Whenever I go back to Prince Rupert I like to make a point of visiting my Dad.
His spirit has remained part of me since September 12 1982. But I still like to visit the veterans section of the Prince Rupert Cemetery. I usually clean away the encroaching moss from the small rectangular granite grave stone that bears his name, military information and the quotation, A Proud Canadian.
This summer I decided to ask someone to join me. My cousin, Carroll, was always like another son to my Dad. It was Carroll who took on the unenviable task to call me when Dad died suddenly and unexpectedly. He and I have carried on that spiritual connection we seem to have even though our lives have often go in different directions.
Now Dad was a proud Canadian who served overseas for 5 years but there is an underlying significance to this tribute. There is a Canadian Whiskey called Royal Reserve and on the back of each 26 ounce bottle was a removeable sticker the read A Proud Canadian. There were a number of these stuck on various things and places around my parents house.
So when I asked Carroll if he would be interested in visiting Dads place where his earthly remains lie, I already had in hand a bottle of Royal Reserve and a couple of Cokes. So we drove up to the Cemetery one afternoon. We had a ‘snort’ as Dad would have called it straight from the bottle. Then dumped some of the Coke to make room for the other liquid. We stood with Dad and talked about the good times we remembered with him, his sense of humor, how we remembered his life, his never complain attitude even though the last 12 years were diminished somewhat from the effects of a heart attack that shortened his life to 63 years.
His was a simple and sometimes difficult life, yet surely not forgotten by many who knew him. Not perfect by any means. But a teeshirt given to Carroll by a close friend had these words, which I think fit my Dad as well: I’m not for everyone, but those who like me like me a lot.
It probably explains why Carroll and my Dad were so close.
We poured some of our drinks around the grave stone in a loving and sharing way that a lot of people might not understand. Mighty irreverent by some standards. But no true Christian is perfect and in that time Carroll and I spent with Dad that afternoon we discovered something pretty amazing ….that each of us in his own private way yet in a real and meaningful way know that we will be together again some day.
It’s the best news I could have ever prayed to have.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
The Shack by William P. Young
How does it feel to have a personal relationship with God? William Young has written a story that has made me truly believe that God can and will approach any one of us...and not be surprised if the way He does is unorthodox.
The complete heart of God is revealed in scripture. The immensity of fully knowing this on a personal level is a challenge that has not been completed in the time the Bible has been available. It is why Gods' word is vibrant, alive and responding to each new generation as it come along.
The Shack takes the reader on an incredible journey. Reinforced through Biblical truth the reader is conjoined to a chain of life changing events in Mack's life. Events that show the reader how to comprehend the way God might work into our very own lives and do it in away that could change our lives forever.
In a note on the book cover, William Young portrays his own life these days as 'enjoying the wastefulness of grace'. For anyone that is thinking at all about the meaning of life in this hectic world of ours, The Shack will start you on a journey to understand what that phrase means.
I believe that understanding Gods grace and the abundance of it, is the beginning of living life the way it is intended to be lived
The complete heart of God is revealed in scripture. The immensity of fully knowing this on a personal level is a challenge that has not been completed in the time the Bible has been available. It is why Gods' word is vibrant, alive and responding to each new generation as it come along.
The Shack takes the reader on an incredible journey. Reinforced through Biblical truth the reader is conjoined to a chain of life changing events in Mack's life. Events that show the reader how to comprehend the way God might work into our very own lives and do it in away that could change our lives forever.
In a note on the book cover, William Young portrays his own life these days as 'enjoying the wastefulness of grace'. For anyone that is thinking at all about the meaning of life in this hectic world of ours, The Shack will start you on a journey to understand what that phrase means.
I believe that understanding Gods grace and the abundance of it, is the beginning of living life the way it is intended to be lived
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Jesus and the Rosetta Stone
Recently a friend asked me if I had heard about a translation of one of the languages on the Rosetta Stone that told a story that paralleled that of Christianity there by proving the Jesus never lived and Christianity was basically a hoax.
I had not heard this story and probably wouldn't have thought much more about it except for the fact the the friend is someone whose opinions I take seriously.
So I decided to inform myself and came up with the following information. It is nothing I wrote or revised just copied to pass along the 'rest 'of the story.
I of course passed it along to my friend.
The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light by Tom Harpur. Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2004. pp. 244. $34.95
The title hints at the enormous task that Mr. Harpur has undertaken, which is nothing less than the radical transformation of Christianity as we know it.
His thesis is that there is nothing original in Christianity, since it was copied or plagiarized from the ancient Egyptian religion. He adduces an impressive list of parallels between the life and teachings of Jesus and the primordial mystery religion, that, if true would silence most skeptics.
For Harpur, the gospels were originally intended to be mythological, expressing deep spiritual truths flowing from the ancient religion. A combination of the machinations of fanatical ecclesiastics and colossal blunders resulted in the gospels being interpreted in historical fashion, thereby robbing Christianity of much of its spiritual power. In a fraud unparalleled in history, the evidence of this deceit was destroyed or covered up in the early centuries of the Christian era, and the pagan roots of Christianity repudiated. The historical Jesus never existed; he is a mythological expression of the god in every person. The events related in the gospel stories describe archetypal interior experiences common to all humanity, and the Jesus story is a spiritual allegory of the soul.
These are serious charges with enormous consequences, requiring a meticulous assemblage of evidence. This is where the problems with the book begin. There is virtually no dialogue with current mainstream scholarship. Much of the book draws on outdated or fringe work. It is questionable whether Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, should be considered a suitable source for a work of this nature (page 165). The bibliography is weighted very strongly in favor of esoteric and theosophical works, and relies very heavily on the works of Gerald Massey (1828-1908) and Alvin Kuhn (1881-1963), two orientalists who wrote extensively on esoteric religion.
