A review of Strange Linguistics (Mark Newbrook)

A review of Strange Linguistics - a skeptical linguist looks at non-mainstream ideas about language. 

I have for a while tried writing a review of Strange Linguistics (Mark Newbrook with Jane Curtain and Alan Libert). As a relative newbie to writing reviews, this is somewhat of a challenge, especially as it is a somewhat difficult book to provide a summary of. It does not set out to prove or discuss any one specific hypothesis - it is rather an overview of a large number of pseudoscientific theories, complete with short explanations why these theories are pseudoscience in the first place. Thus, it is difficult to conclude whether it provides a sufficient argument in favor of some hypothesis - as no such intention is set out. This lack of focus does not detract from the work, but does make the life of the reviewer somewhat more difficult.

Newbrook et.al. do give the claims, in general, a fair hearing, and proceed to explain why these claims do not cut it. In the introductory chapter, he dutifully explains how some of these mistaken views probably are entirely harmless, but how others easily can be used to inflame ethnic conflict and just generally trick people - I especially find the claims made by the likes of David Oates to be likely to make people ruin other people's lives over badly justified claims:

Oates and his followers have applied the analysis of RS [reverse speech] in various practical domains, some of them involving matters of great sensitivity and potential harm. If RS is not genuine, this work is valueless at best and quite possibly extremely damaging. The areas in question include child psychology, alleged cases of child molestation, other alleged criminal offences (this includes the 'O.J Simpson' case) and the analysis and treatment of sexual and other personal problems more generally. [1, p. 168] 

As for the fairness Newbrook grants, it is well worth noting that he has led a research project into linguistic material provided by alleged alien abductees, with entirely inconclusive results, which he in some details elaborates on in the chapter on language from mysterious sources. (By 'inconclusive', take this to mean that Occam's razor justifies rejecting the claims of alien origin for these allegedly alien linguistic snippets, which indeed is the conclusion Newbrook draws from his research.)

For some claims the authors investigate, there could be some justification in providing a somewhat more detailed explanation as to why they are wrong. If it had overviews of topics such as the statistical likelihood of chance resemblances between languages, the comparative method, and some other relevant parts of linguistics, it could be very useful indeed.

It is definitely a good book if you already have some background in linguistics. It would also be a worthwhile addition to the library of any scholar or journalist who is not well-versed in linguistics but on occasion has to evaluate the value of claims that deal with linguistics - if they are willing to do some extra research on their own, alternatively, accept the claims of a bona fide linguist without looking closer at the evidence in his favor. As for journalists, I would even say the relevant chapters of this book should be relevant reading before writing any article on linguistic matters whatsoever. Alas, the lack of clearer elaboration on linguistic methodology might make it a bit too inconclusive to those unfamiliar with the field.

Linguists themselves probably can figure out the problems with various claims such as those presented in this book - and doing so could be a good exercise for a course in skepticism for undergraduate linguists (and even more so students of philology, whose understanding of linguistics sometimes may leave some room for improvement). Ultimately though, the book presents little new for the linguist - except maybe as a convenient source to refer to when there is no time to devote to the proper debunkage of some claim, or as an overview of exactly what kinds of weird beliefs about language are being peddled on the marketplace of ideas (which can be a bit of a shock even to seasoned skeptics).

If the book ever is translated, local crackpot linguistic theories should probably be given a more in-depth treatment: Swedish or Finnish translations probably should include more detailed investigations into both Ior Bock and Paula Wilson's claims (quite distinct types of claim, even if both are wildly wrong; Ior Bock's claims are described and rejected for the same reasons any number of other claims are, Paula Wilson is not mentioned at all which for a non-Scandinavian audience is an entirely justified omission), any Indian edition should probably debunk the various notions regarding Sanskrit that are popular there, Hungarian editions need to elaborate on why it is unlikely that Hungarian is related to the Turkic languages, etc. How such supplementary chapters would be written and incorporated into the book would probably be a challenge though.

There is a certain morbid humor to reading it, the endless amount of bullshit that humans have come up with is as fascinating as any good supernatural thriller. Newbrook in a way comes off as the straight man in a comedy, granting much leeway to the strange antics of a weird coterie of peculiar thinkers and crackpots. The amount of leeway he grants may seem excessive at times, but many of these weird theories are so wrong that even the loosest criteria are enough to debunk them.

