Jesus VS Horus

It has been said that Jesus is just a copy of Horas; this claim has been made popular in movies such as Zeitgeist and Religulous and in other pseudo-academic books. One commonly referenced is Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection by D. M. Murdock. This book gets many things about Egyptian mythology incorrect and has received strong criticism from scholars (McGrath_undated-bu, Casey2014-eq, Carrier_undated-rb). The book references Gerald Massey's works; these works are not considered significant in the field of Egyptology(Ward_Gasque_undated-tl, Redford2005-sx, Porter2006-sl), even some pagans find this connection to not hold any water (Raise_the_Horns_undated-zk). New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman' writes:

Claims

Most of these claims, such as one from Bill Maher in the movie Religulous will say that:

• Horus is the son of god (Osiris)
• Born to a virgin mother (Isis)
• Baptized in a river by Anup the Baptizer
• Horus was tempted while alone in the desert
• Performed healing and miracles
• Raised the dead
• Raised Asar (Which is said to mean 'Lazarus.')
• Had 12 disciples
• Crucified
• Raised after three days
• Woman announced his resurrection
• Is the savior of humanity

Some additional claims found (InspiringPhilosophy2016-ke):

• Horus was born on December 25th in a cave
• A star in the east announced his birth, and he was visited by three wise men
• He had a father named Seb which translates to Joseph
• Gave a sermon on a mount
• Shares titles with Jesus such as "The Way, the Truth, and the Life" or the "Son of Man"
  Bill says that he gets it from the Book of The Dead, however, there is no single Book of the Dead. The Book of the Dead is not a narrative like the Gospels, but a collection of spells from ancient Egyptian funerary texts over a great length of time (The Oxford Guide to Egyptian Mythology).

Debunking The Claims

• Not born of a virgin:
  There are several accounts of Horus's conception. In some carvings, Isis takes the form of a bird and revives a dead Osiris long enough to have sex with him and impregnates herself (Pinch2004-mw). In a more detailed account, Osiris is dismembered by his enemy Seth. Isis manages to put his body back together, save for his phallus as it had been eaten by catfish in the Nile. She instead makes him a golden/wooden phallus and has sex with his corpse to get pregnant (Plutarch1927-zb). This is simply not a virgin birth as described by Scott Church on the wall.org website:

  Church2017-mx
  

  The birth of Horus is recounted in the myth Isis and Osiris. In most versions of the myth he is born to the goddess Isis after she retrieves the dismembered body parts of her murdered husband Osiris except his penis which was thrown into the Nile and eaten, depending on the account by a catfish or a crab. Plutarch reports that when Isis was unable to retrieve Osiris' penis she used her magic to fashion one from gold and impregnated herself with it. Some versions portray Isis either as reviving Osiris enough to have an erection via the refashioned penis, or reviving the penis itself (noauthor_1973-ip, Lesko1999-xq, Scholz1999-ye, Shaw2004-bz).

• He was not born December 25th in a cave:
  There is simply no evidence for this being the date he was born on. The closest is that Plutarch says Horus was born around the winter solstice, however all other sources say that he was born in a swamp (Roy2005-fu, Plutarch1927-zb, Frazer1907-lz). Aside from that, December 25th is not confirmed by the New Testament to be the birthday of Christ (See The Date Of December 25th Is Unique)).

• The Star and the three Magi:
  There is no evidence for this. And there were not 3 wise men in the biblical narrative, rather there was an unnumbered amount.

• Seb is not the father of Horus:
  Seb [Geb] is the god of the earth and father of Osiris (Pinch2010-tt) and is not related to Horus. The name means "Lame One" and is not linguistically related to Joseph in any way.

• Anup the Baptizer is made up:
  D. M. Murdoch, drawing heavily from Gerald Massey, identifies Anup the Baptizer as the Egyptian god Anubis

  D. M. Murdoch
  

  There is no character named Anup the Baptizer in ancient Egyptian mythology. The name Anup is a transliteration of the Coptic spelling of the name of the Egyptian god Anubis (ⲁⲛⲟⲩⲃⲓⲥ in Coptic), who was not associated with baptism in any way and who was not said to have baptized Horus in any sense.

• Horus was not tempted in the desert; he battled Seth:
  The companion guide to the film Zeitgeist outlines the basis for this claim by explaining:

  Oxford Guide to Egyptian Mythology
  

  As does Satan with Jesus, Set (aka Seth) attempts to kill Horus. Set is the god of the desert who battles Horus, while Jesus is tempted in the desert by Satan (p. 23).
  Doing battle with the god of the desert is not the same as being tempted while alone in the desert; and according to the Gospel accounts, Satan did not attempt to kill Jesus there (cf. Matt 4,Mark 1:12-13,Luke 4:1-13).
  The relationship between Horus and Seth in the ancient Egyptian religion was quite different than the relationship between Jesus and Satan. While Seth and Horus were often at odds with each other, it was believed that their reconciliation was what allowed the pharaohs to rule over a unified country. It was believed that the pharaoh was a Horus reconciled to Seth, or a gentleman in whom the spirit of disorder had been integrated (The Oxford Guide to Egyptian Mythology, Seth). In stark contrast, there is never any reconciliation between Jesus and Satan in Scripture.

