[A revised and expanded version of the following rebuttal appears as Chapter 22 in Shattering the Christ Myth: Did Jesus Not Exist? by James Patrick Holding.]

Those who are familiar with Zeitgeist know that it's a tripartite conspiracy movie, though my concern is solely with Part One, which attempts to make the case that (i) Jesus never existed, and that (ii) Christian teachings and the vast range of world mythology find a common root in astrology, as evidenced by (iii) strong similarities between the stories of Jesus and various pagan gods.  Five especially were singled out for treatment: Attis, Dionysus, Krishna, Mithras, and Horus.  Before I get to them, I think it'd be a good idea to review what they said about Jesus himself.  Zeitgeist says:

Jesus Christ was born of the virgin Mary on December 25th in Bethlehem, his birth was announced by a star in the east, which three kings or magi followed to locate and adorn the new savior.  He was a child teacher at 12, at the age of 30 he was baptized by John the Baptist, and thus began his ministry.  Jesus had 12 disciples which he traveled about with performing miracles such as healing the sick, walking on water, raising the dead, he was also known as the "King of Kings," the "Son of God," the "Light of the World," the "Alpha and Omega," the "Lamb of God," and many others. After being betrayed by his disciple Judas and sold for 30 pieces of silver, he was crucified, placed in a tomb and after 3 days was resurrected and ascended into Heaven.

This is mostly true.  According to the biblical story, Jesus was born to a virgin mother named Mary in the town of Bethlehem in Judaea.  The Bible doesn't directly specify a time of the year, much less a particular month, week, or even day.  December 25th was attached to the event much, much later, and it probably isn't a very probable time.  His birth was announced by some sort of astronomical object, and a group of magi used it to locate the child.  But the Bible doesn't say how many of them there are, only that they brought three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  It was later tradition that connected each gift to a single figure, and it was also only later that the magi were identified as "kings".  At the age of 12, Jesus was found in the Temple having a discussion with the teachers there.  The Bible never calls him a "child teacher"; what it actually says is that:

[A]fter three days they found him in the Temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions.  And all who heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. (Luke 2:46-47)

Sometime around the age of 30, Jesus was baptized by a known prophetic figure named John, popularly called "John the Baptist".  After this, he gathered a group of disciples and marked out twelve of them as a special group, deliberately echoing the twelve tribes of Israel.  Many see a great significance in the symbolism of the number.  One brilliant scholar, N. T. Wright, put it very well when he noted that Jesus was representing the end of exile and the beginning of the restoration.  He said:

Nobody doubts that Jesus called disciples, and regarded them as a distinct group.  This creates a context in which it makes sense, despite some recent doubts, for Jesus to give his followers a special prayer, and to speak of them as a new community, a 'little flock'.  He explained what he was doing, as we shall see in more detail later, in terms of the reconstitution of Israel. (Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 169)

The very existence of the twelve speaks, of course, of the reconstitution of Israel; Israel had not had twelve visible tribes since the Assyrian invasion in 734 BC, and for Jesus to give twelve followers a place of prominence, let alone to make comments about them sitting on thrones judging the twelve tribes, indicates pretty clearly that he was thinking in terms of the eschatological restoration of Israel. (Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 300)

This, by the way, is why the movie entirely misses the point when it points out the recurrence of the number 12 in the Bible and tries to link it to the Zodiac.  The twelve disciples represent the twelve tribes of Israel, which in turn are descended from the twelve sons of Jacob.  (Many of the other instances of "twelve" are simply irrelevant or else might be carefully modeled after the same significance.)  With his disciples, Jesus traveled chiefly around Galilee and Judaea, occasionally performing acts that we'd call miracles, such as restoring the ill and marginalized to health and social status, walking on water, and even raising the dead to life.  Eventually, one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver (Matthew 26:14-16).  Jesus was crucified by the Romans, enduring the most shameful form of execution available in the world of his time.  He was then buried in a tomb, but rose again from the dead on the third day in vindication of his mission.  Forty days after this, he ascended to 'heaven' (Acts 1:9-11).  His followers called him titles like "Son of God" (Mark 1:1), "Lamb of God" (John 1:29), "King of Kings" (Revelation 17:14), "Light of the World" (John 8:12), and "the Alpha and the Omega" (Revelation 1:11).

The movie was at least somewhat accurate on the story of Jesus, but things change just a little bit when we get to those five other gods.  Before mentioning them though, one quick note.  Zeitgeist often makes a big deal of the fact that these other figures are also credited with miracles, but that shouldn't be too surprising.  After all, these are gods we're talking about, and gods and miracles have a tendency to go together.  Teaching, too, can sometimes fit into this category.  Another function of some gods is to convey information or introduce concepts and practices to humans.  It isn't a very good parallel for Zeitgeist to make if the feature is something that tends to be common to gods in general.

That said, I'd like to talk about Attis.  Now remember, Zeitgeist said:

Attis, of Phyrigia, born of the virgin Nana on December 25th, crucified, placed in a tomb and after 3 days, was resurrected.

That's really not very much to go on, so let me fill in a few gaps.  A second-century geographer named Pausanias recorded various traditions about Attis.  In one story, he mentions the origins of Attis and the unusual record of his life and death.  What Pausanias said about that was this:

Zeus, it is said, let fall in his sleep seed upon the ground, which in course of time sent up a demon with two sexual organs, male and female.  They call the demon Agdistis.  But the gods, fearing Agdistis, cut off the male organ.   There grew up from it an almond tree with its fruit ripe, and a daughter of the river Sangarius, they say, took of the fruit and laid it in her bosom, when it at once disappeared, but she was with child.  A boy was born and exposed, but was tended by a he-goat.  As he grew up, his beauty was more than human, and Agdistis fell in love with him.  When he had grown up, Attis was sent by his relatives to Pessinus, that he might wed the king's daughter.  The marriage song was being sung when Agdistis appeared, and Attis went mad and cut off his genitals, as also did he who was giving him his daughter in marriage.  But Agdistis repented of what he had done to Attis and persuaded Zeus to grant that the body of Attis should neither rot at all nor decay. (Description of Greece 7.17.10-12)

Before that, though, Pausanias recorded another form of the story in which Attis is slain by a boar:

Hermesianax, the elegiac poet, says in a poem that [Attis] was the son of Galaus the Phrygian, and that he was a eunuch from birth.  The account of Hermesianax goes on to say that, on growing up, Attis migrated to Lydia and celebrated for the Lydians the orgies of the Mother; that he rose to such honor that Zeus, being wroth at it, sent a boar to destroy the tillage of the Lydians.  Then certain Lydians, with Attis himself, were killed by the boar, and it is consistent with this that the Gauls who inhabit Pessinus abstain from pork. (Description of Greece 7.17.9-10)

Pausanias also mentions elsewhere that Attis was said to have been buried beneath Mount Agdistis (Description of Greece 1.4.5).  A third version of the story, also involving a boar, is from the writings of the historian Herodotus (Histories 1.34-45).  To just summarize it, Attis is the heroic son of the Lydian king Croesus, who has a dream prophesying that Attis will be killed by an iron spear.  The king stores away all the weapons and forbids Attis to go out on military expeditions.  In the meantime, a Phrygian named Adrastus, who was exiled from his home for having accidentally killed his brother, comes and begs Croesus to purify him.  The king grants his wish and lets him stay there.  Shortly thereafter, a massive boar begins terrorizing the Mysian fields, and so the Mysians beg Croesus for help.  He agrees to send his armies but not Attis, who then appeals to his father on the basis that boars and iron spears are very different things.  Croesus agrees and gives Adrastus the task of protecting Attis.  Unfortunately, in an attempt to kill the boar, Adrastus threw his spear and accidentally hit Attis instead, killing him.  The Lydians brought back Attis' corpse, which was promptly buried in a tomb, and Adrastus killed himself in remorse.

A fourth tale, told by the Roman poet Ovid (Fasti 4.221ff), has Attis as the lover of the goddess Cybele.  Attis pledges his undying love but eventually betrays Cybele with the nymph Sagaritis.  Cybele responds by wounding a tree with a special connection to him, driving him into a madness that led him to castrate himself.  In another book altogether, Ovid relates (Metamorphoses 10.103) that Attis died under a pine tree.

