Referring back to the existence of something resembling a great
World-religion which has come down the centuries, continually expanding
and branching in the process, we have now to consider the genesis of
that special brand or branch of it which we call Christianity. Each
religion or cult, pagan or Christian, has had, as we have seen, a vast
amount in common with the general World-religion; yet each has had its
own special characteristics. What have been the main characteristics of
the Christian branch, as differentiating it from the other branches?
We saw in the last chapter that a certain ascetic attitude towards Sex
was one of the most salient marks of the Christian Church; and that
whereas most of the pagan cults (though occasionally favoring frightful
austerities and cruel sacrifices) did on the whole rejoice in pleasure
and the world of the senses, Christianity--following largely on
Judaism--displayed a tendency towards renunciation of the world and the
flesh, and a withdrawal into the inner and more spiritual regions of the
mind. The same tendency may be traced in the Egyptian and Phrygian cults
of that period. It will be remembered how Juvenal (Sat. VI, 510-40)
chaffs the priests of Cybele at Rome for making themselves "eunuchs for
the kingdom of heaven's sake," or the rich Roman lady for plunging in
the wintry Tiber for a propitiation to Isis. No doubt among the later
pagans "the long intolerable tyranny of the senses over the soul" had
become a very serious matter. But Christianity represented perhaps the
most powerful reaction against this; and this reaction had, as indicated
in the last chapter, the enormously valuable result that (for the time)
it disentangled love from sex and established Love, pure and undefiled,
as ruler of the world. "God is Love." But, as also indicated, the
divorce between the two elements of human nature, carried to an extreme,
led in time to a crippling of both elements and the development of a
certain morbidity and self-consciousness which, it cannot be denied, is
painfully marked among some sections of Christians--especially those of
the altruistic and 'philanthropic' type.
Another characteristic of Christianity which is also very fine in
its way but has its limits of utility, has been its insistence on
"morality." Some modern writers indeed have gone so far--forgetting, I
suppose, the Stoics--as to claim that Christianity's chief mark is its
high morality, and that the pagans generally were quite wanting in the
moral sense! This, of course, is a profound mistake. I should say that,
in the true sense of the word, the early and tribal peoples have been
much more 'moral' as a rule--that is, ready as individuals to pay
respect to the needs of the community--than the later and more civilized
societies. But the mistake arises from the different interpretations of
the word; for whereas all the pagan religions insisted very strongly on
the just-mentioned kind of morality, which we should call _civic duty to
one’s neighbor_, the Christian made morality to consist more especially
in a man’s _duty to God_. It became with them a private affair between a
man’s self and God, rather than a public affair; and thus led in the end
to a very obnoxious and quite pharisaic kind of morality, whose chief
inspiration was not the helping of one's fellow-man but the saving of
one's own soul.
There may perhaps be other salient points of differentiation between
Christianity and the preceding pagan religions; but for the present we
may recognize these two--(a) the tendency towards a renunciation of the
world, and the consequent cultivation of a purely spiritual love and (b)
the insistence on a morality whose inspiration was a private sense of
duty to God rather than a public sense of duty to one's neighbor and to
society generally. It may be interesting to trace the causes which led
to this differentiation.
Three centuries before our era the conquests of Alexander had had the
effect of spreading the Greek thought and culture over most of the known
world. A vast number of small bodies of worshipers of local deities,
with their various rituals and religious customs, had thus been broken
up, or at least brought into contact with each other and partially
modified and hellenized. The orbit of a more general conception of life
and religion was already being traced. By the time of the founding of
the first Christian Church the immense conquests of Rome had greatly
extended and established the process. The Mediterranean had become a
great Roman lake. Merchant ships and routes of traffic crossed it in all
directions; tourists visited its shores. The known world had become one.
The numberless peoples, tribes, nations, societies within the girdle of
the Empire, with their various languages, creeds, customs, religions,
philosophies, were profoundly influencing each other. (1) A great fusion
was taking place; and it was becoming inevitable that the next great
religious movement would have a world-wide character.
(1) For an enlargement on this theme see Glover's Conflict of
Religions in the early Roman Empire; also S. J. Case, Evolution of
Early Christianity (University of Chicago, 1914). The Adonis worship, for
instance (a resurrection-cult), "was still thriving in Syria and Cyprus
when Paul preached there," and the worship of Isis and Serapis had
already reached then, Rome and Naples.
It was probable that this new religion would combine many elements from
the preceding rituals in one cult. In connection with the fine temples
and elaborate services of Isis and Cybele and Mithra there was growing
up a powerful priesthood; Franz Cumont (1) speaks of "the learned
priests of the Asiatic cults" as building up, on the foundations of old
fetichism and superstition, a complete religious philosophy--just as
the Brahmins had built the monism of the Vedanta on the "monstrous
idolatries of Hinduism." And it was likely that a similar process would
evolve the new religion expected. Toutain again calls attention to the
patronage accorded to all these cults by the Roman Emperors, as favoring
a new combination and synthesis:--"Hadrien, Commode, Septime Sévère,
Julia Domna, Elagabal, Alexandre Sévère, en particulier ont contribué
personnellement a la popularité et au succes des cultes qui se
celebraient en l'honneur de Serapis et d'Isis, des divinités syriennes
et de Mithra." (2)
(1) See Cumont, Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain
(Paris, 1906), p. 253.
