The Christ Conspiracy, Chapter 14 pt II

Chapter 14 indeed contains several rather remarkable examples of flawed logic, factual errors and terrible sourcing. Since some of the sources are hard to find, I will again post a set of problems I have found with no claim as to completeness - several more posts on this chapter are probably going to appear soon.

The cross and crucifix are very ancient symbols found around the world long prior to the supposed advent of the Christian savior. In the gospel story Jesus tells his disciples to "take up the cross" and follow him. Obviously, the cross already existed and was a well-known symbol, such that Jesus did not even have to explain his strange statement about an object that, we are led to believe, only gained significance after Jesus died on it. [1, p 218]

The cross was a significant Roman execution method before Jesus' time too, as anyone acquainted with the history of Roman occupation would know. Outside of the Roman empire (but within the reach of its influence) Alexander Jannaeus had crucified several hundred pharisees a bit more than a century earlier. It seems - and this may be a misreading - that Murdock tries to debunk the notion that the crucifixion of Jesus was the first crucifixion ever. It obviously was not the first crucifixion ever, but no one claims that either. As for the pericope where Jesus tells his adherents to take up the cross, this does indeed seem to be a later addition to the gospel story added by someone who didn't realize how illogical it indeed does sound. Nevertheless, the cross may have had a (political) significance as a symbol of Roman occupation in Israel before Jesus, and this should be clear. Murdock's objection is based on weirdly halting logic - the particular gospel pericope she is referring to cannot be used to establish that the cross is a pre-Christian religious symbol; however, other evidence indeed can, but the significance thereof is not clear.

The cross, obviously - especially those variations with equal-length arms - is a pretty obvious symbol, one of the simplest possible geometrical figures. It being ubiquitous in religions around the world is no mystery.

She further repeats claims from a variety of not quite trustworthy sources, such as A. Churchward, on the antiquity of the cross as a symbol among the pygmies. Certainly it may be antique among them as well, but Churchward and similar authors had an ability to ascribe way more significance to such facts than is justifiable, and relied on less than reliable evidence.

Easter is "Pessach" in Hebrew, "pascha" in Greek and "Pachons" in Latin, derived from the Egyptian "Pa-Khunsu," Khunsu being an epithet for Horus. As Massey says, "The festival of Khunsu, or his birthday, at the vernal equinox, was at one time celebrated on the twenty-fifth day of the month named after him, Pa-Khunsu" [1, p. 220]

The derivation from Pa-Khunsu seems rather unjustified and requires a fair bit more supporting data - Massey provides no justification, and the Latin for pascha/pessach is not pachons. Perseus.tufts.edu does not find it in its vast corpus of Latin texts. Thesaurus Linguae Latinae does not know of such a word either. The word does exist in Greek, but does not pertain to Easter, but rather to a month in the Egyptian calendar (still present in the Coptic calendar, although the name has gone through some sound changes rendering it slightly different in its modern form). The month's name indeed derives from Khunsu, but we cannot derive Pesach from that month's name in any reasonable manner.

The word "Hell" is also derived from the European goddess Hel, whose womb was a place of immortality. The Christians demonized this womb and made it a place of eternal damnation, and, since volcanoes were considered entrances into the womb of mother earth, it became a fiery hell. The original Pagan hell had no locality and was often situated in the same place as heaven. [1, p. 222]

The concept of a fiery hell was present in Christianity way before Christianity started entering into areas where worship of the goddess Hel, or concept of her kingdom were commonplace (see, e.g. Luke 16, hinting at such imagery at least being in use in early Christianity). In fact, the word 'hell' (as opposed to the concept, which earlier went by names such as Hades, Gehenna, Tartaros) only entered Christianity as its doctrines were translated into the germanic languages. Even in the first Bible translation into a Germanic language - Wulfila's translation into Gothic, the word is 'gaiaininnan', a clear borrowing of Gehenna. Here, though, the etymological fact she presents is fairly accurate - the Goddess Hel indeed is related to the word Hell, but what many readers will fail to know here is that the origin of words for a concept need not correlate with the origin of the concept. (An important thing anyone worthy of the title 'linguist' understands.) 