Fifth, according to the writer Diodorus Siculus, Cybele caused Attis to die when she had a miscarriage after becoming pregnant by him.  She ensured that his body was left exposed rather than buried, and the Phrygians were much later commanded to bury his corpse.  Unable to recover any pieces of his body after such a long time, they instead held a funeral for a statue of him.

A sixth tale related by Arnobius (Adversus Gentes 5.5-7) in the third century AD is much more detailed than most of the others.  In it, Zeus spilled his seed on a rock called Agdus after a failed attempt to impregnate the Mother Goddess, whom Arnobius understands to be Zeus' mother.  The rock, however, became pregnant and gave birth to the androgynous Agdistis.  He was extremely wild, and so the gods plotted to drug Agdistis with wine until he lost consciousness.  During his slumber, the god Liber tied a rope to Agdistis' genitals, and when Agdistis woke up and tried to storm off in a fury, he was emasculated.  From the ensuing shower of blood, a pomegranate tree.  Later, Nana, the daughter of Sangarius, takes some of the fruit and becomes pregnant through it somehow.  She later gives birth to Attis.  The Mother Goddess and Agdistis both loved him very greatly, and it wasn't just a "friendly" sort of love, if you catch my drift, especially where Agdistis was concerned.  The king of Pessinus intervenes by giving his daughter to Attis in marriage, but Agdistis causes havoc at the wedding, driving everyone insane.  Among other tragedies, Attis fatally emasculates himself beneath a pine tree.  Zeus is asked to restore Attis to life but refuses, consenting only to make sure that the body never decays, that his hair always grows, and that his little finger is in constant motion.

The movie seemed to imply that the birth of Attis was somehow comparable to that of Jesus, but to review how Attis was born according to the most prominent tradition, it involved vanishing fruit from a tree that grew from the blood shed in self-mutilation by a hermaphrodite demon.  Whether or not Attis' mother was a virgin in this story, it isn't said, but in any case, while it does involve a conception without intercourse, beyond that it's certainly nothing like the conception of Jesus, which happens in that story simply through the power of God's Holy Spirit.  Besides that, two of the other three traditions advance human fathers, Galaus and Croesus, for Attis, which clearly indicates an absence of belief in any sort of virgin birth.  The only tradition that differs is very unlike the story of Jesus and comes from a source later than the New Testament.  That makes the so-called "virgin birth" of Attis a very weak link, but not as weak a link as the birthday.  Aside from the fact that December 25th isn't associated with Jesus until much later, it isn't associated with Attis at all in the primary sources.

As for crucifixion, it should be very clear that none of these accounts has anything remotely like that.  The closest is Attis dying beneath a pine tree, which is an incredible distance from being crucified.  One source cited on occasion is a snippet from the fourth-century writings of Firmicus Maternus, a former astrologer who converted to Christianity and wrote a scathing polemic against the other religions of the empire.  He says that during a yearly festival of the cult of Cybele, "a pine tree is cut every year, and an image of a youth is fastened on the middle of the tree" (Error of the Pagan Religions 27.1).  This isn't to imply that Attis died on a tree, however; rather, he died under the tree, but for the purposes of the procession, the figure of Attis had to be attached to the tree.

A few stories do have Attis being buried in a tomb after his death, but none of them have him ever leaving it.  As for resurrection, the closest that the surviving myths ever get to that is well after the time of Jesus.  Aside from what Arnobius related about Attis' non-resurrection, one puzzling passage from Firmicus Maternus affirms new life for Attis.  As he says:

In order to satisfy the angry woman, or perhaps trying to find consolation for her after she repented, [the Phrygians] advanced the claim that he whom they had buried a little while earlier had come to life again; and since the woman's heart burned unbearably with overweening love, they erected temples to the dead youth. [...] The earth, they maintain, loves the crops, Attis is the very thing that grows from the crops, and the punishment which he suffered is what a harvester with his sickle does to the ripened crops.  His death they interpret as the storing away of the collected seeds, his resurrection as the sprouting of the scattered seeds in the annual turn of the seasons. (Error of the Pagan Religions 3.1-2)

A few things to notice.  First of all, this comes from a text several hundred years later than the origin of Christianity, and no hint of a new life for Attis appears in anything earlier than that.  Second, in Firmicus' story, the Phrygians fabricate the idea to console Attis' killer; and the claim is immediately contradicted by noting that the Phrygians "erected temples to the dead youth".  Third, Firmicus relates that many saw the story as an agricultural allegory, which makes it distinctly unlike Jesus.  At best, this is an obscure variant with little to no connection to Christianity.

It looks pretty clear-cut that Attis isn't a "solar messiah" or a "dying-and-rising savior god" like the makers of Zeitgeist would like.  He was just a god with a confused family tree who killed himself in a very unpleasant way, and whose male followers often emasculated themselves in imitation of him.  Frankly, as a guy, I'm glad that Christianity survived and Attis-worship didn't.

Another of the five main gods offered by Zeitgeist is Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.  Talking about him, the movie claims:

Dionysus of Greece, born of a virgin on December 25th, was a traveling teacher who performed miracles such as turning water into wine, he was referred to as the "King of Kings," "God's Only Begotten Son," "The Alpha and Omega," and many others, and upon his death, he was resurrected.

One of our most important sources for information about Dionysus is a play by Euripides called The Bacchae.  In it, the circumstances of Dionysus' birth are described.  Essentially, a Theban woman named Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, was another of Zeus' many mistresses.  Hera, perpetually jealous and justifiably so, persuaded Semele to doubt whether Zeus was really himself.  Semele requested that Zeus do her a favor, and after securing his promise, she demanded that he appear to her in his divine glory so that she could finally be sure.  Of course, when he did so, it burnt her to a crisp.  And as Euripides says of Semele:

[I]n the compulsion of birth pains, the thunder of Zeus flying upon her, the mother cast [Dionysus] from her womb, leaving life by the stroke of a thunderbolt.  Immediately Zeus, Kronos' son, received him into a chamber fit for birth, and having covered him in his thigh shut him up with golden clasps, hidden from Hera.  And he brought forth, when the Fates had perfected him, the bull-horned god, and he crowned him with crowns of snakes. (Bacchae 88-102[?])

It seems pretty obvious that this is nothing like a virgin birth.  An unusual birth, sure, but Semele definitely wasn't a virgin, and Zeus was about as far from virginity as you can get!  In another tradition, Dionysus is the son of Zeus and the goddess Persephone (Orphic Hymn 29), but the hymn still mentions that Zeus "mated with Persephone in unspeakable union", so this alternate ancestry doesn't help Zeitgeist's case.  As for December 25th, the simple truth is that no ancient pre-Christian source offers a date for a celebration for Dionysus, and the first mention of such a thing is by St. Epiphanius in the fourth century, and the date is January 6th, not December 25th!

Zeitgeist also says that Dionysus was a "traveling teacher", which is true but maybe a bit misleading.  In The Bacchae, Dionysus disguises himself as a priest of his own worship to go around and spread his cult.  That's a long way from Jesus, though, who was a leader-prophet and messianic figure who announced the end of exile, the restoration of the true Israel, the return of God to his people, and the judgment of God against the corruption of the society of his day (Jesus and the Victory of God, pp. 168-173, 651-653).  Dionysus traveled the world to entice people to worship him and accept his gift of wine, while Jesus traveled the land of Israel to announce the very Jewish message of the kingdom of God.  Dionysus also tended to be extremely vindictive to those who refused his message.  He often drove women insane and compelled them to commit horrible acts, such as eating their own babies.  In The Bacchae, Dionysus drives the Theban women insane and tricks King Pentheus into going out among them, where he is torn apart by a group of them, especially his own mother.