(2) Cultes paiens dans l'Empire Romain (2 vols., 1911), vol. ii,
p. 263.
It was also probable that this new Religion would show (as indicated
in the last chapter) a reaction against mere sex-indulgence; and,
as regards its standard of Morality generally, that, among so many
conflicting peoples with their various civic and local customs, it could
not well identify itself with any ONE of these but would evolve an
inner inspiration of its own which in its best form would be love of the
neighbor, regardless of the race, creed or customs of the neighbor, and
whose sanction would not reside in any of the external authorities
thus conflicting with each other, but in the sense of the soul's direct
responsibility to God.
So much for what we might expect a priori as to the influence of the
surroundings on the general form of the new Religion. And what about the
kind of creed or creeds which that religion would favor? Here again
we must see that the influence of the surroundings compelled a certain
result. Those doctrines which we have described in the preceding
chapters--doctrines of Sin and Sacrifice, a Savior, the Eucharist, the
Trinity, the Virgin-birth, and so forth--were in their various forms
seething, so to speak, all around. It was impossible for any new
religious synthesis to escape them; all it could do would be to
appropriate them, and to give them perhaps a color of its own. Thus
it is into the midst of this germinating mass that we must imagine the
various pagan cults, like fertilizing streams, descending. To trace all
these streams would of course be an impossible task; but it may be of
use, as an example of the process, to take the case of some particular
belief. Let us take the belief in the coming of a Savior-god; and this
will be the more suitable as it is a belief which has in the past been
commonly held to be distinctive of Christianity. Of course we know now
that it is not in any sense distinctive, but that the long tradition of
the Savior comes down from the remotest times, and perhaps from every
country of the world. (1) The Messianic prophecies of the Jews and the
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah emptied themselves into the Christian
teachings, and infected them to some degree with a Judaic tinge. The
"Messiah" means of course the Anointed One. The Hebrew word occurs some
40 times in the Old Testament; and each time in the Septuagint or Greek
translation (made mainly in the third century BEFORE our era) the word
is translated [gr cristos], or Christos, which again means Anointed.
Thus we see that the idea or the word "The Christ" was in vogue in
Alexandria as far back certainly as 280 B.C., or nearly three centuries
before Jesus. And what the word "The Anointed" strictly speaking means,
and from what the expression is probably derived, will appear later. In
The Book of Enoch, written not later than B.C. 170, (2) the Christ is
spoken of as already existing in heaven, and about to come as judge
of all men, and is definitely called "the Son of Man." The Book of
Revelations is FULL of passages from Enoch; so are the Epistles of Paul;
so too the Gospels. The Book of Enoch believes in a Golden Age that is
to come; it has Dantesque visions of Heaven and Hell, and of Angels good
and evil, and it speaks of a "garden of Righteousness" with the "Tree of
Wisdom" in its midst. Everywhere, says Prof. Drews, in the first century
B.C., there was the longing for a coming Savior.
(1) Even to-day, the Arabian lands are always vibrating with
prophecies of a coming Mahdi.
(2) See Edition by R. H. Charles (1893).
But the Savior-god, as we also know, was a familiar figure in Egypt. The
great Osiris was the Savior of the world, both in his life and death: in
his life through the noble works he wrought for the benefit of mankind,
and in his death through his betrayal by the powers of darkness and
his resurrection from the tomb and ascent into heaven. (1) The Egyptian
doctrines descended through Alexandria into Christianity--and though
they did not influence the latter deeply until about 300 A.D., yet they
then succeeded in reaching the Christian Churches, giving a color to
their teachings with regard to the Savior, and persuading them to accept
and honor the Egyptian worship of Isis in the Christian form of the
Virgin Mary.
(1) See ch. ii.
Again, another great stream of influence descended from Persia in the
form of the cult of Mithra. Mithra, as we have seen, (1) stood as a
great Mediator between God and man. With his baptisms and eucharists,
and his twelve disciples, and his birth in a cave, and so forth,
he seemed to the early Fathers an invention of the devil and a most
dangerous mockery on Christianity--and all the more so because his
worship was becoming so exceedingly popular. The cult seems to have
reached Rome about B.C. 70. It spread far and wide through the Empire.
It extended to Great Britain, and numerous remains of Mithraic
monuments and sculptures in this country--at York, Chester and other
places--testify to its wide acceptance even here. At Rome the vogue of
Mithraism became so great that in the third century A. D., it was quite
doubtful (2) whether it OR Christianity would triumph; the Emperor
Aurelian in 273 founded a cult of the Invincible Sun in connection with
Mithraism; (3) and as St. Jerome tells us in his letters, (4) the latter
cult had at a later time to be suppressed in Rome and Alexandria by
PHYSICAL FORCE, so powerful was it.
(1) Ch. ii.
