The first part of the following movie states that the Judeo Christian Religions were copied directly off egyptian, and early Sun worshipping cults.
Is what this movie saying true or complete bollocks ?

http://zeitgeistmovie.com/

I'm no expert on this topic, but I've heard that Christianity absorbed many ideas from the pagan religions that came before it. Rather than trying to make the pagans quit celebrating their old holidays, they kept them and just gave them Christian names. That's how we ended up with things like the Christmas tree and the easter bunny. I mean, what possible connection does a bunny delivering chocolate eggs have to Christ's cruxifiction and rebirth?

In a way, yes.

Judaism is, for all practical purposes, a revised sun-worship. The Hebrew god Yahweh was based off the Egyptian cult of the sun-god Aten and Babylonian sun deities. Eventually, this henotheism developed into monotheism, and the god previously associated with the sun was associated with All.

Christianity was based on Judaism, but with an extra fold of hero-worship or saviour-worship, which is the cult of Jesus. The early Christian church was, really, a schismatic personality cult within Judaism, and it was by far not the only one. It was, however, the most successful, because it adapted foreign ideas and beliefs into its own belief system.

Judaism is, for all practical purposes, a revised sun-worship. The Hebrew god Yahweh was based off the Egyptian cult of the sun-god Aten and Babylonian sun deities.
Please present your evidence considering Egyptian god Aten.
with an extra fold of hero-worship or saviour-worship, which is the cult of Jesus.
Wrong. Maybe it is based on it now, but it wasn't based for the first three centuries. Read Thomas gospel for example.
The early Christian church
There was no one early Christian church/organisation. The most known division is between traditionalists (proto-catholics) and gnostics.
But there were also local variations, like the coptic church in Egypt.

Wrong. Maybe it is based on it now, but it wasn't based for the first three centuries. Read Thomas gospel for example.

Was the Thomas gospel every widely accepted?

When the Christian religion was made "official" by the Roman empire, the Romans had a basic main problem. 40% of people were Christian, another 40% were followers of Mythra, and the another 20% were "pagans", like Egyptians, Greeks, etc...
So what they did was adapt certain traditions like Christmas (Mythras birthday), or the solar disc (Egyptian), and merged all into one big religion, the Roman Christianity. This was done so people from all religions and beliefs can adapt to Christianity more easily.

Was the Thomas gospel every widely accepted?
Sorry, no library cards have survived :D but Thomas gospel was known in Greece, Rome and Egypt.


When this Coptic version of the complete text of Thomas was found, scholars realized that three separate Greek portions of it had already been discovered in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, in 1898. The manuscripts bearing the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas (P. Oxy. I 1; IV 654; IV 655) have been dated to about AD 200, and the manuscript of the Coptic version to about 340. Although the Coptic version is not quite identical to any of the Greek fragments, it is believed that the Coptic version was translated from an earlier Greek version.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Thomas

i was blown away by this movie, and as well am very interested in learning more about the validity of the claims. does anyone have any links or anything to help point me in the right direction?

complete bollocks. theres a giant gray area in time between where moses walked the land and where egyptian mythology came about. i quit going to church because of this same controversy, but its nothing.

The human psyche is a very complex thing, it's altogether too simple for it to find patterns in things that aren't there. Quite frankly the whole aspect to religion brought about by the Zeitgeist movie is only there to do one thing, create controversy with those that find controversy in it.

I personally found no collation with any of it, Religion to me has been dead in the water for centuries however we still have the blind blindly following people that manipulate, control and dominate them. (Which is what that movie really gets at towards the end, religion was just the tip of the iceberg to their 'String Theory', which incidentally is not to be confused with 'Quantum String Theory'.)

The first part of the following movie states that the Judeo Christian Religions were copied directly off egyptian, and early Sun worshipping cults.
Is what this movie saying true or complete bollocks ?

http://zeitgeistmovie.com/

I wouldn't be too surprised if there was some Egyptian influence. Religions can evolve like living things do.

I'm not sure that there is any worth talking about religion that is not somehow influenced from prior beliefs.

I have done quite a bit of reading up on the claims from the religion portion of the Zeitgeist movie and the claims do hold up.

Check out the reference page at the movies website. They do a pretty good job of providing sources to back up their claims. After a bunch of further investigation into this ... I can only conclude that they barely scratched the surface of the matter. Jesus was taken from many religions and the ancient Egyptian myths are the primary foundation for the Judeo-Christian and Islamic faiths. I think they left that part out in the movie. All three religions are tied to Egyptian mythology. That makes perfect sense when you see that the Hebrew people fled Egypt during the Exodus. They did not leave their religions behind when they moved. They took their religions with them and made them their own.

the ancient Egyptian myths are the primary foundation for the Judeo-Christian and Islamic faiths
Oh, come on, why forget the Babylonian, Mesopotamic myths? They are much closer to various stories in the old testament than anything else in Egyptian myths, which is quite natural them being middle eastern and in the same territory.