There are two chapters whose inclusion at first may seem odd - one chapter on skepticism of mainstream linguistics, which does present some reasonable objections to Chomskyan (and related) linguistics, and another chapter on constructed languages. Some people that have constructed languages indeed base their hobby on pseudo-scientific notions of how language works - this is especially prevalent among those who wish their languages to have an actual population of speakers, oddly enough. However, the inclusion of languages that are framed as fiction or part of fictional worlds would be decidedly odd if it were not for the fact that non-practitioners of that particular hobby may misunderstand it. Here, the treatment could have made it clearer that hobbyists often do not see their hobby as any kind of scientific statement or claim, but rather as works of 'art' or similar. That chapter could have done with somewhat better research, but at the same time it might be the least important chapter, and therefore, not investing that much on getting a detailed picture of the constructed languages-scene is very justified.

The main drawback as far as I can tell is the lack of an index, making it difficult to find things quickly. An index would improve its usability especially for journalists, who often write with very strict deadlines looming. Some of the particular claims listed could fit in several different chapters according to the classification (and some are, indeed, mentioned in several places, often with a mention of where the main treatment of the claims occurs). I imagine a more lexicon-like layout could have fit, and would have provided an easy way of expanding the book in the future, but on the other hand that would separate the description of individual claims from the description of the main types of problems that mainly accompany specific kinds of claims.

In conclusion, it is a book that should probably be consulted by any number of people - especially non-linguists and journalists whose work at times intersect linguistics, but there is some room for improvement. On the other hand, it is possible an edition incorporating the improvements I would suggest would get unwieldy in size, and thus a complementary volume could maybe be justified. However, to some extent such a volume would be your basic introduction to linguistics anyway, the contents of (the relevant parts of) which should probably be learned by anyone before consulting this book anyway.

[1] Mark Newbrook with Jane Curtain and Alan Libert. Strange Linguistics - a skeptical linguist looks at non-mainstream ideas about language. Lincom Europa, 2013.

The Christ Conspiracy: Chapter 15, pt II

The fifteenth chapter, The Patriarchs and the Saints are the Gods of other Cultures contains several more problems than the ones listed in the previous post. I have been trying to list only the significant problems I run into, as otherwise, this review would take forever.

The chapter presents the following Biblical characters and post-Biblical Christian saints, with some associated characters:

• Noah
• Abraham and Sarah
• Moses
• Joshua
• David
• Joseph (Jesus' father)
• Mary
• St. Josaphat
• St. Christopher

I have already covered the (main) problems of the Noah subchapter, and one problem with the Abraham subchapter. There are more problems with the Abraham subchapter, so I will return to that chapter further down. By and large, most of these characters probably indeed did not exist - and that is a significant fact that does lend some credibility to the thesis that Jesus might not have existed either.

Regarding Abraham - who very probably is mythical, of course - Murdock states:

Although Abraham and Sarah are held up as the patriarch of the Hebrews and Arabs, the original Abraham and Sarah were the same as the Indian God Brahma and goddess Sarasvati, the "Queen of Heaven," and the story of Abraham's migration is reflective of a Brahmanical tribe leaving India at the end of the Age of Taurus. This identification of Abraham and Sarah as Indian gods did not escape the notice of the Jesuit missionaries in India; indeed, it was they who first pointed it out. [1, p. 239]

The claim that Jesuit missionaries were the first to point it out is supported by a source, but the rather more remarkable claim about Brahmanical tribal migrations more than 4000 years ago is given no supporting sources. Is there any evidence for this claim? Good form would be to provide some kind of references, so that the reader is able to assess the weight of the evidence. Again, Murdock fails at this.

She further emphasizes some kind of connection between Abraham and Brahma, but the only piece of evidence ever given is the similarity of the names - no thematical similarities, no shared qualities, no shared narratives are given.

