The Christ Conspiracy: Chapter 15, pt 1

Chapter 15, The Patriarchs and Saints are the Gods of Other Cultures, at its core presents a thesis that probably is shocking to true believers, but nothing new to those who are somewhat well-read on these topics. Nevertheless, to some extent it also exaggerates the thesis, making statements that do exceed what can be known as though these statements were fact. As usual, it also intersperses a fair share of speculation mixed with tendentiously presented facts.

The most fascinatingly weird claim she makes is present in the segment on Noah. It is well known that the Noah myth derives from older myths, but Murdock is not content with that:

Xisuthros or Ziusudra was considered the "10th king," while Noah was the "10th patriarch." Noah's "history" can also be found in India, where there is a "tomb of Nuh" near the river Gagra in the distrct of Oude or Oudh, which evidently is related to Judea and Judah. The "ark-preserved" Indian Noah was also called "Menu." Noah is also called "Nnu"[SIC] and "Naue," as in "Joshua, son of Nun/Jesus son of Naue," meaning not only fish but also water, as in the waters of heaven. Furthermore, the word Noah, or Noé, is the same as the Greek νους, which means "mind," as in "noetics," as does the word Menu or Menes, as in "mental." In Hebrew, the word for "ark" is THB, as in Thebes, such that the Ark of Noah is equivalent to the Thebes of Menes, the legendary first king of the Egyptians, from whose "history" the biblical account also borrowed.[1, p. 238]

This is so full of mistakes, that I figure a list will help keep track of the debunking.

• Xisuthros/Ziusudra being the tenth king.
• Oude/Oudh having anything to do with Judea (see 'short words' further down).
• No source provided regarding the tomb of Nuh, no attempt to establish its age - is it potentially more recent than the arrival of Islam in India?
• Naue or Nun signifying "water" - which particular language? We cannot all be superlinguists who can identify languages on sight just based on one monosyllabic word! Since no language is mentioned, it is also quite difficult to verify the relevance of the claim.
• The far-fetched stretch of etymologies Noah → νους → mentes → Menes, Tevah → Thebes
• She clearly mentions the (significantly more recent form) "Noé" to make the apparent similarity to "Noetics" (also a much more recent word) greater. Noé is a much more recent rendering of נוח, the comparison should be nous or noos to Noach, not noetics to Noé.

As it happens, the Hebrew word for 'ark' is TBH, תבה, rather than THB. Of course, Thebes is not T+H+B either, it's Θῆβαι - the "TH" bit is a single sound that in some languages - particularly English - is written using a sequence of letters (here, the fact that letters and sounds are separate things is relevant). It being represented as a sequence TH does not signify it having any actual resemblance or relation to the actual sequence T+H. (In fact, though, Hebrew ת was probably sometimes pronounced a lot like English th is, which does not support my case particularly much.)  What we reach here, however, is a phenomenon Mark Newbrook calls 'very short words'[2]. The designation refers to the phenomenon where the shorter the words that we go looking for, the greater the chance that we find similar stems embedded in words in other languages. Thebes/Θῆβαι and Tevah share rather little - just one single syllable. Further, we have several forms for Thebes: Thebes, Θῆβαι, Ta-Opet (Classical Egyptian), Ta-Pe (Demotic), wꜣs.t (Classical Egyptian, not strictly related to the other words but signifying the same town). There is thus lots of space to come up with potential cognates for biblical names, and little material to falsify such claims with (consider Ta-Opet vs. Tabitha or Tappuah, Ta-Pe vs. Tappuah, Topheth or Tobiah, etc. What makes Tevah more favorable for linking to any of these than the above, equally spurious suggestions?).

