Is Lazarus a remake of Osiris?

Is the story about the raising of Lazarus by Jesus in the New Testament Gospel of John a remake of the mythical resurrection of Osiris by Horus in the ancient Egyptian texts?

Below is an image of the parts from my book Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection showing a comparison between the Egyptian Texts and the Gospel of John. CIE further evinces that John was written for an Egyptian audience and contains many Egyptian themes, having its provenance also in Egypt, likely at Alexandria, using ancient texts such as these and others from the library there.

For more information, see the search term “Lazarus” in the Google Book Search for Christ in Egypt.


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  1. Mr
    Yes, Acharya, you are correct. I have your book “Christ in Egypt” and everthing in it is logical. Where else would the Gospel Fables come from, especially as so many Hebrewsand Christians writing scriptures lived in Alexandria and had access to the Great Library, and also knew Egyptian Astrotheology.

  2. Osiris and Western Thought
    Hi Acharya, thanks for resurrecting this important topic.

    As you know, it is also discussed by Tom Harpur in The Pagan Christ. I have the impression that Harpur has a more positive spin, that understanding Egyptian origins enables a more empirical Christology.

    My suspicion here is that the rejection of Osiris is part of a Western pathology of prejudice against Asia. Noting that the Norse Gods were called the Aesir, a word also very similar to Osiris and Asia, I wonder if urban Christianity, in its efforts to impose uniformity on diverse rural populations, used Osiris as a talisman of the mystical and mythic and eastern, while claiming that Christianity was rational and logical and western. But, Saint John embeds Osiris at the heart of his gospel, in the same point relative to his text as Jesus comes relative to the Bible as a whole. The mythic battle between east and west saw Osiris as the secret leader of the east.

    Osiris was denigrated by the west in its official script while homage was still paid by the renaming of Osiris as Lazarus, of Isis as Mary, of Nephthys as Martha, and of Horus as Jesus. Denial of this renaming is a central problem in the hypocrisy of Abrahamic faiths, which face a contradiction between their claims to truth and their rejection of the wider religious heritage of the world that supports the origins of their own faith.

  3. Thank you. As you can see from the examples from ancient Egyptian texts that I have provided, there is much more to Egyptian religion and mythology than the simplified encyclopedia entries most people turn to.

    While Isis is portrayed in myths and during ritual celebrations as resurrecting Osiris on an annual basis, so too was Horus repeatedly depicted in the ancient texts as resurrecting his father, who symbolized the deceased person at whose funeral these texts would have been read.


    Osiris is the nightly sun which is “resurrected” each day [i]as [/i]Horus; thus, Horus is both the resurrector and the resurrection of his father.

    Unlike biography, mythology is not set in stone, and it is often cyclical and variable, dependent on natural phenomena, such as the sun, moon, planets, stars and constellations, as well as earthly events and elements.

    In this same regard, Isis does not only use Osiris’s phallus to produce Horus, she is also depicted as conceiving the god “immaculately” and without a male partner and is thus also a [i]virgin [/i]mother.

    ISIS IS A VIRGIN MOTHER ([url][/url])

  4. I am wondering if I am mistaken regarding the timeline. The biblical story has the biblical Jesus raising Lazarus, the disciple he loved, but wouldn’t the Osiris story have Isis resuscitating the reconstructed Osiris, with whom she then became pregnant from the magic penis she provided for him, and then she gave birth to Horus? Do I have the story wrong? I am wondering how could Horus raise Osiris when Horus had not yet been born? I thought Isis was the one who resurrected Osiris.

  5. It seems quite odd in your link that the mother of a king would be called “The Great Virgin”. It causes me to wonder if there was some mistranslation from the original Egyptian writings into Greek. Perhaps the word translated as “virgin” actually meant “lover” or something that would make more sense for a mother. It seems strange that the Egyptians would believe a mother to be a virgin, but then there are millions today who consider the mother of the biblical Jesus to be a virgin, so maybe the ancient Egyptians were just as gullible as many Christians are today. I guess those who do not learn from the past are condemned to relive it.

