THE HISTORICAL JESUS

AND

M Y T H I C A L - C H R I S T

by Gerald Massey

In presenting my readers with some of the data which show that much of the Christian History was pre-extant as Egyptian Mythology. I have to ask you to bear in mind that the facts, like other foundations, have been buried out of sight for thousands of years in a hieroglyphical language, that was never really read by Greek or Roman, and could not be read until the lost clue was discovered by Champollion, almost the other day! In this way the original sources of our Mytholatry and Christology remained as hidden as those of the Nile, until the century in which we live. The mystical matter enshrouded in this language was sacredly entrusted to the keeping of the buried dead, who have faithfully preserved it as their Book of Life, which was placed beneath their pillows, or clasped to their bosoms, in their coffins and their tombs.

Secondly, although I am able to read the hieroglyphics, nothing offered to you is based on my translation. I work too warily for that! The transcription and literal rendering of the hieroglyphic texts herein employed are by scholars of indisputable authority. There is no loophole of escape that way. I lectured upon the subject of Jesus many years ago. At that time I did not know how we had been misled, or that the "Christian scheme" (as it is aptly called) in the New Testament is a fraud, founded on a fable in the Old!

I then accepted the Canonical Gospels as containing a veritable human history, and assumed, as others do, that the history proved itself. Finding that Jesus, or Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, was an historical character, known to the Talmud, I made the common mistake of supposing that this proved the personal existence of the Jesus found portrayed in the Canonical Gospels. But after you have heard my story, and weighed the evidence now for the first time collected and presented to the public, you will not wonder that I should have changed my views, or that I should be impelled to tell the truth to others, as it now appears to myself; although I am only able to summarize here, in the briefest manner possible, a few of the facts that I have dealt with exhaustively elsewhere. The personal existence of Jesus as Jehoshua Ben-Pandira can be established beyond a doubt. One account affirms that, according to a genuine Jewish tradition "that man (who is not to be named) was a disciple of Jehoshua Ben-Perachia." It also says, "He was born in the fourth year of the reign of the Jewish King Alexander Jannæus, notwithstanding the assertions of his followers that he was born in the reign of Herod." That would be more than a century earlier than the date of birth assigned to the Jesus of the Gospels! But it can be further shown that Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have been born considerably earlier even than the year 102 B.C., although the point is not of much consequence here. Jehoshua, son of Perachia, was a president of the Sanhedrin -- the fifth, reckoning from Ezra as the first: one of those who in the line of descent received and transmitted the oral law, as it was said, direct from Sinai. There could not be two of that name. This Ben-Perachia had begun to teach as a Rabbi in the year 154 B.C. We may therefore reckon that he was not born later than 180-170 B.C., and that it could hardly be later than 100 B.C. when he went down into Egypt with his pupil. For it is related that he fled there in consequence of a persecution of the Rabbis, feasibly conjectured to refer to the civil war in which the Pharisees revolted against King Alexander Jannæus, and consequently about 105 B.C. If we put the age of his pupil, Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, at fifteen years, that will give us an approximate date, extracted without pressure, which shows that Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have been born about the year 120 B.C. But twenty years are a matter of little moment here. According to the Babylonian Gemara to the Mishna of Tract "Shabbath," this Jehoshua, the son of Pandira and Stada, was stoned to death as a wizard, in the city of Lud, or Lydda, and afterwards crucified by being hanged on a tree, on the eve of the Passover. This is the manner of death assigned to Jesus in the Book of Acts. The Gemara says there exists a tradition that on the rest-day before the Sabbath they crucified Jehoshua, on the rest-day of the Passah (the day before the Passover). The year of his death, however, is not given in that account; but there are reasons for thinking it could not have been much earlier nor later than B.C. 70, because this Jewish King Jannæus reigned from the year 106 to 79 B.C. He was succeeded in the government by his widow Salomè, whom the Greeks called Alexandra, and who reigned for some nine years. Now the traditions, especially of the first "Toledoth Jehoshua," relate that the Queen of Jannæus, and the mother of Hyrcanus, who must therefore be Salomè, in spite of her being called by another name, showed favour to Jehoshua and his teaching; that she was a witness of his wonderful works and powers of healing, and tried to save him from the hands of his sacerdotal enemies, because he was related to her; but that during her reign, which ended in the year 71 B.C., he was put to death. The Jewish writers and Rabbis with whom I have talked always deny the identity of the Talmudic Jehoshua and the Jesus of the Gospels. "This," observes Rabbi Jechiels, "which has been related to Jehoshua Ben-Perachia and his pupil, contains no reference whatever to him whom the Christians honour as God!" Another Rabbi, Salman Zevi, produced ten reasons for concluding that the Jehoshua of the Talmud was not he who was afterwards called Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth (and of the Canonical Gospels) was unknown to Justus, to the Jew of Celsus, and to Josephus, the supposed reference to him by the latter being an undoubted forgery.

The "blasphemous writings of the Jews about Jesus," as Justin Martyr calls them, always refer to Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, and not to the Jesus of the Gospels. It is Ben-Pandira they mean when they say they have another and a truer account of the birth and life, the wonder-working and death of Jehoshua or Jesus. This repudiation is perfectly honest and soundly based. The only Jesus known to the Jews was Jehoshua Ben-Pandira, who had learnt the arts of magic in Egypt, and who was put to death by them as a sorcerer. This was likewise the only Jesus known to Celsus, the writer of the "True Logos," a work which the Christians managed to get rid of bodily, with so many other of the anti-Christian evidences. Celsus observes that he was not a pure Word, not a true Logos, but a man who had learned the arts of sorcery in Egypt. So, in the Clementines, it is in the character of Ben-Pandira that Jesus is said to rise again as the magician. But here is the conclusive fact: The Jews know nothing of Jesus, the Christ of the Gospels, as an historical character; and when the Christians of the fourth century trace his pedigree, by the hand of Epiphanius, they are forced to derive their Jesus from Pandira! Epiphanius gives the genealogy of the Canonical Jesus in this wise:--

Jacob, called Pandira, Mary - Joseph -- Cleopas, Jesus.

This proves that in the fourth century the pedigree of Jesus was traced to Pandira, the father of that Jehoshua who was the pupil of Ben-Perachia, and who becomes one of the magicians in Egypt, and who was crucified as a magician on the eve of the Passover by the Jews, in the time of Queen Alexandra, who had ceased to reign in the year 70 B.C.--the Jesus, therefore, who lived and died more than a century too soon.

Thus, the Jews do not identify Jehoshua Ben-Pandira with the Gospel Jesus, of whom they, his supposed contemporaries, know nothing, but protest against the assumption as an impossibility; whereas the Christians do identify their Jesus as the descendant of Pandira. It was he or nobody; yet he was neither the son of Joseph nor the Virgin Mary, nor was he crucified at Jerusalem. It is not the Jews, then, but the Christians, who fuse two supposed historic characters into one! There being but one history acknowledged or known on either side, it follows that the Jesus of the Gospels is the Jehoshua of the Talmud, or is not at all, as a Person. This shifts the historic basis altogether; it antedates the human history by more than a hundred years, and it at once destroys the historic character of the Gospels, together with that of any other personal Jesus than Ben-Pandira. In short, the Jewish history of the matter will be found to corroborate the mythical. As Epiphanius knew of no other historical Jesus than the descendant of Pandira, it is possible that this is the Jesus whose tradition is reported by Irenæus.

Irenæus was born in the early part of the second century, between 120 and 140 A.D. He was Bishop of Lyons, France, and a personal acquaintance of Polycarp; and he repeats a tradition testified to by the elders, which he alleges was directly derived from John, the "disciple of the Lord," to the effect that Jesus was not crucified at 33 years of age, but that he passed through every age, and lived on to be an oldish man. Now, in accordance with the dates given, Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have been between 50 and 60 years of age when put to death, and his tradition alone furnishes a clue to the Nihilistic statement of Irenæus.

When the true tradition of Ben-Pandira is recovered, it shows that he was the sole historical Jesus who was hung on a tree by the Jews, not crucified in the Roman fashion, and authenticates the claim now to be made on behalf of the astronomical allegory to the dispensational Jesus, the Kronian Christ, the mythical Messiah of the Canonical Gospels, and the Jesus of Paul, who was not the carnalised Christ. For I hold that the Jesus of the "other Gospel," according to the Apostles Cephas and James, who was utterly repudiated by Paul, was none other than Ben-Pandira, the Nazarene, of whom James was a follower, according to a comment on him found in the Book Abodazura. Anyway, there are two Jesuses, or Jesus and the Christ, one of whom is repudiated by Paul.

But Jehoshua, the son of Pandira, can never be converted into Jesus Christ, the son of a virgin mother, as an historic character. Nor can the dates given ever be reconciled with contemporary history. The historical Herod, who sought to slay the young child Jesus, is known to have died four years before the date of the Christian era, assigned for the birth of Jesus.

So much for the historic Jesus. And now for the mythical Christ. Here we can tread on firmer ground.

The mythical Messiah was always born of a Virgin Mother--a factor unknown in natural phenomena, and one that cannot be historical, one that can only be explained by means of the Mythos, and those conditions of primitive sociology which are mirrored in mythology and preserved in theology. The virgin mother has been represented in Egypt by the maiden Queen, Mut-em-ua, the future mother of Amenhept III some 16 centuries B.C., who impersonated the eternal virgin that produced the eternal child.

Four consecutive scenes reproduced in my book are found portrayed upon the innermost walls of the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Luxor, which was built by Amenhept III., a Pharaoh of the 17th dynasty. The first scene on the left hand shows the God Taht, the Lunar Mercury, the Annunciator of the Gods, in the act of hailing the Virgin Queen, and announcing to her that she is to give birth to the coming Son. In the next scene the God Kneph (in conjunction with Hathor) gives the new life. This is the Holy Ghost or Spirit that causes the Immaculate Conception, Kneph being the spirit by name in Egyptian. The natural effects are made apparent in the virgin's swelling form.

Next the mother is seated on the mid-wife's stool, and the newborn child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the Adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the Gods and gifts from men. Behind the deity Kneph, on the right, three spirits--the Three Magi, or Kings of the Legend, are kneeling and offering presents with their right hand, and life with their left. The child thus announced, incarnated, born, and worshipped, was the Pharaonic representative of the Aten Sun in Egypt, the God Adon of Syria, and Hebrew Adonai; the child-Christ of the Aten Cult; the miraculous conception of the ever-virgin mother, personated by Mut-em-ua, as mother of the "only one," and representative of the divine mother of the youthful Sun-God.

These scenes, which were mythical in Egypt, have been copied or reproduced as historical in the Canonical Gospels, where they stand like four corner-stones to the Historic Structure, and prove that the foundations are mythical.

Jesus was not only born of the mythical motherhood; his descent on the maternal side is traced in accordance with this origin of the mythical Christ. The virgin was also called the harlot, because she represented the pre-monogamic stage of intercourse; and Jesus descends from four forms of the harlot - Thamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba -- each of whom is a form of the "stranger in Israel," and is not a Hebrew woman. Such history, however, does not show that illicit intercourse was the natural mode of the divine descent; nor does it imply unparalleled human profligacy. It only proves the Mythos.

In human sociology the son of the mother preceded the father, as son of the woman who was a mother, but not a wife. This character is likewise claimed for Jesus, who is made to declare that he was earlier than Abraham, who was the typical Great Father of the Jews; whether considered to be mythical or historical. Jesus states emphatically that he existed before Abraham was. This is only possible to the mythical Christ, who preceded the father as son of the virgin mother; and we shall find it so throughout. All that is non-natural and impossible as human history, is possible, natural and explicable as Mythos.

