Unit II Paper

Zeitgeist and Its Mistakes

The movie “Zeitgeist” caused a considerable amount of controversy upon its release. The most controversial part was, obviously, the first one, saying that the Christianity is just another version of a popular astrological myth. It might sound pretty convincing, yet if one goes deeper, he or she will find many holes in the theory presented in the movie. It is a little ironic that the flick that is used to tell us that we are manipulated plays with the feelings of the viewer, and plays with the facts and with the interpretations of those facts too. It is also ironic that one doesn’t even need to be a Christian to disprove the theories in the movie. The flick “Zeitgeist” is filled with mistakes, it misinterprets many facts, or it ignores the facts and interpretations that don’t fit its thesis.

In the beginning of the film, viewers are shown a cartoonish portrayal of the God, with a humoristic comment of someone speaking to an audience, which laughs heartily at his jokes. Use of laugher to make someone laugh is an old, let’s call it “a manipulation technique” (without any negative bias of course, word persuasion might fit better). It is widely used, for example, in comedies, to make the audience think, that the show is funnier than it actually is. The laughing audience could be used by authors to make viewers to think that the religion itself is funny. Yet the portrayal of the God was extremely naïve and stereotypical, and there is no point to discuss with it, since it is not a part of the main theory presented in the movie, it serves rather to set up the mood for the rest of the first part of the flick.

The main part of the film starts with a talk about sun, how important it is for human kind, and that it is pretty understandable, that the sun is the most respected object in the history. One might agree with that, although it must be stated, that if authors want to tell that all religions are descendants of an ancient “worship of the sun”, they are wrong. The sun became a popular worship object when agriculture has started, since the sun is an extremely important factor for it. Men were having belief systems much earlier, and those early religions were probably monotheistic. Also, people during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic age were probably showing more respect for the moon, than for the sun.

Later authors tell us that men were observing the sun, the stars, and a nature, and that they were cataloguing the stars into zodiacs. Later people were personificating the stars and the constellations, and thus they were creating gods and myths about them. Yes, it is truth that gods of many polytheistic religions were associated with the natural processes and that many myths were trying to explain cyclical changes in the nature, but the first religions were older than those myths, myths that often were created to explain processes that became important for men after they started the agricultural activity. Also, there are complicated and rich mythologies created by the cultures that didn’t have huge knowledge about the astronomy.

Later, the authors suggest us that there is a link between twelve months, four seasons, and twelve zodiac signs; they also mention the zodiac cross (four arms – four seasons). One might disagree with their point too. The months are rather connected with the moon and its phases, rather than with the star constellations. The number of the seasons wasn’t always and everywhere four. For example, in ancient Egypt people were splitting the year on three seasons, and the flooding of the Nile was the reason for such division. It is a little ironic, since the ancient Egypt plays a crucial role in the later part of the movie.

There is a major problem with the idea of zodiac signs and their role in creation of the religions too. The word “zodiac” comes from greek language, and the zodiac as we know it today comes from the ancient Greeks, and more precisely, from Ptolemy (about 100-175 AD). It certainly had been created earlier, but it was Ptolemy who preserved it in a form we know today. Before him, three ancient civilizations were using very similar system of the zodiac signs: Babylonian, Greek, and Hindu. The most ancient source of the zodiac signs that are used till today is the Mesopotamian astronomy, especially the Babylonian one. Besides, originally there were seventeen or eighteen zodiac signs, and they had more to do with the moon, than with the sun. The system of twelve constellations has been created probably about 2700 years ago, and the division of ecliptic on twelve parts, 30^O each one, has been introduced around year 420 BC. That means that the astrology and the zodiac as portrayed in the movie have been introduced not earlier than in the V century BC. The authors needed for their theory twelve zodiac signs and the division of ecliptic on twelve parts, 30^O each one. But if they think that the zodiac signs are the source of the myths and religions that means that the myths and religions that are mentioned in the movie couldn’t be created before the V century BC.

It is important to write about the Jewish calendar, since the Christianity appeared among Jews. Since the movie talks about the solar cults, the source of the Jewish calendar should be the solar cults too. Yet, the Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar, and the difference between it and a solar year required an addition of an extra month, once for a while. In other calendars, the additional months or days were meant to coordinate the calendar with the solar cycle. Those months or days were being added after special observations and calculations were conducted. Jews were solving this problem in a different way. If there was an obvious difference between a cycle of nature and the calendar, the Sanhedrin had a meeting, and it was adding an additional month. Jews systematized their calendar, basing it on observations and mathematic calculations, in the V century AD, thanks to Hillel II. It is very unlikely, that the Jewish calendar has been influenced by the solar cults. It is also important to notice, that both the Judaism and the Christianity had and still have a very negative attitude towards astrology. It was always considered to be a sin, and the critique of astrology can be found in many fragments of the Bible.