(2) See Cumont, op. cit., who says, p. 171:--"Jamais, pas meme a
l'epoque des invasions mussulmanes, l'Europe ne sembla plus pres
de devenir asiatique qu'au moment ou Diocletien reconnaissait
officiellement en Mithra, le protecteur de l'empire reconstitue." See
also Cumont's Mysteres de Mithra, preface. The Roman Army, in fact,
stuck to Mithra throughout, as against Christianity; and so did the
Roman nobility. (See S. Augustine's Confessions, Book VIII, ch. 2.)
(3) Cumont indeed says that the identification of Mithra with the
Sun (the emblem of imperial power) formed one reason why Mithraism was
NOT persecuted at that time.
(4) Epist. cvii, ad Laetam. See Robertson's Pagan Christs, p.
350.
Nor was force the only method employed. IMITATION is not only the
sincerest flattery, but it is often the most subtle and effective way of
defeating a rival. The priests of the rising Christian Church were, like
the priests of ALL religions, not wanting in craft; and at this moment
when the question of a World-religion was in the balance, it was an
obvious policy for them to throw into their own scale as many elements
as possible of the popular Pagan cults. Mithraism had been flourishing
for 600 years; and it is, to say the least, CURIOUS that the Mithraic
doctrines and legends which I have just mentioned should all have been
adopted (quite unintentionally of course!) into Christianity; and still
more so that some others from the same source, like the legend of the
Shepherds at the Nativity and the doctrine of the Resurrection and
Ascension, which are NOT mentioned at all in the original draft of the
earliest Gospel (St. Mark), should have made their appearance, in the
Christian writings at a later time, when Mithraism was making great
forward strides. History shows that as a Church progresses and expands
it generally feels compelled to enlarge and fortify its own foundations
by inserting material which was not there at first. I shall shortly give
another illustration of this; at present I will merely point out
that the Christian writers, as time went on, not only introduced new
doctrines, legends, miracles and so forth--most of which we can trace to
antecedent pagan sources--but that they took especial pains to
destroy the pagan records and so obliterate the evidence of their own
dishonesty. We learn from Porphyry (1) that there were several elaborate
treatises setting forth the religion of Mithra; and J. M. Robertson adds
(Pagan Christs, p. 325): "everyone of these has been destroyed by the
care of the Church, and it is remarkable that even the treatise of
Firmicus is mutilated at a passage (v.) where he seems to be accusing
Christians of following Mithraic usages." While again Professor Murray
says, "The polemic literature of Christianity is loud and triumphant;
the books of the Pagans have been DESTROYED." (2)
(1) De Abstinentia, ii. 56; iv. 16.
(2) Four Stages, p. 180. We have probably an instance of this
destruction in the total disappearance of Celsus' lively attack
on Christianity (180 A.D.), of which, however, portions have been
fortunately preserved in Origen's rather prolix refutation of the same.
Returning to the doctrine of the Savior, I have already in preceding
chapters given so many instances of belief in such a deity among the
pagans--whether he be called Krishna or Mithra or Osiris or Horus or
Apollo or Hercules--that it is not necessary to dwell on the subject any
further in order to persuade the reader that the doctrine was 'in the
air' at the time of the advent of Christianity. Even Dionysus, then
a prominent figure in the 'Mysteries,' was called Eleutherios, The
Deliverer. But it may be of interest to trace the same doctrine among
the PRE-CHRISTIAN sects of Gnostics. The Gnostics, says Professor
Murray, (1) "are still commonly thought of as a body of CHRISTIAN
heretics. In reality there were Gnostic sects scattered over the
Hellenistic world BEFORE Christianity as well as after. They must have
been established in Antioch and probably in Tarsus well before the
days of Paul or Apollos. Their Savior, like the Jewish Messiah, was
established in men's minds before the Savior of the Christians. 'If
we look close,' says Professor Bousset, 'the result emerges with great
clearness that the figure of the Redeemer as such did not wait for
Christianity to force its way into the religion of Gnosis, but was
already present there under various forms.'"
(1) Four Stages, p. 143.
This Gnostic Redeemer, continues Professor Murray, "is descended by a
fairly clear genealogy from the 'Tritos Soter' ('third Savior') (1) of
early Greece, contaminated with similar figures, like Attis and Adonis
from Asia Minor, Osiris from Egypt, and the special Jewish conception of
the Messiah of the Chosen people. He has various names, which the name
of Jesus or 'Christos,' 'the Anointed,' tends gradually to supersede.
Above all, he is in some sense Man, or 'the second Man' or 'the Son of
Man'... He is the real, the ultimate, the perfect and eternal Man, of
whom all bodily men are feeble copies." (2)
(1) There seems to be some doubt about the exact meaning of this
expression. Even Zeus himself was sometimes called 'Soter,' and at
feasts, it is said, the THIRD goblet was always drunk in his honor.
(2) See also The Gnostic Story of Jesus Christ, by Gilbert T.
Sadler (C. W. Daniel, 1919).
