I have posted another Examiner article, this time exploring the issue of whether or not atheism is the solution to the world's psychological and spiritual ills.
There has been a great deal of debate in the media lately concerning the "New Atheism" as led by "atheist gods" such as Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. This notoriety has been enhanced by Dawkins & Co.'s infamous "bus ads," as well as the "Imagine No Religion" billboards by the Freedom from Religion Foundation headed by Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor. Then there is the little chat between famous atheists Bill Maher and Brad Pitt that is kicking up controversy, along with a number of other "stars" expressing their unbelief. We also read reports that atheism is on the rise in the United States, reaching percentages never recorded before. Truly, atheism is out of the closet.
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.)
