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- Good evening.

When Africans were brought to this country as slaves, the merchants of that industry justify their involvement in the sale of human flesh by declaring that the Africans were not Christians, therefore they were heathens.

But where do the deep roots of Christianity lead?

Back to the Africans along the Nile in Nubia and Egypt according to Dr. Charles S. Finch, Assistant Professor of Community Medicine and Family Practice at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. Finch is a board certified family physician who was educated at Yale University and Jefferson Medical College.

He is a former instructor of African History and Mathematics at the Commonwealth School in Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. Finch was also an epidemiologist for the Center for Disease Control and a clinical preceptor at the Duke Watts Family Medicine Center in Durham, North Carolina.

We asked Dr. Finch, a practicing Catholic, to explain the thesis of his paper, "The Kamitic or Egyptian Origin of Christianity."

- I think I can best answer that by saying that we have the idea that Christianity sort of sprung full-blown on the world stage some 2000 years ago.

We will admit that it came out of the Jewish tradition, or the Jewish tradition was in some sense responsible for the Christian tradition, but that Christianity itself was a higher dispensation and therefore was totally unique and was unlike any religious phenomenon that had happened in the world before and therefore brought a new dispensation.

My thesis is that there is another route to Christianity.

There is another stream which fed the river of Christianity, and that one is a Kamitic route.

Now I use that word Kamitic to refer particularly to Egypt, but to the African ethos in general.

Now that word Kamitic, and I'll spell it out, K-A-M-I-T-I-C, comes from an Egyptian word kam.

Now, the Egyptians did not have vowels in their written language.

Now, of course, when they spoke, they spoke with vowels just like you and I did, but they did not represent their vows in the written language.

So when we transliterate the hieroglyphics into our script or the script that we use today, the word Kamitic comes out in terms of its root to KM, which we transliterate as kam.

Now, that is the strongest word in the Egyptian language for black or blackness.

It refers not only to the land and the color of the land, but also the color of the people who occupy the land of Egypt and really the Nile Valley.

We sort of like to talk about Egypt as a geographical expression, but it refers to a civilization that encompassed a large stretch of Nile Valley, including what we today call Nubia or Ethiopia.

And that in the ancient times, there was not necessarily any clear distinction between Ethiopia and Egypt.

Very often, in various parts of the history, they were one and same and were called such.

But to kind of get back to the subject, so kam is the strongest word in Egyptian language, meaning black or blackness.

I use that word therefore, to refer to a broad African ethos as personified by the high civilization and culture of Egypt.

Now, it was out of the metaphysical and religious and symbolic creations of these people, the Kamitic people of the Nile Valley, that the later revealed religions of which Christianity is perhaps the most remarkable one, evolved or developed.

And that the Kamitic genesis was, I think, the preponderant one, particularly in the first three centuries of Christianity.

That indeed, if you look at Christianity in the first three centuries of its birth and development, it was in many respects, a Kamitic religion.

- Okay, in order for our viewers to better follow you, tell us about some of the main divine figures in the Egyptian culture and what period are we talking about?

- Okay, now, the Egyptian pantheon is a fairly extensive one.

I mean, pantheon means their company of gods, of which there are a number.

The one particular group of figures that gave rise to the phenomena of Christianity in particular, although not exclusively by any stretch of imagination, were those who participate in what I like to call the Osirian drama, the drama of Osiris, which by the way, became the prototype of all similar dramas that occurred later on in the Mediterranean, that of Dionysus, Tammuz, Attis and Adonis.

Okay, but not to get too far off the subject, Osiris is the main actor in the Ossian drama, or the Ossian mystery play.

His Egyptian name is Asar, A-S-A-R.

He is according to Plutarch, he is the son of Newt who was born during the last five days of the year.

He comes and rains on the earth for 28 years, which by the way is an illusion or reference to the lunar cycle or the cycle of the moon.

He teaches man the science of agriculture or horticulture.

He teaches them how to grow the vine.

He civilizes them.

In fact, he brings them all the blessings that take man from a savage state to a civilized state.

His sister is also his wife.

Her name, which we know in history is Isis.

Her Egyptian name was Ast, A-S-T, which means the seat or the throne.

Now, Isis is on one hand the sister of Osiris.

She's also his wife.

She is also the virgin mother of his son Horus.

