I have made my feelings about the Bill Maher documentary clear in my one line review from last week but there was a deeper point that I felt I had to blog, at least to verbally process for myself. I would hope that everyone would see through the dubious, even dishonest editing techniques that were used to underline punchlines or destroy counter-arguments in this movie. That’s cool, as long as we remember it is predominantly a laughumentary, not a documentary. Hollywood movies on “religion” made by stand up comedians are just about as reliable a source of information as the side of buses.
Less cool is the use of Christian participants. The only Christian of any stature at all featured is Francis Collins, he who mapped the human genome. But he is asked not about the relationship between faith and reason but the text of the New Testament! What? Was Richard Bauckham unavailable? The people that Maher encounters prove his point for him. This makes the movie funny and it is also fair enough game. Maher may well have had to shoot 600 hours of film to get what he got, but when religions go about believing stuff like this or this, then make fun all you like.
But sometimes he is just outright stupid in his claims and the argument he makes about Horus, the Egyptian pagan god is one such example. Maher shares a long list of “similarities” between the Jesus story and the Horus story. If it were true, it would make a compelling case. Since movies don’t have footnotes, he is able to get away with this. The claims begin with the assertion that Horus was born on December 25th. Leaving aside that a 3200 year old Egyptian myth probably wasn’t using our calendar, no Christian thinks Jesus was born on December 25th. We don’t know what day he was born on. We merely celebrate it on December 25th and the reason for that has a whole lot more to do with mid-winter and Saturnalia than some historical sense of Jesus being Aquarius.
In Egyptian texts, Horus didn’t die, never mind rise again. Horus is a catch all name referencing different mythic story strands. Horus didn’t raise a friend called Lazarus, he raised his father called El Asis. Every single citation that Maher shares is bogus. It is as preposterous as his attempt to conflate the myth of Mithras, a Persian god from about 5-600BC who was adopted widely in Rome after undergoing modification in the 3rd Century. Why did he become popular in Rome? Because as a pagan god he wasn’t grounded in a historical person and so the myth absorbed the story of Jesus and adapted it to fit inside the Mithras mystery cult! It’s the opposite of what Maher is claiming!
Even leaving all the issues of bogus claims aside, the idea that Christianity could have its roots in some pagan myth is historically preposterous. How can I make such a strong claim? Because the early Christians were Jews. The Jews followed the one true God. They recited the Shema prayer every morning, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”. The Jews had an understanding of the world that was profoundly monotheist and historical. To adopt and adapt a Persian or Egyptian pagan myth and expect it to spread in the synagogues of the Mediterranean is far more crazy an idea than anything the New Testament offers.
Your Correspondent, Will be equally hard on Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
Trouble is, not all Jews were generally-strict-monotheistic-and-intolerant-of-syncretism. Being Jewish absolutely did not prevent some Jews from swimming in Paganism up to their necks.
PHILO , in first century Alexandria, reinterpreted Jewish law in terms of Pagan philosophy. Philo used terminology from the Pagan mystery religions and famously developed a theory of the Greek logos—God’s Word. Being a Jew didn’t stop him from wholesale borrowing of Pagan religious ideas.
[Ferguson, Everett. Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 2d edition (1993), pg. 450-4 ]
JASON , the high priest who ruled Jerusalem in the 2d century BC:
i) changed the constitution of Jerusalem from at of a temple-state to a Greek city-state with a citizens-council, gymnasium, and ephebeia
ii) banned the wearing of Jewish head dress
iii) allowed young Jews to have an operation to hide their circumcision
Jason was . . . a Jew. Being a Jew—a Jewish high priest no less—didn’t stop Jason from wholesale borrowing from Paganism
[For details see Ferguson,(1993), pg. 381; 1 Maccabees 1:13- 15; 2 Maccabees 4:10 - 17]
MENELAUS who, with his party of Jewish Hellenizers, ruled Jerusalem in the 160s BC, changed the temple service into worship of the God Baal Shamayim, who was identified with Zeus. The hellenizers even oversaw the sacrifice of pigs, traditionally sacrificed to Dionysus, in the Jerusalem temple.