The movie is filled with the mistakes about various ancient gods. Attis wasn’t born on December 25 (all celebrations connected with the cult of Attis were in March), he wasn’t born of a virgin (his mother, Nana, had been impregnated by the fruit of an almond tree, that grew from the Agdistis’ gonads), he died under a tree, after a fight with the Phrygian king, early versions of this myth say nothing about the resurrection. Mithra was not born of a virgin; he emerged from the rock, or from the cave. He didn’t have twelve disciples; in one version of the myth he had one friend who was traveling with him, in other version – two disciples. There is no information about his death, grave, or resurrection. We have only an account of Tertullian, Christian writer, who lived in II/III century AD, and who wrote, that in the Mithraism there is some vision of resurrection, but it is not specified how it looks, what it really means, or even to whom it applies. The Krishna wasn’t born of a virgin too; he entered a womb of a woman who already bore several sons, and when he was born, he was in his divine form, with four arms. He didn’t rise after his death – he achieved a state of Samadhi, which means he was “unified” with the Universe. Dionysus wasn’t born of a virgin either, not to mention, that neither Krishna, nor Dionysus have anything to do with the solar cults. They have been included in the argumentation to draw some parallels between them and Jesus, although most of those parallels is wrong, and still, since they were not solar gods, they don’t fit to the thesis anyway. Also, the fact that many gods were doing miracles is of no importance – it is pretty obvious that they were able to do them, since they were gods.

The movie concentrates on an Egyptian god, Horus, and the fragments about him include many mistakes. Horus wasn’t born of a virgin. His father, Osiris, has been killed by his brother, Seth, and his body has been cut in many pieces. Wife of Osiris, Isis, had gathered his body parts, except the phallus, which has been eaten by a fish. She created a new one, with a magic, and she resurrected hers husband. They made love, and she conceived Horus. Osiris was alive only temporarily, and soon after he died again, and he became a ruler of the underground kingdom of dead. Isis had given birth to Horus, and when her son had grown, he started a fight with his uncle. The “Zeitgeist” states that their fight is a metaphor of day and night, but it is not true. They were representing either order (also associated with the Egypt) and chaos (associated with the dangerous desert surrounding Egypt), or upper and lower Egypt (in that aspect, they were sometimes shown fighting, and sometimes binding together papyrus and lotus, which symbolized the unification of an Egypt, since the papyrus symbolized lower Egypt and the lotus symbolized upper Egypt). Their rivalry wasn’t a war between good and evil; it had both positive and negative aspects. As about the day and night, Egyptians were explaining it completely differently. They believed that the sky is a goddess Nut, who swallows the sun at the evening, and gives birth to it in the morning. When sun bark travels through her body, it is attacked by various monsters, and it is protected by Seth. If Seth is a protector of a sun bark, how can he represent the night? Also, Horus wasn’t specifically a god of sun. The god of sun was Ra, later associated with Atum, the great grandfather of Horus’ parents, Osiris and Isis, and even later, with Amon, god of the winds. Horus was a god of pharaohs, of revenge, of order, and also another god of a sky. Sun and moon were sometimes told to be his eyes (moon being less bright, because one of Horus’ eyes was injured when he was fighting with Seth. There was no star on the east, and no three kings appearing after his birth. Horus never died, not to mention that he was never resurrected. There is no information about him being baptized by Anup or being betrayed by Typhoon, in any version of the myth. Typhoon has nothing to do with the Egyptian mythology; it is a monster from the Greek mythology. Horus didn’t have twelve disciples, he actually had four of them: Hapi, Tuamutef, Amset, and Quebhsennuf. The myth of rivalry of Horus and Seth has many aspects that are completely impossible to be connected with the Christianity, like the story about Horus adding his semen to the lettuce that was later consumed by Seth, which symbolized that Horus dominated Seth.

Authors are right that in many myths there are deities that die and are ressurected, but they seem not to notice, that if in any myth there was a story about a deity being raised from the dead, this story was usually connected with the agricultural activity, and a cycle of nature, while Jesus’ resurrection has completely different, metaphysical meaning. When authors try to convince the viewer that Jesus is just another solar deity, they miss one point. When the stories about various gods mentioned in the movie were created, they were already about deities that lived somewhere in the past, while the stories about Jesus were being told by people who lived in his times to other people who lived in his times, and who, if they lived in the Palestine, could easily remember him and would know if he didn’t exist and was made by the apostles.