... The word astronomers use to indicate the sun in its high point of ascension is perihelion. Now you may notice there is a Hell in this word (peri-hel-ion), at least it can be traced to Hell, or Hell to it. Helion, the last part of this was was pronounced by the Greeks Elios, and is synonymous with Acheron, which is generally translated Hell. So that we have "peri," which means around, about, and "helion," Hell-that is, the sun roundabout Hell.[1, p. 222]

This is industrial-grade wrong. Murdock, claiming to be a linguist, should have some clues as to this, but it turns out she does not. Robert Graves - her source for this entire quote - really deserved more criticism than most were willing to level at him, since this kind of ignorant albeit imaginative unfettered fabrication really stands out as low points in his intellectual achievements. It turns out perihelion is a relatively recent word:

perihelion (n.) "point at which a celestial body is nearest the Sun," 1680s, coined in Modern Latin (perihelium) by Kepler (1596) from Latinizations of Greek peri "near" (see peri-) + helios "sun" (see sol). Subsequently re-Greeked."  N) [2]

The word has nothing to do with "Hell", and Perihelion as a word is way more recent than 'Hell' as a word is (and my awkward insistence on noting that I am speaking of these words as words is due to the sheer amount of obtuseness I have seen when debating Murdock's fans online). The connection between Helios and Hell is also spurious, as Hell is, as already pointed out, a Germanic word - not used in the geographical variations of Christianity whose populations speak French or Greek or Spanish - and one that has been used to translate a Latin and Greek concept into a few Germanic languages. Certainly the Christian notion of hell is of pagan vintage, but it is not derived from Germanic paganism (even if Germanic paganism very well may have shared a similar concept - it is more likely, though, that Christianity derives its concepts from the beliefs that were dominant in the region it developed, that is Roman, Greek and various Semitic belief systems around the Mediterranean). Murdock seems incapable to realize that Christianity, as it entered the anglosphere, caused English both to acquire Latin and Greek terms and to repurpose Germanic words in order to have a sufficient vocabulary to describe its doctrines. She seems to fail to realize that the English names of terms often have nothing to do with the origin of these concepts. English is not a representative language of how things were in antiquity, a thing Murdock often fails to realize: English is not the be-all end-all of how reality and mankind's linguistic conceptualizations thereof interrelate.

In a segment on how the Lord's Prayer is derivative from earlier sources (and therefore made up later), Murdock should have been able to spot the error in this particular claim:

"...the Lord's prayer was a collection of sayings from the Talmud..."[1, p. 228; 3, p. 469]

It is a quote, so not a claim of her own, but even cursory research into it will show that the Talmud is more recent than the NT. Yes, it does contain some material that is undoubtedly old - e.g. Yehudah Hanasi's redaction of the Mishnah is about the same age as the NT and probably in great part based on traditions going back decades and even centuries prior to his life, there is any number of midrashic and targumic notions throughout the Talmud that may go back to pre-Christian times, as well as things that seem to parallel various intertestamental writings - so indeed, Talmudic material may very well predate Christianity at times. However, there is no implication whatsoever that things in the Talmud must be older than things in the NT, as the Talmud was finally redacted in the fifth century.

However, there is a subsequent claim in the same clause, which seems to require some further backing up and not just assertion:

"..., many derived from earlier Egyptian prayers to Osiris." [1, p. 228, 3, p 469]

This full quote is from Barbara Walker. Walker refers to Wallis Budge's Egyptian Magic (New York, Dover Publications, 1971)., p 116. It is worth informing that neither "talmud" or "mishnah" is mentioned throughout that work, nor does it speak about Egyptian texts as sources of other texts. (However, I will admit that the edition I have used is not the same Walker has used, so other authors may have introduced additional commentary to it. In that case, though, the name of the other authors should be mentioned in referring to their writing.) Establishing the existence of similarities needs a comparison between the texts, and nowhere does Walker provide such a comparison - she only provides what essentially is a huge corpus of texts and leaves the act of comparing them to the critical reader. The uncritical reader, of course, will think she actually is referring to a source that has done such a comparison. The provided source does neither pretend to have done that or make any comparable claim, and giving it as a source for the claim that similarities exist is misleading. Murdock, the ability to evaluate the credibility and value of sources is a key skill of any good scholar.

