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MYTHICAL ELEMENT
IN
CHRISTIANITY.
BY
ED. VANSITTART NEALE, M.R.I.'
PUBLISHED
BY
THOMAS
SCOT T,
NO. 11, THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD,
UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E.
Price One Shilling.
�LONDON:
FEINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, W.
�PRAYER,
[Reprintedfrom The Examiner of September 7, 1872.]
Sir,—An active correspondence is being carried on in
the columns of ofie of your contemporaries relative to
o/ Prayer, but I notice that the main issue®
are ^mtoffiched delicately and treated with reserve. Will
you allow me to state as clearly as I can in a few words
the sceptic’s difficulty ? I use the term sceptic simply
because it is short and convenient, and sufficiently, if
SOT^perfectly, accurate.
1. The sceptic cannot rely upon the a priori argument
foTjsrayer, cannot argue—as one of the writers has put
it, “ from the existence of a loving Father in heaven to
W efficacy of prayer,” for the very sufficient reasod
that he does not permit himself to indulge in any belief
at all respecting a Father in heaven. His view is that
the supernatural world is to us a 11 terra incognita,” and
that the notions so abundantly entertained regarding it
are the baseless products of human speculation. He is
not such a “ fool ” as to say even in his heart “ there is
no God he declares only that we are incapable of say
ing whether there is a God or not. The subject is not
within the. range of our faculties. Fully admitting that
the Theistic hypothesis may be correct, he denies that
we can know it to be so ; and to pray to a Deity who has
placed between Himself and us an impenetrable veil,
whose very existence is to us a mere possibility, is from
the sceptic’s standpoint as irrational an act as for persons in the dark to address communications to imaginary beings with whom their fancy may have peopled
the surrounding void.
2. The sceptic cannot argue to the efficacy of prayer
from tig’effects, for the very sufficient reason that no one
IS sable to satisfy him that prayer has any supernatural
effects at all. No phenomena are forthcoming toprove
that the required relation of cause and effect exists be*
tween the act of prayer and its alleged consequences.
People will not remember1 that post hoc is not equivalent
to
hoc. The so-called answers to prayer, which
the sceptic is invited to consider, are invariably capable of
natural explanation ,* and to prove answer to prayer in
the ordinary acceptation of the words, to prove, that is,
the.intervention of the Deity, it is obvious that all expla
nation of the phenomena on natural grounds must be
disproved, or at least practically precluded by the extra
ordinary nature of the circumstances. For instance, if
a man were to pray that he might throw sixes, his doing
so would be no evidence of answer to prayer ; but if he
threw sixes whenever he prayed that he might do so, no
natural explanation of the phenomenon would be pos
sible, and we should be forced to attribute it to the
efficacy of prayer.
As a matter of fact, the Christian carefully avoids
placing himself in a position to furnish the sceptic with
satisfactory evidence of the efficacy of prayer, since he
prays only for objects which might be attained, and for
results which might very possibly come about in the
natural course of things. He prays that a friend may
recover from sickness, but he does not pray that a broken
limb may knit together before the time. In a word, he
never prays for a miracle. And yet, since he is asking
for the intervention of the Deity, a miracle should be as
readily expected as an ordinary occurrence. But, as I
said before, the Christian never ventures to pray for
anything which appears to be impossible, for anything
the realisation of which would be inexplicable on natural
grounds. So long as he retains this attitude he will find
it impossible to satisfy the sceptic that the phenomena
which, in order of time, have followed after his prayer
are due to the influence of that prayer upon the mind of
the Deity.
I am, &c.,
Y.
�LONDON:
FEINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
HAYMARKET, W.
9
�;1
V
K G</
THE MYTHICAL ELEMENT
4
IK
CHRISTIANITY.
I
♦
HE importance attached by the teachers or de
fenders of Christianity to the historical character
ot the preternatural incidents asserted to have
attended the birth of Jesus, to have illustrated his
life, ana to have accompanied its close, has, not unnaturally, led to a reaction, liable to be as prejudicial
to a sound judgment about the origin of the Christian
religion on the one side, as an uncritical reliance
upon the absolute truth of all that is recorded in the
New Testament has been on the other side. An un
reasoning belief is in some danger of giving place to
an unreasoning distrust. The inconsistencies and
contradictions, of which so large a crop becomes ap
parent m the gospels, when surveyed by the eyes of
an uncompromising critic, as the author of ‘ The Eng
lish Life of Jesus,’ forming part of this series, has
■ d®r^’ns.tr^ed, combined with the very scanty notices
of Christianity to be found in any but professedly
Christian writers, during the first hundred and fifty
years after the birth of Jesus, have given rise to the
opinion, expressed by the writer of another tract
comprised m the series, that Jesus was not really an
istorical person at all ; “ that neither the twelve
Apostles nor their divine Master ever existed.” a
T
a ‘The Twelve Apostles,’ p. 28.
B
�4
‘The Mythical Element in Christianity.
It may appear, probably, a sufficient reply to such;
a conclusion, to observe that it is not shared by any
of the great critics whose labours in the investigation
of the New Testament have led to that change in
men’s judgments as to its historical character, which
seems to be now growing up into the recognised
critical opinion.
Strauss, Bauer, Renan, the
author of ‘ The English Life of Jesus,’ for instance,,
one and all write with the obvious conviction that,
in dealing with the life of Jesus, they are dealing
with the life not only of a real man, but a man of a
most remarkable character? But, in the interest of
historical truth, it is desirable to examine thoroughly
the grounds for any judgment on an important ques
tion, put forth, with apparent conviction, by any
writer who possesses sufficient knowledge of the sub
ject discussed to entitle his judgment to respect,
however much that judgment may run counter toreceived opinion. This is desirable, first, because
the progress of critical inquiry in historical matters
has involved a continuous destruction of received
opinions, and the substitution for them of others
which, when first announced, were considered ab
surd ; secondly, because history, not admitting of
verification by immediate observation, is peculiarly
exposed to that paralysis of doubt which hangs over
the intellect, hampering instead of stimulating its
energies, and substituting the sickly feebleness of
sceptical questionings in place of the vigorous health
of scientific research?
b See ‘ English Life of Jesus,’ p. 344, for a summary of the con
clusions to which this able and fearless critic comes about him.
c Thus, in Mr Lumisden Strange’s ‘ Is the Bible the Word of God 1 ’
the hypothesis of the mythical origin of Christianity peeps in, as a
theory which he neither accepts nor rejects, but which serves to
aid the conclusions to which he comes about Christianity, by the
mysterious uncertainty thrown over its origin. See pp. 351, 352,
374-381. .
�The Mythical Element in Christianity.
5
I propose, therefore, to subject to a critical exami
nation the reasons adduced in support of the hypo
thesis that Jesus Christ is a mythical personage,
■who never had any existence, except in the imagina
tions of his disciples.
The way in which this mythical belief arose is
supposed to have been somewhat as follows :d “ The
siege of Jerusalem kindled into a flame the enthusi
astic spirit of trust in Divine aid inherent in the
Jewish race. There were, says Josephus, a great
number of prophets who denounced to the people
that they should wait for deliverance from Heaven?
True, the Pharisaic historian can see in these men
only persons suborned by the leaders of the Zealots—
‘ the Tyrants,’ as he calls them—John and Simon ;
but we may read the tale of that age better by the
light of the ages preceding it. As from the depths of
the captivity at Babylon there came forth the glow
ing hopes of triumphant deliverance which inspire
the last twenty-seven chapters of our Book of Isaiah;
as the sufferings and struggles under Antiochus
Epiphanes produced the ^conception of the 1 Son of
Man ’ revealed in the clouds, to whom was given
dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people,
nations, and languages should serve him, an ever
lasting dominion, which should not pass away, and ‘ a
kingdom which should not be destroyed; ’f so the
fall of Jerusalem produced a reaction of hope and
trust, which gave a new and unexpectedly fruitful
development to the idea of the Messiah. To some
deep prophetic spirit, meditating on the mysterious
See ‘ The Twelve Apostles,’ p. 16. I have taken the liberty of
filling up the very scanty delineation of the supposed growth of
the myth, given in that tract, with some details which seem to me
to throw over it an air of plausibility, but for which the author of
the above-named publication is not responsible.
e ‘ Jewish War,’ vi. 5.
f Dan. vii. 14.
�6
The Mythical Element in Christianity.
questions, why Jehovah had given over his ancient
people to be trodden down of the Gentiles ? why
no deliverer had appeared from Heaven to save them
in their sore need ? light came with the notion—it is
for our sins ; because the Messiah has come, and we,
dihat is, our rulers, have not recognised him : he has
come, as the great prophet of the captivity foretold,
as ‘ one despised and rejected of men,’ ‘ a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief,’ one ‘ taken from
prison and from judgment,’ and ‘ cut off out of the
land of the living because ‘ for the transgressions
of his people was he stricken s but yet one whom
God has exalted to his throne in heaven to sit on
his right hand till the time should arrive when his
people, ‘ purified as by a refiner’s fire,’ ‘ purged as
gold and silver,’ should 1 offer to Jehovah an offer
ing of righteousness,’ h and who, then, shall ‘ sud
denly be revealed ’ to take vengeance on his enemies,
and establish that unending kingdom which the
ancient prophets have foretold.”
“ But when had this unrecognised Messiah ap
peared? An answer was supplied by the same
prophetic voice.
Had not Malachi foretold that
Jehovah would send Elijah the prophet before ‘ that
great and dreadful day, which should burn up all that
do wickedly,’ to ‘ turn the hearts of the fathers to the
children, and the hearts of the children to their
fathers ? ’ and was it not the fact that, about forty
years before the taking of Jerusalem, one had appeared
‘ in thespiritand power of Elijah,’ preaching repentance
as the preparation for a greater who should come
after him ? Was there not also a tradition that, not
long after the death of John the Baptist, Pontius
Pilate, the Roman governor, had put to death a native
of Galilee, one accused by the High priest and rulers
" Is. liii. 3—;
11 Mai. iii. 3; iv. 5, 6.
�' ^Lhe Mythical Element in Christianity,
7
of that day of blasphemy and sedition, whom Pilate
had crucified along with others, ‘malefactors,’ in whom
it might well be that the prophecy of the innocent
sufferer, who ‘ should make his grave with the wicked ’
had found its accomplishment ? Thus, on the slenderest
possible foundation of actual fact, may it have become
possible for the Jewish imagination to launch the
Messianic idea under a novel aspect, postponing to
an indefinite, though not very remote future, its
expectant glories, and supplementing them by the
conception of an earthly life suited to one who, for
our sakes, had borne our sins and tasted of our sor
rows ? 1 Opposed from the first to the formal spirit of
the Pharisaical party, the Scribes and Lawyers of the
New Testament, which had become dominant again
when the ardent hopes of supernatural victory, that
led to the obstinate resistance of Jerusalem, had been
crushed by its fall; drawing its inspirations from the
free air of ancient prophecy, rather than from the more
modern ‘ Book of the Law,’ from Isaiah and Jeremiah
rather than from Ezra; the new faith, while it attracted
within its influence many of the noblest and purest
spirits produced in that age by the Jewish people,
still met with a cold reception from the mass of the
nation. But it rapidly spread among the Gentile pro
selytes ; and soon shaking itself free from the fetter
of circumcision, was able to recruit its ranks from all
the varied populations comprised in the Roman em> The author of ‘ The Twelve Apostles ’ (p. 16) calls this notion an
“ inversion” of the popular belief, and alleges that other cases of
similar ‘ ‘ inversions ” may be produced, though he does not cite any
instance. But to make the Christian conception of the Messiah
into an inversion of the Jewish, it would be necessary to show that
the Jews believed in a Messiah who should suffer after having
triumphed, a notion which might have been inverted into that of
a Messiah who should triumph after having suffered; while, in
fact, the notion of a suffering Messiah appears to have been quite
foreign to Jewish expectations till it was introduced by the Chris
tian teaching.
�8
’The Mythical Element in Christianity.
pire, and thus swell its numbers to a large body;
while yet it retained, from the fervour of its
original members, in the general spirit of its doc
trines, and the character of the supernatural details
with which the imagination of the disciples gradually
clothed the supposed life of their master, the flavour
of Jewish thought and the traces of Jewish beliefs.
Thus grew up the myth of Jesus Christ embodied in
those four gospels, themselves only a part of a
far more extensive evangelic literature once widely
diffused in the Christian Church, to which the sub
sequent course of ecclesiastical history has given
such a wide and lasting influence over Europe and
the countries conquered or colonised by European
energy.”
If we regard this hypothesis only in itself, without
troubling ourselves as to its power of accounting for
the positive statements relating to the rise of Chris
tianity which have survived the waste of time, I
think it must be admitted that the mythical theory
of its origin presented above is not encumbered
by any inherent impossibility; that stranger things
have undoubtedly happened in the religious his
tory of mankind than the growth of such a
belief, deriving its nourishment, like some orchi
daceous plants, only from the atmosphere in
which its seeds germinated, and supporting itself on
the accidental props of surrounding circumstances,
without requiring to strike its roots into the solid
ground of facts. And, if we are disposed to found
our judgments as to the origin of Christianity only
on arguments of internal probability, and test them
only by the historical evidence for the details of the
narratives relating to it, we may be ready to acquiesce
in the canon proposed by the author whose hypothesis
we are examining, that, “ if a hero be known chiefly
as the performer of supernatural exploits, both hero
�*The Mythical Mement in Christianity.
9
and exploit are mythical.” ■> But to those who value
attested facts more highly than their own imagina
tions of possibilities, general canons of this nature
are unsatisfactory. Let us see, then, if we cannot find
some other test of more scientific precision than ima
ginary possibility to which to subject this hypothesis.
It is not difficult to find one. The hypothesis of the
mythical origin of Christianity above stated is founded
on the revolution in the expectations as to the coming
of the Messiah, supposed to have been produced in
the minds of some pious enthusiastic Jews by the de
struction of Jerusalem. If by good historical evidence
we can trace the conceptions which associate the
Messianic character with Jesus, called the Christ, to
a time anterior to the siege of Jerusalem, this mythi
cal theory must fall of itself; and for that purpose the
use of the name Christian is sufficient. For Christ is
the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah ; “ the
anointed one the “ Son whose throne is for ever, and
the sceptre of whose kingdom is the sceptre of
righteousness; who had loved righteousness and
hated iniquity, wherefore God had anointed him with
the oil of gladness above his fellows,” k King and High
Priest for ever;1 and the sense of the termination
anus, in Clmstianus, is “ belonging to Christ.” So
that, even if we could not find any direct proof of the
title Christ having been applied to Jesus of Nazareth
prior to the siege of Jerusalem, but have proofs of the
use of the name Christian before that date, this would
suffice to show that Christianity did not arise out of
such a myth as has been above stated ; unless it could
be demonstrated that the name was then applied to
persons who held tenets quite distinct from those
subsequently associated with it.
Before entering upon this investigation, however,
J ‘ Twelve Apostles,’ 32.
k Ps. xlv. 6, 7.
1 Heb. i. 8, 9; ii. 5.
�io The Mythical Element in Christianity.
it will be well to consider another form of mythical
hypothesis about the origin of Christianity, not ad
mitting of being subjected to this chronological test,
namely, the theory which traces the name Christian
to a confusion between Christus and Chrestos, the
Greek word for “good,” and supposes that “Chris
tians ” may have originally meant only “ the good
men,” the followers of one who was imagined to have
been supremely “good;” an appellation afterwards
exchanged for “Christus,” or “the anointed one,”
when this body had come, by some process not dis
tinctly explained, to identify their supposed founder
with the Messiah. This idea is suggested by the
Rev. Robert Taylor in his 1 Diegesis ; or, Discovery of
the Origin and Early History of Christianity,’ who,
in support of it, makes the following statement: m
“Justin Martyr, in his account of the name (Chris
tian), which he gives in his apology to Antoninus
Pius, thus takes away all possible reference to the
name of Christ as the founder of a sect. Christianoi
einai kategoroumetlia, To de chreston miseisthai ou
dikaion—chrestotatoi huparchomen.10- Theophilus of
Antioch,0, after a long string of puns upon christus
and chrestus, thinks that christus, not chrestus, should
be the word, because of the sublime significance of
christus, which signifies the sweet, the agreeable, the
most useful, and never-to-be-laughed-at article, poma
tum. “ W^hat use of a ship,” he argues, “unless it
be smeared ? What tower or palace would be good
or useful unless it were greased ?
What man
comes into life or enters into a conflict without being
anointed ? What piece of work would be considered
finished unless it were oiled ? The air itself, and
m Pp. 399-400.
”
ar®.accused of being Christians, but it is not just to hate
tnat^wmch^is good. We are very good.
�f
"The Mythical Element in Christianity. 11
every creature under heaven, is, as it were, anointed
with light and spirit. Undoubtedly we are called
Christians for this reason and no other, because we
are anointed with the oil of God.”?
“ Tertullian,1! Clemens Alexandrinus,1’ and St
Jeromes abound in the same strain. Everywhere yre
meet with puns and conundrums on the name;
nowhere with the vestige of the real existence of a
person, to whom the name was distinctively appro
priated.”
Mr Taylor appears to have entertained very
peculiar notions as to the meaning of verbs of num
ber. The “ abounding ” of which he speaks consists
in the existence in the writers from whom he quotes
of the passages cited, and no others, so far as I can
discover, containing any allusion to the possible deri
vation of Christian from Chrestus: while his “ab
sence of any vestige of the real existence of a person
to whom the name (Christus) was distinctively
appropriated ” concerns writers, from quotations in
whose works the story in the Gospels might be
almost, if not entirely, reconstructed, if the Gospels
were lost. But, besides this, the passages cited, when
examined, do not support the position that the writers
of them had any doubt as to the true origin of the
name Christian. It is very questionable whether
Justin Martyr, in the passage quoted by Mr Taylor,
refers at all to an identification of Christus with
Chrestus, though Mr Taylor, by inverting the order
p Toigaroun gar toutou eneken Tcaloumetlia christianoi, hoti chriametha elaion Theou.
'i Cum perperam Ch.restian.us pronuntiatur (puta christianus),
de suavitate, vel benignitate compositum nomen est.—Apology.
» Strommata. Autika de eis Christon pepisteukotes chrestoi te
eisi kai legontai.
e In Gal. v. 22: Quum apud Grsecos chrestetes utrumque
sonat, virtus est lenis, blanda tranquilla, et omnium bonorum
censors.
�12 'The Mythical Element in Christianity.
of Justin’s sentences, and leaving out the connecting
passages, gives his words this appearance. Justin’s
argument, which is too long to quote fully, is, that
we (Christians) are very good men (jAirestotatoi) ;
therefore, we ought not to be condemned simply on
account of our name, because we are called Chris
tians, for it is not just to hate that which is good.
He does not say, as Mr. Taylor insinuates, our name
shows that we are good men; he directly asserts the
fact of this goodness. And that he did not himself
derive the name Christian from chrestos is placed
beyond a doubt by two other passages in his Apology,
the first of which says, “ Our Master, the Son of God,
the Father and Ruler of all things, is Jesus Christ,
from whom also we come to be named Christians ;r,t
while the second states that the true Son of God ....
is called Christ, because God had anointed and set in
order all things by Him.u Theophilus, in the passage
referred to by Mr Taylor, is arguing that his correspondentAutolycus “did not knowwhat he was saying,
in laughing at him for calling himself a Christian.” v A
proposition which he proceeds to prove, by dwelling
on the common practice and admitted usefulness of
the act of anointing, to show the excellent qualities
implied in the Christian name; an argument in which
we, who are not accustomed to anoint ourselves or
our houses, &c., may see as little force as those who
never wash themselves might see in the praise of
water as a source of cleanliness; but which is very far
from showing any doubt in the mind of Theophilus
about the derivation of the name Christian from the
verb chrio, to anoint. The quotation from Tertullian,
‘ 1 Apol. 12.
u Christos men kata to kechristliai, kai kosmesai ta panta di hautou,
tou Theou legetai.—2 Apol. 6.
' Pen de sou lcatagelan me, TcaPnmta me Christianon, ouk oidas
ho legeis.—Ad. Aut. i. 1.
�The Mythical ‘ lement in Christianity. 13
E
made by Mr Taylor, is garbled. The complete, pas
sage reads thus : li The interpretation of Christianus
is rarely derived [by you] from anointing. For since
it is very badly pronounced by you Chrestianus, for
you have no accurate knowledge even of the name, it
is compounded from suavity, or benignity. w So
that Tertullian, instead of intimating any doubt in
his own mind of the origin of the name, as Mr Taylor
suggests, adduces the use of the name Chrestianus in
proof of the gross ignorance of his contemporaries about
the true origin of Christianus; but says, if youwiZZ make
this mistaken substitution of e for i, then you must
derive the name from goodness. The passage quoted
from Jerome has nothing at all to do with the origin
of the name Christian ; but is simply an explanation
of the meaning of chrestotes in the passage, in Gala
tians, which, he says, is the Greek equivalent of
either suavity or benignity.* Lastly, the passage
cited from Clemens Alexandrinus ? is part of a meta
physical argument, based upon a statement of Plato,
“ that the knowledge of a’true king is a kingly know
ledge, and he who has acquired it, whether he is a
king or a private person, would always, according to
the true method, be rightly addressed as a king;
whence, continues Clemens, “ those who have be
lieved in Christ are, and are to be addressed as good,
since they are cared for as kings by the true king.
For as the wise are wise by wisdom, and the legal
legal by law, so those who belong to Christ the king
w Apol. c. 3. Christianus raro quantum interpretatio est de
unctione deducta. Nam et cum perperam Chrestianus pronuntiatur, avobis, nam nec nominis certa est notitiavobis, de suavitate
vel benignitate compositum est.
i -**
1 Benignitas autem sive suavitas, quum apud Grsecos chrestotes
utrumque sonat, virtus est lenis, &c. Mr Taylor’s scholarship
appears to have stopped short of teaching him that utrwmquc sonat
means has either sense, and has no reference to the sound of
chrestotes.
y Strom, ii. c. 418.
�14 The Mythical Element in Christianity.
are kings, and those who are of Christ are Christians ”
Whatever we may think of the argument, its con
clusion both shows that, in the idea of Clemens, it
rested on the office of Christ as “ anointed ” king, and
supplies in itself a clear “ vestige of a person to whom
the name Christ was distinctively appropriated,”
which Mr Taylor finds so difficult of discovery in the
writers cited by him.
The hypothesis that Christian may have grown up
by the transformation of chrestos, is thus left destitute
of any support from ancient authority. But, besides
this, it is exposed to a grave objection of a linguistic
character. Anos is a termination very little used by
Greek writers, and when it is employed, this is in the
sense of the possessor of a quality, which the primitive
expresses; as peitkedanos from peuke, having bitter
ness ; rigedanos from rigos, having cold.2 But there
is no Greek primitive expressing goodness, from
which Chrestianos could be derived. The primitive is
chrestates, and the name, therefore, if formed from
this source, would have been not Chrestianos, but
Chrestotetanos. On the other hand, anus is a very
common Latin termination, in the sense of belonging
to a distinct place or person, as Montanus, Fontanus,
Romanus, Albanus, Spartanus, Tullianus, Catonianus,
Sullanus;a the sense in which Christianus is com
monly employed. Whence F. C. Bauer has expressed
the opinion that the name probably arose at Rome,
notwithstanding the statement in the Acts,b “ that
the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.”
And, at all events, if it was first used in Antioch, this
was most likely done by Italians, or in order to make
the name intelligible to Roman ears.
» Matthiae Greek Gram I. Adjectives III.
» Zumpt. Lat. Gram. 181, sec. lix.
■ I so*
■^•^hengeschichte der drei erster Jahrhunderte,
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. 15
Now Chrestos or Chrestus is by no means uncommon
as an ancient name among Greeks and Romans.
Appian mentions a Socrates Chrestos, whom Mithri
dates made King of Pontus ; Aurelius Victor speaks
of a Chrestus as engaged in a conspiracy to kill
Hannibal; Martial has two epigrams on a “ Chrestus”
and one on a Chrestillus.c Chreste occurs in an
ancient epitaph; Fulgentius mentions a Manlius
Chrestus, who wrote a book on Hymns to the Gods ;
and Ausonius has an epigramd on two brothers,
Chrestos and Akindunos, of whom he says that, if
Akindunos would make a present of the a in his
name to Chrestos, the names would answer better to
their characters ; for Chrestos would become Achrestos—-i.e., useless, and Akindunos Kindunos—i.e., dan
gerous.6 And Mr Fynes Clinton, in his ‘Fasti Romani,’
mentions three other persons named Chrestus, one
contemporary with the sophist Adrian, a.d. 171;
another put to death by Ulpian, a.d. 228; and a
third, a grammarian, living a.d. 359. It cannot
therefore be at all surprising that the non-Christian
population of the Roman empire, in the first Christian
centuries, should have supposed the name of the
founder of the new religion to be Chrestus, and have
called his disciples Chrestiani, without intentional
reference to any good qualities ascribed to them; for
which, indeed, we know that they were very far from
disposed to give them credit.
This phase of the mythical hypothesis, where
Christ is presented as an ideal concentration of the
goodness manifested by his alleged followers, being
thus shown to be untenable, there remains for
examination only the other phase, which, resting
c vi. 54, ix. 25,. vi. 9.
d xxxix.
e See note on Tertullian Apol. c, 3, in Migny’s Edition of the
Fathers.