In the Ancient (old) world there were three great civilizations/empires - Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia,
as well as the fourth one for a short while - The Land of the Hittites. The first three were the crossroads of culture, and they influenced everything greatly.

Christians and Muslims say Amen because of Egyptian myth.
Amun and Amen are the same thing.

During the 18th Dynasty reign of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), a single god named Aten was introduced. That would probably be the reason people still use the word Amen in prayers.

The Ankh is the cross.

Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph signifying "life," a cross surmounted by a loop and known in Latin as a crux ansata (ansate, or handle-shaped, cross). It is found in ancient tomb inscriptions, including those of the king Tutankhamen, and gods and pharaohs are often depicted holding it. The ankh forms part of hieroglyphs for such concepts as health and happiness. The form of the symbol suggests perhaps a sandal strap as its original meaning, though it has been seen as representing a magical knot. As a cross, it has been extensively used in the symbolism of the Coptic Christian church -- Copyright 1994-1998 Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Here is the definition from the Guinness Encyclopedia of Signs and Symbols, p. 91. -
Ankh the most valued symbol of the ancient Egyptians, also known as crux aitsata, or the 'ansate' or 'handled cross'. It combines two symbols, the tau cross - 'life', and the circle - 'eternity', thus together 'immortality', and also the male and female symbols of the two principal Egyptian deities Osiris and Isis, thus the union of heaven and earth. In hieroglyphic writing, it stands for 'life' or 'living', and forms part of words such as 'health' and 'happiness'. Egyptians wore the ankh as an amulet to prolong life on earth, and were buried with it to ensure their 'life to come' in the afterworld; belief in the ankh's power was reinforced by its resemblance to a key which would unlock the gates of death. This 'key' symbol was also carved on canal walls on the Nile, in the belief that its presence would control the flow of water and so avoid both floods and drought. The ankh was adopted by the early Coptic Christians of Egypt who also used it on their monuments to symbolize life after death. In more recent times, the ankh has been used by witches in spells and rituals involving divination, fertility and health.

The Egyptians did borrow from many cultures ... but Judeo-Christian ideas came from Egypt. The Greeks and Romans attributed their knowledge to the Egyptians. I know that the Egyptians were not the first ... they were just the ones that held is directly before Judaism or Christianity sprung up.

Check out the Catholic Encyclopedia on Egypt. They admit that there was a sect of Christianity in Egypt that pre-dates their own. It is funny to watch the way that they denounce things as being untrue ... when you know damn good and well that they are. I love reading it as a source to get a laugh. Remember - the Catholics said the world was flat when all the evidence said it was round. They are notorious liars.


1. Early Christianity in Egypt

We have no direct evidence of Christianity having existed in Egypt until Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-220) when it had already spread over the land. What we know of the Church of Egypt before that time is exclusively through inferences or unconfirmed traditions preserved principally by Eusebius (see below). Thus we may infer the existence of Christianity in Egypt during the second century from the fact that under Trajan a Greek version of the "Gospel According to the Hebrews" was being circulated there (Duchesne, Histoire Ancienne de l'Eglise, I, 126). We know that this gospel was the book of the Judeo-Christians. Its very name points to the existence at the same date of another Christian community, recruited from among the Gentiles. This, presumably, followed another Gospel which Clement of Alexandria calls "the Gospel According to the Egyptians". (On the Gospel of the Egyptians, see Harnack, Chronologie der altchristlichen Litteratur, I, 1, pp. 612-622; on the Gospel of the Hebrews, ibid., pp. 631-49).