This passage brings vividly before the mind the process of which I
have spoken, namely, the fusion and mutual interchange of ideas on the
subject of the Savior during the period anterior to our era. Also it
exemplifies to us through what an abstract sphere of Gnostic religious
speculation the doctrine had to travel before reaching its expression in
Christianity. (1) This exalted and high philosophical conception passed
on and came out again to some degree in the Fourth Gospel and the
Pauline Epistles (especially I Cor. xv); but I need hardly say it
was not maintained. The enthusiasm of the little scattered Christian
bodies--with their communism of practice with regard to THIS world and
their intensity of faith with regard to the next--began to wane in the
second and third centuries A.D. As the Church (with capital initial)
grew, so was it less and less occupied with real religious feeling, and
more and more with its battles against persecution from outside, and its
quarrels and dissensions concerning heresies within its own borders. And
when at the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) it endeavored to establish an
official creed, the strife and bitterness only increased. "There is no
wild beast," said the Emperor Julian, "like an angry theologian." Where
the fourth Evangelist had preached the gospel of Love, and Paul had
announced redemption by an inner and spiritual identification with
Christ, "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive";
and whereas some at any rate of the Pagan cults had taught a glorious
salvation by the new birth of a divine being within each man: "Be of
good cheer, O initiates in the mystery of the liberated god; For to
you too out of all your labors and sorrows shall come Liberation"--the
Nicene creed had nothing to propound except some extremely futile
speculations about the relation to each other of the Father and the
Son, and the relation of BOTH to the Holy Ghost, and of all THREE to the
Virgin Mary--speculations which only served for the renewal of shameful
strife and animosities--riots and bloodshed and murder--within the
Church, and the mockery of the heathen without. And as far as it dealt
with the crucifixion, death and resurrection of the Lord it did not
differ from the score of preceding pagan creeds, except in the thorough
materialism and lack of poetry in statement which it exhibits. After
the Council of Nicaea, in fact, the Judaic tinge in the doctrines of the
Church becomes more apparent, and more and more its Scheme of Salvation
through Christ takes the character of a rather sordid and huckstering
bargain by which Man gets the better of God by persuading the latter
to sacrifice his own Son for the redemption of the world! With the
exception of a few episodes like the formation during the Middle Ages of
the noble brotherhoods and sisterhoods of Frairs and Nuns, dedicated to
the help and healing of suffering humanity, and the appearance of a few
real lovers of mankind (and the animals) like St. Francis--(and these
manifestations can hardly be claimed by the Church, which pretty
consistently opposed them)--it may be said that after about the fourth
century the real spirit and light of early Christian enthusiasm died
away. The incursions of barbarian tribes from the North and East, and
later of Moors and Arabs from the South, familiarized the European
peoples with the ideas of bloodshed and violence; gross and material
conceptions of life were in the ascendant; and a romantic and aspiring
Christianity gave place to a worldly and vulgar Churchianity.
(1) When travelling in India I found that the Gnanis or Wise Men
there quite commonly maintained that Jesus (judging from his teaching)
must have been initiated at some time in the esoteric doctrines of the
Vedanta.
I have in these two or three pages dealt only--and that very
briefly--with the entry of the pagan doctrine of the Savior into the
Christian field, showing its transformation there and how Christianity
could not well escape having a doctrine of a Savior, or avoid giving a
color of its own to that doctrine. To follow out the same course
with other doctrines, like those which I have mentioned above, would
obviously be an endless task--which must be left to each student or
reader to pursue according to his opportunity and capacity. It is clear
anyhow, that all these elements of the pagan religions--pouring down
into the vast reservoir, or rather whirlpool, of the Roman Empire,
and mixing among all these numerous brotherhoods, societies, collegia,
mystery-clubs, and groups which were at that time looking out intently
for some new revelation or inspiration--did more or less automatically
act and react upon each other, and by the general conditions prevailing
were modified, till they ultimately combined and took united shape
in the movement which we call Christianity, but which only--as I have
said--narrowly escaped being called Mithraism--so nearly related and
closely allied were these cults with each other.
At this point it will naturally be asked: "And where in this scheme of
the Genesis of Christianity is the chief figure and accredited leader of
the movement--namely Jesus Christ himself--for to all appearance in the
account here given of the matter he is practically non-existent or a
negligible quantity?" And the question is a very pertinent one, and very
difficult to answer. "Where is the founder of the Religion?"--or to
put it in another form: "Is it necessary to suppose a human and visible
Founder at all?" A few years ago such a mere question would have been
accounted rank blasphemy, and would only--if passed over--have been
ignored on account of its supposed absurdity. To-day, however, owing to
the enormous amount of work which has been done of late on the
subject of Christian origins, the question takes on quite a different
complexion. And from Strauss onwards a growingly influential and learned
body of critics is inclined to regard the whole story of the Gospels as
LEGENDARY. Arthur Drews, for instance, a professor at Karlsruhe, in his
celebrated book The Christ-Myth, (1) places David F. Strauss as first
in the myth field--though he allows that Dupuis in L'origine de tous
les cultes (1795) had given the clue to the whole idea. He then mentions
Bruno Bauer (1877) as contending that Jesus was a pure invention
of Mark's, and John M. Robertson as having in his Christianity and
Mythology (1900) given the first thoroughly reasoned exposition of the
legendary theory; also Emilio Bossi in Italy, who wrote Jesu Christo
non e mai esistito, and similar authors in Holland, Poland, and other
countries, including W. Benjamin Smith, the American author of The
Pre-christian Jesus (1906), and P. Jensen in Das Gilgamesch Epos in
den Welt-literatur (1906), who makes the Jesus-story a variant of the
Babylonian epic, 2000 B.C. A pretty strong list! (2) "But," continues
Drews, "ordinary historians still ignore all this." Finally, he
dismisses Jesus as "a figure swimming obscurely in the mists of
tradition." Nevertheless I need hardly remark that, large and learned
as the body of opinion here represented is, a still larger (but less
learned) body fights desperately for the actual HISTORICITY of Jesus,
and some even still for the old view of him as a quite unique and
miraculous revelation of Godhood on earth.