What takes this a step beyond Newbrook's label for similar bogus cognates is that there is not even any similarity between the meanings of תבה and Ta-Opet. There is nothing that makes the connection apparent. Murdock could keep going through towns and kings of antiquity until she found anything to connect Noah to, there is nothing that per se forces Thebes to be the preferred alternative - and this opens up a huge space of unfalsifiable claims. Let us be generous and say there are only twenty relevant names in the Bible (considering how insignificant some of the characters she's pointing to are, the number could easily be argued to be significantly larger). Let's also be generous and say there are only two hundred kings in antiquity. This gives us a whopping four thousand potential pairings - analogously to the birthday paradox, it is more than likely that quite a few of them are similar.

A significant problem here is also the number of languages she has to use for this reasoning to make sense - does anyone really believe that there is a quadri- or pentalingual pun involved? For real?

Keep in mind, as well, the number of other flood-heroes: Utnapishtim, Δευκαλίων, Noah, ... would we not expect these names to have some kind of similar connections? We would also probably expect more clearly explicit such connections.

Obviously, then, Noah's famous "ark," which misguided souls have sought upon the earth, is a motif found in other myths. As Doane relates, "The image of Osiris of Egypt was by the priests shut up in a sacred ark on the 17th of Athyr (Nov. 13th), the very day and month on which Noah is said to have entered his ark." Noah is, in fact, another solar myth, and the ark represents the sun entering into the "moon-ark," the Egyptian "argha," which is the crescent or arc-shaped lunette or lower quarter of the moon. This "argha of Noah" is the same as Jason's "Argonaut" and "arghanatha" in Sanskrit. Noah's ark and its eight "sailors" are equivalent to the heavens, earth and the seven "planets," i.e., those represented by the days of the week. As to the "real" Noah's ark, it should be noted that it was a custom, in Scotland for one, to create stone "ships" on mounts in emulation of the mythos, such that any number of these "arks" may be found on Earth.[1, p. 238]

Indeed, the ark did not exist, yet Murdock manages to turn even such an almost trivially true claim into pseudoscience. There are two separate words natha in Sanskrit (assuming nāthá, नाथ, is the word Murdock intends, since she does not follow any scholarly transliteration we cannot know!), one signifying 'lord, master' and a whole complex of similar meanings, the other signifying a refuge or resort. The first one is in the masculine gender, the other neuter. The greek -naut is instead cognate with Greek ναῦς, Latin navis and Sanskrit नौ, नाव (nau, nava), all these signifying ships. Again, it would have been helpful had Murdock provided some kind of scholarly transliteration of arghanata. A list of the problems may help in keeping track of the problems:

• argha noah is irrelevant, as ark only appears in the tradition of biblical texts about 700 years after they were originally composed, when Jerome translated them into Latin, until then you had had tevah and  the greek kibotos in the main versions of the text. 
• argha noah is a theosophic 19th century invention with no evidence in support of it. It is basically just as made up as the religions it is made up to subvert.
• argha noah is clearly made up to correspond to the English phrase 'ark of Noah' (compare the phrase in some other languages - Noas ark, Nooan arkki, kovček Noya, something like kidobani nois (or maybe nois kidobani) in Georgian,  whereas the phrase in Biblical Hebrew would've been Tevat Noah, and in Biblical Greek kibotos tou Noe or something in the vicinity of that (I do not know Biblical Greek well enough to make any promises). Had these fanciful authors spoken Georgian, their "Egyptian" concept would go by a name like kidobanois or somesuch. (The nature, btw, of this 'egyptian' concept differs significantly from one author to another - one author says it is a yearly festival, another says it's a monthly lunar occurrence, and so on. See, for instance, Jordan Maxwell's The Naked Truth, where he attributes argha noah to something entirely different - this suggesting to me that there is no validity to the concept whatsoever.) 