It can be explained by the Mythos, because it originated in that which alone accounts for it. For it comes to this at last: the more hidden the meaning in the Gospel history, the more satisfactorily is it explained by the Mythos; and the more mystical the Christian doctrine, the more easily can it be proved to be mythical.

The birth of Christ is astronomical. The birthday is determined by the full moon of Easter. This can only occur once every 19 years, as we have it illustrated by the Epact or Golden Number of the Prayer Book. Understand me! Jesus, the Christ, can only have a birthday, or resurrection, once in 19 years, in accordance with the Metonic Cycle, because his parents are the sun and moon; and those appear in the earliest known representation of the Man upon the Cross! This proves the astronomical and non-human nature of the birth itself, which is identical with that of the full moon of Easter in Egypt.

Casini, the French Astronomer, has demonstrated the fact that the date assigned for the birth of the Christ is an Astronomical epoch in which the middle conjunction of the moon with the sun happened on the 24th March, at half-past one o'clock in the morning, at the meridian of Jerusalem, the very day of the middle equinox. The following day (the 25th) was the day of the Incarnation, according to Augustine, but the date of the Birth, according to Clement Alexander. For two birth days are assigned to Jesus by the Christian Fathers, one at the Winter Solstice, the other at the Vernal Equinox. These, which cannot both be historical, are based on the two birthdays of the double Horus in Egypt. Plutarch tells us that Isis was delivered of Horus, the child, about the time of the winter Solstice, and that the festival of the second or adult Horus followed the Vernal Equinox. Hence, the Solstice and spring Equinox were both assigned to the one birth of Jesus by the Christolators; and again, that which is impossible as human history is the natural fact in relation to the two Horuses, the dual form of the Solar God in Egypt.

And here, in passing, we may point out the astronomical nature of the Crucifixion. The Gospel according to John brings on a tradition so different from that of the Synoptics as to invalidate the human history of both. The Synoptics say that Jesus was crucified on the 15th of the month Nisan. John affirms that it was on the 14th of the month. This serious rift runs through the very foundation! As human history it cannot be explained. But there is an explanation possible, which, if accepted, proves the Mythos. The Crucifixion (or Crossing) was, and still is, determined by the full moon of Easter. This, in the lunar reckoning, would be on the 14th in the month of 28 days; in the solar month of 30 days it was reckoned to occur on the 15th of the month. Both unite, and the rift closes in proving the Crucifixion to have been Astronomical, just as it was in Egypt, where the two dates can be identified.

Plutarch also tells us how the Mithraic Cult had been particularly established in Rome about the year 70 B.C. And Mithras was fabled as having been born in a cave. Wherever Mithras was worshipped the cave was consecrated as his birthplace. The cave can be identified, and the birth of the Messiah in that cave, no matter under what name he was born, can be definitely dated. The "Cave of Mithras" was the birthplace of the Sun in the Winter Solstice, when this occurred on the 25th of December in the sign of the Sea-Goat, with the Vernal Equinox in the sign of the Ram. Now the Akkadian name of the tenth month, that of the Sea-Goat, which answers roughly to our December, the tenth by name, is Abba Uddu, that is, the "Cave of Light;" the cave of re-birth for the Sun in the lowest depth at the Solstice, figured as the Cave of Light. This cave was continued as the birthplace of the Christ. You will find it in all the Gospels of the Infancy, and Justin Martyr says, "Christ was born in the Stable, and afterwards took refuge in the Cave." He likewise vouches for the fact that Christ was born on the same day that the Sun was re-born in Stabulo Augiæ, or, in the Stable of Augias. Now the cleansing of this Stable was the sixth labour of Herakles, his first being in the sign of the Lion; and Justin was right; the Stable and Cave are both figured in the same Celestial Sign. But mark this! The Cave was the birthplace of the Solar Messiah from the year 2410 to the year 255 B.C.; at which latter date the Solstice passed out of the Sea-Goat into the sign of the Archer; and no Messiah, whether called Mithras, Adon, Tammuz, Horus or Christ, could have been born in the Cave of Abba Uddu or the Stable of Augias on the 25th of December after the year 255 B.C., therefore, Justin had nothing but the Mithraic tradition of the by-gone birthday to prove the birth of the Historical Christ 255 years later!

In their mysteries the Sarraceni celebrated the Birth of the babe in the Cave or Subterranean Sanctuary, from which the Priest issued, and cried:--"The Virgin has brought forth: The Light is about to begin to grow again!"--on the Mother-night of the year. And the Sarraceni were not supporters of Historic Christianity.

The birthplace of the Egyptian Messiah at the Vernal Equinox was figured in Apt, or Apta, the corner; but Apta is also the name of the Crib and the Manger; hence the Child born in Apta, was said to be born in a manger; and this Apta as Crib or Manger is the hieroglyphic sign of the Solar birthplace. Hence the Egyptians exhibited the Babe in the Crib or Manger in the streets of Alexandria. The birthplace was indicated by the colure of the Equinox, as it passed from sign to sign. It was also pointed out by the Star in the East. When the birthplace was in the sign of the Bull, Orion was the Star that rose in the East to tell where the young Sun-God was re-born. Hence it is called the "Star of Horus." That was then the Star of the "Three Kings" who greeted the Babe; for the "Three Kings" is still a name of the three stars in Orion's Belt. Here we learn that the legend of the "Three Kings" is at least 6,000 years old.

In the course of Precession, about 255 B.C., the vernal birthplace passed into the sign of the Fishes, and the Messiah who had been represented for 2155 years by the Ram or Lamb, and previously for other 2155 years by the Apis Bull, was now imaged as the Fish, or the "Fish-man," called Ichthys in Greek. The original Fish-man--the An of Egypt, and the Oan of Chaldea--probably dates from the previous cycle of precession, or 26,000 years earlier; and about 255 B.C., the Messiah, as the Fish-man, was to come up once more as the Manifestor from the celestial waters. The coming Messiah is called Dag, the Fish, in the Talmud; and the Jews at one time connected his coming with some conjunction, or occurrence, in the sign of the Fishes! This shows the Jews were not only in possession of the astronomical allegory, but also of the tradition by which it could be interpreted. It was the Mythical and Kronian Messiah alone who was, or could be, the subject of prophecy that might be fulfilled--prophecy that was fulfilled as it is in the Book of Revelation--when the Equinox entered, the cross was re-erected, and the foundations of a new heaven were laid in the sign of the Ram, 2410 B.C.; and, again, when the Equinox entered the sign of the Fishes, 255 B.C. Prophecy that will be again fulfilled when the Equinox enters the sign of the Waterman about the end of this century, to which the Samaritans are still looking forward for the coming of their Messiah, who has not yet arrived for them. The Christians alone ate the oyster; the Jews and Samaritans only got an equal share of the empty shells! The uninstructed Jews, the idiotai, at one time thought the prophecy which was astronomical, and solely related to the cycles of time, was to have its fulfilment in human history. But they found out their error, and bequeathed it unexplained to the still more ignorant Christians. The same tradition of the Coming One is extant amongst the Millenarians and Adventists, as amongst the Moslems. It is the tradition of El-Mahdi, the prophet who is to come in the last days of the world to conquer all the world, and who was lately descending the Soudan with the old announcement the "Day of the Lord is at hand," which shows that the astronomical allegory has left some relics of the true tradition among the Arabs, who were at one time learned in astronomical lore.

The Messiah, as the Fish-man, is foreseen by Esdras ascending out of the sea as the "same whom God the highest hath kept a great season, which by his own self shall deliver the creature." The ancient Fish-man only came up out of the sea to converse with men and teach them in the daytime. "When the sun set," says Berosus, "it was the custom of this Being to plunge again into the sea, and abide all night in the deep." So the man foreseen by Esdras is only visible by day.

As it is said, "E'en so can no man upon earth see my son, or those that be with him, but in the daytime." This is parodied or fulfilled in the account of Ichthys, the Fish, the Christ who instructs men by day, but retires to the lake of Galilee, where he demonstrates his solar nature by walking the waters at night, or at the dawn of day.

We are told that his disciples being on board a ship, "when even was come, in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them walking upon the sea." Now the fourth watch began at three o'clock, and ended at six o'clock. Therefore, this was about the proper time for a solar God to appear walking upon the waters, or coming up out of them as the Oannes. Oannes is said to have taken no food whilst he was with men: "In the daytime he used to converse with men, but took no food at that season." So Jesus, when his disciples prayed him, saying "Master, eat," said unto them, "I have meat to eat that you know not of. My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me."

This is the perfect likeness of the character of Oannes, who took no food, but whose time was wholly spent in teaching men. Moreover, the mythical Fish-man is made to identify himself. When the Pharisees sought a "sign from heaven," Jesus said, "There shall no sign be given but the sign of Jonas. For as Jonas became a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the son of man be to this generation."

The sign of Jonas is that of the Oan, or Fish-man of Nineveh, whether we take it direct from the monuments, or from the Hebrew history of Jonah, or from the Zodiac.

The voice of the secret wisdom here says truly that those who are looking for signs, can have no other than that of the returning Fish-man, Ichthys, Oannes, or Jonah: and assuredly, there was no other sign or date--than those of Ichthys, the Fish who was re-born of the fish-goddess, Atergatis, in the sign of the Fishes, 255 B.C. After whom the primitive Christians were called little fishes, or Pisciculi.

This date of 255 B.C. was the true day of birth, or rather of re-birth for the celestial Christ, and there was no valid reason for changing the time of the world.

The Gospels contain a confused and confusing record of early Christian belief: things most truly believed (Luke) concerning certain mythical matters, which were ignorantly mistaken for human and historical. The Jesus of our Gospels is but little of a human reality, in spite of all attempts to naturalize the Mythical Christ, and make the story look rational.

The Christian religion was not founded on a man, but on a divinity; that is, a mythical character. So far from being derived from the model man, the typical Christ was made up from the features of various Gods, after a fashion somewhat like those "pictorial averages" portrayed by Mr. Galton, in which the traits of several persons are photographed and fused in a portrait of a dozen different persons, merged into one that is not anybody. And as fast as the composite Christ falls to pieces, each feature is claimed, each character is gathered up by the original owner, as with the grasp of gravitation.

It is not I that deny the divinity of Jesus the Christ; I assert it! He never was, and never could be, any other than a divinity; that is, a character non-human, and entirely mythical, who had been the pagan divinity of various pagan myths, that had been pagan during thousands of years before our Era.

Nothing is more certain, according to honest evidence, than that the Christian scheme of redemption is founded on a fable misinterpreted; that the prophecy of fulfillment was solely astronomical, and the Coming One as the Christ who came in the end of an age, or of the world, was but a metaphorical figure, a type of time, from the first, which never could take form in historic personality, any more than Time in Person could come out of a clock-case when the hour strikes; that no Jesus could become a Nazarene by being born at, or taken to, Nazareth; and that the history in our Gospels is from beginning to end the identifiable story of the Sun-God, and the Gnostic Christ who never could be made flesh. When we did not know the one it was possible to believe the other; but when once we truly know, then the false belief is no longer possible.

