Jesus was NOT copied from pagan mythology (Zeitgeist REBUTTED) 

It might be low hanging fruit, but that bad fruit has been eaten by a lot of people.

The claim Krishna was born of a Virgin always struck me as the true sign that someone really was just lying. Especially since Krishna’s OLDER BROTHER plays a major role in his story.

Wow I can’t believe the Gospel writers anticipated the invention of the English language centuries in advance and used it to craft their narrative based on a clever pun from the non-existent language. The Christians are truly naive!!

That documentary was a real stumbling block for me years ago. I sincerely appreciate that you took the time to go through this one. Thank you!

Mythicists are the true definition of grasping at straws to disprove Christ

The real miracle is how Trent Horn can keep a straight face as he drops truth bombs.

DUDE THEY WORSHIPPED THE SUN AND JESUS IS THE SON WOAH

The video not only misrepresents Christianity, it misrepresents pagan myth.

Low-hanging fruit is the easiest to pick. That’s what makes it so dangerous.

Jesus died on a cross. The cross was made of Mahogany. "Mahogany" ends with "Y", which translates to "why?" in Hebrew. Every time a husband cheated on his wife in the ancient Israel, the wife would say, "Why!?" Adding all of these evidences, we can conclude Jesus was a woman. Prove me wrong, Mr. Trent!

What an excruciating "documentary." As a college instructor, sometimes the amount of misinformation (or disinformation) that is dumped in my lap is so fatiguing that I want to throw up my hands. Great job staying methodical and charitable, Trent.

It's so good to be christian. The peace of conscience is great. When I was agnostic, life was totally without sense and I used to live to please my desires, like a dog or another brute animal, but when you convert, it's interesting how everything changes.

It's weird to assume different tribal groups separated by thousands of miles, sometimes hundreds of years, and language barriers would know anything about one another's mythology, let alone copy them.

Thank you Trent, I remember watching this when I was 18-19years old and I attribute this and my lack of knowledge to my push back from God. I came back to my faith and only wish I wasn’t naive to fall for this early in life. Thank you again, I’ll be sharing 🙏🏽

I was so dejected after watching this several years ago. Thankfully the Holy Spirit had a tight grip on me as this would have challenged my faith. Thank you for exposing the ridiculousness of the arguments, you are a gift to the Church!

This movie mislead me during my college days, i did not go to church for a year because of this, it scarred me so much that i become agnostic. But thanks to God i was brought back by the grace of God. Thanks for this Trent.

It’s wild the deceptive lengths people go to in order to defame Christ and the Church. Thanks, Trent for your great work! Zeitgeist would certainly be convincing for those who don’t do their homework.

My brothers showed me zeitgeist over ten years ago, because of their disbelief and my great faith at that time. Unfortunately at the time I allowed it to doubt my faith and my life changed for the worse during this period. Since then I’ve regained much faith, and this rebuttal helped, but also reminded me of a time I wish I had back to glorify God instead of what actually happened.

Excited for this one. Appreciate your work Trent.

I’m Orthodox but enjoy watching you Trent

This should be used as an educational video in Christian schools so that children can see how easily they can be fooled into doubting their faith.

When I first heard that Jesus is “inspired” by other fates really shook up my faith. Thanks for disproving it.

I was a teenager when that “documentary” was released, and it was one of many things that made me give up my presbyterian faith. Been struggling for over a decade with atheism, agnosticism, satanism, paganism, buddhism… and so on. But through the Holy Spirit, and apologists like Trent Horn, I’m coming back to the faith, but as a Catholic this time. So the “low hanging fruit” such as Mr. Horn’s video here debunks is far more important to refute than he gives it credit for.

Good points. As a jew myself I was highly susipicious of that ‘documentary’. We may agree or disagree about the theological truths but it is obvoius that most of the NT drinks from jewish sources and that an historical Jesus existed . Period. When they ‘joined’ Jesus life and Joseph ‘s I almost started laughing. And the rest of it is BS. This people really want judeo christian world to dissapear.

Dude you crushed it. I appreciate you bro. I KNOW you've researched with thoroughness, but more important, honesty. God bless you and yours Trent!