(1) Die Christus-mythe: verbesserte und erweitezte Ausgabe, Jena,
1910.
(2) To which we may also add Schweitzer's Quest of the historical
Jesus (1910).
At first, no doubt, the LEGENDARY theory seems a little TOO far-fetched.
There is a fashion in all these things, and it MAY be that there is a
fashion even here. But when you reflect how rapidly legends grow up even
in these days of exact Science and an omniscient Press; how the figure
of Shakespeare, dead only 300 years, is almost completely lost in
the mist of Time, and even the authenticity of his works has become a
subject of controversy; when you find that William Tell, supposed to
have lived some 300 years again before Shakespeare, and whose deeds in
minutest detail have been recited and honored all over Europe, is almost
certainly a pure invention, and never existed; when you remember--as
mentioned earlier in this book (1)--that it was more than five hundred
years after the supposed birth of Jesus before any serious effort
was made to establish the date of that birth--and that then a purely
mythical date was chosen: the 25th December, the day of the SUN'S new
birth after the winter solstice, and the time of the supposed birth of
Apollo, Bacchus, and the other Sungods; when, moreover, you think for
a moment what the state of historical criticism must have been, and
the general standard of credibility, 1,900 years ago, in a country like
Syria, and among an ignorant population, where any story circulating
from lip to lip was assured of credence if sufficiently marvelous
or imaginative;--why, then the legendary theory does not seem so
improbable. There is no doubt that after the destruction of Jerusalem
(in A.D. 70), little groups of believers in a redeeming 'Christ' were
formed there and in other places, just as there had certainly existed,
in the first century B.C., groups of Gnostics, Therapeutae, Essenes and
others whose teachings were very SIMILAR to the Christian, and there was
now a demand from many of these groups for 'writings' and 'histories'
which should hearten and confirm the young and growing Churches. The
Gospels and Epistles, of which there are still extant a great abundance,
both apocryphal and canonical, met this demand; but how far their
records of the person of Jesus of Nazareth are reliable history, or how
far they are merely imaginative pictures of the kind of man the Saviour
might be expected to be, (2) is a question which, as I have already
said, is a difficult one for skilled critics to answer, and one on which
I certainly have no intention of giving a positive verdict. Personally I
must say I think the 'legendary' solution quite likely, and in some ways
more satisfactory than the opposite one--for the simple reason that
it seems much more encouraging to suppose that the story of Jesus,
(gracious and beautiful as it is) is a myth which gradually formed
itself in the conscience of mankind, and thus points the way of
humanity's future evolution, than to suppose it to be the mere record
of an unique and miraculous interposition of Providence, which depended
entirely on the powers above, and could hardly be expected to occur
again.
(1) Ch. II.
(2) One of Celsus' accusations against the Christians was that
their Gospels had been written "several times over" (see Origen, Contra
Celsum, ii. 26, 27).
However, the question is not what we desire, but what we can prove to be
the actual fact. And certainly the difficulties in the way of regarding
the Gospel story (or stories, for there is not one consistent story)
as TRUE are enormous. If anyone will read, for instance, in the four
Gospels, the events of the night preceding the crucifixion and reckon
the time which they would necessarily have taken to enact--the Last
Supper, the agony in the Garden, the betrayal by Judas, the haling
before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, and then before Pilate in the Hall
of judgment (though courts for the trial of malefactors do not GENERALLY
sit in the middle of the night); then--in Luke--the interposed visit to
Herod, and the RETURN to Pilate; Pilate's speeches and washing of hands
before the crowd; then the scourging and the mocking and the arraying of
Jesus in purple robe as a king; then the preparation of a Cross and the
long and painful journey to Golgotha; and finally the Crucifixion at
sunrise;--he will see--as has often been pointed out--that the whole
story is physically impossible. As a record of actual events the story
is impossible; but as a record or series of notes derived from the
witnessing of a "mystery-play"--and such plays with VERY SIMILAR
incidents were common enough in antiquity in connection with cults of
a dying Savior, it very likely IS true (one can see the very dramatic
character of the incidents: the washing of hands, the threefold denial
by Peter, the purple robe and crown of thorns, and so forth); and as
such it is now accepted by many well-qualified authorities. (1)
(1) Dr. Frazer in The Golden Bough (vol. ix, "The Scapegoat," p.
