Gerald Massey (; 29 May 1828 – 29 October 1907) was an English

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

and writer on

Spiritualism Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase) ...

and Ancient Egypt.

Early life

Massey was born near

Tring Tring is a market town and civil parish in the Borough of Dacorum, Hertfordshire, England. It is situated in a gap passing through the Chiltern Hills, classed as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, from Central London. Tring is linked to ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

in England to poor parents. When little more than a child, he was made to work hard in a silk factory, which he afterward deserted for the equally laborious occupation of straw plaiting. These early years were rendered gloomy by much distress and deprivation, against which the young man strove with increasing spirit and virility, educating himself in his spare time, and gradually cultivating his innate taste for literary work. He was attracted by the movement known as

Christian socialism Christian socialism is a religious and political philosophy that blends Christianity and socialism, endorsing left-wing politics and socialist economics on the basis of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. Many Christian socialists believe capi ...

, into which he threw himself with whole-hearted vigour, and so became associated with

Frederick Denison Maurice John Frederick Denison Maurice (29 August 1805 – 1 April 1872), known as F. D. Maurice, was an English Anglican theologian, a prolific author, and one of the founders of Christian socialism. Since World War II, interest in Maurice has exp ...

and

Charles Kingsley Charles Kingsley (12 June 1819 – 23 January 1875) was a broad church priest of the Church of England, a university professor, social reformer, historian, novelist and poet. He is particularly associated with Christian socialism, the working ...

Later life

From about 1870 onwards, Massey became increasingly interested in Egyptology and the similarities that exist between

ancient Egyptian mythology Egyptian mythology is the collection of myths from ancient Egypt, which describe the actions of the Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world around them. The beliefs that these myths express are an important part of ancient Egyptia ...

and the

Gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...

stories. He studied the extensive Egyptian records housed in the

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...

n and

Egyptology Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , '' -logia''; ar, علم المصريات) is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious ...

section of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

in London where he worked closely with the curator, Dr.

Samuel Birch Samuel Birch (3 November 1813 – 27 December 1885) was a British Egyptologist and antiquary. Biography Birch was the son of a rector at St Mary Woolnoth, London. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School. From an early age, his manifest ...

, and other leading Egyptologists of his day, even learning

hieroglyphics Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

at the time the

Temple of Horus at Edfu The Temple of Edfu is an Egyptian temple located on the west bank of the Nile in Edfu, Upper Egypt. The city was known in the Hellenistic period in grc-koi, Ἀπόλλωνος πόλις and in Latin as ''Apollonopolis Magna'', after the chief g ...

was first being excavated.Gerald Massey Collection-Upper Norwood Joint Library

Writing career

Massey's first public appearance as a writer was in connection with a journal called the '' Spirit of Freedom'', of which he became editor, and he was only twenty-two when he published his first volume of poems, ''Voices of Freedom and Lyrics of Love'' (1850). These he followed in rapid succession with ''The Ballad of Babe Christabel'' (1854), ''War Waits'' (1855), ''Havelock's March'' (1860), and ''A Tale of Eternity'' (1869). In 1889, Massey published a two-volume collection of his poems called ''My Lyrical Life''. He also published works dealing with

, the study of

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...

s (1872 and 1890), and theological speculation. It is generally understood that he was the original of

George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wro ...

Felix Holt ''Felix Holt, the Radical'' (1866) is a social novel written by George Eliot about political disputes in a small English town at the time of the First Reform Act of 1832. In January 1868, Eliot penned an article entitled "Address to Working M ...

. Massey's poetry has a certain rough and vigorous element of sincerity and strength which easily accounts for its popularity at the time of its production. He treated the theme of

Sir Richard Grenville Sir Richard Grenville (15 June 1542 – 10 September 1591), also spelt Greynvile, Greeneville, and Greenfield, was an English privateer and explorer. Grenville was lord of the manors of Stowe, Cornwall and Bideford, Devon. He subsequently ...

before

Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his ...

thought of using it, with much force and vitality. Indeed, Tennyson's own praise of Massey's work is still its best eulogy, for the

Laureate In English, the word laureate has come to signify eminence or association with literary awards or military glory. It is also used for recipients of the Nobel Prize, the Gandhi Peace Award, the Student Peace Prize, and for former music direc ...