It's also said that Dionysus turned water into wine, like Jesus did at the wedding in Cana (John 2:1-11), but that doesn't really bear up well under scrutiny.  The idea probably comes from two different accounts.  In one, Pausanias tells how during festival times at Elis, empty jars are placed in a shrine and, allegedly, are miraculously filled with wine overnight.  He says:

Between the market-place and the Menius is an old theater and a shrine of Dionysus.  The image is the work of Praxiteles.  Of the gods the Eleans worship Dionysus with the greatest reverence, and they assert that the god attends their festival, the Thyia.  The place where they hold the festival they name the Thyia is about eight stades from the city.  Three pots are brought into the building by the priests and set down empty in the presence of the citizens and of any strangers who may chance to be in the country.  The doors of the building are sealed by the priests themselves and by any others who may be so inclined.  On the morrow they are allowed to examine the seals, and on going into the building they find the pots filled with wine. (Description of Greece 6.26.1-2)

The other story, told by Pliny the Elder, makes claims about a spring that occasionally produces wine:

In the island of Andros, at the temple of Father Bacchus, we are assured by Mucianus, who was thrice consul, that there is a spring, which, on the nones of January, always has the flavor of wine; it is called dios theodosia. (Natural History 2.106)

According to Mucianus, there is a fountain at Andros, consecrated to Father Liber, from which wine flows during the seven days appointed for the yearly festival of that god, the taste of which becomes like that of water the moment it is taken out of sight of the temple. (Natural History 31.13)

Diodorus Siculus also mentions "a spring [...] which at some certain times streams forth most rich and fragrant wine".  But in all of these cases, it isn't said that Dionysus actually turns water into wine.  As miraculous as these stories might be if they were true and not engineered by the priests, they aren't parallel to Jesus' miracle at Cana.

Zeitgeist doesn't directly claim that Dionysus was crucified, but the movie does display in connection with him an amulet portraying a figure suspended from a cross.  The only problem with this amulet is that it's suspected by leading experts to be a complete forgery!  Dionysus wasn't crucified, and the willingness of the makers of Zeitgeist to include its image without a notice should caution viewers against trusting them too highly.  In fairness, though, Zeitgeist's sources Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy are undoubtedly the ones at fault for deliberately ignoring that fact.  Even before the forgery was discovered, though, it was known that the amulet dated from times well after the life of Christ, and so the most likely option would have been that the amulet resulted from interaction with Christianity.

As for the death and resurrection of Dionysus, in only two traditions can anything remotely like that be found; the first comes from Diodorus Siculus, who said:

The fabulous writers likewise feign a third generation of Bacchus, that he was the son of Jupiter and Ceres, and that some men of the earth pulled him in pieces, and boiled his parts; and that Ceres gathered his members together again, and renewed and revived him.  Which fictions the natural philosophers explain according to natural reason; for he is said (they say) to be the son of Jupiter and Ceres, because the vine is nourished by the earth and the rain from heaven, and so produces fruit; whence comes wine, by pressing of the grape.  That the boiling of his members, signifies the operation of making the wine, which many boil to render it more strong and fragrant.  That his members were pulled in pieces by earthly men afterwards, and joined together again, and he restored to his former state, denotes no more, but that, after the vintage and pruning of the vines at the season of the year, the earth causes them to flourish again, and to be as fruitful as they ever were before. (Historical Library, p. 203)

From this it should be clear that the story was essentially an allegory for the process of wine-making and the seasonal growth of grape vines.  It has no comparison to the death and resurrection of Jesus, which was held by the early church to be a concrete, historical event that happened at a specific place and time, with no immediate link to yearly cycles or agriculture.  A somewhat similar story is also related by the second-century Christian bishop Clement of Alexandria, who wrote:

The mysteries of Dionysus are wholly inhuman; for while still a child, and the Curetes danced around (his cradle) clashing their weapons, and the Titans having come upon them by stealth and having beguiled him with childish toys, these very Titans tore him limb from limb when but a child. [...] Athene, to resume our account, having abstracted the heart of Dionysus, was called Pallas, from the vibrating of the heart; and the Titans who had torn him limb from limb, setting a cauldron on a tripod and throwing into it the members of Dionysus, first boiled them down, and then fixing them on spits, held them over the fire.  But Zeus having appeared, since he was a god, having speedily perceived the savour of the pieces of flesh that were being cooked--that savour which your gods agree to have assigned to them as their perquisite--assails the Titans with his thunderbolt and consigns the members of Dionysus to his son Apollo to be interred.  And he--for he did not disobey Zeus--bore the dismembered corpse to Parnassus, and there deposited it. (Exhortation to the Heathen 2)

The story is there picked up in a text, possibly from the second century AD, attributed to the earlier Roman writer Gaius Julius Hyginus.  It is said:

Liber, son of Jove and Persephone, was dismembered by the Titans, and Jove gave his heart, torn to bits, to Semele in a drink.  When she was made pregnant by this, Juno, changing herself to look like Semele's nurse, Beroe, said to her: "Daughter, ask Jove to come to you as he comes to Juno, so you may know what pleasure it is to sleep with a god."  At her suggestion Semele made this request of Jove and was smitten by a thunderbolt.  He took Liber from her womb and gave him to Nysus to be cared for.  For this reason he is called Dionysus, and also "the one with two mothers". (Fabulae 167)

And the third-century Christian author Commodianus summarizes it all quite well:

Ye yourselves say that Father Liber was assuredly twice begotten.  First of all he was born in India of Proserpine and Jupiter, and waging war against the Titans, when his blood was shed, he expired even as one of mortal men.  Again, restored from his death, in another womb Semele conceived him again of Jupiter, a second Main, whose womb being divided, he is taken away near to birth from his dead mother, and as a nursling is given to be nourished to Nisus.  From this being twice born he is called Dionysus; and his religion is falsely observed in vanity; and they celebrate his orgies such that now they themselves seem to be either foolhardy or burlesquers of Mimnermomerus.  They conspire in evil; they practise beforehand with pretended heat, that they may deceive others into saying that a deity is present.  Hence you manifestly see men living a life like his, violently excited with the wine which he himself had pressed out; they have given him divine honour in the midst of their drunken excess. (Instructions 12)

That link brings the story full-circle and connects the conflicting mothers assigned to Dionysus.  Here, the god Liber--sometimes called Zagreus in his earlier phase--is killed by Titans and essentially reincarnated in the womb of Semele as the more familiar Dionysus.  That's certainly not the same thing as resurrection, and in any case, in this story it happens when the figure is only an infant, whereas Jesus is an adult when he is crucified.  The second story, on the other hand, is found in Firmicus Maternus, who relates that after the "tyrant" Liber was forced out of Thebes by Lycurgus:

Liber was caught by Lycurgus and hurled into the sea over a nearby cliff which formed an immense precipice with impassible rocks.  And this severe punishment was designed to let the mangled corpse, long tossed by the waves of the sea, restore the errant wits of the populace to sanity and sobreity.  Such was the end of Liber; and Homer exposes his panicky flight and indicates his death by saying: "Dionysus in terror dived down in the briny sea, where Thetis received him in her bosom; fearstricken he was, for a powerful shivering caught him at the man's bluster." (Error of the Pagan Religions 6.8; cf. Iliad 6.135-137)

In short, the deaths of Dionysus and Jesus are nothing alike, and although Zagreus is restored to life in a sense,

Finally, as for the titles "King of Kings", "God's Only-Begotten Son", and "Alpha and Omega", Zeitgeist is batting zero for three, a rather unimpressive feat.  None of them are found in the primary sources, and it's a real shame that the makers of the movie didn't do a better job of documenting their claims.

All in all, Dionysus seems to go the way of Attis.  He's no "solar messiah" and bears little resemblance to Jesus.  To group them all together is rather unjustified.

A third god suggested by Zeitgeist is Krishna, a manifestation of the Hindu god Vishnu.  Zeitgeist says:

Krishna, of India, born of the virgin Devaki with a star in the east signaling his coming, performed miracles with his disciples, and upon his death was resurrected.

