My response to Mzbel on “Jesus was made up” and the Horus myth

Last week’s social media was buzzed with discussions about Mzbel and her conclusion that Jesus was a made up story brought into our times. She dismissed the Gospel accounts of Jesus claiming it was a bogus-copied story of one of the Egyptian gods namely, Horus. This then implies that, Christianity must be rejected and not given any acceptance.

Admittedly, although this is not a new claim against Christianity, it is a bold one. Many skeptics, agnostics, and atheists through the ages who have sought for an intellectual support or justification for their rejection of Christianity have resorted to such claims. However, just like any truth claim, such claims must diligently examined to ascertain its legitimacy.

To arrive at a safe conclusion, we must examine the god Horus, and the parallels being drawn between him and Christ. Then we can examine the life and person of Jesus to ascertain whether the Gospel’s accounts of him are accurate.

1. To begin with, Horus is one of the oldest recorded deities in the ancient Egyptian religion. He is often depicted as a falcon or a man with a falcon head, and was believed to be the god of the sun and of war. This is critical to note because the mythology about Horus does not account for him as a distinct person who once lived in bodily form as a human.

The closest allusion to any form of bodily existence is the fact that the ancient Egyptians believed the reigning pharaoh was a manifestation of him. Horus was therefore one of the numerous gods of Egypt. Our information about Horus comes from a variety of archaeological sources, which comes with various variations of the story, each of them popularized at different times and places throughout the 5,000-year span of ancient Egyptian history.

2. Mzbel’s main concern and case is that the similarities between the myth of Horus and the gospel account of Jesus are too close and therefore a fraud is committed. Given that Horus is an older version, the culprit lies with the Christians. Part of the problem with this claim is that, in order to find items that even partially fit the life story of Jesus; we must cherry pick from different myths of Egyptian history to draw such parallelism.

Don’t forget that the myth of Horus predated Jesus over 3000 years and there existed uncountable versions of his story even around that time. Just like any ancient myth, there may have existed an oral tradition of the story, but it was simply impossible to keep such a vast number of variations by oral tradition. In addition, the myth of Horus was a developing story over centuries and it was not possible to look up unto a particular period to have a conclusive story like the life of Jesus.

3. This means that the early Christians, even if they had wanted to base the Gospels on the Horus myths, would have had no way to do so. They might have known what was believed about Horus in the Egypt of their day, but they would have had no access to the endless variations of the stories that laid buried in the sands until archaeologists started digging them up in the 1800s. This is possible today because modern archeology has given us extensive knowledge of Egypt’s religious beliefs making it possible to cite one detail from this version of a story and another from that.

4. Unlike Horus, Jesus is a historically attested figure who lived in Palestine about the years 6 CE and 33 AD. Mzbel is not the first to doubt the historical existence of Jesus. However, as the historian Otto Betz rightly notes, “No serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus.” Even one of the most vocal intellectuals of the new atheism, Richard Dawkings, publicly admitted in one of his debates with John Lennox that, the historical existence of Jesus couldn’t be denied.

5. Considering that Jesus’ life and ministry were largely confined to a comparatively unimportant small corner in the Roman Empire, a surprising amount of information about Jesus can be drawn from secular historical sources. These secular historical witnesses are usually pagan, anti- Christian writers who were giving an account of history.

For example, Cornelius Tacitus, the man considered the greatest historian of ancient Rome, documents Roman history from the emperors Augustus to Nero. He briefly mentions Jesus, his crucifixion, and even the movement that arose as a result. Several other secular historians such as Suetonius, Pliny, Thallus, and Josephus state the historicity of Jesus and the impact he had on the early church.

6. If Jesus is not a historical figure who actually lived, and his claims were not attested, what accounts for the movement, called Christianity that his life, ministry, and death inspired? Christianity was the most unfavored and persecuted religious view of that time and if it was not true that a man by name Jesus lived, and all that the Gospel accounts of him is not true, what justifies the persecution that took place under the Roman Emperors Nero, Claudius, Domitian, Trajan, Aurelius, etc.

Why were the Christians willing to endure death under the callous Roman Emperors for something that was a mere fabrication? What accounts for the radical change in people like Saul the Christian persecutor, who later became Paul, the Christian martyr? Such a change can only be attributed to a sort of truth encounter.

7. If Jesus is a made up story, what of all the prophecies, which was beyond his control, yet he perfectly fulfilled them. For example his place of birth (Micah 5.2, Matt. 2.1); the time of his birth ( Daniel 9.25, ); Manner of his birth ( Is. 7.14, Matthew 1.23); his betrayal ( Psalm 41.9, Matthew 10.4); crucified with thieves (Isaiah 53.12, Matthew 27.38); piercing (Psalm 22:16, 23.33); his burial in a rich man’s tomb (Isaiah 53.9, Matthew 27.57-60) and many other prophecies that Jesus could not have been engineered by Jesus himself. Could we say coincidence is at work here?

Professor Peter Stoner, a professor of mathematics tried calculating the odds that a person could fulfill just eight of the over 300 prophecies about Jesus. The result of such a chance: 100,000,000,000,000,000 (17 zeroes after one. I do not know how to write it in words!). This places Jesus in a unique position.

8. Jesus himself claimed deity and uniqueness. He was unequivocal about his identity and mission and that was what actually got him crucified. He claimed he was God (John 5:17,18); he is the same as the father ( John 8.19); accepted worship and honor only reserved for God ( John 5.23); He forgave sins ( Mark 2:5-7); and claimed he gives eternal life (John 10.10). If Jesus was not God, then he deserves an Oscar for being the most damnable actor. This is because, as Philip Schaff puts it, “it would take more than a Jesus to invent a Jesus.”

My conclusions therefore on Mzbel and her thoughts on Jesus are:

(a) The fact that there is a “seemingly” parallelism between two things does not make one the copy of the other. It appears that -- centuries before Jesus’ birth -- Satan created myths about Horus' life in anticipation of Jesus, in order to cause confusion, doubt, and disbelief.

(b) Jesus stands as a unique savior throughout history. We accept either him as a liar, lunatic or Lord.

(c) Finally, Jesus himself bids all to come unto him who are weary and burdened in this life, for he offers food that satisfies forever and living waters that never ceases to flow to satisfy.