In my first post I mentioned three areas in which Christians could benefit from the study of mythology: interpreting parts of scripture which either directly mention or allude to other mythologies, better understanding human nature as a whole, and using comparative mythology in apologetics. I am currently working on further posts about the last area, but those essays require quite a bit of time and research to write. In the meantime, I think it would be valuable to look at the other two uses, which are far easier for me but still beneficial studies. In this post I want to look at a place where scripture refers by name to the gods of another religion, and where a lack of familiarity with the mythological context can make it difficult to understand the text.
In Acts 14, Paul and Barnabas go to preach in Lycaonia, a Hellenized region in the northeast Mediterranean. Beginning in verse 8, Luke records these events. “Now at Lystra there was a certain man sitting who was unable to use his feet. He was crippled from his mother’s womb and had never walked. He listened to Paul as he was speaking. And Paul, looking closely at him and seeing that he had faith to be saved, said in a loud voice, ‘Stand up straight on your feet.’ And he jumped up and started walking. And the crowds, seeing what Paul had done, lifted up their voices, saying in the Lycaonian dialect, ‘The gods have come down to us looking like men!’ They called Barnabas Zeus, and Paul Hermes, because he was the primary speaker. And the priest of Zeus, who was at the entrance to the city, brought bulls and flower wreaths to the gates with the crowds and wanted to offer sacrifices.”1 Paul and Barnabas go on to mourn this reaction, since they are only men, and are driven out of the city soon after, although we later learn that they did convert some people while there. If we are unfamiliar with Greek mythology, the text leaves us with several questions. Who are Zeus and Hermes? Why do these people connect them with Paul and Barnabas? Why do the people respond to the miracle in this way?
First, we need to understand who these gods were believed to be. Zeus, also called Jupiter or Jove by the Romans and some English translations of this passage, was the highest god of the Olympian pantheon. He was the god of lightning, the sky, royalty, justice, and a number of other domains. Hermes, also called Mercury, was one of his sons and was an equally versatile god. His domains included merchants, travelers, thieves, shepherds, tricksters, and the souls of the dead. The most important domains for us to know about here, however, are hospitality for Zeus and messengers for Hermes. The relevance of Hermes being the god of messengers is easy to see in the text; it is the reason the people associate him with Paul. It is more difficult to see the connection to Zeus and hospitality from the text alone. The connection is relatively obvious, however, to someone familiar with Greek mythology, and it may provide more insight into the Lystrans’ reactions.
The importance of hospitality in the ancient world is difficult for the modern reader to fully grasp. It is so much more than the modern concept that we frequently use the Greek term, xenia or philoxenia, rather than attempting a full translation. In a time where hotels and inns were rare and often unpleasant, travelers were frequently reliant on the willingness of strangers to provide them with food and a place to sleep. We can see this importance in many places in scripture, such as the requirement for elders to be hospitable (which could originally have meant that they should be willing to open their house to travelers), the frequent allusions in the Old Testament to sojourners, the encouragement to show hospitality to strangers in Hebrews 13, and in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. There is a story that is often called the ancient Greek Sodom and Gomorrah found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses that is useful to us for understanding the interaction in Acts 14.
In the story, Zeus and Hermes come to a city in disguise and move from house to house, presenting themselves as travelers and requesting their guest-rights. They are turned away by every house from the smallest hut to the grandest mansion. Finally, they come to the last house in which they find an old couple named Philemon and Baucis. The couple is extremely poor and barely has enough food to survive, but they know their responsibility and open their home, preparing as great a feast as they can manage and practically ensuring that they will starve in the winter. After a series of tiny miracles and strange occurrences, the strangers reveal themselves and tell the couple how they had come to test the people’s hospitality and no one else had welcomed them. The gods tell the couple they are going to destroy the city, and that they should leave and not look back. Later, the two become priests and ask the gods for a final blessing, that they will die together and not have to live alone. The gods grant their requests and at the moment of their death turn them into a pair of trees to overlook the city and remind people of their responsibility as hosts.
This story is one example of myths concerning theoxenia, or hospitality shown to the gods. The presence of Zeus and Hermes is not a unique feature of the story, as this is one of Zeus’s primary domains and Hermes is often his traveling companion. Knowing that context, let us reexamine the reaction of the Lystrans to what they believed was a divine visit. It seems fairly likely that upon witnessing the miracle, the people assumed that the gods were visiting them and testing them, and so they went out of their way to lavish praise and offerings on them lest they be destroyed. Imagine their shock and terror, then, when the people they assume to be gods react to their sacrifice by tearing their clothes. It is little wonder that they were barely stopped from offering the bulls, and even that they were turned against them so soon after.
