Horus-Christ Mythos

I first became aware of a possible link between a correlation between the biblical stories of Jesus, and the myths of Horus from the Egyptian Book of the Dead in Tomas Harpur's book The Pagan Christ. It was well-written, appeared to be very well-researched, and amazed me to the point where I had to learn more. The basic details of what Harpur claimed was that virtually every detail of the Biblical Christ had a direct parallel to Horus in Egyptian Mythology. Some of the resemblances include: John the Baptist is Anup the Baptizer, King Herod was Set, both Jesus' and Horus' mothers were virgins, both births were announced by angels and witnessed by shepherds, and the list goes on and on.

As it turns out, Harpur based his entire book on the work of two people: Alfred Kuhn and Gerald Massey. Turns out, Kuhn based his entire work on Gerald Massey's translation of the Book of the Dead, which he did wrong (which may or may not have been on purpose). The only obvious parallels are that they were both descended from royalty, both had someone in power try and kill them as infants, and both performed various miracles.

I keep this book in my collection for one main reason: it proves that even though it is in a book, it doesn't mean that it is correct. The Wikipedia entry on the Christ-Horus mythos is FAR more accurate than the book, even though the book is written in a very intelligent and scholarly manner. I think that everyone can learn from this instance, because there is this notion in this country that information on the internet is less reliable than books, and all through my high school career we were allowed only very rarely to use a website in a paper, and instead had to use only books. While I love to read and learn from books, I think we need a new society view on how we should learn, that multiple means of media (TV, books, internet, etc.) should be resorted to in the critical search for knowledge.