Murdock goes on and makes improbably claims about the meaning of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japhet:

The sons of Noah, of course, are also not historical, as Shem "was actually a title of Egyptian priests of Ra." The three sons of Noah, in fact, represents the three divisions of the heavens into 120° each. As characters in the celestial mythos, Noah corresponds to the sun and Shem to the moon, appropriate since the Semitic Jews were moon-worshippers.[1, p. 239]

Claiming that a given set of three persons corresponds to a division of something into three does require some kind of supporting evidence. What about these three make this correspondence obvious? Why does one of the three - a whopping 120 degrees of the heaven - also correspond to the moon? This claim again comes from Hazelrigg the astrologer, rather than from any actual scholarly sources.

Also, duly note that the word 'Semite' and related forms as a designation for the Semitic peoples is a term that only goes back to the 18th century. The Biblical Jews did not describe themselves as Semites, and such a connection between moon-worship, Shem-as-the-moon and Semites cannot have occurred to the authors of the biblical narratives.

Abraham also seems to have been related to the Persian evil god, Ahriman, whose name was originally Abriman. Furthermore, Graham states, "The Babylonians also had their Abraham, only they spelt it Abarama. He was a farmer and mythological contemporary with Abraham."[1, p. 240]

Please provide a source for Ahriman's name originally being Abriman? The accepted etymology among most scholars has it stemming from Angra Maynu. As for the quality of Graham's work, I will actually refer to a source I would usually avoid using, but whose summary of this book seems fairly legit, viz tektonics.org's review[3] .

Furthermore, Abram's "Ur of the Chaldees" apparently does not originally refer to the Ur in Mesopotamia and to the Middle Eastern Chaldean culture but to an earlier rendition in India, where Higgins, for one, found the proto-Hebraic Chaldee language. [1, p. 240]

Murdock's obsession with moving the Semitic family of languages to India grows absurd at times. Her reliance on Higgins' bumbling amateur linguistics is laughable. However, one step further, this is worse than pure conjecture. It is counterfactual conjecture at best. At the very least, a claim such as this requires significant amounts of supporting data. Murdock provides but one datapoint for that, and that datapoint - Higgins' finding the Chaldee language in India - is nothing but wrong. Finally, Chaldee is not proto-Hebraic. Chaldee is closer to proto-Semitic than Hebrew is (time-wise), but they are in different branches of Semitic.

In fact, the Greek name for the constellation of Bootes, or Adam, is Ιοσεφ or Joseph.[1, p. 250]

The source given for the claim that Bootes is Adam and is called Iosef in Greek is Karl Anderson (p. 126, Astrology in the Old Testament). Anderson fails to provide any source for this. Modern sources such as tufts.perseus.edu makes it possible to search a very huge corpus of ancient Greek texts for words such as Ιοσεφ. It turns out not a single instance of the word is in a context where the surface meaning of the text has anything to do with any asterism, nor is there any large number of instances of it in the first place. A similar claim is made in a quoted portion from Hazelrigg - another 19th century astrologer who, as I keep emphasizing, did not bother with providing sources.

This kind of fabricated linguistics being included in the work of a person that regularly labels herself a linguist is saddening. The chapter itself could have been good - had she decided to go no further than the idea that most Old Testament characters have no historical background. But as it stands, she included way too much in ways of 19th century theosophy,

[1] D.M. Murdock, The Christ Conspiracy, 1999
[2] Mark Newbrook, Strange Linguistics, 2012. There is an entire chapter devoted to the phenomenon. The opening pages of the chapter describe the relevant problems with this kind of approach to evidence.
[3] http://www.tektonics.org/gk/grahamlloyd01.html

The Christ Conspiracy: Ch 16: Etymology Tells the Story

This chapter reaches some of the lowest depths this far in scholarly quality throughout the book. Murdock - who claims to be a linguist[1] - showcases her utter lack of care or understanding for linguistic methodology (for the relevant subfields of linguistics, obviously, as e.g. generative linguistics is of no or little relevance to her thesis). Few of the etymological claims she makes in it are built on any foundation whatsoever, and the few that stumble close to realistic guesses are interpreted in ways that derive too much mileage out of them.