Their works, however, are idiosyncratic, and not accepted within the field of Egyptology. One can see why: both of them work from the narrowest range of sources, making tortured and questionable word etymologies and esoteric interpretations of hieroglyphics and Egyptian art. We are asked to accept their interpretations at face value with little or no supporting evidence or proof.
Little supporting evidence
Harpur repeats these interpretations with little further supporting evidence. It would be expected that one could confront and cross-examine the statements offered as evidence; in fact, it is very difficult and in some cases nearly impossible. For example, on page 77, he states that Massey has found 180 correlations between the lives of Horus and Jesus, proving the identity between the two. Neither the name of the work nor the page numbers are given to us.
In numerous instances, bold and sweeping statements are made with little or no supporting references, and there is often the same problem with extended quotations. The startling statement by Meister Eckhart on page 41 begs for a reference, but in vain.
Over the last 50 years, a tremendous amount of research has been generated on both the historical Jesus, Second Temple Judaism, and the social and economic conditions of the first-century Roman empire. Mainstream scholarship has situated Jesus securely in the context of Second Temple Judaism, Greco-Roman society, and the structure of empire. Additionally, it has revealed the social and economic impact of the early Christian proclamation and the religious currents that nourished the life and message of Jesus. With the exception of references to the work of the Jesus Seminar, most of this research is absent from this work. Ironically, even the work of the Jesus Seminar is dismissed by Harpur, because they still mistakenly believe that Jesus was an historical person. A failure to anchor the argument in sound historical research leads to assertions such as on page 5 that there was a 'Jesus' in Egyptian lore as early as 18,000 BCE--astounding when one considers the fact that the earliest pre-historic sites in Egypt date to about the 6th millennium BCE with the familiar Egyptian civilization beginning about 3500 BCE.
Several striking quotations from the Church Fathers admit that Christianity is not new. The statement by St. Augustine on page 27 is a fine example: the true religion has always existed among the ancients, and began to be called Christianity with the coining of Jesus Christ in the flesh. This line of argument was quite common during the patristic era, for one of the most uncomfortable accusations against Christianity was that it was new. The peoples of the ancient world, unlike modern people, revered old and venerable traditions rather than innovations, especially in the area of religion. Apologists had to prove that Christianity was not new, but had an ancient and respectable pedigree. These quotations do not imply that Jesus did not exist or that Christianity was a myth.
Start with the bibliography, and it reads like a Rogue's Gallery of Scholastic Incompetence: Freke and Gandy, Acharya S, Tim Leedom, T. W. Doane, Earl Doherty, Helen Ellerbe, Kersey Graves, John Shelby Spong, Godfrey Higgins, Gerald Massey, Alvin Boyd Kuhn. These last three (in reverse order) are Harpur's most favored sources; throughout Harpur expresses bewilderment that these three "scholars" (the word he applies liberally to just about anyone, regardless of credentials), especially Kuhn, have been so vastly ignored. The very idea that they have been ignored because of their incompetence and inability somehow never manages to cross Harpur's uncritical mind.
Some critical work backing this up was done for us by W. Ward Gasque, a Canadian Biblical scholar, who reports that he emailed 20 Egyptologists to get their view of these last three writers. Of the 10 who responded to Gasque, only one had ever heard of any of them. I think it worth reporting much of what Gasque reports, in full:
Harpur refers to Kuhn, Massey and Higgins as 'Egyptologists'; but he does not quote any contemporary Egyptologist or recognized academic authority on world religions, nor does he appeal to any of the standard reference books, such as the magisterial three volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (2001) or any primary sources.
He is especially dependent on Kuhn, whom he describes as "one of the single greatest geniuses of the 20th century" -- [one who] "towers above all others of recent memory in intellect and his understanding of the world's religions." Further, "Kuhn has more to offer the Church than all the scholars of the Jesus Seminar together. More than John Spong, C. S. Lewis, Joseph Campbell or Matthew Fox." Harpur declares himself "stunned at the silence with which [Kuhn's] writings have been greeted by scholars."
As it turns out, Kuhn was a high school language teacher who earned a PhD from Columbia University by writing a dissertation on Theosophy; his only other link with an institution of higher learning was a short stint as secretary to the president of a small college. Though he was a prodigious author, most of his works were self-published.
I emailed 20 leading international Egyptologists, regarding the contributions made to the field by Kuhn, Higgins and Massey. I also asked their opinion of the following claims by Kuhn (and hence Harpur):
* That the name of Jesus was derived from the Egyptian Iusa, which means "the coming divine Son who heals or saves."
* That the god Horus is "an Egyptian Christos, or Christ . . . He and his mother, Isis, were the forerunners of the Christian Madonna and Child, and together they constituted a leading image in Egyptian religion for millennia prior to the Gospels."
* That Horus also "had a virgin birth, and that in one of his roles, he was 'a fisher of men with 12 followers.'"
* That "the letters KRST appear on Egyptian mummy coffins many centuries BCE, and . . . this word, when the vowels are filled in . . . is really Karast or Krist, signifying Christ."
* That the doctrine of the incarnation "is in fact the oldest, most universal mythos known to religion. It was current in the Osirian religion in Egypt at least 4,000 years BCE."
Only one of the 10 experts who responded to my questions had ever heard of Kuhn, Higgins or Massey! Professor Kenneth A. Kitchen of the University of Liverpool pointed out that not one of these men is mentioned in M.L. Bierbrier's Who Was Who in Egyptology (3rd ed, 1995); nor are any of their works listed in Ida B. Pratt's very extensive bibliography on Ancient Egypt (1925/1942).