  6. Tellurian: “It seems strange that the Egyptians would believe a mother to be a virgin”

    No, it actually isn’t strange at all when one has a greater understanding of the Egyptian religion. A female has the ability to re-gain her virginity via sacred union with god regardless of being married or having many children.


    [quote]”… as explained in my book Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ:

    The Greek name “Lazarus” or “Lazaros” equals “Eleazar” in Hebrew and, per Strong’s [Concordance] (G2976), means “whom God helps.”

    It is a strange coincidence firstly that the person whom Jesus resurrects happens to be named “whom God helps,” and secondly that “Eleazar”—or, breaking down its original components in Hebrew,
    El-Azar—closely resembles a combination of the Semitic word for God, “El,” with the Egyptian name for Osiris, “Ausar.” Interestingly, there exists an ancient Phoenician inscription called “the Carpentras” that does indeed identify Osiris with the Semitic god “El” or “Elohim,” calling him “Osiris-Eloh.”2

    Regarding “El Osiris,” Albert Ross Parsons remarks:

    “…El Osiris in another form is L’Azarus, an account of whose death and resurrection occur in the gospel of John, where the Lord Jesus
    personates the central sun which restored to life El Osiris…”

    – Christ in Egypt, page 304[/quote]

  7. One also needs to know the history of the parthenogenetic creatrix or virgin mother of the world, as highlighted in my review and excerpts from the book by Dr. Marguerite Rigoglioso:

    Virgin Mother Goddesses of Antiquity ([url][/url])
    Neith, Virgin Mother of the World ([url][/url])

    The virgin mother is an old concept – evidently one of the oldest we know about – and practically every goddess around the Mediterranean was linked into it in some way or another.

    1. There is a theory that early humans did not associate sex with reproduction at all, and so the appearance of children was just something that happened through women, who would naturally be seen as the source of all life. It would be logical to extend this to the cosmic/metaphysical level.

  8. really??
    Looking at those “parallels” I have to ask myself, “really??? are you serious???”

    That two “sisters” once ran is a “parallel”??? Seriously?? This would be a joke even if the claim didn’t discredit itself: those were “sisters” in a non-family sense as Jesus had no blood sisters.

    Osiris and Lazarus are parallels?? Really?? It is amazing that this “Lazaurs” was Osiris, the chief god in the Egyptian pantheon. To say the least, the translation of his name into “Lazarus” is unique as I have never seen anyone claim this anywhere else, even though as the chief god he is the most commonly cited Egyptian deity. The chief Egyptian deity is the same as the poor Judean?? Really???

    Oh and it looks like Osiris in the first “parallel” is the same as Jesus, and here the same as Lazarus. Amusing.

    Isis once cried, and Jesus once cried, so this is a case of borrowing?? Really?? Didn’t the quote above say Osiris was Jesus, and the one below that Horus was Jesus? Oh and weren’t you saying before that Jesus was copied from Mithras (who had nothing in common with these Egyptian gods)

    I just love this. You have to go pretty much everywhere to find parallels as weak as “they both once cried”. You show how ridiculous these theories are.

    1. The parallels are obvious, despite all the hysteria. In fact, they are quite striking to anyone who isn’t insensate.

      As concerns the word “Lazarus” being related to “Osiris,” ([url][/url]) there are many good, scientific reasons to make that connection, but one would only know those facts if s/he actually studied the subject. Your remarks indicate you didn’t even read this post or any of the material in the link below the image.

      And, yes, of course I maintain that Jesus is also a remake of Mithra ([url][/url]) – many gods and goddesses were utilized in the creation of the Christ figure. Anyone who has actually studied the mythicist case ([url][/url]) I’ve made in my books and articles would know that fact. Unfortunately, many of my critics have not studied the case in any depth whatsoever and are not experts on my work or the subject matter at all.

      What is “ridiculous” is the idea that a Jewish man 2,000 years ago was the “son of God,” born of a virgin, cured the blind, raised the dead, walked on water, was transfigured on a mount, himself resurrected from the dead and flew off into heaven.