Again, organized Christianity at an early date in Egypt is, indirectly at least, attested by the activity of the Gnostic schools in that country in the third and fourth decades of the second century. Eusebius is authority that "Basilides the heresiarch", founder of one of these schools, came to prominence in the year 134. Other Egyptian founders of such schools, Valentinus and Carpocrates, belong to the same period. Valentinus had already moved to Rome in 140, under the pontificate of Pope Hyginus (Irenæus, Adv. Hær., III, iv, 3), after having preached his doctrines in Egypt, his native country.As Duchesne (op. cit., I, 331) well remarks, one cannot believe that these heretical manifestations represented all the Alexandrine Christianity. These schools, precisely because they are nothing but schools, suppose a Church, "the Great Church", as Celsus calls it; such aberration, precisely because labelled with their authors' names, testify to the existence of the orthodox tradition in the country where they originated. This tradition, from which heresies of such a power of diffusion could separate themselves without putting its very existence in jeopardy, must have been endowed with a vitality which cannot be accounted for without at least half a century of normal growth and organization under the guidance strong and vigilant bishops. We may, therefore, safely conclude as that as early as the middle decades of the first century there was in Alexandria, and probably in the neighboring nomes, or provinces, Christian communities consisting principally of Hellenistic Jews and of those pious men (phoboumenoi ton Theon) who had embraced the tenets and practices of Judaism without becoming regular proselytes. These communities must have had some numerical importance, for on the one hand the Jews were exceedingly numerous (over one million) in Egypt, and particularly in Alexandria, where they constituted two-fifths of the whole population; and on the other hand the philosophical eclecticism that generally prevailed in Alexandria at that time co-operated in favour of Christian ideas with the great doctrinal tolerance then obtaining throughout Judaism, to the extent, indeed, as Duchesne tersely puts it, that one might think like Philo or like Akiba, believe in the resurrection of the flesh or in its final annihilation, expect the Messias or ridicule that hope, philosophize like Ecclesiastes or like the Wisdom of Solomon (op. cit., I, 122). Along with this Judaizing church, whose hopes and expectations were centered in Jerusalem and the Temple, who accepted Christianity and yet continued to observe the Law, there was another Church, decidedly Gentile -- we might say, Christian -- in its character and aspirations, as well as in its practices. It is difficult to surmise what the relations of those two churches to one another were in their details. It is very probable that the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Titus, by putting an end to the hopes of many among the judaizing Church, brought them over to the Great Church, which henceforth gained rapidly in numbers and prestige and soon became the only orthodox Christian Church.

newadvent.org/cathen/05329b.htm

Cross is a sacred symbol in many cultures and by disregarding the Babylonian mythology you're making a tragic error.
Amen comes from the word "Let it be so".
I don't have the time for this, but I urge readers to cross check the facts implied by LuckyNumbers, because he's exaggerating them.
The Coptic church in Egypt is indeed an old one.

i was blown away by this movie, and as well am very interested in learning more about the validity of the claims. does anyone have any links or anything to help point me in the right direction?

I don't have links , but Popular mechanics does point out some of their points about the 11th of September could very well be false.
The third part of the movie, according to Read Only, Isn't true because there is oversight, and the Federal Reserve has its own senate comittee.

I'd say the religious part of the movie was largely supported by evidence, though some of the conclusions are obviously controversial. The 9/11 part is rubbish. I think the new world order part has some truth to it but covered in a lot of exaggeration and paranoia. Overall, it's a good primer to start looking into the subjects in more detail.

I can't really answer the question exactly, but I think that would be interesting to mention that the religious-related part of the movie is all or most copied (literally) from "the god that wasn't there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_Who_Wasn't_There)", and the rest is an assemblage of multiple conspiracy theories.

Some links debunking the thing, specially the conspiracy parts:

http://www.skepchick.org/skepticsguide/viewtopic.php?t=3648

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=85264

http://guelphskeptics.org/?p=18



Even the parts ripped off from TGWWT aren't free of cricitcs between the skeptics, anyway, and the author himself has admitted some mistakes. (Can find it through the links)

The first part of the following movie states that the Judeo Christian Religions were copied directly off egyptian, and early Sun worshipping cults.
Is what this movie saying true or complete bollocks ?



i don't know about all of it, but i think the revised dates of holidays and things are true.

The movie is entirely a work of fiction, i say entirely but i only watched about 10-15 minutes of it. It is all rehashed crap anyway so i know what it is about just from reading forum posts on it. For me sitting there listening to this ominous voice telling me not to believe anything i heard except for the lies they are telling me is really insulting.

Also, i know the second part is about 911 and you really have to deny reality to follow along with the claims made.

Someone got their hands on expensive graphics software and made a fairy tale. And really that about sums it all up.

The religious claims of zeitgeist are basically true, though most Christian scholars would argue that the transmission of ideas was the other way around - that Early Christianity (spreading across the Mediterranean like wildfire, and thus threatening the hegemony of other religious cults of like nature i.e. Isis and Mithras) actually was the progenitor of such practices as Baptism and the Eucharist (among many others) - in turn transmitting them to the preexisting cults.