Since he died in 1834, Kitchen noted, "nothing by Higgins could be of any value whatsoever, because decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs was still being finalized, very few texts were translated, and certainly not the vast mass of first-hand religious data."
Another scholar responded: "Egyptology has the unenviable distinction of being one of those disciplines that almost anyone can lay claim to, and the unfortunate distinction of being probably the one most beleaguered by false prophets." He dismissed Kuhn's work as "fringe nonsense."
These scholars were unanimous in dismissing the suggested etymologies for 'Jesus' and 'Christ.'
Peter F. Dorman of the University of Chicago commented: "It is often tempting to suggest simplistic etymologies between Egyptian and Greek (or other languages), but similar sequences of consonants and/or vowels are insufficient to demonstrate any convincing connection."
Ron Leprohan, of the University of Toronto, pointed out that while sa means 'son' in ancient Egyptian and iu means 'to come,' Kuhn and Harpur have the syntax all wrong. In any event, the name Iusa simply does not exist in Egyptian. The name 'Jesus' is Greek, derived from a universally recognized Semitic name (Jeshu'a) borne by many people in the first century.
While all the scholars agreed that the image of the baby Horus and Isis has influenced the Christian iconography of Madonna and Child, this is where the similarity stops. The image of Mary and Jesus is not one of the earliest Christian images -- and, at any rate, there is no evidence for the idea that Horus was virgin born. Further, the New Testament Mary was certainly not a goddess, like Isis.
There is no evidence for the idea that Horus was 'a fisher of men' -- or that his followers, the king's officials, were ever 12 in number.
KRST is the word for 'burial' ('coffin' is written 'KRSW'); but there is no evidence whatsoever to link this with the Greek title 'Christos,' or Hebrew 'Mashiah.'
There is no mention of Osiris in Egyptian texts until about 2350 BCE, so Harpur's reference to the origins of Osirian religion is off by more than a millennium and a half. Elsewhere, Harpur refers to "Jesus in Egyptian lore as early as 18,000 BCE"; and he quotes Kuhn as claiming that "the Jesus who stands as the founder of Christianity was at least 10,000 years of age." In fact, the earliest extant writing that we have dates from about 3200 BCE.)
Kuhn's redefinition of 'incarnation' and his attempt to root this in Egyptian religion is regarded as bogus by the Egyptologists I consulted. According to one: "Only the pharaoh was believed to have a divine aspect, the divine power of kingship, incarnated in the human being currently serving as the king. No other Egyptians ever believed they possessed even 'a little bit of the divine'."
Virtually none of the alleged evidence in The Pagan Christ is documented by reference to original sources. The notes -- which refer mainly to Kuhn, Higgins, Massey or various long-out-of-date works -- abound with errors and omissions. Many quotations are taken out of context and clearly misinterpreted.
The book is chock full of questionable claims, such as: that "Christianity began as a cult with almost wholly Pagan origins and motivations in the first century"; that nearly all of the most creative leaders of the earliest church were pronounced heretics and reviled by "those who had swept in and grabbed control of [church] policies"; that "apart from the four Gospels . . . and the Epistles, there is no hard, historical evidence for Jesus' existence coming out of the first century at all."
Harpur claims that "the greatest cover-up of all time" was perpetrated at the beginning of the fourth century; and that thousands of Christian scholars have a vested interest in maintaining the myth that there was an actual Jesus who lived in history.
Presumably, the Jewish, Unitarian, secular and very liberal Christians who happen to be recognized scholars have no axes to grind regarding whether or not Jesus actually lived, or whether most of the ideas found in the Bible stem from Egyptian or other Near Eastern religions. It would be unlikely that you could find more than a handful who believe that Jesus of Nazareth did not live and walk the dusty roads of Palestine.
Harpur's book is based on the work of self-appointed 'scholars' who seek to excavate literary and archaeological resources of the ancient world the way a crossword puzzle enthusiast mines dictionaries and lists of words -- rather than by primary scholarship.
While this was an extensive quote to use, it corresponds with what will be shown further: Harpur, though once a minor Biblical scholar himself, has clearly hoist his integrity upon the petard of gullibility. Even the few real scholars he uses (Crossan, Borg, Funk, Pagels, etc) are used sparingly, would powerfully disagree with his sources like Massey and Kuhn, and themselves are considered to variable extents "fringe" by the mainstream. There is not a hint of any knowledge of specific evangelical scholarly responses (just vague references to angry "conservative" respondents). In this book and in his columns, Harpur merely uncritically follows preferred sources and pretends that contrary material either does not exist, or is just sponsored by fundamentalists. Not surprisingly, Harpur reacts like a spoiled child when called on his errors; you can see this below with Gasque. Willful and gullible misinformers should never be permitted any leave to get away with anything, and that includes Harpur. We will also be responding to his common retort that his critics simply need to read the works of his sources and appreciate their genius, by indeed looking at these sources and exposing their nuttiness. Here is what we have:
· Alvin Boyd Kuhn -- includes a look at one of his works on a marginally related topic, The Esoteric Structure of the Alphabet. The insanity of this work alone should put intelligent readers off Kuhn for a lifetime.
· Gerald Massey -- three items here, two from work done prior to out work on Harpur.
· Godfrey Higgins -- his work is hard to come by, but we managed it.
I had not heard this story and probably wouldn't have thought much more about it except for the fact the the friend is someone whose opinions I take seriously.
So I decided to inform myself and came up with the following information. It is nothing I wrote or revised just copied to pass along the 'rest 'of the story.
I of course passed it along to my friend.
