A Roman writer of the fourth century, Macrobius, in a work called Saturnalia (1:18) discusses the practice of representing the gods in the temples as of different ages. He says:

These differences of age refer to the sun, which seems to be a babe at the winter solstice, as the Egyptians represent him in their temples on a certain day, that being the shortest day, he is then supposed to be small and an infant.

This is confirmed and elaborated by a Christian writer, the author of the Paschal Chronicle, who says:

Jeremiah gave a sign to the Egyptian priests, saying that their idols would be destroyed by a child-saviour, born of a virgin and lying in a manger. That is why they still worship, as a goddess, a virgin-mother, and adore an infant in a manger.

He wants to explain age old customs to which their god is indebted as imitations of their own much later god. The stories of Jesus and Horus, the god in question, are similar. Horus was a sun god of the Egyptians. In the adjustment of the rival Egyptian gods, when the tribes were amalgamated in one kingdom, about 3000 years before Jesus was born, Horus was made the son of Osiris and Isis.

In the Egyptian religion that emerged from the syncretism, Osiris, a supreme and transcendental god who had acquired the attributes of most other Egyptian gods, was the father of Horus. Among his many titles were Lord of Lords, King of Kings, God of Gods, the Resurrection and the Life, the Good Shepherd, Eternity and Everlastingness, the god who “made men and women to be born again.” He became Serapis in the Hellenistic period, a god much like the Christian concept of Yehouah. Horus and his Father, Osiris, were even interchangeable, reminding us that Jesus said:

I and my Father are one.

Osiris was a god who suffered at the hands of the evil Set—another Asiatic god conceived of as the brother of Osiris—died and rose again, to reign eternally over the souls of the righteous dead. He is depicted as dark in complexion, suggesting he is the sun of night or winter, the gentle sun of the ANE who is father of the sun of the horizon, the sun that daily passes from the eastern horizon to the western one. His worshippers believed that, like their god, they would inherit eternal life. Some say Osiris’s coming was announced by the “Three Kings” or the “Three Wise Men”—the three stars Mintaka, Anilam and Alnitak in the belt of Orion, which point directly to Osiris’s star in the east, Sirius (Sothis), the sign of his birth. Osiris typified the Christian idea of a messiah, a saviour god, rather than the Jewish idea of a conquering king. His flesh was also eaten in the form of communion cakes of wheat, the plant of truth, just as Christians devour wafers which are the body of their saviour god.

In the bible, Psalms 23 is an Egyptian appeal to Osiris. A hymn to Osiris as the Good Shepherd begs him to lead the deceased to the green pastures and still waters of Paradise, the nefer-nefer or most beautiful land, to restore the soul to the body and give protection in the valley of the shadow of death (the Tuat). Before the Lord’s Prayer, an Egyptian hymn to Osiris-Amun (Amen) began, “O Amen, O Amen, who art in heaven.” Amen was also invoked at the end of every prayer. It was later rationalized, in Judaism, into a nod of assent signifying “Truly” or “Verily”.

Horus was born of the virgin Isis-Meri, Isis the Beloved, on 25 December. Like his father, his birth was announced by that star in the east (Sothis) and attended by the three wise men. Isis was the sister and the lover of Osiris, but whether we should speak of her as “a virgin mother” is a matter of words. In one Egyptian myth she was fecundated by Osiris in their mother’s womb, in another and more popular, she was miraculously impregnated by contact with the false phallus of the dead Osiris. Virginity in goddesses is a mythical virtue not a practical one. It is as real as the eternal life that all of these speculative religions promise.

Why should Pagan beliefs have to be used to explain the Christian virgin birth myth? The Septuagint plainly, but in a false translation, said, “A virgin shall conceive”, and this was taken to refer to the Messiah. Moreover, if Jesus despised conjugal relations, as early Christians believed, they could not accept that he, as a god, would have chosen the vile union necessary to enter the world. The early Christians in whose circles the gospel stories developed, will have seen this as an implication their God was virgin born, like the equivalent Pagan legends. It would have seemed a necessity of any god in the Hellenistic world.

The birthday of Horus was annually celebrated in the temples, about 25 December. A figure of Horus as a baby was laid in a manger, in a scenic reconstruction of a stable, and a statue of Isis was placed beside it. In the catacombs at Rome are pictures of the baby Horus being held by the virgin mother Isis—the original Madonna and Child. Horus was the rising sun, the sun of the east. He was the daily saviour of mankind, saving us from perpetual darkness. He was the light of the world. His birth festival was a Christmas without Christ.

This spectacle is still presented in every church in the world on 25 December. Catholic priests have taught their flocks to believe S Francis of Assisi invented this touching scene of the humble birth of the redeemer. Francis of Assisi will never have read the obscure Paschal Chronicle, but some other Christian writer had seen and reproduced it, and it had come to the knowledge of S Francis. Christ’s crib is an exact reproduction of the scene exhibited in Egyptian temples centuries before Christ, and the Egyptian legend itself is thousands of years older than Jeremiah. On the analogy of the Christian practice, the Egyptian legend must have described Isis as having given birth to her divine son in a stable. In Alexandria, there was a similar Greek celebration on 25 December of the birth of a divine son to Kore (the “virgin”).

And this is not the end. The Greeks had a similar celebration. The idea of a divine son being born in a cave was common, or there were actually several scenic representations of the birth of these gods in their festivals. J M Robertson gives some in Christianity and Mythology. Hermes, the Logos (like Jesus in John), the messenger of the gods, son of Zeus and the virgin Maia, was born in a cave, and he performed extraordinary prodigies a few hours after birth. He was represented as a “child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger”. Dionysos (Iacchos, Bacchus) was similarly represented. The image of him as a babe was laid in a basket cradle in the cave in which he was born.