Product Description

Destined to be a classic enjoyed by both the professional scholar and the lay person, this comparative religion book contains a startling perspective of the extraordinary history of the Egyptian religion and its profound influence upon the later Christian faith. "Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection" uses a massive amount of primary sources and the works of highly credentialed authorities in relevant fields to demonstrate that the popular gods Horus and Jesus possessed many characteristics and attributes in common. Drawing from thousands of ancient Egyptian texts in an assortment of translations along with the original language, as well as modern research in a number of other languages, controversial independent scholar of comparative religion and mythology D.M. Murdock puts together an astonishing amount of fascinating information that shows many of our most cherished religious beliefs and concepts did not appear suddenly out of the blue but have long histories in numerous cultures found around the globe, including and especially in the glorious Land of the Pharaohs. D.M. Murdock, also known as "Acharya S," is the author of the bestselling books "The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold"; "Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled"; and "Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ." Ms Murdock's books focus largely on the history and origins of religion, dating back thousands of years and encompassing religious ideologies and beliefs of a wide variety that nevertheless reveal common cultural heritage and a keen interest in and reverence for the natural world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61609 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

Customer Reviews

Another Great Tome by D.M. Murdock/Acharya S
Christ In Egypt is more than 500 pages crammed full of examples and quotations all fully cited. This book follows the same theme as Murdock's earlier books, but it's different in that the author is focusing on just one mythological parallel to Christianity. I've never studied Egyptian religion too deeply, but the way she presents it makes me very curious to learn more. In particular, she has helped me to better understand the importance of the Coptic Christians and the Alexandrian Jews, and this has given me more of the context behind the development of Gnosticism.

If you're not familiar with the authors work, she mostly writes about comparative mythology in terms of Christianity. In particular, she emphasizes astrotheology (related to cultural astronomy, ethnoastronomy, and archeoastronomy) which is a field that is growing in popularity within a certain sector of scholars. If you'd like to learn more before deciding whether you want to buy this book, I'd recommend checking out her website or blog (Truth Be Known). She has some good introductory articles that explain what astrotheology is. Also, she runs a discussion board which is a wealth of information. Specific to this book, excerpts can be found on the Stellar House Publishing website.

You might be familiar with astrotheology from the first part of the movie Zeitgeist, but that movie is only a very basic presentation. So, don't dismiss Murdock's work based on criticisms that you've read about Zeitgeist. Christ In Egypt is partly a response to those criticisms and it's a very thorough response. If you're genuinely interested in this topic, I'd recommend reading the book (which is something many of her critics don't do) and making up your own mind.

As for the issue of Murdock's scholarship, here is an excerpt from the preface of Christ In Egypt:

"I have been compelled to do extensive and exhaustive research in the pertinent ancient languages, such as Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Coptic, while I have also utilized authorities in modern languages such as German and French. . . . In my analysis of the ancient Egyptian texts, I consulted and cross-referenced as many translations as I could find, and I attempted to defer to the most modern renditions as often as possible."

Murdock cites more than nine hundred scholarly sources and primary texts which includes thousands of footnotes, around 60 illustrations, and a 36 page long bibliography. She references the contemporary mythicist scholars Earl Doherty, Robert M. Price, and G.A. Wells; she goes into great detail about the criticisms of Gerald Massey; and she has a large section where she discusses her disagreement with Richard Carrier. Both Price and Doherty praise her work and reference it, and Price wrote a foreword to one of her earlier books (Who Was Jesus?). Also, here are some of the modern Egyptologists she references: Rudolf Anthes, Jan Assman, Hellmut Brunner, Claas J. Bleeker, Bob Brier, Henri Frankfort, Alan H. Gardiner, John Gwyn Griffiths, Erik Hornung, Barry Kemp, Barbara Lesko, Bojana Mojsov, Siegfried Morenz, William Murnane, Margaret A. Murray, Donald B. Redford, Herman te Velde, Claude Traunecker, Reginald E. Witt, and Louis V. Zabkar. One nice thing about Murdock's books is that the bibliographies give you many directions in which to study further.

