OSIRIS ISN’T mentioned in the Bible—at least, not directly. However, a loanword in Isaiah 14:19 suggests that the prophet Isaiah had the Egyptian god of the underworld in mind.

The verse, as it’s translated into English, is confusing: “[B]ut you are cast out, away from your grave, like a loathed branch…” It’s assumed that the word netser, meaning “branch,” was what Isaiah wrote. However, scholar Christopher B. Hays argues convincingly that the word is a homonym for a well-known Egyptian word that means “divinized corpse”—a term often found in Egyptian texts about the god Osiris.

We discuss the relationship between Osiris and Isis, the parallels to other pagan deities of the ancient Near East like El, Enlil, Dagon, Molech, Kronos, and Saturn, which are just different names for the same entity, and the connection to end times prophecy.