Zeitgeist
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Zeitgeist - Companion Guide
Peter Joseph (creator of Zeitgeist) believes that I'm mentally ill because I disagree with him. You can read all about it on his forums (linked from this forum post), with a blog-based rebuttal here. You better not disagree with him, or you'll be labeled insane next. Perhaps I'm crazy for pointing out his forum post?
I have been getting many complaints from people who claim that I did not read the Companion Guide, so therefore I cannot debate the movie. My first argument against that is I was debating the facts in the movie, which does not include whatever is written in an e-book by another author. Second, the Companion Guide covers only Part I of the film, not Parts II and III, so I fail to see how this means I cannot at least debate those parts. In all fairness, I decided to get a copy of the Companion Guide. Let's start talking about it...
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Horus, Sun of God
- Horus versus Set
- Born on December 25th
- The Virgin Isis-Mery
- Conclusion
Introduction
The book starts with taking two quotes out of context then providing us with a quote by a similar author to Acharya S. Following the third quote, it does not seem too illogical to me that a religion, ancient or modern, would have some form of good and evil, an afterlife, and so forth. Seeing how we are doing an introduction, let's talk about Acharya S a bit. I discussed her to some extent in the Movie Sources section.
Essentially she's a liar and fraud, who claims to have superior knowledge of language (Greek, Hebrew, English, for starters), when in reality her knowledge of language seems to be child-like at best -- making comparisons to the words "Sun" and "Son" meaning the same thing and being the same words in other languages. She claims to be a "member" of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, but this is complete farce, and nobody there has heard of her. Not to mention she claims that she has a higher biblical knowledge than "that of most clergy", yet seems to be more guilty of buffet picking versus from the bible than most fundamentalist Christians.
I will not be able to go point-by-point through the book for two reasons, firstly because the author says so many things in such a small area, this page would be massive and it would take me forever to do it -- most of it you can find debunked in my debunking of Part I. The second is that it is copyrighted material, and so I would not be able to put the book on this page in its entirety -- so I will assume you have the book too.
However, I will do my best and discuss most things she says. Several people, as I mentioned at the top of this page, have essentially told me that this book clarifies all the mistakes made in the movie -- and that is hardly the case, because this book essentially makes the same or even more outrageous claims than the movie. The author of the book is also heavily guilty of self-sourcing, she provides her books as sources -- and to clarify with a complaint made, when I link someone to a page where I have already debunked something, that is not the same thing as me claiming my own page is the source itself.
Egyptian Language Translations
It seems like the author is just going on about how translations of the Egyptian language can be trusted, though that is not really clear, it seems like Acharya S has a hard time communicating even basic ideas without trying to make them sound complicated. Regardless, the author says that Greek writing is "word-based", implying to me that Egyptian writing was not, that it was simply pictograms. This is a common misconception, in fact the symbols used were consonants much like Arabic or Hebrew, followed by symbols showing the action of the word written, its function, and many other things[1].
God, Man or Myth?
She starts by talking about how we know that Egyptian Gods were myths and not to be considered real people, even though sometimes in Ancient Egypt such action was done -- same as we do to Jesus today, we make him into something real. Obviously from this area, she believes Jesus to be a myth, and that's fine, I just didn't realize her opinion of Jesus extended into fact. But I digress, she also mentions that you can find more information in her book The Christ Conspiracy, something which was used as a primary source for Zeitgeist, the movie, something I have shown to be less than trust worthy in the Movie Sources section.
Who Is Gerald Massey?
While he is said to be self-taught in the areas of the written language, even to have taught himself to read Egyptian hieroglyphs, he is really no one of consequence outside of the circles of Christian conspiracies. He is not considered an Egyptologist, or someone knowledgeable of ancient texts by anyone but himself and Christian conspiracists. While they may contribute this to an even bigger conspiracy, I just say he was full of it. As he was someone who considered himself a druid, it does not surprise me that there might be some animosity towards Christianity, especially because of its anti-pagan activities of the Middle Ages, and thus a desire to make it look like it was stolen, from a pagan religion. While Acharya S may consider herself and Gerald Massey to be knowledgeable about Egyptology, no one else on earth does, except followers of theirs.
Horus, Sun of God
The "Sun of God" thing does not make sense. I would like to remind you that Acharya S considers herself to be very knowledgeable in at least Hebrew and Greek, so how could she connect "Son" and "Sun", when they are not linguistically similar, and in English they just sound similar, but are not related. In this section she essentially says the same things that were said about Horus in Part I of the film, things such as he was the Sun God, born on December 25th, and many other things that are completely untrue, you can see more in that section.
Who is Horus?
This section makes similar and even more outrageous claims than Part I of the film did about Horus, it also attempts to make some really asinine linguistic connections. It even alludes to a fact that "horizon" has something to do with "Horus", when in fact horizon originates from Old French orizon, originally from Greek horos meaning "boundry". You would think someone with a knowledge of Greek would know that[2]. She continues on with claims and self-contradictions, too many to list here. Reading her work makes me want to stab out my eyes.
Horus versus Set
Basically this section of the book implies, as the movie did, that there is a battle between Horus and Set as there is one of Good and Evil, however as we discussed in Part I, only a single battle took place, Set was not evil until nearly 100 AD when the Romans turned him into a demonic figure.
The Astrotheology of the Passion
The author attempts more connections between Egypt, the Zodiac, and so forth. Things thoroughly debunked. The worst part is she blatantly lies about "birthdays" of deities to make different dates important, when most of them never had birth dates.
Who is Set?
What is most interesting is that they refer to Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead to talk about how Set is listed as essentially a demonic figure, but in the same chapter, it also talks about how Horus lived and how Ra was the Sun God, not Horus. It also talks about how Set and Horus only battled one time, not every night, nor was it a battle of "good and evil", more of a battle over who should look over humanity. No where in this chapter does it describe Set as "that god who steals souls, who laps up corruption, who lives on what is putrid, who is in charge of darkness, who is immersed in gloom, of whom those who are among the languid ones are afraid.", or anything even close[3]
Born on December 25th
As we discussed in Part I, in the Horus section, Horus' birthday was on the 5th day of the Epagomenal Days, which takes place in late August or sometimes in late July. We also discussed in the Birth subsection, in the Jesus section, some more information about December 25th, which is widely know to have been purposely put on a popular Roman pagan holiday, in order to convert more Romans. The book goes on to great length to explain away this whole situation.
Christian Sun Worship?
We discussed this at length on Part I.
The Virgin Isis-Mery
We discussed this at length in Part I was well, in the Horus and Jesus' Mother sections.
Mary is Mery Redux?
Just when I think the book could not lie any more, nor get any more preposterous, it essentially cross compares the stories of Jesus and Mary to that of Horus and Isis -- and of course for the author it works, because they completely lie about the story of Horus, making such claims as that Horus and Isis try to escape Set as Jesus and Mary tried to escape Herod. This is something that makes no sense, considering as we discussed in the Horus section and also above, Set and Horus were in battle over who controlled humanity, a single time, when Set cut off one of his testicles -- this is hardly even remotely close to anything like the story of Jesus as a child.
Conclusion
Essentially the movie made it a lot easier for her claims to be accepted, because the film maker made them much more simple, but even when they are simple, they are easy to refute. The problem is that she overloads readers with so much information, that it is hard to weed out what to believe and what not to believe, so naturally some people would just assume she knows what she's talking about.
She's a liar, and of story.