The mythical Messiah was Horus in the Osirian Mythos; Har-Khuti in the Sut-Typhonian; Khunsu in that of Amen-Ra; Iu in the cult of Atum-Ra; and the Christ of the Gospels is an amalgam of all these characters.
The Christ is the Good Shepherd!
So was Horus.

Christ is the Lamb of God!
So was Horus. Christ is the Bread of Life!
So was Horus. Christ is the Truth and the Life!
So was Horus. Christ is the Fan-bearer!
So was Horus. Christ is the Lord!
So was Horus. Christ is the Way and the Door of Life!
Horus was the path by which they travel led out of the Sepulchre. He is the God whose name is written with the hieroglyphic sign of the Road or Way.

Jesus is he that should come; and Iu, the root of the name in Egyptian, means "to come." Iu-em-hept, as the Su, the Son of Atum, or of Ptah, was the "Ever-Coming One," who is always pourtrayed as the marching youngster, in the act and attitude of coming. Horus included both sexes. The Child (or the soul) is of either sex, and potentially, of both. Hence the hermaphrodital Deity; and Jesus, in Revelation, is the Young Man who has the female paps.

Iu-em-hept signifies he who comes with peace. This is the character in which Jesus is announced by the Angels! And when Jesus comes to his disciples after the resurrection it is as the bringer of peace. "Learn of me and ye shall find rest," says the Christ. Khunsu-Nefer-Hept is the Good Rest, Peace in Person! The Egyptian Jesus, Iu-em-Hept, was the second Atum; Paul's Jesus is the second Adam. In one rendition of John's Gospel, instead of the "only-begotten Son of God," a variant reading gives the "only-begotten God," which has been declared an impossible rendering. But the "only-begotten God" was an especial type in Egyptian Mythology, and the phrase re-identifies the divinity whose emblem is the beetle. Hor-Apollo says, "To denote the only-begotten or a father, the Egyptians delineate a scarabæus!

By this they symbolize an only-begotten, because the creature is self-produced, being unconceived by a female." Now the youthful manifestor of the Beetle-God was this Iu-em-hept, the Egyptian Jesus. The very phraseology of John is common to the Inscriptions, which tell of him who was the Beginner of Becoming from the first, and who made all things, but who himself was not made. I quote verbatim. And not only was the Beetle-God continued in the "only-begotten God"; the beetle-type was also brought on as a symbol of the Christ. Ambrose and Augustine, amongst the Christian Fathers, identified Jesus with, and as, the "good Scarabæus," which further identifies the Jesus of John's Gospel with the Jesus of Egypt, who was the Ever-Coming One, and the Bringer of Peace, whom I have elsewhere shown to be the Jesus to whom the Book of Ecclesiasticus is inscribed, and ascribed in the Apocrypha.

In accordance with this continuation of the Kamite symbols, it was also maintained by some sectaries that Jesus was a potter, and not a carpenter; and the fact is that this only-begotten Beetle-God, who is pourtrayed sitting at the potter's wheel forming the Egg, or shaping the vase-symbol of creation, was the Potter personified, as well as the only-begotten God in Egypt.

The character and teachings of the Canonical Christ are composed of contradictions which cannot be harmonised as those of a human being, whereas they are always true to the Mythos.

He is the Prince of Peace, and yet he asserts that he came not to bring peace: "I came not to send peace, but a sword," and not only is Iu-em-hept the Bringer of Peace by name in one character; he is the Sword personified in the other. In this he says, "I am the living image of Atum, proceeding from him as a sword." Both characters belong to the mythical Messiah in the Ritual, who also calls himself the "Great Disturber," and the "Great Tranquilizer"--the "God Contention," and the "God Peace." The Christ of the Canonical Gospels has several prototypes, and sometimes the copy is derived or the trait is caught from one original, and sometimes from the other. The Christ of Luke's Gospel has a character entirely distinct from that of John's Gospel. Here he is the Great Exorciser, and caster-out of demons. John's Gospel contains no case of possession or obsession: no certain man who "had devils this long time"; no child possessed with a devil; no blind and dumb man possessed with a devil.

Other miracles are performed by the Christ of John, but not these; because John's is a different type of the Christ. And the original of the Great Healer in Luke's Gospel may be found in the God Khunsu, who was the Divine Healer, the supreme one amongst all the other healers and saviours, especially as the caster-out of demons, and the expeller of possessing spirits. He is called in the texts the "Great God, the driver away of possession."

In the Stele of the "Possessed Princess," this God in his effigy is sent for by the chief of Bakhten, that he may come and cast out a possessing spirit from the king's daughter, who has an evil movement in her limbs. The demon recognises the divinity just as the devil recognises Jesus, the expeller of evil spirits. Also the God Khunsu is Lord over the pig--a type of Sut. He is pourtrayed in the disk of the full moon of Easter, in the act of offering the pig as a sacrifice. Moreover, in the judgment scenes, when the wicked spirits are condemned and sent back into the abyss, their mode of return to the lake of primordial matter is by entering the bodies of swine. Says Horus to the Gods, speaking of the condemned one: "When I sent him to his place he went, and he has been transformed into a black pig." So when the Exorcist in Luke's Gospel casts out Legion, the devils ask permission of the Lord of the pig to be allowed to enter the swine, and he gives them leave. This, and much more that might be adduced, tends to differentiate the Christ of Luke, and to identify him with Khunsu, rather than with Iu-em-hept, the Egyptian Jesus, who is reproduced in the Gospel according to John. In this way it can be proved that the history of Christ in the Gospels is one long and complete catalogue of likenesses to the Mythical Messiah, the Solar or Luni-Solar God.

The "Litany of Ra," for example, is addressed to the Sun-God in a variety of characters, many of which are assigned to the Christ of the Gospels. Ra is the Supreme Power, the Beetle that rests in the Empyrean, who is born as his own son. This, as already said, is the God in John's Gospel, who says:--"I and the Father are one," and who is the father born as his own son; for he says, in knowing and seeing the son, "from henceforth ye know him and have seen him"; i.e., the Father.

Ra is designated the "Soul that speaks." Christ is the Word. Ra is the destroyer of venom. Jesus says:--"In my name they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them." In one character Ra is the outcast. So Jesus had not where to lay his head.

Ra is the "timid one who sheds tears in the form of the Afflicted." He is called Remi, the Weeper. This weeping God passes through "Rem-Rem," the place of weeping, and there conquers on behalf of his followers. In the Ritual the God says:--"I have desolated the place of Rem-Rem." This character is sustained by Jesus in the mourning over Jerusalem that was to be desolated. The words of John, "Jesus wept," are like a carven statue of the "Afflicted One," as Remi, the Weeper. Ra is also the God who "makes the mummy come forth." Jesus makes the mummy come forth in the shape of Lazarus; and in the Roman Catacombs the risen Lazarus is not only represented as a mummy, but is an Egyptian mummy which has been eviscerated and swathed for the eternal abode. Ra says to the mummy: "Come forth!" and Jesus cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" Ra manifests as "the burning one, he who sends destruction," or "sends his fire into the place of destruction." "He sends fire upon the rebels," his form is that of the "God of the furnace." Christ also comes in the person of this "burning one"; the sender of destruction by fire. He is proclaimed by Matthew to be the Baptiser with fire. He says, "I am come to send fire on the earth."

He is pourtrayed as "God of the furnace," which shall "burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." He is to cast the rebellious into a "furnace of fire," and send the condemned ones into everlasting fire. All this was natural when applied to the Solar-God, and it is supposed to become supernatural when misapplied to a supposed human being to whom it never could apply. The Solar fire was the primary African fount of theological hell-fire and hell.

The "Litany" of Ra collects the manifold characters that make up the total God (termed Teb-temt), and the Gospels have gathered up the mythical remains; thus the result is in each case identical, or entirely similar. From beginning to end the Canonical Gospels contain the Drama of the Mysteries of the Luni-Solar God, narrated as a human history. The scene on the Mount of Transfiguration is obviously derived from the ascent of Osiris into the Mount of Transfiguration in the Moon. The sixth day was celebrated as that of the change and transformation of the Solar God in the lunar orb, which he re-entered on that day as the regenerator of its light. With this we may compare the statement made by Matthew, that "after six days Jesus went up into a high mountain apart, and he was transfigured, and his face did shine as the sun (of course!), and his garments became white as the light."

In Egypt the year began soon after the Summer Solstice, when the sun descended from its midsummer height, lost its force, and lessened in its size. This represented Osiris, who was born of the Virgin Mother as the child Horus, the diminished infantile sun of Autumn; the suffering, wounded, bleeding Messiah, as he was represented. He descended into hell, or hades, where he was transformed into the virile Horus, and rose again as the sun of the resurrection at Easter. In these two characters of Horus on the two horizons, Osiris furnished the dual type for the Canonical Christ, which shows very satisfactorily HOW the mythical prescribes the boundaries beyond which the historical does not, dare not, go. The first was the child Horus, who always remained a child. In Egypt the boy or girl wore the Horus-lock of childhood until 12 years of age. Thus childhood ended about the twelfth year. But although adultship was then entered upon by the youth, and the transformation of the boy into manhood began, the full adultship was not attained until 30 years of age. The man of 30 years was the typical adult. The age of adultship was 30 years, as it was in Rome under Lex Pappia. The homme fait is the man whose years are triaded by tens, and who is Khemt. As with the man, so it is with the God; and the second Horus, the same God in his second character, is the Khemt or Khem-Horus, the typical adult of 30 years. The God up to twelve years was Horus, the child of Isis, the mother's child, the weakling. The virile Horus (the sun in its vernal strength), the adult of 30 years, was representative of the Fatherhood, and this Horus is the anointed son of Osiris. These two characters of Horus the child, and Horus the adult of 30 years, are reproduced in the only two phases of the life of Jesus in the Gospels. John furnishes no historic data for the time when the Word was incarnated and became flesh; nor for the childhood of Jesus; nor for the transformation into the Messiah. But Luke tells us that the child of twelve years was the wonderful youth, and that he increased in wisdom and stature. This is the length of years assigned to Horus the child; and this phase of the child-Christ's life is followed by the baptism and anointing, the descent of the pubescent spirit with the consecration of the Messiah in Jordan, when Jesus "began to be about 30 years of age."

The earliest anointing was the consecration of puberty; and here at the full age of the typical adult, the Christ, who was previously a child, the child of the Virgin Mother, is suddenly made into the Messiah, as the Lord's anointed. And just as the second Horus was regenerated, and this time begotten of the father, so in the transformation scene of the baptism in Jordan, the father authenticates the change into full adultship, with the voice from heaven saying:--"This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased;" the spirit of pubescence, or the Ruach, being represented by the descending dove, called the spirit of God. Thus from the time when the child-Christ was about twelve years of age, until that of the typical homme fait of Egypt, which was the age assigned to Horus when he became the adult God, there is no history. This is in exact accordance with the Kamite allegory of the double-Horus. And the Mythos alone will account for the chasm which is wide and deep enough to engulf a supposed history of 18 years. Childhood cannot be carried beyond the 12th year, and the child-Horus always remained a child; just as the child-Christ does in Italy, and in German folk-tales. The mythical record founded on nature went no further, and there the history consequently halts within the prescribed limits, to rebegin with the anointed and regenerated Christ at the age of Khem-Horus, the adult of 30 years.

And these two characters of Horus necessitated a double form of the mother, who divides into the two divine sisters, Isis and Nephthys. Jesus also was bi-mater, or dual-mothered; and the two sisters reappear in the Gospels as the two Marys, both of whom are the mothers of Jesus. This again, which is impossible as human history, is perfect according to the Mythos that explains it.