found in him a poet of fine lyrical impulse, and of a rich half-Oriental imagination. The inspiration of his poetry is a combination of his vast knowledge based on travels, research and experiences; he was a patriotic humanist to the core. His poem "The Merry, Merry May" was set to music in 1894 by the composer

Cyril Rootham Cyril Bradley Rootham (5 October 1875 – 18 March 1938) was an English composer, educator and organist. His work at Cambridge University made him an influential figure in English music life. A Fellow of St John's College, where he was also or ...

and then in a popular song by composer Christabel Baxendale. Massey was a believer in

spiritual evolution Spiritual evolution, also called higher evolution, is the idea that the mind or spirit, in analogy to biological evolution, collectively evolves from a simple form dominated by nature, to a higher form dominated by the Spiritual or Divine. It is di ...

; he opined that Darwin's theory of evolution was incomplete without

spiritualism Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase) ...

The theory contains only one half the explanation of man's origins and needs spiritualism to carry it through and complete it. For while this ascent on the physical side has been progressing through myriads of ages, the Divine descent has also been going on – man being spiritually an incarnation from the Divine as well as a human development from the animal creation. The cause of the development is spiritual. Mr. Darwin's theory does not in the least militate against ours – we think it necessitates it; he simply does not deal with our side of the subject. He can not go lower than the dust of the earth for the matter of life; and for us, the main interest of our origin must lie in the spiritual domain.

In regard to Ancient Egypt, Massey first published ''The Book of the Beginnings'', followed by ''The Natural Genesis''. His most important work is ''Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World'', published shortly before his death. Like

Godfrey Higgins Godfrey Higgins (30 January 1772 in Owston, Yorkshire – 9 August 1833 in Cambridge) was an English magistrate and landowner, a prominent advocate for social reform, historian, and antiquarian. He wrote concerning ancient myths. His book ''Anaca ...

a half-century earlier, Massey believed that Western religions had Egyptian roots. Massey wrote,

The human mind has long suffered an eclipse and been darkened and dwarfed in the shadow of ideas the real meaning of which has been lost to moderns. Myths and allegories whose significance was once unfolded in the Mysteries have been adopted in ignorance and reissued as real truths directly and divinely vouchsafed to humanity for the first and only time! The early religions had their myths interpreted. We have ours misinterpreted. And a great deal of what has been imposed on us as God’s own true and sole revelation to us is a mass of inverted myths.

One of the more important aspects of Massey's writings were his assertions that there were parallels between

Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

and the Egyptian god

Horus Horus or Heru, Hor, Har in Ancient Egyptian, is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities who served many functions, most notably as god of kingship and the sky. He was worshipped from at least the late prehistoric Egypt until the P ...

, primarily contained in the book ''The Natural Genesis'' first published in 1883. Massey, for example, argued in the book his belief that: both Horus and Jesus were born of virgins on 25 December, raised men from the dead (Massey speculates that the biblical Lazarus, raised from the dead by Jesus, has a parallel in ''El-Asar-Us'', a title of

Osiris Osiris (, from Egyptian ''wsjr'', cop, ⲟⲩⲥⲓⲣⲉ , ; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎𐤓, romanized: ʾsr) is the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He was ...

), died by

crucifixion Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross or beam and left to hang until eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation. It was used as a punishment by the Persians, Carthagin ...

and were resurrected three days later. These assertions have influenced various later writers such as

Alvin Boyd Kuhn Alvin Boyd Kuhn (September 22, 1880 – September 14, 1963) was an American Theosophist, lecturer, and self-published author. He was a proponent of the Christ myth theory. Harpur, Tom. (2004). '' The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light''. Toro ...

Tom Harpur Thomas William Harpur (1929–2017), known as Tom Harpur, was a Canadian biblical scholar, columnist, and broadcaster. An ordained Anglican priest, he was a proponent of the Christ myth theory, the idea that Jesus did not exist but is a fictiona ...

Yosef Ben-Jochannan Yosef Alfredo Antonio Ben-Jochannan (; December 31, 1918 – March 19, 2015), referred to by his admirers as "Dr. Ben", was an American writer and historian. He was considered to be one of the more prominent Afrocentricism, Afrocentric scholars ...

, and Dorothy M. Murdock.

Christian ignorance notwithstanding, the Gnostic Jesus is the Egyptian Horus who was continued by the various sects of gnostics under both the names of Horus and of Jesus. In the gnostic iconography of the Roman Catacombs child-Horus reappears as the mummy-babe who wears the solar disc. The royal Horus is represented in the cloak of royalty, and the phallic emblem found there witnesses to Jesus being Horus of the resurrection.

