In an exciting development, the promo for a new "God" movie prominently features me as the "mythicist." This fascinating documentary--which I truly believe should be a big deal--is called "God in the Box," and you may have come across it before.
These fellows traveled around the U.S. interviewing people from all walks of life about their opinions regarding God. As you can imagine, the results run the gamut.
In this promo clip, I am sandwiched between an African-American Christian preacher and a white American female convert to Islam. (Yes, I know--the irony of it.)
And here is an amazing human-interest twist of fate: The African-American fellow at the end of the video is a friend of mine from Los Angeles! None of us had any idea of this connection, so it is very cosmic--how appropriate for the subject matter. Even better, this individual named "Ting" was very helpful to me and mine during our direst time of need.
As I say, I am very hopeful that this interesting and inspiring documentary "God in the Box" will be very popular. It has already been submitted to the Sundance Film Festival, and I am also hoping that Artivist will take notice of it, as well as mainstream media.
Imagine my surprise when I heard that Bill Maher, plugging his new movie "Religulous," was on the highly popular show "The View" discussing the Egyptian god Horus!
In the segment provided below of the brave Maher's appearance among "The View's" she-wolves, he says that the story of the virgin-born savior who rose from the dead was popular around the Mediterranean for a "thousands years" before Christianity. Bill then relates that Horus raised "Lazarus" from the dead. Maher next attempts to raise "the Indian god Krishna," but he's cut off.
Now, Maher could only have gotten that information about Horus from a few places, one of which is my work. The only sources prior to my book The Christ Conspiracy that discuss the Horus-Lazarus connection to any extent are Alvin Boyd Kuhn and Gerald Massey. There are a few places since the publication of Christ Con, including Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ, which has gotten some notoriety. It would be nice to know, of course, if Maher has been exposed to my work, whether directly or through the hit movie "ZEITGEIST." Since the bit about Lazarus is not in ZG, it's possible someone along the way during his movie project steered Maher towards my work.
In any event, in my work I address the correspondences between the biblical character Lazarus, whom Jesus raises from the dead, and the Egyptian story of Horus raising El-Azarus or Osiris from the dead, which was a central theme in the Egyptian religion. While I discuss the raising of Lazarus as an Egyptian motif in The Christ Conspiracy and Suns of God, I go into greater detail concerning this pericope in my book Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ. In that book, I provide an entire section called "The Raising of Lazarus," including a discussion of the name as related to "El-Azarus" or "El-Osiris." Indeed, we discover that in the general area where Christ supposedly lived emerged an ancient stela with an inscription called "the Carpentras" in which appears the epithet "Osiris-Eloh," a combination of the Egyptian god with the biblical "El," as in Elohim. More on the subject of this Lazarus-Osiris story will be found in my forthcoming book Christ in Egypt, where I examine the primary sources to show that the biblical Lazarus tale appears to have been lifted almost whole cloth from the Egyptian funerary literature.
It would be fantastic, of course, if the great Bill Maher were to have me on his HBO show to discuss all these issues. (Hint, hint! I would be more than happy to discuss these issues in the major media, as I have already so many times elsewhere since 1995. Please see "Acharya S in the Media." Be sure also to see my online videos.)
In an exciting development, the promo for a new "God" movie prominently features me as the "mythicist." This fascinating documentary--which I truly believe should be a big deal--is called "God in the Box," and you may have come across it before.