I tend to disagree with this interpretation of the mimetic transmission among Early Christianity and other cults, but I think it is right to a certain extent. It is the nature of religious institutions that they not only are molded from without (much to the chagrin of the supposedly unwavering dogmas like Catholicism (what ever happened to limbo?) and Mormonism (an openly racist institution until the mid 1970's)), but they also shape and transmit ideas to and through their cultural context. So it seems reasonable that though Early Christianity was in large part shaped by preexisting near-eastern cults, it also, as a new religious force in the world, shaped them through its own devices.

And things like the cross were not entirely ripoffs from other cults (like the ankh of Isis). The cross was a tool of execution - the early Christian adoption of such a symbol would have been really strange, akin to some religious cult today adopting the electric chair, or lethal injection syringe as their symbol.

So though the cross did exist in great abundance as a religious symbol among near eastern religions and cults, it had context outside of those - the Christians didn't just totally rip it off of the Isis folks.

I'm not sure how this pertains to the argument, but you all might be interested that most of the crosses upon which people were crucified weren't necessarily the "cross shape" as we picture it today. Many were shaped more like "X" - and most were shaped more like "+", with the cross-bar halfway up the pole, instead of like "t", with the cross bar more towards the top..."the more you know!"

Also recall that the supposed Saint Peter was crucified upside down (i'd think this would be a better way to go, as you'd probably pass out in like 30 minutes from all the blood rushing to your brain). Most people who were crucified hung up there for a really long time (sometimes even days). You would usually die from asphyxiation, after your arms had given out and you could no longer hold yourself up. Your shoulders would slump down and you wouldn't be able to breathe.

I think the movie confuses the fact that there are similarities between Judaic religious practices and myths and Egyptian ones as evidence of causation. There is correlation between them, and the Egyptian ones are older, but correlation doesn't equal causation.

In fact, as another poster noted, there is a great deal more correlation between Jewish mythology and Sumerian/Babylonian mythology.

In fact there is *EVEN* more between Jewish mythology and Canaanite/Ugaritic mythology that existed before it. The Ugaritic pantheon even had as their highest god "El" the creator (compared to the Jewish name for God "El" used in some books of the Bible), and a separate god "Yahweh", one of the seventy sons of El (compare to the *other* Jewish name for god "Yahweh" used in other books of the Bible).

The Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls (but not the Masoretic text) both state Deuteronomy 32:8 as:

When the Most High (El) gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of El. For Yahweh's portion is His people, Jacob the line of His inheritance

The words "sons of El" are somewhat disputed as some think of them as "angels of God" rather than taking them literally (the Masoretic text renders the words as "sons of Israel"). The passage has long been linked with "Table of Nations" in Genesis (where God split up the Earth into seventy nations).

Note that, if you assume a Ugaritic root to the references, it all makes a lot of sense, as the Ugaritic El also divided the world into seventy nations--one for each of his sons, including Yahweh.

See here (http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/05-Deuteronomy/Text/Articles/Heiser-Deut32-BS.htm) for a more expert discussion of the same point.

It seems very likely that the noted similarities between Egyptian religion and Jewish religion arose because all the cultures in the region were cross-pollinating all the time. The rise of Judaism was not some linear march from an Egyptian starting point. It was a hodgepodge of ideas taken from many sources in the region that eventually evolved into the Canaanite religions (of which Ugaritic was one), and then the Canaanites transitioned into Judaism and began to think of themselves as a separate group from the other Canaanites around them.

The Ugaritic pantheon even had as their highest god "El" the creator (compared to the Jewish name for God "El" used in some books of the Bible). . . .Elohim, which also occurs, is simply the plural of eloh which comes from the same proto-Semitic root as Arabic allah. Is El another form of eloh?. . . .and then the Canaanites transitioned into Judaism and began to think of themselves as a separate group from the other Canaanites around them.Now DNA analysis suggests that the Canaanites who chose not to adopt Judaism were the ancestors of the Palestinians. The Palestinians are as closely related to the Jews and the Lebanese, if not more so, than they are to the Arabs.

There is some truth in the movie. But the truth is not so simple.

Elohim, which also occurs, is simply the plural of eloh which comes from the same proto-Semitic root as Arabic allah. Is El another form of eloh?

My Hebrew etymology is not all that it could be, but a few sources, at least suggest that eloah is related to "El." Most are not well sourced though. To cite two:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05393a.htm ("Elohim has been explained as a plural form of Eloah or as plural derivative of El.")

http://www.thechristadelphians.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=4744 ("[B]y dialetic transference, namely phonetic substitution Il/Ilu become[s] El/Eloah in the general punic vocabulary...")

That makes selse to me, as it explains the number of proper names that refer to God (Michael ("who is like God"), Gabriel ("Man of God"), Israel ("He who strives with God"), Daniel ("God is my judge"), etc.).