�16 Ehe Mythical Element in Christianity.
on a supposed modification of the idea of the
Messiah consequent on the destruction of Jeru
salem, admits of a chronological test, in the
inquiry whether there is satisfactory evidence of the
use of the name Christian before that event. Now
we have, in the works of two eminent Roman
historians, Tacitus and Suetonius, who lived in the
latter half of the first and the commencement of the
second Christian century, distinct evidence of the use
of this name five years before the siege of Jerusalem,
and its connection with a person called Christus, who
is stated to have lived about thirty-five years pre
viously. The passage in Tacitus has often been
quoted, but from its importance to the present argu
ment I repeat it here, in the words of Gibbon’s
translation. Tacitus, after narrating the conflagra
tion of Rome, the suspicions which attached to the
Emperor Nero of having ordered the city to be set
on fire, and the steps he had taken to avert this
charge by religious ceremonies intended to appease
the anger of the deities to whom he ascribed the
calamity, states “ that, to divert a suspicion which the
power of despotism was unable to suppress, the
emperor resolved to substitute in his place fictitious
criminals. With this view he inflicted the most ex
quisite tortures on those men, who, under the vulgar
appellation of Christians, were already branded with
deserved infamy. They derived their name and
origin from Christ, who in the reign of Tiberius had
suffered death by the sentence of the procurator,
Pontius Pilate. For a while this dire superstition
was checked; but it again burst forth, and not only
spread itself over Judeea, the first seat of this mis
chievous sect, but was even introduced into Rome,
the common asylum which receives and protects
whatever is impure, whatever is atrocious. The con
fessions of those who were seized discovered a great
�’The Mythical Element in Christianity. 17
number of their accomplices, who were all convicted,
not so much for the crime of setting fire to the city
as for their hatred of the human kind. They died in
torments, and their torments were embittered by
insult and derision. Some were nailed on crosses;
others sewn up in the skins of wild beasts, and ex
posed to the fury of dogs; others again, smeared
over with combustible materials, were used as torches
to illuminate the darkness of the night. The gardens
of Nero were destined for the melancholy spectacle,
which was accompanied by a horse race, and honoured
by the presence of the emperor, who mingled with the
populace in the dress and attitude of a charioteer.
The guilt of the (Christians) f deserved indeed the
most exemplary punishment, but the public abhor
rence was changed into commiseration, from the
opinion that these unhappy wretches were sacrificed,
not so much to the public welfare, as to the cruelty
of a jealous tyrant.”S
With this passage must be put in apposition the
following account of Nero’s measures in Suetonius.11
“ Many things were censured and repressed, and that
severely, and some ordered. A limit was set to ex
penditure. Public suppers with gratuitous doles of
food were established. It was provided that nothing
cooked but pulse or pot-herbs should come into the
cooks’ shops, while previously all kinds of victuals were
exposed there. The Christians, a class of men who
hold a new and mischievous superstition, were subjected
to capital punishment. The four-horse chariot games,
in which, by an inveterate license, cheating and rob
bery were sanctioned, with a right of going every
where, were forbidden; the troops of pantomimics were
banished with the pantomimes.”
Now, unless it can be shown, either that these pasf The name is not repeated in the original.
g Tac. Ann. xv. 44, Gibbon c. xvi.
h Vit. Ner., c. 16.
�18
T’he Mythical Element in Christianity.
sages have been interpolated into the. writings of
Tacitus and Suetonius, or that those authors applied
to the year 65 a.d. names not known till a later
time, and confused the persons whom Nero put to
death, on the charge of having set fire to Rome, with
the body known as Christians at a later epoch, they
completely upset the mythological hypothesis now
under our consideration, by proving that the Chris
tian name was in use and connected with a Christ
who had suffered at a date anterior by several years
to the time when, according to this hypothesis, the
idea of such a Christ first arose. The author of
‘ The Twelve Apostles ’ shows too much acquaintance
with classical literature to allow of our supposing
that he was not aware of these passages in Tacitus
and Suetonius, and too much logical power to allow
of our supposing that he did not see how fatal they
are to his hypothesis, unless they can be got rid of
in one or the other of the modes indicated above.
Unfortunately, he does not tell us which of these alter
natives he adopts, but prefers to ignore the positive
testimony of Tacitus and Suetonius to the existence
of Christians in the reign of Nero altogether, and to
rely for his external proof of the unhistorical cha
racter of Jesus upon certain negative evidences, to
which I shall fully advert subsequently. I am
therefore driven, in dealing with these passages, to
refer to the observations of other writers, who have
discussed them from a point of view opposed to
Christianity—such as Mr Taylor, in the work already
cited ; Mr Robert Cooper, in his ‘ Infidel’s Text Book
and Mr Lumisden Strange, in his ‘ The Bible: is it
the Word of God ? especially Mr Taylor, who seems
to have been a man of considerable, though not very
profound learning, and to whom his successors appear
to have been indebted for most of their arguments on
the subject before us.
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. 19Of the alternatives above stated Mr Taylor adopts
the first decidedly, in regard to Tacitus, and hints at
rather than contends for the second, in regard to
Suetonius. He adduces various reasons for supposing
the passage in Tacitus to be a forgery, which I
produce here, in a somewhat condensed shape, with
my replies to them.1
1. The passage is not quoted by Tertullian, though
he had read and largely quotes the works of Tacitus,,
and in his Apology is so hot upon it, that his missing
it is almost miraculous.
Reply. Tertullian quotes Tacitus twice only, and
both times the same passage—namely, an absurd
account given by him of the origin of the Jews, and
of their worshipping a deity with an ass’s head.l
But he does assert the existence of statements in the
Roman historians, implying that Hero persecuted the
Christians at Rome, which is what Tacitus and
Suetonius state.k
2. Tertullian has spoken of Tacitus in a way that
it is absolutely impossible he could have spoken of
him, if his writings had contained such a passage.
Reply. He calls him “ the most loquacious of the
great liars,” 1 an epithet agreeing well with the more
detailed abuse of the Christians to be found in
Tacitus, than in Suetonius.
3. The passage is not quoted by Clemens Alex
andrinus, who sets himself entirely to the task of
adducing and bringing together admissions and re
cognitions which Pagan authors had made of the
existence of Christ and Christianity.
Reply. Clemens applies himself to collect passages
’ Diegesis, p. 394—396.
i Apol. c. 16, In. Nat.c. 11.
k Consulite commentaries -vestros, in illis reperietis Neronem
primum, in hanc sectam turn maxim e Romas orientem, Csesariano
gladio fervisse.—Apol. 5.
1 Mendaciorum loquacissimus.—Apol. c. 16, In.Nat. c. 11.
C
�‘20 The Mythical Element in Christianity.
from heathen writers anterior to Christ, which might
be regarded as an unconscious anticipation of his
character and acts. To deal with historical notices
of Christ and Christianity was entirely beside the
object of his work.
4. The passage has not been stumbled upon by the
laborious, all-seeking Eusebius, who could by no pos
sibility have missed it, and whom it would have saved
the labour of forging the testimony of Josephus,
adducing the correspondence of Christ and Abgarus,
and the Sibylline Verses, or forging a revelation from
Apollo in attestation of Christ’s conception.
Reply. The object of Eusebius in citing the state
ments referred to by Mr Taylor, of which I by no
means defend the authenticity, though I do not know
what proof Mr Taylor could furnish that Eusebius
himself forged them, was not to establish the fact of
the existence of Jesus, or that of a body of Christians
before the siege of Jerusalem,—facts that probably no
one in the fourth century dreamt of disputing,—but to
adduce testimony favourable to the Christian beliefs
about Jesus, or to the character of Christians ; and, as
the passage of Tacitus was quite useless for this
purpose, Eusebius had no motive for referring to it,
5. There is no vestige of the existence of the pas
sage before the fifteenth century.
Reply. It is clearly referred to by Sulpicius Severus
at the close of the fourth century, though without
naming Tacitus, in a passage which is as follows : ni
“Nor could Nero, in any way prevent the supposition
that the fire had been ordered. Therefore he turned
the reproach upon the Christians, and perpetrated the
most cruel tortures on innocent persons—inventing
new modes of death, that they should be sewn up in
the skins of wild beasts, and torn to pieces by dogs.
m Sacr, Hist. 2, c. 29.
�<%he Mythical Element in Christianity. 21
Many were nailed to crosses, or roasted in the flames.
More were reserved to be burnt instead of lamps at
night, when the day had waned.”11
6. It rests on the fidelity of a single individual, who
had the ability, opportunity, and the strongest possible
inducement of interest, to introduce the interpolation.
Reply. To what the last words allude I cannot
imagine, but the statement generally rests upon a
blunder of Mr Taylor, who supposed that there were
no MSS. of Tacitus in existence, but such as were
■copied from a printed edition published by Johannes
•de Spire at Venice in 1468,° of which he seems to
have imagined that the original had disappeared.
But in fact there are, in the Medicean library, at
Florence, two ancient MSS. of Tacitus, both contain
ing this passage. The first mentioned in letters of
Poggio of the 21st Oct., 1427, and the 3rd June,
1428, is stated to have been written in the eleventh
■century by order of Desiderius, abbot of the monastery
of Casino, and tab have come into the possession of
the Medici from the convent of St Mark at Florence.
From it numerous copies are said to have been made
in the twelfth century, by which the works of Tacitus
» The following phrases in Sulpicius agree too closely with the
very peculiar phraseology of Tacitus to allow of the resemblance
being accidental:
Sed non ope humana decedebat infamia, quin jussum incendium
crederetur.—Tacitus.
Neque ulla re Nero efficiebat, quin ab eo jussum incendium
putaretur.—Sulp. Sev.
Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contexti laniatu
■canum interirent.— Tacitus.
Quin novae mortes excogitatatae, ut ferarum tergis’ contexti,
laniatu canum interirent.—Sulp. Sev.
Aut crucibus affixi, aut flammandi; atque ubi defecisset dies in
usum nocturni luminis urerentur.—Tacitus.
Multi crucibus affixi, aut flammis usti. Plerique ad id reservati,
ut cum defecisset dies, in usum nocturni luminis urereptur.—
Sulp. Sev.
° Diegesis, 394.
�22 The Mythical Mement in Christianity.
were spread through Italy, France, Britain, Germany,
and Spain; and from one of these copies Johannes
de Spire’s edition appears to have been printed. The
second MS. seems also to date from the eleventh cen
tury ; and contains a statement relating to the works of
Apuleius, written on the same set of skins, showing
that the original, of which the present MS. is a copy,
was made towards the close of the fourth century,P
7. The passage, though unquestionably the work
of a master, and entitled to be pronounced a chef
d’oeuvre of the sort, betrays a penchant for that
delight in descriptions of bloody horrors, as peculiarly
characteristic of the Christian disposition as it was
abhorrent to the mild and gentle mind and highlycultivated tastes of Tacitus. It has a character of
exaggeration, and trenches on the laws of natural
probability. It is indeed not conceivable that Nero
should have been so hardened in cruelty, and wanton
in wickedness, as this passage would represent him.
Reply. The most startling atrocity, the burning men
alive in dresses of combustible materials as living
torches, is well attested by Juvenal,i Seneca,r Mar
tial/ and Tertullian?
p See Preface by F. Ritter to edition of Tacitus of 1848,
p. 45—50.
9 vii. 235. Ausi quod liceat tunica punire molests. Daring what
may be punished by a vest of pain. The old scholiast describes
this ‘ ‘ tunica molesta ” as “ ex charta facta, pice illite in qu a ignibus
pcenee addicti ardere solebant ”—made of paper smeared with pitch,
in which those sentenced to punishinent by fire were wont to bum.
Ib. i. 155. Taada lucebis an ilia, qua stantes ardent qui fixo gutture
fumant. You will shine by that torch with which those glow who
smoke while standing with the neck fixed. Scholiast, Nero clothed
malefactors with pitch and papyrus, and ordered them to be
brought to a fire that they might burn.
r Epist. ii. ad Lucill. Cogita hoc loco carcerem, et circus, et
equuleos, et ancum, et illam tunicam alimentis ignium et illisam
et textam. Here think of the prison, and the circus, and the
horses, and the hook [instruments of torture], and that tunic
smeared with and woven of the food of fire. These lines appear
�’The Mythical Element in Christianity. 23
8. Such good and innocent people as the first
Christians must be supposed to be could not have
provoked so great a degree of hostility. They must
have sufficiently endeared themselves to their fellow
citizens to prevent the possibility of their being so
treated.
Reply. The whole character of the Christian apolo
gies shows that, from whatever cause, the first Chris
tians did call forth great hatred from certain classes,
as they called forth contemptuous disdain from other
classes.
9. So just a man as Tacitus unquestionably was
could not have spoken of the professors of a purer
religion than the world had ever seen as justly
criminal, and deserving exemplary punishment.
Reply. It does not appear that Tacitus ever
examined into the tenets of the Christian religion.
The charge of “ hatred of mankind,” u which is his
only definite accusation, is very intelligible, if we
bear in mind the anticipation of the speedy coming
of Christ to judge all men, which we know, from St
Paul’s epistles, that the Christians of that age
generally entertained, and the consequences attached
by Christian belief to that judgment.
10. The account is inconsistent with the 1st
to have been written while the atrocities were fresh in Seneca’s
memory, shortly before his own death, which took place the year
following the burning of Rome.
s X. 25, 5. Nam quum dicatur, Tunica presente molests,
Ure manum, plus est dicere non facio. For when in presence of a
vest of pain the order is given, “ Burn your hand,” it is more
courageous to say, “ I won’t do itbecause this might lead to the
burning of yotir body.
‘ Apol. § 50. Licet nunc sarmenticios et semiustos appelletis,
quasi ad stipitem dimidio axis revincti sarmentorum ambitu excoriamur. Though now you call us faggot men and half-axis men,
as if being bound to the stake by half our axis we were scorched by
the encircling faggots.
u Odium generis humani.
�24 The Mythical Element in Christianity.
Epistle of St Peter,v where Nero is spoken of as the
minister of God for good, and the Christians are
assured that, so long as they” are followers of that
which is good, no one would harm them.
Reply. There is no necessary contradiction between
the two accounts, even if the Epistle was written in
the age traditionally assigned to it. Nero, according
to Tacitus and Suetonius, in the beginning of his
reign, gave a promise of good government, to which
the Epistle may refer, supposing such passages as
ii. 12, iii. 13, and iv. 14 do not point to a period of
persecution and trial of the Christians, as has often
been contended, rather than to one of tranquillity.
And if it were written during the reign of Nero, no
other evidence would be required for overthrowing
the hypothesis which would make the origin of
Christianity be subsequent to the siege of Jerusalem.
But the Tubingen school of critics allege strong
grounds for placing the date of the Epistle in the
time of Trajan.w
11. It is inconsistent with the statements of Melito,
Bishop of Sardis, who expressly states that the
Christians up to his time—the third century—had
never been the victims of persecution; and that it
was in the provinces lying beyond the boundaries of
the Roman empire, and not in Judsea, that Chris
tianity originated.
Reply. Melito lived not in the third, but in the
second century. He dedicated an epistle to Marcus
Antoninus in defence of the Christians, which Euse
bius in his Chronicon places in a.d. 170, and which
cannot be later than the accession of Commodus,
a.d. 180 ; and he expressly mentions Nero and
Domitian “ as having been inclined, through the
persuasion of certain envious and malicious persons,
’ iii. 13.
w Schwegler Nach Apost. Zeitalter, ii., 11—17.
�the Mythical Element in Christianity. 25
to bring our doctrine into hatred ; but your godly
ancestors,” he continues (Trajan and Hadrian) “ cor
rected their blind ignorance, and rebuked oftentimes
by their epistles the rash enterprises of those who
were ill-affected towards us.” x Melito does not men
tion Judaea at all, but says only that “ our philosophy
first flourished among the Barbarians, and from thence
having spread over thy people, under the illustrious
reign of Augustus, thy predecessor, it has been an
eternal benefit to thy kingdom.” The use of bar
barian in this passage is agreeable to the Greek
practice in speaking of every nation who were not
Greeks.
Instances abound; I cite two only.
Plutarch says of his own contemporaries, “ The
people have no need of statesmen for procuring
peace, since all war, whether with Greeks or Bar
barians, is taken away and banished for ever.” s So
Philo2 speaks of “ Caius, after the death of Tiberius
Caesar, taking the command of all the earth, and sea,
the Barbarian races with the Hellenes, and the
Hellenes with the Barbarians.” Melito probably
meant simply that the Christian faith, having origi
nated in Judaea, had thence spread to Greece and
Italy.
12. Tacitus, in no other part of his writings,
makes any allusion to Christ or Christianity.
Reply. This silence is quite consistent with the
tone of the passage under consideration, which shows
a contemptuous indifference to Christian ideas as
a religion. Tacitus noticed Christianity only when
it came into collision with a political question.
In reviewing generally Mr Taylor’s objections to
this passage in Tacitus, we see that whatever
strength they possess apart from his confident asser
tions depends on his supposition, first, that no allu1 See Euseb. ii., H. E. 26.
* ‘ Political Precepts,’ § 32.
1 De Virtutibus, ii. 546. Mangey’s edition.
�*16 The Mythical Element in Christianity.
sion to the passage can be discovered before the
fifteenth century ; secondly, that there then existed a
writer who had the opportunity, the disposition, and
the ability to compose an account of the persecution
of the Christians under Nero, in what Gibbon calls
l; the inimitable style of Tacitus,” and thus palm off a
forgery on the literary world. Nothing in the con
text causes any suspicion that the passage has been
interpolated.
On the contrary, although it is
possible to strike out the sentences in Tacitus relating
to the persecution of the Christians by Nero without
making a gap in his narrative, his story is more con
sistent with itself if they are retained; because the
next paragraph begins with a statement implying the
lapse of some considerable time since the conflagra
tion, which the account of the proceedings against
the Christians fills up.a And when we find that the
passage is quoted by a writer of the fourth century
instead of having been unnoticed till the fifteenth;
that MSS. containing it were widely circulated
throughout Europe two or three centuries before the
date of the supposed forgery ; and that one ancient
MS. where it occurs has internal evidence of having
been copied from an original writer in the fourth
century, I can discover no reason for accepting Mr
Taylor’s hypothesis as having even a shade of pro
bability. The genuineness of the passage of Tacitus
must, I think, be considered as established, and
becomes a strong proof that, five years before the
siege of Jerusalem under Titus, there were at Rome
a considerable bodyb of persons commonly called
Christians, who traced their origin to a Ghristus put
to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate, in the
reign of Tiberius.
a Interea, conferen dis pecuniis pervastata Italia, provincial
eversse, soeiique popuJi.
b “ Multitudo ingens,” says Tacitus.
�The Mythical Element in Christianity.
The existence of a body of persons thus named in
Rome at this time is confirmed by the passage already
cited from Suetonius, on which Mr Taylor remarks
only “that he hopes the Christians will not be
offended, if he hopes that it may not apply to them,”
certainly a very feeble form of critical objection. No
doubt Mr Taylor felt the absurdity of supposing that
any Christian would have introduced a description of
his co-religionists as men who “ held a new and mis
chievous superstition ” into Suetonius, between two
passages relating the one to cooks’ shops and the other
to horse races ; and so endeavoured to ride out of the
difficulty, that the passage proves the existence in
Rome under Nero of a body of Christians consider
able enough to have become the subject of penal
•enactments, by a miserable joke. But the way in
which Suetonius introduces this notice, and the way
in which Tacitus refers to the death of Christ by
order of Pontius Pilate, not as to a rumour but as to
an ascertained fact, raises a question of considerable
interest, namely, whether those acts of Pilate c re
ferred to by Justin Martyr and Tertullian did
not really exist, and form a solid foundation
upon which the unscrupulous piety of Chris
tian writers in later times reared that fabric of for
geries preserved to us under the name of the Gospel
of Nicodemus,d and thus have brought into question
the existence of any official documents relating to
the history of Jesus ? In the time of the first
Roman Emperors, says Dr Lardner,e “ there were
acts of the Senate, acts of the city, or people of Rome,
c Ton epi Pontiou Pilatou genomen 5n acton. Justin Martyr, I.
Apol., p. 76, 84. Paris 1686. 63, 82 Bened. Ea omnia super
Christo Pilatus et ipse jam pro sua conscientia Christianus retulit.
Tertullian, Apol. 23.
d Fabricius Codex, Apocryph. N. T., i. 214.
e ‘ Heathen Testimonies,’ c. ii., from which the following state
ment is condensed.
�28
The Mythical Element in Christianity.
acts of other cities, and acts of the governors of
provinces. Of all these we can discern clear proofs
in ancient writers of the best credit.” Thus Julius
Caesar ordered that the acts of the Senate as well as
daily acts of the people should be published/
Augustus forbid the publication of those of the
Senate.s Tacitus mentions a senator appointed by
Tiberius to draw up these acts.11 Elsewhere we find
them referred to as containing speeches from which
the oratorical talent of Pompey and Crassus might be
appreciated.1 The acts of the people appear to have
been journals containing accounts of public trials and
affairs, punishments, assemblies, buildings, births,
deaths, marriages, divorces, &cJ They were kept
at other places besides Rome, as, e.p., at Antium,
whence Suetonius learned the day and place of birth
of Caligula, and which he refers to as official docu
ments/ And Philo speaks of acts or memoirs of
Alexandria1 being sent to Caligula, “ which he read
with more eagerness and satisfaction than anything
else.” That there should have been similar acts or
reports of remarkable occurrences sent up from the
governors of the provinces to Rome is therefore in
itself probable, and would explain in a satisfactory
manner the positive statement as to the death of
Christ by order of Pontius Pilate made by Tacitus ;
though Dr Lardner does not cite, nor have I been
able to discover, any reference to such acts by Roman
historians. But it seems improbable that either
Justin Martyr or Tertullian would have appealed to
records of this nature, in writings addressed to the
f Suet. Vit. J. C., c. 20.
s Suet. Vit. Aug., c. 36.
h Ann. i, 5.
’ Tac. Dial, de Oratore, 37.
. ’
3 See instances in Lipsius Excursus on Tac. Ann. v. 4.
k Vit. Cal., c. 8; Vit. Tib., c. 5.
1 Hupomnetikais ephemerisin. De Leg. ad Caium, 1016 A. Mangey.
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. 29
Emperor and Senate of Rome, as apologies for their
religion, if it were not generally known that such re
cords existed. So that the reference is in itself a
pretty good evidence of the fact.m And at all events,
the acts of the people of Rome must have contained
full details of events so sensational as the conflagra
tion of the city, and the steps taken by Nero to throw
off suspicion from himself upon the Christians, which
would supply Tacitus with official information of the
name ascribed to the victims of imperial cruelty and
cunning; as they probably furnished to Suetonius the
materials for his summary of Nero’s police regula
tions. Now this is all that is required to. take the
statement of the existence of bodies of Christians at
that time in Rome entirely out of the domain of
legend and myth.
To the positive evidence of the existence of Chris
tianity as a religious belief before the date of the
siege of Jerusalem, furnished by these passages in
Tacitus and Suetonius, must be added, as a strongconfirmatory proof, the statement of Pliny the
younger, in his often cited letter to the Emperor
Trajan, written probably in a.d. 107 or 108.n In this
letter he speaks not only of the great numbers of
“persons of all ages, of every rank and of both sexes,
who were in danger of suffering as. Christians, but of
“some who declared that they had ceased to be
Christians twenty years before.” Surely it is far
more likely that such a spread of the new faith to a
point so distant from Jerusalem as Bithynia, reprem The statements of Tertullian, however, make it nearly certain,
and those of Justin Martyr at least probable, that the documents
to which they referred were not copies of official records, but ac
counts similar to those circulated among the Christians in later
days as the acts of Pilate, in opposition to which Eusebius states
that acts derogatory to Christ were forged by the heathen in the
persecution of Maximin., E. H. i. 9, andix. 5.
” Lardner, ‘ Heathen Test.’ c. v.
�jO Ifhe Mythical TLletnent in Christianity.
serifs the results of a propaganda continued for
three-quarters of a century, rather than that a period
of about thirty-five years should have sufficed for the
incubation and production of the supposed myth—its
acceptaifce.among a certain class of Jews, its diffusion
among their Gentile converts, and the attainment of
a following so considerable as that described by
•PJ,nyj in a province remote from Judaea ?
But here again recourse has been had to the
weapon which we have found used against the testi
mony of Tacitus—suspicion of forgery. The learned
Dr J. S. Semler entertained doubts as to the genuine
ness of this letter, and his doubts are paraded, as if
they were unquestioned certainties, by Mr R. Cooper,
who expands them into a statement “ that the
German literati have long been of opinion that this
letter is a forgery.”0 As the main ground for this
conclusion, he adduces the objections, “that the letter
is found in one MS. only of Pliny’s letters, and not
in the others,” and that Pliny states that the Chris
tians used to meet before daylight and sing a hymn
to Christ as to a God; whereas, says Mr Cooper,
■“ the belief in the Divinity of Christ was not
established till the Council of Nice, in a.d. 325 ”;
whence Mr Cooper suggests that the letter was forged
during. the century intervening between Pliny and
Tertullian, a.d. 216, by whom it is quoted. How the
forger came to introduce a form of address to Christ,
which, according to Mr Cooper, did not come into use
till a century after Tertullian’s death, he does not
condescend to explain. But, in fact, Tertullian’s
quotation, while it proves the existence both of the
umr*68
Text Book,’ or Lectures on the Bible, London,
& o, pp. 56, 57. Mr Cooper cites Semler’s Neue Versuche die
Kirchen Histone der ersten Jahrhunderten aufzuklaren, 1788,
a wor^
which I have not been able to obtain a
sight.