The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light by Tom Harpur. Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2004. pp. 244. $34.95
The title hints at the enormous task that Mr. Harpur has undertaken, which is nothing less than the radical transformation of Christianity as we know it.
His thesis is that there is nothing original in Christianity, since it was copied or plagiarized from the ancient Egyptian religion. He adduces an impressive list of parallels between the life and teachings of Jesus and the primordial mystery religion, that, if true would silence most skeptics.
For Harpur, the gospels were originally intended to be mythological, expressing deep spiritual truths flowing from the ancient religion. A combination of the machinations of fanatical ecclesiastics and colossal blunders resulted in the gospels being interpreted in historical fashion, thereby robbing Christianity of much of its spiritual power. In a fraud unparalleled in history, the evidence of this deceit was destroyed or covered up in the early centuries of the Christian era, and the pagan roots of Christianity repudiated. The historical Jesus never existed; he is a mythological expression of the god in every person. The events related in the gospel stories describe archetypal interior experiences common to all humanity, and the Jesus story is a spiritual allegory of the soul.
These are serious charges with enormous consequences, requiring a meticulous assemblage of evidence. This is where the problems with the book begin. There is virtually no dialogue with current mainstream scholarship. Much of the book draws on outdated or fringe work. It is questionable whether Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, should be considered a suitable source for a work of this nature (page 165). The bibliography is weighted very strongly in favor of esoteric and theosophical works, and relies very heavily on the works of Gerald Massey (1828-1908) and Alvin Kuhn (1881-1963), two orientalists who wrote extensively on esoteric religion.
Their works, however, are idiosyncratic, and not accepted within the field of Egyptology. One can see why: both of them work from the narrowest range of sources, making tortured and questionable word etymologies and esoteric interpretations of hieroglyphics and Egyptian art. We are asked to accept their interpretations at face value with little or no supporting evidence or proof.
Little supporting evidence
Harpur repeats these interpretations with little further supporting evidence. It would be expected that one could confront and cross-examine the statements offered as evidence; in fact, it is very difficult and in some cases nearly impossible. For example, on page 77, he states that Massey has found 180 correlations between the lives of Horus and Jesus, proving the identity between the two. Neither the name of the work nor the page numbers are given to us.
In numerous instances, bold and sweeping statements are made with little or no supporting references, and there is often the same problem with extended quotations. The startling statement by Meister Eckhart on page 41 begs for a reference, but in vain.
Over the last 50 years, a tremendous amount of research has been generated on both the historical Jesus, Second Temple Judaism, and the social and economic conditions of the first-century Roman empire. Mainstream scholarship has situated Jesus securely in the context of Second Temple Judaism, Greco-Roman society, and the structure of empire. Additionally, it has revealed the social and economic impact of the early Christian proclamation and the religious currents that nourished the life and message of Jesus. With the exception of references to the work of the Jesus Seminar, most of this research is absent from this work. Ironically, even the work of the Jesus Seminar is dismissed by Harpur, because they still mistakenly believe that Jesus was an historical person. A failure to anchor the argument in sound historical research leads to assertions such as on page 5 that there was a 'Jesus' in Egyptian lore as early as 18,000 BCE--astounding when one considers the fact that the earliest pre-historic sites in Egypt date to about the 6th millennium BCE with the familiar Egyptian civilization beginning about 3500 BCE.
Several striking quotations from the Church Fathers admit that Christianity is not new. The statement by St. Augustine on page 27 is a fine example: the true religion has always existed among the ancients, and began to be called Christianity with the coining of Jesus Christ in the flesh. This line of argument was quite common during the patristic era, for one of the most uncomfortable accusations against Christianity was that it was new. The peoples of the ancient world, unlike modern people, revered old and venerable traditions rather than innovations, especially in the area of religion. Apologists had to prove that Christianity was not new, but had an ancient and respectable pedigree. These quotations do not imply that Jesus did not exist or that Christianity was a myth.
Start with the bibliography, and it reads like a Rogue's Gallery of Scholastic Incompetence: Freke and Gandy, Acharya S, Tim Leedom, T. W. Doane, Earl Doherty, Helen Ellerbe, Kersey Graves, John Shelby Spong, Godfrey Higgins, Gerald Massey, Alvin Boyd Kuhn. These last three (in reverse order) are Harpur's most favored sources; throughout Harpur expresses bewilderment that these three "scholars" (the word he applies liberally to just about anyone, regardless of credentials), especially Kuhn, have been so vastly ignored. The very idea that they have been ignored because of their incompetence and inability somehow never manages to cross Harpur's uncritical mind.
Some critical work backing this up was done for us by W. Ward Gasque, a Canadian Biblical scholar, who reports that he emailed 20 Egyptologists to get their view of these last three writers. Of the 10 who responded to Gasque, only one had ever heard of any of them. I think it worth reporting much of what Gasque reports, in full:
Harpur refers to Kuhn, Massey and Higgins as 'Egyptologists'; but he does not quote any contemporary Egyptologist or recognized academic authority on world religions, nor does he appeal to any of the standard reference books, such as the magisterial three volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (2001) or any primary sources.
He is especially dependent on Kuhn, whom he describes as "one of the single greatest geniuses of the 20th century" -- [one who] "towers above all others of recent memory in intellect and his understanding of the world's religions." Further, "Kuhn has more to offer the Church than all the scholars of the Jesus Seminar together. More than John Spong, C. S. Lewis, Joseph Campbell or Matthew Fox." Harpur declares himself "stunned at the silence with which [Kuhn's] writings have been greeted by scholars."
As it turns out, Kuhn was a high school language teacher who earned a PhD from Columbia University by writing a dissertation on Theosophy; his only other link with an institution of higher learning was a short stint as secretary to the president of a small college. Though he was a prodigious author, most of his works were self-published.
