The Christian religion and Masonry have one and the same common origin: both are derived from the worship of the Sun. The difference between their origin is, that the Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun. Thomas Paine, Age of Reason
Dr Robert Beckford’s The Hidden Story of Jesus explores comparisons between Krishna and Buddha and Jesus:
The story of Jesus wasn’t quite as unique as you might have thought. That the Hindu God Krishna also had a miraculous birth and was also attended by angels and shepherds. And that like Jesus, the Buddha also performed miracles, walking on water and feeding the five-hundred ... Krishna: there is also an immaculate conception and the birth is heralded by angels ... According to tradition his [Buddha] mother Maya gave birth to him miraculously. Like Jesus he was also predicted to be a great man from birth, and wise men travelled to see him ... Like Jesus he was also tempted by a devil figure but resisted ... In their teachings both Jesus and Buddha provide a very practical guide to personal transformation that is remarkably similar ... The similarities between the teachings of Jesus and Buddha are remarkable. ibid.
Comparisons, comparisons everywhere, nor any stop to think:
The rise of Mithras almost exactly parallels the rise of Jesus ... A saviour God who offered his followers a life after death — did Christianity steal these ideals? ... One tradition claims Mithras even had a virgin birth ... They chose December 25th, the winter solstice, which also happens to be the birthday of Mithras ... The Roman god Mithras and the ancient Egyptian cult of Osiris are just too close to home to be dismissed so easily. ibid.
‘What are you left with?’ asks Dr Beckford. ‘Jesus the Jew.’
Allegations of fraud are far from flushed through the toilet-flue of evidence:
He [Horus] was all that was good and righteous and holy. And he had his adversary — his name was Set. Sound a little bit familiar? Like with Jesus of Nazareth, who had his adversary, Satan? Horus-Set = Jesus-Satan. In fact the resemblances between Jesus and Ah-men-Ra or Horus and all of the other saviours of mankind are just too many. They go on and on and on ... Horus baptised with water by Arup; Jesus baptised with water by John ... Horus born in Annu, the place of bread; Jesus born in Bethlehem, the house of bread. Horus the good shepherd with the crook upon his shoulders; Jesus the good shepherd with the lamb or kid upon his shoulder. The seven on board the boat with Horus; the seven fishers on board the boat with Jesus. Horus as the Lamb; Jesus as the Lamb. Horus as the Lion; Jesus as the Lion. Horus as the black child; Jesus as the little black bambino. Horus identified with Tat or Cross; Jesus identified with the Cross. Horus of twelve years; Jesus of twelve years. Horus made a man of thirty with his baptism; Jesus made a man of thirty years with his baptism. Horus the Krst; Jesus the Christ. Horus the manifesting son of God = Jesus the manifesting son of God. Derek Partridge, The Naked Truth
The British Museum’s bad boy, the exotically named Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge, may have offloaded from the back of a chariot a fistful of dodgy Egyptian stolen artefacts on behalf of the British museum, but he also wrote extensively on the comparative origins of Belief:
The Egyptians of every period in which they are known to us believed that Osiris was of divine origin, that he suffered death and mutilation at the hands of the powers of Evil, that after a great struggle with these powers he rose again, that he became henceforth the King of the underworld, and judge of the dead, and that because he had conquered Death the righteous also might conquer Death ... In Osiris, the Christian Egyptians found the prototype of Christ, and in the pictures and statues of Isis suckling her son Horus, they perceived the prototypes of the Virgin Mary and her child. E A Wallis Budge, Egyptian Religion
Here we draw a line in the Egyptian sand despite further comparisons between Jesus and Antigonus, Cyrus, Prometheus, Heracles, Babylonian kings, pagan mythology and your old Latin teacher.
Jesus is called the Lamb of God. The Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. Now, you talk about an old concept and an old motif — that certainly is. Virtually all the ancient religions in the world had a Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. Jordan Maxwell, The Naked Truth
Modern scholarship is scathing and sceptical about the scarcely reliability Gospels — multiple scallywags manipulating scabrous manuscripts donkey’s years after any manifestation of Jesus. Mark was considered the first — scorified as fiction. (How did Mark know what Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane if everybody was asleep?) Next to the scaffold scampers the scoundrel Matthew with a scandal sheet that upscales Mark with a score-sheet of scrambled and scraggy detail:
Their multiple authors — none of whom published anything until many decades after the Crucifixion — cannot agree on anything of importance. Matthew and Luke cannot concur on the Virgin Birth or the genealogy of Jesus ... they disagree wildly about the Sermon on the Mount, the anointing of Jesus, the treachery of Judas, and Peter’s haunting “denial”. Most astonishingly, they cannot converge on a common account of the Crucifixion or the Resurrection. Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great pp111-112
The unstable history of the Gospels renders any psychoanalysis of Jesus a straw man. The Christmas story is a mulled mix of balmy imagery (the Star of Bethlehem) and baleful commentary. The dearth of dependable detail provides no evidence of Jesus’ Life or Death. The audacious authors of the Gospels assumed the need to continue a stale fascist tradition:
Why would Christians want to portray Jesus as violent, as someone who killed people, who withered people? And I’m not sure that there’s a good answer to it. Professor Bart Ehrman
Heaven knows the blood-soaked pages of the Christian Bible do not confer glory to a beloving cuddly God. Cursing fig trees is not figurative of a fruit-fancying son of God but the fragmentary figment of a fanciful imagination. Down the rabbit hole of evidence falls Corpus Christi with a cunning plan. Take the red pill.
I read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns. I could vide myself helping in and even taking charge of the toll-chocking and the nailing in. Being dressed in the height of Roman fashion. I didn’t so much like the latter part of the Book, which is all like preachy-talking rather than fighting and the old in-out. I like the parts where these old yahoodies toll-chock each other. Then drink their Hebrew vino. Getting onto the bed with their wives’ handmaidens. That kept me going. Stanley Kubrick, A Clockwork Orange 1971, Alex’s prison vision of Bible
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