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. j1
letter ascribed to Pliny, and the reply ascribed to
Trajan, at the time when his apology was written,
does create some suspicion that the particular expres
sion to which Mr Cooper objects may have been in
troduced at a later date, for he makes Pliny say that
the Christians sang a hymn to Christ and God,
instead of to Christ as to God ; which is the reading
of our present copies of Pliny. P So that, to say
nothing of the obvious answer to this objection,
that Pliny, who does not profess to report the
exact words used by any Christian, and, in this
letter, speaks of haying required those who were
charged before him “ to repeat after him an invocation
to the gods, and make offerings of wine and incense
to the statue of Trajan, which, for that purpose, he
had ordered to be brought out with those of the
deities,” may have somewhat misapprehended the
nature of the addresses made by the Bithynians to
Christ, the objection vanishes before the same kind
of doubt to which it owes its existence. The other
objection, that the letter is not to be found in some
of the best MSS. of Pliny’s letters, states a fact, but
omits to state that the omission is not confined to
this particular letter, but extends to the whole corres
pondence between Pliny and Trajan, which forms the
10th book of his letters, and apparently was not pub
lished till some considerable time after Pliny’s death,
while the bulk of his other letters were collected and
published during his life, or immediately after his
decease, whence these letters were not found in
many copies of his works, i
As for the German literati, they are so far from
p Christo et deo, instead of Christo quasi deo. This is stated to
be the reading of the best MSS. of Tertullian. Others have ut
deo. Eusebius renders the phrase diken theo, which seems to show
that he read ‘ quasi ’ in Pliny.
q See Preface to Titze's Edition of ‘Pliny,’ Leipsic, 1823.
�3 2 The Mythical 'Element in Christianity.
having “ generally concluded this letter to be a
forgery,” as Mr Cooper asserts, that edition after
edition of Pliny’s letters has been published in
Germany, since Semler’s work appeared, in which
this letter is treated as genuine. Its genuineness is
ably defended by a recent editor, Moritz Doring,r
who observes, as appears to me with perfect justice,
that it is difficult to see what object could be gained
by forging it. An enemy of Christianity would have
shown his desire for persecution more openly. A
secret Christian could not have hoped to stop it by
such meansthat is to say, by suggesting the adop
tion of a mixture of leniency and severity, involving
death to those who refused to recant,s with the
statement that, by the adoption of this course,
coupled with free pardon to such as would worship
the Roman deities, “ the temples, which had been
almost forsaken, were beginning to be more fre
quented, and the sacred solemnities, after a long
intermission, to be revived; ” and “ that victims were
everywhere bought up, whereas, before, there were
few purchasers.” How too can we suppose that any
Christian would have been contented to ascribe the
conduct of martyrs, who “ resisted even unto death,”
only to “ contumacy and inflexible obstinacy ; ’ * or
would not have insinuated some words of pity, if not
of praise, for the two deaconesses, whom Pliny put
to the torture, instead of simply stating that he “ dis
covered nothing but a bad and extravagant supersti
tion.”11 On the other hand, can we imagine that an
enemy to Christianity would make Trajan direct, as
he does in his reply to Pliny, that the Christians
r In an Edition published at Freyberg, 1843.
8 Confitentes, iterum ac tertio interrogavi, supplicium minatus :
perseverantes dud jussi.
* Pertinaciam, et inflexibilem obstinationem.
u Superstitionem pravam et immodicam.
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. 33
were not to be sought for, and were in all cases to be
pardoned “ on supplicating our gods,” without even
insisting “ on their reviling Christ,” though this is
suggested in Pliny’s letter, and absolutely prohibit
the reception of anonymous accusations, as “ a very
bad precedent and unworthy of his age.” But the
tone of the letters is just what might be reasonably
expected from what else we know of Pliny and
Trajan. Trajan expresses his hatred of the system
of spies. Pliny institutes careful inquiries, and does
not conceal from the emperor what is favourable to
the Christians; that they pledged themselves solemnly,
“ not to the commission of any crime, but not to be
guilty of theft, or robbery, or adultery, never to falsify
their word, or refuse to give up property entrusted to
them ; ” but he judges their refusal to sacrifice to the
gods to be a criminal obstinacy, and their belief to be
a contemptible superstition, and dislikes particularly
the secrecy of their meetings, and their forming a
separate society, to which others of his letters show
that Trajan was particularly adverse. Add that the
style and language of these letters agrees perfectly
with those of the other letters of Pliny and Trajan,
a point by no means unimportant, when we re
member that this style is far from easy of imitation.
On the whole, then, there seems no reason for doubt
ing what Tertullian and Eusebius assume, that the
letters are genuine parts of the correspondence
between Pliny and the Emperor Trajan.
The conclusion of the genuineness both of these
letters and the passages from Tacitus and Suetonius
previously adduced, is confirmed, I think, if wTe com
pare either of these authorities with the documents
which a mistaken piety undoubtedly did forge, for
the better confirmation of the Christian faith, such as
the letters of Pilate to Tiberius, or the testimony to
Christ interpolated into Josephus, which I select for
�j4 The Mythical Element in Christianity.
comparison, because they are the Zeasf obviously
absurd of these fictitious evidences.
2nd letter of Pilate.v
“ Pilate to Tiberius Caesar. Health!
“On Jesus Christ, of whom I gave you clear in
formation in my last, at length, by the desire of the
people, as it were against my will, and without my
order, a severe punishment has been inflicted. But,
by Hercules, so pious and pure a man no age has
ever produced, or will produce. But a wonderful
struggle of the people itself, and concurrence of all
the scribes and rulers existed, as their own prophets
and our sybils had forewarned, to crucify this am
bassador of the truth ; signs in nature, which in the
judgment of philosophers threatened destruction to
the universe, appearing while he was hanging. His
disciples thrive, not belying their master by their
words, and the continency of their lives—yea, being
in his name great doers of good. If I had not dreaded
a sedition of the people, who were all but boiling
over, perhaps this man would still live. But being
rather driven by my regard for your dignity, than led
by my own will, I did not oppose with my full
strength that this pure blood, innocent of any charge,
should by the malignity of the men, unjustly, on their
clamour, as the documents explain, suffer death, and
be exposed to the winds.”
Extract from Josephus :w
“At that time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may
be called a man; for he performed many wonderful
works. He was the teacher of such men as received
the truth with pleasure. He drew over to himself
many Jews and Gentiles. This was the Christ. And
when Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men
v Acta Pilati, Fab. Cod. Apocryph. N. T. I., 244. The poverty
of the Latin style is necessarily concealed in the translation.
w Ant. xviii. 3, 3.
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. 35
among us, had condemned him to the cross, they who
beforehand had conceived a love for him did not
cease to adhere to him. For, on the third day, he
appeared to them again alive, the divine prophets
having foretold these and many wonderful things
respecting him; and the sect of Christians, so called
from him, subsists to this day.”
The contrast between the tone of such passages,
and those adduced above from Tacitus, Suetonius, and
Pliny, is apparent; and shows, what it is reasonable to
expect that, when the Christian imagination invented
testimonies, it neither made these imaginary witnesses
abuse the Christian religion, nor contented itself
with making them attest what no one at the time
disputed—namely, the existence of a body of Chris
tians before the middle of the first century ; but
applied itself to meet the matters really contested,
which was, not whether Jesus had lived at the time
when they asserted that he did live, but whether his
life and acts had been such as they represented.
Now, in opposition to this direct evidence of
the existence of Christianity before the siege of
Jerusalem, borne by the concurrent testimony of two
. eminent writers, who were not Christians, and con
firmed incidentally by the official correspondence of a
third, what is adduced F Simply a list of other
non-Christian writers living in that age, who make no
mention of Christianity.
The author of c The Twelve Apostles ’ enumerates
the following alleged contemporary writers, whose
silence on this subject, he says, “is most remark
able”*:—
x Mr Cooper, in his ‘ Infidel’s Text-Book,’ pp. 50,51, gives a much
longer list, to which Mr I. L. Strange refers in his ‘ The Bible ; is it
the Word of God ?’ p. 351, of writers who have said nothing about
Christians, including several, though not all, of those mentioned
above. The list is not remarkable for the classical knowledge of
names displayed in it; and as it includes several writers who lived
D
�36
The Mythical Element in Christianity.
A.P.
Josephus, born
....
. 37
Philo, the Jew, died about.
. 42
Plutarch, flourished ....
. 80
Pampbilus, the Grammarian, flourished
. 30
Memnon,
,,
. 50
55
Epictetus, the Philosopher,
. 90
55
Lesbonax, the Sophist,
. 10
55
Pliny the elder, died
. • 77
Seneca, the Philosopher, died .
65
Curtius, the Historian, flourished
69
Pomponius Mela, the Geographer, flourished 45
Velleius ? Paterculus, the Historian
30
55
Valerius Maximus
„
• ,,
26
55
Exception may be taken to the dates assigned to
some of these authors. The age of Pamyhilus is
doubtful. On the one hand he is called AnriarcAews,
of which the natural meaning is a pupil of Aristar
chus, who lived 130 B.O. On the other hand, he is
said to have quoted Apion, who was alive in a.d. 41.
Mr Fynes Clinton attaches most weight to the last
statement in fixing the date of Pamphilus, and
adduces another case to show that Aristarch&ios may
mean only, of the school of Aristarchus.2 But, as we
do not possess the alleged quotation from Apion, it
is possible that the statement may be a mistake, or
in the second century, when, even according to the mythical
theory, the name Christian was known, their silence tends to de
stroy the weight of any argument drawn from the silence of those
who liy ed in the first century, by showing that this silence may
have proceeded from other reasons than the one of the name being
unknown at the time. (See p. 65). The remarks made below, on
the improbability of the writers referred to by the author of ‘ The
Twelve Apostles’ mentioning Christianity, apply to the other
writers mentioned by Mr Cooper, as I have ascertained by indi
vidual examination of them. I have not gone more fully into
these cases here, to avoid making this tract tediously long,
y Misprinted Valerius.
1 Fasti Hell., iii. 584; C. N. 228.
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. 37
refer to some other Apion than the noted gram
marian, and that Aristmcheios should be taken in its
ordinary meaning, which would make Pamphilus
anterior to the Christian era.
The age of Memnon is also very uncertain; our
only acquaintance with him being derived from frag
ments of his works preserved by Photius. Voss
places him in the time of Augustus ; while Orellius,
in the preface to an edition of his works, published
in 1816, contends that he could not have written
before the time of Hadrian, or even of the Antonines.
Again, the date of Quintus Curtius has been placed
by different editors of his works at various periods
between the time of Cicero and that of the Emperor
Theodosius ; the epoch which seems the most probable
being that of the Emperor Constantine.a As to the
Sophist, Lesbonax, since the only writings of his
which have come down to us are two orations sup
posed to have been delivered during the Corinthian
war, B.C. 413, it is difficult to see why his silence
about Christianity should be considered remarkable.
In the case of the other writers, the question
arises, what probability is there that they would
notice such a fact as Christianity probably was up to
the close of the first century ? If we assume the
historical truth of all the prodigies recorded in the
N. T., the case would, no doubt, be very different
from what I take it to be. Gibbon, for instance, is,
I think, quite justified in arguing that Pliny the
elder could hardly have failed to notice the darkness
which is said to have overspread all Palestine for
several hours during the Crucifixion, in his careful
examination of all known instances of failure of the
sun’s light, if such a darkness had actually occurred.
But suppose these marvels to have been simply the
See Dissertations in Valpy’s Delphin Ed. 1826, i., p. 32.
�I
38 ’The Mythical Element in Christianity.
colouring given by the belief of the Christian com
munity in the superhuman character of Christ to the
events of his life : suppose that the Christians, until
after the siege of Jerusalem, were commonly regarded
as a Jewish sect,b distinguished from other sects
only because “ after a way which these called heresy,
so worshipped they the God of their fathers; ”c
differing from them only “ on certain questions
touching their own superstitions, and one Jesus,
which was dead, whom [the Christians] affirmed to
be alive,” d there would be no reason for expecting
to find notices of Christianity by any writers other
than Christian, unless it can be shown that these
writers bestowed much attention upon the Jewish
sects and their opinions generally. Now, so far is
this from being the case, that of the writers men
tioned above, the only ones not Jews who notice the
Jews at all are Memnon, Plutarch, Epictetus, Pliny
the elder, Seneca, and Pomponius Mela,e and the
notice which they take of the Jews is very slight.
PLemnon states only that they were subject to Antio
chus, the King of Syria, whom the Romans defeated/
Plutarch’s notice is confined to the questions, sug
gested as topics for after-dinner conversation, whe
ther the Jews abstained from swine’s flesh because
they worshipped that animal, or because they had an
antipathy to it; and whether Adonis, which he seems
to have supposed to be the name of the God of the
Jews, is not the same as Bacchus. ® Epictetus, in blamb “ Thou, seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are
who believe, and they are all zealots of the law!’ Acts xxi. 20.
c Acts xxiv. 14.
d Acts xxv. 19.
' I must except Pamphilus, whose works I have not been able to
obtain, of whom, therefore, I cannot say whether he mentions the
Jews or not.
f Ch. 25, 26.
'
g Sympos. iv., Ques. 5 and 6. How unsafe is it to argue from
the silence of ancient writers, as to remarkable persons in or near
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. 39
ing those who assume the profession of philosophy
without acting up to it, says, “ Why should you pre
tend to be a Greek when you are a Jew ? Do you
not perceive on what terms a man is called a Jew, a
Syrian, an Egyptian ? When we see a man incon
stant to his principles we say he is not a Jew, but
when he has the temper of a man dipped and pro
fessed, then he is, indeed, and is called, a Jew. Even
so, we are counterfeits—Jews in name, but in reality
something else.”11 Again, when discoursing of in
trepidity, be says, “It is possible that a man may
arrive at this temper and become indifferent to those
things [dangers] from madness, or from habit, as the
Galileans.”1 Both passages have been supposed, and
it seems not unlikely, do refer to the Christians;
they are all that Epictetus says about the Jews.
Pliny the elder gives a short account of the
geographical position of Judsea and its natural pro
ductions, and relates that there is a river in it which
dries up every Sabbath day ; but of the religious
beliefs of the nation he says only that they were re
markable for their contempt of the Deities,! and that
they practised a magical art, taught them by Moses
and Jochabela many thousand years after Zoroaster,
whom Eudoxus states to have lived 6000 years
before Plato.k Seneca twice alludes to the Jewish
Sabbath, once in a fragment of his dialogue on
“ Superstition,” preserved by St Augustine, where he
to their own day, to their non-existence, appears from the fact that
Plutarch never mentions Persius, Juvenal, Lucan, Seneca, Quin
tilian, Martial, Tacitus, Suetonius, or either Pliny, with all of
whom he was contemporary either in his youth or his old age. Nor
is he mentioned by any Roman writer. Yet he had lived for some
years in Rome and given popular lectures there. Emerson, Pre
face to translation of Plutarch’s Morals, ix.
h Book ii. 9, Upton’s translation.
1 Book iv. 7, lb.
j Gens contumelia numinum insignis. Hist. Nat. xiii. 4.
k lb. xxx. 1.
�40 The Mythical Element in Christianity.
accuses the Jews of “ thus causing a useless waste of
the seventh part of their time
and a second time,
in one of his letters,1 in which he speaks of a 11 pro
hibition to light candles on the Sabbaths and this
is the only notice which he takes of them. Lastly,
Pomponius Mela simply mentions that Judaea is a
district of Syria. Why should we expect that
authors who take so little notice of the ancient faith
of the Jewish people, who in the first Christian
century had spread so widely over the Roman em
pire, should specially busy themselves about a recent
offshoot of that faith rejected by the body of the
Jewish nation, then slowly diffusing itself, principally
among the poorer classes, slaves, and freed-men, and
women probably more than men,m in the great cities
of the empire ; and numbering, at the outside, not
more than a few thousand adherents in any one of
those cities.11
1 Ep. 95.
m ‘ Ye see, brethren, your calling. God hath chosen the foolish
things of the world, and base things, and things which are de
spised.’ 1 Cor. i. 25—28.
n Gibbon, after a careful consideration of all the numerical data
which he could find, concludes, “ that the most favourable calcula
tions will not permit us to imagine that more than a twentieth
part of the subjects of the empire had enlisted under the banner
of the Cross before the important conversion of Constantine,”
C. xv., near end; an estimate not contested by his modern editors.
He remarks also that ingens multitude), the expression used by
Tacitus of the Christians under Kero, is the same as that used by
Livy of the Bacchanals, multitudinem ingentem alterum jam prope
populum esse. Yet the whole number was found to be 7,000. Liv.
39, ch. 14—17. Of the ancient writers whom I have examined,
Strabo gives the fairest and fullest account of the Jewish religion.
Yet even he dwells almost exclusively on the prohibition against
making any image of the Deity, which seems to have made a deep
impression on him as profoundly reasonable, and which he
ascribes to Moses, from the purity of whose teachings he conceives
that his followers had degenerated into superstitious practices.
Obviously, he had not at all studied their religious history.
Geog. xvi. 2, secs. 34—36. Cicero, his contemporary, though he
lived in the age when the Romans first became acquainted with the
Jews from the capture of Jerusalem by Pompey, takes no notice
whatever of them.
�iThe Mythical Element in Christianity. 41
Among the list of writers enumerated by the
author of ‘ The Twelve Apostles ’ there are really two
only whose silence respecting Christianity can be
reasonably a subject of surprise, because, undoubtedly,
both of them were familiar with Jewish thought, and
paid great attention to the religious beliefs of their
nation—P7m7o and Josephus. But Philo was of a
generation earlier than Jesus. He calls himself old,
that is, probably, over 70, in a.d. 40, on the occasion
of his mission to Rome.0 His works, which princi
pally consist in a series of commentaries on the
Pentateuch, must have been written before that date,
with the exception of the account of his embassy to
Rome placed at the end of them; since he was selected
for this office, in spite of his advanced years, in con
sequence of the influence which his learning and re
putation was considered to give him. It is true that
in this narrative P he gives “ an account of the state
of the Jews and their afflictions under Augustus,
Tiberius, and Caligula,” as Mr Cooper states; but
this account is so far from entering into the par
ticulars of their religious opinions, that it does not
even mention the divisions of Pharisees and Sad
ducees, of which we learn nothing from Philo;
though he has devoted a separate treatise to the
Essenes, from his admiration of the contemplative
life, withdrawn from all worldly distractions, which
they led. The silence of Philo on the existence of a
sect of Christians among the Jews cannot, under
these circumstances, be considered of any weight as
an argument against its existence, whatever may
be the weight due to it, when adduced, as is done
by- Mr Cooper, to prove “ that the pretensions of
the Christians to the divine influence of their master
0 See Preface to Mangey’s Edition of his works.
p Satirically called ‘ Of Virtues.’
�42 The Mythical Element in Christianity.
%
are perfectly gratuitous; ” i a matter with which I am
not now dealing.
Josephus comes under another category. But the
allegation that he “ does not make the slightest
mention of Jesus Christ ” r can be established only if
it can be shown not only that the passage quoted
above is interpolated into his works, of which there
appears to be no reasonable doubt,s but also that the
short incidental notice of Jesus, contained in his
account of the death of James, by order of the High
Priest Ananus, is an interpolation. Now this is a
much more doubtful question. The passage is as fol
lows : “Ananus, thinking that he had met with a fitting
opportunity, seeing that Festus was dead and Albinus
was still on his journey, convened a Sanhedrim of
judges, and having brought before it the brother of
Jesus, who is called Christ, named James, and some
others, accused them of having broken the law, and
gave them over to be stoned.” 1
This passage was known to Photius, whose silence
as to the passage in Ant. xviii. is one strong argument
against it." It is quoted by Eusebius, and by
Jerome, though inaccurately, and it appears pro
bable that it is referred to by Origen.v Objection has
q £ Infidel’s Text Book,’ p. 51.
1 lb. p. 54, ‘ Twelve Apostles,’ p. 10.
' See Lardner’s discussion of this passage in his ‘ Jewish Testi
monies and Credibility of the Gospel.’
‘ Ant. xx. 9.1.
“ Lardner’s Jewish Test. v. 3.
v Origen says “ that Josephus, who wrote the ‘ J ewish Antiquities’
in twenty books, being desirous to assign the cause why the Jews
suffered such things, that even their temple was demolished to its
foundations, says that these things had happened because of the
anger of God against them for what they had done to James, the
brother of Jesus, called Christ.” In Matt., sec. 17. Again, in his
work against Celsus, i. c. 37, he states “ Josephus says that these
things befel the Jews in vindication of James, called The Just,
who was the brother of Jesus, called Christ; inasmuch as they
killed him who was a most righteous man.” And afterwards, in
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. 43
been taken to the genuineness, on the ground—first,
that it implies some longer account of Jesus, of which
none is given in Josephus except the passage allowed
to be interpolated. Secondly, that the absence of
a reference to Christ in any other passage of Josephus
than this one, shows a settled intention on his part
not to notice him, which is inconsistent with the
notice here. But neither of these objections appears
to me of much force. Josephus may have designedly
abstained from any notice of Christ, or Christianity
as a religious belief, and yet have mentioned the title
commonly given to Jesus, as a means of identifying
the James whom he names as condemned to death;
and if he introduced the title only for this purpose,
and his object was sufficiently attained by its intro
duction, he would have no reason for giving any
further account of Jesus, whom we know that he did
not acknowledge to be the true Messiah. The fact
that the passage is quoted by Photius, who does not
notice the account in Ant. xviii., proves that, at all
events, the two passages are independent of each
other. On the other hand, if any part of the passage
is struck out, the whole must go, including the notice
of James, and the sentence must be reduced to the
words, “ and bringing before it some, he accused
them of having broken the law.” But this is an
‘ Cont. Cels.’ ii, see. 13, he says of the destruction of Jerusalem,
“which, as Josephus writes, happened on account of James the
Just, the brother of Jesus, called Christ; but, in truth, upon ac
count of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God.” This account is not
to be found in Josephus; but the expression, 1 ‘ the brother of J esus,
called Christ,” is peculiar, and not likely to be used by Origen
except as a quotation, as we may see from the continuation of
the last passage. If he knew that Josephus had given an account
of the death of James under the description of the “ brother of
Jesus, called Christ,” he may have ascribed to Josephus notions
as to the consequences of this crime, which he had gathered from
other sources ; but it seems improbable that he should have done
this, if Josephus had not mentioned the death of James at all.
�44 The Mythical Element in Christianity.
awkward statement. It is not likely that Josephus
would have said, Ananus “ brought some ” before
the Council without any explanation of who they
were. Nor is it probable that an interpolator would
have divided the sentence, inserting the words from
“ the brother of Jesus ” to “ and,” before “ some,” and
l< others” after it, though the Greek would have
allowed him to say, with even more elegance, “ others
some,” instead of “ some others.” And if the inter
polator were a Christian, as is supposed, he would
probably have said, “ the brother of Jesus, the
Christ,” not “ the brother of Jesus, called Christ.” w
The gravest objection to the passage lies in its
alleged inconsistency with the account of the death of
James, given by Hegesippus and Clemens of Alex
andria, as cited by Eusebius, who do not mention
any trial of him instituted by Ananus, nor any others
put to death with him, but describe him to have been
“ killed in a tumult near the temple, where some
flung him down and threw stones at him; but his
death was completed by a blow on the head with a
fuller’s pole.” x Yet, surely, it is quite possible that this
may have been the actual mode of the death of James,
while it had been preceded by an informal judicial
process such as Josephus mentions. He does not
tell us on what particular transgressions of the law
the accusation turned. If the other persons accused
were not Christians, or were not put to death as
such, the Christian tradition would probably have
ignored them. The whole proceeding was irregular,
according to JosephusJ So that it is not improbable
that the attempt to execute the sentence may have
w As in Ant. xviii. 1, where we read, “He was the Christ.”
* Lardner’s ‘Jewish Testimonies,’ iv. 3.
y So. that, “ Albinus wrote to Ananus in great anger, threatening
to punish him for what he had done, and King Agrippa took away
from him the High Priesthood.” Josephus, u.s.
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. 45
led to a riot, in which James was killed—some
persons, perhaps, attempting to rescue him from a
judgment which they considered illegal.
On the whole, then, the arguments for the genuine
ness of this passage appear to me to preponderate
over those against it; and, if it is genuine, we
have in Josephus a witness not only to the fact but
to the notoriety of the ascription of the title of Christ
to Jesus, at a period anterior to the siege of Jeru
salem ; since he uses this title as a sufficient means of
identifying another person, by describing him as the
“brother of Jesus, called Christ.”2 But if this con
clusion is mistaken, other cases in Josephus must
put us on our guard against attaching much weight
to his silence. Dr Lardner has observed that,
although in the preface to his ‘ Jewish Antiquities ’
‘ he engages to write of things as he found them men
tioned in the Sacred Books, without adding any
thing to them, or omitting anything from them,’ yet
he says nothing about the golden calf made
by the people in the wilderness, nor does
he once name Mount Sion or Zion, either in his
‘ Antiquities ’ or his ‘ Jewish War,’ though there were
so many occasions for it, and it is so often mentioned
in the Old Testament.1 The importance of such a
8,
*
caution, in dealing with Jewish authorities, is con
firmed by the absence of any direct mention of
Christianity in the Mischna, or original text of the
Talmud, though this was certainly not compiled
earlier than the second Christian century, and pro1 Mr Cooper, in liis ‘Infidel’s Text Book,’ p. 54, omits to notice
this passage, and thus leaves his readers under the impression
that “ there is not the slightest mention made of Jesus Christ in
the works of Josephus except the passage interpolated in .Ant.
xviii.
and yet he was not ignorant of its existence, for, in an
earlier work, called ‘ The Bible and its Evidences,’ p. 81, he
quotes it, and makes to it one of the objections noticed above.
a ‘ Jewish Testimonies,’ iv. 4.
