Me and Linn recently received a request from a friend of ours who was quite concerned about a movie she watched recently. The movie, Zeitgeist, is film created by Peter Joseph that presents, at first glance, a compelling argument that religions, specifically Christianity, are in fact based upon ancient Egyptian mythology. Zeitgeist first debuted in 2007 and since has had a large impact on both believers and non believers alike.
Linn and I decided to see what the movie was all about. I must admit that the movie presents its case in a convincing manner, however, upon closer examination of the facts it has proven to be another cleverly devised myth that has been targeted to cause confusion and doubt among those who are new to their faith or unfamiliar with the historical claims they are making. We decided to do a bit of research to see how some of the top scholars refute the claims of Peter Joseph. See the following links to view the movie and a good apologetic response.
The Movie (see part 1 on religion):
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
A Response:
http://www.alwaysbeready.com/index.php?Itemid=107&id=124&option=com_content&task=view
The majority of the mysticism claims that Peter Joseph makes in this movie is actually not anything new. The ideas that Christianity could have been taken or influenced by pagan mythology was first introduced by the German Religionsgeschictliche Schule around the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Some notable names to come from this school of thought were Richard Reitzenstein, and Sir James Frazer. Even at that time, scholars rose up to debunk the claims that Christianity was taken from other ancient pagan religions. In recent years, these ideas have seen a comeback of sorts in the form of books and movies (such as the DaVinci Code). However, just as before, scholars have pointed out all the major historical and scientific errors that are purported in these claims. As it is, the majority of scholars consider this parallel between Christianity and ancient Egyptian mysticism as a non-issue since there has been a wealth of research done to refute the claims. Personally, I find it interesting to see to what lengths people will go to try and refute Christianity and as Christians, we ought to be familiar with the views of the surrounding culture such that we can engage others and present a sound case for our faith. If you look at the response to zeitgeist you will find a long list of scholars and sources for further investigation.
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