Criticism

Christian theologian W. Ward Gasque, a PhD from

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

and Manchester University, sent emails to twenty Egyptologists that he considered leaders of the field – including

Kenneth Kitchen Kenneth Anderson Kitchen (born 1932) is a British biblical scholar, Ancient Near Eastern historian, and Personal and Brunner Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and honorary research fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, Univ ...

of the University of Liverpool and Ron Leprohon of the University of Toronto – in Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, Germany and Austria to verify academic support for some of these assertions. His primary targets were

and the

Christ myth theory The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory, is the view that "the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology", possessing no "substantial claims to historical fact". Alternatively ...

, and only indirectly Massey. Ten out of twenty responded, but most were not named. According to Gasque, Massey's work, which draws comparisons between the Judeo-Christian religion and the Egyptian religion, is not considered significant in the field of modern Egyptology and is not mentioned in the ''

Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt'', edited by Donald B. Redford and published in three volumes by Oxford University Press in 2001, contains 600 articles that cover the 4,000 years of the history of Ancient Egypt, from the predynastic ...

'' or similar reference works of modern Egyptology.The Leading Religion Writer in Canada ... Does He Know What He's Talking About?
/ref> Gasque reports that those who responded were unanimous in dismissing the proposed etymologies for Jesus and Christ, and one unspecified Egyptologist referred to Alvin Boyd Kuhn's comparison as "fringe nonsense." However, Harpur's response to Gasque quotes leading contemporary Egyptologist Erik Hornung that there are parallels between Christianity and ancient Egypt, as do the writings of biblical expert

Thomas L. Thompson Thomas L. Thompson (born January 7, 1939 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American-born Danish biblical scholar and theologian. He was professor of theology at the University of Copenhagen from 1993 to 2009. He currently lives in Denmark. Thompson is ...

. Theologian

Stanley E. Porter Stanley E. Porter (born November 23, 1956) is a Canadian–American academic and New Testament scholar, specializing in the Koine Greek grammar and linguistics of the New Testament. Life and career Porter was born in Long Beach, California, on ...

has pointed out that Massey's analogies include a number of errors. For example, Massey stated that 25 December as the date of birth of Jesus was selected based on the birth of Horus, but the New Testament does not include any reference to the date or season of the birth of Jesus.''Unmasking the Pagan Christ'' by Stanley E. Porter and Stephen J. Bedard 2006 pages 18–29 The earliest known source recognizing 25 December as the date of birth of Jesus is by

Hippolytus of Rome Hippolytus of Rome (, ; c. 170 – c. 235 AD) was one of the most important second-third century Christian theologians, whose provenance, identity and corpus remain elusive to scholars and historians. Suggested communities include Rome, Palestin ...

, written around the beginning of the 3rd century, based on the assumption that the

conception of Jesus The Annunciation (from Latin '), also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Annunciation of Our Lady, or the Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the biblical tale of the announcement by the ange ...

took place at the Spring equinox. Hippolytus placed the equinox on 25 March and then added 9 months to get 25 December, thus establishing the date for festivals.''Mercer Dictionary'' of the Bible by Watson E. Mills, Edgar V. McKnight and Roger A. Bullard 2001 page 142 The Roman

Chronography of 354 The ''Chronograph of 354'' (or "Chronography"), also known as the ''Calendar of 354'', is a compilation of chronological and calendrical texts produced in 354 AD for a wealthy Roman Christian named Valentinus by the calligrapher and illustrator ...

then included an early reference to the celebration of a Nativity feast in December, as of the fourth century. Porter states that Massey's serious historical errors often render his works nonsensical. For example, Massey states that the biblical references to

Herod the Great Herod I (; ; grc-gre, ; c. 72 – 4 or 1 BCE), also known as Herod the Great, was a Roman Jewish client king of Judea, referred to as the Herodian kingdom. He is known for his colossal building projects throughout Judea, including his renov ...

were based on the myth of "Herrut" the evil hydra

serpent Serpent or The Serpent may refer to: * Snake, a carnivorous reptile of the suborder Serpentes Mythology and religion * Sea serpent, a monstrous ocean creature * Serpent (symbolism), the snake in religious rites and mythological contexts * Serp ...

, while the existence of Herod the Great can be well established without reliance on Christian sources.

References

External links