400) speaks of the frequency in antiquity of a Mystery-play relating
to a God-man who gives his life and blood for the people; and he
puts forward tentatively and by no means dogmatically the following
note:--"Such a drama, if we are right, was the original story of Esther
and Mordecai, or (to give their older names) Ishtar and Marduk. It was
played in Babylonia, and from Babylonia the returning Captives brought
it to Judaea, where it was acted, rather as an historical than a
mythical piece, by players who, having to die in grim earnest on a
cross or gallows, were naturally drawn from the gaol rather than the
green-room. A chain of causes, which because we cannot follow them
might--in the loose language of common life--be called an accident,
determined that the part of the dying god in this annual play should
be thrust upon Jesus of Nazareth, whom the enemies he had made in high
places by his outspoken strictures were resolved to put out of the way."
See also vol. iv, "The Dying God," in the same book.
There are many other difficulties. The raising of Lazarus, already dead
three days, the turning of water into wine (a miracle attributed to
Bacchus, of old), the feeding of the five thousand, and others of the
marvels are, to say the least, not easy of digestion. The "Sermon on the
Mount" which, with the "Lord's Prayer" embedded in it, forms the great
and accepted repository of 'Christian' teaching and piety, is well known
to be a collection of sayings from pre-christian writings, including the
Psalms, Isaiah, Ecclesiasticus, the Secrets of Enoch, the Shemonehesreh
(a book of Hebrew prayers), and others; and the fact that this
collection was really made AFTER the time of Jesus, and could not
have originated from him, is clear from the stress which it lays on
"persecutions" and "false prophets"--things which were certainly not a
source of trouble at the time Jesus is supposed to be speaking, though
they were at a later time--as well as from the occurrence of the word
"Gentiles," which being here used apparently in contra-distinction to
"Christians" could not well be appropriate at a time when no recognized
Christian bodies as yet existed.
But the most remarkable point in this connection is the absolute
silence of the Gospel of Mark on the subject of the Resurrection and
Ascension--that is, of the ORIGINAL Gospel, for it is now allowed on
all hands that the twelve verses Mark xvi. 9 to the end, are a later
insertion. Considering the nature of this event, astounding indeed, if
physically true, and unique in the history of the world, it is strange
that this Gospel--the earliest written of the four Gospels, and nearest
in time to the actual evidence--makes no mention of it. The next Gospel
in point of time--that of Matthew--mentions the matter rather briefly
and timidly, and reports the story that the body had been STOLEN from
the sepulchre. Luke enlarges considerably and gives a whole long chapter
to the resurrection and ascension; while the Fourth Gospel, written
fully twenty years later still--say about A. D. 120--gives two chapters
and a GREAT VARIETY OF DETAILS!
This increase of detail, however, as one gets farther and farther from
the actual event is just what one always finds, as I have said before,
in legendary traditions. A very interesting example of this has lately
come to light in the case of the traditions concerning the life and
death of the Persian Bab. The Bab, as most of my readers will know, was
the Founder of a great religious movement which now numbers (or numbered
before the Great War) some millions of adherents, chiefly Mahommedans,
Christians, Jews and Parsees. The period of his missionary activity
was from 1845 to 1850. His Gospel was singularly like that of Jesus--a
gospel of love to mankind--only (as might be expected from the
difference of date) with an even wider and more deliberate inclusion of
all classes, creeds and races, sinners and saints; and the incidents and
entourage of his ministry were also singularly similar. He was born at
Shiraz in 1820, and growing up a promising boy and youth, fell at the
age of 21 under the influence of a certain Seyyid Kazim, leader of a
heterodox sect, and a kind of fore-runner or John the Baptist to the
Bab. The result was a period of mental trouble (like the "temptation in
the wilderness"), after which the youth returned to Shiraz and at the
age of twenty-five began his own mission. His real name was Mirza Ali
Muhammad, but he called himself thenceforth The Bab, i.e. the Gate ("I
am the Way"); and gradually there gathered round him disciples, drawn
by the fascination of his personality and the devotion of his character.
But with the rapid increase of his following great jealousy and hatred
were excited among the Mullahs, the upholders of a fanatical and
narrow-minded Mahommedanism and quite corresponding to the Scribes and
Pharisees of the New Testament. By them he was denounced to the
Turkish Government. He was arrested on a charge of causing political
disturbance, and was condemned to death. Among his disciples was one
favorite, (1) who was absolutely devoted to his Master and refused to
leave him at the last. So together they were suspended over the city
wall (at Tabriz) and simultaneously shot. This was on the 8th July,
1850.
(1) Mirza Muhammad Ali; and one should note the similarity of
the two names.
In November 1850--or between that date and October 1851, a book
appeared, written by one of the B[a^]b's earliest and most enthusiastic
disciples--a merchant of Kashan--and giving in quite simple and
unpretending form a record of the above events. There is in it no
account of miracles or of great pretensions to godhood and the like. It
is just a plain history of the life and death of a beloved teacher.