�46 The Mythical Element in Christianity.
z
bably at a still later date, and though there appear
to be some covert allusions to it.b Yet, unques
tionably, this silence cannot proceed from the absence
of a large body of Christians in that age.
Thus the negative testimony to which the author
of ‘ The Twelve Apostles’ attaches so much importance
dwindles into insignificance when examined, and
leaves unimpugned the positive testimony of Tacitus
and Suetonius to the existence at Rome of a body of
persons known as Christians some years before the
siege of Jerusalem, confirmed by the testimony of
Pliny to the extensive diffusion of the Christian faith
in Bithynia between a.d. 100 and 110 ; evidence fatal
to the mythical hypothesis advocated by this writer.
Having thus a solid foundation for believing
Christianity to have originated in the faith in an
historical person, laid by the testimony of writers
who did not share that faith, we may proceed to
inquire whether this testimony is not placed beyond
any reasonable doubt by the evidence of those who
did share it. Mr Cooper, indeed, objects to quotations
from Christian writers in support of Christian state
ments, that it is a petitio principii, proving a position
by that which is denied ; establishing Christian
statements by Christian statements, a modus operands
which cannot be tolerated in an examination into
their truth.0 And an objection of this nature would
have much force, if the matter to be proved were of
a nature likely to be coloured by the imaginations of
the narrators. To take the case of Mr Cooper him
self. If a question were raised as to the learning,
the fairness, the cogency of reasoning, and critical
sagacity displayed by him in his ‘ Infidel’s Text
Book,’ the testimony of a professed disciple of Mr
Cooper to the display of these qualities in his work
b ‘ Jewish Testimonies,’ v. 1. ii. 8.
c ‘ Infidel’s Text Book,’ p. 69.
�the Mythical Element in Christianity. 47
might reasonably be looked at with suspicion. But
if the question were only when or where Mr Cooper
was born, or the lectures which compose that book
were delivered, to whom could we turn, with so good
a prospect of obtaining correct information on these
matters, as to those who might be associated with
him in diffusing his Gospel of Infidelity. The
Mormons may be very questionable witnesses to the
character of Hiram Smith or Brigham Young, but
they are the best witnesses to the dates and ordinary
incidents of their fives. And so the writings of the
first generations of Christians must be regarded as
authorities, I will not say absolutely trustworthy, for
they must always be open to reasonable criticism,
yet certainly entitled to great weight, on questions
concerning the time when the Christian religion
began. Now on this point the New Testament gives
no “ uncertain sound.” All the Gospels agree in
connecting the appearance of Jesus as a teacher with
the preaching of John the Baptist, whose date is
fixed by Josephus. All agree in ascribing the cruci
fixion of Jesus to Pontius Pilate, the period of whose
government of Judtea is well ascertained. One of
the evangelists had apparently taken considerable
pains to fix the time when Jesus began to teach, by
reference to a number of contemporary sovereigns.
And though it is doubtful whether he was in all
these cases well-informed, still the fact of his having
made such researches shows that he was not indif
ferent to the duty of an historian to fix as far’as pos
sible the time when the events recorded by him
happened, and, in consequence, deserves the credit
generally conceded, upon such matters, to the state
ments of a writer who certainly was not removed by
a period of more than seventy years from the time of
which he writes.
,
. It may perhaps be objected to the statements of
�48
The Mythical Element in Christianity.
the Gospels, that the existence of some one on whom
the imagination of those who first launched the
Christian faith pitched, as the solid point round
which their mythical conceptions could crystallize,
as has been suggested in the beginning of this essay,
may be admitted without allowing an historical
foundation for the statement that a Messianic character
was attributed to Jesus before the siege of Jerusalem ;
and that the Gospels, which cannot be shown to have
been written before that event, may have antedated
this belief, by assigning to a time forty years earlier
ideas which really arose subsequently to, and in con
sequence of, this catastrophe. But the New Testa
ment supplies other evidence not open to this
objection—the evidence of three distinct witnesses,
in The Acts of the Apostles, The Epistles of St. Paul,
and The Apocalypse. Let us examine their testimony.
I am by no means disposed to take up the cudgels
generally in defence of the historical character of
the Acts. I admit that this work appears to have
been written with the object of reconciling the
Petrine and the Pauline factions, whose disputes
distracted the first age of the Church, by exhibiting
the two leaders acting side by side in the work
of evangelisation, giving to Peter especially the
“ ministry of the circumcision,” and to Paul that
of “ the uncircumcision,” as if by a mutual
agreement generally sanctioned by the Apostles;
while it ascribes to Peter the honour of making the
first important Gentile convert, and makes Paul
everywhere address himself first to the Jews, and
turn to the Gentiles only when rejected by them,
instead of presenting himself, as his epistles would
lead us to expect, in the character of an ambassador
for Christ, and announcing the principle of righteous
ness by the “ faith which Abraham had yet being
uncircumcised;” a faith where the difference between
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. 49
Jew and Greek vanished, and all alike were con
victed of “ having come short of the glory of God,”
and needing to be justified, “ not by the works of
the Law,” but by that inner principle of trust and
love by which they might be transformed into true
children of their heavenly Father. I allow that the
narrative of the first preachings of the Apostles at
Jerusalem is steeped in a roseate mist of mythological
wonders where the features of history disappear.
But this does not alter the fact that the latter
chapters of the Acts embody what appears to be the
narrative of an eyewitness and companion of Paul,
whose natural blending of “ they ” and “ we ” in the
story testifies to the truthfulness of his accounts ;d
while the undesigned coincidences between his state
ments and the letters of Paul, admirably pointed out
in Paley’s ‘ Horae Paulinas,’ “ make out,” to borrow
Mr Taylor’s words,e “ to the satisfaction of every
fair inquirer, that neither those epistles nor that
part of the Acts of the Apostles are supposititious.
The hero of the one is unquestionably the epistoler
of the other. Both writings are therefore genuine,
to the full extent of everything they purport to be.
Neither are the epistles forged, nor the history, as
far as relates to Paul, other than a faithful and a fair
account of a person who really existed, and acted the
part ascribed to him.”
I may observe, in confirmation of this conclu
sion, that the story of the preaching of Christianity,
as we read it in this part of the Acts, is not such as
might be naturally expected from the Gospels, and
certainly not that which the inventor of an imaginary
d xvi. 6—9, “they;” 10—17, “we;” 18 to xx. 4, “he” or
“ they ; ” xx. 5, to xxi. 17, “ we; ” xxi. 20, to xxvi. 35, “ he ” or
“ they; ” xxvi. to xxvii. 37, “ we; ” xxvii. 38, to xxviii. 6, “ he” or
“they;” xxviii. 7—16, “we.”
' ‘Diegesis,’p. 376.
�The Mythical Element in Christianity.
history would have been likely to produce. The
Acts of the Apostles profess to be a continuation of the
3rd Gospel, which ends with a solemn declaration
of Christ, made to the eleven Apostles immediately
before his ascension, that repentance and remission of
sins should be preached in his name to all nations,
beginning at Jerusalem, “ and ye are the witnesses
of these things.” f And the first part of the Acts
narrates a story of missionary effort, spreading from
Jerusalem to the countries bordering on Jud tea, in
apparent accordance with this injunction. But, from
the xvith chapter to the end of the book, all this is
changed. There is no talk of Jerusalem as a centre
of propaganda: there is no mention of “ the twelve,”
or any one connected with them, going forth among
the nations. The story of missionary activity centres
in the labours of a man who was not one of the
original apostles, who had been at first a bitter
opponent of Christianity, and between whom and
“ the twelve ” there is no trace of a very cordial
sympathy. While the only one of the latter body
who is mentioned at all, James, is described as
stationary in Jerusalem. Surely no one who had
begun by evolving twelve apostles out of his “ moral
consciousness ” would have gone on to assign to
them a part in the preaching of the Christian faith
which he records, so insignificant as this. The fact
is conceivable, for fact is often stranger than fiction.
The fiction is self-destructive.
Assuming, then, that Mr Taylor’s judgment upon
this part of the Acts is well founded, what does it
show us ? What are these thirteen chapters of the
Acts, but records of journies made by St Paul during
a long series of years, while the city and Temple of
Jerusalem were still undestroyed, for the purpose of
f Luke xxiv. 47, 48. The 1st and 2nd Gospels contain corre
sponding statements: Matt, xxviii. 20; Mark xvi. 15—20.
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. $ i
spreading through Asia Minor, Macedonia, and
Greece the faith in Jesus as the Christ ? s And with
this statement, the letters of Paul, whose genuineness
we have seen Mr Taylor admits, and no critic of whom
I know, who has studied them, has ever denied, to
the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, are in
complete agreement. From beginning to end, they
are full of earnest faith in Jesus Christ, “ who was
made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and
declared to be the son of God with power, according
to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the
dead.” h And of these epistles, those to the Galatians
and Corinthians distinctly testify to a time anterior
to the siege of Jerusalem. The Galatians describes two
journies made by Paul to Jerusalem, at an interval of
fourteen years.1 The 1st Epistle to the Corinthians
provides for the sending to Jerusalem money which
had been collected “for the Saints ;”■) the 2nd Epistle
mentions an intended visit of Paul to Judsea.k
They testify also to the existence of those apostles
which the author of ‘ The Twelve Apostles ’ denies.
The 1st Epistle to the Corinthians speaks of “ the
twelve,” 1 and twice mentions Peter under the name
of Cephas.111 The Epistle to the Galatians speaks of
Peter by both names,11 of James, the Lord’s brother,0
of John,? and Barnabas,i as names thoroughly well
? See Acts xvii. 3, 18; xviii. 5; xix. 4, 18; xx. 21, 24, 35.;
xxi. 13; xxv. 19; xxvi. 9, 15,23, 28 ; xxviii. 31.
11 Rom. i. 3, 4.
' i. 18; ii. 1.
,
,
3 I Cor. xii. 3.
k II Cor. i. 66.
1 I Cor. xv. 5.
m I Cor. i. 12; xv. 5.
“ Peter, i. 18; ii. 7, 8, 11, 14 ; Cephas, ii. 9.
°i. 19;ii. 9.
p ii. 9.
s ii. 14.
B
�52 ¥he Mythical Element in Christianity.
known among the Christian community; and confirms
to this extent the story in the Gospels.1
I pass to the third witness mentioned above, the
Apocalypse, of which the general consent of the ablest
critics, founded on the distinct reference to Jeru
salem as still standing in chapter xi., places the date
before the destruction of that city? Now the
Apocalypse professes to be “a revelation from Jesus
Christ, which God gave unto him, to show his ser
vants things which must shortly come to pass”;* whom
it describes as the “ faithful and true witness
“ the
first begotten from the dead;”u “whom every eye
should see, and they also that pierced himand
again, “ as one like unto the Son of Man,v who was
dead and is alive for ever, and has the keys of hell and
of death ;”w and again, as “ the Lamb who has been
slain,” and now “ is worthy to receive power, and
'
» The name Cephas does not occur in the Synoptics. We learn
its application to Peter, positively, only from the fourth Gospel^
i. 42; and, in this Gospel, it is never used again. In the passages
where Peter is afterwards mentioned, he is called Simon Peter, ex
cept where the name occurs several times in the same story, when
the Simon is dropped, xiii. 63; xviii. 11, 16, 17, 18, 26, 27; xx.
3, 4; xxi. 7, 17, 20, 21; and in xxi. 15, 17, where Jesus three;
times addresses him as Simon, son of Jonas. In the Synoptics we
find Peter without the Simon, except on the occasion of his acknow
ledging Jesus as the Christ, Matt. xvi. 16; and his falling at
Christ’s feet, Luke v. 8. But he is several times mentioned as
Simon only, especially in Luke. See Matt. xvi. 17; Mark i. 29,
30, 36; xiv. 37; Luke iv. 38; v, 3, 4, 5, 10; xxvi. 31; xxiv. 34.
» The author of ‘The Twelve Apostles’ has apparently forgotten
this reference when he asserts that the writer of the Apocalypse
says nothing which can identify his Jesus with the Jesus of the
Gospels. (Page 20). Surely he never can have imagined that the
city which is described as the Holy city, containing the Temple of
God, where “our Lord was crucified” xi. 1, 2, 8, is any other city
than Jerusalem, or that the “Lord” can he any other than the
“ Jesus” from whom the whole book purports to proceed.
t i. 1.
u i. 5.
’ The name which Jesus commonly gives himself in the Gospels.
»i. 13; 18.
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. 53
riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and
glory, and blessing ;”x from whose wrath “ the kings
of the earth, and the rich men, and the chief
captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman
and every freeman should hide themselves in the dens
and rocks of the mountains; ” ? with whom the
nations should make war, and who should overcome
them, “for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings;” z
who, accordingly, afterwards rides forth in triumph,
on a white horse, clothed in a vesture dipped in
blood, and followed by the armies of heaven,a to
“ tread the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath
of Almighty God; ” b and who, after his final victory,
appears, as the light of the New Jerusalem which had
descended from heaven, and had twelve foundations,
and “on them the names of the twelve Apostles of
the Lamb.” c Of these apostles the author of ‘ The
Twelve Apostles ’ observes, that the writer does not
mention their names, nor does he say whether they
existed already, or were only to have a future
existence ;d which is no doubt literally true, though, if
so, the exigencies of the fiction would seem to
require that some important part in the events
described in the Apocalypse as immediately immi
nent should be assigned to persons to whom so
striking a position is attributed in their triumphant
issue. But the objector overlooks the fact that the
Apocalypse is fatal to his hypothesis in itself, and
apart from its identification of the Jesus of whom it
speaks with the Jesus of the Gospels. For this
hypothesis is, that the notion of a Messiah who had
suffered and should come in triumph, to deliver his
people and establish his kingdom over the earth,
arose after the destruction of Jerusalem, out of the
» v. 12.
a xix. 11—14.
7 vi. 15.
b xix. 16.
1 xvii. 14.
c xxi. 14.
d P. 20.
�54
Mythical 'Element in Christianity.
reaction of Messianic hopes against the blow inflicted
upon them by the destruction of the Holy city;
while here we have a book full of this idea from be
ginning to end, written while Jerusalem was still
standing, and addressed to bodies of believers in such
a Messiah, who form seven churches in seven of the
principal cities in the Roman province of Asia; a
conclusive proof that, in whatever cause the idea of
a Messiah who should triumph after having suffered
originated, it did not grow out of the destruction of
Jerusalem.
Thus we have in the New Testament, besides the
direct testimony of all four Evangelists, three inde
pendent witnesses, whose evidence indirectly, but in
each case conclusively, negatives this mythical hypo
thesis. Let us go one step further, to the next
generation of Christian writers, and take the evidence
of Papias, bishop of Hieropolis, in the beginning of
the second century, from whose writings we possess
various passages, preserved by Eusebius. Papias,
says Eusebius,e in the preface to his work, by
no means gives us to understand that he had been
an eye and ear witness of the holy apostles, but that
he had received the orthodox doctrine from those who
had known them. These are his words : “ I have no
hesitation in interweaving in my interpretation what
I have learned from the presbyters, and impressed
on my memory, since I am assured of their truth.
For I did not attend, as the great mass are wont to
do, especially to those who are only great talkers, but
I directed my eyes to those who could testify to the
truth. Not to those I turned who repeated by rote state
ments about which they knew nothing, but to those
who knew the rules prescribed by the Lord himself
e ‘ Ecc. Hist.’ iii. 39; Exegesis ton Tcuriakon logion.
�1 The Mythical Element in Christianity. 55
for the faith. When I fell in with any one who had
enjoyed the teaching of the elders, I inquired of him
w’hat they had spoken ? What, I asked, have
Andrew, what Peter, what Philip, Thomas, James,
what John, what Matthew said ? or what do the
disciples of the Lord, men like Aristion and the
Presbyter John, say ? ” f Here we find Papias distin
guishing two generations of teachers, both older than
himself; the first, including the well-known names
of six out of the twelve Apostles, of which he speaks
as wholly passed away ; the second, disciples still alive,
though his own seniors; each of whom he mentions
equally as real persons, from whose teachings he
hoped to receive instruction. The statement is very
intelligible and natural, if there had really existed
in the last generation men well known as the
apostles of Jesus, but very inconceivable, if the only
answer which Papias could have obtained to his in
quiries had been, what it must have been supposing
the hypothesis under our consideration to be true,
“we have never met with any such persons, nor know
of any one who has seen them. We know only, that
we have heard them tallied about, during the last
twenty or thirty years, as the apostles of a Jesus
who is said to have been crucified eighty years since.”
Regarded as a statement really made by a writer who
lived in the age of Papias, the passage becomes, on
this hypothesis, absurd; while, if it were not a
genuine statement of Papias, but one made up, in
order to give credence to the story of there having
been a body of apostles, the inventor must have
been a great bungler, to make his witness testify only
to what he had heard, instead of boldly putting into
his mouth the assertion that he had seen and conf Ti Petros eipen., ti Philippos,
ti legousin Aristion, &c.
�$6 The Mythical Element in Christianity.
versed with apostles of the Lord, as he might easily
have done, if any of these apostles had lived to old
age. On the other hand, if the statement is not
concocted, it furnishes one of those indirect proofs
that Jesus and his Apostles are not mythical but
historical persons, which are the more convincing
because their evidence is undesigned.
It would be easy to heap up testimony to the same
effect out of the writers who succeeded Papias. But
as this testimony would carry us too far from the
original sources, I abstain from going into it, and
confine myself to one additional piece of evidence, the
lists of names of the Christian bishops in the patriar
chal sees of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and
Rome, preserved in the Chronicon of Eusebius ; of
which I may observe that it is not a record confined
to ecclesiastical incidents, but a general chronicle of
important events, from the earliest times to the age
of Eusebius, containing the names of the different
bishops of these great sees, introduced under their
proper dates. The names and dates are as follows :
Antioch.
A.D.
Alexandria.
A.D.
•
# 65 Euodius
. 43
Annianus
Asilus
85 Ignatius .
. 71
. 115
Cerdon .
98 Heros
Jerusalem.
Rome. Chron. H.E.
Petrus
36
James
(Ko dates.)
Linus
Simeon
66
68
80
Anacletus
Justus
79
99
92
87
Then twelve others, down Clemens
100
96
to the time of Hadrian. Evaristus
It will be seen that, in each of the great
capitals, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome, the list of
names, excluding Peter, goes up beyond the time
when, according to the mythical hypothesis, the idea
�The Mythical Element in Christianity. 57
of Christianity arose. Yet the statements of Eusebius
appear to have been founded in every case on docu
ments preserved in the respective churches.? borne
uncertainty seems to have attached to these Jjeco}’ s
in the case of Rome ; where Augustine gives another
list of bishops, in which Clemens precedes Anacletus
instead of following him, and the dates given by
Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History slightly differ
from those given in his Chronicon. But though some
suspicion is thus cast on the accuracy of the 1S^®’1
is difficult to suppose that in all these great cities
the Christians deliberately fabricated the names o
bishops who never existed, in order to give counte
nance to the notion that the Christian religion _ began
to be taught half a century earlier than was in tact
the case. And the difficulty of this supposition is
increased by the circumstance that neither in Antioch
nor Alexandria is the first bishop one of the Apost es,
to whom the inventors of an imaginary succession o
bishops would have naturally attributed the founda
tion of the great Christian churches; they are per
sons, for the introduction of whose names no other
reason can be given than the simple one that they did
historically fill the office of bishops in the places and
at the times where and when they are mentioned.
What is there to oppose to the accumulative force
of these distinct lines of evidence, from writers who
were not Christians and writers who were Christians,
from histories, and memoirs, and letters, and pro
phetic anticipations, and autbiographical notices, and
official lists of names, all combining to prove that
Christianity arose out of the reverence felt for an
historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, who was
crucified by order of Pontius Pilate, but of whom his
8 See the passages in Fynes Clinton, ‘ Fasti Romani,’ ii. 535.
�58
The Mythical Element in Christianity.
disciples believed that he had risen from the dead, and
would shortly come in the clouds as the judge of
all mankind. Absolutely nothing but that certain
writers do not mention Christianity, the character of
whose writings gives us no reason for expecting that
they would mention it; and that, when we enter into
the details of the stories preserved to us about Jesus,
we find ourselves involved in such a mass of contra
dictory statements that we do not know on what to
rely, beyond the broad facts stated above ; and the
evidence as to his character furnished by the sayings
attributed to him, and the impression which he
appears to have produced on those among whom he
lived and worked.
It does not fall within my present object to
consider this historical element, either in itself or in
its bearing upon religious faith. I wish only to show
what I hope to have succeeded in showing, that
there is far more of unwarranted assumption and
unreasoning credulity involved in the disbelief of the
historical origin of Christianity out of reverence for
the person of Jesus of Nazareth, than is involved in
the belief that it did thus originate.
But this belief, if it be confined to that which is
historically proveable, must take up an attitude very
different from the one which the defenders of what
is called Orthodox Christianity commonly assume.
If Jesus of Nazareth can be proved, beyond any
reasonable doubt, to have been a person, of whose
actions and sayings we know enough to show that
he exhibited a very remarkable phase of religious feel
ing, which produced among his disciples an unbounded
reverence for him ; whose death was attended by the
remarkable incident, that it was followed by the firm
belief of these disciples in his resurrection from the
dead ; and who appeared at an epoch in the spiritual
�The Mythical Element in Christianity, $9
development of our race, which has given to this
reverence and belief a most important influence on
the religious history of mankind, still, here the voice
of history stops. When we attempt to pass beyond
these limits, into the details of what are generally
called the evidences of the Christian religion,—the
direct external proofs of supernatural action,—we find
ourselves in the domain of legend and myth; and all
certainty as to the supposed facts vanishes with the
traditional, imaginative, and contradictory character
of the testimony adduced for them. If the Catholic
faith as to the person of Jesus is to continue, the
grounds for it must then be taken from other sources
than these details; where the opponents of the belief
of the Church have, I conceive, as decisive a victory
in the argument as its defenders have on the question
whether the Christian faith did not arise from that
reverence for the person of Jesus, and persuasion that
he had risen from the dead, to which the New Testa
ment traces it.
That a new and more radical contest concerning
the claims of Christianity will be carried on upon
this ground I expect; and its result will, in my
judgment, not be such as is usually assumed at the
present day by those who contend for the application
to the New Testament of the strict rules of historical
criticism. But neither can it be such as those assume
who contest the legitimacy of this application. Reli
gious faith may, and I believe will, find a secure
refuge in the supersensual world of ideal truths, and
the external affirmation to them given by the course
of man’s religious development. But this faith will
no longer be able to isolate itself from the general
progress of the race, or represent itself as the
exclusive sesame of an arbitrary salvation. It must
be based on trust in the Universal Father, whose
�6o ’The Mythical Element in Christianity.
love embraces all his creatures, a trust which the
revelation of His nature, made through the course of
human history, may affirm, but for which it cannot
be a substitute. And the feeling engendered by it
towards the ancient channels of religious influence
may, I conceive, be summed up in Goethe’s words :11
Ich wandle auf weiter, bunter Flur,
Urspringlicher Natur,
Eine heilige Quelle in welchem ich hade,
1st Ueberlieferung, ist Gnade.
b Gott Gemiith und Welt, ii, 227. Edition of 1828.
I rove o’er the broad and varied field,
Of primitive nature;
A sacred spring in which I bathe
Is tradition—is grace.
�
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The mythical element of Christianity
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Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway and part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. Sticker placed over original imprint reads London: T. Scott. Cutting attached to p. [3] 'Prayer' reprinted from 'The Examiner', September 7, 1872. This may be a response to Annie Besant's article 'On Prayer', the preceding item bound in Conway Tracts 31. Includes bibliographical references.
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Conway Tracts
Jesus Christ-Rationalistic Interpretations
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hh ‘Thousand
IjJlYTHIC CHRISTS
||1ND THE TRUE
I ^.CRITICISM OF SOME MODERN THEORIES
. •
y Rev. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, m a
d d.
L*te Jaa>es Long Lecturer on Oriental ReVgura^i
NTER
AND
LONGHURST
g PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C.
FOR
NORTH LONDON CHRISTIAN
EVIDENCE LEAGUE
*
Sixpence ndtt
��N'&8
MYTHIC CHRISTS
AND THE TRUE
A CRITICISM OF SOME MODERN THEORIES
By Rev. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, m.a„ d.d.
THE NORTH LONDON CHRISTIAN
EVIDENCE LEAGUE
12, Hici STREET, HAMPSTEAD, N.W.
1909
��nahonalskularsooety
PREFACE
“ Our age,
Our weakling age, sick of a deadly doubt.”
QNE of the most urgent needs of the present time
is that of men who will think for themselves
and not be “ driven about by every wind of doctrine.”
In many cases, it is true, the struggle for daily bread
is nowadays so acute that not a few busy men and
women have neither time nor energy to devote
themselves to deep study. At the same time they
are ready and willing to accept the latest informa
tion which they can obtain on all matters of im
portance. We know that some people are specialists
in scientific matters, others in archaeology, others in
other subjects, and we are for the most part com
pelled to take for granted the results which such
men have reached by their learned researches.