As the child-Horus, Osiris comes down to earth; he enters matter, and becomes mortal. He is born like the Logos, or "as a Word." His father is Seb, the earth, whose consort is Nu, the heaven, one of whose names is MERI, the Lady of Heaven; and these two are the prototypes of Joseph and Mary. He is said to cross the earth a substitute, and to suffer vicariously as the Saviour, Redeemer, and Justifier of men. In these two characters there was constant conflict between Osiris and Typhon, the Evil Power, or Horus and Sut, the Egyptian Satan. At the Autumn Equinox, the devil of darkness began to dominate; this was the Egyptian Judas, who betrayed Osiris to his death at the last supper. On the day of the Great Battle at the Vernal Equinox, Osiris conquered as the ascending God, the Lord of the growing light. Both these struggles are pourtrayed in the Gospels. In the one Jesus is betrayed to his death by Judas; in the other he rises superior to Satan. The latter conflict followed immediately after the baptism. In this way:--When the sun was half-way round, from the Lion sign, it crossed the River of the Waterman, the Egyptian Iarutana, Hebrew Jordan, Greek Eridanus. In this water the baptism occurred, and the transformation of the child-Horus into the virile adult, the conqueror of the evil power, took place. Horus becomes hawk-headed, just where the dove ascended and abode on Jesus. Both birds represented the virile soul that constituted the anointed one at puberty. By this added power Horus vanquished Sut, and Jesus overcame Satan. Both the baptism and the contest are referred to in the Ritual. "I am washed with the same water in which the Good Opener (Un-Nefer) washes when he disputes with Satan, that justification should be made to Un-Nefer, the Word made Truth," or the Word that is Law.

The scene between the Christ and the Woman at the Well may likewise be found in the Ritual. Here the woman is the lady with the long hair, that is Nu, the consort of Seb--and the five husbands can be paralleled by her five star-gods born of Seb. Osiris drinks out of the well "to take away his thirst." He also says: "I am creating the water. I make way in the valley, in the Pool of the Great One. Make-road (or road-maker) expresses what I am." "I am the Path by which they traverse out of the sepulchre of Osiris."

So the Messiah reveals himself as the source of living water, "that springeth up unto Everlasting Life." Later on he says, "I am the way, the truth, the life." "I am creating the water, discriminating the seat," says Horus. Jesus says, "The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father." Jesus claims that this well of life was given to him by the Father. In the Ritual it says, "He is thine, O Osiris! A well, or flow, comes out of thy mouth to him!" Also, the paternal source is acknowledged in another text. "I am the Father, inundating when there is thirst, guarding the water. Behold me at it." Moreover, in another chapter the well of living water becomes the Pool of Peace. The speaker says, "The well has come through me. I wash in the Pool of Peace."

In Hebrew, the Pool of Peace is the Pool of Salem, or Siloam. And here, not only is the pool described at which the Osirified are made pure and healed; not only does the Angel or God descend to the waters--the "certain times" are actually dated. "The Gods of the pure waters are there on the fourth hour of the night, and the eighth hour of the day, saying, 'Pass away hence,' to him who has been cured."

An epitome of a considerable portion of John's Gospel may be found in another chapter of the Ritual--"Ye Gods come to be my servants, I am the son of your Lord. Ye are mine through my Father, who gave you to me. I have been among the servants of Hathor or Meri. I have been washed by thee, O attendant!" Compare the washing of Jesus' feet by Marry.

The Osiris exclaims, "I have welcomed the chief spirits in the service of the Lord of things! I am the Lord of the fields when they are white," i.e., for the reapers and the harvest. So the Christ now says to the disciples, "Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that are white already unto the harvest."

"Then said he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest that he send forth labourers into his harvest. And he called unto him his twelve disciples." Now, if we turn to the Egyptian "Book of Hades," the harvest, the Lord of the harvest, and the reapers of the harvest are all portrayed: the twelve are also there. In one scene they are preceded by a God leaning on a staff, who is designated the Master of Joy--a surname of the Messiah Horus when assimilated to the Soli-Lunar Khunsu; the twelve are "they who labour at the harvest in the plains of Neter-Kar." A bearer of a sickle shows the inscription: "These are the Reapers." The twelve are divided into two groups of five and seven--the original seven of the Aahenru; these seven are the reapers. The other five are bending towards an enormous ear of corn, the image of the harvest, ripe and ready for the sickles of the seven. The total twelve are called the "Happy Ones," the bearers of food. Another title of the twelve is that of the "Just Ones." The God says to the reapers, "Take your sickles! Reap your grain! Honour to you, reapers." Offerings are made to them on earth, as bearers of sickles in the fields of Hades. On the other hand, the tares or the wicked are to be cast out and destroyed for ever. These twelve are the apostles in their Egyptian phase.

In the chapters on "Celestial Diet" in the Ritual, Osiris eats under the sycamore tree of Hathor. He says, "Let him come from the earth. Thou hast brought these seven loaves for me to live by, bringing the bread that Horus (the Christ) makes. Thou hast placed, thou hast eaten rations. Let him call to the Gods for them, or the Gods come with them to him."

This is reproduced as miracle in the Gospels, performed when the multitude were fed upon seven loaves. The seven loaves are found here, together with the calling upon the Gods, or working the miracle of multiplying the bread.

In the next chapter there is a scene of eating and drinking. The speaker, who impersonates the Lord, says:--"I am the Lord of Bread in Annu. My bread at the heaven was that of Ra; my bread on earth was that of Seb." The seven loaves represent the bread of Ra. Elsewhere the number prescribed to be set on one table, as an offering, is five loaves. these are also carried on the heads of five different persons in the scenes of the under-world. Five loaves are the bread of Seb. Thus five loaves represent the bread of earth, and seven the bread of heaven. Both five and seven are sacred regulation numbers in the Egyptian Ritual. And in the Gospel of Matthew the miracles are wrought with five loaves in the one case, and seven in the other, when the multitudes are fed on celestial diet. This will explain the two different numbers in one and the same Gospel miracle. In the Canonical narrative there is a lad with five barley loaves and two fishes. In the next chapter of the Ritual we possibly meet with the lad himself, as the miracle-worker says:--"I have given breath to the said youth."

The Gnostics asserted truly that celestial persons and celestial scenes had been transferred to earth in our Gospels; and it is only within the Pleroma (the heaven) or in the Zodiac that we can at times identify the originals of both. And it is there we must look for the "two fishes."

As the latest form of the Manifestor was in the heaven of the twelve signs, that probably determined the number of twelve basketsful of food remaining when the multitude had all been fed. "They that ate the loaves were five thousand men;" and five thousand was the exact number of the Celestials or Gods in the Assyrian Paradise, before the revolt and fall from heaven. The scene of the miracle of the loaves and fishes is followed by an attempt to take Jesus by force, but he withdraws himself; and this is succeeded by the miracle of his walking on the waters, and conquering the wind and waves. So is it in the Ritual. Chap. 57 is that of the breath prevailing over the water in Hades. The speaker, having to cross over, says: "O Hapi! let the Osiris prevail over the waters, like as the Osiris prevailed against the taking by stealth, the night of the great struggle." The Solar God was betrayed to his death by the Egyptian Judas, on the "night of the taking by stealth," which was the night of the last supper. The God is "waylaid by the conspirators, who have watched very much." They are said to smell him out "by the eating of his bread." So the Christ is waylaid by Judas, who "knew the place, for Jesus often resorted thither," and by the Jews who had long watched to take him.

The smelling of Osiris by the eating of his bread is remarkably rendered by John at the eating of the last supper. The Ritual has it:--"They smell Osiris by the eating of his bread, transporting the evil of Osiris."

"And when he had dipped the sop he gave it to Judas Iscariot, and after the sop Satan entered into him." Then said Jesus to him into whom the evil or devil had been transported, "That thou doest, do quickly." Osiris was the same, beseeching burial. Here it is demonstrable that the non-historical Herod is a form of the Apophis Serpent, called the enemy of the Sun. In Syriac, Herod is a red dragon. Herod, in Hebrew, signifies a terror. Heru (Eg.) is to terrify, and Herrut (Eg.) is the Snake, the typical reptile. The blood of the divine victim that is poured forth by the Apophis Serpent at the sixth hour, on "the night of smiting the profane," is literally shed by Herod, as the Herrut or Typhonian Serpent.

The speaker, in the Ritual asks: "Who art thou then, Lord of the Silent Body? I have come to see him who is in the serpent, eye to eye, and face to face." "Lord of the Silent Body" is a title of the Osiris. "Who art thou then, Lord of the Silent Body?" is asked and left unanswered. This character is also assigned to the Christ. The High Priest said unto him, "Answerest thou nothing?" "But Jesus held his peace." Herod questioned him in many words, but he answered him nothing. He acts the prescribed character of "Lord of the Silent Body."

The transaction in the sixth hour of the night of the Crucifixion is expressly inexplicable. In the Gospel we read:--"Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour." The sixth hour being midnight, that shows the solar nature of the mystery, which has been transferred to the sixth hour of the day in the Gospel.

It is in the seventh hour the mortal struggle takes place between the Osiris and the deadly Apophis, or the great serpent, Haber, 450 cubits long, that fills the whole heaven with its vast enveloping folds. The name of this seventh hour is "that which wounds the serpent Haber." In this conflict with the evil power thus portrayed the Sun-God is designated the "Conqueror of the Grave," and is said to make his advance through the influence of Isis, who aids him in repelling the serpent or devil of darkness. In the Gospel, Christ is likewise set forth in the supreme struggle as "Conqueror of the Grave," for "the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose;" and Mary represents Isis, the mother, at the cross. It is said of the great serpent, "There are those on earth who do not drink of the waters of this serpent, Haber," which may be paralleled with the refusal of the Christ to drink of the vinegar mingled with gall.

When the God has overcome the Apophis Serpent, his old nightly, annual, and eternal enemy, he exclaims, "I come! I have made my way! I have come like the sun, through the gate of the one who likes to deceive and destroy, otherwise called the 'viper.' I have made my way! I have bruised the serpent, I have passed."

But the more express representation in the mysteries was that of the annual sun as the Elder Horus, or Atum. As Julius Firmicus says: "In the solemn celebration of the mysteries, all things in order had to be done which the youth either did or suffered in his death."

Diodorus Siculus rightly identified the "whole fable of the underworld," that was dramatised in Greece, as having been copied "from the ceremonies of the Egyptian funerals," and so brought on from Egypt into Greece and Rome. One part of this mystery was the portrayal of the suffering Sun-God in a feminine phase. When the suffering sun was ailing and ill, he became female, such being a primitive mode of expression. Luke describes the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane as being in a great agony, "and his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling to the ground." This experience the Gnostics identified with the suffering of their own hemorrhoidal Sophia, whose passion is the original of that which is celebrated during Passion week, the "week of weeping in Abtu," and which constitutes the fundamental mystery of the Rosy Cross, and the Rose of Silence.

In this agony and bloody sweat the Christ simply fulfils the character of Osiris Tesh-Tesh, the red sun, the Sun-God that suffers his agony and bloody sweat in Smen, whence Gethsmen, or Gethsemane. Tesh means the bleeding, red, gory, separate, cut, and wounded; tesh-tesh is the inert form of the God whose suffering, like that of Adonis, was represented as feminine, which alone reaches a natural origin for the type. He was also called Ans-Ra, or the sun bound up in linen.