The first thing that can be said about this is that, since Krishna was said to be Devaki's eighth son, calling this a virgin birth seems rather dubious.  As told in Srimad Bhagavatam, Devaki was the sister of a nobleman named Vasudeva.  Devaki's brother Kamsa was a tyrannical king.  At the wedding, a disembodied voice informed Kamsa that Devaki's eighth son would kill him, and so Kamsa prepared to kill her.  Vasudeva, in a successful effort to save his bride's life, agreed to deliver to Kamsa all of the children immediately after birth.  Kamsa succeeded in killing the first six of Devaki's children and put the couple under house arrest.  The seventh, a "plenary portion of Krishna" (Srimad Bhagavatam 10.2.4-5) was transferred to another woman's womb through miraculous means.  The eighth was Krishna himself, possibly conceived without intercourse.  Cryptically, the text says that:

While carrying the form of the Supreme Personality of Godhead within the core of his heart, Vasudeva bore the Lord's transcendentally illuminating effulgence, and thus he became as bright as the sun.  He was therefore very difficult to see or approach through sensory perception.  Indeed, he was unapproachable and unperceivable even for such formidable men as Kamsa, and not only for Kamsa but for all living entities.  Thereafter, accompanied by plenary expansions, the fully opulent Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is all-auspicious for the entire universe, was transferred from the mind of Vasudeva to the mind of Devaki.  Devaki, having thus been initiated by Vasudeva, became beautiful by carrying Lord Krishna, the original consciousness for everyone, the cause of all causes, within the core of her heart, just as the east becomes beautiful by carrying the rising moon. (Srimad Bhagavatam 10.2.17-18)

Vasudeva escaped temporarily with Krishna, went to another house, exchanged Krishna for a baby girl, and returned to his place of imprisonment.  Thus, Krishna escaped being killed.  He later did, as the story goes, kill Kamsa (Srimad Bhagavatam 10.44.34-38).

The birth of Krishna is closer by far to the birth of Jesus than those of either Attis or Dionysus, but the fundamental difference is that Zeitgeist is simply dead wrong in calling Devaki a "virgin".  Krishna had an unusual birth, perhaps, maybe even a peculiar sexless one, but it isn't a virgin birth.  And unlike the birth of Jesus', which reflects a very Jewish background of transcendant monotheism, the birth of Krishna is made possible through a distinctively Hindu pantheistic framework.

The only other important part of Zeitgeist's picture of Krishna is the claim that after he died, he was resurrected.  The movie is right to say that Krishna died.  He was, after all, an incarnation of the divine, an avatar of Vishnu.  The story of his death, in which Krishna is mistakenly killed by a hunter, is narrated in the Mahabharata like this:

Having restrained all his senses, speech, and mind, Krishna laid himself down in high Yoga.  A fierce hunter of the name of Jara then came there, desirous of deer.  The hunter, mistaking Keshava, who was stretched on the earth in high Yoga, for a deer, pierced him at the heel with a shaft and quickly came to that spot for capturing prey.  Coming up, Jara beheld a man dressed in yellow robes, rapt in Yoga and endued with many arms.  Regarding himself as an offender and filled with fear, he touched the feet of Keshava.  The high-souled one comforted him and then ascended upwards, filling the entire welkin with splendor. (Mahabharata 16.4)

Absolutely nowhere, though, have I found a tradition of Krishna being resurrected.  Reincarnated, perhaps, but that's hardly out of place in Hinduism.  Reincarnation isn't comparable to the Jewish concept of resurrection, which involves the same body returning to life, not a new body being conceived in a womb.

All in all, then, Krishna isn't very much like Jesus either.  There's no virgin birth, per se; there's no crucifixion; there's no resurrection; and the significance of Krishna's life was totally unlike Jesus'.

The next god tried out by Zeitgeist is Mithras.  There are actually three important versions of Mithras: the Vedic god Mitra, the Iranian god Mithra, and the Mithras of the Roman Mithraic cult.  One mistake that Zeitgeist makes here and there is assuming that these are all pretty much the same.  That was the dominant view in scholarship a long time ago, when Franz Cumont was a leading expert on Mithraism, but modern Mithraic scholars know that the three shouldn't be confused.  Anyway, Zeitgeist largely draws on Roman Mithraism when it says:

Mithra, of Persia, born of a virgin on December 25th, he had 12 disciples and performed miracles, and upon his death was buried for 3 days and thus resurrected, he was also referred to as "The Truth," "The Light," and many others. Interestingly, the sacred day of worship of Mithra was Sunday.

The first significant claims, of course, is the virgin birth.  Unfortunately, since Roman Mithraism was a mystery religion, they tended not to write down what they believed.  However, a number of pieces of artwork survive, and so scholars can reconstruct various elements of the story of Mithras.  The Roman Mithras was born, somewhat like Agdistis, from a rock, and in adult form at that.  Commodianus confirms this, saying that "the unconquered one was born from a rock" (Instructions 13).  In the Zoroastrian Yashts of the Avesta (esp. cf. Mihr Yasht), Mithra is created by Ahura Mazda as one of the yazatas (Yasht 10.1).  Calling the birth of Mithras a "virgin birth" is a gross misrepresentation.

The claim that Mithras had twelve disciples is pretty common among Zeitgeist's sources, and it's based on a misinterpretation of a particular relief that displays signs of the Zodiac.  It'd be a mistake to define these figures, then, as "disciples" of Mithras.

The real problem with what Zeitgeist says about Mithras comes with talk of a death, burial, and resurrection.  Nowhere is there even the slightest bit of evidence that Mithras was imagined by either Romans or Persians to have ever died.  The leading scholars insist on this point.  And, of course, without a death, burial and resurrection tend to go out the window.  The closest that they ever come to making a point on this issue is through a brief quote from a second-century Christian named Tertullian, who said:

The question will arise: by whom is to be interpreted the sense of the passages which make for heresies?  By the devil, of course, to whom pertain those wiles which pervert the truth, and who, by the mystic rites of the idols, vies even with the essential portions of the sacraments of God.  He, too, baptizes some--that is, his own believers and faithful followers; he promises the putting away of sins by a laver (of his own); and if my memory still serves me, Mithra there, (in the kingdom of Satan,) sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers; celebrates also the oblation of bread; and introduces an image of a resurrection, and before a sword wreathes a crown. (Presciptions Against Heretics 40.1-4)

The first thing worthy of being noticed is that Tertullian admits he's relying on doubtful memories for his claims about Mithraism.  Second, several of these may be things that Tertullian has phrased to parallel Christian thought in order to make his point: that Satan perverts everything good in Christianity.  Third, Tertullian says that Mithras "introduces an image of a resurrection".  Exactly what that's supposed to mean, is nowhere made clear.  It definitely isn't close to sure what the image is, or that the resurrection is supposed to be that of Mithras.  It's a vast stretch to get from passages like this to a belief in a dying and rising Mithras.  It just isn't supported by the evidence.

The same problem goes along with the claim that Mithras had titles like "the Truth" and "the Light".  If he did, Mithraic scholars would probably appreciate it if the makers of Zeitgeist could let them know where, since it'd be a major find.  There's just no evidence for those titles.