Knowing this context can help us as we read this account to understand what seems to be an extreme reaction by the Lystrans, to see them better as people than as caricatures, and to grasp the complications that the apostles faced in their evangelism. It becomes easier to understand why they did not go around always performing extreme and obvious miracles when this was the response. This is only one of several places in Acts where the religious and cultural context of the ancient Greco-Roman world has a strong but difficult to see influence on the actions of the characters.
Over these past two months, as we have moved through the holidays, I noticed the return of a few old mythological talking points that seem to get passed around the internet every year. Some of these are legitimate discussions, such as the tracing of various Christmas traditions to the practices of various polytheistic religions from northern Europe to the Mediterranean. It is certainly true and worth remembering that many religious practices were assimilated into Christian practice as Christianity spread. There are other discussions, however, that have far less historical merit. One of those is the allegation that the story of Jesus is merely a reinterpretation of older stories concerning Horus, the Egyptian god of the sky (the dates given are misleading, as there is no single text or group of texts forming an Egyptian canon, and at least a couple of the traits attributed to Horus are misinterpreted from sources dating after the death of Jesus). There are many versions of this claim, but the most common arguments are shown in the below image.
First, we ought to address the claims made here about Jesus, since not all of them align with the biblical record. Of course, it is possible that the person who made this image is including information from later, apocryphal stories and not from the Bible alone. That is certainly the case in some other versions of this claim which reference events from the Protoevangelium of James. While those claims are also suspect, I have no real interest at the moment of analyzing later Christian development; that falls into the same category as Christmas traditions and deserves a different discussion. If these allegations are meant to carry any significance, they need to have entered into the Jesus narrative prior to the writing of the 4 gospel accounts. Therefore, we may disregard the birth date allegation, as December 25 is not claimed as Jesus’s birthday by the Bible and, in any case, Horus is only rarely and tangentially associated with the winter solstice. Likewise, the claim that the “north star” led the wise men to Jesus is unfounded. The magi say that they saw “his star in the east” but it is unclear whether this is meant to suggest that the star itself was in the east or that they saw it while they were in the east, which is designated as the direction from which they came. The star also only signaled to them that the Messiah had been born, it did not lead them anywhere. Furthermore, I can find no evidence of any such story connected to Horus.
For the rest of the claims, we can use the gospel accounts as an established text for the life of Jesus. The only real difficulty still present is that it is usually impossible to prove a negative. Therefore, I cannot definitively say that the following statements have never been true of Horus in any story. What I can say, however, is whether I have been able to find any source for these claims and whether or not they are present in the typical versions of various Horus myths. It will have to suffice to say that if any of these stories exist in sources of which we are unaware, those versions of the story must have been extremely limited in their popularity. Therefore, it is highly improbable at best that such rare and underrepresented accounts, if they existed at all, could have influenced the gospel writers.
The first claim is that, like Jesus, Horus was born of a virgin. Other versions of this argument go so far as to give the name of Horus’s mother as Meri, an attempted reconstruction of the name Mary into Egyptian, albeit an unconvincing one as it is clearly based on the English version of the name and not on the underlying Hebrew or even Greek versions. This example, however, correctly identifies the mother of Horus as the goddess Isis. The claim that Isis was a virgin when she conceived Horus is at best a massive leap from the usual details. The birth narrative of Horus as usually told is remarkably explicit, and it makes it very clear that Isis and Osiris had sexual intercourse to conceive Horus. It is true that there are unconventional elements to the conception, which are more graphic than I care to describe, but to call this a virgin birth would require an extreme twisting of definitions and no ancient reader would interpret the story in this way (nor would a modern reader unless influenced by this specific discussion). There are other versions of this claim that give the “earthly father” of Horus as Seb, rather than Osiris, who is then claimed to correspond to Joseph. This may be a reference to the earth god Geb, who is the father of another version of Horus called Heru-Ur, Horus the elder. Less is known about this version, but no virgin birth appears to be present, and this is not the version of Horus alluded to by the other claims.