Now, you know, it's hard to understand how somebody who has a husband could be a virgin mother, but we'll deal with that a little bit later.

Then there is a son, Horus, in Greek spelled H-O-U-R-S, whose Egyptian name is Heru, H-E-R-U.

Now, Horus, among other things, gives his name to our word for hour, okay, which is a type of time or which is a unit of time.

Heru, his Egyptian name, H-E-R-U, gives us the word hero in Greek.

Now, why is that so?

Because Horus was the youthful solar god, the youthful solar deity who conquers and defeats the dragon of darkness.

And all of the later heroes of the epics, particularly of Greece, but not just Greece, all over the Mediterranean, were also similarly solar gods or solar figures who conquered the dragon of darkness.

And that includes Hercules, that includes Theseus, that includes Perseus.

All of the major mythical figures of the Mediterranean and Greece in particular were solar heroes in one form or another.

And their prototype is Horus, and they are called by the Greeks hero.

And that word hero comes from the Egyptian name for Horus, which is Heru.

Now, the fourth actor in this drama, if I may use that word, is a very enigmatic God or figure Set, S-E-T.

The reason why I say he is enigmatic, because he is one of the earliest gods in the Egyptian pantheon.

He is older, interestingly enough than any of the gods that I named earlier, except for Isis.

He's older than Osiris, and he is older than Horus, or his worship is earlier than any of those.

And well, earlier and early on, he was a benevolent God.

He was a God to whom you prayed for sustenance and growth and protection.

And he also was a god of the underworld.

However, by historical times, and when I say historical times, the beginning of the first dynasties, which somewhere between 3.000 and 4,000 BC, he has metamorphosed into the great adversary.

- Or changed into.

- Changed, excuse me.

Yeah, I mean, let me use that word, changed into the great adversary of Osiris who becomes the personification of the good being.

And the word Set, S-E-T, interestingly enough, gives us the root of the later Semitic Satan.

Because Set becomes, evolves into a personification of evil, even though he originally was not and becomes a prototype of Satan.

And even, as I said, gives his name to the word Satan.

But even in the episodes described in Genesis, sort of give us an inclination of that also, because in at least the non-biblical traditions, Satan is originally a good angel who was cast out because he rebelled against God.

Well, Satan, Set, excuse me, Set, the Egyptian God also was a good being or a good deity who eventually became evil and became the personification of evil.

So these are the four main actors in the Ossian drama or the drama of Osiris.

He who comes in and brings all the blessings on earth rains for 28 years, then is killed by his brother, Set.

Set, I should mention also is Osiris brother.

He's killed by his brother, Set who cuts him up into 14 pieces and scatters those pieces all over the Nile.

His sister and wife, Isis mourns his loss, mourns his death, and goes all over the world picking up the pieces of his body to reconstitute him.

And then she, interestingly enough, in the myth actually conceives after he has died, which is one of the great Egyptian mysteries.

And out of that conception, out of that union, in other words, the post resurrected Osiris and Isis comes Horus, who is the son of Osiris, and eventually he and Set fight.

He and Set have a tremendous battle that rages back and forth and he emerges victorious.

- You cite a lot of parallels between the Egyptian religion, if you will, and Christianity.

Let's take the birth of Horus once again and the birth of Jesus.

- Okay, there's a number of different ways that you can look at this.

If you look at the institution of the Pharaohocracy, that is the pharaohs, the institution of the kingship of the Egyptian kingship as personified the Pharaohs.

The Pharaoh was the earthly manifestation of Horus.

In fact, one of his names was Horus.

So he Horus in the flesh.

Now, there is in the Temple of Luxor.

in a place in upper Egypt, which we call Thebes, dating from 1700 BC.

A group of scenes, four in number, which are absolutely fascinating, and it's just too bad that I can't show you the picture of these scenes, but they are scenes depicting the birth of the royal Pharaoh.

Now, the Egyptians considered their pharaoh's divine, God's incarnate, Horus incarnate.

So what they were depicting was a divine birth, IE a divine Horus in the personification of the Pharaoh.

In the first scene, you have Thoth, T-H-O-T-H, who is the messenger of the gods, who's the God of will, he's the God of science, he's the God of knowledge.

He's also the messenger of the Gods.

Who comes to the divine mother, IE the great queen, the wife of the Pharaoh, and announces to her the impending birth of a divine child who is descended from the God Amun-Ra in the personification of Horus, the annunciation.