Menelaus and his pals were . . . Jews. Being Jews didn’t stop them from wholesale borrowing from Paganism.
[Ferguson (1993), 382-3]
In the diaspora , some Jews were even know to worship Pagan gods. Being Jews didn’t stop them from wholesale borrowing from Pagan cults.
[for the text of a number of original sources confirming this see: Williams, Margaret, The Jews among the Greeks and Romans, A Diasporan Sourcebook (1998) pg 122- 3]
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What’s morePaul and the other early Christians plainly were not generally-strict-monotheistic-intolerant-of-syncretism Jews—if they had been, they wouldn’t have converted to a new religion centered on a walking, talking godman, with mystery-style initiations and sacred meals shared with the godman.
Now that I think about it, the fact that most Jews didn’t convert to Christianity, why isn’t that fact evidence Christianity did borrow from Paganism, and in doing so repel the all the generally-strict-monotheistic-intolerant-of-syncretism Jews?
And, and: in the very early days of the Jerusalem church, after Saint Steven was murdered, the Jewish Christians all packed up and left town—basically chased out by the generally-strict-monotheistic-intolerant-of-syncretism Jews who rejected the new heresy. Why isn’t that evidence that Christianity did get syncretic with Paganism, and in doing so repel all the generally-strict-monotheistic-intolerant-of-syncretism Jews?
Moonsray
Philo is a remarkable case of a man who is uniquely able to take disparate, even contradictory sources and meld them together. I seem to remember having to defend even citing Philo recently on this blog because he was so “biased”.
In the other cases Moonsray, I think it is fair to see that the Maccabean revolt that followed the slip into syncretism kind of serves as strict and defined underlining of the passionate monotheism of Judaism.
I also strongly contest your suggestion that Paul or the early Christians (all Jewish) engaged in Pagan syncretism. I’ll write something on that next week and we might have a chat about it in more detail.
All this is to re-iterate, in the comedy documentary Religulous, Bill Maher fails to make a strong argument against Christianity for a number of reasons, one of which is his mis-representation of Horus and Mithras as influences in the formation of Christian narrative and doctrine.
His argument against Christians however is damning and at times damn funny.
Bill Maher is an unpleasant man who misstates the case for Christian syncretism.
Well he might be the most pleasant man a guy could ever meet but his movie persona lacks a certain humility he demands from “religious people”. But I think he mis-states that Christianity is syncretistic. When it is isn’t. It’s a Jewish sect that grew globally.
We agree. Maher misstates his case.
And we agree Christianity started as a Jewish sect. A syncretic polytheistic Jewish splinter sect that worshiped a come to earth miracle working godman, son of a mortal woman and the great god in the sky. Can’t get more pagan than that.
Which, again, is why most monotheistic Jews then and now didn’t and don’t convert.
Tricky Moonsray, trying to conciliate and then bam! You hit me with your Christianity-as-paganism spiel again.
I think you can get a lot more pagan than the deeply Jewish tale of Yeshua.
But I’ll get round to that next week and you can tear those posts apart too.
En garde!
Maher is one of those guys makes me want to slap him. I find my self wanting to take the contrary view to him as much as possible.
When i watch the clips of this movie i’m on the side of the religious idiots wanting them to stump the smug git with one moment of genius argument. I like to think they did, but he edited it out. He does at least show how much respect the dawkins/dennents etc do show for religious types in comparison.
Respect “In comparison” in this instance is a meaningless term.
Zoom,
I have to admit I’m skeptical both ways. Seeing the movie left quite an impression, particularly when you look at other things that have been ‘borrowed’ by religions. (as you mentioned in your post, Saturnalia, etc.) You condemn Maher’s documentary for not having footnotes, yet I see none in your reply to him.
Not meaning to sound pugnacious or confrontational (which is tough over the web) Do you have any?