Natural as this attitude is in certain respects, it is
not wise to adopt it too readily in religious matters.
“ Call no man your father upon earth,” “ Prove all
things, hold fast that which is good,” are Scriptural
maxims which commend themselves to our common
sense and to our English love of freedom. We should
practise these directions more than we do. If we
must consult a physician, let us make sure before
hand that he is not a quack. Let us not rashly
stake the moral and religious interests of ourselves
�iv
PREFACE
and of those who are near and dear to us for time
and for eternity on the unsupported assertions of
the first person we meet who makes an attack on
Christianity and the Bible. Let us occasionally
doubt our own doubts. The Christian Faith has re
sisted the billows and storms of nearly nineteen
centuries, and it is therefore at least unlikely that
the “ gates of Hades ” will now “ prevail against it,”
the more so because all or almost all the arguments
brought against it to-day have been used again and
again before our time without success.
The desire to be “ up-to-date” in matters of thought
does not generally exert undue influence upon men
of sober earnestness and common sense, such as
those for whom this little book is mainly intended.
But more shallow minds—though for them too
Christ died and rose again—more readily yield to
the temptation to be “ abreast of the times,” as they
think. The result of this want of thought too often
is that worn-out theories and long exploded errors
are for a time accepted as the latest discoveries of
the most enlightened age in the world’s history.
This is not the best way of being “ up-to-date.” Let
us study, and think, and pray.
At the present moment not a few writers, some of
them men of learning, others men who have no claim
to be considered such, are endeavouring to convince
“ the man in the street ” that certain leading doctrines
of Christianity have been borrowed from heathenism.
In some cases these people are ignorant of what
the doctrines they are assailing really are. In nearly
every instance the assailant shews that he has never
■
�PREFACE
v
devoted any careful study to Christian evidences.
Not unfrequently it becomes evident from the
language he uses that he is absolutely unaware
that such things exist! If, besides this degree of
ignorance, he possesses a perfervid imagination, he
is in a position to write, in all good faith, a book
admirably calculated to cause deep spiritual distress
to those who are not well grounded in their faith
in Christ, who have no personal knowledge of the
Master Himself, but merely a more or less tra
ditionary belief in Him. If this feeling of distress
causes them to enquire and so learn the certainty
of those things wherein they have (or should have)
been instructed, the result will be good for them
selves in every way. Enquiry may lead them to
genuine personal knowledge of the Master, whom
to know is everlasting life.
It is in the hope of being able to help those who
are really in earnest in seeking the truth that I have
written this little book. It is the result of years of
study of Oriental religions and of their sacred books.
My sceptical mind has forced me to doubt other
men’s statements about the teaching contained in
these, and has thus compelled me to study them in
their original languages. Therefore I base my con
clusions not on other people’s assertions, but on my
own researches.
I candidly confess that I once myself knew by
painful experience the agony of religious doubt and
uncertainty on the most vital of all subjects. It
therefore seems to me a simple matter of duty, now
that I know the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, to
�vi
PREFACE
strive to remove difficulties from other men’s paths.
If in any measure I succeed in this, it will be its own
reward.
In the course of my study of anti-Christian works,
I must regretfully acknowledge that I have not
always been impressed with the conviction that their
authors desired at any cost to find out and declare
“the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth,” though one naturally starts with that assump
tion and endeavours to cling to it to the end in
every case.
The nineteenth century produced quite a large
crop of theories more or less opposed to Christianity.
It was an age of hasty and ill-considered conclusions.
The tide is now turning. What has well been said
regarding Wolf’s hypothesis about the Homeric
poems is true also in reference to much that has
been written against the Christian faith. “ The
operose constructions of the German professors ”
(and English sciolists) “ are being obliterated, like a
child’s sand castles, by the returning tide of sense ”
(Times, lit. supplement, 8th March, 1907).
�CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface
iii
CHAPTER
I.
Mithra and Modern Myths
II.
The “Indian Christ” of Some Modern
Mythologists...............................................
24
III. The Historical Buddha and Modern
Mythology...............................................
34
IV. The Myth of Adonis, Attis, and Osiris .
45
Our Modern Mythologists v. the VirginBirth
.........................................................
75
V.
i
��Mythic Christs and
the True
MITHRA AND MODERN MYTHS
A/TYTHS being the offspring of credulity and
ignorance, it is not surprising that they should
spring up in our own day, when our magazines tell
of “ J ulia’s ” latest feats in calligraphy and some of
our London papers question whether the Christ
of the Gospels ever lived at all. We find so many
modern myths in this country, all professing to be
very ancient and to give true and reliable accounts
of the stories current in heathen lands about
various deities and heroes, that their existence and
the credit which they obtain shew that the age of
miracles is not past. The credulity of the incre
dulous is a daily miracle. Provided that the person
who writes a book or an article on any Oriental
religion or philosophy is able to shew his gross
ignorance of Christianity and his utter lack of ac
quaintance with Eastern languages, he is apparently
at once accepted by most of our fellow-countrymen
as an authority upon all these points. To dispute
his “conclusions” is to prove one’s own ignorance
and “narrowmindedness,” all the more so should one
have spent a large part of one’s life in the study of
such subjects and among those who profess the
religions and philosophies in question. It bears out
B
�2
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
the classical proverb, “ The people wish to be de
ceived, let them be so.”
To the mere student of things Eastern this attitude
of “Modern Thought” (lucus a non lucendo') in Eng
land is full of interest. His Oriental studies have
given him some acquaintance at first-hand with the
mythology of the East, and he fondly fancies that
he knows all about Krishna and his mother DevakI,
Mithra and the “ Petra Genetrix,” Isis and the
infant Horus. As he has probably consulted the
“Ethnic Scriptures” in which these tales are told,
and read them in their original languages, there is
some excuse for this fancy on his part. But when
he turns to modern English books and periodicals,
he finds an entirely new collection of tales on these
very subjects, tales for the most part unknown to
the worshippers of the deities in question. To his
jaded mind these have, at least, all the charm of
utter novelty. He has certainly never read or heard
anything of the kind before. He often finds authori
ties quoted for the assertions made by the writers
of these wonderful stories. Should he take the trouble
to consult these authorities, he finds either that they
have evidently been misunderstood, or that they
actually assert something quite contrary to what
they are quoted in support. Occasionally the chapter
or verse referred to does not exist in the book quoted.
The student is surprised at all this, but he concludes
that no man in his senses would accept as true
assertions so baseless, and statements made by men
who have at least shewn no knowledge whatever of
the subjects on which they write. He is therefore
astounded to find hard-headed business men, men
priding themselves on their common-sense and the
impossibility of taking them in, men who would not
risk a penny in business transactions without long
and careful scrutiny—to find these men blindly
�MITHRA AND MODERN MYTHS
3
accepting such romances without enquiry, and stak
ing their present and future happiness upon the
correctness of asserted “ facts ” which are destitute
of a shade of proof. There are, no doubt, reasons
for this strange attitude of mind, for this marvellous
credulity, but justification there cannot be. Even a
very casual enquiry would, in many cases, shew the
phenomenal inaccuracy of many modern disquisi
tions upon Comparative Religion and kindred sub
jects. But our credulous unbeliever has no time for
enquiry. Besides, he is too certain of his “ conclu
sions” to care to examine the ground on which
they are based. Possibly it might turn out to be
another instance of “terminological inexactitude,”
and this is an age of myth-making. Why should
not modern myths be as good as ancient ones and
quite as reliable ? Besides, enquiry might shew that
Christ was true, and that might, suggest the duty of
honourably keeping one’s baptismal vow. On the
whole, then, many a man prefers not to enquire, not
to think, though he calls himself a sceptic (enquirer)
and talks loudly of “free thought,” which to him
seems to mean freedom from thought.
We proceed to adduce evidence to prove this as far
as Mithra is concerned.
A modern writer on the subject, who tells us that
his book “challenges1 criticism above all by its thesis,”
informs us that “vigilant scholars confess that we
know very little as to the Mithraic religion,”2 and
that “we cannot hope to find much direct know
ledge.” Yet he proceeds, as do others, to afford us
a complete account of the legends and the inmost
theology of the Mithraists, together with details of
its origin. All this he has warned us is not “ direct
1 Mr. J. M. Robertson, Pagan Christs, preamble, p. xi., ed.
of 1903.
a Oi). cit., p. 292.
�4
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
knowledge,” and so we should be prepared to find
that his “ imagination bodies forth the forms of things
unknown, and . . . gives to airy nothing a local habita
tion and a name.” This unquestionably is what we
do find in his book and in others on the same lines.
A few examples will suffice to show this.
. Mr. Robertson says, “ Mithra1 comes to occupy a
singular position as between the two great Powers of
good and evil, Ormazd and Ahriman . . . being
actually named the MEDIATOR (Plutarch, Isis, and
Osins, cap. 46; Julian, in Regem Solem, capp. 9, io,
12), and figuring to the devout eye as a humane
and beneficent God, nearer to men than the Great
Spirit of Good, a Saviour, a Redeemer, eternally
young, Son of the Most High, and a preserver of
mankind from the Evil One. In brief, he is a Pagan
Christ.” “The Khorda Avesta2 (xxvi., 107) styles
Mithra ‘the Word? In the Vendidad (Fargand
xix. 15) Zarathustra speaks of Mithra, Sraosha, ‘the
Holy Word,’ thus joining Mithra with ‘the Word.’
. . . The Mithraic3 mysteries, then, of the burial
and. resurrection of the Lord, the Mediator and
Saviour; burial in. a rock tomb and resurrection from
that tomb: the sacrament of bread and water, the
marking on the forehead with a mystic mark, all
these were in practice . . . before the publication of
the Christian Gospel of a Lord who was buried in a
rock tomb, and rose from that tomb on the day
of the sun.” He then endeavours to find some frag
ment of proof that Mithra was regarded as Virginborn, and, though he fails in the search, he nevertheless
says, “ It4 was further practically a matter of course
that his divine mother should be styled Virgin,” and
asserts that he figures “as supernaturally born of
1 Op. cit., p. 304.
s Op. cit., pp. 333, 334.
2 Op. cit., pp. 329, 330.
4 Op. cit., p. 339.
�MITHRA AND MODERN MYTHS
5
a Virgin Mother and of the Most High God ’’ in the
fourth and fifth centuries, quoting the authority of
an Armenian Christian writer. We shall see later
what this authority does actually say, and how far
he is from supporting such a statement.
Men of our own age are popularly supposed to be
so ignorant on these matters that a writer of the
same school of “ thought ” ventured to publish an
article on Mithraism and kindred subjects in the
Nineteenth Century—and After a few years ago, in
which the following passage occurs :—
“. . . Just1 as the religion of Isis2 did, [Mithraism]
resembled that of Christ in being a religion of in
ward holiness, of austere self-discipline and purity;
but the details of its resemblance are incomparably
more close and curious. . . . According to Mithraic
theology, God, considered in His totality, is a Being
so infinite and so transcendent that His direct con
nexion with man and the universe is inconceivable.
In order to become the father of man and Creator,
He manifested Himself in a second personality,
namely Mithra, who was in his cosmic character
identified with the ‘ unconquered sun,’ and, as a
moral and intellectual being, was the Divine Word
or Reason, and, in more senses than one, the
‘ Mediator ’ between man and the Most High. . . .
This Divine Saviour came into the world as an
infant. His first worshippers were shepherds; and
the day of his nativity was December 25th. His
followers preached a severe and rigid morality, chief
among their virtues being temperance, chastity, re
nunciation and self-control. . . . They had seven
sacraments, of which the most important were
baptism, confirmation, and an Eucharistic Supper, at
which the communicants partook of the divine nature
of Mithra under the species of bread and wine.”
1 Nineteenth Century for September, 1905, p. 496.
2 Vide p. 85.
�6
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
If we know all this about Mithra, we know a great
deal, and Mr. Robertson is too modest in speaking
of our knowledge as being very slight on the subject.
Noticing that all the phrases which are employed
in the above extracts are those used in Christian
theology, some of them of quite recent coinage,
others found in Holy Scripture, and most actually
copied from the English Authorised Version of the
Bible, we enquire with great interest what Mithraic
literature there is whence these modern exponents
of the faith learnt all the exact details which they so
graphically lay before us. Perhaps we carry our
researches further and look for Mithraic Scriptures
in the “ Sacred Books of the East” series. We do
not find them there, nor is the reason far to seek.
There are no Mithraic Scriptures extant.
A German writer, A. Dieterich, indeed, not long
since published a Greek document, edited from a
papyrus now in Paris, which he called a Mithraic
Liturgy.1 Possibly it is Mithraic, though the great
authority on the subject, Prof. Cumont, denies this,
but it is certainly not a liturgy, nor does it state
one single doctrine of Mithraism. It does not even
form the one solitary exception which is said to
prove the rule.
All the materials upon which our knowledge of
Mithraism, properly so called, depends are contained
in Prof. Cumont’s Textes et Monuments Figures relatifs
aux Mysteres de Mithra? A short English transla
tion without the original quotations has also ap
peared. It is easy for anyone who is really in
earnest upon the subject, therefore, to ascertain ex
actly how much and how little we know about
Mithraic theology. He will find that we have no
proof whatever of the greater part of the “facts”
1 A. Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie.
2 Two vols., Bruxelles, 1899-1906.
(Teubner, Leipzig, 1903.)
�MITHRA AND MODERN MYTHS
7
stated in the extracts given above. The writers who
endeavour to represent Mithra as a “ Pagan Christ ”
have openly borrowed the phrases they use from
Christianity itself, and less honestly still do they
read Christian doctrines into Mithraism. Besides the
few sculptures which have been found representing
Mithra’s birth (not from a Virgin, but) from a rock,
and his killing a bull, these writers depend upon the
references to Mithraism which a few Christian and
heathen, mostly Greek and Latin, authors make.
An earlier stage of the worship of Mithra is, how
ever, known to us from certain parts of the ancient
Sacred Books of India and Persia. These we shall
have to examine, in order to enquire whether they
lend any support whatever to such assertions as
those which we are considering.
Mithra was worshipped by the ancient Aryans of
both India and Persia before and after their separa
tion from one another. The verses in the Rig- Veda
and the Avesta in which he is mentioned, assign him
such lofty attributes that very probably at a remote
period of antiquity he did represent a by no means
degraded conception of the Divine. Such lofty ideas
about God we find in some measure in the most
ancient records of all religions which we are able to
investigate. But in all Ethnic faiths the conception
becomes gradually debased, and Mithra forms no
exception.
In the Rig- Veda, Mithra (or, as he is there styled,
Mitra) appears for the most part in close connexion
with Varuna or the personified “ Heaven.” He is
sometimes associated with other gods, and is rarely
alone. His name signifies “ Friend,” and he is styled
priyatamas nrinam, “ most beloved by men ” (R.V.
Mandala vii., Hy. 62, v. 4). Varuna and he be
hold all things through their common Eye, the
Sun, but they are spoken of as two distinct gods
�8
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
(R.V., Mand. vii., Hy. 61, v. i). Mitra is the eldest
of the seven Adityas or sons of Aditi, the goddess
of the infinite expanse, and her husband Kasyapa.
“He is greater than earth and sky; he supports all
the gods ” (R.V., Mand. iii., Hy. 59, vv. 7 and 8). But
as in Vedic times Varuna himself had already begun
to give way to inferior gods, and gradually to cease to
be worshipped, so Mitra too was evidently receding
into oblivion.
In Persia also it is certain that Zoroastrianism
tended to lower the position which he had previously
held in men’s minds. The Avesta does not include
him among the seven Amesha Spentas, or “ Bountiful
Immortals,” who correspond with the Adityas of
India. Yet in some passages language is used of
him which shews that there was a tendency to regard
him as a rival to Ahura Mazda (Ormazd) himself.
To counteract this perhaps he was sometimes said to
have been created by the latter of equal dignity, as
we read in Yasht x., 1:—
“Ahura Mazda said to beneficent Zarathustra
(Zoroaster), ‘ Then, when I created (set forth) Mithra,
owner of broad pastures, O beneficent one, then I
rendered him as great in worshipfulness, as great in
venerableness, as even myself, Ahura Mazda? ”
As he was associated with Varuna in the Rig- Veda
so in the Avesta we sometimes find him worshipped
in connexion with Ahura Mazda, as for instance in
Yasht x., v. 145 :—
“ Mithra, Ahura, the lofty ones, the imperishable,
the righteous, do we praise: both stars and moon
and sun, over the baresman-twigs: Mithra, lord of all
the provinces, do we honour.”
Mithra was regarded as the deity who punished
untruth and breach of faith, and his wisdom was
such that we are told {Yasht x., v. 107), “Greater
natural wisdom attendeth not earthly mortal in the
�MITHRA AND MODERN MYTHS
9
world than even the natural wisdom which attendeth
heavenly Mithra.” But he soon became identi
fied with the Sun, or perhaps with the fravashi
or Genius which ruled the latter, for v, 136 of the
same Yasht says of him :—
“ Mithra, owner, of broad pastures, the watchful
one, do we honour, him whom red swift yoked steeds
draw in a chariot with one golden wheel: and his
spear-points are all-resplendent if one bears offerings
towards his abode.”
Here we notice his “one wheel” (cakkra—\he
Sanskrit cakray also meaning “ disc of the sun ”), his
red steeds, his “ spear-points all-resplendent,” that is
to say, the rays of the sun. Hence in later Mithraism
the god is represented as shooting an arrow into
a rock (the sky or a cloud) and bringing out water.
So too he kills the bull (that is, he fertilizes the
ground) by striking him with his knife, that is, with
the solar rays.
Mithra not only maintains good on earth, but he
also aids Ahura Mazda in the age-long contest with
Anro-Mainyus (Ahriman) and his creatures. As the
sun at night visits the Underworld, so Mithra
becomes one of the deities who govern the region of
the dead. Hence at the end of the world, when men
come to be tried and endeavour to cross the Chinvat
bridge, Mithra is to be associated with Sraosha and
Rashnu in the task of judging them. Even now he
is considered to be one of the deities to whom wor
ship is due. Hence in the Pahlavi “Patel” or Con
fession, the penitent acknowledges his offence
“ Before the Creator Ormazd and the Ameshospands
and before the good Law of the Mazda-worshippers,
before Mithra, Srosh and Rashnu, before the heavenly
Izeds, before the earthly I zeds,” as well as before the
spirit of Zoroaster and the religious officials of his
faith.
�10
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
Professor Hermann Oldenberg styles Mithra “ the
extremely ancient Sun-god,” and rightly says that he
was “ undoubtedly one of the most prominent figures
in the popular faith of the Iranian peoples, and also
in the worship of the Achaemenian kings.” Though
his name does not occur in Darius’ Inscriptions, yet
Artaxerxes Mnemon and Artaxerxes Ochus couple
him with Ahura Mazda and the goddess Anahita
when they pray to these deities for the protection of
their empire. In Darius’ time, although the “ clan
gods” are at least once mentioned as worthy of
honour, yet otherwise Ahura Mazda is spoken of in
terms which would befit a monotheist. But even
in the Avesta itself we fipd polytheism fully adopted.
In the Vendidad (Fargand xix. § 13) Ahura Mazda
bids Zoroaster invoke “Limitless Time” (Zrvdn
Akarana1} as well as Vayu the atmosphere, the
Winds, and “ the holy, fair daughter of Ahura Mazda ”
(Spenta Armaiti, the Genius of the Earth). It is not
at all strange, therefore, to find that the fullydeveloped Mithraism of later times associated itself
with the worship of all kinds of other deities.
We have seen that Mr. J. M. Robertson in his
clever work of imagination, confounding Zoroastrian
ism with much later Mithraism to some degree,
informs us that the Khorda Avesta styles Mithra
“The Word,” and hence would have us form a
certain conclusion regarding the origin of the Chris
tian doctrine of the Divine Reason. In proof of his
assertion he quotes chapter xxvi. 107, of the work
cited. There is no such chapter in existence, if we
may consider the standard edition of the original
1 Mr. J. M. Robertson’s remark that Mithraism borrowed its enig
matical “Supreme God,” Kronos-Zervan (which he calls “a Baby
lonian conception ”) in Armenia, and was thus “prepared in Armenia
for its cosmopolitan career in the western world ” (Pagan Christs,
p. 302) is therefore lacking in accuracy.
�MITHRA AND MODERN MYTHS
ii
text, Professor Karl Geldner’s, as an authority. But
possibly this is merely a printer’s error, though an
unfortunate one. We may remark, however, that
the title of “ Word,” given to Mithra alike in Pagan
Christs and in the Nineteenth Century article we
have quoted, also fails to occur in the Avesta. Nor
is Mithra there entitled the Divine Reason. Mr.
Robertson also tells us that Mithra is associated with
the “Word” in Fargand, xix. 15, of the Vendidad.
If this were true, it would shew that Mithra was not
identified with the Divine Word, though this identi
fication has previously been distinctly asserted by
our exponent of Mithraism. Where, then, does the
Logos doctrine as derived in some measure from
the latter come in? But the fact is that the Avesta
nowhere contains any doctrine of the Divine Logos
at all. The proper translation of the verse runs thus
(it is supposed to be spoken by Ahura Mazda):—
“ A speech (yakhshem) did Zoroaster utter to me:
‘ I invoke, O Ahura Mazda, Righteous One, the
Creation, the Law, I invoke Mithra, owner of wide
pastures, well-armed, most brilliant in his conquests,
most victorious in his conquests ; I, grasping in hand
weapons against the head of the demons, invoke
Sraosha, Ashi, the well-formed.” The word vakhshem
here evidently means “ speech,” for the very speech
itself follows in the verse, as is evident from the
translation. It is not Ahura Mazda’s but Zoroaster’s.
It has no nearer connexion with Mithra than with
the other beings and things invoked therein along
with him. We may be pardoned for failing to find
any doctrine of the Divine Logos here.
Possibly, however, Mr. Robertson intended rather
to refer to the fourteenth verse in the same chapter.
There the phrase mdthro spento, “sacred text,” has
sometimes been rather carelessly rendered “ Holy
Word.” He may have been misled by some such
�12
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
translation, a thing impossible for a person at all
acquainted with the original language. Mathro is
the same as the Sanskrit mantra, “ a hymn,” and the
context shews that the reference here is to the
sacred text of the Avesta, which was supposed to be
revealed by Ahura Mazda, “whose spirit is the
sacred text ” {yenhe urva mathro spento), as this verse
states. The passage in Mr. Robertson’s book which
we are criticising, in accordance with his already
quoted invitation, is a very admirable instance of the
danger incurred by depending upon an English
version of an Oriental work. Our author first reads
Christian theology into books in which nothing of
the kind occurs, and then triumphantly points out
how clearly such doctrines have been derived from
Ethnic sources!
Having thus far dealt with Mithra in Vedic Hin
duism and in Avestic Zoroastrianism, we have now
to consider the origin and progress of Mithraism,
properly so called, which differs from both at least
as much as Buddhism does from Hinduism. To
confound these religions with one another is hardly
a proof of competence to discuss the subject.
The first European writer who mentions Mithra is
the old Greek historian Herodotus. His worship was
then apparently confined to Persia itself. Herodotus
(i. 131) tells us that the Persians gave the name
Mithra to the goddess Aphrodite or Venus, whom he
associates with the abominations of Mylitta-worship
at Babylon. This is doubtless a mistake, since
Mithra was a god, not a goddess. But his very mis
take gives good reason to surmise that he knew
of Mithra’s close association with the licentious rites
early connected with Anahita, a Persian goddess
whom the Greeks called Anaitis. This is the first
reason we have for doubting whether the religion of
Mithra “ resembled that of Christ in being a religion
�MITHRA AND MODERN MYTHS
13
of inward holiness, of austere self-discipline and
purity,” as the writer in the Nineteenth Century,
already quoted, asserts. We shall find plenty of
other proofs to the contrary to adduce further on.
Even in early days in Persia, though Mithra was the
guardian of Truth, he is not asserted to be that of
Purity. As he was said to fertilise the earth with
his rays, and was early associated with Anahita
(which Mr. Robertson admits, p. 344, and which we
learn from the Inscriptions of the Achaemenian
Kings), and since it is acknowledged {Pagan Christs,
p. 339), that this Anahita was a goddess of “fruitful
ness and nutriency,” Mithra can hardly have been
ever regarded as encouraging this particular virtue.
It seems almost a pity to mar the fair picture pre
sented to us by the poetic imagination of our
opponents, but our appeal is to fact and not to
fiction.
Alexander the Great’s conquests brought Persia
into close connexion with the Western world. Hence
it was that Mithra-worship, more or less affected and
corrupted by the Babylonian cult of the Sun-god
Shamshu perhaps, gradually became better known in
other lands. It seems never to have spread among
the Greeks. But when the Cilician pirates, who
would naturally be drawn to the service of “a humane
and beneficent God ” and a religion “ of inward holi
ness, of austere self-discipline and purity,” were
captured by Pompey (Plutarch, Life of Pompey, ch.
xxiv.) and brought to Italy, they introduced into Rome
the worship of their god Mithra (B.c. 68). For many
years no attempt seems to have been made to spread
the religion, and it was still confined in the main to
slaves and others who had come from the East. It
formed an “ intimate union ” at Rome with “ the mys
teries of the Great Mother,” Cybele (Cumont, Mysteries
of Mithra, English version, p. 19, cf. pp. 30, 86, 87,
�i4
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
179, 198), than which few rites were more licentious.