The next claim is that Horus fled to Egypt to escape from Typhon. This appears to be a conflation of 2 different myths. The first one is Greek, in which the Olympians flee to Egypt to escape Typhon (who is not a figure of Egyptian mythology) and transform into various animals. This is a Greek explanation for why the Egyptians worshipped animal headed gods, and Horus is indeed represented here by the sun god Apollo, who turns into a falcon. The second myth is Egyptian, in which Isis flees into the marshes of the Nile delta to hide from Set, Horus’s uncle and Osiris’s usurper brother (Set and Typhon fill vastly different mythological roles, but they are sometimes conflated on the basis that they are both symbols of chaos). It is here that she gives birth to Horus and raises him. I suppose it is possible to draw a connection between these myths and Jesus’s escape from Herod, indeed both are hunted down for their potential to overthrow the king. There are, however, simpler explanations, even without assuming the historical reliability of the Bible. The account of Jesus’s refuge in Egypt draws directly on the imagery of the Exodus and is best understood in a Jewish context. The myths detailed above, however, are intended either as early syncretism or as part of a narrative of familial vengeance and defeat of a usurper king. There is no indication that these two myths were ever connected, and neither one has enough evidence on its own to suggest a connection to Jesus, and certainly not enough to prefer this explanation over the Old Testament parallel. It seems likely that the originator of this claim conflated the stories to make it appear as though there was one myth with much stronger parallels to Jesus’s early life.
There is little to say about the assertion that Horus was taught in the temple as a child. Sources rarely give attention to Horus’s age, but as mentioned in the previous example he was apparently raised in a marsh until he was ready to confront his uncle Set. There appears to be no evidence at all for this claim.
Likewise, there is no account of Horus being baptized at all, much less at age 30 by “Anup the Baptizer”. Anup may be a reference to Anubis. He is Horus’s cousin, like John is to Jesus, and did aid him in his fight against Set. However, I cannot find any reference to him baptizing (unless you count the fact that his mother was a river goddess), nor can I find any other parallels between him and John the Baptist. Anubis may be a popular figure in Egyptian art and ceremony, and in modern media, but his presence in mythological records is minimal.
The claim that Horus had 12 disciples is also unfounded, though I was surprised to find there was any record at all of a group of followers. Horus is sometimes depicted with 4 followers (who may also be his sons) and at other times he is accompanied by 16 warriors as he goes into battle. Even if the numbers were altered over time or the apostles actually numbered 16 (which is theoretically possible depending on how you read certain verses), however, I do not find this to be a plausible origin for the apostles. The apostles are central to the story of Jesus, whereas these followers are tangential at best to the Horus myths. Furthermore, the apostles are not soldiers or bodyguards, and their relationship with Jesus bears virtually no resemblance to the followers of Horus. It would be almost as plausible to say that the Greek Castor and Pollux are actually identical to the Mayan Hunahpu and Xbalanque, simply because they are both a set of hero twins.
It is certainly true that Horus performed miracles in his myths. He was, after all, a god. This evidence is no stronger for him than it would be for literally any other deity in any religion, and it seems unfair to me to list it here. It is hardly unexpected that gods perform supernatural actions, and that is never a point used in usual comparative mythology because it would be akin to saying “they both had hands.” I can also find no indication of Horus ever walking on water, and I have to question why a sky god who can turn into a falcon and fly would ever do so to begin with.
Horus did not raise anyone named El-Azar-Us from the dead. That is not an Egyptian name at all, but appears to be a combination of Lazarus’s Hebrew name (El’azar or Eleazar) with the more familiar Greek or Latin versions of his name. It is possible to make a connection through the creative application of etymology, though not a strong one. Horus’s father, the god of the dead who was raised from death by Isis, is often called by his Greek name, Osiris. His Egyptian name is written wsjr (see below) and is sometimes vocalized as Asar. If you combine that spelling with the Greek version and attach the Hebrew (not Egyptian) word for god, el, to the front you can produce Elasaris, or “the god Osiris.” Obviously this is a nonsensical combination of elements of various languages, and it would never come about naturally, but it appears to be the strongest justification for this claim.
I can find no evidence of Horus being transfigured on any mountain. I also have difficulty imagining what “transfiguration” would even mean in the context of Egyptian mythology, where the gods shift their forms as easily as we change clothes. Even though I am trying to read these claims as charitably as possible, I have no idea where this comes from.