In computer science, there is a somewhat jocular saying that captures the essence of a rather important problem with Murdock's work: garbage in, garbage out. No matter how much effort you put into analyzing the data, if the data is wrong and you are hell-bent on deriving results from it, the result will be worthless.

1) D.M. Murdock, The Christ Conspiracy

2) http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=perihelion&allowed_in_frame=0

3) Walker, Barbara. The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, article "Jesus", p. 469

Barbara Walker: Senate

Tracing down some claims Barbara Walker made that D.M. Murdock repeats uncritically, I stumbled across this while searching for one article:

Senate

From Latin se-natus, "self-born," in earliest times probably a group of matrones or tribal mothers thought to be reincarnated in their daughters by matrilineal succession. The later patriarchal gods also claimed to be "self-born," like Ra in Egypt. Providing any god with a mother implied that there was an older, greater female authority over him-- a self-defeating idea for patriarchal thinkers.[1, p. 902]

Senate is not related to natus, and does pretty certainly not mean "self-born". How do we know this?

• natus changes to gnatus with every other prefix we know it to occur with, c.f. cognatus and pregnas.
• senatus and natus are not of the same declension. Applying a prefix does not change the declension of nouns in Latin. Sometimes, different nouns have a few forms cooccuring, c.f. anus (anus, ring) and anus (old woman), or datus and datum, both of which have forms that coincide and forms that are distinct. Thus, senatus and natus being similar in the nominative does not prove that they originate with the same word, and their not being similar throughout the paradigm indicates they very probably are not.
• se- is not used very often for that kind of construction
• We know what it actually derives from - senectus, from senex. Senex signifies old, senectus is a collective noun for old persons. Thus, the senate is basically an assembly of elders. 
• We know the greeks translated it as gerousia, which also signifies an assembly of old people.

Alas - or maybe rather, fortunately - Latin reference grammars will not go about listing every thing that isn't permissible in Latin. Thus finding a concise source for any of the claims above is rather challenging, as these claims are negative rather than positive and reference grammars generally describe what is possible.

It should be pretty obvious Walker just tried her hand rather ineptly at etymology in order to prop up her hypothesis, which is that Indo-European culture had been, rather recently, predominantly a matriarchy. 

Bibliography:

[1] Barbara Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

Barbara Walker: A grab-bag of wrongs, again

Brother

English "Brother" stemmed from Sanskrit bhratr, "support." [1, article "brother"]

 Brother and bhratr both stem from Proto-Indo-European *bʰréh₂tēr, rather than one from the other. This also signifies that this word is at least as old as the earliest branch's splitting off among the Indo-European languages. भृति - bhRti indeed is Sanskrit and means support, but bhratr is a separate word, भ्रातृ. It would have helped me to verify that if she had used a reasonable transliteration scheme or at least stated somewhere what scheme she uses. 

Worth noticing is that Ancient Greek also had a cognate, φράτηρ, although its meaning had shifted to clansman. However, this should be seen in contrast to Walker's more specific claims. The same article starts out with the following:

The Greek word for brother was adelphos, "one from the same womb," derived from the matrilineal family when only female parenthood was recognized. 

[1, article "brother"]

If adelphos was old enough to go back to such times, we would expect it to appear in some other Indo-European branch as well, which it does not. Even the groups most closely related to Greek - Armenian, as far as we can tell - has its word for brother derive from *bʰréh₂tēr.