Zeitgeist is somewhat correct that Sunday was a sacred day for Roman Mithraism, but it isn't nearly so significant as they might think.  The reason that Christian worship came to take place on a Sunday was in commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus; Mithras doesn't have anything like that.  Instead, it should just be considered that there are only seven days in a week, and it shouldn't be terribly surprising if sacred days happen to coincide.  Besides that, the vast bulk of our evidence for Roman Mithraism comes from after the time of Jesus, meaning that it's more probably that, if there were any borrowing involved here, it was the Mithraists borrowing from the Christians in this case.  Interestingly, historian Michele Salzman has argued that the Mithraic connection to Sunday postdates the New Testament era:

The evidence that can be adduced for the Mithraists' use of the seven-day planetary week is largely iconographic; we simply do not know how much it shaped their liturgy in the centuries before Constantine. [...] [T]here is no good evidence to indicate that pagans celebrated the dies Solis [Sunday] as a religious holiday. [...] [P]agans and Christians did have different notions of Sunday; only for the Christians do we have evidence of this day being marked as a day of worship on a weekly basis, both before and after Constantine. (Time and Temporality in the Ancient World, pp. 192, 195, 207)

So far, Zeitgeist seems to be zero for four.  But what about the fifth god, the one they seem to believe is the strongest connection?  That'd be Horus.  The movie says a lot more about him:

[Horus] is the Sun God of Egypt of around 3000 BC.  He is the sun, anthropomorphized, and his life is a series of allegorical myths involving the sun's movement in the sky.  From the ancient hieroglyphics in Egypt, we know much about this solar messiah.  For instance, Horus, being the sun, or the light, had an enemy named Set and Set was the personfication of darkness or night.  And, metaphorically speaking, every morning Horus would win the battle against Set - while in the evening, Set would conquer Horus and send him into the underworld.  [...]  Broadly speaking, the story of Horus is as follows: Horus was born on December 25th of the virgin Isis-Meri.  His birth was accompanied by a star in the east, which in turn, three kings followed to locate and adorn [sic] the newborn savior.  At the age of 12, he was a prodigal child teacher, and at the age of 30, he was baptized by a figure named Anup and thus began his ministry.  Horus had 12 disciples he traveled around with, performing miracles by healing the sick and walking on water.  Horus was known by many gestural names such as "the Truth", "the Light", "God's Anointed Son", "the Good Shepherd", "the Lamb of God", and many others.  After being betrayed by Typhon, Horus was crucified, buried for three days, and thus resurrected.

There's an immense amount to say about all of these claims.  First of all, Zeitgeist presents an immensely simplistic version of the relationship between Horus and Set, identifying the former with the sun and the latter with darkness.  In fact, in the Egyptian sources we do have, one of Set's main functions was to defend the sun on its travels against Apophis, the dragon who wished to destroy it (ANET, p. 12).  However, in one very important myth cycle, he does frequently serve also as the bitter foe of first his brother Osiris, whom he kills, and later Osiris' son Horus, against whom he competes for power before the gods finally convene and decide in favor of Horus.  Yet in the same text, the Egyptian sun god Re declares:

Let Seth, the son of Nut, be given to me, so that he may live with me and be a son to me.  And he shall speak out in the sky, and men shall be afraid of him. (ANET, p. 17)

In the stories of Horus, again Zeitgeist goes too far in their desperate desire to see December 25th everywhere.  The sole reference to a birthdate is to the 31st of an Egyptian month Khoiak, which probably coincided more with October than with December.  The odds that Khoiak 31st corresponds to December 25th are certainly small.  His mother Isis was also not a virgin when he was born.  There is certainly no reason to suspect that Horus was conceived in a manner other than intercourse between Osiris and Isis.  In Plutarch's Osiris and Isis, Harpocrates--Horus-the-Child--has the following origin:

Isis conceived by Osiris copulating with her after death and brought forth the prematurely born, and weak in his lower limbs, Harpocrates. (Osiris and Isis 19)

And in the first hymn found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the last line is:

The Company of the gods rejoiced at the coming of Horus, the son of Osiris, whose heart was firm, the triumphant, the son of Isis, the heir of Osiris.

It must be said, of course, that Egyptian mythology tended to have several figures identified as Horus.  First, one of the siblings of Osiris and Isis was called "the elder Horus", and Plutarch records a suggestion that he was born when Osiris and Isis, still both in the same womb--they were, after all, brother and sister--had intercourse (Osiris and Isis 12).  A Horus seemingly distinct from both of these, in Plutarch's account, is the Horus who fights Set, called Typhon by Plutarch.

As for the three kings adoring Horus in infancy, the teaching at age 12, the baptism by Anup at age 30, the twelve disciples, the crucifixion, the burial, and the resurrection: all foreign to our ancient sources for Horus.  Ancient mythology tends not to have events happening at specific times in the lives of gods, though various phases like infancy and adulthood aren't uncommon.  Anup appears to be an alternate name for Anubis, the jackal-headed god of embalming, who wasn't in the baptism business.  That was a Jewish thing, which is why John the Baptist was known to do it (Antiquities of the Jews 18.5.2).  When sources record associates of Horus, the number 12 isn't among them.  When it comes to Horus being "betrayed by Typhon", we have to recall that Typhon was the Greek name for Set, who was the foe of Horus, not his follower.  The idea of "betrayal", insofar as it's intended to parallel the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot, is out of place here.  Most importantly, Horus was never crucified--never killed, for that matter--and hence had no resurrection scene either.  As far as a parallel to Jesus goes, Horus is as much of a bust as the others.

Now, before I move on from Egypt, there's just one last thing I want to mention.  You might remember that in the movie, a very, very long list of claimed similarities between Christianity and Egyptian myth scrolled quickly across the screen.  Well, I was curious, so I transcribed the first part of the table.  To sum up, if these parallels were any more strained, they'd need to be hospitalized.  Many are completely irrelevant, and some are outright laughable.  One of them, for example, said:

Seb, Isis and Horus, the Kamite holy trinity [compares to] Joseph, Mary and Jesus, a Christian holy trinity.

The makers of the list clearly weren't thinking.  Nowhere in Christianity are Joseph, Mary, and Jesus said to comprise a "holy trinity".  The word "trinity" isn't a synonym for "trio" or "triad"; the only trinity in Christianity is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Joseph, Mary, and Jesus are sometimes called "the Holy Family", but never "a Christian holy trinity".  Whoever wrote this list simply didn't understand the word, and they were clearly very desperate to find as many parallels as possible, no matter the cost to facts.  Case in point, a second line said:

Horus, the brother of Sut the betrayer [compares to] Jesus, the brother of Judas the betrayer.

The problem is that nothing in the historically reliable documents and traditions at our disposal intimates that Jesus was the brother of Judas Iscariot!  If these are the sorts of stretches necessary to give the illusion of an impressive collection of parallels, it isn't worth it.  As a last item from the list, another line said:

The two mothers of Child-Horus, Isis and Nephthys, who were two sisters [compare to] the two mothers of Child-Jesus, who were sisters.

...I'll let that just sink in a moment.  Whatever the merits of the first half, the second part is just incredible.  Jesus did not have two mothers who were sisters.  Jesus had one mother, Mary!  By the way, a quick excursus: elsewhere in the film, they claim that three "virgin mothers"--Mary the mother of Jesus, Myrrha the mother of Adonis, and Maya the mother of Buddha--all had names beginning with the letter M, as though this were somehow significant.  In fact, though, it's known that "Mary" was the most common name among Jewish women in the land of Israel at that time (Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p.89).  It should hardly come as a surprise that the mother of Jesus might bear that name.  The movie is right that the mothers of Adonis and Buddha are called Myrrha and Maya in some traditions, but neither was a virgin mother.  Myrrha committed incest with her father, Cinryas according to Ovid (Metamorphoses 10.298-518).  Apollodorus gives the mother the name Smyrna, essentially equivalent to Myrrha, and calls her father Theias (Library 3.14.4).  In this version, too, Adonis is born from incest.  As for Maya, it's true that in many traditions, Buddha was conceived apart from sexual union, but as Maya was already married, it's doubtful that she herself was a virgin.  What the Buddha-karita of Asvaghosha, a first-century biographer of Buddha, says is:

A king, by name Suddhodana, of the kindred of the sun, anointed to stand at the head of earth's monarchs, ruling over the city, adorned it, as a bee-inmate a full-blown lotus.  [...]  To him there was a queen named Mâyâ, as if free from all deceit--an effulgence from his effulgence, like the splendour of the sun when it is free from all the influence of darkness, a chief queen in the united assembly of all queens.  [...]  Then falling from the host of beings in the Tushita heaven, and illumining the three worlds, the most excellent of bodhisattvas suddenly entered at a thought into her womb, like the Nâga-king entering the cave of Nandâ.  Assuming the form of a huge elephant white like Himâlaya, armed with six tusks, with his face perfumed with flowing ichor, he entered the womb of the queen of king Suddhodana to destroy the evils of the world. (Buddha-karita 1.9, 15, 19-20)

Those who try to argue for Maya's virginity commonly toss out one source, a quotation from the fourth-century Christian author Jerome, who writes:

To come to the Gymnosophists of India, the opinion is authoritatively handed down that Buddha, the founder of their religion, had his birth through the side of a virgin. (Against Jovinianus 1.42)

The problem with using this as evidence is that Jerome wrote many hundreds of years after the lifetime of the historical Buddha; he was not a Buddhist, but rather a Christian looking at Buddhism through Christian eyes; and he lived a great distance from India.  The quote appears in a context where Jerome is defending the virtues of chastity, and in the same list--which he says was "hastily gathered from many histories" (Against Jovinianus 1.43)--he mentions Minerva's birth from Jupiter's head, Bacchus' birth from Zeus' thigh, the allegedly "virgin" birth of Plato's mother after being "violated by an apparition of Apollo" (1.42), and the "virgin" birth of Romulus and Remus, the sons of the Roman god Mars.  The odds simply favor the position that Jerome is unreliable and, at best, reporting a Christianized tradition.  Buddha most likely was not initially claimed to have had a virgin birth.

