Gerald Massey was an English poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and self-educated Egyptologist. He was born near Tring

Tring

Tring is a small market town and also a civil parish in the Chiltern Hills in Hertfordshire, England. Situated north-west of London and linked to London by the old Roman road of Akeman Street, by the modern A41, by the Grand Union Canal and by rail lines to Euston Station, Tring is now largely a...

, Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...

 in England.

Biography

Massey's parents were poor. 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

Christian socialism generally refers to those on the Christian left whose politics are both Christian and socialist and who see these two philosophies as being interrelated. This category can include Liberation theology and the doctrine of the social gospel...

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

Charles Kingsley

Charles Kingsley was an English priest of the Church of England, university professor, historian and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and northeast Hampshire.-Life and character:...

.

"During the later years of his life, (from about 1870 onwards) Massey became interested increasingly in Egyptology and the similarities that exist between ancient Egyptian mythology and the Gospel stories. He studied the extensive Egyptian records housed in the British Museum, eventually teaching himself to decipher the hieroglyphics."

Writing career

Massey's first public appearance as a writer was in connection with a journal called the Spirit of Freedom

Spirit of Freedom, and Working Man's Vindicator

The Spirit of Freedom, and Working Man's Vindicator was a Chartist publication noted for its rigorous and untiring determination to call a "man a man, and a spade a spade". It was "full of fire and breathed the spirit of republicanism"....

, 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 collected the best of the contents of these volumes, with additions, into a two-volume edition of his poems called My Lyrical Life. He also published works dealing with Spiritualism, the study of Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's sonnet

Sonnet

A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...

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

George Eliot

Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...

's Felix Holt

Felix Holt, the Radical

Felix Holt, the Radical 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 Men, by Felix Holt"...

.

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

Richard Grenville

Sir Richard Grenville was an English sailor, sea captain and explorer. He took part in the early English attempts to settle the New World, and also participated in the fight against the Spanish Armada...

 before Tennyson 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

Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom

The Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, also referred to as the Poet Laureate, is the Poet Laureate appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom on the advice of the Prime Minister...

 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 a popular song by composer Christabel Baxendale

Christabel Baxendale

Christabel Baxendale was an English violinist and composer. She was active in the early 1900s and gave concerts in the London area, sometimes assisted by her sister who was a singer.-Works:Baxendale composed mostly popular songs...

.

In regard to Egyptology

Egyptology

Egyptology is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the AD 4th century. A practitioner of the discipline is an “Egyptologist”...

, Massey first published The Book of the Beginnings, followed by The Natural Genesis. His most prolific work is Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, published shortly before his death. His 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

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 5,000 years of the history of Ancient Egypt, from the predynastic era to the seventh century CE...

or similar reference works of modern Egyptology.

Massey was a believer in spiritual evolution

Spiritual evolution

Spiritual evolution is the philosophical, theological, esoteric or spiritual idea that nature and human beings and/or human culture evolve, extending from the established cosmological pattern or ascent, or in accordance with certain pre-established potentials...

, he claimed that Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

's theory of evolution was incomplete without spiritualism

Spiritualism

Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...

:

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 myraids 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.

Claimed parallels between Horus and Jesus

One of the more sensational aspects of Massey's writings were the parallels he drew between the Christian god Jesus of Nazareth

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

 and the Egyptian god Horus

Horus

Horus is one of the oldest and most significant deities in the Ancient Egyptian religion, who was worshipped from at least the late Predynastic period through to Greco-Roman times. Different forms of Horus are recorded in history and these are treated as distinct gods by Egyptologists...

. These comparisons are primarily contained in his book The Natural Genesis. Massey's writings on this subject have influenced various later authors such as Alvin Boyd Kuhn

Alvin Boyd Kuhn

Alvin Boyd Kuhn was a scholar of comparative religion, mythology, linguistics and language.Born in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, Kuhn studied the Ancient Greek language at university. He started his career working as a language teacher in high schools. He later enrolled at Columbia University to...

, Tom Harpur

Tom Harpur

Thomas William Harpur is a Canadian author, broadcaster, columnist and theologian. An ordained priest, he is a proponent of the Christ myth theory, the idea that Jesus did not exist but is a fictional or mythological figure...

, and Acharya S.

Some of the similarities that Massey claimed existed are that they both

1. Were born of virgins on December 25
2. Taught in a temple as a child at age 12
3. Were teachers who had 12 Disciples
4. Were baptized in a river
5. Gave a sermon on the mount
6. Healed the sick
7. Raised men from the dead (El-Asar-Us for Horus, Lazarus
   Lazarus of Bethany
   Lazarus of Bethany, also known as Saint Lazarus or Lazarus of the Four Days, is the subject of a prominent miracle attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus restores him to life four days after his death...
   
    for Jesus)
8. Died by crucifixion
9. Were resurrected three days later.

At the same time, most contemporary Egyptologists believe these parallels are not true and pseudo-scientific. In particular they point out that, among the sources make no mention of these facts in the life of Horus, and the celebration of Jesus' birth on December 25 was chosen for political reasons and was never claimed to be the actual date of his birth. However, W. Ward Gasque conducted a world-wide poll of twenty leading Egyptologists - including Professor Kenneth Kitchen

Kenneth Kitchen

Kenneth Anderson Kitchen is Personal and Brunner Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool, England...

 of the University of Liverpool and Ron Leprohan, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Toronto- in Canada, US, UK, Australia, Germany, and Austria to verify if there was any academic support for these claims. The scholars were unanimous in dismissing the claimed parallels. One scholar, who called it "fringe nonsense", also cautioned that "[e]gyptology has the unenviable distinction of being one of those disciplines that almost anyone can lay claim to, and the unfortunate distinction of being probably the one most beleaguered by false prophets.".

See also

• Christ myth theory
• Jesus Christ in comparative mythology
  Jesus Christ in comparative mythology
  The study of Jesus from a mythographical perspective is the examination of the narrative of Jesus, the Christ of the gospels, Christian theology and folk Christianity as a central part of Christian mythology....
  
  
• Godfrey Higgins
  Godfrey Higgins
  Godfrey Higgins , was an archaeologist, Freemason and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, humanist, social reformer, and author of various now-esoteric and rare books...
  
  
• John G. Jackson
  John G. Jackson (writer)
  John Glover Jackson was a Pan-Africanist historian, lecturer, teacher and writer. He promoted ideas of Afrocentrism, Black atheists, and Jesus Christ in comparative mythology....
  
  
• Kersey Graves
  Kersey Graves
  Kersey Graves was a skeptic, atheist, spiritualist, Nontheist Friend, reformist and writer.-Life:Kersey Graves was born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania on 21 November 1813.. His parents were Quakers, and as a young man he followed them in their observance, and then later moved to the Hicksite wing...
  
  

External links

• http://gerald-massey.org.uk
• Africa Within, many of Massey's articles and poems relating to Egyptology.