CONCLUSION
Not only to the myth-theory but to every attempt at ejecting historical
falsity from religion there has been offered the objection that
religion "does good"; that mankind needs "some religion or other";
and that to "undermine faith" does social harm, even if it be by
way of driving out delusion. This position is not at all special to
orthodoxy. It was taken up by Middleton; by Kant, when he shaped a
"practical" basis for theistic belief after eliminating the theoretic,
and counselled unbelieving clergymen to use the Bible for purposes of
popular moral education; by Voltaire when he combated atheism after
bombarding Christianity; and by Paine when he wrote his Age of Reason
to save the belief in God.
Insofar as the general plea merely amounts to saying that mankind
cannot conceivably give up its traditional religion at a stroke; that
liberal-minded priests are better than illiberal, for all purposes;
and that in a world dominated by economic need it is impossible for
many enlightened clergymen to secure a living save in the profession
for which they were trained, I am not at all concerned to combat
it. For the liberal priest, enlightened too late to reshape his
economic career, I have nothing but sympathy, provided that he in no
way hampers the intellectual progress of others. Insofar, again, as the
plea for "religion" is merely a plea for a word, or a thesis that all
earnest conviction about life is religion, it is quite irrelevant to
the present discussion. The rationalists who feel they cannot face the
world without the label of "religion" for their theory of the cosmos
and of conduct will be in the same position whether they believe
in a "historical Jesus" or not; and those who must have a humanist
"liturgy" of some sort in place of the ecclesiastical are apparently
not troubled by problems of historicity. What we are concerned with
is the notion that to deny the historicity of Jesus is somehow to
imperil not only ethics but historical science.
M. Loisy puts the last point in his suggestion, in criticism of Drews,
that he who thinks to break down either all the traditional or the
"liberal" orthodoxies by denying the historic actuality of Jesus
will find he has "only furnished to their defenders the occasion
to persuade a certain not uncultivated public that the divinity of
Christ, or at least the unique character of his personality, is as
well guaranteed as the reality of his life and his death." [445]
Had M. Loisy then forgotten that his own attempts to elide from the
documents a number of details which he saw to be mythical have given
occasion to the defenders of the faith to assure a not uncultivated
public that the disintegration of the gospels destroyed all ground
for belief in any part of them? [446]
We on this side of the Channel might meet such challenges, grounded
on the susceptibilities of the "public," with the demand of our great
humorist, Mr. Birrell: "What, in the name of the Bodleian, has the
general public got to do with literature? The general public ... has
its intellectual, like its lacteal sustenance, sent round to it in
carts." [447]
But we must not turn the jest to earnest. There are plenty of
honest laymen to play the jury; and to them let it be put. The issue
between us and M. Loisy, as he virtually admits, must be fought out by
argument. It is perfectly true, as he says, that "in principle, nothing
is more legitimate, more necessary, than the comparative method;
but nothing is more delicate to handle." [448] Every issue, then,
must be vigilantly debated. But the obligation is reciprocal. In these
inquiries we have found M. Loisy many times in untenable positions,
and resorting to inconsistent arguments. The tests which he applies to
a mass of tradition are equally destructive to most of what he retains.
Let illicit employments of the comparative method be discredited by all
means; but let us also have done with a criticism which on one leaf
claims that Jesus gave a "homogeneous" teaching which his disciples
could not have "combined," and on the next avows that "the gospel ethic
is no more consistent than the hope of the kingdom." [449] And when
the myth-theorists are called upon to make no unwarranted assumptions,
let us also have an end of such assertions as that "twenty-five or
thirty years after the death of Jesus the principal sentences and
parables of which the apostolic generation had kept memory were put
in writing." [450] This is pure hypothesis, unsupported by evidence.
The issue between us and M. Loisy, once more, is not one in which
merely he assails the myth-theory as outgoing its proofs: it is one
in which his positions are at the same time assailed all along the
line, and particularly at its centre, as incapable of resisting
critical pressure. By all means let us seek that "the science of
religion should be applied without preoccupations of contemporary
propaganda or polemic." The present writer reached the myth-theory
not by way of propaganda but as a result of sheer protracted failure
to establish a presupposed historical foundation. Professor Smith
disclaims all criticism of "Christianity." And if Professor Drews
be blamed for avowing a religious aim, the answer is that he would
otherwise be assailed as "irreligious," alike in his own country and
elsewhere. The myth-theory has to meet other foes than M. Loisy.
It is remarkable that Professor Schmiedel, who has gone nearly as far
as M. Loisy in recognizing in detail the force of the pressures on the
historical position, makes the avowal: "My inmost religious convictions
would suffer no harm, even if I now felt obliged to conclude that
Jesus never lived," [451] though as a critical historian he "sees no
prospect of this." He further avows that his religion does not require
him "to find in Jesus an absolutely perfect model," and that in effect
he does not find him so. [452] And he wrote in 1906 that "for about six
years the view that Jesus never really lived has gained an ever-growing
number of supporters," [453] adding that "it is no use to ignore it,
or to frame resolutions against it." It is accordingly with no kind of
polemic motive as against so entirely candid a writer that I suggest
certain criticisms of his emotional positions as tending unconsciously
to affect his judgment of the critical problem.
It is after the avowals above cited that he writes:-- [454]
Nor do I ask whether in Jesus' faith and ethical system what he had
to offer was new. Was it able to give me something that would warm
my heart and strengthen my life?--that is all I ask. What does it
matter if one of the ideas of Jesus had been expressed once already
in India, another once already in Greece, a third once already, or
many times, by the Old Testament prophets, or by the much-praised
Jewish Rabbis shortly before the time of Jesus? Such ideas may
be found in books: that is all. What we ought to feel grateful to
Jesus for, is that he was destined for the first time to make the
ideas take effect and influence the lives of mankind in general.
It would, I think, be difficult to over-estimate the amount of
psychic bias involved in that pronouncement, which contains a theorem
no more fitly to be taken for granted than any concrete historic
proposition. The Professor, it will be observed, does not specify
a single teaching of Jesus as new, while admitting that some were
not. What he says is, in effect, that other utterances of Jesuine
doctrines do not "warm the heart"; that those of Jesus do; and that
they "for the first time" caused certain doctrines to "take effect
and influence the lives of mankind in general." What doctrines then
are meant, and what effects are posited? And why do other utterances
of the doctrines not "warm the heart"?
Presumably the doctrines in question are those of mutual love, of
forgiveness of enemies, of doing as we would be done by. Concerning
the gospel doctrine of reward the Professor makes a disclaimer; and
concerning the doctrine that God cares for men as for the lilies
and the birds he pronounces that it is "to-day not merely untrue:
it is not even religious in the deepest sense of the term." [455]
It is not then clear that he would acclaim the doctrine that to help
the distressed is to succour the Lord. In any case, the detailed
religious prescription of beneficence was not merely a Jewish maxim:
it was an article of Egyptian religion; [456] and it can hardly be in
respect of such teaching that the Professor affirms a new "influence
on the lives of mankind in general."