Everyone is aware of the infamous practices of her
priests, the Galli, and of the association therewith of the
story of Attis. The original conception of Mithra had
been, as we have seen, a noble one; but there seems too
much reason to fear that, in company with that of
Anahita, it had undergone moral degradation. Other
wise it would not have been possible for Mithra
and Cybele to have been worshipped “in intimate
communion with each other throughout the entire
extent of the Empire” (Cumont, p. 179), or at least
in every part of it into which Mithraism finally
spread. For, though Mr. Robertson says: “ Mith
raism was, in point of range, the most nearly universal
religion of the Western world in the early centuries
of the Christian era” (p. 289), yet this statement
requires modification. Cumont informs us that, at
first at least, “ The influence of this small band of
sectaries on the great mass of the Roman population
was virtually as infinitesimal as is to-day the influence
of Buddhist societies in modern Europe ” {Mysteries,
p. 37). “ It was not until the end of the first century
that the name of Mithra,” he says, “ began to be
generally bruited abroad in Rome.” In Plutarch’s
time (46-125 A.D.) “the Mazdean sect already enjoyed
a certain notoriety in the Occident.” Of Roman
writers the first to mention it is Statius in his Thebais
(Book I., fin.), about 80 A.D. Then, and throughout
its whole subsequent course in the West, the worship
of Mithra was recognised as being simply and solely
adoration of the Sun, with whom inscriptions found
especially in Germany, but also in Dacia, Southern
Gaul, England, and other countries, openly identify
the god. His shrines or chapels were usually under
ground, and in those which have been discovered are
found in Greek and Latin such inscriptions as “ To
the Sungod Mithra,” “To Mithra the unconquered Sun.”
�MITHRA AND MODERN MYTHS
15
Mithraism was largely a soldiers’ religion, and this
explains why it was carried by the legions to so
many parts of the Empire. The worshippers of
Mithra “rated strength higher than gentleness, and
preferred courage to lenity. From their long associa
tion with barbarous religions there was perhaps a
residue of cruelty in their ethics” (Cumont, p. 142).
The oldest Mithraic inscriptions found at Rome date
from the reigns of Trajan (A.D. 98-117) and Hadrian
(a.D. 117-138). Sculptures represent Mithra as a
youth wearing a Phrygian cap, starting forth from a
rock. In his hand he holds a torch. In others he is
a vigorous young man with one knee planted upon
a bull, into whose neck he has driven a dagger. Boys
holding torches stand by him. A dog licks up the
flowing blood of the bull, as sometimes does a serpent
also. A scorpion has seized the bull, and a raven
stands near at hand. These probably are connected
with the signs of the Zodiac through which the Sun
passes. Elsewhere Mithra as the Solar archer shoots
an arrow into the rock or cloud, whence flows a stream
of water.
Porphyry, on the authority of Eubulus, tells us that
the worshippers of Mithra were divided into a number
of different Orders, all believing in the Transmigration
of Souls, and that the members of the highest order,
the “ Fathers,” who were styled Eagles and Hawks,
abstained from animal food. He says that the
“ Initiated ” who took part in their “ orgies ” were, if
men called Lions, if women, Hyaenas. Some say that
there were seven classes,1 Ravens, Griffins, Soldiers,
Lions, Persians, Sun-runners, and Fathers, the Ravens
being the lowest order who waited on the others.
Tertullian says that they had “ virgins and continent
men” among them. Others deny that women were
1 It is to the initiatory rites undergone on entering these that modern
Mythology gives the title of “ Sacraments.”
�i6
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
allowed to join at all in the worship of Mithra,
and say that they were compelled to adore Cybele
instead. Nonnus tells us that eighty different kinds
of tortures were inflicted upon those who were being
initiated into the Mysteries: others say twelve, among
which are mentioned the test by fire and water, by
hunger, thirst and cold, by flogging, bleeding, branding
with hot irons, and the threat of being murdered.
Some at least of these, in particular the scourging
and the ablutions, originated in the ancient Persian
rites (Cumont, p. 6), others in Stoic ideas, which had
a “profound influence” on Mithraism. The religion
probably borrowed from Persia belief in a resurrec
tion, if it was not rather in transmigration. The
doctrine of a “renovation” or resurrection is found
only in very late portions of the Avesta, composed
when the Persians had for hundreds of years had
large Israelite colonies dwelling in the very midst of
their empire, at Ecbatana (Achmetha, now Hamadan)
and elsewhere. There can be no doubt that it was
derived from Israel. They had the custom of
“ baptising ” certain of their number (if we may use
the term baptism in the loose way in which our
opponents do) in the blood of a bull. This, the
taurobolion, was borrowed from the worship of Cybele.
Sacrifices of more than one kind were offered in their
subterranean temples. Lampridius (Commodus, cap.
ix.) tells us that the latter Emperor (a.d. 180-192) was
admitted to take part in the mystic rites of Mithraism,
and that as part of the ceremony he caused a human
being to be murdered in reality (and not only in
pretence, as at that time seems usually to have been
the case). But amid the strange and terrible rites by
means of which the neophyte was initiated on
ordinary occasions was, Cumont says, “a simulated
murder, which in its origin was undoubtedly real”
(p. 161). The Church historian Socrates tells us that
�MITHRA AND MODERN MYTHS
17
in A.D. 362, when a deserted temple of Mithra at
Alexandria was being removed, many human skulls
were discovered, which proved that human sacrifices
had been offered there (Bk. III., chap, ii., §§ 2-6).
One of the noteworthy things about Mithraism is
the way in which it won the favour of so many of
the Roman Emperors, generally the worst of them.
When King Tiridates of Armenia came to Rome,
Nero (A.D. 54-68) expressed a wish to be initiated
into the mysteries, and Tiridates adored in Nero an
emanation from Mithra himself (Cumont, pp. 85, 86).
The Emperors Aurelian, Diocletian, Galerius, and
Licinius, as well as Julian the Apostate, openly
favoured Mithraism, which was then at the zenith
of its power, and was destined to fade away gradually
before the spread of the Gospel. Julian (A.D. 361-3),
being an apostate from Christianity, seems to have
applied to Mithra some Christian titles.
Mithraism, “ far from hostility towards the ancient
Graeco-Roman beliefs . . . sought to accommodate
itself to them, in appearance at least. A pious mystic
could, without renouncing his faith, dedicate a votive
inscription to the Capitoline triad, Jupiter, Juno, and
Minerva ” (Cumont, pp. 175-7). In the fourth century
the high priests of the religion “ were found perform
ing the highest offices of the priesthood in temples
of all sorts ” (ibid?). “ In the region of the Rhine
the Celtic divinities were worshipped in the crypts of
the Persian god, or at least alongside of them.”
Professor Cumont shews clearly that it was to
Mithraism that we must trace the assumption of
divine titles by the emperors of Rome. The attempt
to supersede all other worship by the adoration of
the Emperor, regarded as in some degree the in
carnation of the Sun-god, was blasted, after a fierce
struggle carried on for centuries, only by the faithful
ness of the Christians, who preferred death to apostasy.
c
�i8
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
Therefore a battle to the death continued for many
generations between Christianity and Mithraism. It
culminated in the utter defeat of the latter and its
ultimate extinction. Yet we are now gravely assured
that Christians mistook Mithraism for their own
faith, and adopted as their creed the leading tenets
of their deadliest foe. What they had previously
believed about their Divine Master and Lord, for
whom so many of them had died by fire in Nero’s
gardens, by the sword, by the teeth of wild beasts,
through forced labour in deadly mines, and by in
describable and manifold tortures, was, according to
our modern mythologists, so vague and ill-defined
that it practically vanished from their minds, leaving
room for the tenets of the great rival faith. Or, if
we are not prepared to believe all this, we are invited
to credit the assertion that the very first disciples
of Christ, the men who have given us the New
Testament, completely forgot all that they had seen
and heard of His life and teaching, and quite inno
cently fell into the error of attributing to Him the
details of a Mithraic myth which, in the form in
which its modern expounders have stated it, had not
yet come into existence !
Mr. Robertson informs us, as we have seen, that
Mithra figures “ as supernaturally born of a Virgin
mother and of the Most High God” in the fourth
and fifth centuries of the Christian era. In proof of
this he refers to the reply of the Christian bishops
of Armenia to the Persian viceroy Mihr Nerseh’s
attack upon Christianity, as quoted by Elisaeus
(Eghishe) the Armenian historian. Nothing whatever
of the sort occurs there. The reply contains only
two references to Mithra. In one of these the
Persians are quoted as saying Mihr astouads i knoche
dsanau, “ the god Mithra was born of a woman ”;
in the other we are informed that a Persian sage had
�MITHRA AND MODERN MYTHS
19
affirmed that Mihr astouads mairadsin e i mardkane,
“The god Mithra is incestuously born of a mortal
mother” (Elisaeus, Concerning the Vardans and the
Armenian War, Armenian original, Venice, 1864,
Book II., pp. 53 and 57). It requires a vigorous
imagination to read Virgin-birth into these state
ments. Mithraic sculptures in Europe do not even
recognise Mithra’s birth of a mortal at all, but uni
formly represent him as springing from the “ Petra
Genetrix,” or “Rock Mother.” Nor does another
ancient Armenian writer, Eznik, say anything to
support Mr. Robertson’s contention, though he tells
us that the Persians believed that the sun {Khorashef
would die {Refutation of Heresies, Arm. original,
Constantinople edition, 1873, Book II., pp. I33> T34)Nor does the ’A/7ra6avaTi<Tiu.6s, published by A. Die
terich under the title Eine Mtthrasliturgie, contain
one syllable about Mithra’s virgin-birth. The tenet,
in short, owes its origin to modern mythology.
It is not difficult to understand the genuine legend.
Mithra is represented as born of a rock, because in
Vedic Sanskrit the word asman, and in Avestic
Persian asman means not only rock but also cloud and
sky. The Sun-god does rise in the sky. Mithra’s
struggle with the bull and his slaughter of the
animal, reluctantly undertaken at Ahura Mazda’s
command, are at least once in sculpture so repre
sented as to give his countenance a look of re
luctance. This has been seized upon by some
modern opponents of Christianity. By depicting
the face only of the god, apart from the rest of the
engraving, they endeavour to support their bestowal
of the title of “Suffering Saviour” on Mithra. As
the Avestic word Gaus means “ the earth ” as well as
“ cow, ox, bull,” and as the word denoting the animal’s
“soul” (urvanj comes from the same root as does
urvara (plant, tree), the myth evidently shews forth
�20
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
the fact that by piercing the earth with his dagger
like rays the Sun enables the vegetable creation to
spring forth.
Mithra was originally the god of a pastoral people
in Persia. Hence it is not surprising that a rude
sculpture depicts two herdsmen standing near the
spot where he emerges from the rock or cloud. But
our modern mythologists mistake these for shepherds,
and on this slender substructure inform us that
one of the beliefs of the Mithraites was that “this
Divine Saviour came into the world as an infant,”
and “ His first worshippers were shepherds.” Having
thus invented a legend for which they have no good
and sufficient authority, and bestowed a title borrowed
from Christianity upon Mithra, they speak of a
“ close and curious resemblance ” between their
newly-coined myth and the Gospel narrative of
Christ’s birth.
In a precisely similar way they inform us that
Mithra was “ in more senses than one the~‘ Mediator’
between man and the Most High.” The sole founda
tion for this confident assertion is Plutarch’s statement
that, in the religion of the Zoroastrians, Mithra was
called
because he stood midway between the
Good Principal, Ormazd, and the Evil Principal,
Ahriman {De Iride et Osiride, cap. 46). Our
opponents’ deduction from these premisses is doubt
less ingenious, but can scarcely be denominated
scholarly or even honest. Plutarch goes on to say
that the Persians worshipped and offered sacrifices
to both the Good and the Evil Principle, and that,
mixing a wolf’s blood with the juice of the moly (by
which he doubtless means the Z^w^-plant), they
used to pour out the libation “in a sunless place.”
As his statements are incorrect about the Zoroastrians,
they may refer to the Mithraists, who worshipped in
caves. If his worshippers really held him to be a
�MITHRA AND MODERN MYTHS
21
“ middle-man ” between Ormazd and Ahriman, we
can the better understand Mithra’s undoubted associa
tion with Cybele, Baal, and other such immoral
deities. But this hardly seems consonant with .the
statement that his religion was one “ of inward
holiness, of austere self-discipline and purity.”
We are asked to believe that there existed a
striking likeness between “the repeated lustrations
and ablutions ” of the Mithraists and Christian bap
tism, which was never repeated, and between their
sacred repast, at which the initiated ate bread and
drank water together, and the Lord’s Supper—
especially because it is conjectured that sometimes
wine was mixed with the water. It is apparently
forgotten that lustrations and sacrificial banquets are
among the most ancient and widespread rites of
nearly all Ethnic religions, and that they existed
among the Jews ages before Mithraism came into
contact with the Western world. Any resemblances
in this respect between Christianity and Mithraism
are more apparent than real, and they are far more
than counterbalanced by the vast differences between
the two religions in spirit, practice, and (as far as
anything can be ascertained of Mithraic doctrines)
belief. Even in connexion with the sacred banquet
of the Mithraists this is observable. “ In a picture
of the ‘ Banquet of the Seven Priests ’ in the Mithraic
Catacomb there are found phrases of the ‘ Eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die ’ order,” as Mr. Robertson
himself has to admit {Pagan Christs, p. 345)—a
spirit very different from the Christian. It is true
that he endeavours to remove the effect of this ad
mission by the perfectly gratuitous supposition that
these words were “ inscribed in a hostile spirit by the
hands of Christian invaders of the Mithraic retreat.”
But a cause which requires to be supported by such
baseless suppositions is self-condemned. We require
�22
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
at least a small amount of fact to prove his main
point, and we are given instead theories, conjectures,
and imagination enough to produce a new Vera
Historia of a modern Lucian.
When Ahriman shall have done his worst, accord
ing to old Persian belief (whether accepted by Mithraists or not we have no means of knowing), Mithra
will kill another marvellous bull, mingle its fat with
wine, and by giving his people this beverage will
confer immortality upon them. But of “ the burial
and resurrection of the Lord, the Mediator and
Saviour, burial in a rock tomb and resurrection from
that tomb,” we find not a word said even in the
ancient Persian writings. As we have no Mithraic
Scriptures that can be consulted, the information
which Mr. Robertson gives us on this important
subject cannot be derived from any authority of
greater weight than his own fancy. In works of
fiction this gift would be invaluable, but even in the
twentieth century we really need something more
reliable than this in support of asserted facts. It is
perhaps strange that we do not find mention of
Mithra’s return to the “ rock ” or cloud whence he, as
Sun-god, sprang. Why should not the Sun’s setting
be commemorated as well as his rising? But the
fact remains.
With regard to our Lord, it is somewhat too late
in the day to endeavour to revive the exploded
theory that He never existed, but was merely a per
sonification of the Sun. Archbishop Whately’s
Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte,
though written to confute Hume, would equally
reduce this Solar myth hypothesis to the absurd.
On this point we need say nothing further.
The religion of Mithra which deified the Csesars,
permitted its professors to fraternise with the wor
shippers of Anaitis, Cybele, Jupiter, and Baal, and
�MITHRA AND MODERN MYTHS
23
to adore these and other deities, bathed its devotees
in bull’s blood, and feigned, if it did not practice,
ritual murder at the initiation of its neophytes, cannot
by any imaginable process of reasoning be identified
with the faith which sternly condemned each and
every one of these practices, and whose professors
died by the extremity of agonising torture rather
than sprinkle a pinch of incense on the fire burning
before Caesar’s statue. But the study of Mithrais.m
is valuable because it enables us to see what Chris
tianity would have been had it originated in the wor
ship of the Sun. The rise, progress, and downfall
of Mithraism shew us also how great is man’s felt
need of a Saviour, and how utterly insufficient to
satisfy it was such a “ pagan Christ ” as Mithra, who
was not incarnated, who neither suffered nor died nor
rose again for men, and was held to be the Inter
mediary between the Spirit of Good and the Spirit
of Evil.
v
�fl
THE “INDIAN CHRIST” OF SOME
MODERN MYTHOLOGISTS
'
T N all ages and in every land universal experience
has convinced men of the truth of the saying of
the ancient Arabian sage, “ Man is bom unto trouble
as the sparks fly upward.” Not only does sorrow fall
to men’s lot and cause them to shed more tears than
would fill the oceans, according to Buddha’s genuinely
Eastern hyperbole, but death itself awaits them, that
“ Shadow feared of man,” ready to strike them down
when they least expect it, certain to do so some day.
In varying degrees, too, the consciousness of guilt,
the reproach of conscience, the dread of punishment,
have ever pursued mankind, in many lands leading
even to the sacrifice of one’s own children in order to
atone for sin. In some savage tribes at the present
day, terror of the unseen evil powers which are sup
posed to surround them is so great that it seems to
have swallowed up all loftier ideas of religion. Even
in the most highly civilised communities of ancient
days the existence of similar beliefs is evidenced by
the discovery of numberless charms to avert the evil
eye, the extensive use of amulets, and the immense
importance attached to all kinds of omens.
Under these circumstances it was but natural that
men should seek some means of escape from so many
evils. Various methods of attaining this end were
devised. But man’s consciousness of his own sinful
ness and his inability to contend successfully with
such mighty invisible foes made him seek elsewhere
24
�THE “INDIAN CHRIST
25
for a Deliverer, one who would save him, it might be
from death, it might be from sin, or at least from its
consequences here and hereafter.
If, as we have the best reason for believing, there
still lingered in the world in early ages, and some
times in much later times, some dim recollection of
the Divine Promise of the coming of One who
should bruise—or rather crush—the Serpent’s head
(Gen. iiio 15), it will not seem strange to find among
different nations the conception of someone, man or
God, who had arisen, or would yet arise, to deliver
men from sin and death. Amid his many woes, man
would naturally cling to the hope which such a
promise would inspire: and he would be led to form
some conception of the nature and work of the
looked-for Saviour. Those among us who do not
accept the Biblical statement that this promise was
actually given must at least admit that, even apart
from it, such a hope not only might spring up in
human hearts, but has actually manifested itself in a
variety of forms in different parts of the world and
among nations of various stocks.
So well established is this fact that attempts have
actually been made to prove that all our Christian
conceptions of the Saviour of mankind are either
borrowed from those of the heathen or have origi
nated in exactly the same way. A sufficient answer
to this, perhaps, is to point out that we have the
historical Christ. We have, therefore, no need of
theory to account for Him when we have the fact.
But it is none the less instructive to learn some of
the leading ideas that have come into existence
among mankind, apart from direct revelation, and to
see how in some cases men have evolved ideal
saviours from among their gods, and how, in others,
they have almost insensibly so coloured their delinea
tions of past or future, real or imaginary, human
�26
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
beings that we are thus able to understand what
kind of a Deliverer men yearned for. In studying the
most ancient records which deal with these matters,
however, we must be careful to restrain the free play
of imagination, in which not a few recent writers on
the subject have indulged, and to confine ourselves
to the recital of actual facts. Strict adherence to the
truth is the only way of learning any lessons which
these primaeval or even less ancient traditions, myths,
or forecasts have to teach us. So studied they are
full of interest and instruction. Among other things
we may learn from them how low and degraded
human ideas often are, and how far short of the
Divine reality men’s highest hopes have fallen.
One of the ideal “ Saviours ” who are still adored
in India is Krishna. At the present time in that
country an attempt is being made to represent him
to the people as an Indian Christ, so to speak. The
object of this is to prevent the spread of Christianity
by substituting an indigenous deity for a foreign
object of worship. A work styled The Imitation of
Krishna by its very name shews this only too clearly.
Even in England it has recently been asserted that
there exists such a marvellous likeness between the
story of Krishna and the Gospel accounts of our
Lord’s life and work that the Indian god is worthy of
being styled a “ Pagan Christ.” People assure us
that the Gospel narrative is largely borrowed from
the Indian myth, and that detail after detail of the
latter is servilely reproduced in the New Testament
and credulously accepted by Christians as a genuine
fact of history. Yet it is acknowledged by even
writers of the modern mythological school, if we may
so term them, that the legends regarding Krishna
which are to be found in circulation in Indian litera
ture are of very late date. No one can tell exactly
when these books were composed, but the earliest
�THE “INDIAN CHRIST
27
of them are at the very least several hundreds
of years later than the composition of the Gospels.
On this point there is no controversy among scholars.
One of the modern mythologists tries to get over
this difficulty by saying, “ The lateness of the
Puranic stories in literary form is no argument
against their antiquity ” (Mr. Vivian Phelips, The
Churches and Modern Thought, 2nd ed., p. 137). We
leave others to admire the logic here displayed, merely
observing that it just as well that we Christians have
not to ask people to accept the records of Christ’s
life upon such a slender foundation. How the first
disciples of Christ in Palestine could possibly copy
Indian myths ages before they had come into exist
ence, or at least before we have even the very slightest^
evidence of their having been invented, is a puzzle to
the ordinary mind. It requires a great development
of the credulity so conspicuous in the writings of our
“ friends on the other side ” to enable anyone to
accept such a theory. The difficulty is still further
increased when we come to consider the legends
about Krishna actually current among his devotees.
For, as we shall see, there is scarcely the faintest
resemblance between them and the Gospel narrative.
But were the resemblance a thousand times as
great as it is, since there is no doubt which of the
two accounts is far the earlier, it would be clear to
most men that the borrowing, if borrowing there be,
must have been from the earlier narrative, to wit the
Christian, and not conversely.
Another writer—a lady this time—gravely invites
us to believe that “ The ideal which Jesus Christ held
up to His followers is essentially the same as that
which Krishna proposed to Arjuna” in the Bhagavad
Gita. “ The Gospel (!) of Krishna and the Gospel of
Christ have in fact the same ultimate aim, to open
to the human soul a way of escape from the dualism
�28
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
of matter and spirit in which humanity is at present
involved ” {Hibbert Journal, October, 1907).
We leave it to anyone who has even a very slight
acquaintance with the New Testament to judge
whether this account of the object of Christ’s Gospel
is in any imaginable sense correct. Mr. Vivian
Phelips tells that Krishna was “ born of a virgin,
Devaki ”: and he assures his credulous readers that,
ere Christ was born,“ the whole world had already
been conversant for ages past with stories of suffering
Saviours, similar in all essentials to the Gospel narra
tives” {op. cit. p. 161). Whether this be so or not
we shall soon see as far as Krishna is concerned,
apart altogether from the lateness of the myth.
Some study of the original authorities from which
sober students must draw all their information re
garding Krishna—the tenth Book of the Bhagavata
Purana, the fifth Book of the Vishnu Purana, the
Harivamsa, the Mahabharata, and the Bhagavad
Gita,—compels us with reluctance to come to the
conclusion that this gentleman’s long account of
Krishna is certainly not drawn from these, the only
genuine authorities on the- subject. Can it be that
the modern mythologist is in reality a romancer,
appealing to his imagination for his “ facts ” ? Even
the totally unreliable Indian myths about Krishna,
comparatively modern though they are, do not sup
port at all adequately many of the statements made
by such writers. If a writer on the subject has really
lived in India for years, he should at least know the
notorious Prem Sagar, the Hindi version of the part
of the Bhagavata Purana which deals with Krishna.
In it we are informed that Devaki, Krishna’s mother,
so far from being a virgin at his conception, had
already before that borne seven children to her hus
band, Wasudeva {Prem Sagar, chap. iii.). What re
liance therefore can be placed upon a writer who
�THE “INDIAN CHRIST
29
asserts that Krishna’s Virgin-birth is a distinctive
feature in the legend ?
He proceeds, however, to tell us that “ The ancient
hymns of the Rig-Veda furnish the germs of those
Sun-myths which tell of the death, resurrection, and
ascension of a Virgin-born Saviour” (op.cit., p. 141).
The errors in this sentence are almost as numerous
as the words. Whatever else Krishna may be, he
assuredly is not a “ sun-myth,” any more than he is
a “suffering Saviour.” His name, which signifies
“the Black,” probably shews that he was originally
a deity worshipped by the aboriginal inhabitants of
India, and borrowed from them by their Aryan
conquerors. No mention at all of Krishna is to be
found in the Rig- Veda. As in few countries is the
sun “ black,” we find some difficulty in believing that
he was ever a Sun-god, though a trifle like this does
not seriously discourage the credulity of our modern
mythologists. We may imagine them saying, “Why
should not the sun be black ? He is black—during
an eclipse.” We present them with this argument
for all it is worth. It is at least more logical than the
doctrine—inculcated by Mr. Vivian Phelips, not by
the Hindus—that Devaki was a virgin after bearing
her husband seven children.
The Greek writer Megasthenes tells us that a deity,
whom he identifies with Herakles (Hercules), was
worshipped near Methora (Mathura, the present
Mattra) in his own time (306-298 B.C.). Possibly
this was Krishna. If so, this is the first mention we
find of him anywhere. The Chandogya Upanishad
(III., § 17, 6) seems to imply that he was a student
of philosophy. Upon this Sir Alfred Lyall’s {Asiatic
Studies, R.P.A. reprint, p. 21) suggestion that possi
bly he was a religious reformer is based. The earlier
part of the Mahabharata depicts him as a warriorking. Krishna can hardly have played all these
�30
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
parts, and it is probable that he played none of
them. His character and conduct, as depicted for us
in the books most prized by his worshippers, often in
passages unfit for translation, are best described by
saying that they are worthy of the name which
he bears, taking its meaning in a moral sense. His
exploits are evidently fabulous, but, as related in
these books, they consisted mainly in indiscriminate
adultery, varied with a good deal of murder. He is
said to have had eight specially beautiful wives of his
own, besides over 16,000 others, and by them he had
a family of 180,000 sons, all of whom finally killed
one another, or were murdered by their father. It is
a comfort to know that only his eight principal wives
were burnt alive on his funeral pyre, in accordance
with the merciful custom of the Hindus.
