Story continued:
And yet another surprising correlation comes to view. The Christ, as it has here been delineated, is the offspring or creation of a conception of deific Mind, first in the inner bosom of spiritual matter, then in organic bodily structure. Primeval space, we have seen, was called in Egypt the NUN, or the Waters of the Nun. All Bible students recognize a familiar ring in the phrase "Joshua, Son of Nun." But so far has ignorance and obscurantism gone with its deadly work in Christian literalism that hardly
anyone knows with definiteness that Joshua is just a variant name for
Jesus. The phrase is actually written in some old documents as "Jesus, Son of Nun." At any rate Joshua is just Jesus, no less. So here is the Christ, called Jesus, son of the aboriginal space, or the NUN. But the wonder increases when we turn to the Hebrew alphabet and find that while "M" is called and spelled "Mem" and means "water," "N" is called and spelled "Nun" and means--of all things--"Fish"! Jesus, then, is son of Pisces, the Fish-sign, as he indeed is in the Gospels themselves.
And Horus, the Egyptian Christ, who is identical with the Jesus of the
Gospels in some one hundred and eighty particulars, performed at Anu a
great miracle. He raised his father Osiris from the dead, calling unto him in the cave to rise and come forth. Anu, as we have seen, became Bethany of the Gospels; and it was at Bethany that Jesus raised Lazarus from death! And who was Lazarus? Here the greatest of all the marvels in this chain of comparative data unfolds under our eyes. According to Budge and other eminent Egyptologists the ancient designation of Osiris was ASAR. But the Egyptians invariably expressed reverence for deity by prefixing the
definite article "the" to the names of their Gods. Just as Christians say, or should say, the Christ, they said: the Osiris. It will be found that the article connoted deity in ancient usage. Our definite article, "the" is the root of the Greek word theos, God; the Spanish article, masculine, "el," is the Hebrew word for God; and the Greek masculine article, "ho," is a Chinese word for deity.
To say the Osiris was equivalent to saying Lord Osiris. When the Hebrews took up the Egyptian phrases and names they converted the name of "the Osiris" or "Lord Osiris" directly into their own vernacular, and the result was "El-Asar." Later on the Romans, speaking Latin, took up the same material that had come down from revered Egyptian sources and to "El-Asar" they added the common Latin termination of the second declension masculine
nouns, in which most men's names ended, namely, "-us"; and the result was now "El-Asar-us." In time the initial "E" wore off, as the scholars phrase it, and the "s" in Asar changed into its sister letter "z," leaving us holding in our hands the Lazarus whom Jesus raised at Bethany! To evidence that this derivation is not a fanciful invention or sheer coincidence the Biblical names of High Priests may be cited. We find one with the name of El(e)azar and another by name Azar-iah, "iah" or "jah" being suffixes of
great deific connotation, matching "el." And so we are faced with the
irrefutable evidence of Comparative Religion that Jesus' raising of Lazarus at Bethany is but a rescript of the old Egyptian dramatic mystery in which Horus, the Christ, raised his "dead" father Osiris, or El-Asar-us from the grave. And the Egyptian recital was in the papyri perhaps 5000 years B.C.
Also at the Egyptian scene were present the two divine sisters, Isis and Nephthys. An old source-name for Isis was Meri, basic for the Latin mare, the sea. The Egyptian plural of Meri was Merti. In Latin feminine form this became Mertae. In Hebrew it resolved into what was rendered in English as Martha. So even in the ancient Egyptian transaction there were present the two Maries, or Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus!
All this sets the stage for the crowning item in the correspondence. In the Gospel drama John the Baptist bears the character of the firstborn or natural man, coming first to prepare the ground or make straight the path for the advent of the spiritual man or Lord Christ. He would therefore stand as the son of the water-mother, Virgo, and under the astrological symbolism would be born at the autumn equinox, or in his mother's house. Onthe other side of the cycle of descent and resurrection Jesus, the Christos, would be the son of the fish-mother, and would be born in his mother's house, Pisces. These houses are six months apart astrologically.
The whole edifice of Gospel historicity trembles under the impact of the strange dramatic circumstance, given in Luke, that the annunciation to Mary of her impregnation by the Holy Ghost came when John the Baptist was six months in Elizabeth's womb.
The natural man, having covered the "six months" between his birth and the date of his quickening into spiritual status in the evolutionary cycle, was thus quickened, or leaped in his mother's womb, when the time for the birth, or advent, of the spiritual Christ had arrived. The water baptism was to be consummated with the fire baptism. And Justin Martyr adds an item left out of the Gospels, that at the baptism of Jesus by John, a fire was
kindled in the waters of the Jordan!
St. Paul declares that we come to birth spiritually only as we die
carnally, which means that the quantum of divine character in us grows in proportion as the quantum of raw nature declines. As the spiritual man, Jesus, son of Nun, the fish, increases, the natural man, John, son of Virgo, the Water, must decrease. Astrologically, as a constellation or star sinks below the horizon in the west, its opposite constellation would be rising in the east. As John, type of the natural first birth, went down, Jesus, type of the spiritual second birth, rose on the world. And, says John the Baptist: "I must decrease as he must increase"! |