Brahma and Sarasvati were apparently also turned into the Indian patriarch Adjigarta and his wife Parvati. Like Abram/Abraham, in the Indian version Adjigarta beseeches the Lord for an heir and eventually takes a young red goat to sacrifice on the mountain, where the Lord speaks to him. As in the biblical tale, a stranger approaches Parvati, who gives him refreshments, and tells her that she will bring forth a son named Viashagagana (Isaac), "the reward of Alms." When the child is 12, the Lord commands Adjigarta to sacrifice him, which the father faithfully begins to do, until the Lord stops him and blesses him as the progenitor of a virgin who will be divinely impregnated. [...] Of the near-sacrifice by Abraham, Graham says, "This too is an old story and like so many others in the Bible, originated in India."[1, p. 239]

The source given for these statements is Lloyd Graham's Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, a book that provides no primary sources for any claims given in it. Graham's shoddy understanding of linguistics - showcased in the previous post I made - is so bad as to be funny:

In Persia the name was originally Abriman, which also acquired an h and became Ahriman-- an "evil deity; the ruler over the kingdom of darkness." the[sic] Babylonians also had their Abraham, only they spelt it Abarama. He was a farmer and mythologically contemporary with the Hebrew Abraham. [...] Now to form an earth every Creator, except the Jews' and Christians' must have a female consort, matter. In the Greek myth the Creator marries his sister, shocking indeed; in the Hebrew he marries his half-sister, which is quite all right. To our Bible students these little touches are called "Jewish refinements." Here the consort was Sarai, and as with Abram and Brama, an h was added and she became Sarah. But it so happens that Brahma had another name, Ishvara, and his wife was Shri. And when you take the vowels out of Sarai, as the Hebrews did, and add the h, you have Shri. The letter h signifies life, and thus did Brama, Abram and Sarai in due time receive life, or being, which implies that in the beginning they did not have it. [2, p 111-112]

Although in some languages - particularly western European ones - the first consonant in Shri is written using the sequence sh, this does not signify any particular "aitchiness" to that sound. In the languages where Shri was spoken of, the first consonant of the name was written with a single letter. This addition of aitches to signify something simply does not work like Graham thinks it does. He was an ignorant fool, and one that didn't care to provide sources for his oftentimes outrageously outlandish notions. Similar conceptual confusion as the one pointed out above can be found everywhere throughout his terrible polemic. Using such sources does not inspire confidence either in the value of the thesis that refers to them or in the author's ability to assess the credibility of sources. There are credible sources that help establish that Abraham was not historical. This wild goose chase for an Indian connection is weird and weak.

As for Moses, she claims a Syrian parallel in 'Mises', an Egyptian 'Manes', Cretan 'Minos', Indian 'Manou', Bacchus as 'Misem' [1, p. 241, p. 243] - these claims mainly resting on the authority of the ever so reliable Lloyd Graham, meanwhile accurately noting the parallel basket-in-a-river theme appearing in stories regarding Sargon and several others.

Were it not for the shoddy scholarship showcased in the chapter - it mainly calls for better sources and less far-out speculation - it could actually be fairly good. Far-fetched and sometimes probably fabricated (by her sources or by the sources' sources) claims recur throughout the text. Meanwhile, she has the gall to accuse (admittedly, accurately so) others of salting excavation sites - her use of charlatan scholars as sources is no more excusable a behavior.

Indeed, a sufficient argument against Moses' historicity would have been the lack of archaeological evidence for the exodus ever having taken place, and the impossibility for such a sizable operation to have been carried out during that time. As for Abraham, anyone claiming historicity definitely bears the burden of proof on their shoulders. As for David, it is slightly less clear cut, but the lack of evidence for a powerful Israel at the time he was supposed to have lived, and the lack of any clear references anywhere else to him are problems for the claim of historicity. One steele mentioning the House of David (as a dynasty) does apparently exist, but that is probably not sufficient evidence per se. If Murdock only had picked that low-hanging fruit, this chapter would have been good. Not revolutionary, though - as seems to be her objective, even if she has to throw scholarly care and scientific caution to the wind in order to attain revolutionary results.