It was cordially received and circulated far and wide; and we have no
reason for doubting its essential veracity. And even if proved now to be
inaccurate in one or two details, this would not invalidate the moral of
the rest of the story--which is as follows:
After the death of the Bab a great persecution took place (in 1852);
there were many Babi martyrs, and for some years the general followers
were scattered. But in time they gathered themselves together again;
successors to the original prophet were appointed--though not without
dissensions--and a Babi church, chiefly at Acca or Acre in Syria, began
to be formed. It was during this period that a great number of legends
grew up--legends of miraculous babyhood and boyhood, legends of miracles
performed by the mature Bab, and so forth; and when the newly-forming
Church came to look into the matter it concluded (quite naturally!) that
such a simple history as I have outlined above would never do for the
foundation of its plans, now grown somewhat ambitious. So a new Gospel
was framed, called the Tarikh-i-Jadid ("The new History" or "The new
Way"), embodying and including a lot of legendary matter, and issued
with the authority of "the Church." This was in 1881-2; and comparing
this with the original record (called The point of Kaf) we get a
luminous view of the growth of fable in those thirty brief years which
had elapsed since the Bab's death. Meanwhile it became very necessary of
course to withdraw from circulation as far as possible all copies of the
original record, lest they should give the lie to the later 'Gospel';
and this apparently was done very effectively--so effectively indeed
that Professor Edward Browne (to whom the world owes so much on account
of his labors in connection with Babism), after arduous search, came at
one time to the conclusion that the original was no longer extant. Most
fortunately, however, the well-known Comte de Gobineau had in the course
of his studies on Eastern Religions acquired a copy of The point of Kaf;
and this, after his death, was found among his literary treasures and
identified (as was most fitting) by Professor Browne himself.
Such in brief is the history of the early Babi Church (1)--a Church
which has grown up and expanded greatly within the memory of many yet
living. Much might be written about it, but the chief point at present
is for us to note the well-verified and interesting example it gives of
the rapid growth in Syria of a religious legend and the reasons which
contributed to this growth--and to be warned how much more rapidly
similar legends probably grew up in the same land in the middle of
the First Century, A.D. The story of the Bab is also interesting to us
because, while this mass of legend was formed around it, there is no
possible doubt about the actual existence of a historical nucleus in the
person of Mirza Ali Muhammad.
(1) For literature, see Edward G. Browne's Traveller's Narrative
on the Episode of the Bab (1891), and his New History of the Bab
translated from the Persian of the Tarikh-i-Jadid (Cambridge, 1893).
Also Sermons and Essays by Herbert Rix (Williams and Norgate, 1907), pp.
295-325, "The Persian Bab."
On the whole, one is sometimes inclined to doubt whether any great
movement ever makes itself felt in the world, without dating first from
some powerful personality or group of personalities, ROUND which the
idealizing and myth-making genius of mankind tends to crystallize. But
one must not even here be too certain. Something of the Apostle Paul we
know, and something of 'John' the Evangelist and writer of the Epistle
I John; and that the 'Christian' doctrines dated largely from the
preaching and teaching of these two we cannot doubt; but Paul never
saw Jesus (except "in the Spirit"), nor does he ever mention the man
personally, or any incident of his actual life (the "crucified Christ"
being always an ideal figure); and 'John' who wrote the Gospel was
certainly not the same as the disciple who "lay in Jesus' bosom"--though
an intercalated verse, the last but one in the Gospel, asserts the
identity. (1)
(1) It is obvious, in fact, that the WHOLE of the last chapter of
St. John is a later insertion, and again that the two last verses of
that chapter are later than the chapter itself!
There may have been a historic Jesus--and if so, to get a reliable
outline of his life would indeed be a treasure; but at present it would
seem there is no sign of that. If the historicity of Jesus, in any
degree, could be proved, it would give us reason for supposing--what I
have personally always been inclined to believe--that there was also
a historical nucleus for such personages as Osiris, Mithra, Krishna,
Hercules, Apollo and the rest. The question, in fact, narrows itself
down to this, Have there been in the course of human evolution certain,
so to speak, NODAL points or periods at which the psychologic currents
ran together and condensed themselves for a new start; and has each such
node or point of condensation been marked by the appearance of an actual
and heroic man (or woman) who supplied a necessary impetus for the
new departure, and gave his name to the resulting movement? OR is
it sufficient to suppose the automatic formation of such nodes or
starting-points without the intervention of any special hero or genius,
and to imagine that in each case the myth-making tendency of mankind
CREATED a legendary and inspiring figure and worshiped the same for a
long period afterwards as a god?
As I have said before, this is a question which, interesting as it is,
is not really very important. The main thing being that the prophetic
and creative spirit of mankind HAS from time to time evolved those
figures as idealizations of its "heart's desire" and placed a halo
round their heads. The long procession of them becomes a REAL piece of
History--the history of the evolution of the human heart, and of human
consciousness. But with the psychology of the whole subject I shall deal
in the next chapter.
