Christ in Egypt: The Alexandrian Roots of Christianity

[Florinda]

Christ in Egypt The Alexandrian Roots of Christianity

As D.M. Murdock has commented at Booktalk, this chapter sets out key arguments in Christ in Egypt. In showing the prominent role of the religious group known as the Therapeuts of Alexandria, Murdock presents a compelling case for the Egyptian roots of Christianity, and shows how the facts reveal that the traditional view of Jesus Christ as a historical person is based on the flimsiest evidence.

Christianity assumes that Jesus Christ was a real man. This baseless assumption has no evidence except the self-serving propaganda of the early church, and has no support in historical sources that would be expected to mention Jesus if he really existed. The amusing thing, abundantly proved in this chapter, is that external evidence from the alleged time of Christ shows that the church already existed among the Egyptian Therapeuts, but Christians have ignored and distorted this evidence because it refutes their framework.

For example, Philo of Alexandria, whose extensive writings provide intellectual foundations for Christian theology, explained before the rise of Christianity how Christian festivals and beliefs were found among the Therapeuts. Many theologians actually discuss Philo, but reject his claims because they undermine their dogma.

Assuming that Philo was wrong because Jesus really lived is just like saying the planets move in epicycles because the sun goes around the earth, or that things get lighter when they burn because they lose phlogiston. This common process of rationalization involves explaining away the evidence in order to fit a rigid false assumption. When the error of the assumption is discovered, the puzzle is solved: planets move in smooth ellipses because they orbit the sun, refuting geocentrism; burnt matter is heavier than unburnt matter through chemically combination with oxygen, refuting phlogiston theory; Christianity evolved from previous mythology through the invention of Jesus Christ as a fictional character, refuting supernatural dogma.

This common structure of scientific revolutions, whereby an old false theory desperately ignores contrary evidence, is abundantly verified in the process of paradigm shift documented by T.S. Kuhn. People have trouble applying this framework of the evolution of ideas to religion because faith claims that it has different standards of evidence from science. But the fact is that despite the efforts of the church to suppress it, enough evidence remains of the actual process of the formation of the church to prove that conventional religious explanations are impossible, leaving the hypothesis of Christ as myth as the only consistent picture.

Murdock explains this process of church formation in relentless detail. Roman Emperors Vespasian and Hadrian, and prominent writers Philo and Josephus, made comments that can only be understood if they had no knowledge of a historical Jesus. Yet their time, location and role means in each case that if Jesus was real it beggars belief that they had never heard of him.

Emperor Vespasian organised a big meeting in 69 AD to invent a new religion suitable for the Roman Empire. This meeting in Israel was documented by leading historians Tacitus and Seutonius, but does not mention Jesus, who one would have thought would have deserved a mention in this context. Instead, there is nothing. Emperor Hadrian, writing early in the second century when Christianity was well established, said “there is no Christian leader who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer, or a master of wrestlers.” (p443) Of course Christians tried to suppress this letter, as clear evidence of the fraud in their origins, but there it stands, demanding explanation.

With several hundred thousand Hellenizing Jews living in Alexandria at the alleged time of Christ, the means, motive and opportunity for the gradual invention of a new syncretic religion, joining ideas from various sources, are abundantly clear. Philo, writing in Alexandria at the alleged time of Christ, made no mention of this incarnate Messiah, but did say that the Therapeuts formed a community at Alexandria, with practices otherwise thought to be solely Christian.

Ancient Christians Eusebius, Jerome and Epiphanius described the Therapeuts as early Christians. Murdock observes that the only “apparent reason for dismissing what appear to be truthful admissions on the part of the church fathers is that these would be fatal to the received Christian history.” (p455n)