At times, she seems to descend into pure obscurity:

The Exodus is indeed not a historical event but constitutes a motif found in other myths. As Pike says, "And when Bacchus and his army had long marched in burning deserts, they were led by a Lamb or Ram into beautiful meadows, and to the Springs that watered the Temple of Jupiter Ammon." And Churchward relates, "Traditions of the Exodus are found in various parts of the world and amonst people of different states of evolution, and these traditions can be explained by the Kamite [Egyptian] rendering only." indeed, as Massey states, "'Coming out of Egypt' is a Kamite expression for ascending from the lower to the upper heavens." [1, p. 243]

What about these traditions can be explained by "the Kamite rendering only"? What does the Kamite rendering even entail? As for Massey, she gives the wrong source - The Historical Jesus and Mythical Christ - when in fact this statement can be found in The Natural Genesis vol II, p. 395, which again probably wasted quite an amount of time on my part. The Natural Genesis is not even mentioned in the bibliography. The source that Massey in turn gives is "Great Mendes Stele, Museum at Boolak, Records, viii. 92." Needless to say, I have been unable to locate any copy of Records, viii. 92. I have, however, found a translation[3] of the Great Mendes Stele, which does not confirm his statement. Due to his phrasing, it is unclear whether his source is supposed to support that claim or the next claim:

'Coming out of Egypt' is a Kamite expression for ascending from the lower to the upper heavens, which were divided in the equinoctial signs². [4, p. 395]

Even if 'coming out of Egypt' had such a significance in some religion, the fact that Egypt was a hugely influential power at times means people would come and go out of it. Thus, at times we must accept that people used phrases signifying leaving Egypt in a literal sense, and that probably not all uses of such a phrase is ancient religious  thing code for something. However, it does appear undeniable by now that Massey made shit up.

In some fairness, some parallels presented between Jesus and Joshua are intriguing, and the two saints presented are clearly mythical. These details do support her thesis more than most evemerists would admit,  but are not sufficient.

The problems in this chapter to a great extent reinforce my suspicion that Murdock has not understood that A implies B does not imply B implies A. That is, if a claim is true ('B'), it does not follow that every claim that supports B is also true. This is a very important thing to realize if you want to reason about things, it is downright trivial to make up untrue claims that support true ones - yet it seems to Murdock, no matter how outlandish a claim ('A') that supports her thesis ('B') is, if it ('A' )supports her thesis ('B'), it ('A') must also be true. This creates a circular structure to her argument: we are supposed to know her thesis is true based on the evidence, and we know the evidence is accurate because her thesis, which they support, is true.

With this, I conclude my review of chapter 15.

[1] D.M. Murdock. The Christ Conspiracy, Adventures Unlimited 1999

[2] Graham, Lloyd. Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, Bell Publications, 1979

[3] Birch, S. 'The Great Mendes Stela' http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/texts/great_mendes_stela.htm, retrieved on November 9, 2013

[4] Massey, Gerald. The Natural Genesis, pt II. Black Classic Press, 1998, originally published 1883.

The Christ Conspiracy, ch 17: The Meaning of Revelation, pt 1

Chapter 17 is devoted to "deciphering" the Book of Revelation. In the very first subchapter, the following very problematic paragraph appears.

Based on its astrological imagery, Massey evinced that Revelation, rather than having been written by any apostle called John during the 1st century CE, was an ancient text dating to 4,000 years ago and relating the Mithraic legend of one of the early Zoroasters. The text has also been attributed pseudepigraphically to Horus's scribe, Aan, whose name has been passed down as "John." Jacolliot claimed that the Apocalypse/Revelation material was gleaned from the story of Krishna/Christna, an opinion concurred with by Hotema, who averred that the book was a text of Hindu mysteries given to Apollonius. In fact, the words "Jesus" and "Christ," and the phrase "Jesus Christ" in particular, are used sparingly in Revelation, revealing they were interpolated (long) after the book was written, as were the Judaizing elements. [1, p. 266]

 Although "John" and "Aan" may look somewhat similar, this only really happens in languages where the name has been significantly reduced over time. In Hebrew, John was Yochanon, Yochana in Aramaic, in Greek it was Ἰωάννης (Iohannes). Murdock, again, utilizes the argument known as very short words, by picking a form that conveniently enough is so short it is easy to fit to Aan (compare Swedish or German Johannes, Latin Ioannes). Aan is short enough to be similar to very many unrelated words, any of the following Biblical names really: Eneas, Enoch, Enosh, On, Ono, Janna, Janoah, Javan ( יָוָן, thus not significantly unlike YWN or somesuch), Achan, Anah, ... This is a thing I keep harping on about, but Murdock has to learn linguistics if she is going to use arguments like these. 