I may here, however, dwell for a moment on two other points which belong
properly to this chapter. I have already mentioned the great reliance
placed by the advocates of a unique 'revelation' on the high morality
taught in the Gospels and the New Testament generally. There is no need
of course to challenge that morality or to depreciate it unduly; but the
argument assumes that it is so greatly superior to anything of the kind
that had been taught before that we are compelled to suppose something
like a revelation to explain its appearance--whereas of course anyone
familiar with the writings of antiquity, among the Greeks or Romans
or Egyptians or Hindus or later Jews, knows perfectly well that the
reported sayings of Jesus and the Apostles may be paralleled abundantly
from these sources. I have illustrated this already from the Sermon
on the Mount. If anyone will glance at the Testament of the Twelve
Patriarchs--a Jewish book composed about 120 B. C.--he will see that
it is full of moral precepts, and especially precepts of love and
forgiveness, so ardent and so noble that it hardly suffers in any way
when compared with the New Testament teaching, and that consequently no
special miracle is required to explain the appearance of the latter.
The twelve Patriarchs in question are the twelve sons of Jacob, and the
book consists of their supposed deathbed scenes, in which each patriarch
in turn recites his own (more or less imaginary) life and deeds and
gives pious counsel to his children and successors. It is composed in a
fine and poetic style, and is full of lofty thought, remindful in scores
of passages of the Gospels--words and all--the coincidences being too
striking to be accidental. It evidently had a deep influence on the
authors of the Gospels, as well as on St. Paul. It affirms a belief
in the coming of a Messiah, and in salvation for the Gentiles. The
following are some quotations from it: (1) Testament of Zebulun (p.
116): "My children, I bid you keep the commands of the Lord, and show
mercy to your neighbours, and have compassion towards all, not towards
men only, but also towards beasts." Dan (p. 127): "Love the Lord through
all your life, and one another with a true heart." Joseph (p. 173): "I
was sick, and the Lord visited me; in prison, and my God showed favor
unto me." Benjamin (p. 209): "For as the sun is not defiled by shining
on dung and mire, but rather drieth up both and driveth away the evil
smell, so also the pure mind, encompassed by the defilements of earth,
rather cleanseth them and is not itself defiled."
(1) The references being to the Edition by R. H. Charles (1907).
I think these quotations are sufficient to prove the high standard of
this book, which was written in the Second Century B. C., and FROM which
the New Testament authors copiously borrowed.
The other point has to do with my statement at the beginning of this
chapter that two of the main 'characteristics' of Christianity were its
insistence on (a) a tendency towards renunciation of the world, and a
consequent cultivation of a purely spiritual love, and (b) on a morality
whose inspiration was a private sense of duty to God rather than a
public sense of duty to one's neighbor and to society generally. I
think, however, that the last-mentioned characteristic ought to
be viewed in relation to a third, namely, (c) the extraordinarily
DEMOCRATIC tendency of the new Religion. (1) Celsus (A.D. 200) jeered
at the early Christians for their extreme democracy: "It is only
the simpletons, the ignoble, the senseless--slaves and womenfolk and
children--whom they wish to persuade (to join their churches) or CAN
persuade"--"wool-dressers and cobblers and fullers, the most uneducated
and vulgar persons," and "whosoever is a sinner, or unintelligent or
a fool, in a word, whoever is god-forsaken ([gr kakodaimwn]), him the
Kingdom of God will receive." (2) Thus Celsus, the accomplished, clever,
philosophic and withal humorous critic, laughed at the new religionists,
and prophesied their speedy extinction. Nevertheless he was mistaken.
There is little doubt that just the inclusion of women and weaklings
and outcasts did contribute LARGELY to the spread of Christianity (and
Mithraism). It brought hope and a sense of human dignity to the despised
and rejected of the earth. Of the immense numbers of lesser officials
who carried on the vast organization of the Roman Empire, most perhaps,
were taken from the ranks of the freedmen and quondam slaves, drawn from
a great variety of races and already familiar with pagan cults of all
kinds--Egyptian, Syrian, Chaldean, Iranian, and so forth. (3) This
fact helped to give to Christianity--under the fine tolerance of the
Empire--its democratic character and also its willingness to accept all.
The rude and menial masses, who had hitherto been almost beneath the
notice of Greek and Roman culture, flocked in; and though this was
doubtless, as time went on, a source of weakness to the Church, and a
cause of dissension and superstition, yet it was in the inevitable
line of human evolution, and had a psychological basis which I must now
endeavor to explain.
(1) It is important to note, however, that this same democratic
tendency was very marked in Mithraism. "Il est certain," says Cumont,
"qu'il a fait ses premieres conquetes dans les classes inferieures de
la societe et c'est l'a un fait considerable; le mithracisme est reste
longtemps la religion des humbles." Mysteres de Mithra, p. 68.
(2) See Glover's Conflict of Religions in the early Roman Empire,
ch. viii.
(3) See Toutain, Cultes paiens, vol. ii, conclusion.