Is it then in respect of mutual love and the forgiveness of
enemies? If so, when did the change begin? Among the apostles? Among
the Fathers? Among the bishops? Among the Popes? To put the issue
broadly, was there more of good human life in Byzantium than in pagan
Greece; or even in the Rome of the Decadence and the Dark and Middle
Ages than in the Rome of the Republic? Was it because of Christian
goodness that the decline of Rome was accelerated instead of being
checked? And, to come to our own day, is the World War an evidence
for an ethical change wrought by the teaching of Jesus--a war forced
on the world by a Germany where there are more systematic students of
the gospels than in all the rest of Europe? I leave it to Professor
Schmiedel and Professor Drews to settle the point between them. They
would perhaps agree--though as to this I am uncertain--on the Jesuine
doctrine that morality is "nothing more than obedience to the will
of God"; and that "every deed is to be judged by the standard, Will
it bear the gaze of God?" [457] In any case I will affirm, for the
consideration of those who on any such ground cling to the notion of
something unique in the teaching of Jesus, that humanity is likely to
make a much better world when it substitutes for such a moral standard,
which is but a self-deluding substitution of God for the conscience
that delimits God, the principle of goodwill towards men, and the law
of reciprocity, articulately known to the mass of mankind millenniums
before the Christian era, and all along disobeyed, then as now,
partly because religious codes intervene between it and life. [458]
If it be admitted--and who will considerately deny it?--that the moral
progress of mankind is made in virtue of recognition of the law of
reciprocity, the case for the general moral influence of Christianity
is disposed of, once for all. If the affirmation be still made, let
it confront the challenge of rational sociology, [459] founded on the
survey of all history--and the World War. Professor Schmiedel's large
affirmation is vain in the face of all that. His real psychic basis,
which in my judgment determines his critical presuppositions, lies in
the phrase: "warms my heart." And that phrase is a tacit confession
of religious partisanship, the result of his Christian training. [460]
The more the moral teaching of the gospels is comparatively studied,
as apart from their myths of action and dogma, the more clear becomes
its entire dependence on previous lore, [461] and its failure even
to maintain the level of the best of that. The Sermon on the Mount
is wholly pre-Christian. [462] It is a Christian scholar who points
out that the Christian doctrine of forgiveness is fully set forth
in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, a century before the
Christian era. In his view, those verses [463] "contain the most
remarkable statement on the subject of forgiveness in all ancient
literature." [464] Why then does it not warm the heart of Professor
Schmiedel equally with the doctrine of the gospels? Simply because he
was brought up to assign pre-eminence to the teaching of Jesus--God
or Man. And here we have, in its fundamental form, that unchecked
assumption of "uniqueness" which secretly dictates the bulk of the
denials of the myth-theory. Canon Charles explicitly traces the
Jesuine teaching to the verses in question:
That our Lord was acquainted with them, and that His teaching
presupposes them, we must infer from the fact that the parallel
is so perfect in thought and so close in diction between them and
Luke xvii, 3; Matt. xvii, 15. [465] The meaning of forgiveness
in both cases is the highest and noblest known to us....
One puts with diffidence the challenge, Was it then high and noble for
the Teacher to give out as his own the teaching of another, instead
of acknowledging it? Is it not incomparably more likely, on every
aspect of the case, that the older teaching was thus appropriated by
gospel-makers bent at once on giving the Divine One a high message
and on securing acceptance for it by putting it in his mouth? Is not
this the strict critical verdict, apart from any other issue?
The bias which balks at such a decision is the sign of the harm done
to intellectual ethic by the inculcated presupposition. It ought to
"warm the heart" of a good man to realize that the ideas which he has
been taught to think the noblest were not the "unique" production of
a Superman, but could be and were reached by Jews and Gentiles--for
they are Gentile also--whose very names are unknown to us. A doctrine
of forgiveness arose in prostrate Jewry precisely because rancour
had there reached its maximum. As a doctrine of asceticism rises in
a society where license has been at the extreme, so the phenomena of
hate breed a recoil from that. The doctrine of non-resistance was
current among the Pharisees of the period of the Maccabean revolt;
and the Testaments of the Patriarchs is the work of a Pharisee. And
the gospels have nevertheless taught all Christians to regard the
Pharisees collectively, with the Scribes, as a body devoid of all
goodness. There is, be it said--not for the first time--a pessimism
in the Christian conception of things; a pessimism which denies
the element of goodness in man in the very act of ascribing it as a
specialty to One, and relying on his "influence" to spread it among
men incapable of rising to it for themselves. The story of Lycurgus and
Alcander is the best ancient example to the precept, quite transcending
that of the good Samaritan, [466] and it is one of the antidotes to
the Christian pessimism which stultifies its own parable by denying
in effect that The Samaritan could think as ethically as The Jew.
It is pessimism, yet again, that accepts the verdict: "Christianity is
the truth of humanity." [467] Were it not that Dr. Schmiedel endorses
it, I should have been inclined to use a stronger term. This too is
myth-making. It would be strange indeed if any depth of truth were
sounded by men who had not the first elements of a conscience for
truth of statement, truth of history: whose very notion of truth
was a production of fiction. The "truth of humanity" is something
infinitely wider than the structure raised by the "prophets" and
"apostles" of the Jesus-cult, out of pre-existing materials, some
two thousand years ago; and humanity will outlive that presentment of
its cosmos and its destinies as it has outlived others. If it should
carry something of the one with it, so does it from the others--even
as the one drew from its predecessors; and it will certainly jettison
more than it will keep. I have not noted in the Testaments of the
Patriarchs any such nullification of its doctrine of forgiveness
as is embodied in the promise of future perdition for Chorazin and
Bethsaida, or in the story of Ananias and Sapphira, to say nothing
of the Jesuine doctrine of future torment. The hate that breathes in
"Ye brood of vipers"; in the continual malediction against Scribes
and Pharisees as universally hypocrites, "sons of Gehenna," making
their proselytes twice as bad as themselves; and in the Johannine
"your father the devil"--all these are "Christian" specialties,
turning to naught the Jewish precept of forgiveness.
And I can "see no prospect" of a long currency for Professor
Schmiedel's panegyric of fictitious sayings in Acts [468] as "of the
deepest that can be said about the inner Christian life." If that
be so, what amount of profundity goes to the whole construction
of the faith? How long is it to be maintained that the secret or
inspiration of good life lies in the ideas of men for whom the framing
of false history was a pious occupation? The main ethical content
of the Christian system, the moral doctrine by which the Church
has lived down till the other day, is the ethic-defying doctrine
of the redemption of mankind by a blood sacrifice--a survival of
immemorial savagery. That is still the specifically "evangelical"
view of Christianity. After living by the doctrine through two eras,
the slowly civilizing conscience of the Church has itself begun
to repudiate it; and we have the characteristic spectacle of its
defenders declaring that the very terms of the historic creed form a
libel framed by its enemies. Taught at last by human reason that the
doctrine of sacrifice is the negation of morality, they pretend that
that doctrine is not Christian. Without it, their Church would never
have taken its historic form. To eliminate it, they have to suppress
half their literature, prose and verse. The accommodations by which
the fundamental immorality has been modified in the interests of
saner morality are but the dictates of human experience; and these
dictates are in turn pretended to be the revelation of the faith that
flouted them.
Unless the world is again to retrogress collectively in its
civilization, this polemic will not long avail to obscure historic
issues. It is not merely the "religion" of Professor Drews, it is
the emancipated human reason, that denies the mortmain of ancient
Syria over the field of ethical thought, and claims the birthright
of modern man in his own moral law. Not one day has passed since the
penning of the Apocalypse without men's hating each other in the name
of Jesus. Wars generations long have been waged for interpretations
of the lore. Hatred and malice and all uncharitableness stamp all
the Sacred Books; and the literature of the Fathers imports into the
dwindling intellectual life of the West all the rancour of battling
Judaism. In our own day, Professor Schmiedel is malignantly assailed
in the name of the divinity of the figure of which he claims to
prove the exemplary humanity, his reasoned argument winning him
no goodwill from the supernaturalists. And around him there figure
virulent partisans, incapable of his candour, so little capable of
love for enemies that they cannot conduct a debate without passion,
perversion and insolence. A multitude of those who acclaim the gospel
Jesus as the supreme Teacher reveal themselves as below the standards
of normal candour.
From such pretenders to moral authority, the seeker for truth turns to
the layman similarly concerned, and to those professional scholars who
are capable of debating without passion, and in good faith. Professor
Schmiedel and M. Loisy are still, it is to be hoped, types of many. The
problem is in the end, unalterably, one of historical science; and
only by the use of all the methods of sound historical science will
it ever be solved.
It is not merely in regard to the study of Christian origins that
sociological problems are vitiated by the habitual passing of
à priori judgments on issues never critically considered. When
an expert hierologist like Dr. Budge tells us repeatedly that
in ancient Egypt a "highly spiritual," "lofty spiritual" and
"elevated" religion went hand in hand with a system of sorcery of
"degrading" savagery, [469] we are led to inquire how the estimates
of altitude are reached or justified. There appears to be no answer
save that Dr. Budge holds certain theories about the universe, and,
finding these more or less akin to the esoteric theology of Egypt,
laurels his own opinions in this fashion. But Dr. Budge is no more
entitled than any one else to settle such questions without rational
discussion, and the reason of some of us revolts at the concept of a
conjoined sublimity and imbecility as a spurious paradox. It is but a
convention of supernaturalist apriorism, figuring where it has no right
of entry. In precisely the same fashion, Dr. Estlin Carpenter credits
to the Aztecs a "lofty religious sentiment," avowed to be "strangely
blended with a hideous and sanguinary ritual." [470] The "lofty" is
again a wreath for the writer's own philosophy of religion, in terms
of which the act of the "good Samaritan," performed a million times by
unpretending human beings, was imaginable only by a supernormal Jew,
and unmatchable in pagan thought.
