Are the Osiris and Jesus stories really that similar?
A response to Benjamin Cain’s article on Jesus and Osiris
Jesus mythicists often propose parallels between Osiris and Jesus. Benjamin Cain argues both stories belong to the genre of ‘dying and rising gods’. I will evaluate some of these parallels and their historical context.
The dying and rising god theory
In the 19th century, James G. Frazer proposed the theory of dying and rising gods. Fraser thought these myths had two main origins.
First, a dying king was killed when his fertility waned. Over time these stories developed into myths of dying gods (euhemerist theory). Second, dying and rising god stories were a reflection of the vegetation cycle (naturist theory).
The comparative method (“patternism”) used by Fraser was popular in the 19th century. However, anthropologists moved away from these often crude generalisations. Mark S. Smith, a scholar of the Ancient Near East identifies a similar trend in the history of religion:
…comparative study of religion has followed anthropology in avoiding comparisons of religious features apart from their cultural settings. Moreover, historians of religion took many negative lessons from Frazer and others; one was the need to be far more aware of modern suppositions. (Mark S. Smith, Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament, 12:2, 257–313)
Historian of religion, James Z. Smith pointed out several limitations with the dying and rising gods theory:
There are empirical problems with the euhemerist theory. The evidence for sacral regicide is limited and ambiguous; where it appears to occur, there are no instances of a dying god figure.
The naturist explanation is flawed at the level of theory. Modern scholarship has largely rejected, for good reasons, an interpretation of deities as projections of natural phenomena. (Dying and Rising Gods, Encylopedia of Religion)
Bart Ehrman concurs:
…there is very thin evidence indeed for anything like a widespread pagan belief in a dying-rising god, on which Jesus was modeled…
A Christian conspiracy?
Proponents of Jesus mythicism, like Cain, sense ulterior motives in the rejection of dying and rising gods:
What I reject is your other stated reason for dismissing the Christ myth theory, which is that the theory failed to “gain traction among most scholars.” You appealed to the consensus and to the authority of Jesus scholars. I pointed out that their authority is bogus because history isn’t a science and because most of the scholars have a conflict of interest. (Benjamin Cain, see response to comments)
It is worth pausing to question the instinctive appeal of these types of explanation. The fundamental attributional error is a common bias where we assume our beliefs are based on evidence while the views of others can be explained away by factors like conflicts of interest. The main problems with Cain’s theory are:
- it is not only ‘Jesus scholars’ or ‘Christian apologists’ that reject the dying and rising gods theory — most historians of religion, historians of the ancient Near East, and anthropologists reject the view.
- many atheists and agnostics are outspoken critics of this view including James Z Smith “arguably the world’s most influential scholar of religion over the past fifty years”, Bart Ehrman, Maurice Casey, Paula Fredriksen.
An academic conspiracy?
Since many atheist scholars reject the dying and rising gods theory, how do we explain their scepticism?
…all of these scholars [who reject mythicism] are professionals, whereas Jesus mythicism is, as I said, a theory that has radical, subversive implications about Christendom and thus about the foundations of modern Western societies. (Benjamin Cain)
It has become common in Western culture to argue because professional scholars are experts — and therefore insiders — they cannot be trusted:
…they underscore a moment when a particular brand of conspiracy theory is emerging in the mainstream: A belief that the “official story” is in fact a Big Lie, being told by powerful, shadowy interests (Benedict Carey, New York Times).
Experts don’t always get it right. Fringe scholars and amateurs can be misunderstood geniuses. Yet, the burden is on those who propose the dying and rising gods view — an idea largely rejected by those best qualified to evaluate it.
Osiris and Jesus
I agree with Cain that resurrection is a key component of Christianity:
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:17–19, NIV)
But we depart on whether ancient Egyptian and Christian religions are “preoccupied with solving the same fundamental problem”:
Cosmologically, it’s about the imagined phases of the sun which are taken to be analogous to people’s longing for immortality. Osiris and Isis are personifications of those phases, the archetypal heroes who conquer death, restoring order and triumphing over disorder and evil (Set’s envy)…
Resurrection is essential to that myth because the myth is structured around the cycle of the sun’s perceived ascents and descents. (Benjamin Cain)
Life after death or resurrection?
We need to start by defining resurrection. Belief in life after death is shared by many religions, including the cult of Osiris:
Judgment of the soul, escape from death through resurrection, personal immortality by mimicking Osiris, such as by mummifying the corpse — these were primary themes of Egyptian religion for some three thousand years! (Benjamin Cain)
Is that what we mean by resurrection, that Jesus’ and Osiris’ existence extended beyond death? It’s more complicated than that. In Christianity, resurrection is of the body:
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. (Luke 24:1–3, NIV)
The renowned Egyptologist J.G. Griffiths was highly critical of Fraser’s theory in the Origins of Osiris and his Cult. Egyptians did not believe in bodily resurrection. Bart Ehrman similarly points out:
Osiris’s body does not come back to life. Quite the contrary, it remains a corpse. There are debates, in fact, over where it is buried, and different locales want to claim the honor of housing it. It is true that Osiris “comes back” to earth to work with his son Horus…Literally, he came “from Hades.”