Zeitgeist included one other important list, though, a list of other pagan gods said to share the characteristics of Jesus, Attis, Dionysus, Krishna, Mithras, and Horus.  Well, we've already seen how poorly the movie did on those comparisons, which it considered the cream of the crop.  This list is even worse in many cases.  One of the "gods" on the list, "Beddru of Japan", is entirely fictional!  The name is entirely wrong for the supposed country of origin, and in fact the first mention of such a god is in the source from which the list was taken uncritically, the first chapter of a book written in 1875 by Kersey Graves called The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors.  Graves is widely recognized as unreliable in the extreme, even for his own time.  The only thing Zeitgeist omitted from his list was the last one, Muhammad.  Interestingly, the list shows up again as a faint background behind a set of pictures, and careful examination reveals that in this scene, Muhammad's name concludes the list.  Also, the list by Graves records "Adonis, son of the virgin Io of Greece", which entirely contradicts the movie's statement that the mother of Adonis was Myrrha!  That kind of discrepancy deserves to be noted.

Still trying to defend the link, though, Zeitgeist cites an infamous and often misunderstood passage from Justin Martyr.  The movie says:

Justin Martyr, one of the first Christian historians and defenders, wrote: "When we say that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was produced without sexual union, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into Heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those who you esteem Sons of Jupiter."  In a different writing, Justin Martyr said "He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you believe of Perseus."  It's obvious that Justin and other early Christians knew how similar Christianity was to the Pagan religions.  However, Justin had a solution.  As far as he was concerned, the Devil did it.  The Devil had the foresight to come before Christ, and create these characteristics in the Pagan world

A couple things need to be said.  What Justin is doing here is countering arguments that Christian doctrine is absurd by claiming that it resembles things already believed by non-Christians.  Of course, to do so, Justin has to make some vast stretches in order to make things fit.  What we have to keep in mind is his setting.  In the ancient world, "new" wasn't "improved", "new" was pretentious.  What's more, Christianity had the disadvantage of a Jewish background, which surely didn't help, as well as the ultimate turn-off: worship of a crucified man.  Appealing to similarity in that context, while obviously going too far, was an understandable tactic.  Justin isn't trying to explain away parallels that everyone recognizes; he's trying to convince the pagans that the parallels exist, and also that Satan developed these similarities through misunderstanding prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament.  When Justin really gets into the details in the passages that the movie doesn't quote, he compares Greek myth with the writings of Old Testament prophets like Isaiah and Zechariah.  Justin Martyr believed that the Greeks plagiarized ideas from the ancient Israelites, strange as that sounds.  His ultimate point is that if the pagans believe these sorts of things about their gods, they have no good reason to reject the story of Jesus.  Probably the best summary of his line of argument comes from the chapter before he begins talking about these "similarities":

If, therefore, on some points we teach the same things as the poets and philosophers whom you honour, and on other points are fuller and more divine in our teaching, and if we alone afford proof of what we assert, why are we unjustly hated more than all others? (1 Apology 20)

So it should be taken with a grain of salt when Zeitgeist says that Justin Martyr proves their point.  He had an agenda, and in many ways his case is precisely the opposite of theirs.

Moving on, Zeitgeist made quite a number of claims about the "real" significance of the birth narratives in the Gospels.  To select just a few highlights:

First of all, the birth sequence is completely astrological.  The star in the east is Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, which, on December 24th, aligns with the 3 brightest stars in Orion's Belt.  These 3 bright stars are called today what they were called in ancient times: The Three Kings.  [...]  Virgo is also referred to as the House of Bread, and the representation of Virgo is a virgin holding a sheaf of wheat.  [...]  Bethlehem is thus a reference to the constellation Virgo, a place in the sky, not on Earth.  [...]  By December 22nd, the Sun's demise was fully realized, for the Sun, having moved south continually for 6 months, makes it to its lowest point in the sky. [...]  During this 3 day pause, the Sun resides in the vicinity of the Southern Cross, or Crux, constellation.  And after this time on December 25th, the Sun moves 1 degree, this time north[.]  And thus it was said: the Sun died on the cross, was dead for 3 days, only to be resurrected or born again.

It's difficult to know precisely where to begin with this.  First of all, I already mentioned that the "three kings" and December 25th result from later traditions, not from the original story of Jesus.  None of what the movie has to say about that is relevant.  While Zeitgeist is correct that the stars of Orion's Belt have been called the "Three Kings", this seems to be a modern term, not an ancient one; and there isn't any evidence that Virgo was called the "House of Bread".  Bethlehem does mean "House of Bread", but it's a known city on earth, the hometown of King David (1 Samuel 17:12), and long before the time of Jesus, the prophet Micah wrote:

Now gather yourself in troops, O daughter of troops.  He has laid siege against us; they will strike the judge of Israel with a rod on the cheek.  But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.  Therefore he shall give them up, until the time that she who is in labor has given birth; then the remnant of his brethren shall return to the children of Israel.  And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of YHWH, in the majesty of the name of YHWH his God; and they shall abide, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. (Micah 5:1-4)

There's one more truly glaring problem with the claims made by Zeitgeist here.  Curious about the astronomy, a skeptic of the claims contacted Dr. Noel Swerdlow, a noted astronomy professor at the University of Chicago.  As it turns out, while the stars of the Southern Cross were just barely visible from Israel in ancient times, it wasn't distinguished as a constellation until much later.  In fact, in ancient times, the second-century astronomer Ptolemy, who catalogued a number of stars in various constellations in a work called the Almagest, included these stars in the constellation Centaurus (Almagest VIII.1.H161-2)!  The simple truth is that it wasn't for over a thousand years after the time of Jesus that the Southern Cross was distinguished.  Zeitgeist is being heavily anachronistic; what we know as the "Southern Cross" just couldn't have had that kind of significance back then.  After this, the movie continued to say things like:

Now, of the many astrological-astronomical metaphors in the Bible, one of the most important has to do with the ages.  Throughout the scripture there are numerous references to the "Age."  In order to understand this, we need to be familiar with the phenomenon known as the precession of the equinoxes. The ancient Egyptians along with cultures long before them recognized that approximately every 2150 years the sunrise on the morning of the spring equinox would occur at a different sign of the Zodiac.  [...]  [Ancient societies] referred to each 2150 year period as an "age." From 4300 b.c. to 2150 b.c., it was the Age of Taurus, the Bull. From 2150 b.c. to 1 a.d., it was the Age of Aries, the Ram, and from 1 a.d. to 2150 a.d. it is the Age of Pisces, the age we are still in to this day, and in and around 2150, we will enter the new age: the Age of Aquarius.

To stop for a moment right there, one things desperately needs to be said.  Zeitgeist's sources refuse to admit it, but the precession of the equinoxes was only discovered in the second century BC by a Greek named Hipparchus (The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, p. 76).  "Ancient societies" before this weren't aware of it.  That becomes very important shortly.  Continuing, the movie talks about the time during the forty years when the Israelites lived as nomads in the desert and Moses, coming down from Mt. Sinai, discovered the Israelites making a golden calf idol:

Most Biblical scholars would attribute [Moses'] anger to the fact that the Israelites were worshiping a false idol, or something to that effect. The reality is that the golden bull is Taurus the Bull, and Moses represents the new Age of Aries the Ram.  This is why Jews even today still blow the Ram's horn.  Moses represents the new Age of Aries, and upon the new age, everyone must shed the old age.