I emailed 20 leading international Egyptologists, regarding the contributions made to the field by Kuhn, Higgins and Massey. I also asked their opinion of the following claims by Kuhn (and hence Harpur):
* That the name of Jesus was derived from the Egyptian Iusa, which means "the coming divine Son who heals or saves."
* That the god Horus is "an Egyptian Christos, or Christ . . . He and his mother, Isis, were the forerunners of the Christian Madonna and Child, and together they constituted a leading image in Egyptian religion for millennia prior to the Gospels."
* That Horus also "had a virgin birth, and that in one of his roles, he was 'a fisher of men with 12 followers.'"
* That "the letters KRST appear on Egyptian mummy coffins many centuries BCE, and . . . this word, when the vowels are filled in . . . is really Karast or Krist, signifying Christ."
* That the doctrine of the incarnation "is in fact the oldest, most universal mythos known to religion. It was current in the Osirian religion in Egypt at least 4,000 years BCE."
Only one of the 10 experts who responded to my questions had ever heard of Kuhn, Higgins or Massey! Professor Kenneth A. Kitchen of the University of Liverpool pointed out that not one of these men is mentioned in M.L. Bierbrier's Who Was Who in Egyptology (3rd ed, 1995); nor are any of their works listed in Ida B. Pratt's very extensive bibliography on Ancient Egypt (1925/1942).
Since he died in 1834, Kitchen noted, "nothing by Higgins could be of any value whatsoever, because decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs was still being finalized, very few texts were translated, and certainly not the vast mass of first-hand religious data."
Another scholar responded: "Egyptology has the unenviable distinction of being one of those disciplines that almost anyone can lay claim to, and the unfortunate distinction of being probably the one most beleaguered by false prophets." He dismissed Kuhn's work as "fringe nonsense."
These scholars were unanimous in dismissing the suggested etymologies for 'Jesus' and 'Christ.'
Peter F. Dorman of the University of Chicago commented: "It is often tempting to suggest simplistic etymologies between Egyptian and Greek (or other languages), but similar sequences of consonants and/or vowels are insufficient to demonstrate any convincing connection."
Ron Leprohan, of the University of Toronto, pointed out that while sa means 'son' in ancient Egyptian and iu means 'to come,' Kuhn and Harpur have the syntax all wrong. In any event, the name Iusa simply does not exist in Egyptian. The name 'Jesus' is Greek, derived from a universally recognized Semitic name (Jeshu'a) borne by many people in the first century.
While all the scholars agreed that the image of the baby Horus and Isis has influenced the Christian iconography of Madonna and Child, this is where the similarity stops. The image of Mary and Jesus is not one of the earliest Christian images -- and, at any rate, there is no evidence for the idea that Horus was virgin born. Further, the New Testament Mary was certainly not a goddess, like Isis.
There is no evidence for the idea that Horus was 'a fisher of men' -- or that his followers, the king's officials, were ever 12 in number.
KRST is the word for 'burial' ('coffin' is written 'KRSW'); but there is no evidence whatsoever to link this with the Greek title 'Christos,' or Hebrew 'Mashiah.'
There is no mention of Osiris in Egyptian texts until about 2350 BCE, so Harpur's reference to the origins of Osirian religion is off by more than a millennium and a half. Elsewhere, Harpur refers to "Jesus in Egyptian lore as early as 18,000 BCE"; and he quotes Kuhn as claiming that "the Jesus who stands as the founder of Christianity was at least 10,000 years of age." In fact, the earliest extant writing that we have dates from about 3200 BCE.)
Kuhn's redefinition of 'incarnation' and his attempt to root this in Egyptian religion is regarded as bogus by the Egyptologists I consulted. According to one: "Only the pharaoh was believed to have a divine aspect, the divine power of kingship, incarnated in the human being currently serving as the king. No other Egyptians ever believed they possessed even 'a little bit of the divine'."
Virtually none of the alleged evidence in The Pagan Christ is documented by reference to original sources. The notes -- which refer mainly to Kuhn, Higgins, Massey or various long-out-of-date works -- abound with errors and omissions. Many quotations are taken out of context and clearly misinterpreted.
The book is chock full of questionable claims, such as: that "Christianity began as a cult with almost wholly Pagan origins and motivations in the first century"; that nearly all of the most creative leaders of the earliest church were pronounced heretics and reviled by "those who had swept in and grabbed control of [church] policies"; that "apart from the four Gospels . . . and the Epistles, there is no hard, historical evidence for Jesus' existence coming out of the first century at all."
Harpur claims that "the greatest cover-up of all time" was perpetrated at the beginning of the fourth century; and that thousands of Christian scholars have a vested interest in maintaining the myth that there was an actual Jesus who lived in history.
Presumably, the Jewish, Unitarian, secular and very liberal Christians who happen to be recognized scholars have no axes to grind regarding whether or not Jesus actually lived, or whether most of the ideas found in the Bible stem from Egyptian or other Near Eastern religions. It would be unlikely that you could find more than a handful who believe that Jesus of Nazareth did not live and walk the dusty roads of Palestine.
Harpur's book is based on the work of self-appointed 'scholars' who seek to excavate literary and archaeological resources of the ancient world the way a crossword puzzle enthusiast mines dictionaries and lists of words -- rather than by primary scholarship.