As a side note, many would like to separate Murdock's work from authors who act as popularizers, but I noticed that she includes Freke and Gandy in her bibliography. I'm glad she did because I personally get tired of the haughty attitude many people get about scholarship. Popularizers like Freke and Gandy (along with Tom Harpur) play an important role as their books make for excellent introductions, but keep in mind that Murdock is a very large step beyond introductory material. If you feel a need to be dismissive towards the lesser scholarship of popularizers, please realize that Murdock's Christ In Egypt is as scholarly as it gets.

As such, even though I highly recommend this book, it might not be a good introduction for most people partly because of its massive size. She is meticulous in her scholarship which means that you have to be seriously interested in the subject to want to read a book like this. I personally appreciate the excess of data. And, with a subject that attracts many critics, the more details and examples provided the better the argument is supported.

Murdock's Christ in Egypt seems to be quite unique... despite there being many books that discuss Christianity and Egyptology. She realized how much info was out there, but the problem was that it was scattered across many sources. Her enormous goal was to collect as many scholarly references as she could find. In doing this, she researched materials that had never been published before and materials that had never appeared in English before. She amazingly managed to stuff a lot into a single book (although I suspect she could've expanded it into multiple volumes). As far as I know, there presently is no better resource available.

Biographical info (from her website):

"Acharya S, whose real name is D.M. Murdock, was classically educated at some of the finest schools, receiving an undergraduate degree in Classics, Greek Civilization, from Franklin & Marshall College, the 17th oldest college in the United States. . . . Acharya is also a member of one of the world's most exclusive institutes for the study of Ancient Greek Civilization, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece. . . . Acharya S has served as a trench master on archaeological excavations in Corinth, Greece, and Connecticut, USA, as well as a teacher's assistant on the island of Crete. Acharya S has traveled extensively around Europe,and she speaks, reads and/or writes English, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese and a smattering of other languages to varying degrees."

Well done and useful
I just finished reading Christ in Egypt and found it to be an excellent read. 521 pages is alot to digest, but absolutely worth it and anyone who takes the time will see clearly how we've come to the state humanity finds itself in today with wars, genocide, and other human injustice including mind control justified in the name of a man's god and will see why selling faith is so dangerous and limiting to our human potential.

In my opinion, this book sheds great light on the truth of The Truth and anyone actually serious about understanding the factual legacy of Christianity and brave enough to consider that which is beyond the popular claims of today's religous institutions will find this book useful.

A Genuine Masterpiece
If you are a relatively intelligent, curious and open-minded person who enjoys understanding how our ideas and beliefs have evolved through history, you could not do better than to investigate the work of D.M. Murdoch, also known as Acharya S. Her most recent volume "Christ in Egypt: the Horus-Jesus Connection" is an extraordinarily well-researched and well-written volume that will illustrate unequivocally the direct link between the ancient Egyptian religion and modern Christianity.

Ms. Murdoch has published a number of volumes on similar topics, most notably "The Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled," "Who Was Jesus: Fingerprints of the Christ" and "The Christ Conspiracy: the Greatest Story Ever Sold." I have found each of them not less entertaining than elucidating. Her research is second to none. She is intimately familiar with the subject, its literature and artifacts and is capable of reading many of the ancient texts on which her research is based in the original languages.

A work such as this with its voluminous references to primary sources and serious academic and archeological scholarship would seem, at first blush, destined for the dusty shelves of a university reference library. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Ms. Murdoch writes in an extremely clear and comprehensible style and one finds oneself caught up in the narrative as in a finely-crafted mystery which, in a certain sense, it is.

One discovers early on that the Egyptian religion was a fully-formed cultural imperative that influenced to a marked degree the daily lives of the people Egypt as well as Greece, Turkey and the Levant for well over two millennia. Central to its belief system was the god Horus, born of a virgin, Isis-Mery, and the god Osiris. We see clearly that the parallels between the stories of the lives of Horus and Jesus leave little doubt that the one is extracted directly from the other.

I believe that "Christ in Egypt" is a genuine treasure for anyone wishing to understand the truth behind our modern beliefs. This book will place that truth before you in the most lucid, cogent and reasonable fashion. It is a splendid work, powerful, elegant and highly readable and must surely be considered, in future, a seminal work on the topic. I recommend it unreservedly.