The movie misses the point when it says that Jesus was born on December 25^th, and it uses that point to compare the Christianity to the cults of Horus and Mithra, who were worshipped on that day. Early Christians didn’t know the date of his birth, and there were many theories and propositions, when it could to take place. For some time they even celebrated his birth on January 6^th, until they replaced old holidays with the new, so it would be easier for the people to get used to the new religion. This fact is well known, it is not kept in secret, and no one denies it, and it doesn’t mean that the Christianity is the continuation of the old cults, since it wasn’t a part of the very earliest Christianity, and it was introduced later. Also, it wasn’t introduced as a continuation of the old holidays, but as a new holiday with its independent meaning. When people were celebrating Christmas, they were celebrating this particular holiday, without thinking about other religions and the meaning this date had for them. The attitude of the believers plays in such situations a crucial role. If the worshippers celebrate a holiday, the intention and reason they have in their minds plays the most important role, and the fact that someone was celebrating something at that day is of no importance. Also, Jesus wasn’t visited by the three kings. The Bible talks about the Persian magi, not about the kings. The tradition has made them kings later, probably because of the passage in the Book of prophet Isaiah, mentioning kings who will come from far places with the gifts. Early paintings of the scene from the Gospel according to st. Matthew portray often two, three, four, six, or even twelve magi visiting Jesus.

The part about sun coming down from a cross also misses an important point. First of all, a cross was not a symbol used by the earliest Christians, and it should be a part of the original cult, if it is to fit the thesis about the solar cults. The movie goes for the astrological interpretation, and it ignores much more probable interpretation: that Christians were using a sign a cross that literally symbolized the cross on which Jesus died. If cross is to be a solar symbol, or a symbol of a constellation, it should have all arms of equal length (like the Celtic cross, which is the cross shown in the movie, and which was in the beginning a solar symbol), but Christians were usually using a cross with unequal arms, like the cross used by Romans for crucifixion. Sometimes they were using the t-shaped cross, which cannot be a solar symbol, but was used by the Romans together with the “classical” cross. Also, the Eastern Orthodox Christians use even different cross, with two additional lines. The top line represents the headboard, while the bottom, slanted line is the footrest, wrenched loose by Jesus' writhing in the agony. The footrest is raised to the left side, from the point of view of the observer, because on that side was the righteous criminal who asked Jesus to remember him when Jesus will come into his kingdom.  It is completely impossible to link this cross with the theory presented in the film, since its shape clearly indicates its real meaning.

The movie tries to tell the viewer that early Christians were using the fish symbol because Jesus was a “Pisces”, since he used fish to feed the crowed and some of his disciples were fishermen. It is not true. His Aramaic name was Jeshua, and his title was “Messiah”. Translated into Greek, it is “Iesus Christos”. First letters are “I” and “Ch”. In Latin the word for the fish was “Ichtis”. First letters of Jesus’ name and title were also the first letter for the Latin word for fish, so the fish became a symbol of the early Christians, especially since it was easy to draw a fish sign. Beside this, Jesus was often being referred to as a shepherd or a lamb, so Aries would fit him much better than Pisces, if we are playing a little with the astrological theory, although it has been proven before that this theory is wrong. The”Zeitgeist” stretches its theory even further, and it states that Jesus telling his disciples to follow a man with a pot of water means, that the man is an Aquarius, and that after Jesus’ time, a Pisces time, will come a time of an Aquarius. Yet, the man with a pot of water is a completely unimportant person, and if someone wants to see an Aquarius in the Gospels, probably no one would fit as good as John the Baptist. The problem is that John was preparing people for the coming of Jesus. That would mean that Jesus is a Capricorn, and that his time will come in… 4300 AD. That shows how full of mistakes and vague, naïve interpretations the theory presented in the movie is.

There are many other mistakes and subjective interpretations of the facts in the movie, and listing them and discussing with them would fill many papers. The movie “Zeitgeist” is filled with them, and it tries to portray them as the truth, but going a little deeper into the topic allows the viewer to notice and disprove those mistakes. This paper explored only part of them; yet, it is enough to show what is wrong with the first part of the movie “Zeitgeist”. The first part sets up the mood for the rest of the movie. Since it sounds pretty convincing for those who lack proper knowledge, they are prepared to believe in what will be shown in the rest of the movie, and in the ultimate message of the "Zeitgeist": that we are all manipulated and deceived. That message might damage the trust that some people have for the others, and too much distrust may damage many aspects of life of both a person, and a society, starting with an economy, and ending with the common person-to-person relationships.

I used a foreign source, to get some of my arguments, and I wanted to post it, but for some reason wiki doesn't want to accept the link. I will just post a little altered URL of that page, without making it a hyperlink, and if someone wants to check that page, he or she should replace all "dot" with ".", and ignore the space between the http and the rest ot the URL. http ://wwwdotpaidotnetdotpl/miiszczu/forum/zeitgeistdotpdf