While this was an extensive quote to use, it corresponds with what will be shown further: Harpur, though once a minor Biblical scholar himself, has clearly hoist his integrity upon the petard of gullibility. Even the few real scholars he uses (Crossan, Borg, Funk, Pagels, etc) are used sparingly, would powerfully disagree with his sources like Massey and Kuhn, and themselves are considered to variable extents "fringe" by the mainstream. There is not a hint of any knowledge of specific evangelical scholarly responses (just vague references to angry "conservative" respondents). In this book and in his columns, Harpur merely uncritically follows preferred sources and pretends that contrary material either does not exist, or is just sponsored by fundamentalists. Not surprisingly, Harpur reacts like a spoiled child when called on his errors; you can see this below with Gasque. Willful and gullible misinformers should never be permitted any leave to get away with anything, and that includes Harpur. We will also be responding to his common retort that his critics simply need to read the works of his sources and appreciate their genius, by indeed looking at these sources and exposing their nuttiness. Here is what we have:
· Alvin Boyd Kuhn -- includes a look at one of his works on a marginally related topic, The Esoteric Structure of the Alphabet. The insanity of this work alone should put intelligent readers off Kuhn for a lifetime.
· Gerald Massey -- three items here, two from work done prior to out work on Harpur.
· Godfrey Higgins -- his work is hard to come by, but we managed it.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
On the Subject of Bio Fuels
Bio-Fools is becoming a catch phrase in the growing case against the bio fuel advocators.
Globally the European Union has set a target that countries use 5.75 percent biofuel for transport by the end of 2008. Proposals in the United States energy package would require that 15 percent of all transport fuels be made from biofuel by 2022. Biofuels production is heavily subsidized at many levels on both continents. In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and other government leaders are publicly still buying into the whole misguided conception that human endeavor can reverse climate change. That topic provides a whole other issue and body of scientific evidence that is a closely related but biofuel is the focus of this commentary.
The evidence that will be cited here at the very least clarifies the opportunity for Canadian government leaders to make their political decisions based on more than the house of cards built in the last few years by people such as Al Gore and David Suzuki.
The global spin gains momentum when organizations like the European Biodiesel Board says that biodiesel reduces greenhouse gasses by 50 to 95 percent compared to conventional fuel. The negative factors to this statement have only been footnotes in the calculations that substantiate them.
Two recent studies further bring this issue to the forefront of the bio fuel buzz. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development. Timothy Searchinger is the lead author of one of the studies and a prominent researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. His study details how the destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces. The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy. In the wake of these new studies, a group of 10 of the United States’ most eminent ecologists and environmental biologists sent a letter to President Bush and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, urging a reform of biofuels policies.
Vegetable oil prices are going up globally because of increased demand for biofuel crops.
More new land is being cleared as farmers in developing countries try to get in on the profits.
Existing crops go for biofuels, while new fields are cleared to feed people at home.
U.S. Midwestern farmers had alternated corn with soy in their fields, one year to the next. Now many grow only corn, meaning that soy has to be grown elsewhere.
Compounding these issues: tax credits for ethanol. The cost of reducing CO2 emissions through this subsidy exceeded $1,700 per ton of CO2 avoided in 2006 and the cost of reducing oil consumption over $85 per barrel according to the National Bureau of Economic Research in the U.S.
Here is another issue presented by Paul Crutzen, Nobel chemistry prize winner. He claims that corn-based biofuels could in fact be much worse due to the NO2 emissions caused by fertilizer application.
Farming for biofuel production is helping fertilizer company stocks be a hot buy for 2008. Companies such as the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, the worlds largest supplier of such products enjoyed record profits and a more than doubling of share prices in 2007 due to demand for their products.
Globally there are numerous negative factors that are not getting much visibility when compared to news items such as British billionaire Richard Branson announcing plans to run biofuel in his passenger jets. Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd., the U.K. carrier controlled by Branson, is preparing to fly a plane powered by biofuel, the first in commercial aviation. Boeing is also expressing some public interest in this direction.
On the other hand high environmental impacts of bio fuels are not sparkly news items.
A study by leading scientists in Switzerland exposed the environmental impacts of biofuels caused by increased agricultural cultivation. In moderate latitudes low crop yields, cause intensive fertilizer use and mechanized tilling that cause the unfavorable environmental impacts and increased soil acidification. In tropical regions agriculture development causes biodiversity loss, the clear-cutting of rainforests agriculture sets great quantities of CO2 free and causes air pollution. Pesticides such as Daconate used in Brazilian sugar cane bioethanol production contains a lot of arsenic causing harmful toxicity.
The results of this study show on the whole that promoting biofuels, for instance, through a tax break, must be done in a differentiated way because all biofuels do not reduce environmental impact as compared to fossil fuels. The report downplays the potential of domestic bioenergy and concludes it will remain so in future. The report says if energy plants were cultivated in Switzerland on a large scale, it would have a negative influence on the food self-sufficiency of the country, or would cause added environmental impact by requiring the intensification of food production. This report comes from a Switzerland, a country that is seeking to increase bio fuel consumption.
Globally, staples such as pasta in Italy, corn based breads in some of the poorest countries and barley for beer are increasing in price partly because cheap nutritious food products are being converted in an inefficient energy source.
A team of UK-based scientists recently suggested that reforestation and habitat protection was a better option. Writing in Science, they said forests could absorb up to nine times more CO2 than the production of biofuels could achieve on the same area of land. The growth of biofuels was also leading to more deforestation, they added. "The prime reason for the renewables obligation was to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions," said Renton Righelato, one of the study's co-authors. "In our view this is a mistaken policy because it is less effective than reforesting," he told BBC News. Dr Righelato, chairman of the World Land Trust, added that the policy could actually lead to more deforestation as nations turned to countries outside of the EU to meet the growing demand for biofuels.
Experts at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm voiced concern that growing food crops to be used to make biofuels could jeopardize water supplies. "When governments and companies are discussing biofuel solutions, I think water issues are not addressed enough," Johan Kuylenstierna, director of the annual conference, told AFP.