In the second scene, you have the God Kneph, K-N-E-P-H, who is the personification of breath and spirit.

Well, he's the personification of breath and air, and the Egyptian conception spirit was synonymous with breath.

So here you have Kneph as the spirit, the divine or holy spirit as it were, holding the symbol of life to the mouth of this queen.

Therefore, it is depicting that the queen is conceiving by the power of the divine or holy spirit.

If you look in the gospels again, you find that Mary has conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In the fourth scene, third scene, excuse me, you find the baby being born, the divine child being born just equivalent to the nativity of Jesus at Bethlehem.

And in the fourth scene, you find all the gods of the Egyptian pantheon gathering around this baby to sing his praises and adore him, just like the angels gathered around the infant Jesus, to sing his praises and adore him.

So here, 1700 years before Jesus was supposed to have been born.

You have the annunciation, the conception, the birth and adoration of the child, IE the complete nativity scene as described by the gospels.

Not to mention, well, you know, we can leave it right there and elaborate a little further.

But here you see, and remember why I say that this is parallel to the birth of Horus, because you see the infant Pharaoh is Horus incarnate.

- Okay, what is meant by solar nativity?

- Okay, yeah, I'm glad you asked that question, because that comes right behind what I was just explaining.

Now, as I said, Horus was one of the forms of the sun God or solar deity.

There were many different forms, but he was one, and particularly he is the infant in one respect and also the youthful solar deity.

Jesus too was a personification of the sun.

In fact, the gospels make a number of references or a number of allusions to Jesus being a emblem or the sun being a type of Jesus or Jesus being a type of the sun.

Now, it is interesting, fascinating even to relate that all of the sun gods of antiquity, particularly the youthful sun gods, Horus being the first and Horus being the prototype, had their birthdays on December 25th.

Now, why is that?

At that particular time in history, and we're talking about somewhere between 2000 and 3000 years ago, December 21st was the winter solstice.

December 21st was the winter solstice, that time when the sun was at its lowest ebb.

Now, the ancients used to describe natural phenomena in very poetic sort of terms.

So the solstice, winter solstice being the time when the sun was at its lowest ebb was often called the sun in its cave.

- [Listervelt] Okay?

- Okay.

Now, on December 21st, that is when the sun reached its lowest ebb, IE and went down to the cave.

For three days, the sun remains in the solstice, remains in its cave.

The first day at which the sun begins to rise again, or begins to move up toward the summer solstice is on midnight of the 25th.

So midnight of the 25th can said to be the birth of the sun in a cave, which as we know, many of the traditions assign the birth of Jesus to a cave.

At that particular moment, 3000 years ago, December 25th, midnight on the eastern horizon where the sun comes up, the constellation Virgo is sitting on the horizon so that the sun can be said to be born in a cave of the virgin.

It is also, I might add, the star Sirius is the brightest star in the heavens.

The only heavenly bodies to our naked eye that are brighter are the planets.

But the brightest star in the heavens is Sirius.

A Sirius is a very, very important Egyptian star because at a early stage in their history, it arose in such a way as to announce the Nile flood.

And so the Egyptians spent many millenniums carefully observing Sirius, and it became what probably the most, next to the sun and the moon itself, became the most important heavenly body in their astronomy.

Interestingly enough, there are those who say that Sirius was indeed the star that led the three wise men to Jesus, IE, to the sun.

Why is that?

If you look at Sirius on the night of the 25th in southerly latitudes, in tropical or southerly latitudes, Sirius is almost directly overhead on the meridian, is directly overhead pointing right down, okay, over where you happen to be standing in various southerly latitudes, okay?

So when the sun is being born in the cave of the virgin on the 25th, Sirius is right overhead, the brightest star in the heavens.

Now, right adjacent to Sirius is a constellation of Orion the Hunter.

There are three stars in the belt of Orion, pointing right to Sirius as if they are following, in fact, it looks like if you look at the planisphere or the representations of them in the constellation, they look like they're following Sirius.

Those three stars in the belt of Orion are called, according to ancient tradition, the three kings.

So again, you can see that much of what we call gospel Christianity has direct correlations to what we might call astronomical mythology.

That is astronomical facts, hard astronomical facts that were represented mythologically or allegorically speaking.