Nowhere but in India, where history and fable are
regarded as one and the same thing (itihasaj, would
all this be deemed historical. But, if it be not so,
we have no knowledge of the real Krishna, if he ever
existed. In that famous philosophical poem the
Bhagavad Gita, the author of the work has chosen
to put his own ideas into Krishna’s mouth, much
as if Lucretius had selected Hercules or Bacchus or
some other popular deity as his own mouthpiece, or
just as people nowadays use Mrs. Partington’s name
when they wish to perpetrate a mildly silly joke.
This is not the place to venture upon an account
of the philosophy taught in the poem we have men
tioned. Suffice it to say that in it Krishna, true
to his character as a warrior, disguising himself, acts
as the hero Arjuna’s charioteer, and urges the latter
to overcome his great reluctance to shed the blood
of his relatives. Krishna reminds him that one
should always perform the duties imposed upon him
by his caste. Hence, he argues, since Arjuna belongs
to the Kshattriya or warrior caste, he must fight and
�THE “INDIAN CHRIST
31
kill people (Bhag. Gita, Bks. Ill,, 35 ; VIII. 7 ; XL, 33,
34; XVIII., 43, 48). Killing is no murder, he is
assured, because of the transmigration of souls
(Bk. II., 18-22). Krishna argues that, in accordance
with the eclectic philosophy which he teaches, any
one who is possessed of true knowledge (Jndna}
thereby escapes all the evil consequences of sin
(Bk. IV., 36, 37). Such teaching lays the axe at the;
root of the tree of all morality. A modern Hindu
writer, well aware that in the Puranas Krishna is the
impersonation of almost every vice, thus defends and
endeavours to glorify his conduct. “ The being,” he
writes, “ who is equal in virtue as well as in vice,
is to us a grander being than the extremely virtuous
man. . . . Conceive a man who is trying his utmost
to fly from vice to its opposite pole, virtue ; imagine
also a being to whom heat and cold, virtue and vice
are the same, and you will find that the latter is
infinitely superior to the former” (Mulopadhaya,
Imitation of Krishna^ preface, pp. 2, 3). A cause
which requires such reasoning to support it is of
course lost. But what are we to think of those who
venture to compare Krishna with Christ, and who
tell us that “ the Gospel of Krishna and the Gospel
of Christ have, in fact, the same ultimate aim ” ?
Some tell us that the worshippers of Krishna hold
that devotion to him is the means of salvation, and
that this is the same as our Biblical doctrine of
Justification by Faith. But this statement is com
pleted by those who first made it by adding that,
as no such doctrine of devotion (bhakti} is found
elsewhere in Hinduism, it must have been borrowed
from Christianity. This is, no doubt, possible. Yet
a good principle is liable to abuse, and its evil effects
will then be in proportion to its original goodness.
The results of “ devotion ” to Krishna are among the
most pernicious conceivable. All who are aware of
�32
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
the conduct of the so-called Vallabhacharyas or sect
of the Maharajas ” and their practice of offering
“ body, mind, and property ” (tan, man, dhan) to their
chiefs, whom they regard as incarnations of Krishna,
will readily admit this. Cases heard before the
High Court at Bombay have revealed almost in
credible vileness and cruelty thereby produced. Yet
Krishna is the deity most honoured in India to-day.
The fabulous history of Krishna, as related es
pecially in the Vishnu Purana, is too long to repeat
here in detail, but we must give an outline of it.
Kansa, who was an incarnation of the demon
Kalanemi, slew the first six of his cousin Devakl’s
children as soon as they were born. Vishnu was
incarnate in the eighth, Krishna, who was black.
Failing in his attempt to find and kill him too, Kansa,
to whom it had been foretold that the child would ulti
mately cause his death, imprisoned Krishna’s parents,
Vasudeva and Devaki, and ordered the murder of
every pious man and every boy of unusual vigour.
Besides many improper exploits which are frankly
dirty and indecent, Krishna on one occasion held up
the mountain Govardhana on the tip of one of his
fingers for seven days to shelter some herdsmen from
a storm. He also slew a demon-bull and some ser
pents of considerable size. Mounted on the wonder
ful bird Garuda, he once went up to the sky to restore
her lost ear-rings to the goddess Aditi. On one
occasion he hospitably entertained a rishi. But
unfortunately he omitted, through mere inadvertence,
to wipe away some fragments of food which had
fallen on the holy man’s foot. Enraged at this want
of respect, the latter declared that his host would be
killed by an arrow in the foot. This came to pass
through an accident, since a hunter one day mistook
the god’s foot for a deer and shot his arrow into it.
Instead of punishing him, Krishna sent him up to
�THE “INDIAN CHRIST
33
the sky in a celestial chariot. Dying of his wound,
Krishna was burnt by Arjuna on a funeral pyre,
together with eight of his unfortunate wives. His
parents afterwards burnt themselves alive through
grief.
This is the legend from which some of our
modern sages, with an equal disregard of chronology,
probability, history, and common sense, would have
us believe that the Gospel narrative is derived I
The fact is that those who invented the myths
relating to Krishna “ went upon the analogy of their
own experience” in regard to such questions as
ethical decency and the lack of moral purpose which
is so conspicuous in his character. They never
intended him “to be a model, or a reforming ruler
and teacher of mankind” (Sir Alfred Lyall, op. cit.y
pp. 31, 32). In one sense he is considered by his
worshippers to be a “ Divine Saviour,” not, however,
one who saves “ his people from their sins ” like our
Lord (Matt. i. 21), but one who enables them to live
in the unchecked perpetration of their cherished sins,
which is not quite the same thing. Unfortunately
Krishna has become perhaps the most influential of
the deities now worshipped in India, though it has
well been said by a man of great experience of these
things in that land : “ The stories related of Krishna’s
life do more than anything else to destroy the morals
and corrupt the imagination of the Hindu youth.”
�THE HISTORICAL BUDDHA AND
MODERN MYTHOLOGY
TA ^E have seen that Mithra is the Sun-god and
* V was acknowledged by Mithraists to be such.
Krishna may or may not have existed as a human
being, but certainly had no connection with any
Solar myth. A third great Oriental hero, Buddha,
was undoubtedly a real man. Attempts to represent
him as a Solar myth may be held to have completely
broken down since the discovery of the Emperor
Asoka’s inscriptions, in one of which Buddha’s birth
place is indicated and the date of his birth indirectly
given. This inscription, though dating about three
hundred years after Buddha’s1 birth, is the earliest
extant document on the subject. Contrast this with
the well ascertained date of the composition of our
Gospels, and the fact that the earliest of St. Paul’s
Epistles can be proved to have been written within
twenty-five years of the Crucifixion. This will en
able the reader to judge for himself of the relative
reliability of Buddhist and Christian documents.
Asoka’s Inscriptions, however, tell us practically
nothing of Buddha’s history except the fact that he
was born in the Lumbini Grove near Taullhwa (in
Nipal), apparently about 557 B.C., and died about
B.c. 477, and that he uttered certain discourses,
none of the names of which correspond with any
part of the present Buddhist Canon, whether we
take that of the Northern or that of the Southern
1 Asoka reigned about 257-220, B.c.
34
�THE HISTORICAL BUDDHA
35
Buddhists. Asoka in many places, however, caused
what we may style the Buddhist1 creed to be in
scribed on rocks, and this agrees with what the Pali
books of the “Three Baskets” {Tipitakani) give us
as the summary of his teaching. There can be
no doubt, therefore, what this was, and little un
certainty is now felt that from the Pali books we can
ascertain with fair accuracy the main details of his
life and a tolerably correct idea of his character and
work. We are able, therefore, to learn what was
believed about him at least some few hundred years
after his birth, and to distinguish from this the multi
farious legends contained in much later books. It is
well to point out this in order to prevent an objec
tion that our distinction between the historical and
the legendary is arbitrary. There may be something
mythical even in what scholars, on the authority of
the oldest Buddhist Scriptures, now generally regard
as probably correct in the main; but there can be no
doubt that what can be proved on documentary
evidence to be later additions to the narrative are
legendary. Yet some of our modern mythologists
do not, as we shall see, scruple to invent and add to
them certain mythical details not found even in the
latest and most unreliable Buddhist fables. Modern
European scholars have written many admirable
works on Buddha’s life and teaching, and there is,
therefore, absolutely no excuse for any writer of the
present day who ventures to draw either on his
imagination for his statements, or upon such accounts
as those given many years ago by St. Hilaire, or
again by late Sanskrit, Tibetan, or Chinese books of
no authority.
1 This may be thus translated :—
“Whatever conditions are sprung from a cause,
The cause of them the Tathagato
Has told, and what is their end :
Thus spake the Great Monk.”
�36
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
We are not surprised that Mr. Blatchford should
inform us that the account of our Lord’s Virgin
birth was borrowed from Buddhism {God and My
Neighbour: see my criticism of his statements in
the Clarion for April 8th, 1904), and that Buddha
was a Solar myth. But it is somewhat strange to
find such a man as Mr. Vivian Phelips following so
innocently in his footsteps. Yet the latter tells us
that Buddha was miraculously conceived by his
mother Maya, that “he1 descended into hell, he
ascended into heaven ... he is to come upon the
earth in the latter days to restore the world to order
and happiness. He is to be judge of the dead. . . .
According to Buddha the motive of all our actions
should be pity, or love for our neighbour . . . Finally,
we should note that Buddha aimed to establish a
‘ Kingdom of Heaven ’ {Dharmachakra^h How any
one can venture to palm off the “Kingdom of
Heaven ” upon us as the translation of a word which
means “the wheel of the Law,” and connotes the
later Buddhist idea that Buddha claimed universal
dominion on earth, passes comprehension. But it
must be admitted that this last assertion is quite as
correct as the others we have quoted in the above
extracts.
As his authority for Buddha’s miraculous birth,
Mr. Phelips mentions1 Professor Rhys Davids’ state
2
ment that “ Csoma Korosi {Asiatic Researches, xx.
299) refers in a distant way to a belief of the later
Mongol Buddhists that Maya was a virgin : but this
has not been confirmed.” Professor Rhys Davids
1 The Churches of Modern Thought, pp. 124 sqq.
2 His other authorities, he tells us, are Beal’s Romantic History of
Buddha, Bunsen’s Angel Messiah, and a report mentioned by Jerome
{Contra Jovianum, Lib. I.). It is almost incredible that he should
accept such books as authorities for the existence of the dogma and
expect others also to do so.
�THE HISTORICAL BUDDHA
37
himself, on the authority of Buddhist works, says
that Maya was “about the forty-fifth year of her
age ” when “ she promised her husband a son ”
(Buddhism, S.P.C.K., ist ed., p. 26). As she was
doubtless married, at latest, when about twelve years
old, and had then been living with her husband
Suddhodana for some thirty-three years, it is hardly
necessary to consider the question of Buddha’s
“ Virgin-birth ” any further. Her death occurred
seven days after her son was born. All this is neither
miraculous nor at all similar to the Gospel narrative.
In my Noble Eightfold Path, I have given an
Appendix containing the earliest Pali and Sanskrit
accounts of the birth of Buddha (pp. 202-6). It is
there shewn that the earliest Pali books of the
Buddhist Canon give absolutely no hint whatever
of Mayas virginity, and mention nothing miracu
lous in Buddha’s conception. In much later Pali
works as for instance in the introduction to the
Jatakas, we find a dream of Maya’s to the effect that
she was carried away to the Himalayas, and that
there a great white elephant entered her side. This
is related only as a dream, not as a reality, and wise
men are called together by her husband to explain
what such a singular dream means. They say that
the meaning is that her son will be either a great
king or an enlightened sage (a “ Buddha ”). But
even here there is no hint of virginity or of a super
natural birth. The first indication of any such idea
is found in a Sanskrit poem by Asvaghosha entitled
the Buddha-Carita (Bk. I., vv. 17, 18). Professor
Cowell thinks that this romance may possibly date
from the first century of the Christian era. The
Professor says, “ Whether he (Asvaghosha) could be
the contemporary and spiritual adviser of Kanishka
in the first century A.D. is not yet proved, though it
appears very probable; but at any rate his Buddha-
�38
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
Carita seems to have been translated .into Chinese
early in the fifth century. This must imply that it
enjoyed a great reputation among the Buddhists of
India, and justifies our fixing the date of its com
position at least one or two centuries earlier” (Intro
duction to Buddha-Carita, p. v.). Hence we see that
something marvellous in Buddha’s conception was
believed by the Indian Buddhists perhaps as early
as three hundred years after our Lord’s time, possibly
even in the first century. But what was it which
this flowery poem states on the subject ? It boldly
accepts as a fact of actual occurrence what the
Introduction to the Jataka fables mentions only as a
dream, viz. that the future Buddha in the form of
an elephant entered his mother’s womb. Asvaghosha
seems to indicate his belief in Maya’s virginity also
by saying that Suddhodana, “ Having gained her,
often mastered desire, ever woman’s practice, and
darkness (or anger) then too [he mastered], not at
all by night having approached the brilliant moon
plant.”
If this is what he means, he very possibly got the idea
from Christian accounts of our Lord’s birth, for there
is no doubt that Christian preachers reached the
western coast of India even in Apostolic times. (See
Geo. Smith, The Conversion of India, pp. 8 and 9.)
The idea is certainly completely foreign to earlier
Buddhism, which saw nothing marvellous or super
natural in Buddha’s conception and birth. Asva
ghosha proceeds to relate many strange things about
Buddha, who, he tells us, after being born from
Maya’s left side, immediately walked and spoke,
proclaiming his own greatness. Later Buddhist
works are full of the most absurd tales about his
conduct then and afterwards. For instance, the
Mahavaggo informs us that, very shortly after his
“enlightenment” under the Bo-tree, Buddha visited
�THE HISTORICAL BUDDHA
39
a community of one thousand Jatilas, or ascetics with
matted locks, near Uruvela. He obtained permission
to spend the night in the room where they kept their
sacred fire burning. There he found “ a savage
serpent-king of great magical power, a dreadfully
venomous serpent,” who, angered at his intrusion,
‘‘sent forth fire. And the Worshipful One (Buddha),
turning his own body into fire, sent forth flames.”
Having thus overcome the serpent, Buddha next
morning threw him into his alms-bowl and exhibited
him to the chief of the monks. One night Buddha
paid a visit to the Tavatimsa heaven to pluck a
flower. He created five hundred vessels with fire in
them for the Jatilas to warm themselves at on a
winter night when they had bathed. During an
inundation, Buddha made the water in one place
recede, and then he “walked about in the midst of
the water on a dust-covered spot.” In all he per
formed 3,500 miracles, and thereby converted all the
Jatilas (Mahavaggo, i., 15-20). We mention these as
a specimen of the more sober marvels attributed to
Buddha, in order that the contrast between his
miracles and those of our Lord may be clear to
everyone.
Some have tried to prove that the Lalita- Vistara,
a famous Sanskrit romance about Buddha’s early life,
was in existence shortly after the beginning of the
Christian era. These attempts have failed, though
we know that such books existed as early as the sixth
century after Christ. But, even were it proved that
they had existed in much earlier days, how is it
possible for any perverse ingenuity to persuade any
reasonable human being that the writers of the Gos
pels could in any way have drawn from such silly
tales the marvellous picture of Christ, “Who went
about doing good,” which we find in the New Testa
ment ? It is true that some of the absurdities in the
�"I.... '
40
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
Apocryphal Gospels may have a Buddhistic origin, as
for instance the fable in the Arabic Gospel of the
Infancy that our Lord spoke when an infant in the
cradle, which story is reproduced in the Qur’an. But
the spirit which produced such compositions is dia
metrically opposed to that to which our New Testa
ment writings are due. This very fact proves that
the latter are not the product of the mythic tendency
as are the former. The contrast in tone and character
is too complete to permit of the hypothesis that the
true and the false have the same origin. John Stuart
Mill tells us that the Gospel accounts of Christ’s life
must be historical, for no poet or dramatist ever lived
who could have “imagined the life and character re
vealed in the Gospels.” Professor Harnack, another
great thinker, and one whose testimony cannot be
suspected of being influenced in favour of orthodox
Christianity, in his exhaustive study of early Christian
literature, says, “ There was a time . . . when people
fancied themselves obliged to consider the most
ancient Christian literature, inclusive of the New
Testament, a mass of deceits and falsifications.
That time has passed away. . . . The oldest liter
ature of the Church is in its main points, and in most
of its details, treated in a literary-historical way, truth
ful and reliable” {Die Chronologie der altchristlichen
Litteratur, Vol. I., pp. viii. and ix.). So that, were the
resemblances to be found in Buddhist myths ten times
as great as they really are, the conclusions of the
opponents of Christianity would still be devoid of any
real foundation.
But let us see what is really taught about Buddha
in the earliest and most reliable Buddhist works.
His youth was passed in Kapilavastu and its
neighbourhood. He resided with Suddhodana, his
father, during the winter, summer, and the rainy
season each year in one or another of the three country
�THE HISTORICAL BUDDHA
4i
seats which a later tradition terms royal “ palaces.”
He married early in accordance with Indian custom.
Only one of his wives is mentioned by name, though
accounts differ as to what her name was. The
Buddhavamso represents him as stating that he had
40,000 wives (ch. xxvi, 15), and later accounts double
this number, but these may be regarded as grossly
exaggerated. The only son of his who is mentioned
is Rahulo, who was born when Buddha—or, as he was
.then called, Siddhartha—was twenty-nine years of
age. Buddha then deserted his wife and child and
.became an anchoret, retiring from all the world’s
[fickle joys in order to find peace of mind through
'self-torture. He became the disciple of one devotee
after another, and, dissatisfied with them, almost
killed himself by his asceticism. After seven years’
vain effort to obtain “the supreme, best state of
calm,” he saw the futility of this method, and began
to take food in strict moderation.
; One night he sat meditating near Uruvela under a
sacred tree, the pipaly since known as the “ Bo-tree.”
His abstraction became intense, and he finally
imagined that he had reached Omniscience (sambodhi)
and had discovered the cause and cure of all human
suffering. He then said of himself, “ I have over
come all foes ; I am all-wise; I am free from stains
in every way; I have left everything, and have
obtained emancipation through the destruction of
desire. Having myself gained Knowledge, whom
should I call my master ? I have no teacher : no one
is equal to me; in the world of men and of Gods no
being is like me. ... I am the highest teacher. I
alone am the absolute omniscient one (sambuddho) :
I have gained coolness” (by the extinction of all pas
sions), “ and have obtained Nirvana. To found the
kingdom of the law (dhammo) I go to the city of the
Kasis (Banaras) : I will beat the drum of immortality
�42
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
in the darkness of this world.” By “immortality”
(amata) he meant Nirvana. It is called deathlessness
because, as there is no existence in it, there can be
no dying. It differs therefore in toto from what we
mean by immortality.
Buddha was so far from claiming to be a Divine
Incarnation that he never in any way even acknow
ledged the existence of a Creator of the universe. He
spoke of the devas or gods of popular belief as needing
to accept his philosophy in order to escape from the
misery of existence.
As soon as he had evolved his philosophy, he
desired to teach it to others. Later accounts tell us
that “ Maro ” endeavoured to persuade and even to
frighten him into becoming annihilated (entering
Nirvana) at once, so as to prevent him from passing
on to others the secret of escape from the misery of
existence. Maro caused all kinds of terrible con
vulsions in Nature in order to alarm Buddha, but in
vain. “ A thousand appalling meteors fell; clouds
and darkness prevailed. Even this earth, with the
oceans and mountains it contains, though it is
unconscious, quaked like a conscious being—like a
fond bride when forcibly torn from her bridegroom—
like the festoons of a vine shaking under the blasts of
a whirlwind. The ocean rose under the vibration of
this earthquake; rivers flowed back towards their
sources; peaks of lofty mountains, where countless
trees had grown for ages, rolled crumbling to the earth;
a fierce storm howled all around; the roar of the con
cussion became terrific ; the very sun enveloped itself
in awful darkness, and a host of headless spirits filled
the air” (Prof. Rhys Davids’ Buddhism, S.P.C.K.,
PP- 36, 37). Some people have compared this fancy
sketch with the Gospel account of the Temptation of
our Lord. Suffice it to say that Maro is not Satan,
as the latter has no place in Buddhism, that the object
�THE HISTORICAL BUDDHA
43
of the trial was quite different in the two cases,
and that the details bear no resemblance to one
another.
Buddha’s whole system of philosophy differed
widely from the doctrines of Christianity. “ His
object was to get rid of an existence without God and
without hope,” which he felt to be all the more
terrible because he held that the death of the body
does not end the consequences of one’s conduct here.
He believed that life was devoid of all purpose. All
its happiness seemed to him worse than illusory, but
“ all that causes suffering—birth, sickness, death,
separation from what is dear to us, and union with
what is hateful ”—remained. “ And this stream of
misery and tears extends backwards to all eternity . . .
and stretches forward to all the eternities. This iswhat
is implied in the ceaseless passing of all beings . . .
into life, until they die, and again from death, by
means of repeated births, into a new existence full
of suffering” (Prof. Grau, The Goal of the Human
Race, pp. 145-7).
He spent the rest of his life after attaining Buddhahood in travelling about the country, teaching his
gloomy philosophy. Many disciples, thousands of
them, joined him, principally from the titled and
wealthy to whom he almost exclusively addressed
himself. At length, at the age of eighty years, he
died through some error of diet, and then, in the
opinion of himself and his followers, became extinct.
His last words addressed to the monks who formed
his Sangho or Community were these: “ Come now,
mendicants, I bid you farewell. Compounds are
subject to dissolution. Succeed through diligence”
(Mahaparinibbana-Suttam, p. 61J
He taught the doctrine of transmigration of char
acter and the results of conduct {Karma), and also
the non-existence of the human soul, According
�44
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
to him, the motive for all conduct should be the
attainment of Nirvana, and thus of release from all
“ passions,” good or bad, and ultimate extinction.
The idea that “he is to be judge of the dead,” that
“he descended into hell, he ascended into heaven,
he is to come upon the earth in the latter days to
restore the world to order and happiness,” is abso
lutely contrary to Buddhism, and is due either to
an unaccountable mistake or to the romantic imagi
nation of a modern English mythologist. Buddhists,
who believe that before their teacher’s birth there
were many other Buddhas, look for the coming of
still more, and especially for one who is to be called
Metteyo. But they are bound to believe that the
historical Siddhartha or Gotamo Buddha is extinct,
and certainly, therefore, cannot expect his return to
earth.
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS,
AND OSIRIS
A LL classical scholars are aware of the existence
of an ancient myth, which, in slightly different
forms, once prevailed throughout Western Asia,
Egypt, Italy and Greece, and which in general set
forth in parabolical language the death of vegetation
in winter and its coming to life again in spring. In
the Hellenic world and in Italy people told how the
Ruler of Hades, or Orcus, carried off to the realms
below Persephone or Proserpina, the fair daughter
of the Earth- or Corn-goddess, Demeter or Ceres,
fend how she was allowed periodically to return to
the surface again and spend some time with her
mother, ere going back once more to the domain of
the dead. In Egypt we have the myth of Osiris, in
Mesopotamia and Syria that of Adonis, in Phrygia
that of Attis (also called Atys or Attin). A slightly
varied Phrygian fable styles the demigod Agdistis.
It has occurred to the fertile imaginations of certain
modern writers that perhaps they could successfully
practise upon the credulity and ignorance of “the
man in the street,” and so induce him to believe that
the doctrine of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus
Christ was but another form of this ancient Nature
legend. Of course, all who have studied the evidence
for our Lord’s Resurrection know that this evidence
is quite unanswerable. Strauss, Renan and countless
other opponents, in modern as well as in early
Christian times, have endeavoured to explain away
45
�46
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
the recorded facts of the case, and always in vain.
It has not been necessary for Christians to answer
these attacks, for one assailant has overthrown
another and shewn how hopeless his theory was.
Professor Orr’s recent book on the subject {The
Resurrection of Jesus') carefully weighs each hostile
theory and concisely gives the evidence which
opponents have, during eighteen hundred years,
entirely failed to shake, or even to account for
unless by confessing it to be true. It is not our
intention to deal with the proof of the doctrine of
Christ’s Resurrection at present, but rather to examine
the narratives relating to Adonis, Attis, and Osiris,
in order to see whether these various forms of the
Nature-myth really bear such a striking resemblance
to the Gospel history as has been loudly asserted of
late.
The name “Adonis” is really due to an error of
the Greeks. Hearing the Oriental women “weeping
for Tammuz” and lamenting aloud, as at the inter
ment of a king, “Adon!” (“My lord”: cf. the
Hebrew of Jer. xxii. 18, and xxxiv. 5, also Ezek.
viii. 14), they fancied that this, instead of being a
title, was the name of the deceased. But his real
name was Tammuz in Hebrew and Syriac, and was
derived from the Accadian Dumu-zi, “ Son of Life,”
probably a contraction for Dumu-zi-apsu, “ Son of the
Life (Spirit) of the Deep” (Sayce). Tammuz was
regarded as the offspring of Ea, the god of the
ocean. Another of his sons was Asari, whose wor
ship was carried to Egypt by its early Semitic
conquerors. This latter deity became known in
Greek as Osiris. Both Tammuz and he were origin
ally Sungods, though afterwards in some measure
identified with the fruits of the earth. It is not at
all strange, therefore, to find that at a later time in
Phoenicia, Osiris and Tammuz were in a measure
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS 47
confounded with one another, and their myths in
some degree held to be but varied forms of one and
the same legend or allegory.