So natural were the primitive mysteries!

My attention has just been called to a passage in Lycophron, who lived under Ptolemy Philadelphus between 310 and 246 B.C. In this Heracles is referred to as

"That three-nighted lion, whom of old
Triton's fierce dog with furious jaw devoured,
Within whose bowels, tearing of his liver,
He rolled, burning with heat, though without fire,
His head with drops of sweat bedewed all o'er."

This describes the God suffering his agony and sweat, which is called the "bloody flux" of Osiris. Here the nights are three in number. So the Son of Man was to be three nights as well as three days in the "heart of the earth." In the Gospels this prophecy is not fulfilled; but if we include the night of the bloody sweat, we have the necessary three nights, and the Mythos becomes perfect. In this phase the suffering Sun was the Red Sun, whence the typical Red Lion.

As Atum, the red sun is described as setting from the Land of Life in all the colours of crimson, or Pant, the red pool. This clothing of colours is represented as a "gorgeous robe" by Luke; a purple robe by Mark; and a robe of scarlet by Matthew. As he goes down at the Autumn Equinox, he is the crucified. His mother, Nu, or Meri, the heaven, seeing her son, the Lord of Terror, greatest of the terrible, setting from the Land of Life, with his hands drooping, she becomes obscure, and there is great darkness over all the land, as at the crucifixion described by Matthew, in which the passing of the Lord of Terror is rendered by the terrible or "loud cry" of the Synoptic version. The Sun-God causes the dead, or those in the earth, to live as he passes down into the under-world, because, as he entered the earth, the tombs were opened, i.e., figuratively. But it is reproduced literally by Matthew.

The death of Osiris, in the Ritual, is followed by the "Night of the Mystery of the Great Shapes," and it is explained that the night of the Great Shapes is when there has been made the embalming of the body of Osiris, "the Good Being, justified for ever." In the chapter on "the night of the laying-out" of the dead body of Osiris, it is said that "Isis rises on the night of the laying-out of the dead body, to lament over her brother Osiris." And again: "The night of the laying-out" (of the dead Osiris) is mentioned, and again it is described as that on which Isis had risen "to make a wail for her brother."

But this is also the night on which he conquers his enemies, and "receives the birthplace of the Gods." "He tramples on the bandages they make for their burial. He raises his soul, and conceals his body." So the Christ is found to have unwound the linen bandages of burial, and they saw the linen in one place, and the napkin in another. He too conceals his body!

This is closely reproduced, or paralleled, in John's Gospel, where it is Mary Magdalene who rises in the night and comes to the sepulchre, "while it was yet dark," to find the Christ arisen, as the conqueror of death and the grave. In John's version, after the body is embalmed in a hundred pounds weight of spice, consisting of myrrh and aloes, we have the "night of the mystery of the shapes": "For while it was yet dark, Mary Magdalene coming to the sepulchre, and peering in, sees the two angels in white sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body had lately lain." And in the chapter of "How a living being is not destroyed in hell, or the hour of life ends not in Hades," there are two youthful Gods--"two youths of light, who prevail as those who see the light," and the vignette shows the deceased walking off. He has risen!

Matthew has only one angel or splendid presence, whose appearance was as lightning, which agrees with Shepi, the Splendid One, who "lights the sarcophagus," as a representative of the divinity, Ra. The risen Christ, who is first seen and recognised by Mary, says to her, "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father." The same scene is described by the Gnostics: when Sophia rushes forward to embrace the Christ, who restrains her by exclaiming that he must not be touched.

In the last chapter of the "Preservation of the Body in Hades," there is much mystical matter that looks plainer when written out in John's Gospel. It is said of the regerminated or risen God--"May the Osirian speak to thee?" The Osirian does not know. He (Osiris) knows him. "Let him not grasp him." The Osirified "comes out sound, Immortal is his name." "He has passed along the upper roads" (that is, as a risen spirit).

"He it is who grasps with his hand," and gives the palpable proof of continued personality, as does the Christ, who says, "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself."

The Sun-God re-arises on the horizon, where he issues forth, "saying to those who belong to his race, Give me your arm." Says the Osirified deceased, "I am made as ye are." "Let him explain it!" At his reappearance the Christ demonstrates that he is made as they are; "See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle me and see. And when he had said this he showed them his hands and feet. Then he said to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands, and reach hither thy hand and put it into my side." These descriptions correspond to that of the cut, wounded, and bleeding Sun-God, who says to his companions, "Give me your arm; I am made as ye are."

In the Gospel of the Hebrews he is made to exclaim, "For I am not a bodiless ghost." But in the original, when the risen one says to his companions, "Give me your arm, I am made as ye are," he speaks as a spirit to spirits. Whereas in the Gospels, the Christ has to demonstrate that he is not a spirit, because the scene has been transferred into the earth-life.

The Gnostics truly declared that all the supernatural transactions asserted in the Christian Gospel "were counterparts (or representations) of what took place above." That is, they affirmed the history to be mythical; the celestial allegory made mundane; and they were in the right, as the Egyptian Gospel proves. There are Healers, and Jehoshua Ben-Pandira may have been one. But, because that is possible, we must not allow it to vouch for the impossible! Thus, in the Gospels, the mythical is, and has to be, continually reproduced as miracle. That which naturally pertains to the character of the Sun-God becomes supernatural in appearance when brought down to earth. The Solar God descended into the nether world as the restorer of the bound to liberty, the dead to life. In this region the miracles were wrought, and the transformations took place. The evil spirits and destroying powers were exorcised from the mummies; the halt and the maimed were enabled to get up and go; the dead were raised, a mouth was given to the dumb, and the blind were made to see.

This "reconstitution of the deceased" is transferred to the earth-life, whereupon "the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up" at the coming of the Christ, who performed the miracles. The drama, which the Idiotai mistook for human history, was performed by the Sun-God in another world.

I could keep on all day, and all night, or give a dozen lectures, without exhausting my evidence that the Canonical Gospels are only a later literalised réchauffé of the Egyptian writings; the representations in the Mysteries, and the oral teachings of the Gnostics which passed out of Egypt into Greece and Rome--for there is plenty more proof where this comes from. I can but offer a specimen brick of that which is elsewhere a building set four-square, and sound against every blast that blows.

The Christian dispensation is believed to have been ushered in by the birth of a child, and the portrait of that child in the Roman Catacombs as the child of Mary is the youthful Sun-God in the Mummy Image of the child-king, the Egyptian Karast, or Christ. The alleged facts of our Lord's life as Jesus the Christ, were equally the alleged facts of our Lord's life as the Horus of Egypt, whose very name signifies the Lord.

The Christian legends were first related of Horus the Messiah, the Solar Hero, the greatest hero that ever lived in the mind of man--not in the flesh--the only hero to whom the miracles were natural, because he was not human.

From beginning to end the history is not human but divine, and the divine is the mythical. From the descent of the Holy Ghost to overshadow Mary, to the ascension of the risen Christ at the end of forty days, according to the drama of the pre-Christian Mysteries, the subject-matter, the characters, occurrences, events, acts, and sayings bear the impress of the mythical mould instead of the stamp of human history. Right through, the ideas which shape the history were pre-extant, and are identifiably pre-Christian; and so we see the strange sight to-day in Europe of 100,000,000 of Pagans masquerading as Christians.

Whether you believe it or not does not matter, the fatal fact remains that every trait and feature which go to make up the Christ as Divinity, and every event or circumstance taken to establish the human personality were pre-extant, and pre-applied to the Egyptian and Gnostic Christ, who never could become flesh. The Jesus Christ with female paps, who is the Alpha and Omega of Revelation, was the IU of Egypt, and the Iao of the Chaldeans. Jesus as the Lamb of God, and Ichthys the Fish, was Egyptian. Jesus as the Coming One; Jesus born of the Virgin Mother, who was overshadowed by the Holy Ghost; Jesus born of two mothers, both of whose names are Mary; Jesus born in the manger--at Christmas, and again at Easter; Jesus saluted by the three kings, or Magi; Jesus of the transfiguration on the Mount; Jesus whose symbol in the Catacombs is the eight-rayed Star--the Star of the East; Jesus as the eternal Child; Jesus as God the Father, re-born as his own Son; Jesus as the Child of twelve years; Jesus as the Anointed One of thirty years; Jesus in his Baptism; Jesus walking on the Waters, or working his Miracles; Jesus as the Caster-out of demons; Jesus as a Substitute, who suffered in a vicarious atonement for sinful men; Jesus whose followers are the two brethren, the four fishers, the seven fishers, the twelve apostles, the seventy (or seventy-two in some texts) whose names were written in Heaven; Jesus who was administered to by seven women; Jesus in his bloody sweat; Jesus betrayed by Judas; Jesus as conqueror of the grave; Jesus the Resurrection and the Life; Jesus before Herod; in the Hades, and in his re-appearance to the women, and to the seven fishers; Jesus who was crucified both on the 14th and 15th of the month Nisan; Jesus who was also crucified in Egypt (as it is written in Revelation); Jesus as judge of the dead, with the sheep on the right hand, and the goats on the left, is Egyptian from first to last, in every phase, from the beginning to the end--

MAKE WHATSOEVER YOU CAN OF JEHOSHUA BEN-PANDIRA.

In some of the ancient Egyptian Temples the Christian iconoclasts, when tired of hacking and hewing at the symbolic figures incised in the chambers of imagery, and defacing the most prominent features of the monuments, found they could not dig out the hieroglyphics and took to covering them over with plaster or tempera; and this plaster, intended to hide the meaning and stop the mouth of the stone Word, has served to preserve the ancient writings, as fresh in hue and sharp in outline as when they were first cut and coloured.

In a similar manner the Temple of the ancient religion was invaded, and possession gradually gained by connivance of Roman power; and that enduring fortress, not built, but quarried out of the solid rock, was stuccoed all over the front, and made white awhile with its look of brand-newness, and re-opened under the sign of another name--that of the carnalised Christ. And all the time each nook and corner were darkly alive with the presence and the proofs of the earlier gods, and the pre-Christian origins, even though the hieroglyphics remained unread until the time of Champollion! But stucco is not for lasting wear, it cracks and crumbles; sloughs off and slinks away into its natal insignificance; the rock is the sole true foundation; the rock is the only record in which we can reach reality at last!

Wilkinson, the Egyptologist, has actually said of Osiris on earth:--"Some may be disposed to think that the Egyptians, being aware of the promises of the real saviour, had anticipated that event, regarding it as though it had already happened, and introduced that mystery into their religious system!" This is what obstetrists term a false presentation; a birth feet-foremost. We are also told by writers on the Catacombs, and the Christian Iconography, that this figure is Osiris, as a type of Christ. This is Pan, Apollo, Aristeus, as a type of Christ. This is Harpocrates, as a type of Christ. This is Mercury, but as a type of Christ; this is the devil (for Sut-Mercury was the devil), as a type of Christ; until long hearing of the facts reversed, perverted and falsified, makes one feel as if under a nightmare which has lasted for eighteen centuries, knowing the Truth to have been buried alive and made dumb all that time; and believing that it has only to get voice and make itself heard to end the lying once for all, and bring down the curtain of oblivion at last upon the most pitiful drama of delusion ever witnessed on the human stage.