- Why did the early Christian fathers change the birth date, as you say, of Jesus from January 6th to December 25th?

- Yes, early on the birthday of Jesus was recognized as being January 6th.

In fact, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Christmas is not even celebrated until January 6th.

And in fact, January 6th represents the 12 days of Christmas that is referred to in the carol, "On the 12th day of Christmas my true love sent to me."

That refers the fact that Jesus was originally born on just January 6th, and in Western Christianity that becomes the epiphany or the appearance of the manifestation.

When Christianity in the third and fourth centuries began to expand and began to seek to convert large masses of people all over the Mediterranean world, they ran right up against centuries, millenniums old systems of sun worship, Horus being one example, Mithras being another.

And in every one of those instances, the sun's birthday was December 25th.

Now, one of the ways in which any religion acquires converts, particularly on a mass scale, is that they incorporate many of the beliefs of the people who they're trying to convert into their own religion.

Christianity was no exception to this.

And particularly since they had already made an identification that an emblem of Jesus was the sun.

So it was no great leap.

- So the birthday was changed too.

- Yeah, the birthday was changed, was taken from January 6th, brought back to the 25th to identify with the birth date of the sun, which was enforced among all the sun worshiping peoples all over antiquity.

And therefore it paved the way or made easier the conversions of masses of people all over Africa, Western Asia, and Europe.

- How did the early Egyptians and the later Christians deal with the question of fatherhood for Horus and Jesus respectively?

- That's a very interesting and sometimes somewhat subtle relationship.

Now, you remember when I said earlier that Horus was born posthumously, if I may use that word, by a reconstituted Osiris.

It was almost a mystical or spiritual birth as much as anything else, okay?

When Horus and Set finished their battle, Set still tries to get back at Horus by bringing him up to the company of Gods and accusing Isis, one of being a harlot and Horus, two, of being a bastard.

Because there is no obvious father, you know, there's no obvious father.

So therefore assumes that because there's no living father, Horus is a bastard and Isis is a harlot.

So that therefore he has no right to be considered the heir of Osiris.

And therefore he should be disowned or disenfranchised.

Thoth, again, the messenger of the gods then assumes his role as the advocate.

He comes before Seb.

Seb is the chief magistrate of the gods and argues in favor of Horus, in favor of Horus's legitimate paternity.

Argues so persuasively and so convincingly that Seb, the chief magistrate of the Gods, rules in favor of Horus and against Set.

Interestingly enough, Seb is also in another aspect called the foster father of Horus, okay?

So in other words, he accepts the legitimate paternity of Horus and assumes the role of his foster father.

Now it is in the first chapter I think of the Gospel according to St. Matthew or in one of the earlier chapters of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, Mary is betrothed to Jesus, Joseph, excuse me, but then she conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, and remember we had said that earlier Horus had conceived also, or at least one of the manifestations of Horus that also conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost.

But Mary had conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost that God became immanent in her and therefore she conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost.

Joseph notices her in the state of being with child.

- State of pregnancy.

- And therefore considers repudiating her because for the reason of harlotry, because her child would therefore be a bastard or illegitimate.

The angel Gabriel, however, intercedes with Joseph and convinces him of the child's divine and therefore legitimate paternity.

Joseph accepts this argument and then steps in or fulfills a role as the foster father of Jesus, because obviously Jesus' real father is God.

There is a divine and he therefore is the foster earthly father.

So again, you can see the very close parallels to the two episodes.

And Joseph is equivalent in this particular situation to the God Seb.

So that you almost have, again two identical episodes revealing themselves, unfolding themselves in the same way.

- One concept that has been very difficult for me to grasp is that of the celestial cross.

Would you explain that please?

- Okay.

Most of what we know about the gospel history and representation of the story of Jesus has celestial or astronomical correspondences or antecedents.

Even the phenomenon of the cross and the crucifixion has astronomical relationships.

And if I may just show this diagram, if you can focus in on it, I'll try to hold it as steady as possible and explain astronomically the phenomenon of the celestial cross and the celestial crucifixion.

Bearing in mind that Jesus, like Horus, is a form of the sun or if you wanna put it the other way, the sun is a form of Jesus to Christ.

Now this line represents the celestial equator, and that's what I've got written here, okay, in kind of crude lettering, celestial equator, what is the celestial equator?

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