In a word, these moral pretensions had better be withdrawn from
the area of historical discussion proper. Involving as they do the
inference that "lofty" religious conceptions are not merely of no
moral value but potent sanctions for all manner of evil, they very
effectually stultify themselves. But rationalism needs not, and should
not seek, to turn such blunders to its account. As M. Loisy claims,
the ground of historic criticism is not the place for such polemic,
which tends only to confuse the scientific issue. That is hard enough
to solve, with the best will and the best methods.
APPENDIX A
THE "TEACHING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES"
(Nov. 1 and 8, 1891.)
[The following is a revised translation of the Didachê tôn dôdeka
apostolôn, discovered by Philotheos Bryennios, Metropolitan of
Nicomedia (then of Serres), in 1873, in the library attached to the
Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre, in the Phanar, or Greek quarter,
of Constantinople. It was part of a manuscript containing several
ancient documents, including two Epistles of Clement of Rome, which
Bryennios published in 1875. Not till 1883 did he publish the Didachê.
Of the genuineness of the MS. there can be no reasonable doubt. That
there was current in the early Church a "Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles" appears from Eusebius (H. E. iii, 25) and Athanasius (Festal
Epistle 39, C.E. 367). There were very good reasons why the Church,
as time went on, should desire to drop the Teaching from her current
literature. It is obviously in origin a purely Jewish document,
and the first six chapters show no trace of Jesuism. We have already
stated the reasons for concluding that the primary "Teaching" was the
official doctrine of the twelve Jewish apostles of the High Priest to
the Jews dispersed through the Roman Empire; that the Gospels borrowed
from it, and not the converse; that Judaic Jesuists adopted it, and
gradually interpolated it; and that it is the real foundation of the
legend of the twelve Jesuist apostles. The sub-title: "Teaching of
[the] Lord through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations" may have been
the original. "Lord" here has the force of "God."
On a first study, we found reasons [471] for deciding that the Epistle
of Barnabas, which in part closely coincides with the "Teaching,"
borrows from it, and not the converse. That view, though naturally
opposed by many orthodox scholars, who want to date the Teaching as
late as possible, was from the first, we find, put by Farrar and
by Zahn, and is convincingly maintained by the American editors,
though of course they take the conventional view that the document
is of Christian origin. Yet its Græco-Jewish origin, we feel certain,
will be plain to every open-minded reader at the first perusal. That
view was maintained by the Rev. Dr. C. Taylor, of St. John's College,
Cambridge, in two lectures given at the Royal Institution in 1886;
and it has been accepted by Dr. Salmon in his Introduction to the
Study of the New Testament. It was admitted to be probable by the
Rev. A. Gordon, in the Modern Review, July, 1884, but rejected by
the American editors (1885).
We have followed, with but few serious variations, the translation of
the American editors, Professors Hitchcock and Brown, which, on careful
comparison, we find to be the most faithful. Reasons for the main
variations are given in the notes. Of the elucidatory notes, some are
borrowed (with additions) from the American and French editions. The
English student may refer to the edition of Professors Hitchcock and
Brown, or to that of Canon Spence (1885), for the literature of the
matter. Needless to say, the clerical reasoning on the matter must
be viewed with constant caution.]
Teaching of the Twelve Apostles
Teaching of [the] Lord, through the Twelve Apostles, to the nations
[472]
Chap. I.--Two ways there are, one of life and one of death, and great
is the difference between the two ways. [473] The way of life, then,
is this: First, thou shalt love the God who made thee; secondly, thy
neighbour as thyself; [474] and all things whatsoever thou wouldest
not have befall thee, thou, too, do not to another. [475] And of these
words the teaching is this: Bless them that curse you, and pray for
your enemies, and fast for them that persecute you; [476] for what
thank [have ye] if ye love them that love you? Do not foreigners
[477] do the same? But love ye them that hate you and ye shall have
no enemy. Abstain from the fleshly and worldly lusts. [478] If any
one give thee a blow on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,
and thou shalt be perfect; [479] if any one compel thee to go one mile,
go with him twain; if any one take thy cloak, give him thy tunic also;
if any one take from thee what is thine, ask it not back; for indeed
thou canst not. [480] To every one that asketh thee give, and ask not
back; for to all the Father desireth to have given of his own free
gifts. [481] Blessed is he that giveth according to the commandment;
for he is guiltless; woe to him that receiveth; [482] for if, indeed,
one receiveth who hath need, he shall be guiltless; but he who hath
no need shall give account, why he took, and for what purpose, and
coming under confinement, [483] shall be examined concerning what he
did, and shall not go out thence until he pay the last farthing. And
it hath also been said concerning this: Let thine alms sweat in thy
hands, until thou knowest to whom thou shouldst give. [484]
Chap. II.--And a second commandment of the teaching is: Thou shalt not
kill, nor commit adultery, nor corrupt boys, not commit fornication,
nor steal, nor do magic, nor use sorcery, nor slay a child by abortion,
nor destroy what is conceived. Thou shalt not lust after the things
of thy neighbour, nor forswear thyself, nor bear false witness, nor
revile, nor be revengeful, nor be double-minded or double-tongued;
for a snare of death is the double tongue. Thy speech shall not be
false, nor empty, but filled with doing. Thou shalt not be covetous,
nor rapacious, nor a hypocrite, nor malicious, nor arrogant. Thou
shalt not take evil counsel against thy neighbour. Thou shalt hate
no man, but some thou shalt reprove, and for some thou shalt pray,
and some thou shalt love above thy life.
Chap. III.--My child, flee from every evil thing, and from everything
like it. Be not wrathful, for anger leadeth to murder; [485] nor
a zealot, [486] nor contentious, nor passionate; for of all these
murders are begotten. My child, become not lustful; for lust leadeth
to fornication; nor foul-mouthed, nor bold of gaze; [487] for of
all these things adulteries are begotten. My child, become not an
omen-watcher; [488] since it leadeth into idolatry; nor an enchanter,
nor an astrologer, nor a purifier, [489] nor be willing to look upon
these things; for of all these things idolatry is begotten. My child,
become not a liar; since lying leadeth to theft; nor avaricious,
nor vain-glorious; for of all these things thefts are begotten. My
child, become not a murmurer; since it leadeth to blasphemy; nor
self-willed, nor evil-minded; for of all these things blasphemies are
begotten. But be meek, since the meek shall inherit the earth. [490]
Become long-suffering and merciful and guileless and gentle and good,
and tremble continually at the words which thou hast heard. Thou shalt
not exalt thyself, nor allow over-boldness to thy soul. Thy soul shall
not cleave to the great, [491] but with the righteous and lowly thou
shalt consort. The experiences that befall thee shalt thou accept as
good, knowing that without God nothing happeneth.
Chap. IV.--My child, him that speaketh to thee the word of God thou
shalt remember night and day, [492] and honour him as [the] Lord;
for where that which pertaineth to the Lord [493] is spoken there
[the] Lord is. And thou shalt seek out daily the faces of the saints,
that thou mayest be refreshed by their words. Thou shalt not desire
division, but shall make peace between those who contend; thou
shalt judge justly; thou shalt not respect persons in reproving for
transgressions. Thou shalt not hesitate [494] whether it shall be or
not. Be not one who for receiving stretcheth out the hands, but for
giving draweth them in; if thou hast anything, by thy hands thou shalt
give a ransom for thy sins. [495] Thou shalt not hesitate to give,
nor when giving shalt thou murmur, for thou shalt know who is the good
dispenser of the recompense. Thou shalt not turn away from the needy,
but shalt share all things with thy brother, and shalt not say they
are thine own; for if ye are partners in that which is imperishable,
how much more in the perishable things? [496] Thou shalt not take off
thy hand from thy son and from thy daughter, [497] but from youth
shalt thou teach them the fear of God. Thou shalt not lay commands
in thy bitterness upon thy slave or girl-slave, who hope in the same
God, lest they perchance shall not fear the God over you both; for
he cometh not to call men according to the appearance, but to those
whom the spirit hath prepared. And ye, slaves, ye shall be subject to
your lords, as to God's image, [498] in modesty and fear. Thou shalt
hate every hypocrisy, and whatever is not pleasing to the Lord. Thou
shalt by no means forsake [the] Lord's commandments, but shall keep
what thou hast received, neither adding to it nor taking from it. In
church thou shalt confess thy transgressions, and shalt not draw near
for thy prayer with an evil conscience. This is the way of life.