Of course, in light of the fact that the ancient Israelites didn't know about the precession of the equinoxes, the connection here falls even flatter than it would've otherwise.  The more sensible view prevails: Moses' anger has nothing to do with astrological symbolism, but instead is based on the fact that the Israelites were already committing idolatry.  It wasn't uncommon in that general area for gods to be represented by bulls, like the Canaanite high god El was (ANET, p. 129).  As for the ram's horn, the shofar, do we really need to astrology to understand the common-sense selection of an animal whose horns make fine trumpets?  Moving on, Zeitgeist gets to the New Testament and says:

Jesus is the figure who ushers in the age following Aries, the Age of Pisces the Two Fish.  [...]  Jesus feeds 5000 people with bread and "two fish."  When he begins his ministry walking along Galilee, he befriends two fisherman, who follow him.  And I think we've all seen the Jesus-fish on the backs of people's cars.  [...]  At Luke 22:10 [...] the man bearing a pitcher of water is Aquarius, the water-bearer, who is always pictured as a man pouring out a pitcher of water.  [...]  He represents the age after Pisces, and when the Sun (God's Sun) leaves the Age of Pisces (Jesus), it will go into the House of Aquarius, as Aquarius follows Pisces in the precession of the equinoxes.  [...]  Apart from the cartoonish depictions in the Book of Revelation, the main source of this idea [of the end of the world] comes from Matthew 28:20, where Jesus says "I will be with you even to the end of the world."  However, in King James Version, "world" is a mistranslation, among many mistranslations. The actual word being used is "aeon", which means "age."

In all of this, Zeitgeist actually does get something monumentally right.  When Jesus refers to the "end of the aeon", he doesn't mean the end of the world.  But he also isn't talking about the astrological Age of Pisces, either.  Rather, in first-century Jewish thought there was an awareness of the current age, ha-olam ha-zeh, and the "age to come", ha-olam ha-ba.  The distinction shows up in later rabbinic writings, and it's also what Jesus is talking about.  The age of exile is drawing to a close, and the messianic age is dawning.  It has nothing to do with astrology.  One more quick side note: the makers of Zeitgeist betray only their own ignorance when they talk about the "cartoonish depictions in the Book of Revelation".  The tradition of apocalyptic literature deserves to be met on its own terms, although admittedly many modern Christians project their own ideas onto it just as rapidly.

The movie also makes a big deal about fish in Christianity.  It really isn't too surprising, though, when you consider just how much of the action in the Synoptic Gospels--that is, Matthew, Mark, and Luke--takes place around the Lake of Gennesaret, also called the Sea of Galilee, where fishing was very important and fish were an important food.  Jesus doesn't just call two fishermen, he calls several pairs of fishermen: Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, and James and John the sons of Zebedee, were all fishermen.  Jesus feeds the 5000 with five loaves of bread and two fish because, in the account, that's what was presented to him.  And you'll note that those numbers didn't stay so low for long!  Pisces has nothing to do with it.  Nor does it have anything to do with the ancient Christian symbol of the fish, which probably had its origins in the prevalence of fishing in the Galilean ministry of Jesus and in the fact the Greek word for fish, ichthys, made an excellent acronym for the phrase Iesous Christos, Theou 'Uios, Soter--"Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior".

Finally, the case of Luke 22:10 and its man carrying a pitcher of water.  The fuller passage reads:

Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover must be killed.  And [Jesus] sent Peter and John, saying, "Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we may eat."  So they said to him, "Where do you want us to prepare?"  And he said to them, "Behold, when you have entered the city, a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water; follow him into the house which he enters.  Then you shall say to the master of the house, 'The Teacher says to you, 'Where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' '  Then he will show you a large, furnished upper room; there make ready."  So they went and found it just as he had said to them, and they prepared the Passover. (Luke 22:7-13)

In context, it's obvious that Zeitgeist is reading a lot into the passage that just isn't there and cutting away everything that doesn't fit.  What Luke wrote was about an actual, physical male carrying a pitcher of water, who was going to lead Peter and John to the right place.

This brings us to a point where we can pursue another of Zeitgeist's big claims.  According to them, Jesus never even existed!  What they say is:

Furthermore, is there any non-Biblical historical evidence of any person, living with the name Jesus, the Son of Mary, who traveled about with 12 followers, healing people and the like?  There are numerous historians who lived in and around the Mediterranean either during or soon after the assumed life of Jesus.  How many of these historians document this figure?  Not one.  [...]  Four historians are typically referenced to justify Jesus's existence. Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, and Tacitus are the first three.  Each one of their entries consists of only a few sentences at best and only refer to the Christus or the Christ, which in fact is not name but a title. It means the "Anointed one".  The fourth source is Josephus and this source has been proven to be a forgery for hundreds of years.  Sadly, it is still cited as truth.

Now, a very great deal of this is highly inaccurate.  First of all, a quick question: why do we need "non-Biblical historical evidence" for Jesus?  The New Testament is a set of primary source documents just as valid as any other, not less so.  The books we now call Gospels were shown by a scholar named Richard Burridge to be in the genre of Greco-Roman biographies, and there's just no reason to consider them fundamentally fictional.  We're free to disbelieve them, if we like, but they are what they are.  So that right there produces several important early sources to the existence of a historical Jesus.  Count the Synoptic Gospels as one or three, the Gospel of John as another--and I highly recommend Richard Bauckham's book The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple for information about that--and the letters of Paul as yet another. 

Let's start with Flavius Josephus, their fourth historian.  His most famous statement is sometimes called the Testimonium Flavianum, and it reads:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure.  He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles.  He was [the] Christ.  And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him.  And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. (Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3)

The movie claims that this passage is entirely a forgery, but that's just not true.  It almost certainly does contain some interpolations, some edits by later copyists who added a few things to what Josephus had to say, but the majority view among scholars who devote themselves seriously to the study of Josephus' works is that the passage, minus a few interpolations, is authentic.  Louis Feldman, for example, one of the world's leading Josephan scholars, did an extensive survey of the literature and found that the majority voice was for only partial interpolation, with many scholars even going for full authenticity.  And as Feldman says:

We must start with the assumption that the 'Testimonium' is authentic until proven otherwise, inasmuch as the manuscript tradition, late though it be, is unanimous in including it. (Josephus and Modern Scholarship, 1937-1980, p. 690)

Furthermore, this isn't the only reference to Jesus in the works of Josephus.  There's another passage that Zeitgeist totally ignored:

And now Caesar, upon hearing the death of Festus, sent Albinus into Judea as procurator.  But the king deprived Joseph of the high priesthood, and bestowed the succession to that dignity on the son of Ananus, who was also himself called Ananus.  Now the report goes that this eldest Ananus proved a most fortunate man; for he had five sons who had all performed the office of a high priest to God, and who had himself enjoyed that dignity a long time formerly, which had never happened to any other of our high priests.  But this younger Ananus, who, as we have told you already, took the high priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent; he was also of the sect of the Sadducees, who are very rigid in judging offenders, above all the rest of the Jews, as we have already observed; when, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority].  Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done. (Antiquities of the Jews 20.9.1)

The important part of this passage for us is that it refers to James, the brother of Jesus (Matthew 13:55).  We know that we have the right Jesus because Josephus makes sure to specify that he's the Jesus who was known as the Christ, the "anointed one".  And this all implies very strongly that Jesus was, in fact, a historical figure, as was his brother.  There's no reason to suggest any interpolations here at all, and certainly no reason to think that the passage is a forgery.  It's widely known to be fully authentic (Josephus and Modern Scholarship, 1937-1980, p. 705).  It holds up, and so does the case for the historical Jesus.  And incidentally, Feldman notes that this passage confirms the 'Testimonium Flavianum' in that it "indicates that Jesus had been mentioned previously" (Josephus and Modern Scholarship, 1937-1980, p. 690).