And here the worst foes of the truth have ever been, and still are, the rationalisers of the Mythos, such as the Unitarians. They have assumed the human history as the starting point, and accepted the existence of a personal founder of Christianity as the one initial and fundamental fact. They have done their best to humanise the divinity of the Mythos, by discharging the supernatural and miraculous element, in order that the narrative might be accepted as history. Thus they have lost the battle from the beginning, by fighting it on the wrong ground.

The Christ is a popular lay-figure that never lived, and a lay-figure of Pagan origin; a lay-figure that was once the Ram, and afterwards the Fish; a lay-figure that in human form was the portrait and image of a dozen different gods. The imagery of the Catacombs shows that the types there represented are not the ideal figures of the human reality! They are the sole reality for six or seven centuries after A.D., because they had been so in the centuries long before. There is no man upon the cross in the Catacombs of Rome for seven hundred years! The symbolism, the allegories, the figures, and types, brought on by the Gnostics, remained there just what they had been to the Romans, Greeks, Persians, and Egyptians. Yet, the dummy ideal of Paganism is supposed to have become doubly real as the God who was made flesh, to save mankind from the impossible "fall!" Remember that the primary foundation-stone for a history in the New Testament is dependent upon the Fall of Man being a fact in the Old; whereas it was only a fable, which had its own mythical and unhistorical meaning.

When we try over again that first step once taken in the dark, we find no foothold for us, because there was no stair. The Fall is absolutely non-historical, and, consequently, the first bit of standing-ground for an actual Christ, the redeemer, is missing in the very beginning. Any one who set up, or was set up, for an historical Saviour from a non-historical Fall, could only be an historical impostor. But the Christ of the Gospels is not even that! He is in no sense an historical personage. It is impossible to establish the existence of an historical character, even as an impostor. For such an one the two witnesses--Astronomical Mythology and Gnosticism--completely prove an alibi for ever! From the first supposed catastrophe to the final one, the figures of the celestial allegory were ignorantly mistaken for matters of fact, and thus the orthodox Christolator is left at last to climb to heaven with one foot resting on the ground of a redemption that must be fallacious. It is a fraud founded on a fable!

Every time the Christian turns to the East to bow his obeisance to the Christ, it is a confession that the cult is Solar, the admission being all the more fatal because it is unconscious. Every picture of the Christ, with the halo of glory, and the accompanying Cross of the Equinox, proffers proof.

The Christian doctrine of a resurrection furnishes evidence, absolutely conclusive, of the Astronomical and Kronian nature of the origins! This is to occur, as it always did, at the end of a cycle; or at the end of the world! Christian Revelation knows nothing of immortality, except in the form of periodic renewal, dependent on the "Coming One;" and the resurrection of the dead still depends on the day of judgment and the last day, at the end of the world! They have no other world. Their only other world is at the end of this.

Now there are no fools living who would be fools big enough to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a barque so rotten and unseaworthy as this in which they hope to cross the dark River of Death, and, on a pier of cloud, be landed safe in Heaven. The Christian Theology was responsible for substituting faith instead of knowledge; and the European mind is only just beginning to recover from the mental paralysis induced by that doctrine which came to its natural culmination in the Dark Ages.

The Christian religion is responsible for enthroning the cross of death in heaven, with a deity on it, doing public penance for a private failure in the commencement of creation. It has taught men to believe that the vilest spirit may be washed white, in the atoning blood of the purest, offered up as a bribe to an avenging God. It has divinized a figure of helpless human suffering, and a face of pitiful pain; as if there were naught but a great heartache at the core of all things; or the vast Infinite were but a veiled and sad-eyed sorrow that brings visibly to birth in the miseries of human life. But "in the old Pagan world men deified the beautiful, the glad;" as they will again, upon a loftier pedestal, when the fable of this fictitious fall of man, and false redemption by the cloud-begotten God, has passed away like a phantasm of the night, and men awake to learn that they are here to wage ceaseless war upon sordid suffering, remediable wrong, and preventable pain; here to put an end to them, not to apotheosize an effigy of Sorrow to be adored as a type of the Eternal. For the most beneficent is the most beautiful; the happiest are the healthiest; the most God-like is most glad. The Christian Cult has fanatically fought for its false theory, and waged incessant warfare against Nature and Evolution--Nature's intention made somewhat visible--and against some of the noblest instincts, during eighteen centuries. Seas of human blood have been spilt to keep the barque of Peter afloat. Earth has been honeycombed with the graves of the martyrs of Free thought. Heaven has been filled with a horror of great darkness in the name of God.

Eighteen centuries are a long while in the life-time of a lie, but a brief span in the eternity of Truth. The Fiction is sure to be found out, and the Lie will fall at last! At last! At last!!!


No matter though it towers to the sky,
And darkens earth, you cannot make the lie
Immortal; though stupendously enshrined
By art in every perfect mould of mind:
Angelo, Rafael, Milton, Handel, all
Its pillars, cannot stay it from the fall.


The Pyramid of Imposture reared by Rome,
All of cement, for an eternal home,
Must crumble back to earth, and every gust
Shall revel in the desert of its dust;
And when the prison of the Immortal, Mind,
Hath fallen to set free the bound and blind,
No more shall life be one long dread of death;
Humanity shall breathe with ampler breath,
Expand in spirit, and in stature rise,
To match its birthplace of the earth and skies.

I am sorry to trouble my readers with a matter so personal as the present subject. It has been found out that I am not infallible. Like my fellow-mortals, I can fall into error. I have to acknowledge and regret a stupid blunder, perceived, alas! too late (p. 15 of the Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ; also p. 419, Vol. II., "Natural Genesis").

In comparing with Egyptian certain Syro-Chaldaic and Aramean words which have been left untranslated in the Greek text of the New Testament, I included the word "sent," entirely forgetting that it was English when I compared it with the Egyptian "shent," a "pool," and "sunnt," a healing bath. The nature of my inadvertence is proved in the very next lines by the remark:--"There is no need to strain a single point for the purpose of making ends meet!"

It was foolish, but such is the simple fact, and I will not seek to minimise my mistake. Any one engaged in attacking what he considers the supreme delusion of the European mind, and the crowning error of all time, ought to be free from the smallest errors himself. Would that it were possible! For the most is sure to be made by the enemy of the least lapse, more especially by those who have been consecrated to the service of falsification.

My error drew the attention of a Mr. Coleman, and induced him to write an article in the Religio-Philosophical Journal of Chicago last October, of which no copy was sent to me by the writer or publisher. To this my attention has just been called; also to a letter by the same writer which appeared in the same journal, dated February 5th, headed "Opinions of Eminent Egyptologists regarding Mr. Massey's alleged Egypto-Christian parallels." Unfortunately, the letter will necessitate a reply to the previous article. In this letter the Rev. A. H. Sayce is reported to say of me to Mr. Coleman, "Many thanks for your very thorough demolition of Mr. Massey's crudities. It is difficult to understand how a man can have the effrontery to put forward such a mass of ignorance and false quotation. You have done a real service to the cause of truth by exposing him so fully. You ask me if I can detect any errors in your essay. Errors enough on the part of Mr. Massey, but they have all been exposed impartially and mercilessly by yourself."

Mr. Coleman continues, and quotes the following from "one of the ablest Egyptologists in England," who is "now connected with the British Museum," of whom he says, "owing to the rather personal character of some of his remarks, it is thought better that his name be not published." The writer says to Mr. Coleman,--"You are right in your exposure of Mr. Massey. Some people think him dishonest; and that he is quite conscious of the ridiculous blunders which he publishes. I do not think so after having examined his large book. It is a work which I should have thought could only have been written in Bedlam. No lunatic could possibly write more wild rubbish, without the least consciousness of the incredible ignorance displayed throughout. The man is AT ONCE an ignoramus of the worst kind, viz., not in the least being aware of his ignorance, and he has the pretension of explaining things which cannot be understood (except by trusting other persons) without a considerable knowledge of different languages, which he does not possess." If the words here used have any real relationship to known facts, it seemed to me that the Egyptologist who has taken the place of the late Dr. Samuel Birch must be the writer of the letter quoted by Mr. Coleman. I wrote to Mr. Renouf stating my inference, and asking him to favour me with a denial if he were not the writer. This is Mr. Renouf's reply. The underlining is mine:--

"Sir,-- You are mistaken in thinking that the extract from Mr. Coleman's letter 'points undoubtedly' to me. There are more persons than one at the Museum besides me, to whom it might be supposed to 'point.' But whatever indiscretion there may have been till now in this matter, I am not disposed to add to it by answering any questions as to my knowledge of the authorship of the letter to which you refer.--I am, Sir, your obedient servant, P. LE PAGE RENOUF."

That answer I look upon as eminently unsatisfactory; and I think my view will be shared by others. Only one person wrote the letter; and this explanation brings at least three under suspicion, without identifying or absolving the right one. If Mr. Renouf be the writer, instead of clearing himself he has imitated the ink-fish and taken refuge in the cloud which he has cast around his confréres at the Museum. I cannot think the reply is calculated to deceive! It contains no denial, however, and perhaps the discretion shown too late may not prove to be the better part of valour; but I leave blank for the time being where I have not the absolute right to fill in a name.

We have heard the language like this of Mr. --- before (put in better English), when anything very upsetting has been presented to the world. Such damnation is dirt cheap! Also, the time has passed for denunciation to be mistaken for disproof. That is the kind of authority I had already counted on, and discounted, when I say, "They must find it hard to take Truth for authority who have so long mistaken Authority for Truth."

By the by I may confess to Mr. --- that I escaped from Bedlam many years ago; I would also remind him that the proper name for Bedlam is Bethlehem; a most ancient mad-house in which the patients have been confined for eighteen hundred years; and that our Bedlam also was once a "religious house." I am not mad myself; but I am possessed by the conviction that a good many other people are, and that no insanity is quite so virulent as that which dates from the ancient Bedlam. I had already warned my readers that they must expect little help from those Egyptologists and Assyriologists who are bibliolators first and scholars afterwards. Bibliolatry puts out the eye of scholarship or causes confirmed strabismus.

I admit in the preface to my "Natural Genesis" that "as a matter of course the author will have blundered in manifold details." At the end of three years I doubt whether I have! But of course in a work of so fundamental and pioneering a nature there will be some oversights, crudities and even graver faults that cannot be avoided in a first edition. Why, 30,000 errors have had to be corrected in the latest edition of the "Word of God." And it does seem at times to be a providential part of the scheme of things that where the truths entirely fail to command attention first, the errors are sure to secure some sort of advertisement for the work. In this way, even a Coleman can be turned to account.

Madness may be a matter of opinion; but whoever charges me with intended "false quotation" lies!

I spared no time to get at my facts, and neglected no available sources of knowledge, whether directly open to myself or derivable through the minds of those who are great linguists. As I also say in my preface I took the precaution of consulting Dr. Samuel Birch for many years after he had offered, in his own words, to "keep me straight" as to my facts, obtainable from Egyptian records. He answered my questions, gave me his advice, discussed variant renderings, read whatever proofs I sent him, and corrected me where he saw I was wrong. I never could understand the interest he took in me and my work. He could have had no sympathy with my real aim and ends (which are not wholly proclaimed even on my title-page), yet he was always ready to enrich my poor means with the treasures of his knowledge, so precious for my purpose; whether by letter or in person, whenever I sought him out amongst the Mummies and

"In a corner found the toys,
Of the old Egyptian boys,"

or got my verification direct from the monuments, including the hieroglyphic texts and pictures in his own copy of the Book of the Dead.