Chap. V.--But the way of death is this: First of all it is evil,
and full of curse; murders, adulteries, lusts, fornications, thefts,
idolatries, magic arts, sorceries, robberies, false testimonies,
hypocrisies, duplicity, guile, arrogance, malice, self-will, greed,
foul speech, jealousy, [499] over-boldness, haughtiness, boasting;
persecutors of the good, hating truth, loving falsehood, knowing not
the reward of righteousness, not cleaving to that which is good nor to
righteous judgment, on the watch not for good but for evil; far from
whom are meekness and patience; loving vanities, seeking reward, [500]
not pitying a poor man, not grieving with one [501] in distress, not
knowing him that made them, murderers of children, destroyers of God's
image, [502] turning away from the needy, oppressing the afflicted,
advocates of the rich, lawless judges of the poor, universal sinners;
may ye be delivered, children, from all these.
Chap. VI.--See that no one lead thee astray from this way of the
teaching, because apart from God doth he teach thee. For if thou
art able to bear the whole yoke of the Lord, thou shalt be perfect;
but if thou art not able, what thou art able that do. And concerning
food, what thou art able, bear; but of that offered to idols, beware
exceedingly; for it is a worship of dead Gods.
[It will be observed that while there is a very marked transition after
ch. vi, a division may be held to begin after ch. v. In this connection
may be noted an interesting fact, brought out by the Rev. A. Gordon
in his examination of the Didachê. Nicephoros of Constantinople
(fl. 750-820) knew of a certain Teaching of the Apostles, which he
mentioned as containing 200 lines. Nicephoros also speaks of the
combined lengths of the two Epistles of Clement as amounting to
2,600 lines. Now, in the Jerusalem MS., which is closely written,
the Clementine Epistles occupy only 1,200 lines, which would give
for the Didachê, in the same writing, on the proportions mentioned
by Nicephoros, only 92 lines, whereas it occupies 203. Mr. Gordon
simply noted the fact as a difficulty. If however he had followed
up his own observation that the Didachê shows a division after the
fifth chapter, he would have found that the proportion of the first
five sections to the rest is nearly as 86 to 203; while with ch. vi
we should have a still closer approximation--88 to 203. We have here,
then, a virtual proof that Nicephoros had before him only these first
five or six chapters, and that the subsequent additions were not to be
found in all copies of the Teaching. The inference from the internal
evidence is thus remarkably confirmed. The original Teaching, once
more, was a purely Jewish document, without even a mention of Jesus.
It will be noted further that, while the first six chapters contain
no suggestion of anything beyond simple monotheism and general ethics,
and the sixth chapter ends with a warning against eating food offered
to idols, the seventh suddenly plunges into a prescription of baptism,
which introduces the formula of "the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit," and minutely provides for the manner of the ceremony. But the
eighth chapter evidently connects directly with the sixth, a direction
as to fasting following on the warning in that section against eating
meat offered to idols. It is thus perfectly clear that the entire
Trinitarian section on baptism is an interpolation. In the eighth
chapter, again, we have an interpolation of the words "as the Lord
commanded in his gospel." In C.M. (415 sq.) are set forth the weighty
reasons for concluding that the Lord's prayer, which is lacking in
Mark, and different in Luke, was a Jewish formula long before the
Christian era.
While the Christist interpolations are thus obvious after the sixth
chapter, it is not here assumed that the first six chapters as they
stand are a single original document. On the contrary, we are inclined
to think that the scheme of the "two ways" is itself a redaction of
an original document which gave the first "way" without preamble,
the present preamble and the fifth chapter being inserted to give
the dual form. On that view, the pre-Christian document may not
have stopped with the sixth chapter, though the definitely Christian
redaction begins with the seventh, as the document now stands. The
Trinitarian seventh chapter was almost certainly one of the latest
of the Christian additions. In the ninth, rules are laid down for the
Eucharist without any allusion to the Godhead of Jesus, who is spoken
of in Ebionitic terms as "Jesus thy servant," though Jesus Christ is
further on spoken of in more distinctly Christist terms. These are
evidently further additions. In the tenth chapter the Ebionitic tone
is resumed, Jesus being still only "thy servant"; while throughout the
rest of the document there is much teaching that might have come from
the Judaic apostles who propagated that of the earlier chapters. As to
this, however, it is difficult to come to a definite conclusion. All
that is certain is that the nucleus of the document was Judaic,
and that the Christian tamperings were made at different stages,
the earlier indicating the primary Ebionitic creed, in which Jesus
was merely a holy man, no more God than any other "Anointed."]
Chap. VII.--Now concerning baptism, thus baptise ye: having first
uttered all these things, baptise into the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water. But if thou hast
not living water, [503] baptise in other water; and if thou canst
not in cold, [then] in warm. But if thou hast neither, pour water
upon the head thrice, [504] into the name of Father and Son and Holy
Spirit. But before the baptism let the baptiser and baptised fast,
and whatever others can; but the baptised thou shalt command to fast
for one or two days before.
Chap. VIII.--But let not your fastings be in common with the
hypocrites; for they fast on the second day of the week and on the
fifth; [505] but do ye fast during the fourth, and the preparation
[day]. [506] Nor pray ye like the hypocrites, but as the Lord [507]
commanded in his gospel, thus pray: Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven,
so on earth; our daily bread give us to-day, and forgive us our debt
as we also forgive our debtors, and bring us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil; for thine is the power and the glory
forever. Three times in the day pray ye thus.
Chap. IX.--Now, concerning the Eucharist, [508] thus give thanks:
first, concerning the cup: We thank thee, our Father, for the holy
vine of David [509] thy servant, which thou hast made known to us
through Jesus thy servant; [510] to thee be the glory for ever. And
concerning the broken [bread]: We thank thee, our Father, for the
life and knowledge which thou hast made known to us through Jesus
thy servant; to thee be the glory for ever. [511] Just as this broken
[bread] was scattered over the hills and having been gathered together
became one, so let thy church be gathered from the ends of the earth
into thy kingdom; for thine is the glory and the power through Jesus
Christ forever.[3] But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist,
except those baptised into the name of [the] Lord; for in regard to
this the Lord hath said: Give not that which is holy to the dogs. [512]
Chap. X.--Now after ye are filled [513] thus do ye give thanks: We
thank thee, holy Father, for thy holy name, which thou hast caused to
dwell in our hearts, and for the knowledge and faith and immortality
which thou hast made known to us through Jesus thy servant; to thee
be the glory forever. Thou, Sovereign [514] Almighty, didst create
all things for thy name's sake; both food and drink thou didst give
to men for enjoyment, that they might give thanks to thee; but to us
thou hast graciously given spiritual food and drink and eternal life
through thy servant. Before all things we thank thee that thou art
mighty; to thee be the glory for ever. Remember, Lord, thy Church,
to deliver it from every evil and to make it perfect in thy love, and
gather it from the four winds, [it] the sanctified, into thy kingdom,
which thou hast prepared for it; for thine is the power and the glory
forever. Let grace come and let this world pass away. Hos-anna to the
God [515] of David! Whoever is holy, let him come, whoever is not,
let him repent. Maranatha. [516] Amen. But permit the prophets to
give thanks as much as they will.
Chap. XI.--Now, whoever cometh and teacheth you all these things
aforesaid, receive him; but if the teacher himself turn aside and
teach another teaching, so as to overthrow [this], do not hear him;
but [if he teach] so as to promote righteousness and knowledge of
[the] Lord, receive him as [the] Lord. Now in regard to the apostles
and prophets, according to the ordinance of the Gospel, so do ye. And
every apostle who cometh to you, let him be received as [the] Lord;
but he shall not remain [except for?] one day; if, however, there be
need, then the next [day]; but if he remain three days, he is a false
prophet. [517] But when the apostle departeth, let him take nothing
except bread enough till he lodge [again]; but if he ask money, he is
a false prophet. And every prophet who speaketh in the spirit, ye shall
not try nor judge; for every sin shall be forgiven, but this sin shall
not be forgiven. [518] But not every one that speaketh in the spirit is
a prophet; but [only] if he have the ways of [the] Lord. So from their
ways shall the false prophet and the prophet be known. And no prophet
appointing a table [519] in the spirit, eateth of it, unless indeed
he is a false prophet; and every prophet who teacheth the truth, if he
do not that which he teacheth, is a false prophet. But every prophet,
tried, true, acting with a view to the mystery of the Church on earth,
[520] but not teaching [others] to do all that he himself doeth,
shall not be judged among you; for with God he hath his judgment;
for so did the ancient prophets also. But whoever, in the spirit,
saith: Give me money, or something else, ye shall not hear him;
but if for others in need he bids [you] give, let none judge him.