Throughout this book has been a recurring theme that essentially weaves a tapestry of human unity not widely perceived. In order to appreciate further this unity, we can turn ot etymology, or the study of the origin and development of words, to demonstrate how closely cultures are related and how there has been basically one mythos and creed with many different forms. We will also discover, therefore, further evidence of what has been demonstrated herein concerning the Christ conspiracy.[2, p. 255]

Commendable as it is to claim human unity for the sake of peace, I think the unity she claims indeed is false. What is superior - to be peaceful due to a history of unity, or to be peaceful in spite of a history of conflict? It is better to learn from history (and not redo the mistakes of the past) than it is to learn from fabrication.

Many people believe that the concept of God as Father originated with Christianity, but this assumption is erroneous, as numerous pre-Christian cultures had their God the Father as well. [...]In the Greek mythology, the sky-god father-figure, aka "Zeus Pateras," who is a myth and not a historical figure, takes his name from the Indian version, "Dyaus Pitar." Dyaus Pitar in turn is related to the Egyptian "Ptah," and from Pitar and Ptah comes the word "pater," or "father." "Zeus" equals "Dyaus," which became "Deos," "Deus" and "Dios"--"God."[2, p. 255]

Although she indeed is correct that the idea of a fatherly God indeed predates Christianity and can be found throughout the early civilized world, and right in connecting Dyaus Pitar (द्यौष्पितृ), Jupiter and Ζεῦ πάτερ, she has the order of the connection down wrong - Jupiter, द्यौष्पितृ and Ζεῦ πάτερ all three derive from a common source, Proto-Indo-European *Dyēus ph_₂ter. I have earlier documented this in a blog post about general abuse of linguistics.

Although most people think the name Jesus originated with the Christian godman, it was in fact quite common, particularly in Israel, where it was Joshua. As such the name appears in the Old Testament over 200 times. As demonstrated, the name Jesus also comes from the monogram of Dionysus, "IES," "Yes" or "Jes," among others. Jacolliot elaborates on these widespread names:

As we have seen, all these names of Jesus, Jeosuah, Josias, Josue derive from two Sanscrit words Zeus and Jezeus, which signify, one, the Supreme Being, and the other, the Divine Essence. These names, moreover, were common not only amongst the Jews, but throughout the East. 

[2, p. 256. 3, p. 301; the surrounding text does not contain any justification for the claim.]

Indeed, Jesus was a common name in Roman-ruled Israel, and may very well have been common before the Roman conquest too. Every serious scholar of early Christian history knows this, and it is also widely repeated in newspaper articles on findings that in some way or other have been interpreted as pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth, such as the (fabricated) James ossuary. I seriously doubt the claim that most people think that the name Jesus originated with Jesus of Nazareth - certainly I have run into the occasional ignoramus who genuinely believed something along those lines, but except for pre-sunday school kids, very few seem to hold such a notion. Obviously, there does not appear to be any need to debunk this particular mistaken belief. Murdock may want to be thorough, but if so I think that effort should have been invested elsewhere.

Jacolliot just makes an assertion without anything to back it up, no philological reasoning or anything, and Murdock quotes this wholesale in support of her position. Something more substantial is required.

As we can see, the source Murdock refers to does not establish the relevant correspondence by argument. If such an argument exists, it is somewhere else in that book - which the phrasing kind of suggests ("as we have seen" - where? It is not in the same chapter). For clarity and ease of following the argument, Murdock should have referred to wherever Jacolliot actually shows this correspondence. She does not. Furthermore, Jacolliot 's life span does not significantly overlap with the neogrammarian school of linguistics, and thus every etymology he suggested is suspect until shown to be in agreement with more methodological linguistics.