And now for Mr. Coleman.

He has been trying to discredit my work for over three years past. His assumption of superiority is immense, and might prove imposing if his methods of attack were not so verminously mean. His latest labour-in-vain has been to try and rear a pyramid on its apex--the sole point of a single fact--which can be sent toppling over with a single kick. Where it suits his purpose he uses an imperfect report of a Lecture so that he may convict me of errors which are not to be found in the Book that he seeks to discredit, and industriously essays to damn.

In the article referred to he says: "In recent numbers of the London Medium and Daybreak there has appeared Mr. Gerald Massey's lecture on 'The Historical Jesus and the Mythical Christ,' as revised and corrected by the author, and as delivered by him in London not long since. In this lecture, which attempts to establish that the Jesus and the Disciples of the New Testament had no existence in the flesh, but were only personifications of Egyptian myths, we find a large number of asserted parallels between the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and certain portions of the Osirian and other myths of Egypt."

The opening paragraph contains two positive, provable, falsehoods. The version of my lecture made use of by him was a reprint from an imperfect report in the New Zealand "Rationalist," which was not revised by the author. If it had been he could only have assumed to know what he asserted without knowing. But it is not true! It is also false that in this lecture, or in my book, I try to "establish that Jesus and the disciples of the New Testament had no existence in the flesh, but were only personifications of ancient Egyptian myths"--whatever that may mean!

On the contrary, I demonstrate the existence of the only possible historic Jesus known to Celsus, to Irenæus, to the Jews, who allow that he had twelve disciples, whom they call the "twelve god ess runagates."

What I do also demonstrate is that the mythical twelve were the followers of Har-Khuti in Egypt ages earlier.

This is a prime specimen of his mode of working, and one it is well to keep in mind all along. This is the mode of demolition which Professor Sayce endorses, warrants, glorifies; and Mr. --- declares to be "quite right."

Again, I have used the Hebrew word ,vlw (Natural Genesis ii. 419), on which our learned Hebraist remarks, "This asserted Hebrew word Shiloam is a fabrication. There is no such Hebrew word in existence as Shiloam--in unpointed Hebrew Sh, L, O, M"!! "To identify Salem, or Shalem, with Siloam in Hebrew, the letter 'm' was required. There being no 'm' in the correct word, Shiloach, Mr. Massey manufactured a Hebrew word and printed it in Hebrew letters, as if to deceive the very elect."

Now, look at that for a lie! with no room left for the least little wriggle out of it!

As Mr. Coleman obviously knows nothing of Hebrew beyond the names of letters, perhaps Mr. Sayce, or Mr. --- will look it out for him in Fuerst, at page 1388, Col. 2, where the word appears with the meaning of "well" in health; and on page 1376, Col. 1, where it means Peace. It is used for the Prince of peace (Is. ix. 6). And Fuerst further says "Shiloah is cognate with ,vlw (Shlom). It is quite impossible that Mr. Sayce should not have known this at the time he gave his sanction to Mr. Coleman's falsehoods and consummate effrontery; and it was cruel not to arrest him as he was careering round in this wild way instead of tickling the poor creature's vanity with insincere applause.

The lie and libel were so unnecessary that I am compelled to regret the wanton waste of pure malignity. When I say the "Pool of Peace" is Salem, or Shloam in Hebrew, I do not say that it is the Pool of Siloam; and am only rendering the word "Peace." And as Shloam means "peace" and salem means peace, I used the alternative of "salem or shloam." I knew the two words were spelt differently, and that Shloam may be pointed Shaloam; I also knew that they were identical in meaning. Moreover, the Pool of the waters that flow softly is a form of the Pool of peace. Not that either of these was involved or at all necessary to my argument. When I say "THE Pool of Peace" is in Hebrew Salem or Shloam, I am speaking of THE mythical pool which in Egyptian is the Pool of Hept or Peace, not the topographical pool of Siloam. I was only concerned with the identity of THE mythical original which had various localisations in different lands, Judea included.

Mr. Coleman runs a long rigmarole about the goddess "Nu" and the place "Annu," in which he flounders in the bottomless bog of his own helpless ignorance, past all pulling out by those who have taken him by the hand--viz., Messrs. Sayce and --- .

He who enters this domain so unprepared and unequipped as Mr. Coleman, must be a fore-damned fool. I could have pitied his impotency but for his ineffable conceit and aggressive insolence.

Because I use the words "An" and "Annu" as synonyms, this great Egyptologist asserts that I identify the Lady of "An" with the goddess "Nu" to form the word Annu. As the monkey exclaimed when he saw the elephant taking in water at such a rate, "To drink with the tail is immense!" An and Annu are simply Egyptian variants of one word; different spellings of the same word were the result of familiarity with matters upon which my corrector is so utterly ignorant that he looks upon and denounces the variants in Egyptian spelling as my distortion of Egyptian names, and sapiently suggests that "there always appears to be an object" in my changes! He thinks the "Lady with the long hair" is Tefnut, and not the goddess Nu as I had inferred, partly because the Ritual says "The hair of the Osiris is in the shape of that of Nu" (Ch. xlii.), and partly because the Osiris ascends the heaven, or Nu, with his long hair down to his shoulders. Either way it matters very little.

What I do regret is that I could not have had the advantage of knowing what Mr. Coleman thinks about Egyptian mythology before writing my book. The opinion of such an expert on the most profoundly allusive and problematical Sayings might have seriously modified the result. He further charges me with having got certain goddesses mixed up; it being his mission to teach me how to separate them once more and distinguish between them individually. Here he tries to turn his ignorance to account by taking advantage of the reader's and producing the impression that the ignorance is mine. He throws dust in the eyes of others and then says it was I who did it. And Mr. Sayce, in a cloud of it, swears it to me!

I may admit that this parallel of the Woman at the Well, which is but one out of fifty, is the weakest one. But it is enough for my purpose to show that the Osiris or Osirified (these being identical in character) appears at the Well or Pool of Peace; that he claims to be the Well and personates the Water; that the source of this water of life given to the Son is the Father; that a well or flow of this water comes out of Osiris to him; that the well of this water comes through him (Cf. John vii. 38, and iv. 14.); that he washes in the "pool of Peace," where the Osirified are made pure or healed: where the "certain times," as I have called them (because the seasons for healing are dual in the Ritual) are detailed thus--"The Gods of the pure waters are there on the fourth hour of the night and the eighth hour of the day," saying, "pass away hence" to him who has been cured or healed.

Here it is noticeable that in the still-continued process of eliminating that which looks too mythical, this passage containing the angel descending to trouble the waters and turn them into a Pool of healing has been dropped from the latest revised version of John's Gospel.

In converting the original mythos into later history, this process of picking the owner's name or sign from stolen goods has gone on from the first, and is not yet ended!

I do not say or suppose anything so simple as that the writer of John's Gospel was copying from some "variant and obscure chapter in an ancient Egyptian papyrus." That is Mr. Coleman's foolish way of putting it. That was not exactly the way in which the Osirian legend got literalized in Rome. If it had been preserved and continued as mythos, it could not have re-appeared under the guise of historic Christianity.

The matter had to be manipulated, converted, assimilated, in which process the original features have been somewhat defaced. This has to be allowed for in judging of my parallels, comparisons, and interpretations.

There must of necessity be a wide gulf between any one who accepts the Gospel history as pure matter of fact, and one who treats it as mainly mythical. The two can only talk to different classes of minds separated for the time being by that gulf, across which they can hardly hear each other speak.

But perhaps the most perfect of all my critic's manifold errors and monstrous blunders is this.

He writes a long essay in six columns to defend a passage in the Johannine Gospel against my mythical interpretation, with the intention of demonstrating the "stupendous display of ignorance and absurdity" which he finds in my volumes. He fights tooth and nail on behalf of the historical interpretation against the mythical. His one line of argument, his raison d'être all through, is that the events under review, the woman at the well, the Christ who drinks there, and other circumstances, are historical! And yet in the opening paragraph of his article he had started with saying--"It is significant that most of these so called New Testament parallels are derived from the fourth Gospel, popularly ascribed to John. Every competent biblicist knows that the account of Jesus and his teachings given in John's Gospel differs widely from those given in the first three Gospels; and there is no reasonable doubt, in the light of historico-critical biblical science, that, while large portions of the latter are genuinely historical, the Gospel of John, as a whole, is UNHISTORICAL, MYTHICAL."

Good God! the man is here throwing away the child with the water it was washed in! If this be so, and, as I demonstrate, the mythical gospel was first, no matter how late it appeared in the canonical gospel ascribed to John, the supposed history of the Synoptics goes to the ground! Where is the sanity in supposing that the Mythical matter of John's Gospel is the result of tattooing Egyptian fables all over the face of historic fact (as previously pourtrayed by the Synoptics), and disfiguring the human features past all recognition? The Christ of John is indefinitely divine, and that is first: the final phase looks definitely historic. That is how the Mythology was humanised. The Myth-Makers were Fabulists, but not the forgers of facts; the forgers are they who converted the fable into historic fact. Mr. Coleman says only just what I say and show on behalf of the Mythos. But what then was the sense, or where was the sanity in labouring to prove it to be historic bit by bit, when, as a whole, it is entirely unhistorical and mythical?

Yet Messrs. Sayce and --- assure Mr. Coleman, with their compliments, that he is right.

I fancy some of my readers will suspect that he is not--quite.

And this is what it is to be demolished! This is doing a "real service to the cause of truth." So says the Rev. Mr. Sayce, and he is an authority.

Mr. Coleman charges me with limiting my quotations from the Egyptian Ritual to Dr. Birch's version of the "very corrupt Turin Text," as if he were an authority respecting the Texts!--and then of misquoting the Texts to establish my parallel. Whereas my slight departures from the Text (in Bunsen) are the result of various emendations or corrections made by the Egyptologists, such as Renouf, including Dr. Birch himself, to whom I took them for his final opinion, and with whom I have gone over Text after Text for that purpose. I neglected no available source of knowledge, early or late. Also in regarding, condensing, and connecting certain passages, I wrote with the whole matter of the Mythos in mind, and had the Ritual well-nigh by heart; which is to be at an enormous disadvantage when judged by Mr. Coleman.

In denouncing the "corrupt Turin Text" he is merely "monkeying round," by quoting the words of Mr. Renouf (Hibbert Lectures, p. 177). He consistently omits the rest of the sentence. Mr. Renouf, like M. Naville, is an expert in Textual and Verbal Criticism, and it is he who says on the same page:--

"Dr. Birch's translation, though made about thirty years ago, before some of the most important discoveries of the full meaning of words, may still be considered extremely exact as a rendering of the corrupt Turin text; and to an Englishman gives nearly as correct an impression of the original as the text itself would do to an Egyptian who had not been carefully taught the mysteries of his religion."

Mr. Coleman's method, however, is the correct one for a defender of the Great Superstition to adopt; and if he were obsessed by the spirit of some fanatical Spanish monk, one of those who urged on the Mexican massacres, dead and damned ages since for his bigotry and cruelty, and re-incarnated to continue the old battle against Truth, he could not have more cleverly struck the track of the Jesuit. It is what the Christians in all ages have done to get rid of, discredit, and mystify, the pre-Christian evidences of the mythical origins; only he lacks the requisite knowledge for doing the work.

Nor is this a matter of mere Textual interpretation; and I am calmly confident that no mere verbal changes will invalidate the fundamental facts, the true doctrines, the identifiable mythology, found in the versions of Birch, Lepsius, and Naville.