Recently in the Smithsonian magazine, Richard Conniff attacked the bio-fuels industry. Food price inflation ("Cargill's chief predicted that reallocation of farmland due to biofuel incentives could combine with bad weather to cause food shortages around the world"); CO2 pollution ("when ethanol refineries burn coal to provide heat for fermentation, emissions are up to 20 percent worse for the environment than gasoline"); supply unreliability ("Switching to corn ethanol also risks making us dependent on a crop that's vulnerable to drought and disease"); soil erosion ("…growing corn requires large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides and fuel. It contributes to massive soil erosion, and it is the main source, via runoff in the Mississippi River, of a vast "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico"); and wildlife destruction ("The United Nations recently predicted that 98 percent of Indonesia's forests will be destroyed within the next 15 years, partly to grow palm oil").
Europeans, who have been on the environmental bandwagon much longer than in North America, get a substantial percentage of their energy from nuclear power whereas a new nuclear plant hasn’t been built in North America in a generation. That conveniently is a non factor in their carbon foot print.
It is an important question whether or not Canadian politicians will respond to this evidence. This is not secret information. It is factual reality and needs to be validated by politicians with the fortitude to bring it to the forum of public debate. Not be intimidated by the likes of David Suzuki when he says those who do not agree with him should be thrown in jail.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton would raise the national renewable fuels goal from the current level of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012 to 36 billion gallons per year by 2022 and to 60 billion gallons by 2030. “Advanced biofuels,” such as cellulosic ethanol, would comprise an increasing share of that target over time. Hillary will set a greenhouse gas emissions target for cellulosic and other advanced biofuels to ensure that they move over time towards a standard of emitting at least 80% less greenhouse gas as compared to gasoline. In addition, she would provide loan guarantees to spur the first two billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol capacity. This is flawed logic.
If all the corn produced in America in 2005 were dedicated to ethanol production (and only 14.3 percent of it was), U.S. gasoline consumption would have dropped by only 12 percent. For corn ethanol to completely displace gasoline all U.S. cropland would have to turn over to ethanol production, and then find 20 percent more land on top of that.
Here in Canada it is very disconcerting to say the least when our highly respected Prime Minister Harper sidles up to this kind of political logic. It is the flavor of the day for environmental lobbies to talk about dirty oil from the oil sands in Western Canada and bizarre carbon storage plans. Who in Canada is talking about for instance, the future of nuclear energy production?
The PBMR(pebble bed nuclear reactor) could leverage gas by 30%, and coal by 100%, an especially significant statistic when applied against recoverable hydrocarbons from oil sands in Canada. The introduction of nuclear process heat into the world's energy market is happening in South Africa, China, Japan and to a lesser extent in the U.S.
PBMR technology could economically provide large amounts of heat in the range of 900 degrees. It is also the only carbon-dioxide-free source. Canada was once a world leader in nuclear technology but doesn’t appear to have any political will to move toward reestablishing this position.
We in Canada need strong hearted politicians who do not bow to ‘truthiness’ and stand up to public opinion that resembles lemmings lunging after the headlines on the 6 o’clock news. Our Prime Minister Stephen Harper has rejuvenated global respect for Canada and the issue of energy needs to be tackled from this high ground not the mushy swamp of ‘inconvenient truths’ that are so easy to step into because sometimes it seems like such a harmless thing to do..
Globally the European Union has set a target that countries use 5.75 percent biofuel for transport by the end of 2008. Proposals in the United States energy package would require that 15 percent of all transport fuels be made from biofuel by 2022. Biofuels production is heavily subsidized at many levels on both continents. In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and other government leaders are publicly still buying into the whole misguided conception that human endeavor can reverse climate change. That topic provides a whole other issue and body of scientific evidence that is a closely related but biofuel is the focus of this commentary.
The evidence that will be cited here at the very least clarifies the opportunity for Canadian government leaders to make their political decisions based on more than the house of cards built in the last few years by people such as Al Gore and David Suzuki.
The global spin gains momentum when organizations like the European Biodiesel Board says that biodiesel reduces greenhouse gasses by 50 to 95 percent compared to conventional fuel. The negative factors to this statement have only been footnotes in the calculations that substantiate them.
Two recent studies further bring this issue to the forefront of the bio fuel buzz. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development. Timothy Searchinger is the lead author of one of the studies and a prominent researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. His study details how the destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces. The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy. In the wake of these new studies, a group of 10 of the United States’ most eminent ecologists and environmental biologists sent a letter to President Bush and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, urging a reform of biofuels policies.
Vegetable oil prices are going up globally because of increased demand for biofuel crops.
More new land is being cleared as farmers in developing countries try to get in on the profits.
Existing crops go for biofuels, while new fields are cleared to feed people at home.
U.S. Midwestern farmers had alternated corn with soy in their fields, one year to the next. Now many grow only corn, meaning that soy has to be grown elsewhere.
Compounding these issues: tax credits for ethanol. The cost of reducing CO2 emissions through this subsidy exceeded $1,700 per ton of CO2 avoided in 2006 and the cost of reducing oil consumption over $85 per barrel according to the National Bureau of Economic Research in the U.S.
Here is another issue presented by Paul Crutzen, Nobel chemistry prize winner. He claims that corn-based biofuels could in fact be much worse due to the NO2 emissions caused by fertilizer application.
Farming for biofuel production is helping fertilizer company stocks be a hot buy for 2008. Companies such as the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, the worlds largest supplier of such products enjoyed record profits and a more than doubling of share prices in 2007 due to demand for their products.