But this is not a resurrection of his body. His body is still dead. He himself is down in Hades, and can come back up to make an appearance on earth on occasion. This is not like Jesus coming back from the dead, in his body…As I read them, there is no resurrection of the body of Osiris. And that is the standard view among experts in the field.
Osiris was the mythical grounds for the Egyptian process of mummification. The recovery and re-joining of pieces of Osiris’ body (cut into pieces by Set) were parallels to Egyptian funeral rituals:
The myth and ritual of Osiris emphasizes the message that there is life for the dead, although it is of a different character than that of the living. What is to be feared is “dying a second time in the realm of the dead” (Book of Going Forth by Day 175–176)…In no sense can the dramatic myth of his death and reanimation be harmonized to the pattern of dying and rising gods. (James Z. Smith. Dying and Rising Gods)
Resurrection and the defeat of death
Christ’s defeat of death is another central aspect of Christianity. His resurrection means one day his people will also be raised:
…then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54–55, NIV)
Because of Jesus’ resurrection, his return will summon the end of death (Revelation 21:4). Is that what ancient Egyptians meant when they called Osiris “ruler of the dead”? No. They did not believe in the defeat of death:
…texts indicate that they hated and feared the end of life. The inevitability of death is related in the lament of a man over his dead wife: “All humanity in one body following their fellow beings [to death]. There is no one who shall stay alive, for we shall all follow you.” (Emily Teeter, Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt)
There was belief that the dead became associated with Osiris. The dead received life after death like Osiris. But no one experienced resurrection:
This identification with Osiris, however, did not imply resurrection, for even Osiris did not rise from the dead. Instead, it signified the renewal of life both in the next world and through one’s descendants on Earth. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Resurrection and the circle of life?
The Osiris myth centres on the cycles of nature — the ascending and descending of the sun, recurrence of the seasons, and vegetation. When Osiris is murdered, his life on earth goes on through his son Horus:
Thus, Horus isn’t just Osiris’s son in a biological sense, but is Osiris’s next phase in so far as they’re both parts of the solar cycle. Osiris is the defeated corpse of the sun, stuck in the underworld but who magically rises again as Horus (theologically or mythically speaking) and as the triumphant sun god’s fiery ba or liberated daytime spirit (“cosmologically” speaking). (Benjamin Cain)
This is a very different understanding of reality. As we’ve seen already, in the New Testament, Jesus was resurrected to bodily life. Metaphors of parents’ lives continuing through their children are irrelevant to this narrative — since Jesus didn’t have children.
Similarly, the cyclical nature of life is explicitly denied, for Christians history is heading towards one event — the return of Christ and the new heaven and new earth (e.g. 2 Peter 3:3–13). This view of history is rooted in the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Isaiah 65:17–25; Daniel 12:1–4) rather than ancient Egyptian religion.
Jesus, the Logos, and Osiris?
Another supposed parallel is John 1 where Jesus is called the Logos:
As the Gospel of John says, Jesus as the Logos descends to earth to prove with his miraculous signs that there’s a way out of death. This Gnostic aspect of Christianity, together with the “light shining in the darkness” metaphor, are grounded in the Egyptian solar cycle. The sun physically seems to descend so that it can rise again in the morning. (Benjamin Cain)
Cain does not offer an argument for why he thinks the Logos or the phrase “light shining in the darkness” are rooted in the Egyptian solar cycle. The metaphor of light and darkness is common in many religions. Imaginative commentators have suggested all manner of supposed origins of the Logos.
I’ve discussed the historical background in more detail elsewhere. Talmudic scholar, Daniel Boyarin, makes the most convincing case:
…highly conceivable to see this Prologue [John 1], together with its Logos doctrine, as a Jewish text through and through rather than, as it has often been read, a “Hellenized corruption” of Judaism. (Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines, p31)
Isis and Horus: foreshadowing Mary and Jesus?
There is one potentially promising parallel cited by Cain — similarities in iconography between Isis nursing Horus and Mary nursing Jesus.
Does this imply the infancy narratives of Jesus find their origin there? The evidence suggests otherwise. Archaeologist Sabrina Higgins has shown there is very limited evidence of continuity between iconography in the Isis and Marian cults.
Isis iconography disappears around the 4th century, whereas icons of Mary nursing Jesus do not appear until the 7th century, and only then in a limited number of monasteries:
Even though this specific Marian image may well have been borrowed from the Isiac iconographic repertoire, it would have been understood within a distinctively Christological framework. Both Mary and Isis were worshipped differently, Isis as a goddess in her own right, while Mary was important insofar as her relationship to her son was concerned. (Sabrina Higgins, Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies)
Conclusion
For Benjamin Cain, similarities between Christian and dying-rising god stories are just “plain fact”. Those who disagree, he dismisses as Christian apologists.
However, this ignores the fact that most scholars from a range of disciplines have rejected the theory. Cain’s ‘parallels’ are often too simplistic:
…alleged parallels which are discovered by pursuing such methodology evaporate when they are confronted with the original texts. In a word, one must beware of what have been called “parallels made plausible by selective description.” (Bruce Metzger, Harvard Review of Theology)
