A scathing criticism written by a Christian?

Those are several different reviews spider.

With interviews and quotes from Eqyptologists. You cannot find a single source of any kind that can positively quote an egyptologist about this crap.

All you posted was ONE person’s criticism and it was a Christian. Compare that with all of the reviews of his work by DIFFERENT individuals that I posted.

all religions are true, and all added together first as one, show the piece of each one that was added by self interest seeking to prove itself as the only truth......

Whatever.

I'm tired of this.

Why are you so against his book? He's a Christian.

Because it's not based on facts. That's been my point all along. Eqyptologists reject this research. I don't know why that's hard to understand.

That's self-refuting nonsense.

And some Egyptologists support this work. There are always going to be differing opinions of controversial subject matter of this nature. That means nothing. The support for his book was overwhelming. The only criticism I could find was from the Christian community and I’m not sure how much if any weight you can allow that. Christians will complain about anything that doesn’t go along with their tired old bible rhetoric.

then eyes that read see thru perception that is self refuting, which lead to believing in time all things heard be nonsense.....

No, what you posted is self-refuting. It's a logical contradiction.

If Islam claims to be the one true religion and so does Christianity, then only one can be right. You say that they are both right, which is self-refuting. If Islam is correct, then Christianity is wrong. If Christianity is right, then Islam is wrong. They both can't be true. Maybe neither one is true, but they both can't be. It's self-refuting nonsense.

No eqyptologists support this work. Show me one. You haven't yet.

re-post

Show me someone other than a Christian who condemns his work. You have yet to do that.

spider......it is totally understood how this rightfully so "appears" to be so, but if you read each word VERY carefully and precisely, you will see more......

"With regard to the resurrection narratives in particular, Fales's theory resuscitates the old religionsgeschichtliche Methode of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries. Scholars in comparative religion at that time ransacked ancient and contemporary mythology in the effort to find parallels to various Christian beliefs, and some even sought to explain those beliefs on the basis of the influence of such parallels. The resurrection narratives and even the disciples' coming to believe in Jesus' resurrection were thought to be explained through the influence of myths about Osiris (a.k.a. Tammuz, Adonis) or divine–human figures like Hercules. Apart from his general sociological theory of myths, Fales does not appear to add anything new to this old story.

The religionsgeschichtliche approach to the resurrection soon collapsed and is today almost universally abandoned, primarily for two reasons: (1) The supposed parallels were spurious. The ancient world was a virtual cornucopia of myths of gods and heroes. Comparative studies in religion and literature require sensitivity to the similarities and differences, or distortion and confusion inevitably result. Some of these mythological figures are merely symbols of the crop cycle (Osiris, et al.); others have to do with apotheosis by assumption into heaven (Hercules, Romulus); still others concern disappearance stories, which seek to answer the question of where the hero has gone by saying that he lives on in a higher sphere (Apollonius, Empedocles); others are cases of political Emperor–worship (Julius Caesar, Augustus). None of these is parallel to the Jewish notion of resurrection from the dead. With respect to the resurrection narratives, David Aune, a specialist in ancient literature, concludes that "no parallel to them is found in Graeco–Roman biography."{6} Rather the resurrection narratives, like the gospels in general, are to be interpreted within a Jewish context.

With respect specifically to the empty tomb narrative, what putative parallel to such an account will Fales find in ancient mythology? The closest would probably be apotheosis stories such as told by Diodorus Siculus. As Hercules climbs up on his funeral pyre, lightning strikes and consumes the pyre. No trace of Hercules is to be found. The conclusion: "he had passed from among men into the company of the gods."{7} Now the empty tomb story is essentially different from such a myth. The resurrection is not the transformation of the man from Nazareth into God. "The notion of deification," says Aune, "is totally alien to the Synoptic Gospels."{8} Rather what we have in the empty tomb story is not apotheosis, but the Jewish idea of resurrection. The literary key to the story is the angel's words, "He is risen! He is going before you into Galilee." (Mk 16. 6–7). If this were an apotheosis story, the angel would say something like, "He has passed from the realm of mortal men and become like God."{9} The empty tomb story is thus illustrative of the general point that once one sees how the gospel narratives are naturally at home in Judaism there is no reason to ignore this immediate context and reach further to putative pagan parallels.{10}

(2) There is no genealogical connection between pagan myths and the origin of the disciples' belief in Jesus' resurrection. Orthodox Jews knew of these pagan myths and found them abhorrent (Ez. 8. 14–15). Thus, even though Philo (Life of Moses 2. 2888) and Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 4. 8, 48 § 326) are willing to call Moses a divine man because of his great virtue and good works, they reject any attempt to immortalize or deify him. According to Hengel, Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead actually served as a prophylactic against the pagan myths:

The development of the apocalyptic resurrection–, immortality–, and judgment–doctrine in Jewish Palestine explains why–in a contrast to Alexandrian Judaism–the Hellenistic mystery religions and their language could gain virtually no influence there. Insofar as the apocalyptic Hassidic piety took up the question of the fate of the individual after death, it answered that basic question of human existence, which arose in a more elementary way in Hellenistic times and abetted the spread of the mystery religions from the second century B. C.{11}
Therefore, we find almost no trace of cults of dying and rising gods in first century Palestine.{12}

Moreover, as Hans Grass observes, it would be "unthinkable" in any case that the original disciples would come sincerely to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead just because they had heard myths about Osiris!{13} Fales seeks to avoid this knock–out punch by claiming that the disciples did not really believe that Jesus was risen from the dead; this myth was in reality a statement about social structures (sociological theory of myths). But this move is surely the reductio ad absurdum of Fales's reconstruction. As Gregory Boyd aptly writes,

If anything is clear from Paul's writings, it is that he and his audience held deep convictions about the story of Christ…They believed it was true. Now one can certainly argue that they were wrong.…But we need seriously to question whether anyone 2,000 years [later] is in a position to assume that their fundamental motivation for believing their story was not what they thought it was. Such an approach constitutes a presumptuous, speculative psychologizing of the evidence.