Globally there are numerous negative factors that are not getting much visibility when compared to news items such as British billionaire Richard Branson announcing plans to run biofuel in his passenger jets. Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd., the U.K. carrier controlled by Branson, is preparing to fly a plane powered by biofuel, the first in commercial aviation. Boeing is also expressing some public interest in this direction.
On the other hand high environmental impacts of bio fuels are not sparkly news items.
A study by leading scientists in Switzerland exposed the environmental impacts of biofuels caused by increased agricultural cultivation. In moderate latitudes low crop yields, cause intensive fertilizer use and mechanized tilling that cause the unfavorable environmental impacts and increased soil acidification. In tropical regions agriculture development causes biodiversity loss, the clear-cutting of rainforests agriculture sets great quantities of CO2 free and causes air pollution. Pesticides such as Daconate used in Brazilian sugar cane bioethanol production contains a lot of arsenic causing harmful toxicity.
The results of this study show on the whole that promoting biofuels, for instance, through a tax break, must be done in a differentiated way because all biofuels do not reduce environmental impact as compared to fossil fuels. The report downplays the potential of domestic bioenergy and concludes it will remain so in future. The report says if energy plants were cultivated in Switzerland on a large scale, it would have a negative influence on the food self-sufficiency of the country, or would cause added environmental impact by requiring the intensification of food production. This report comes from a Switzerland, a country that is seeking to increase bio fuel consumption.
Globally, staples such as pasta in Italy, corn based breads in some of the poorest countries and barley for beer are increasing in price partly because cheap nutritious food products are being converted in an inefficient energy source.
A team of UK-based scientists recently suggested that reforestation and habitat protection was a better option. Writing in Science, they said forests could absorb up to nine times more CO2 than the production of biofuels could achieve on the same area of land. The growth of biofuels was also leading to more deforestation, they added. "The prime reason for the renewables obligation was to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions," said Renton Righelato, one of the study's co-authors. "In our view this is a mistaken policy because it is less effective than reforesting," he told BBC News. Dr Righelato, chairman of the World Land Trust, added that the policy could actually lead to more deforestation as nations turned to countries outside of the EU to meet the growing demand for biofuels.
Experts at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm voiced concern that growing food crops to be used to make biofuels could jeopardize water supplies. "When governments and companies are discussing biofuel solutions, I think water issues are not addressed enough," Johan Kuylenstierna, director of the annual conference, told AFP.
Recently in the Smithsonian magazine, Richard Conniff attacked the bio-fuels industry. Food price inflation ("Cargill's chief predicted that reallocation of farmland due to biofuel incentives could combine with bad weather to cause food shortages around the world"); CO2 pollution ("when ethanol refineries burn coal to provide heat for fermentation, emissions are up to 20 percent worse for the environment than gasoline"); supply unreliability ("Switching to corn ethanol also risks making us dependent on a crop that's vulnerable to drought and disease"); soil erosion ("…growing corn requires large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides and fuel. It contributes to massive soil erosion, and it is the main source, via runoff in the Mississippi River, of a vast "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico"); and wildlife destruction ("The United Nations recently predicted that 98 percent of Indonesia's forests will be destroyed within the next 15 years, partly to grow palm oil").
Europeans, who have been on the environmental bandwagon much longer than in North America, get a substantial percentage of their energy from nuclear power whereas a new nuclear plant hasn’t been built in North America in a generation. That conveniently is a non factor in their carbon foot print.
It is an important question whether or not Canadian politicians will respond to this evidence. This is not secret information. It is factual reality and needs to be validated by politicians with the fortitude to bring it to the forum of public debate. Not be intimidated by the likes of David Suzuki when he says those who do not agree with him should be thrown in jail.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton would raise the national renewable fuels goal from the current level of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012 to 36 billion gallons per year by 2022 and to 60 billion gallons by 2030. “Advanced biofuels,” such as cellulosic ethanol, would comprise an increasing share of that target over time. Hillary will set a greenhouse gas emissions target for cellulosic and other advanced biofuels to ensure that they move over time towards a standard of emitting at least 80% less greenhouse gas as compared to gasoline. In addition, she would provide loan guarantees to spur the first two billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol capacity. This is flawed logic.
If all the corn produced in America in 2005 were dedicated to ethanol production (and only 14.3 percent of it was), U.S. gasoline consumption would have dropped by only 12 percent. For corn ethanol to completely displace gasoline all U.S. cropland would have to turn over to ethanol production, and then find 20 percent more land on top of that.
Here in Canada it is very disconcerting to say the least when our highly respected Prime Minister Harper sidles up to this kind of political logic. It is the flavor of the day for environmental lobbies to talk about dirty oil from the oil sands in Western Canada and bizarre carbon storage plans. Who in Canada is talking about for instance, the future of nuclear energy production?
The PBMR(pebble bed nuclear reactor) could leverage gas by 30%, and coal by 100%, an especially significant statistic when applied against recoverable hydrocarbons from oil sands in Canada. The introduction of nuclear process heat into the world's energy market is happening in South Africa, China, Japan and to a lesser extent in the U.S.
PBMR technology could economically provide large amounts of heat in the range of 900 degrees. It is also the only carbon-dioxide-free source. Canada was once a world leader in nuclear technology but doesn’t appear to have any political will to move toward reestablishing this position.
We in Canada need strong hearted politicians who do not bow to ‘truthiness’ and stand up to public opinion that resembles lemmings lunging after the headlines on the 6 o’clock news. Our Prime Minister Stephen Harper has rejuvenated global respect for Canada and the issue of energy needs to be tackled from this high ground not the mushy swamp of ‘inconvenient truths’ that are so easy to step into because sometimes it seems like such a harmless thing to do..
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