Walker, throughout her work, maintains a view of history wherein patriarchy entered the world with Brahmanism which through its offshoots Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam suppressed matriarchal traditions everywhere. I think it is safe to assume her assumption that brother stems from India is a consequence of her belief that Brahmanism is the source of patriarchy, whereas the Greeks in this case somehow retained the more original word. No, it is unlikely the word 'brother' and its cognates have spread from India in order to cover up a matrilineal view of brotherhood. She does not state this outright, but considering the great obsession the entire encyclopedia showcases with Brahmanism being an important culprit in suppression of the matriarchy even outside of India - and positing that any number of PIE words are really of sanskrit origin, I find this a reasonable attempt at parsing her intentions.

Horseshoe

[...] 

Greeks assigned the yonic shape to the last letter of their sacred alphabet, Omega, literally, "Great Om," the Word of Creation beginning the next cycle of becoming. The implication of the horseshoe symbol was that, having entered the yonic Door at the end of life (Omega), man would be reborn as a new child (Alpha) through the same Door. [1, article "Horseshoe"]

Fascinatingly enough, this alphabet was not holy enough to prevent additional letters being added beyond omega, nor was it planned from the beginning to contain omega as its final letter: omega is not part of the original greek alphabet, but was added due to the appearance - through sound changes - of a distinction between long and short o. The etymology she gives - great om - also is false, as 'great O' is more honest. Again, Walker keeps trying to inflate the role of Hindu concepts in Indo-European culture.

Houri

 Persian-Arabian heavenly nymph, sexual angel, or temple prostitute; cognate with the Greek hora, Babylonian harine, Semitic harlot, or "whore." Houris were dancing "Ladies of the Hour" who kept time in heaven and tended the star-souls. [1, article "Houri"]

"Semitic" harlot? I guess there is a typo or something there, as harlot is not a semitic word. Besides, "whore" stems from Proto-Indo-European *karo, whereas English hour and Greek hora is from proto-indo-european *yer, *yor (year, season), the English being a loan from Greek (ὥρα). I've been trying to find harine in relevant dictionaries but been unable to do locate it, Google books gives short snippets from relevant literature indicating entire different meanings - indicating that probably, Walker has relied on unreliable sources again.

[1] Barbara Walker, Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

Barbara Walker: August, Azazel

August

Roman month of the oracular Juno Augusta. Oracles were augustae in the semi-matriarchal "republican" period. The term was later applied to male priests, then to emperors. An "august" man was one filled with the spirit of the Goddess. Augur, the old name for a seer, meant "increaser," once referring to the mother-priestess. The first emperor Augustus took his title from the Great Mother of the Gods, presumed incarnate in his wife Livia Augusta. Their house stood opposite the temple of the Great Mother, whom Augustus honored as the national Goddess.

...

Churchmen repeatedly tried to obliterate the Goddess's connections with her harvest month. It was officially claimed that August had been named for St. Augustine - "prophetically" of course, since the name had been given to the month centuries before Augustine was born.⁵[1, p. 79-80]

Here, her source - Pomeroy Brewster's Saints and Festivals of the Christian Church, 1904 - does essentially say what she says it says, viz. that August was given that name centuries before the birth of Augustine. However, most people would probably accept that without a source - her source does not say that any official claims that August was named for St. Augustine ever have existed, and of these statements, that is definitely the one that needs backing up. Google's scanning and subsequent OCR is slightly damaged, alas:

AUGUST 

The eighth was August, being rich arrayed 

In garment all ofgold, down to the ground :

Yet rode he not, but led a lovelv maid 

Forth by the lily hand, the which was crowned 

With ears of corn, and full her hand was found.

— Spenser, 

the old Roman Kalendars August bore the name of Sextilis 
le sbcth month and it contained but twenty-nine days. Julius 
ar in reforming the Kalendar, added a day to it ; but when 
ustine conferred upon it his own name he took a day from 
nary and added it thus making the thirty-one days now 
rded it.