• Horus didn't go around healing people:
  The ancient Egyptians used the spell described on this monument to cure people. It was believed that the spirit of Horus would dwell within the sick, and they would be cured the same way he was. This spiritual indwelling is a far cry from the physical healing ministry of Christ. Horus did not travel the countryside laying his hands on sick people and restoring them to health. The Eye of Horus was associated with spells that could perform healing (Pinch2010-tt) to parallel Horus's own healing in his myths, an example can be seen in 4th century BC monument (The Metternich Stella).

• He didn't raise Osiris either:
  Osiris died and then served as the God of the dead in the underworld. There are a few stories such as the conception of Horus where he is temporarily revived, but no lasting resurrection ever happens (Redford1983-wu).

• Walked on water?
  There is no surviving ancient Egyptian account of Horus walking on water. The claim about him walking on water is just a myth (Warner_Wallace2017-ng).

• Isis raised Asar, and the name doesn't mean Lazarus:
  Like Anup was to Anubis, Asar is a transliteration of the Egyptian name Osiris. Isis was the one that revived Osiris, not Horus. In John 11 and Luke 16:19-31, we can see two people in the Gospels bear the name Lazarus, derived from the Hebrew word Eleazar meaning God has helped.

  (McDaniel2019-bg)
  

  The name Asar is a poorly Anglicized form of wsjr, the ancient Egyptian name for the god Osiris, the father of Horus, husband of the goddess Isis, and ruler of the afterlife. As you can see, the actual Egyptian name sounds much less like "Lazarus" than the inaccurate transliteration given by Maher in Religulous. The exact etymology of the name wsjr is unclear, but the second element of the name is generally thought to be derived from the Egyptian verb jrj, meaning "to do" or "to make."
  Meanwhile, the name Lazarus is the Latinized form of the name Λάζαρος (Lázaros), which is used in the Greek New Testament as the Greek form of the Hebrew name אֶלְעָזָר (El'azar), meaning "God has helped." The first element of the name, אֵל (El), is the most basic word for "God" in Biblical Hebrew. This element occurs in many other personal names throughout the Hebrew Bible and is derived from the same Proto-Semitic root as the Arabic word الله (Allāh), which is still used by Arabic-speaking Muslims, Christians, and Jews throughout the Middle East.
  The ending of the name, עָזָר (ʿāzār), is the third-person masculine singular past-tense form of a paʿal verbal construction meaning "He has helped." This is a normal Hebrew verb construction and has no connection to Osiris. The name Lazarus has absolutely no etymological connection to the Egyptian name wsjr. The two names do not even come from the same language.

• He didn't have 12 followers:
  This is referencing a mural reading "the twelve who reap the harvest." However, Horus does not appear in this mural. Horus has several followers such as six demi-human "Sons of Horus" or an untold amount of metalworkers (Traunecker2001-jx, Daunt1926-xm), but it never comes up to 12. Jesus picked 12 followers to represent the 12 tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28).

• He was not crucified:
  D. M. Murdock identifies the symbol of the cross as preexisting Christianity. In the case of Horus, she shows the ankh and Christ's cross as being the same. This is not the case, as the ankh is a symbol for life, not death, and no one was ever crucified on one (Wikipedia_contributors2023-du).

• He was not resurrected
  In some articles, it has been said that Horus was killed and resurrected; this is untrue (Wallis_Budge2012-th) Horus was not resurrected in his account. The Metternich Stella shows Horus is stung as a child by a scorpion sent by Set. The baby is weakened and refuses to eat, but is later cured by Thoth. Horus is healed, not resurrected, even if it would not bear any resemblance to the Christian story (Borghouts1978-nk, Scott1951-lr,Nunn2002-ia'), Kakosy1994-vl, Teeter2011-ws)

• Title and other similarities
  Horus has never been mentioned as the Savior or The Way, The Truth, and The Life. He is not called Christ either, so he doesn't share any non-generic titles with Jesus.

Jesus is not a copy of Horus

The claim that Jesus is a copy of the Egyptian god Horus is largely based on misinformation and selective interpretation, often popularized by movies like Zeitgeist and Religulous. Contrary to these claims, Horus was not born of a virgin, did not have 12 disciples, and was neither crucified nor resurrected. His narrative also lacks elements like being born on December 25th, being tempted in the desert, or performing miracles similar to those attributed to Jesus. New Testament scholars and experts in Egyptian mythology, such as Bart Ehrman and Donald B. Redford, have discredited the Horus-Jesus connection as lacking historical evidence and academic rigor. Therefore, the assertion that Jesus is a plagiarized version of Horus does not hold water when scrutinized against primary sources and scholarly research.