Chap. XII.--And let every one that cometh in [the] Lord's name be
received, but afterwards ye shall test and know him; for ye shall
have understanding, right and left. If he who cometh is a wayfarer,
help him as much as ye can; but he shall not remain with you, unless
for two or three days, if there be necessity. But if he will take
up his abode among you, being a craftsman, let him work and so eat;
but if he have no craft, provide, according to your understanding;
that no idler live with you as a Christian. But if he will not act
according to this, he is a Christmonger; [521] beware of such.
Chap. XIII.--But every true prophet who will settle among you is
worthy of his food. Likewise a true teacher, he also is worthy, like
the workman, of his food. [522] Every firstfruit, then, of the produce
of wine-press and threshing-floor, of oxen and of sheep, thou shalt
take and give to the prophets; for they are your high-priests. But
if ye have no prophet, give [it] to the poor. If thou makest a
baking of bread, take the first [of it] and give according to the
commandment. In like manner when thou openest a jar of wine or oil,
take the first [of it] and give to the prophets; and of money and
clothing and every possession, take the first, as may seem right to
thee, and give according to the commandment.
Chap. XIV.--And on the Lord's-day of [the] Lord [523] being assembled,
break bread, and give thanks, after confessing your transgressions,
in order that your sacrifice may be pure. But any one that hath
variance with his friend, let him not come together with you, until
they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be defiled. For this
is that which was spoken by [the] Lord: [524] At every place and time,
bring me a pure sacrifice; for a great king am I, saith [the] Lord,
and my name is marvellous among the nations. [525]
Chap. XV.--Now elect for yourselves bishops and deacons worthy
of the Lord, men meek and not avaricious, and upright and proved;
for they, too, render you the service [526] of the prophets and the
teachers. Therefore neglect them not; for they are the ones who are
honoured of you, together with the prophets and teachers.
And reprove one another, not in anger, but in peace, as ye have [it]
in the gospel; and to every one who erreth against another, let no
one speak, nor let him hear [anything] from you, until he repent. But
your prayers and your alms and all your deeds so do ye, as ye have
[it] in the gospel of our [527] Lord.
Chap. XVI.--Watch for your life; let not your lamps be gone out,
and let not your loins be loosed, but be ready; for ye know not the
hour in which our Lord cometh. But ye shall come together often,
and seek the things which befit your souls; for the whole time of
your faith will not profit you, if ye be not made perfect in the last
season. For in the last days the false prophets and the corruptors
shall be multiplied, and the sheep shall be turned into wolves, and
love shall be turned into hate; for when lawlessness increaseth they
shall hate one another, and shall persecute and shall deliver up;
and then shall appear the world-deceiver as the Son of God, [528]
and shall do signs and wonders, and the earth shall be given unto his
hands, and he shall commit iniquities which have never yet been done
since the beginning. Then all created men shall come into the fire
of trial, and many shall be made to stumble and shall perish. But
they that endure in their faith shall be saved from under even this
curse. And then shall appear the signs of truth; first the sign of
an opening [529] in heaven, then the sign of a trumpet's voice, and
thirdly, the resurrection of the dead; yet not of all, [530] but as it
hath been said: The Lord will come and all the saints with him. Then
shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven.
APPENDIX B
THE MYTH OF SIMON MAGUS
I
Two questions are raised under this heading--the question whether,
as was argued by F. C. Baur, the "Simon Magus" of the "Clementine
Recognitions" and "Homilies" is a mask-name for a polemic directed
primarily at the Apostle Paul; and the more fundamental question
whether the Simon Magus of the Acts is or is not a historical
character.
The reasons for holding Simon to be a mythical personage (as apart from
the reasons for supposing the Clementine Simon to be meant for Paul,
and the story of the Acts to be a misconceiving adaptation of the
Clementine narrative) are overwhelming. To begin with, Justin Martyr,
a Samaritan born, expressly says [531] that almost all the Samaritans
worshipped Simon. [532] This alone might dispose of the notion that the
"Simonians" dated merely from the time of Paul and Peter. It is absurd
to suppose that nearly all the Samaritans, a people with old cults,
could be converted within a century to a new Deity originating in
one man. The cult must date further back than that. And that Justin,
though of Samaritan birth, could widely misconceive the cults around
him, is pretty clear from his famous blunder of finding his Simon
Magus as Simo Sanctus in the Semo Sancus of Rome, the old Sabine
counterpart of the Eastern Semo. [533]
For there is abundant evidence, to begin with, that a name of which
the basis is Sem is one of the oldest of Semitic God-names. We have
the forms Shem, Sime-on, Sams-on, S(h)amas (the Babylonian name
of the sun; Hebrew Shemesh), San-d-on, or Samdan [534] Semen and
Sem, all plainly connected with a sun-myth. Shamas or Samas was an
Assyrian Sun-God, the duplicate of Melkarth and Hercules. Samson
or Simson or Shimshai (= the Sun-man), the Hebrew Sun-hero, is
unquestionably a mere variant of that myth. Sand-on, also a Sun-God,
is the same myth over again. Baal-Samen, "the Lord of Heaven,"
[535] is the same conception as Baal-Melkarth; Baal, "the Lord,"
a Sun-God himself as well as Supreme God, being joined with the
Sun-God proper. The name Sem, again, is found as signifying Hercules,
in conjunction with those of Harpocrates and the Egyptian Hermes,
[536] and is probably involved in the mythical queen-name Semiramis
(Sammuramat), since she in one of the myths gets her name from Simmas,
"keeper of the king's flocks," who rears her [537]--another form of
the Sun-God, belike. Simeon, in the myth of the twelve tribes, is
one of the twin-brethren, who in all mythologies are at bottom solar
deities. The "on" means "great," as in Samson, Dagon, Solomon, etc.;
[538] and the Dioscuri of the Greek and Roman myth were "the Great Twin
Brethren." It was added to the name of the Samaritan God Êl Êlyon,
"Great Êl," [539] who is just the Êl (singular of Elohim) of the
Hebrews. But the name Shem itself means "the Lofty"; [540] and the
name of the mythical ancestor of the Shemites is at bottom a God-name,
just as are those of Noach, Abram, Jacob, and Isra-el. It may also, it
appears, have had the significance of "red-shining." [541] And, last
but not least, the same vocable also has the significance of "name,"
so that the Semites or sons of S(h)em were also "the men with names"
[542]; and the Hebrew "Shem hemmaphorash" or Tetragrammaton was the
name of four letters (IEUE = Yahweh) or "the peculiar name." [543]
Lenormant declares [544] that this last tenet came from Chaldea, where
"they considered the divine name, the Shem, as endowed with properties
so special and individual that they succeeded in making of it a
distinct person." But this idea of the sacredness of the God-name was
one of the most prevalent of ancient religious notions. It was still
devoutly held by the Christian Origen, who argued [545] that the Hebrew
divine names must be held to because they alone were potent to conjure
with. It appears in the Judaic Teaching of the Twelve Apostles in its
Christianised form (c. x), in the passage of thanksgiving beginning,
"We thank thee, holy Father, for thy holy name, which thou hast made
to dwell in our hearts." In the Jewish Sepher Toledoth Jeschu, Jesus
is made to do his magic works by virtue of the "Shem hemmaphorash,"
the Tetragrammaton, of which he has furtively possessed himself. Thus
could an ancient God-name retain its mysterious prestige even after
the mystery-mongers (reversing the process imagined by Lenormant) had
taken the name-quality out of it, and left only the word for "name." In
other ways it clung to the Jewish cult. It is highly probable that the
pre-eminent Jewish prayer, the "Shema" (or the "Shemoneh Esreh"),
of which the name is explained away into insignificance, is an
extremely ancient prayer to the Sun-God. [546] Even this is sought
to be connected with a historical "Simon." [547] And all the while
the original God Sem survives in the Jewish mythology as "Shamma-el,"
the Prince of Demons and angel of death, who has power over all peoples
except the Jews; [548] and at the same time in the legend of Samu-el,
the unshorn, the child of the heretofore sterile mother (vexed by her
rival as Rachel by Leah), the potentate who makes and unmakes kings,
and who is called up as a "God" [549] from the earth by incantation.
