Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light
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Praise for The Pagan Christ"In this passionate hymn to Christ universal, rather than demythologizing Jesus as so many scholars do, Tom Harpur remythologizes Christ. He identifies the Christian mythos with universal themes drawn, in particular, from Egyptian wisdom, not to debunk Christian truth but to rekindle it with ancient fire."— Forrest Church, author of Bringing God Home: A Spiritual Guidebook for the Journey of Your Life"A thoroughly captivating book .... Harpur describes and shares his intellectual journey extremely powerfully."— Globe and Mail"A truly revolutionary work, devout but subversive in the best sense, with a carefully constructed narrative that challenges believers and non-believers to fundamentally re-examine 'the Greatest Story Ever Told.' ... Harpur has arrived at a dramatic conclusion, firmly held and well detailed."— Edmonton Journal Library Journal Harpur (religion editor, Toronto Star; For Christ's Sake) has a simple yet challenging thesis: Jesus did not exist. He argues that what was originally meant to be taken spiritually and allegorically was, by the third century, taken literally. A former Anglican priest and former believer in the historical Jesus, Harpur now proposes that religion has an important spiritual meaning, one that was recognized by the Egyptians, and that Egyptian allegory was taken over by Christians and made historical in the character of Jesus. Harpur shows the many correspondences between Christian teaching and Egyptian teaching but tends to go a bit overboard in his interpretations, saying, for example, that "the evidence seems incontestable that the twelve disciples represent twelve deific powers, and not men." He also claims that the Egyptian pictograph representing unharmed wellness and unity was gradually transformed into the Rx symbol for prescriptions, although some argue that it comes from the Latin word recipe ("to take"). For all its faults, Harpur's book is intriguing, and it will be popular among those who question received dogma. For larger religion collections.-Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Author's NoteviiiAcknowledgmentsix1Discovery: A Bible Story I'd Never Heard Before12Setting the Stage: Myths Aren't Fairy Tales153Christianity before Christianity: Where It All Began274The Greatest Cover-up of All Time: How a Spiritual Christianity Became a Literalist Christianism495It Was All Written Before-in EgyptPart IAncient Egyptian Religion67Part IIHorus and Jesus Are the Same776Convincing the Sceptics917The Bible-History or Myth? The End of Fundamentalism1158Seeing the Gospels with New Eyes: Sublime Myth Is Not Biography1379Was There a Jesus of History?15710The Only Way Ahead: Cosmic Christianity177Epilogue195Appendix ABackground on Three Experts on Mythology, Religion, and Ancient Egypt199Appendix BMore Similarities between the Egyptian Christ, Horus, and Jesus205Appendix CTwo Strange Passages211Glossary215Notes219Bibliography229Index237
