Gerald Massey

Photograph of Gerald Massey dated 1856

Gerald Massey (29 May 1828 – 29 October 1907) was an English poet and writer on Spiritualism and Ancient Egypt.

Early life

Massey was born near Tring, Hertfordshire in England to poor parents. When little more than a child, he was made to work hard in a silk factory, which he afterward deserted for the equally laborious occupation of straw plaiting. These early years were rendered gloomy by much distress and deprivation, against which the young man strove with increasing spirit and virility, educating himself in his spare time, and gradually cultivating his innate taste for literary work. He was attracted by the movement known as Christian Socialism, into which he threw himself with whole-hearted vigour, and so became associated with Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles Kingsley.^[1]

"During the later years of his life, (from about 1870 onwards) Massey became interested increasingly in Egyptology and the similarities that exist between ancient Egyptian mythology and the Gospel stories. He studied the extensive Egyptian records housed in the British Museum, eventually teaching himself to decipher the hieroglyphics."^{[citation needed][2]}

Writing career

Massey's first public appearance as a writer was in connection with a journal called the Spirit of Freedom, of which he became editor, and he was only twenty-two when he published his first volume of poems, Voices of Freedom and Lyrics of Love (1850). These he followed in rapid succession with The Ballad of Babe Christabel (1854), War Waits (1855), Havelock's March (1860), and A Tale of Eternity (1869).

In 1889, Massey published a two-volume collection of his poems called My Lyrical Life. He also published works dealing with Spiritualism, the study of Shakespeare's sonnets (1872 and 1890), and theological speculation. It is generally understood that he was the original of George Eliot's Felix Holt.^[1]

Massey's poetry has a certain rough and vigorous element of sincerity and strength which easily accounts for its popularity at the time of its production. He treated the theme of Sir Richard Grenville before Tennyson thought of using it, with much force and vitality. Indeed, Tennyson's own praise of Massey's work is still its best eulogy, for the Laureate found in him a poet of fine lyrical impulse, and of a rich half-Oriental imagination. The inspiration of his poetry is a combination of his vast knowledge based on travels, research and experiences; he was a patriotic humanist to the core. His poem "The Merry, Merry May" was set to music in a popular song by composer Christabel Baxendale.

In regard to Ancient Egypt, Massey first published The Book of the Beginnings, followed by The Natural Genesis. His most prolific work is Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, published shortly before his death.^[1] According to Christian Theologian W. Ward Gasque, his work, which draws comparisons between the Judeo-Christian religion and the Egyptian religion, is not considered significant in the field of modern Egyptology and is not mentioned in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt or similar reference works of modern Egyptology.^[3]

Massey was a believer in spiritual evolution; he opined that Darwin's theory of evolution was incomplete without spiritualism:

The theory contains only one half the explanation of man's origins and needs spiritualism to carry it through and complete it. For while this ascent on the physical side has been progressing through myriads of ages, the Divine descent has also been going on – man being spiritually an incarnation from the Divine as well as a human development from the animal creation. The cause of the development is spiritual. Mr. Darwin's theory does not in the least militate against ours – we think it necessitates it; he simply does not deal with our side of the subject. He can not go lower than the dust of the earth for the matter of life; and for us, the main interest of our origin must lie in the spiritual domain.^[4]

Assertions about Jesus and Horus

One of the more important aspects of Massey's writings were his assertions about parallels between Jesus and the Egyptian god Horus, primarily contained in his book The Natural Genesis. Massey, for example, stated both Horus and Jesus were born of virgins on 25 December, raised men from the dead – Massey speculates that the biblical Lazarus, raised from the dead by Jesus, has a parallel in El-Asar-Us, a title of Osiris –, died by crucifixion and were resurrected three days later.^[5] These assertions have influenced various later writers such as Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Tom Harpur, Dr.Yosef ben-Jochannan, and Acharya S.^[6]

Christian theologian W. Ward Gasque, a Ph.D. from Harvard and Manchester University, sent emails to twenty Egyptologists that he considered leaders of the field - including Kenneth Kitchen of the University of Liverpool and Ron Leprohan of he University of Toronto - in Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, Germany and Austria to verify academic support for some of these assertions. His primary targets were Tom Harpur, Alvin Boyd Kuhn and the Christ myth theory, and only indirectly Massey. Ten out of twenty responded. Those who responded were unanimous in dismissing the proposed etymologies for Jesus and Christ, and one unspecified Egyptologist referred to Alvin Boyd Kuhn's comparison as "fringe nonsense."^[3]

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press 

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Gerald Massey

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Gerald Massey

• Ancient Egypt, Light of the World, 12 books on Egypt.
• gerald-massey.org.uk
• Africa Within, many of Massey's articles and poems relating to Egypt.
• Works by or about Gerald Massey in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Gerald Massey - Lectures on archive.org