[Here is my review of Tom Harpur’s bestseller.  The review was published in The Georgia Straight in the June 17 2004 edition.]

 

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The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light by Tom Harpur.  Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2004.  ($34.95)

 

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     Tom Harpur has seen the light.  The Toronto Star  columnist and author (this is his tenth book) invites us to find the ‘Christ within’, who has nothing to do with the historical Jesus – indeed, Harpur claims, there never was one.

     He argues that Christ is a myth based on the deity Horus, ‘the Egyptian Christ’.  This  bird-beaked pagan god was distorted into a flesh-and-blood crucified Jew by early church leaders who wanted their teachings to seem unique.  The ‘Lost Light’ is our divine nature.   Taken symbolically, Christ’s story teaches us how to unfold our Christ-potential.  Ditching Mel Gibsonesque literalism is the only way the church has a future.  No literal miracles means no conflict with science.  The insight that all faiths are signposts to that inner spark will end religious strife.  Thus spake Tom Harpur.

     He cites dozens of parallels between Horus myth and gospel Jesus.  But Egyptian mythology was a kaleidoscope of tales about hundreds of local totem-gods that  merged and evolved through antiquity.  There were at least  fifteen deities named ‘Horus’ in this mythic melange.  It’s no shock to find many matches between ‘Horus’ and Christ, or any  god you’d care to compare.  

     Harpur was a Rhodes Scholar and divinity professor, so it’s odd to find his book chalk-full of factual flubs. He reports that the Egyptian name ‘Iusu’, supposedly the root of ‘Jesus’, can be traced to 18000 BC.  But writing doesn’t predate the fourth millennium.  A  god crucified was depicted around 300 BC, he writes.  The image dates from six centuries later – regarding  Christian origins, the BC/AD thing isn’t a fussy detail.  The list of mistakes is longer than this whole review.