In other words, anyone anointed would be called "Christ" by the Greek-speaking inhabitants of the Roman Empire, who were many, since Greek was the lingua franca for centuries. As noted, in Greek Krishna is also Christos, and the word "Christ" also comes from the Hindi word "Kris" , which is a name for the sun, as is evidently "Krishna" in ancient Irish.[2, p. 256]

The claim that Krishna is ancient Irish for sun has been debunked previously in this blog. It would be good if she would specify which version of Greek Krishna is Christos in - in modern Greek, at least, I have found Κρίσνα, but then again my Greek is almost non-existent and it is possible there are texts where Χριστός does refer to Κρίσνα. I find it unlikely, though. The "As noted" part seems to be a kind of trick - nowhere is this noted elsewhere in the book, so I guess she thinks she can get away with not showing it if she indicates she has indeed shown it already. Perseus.tufts.edu does almost exclusively find Χριστός in works related to Christianity, but does not find Κρίσνα or potentially different variants at all - seems as though its corpus of Greek texts either use a different name altogether, or are not interested in him whatsoever. It is of course possible that I just did not happen upon the name ancient Greeks used for him, or that their corpus is too small or that Krishna is not much discussed in the entire corpus of Greek texts of antiquity (although I found a suggestion that he is referred to as 'Herakles' by Megasthenes).

 Satan is an adaptation of the Persian representative of evil "Ahriman," the twin brother of "God," the same as the Egyptian Set, Horus's twin and principal enemy, also known as "Sata," whence comes "Satan." Horus struggles with Set in the exact manner that Jesus battles with Satan, with 40 days in the wilderness, among other similarities, such as the revealing from the mount "all the kingdoms of Earth." This myth represents the triumph of light over dark, or the sun's return to relieve the terror of the night. Horus/Set was the god of the two horizons; hence, Horus was the rising sun, and Set the time of the Sun-SET.[2, p. 257]

Satan, properly speaking, comes from the Hebrew verb שָׂטַן - to oppose, withstand, to be an opponent. There is of course no etymological connection between Set the Egyptian God and sunset. Whether Set and שָׂטַן are etymologically connected is less trivial to answer, as both Hebrew and Egyptian have several consonants that somewhat inconsistently are transcribed by s, and the same holds for t as well, and the Egyptian and Hebrew consonant systems were somewhat different. The Egyptian Seth apparently may have been pronounced something like Sutah originally, which doesn't really make it any more similar to Satan.  Set/Seth is a short word - which is rather significant as it increases the chance of random similarities. Finally, functionally Seth seems to occupy a rather different role in the Egyptian religion than Satan occupies in different Abrahamic traditions. To show that they somehow have the same origin, Murdock has to present some reasonable manner in which the two have diverged to reach their known forms from a common source. She does not do so, and is content with making just another assertion. 

In Hebrew, the name "Satan" or "Shaitan" merely means "adversary," not absolute evil being. The title of Satan as the "adversary," also at 1 Peter 5:8, refers to the sun as "Lord of the Opposite, which means a sign or constellation opposite to the sun at any given point." [2, p. 258]

As a source for this claim, she gives Kersey Graves' The Biography of Satan. He does indeed say the exact same thing, but provides no further source. Murdock, in a defensive rant about the quality of Graves' works, says she has researched his sources and found his claims justified. Why does she not then give a reference to the relevant source, instead of the un-verifiable Graves? I have attempted to find astronomical/astrological uses of adversarius and ἀντίδικος on perseus.tufts.edu, but to no avail (duly note my Greek and Latin are weak, and it takes me quite some time to work through the relevant texts). Some attestation of an astronomical use of either of these words - but preferrable the greek one - would be good. I doubt there is one, though. If someone knows of such a use, I would be happy to admit to this being a reasonable claim!

As for the defense of Graves' quality, I would suggest Murdock produces an annotated and referenced edition of his books, if she really thinks his value has been as underrated as she seems to think. In this case, Graves, as is his wont, omits to provide any source for his claim, so tracing it down is well-nigh impossible.