As far as the various names, titles, and epithets are concerned, Horus may claim some actual connection. Although I have never actually seen any of these names used for him, Horus is a sky god associated with both the sun and moon, so names like “the light” or “the morning star” may have been used for him. He is sometime connected with Apollo who has the title Phoebus, or bright. Likewise the name “son of god” would be possible since he is part of a family of deities and it is not terribly uncommon to call any divine being a “son of the gods” (although that phrase is mostly used in the Semitic branch of afroasiatic languages, not the Egyptian). Horus is also the god of Pharaohs, and as such is represented by the shepherds crook. These similarities, however, do not suggest a connection. As I stated, these are only attributes of Horus and the names themselves do not appear to apply to him. Furthermore, many of the names of Jesus are straightforward, they are often common words that are often associated with deity or religious value. The only ones that are not immediately applicable to deities around the world are “Anointed One (aka Messiah or Christ)” and “Son of Man,” which both are drawn from the prophetic imagery of the Old Testament. It is worth noting that these more specific names are not shared by Horus in any way. These names are also a narrow selection of the epithets given to Jesus by the Bible, there are many which are not included on this list.
Finally, Horus was not crucified and resurrected. It would probably be fair to say that he never dies at all in Egyptian mythology, although the fluid nature of Egyptian gods complicates that somewhat. Horus is associated with other death and rebirth gods, like his father Osiris, and he is sometimes combined with Ra to form the deity Ra-Horakhty. When viewed as an aspect of or successor to Ra, Horus participates in the nightly journey of death (sunset), “burial” (night), and rebirth (sunrise). There are, however, important distinctions between this cycle and the resurrection of Jesus. For one, this is not the aspect of Horus that Jesus is usually alleged to be based on. All of the other allegations were drawn either from pure imagination or from stories about Horus’s depiction as a king and warrior of the legendary past, whereas this comparison draws on the much less frequent mixture of Horus and Ra as a central figure of Egypt’s cyclical cosmology. Put simply, we have until now been talking about the Horus of Egypt’s distant past, but now we are talking about the Horus that is believed to continuously repeat the same actions every night. This distinction does not exist between the Jesus who walked among men and the Jesus who died and rose again. Also, Jesus’s death is very explicitly a once-for-all event. That is a core part of Christian teaching and makes this death and rebirth narrative completely different from either the incomplete resurrection of Osiris or the cyclical, symbolic afterlife journey of Ra and, by extension Horus. This is perhaps the strongest connection that has been presented, but while Horus follows the pattern of most death and rebirth gods by being associated with cyclical patterns in nature, Jesus breaks from that pattern in numerous and notable ways.
It is important to note that comparative mythology is not merely a discipline of identifying shared traits between gods. If it were, we could draw many more striking and convincing comparisons between Jesus and various Aztec gods than we can for Horus. We also have to investigate the history of a religion, its contact with other religions surrounding it, the relationships between the groups of people who practice them, and, most importantly for this discussion, the roles that figures play in their respective myths. Horus is an avenger, a warrior, and a god of kingship. Those traits are not absent from Jesus, but they are far less prevalent in the pages of scripture than his kindness, his gentleness, his humility, and his refusal to avenge himself. Horus had many functions in Egyptian religion as he was combined with various other gods, but his most important ones have always been his role in war and his bestowal of authority to the Pharaohs. Jesus, in contrast, is the Prince of Peace and a friend of the downtrodden and poor instead of the rich and powerful. Even if the above allegations had more truth than they do, these two fill completely different roles in their respective religions. Ignoring that would be disrespectful to both Christians and pagans.
I hope that my treatment of these allegations has been fair, and that I have not allowed my personal beliefs to blind me. I have tried to treat this with the same degree of honesty and investigation that I would apply to any other mythological comparisons. In many places I have gone out of my way to strengthen the arguments and to look at any possible explanations that may lie underneath. If I had merely taken the statements at face value, it would not have taken a quarter of this essay to refute them. I also tried to look at reactions to this chart by atheists, agnostics, and pagans, and I have seen people with all sorts of biases denounce these claims, and I have seen no one provide a strong argument in their favor. I say all this to make it clear that I am not writing this as an apologist, but as a student of mythology. This is not simply a poorly thought out attack on Christianity, it is a gross misrepresentation of comparative mythology. It helps no one, floods online discourse with false information, draws time and attention away from more meaningful discussions, and preys on people’s confirmation biases to provoke emotional responses. I sincerely hope that we can leave it behind and not see it circulating again next holiday season.