But all this connects decisively with Samaria. It is not improbable
that the name Samaria itself was derived from the name of the Sun-God,
it being very much more likely that the mountain would be named
from the God who was worshipped on it than from a man Shemer. [550]
The last is obviously a worthless gloss. A reasonable alternative
view is that as the God-name Asshur is identified with the name of
the Assyrian country and people, whether giving or following their
race-name, so the Semitic God-name Shem is bound up with the name
Samaria, as that of Athênê with Athens. It is at all events clear
that, as is claimed by Volkmar, [551] Sem or Simon was the chief God
of the Samaritans. They declared to Antiochus, according to Josephus,
[552] that their temple on Mount Gerizim had no name, but was that of
"the greatest God"; and this squares with the other evidence, whether
or not it be true that they offered, as Josephus states, to dedicate
the temple to Zeus of the Hellenes. For, S(h)em being "the high,"
Sem-on would be the Great High One or Greatest God, just as Êl Êlyon
was the great Êl, the Great Power, Greatest of Powers. And as Sem-on
was also the Great Name, the God was in that sense without a name,
which circumstance is the explanation of the otherwise pointless
phrase of the Johannine Jesus (John iv, 22) to the Samaritan woman,
"Ye worship that which ye know not what." And all the ideas converge
in the phrases in the Acts (viii, 9-10), that Simon claimed to be
"some great one" (heauton megan) and was spoken of as "that power of
God which is called Great." In fine, Simon Magus, the Mage, is just
a version of Simon Megas, Great Simon.
We know from their version of the Pentateuch that the later Samaritans,
being strong "monotheists" in one of the senses of that elastic and
misleading term, sought always to substitute angels for Elohim in
the old narratives of divine action (e. g. Gen. iii, 5; v, 1; v, 24;
xvii, 22), "lest a corporeal existence should be attributed to the
Deity." [553] And it is instructive to note how their theological
drift exhibits itself in early Christism. The doctrine of the "Logos"
is not merely Alexandrian-Christian, it is Judaic. Some of the Aramaic
paraphrasts of the Old Testament at times wrote "the Word of Jehovah"
instead of the angel of Jehovah, sometimes the "She-kin-ah," which
means "the abode of the Word of Jehovah." [554] On the other hand,
we know from the Gospel of Peter that one of the early Christian sects
regarded Jesus as having received his dynamis, his power, at baptism,
and yielded it up at crucifixion. Here we are close to Samaritanism,
in which the angels were regarded [555] as "uncreated influences
proceeding from God (dynameis, powers)," pretty much as Simon is
described in the Acts. Thus "Simon" for the Samaritans would just be
"Êl," which the Samaritan Justin, like the writer of "Peter," held
to mean "Power." And at the same time, be it observed, Simon was
"the Word."
But still the proof abounds. In Lucian's account of the Syrian
Goddess we are told [556] that in the temple at Byblos there was a
statue, apparently epicene or double-sexed, called by some Dionysos,
by others Deucalion, and by others Semiramis, but to which the Syrians
gave no specific name, calling it only Semeion, a word which in Greek
properly means "sign," but may mean image. There can be little doubt
that Movers [557] was right in surmising this statue to be just the
primordial Sem or Sem-on, the Great Sem of the Semitic race. The
two-sexed character is in perfect keeping with the ideal duality of
the old Assyrian Nature-Gods; [558] and the peculiar detail of the name
which was not a name brings us again to the Sem-on of the Samaritans.
Everything in the Christian legend falls in with this
identification. The Fathers [559] tell us of one Helen, a prostitute
from Tyre, with whom Simon went about, and whom he gave out to be a
reincarnation of Helen of Troy, and also his "Thought." Helen is almost
unquestionably, as Baur [560] surmised, the Selene or Luna of the old
sun-cultus. In the paragraph following his account of the Semeion,
Lucian tells us that in the forepart of the same temple stands the
throne of Helios, but without a statue; Helios and Selene, the sun and
moon, being the only divinities not sculptured in the temple--though
he goes on to mention that behind the throne is a statue of a clothed
and bearded Apollo, quite different from the Greek form. Here, again,
we have a mystic conception of the Sun-God, a conception necessarily
confusing to ordinary visitors, even supposing the priests themselves
to have had any consistent ideas about it; and the fact [561] that the
temple further contained among other statues one of Helena (herself an
old Moon-Goddess), gave ample opportunity for the usual mythological
variants. Thus it came about that while Justin and Irenæus connect
Simon Magus with Helen, Irenæus says the Simonians have "an image of
Simon in the likeness of Jupiter, and of Helen in that of Minerva"--a
curious statement, which at once recalls that of Lucian [562] that the
Hêrê of the temple of Byblos "has something of Athênê and Aphrodite, of
Selene and Rhea, of Artemis, of Nemesis, and of the Parcæ." This again
squares with the fact that in the Chaldeo-Babylonian system Samas was
associated with the goddess Gula, "triform as personating the moon, and
sometimes replaced by a group of three spouses of equal rank, Malkit,
Gula, and Anunit." [563] And in the Latin translation by Rufinus of
the pseudo-Clementine "Recognitions," for Helena we actually have Luna.
The chain is complete. We are dealing not with a historic person or
persons, but with an ancient cult, which Christian ignorance and Judaic
"monotheism" between them strove to reduce somehow to a historical
narrative, as the myths of Abraham and Samson and Israel and Elijah
and a dozen others had been reduced, as the mythic ritual had been in
the gospels, and as indeed the rituals of Paganism had been in the
current pagan mythologies. There was no Samaritan Simon the Mage,
who met a Christian Peter; it was not a preaching Simon who taught
of himself, but the Samaritan populace who traditionally believed of
their God Sem or Simon, that "he appeared among the Jews as the Son,
while in Samaria he descended as the Father, and in the rest of the
nations he came as the Holy Spirit." [564] The parallel holds down
to the last jot. The Semeion of the temple of Byblos had a dove
on his head, [565] and there are abundant Jewish charges as to the
worship of a dove by the Samaritans at Mount Gerizim; [566] so that
Simon was the Logos receiving the Holy Spirit, the dynamis, just as
Jesus did in the Gospels; and the Christists' doctrine that the Holy
Spirit should be given to the nations is simply an adaptation of the
Samaritan syncretism, which they sought to override by a syncretism
of their own in their latest gospel, where it comes out that their
Galilean Jesus was called a Samaritan by Jews, [567] a charge which
curiously enough he does not dispute, denying only that he has "a
daimon." This is exactly the myth of Simon turned into a story of
an incarnate Messiah, who affirms his reality. [568] Well might the
Fathers call their imaginary "Simon" the Father of all heresies. He
was the "Father" in a sense of their own creed, as well as of all
the Gnosticisms into which it broke.
II
What hinders ordinary students from accepting Baur's view of
the "Clementine" Simon, which we have here sought to support,
is the existence of the fragments of writings attributed to Simon,
together with the circumstantialities of the story in the Acts and the
Fathers. But these circumstantialities are just the marks of all the
ancient myths, Jewish, Christian, and Gentile; and the attribution
of writings to Simon Magus no more proves his historical existence
than the same process proves the historical existence of Orpheus and
Moses. [569] The fragments and paraphrases preserved by the Fathers
are just part of the mass of ancient Occultism; and their connection
with the name of Simon the Mage is merely a variation of the Jewish
myth which attributes the authorship of the Zohar to Simon Ben Jochaï,
a mythical or mythicised personage if ever there was one. He is fabled
to have lived in a cave for twelve years, studying the Cabbala,
during which time he was visited by Elias. At his death fire was
seen in the cave, and a voice from heaven was heard saying, "Come
ye to the marriage of Simon Ben Jochaï: he is entering into peace,
and shall rest in his chamber." At his burial there was heard a voice
crying, "This is he who caused the earth to quake and the kingdoms to
shake." [570] Simon is said to have belonged to the first century of
the Christian era; while the Zohar is held to have been composed in
the 13th century. [571] In all probability the matter of the Zohar
is largely ancient; and the association of it (as of the Shema or
Shemoneh Esreh prayer) with the name Simon points distinctly to a
traditional vogue of the name in Semitic Gnosticism. But there is no
more reason to believe that an actual Simon composed the Zohar, or the
"Great Denial" (perhaps = antinomy) attributed to Simon the Mage,
than to believe in the above stories of the voices from heaven and
those of the miracles of the Mage in the Acts. The Talmudic legends
clearly point to a sun myth, bringing Simon into connection with Elias,
Eli-jah, an unquestionable Sun-God, who combines the names El and Jah,
though reduced by the Judaic Evemerising monotheists to the rank of a
judge-prophet, as was Samu-el, and as Sams-on was made a "judge." It
lay in the essence of ancient religiosity to do this, and at the same
time to seek to father all its documents on sacrosanct names. That a
real Samaritan Simon of the first century should write a new occultist
book and publish it as his own, is contrary to the whole spirit of
the time. Only centuries after the period of its composition could
such a book be attributed to an ordinary human author by those who
accepted it. If it was current in the first century, it must have
been either fathered on an ancient and mythical Simon or regarded as
a book of the mysteries of the God Simon. The opinions or statements
of the Christian Fathers concerning it are quite worthless save as
embodying a name-tradition.