The origin of the "devil" also can be uncovered through etymology, in that the word comes from the Sanskrit term "deva" or the Persian "daeva" both of which originally referred to angelic entities, usually female, who were demonized by Christian propagandists. In actuality, "devil" shares the same root as "divine." In addition, the word "demon" is a Christian vilification of the Greek word "daemon," which likewise referred to a divine spirit. [2, p. 258; ]

Devil is not derived from Deva. Looking at the path the word has taken, it is pretty clear it is the result of several layers of sound changes on top of several layers of borrowing - it comes from Latin diabolus, from a Greek word of similar form, Διάβολος. Other languages throughout Europe have forms that have gone through fewer or different sound changes, and when we try and reconstruct what the ancestor of Swedish djävul, Dutch duivel, German Teufel, Russian дьявол, Spanish diablo, Irish diabhal, Italian diavolo, etc, we are led to conclude that the scholarly consensus on this particular word is pretty solid. Again, Murdock is misled by accidental similarity between English and "eastern" languages. It is not clear, by the way, that the devas primarily were feminine. In fact, there is a separate Sanskrit word for feminine beings of the same kind, viz. devi. Divine and devil do not share a root - divine comes from divus (whence also deus), devil ultimately from Greek διαβάλλω, to slander. The daevas were already considered evil by the Zoroastrians, so any Christian demonization of them does not have to be posited. An old Zoroastrian creed states "I declare myself a Mazdah-worshipper, a Zoroastrian, an enemy of the Daevas, holding Ahura's law"[4, p. 125, see also 137-138.]. Ultimately, the amount of confusion present in Murdock's claim here is staggering.

Of course, the English word 'devil' and deva/devi/daeva do look (and sound) similar, but a linguist would realize this kind of coincidence does happen. Murdock further focuses too much on English - as though English reliably contains hints as to secrets about religion and history that other languages do not. She claims to know Spanish, French and German - why does she never use hints hidden in these languages to support her case, or is English somehow special in retaining them? Is the Volksgeist of the anglosaxons especially well suited to be consciously deceived (explaining why so many of them do believe in the existence of the devil as the main opponent of God) but unconsciously somehow retain an unusual number of hints towards the truth in the shape of their words? Magic thinking is magic. 

As Hazelrigg says: The "Holy City" is likewise a term essentially solar, being the same as the Phoenician word hely, and having its root in the Greek helios, Sun; whence Heliopolis, the city of the Sun.[2, p. 259]

Except, in the Bible it was עִיר קֹדֶשׁ, ʿi:r qodeš. Greek helios and Germanic holy have no connection, and it is worth noting that holy, heilig, helig, etc were not used in Christianity until Germanic tribes were converted. In Greek, holy was hieros, in Semitic languages it was derived from qodeš and in Latin, obviously, sanctus. Hazelrigg tries to deduce the origins of a concept through looking at a linguistic coincidence in a language spoken over a millennium later. Hazelrigg was an astrologer, and not a linguist. His understanding of the world lacked all scientific rigor. 

"Bethany", site of the famous multiplying of the loaves, means "House of God," and is allegory for the "multiplication of the many out of the One." [2, p. 259]

Except "Bethany" does not mean "House of God". There has been some debate as to its meaning, with suggested translations being house of dates, house of misery and a few others. The claim that it is allegory for the "multiplication of the many out of the One" should be given some kind of supporting argument - assertion does not quite cut it.