When I was a boy, I went with my family to spend a weekend with some friends in a city a couple of hours away from home. I shared with those friends a mutual love of reading, and on their recommendation I picked up a book that, unbeknownst to me, was about to become one of the most popular books at my little country school. The book was called Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and it introduced me to the massive and engaging world of myth. I was awestruck with the stories of gods, monsters, and heroes from the unfamiliar lands of Ancient Greece, and I quickly bought up as many books as my parents could afford. The next summer at church camp I was reading one such book and someone asked me why I even bothered with church if I was so fascinated by these other gods. The question confused me. I had never thought about this as a religion, never believed that the stories were true. Heracles was no more real to me than Superman or Harry Potter. I told the person exactly that; it was just a bunch of fun stories, nothing more.
Ten years later, that question has been asked again and again. Part of my answer remains the same, but I fancy myself at least a little bit more thoughtful than I was at age 12. I have learned a decent bit about the myths and legends of the non-Christian world, though I am by no means an expert, and my answer has, accordingly, become more complex.
From my point of view, there are three primary areas in which a study of mythology is useful to a Christian beyond merely providing entertainment. These are certainly not the only three, as there is no end to the benefits that may be gained from any study that leads to a deeper understanding of another group of people, but these three stand out to me as both the most apparent and most useful.
First, the study of mythology can grant insight into the cultures that surrounded God’s people during the time of the Bible. This is the narrowest of the benefits, as it only really applies to Greco-Roman and Ancient Near Eastern mythologies, but it is immeasurable in value. Occasionally, scripture makes specific references to other contemporary religions (it is important to remember that while these are now “mythologies” that exist to us only in the past, they were, in Biblical times, living religions that were practiced by the people who interacted with God’s message). In these cases, knowledge of Zeus, Hermes, or Diana of Ephesus (distinct from the more familiar Artemis of the rest of Greece) is of direct use in interpreting the text. In other places the use is more subtle. Religion is one of the fundamental building blocks of culture, and to fully understand a group of people it is necessary to understand their religion. What does the behavior of Zeus say about the way in which the Greeks viewed royalty? What significance does the worship of Aphrodite hold when we consider Paul’s message to the Corinthians regarding sexual ethics, when her temple overlooked the city itself? How does the message of the Son of God impact a world in which demigods are regular features in stories and worship? To a student of scripture who is unfamiliar with mythology, these questions may never even cross their mind, and they certainly could not be answered.
Second, the study of mythology can reveal a great deal about humanity and how we relate to God. As Paul wrote in Romans 1:19-23 “Because what is knowable about God is evident to them. For God revealed it to them. For His invisible traits are clearly perceived from the creation of the world, being understood through His handiwork, namely His eternal power and divinity, so that they are without excuse, because though they knew God they did not glorify or thank Him as God, but their discussions became worthless and their hearts without understanding were darkened; claiming to be wise they became foolish, and exchanged the immortal glory of God for the likeness of the image of mortal man and birds and beasts and reptiles.” From these verses it is clear that the pagan worship practices that have given way to myth originated in an imperfect approach to God. The ancients failed to properly honor God, yes, but their instincts drove them in devotion to the unknown divinity that they knew was out there somewhere. I think that we can learn much about our own nature, both our vices and our virtues, by looking at these imperfect reflections of true worship, by seeing what happens when we try to remake deity in our own image. The result is often, predictably, disheartening, and it shows us our deepest flaws. But it is also, on occasion, uplifting to see that some goodness seems to be built into us.
The third reason, and in some sense the most immediately practical, is the use of comparative mythology in apologetics. This is often a weapon wielded against Christians; it is not uncommon to hear someone attack the resurrection, the flood, or even the incarnation as merely repeating motifs borrowed from other, older myths. This alone would be sufficient reason to study mythology. For if we do not know at least the basics of the attack, how can we offer any defense? There is also a world of potential in using that same discipline to support our arguments rather than merely defending. This is the one area in which I will refrain from giving examples, at least for the moment. I intend to follow this post with a number of short essays going into detail on how specific myths and motifs can be both defended against and used to our advantage. It is my hope that you will join me in this study, and that you will come away with an appreciation for this work or, at the very least, with a reason to think deeply about these matters.
Axios 