      1. If the name Neith can become Athena then I see no problem with Osiris becoming Lazarus.

      2. All religions have a sense of “ridiculous” in it..but that’s why they are faith based. Now there are similarities within all religions because they are centralized in the main theme of a “God” but some connections made in this book are clearly reaching and over-interpreted

  9. bollocks
    the significant feature of the lazarus story is the time he spent in the tomb, which is four days. he outdid the messiah on that one! but seriously, the four days that lazarus was ‘dead’ represent the four ‘dead’ days of the mosaic calendar. the annual cycle worked on a system of 360 days, with four ‘dead days’ counted off before the month of abib began. the calendar was constructed like this to ensure that the seven day week remained consistent, 7 x 52 = 364, and also to ensure that the feast days fell on the same day of the month every year. if they didn’t the long weekend of passover would be all over the place and the weekly sabbaths would clash with the annual sabbaths. it is on this day the call is made to ‘come forth’, and then the instruction given to ‘loose him and let him go’, which all together translates as: ‘this is the first day of the annual feast day cycle of 360 days according to the mosaic calendar, and you will see it if you take the graveclothes – as a symbol of death – from your eyes’. this part of the story serves as a marker for the correct timing of events as they unfolded over the next few weeks. sorry, no star signs here 😉

    1. Again, regardless of the hysteria and bizarre strawmen and fingerpointing elsewhere, the parallels are striking and important.

  10. bizarre?
    hysteria? indeed!

    straw man? maybe a scarecrow!

    granted; the parallels are striking, and important. my case is that beside the obvious literary parallels there is a unique subtext underlying the christ myth – and by myth i imply no negative connotation; i hold that the myth is a valid literary form – and that subtext is the package we know as judaism. one of the features of that subtext is the mosaic calendar. we see its hellenized form still in use by the jews today. it is not lunar, solar, sidereal or metonic; it is purely a numerical construct, and, no doubt, based on a borrowed 360 day/12 month pre-existing form. the trick is to work out the adjustment cycle. once the calendar is locked in all those esoteric and weird things in apocalypse loose their nonsense value and become exactly what they were intended to be: metaphors. and the saturnalia and that fertility thing with the rabbit and the eggs go back to where they belong as well. tsk – bloody romans!

    anyway, no offense intended; just testing the waters

    there’s one astronomical feature i discovered weaved into the biblical text that you may appreciate; the virgin eve and her first two sons. the text states quite specifically that the first reproductive event involving a female virgin resulted in two births, hence, twins. the time it takes for the sun to enter the virgin and exit the twins is around forty weeks; the human gestation period.

    the sphinx shows us that the ascribed identities of the constellations and their circular course were common knowledge in egyptian antiquity. the greeks picked up on that system, as did the hebrews through moshe = to draw out. sphinx = mythical beast having a woman’s head, a lion’s body, wings and the power to kill any who failed to solve its riddle. sphinx, from gk. sphingein = draw tight, as in close a circle, from which we get sphincter = a ring of muscle surrounding an opening. their year opened with the virgin, the head, and closed with the lion, the tail, and the wings… well, that’s obvious