The "great" king Solomon, so-called wisest man in the world, with his 1,000 wives and concubines, should today be considered an immoral criminal, were the story true. obviously, this absurd tale is not historical. In fact, "Sol-om-on" refers to the sun in three languages: "Sol" is Latin, "om" is Eastern, and "on" is Egyptian. "On" means both "sun" and "lord," reflecting an association found in countless cultures. Solomon can also be  traced to the same root as "Salvation," which is related to "Salivahana," the Indian savior-god. [2, p. 260]

 Again, as said elsewhere, Solomon does not come from Sol-om-on - in fact, in the Hebrew language his name was (and still is) Šəlomo, a transparently semitic name, with the -n on the end in European renditions of the name stemming from a Greek grammatical addition, much like how Philo was rendered Philon in Greek. "Om" or "on" signifying sun in the relevant languages needs some back up as well, and there are of course more than one Eastern language. Her source for this claim claims that On is Ethiopian, rather than Egyptian, so she is at the very least misreading or misrepresenting her source on a tiny detail there as well (although I cannot find such a word in either). As for Salvation, it derives from Indo-European *solo, which meant whole, and by Latin had changed meaning towards safe. Salvation, thus, is making safe, as in saving. As for Salivahana, the provided source is Higgins, whose credibility should by now be recognized as worthless. All other sources I have found on Salivahana seem to indicate his life-span was significantly later, and the similarity may very well be entirely random. Few sources I have been able to obtain say much about him, though. India has had a significant amount of royalty (of which Salivahana was a member), deities and royal deities, and finding one whose name is superficially similar to someone else cannot be particularly challenging.

I have previously pointed out fabricated words in her works - including the claim that Scandinavians call the sun "John" and that Persians call it "Jawnah" [2, p 262]. There is further rather tendentious interpretation of Jesus' mentioning the sign of Jonah at Matthew 16:4, as in that sign being the sun. The very same gospel makes it clear what the sign of Jonah is supposed to be, though: "For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Yes, an astrotheological interpretation is still possible, but Murdock's interpretation skips over the important bit of actually explaining what the sign of Jonah is supposed to be, and hurries along to a JESUS = SUN conclusion a bit too carelessly.

Towards the end of the chapter, she goes on with some made up words, such as old Irish "budh" for the sun (which I previously have written about), conflating "Bull" and "Baal", and so on.

Like all other sciences, etymology is not exact or perfect, and etymological speculation at times may be faulty. Nevertheless, the theme demonstrated is too overwhelming to be dismissed.[2, p. 263]

Etymology is especially far from exact or perfect when no attempts to separate the wheat from the chaff are made, when unbridled speculation is the order of the day, and when it is driven by ideology rather than genuine scientific curiosity tempered by rational skepticism. Murdock's attempt showcases all these problems The theme she tries demonstrating is far from overwhelming, and in fact is easily dismissed - and on good grounds even then. However, the theme I have been trying to demonstrate - her credulity, unscientific mindset and lack of scientific rigor - is indeed too overwhelming to be dismissed. Indeed, there are more problematic claims in this chapter - some, I have decided not to include because obtaining sources gets tedious at some point, some I have decided not to include because they are similar to other problematic claims that I did include, and so on.

As a final comment, the chapter does not produce a coherent argument, just showcasing a bunch of supposed connections between religious ideas in disparate places. The linguistic evidence presented is too often English-centered (for regions where no Germanic languages ever have been widely spoken) or just pure speculation (often even demonstrably mistaken speculation). Together, these two problems combine to make the chapter lack direction, coherence or even a proper point. Meanwhile, easily impressed ignoramuses will be convinced and the arguments presented will be repeated on every religion-oriented forum ever as undeniable truths, and people will be mislead into thinking that this is genuinely how linguistics is done.

[1] D.M. Murdock, http://www.truthbeknown.com/licona.htm, on her website she also has a repost of a third-party blurb for or review of her book The Christ Conspiracy where she is called a linguist, http://www.truthbeknown.com/christ.htm. The first link contains this explicit statement: "Again, I am not a "skeptic" with some passing interest in mythology. I am what I say I am: an archaeologist, historian, mythologist and linguist."
[2] D.M. Murdock, The Christ Conspiracy
[3] Jacolliot, Bible in India
[4] James Hope Moulton, Early Zoroastrism, 1926. Hartz, O'Brien and Palmer also concur in their Zoroastrism, 2010 (pages 91 and 140).

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