This video was so destructive to the millennial generation. We were poorly educated about ancient history and mythology. Very few were looking to really study this. Many found this as a good confirmation of their own biases and accepted it uncritically. P. S. Anyone else annoyed by his confusion between “adorned” and “adored”? I noticed it twice! Once it was even written in a slide! 😂

A few points: - I wonder why Horus though. To me Osiris, as the dying and rising god, would be a much more adequate figure for a comparison with Jesus. Although again, there are certain massive differences, like the fact that the risen Osiris is the god of the dead and lives in the Underworld. - Seth is NOT an "evil god of darkness". He's associated with tempests and the desert, mostly. Also, he's the murderer of the king Osiris, wanting to become king instead of him. Horus is the son of Osiris, fighting Seth to reclaim the heritage of his father (e.g. in p(apyrus) Chester Beatty I). That's the main element of this story. Seth has also a positive aspect, as the one who, with his lance, defeats the serpent Apophis in the Underworld during the sun-god Re's nightly journey. In the 1st millenium BC though, as the cult of Osiris enjoys a big rise in popularity, Seth becomes an almost exclusively evil figure. But then again, in the opposition between Seth and Osiris there's the opposition of fertility (fertile lands around the Nile, a son (Horus) ) and sterility (the desert, no children). - The story of Jesus copied and pasted to Horus seems quite dubious. Ancient Egyptians considered 5 gods (Isis, Osiris, Horus, Seth, Nephthys) were born at the end of the year, yes, but the end of the _Egyptian_ year, that is in summer (around July (in the Julian calender). December though (or what would be the equivalent of it) was the month of Khoiak, dedicated to a big feast of Osiris. - Who is "Anup the Baptizer"? Do they mean Anubis (< eg. 'jnpw')? Anubis is mainly a funerary god and the embalmer deity. There was indeed an article in an issue of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology from the 1930s with an article by Sir Allan H. Gardiner about "The Baptism of Pharaoh", but first, "baptism" there was used in quotes, and second, it was about the royal purification ritual (where Anubis is absent, but Horus and Seth (sometimes replaced with Thot) are present). The 12 followers and the crucifixion seem totally invented. True, Horus may have had followers, but then again, Seth had followers (mentioned as a collective) too (other gods have them too), so nothing exclusive here. But 12? And a crucifixion? - Something very bothersome is the fact that in the Zeitgeist video they don't mention the exact Egyptian text they're using. They just say "ancient texts". Give me your precise references! Where are they? Instead, he uses later some weird astronomical considerations as arguments. But what about the textual and archaeological evidence, which would be much more convincing? - Trent's points (12min in) on Egyptian mythology are correct. Isis conceived Horus as a bird, landing on Osiris"s phallus. I guess Isis was a virgin before, but I don't think any Egyptian text makes such a fuss of her being a virgin or not. And indeed, mri is the verb for "to love". Mri.t would be the feminine participle, whether active or passive, used also as a part of names (e.g. Meritamun, "beloved of Amun"). Around the 34th min, we're back to Egypt. - Who's "Meth"? What "Holy Ghost"? Also, I love how he disregarded the hieroglyphic text in these scenes, an integral part of the scenes. Also, "Immaculate Conception"? In Ancient Egypt? As in "Mary born free of original sin"? No. Isis was born of Geb (the Earth god) and Nut (the Sky goddess). There's no mention of "sin" or "free from sin" there. There's nothing against the concept of maat, of "righteousnes conforming to a particular cosmic order". All of this is just some weird fantasy. -Who's "Mises"? Again, no reference given. -Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead is the so-called "negative confession", uttered by the dead as a justification of his righteous life, where he says he hasn't done a big series of wrong deeds. Passages from funerary literature where the dead affirms his righteousness are known since the Old Kingdom (ca. 2650 - ca. 2150 BC) with passages on tombs saying "I fed the hungry and clothed the nacked". Why would the Bible take just ten of the utterances in Chapter 125? Also, why the Book of the Dead, and not, let's say, wisdom literature? Zeitgeist could have mentioned the Teachings of Ani or those of Amenenope, from the New Kingdom (1550 - 1070 BC), where some scholars have argued one can find the oldest formulation of the "Golden Rule". But no, once again, they make a crappy parallel.

Ah yes, Horus, who existed long before the Romans, was crucified! Of course! This movie is as well studied as my essays in high school were.

Zeitgeist really affected my life for a long time. It sucks young people in and it just proves that if you say a lie convincing enough, that people will believe it.