III
There remains to be considered the theory of the Tübingen school that
the Christian legend of Simon Magus is to be found in its earliest form
in the "Clementines," that body of early sectarian forged literature
which has been made to yield so much light as to the early history
of the Christist Church. Here, in a set of writings ("Recognitions"
and "Homilies," of which books one is a redaction of the other),
purporting to be by Clement of Rome, we have a propaganda that is on
the face of it strongly Petrine, and that turns out on analysis to be
strongly anti-Pauline, though the gist of the matter is a series of
disputations between Peter and Simon the Mage. It is impossible at
present to settle what was the first form of these documents, which
as they stand bear marks of the third century, and survive only in
the Latin translation of Rufinus (d. 410); but it is plain that they
preserve elements of the early Ebionitic or Judæo-Christian opposition
to the Gentile Christism of Paul. The Tübingen theory is that under
the name of Simon Magus Paul is attacked throughout. This, at first
sight, certainly seems a fantastic thesis; but an examination of the
matter shows that it is very strongly founded. A leading feature in
the conduct of Simon Magus in the Clementines, as in the Acts, is his
attempt to purchase apostleship with money. Now, this corresponds very
closely with the act of Paul in bringing to Jerusalem a subsidy from
the Western churches, an act which, on the part of one not recognised
as an apostle, and exhibited in the Epistles as always on jealous
terms [572] with the Jerusalem apostles, would naturally rank as an
attempt to purchase the Holy Ghost with lucre. Again, Simon Magus
in the Clementines claims to rest his authority on divine visions,
which is exactly the position of Paul; [573] and Peter denies that
visions have such authority. Once recognise the primary strife between
Judaising and Gentilising Christians, of which there are so many
traces in New Testament and Patristic literature, and it is easy to
see that these are the very points on which the anti-Paulinists would
most bitterly oppose Paul and his movement. In the Clementines, Peter
not only opposes the Magus in Palestine, but follows him to Rome,
thus carrying the antagonism between the two sects over the whole
theoretic field. The fact that both Simon Peter and Simon Magus,
Cephas and Paul, are made to journey from East to West, and to die
in the West, like the immemorial Sun-God, is suggestive.
That the Judaists should give Paul a symbolical name, again, was quite
in keeping with the usual dialectic of the time, in which Rome, for
instance, figured as "Babylon," the typical great hostile city of
Jewish remembrance. Just as Babylon symbolised heathen oppression,
Samaria typified heathen heresy, the divergence from the Jewish cult
in a heathen direction. Such divergence was the Judaist gravamen
against Paul, who broke away from the law; and as Simon, Semo,
typified Samaritan heresy in general, it was peculiarly suited to
the arch-heretic who sought to overthrow the supreme privilege of
Jerusalem. Simon was the Samaritan "false Christ," and Paul's preaching
falsified the Judaic Christ. [574] And nothing is more remarkable in
the matter than the way in which the plainly patched-up reconciliatory
narrative of the Acts squares with this theory. The book of Acts is
explicable only on the hypothesis that it was designed, in its final
form, to reconcile the long-opposed sects by reconciling Peter and
Paul in a quasi-historical narrative. The narrative plainly clashes
with Paul's alleged Epistles. For the rest, it is managed largely
on the plan of duplicating the exploits of the two heroes, so that
Paul confutes Elymas as Peter does Simon, and closely duplicates
one of Peter's miracles. [575] Some legends were in existence to
start with, and others were invented to match them. Similarly the
dispute between Paul and Barnabas at Antioch was to supersede the
strife there between Paul and Peter. [576] If then the composer of
the Acts had before him a legend of Peter confuting Simon the Mage,
it would suit him to retain it, since thus would he best dissociate
the Mage from Paul. But, as Zeller points out, he is careful, first
of all, to place the story of the Mage before Paul's conversion;
and at the same time he shows he knows the original significance of
the charge against Simon Magus as to offering money, by ignoring the
most important of Paul's subsidies. [577]
The application of a great mass of the polemic against Simon Magus
in the Clementines is so obvious that the evasion of the problem by
Harnack and Salmon and others on futile pleas of "false appearances"
and "common-sense" is simply a confession of defeat. Baur's case,
after being dismissed on pretexts of "common-sense" by those who
could not meet it, is irresistibly restated by Schmiedel, on a
full survey of its development by Lipsius and others. The only
solution is, that the Clementines adapt for new purposes a mass of
old anti-Pauline matter. At the time at which they were redacted,
Paul had been established as a "catholic" figure; and there could be
no such hatred to him as breathes through the fierce impeachments of
the teaching of the Paulines in the Recognitions and Homilies. For it
is at the Epistles that the bulk of the attacks are directed. What has
been done is to use up, for a new polemic with heretics, a quantity of
old anti-Pauline literature in which the disguising of Paul under the
name of Simon Magus probably blinded the redactors to its purpose. For
them Simon was simply the arch-heretic, and it was against his detested
memory and persisting influence that they operated.
The theory is no doubt a complicated one; but when taken in its full
extent, as recognising the addition of the heresy of the Gnostic
Paulinist Marcion to that of Paul, it is perfectly consistent with
the documents; and there is really no other view worth discussing, as
regards the connection of Simon Magus with Peter. The orthodox belief
that Simon was an actual Samaritan who suddenly persuaded the people
of Samaria to regard him as a divine incarnation, as told in the Acts,
will not explain the mass of identities in the Clementines between the
teaching ascribed to him and the actual Pauline Epistles. In explaining
the choice of the name Simon for Paul by his Judaic antagonists, the
myth-theory is far more helpful than the view of Simon's historicity. A
"false God" Simon, the God of the typically misbelieving Samaritans,
would be by Jews reduced to human status as a matter of course, unless
he were simply classed as a "daimon." A "Simon the Mage" was for them
just the type they wanted wherewith to identify Paul, the new False
Teacher. To identify, on the other hand, a contemporary or lately
deceased Paul with a contemporary or lately deceased Simon would be
an idle device, missing the end in view. The name of such a Simon
would for purposes of aspersion be worth little or nothing. The name
had to be a widely and long notorious one, and the myth supplied it.
IV
In conclusion, let it be noted that the bearing of the myth of
Simon Magus on Christianity is not limited to the explanation of
the Samaritan origins and the elucidation of the Paul-and-Peter
antagonism. The more the matter is looked into, the more reason is
seen for surmising that Samaria played a large part in the beginnings
of the Christian system. Samaria seems to have been beyond all other
parts of Palestine a crucible in which manifold cult-elements tended
to be fused by syncretic ideas; and the extent to which Samaria figures
in the fourth gospel is a phenomenon not yet adequately explained. The
fact that Jesus is there said to have been called a Samaritan reminds
us that among the movements of the "false Christs" so often alluded
to in the Gospels [578] a Samaritan cult of the mystic Christ may
have counted for much. The fourth gospel itself would come under the
anti-Pauline ban, inasmuch as, while Simon Magus is said to have sought
to substitute Mount Gerizim for Jerusalem, Jesus here [579] is made
to set aside both the Samaritan mountain and Jerusalem. The very fact
that the Samaritan woman professedly expects the coming of Messiah,
is a hint that the story of the well and the living water may be of
Samaritan Messianic origin. Nay more, since we know that the Samaritans
in particular laid stress on the Messiah Ben Joseph rather than on the
Messiah Ben David, they regarding themselves as of Josephite descent,
it is probable that the very legend of Jesus being the putative son
of one Joseph, which we know was absent from the Ebionite version
of Matthew, was framed to meet the Samaritan view. These matters are
still far from having been exhaustively considered.
NOTES
[1] The charge of haste is posited as a preliminary to criticism by
the Rev. Dr. Thorburn in his work on The Mythical Interpretation of
the Gospels. Some examples of Dr. Thorburn's own haste will be found
in the following pages.