[2, p. 348, google's OCR]

The non-OCR versions available have some similar problems, as the leftmost part is missing for this particular page. "sbcth" should properly be sixth, though, and is visible in the scanned version. I figure the author had a slip of mind - or used a now obsolete name for Augustus (?), c.f. from the same book:

But when Augustus to honour 
his own month increased the days of August to thirty-one he took 
the day from Februare leaving that month in ordinary years but 
twenty-eight days.

[2, p. 87, google's OCR]

(Which, by the way, seems to be a generally discredited claim too, as the month lengths apparently were changed at some other time. However, it is not my task to provide sources for such things here. Just pointing the interested reader to go find out for themselves.)

Azazel

"God's Messenger," the deity who received sacrificial goats on the Jewish Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur, New Year). Azazel was not originally Hebraic, but Syrian.¹[1, p. 80]

As a source she gives Cumont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism [at 1, p. 80-81]. Cumont says:

There were, for instance, Baltis, an "Our Lady" from Osroene beyond the Euphrates; Aziz,  the "strong god" of Edessa, who was identified with the star Lucifer; Malakbel, the "Lord's messenger," patron of the soldiers from Palmyra, who appeared with several companions at Rome, in Numidia and in Dacia.[3, p. 113]

In reading this text, she manages to misidentify which God is the Lord's messenger - Malakbel is (and to anyone familiar with Hebrew, the cognates to Hebrew should be obvious), not Aziz. Aziz is a word meaning strong - she does get the geographical origin of Aziz right, as Edessa is in Assyria. In fact, it's not surprising that a word signifying strength appear in names of supernatural beings (however, the etymology of Azazel does seem somewhat unclear, and he is not a popular topic in the Old Testament, although he did appear in later works a bit. An honest scholar would mention that there is quite a bit of unknowns regarding Azazel). Anyways, no matter - later Hebrew mystics and writers did develop Azazel, and they may very well have adapted the Syrian Aziz into their doctrines even if he was not part of the original Azazel-concept (which I do not deny anyway, as it indeed is possible). The problem here is misrepresenting what a source says, as the source does not say anything along the lines of what Walker makes it out to say, and she apparently also fails to read the rest of the text properly, explaining the 'Lord's messenger' blunder. Burden of proof clearly rests on her shoulders regarding claims such as these - "it is possible" does not make it so.

In addition, Yom Kippur is not the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah is (although there does, actually, exist three other Jewish New Years - 1st Elul, 1st Shevat and 1st Nisan - for different purposes, and potentially other ones as well.)

[1] Walker, Barbara, Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
[2] Brewster, Pomery - Saints and Festivals of the Christian Church, 1904, available on archive.org
[3] Cumont, Franz; Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, 1911

---- some general musings ----

Upcoming:

Antichrist, Antinomianism, Apex, Apostles, Apple, Arianism, Ark. A few more after that, and the letter 'A' will be complete. How about that. This leads to a secondary issue: how does one quantify the number of claims made in a text? A primary observation could be that all claims are not equal in significance, and another observation is that it is easier to spot that something is a claim if it also is wrong, and thus there is a notable likelihood that the ratio of incorrect claims to correct claims will get skewed by a flaw in the method.

Of course, I only point out mistakes that have passed through this simple algorithm:

• I find something that look suspicious.
• I try to obtain the source for the statement. If that source appears credible, and it disagrees with the statement, bingo.
• If the statement correctly represents the source, I see if the source appears credible. I may obtain sources that contradict it to show that it's not a closed case. 

Anyways, the first step there is kind of important - how many mistakes pass by without me noticing them? May be any number!

Barbara Walker: Women's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects: Altars

The Horned Moses
Walker states some things about Horns and Moses, and misrepresents her source. Let us first see what her source says this time:

"In Hebrew a 'radiated' and a 'horned' head is signified by the same word. Hence, when Moses came down from the Mount, cornuta fuit facies ejus, according to the Vulgate; and in virtue of this mistranslation hath the Law-giver ever been graced with those appendages". Without entering into the nice controversy here foreshadowed, it is quite enough for the present purpose to point to the fact that the authors of the Vulgate translation believed, from their own training and habit, that the Hebrew meaning was that the great, almost divine Moses, came down with actual horns upon his head. [Elworthy, Frederick, "Evil Eye: The Origins and Practices of Superstition", 1895, pp. 185-186; seems the reissue Walker used has reused the same pagination.]