Hey Trent! Just 10 minutes into this and I'm loving it! Please do consider doing a video on Hinduism. As an Indian with some basic knowledge of Hinduism, the rebuttals that I generally see from Westerners don't seem to be using accurate depictions of that religion. Hoping you could give a much better analysis.

I remember watching this trilogy as a young teen. The most insidious part of this documentary is that they presented some truthful elements (9/11, banking). But this is how they ended up sneaking in lies like saying Jesus was a pagan deity. Found it very strange at the time.

I am sad now. I'd heard people mentioning 'Zeitgeist' as an argument against Christian beliefs and I had no idea they were referring to a documentary, I didn't know about it, I thought they just meant the concept of Zeitgeist. And these people were introduced to this documentary when we were in school, apparently. I can't believe this exists, it is so dangerous, the way they make it sound as if it were true is horrible, so confusing. It might be easy to rebut, but it's important to do it.

Its not even a sophomore level documentary, it really isn’t. It’s a fluff pop piece intentionally made as a hit piece on Christianity to appeal to naive and easily influenced school grade/sophomore students. I actually thought he would mention the Sasquatch at some point!

Ah, Zeitgeist. There's a false claim every couple of seconds in this one

This is dumb. I remember the new atheist types tried to push this crap. I never really bought into it even though at the time I wasn’t all that religious

Trent dismantles another hollow polemic full of sophistry.

You're always posting videos on things I'm looking into at the moment lol. God bless you Trent.

I would love for you to do a video on the so called "Dark ages".

From what I've found, this and similar claims against against Catholicism are rooted in a 19th-century 'literary' work called "The Two Babylons" by Alexander Hislop. That work was referred to by Lorraine Boettner in his anti-Catholic work "Roman Catholicism" in 1962. Boettner and Hislop seem to be sources used by Dave Hunt in his anti-Catholic work "A Woman Rides the Beast". Those three books form the "bible" of anti-Catholic arguments, even though Hislop's work has been roundly rejected by intellectually honest researchers (for it's shoddy literary content and poor referencing), even non-Catholic ones. So, read up on those guys, then you'll know everything to expect from any anti-Catholic you might run into.

The thing with many pagan myths stories, is that they do convey meaningful (symbolical) truths of reality. The thing with Christianity is that these symbols aren't merely abstract, no longer, but became actualized through Jesus Christ... As it is written; The *WORD* (narrative structure of reality) became flesh and walked among us.

Ugh. I remember being hooked by this documentary hook, line and sinker back when I was in highschool. It has always been in the back of my mind since I converted. Thanks for doing this video! It is very helpful to put to rest my foolish, young highschool self.

Trent, would you ever consider addressing the Nietzschean critique of Christianity?

For me, this isn’t even low hanging fruit. I needed to hear this one, thank you.

It’s funny to me that critics of religion always ADMIT that there are almost universally held beliefs and myths, but they never seem to consider that the reason this happens is because it is actually real and true and subconsciously understood by humanity

I let this documentary sway me from God for many years and I eventually came back to the church. God bless you Trent for helping me regain my faith!

Trent, I'd love to watch a rebuttal video regarding Islam and their view on Jesus!

It's almost as if the atheists behind the Zeitgeist video were trying to dismiss Jesus as hard as possible in every way imaginable.

Low hanging fruit, yes. But soooo many people buy into these arguments and misconceptions that they need to be talked about. So, it is important.

Imagine illiterate fishermen coming up with such a tight story and dying violent deaths to support their lie.

Minor correction at 4:10 it wasn't Apolo who carried the sun in a chariot, but Helios.

Trent, great job as always! An idea for a rebuttal video: Universalism! Would be really interesting to see you rebut David bentley hart or any of the other universalists out there since they bring up some interesting things to think about.

This is needed. I actually ran into someone posting these memes a couple weeks ago. You'd think something that was so obviously wrong wouldn't have such legs.

Mind blown, these rebuttals are fantastic! Thank you for taking the time to do them.

YES! I've been waiting for this!!!

Excellent video - thank-you for this and the other rebuttal video's.

