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