In The Women's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, p. 82, in the article "Altars", Barbara Walker has read this text to mean:

The Bible speaks of altars bearing horns, and of Moses coming down from the holy mountain with a horned head, according to the original Hebrew, which translators usually render "radiant."

This actually brought me to think a bit about the polysemy in general of words denoting rays/beams, e.g.

English: beam - cognate to German Baum, etc, original meaning: tree

German, Swedish: Strahl, stråle - also signifying jets of liquid (among other things).

Latin: radius, also signifying the spokes of a wheel (among other things) - also the origin of 'ray'.

Finnish: säde, also signifying a detail in the anatomy of equine hooves (by extension), originally signifying a spark.

Russian: луч, also signifying a bone (the radius bone, coincidentally enough) (and some other, probably more modern meanings in geometry, physics and such, as well as 'a glimpse'. 

Hebrew: קרן, also signifying horns.

If the Bible had been originally written in English, we would not claim the biblical authors had meant to state that Moses had a tree or a spoke in his face, if it were originally in Finnish, I doubt anyone would claim the authors had tried saying Moses was having a tiny bit of a horse foot protruding from his face (or sparks), and jets of liquid are also out. (Well, that would explain the cloth he was wearing - which neither horns, spokes, or equine bits really fit with; a wet cloth might extinguish sparks, though, in case there's a risk for fire.) Given the context, beams of light is not only a reasonable interpretation - it is probably the best possible interpretation, and given the above sample of polysemy with regard to words denoting a "perceived unit" of light, Hebrew is not particularly weird using 'horn' to denote beams of light. It seems a sample of relatively non-weird languages all have what could be considered 'strange' polysemy going for it.

Seems to me all of these use some more concrete things to denote a somewhat more untouchable thing.

Anyways, yet another instance of Barbara Walker failing to accurately restate what her source says.

Barbara Walker: Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, "Kingship"

On page 506, in the article on kingship, Walker says:

The Roman word for a king, rex or reg, descended from Sanskrit raj, as did the Celtic rig.[1]

As a source for this particular statement, she provides Dumezil's  Archaic Roman Religion. Which actually says that rex, raj and rig descend from Proto-Indo-European (admittedly, I only obtained the French version):

 il est remarquable que, comme celui de la société védique (raj(an)), comme celui de toutes les sociétés celtiques anciennes (rig-), le chef de la société romaine primitive porte le vieux nom indo-européen *reg-. Ce seul fait assure que les habitants des cabanes des montes tibérins n'étaient pas des groupes de familles inorganiques, qui au bout d'un certain temps, se seraient associées en créant des institutions nouvelles, mais que, au contraire, ils étaient arrivés aves une structure suprafamiliale, politique traditionelle : comment supposer en effet que ces hommes qui, d'un lointain passé, avaient hérité, aves le mot, la notion de rex, l'avaient d'abord laissée péricliter pour la réactiver ensuite, sous le même nom?

Or, si nous ne connaissons pas directement le rex latin, la comparaison du rí irlandais et du rãj(an) védique permet de concevoir avec quelque couleur ce qu'était le *reg- indo-européen, duquel ils sont dérivés.[2] [my bolding, any omitted accents are solely my responsibility.]

Can we trust a source that seems not to understand what her sources say? How many such mistakes does it take until the book's credibility should be  considered entirely debunked?

This is not just for the pleasure of debunking or tearing down someone's credibility - this is a serious question to any fans of Murdock's (or to herself, even) - if an author repeatedly proves themselves incapable of getting right the very things they quote from another author, how credible are their claims?

[1] Barbara Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
[2] Dumezil, George: La religion romaine archaique, avec un appendice sur la religion des Etrusques Bibliotheque historique, 1974