I'm glad you did this. In my late teens and early 20's I was very caught up in the Zeitgeist Movement and the Venus Project. I really thought Peter Joseph had come up with an economic system that wasn't Communism but could replace Capitalism. Eventually, the debate between Stephan Molyneux and Peter Joseph convinced me otherwise when Stephan wiped the floor with him. It's great to see you absolutely bury Peter's ridiculous ideas about religion.

I ended up watching Zeitgeist either around the time I had a crisis of faith in primary school, or after I stopped believing in God early on in uni. It's jumbled in there somewhere, but that, along with Thunderf00t's "Why Do People Laugh at Creationists" video series, either led me to renounce my faith, or confirmed my bias after the fact. Either way, I was already emotionally predisposed toward the atheism movement of the aughts; if it sounded good and made me feel good, that was good enough for me in my late teens & early 20s.

Hey Trent, little correction! It was not Apollo who was carrying the sun in a chariot around the horizon but the sun god Helios.

Great rebuttal! Also, it's not really "beneath your time" (as other may accuse you of doing) rebutting low hanging fruit because that low hanging fruit is grabbed by baby Christians who need to see videos like this!

A rebuttle of Dan Brown might be good too. It's good to have a video to point people too if they bring this low-hanging fruit up.

Great rebuttal! I know some who have fallen for this.

This documentary is honestly hilarious. Thank you for your work, God bless.

Thank you sir I’m someone who’s in the process of coming out Protestantism mainly because of the sola scriptura debates between James Whites and Tim Staples as well as James whites debate with Patrick Madrid. I’ve always heard the argument that Jesus was copied from older religions and this video helps to rebut that foolishness. May God bless you always 🙏

I was just getting into Scientology when I watched this for the first time so although the original video was very shocking, it didn’t shake my faith as I had already left Christianity years prior. I was watching the video a lot back then and I ALWAYS thought about this part of the Zeitgeist movie and always wondered if there was any way to verify the information in zeitgeist. Today I thought about it after years and googled it and found this video which applies to my EXACT question. Very interesting! I do feel there’s more to study though! But this video is a good starting point with sources to look into.

They keep saying that some Christian words kinda sound like other pagan words. Hey the word Easter sorta sounds like Ishtar, the pagan goddess. This is goofy. I could point out that the name Dr Seuss sounds similar to Zeus. Does this mean that the stories of Dr Seuss are actually copied from the stories about Zeus? It would be crazy to think so.

Copyright claim on something saying everything is copied. Imagine the irony.

Oh my gosh, I’ve taken several courses in ancient art history and one that specialized in the Ancient Near East and the amount of things Zeitgeist has gotten wrong in the spam of 15 seconds is horrendous. I’m over here thinking “did I fall asleep during that part of class???”

Thank you for posting this.

This would be an important and useful book you might write, sir. You would surely do the subject justice and help to unconfuse souls, especially students.

These arguments are always a mix of false claims and "omigish! Did you know Christianity uses some universal symbols, contains some universal methods of human expression, and is rich in themes that humans have always thought important?!"

Thank you, Trent! Awesome as always 🙏🙏🙏

Orthodox and Arab Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7, because we follow the Julian calendar.

Wait. "Messiah" doesn't translate to "Saviour"... It translates to "The Anointed one".

7:08 - “Son of God” and “Sun god”: the difference between the Hebrew words for “sun” and “sun” 8:29 - Horus 10:02 - Is the death and resurrection of Jesus based on pagan religions? 11:55 - According to Trent, we *don’t* have Egyptian literature claiming that Horus was either crucified, buried for three days, had twelve disciples, baptized by Anup, etc. 12:30 - The source for such Horus claims. 13:00 - Horus’ mother (Meri) as opposed to Mary’s name in Hebrew (Miriam) 14:00 - What about the Greek god Attis? Isn’t his story similar? 14:32 and 14:38 - Was Attis was crucified and resurrected? 15:15 and 15:23 - What about Krishna? Is that a virgin birth? Was there a star? 15:50 and 16:20 - What about the Greek god, Dionysus? 17:43 - Was Dionysus called “King of Kings”, “Alpha and Omega”? 18:08 - Was Dionysus resurrected? 18:14 - What about the image of Dionysus being crucified? Was that a fake? 18:55 and 19:18 - And Mithra? Is there a difference between the Persian Mithra (before Christ) and the Roman Mithra (after Christ)? 51:37, 52:18, 52:30 - Joseph

Thanks for all your work Trent!

