DUPUIS, CHARLES-FRANÇOIS. - French scholar and politician, born at Trie-Château (Oise) on 16 Oct. 1742, died at Is-sur-Tille (Côte d'Or) on 29 Sept. 1809. Professor of Latin eloquence at the Collège de France (1787), he became a member of the Académie des Inscriptions the following year. He was a deputy to the Convention; in 1802 he retired to private life in Burgundy, devoting himself entirely to his studies.
Among his works based on erudite astronomy, the most notable is: L'origine de tous les cultes ou la religion universelle (3 vols., Paris 1794), in which he explains all mythology through the key of astralism and presents the great figures of ancient religions, Osiris, Bacchus, Mithras, as personifications of the sun, in the manner of the solar theology prevalent at the end of paganism. Even the Founder of Christianity is not exempt from this rule: indeed, He was born on the day of the winter solstice, in a cave like Mithras, rose again at the spring equinox, and had twelve Apostles, as many as the signs of the Zodiac, following Him in the sign of Aries (the Lamb of the Apocalypse). These superficial, naive, and sometimes grotesque comparisons provoked abundant refutations. The work was placed on the Index (decree of 27 July 1818).
More than a century later, the astral myth applied to Jesus was revived by H. Drews, a monist philosopher, in Die Christusmythe (1910), which associated it with the apocalyptic speculations of pre-Christian Judaism of Gnostic inspiration, provoking the reaction of all historians of Christian origins. P. L. Couchoud, Le mystère de Jésus (1924), which also denies the historical existence of Jesus, rejects astral mythology while emphasizing instead the Jewish tradition with its messianic orientation.