If we had independent compelling evidence that these early Christian communities were creating myths to justify their social program, that would be another matter. But no such evidence is available. The fact that what Paul and his audience believe may not fit into the naturalistic worldview cannot itself justify the presumption of telling the apostle and his audience what they were 'really' doing.{14}

The New Testament expectation that in light of Jesus' resurrection the general resurrection of the dead was imminent, Paul's energetic disquisitions in response to the Corinthians' sceptical question about the general resurrection, "With what kind of body do they come?" (1 Cor. 15.35), as well as the portrayal in the apostolic sermons in Acts of the resurrection as a literal event verified by witnesses, show that belief in Jesus' resurrection was a historical claim, not a disguised social theory. We have every reason to think that the disciples and the churches they founded believed that Jesus was literally risen from the dead."

http://www.notyourmamasreligion.com/apps/articles/web/articleid/50210/columnid/3198/default.asp

Review
This time Tom Harpur may have gone too far for traditional mainline Christians. He might however just attract those in the secular world on the fringes of belief in Christ to take a second look at religion. Harpur’s Christ transcends the Christianity we know; in fact according to Harpur’s extensive research, the basic tenets adopted by the early Church had their roots in early Egyptian and other mythology.


Harpur bases most of his insights on the earlier research of others, especially by Dr. Alvin Boyd Kuhn and Kuhn’s major sources which include Egyptologist Gerald Massey; and the esteemed Dr. Northrup Frye, University of Toronto professor; as well as decades of personal study and research. In the late 60s when Harpur himself was teaching at the Toronto School of Theology he had difficulty with Frye’s assumption that the Bible “was not a document concerned with history but a vast collection of sublime myths and metaphors.”


The intellectual and visionary Frye was extremely popular among students to whom he preached that “every syllable of the Gospels was written in myth.” It was 15 years before Harpur began to understand what Frye was saying and even more recently in the months of research into this book that Harpur reached the dramatic conclusions in this book.


Harpur contends that early on, in the third and fourth centuries C.E. (Common Era), the Christian Church shifted from the spiritual wisdom it had previously inherited from ancient sources. A more popular recounting of “historical events” presented the historical Christ as one who was incarnated as the Son of God rather than the earlier accepted view of a Christ-like Saviour accepted by a pagan world as truth. This “Christ,” it was believed, dwelt in each individual.


Harpur defines pagan according to its interpretation by the emerging Church as denoting those who were not orthodox Christians. These “pagans” held views of the Christ within that the Church decried. “Myth,” Harpur explained in an interview after the book hit best-seller lists “is something that enshrines a truth that is essential to understanding the human condition.” As Joseph Campbell has said, “Myth is what never was, yet always is.”


What Harpur states is the truth that he has now come to accept includes believing that the miracles of Christ never actually occurred, nor did his birth, ministry and death happen as recounted in the New Testament. Everything from the star in the East to Jesus’ walking on water; everything Jesus said or did, originated thousands of years before.


Ultimately Harpur questions even the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth, saying that if indeed such a man existed at that time, it was not the Christ we have been brought up to believe in – thus defeating any arguments supporting the work of historians like the Jewish Josephus or Roman Tacitus of the first and second centuries, to name only a couple. The Gospel life of Jesus, he says, had already been written in substance, at least 5,000 years before he came.


Harpur writes not in a vacuum of ignorance but out of a lifetime of study, research and questioning. An Anglican priest who was never content to remain complacent with what he had learned and preached, Harpur dismissed his own early questions as nonsense. He also dismissed other thinkers who spoke out including Sigmund Freud whose dictum was that the Bible was a “total plagiarism” of the Sumerian and Egyptian mythologies.


Harpur insists that his wrestling with newly discovered materials has only served to deepen his faith and spiritual life and to bring fresh, new meaning to Bible stories. For him there is a renewed significance in the rituals of Easter and Christmas and the Christian symbols of the cross and the Eucharist. He embraces the powerful meaning behind the expression “take up your cross” as accepting “the discipline and ambiguity and suffering involved in being a fully aware human being.”


Harpur examines exact parallels between Egyptian mythology and Gospel writings. Even the story of Lazarus is not truth he says but a recurring deeply archetypal and widely used symbol of God’s power to resurrect the dead. Harpur quotes the classic work Egyptian Religion of Sir Wallis Budge who said that no matter how far back researchers go, there is no time “that there did not exist a belief in the resurrection, for everywhere it is assumed that Osiris rose from the dead.” The Egyptians believed in the “anthropomorphic divinity, or Christ ideal,” of Osiris and his son Horus, neither of whom were ever considered historical.


Tom Harpur has always been as much of a journalist as a theologian and sees his vocation as making complex issues intelligible to the ordinary, intelligent layperson. If we believe that as Jesus said “the kingdom of God is within” we have a moral obligation to search for our own truth, or as Harpur puts it “the lost light.” An open mind is always at the root of Harpur’s writing and I believe we must keep our own hearts open to the word of God as it comes to each of us, not as a “fait accompli” but as something transforming and reforming. This is a must read for theologians and theological students as well as true seekers.