This channel was a great discovery... I don't agree with much of the content but it is very instructive

Frankly, if this many religions did have such specific similar myths, it'd be enough of a miracle to make me take notice!

The guy who wrote that movie must be short...he's always reaching!

When I saw that timestamp, I legit thought I wouldn’t sit through it all. …and yet 1 hour, 4 mins later, here we are.

Trent, Can you link other video about ancient historians and Jesus?

Loved this. It's good to alternate between quite popular objections to Catholicism and other more intellectually constructed.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE VIDEO THE DOCUMENTREY ALMOST MADE ME ATHIEST

What confuses me about religion critics is how the frightening similarities between religions throughout human history might be trying to warn us of impending doom and attempting to introduce some method to the madness to subvert some of the more ugly effects, rather than just flat-out ripping each other off? After all, like Trent just said, “If you hear trampling, it’s better to assume horses before you assume unicorns.”

Is it possible to put the references in the description of the video? Great video, helping lots of confused people.

Zeitgeist is an oldie! Reaching back for the classics on this one!

Βest debunking video I've ever seen🤝👏👏👏 We all need to do do more research and not believe every stupid claim we read online

Whatever Zeitgeist is smoking sure has helped him connect the dots.

At 0:31:00 ish, wow! The circle on the "Celtic cross" in free standing crosses from Britain and Ireland C. 700 - 800 developed because it provided structural security for the arms of the cross when they moved from incised crosses on slabs to fully recessed freestanding crosses, e.g. the Ruthwell Cross, the Gosforth cross. That Zeitgeist chap astounds me with his general ignorance

Zeitgeist here is absolutely mind-numbing. It was funny at first, but at this point the things that are coming out of this man's mouth are atrocious.

It is funny to me how people try to discredit Christianity based on worn out comparisons, purposeful ignorance of history, and lack of follow through with looking up sources. Not to mention assuming languages haven’t evolved and grown since the time of their conception. There’s many phrases and words that have changed over the years across many countries, with differing dialects in between such as the US coke vs pop usage. It’s also interesting that the default assumption is Judaism/Christianity copied from pagans when sometimes it’s the complete opposite. Just shows the innate biases that can occur in data gathering and research. Side note: I actually love reading different Flood stories because they’re quite interesting in terms of reasonings and what lessons the people at the time took from them. The Epic of Gilgamesh has more to do with the main god disliking the unclean, noisy humans, and the only reason any human survived was because one of the gods warned them. In the end, the big god was mad but since the other gods were watching him, he couldn’t kill them and just made them immortal. The Norse Flood myth is probably my favorite as it’s the fall of the giant Ymir and Odin and the other gods taking his body to creat Midgard (Earth). Also, when I hear ‘Sargon of Akkad’ I can only think of the RU-vidr turned podcaster 😂 I vaguely recall him mentioning purposefully naming his handle after Sargon in his gaming days, but it never clicked til I learned a bit of the realSargon of Akkad history. Just funny how everything connects sometimes.

The obvious explanation of the circle in the Celtic Cross is that it is a halo representing the divinity of Christ.

I loved the commentary on the miracles of Horus when you said something like of course you would expect a deity to do miracles. Don’t even see the irony do you?

I think the reason why so many people believe this obviously flawed myth is that they have no other option when it comes to denying Christ, and when they’re desperate to make a point, they’ll take anything no matter how devoid of logic it is. There’s the one channel called “Jesus Never Existed” run by Ken Humphrey, and I’d love to see Trent just tear into this guy’s content.

Minor correction: At 25:40 you say the Magi did not follow the star, but it says at Matthew 2:9 "After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising _preceded them_ (emphasis mine), until it came and _stopped_ (emphasis mine) over the place where the child was. Otherwise, so far, so good.

54:14 This is the most based statement and rebuttal i have ever heard from Trent, and thats saying something

Excellent rebuttal!

Trent please rebute Naked Astrology

Yaaaas. zeitgeist is such a load of dunning-kreuger and lies. I had a roommate that thought it was a revelation.

Interesting take on the comparison to Joseph and Jesus 52:52 . I just listened to Brandt Pitre where he compares the two as a typology. Do we want to run away from the similarities or embrace them?

I can't hear the name Sargon without thinking of Carl Benjamin.