[2] Twenty years ago a French scholar gently included me in this
reproach.
[3] I omit personalities.
[4] Art. by H. G. Wood in The Cambridge Magazine, Jan. 1917.
[5] Cp. H.J. 128-139.
[6] In the course of a second attack, the critic avows that he knows
of "no theory of gospel-origins, living or dead," which concedes
that the tragedy-story was added to the gospels as a separate
block. Reminded that the school of B. Weiss make their "Primitive
Gospel" end before the tragedy, he replies in a third attack that
that school is "obsolete"--i. e. neither living nor dead?
[7] It seems to have been the view of Mr. Cassels.
[8] Art. Gospels in Encyc. Bibl., ii, col. 1869.
[9] Ecce Deus, p. 93.
[10] Historical Christ, p. 182.
[11] Ecce Deus, pref. p. ix.
[12] Dr. Conybeare, The Historical Christ, p. 5.
[13] H.J. 112, 113, 128, 157 sq., 177 sq.
[14] Hist. of Greece, 10 vol. ed. 1888, ii, 462.
[15] Id. p. 500.
[16] Gesch. des Alterthums, ii (1893), 649. See the context for the
historic basis in general.
[17] Id. 427, 564.
[18] Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 2nd ed. p. 91. Cp. 93 sq.
[19] Id. p. 100. Cp. 106-7, 123.
[20] Id. p. 105. Cp. 109.
[21] P.C. 274 sq. A proselytizing Catholic Professor in Glasgow
has represented me as denying the historicity of Apollonius, having
reached that opinion by intuition.
[22] The Bhagavat Gîta, which glorifies Krishna, is late relatively
to the cult.
[23] Cp. Gunkel, Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des N.T.,
1903, p. 5 sq.
[24] Apropos d'histoire des religions, p. 290.
[25] Jesus, by William Renton. Pub. by author, Keswick, 1879.
[26] Rep. by R.P.A. 1907.
[27] The Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels, 1916.
[28] E. g. He takes as applying to Jesus (p. 377) a remark applied
expressly and solely to the myth of Herakles.
[29] Work cited, p. 10.
[30] Second Leben Jesu, § 91 (3te Aufl. p. 569).
[31] See refs. in Drews, The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus,
Eng. trans. p. 23.
[32] As cited, p. 572.
[33] Jesus and Israel, Eng. tr., pp. viii, ix, 29.
[34] Putnams, 1912. I had not met with this work when I chose my own
title, The Historical Jesus, else I should have framed another.
[35] Work cited, pp. 335-353.
[36] Williams and Norgate, 1895.
[37] Work cited, p. 420.
[38] Id. p. 17, etc.
[39] The Historic Jesus, p. vii.
[40] In this connection he puts the theory--derived from the celebrated
Herr Chamberlain--that Jesus was not a Jew but an "Amorite."
[41] H.J. chs. xvii and xix.
[42] H.J. 199. On this compare The Four Gospels as Historical Records,
chs. vi-xiii.
[43] Canon Cheetham, Hulsean Lectures on The Mysteries, 1897, p. 115.
[44] "The primitive idea of the sacrificial meal, namely, that it is
by participation in the blood of the god that the spirit of the god
enters into his worshipper."--Prof. Jevons, Introd. to the Hist. of
Religion, 1896, p. 291. "Originally the death of the god was nothing
else than the death of the theanthropic victim."--Robertson Smith,
Religion of the Semites, 1889, p. 394.
[45] Jésus et la tradition évangélique, 1910, p. 106.
[46] H.J. 202-3.
[47] Loisy, p. 171.
[48] See refs. in H.J. 171; others in G.B. ix. 420 n. An overwhelming
case for the reading "Jesus (the) Barabbas" is established by
E. B. Nicholson, The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 1879, pp. 141-2.
[49] Mr. Lester translates "Son of a Teacher," but this (adopted by
Brandt) is an evasive rendering. He thinks the story, even if true,
had no connection with the condemnation of Jesus.
[50] Cp. Nicholson, as cited, p. 142.
[51] G.B. ix, 418; P.C. 146.
[52] G.B. ix, 419.
[53] Id. iv, ch. vi; P.C. 124.
[54] P.C. 152, 64; G.B. iv (Pt. III, The Dying God), 170 sq.
[55] P.C. 161. Cp. Turner, Samoa, 1884, 274-5; G.B. iv, ch. vi.
[56] P.C. 137, 161, 186; G.B. iv (Pt. III), 166.
[57] Macrobius, Saturnalia, i, 7. Cp. Varro, cit. by Lactantius,
Div. Inst. i, 21.
[58] G.B. iv, 14 sq., 46 sq., x, 1 sq.
[59] Cp. Ward's View of the Religion of the Hindoos, 5th ed. 1863,
p. 92.
[60] See P.C. 105 sq. as to the various motives of human sacrifice.
[61] Livy, viii, 9, 10; Lafcadio Hearn, Japan, 166; P.C., 138.
[62] Cp. Kalisch, Comm. on Leviticus, 1867, i, 366; P.C. 121.
[63] Robertson Smith, Semites, 391; F. B. Jevons, Introd. to Hist. of
Religion, pp. 274-93.
[64] P.C. 363.
[65] Id. 108 sq.
[66] Cp. G.B. Pt. III, The Dying God (vol. iv), 166 n., 214 sq.;
P.C. 116-117, 140.
[67] P.C. 364-8.
[68] Cp. Kalisch, as cited; G.B., as last cited; Ps. 106, etc.
[69] P.C. 158 sq. Hebrews, ix, 7, 25, suggests a cryptic meaning for
the sacrifice of atonement.
[70] As to Hebrew private sacraments, see P.C. 168 sq.
[71] P.C. 166. I do not find that Mr. R. T. Herford deals with this
matter in his valuable work on Christianity in Talmud and Midrash,
1903.
[72] See below, p. 104, as to the inferrible early forms of the
propaganda of the crucifixion.
[73] Mr. Joseph McCabe (Sources of Gospel Morality, p. 21) argues
against the myth-theory that the early Rabbis never question the
historicity of Jesus. But it is extremely likely that early Rabbis
did use the Barabbas argument before the gospel story was framed. In
an age destitute of historical literature and of critical method or
practice, it sufficed to turn their flank.
[74] C.M. 352, § 21, and refs. A fair "biographical" inference would
be that the betrayed Jesus had been an obscure person, not publicly
known. This inference, however, is never drawn.
[75] Ward's View of the Religion of the Hindoos, 5th ed. 1863, p. 91.
[76] Cp. Prof. Drews, The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus,
Eng. tr. p. 54 sq., for Niemojewski's theory that Pilate = the
constellation Orion, pilatus, the javelin-bearer. This theory is not
endorsed by Drews.
[77] P.C. 137.
[78] G.B. ix, 412 sq.
[79] G.B. ix, 415, note.
[80] Justin Martyr, Dial. with Trypho, c. 40.
[81] G.B. ix, 357 sq.
[82] P.C. 146; G.B. ix, 359.
[83] Second Leben Jesu, § 83.
[84] Die evang. Geschichte, p. 156.
[85] G.B. Pt. III (vol. iv), 113-114.
[86] "Upon an ass and [even in R.V.] upon a colt, the foal of an ass,"
Zech. ix, 9. I should explain that in denying that such "tautologies"
were normal in the Old Testament I had in view narrative passages.
[87] C.M. 338-341.
[88] Gen. xlix, 11.
[89] The Historical Christ, p. 22.
[90] See p. 19, note, ref. to M. Durkheim. M. Durkheim is one of the
greatest of anthropologists; he is not a mythologist at all.
[91] C.M. 340.
[92] Id. 341.
[93] Id. 218, note.
[94] Work cited, p. 14.
[95] Id. p. 76.
[96] See his Myth, Magic, and Morals, 2nd ed. p. 302.
[97] Comm. in Joh. x, 16, cited by Strauss. See his first Life of
Jesus, Pt. II, ch. vii, § 88, for the views of the commentators on
the episode.
[98] G.B. ix, 417.
[99] Cultes, mythes, et religions, i, 338.
[100] In John, the high priest is actually made to remonstrate from
a Jewish point of view, by way of enforcing the Christian conclusion.
[101] Jésus et la tradition, p. 76.
[102] There might be involved, again, a reminiscence of the
crucifixion of the last independent king of the Jews, Antigonus,
by Mark Antony. C.M. 364.
[103] C.M. 365.