On the contrary, the closer the inspection made by men of insight the more will my interpretation of the vastest number of facts ever yet collected and collated be corroborated.

Mr. Coleman has been soliciting certificates. I will give him one written on a label bound to last and stick like pitch-plaster. It is my recognition of his claims to be

He calls to Europe, high and low,
And all the Americas,--
"That is the man who does not know;
I am the man who does"!

The others join in Chorus; Oh!
They make his brain-bee buzz!
"You are right, dear friend! He does not know;
You are the man who does"!

From personal knowledge of him, and the imposture of his pretensions, I know him to be incompetent to discuss matters of Egyptology. He is not an authority in any department of literature, and has not a soul beyond the making of fly-dirts on the window to obstruct the light,--or of violating the privacy of letters so foolishly entrusted to him.

In setting himself up as a critic and corrector, mentor and censor, advocate, judge and jury, all in one, he has greatly mistaken his vocation. If he must pose as a man of letters and a symbolist, he should have been a printer's reader, allowed once a week to carry a typical banner at the tail of a Lyceum procession on Sundays. He may pass for one of the learned amongst those who know no better; in the realm of the blind the one-eyed
man is a king. He shows some cleverness in writing about what he does not understand, where he is not likely to be brought to book. But he is no more capable of judging, or qualified to give a verdict, in a matter like this, than the weevil that worms its way through one of Turner's canvasses is fitted to pass an opinion on the picture.

He has an irritating itch for recognition, or notoriety, but has shown no sign of possessing, or being possessed by, the genuine passion for truth. Like an incipient Herostratus or Guiteau--the fellow who culminated as a fool gone insane with vanity--he would do anything to be talked about, or written to--even commit Massey-cre--if he were only able.[A literary correspondent writes of this Sahur:--"I know little about Egyptology, but I do know that the fellow deserves a--well, a 'serendible good drubbing' for his insolence to you. Should you reply, please give him a kick from me, if only in a foot-note." ]

Never did any writer known to me put forth such strenuous or futile efforts to lift himself up by his own shirt-collar and add a cubit to his stature in the eyes of the lookers on.

From the beginning to the end of his attempts, his aim and object, the total drift of all his deprecation, is to belittle my work, and make himself look large to his readers through a mist of his own making. A chief part of his criticism consists in proclaiming that he does not see! I never said he did, or could. Nelson at Copenhagen put up the glass to his one blind eye and could not perceive the signal flying. Mr. Coleman often puts his glass to two, with the same result of not seeing.

I have had to congratulate him on writing to me to set him right on the subject of astronomy, before he put his foot into it on a matter most fundamentally important to my subject; the ignorance shown by his questions being astounding.

With all his native impudence he has asserted (in the Religio-philosophical Journal), that the name of Jesus Christ was unknown until the middle of the first century A.D. (cf. the second book of Esdras--a pre-Christian book of the Secret Wisdom.)

In the same journal he classed Baring Gould as being on my side, in opposition to all other writers on the subject of Jehoshua Ben Pandira, and entirely overlooked the fact that although Baring Gould used the same Talmudic material as myself, his conclusions were totally antipodal to mine; and that he remains as orthodox to-day as were his conclusions then.

And now Mr. Coleman may pass with his certificates.

There is an American story of a dog who ran after a wolf, fast and furious at first, but before the race was over, the dog was seen to be flying still faster--a "leetle bit in front of the wolf!"

Mr. Coleman is not an authority, and has no reputation to lose. But his private backers have; and they have committed the unpardonable sin against scholarship of endorsing and justifying false statements made against me by Mr. Coleman, without taking the trouble to test the truth of his assertions or to verify the alleged facts for themselves. They were so ready to make a mountain of an underhand, underground worker's little molehill; they were so eager to have me knifed, that they have warranted a blade which was treacherously limp and leaden!

Mr. Sayce marvels at my effrontery in making assertions, some of which Mr. Coleman has so falsely put into my mouth; and then charges me with "false quotation"; and he calls Mr. Coleman's puerile performance a "very thorough demolition," and a "real service to the cause of truth." He rejoices over what he terms an impartial and merciless exposure.

To my thinking the Professor is rather Uriah-Heepishly thankful for exceedingly small mercies, and says grace to a miserable meal.

Mr. --- vouches for the fact that his correspondent is "quite right;" and it appears that neither of them knows better, or else their vision was overclouded with the bile of a bitter bigotry. Either way, I warn my American friends that Mr. --- has made use of the official stamp (the Hall-mark, so to say,) of the British Museum, to pass off spurious wares upon unsuspecting people in the United States! and I fancy that, for all lovers of truth, justice, and fair play, I have so far demonstrated the congenital incompetence of my critics to sit in judgment on my work.

It really makes one ashamed of scholarship to think of two reputed great scholars backing by taking shelter behind a pretender to knowledge like Mr. Coleman to discredit me and condemn my work instead of handling the matter for themselves.

My publishers tell me they sent a copy of the "Natural Genesis" to Mr. Sayce over three years ago. I have not heard that he attempted to expose my mass of ignorance and false quotation, dispute my facts, refute my interpretation, or controvert my conclusions. True, he is not an Egyptologist nor a master of mythology. But that is no excuse nor justification for the conduct which I resent. It only serves as cause for all the severer condemnation. Of course in writing a letter he might have claimed privacy for his opinions, but cannot plead that privilege now the letter is made public.

The other writer, whom I hold to be Mr. Renouf (pro. tem.), is a professed Egyptologist, a good grammarian, an expert in textual criticism. I am a devoted student of his writings in common with those of other Egyptologists. But I never could think highly of his insight or range of vision. To a mind like his, in a case like mine, the profoundest acquaintanceship with the largest mass of facts--the widest and truest generalisation based on the facts, or the subtlest interpretation of them, will only look like a departure away from and a going beyond the facts as limited for him.

I have dived deeply, and he fails to see
The ocean hath its due profundity.

You may transcribe texts and decipher inscriptions, but with the light shut out all round by non-application of the comparative method, and from lack of illumination within, you cannot touch the Egyptian origins in mythology or language, time or space, or interpret the mystery of Egypt to her own forgetful self.

Every day discoveries are proving how limited has been the outlook, how non-evolutionary and untrue the interpretation of Egyptologists concerning the past of that people; and the latest discoveries made have swept away many of the mental landmarks, and effaced the limits of Egyptologists like Mr. Renouf, who have only just blazed the veriest surface of the subject. But I claim that every fresh fact made known of late years is in favour of my interpretation. In England they have been too long the victims of the Hebrew and Indo-Germanic delusions respecting the beginnings.

Mr. Renouf has declared (Hibbert Lectures, p. 243) that "neither Hebrews nor Greeks borrowed any of their ideas from Egypt" (see Herodotus, Plato, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, and others). He thinks the "mythological symbolism" of Egypt arose from "varieties of metaphorical language" which "reacted upon thought" and "obtained the mastery" (Ib. p. 237). Following Max Müller he says, "Mythology, we know, is the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage of human culture" (Ib. p. 251). Nonsense. 'Tis but a dream of the metaphysical theorist to suppose that mythology is a Disease of language, or anything else except his own brain. Mythology was a primitive mode of thinging the early thought; the beginnings of its sign-language being earlier than words. It remains the repository of man's most ancient science; and, truly interpreted once more, it is destined to be the death of all those false theologies to which it has unwittingly given birth.

He has said (Ib. p. 177) it is perhaps hopeless to expect that the Egyptian legends alluded to in the "Book of the Dead" will be recovered. My claim is to have recovered them, by application of the comparative process to a world-wide range of mythology; and it will be easier to denounce the audacity as lunatic than to disprove the right to make that claim. I do not pretend and I do explain. He is one of those critics who suspect error in what they do not understand--e.g. the Father-God Seb in one phase of character is the Earth. But when Seb is called the Mother, Mr. Renouf suspects an error in the text. It is only the mother who can bring forth. Hence we find the back of Seb opens to bring forth.

In his off-hand way of damning by denunciation an old friend of mine, Mr. McLennan (whose name Mr. Renouf mis-spells twice over, once as McLellan in the text (p. 30), and once as McLennon in the index), he asserts that the "representations" made in the zodiac of Denderah were "not anterior to the Christian era, or Roman domination; they were borrowed from the Greeks, and were entirely unknown to the Egyptians." (Ib. p. 30.) Whereas the inscription found at Denderah states that the Temple had been restored in accordance with a plan discovered in the writings of Kufu; whilst the chief celestial types pourtrayed all over the planisphere prove themselves to be solely Egyptian! When I pointed out this passage to Dr. Birch, he said, "Certainly; the types in the planisphere are not Greek. Renouf should have done as the artists did who gave the Greek on one side, the Egyptian on the other."

All that he was warranted in saying is that the mythological types, Typhon, Sut, Isis, Horus, Seb, Shu-and-Tefnut, and the rest of those that never were Greek, have been reproduced at a later period by Greco-Egyptian artists, with a few modernisations. If he intended to distinguish between the Zodiacal and extra-Zodiacal signs of the planisphere, he should have said so. But of the twelve signs the Virgin is Isis, and the Sagittarius is composed of Shu and Tefnut. He must have known, however, that when Depuis and McLennan spoke of the Zodiac of Denderah as being ancient, they meant the planisphere, and were not distinguishing the one set of signs from the other.

Rays of light from the newest dawn would bring no quickening influence to such as are mentally bound and doomed till death to remain the representatives of an expiring system of thought.

The resurrection of Egypt has brought forth a Spectre that will frighten Historic Christianity to death; or haunt the minds of men till they lose their unworthy fears and listen like truth-lovers to the message which she brings to them from the Grave.

What says Professor Mahaffy, after getting a glimpse of the ghost, and finding that the dead language has come to life again? He admits that "every great and fruitful idea," "theological conception," religious and moral doctrine, now called Christian, were also Egyptian. But, he says, "I recoil from opening this great subject now; it is enough to have lifted the veil and shown the scene of many a future conflict."

I have not recoiled. The odium of opening this great subject now is mine. I am selected for the honour of receiving, not the civic wreath for crown of reward, but the first blows of the bludgeon on the head from those who raise the howl of insanity.

"You will win at last," said Captain Burton, "but 'at last' generally comes too late!" Well, I don't know. The train I ride in travels with increasing speed.

For the present I have to ask my indiscriminating assailant to assume that responsibility to which he is committed by Mr. Coleman and produce the evidence for his accusations. He says he has examined my work; now let him cross-examine me. I am scarcely mad or Quixotic enough to think he will, but should he do so, I will undertake the printing of his exposure to the extent of fifty pages, the size of the present pamphlet.

I mean business.

I court honest criticism, and welcome genuine correction. I do not mind being misunderstood, but do resent misrepresentation. I am in search of realities myself, and have no tolerance for men or things in masks. I try to follow Truth, like the old Egyptians, my masters, with all the force of sincerity, all the fervour of faith. That is comparatively easy now-a-days when bon-fires are no longer made of man or book, and the penalties are so very slight. A loaf or two of bread the less; a greeting here or there with an offensive epithet, a rotten egg, or a dead cat, are things to be smiled at when we remember our fore-runners that were her lovers from old, who beat out a pathway for us through all the long dark night of the past, and lit it with illimitable rows of their burning bodies, each turned into a flaming Torch for Truth.

GERALD MASSEY.

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