Murdock of course also keeps doing that silly "Christna" thing. On what basis we can conclude that words are later additions to a text if they are used sparingly is never made clear.

Finally, no source is provided for the claim that the text has been attributed pseudepigraphically to Horus's scribe, Aan. As far as Aan/Anup goes, she seems to rely quite a bit on Massey, and I can find no such claim in his material. Who has attributed this text to Aan/Anup? When? There is a reason even Wikipedia disdains weasel-words. In this case, there is no single weasel word, but the use of a passive without an explicit demoted subject (and no source given) amounts to about the same effect. Who passed Aan's name down as John? Without sources - which she does not provide - we do not know, so we cannot check whether this really is an accurate statement. Not even when she mentions Jacolliot or Massey does she provide any references for her reader - these have all written significant amounts of text, making it quite difficult to locate the arguments they present for these claims, and thus making it difficult to evaluate the claim.

This, per se, should be sufficient to show that Murdock's grasp of things is shoddy at best. The chapter mainly conforms to the same pattern, being nothing but a huge bunch of pareidolia. More of that in a later post.

[1] Murdock, D.M.. The Christ Conspiracy, 1999, Adventures Unlimited.

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 Dilling Exhibit

As I have come across people calling themselves rationalists or atheists that have unabashedly referred to the Dilling Exhibit when discussing the Talmud, I have decided to write up a proper debunking of the exhibit's content. For those who have never heard of it, the Dilling exhibit is a quote-mine of Talmudic material, whose intent is to make the Talmud seem as though it accepts and downright encourages theft, pedophilia, murder and various other obviously bad things.

Some Christians also repeat similar allegations regarding the content of the Talmud, whether for anti-Semitic or anti-Judaic purposes. (These two are somewhat distinct things, with different causes, uses, objectives and so on. However, sometimes they do have common ground and there are representatives of both that share the same misunderstandings, misrepresentations and downright fabrications. I may attempt a small dissection of these two topics at some points, but such a dissection will necessarily only be an overview of the relevant literature.)

The Talmud is notoriously difficult to read. In part, this is due to the time that has passed since it was written, and to purely cultural differences - were a rabbi of the 4th century and I to try and express the same sentiments, we would probably express them in wildly different manners. Three main hypotheses for its obscure style are easy to come up with: design, cultural distance (already hinted at above) and incompetence.  I find the two first to be the most likely explanations. Other Jewish works from the same time are often somewhat less difficult to understand (then again, mystical works may be significantly less easy to understand, but the causes seem to be somewhat distinct from the causes underlying the problems when reading the Talmud) - provided you know the involved vocabulary (which is not necessarily easy). The Talmud is, by its nature, a discussion, and as such it records contradictory stances as well as sometimes far-flung reasoning to support whatever point the involved rabbis are trying to make. I suspect the talmudists wanted to make their work force the reader to become a participant in the discussion, rather than just a "reader" (obviously, some of the quoted rabbis may not have been aware their sayings would be recorded - so it is possible the recorded statements merely reflect a general style to engage the pupils?). To that purpose, it is fairly well made - the reader gains much from having a reading partner that has participated in the talmudic discourse earlier.

The final option is that the authors did not really realize the importance of (linguistic) frames of reference at all, and assumed the text would be understandable to anyone despite obvious flaws in understandability. However, the great emphasis the Talmud places on study, on learning from teachers, etc, seems to argue against this particular explanation. I severely doubt the talmudic rabbis where incompetent at expressing their ideas.

I do admit the Talmud has its bad moments - some of which are pretty terrible, even -, as does every old religious work. (And most newer ones as well.) However, some of the criticism it has received is definitely not justified, and reflects badly on the originators of those particular bits of criticism. Either their criticism originates in ill will or in ignorance. Both are road-blocks for rational thought.


This will be a long-term project, of course, just like the Murdock-Walker-etc project. Until I have finished The Christ Conspiracy, this particular project may not see very frequent updates (not that I can say The Christ Conspiracy-debunking has seen frequent updates either!), and it may also take a back seat to The Suns of God. However, the pace at which the debunking is performed is not the important thing - once it is done, I will be happy to have carried it out, as it will remain online for the foreseeable future for those for whom a source such as this is useful.

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).

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