Zeitgeist also mentions that Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny the Younger all make reference to Jesus, which is entirely true, although the movie's reason for dismissing their testimony is extremely weak.  Starting with the Roman historian Tacitus, he wrote:

Such indeed were the precautions of human wisdom.  The next thing was to seek means of propitiating the gods, and recourse was had to the Sibylline books, by the direction of which prayers were offered to Vulcanus, Ceres, and Proserpina.  Juno, too, was entreated by the matrons, first, in the Capitol, then on the nearest part of the coast, whence water was procured to sprinkle the fane and image of the goddess.  And there were sacred banquets and nightly vigils celebrated by married women.  But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order.  Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.  Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.  Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.  Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths.  Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.  Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car.  Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed. (Annals 15.44)

The degree of detail we actually get from this is astounding.  During the reign of Nero, there was a group of people known as Christians.  They're named after a person called "Christus", who endured the "extreme penalty", an undoubted reference to crucifixion (cf. Martin Hengel, Crucifixion, pp. 2-3).  This all happened in the province of Judaea while Pontius Pilatus was in charge, during the reign of Tiberius Caesar.  The following of this "Christus"--a "most mischievous superstition", as Tacitus calls it--spread even to Rome.  It should be very obvious that the only person crucified in Judaea under Pilate who was known as a messianic figure--the meaning of "Christus", after all--and whose followers survived around the empire, even in Rome, into the reign of Nero and were called "Christians", is the historical Jesus.  Zeitgeist objects to this with the weak declaration that Jesus is here called "Christus", a Latinized form of his title instead of his name, as though it were therefore unclear who is under discussion.  That just won't do, since it's obviously the same Jesus.

It's pretty clear that Suetonius has the same person in mind, but his testimony is much less useful.  He wrote:

He suppressed all foreign religions, and the Egyptian and Jewish rites, obliging those who practised that kind of superstition, to burn their vestments, and all their sacred utensils.  He distributed the Jewish youths, under the pretence of military service, among the provinces noted for an unhealthy climate; and dismissed from the city all the rest of that nation as well as those who were proselytes to that religion, under pain of slavery for life, unless they complied.  He also expelled the astrologers; but upon their suing for pardon, and promising to renounce their profession, he revoked his decree. (Tiberius 36)

[Claudius] exonerated for ever the people of Ilium from the payment of taxes, as being the founders of the Roman race; reciting upon the occasion a letter in Greek, from the senate and people of Rome to king Seleucus, on which they promised him their friendship and alliance, provided that he would grant their kinsmen the Iliensians immunity from all burdens.  He banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus.  He allowed the ambassadors of the Germans to sit at the public spectacles in the seats assigned to the senators, being induced to grant them favours by their frank and honourable conduct. (Claudius 25)

In light of all of the above, it seems very plausible that Suetonius' "Chrestus"--a common Roman misspelling of "Christus"--is a reference to Jesus, and that the disturbances resulted from the early relationships in Rome between non-Christian Jews and Christians.  It should be noted that the Latin phrase similia sectantes, which appears in the passage about Tiberius, might conceivably be better translated as "similar sects" and indicate the Christians, but that's speculative.  Finally, Pliny the Younger governed the province of Bithynia for a while and wrote in a letter to the Emperor Trajan:

It is my practice, my lord, to refer to you all matters concerning which I am in doubt.  For who can better give guidance to my hesitation or inform my ignorance?  I have never participated in trials of Christians. I therefore do not know what offenses it is the practice to punish or investigate, and to what extent.  [...]  Soon accusations spread, as usually happens, because of the proceedings going on, and several incidents occurred. An anonymous document was published containing the names of many persons.  Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ--none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do--these I thought should be discharged.  Others named by the informer declared that they were Christians, but then denied it, asserting that they had been but had ceased to be, some three years before, others many years, some as much as twenty-five years.  They all worshipped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ.  They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so.  When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food.  Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations.  Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition. (Letters 10.96)

What Pliny says is very important.  Christians, according to the information Pliny gathered from those he pressured into apostasy, sang a hymn to Jesus "as to a god"; they gathered early on a particular day; they took oaths to live virtuously; and they assembled again for a meal, undoubtedly the eucharist, hence Pliny's mention of "ordinary and innocent food" to counter common rumors that Christians were cannibals.  The line with the Latin phrase quasi deo, "as to a god", is critical, because it implies that Pliny thinks something very weird about this, as if the Christ in question were someone who wouldn't normally be worshipped.  The clearest explanation, of course, is that Jesus was known to be a human being, hence Pliny's perplexity at the Christians' worship of him.  And, again, it's obviously Jesus who's in sight here, not someone else, like the movie's makers might wish.

From all of these put together, I think that most people should be able to see that Zeitgeist is just wrong about Jesus.  He was a real person in history.  We have a great wealth of sources from within the New Testament itself, and we have several references from beyond it.  For someone who never held political office, that's incredibly impressive!  With that, I turn to Zeitgeist's final two objections to the historicity of Jesus.  First, there's a list presented of "historians", as the movie says, who never mentioned Jesus.  And second, the movie declares:

You would think that a guy who rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven for all eyes to see and performed the wealth of miracles acclaimed to him would have made it into the historical record.  It didn't because once the evidence is weighed, there are very high odds that the figure known as Jesus, did not even exist.

As we've seen, Jesus is mentioned in the historical record, and quite abundantly, especially considering his position.  He may have been a miracle worker and may have risen from the dead, but he was also a traveling teacher and prophetic figure in a relatively insignificant province that was often held in contempt by the elite as a troublesome and seditious place.  He didn't hold political office, he didn't lead an army, he never traveled to Rome.  In short, he's just not the sort of fellow that most Roman historians would choose to mention.  And, of course, if anyone happened to actually believe in his miracles, Zeitgeist wouldn't accept their testimony, since that would make them a Christian.  Talk about stacking the deck!  As for that list, it's crucially flawed.  For one, it includes Livy, who died in 17 AD, before Jesus ever began his ministry!  How an oversight like that got through, one can only imagine.  Another figure on the list, Columella, left only a couple surviving works concerning agriculture and trees!  Where exactly is Jesus supposed to fit in?  Among just a few of the others, Phaedrus simply wrote fables, Quintilian was a rhetorician, Silius Italicus was an epic poet who wrote about the Second Punic War, and Gaius Valerius Flaccus wrote a poem called the Argonautica about Jason's search for the Golden Fleece.  I could go on about many of the others, but this selection serves to point out how flawed the list is.

I could also discuss the claims made in Zeitgeist about Noah and Moses, but I don't think that's really necessary here.  The cases made in the movie are hardly compelling, and even if accepted, they're irrelevant to the main topic.  So looking back over all of this, what do we see?  A few important things:

1. Zeitgeist distorts all the religions mentioned in terms of the basic facts about their fundamental stories.  That includes Jesus, Attis, Dionysus, Krishna, Mithras, Horus, Adonis, Buddha, and a whole list of others.  The comparisons it makes are just wrong.
2. Zeitgeist oversimplifies ancient myths and relies on non-scholarly secondary sources instead of scholarly secondary sources or the primary sources themselves.  Some of Zeitgeist's sources just fabricated material in hopes that no one would find out.
3. Zeitgeist is based on astronomical and astrological ideas that don't fit with the time.
4. Zeitgeist claims that Jesus never existed, but provides no evidence for its claim and fails to interact honestly with the evidence for the opposing side.

In short, virtually any field Zeitgeist touches, it treats poorly.  If something on par with Zeitgeist were ever offered in a serious college course as a response to an assignment, it would get a failing grade, for quite good reason.  And the makers of the movie would have you believe that there's a vast religious conspiracy distorting facts, and that they're exposing the truth for all to see.  Distortion of facts is the domain of Zeitgeist, as we've just seen.  It doesn't deserve to be believed.  What I think does deserve to be believed is a different story.  So if you'll suffer through just one more ancient document, there's one last thing I'd like to share:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.  We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made.  For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human.  For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.  On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.  He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.  We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.  We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.  We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come.  Amen.