ZEITGEIST: THE MOVIE

In the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, professor of Old Testament and Catholic Theology at
the University of Bonn Dr. G. Johannes Botterweck writes:
In the Late Period in particular, goddesses are frequently called ―(beautiful) virgins,‖ especially
Hathor, Isis, and Nephthys. 55
In addition, according to early Church father Epiphanius (c. 310-403), the virgin mother of the god Aion—
also considered to be Horus—brought him forth out of the manger each year. 56 This account is verified
earlier by Church father Hippolytus (c. 236), who, in discussing the various Pagan mysteries (Refutation
of All Heresies, 8.45), raises the idea of a ―virgin spirit‖ and remarks: ―For she is the virgin who is with
child and conceives and bears a son, who is not psychic, not bodily, but a blessed Aion of Aions.‖ 57
Concerning the relationship of the Egyptian religion to Christianity, Budge
summarizes:
..at the last, when [Osiris‘s] cult disappeared before the religion of the Man
Christ, the Egyptians who embraced Christianity found that the moral system
of the old cult and that of the new religion were so similar, and the promises
of resurrection and immortality in each so much alike, that they transferred
their allegiance from Osiris to Jesus of Nazareth without difficulty. Moreover,
Isis and the child Horus were straightway identified with Mary the Virgin and
her Son, and in the apocryphal literature of the first few centuries which
followed the evangelization of Egypt, several of the legends about Isis and
her sorrowful wanderings were made to centre round the Mother of Christ.
Certain of the attributes of the sister goddesses of Isis were also ascribed to
her, and, like the goddess Neith of Sais, she was declared to possess
perpetual virginity. Certain of the Egyptian Christian Fathers gave to the
Virgin the title ―Theotokos,‖ or ―Mother of God,‖ forgetting, apparently, that it
was an exact translation of neter mut, a very old and common title of Isis.
As Murdock shows in her books Suns of God and Christ in Egypt, the mythical
virgin-mother motif has been common, possesses an astrotheological meaning,
and was part of the ancient mysteries.
Moreover, the title or epithet of ―Meri‖ or ―Mery,‖ meaning ―beloved,‖ was
Isis nursing Horus
applied to many kings and later to various deities, such as Isis, including just (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
before the supposed existence of Jesus‘s mother, Mary. As Egyptologist Dr.
Alfred Wiedermann, a professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Bonn, remarks:
The Egyptian word Meri means, very generally, ―the loving or the beloved,‖ and serves in this
sense as a title of goddesses, and is as often used as a proper name… 58
For more on this subject of the term ―Meri,‖ see Christ in Egypt, pp. 124-138.
14. His birth was accompanied by a star in the east, and upon his birth he was adored
by three kings.
The very idea that when a person is born a star appears, along with three magi or kings following it to
meet the newborn savior, obviously and logically represents a metaphysical fantasy/mythological event.
Therefore, again, the symbolic relationships are of the greatest interest to us, and here the important
questions thus become: Were Jesus and Horus both associated with a birth star and three ―kings‖ or
magi? Is there a relationship between the birth star and the three kings? The answer to these questions is
a definitive yes, based on scholarship concerning the Horus/Osiris/Ra myths, which we need to recall are
often interchangeable.
55 Botterweck, II, 338-339.
56 Murdock, CIE, 87-88.
57 Meyer, 152.
58 Proceedings of the Society for Biblical Archaeology, XI, 272.