Talk:Jesus, pre-4th century Christianity, and syncretism

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[edit] Page deleted

This page was discussed on AfD (see here). The result was merge or delete and was closed by dbenbenn, who made this page a redirect. I'm therefore restoring this as a redirect- please don't recreate this page (not least for the reasons discussed by Flyboy Will below)! --G Rutter 13:44, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, this article was deleted some time ago, and appears to now have been reinserted based on an "archived" copy cut and pasted from an old copy of wikipedia by some anonymous editor. Sure this needs to be here at all, given the extensive coverage at articles like Historicity of Jesus and Jesus-Myth? Wesley 18:02, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pseudo-Egyptian gibberish

"An early myth involving Horus is that of his birth to the goddess Meh, also known as Meri, in some versions being seen as a human virgin. In the story, she receives an announcement of her motherhood from Thoth (a god who predominantly acted as the messenger of the heavens), and is supernaturally impregnated by the holy spirit (Kneph) transmitted to her by Thoth via an Ankh. During the birth, Meh received 3 wise visitors bearing gifts. Meh's consort and protector is Seb, as Meh was goddess of the Nile, and Seb was the crocodile god. After the birth, they had to flee persecution from the evil serpent/dragon Herrut (also known as devourer of the infants), who was fundamentally opposed to what Horus stood for, and Seb took the mother and child into the reeds of lower Egypt to hide.

[...]

Some scholars allege that the tale of Horus' birth to Meh forms the basis of Jesus' nativity, Aramaic speakers having transcribed the story of Meri and Seb as that of Mariah and Jo-sef (f is written in Greek as ph), with Mariah being corrupted by Greek into Maria in Greek and thus Mary in English. In particular it is alleged that Herrut (a dragon/serpent) was changed into Herod (Syriac for dragon), and the story of Herod's persecution and slaughter of the innocents (for which there is no evidence excepting the Gospel of Matthew and the apocryphal Gospel of James) thus serving as political propaganda against Herod the Great."

This is, for the lack of better term, complete bullshit. All versions of the birth of Horus by Hathor known to me have nothing like the details alleged above. Furthermore,

1. There's no goddess Meh (origins of the wiki redirect are a mystery to me). There's a goddess Hathor, also known as Mehet-Weret; and she was certainly never ever known as Meri or anything like that.
2. Thoth did not predominantly act as the messenger of the heaven.
3. "transmitted to her by Thoth via an Ankh" is a gross misunderstanding of the symbolism of Egyptian art.
4. "Meh received 3 wise visitors bearing gifts" - no mention of this in any Egyptian source.
5. "Meh's consort and protector is Seb" - wrong. Seb is the obsolete mistransliteration of Geb, who was never Hathor's consort. Geb's "wife" is Nut.
6. "Seb was the crocodile god" - wrong. Seb was always represented as a man. Crocodile gods were Ammut (female) and Sobek (male). Sobek was never known as Seb, and was never linked to Hathor or Horus.
7. "After the birth, they had to flee persecution" - no mention of this in any Egyptian source.
8. "evil serpent/dragon Herrut (also known as devourer of the infants)" - no mention of this supposed God anywhere in Egyptian literature. Moreover, related web sources [1], [2], [3] etc, claim that Herrut is derived from "heru" which is supposedly egyptian for "to terrify". That is also nonsense - "heru" is actually the God Horus; "kheru" is "voice", "heroo" is "day". "To terrify" would be something like "sebeha".
9. Herrut cannot be a misspelling of some other God. Here are all the similar god names:
   • Heret-Kau - female goddess associated with afterlife and temple building;
   • Kherty - ram-god, deity of protection of the netherworld;
   • Khepri - scarab sun-god;
   • Hauron - Caanite God of the desert sometimes worshipped by Egyptians;
   • Heryshef - minor ram-god, possibly initially a sole creator God of a small community; later a fertility god;
10. Serpent-Gods of Egypt:
    • Apep - primeval God that ate the Sun at the end of each day; sometimes equated with Seth;
    • Denwen - Old-Kingdom boogeyman that the pharaoh ceremonially prevented from devouring the world;
    • Mehen - protector of Re;
    • Meretsger - minor local Goddess of protection;
    • Nehebu-Kau - benign and helpful deity;
    • Renenutet - popular deity of nurturing and protection;
    • Wadjet - Goddess of magic and pharaohs;
    • Wepset - guardian Goddess of pharaohs;
    • Weret-Hekau - another Goddess associated with the uraeus;
    • Yam - Semitic serpent-God of the sea, sometimes worshipped in Egypt.
11. "Seb took the mother and child into the reeds of lower Egypt to hide" - no mention of this in any Egyptian source.
12. "Some scholars allege..." Who are these scholars?
13. "Aramaic speakers having transcribed the story of Meri and Seb as that of Mariah and Jo-sef" - complete bollocks, as there were neither Meri or Seb in Egypt. Seb is a modern mis-translation, a mistake made after the re-discovery of hieroglyphics in the 19th century. This would be unknown to Aramaic speakers. Meri, as already mentioned, is a complete fabrication, and never appears in any Egyptian sources.
14. "it is alleged that Herrut (a dragon/serpent) was changed into Herod (Syriac for dragon)". Alleged by whom? And, as already noted, there was no Egyptian counterpart for anything like the baby-killing serpent with a name similar to Herod.

Summary The entire thing appears to be a giant hoax; a rather common tactic in fact of researchers coming up with some obscure Egyptian crap to lend weight to their theories. Unfortunately, everything I wrote above is my own original research, while I'm afraid the quotations above must be taken from actual publication. I'm willing to bet the entire thing will have roots with someone with no Egyptology background; and, as far as I can see, it went completely under the radar of any Egyptologists and thus has never been addressed or disproven.

So, what would we need to do here? Just leave that piece of crap be in there because there's no indepedent sources disproving it? Flyboy Will 20:50, 20 December 2005 (UTC)