiritual allegory of the soul.

These are serious charges with enormous consequences, requiring a meticulous assemblage of evidence. This is where the problems with the book begin. There is virtually no dialogue with current mainstream scholarship. Much of the book draws on outdated or fringe work. It is questionable whether Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, should be considered a suitable source for a work of this nature (page 165). The bibliography is weighted very strongly in favor of esoteric and theosophical works, and relies very heavily on the works of Gerald Massey (1828-1908) and Alvin Kuhn (1881-1963), two orientalists who wrote extensively on esoteric religion.

Their works, however, are idiosyncratic, and not accepted within the field of Egyptology. One can see why: both of them work from the narrowest range of sources, making tortured and questionable word etymologies and esoteric interpretations of hieroglyphics and Egyptian art. We are asked to accept their interpretations at face value with little or no supporting evidence or proof.

Little supporting evidence

Harpur repeats these interpretations with little further supporting evidence. It would be expected that one could confront and cross-examine the statements offered as evidence; in fact, it is very difficult and in some cases nearly impossible. For example, on page 77, he states that Massey has found 180 correlations between the lives of Horus and Jesus, proving the identity between the two. Neither the name of the work nor the page numbers are given to us.

In numerous instances, bold and sweeping statements are made with little or no supporting references, and there is often the same problem with extended quotations. The startling statement by Meister Eckhart on page 41 begs for a reference, but in vain.

Over the last 50 years, a tremendous amount of research has been generated on both the historical Jesus, Second Temple Judaism, and the social and economic conditions of the first-century Roman empire. Mainstream scholarship has situated Jesus securely in the context of Second Temple Judaism, Greco-Roman society, and the structure of empire. Additionally, it has revealed the social and economic impact of the early Christian proclamation and the religious currents that nourished the life and message of Jesus. With the exception of references to the work of the Jesus Seminar, most of this research is absent from this work. Ironically, even the work of the Jesus Seminar is dismissed by Harpur, because they still mistakenly believe that Jesus was an historical person. A failure to anchor the argument in sound historical research leads to assertions such as on page 5 that there was a 'Jesus' in Egyptian lore as early as 18,000 BCE--astounding when one considers the fact that the earliest pre-historic sites in Egypt date to about the 6th millennium BCE with the familiar Egyptian civilization beginning about 3500 BCE.

Several striking quotations from the Church Fathers admit that Christianity is not new. The statement by St. Augustine on page 27 is a fine example: the true religion has always existed among the ancients, and began to be called Christianity with the coining of Jesus Christ in the flesh. This line of argument was quite common during the patristic era, for one of the most uncomfortable accusations against Christianity was that it was new. The peoples of the ancient world, unlike modern people, revered old and venerable traditions rather than innovations, especially in the area of religion. Apologists had to prove that Christianity was not new, but had an ancient and respectable pedigree. These quotations do not imply that Jesus did not exist or that Christianity was a myth.