    the pool of symbols is universal, how we arrange them is up to us 🙂

  11. OTher way around
    Could the Egyptian belief possibly copied of Christians? :s

  12. oops… arriving 1 year after the last comment:-)
    I stand with -and admire- Acharya on all her stances regarding religious dogmatism. Here in France freedom of speech is being all the time more eroded.
    I have a few questions nevertheless first to Acharya but actually to everybody :
    • haven’t Egyptians identified the principle of evil in ‘seth’ ? …making them no more immune to barbarism than their followers ? They spotted it : so dogmatism was there already wasn’t it ?
    • the theory of evolution is known to be so flawed it is a sinking ship. One example in a million : ok giraffes have dvlped their long neck over time to reach the high parts of trees, but the fossils of those short and middle neck giraffes, when trees were lower:-), are nowhere. Another funny one is that man is said to be coming from ape. Well actually why obfuscate the debate here ? Man -like the ape- comes from the atom of hydrogen ! Could it be that smthg else than mechanical astrological random process is going on here ? Just a question…
    • yep yep Osiris-Lazarus stories ( we call him ‘Lazare’ here, like in ‘Gare Saint-Lazare’ popularized worldly in the wonderful movie Hugo Cabret ) oh are so obviously echoing each other through time. Mmh… should we call that plagiarism, or rather eternal truths ? And if so, what truths ?
    • pyramids -Egypt, Mexico etc…- have been encoded with Pi, the golden ratio, and the numbers of the precession of the equinoxes -a 25920 years cycle very hard to observe- among other enigmas -or wonders-. How come !?
    • islam is today the most troubled hummm movement bothered by women and history. Here I notify that I am not talking about people but only about ideas. Haven’t Isis and Mary given birth to sun gods ? Why is this bothering ? And having a problem with history ( Afghanistan, Mali, and now Egypt among many others ) just mean you don’t want to face history no ? Mmh. What is there that could be so annoying ?
    🙂 I love my life. Answering messages written a year ago ! But if anybody find this bottle in the sea, given the fact that I won’t come back here, please write your answer at After all miracles and free acts are our safest bets nowadays…

  13. Your paralles are excelent However I’m wondering if your book has a side by side chart, showing how the birth of Jesus from The gosple of Mathew is a remake of the Birth of Horus from Egyptian texts?

  14. lol! Yeah, you can “prove” pretty much everything when you rip short snippets of text completely out of context. Twit.

    1. What a brilliant retort!

      The point is that many of these mythical motifs are present in Egyptian religion, which undoubtedly influenced Christianity. This post serves to refute falsehoods by nonexperts (who ignorantly call others “twit”) that these motifs were not present within Egyptian religion.

      The context argument is irrelevant here. We are interested in any possible element that may have influenced Christianity. When these elements and motifs were presented to the public, they were not kept in any context. They were part of Egyptian religious doctrines and rituals that stood on their own. It is extremely disingenuous and irrational to try to bat away these important elements and motifs with simple-minded and emotion-driven shrieks of “context!” and puerile insults.

      Religious fanaticism tends to blind people to what is blatantly obvious in front of them, unfortunately, and to make them rather anti-social and dishonest, obviously.

      In the meantime, my scholarly book of nearly 600 pages, Christ in Egypt, draws from thousands of primary sources in their original languages, which most “twits” are not able to do research in and are highly ignorant of.

  15. The earliest dates of the Osiris account seem to be about 2400BC? We know Jesus resurrected Lazarus in about 30AD so any atheist might think that Jesus merely recounted some old Egyptian legends common to His time.

    In fact as the Osoiris legend is based on texts inscribed in pyramid walls – and pyramids and Sphinx seem to have survived The Flood it seems obvious that the Osiris account is an attempt by Satan and his minions to spread a false worship of stone idols in the awful years leading up to the Flood that Made Jehovah decide to destroy all life and artefacts off earth except for Noah and his family.
    Around the world today are billions of people who worship idols or false gods while a few Christians continue to worship Jehovah – the only real God who has promised to wipe all the idolators off the face of the earth for a second time.
    You need to accept the reality of the Flood and the idolatry of Bablyon before this Osiris-Lazarus question becomes nonsensical.

    1. I have just read this thread again after Acharya linked to it on Facebook. Hi Acharya, hope you are doing well. I am struggling to tell if the last comment from Rose White is satire. Rose says “You need to accept the reality of the Flood and the idolatry of Bablyon before this Osiris-Lazarus question becomes nonsensical.” Yes very true. If you think Noah and the Flood is literal history then any sensible reading will seem like nonsense. And ‘Bablyon’ is a nice touch.

  16. I love all your replies to the comments. I’ve purchase all of your books and enjoy them immensely. Thanks for all your hard work.

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