The Greek form of the tale of Adonis is well
known, and it has been frequently the theme of
poetry in many tongues. He was the lover of the
goddess Aphrodite, he was slain by the tusk of a wild
boar, and the goddess lamented him yearly, and
caused a flower to spring from his blood (cf. Ovid,
“ Metamorphoses,” Lib. x., 503-fin.). Another form
of the story informs us that Adonis was son of an
Assyrian king Theias and his own daughter Smyrna,
and that, when the child was born, Aphrodite handed
him over to Persephone to be reared. When Aphro
dite thought that the time had come for him . to
return to her, Persephone refused to restore him.
Zeus was then appealed to, and asked to decide with
whom Adonis should dwell. He decreed that a third
part of each year should be spent with each of the
rival goddesses in turn, the remaining third being at
Adonis’ own disposal. Adonis, however, devoted this
period also to Aphrodite. He was afterwards killed
by a boar while hunting, as has already been men
tioned (Apollodorus, Lib. iii., cap. 14, §.3-4). This
writer tells us nothing whatever of Adonis’ return to
life, though it may perhaps be inferred that something
of the kind was implied by the alternate visits to
Aphrodite and to the Queen of Hades. But, if so,
these occurred rather before than after his death. In the
previous version of the myth, the nearest approach to
a return to life is the growth of a flower from his blood.
If we may judge from the classical forms of the
legend, lamentation for the death of Adonis long
preceded the establishment of any festival in honour
of his return to the bosom of Aphrodite. But in
much later times in Rome and elsewhere the festival
of the “ Adonia” was celebrated in June, at the time
�MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
of the summer solstice, with alternate wailings and
rejoicings. According to Macrobius {Saturn. i., 21,
vide Sayce, Religions of Egypt and Assyria, and
Hibbert Lectures, p. 231), the Syrians explained the
boar’s tusk, with which Adonis was slain, as denoting
the cold and gloom of winter, and said that his return
to earth implied his “ victory over the first six zodia
cal signs, along with the lengthening daylight.” The
reference to the signs of the zodiac shews that Adonis
was still known to have originally been the Sungod,
though then identified with the fertility of the soil,
which was regarded as largely due to his generative
influence. Professor Sayce holds that the Syrian
custom of rejoicing immediately after the “ wailing
for Tammuz” was introduced from Egypt, where the
idea of Osiris’ continued life after death had long
been entertained. Lucian’s account of the Syrian
festival supports this supposition {De Syria Dea,
cap. vii.). From very ancient times, as we learn
from the Assyrian poem of the “ Descent of Ishtar
to Hades,” it was believed in Accad that Ishtar, or
Ashtoreth, who in Greece was styled Aphrodite, had
gone down to the lower world “ in search of the healing
waters which should restore to life her bridegroom,
Tammuz.” Apparently she succeeded, but the poem
says absolutely nothing of any return to life on the
part of the dead god. (See the original text in Rawlin
son’s Inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. iv., plate 31.)
The “ wailing for Tammuz” took place in different
countries at different seasons of the year. Accad
and Babylonia generally recognised the fierce summer
heat as his deadly foe, Phoenicia the cold of
winter. “If there was another feast in which grief
gave place to joy at his restoration to life, it was
separate from that which celebrated his death, and
must have taken place at a different time of the
year.” In the West, on the other hand, “ he ceased to
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS 49
be the Sungod of spring and became the Sungod of
summer. Winter, and not summer, was the enemy
who had slain the god” (Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, pp.
231, 232). Hence, when Julian the Apostate entered
Antioch in triumph in October, A.D. 362, the wailing
.Over Adonis’ death which he then found going on must
have seemed to him full of ill omen (Am. Marcellinus,
Lib., xxii., 9., 15).
The fact that this lamentation for Tammuz was
observed at different seasons of the year in different
countries, in accordance with the known variety of their
(climate, agrees with all other facts of the case, and
proves that his worshippers did not fall into the
error of imagining that they were weeping for a
human “ Saviour ” or Deliverer who had been slain.
They by no means regarded Tammuz as a Saviour,
but well understood that their religious rites had
reference to an annual occurrence in Nature. That
this was recognised is clear from the explanations of
it which Roman and Greek authors give on their
authority, and also from the loathsomely licentious
practices then observed in honour of the god. “It
is possible, though not yet proved, that in Tammuz
two deities have been combined together, the Sungod
and the vegetation of the spring which the young Sun
of the year brings into existence ” (Sayce, Religions
of Egypt and Babylonia, p. 350). The same process
of combination or of reflection was pursued in the
case of Osiris also, as we shall see presently. Ulti
mately, as Marcellinus shews (Lib. xix., 1., 11, and
Lib. xxii., 9., 15), it was held that the reaping of the
corn and the dying down of vegetation at the onset
of winter was what was really denoted by Tammuz’
death. Thus the god became identified not so much
with vegetation itself as with the productive- or
generative power in Nature which caused the crops
to grow out of the bosom of the earth. As the
�5o
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
character of Tammuz, her “lover,” underwent this
change, so Ishtar herself came to express a con
ception altogether different from that which she at
first represented. She was originally “ the spirit of
the evening star ” (Sayce, op. cit., p. 340), as we learn
from her name, which, in its primary Accadian
form Gis-dar, meant “bright lady.” (It occurs so
written in the Preface to Hammurabi’s Laws, column
iii., line 54, in Harper’s edition of the original text.)
But when Adonis became the vivifying power which
produces vegetation, Ishtar was regarded as the
Earth fertilised thereby, very much as was the case
with Isis in Egypt.
It is impossible for us to describe the abominably
immoral practices which resulted from this conception,
and which were everywhere inseparably connected
with the worship of Adonis and Aphrodite, otherwise
styled Tammuz and Ishtar. Not only at Babylon in
the temple of the goddess whom Herodotus (Lib. i.,
199) terms Mylitta, but also wherever the productive
powers of Nature were deified—in Phrygia, in Cyprus,
throughout heathen Palestine, in Syria, in India,
and in many other lands—these abominations were
for ages continued as religious rites. They were
supposed to give pleasure to the deities in whose
honour they were practised, to promote the fertility
of the soil, and to acquire merit for the unspeakably
degraded beings who practised them.
Lucian, or the author of the book On the Syrian
Goddess generally ascribed to him, after giving us an
account of the shameful rite performed at Byblos
(Gebal) in honour of Aphrodite each year, tells us that,
the very day after that on which the lamentation for
Adonis’ death took place, an announcement was
made that he was alive fDe Syria Dea, cap. 6).
This is one of the comparatively few instances in
which any distinct mention is found of the belief
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS 51
that he did return to life, except, indeed, in the pages
of Christian writers of antiquity. The latter not
unfrequently apply distinctively Christian phrase
ology to heathen ideas, by the use, for example, of
such words as “resurrection.” Dr. Frazer, perhaps
unconsciously, somewhat colours the picture he
draws, partly because the English language itself
has become permeated with Christian conceptions.
Mr: Robertson continues the process in a man
ner which candour and the desire to represent
the actual facts hardly warrant. Then Mr: Vivian
Phelips takes things in hand, and unfortunately
allows his imagination to carry him entirely
away.
To give an instance of this with reference to
the myth of Adonis, let us take what Lucian and
Theocritus tell us about the latter deity’s return to
life. The author of the little book On the Syrian
Goddess, already quoted, says regarding Adonis:
“Afterwards, on the next day, they say mythically
that he is alive, and send him into the air ” (cap. vi.).
Dr. Frazer paraphrases this by saying, “Adonis was
supposed to come to life next day, and ascend to
heaven. This probably occurred in spring, about
Easter? (The italics are ours.) Again he tells us,
on Theocritus’ authority, that at Alexandria “ the
women wailing for Adonis sang that he would
return” (.ZiftwA, Attis, Osiris, pp. 182-6). What,
according to Theocritus, they really said was, “ Fare
well now, dear Adonis, and mayest thou be of good
cheer till next year. And now thou art gone,
Adonis, and as a friend shalt thou come when thou
arrivest” (Theoc., xv., 143-4).
Mr. Vivian Phelips on such authority founds his amazing statement that, “ Of all old-world legends,
the death and resurrection of a . . . divinely-born
Saviour was the most widespread” {The Churches
�52
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
and Modern Thought, p. 59). This assertion is hardly
justified by the facts of the case, at least as far as
the myth of Adonis is concerned. Whether it is in
harmony with what we learn from other somewhat
similar stories we shall be able to judge when we
have carried a little further this present chapter.
We now turn to the study of the Phrygian legend
of Attis. Some of the details of this story are well
known to us from classical sources, on which, in the
absence of genuine Phrygian accounts, we have to
depend ; others are unfit for repetition in a modern
language. Attis was, the tale relates, though in
other words, son1 of a savage monster called
Agdistis and a princess Nana. Agdistis was the
offspring of Jupiter and a huge rock. Dr. Frazer
points out that in reality Agdistis is “ a double of
Attis’' (Adonis, Attis, Osiris, p. 224). We dare not
sully our pages by narrating the details given regard
ing Agdistis’ conception, but it is emphatically not
a Virgin-birth. As Agdistis and Attis are practi
cally one and the same being, what is true of
Agdistis’ birth applies equally to that of Attis. The
people who told these tales certainly did not mean
to imply that they believed in the Virgin-birth of
either of these deities. Dr. Frazer is probably right
1 Arnobius (Adv. Gentes, Lib. v.) narrat Agdistem per Bacchi
dolum sese partibus privasse genitalibus. “Cum discidio partium
sanguis fluit immensus. Rapiuntur et combibuntur haec terra.
Malum repente cum pomis ex his punicum nascitur, cuius Nana
speciem contemplata, regis Sangarii vel fluminis Alia, carpit mirans
atque in sinu reponit. Fit ex eo praegnans.” Dr. Frazer, though he
refers to this story, says, “ His mother Nana was a virgin, who con
ceived by putting a ripe almond or a pomegranate into her bosom ”
{Adonis, Attis, Osiris, p. 219). It is pretty clear, to those who know
anything of the East, what the figurative meaning of the almond or
pomegranate really is; and the particulars which Arnobius gives of
the origin of the latter makes the meaning still plainer. Hence it is
hardly quite correct to say that here we have what is intended to be
an instance of belief in a Virgin-birth, in the true sense of the term.
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS 53
in holding that the name which in Greek assumed
the form “Attis’' is the word which in all TurkoTartar languages, including Accadian and Hungarian,
means “ Father,” while Nana in languages of the
same stock denotes “ Mother.” The “ rock ” probably
signifies a cloud or the sky, as in the case of Mithra
(see p. 19 above). Thus in its original form the myth
was a Nature-legend, entirely free from the unsavoury
features into which later mythologists distorted the
primitive account of the fertilising of the earth by
the heaven-sent rain.
Attis is distinctly at once a Sungod and god of
fertility. The story of his association with the
“ Great Mother,” Cybele, and of his self-mutilation,
is differently told by different writers, but the general
meaning is the same.
According to Arnobius, Agdistis entreated Zeus to
restore Attis to life. He refused to do so; yet he
granted that the body should remain undecayed,
that his hair should keep growing, and “ his smallest
finger always moving.” We find that the Sungod is
somehow identified at once with the generative
power of Nature and with the corn which is sown
in the earth and springs forth from it. The growth
of Attis’ hair after his death recalls the story, alike
Chinese and old Norse, which relates how the flesh
of Pw'an-Ku or Ymir became the soil (as did that
of Tiamat in Babylonian mythology), and his hairs
the plants of the earth. But, instead of a literal
“ resurrection ” of Attis, we are told that permission
to rise again was refused, and that his resuscitation
did not take place. If other accounts import into the
story the idea that Attis returned to life, it is clear
that the meaning is the same as in the case of
Adonis. To speak of the “resurrection” of Attis,
therefore, as being celebrated on the 25 th March,
during the observance of the Hilaria festival at Rome
�54
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
in honour of Cybele, hardly seems quite in accordance
with the real belief of Attis’ devotees. Livy speaks
of Cybele’s festival as occurring “ on the day before
the Ides of April,” i.e. on the 12th April. The general
character of the worship offered to Attis, and the
way in which the most devout of his adorers, the Galli,
mutilated themselves in imitation of their deity, is
well known. The main features of the myth of Attis
bear such a close resemblance to those of the Adonis
legend that we need not further dwell upon them.
It remains for us to enquire into the Egyptian story
of Osiris.
The Book ofthe Dead,as European writers, following
Lepsius, generally style the volume so often interred
by the ancient Egyptians in the tombs along with
the bodies of their deceased friends and relatives,
confirms the account long known to us from the
Greek writer Plutarch (De Iride et Osiride, capp.
13-21). It assumes as a well-known fact that Osiris
“ suffered death and mutilation at the hands of his
enemies ; that the various members of his body were
scattered about the land of Egypt; that his sister
wife Isis sought him sorrowing and at length found
him ; that she raised up his body and was united unto
him; that she conceived and brought forth a child
(Horus); and that Osiris became the god and king
of the Underworld ” (Budge, Book of the Dead, Introd,
to Translation, p. lxxx.).
It was believed that
when the pieces of his body (except one, which a fish
had swallowed) were collected and put together they
were made into a mummy, and thus preserved in the
tomb from decay (vide the Egyptian text, cap. cliv.,
line 16, Budge’s Ed.).
In this book it is clear that Osiris is identified with
the setting sun, as in the Hymn to Osiris, in Chap
ter XV., for instance. That passage thus addresses
him, “ Thou turnest thy face to Amentet ” (the
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS
55
Underworld); “thou makest both lands to shine
with refined copper. The dead stand beholding thee,
they draw breath, they behold thy face as the rising
of the solar disc from its horizon ; their hearts rest
in beholding thee : thou art everlastingness, eternity.”
At the beginning of this Hymn he is styled, Un nefei\ “ the Good Being,” and the “ Lord of Eternity,”
and his worshippers must, therefore, originally have
conceived of him as a god possessed of very lofty
attributes, though in later times this idea became very
much debased, as in similar cases in all other Ethnic
faiths. At On (Heliopolis), Osiris was adored as
“ the Soul of Ra,” the Sungod (Pinches, Old Test, in
the Light of, etc, p. 264).
It is customary among modern writers to speak of
Osiris’ “ Resurrection.” This is a mistake which may
produce serious consequences. What we learn from
the Book of the Dead is that his body was carefully
put together and buried, and that he became god of
the Underworld, where be bestows eternal existence
upon those who become in a mystical manner identi
fied with him. It is because his body was held to be
dead, buried, and to remain lifeless, that the title of
god of the “ still heart ” was bestowed on Osiris, since
stillness of the heart implies death. In this respect
he was held to be in the same condition as mummi
fied men, being alive only in spirit, not in body.
This is clear from almost every reference to him in
Egyptian theology. Accordingly in one passage
Thoth is represented as addressing him thus : “ Thy
son Horus avengeth thee, ... he bindeth together
for thee thy flesh, he gathereth together for thee thy
limbs, he collecteth for thee thy bones. . . . Thou art
lifted up, then, Osiris; I have given thee thy hand :
I cause thee to remain alive for ever. . . . The great
company of the gods protecteth thee, . . . they
journey beside thee to the door of the gate of the
�56
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
Underworld {Tuat}” {Book of the Dead, Egyptian
text, p. 47, lines 4-6). He is spoken of as “giving
birth to mortals a second time,” as well as himself
“coming to youth” again {op. cit., p. 482). Dr.
Budge explains the former expression as referring to
“the birth into the life which is beyond the grave”
(Introd., p. Ixxxv.). It certainly does not imply a
belief in the Christian doctrine of the New Birth, or
in a resurrection of the body of Osiris himself, or of
his devotees. “The educated Egyptian,” says Dr.
Budge, “ never believed that the material body would
rise again and take up new life. . . . They mummi
fied their dead, simply because they believed that
spiritual bodies would ‘ germinate ’ in them. . . . The
dead body of Osiris himself rested upon earth in
Heliopolis” (Introd., p. lxxxvi.). On this point the
language of the Book of the Dead is clear : “Ta x^t
nutert aat enti heteptu em Annu,” that is to say,
“The divine great body, which is laid at rest in
Heliopolis ” (Eg. text, cap. 162, line 7: cf. Plutarch,
op. cit., cap. 20, fink).
We are not told anything of the nature of the
spiritual body with which Osiris entered the Lower
World. But “that he dwelt in the material body
which was his upon earth, there is no reason what
ever to suppose” (Budge, ut suprci). His dismem
bered body was collected and preserved from decay,
for the same reason as that which led to the preserva
tion of the bodies of those Egyptians who could
afford to be properly embalmed. The Egyptian
authorities on the subject shew us that it would be
just as correct to say that the mummies in our
museums had “ risen from the dead,” as to speak of
the “ Resurrection ” of Osiris. He was believed to
be alive, and to reign in the Underworld, just as their
spirits were recognised as living, in spite of the fact
that their mummified bodies remained dead. In the
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS
57
Christian sense of the word, Osiris’ followers did not
at all believe that he had “risen from the dead,”
though they thought that in the Underworld he could
render very real assistance to the spirits of those who
had served him on earth. In this respect Osiris in
Egypt was supposed to perform the same office as
was undertaken in Babylonian mythology by Merodach (Marduk). On Cyrus’ “Barrel Cylinder,” for
example, Merodach is referred to as “ The lord who
by his might quickeneth the dead” (“Belu sa ina
tukulti-sa [?-su] uballitu mitutan ”: Rawlinson, Cun.
Inscr. of Western Asia, vol. v., plate 35, line 19), that
is to say, gives life to their spirits by introducing
them into the realm of the departed, and there
watching over them. It is of great importance that
the true significance of such phrases should be rightly
understood. The context enables us to ascertain
what the real meaning of such language is, and how
it was understood by the worshippers of Osiris in
the one country and of Merodach in the other.
We must now consider the meaning of the myth
of Osiris. In name, and originally in the idea which
he represented, Osiris (in Egyptian Asar) is identical
with the Sumerian god Asari. The latter was, like
Osiris, god of the setting sun (Sayce, Religions, etc.,
p. 164), and was by the Semitic conquerors of the
country identified with Merodach. The spirit of the
pious Egyptian, when “ justified ” and identified with
Osiris, prays that it may come forth with Ra, the
Sungod, into the sky, and with him sail over the
world in the Atetet boat of the sun {Papyrus of Ani,
sheet 20, Hymn to Ra, line 5). Hence it is clear
that the death of Osiris meant the setting of the Sun :
and the red glow of sunset shed over the land was
possibly what the myth allegorically expressed by
speaking of the parts of his body being scattered over
the whole country after his murder by his brother
�58
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
Typhon or Set. Or in Egypt there may have pre
vailed at one time, as was undoubtedly the case in
very many other countries, the barbarous custom of
killing a man and sprinkling his blood and scattering
far and wide over the fields the torn fragments of his
body in order to secure their fertility (Adonis, Attis,
Osiris, pp. 330-1). If so, the red and scattered rays
of the setting sun may have been at first allegori
cally compared to a death and mutilation of this
kind, and this may have been afterwards taken for
a literal reality. This, of course, is only a supposi
tion, and cannot be proved. But, if taken only as
a hypothesis, it gives a possible explanation of the
strange and ghastly story. In some way or other it
is certain that, though Osiris was at first the setting
Sun, who was entreated to enlighten with his rays
those whose spirits after death travelled with him
to his resting-place in the distant West, and to secure
them new life in the dark Underworld, yet he ulti
mately became identified with the fertility of the
ground and the growth of corn (Frazer, op. cit., p. 323 ;
Plutarch, op. cit.,. capp. 32, 33, 36, 38, 51, 65). Sayce
shews that it is incorrect to take Osiris as originally
denoting the sown corn, though later the identifica
tion did take place (Rel. of Ancient Eg. and Bab.,
p. 167). He was also associated with the Nile, if not
actually identified therewith, because the Nile gives
fertility and as it were life itself to the land by its
annual overflow. But Mr. Grant Allen is quite in
error in fancying that Osiris was an Egyptian chief
or king, deified after death. In this he is uncon
sciously following in the footsteps of Euhemeros,
and saying of Osiris what was asserted of Zeus
in Crete. Euhemerism (or “ Humanism ”) is quite
untenable as a theory employed to explain such
myths as those we are now dealing with. Osiris
was not a “ suffering Saviour ” in the sense of having
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS
59
ever been a man, or having in any way died for men.
Such a theory has no support among Egyptologists.
The sowing of the seed corn was compared with
the burial of the dead and with the setting of
the sun ; and so it was not unnatural that the
Egyptians should consider the sunrise and the
springing up of the grain as typical of the life of
the spirit after its separation from the body. At
least as early as the Eighteenth Dynasty, Osiris was
supposed to be closely connected with the corn as it
emerged into new life, though we have seen that this
was not the original idea represented by the god.
But here we must guard against a misunderstanding
into which Dr. Frazer has somehow been led. He
says, “ Thus from the sprouting of the grain the
ancient Eyptians drew an augury of human immor
tality. They are not the only people who have built
the same far-reaching hopes on the same slender
foundation.” He then proceeds to quote St. Paul’s
words in 1 Corinthians xv.,36-38,42-44 (op. cit.,p. 345).
It is clear that he would have us understand that
the Apostle founds the Christian hope of immortality
upon the fact that the grain, when properly sown,
springs up fresh and vigorous. If this were so, the
foundation would be slender indeed. But had the
learned author whom we have quoted taken the
trouble to read St. Paul’s argument carefully before
criticising it, he would have seen that the Apostle
does not teach anything whatever of the kind. On
the contrary, he teaches that our hope of rising
again from the dead is based (not on the sprouting of
corn but) on the historical fact of the Resurrection of
the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Cor. xv., 1-24). This fact
he knew for a certainty, and so did the Corinthian
Christians. Even a casual reader may see that St.
Paul uses the growth of the corn only as an illustra
tion. Professor Sayce well points out that in Egypt,
�6o
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
too, no one fancied that the immortality of the soul
wasproved\yy the fact that the buried seed afterwards
sprang up into new life. Among the worshippers of
Osiris as among Christians the illustration drawn
from the corn was “ the result of the doctrine of the
Resurrection, not the origin of it. It is not till men
believe that the human body can rise again from the
sleep of corruption that the growth of the seed which
has been buried in the ground is invoked to explain
and confirm their creed ” (Rel. of Eg. and Bab.,
p. 167). Probably the Egyptians did not believe in
the actual resurrection of the body, but from the
most ancient times they, in common with all other
nations, held firmly the conviction that the death of
the human body did not end all, but that the spirit
lived on in another sphere. This is not the place to
discuss the origin and grounds of such a belief, but
it clearly did not rest on such a slender foundation
as Dr. Frazer fancies. Nor does the Christian.
It is not quite clear how and why Osiris finally
came to appear to the Egyptians to have more
in common with humanity than the other gods.
Probably this was due to his dying and yet in
a sense remaining alive, as the sun manifestly seemed
to do, in which fact he resembled men, whom death
could not and did not completely destroy. All the
Egyptian gods and goddesses were thought to possess
material bodies, upon which old age at least had
a very considerable influence for the worse. Hence
it was not difficult to conceive of one of them being
murdered, as the myth related in reference to Osiris.
They believed that this had taken place at the time
when the gods reigned on earth. Osiris was in this
sense, and only in this sense, regarded as having
been an Egyptian sovereign, who had been treacher
ously slain, and whose tomb could still be pointed
out at Heliopolis, just as could that of Zeus jin Crete.
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS
61
(For an answer to Mr. Grant Allen’s deductions from
this latter statement of Euhemeros, see my Compara
tive ReligionA)
In consequence of his having died and yet remain
ing spiritually alive, Osiris seemed to his worshippers
to be a real deliverer, at least in the sense that they
thought that he felt for dying men more perhaps
than any other god, and could therefore be entreated
to take pity on their souls and protect them from the
piultitudinous dangers that beset the soul on its long
journey to the Sekhetu Aalu or Elysian Fields. But,
as we have seen, they did not for one moment
imagine that his body had ever come to life again.
The doctrine of the “ Resurrection of Osiris ” must
therefore be regarded as due to the reading of
Christian teaching and belief into heathen expressions
of quite a different meaning. This being the case,
it is manifestly impossible to agree with our modern
Mythologists in seeking to deduce the doctrine of
the Resurrection of our Lord from the Osiris-myth.
inasmuch as the latter contained no such doctrine.
But from the pathetic way in which the Egyptians
turned to Osiris in their grief, in the presence of
death and the unknown future, we may learn how
deep and heartfelt was man’s need of a Saviour from
death and from sin.
Although it thus contained some measure of truth,
the Osiris-myth led in practice to the same degrada
tion of morals which we find encouraged by other
Nature-myths. Dr. Frazer reminds us that, at the
time when the Dendera inscription was composed,
Osiris had come to be regarded “ as a personification
of the corn which springs from the fields after they
have been fertilised by the inundation. This, accord
ing to the inscription, was the kernel of the mysteries”
1 Longmans & Co., i/-.
�62
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
(pf. cit., p. 323). As Osiris therefore, especially when
regarded (as Professor Maspero shews he was from
very ancient times) as the fertilising power of the
Nile which produced the corn, conveyed to the
mind of his worshippers the idea of generative
might, it is not strange that this conception led to
evil. Both Herodotus (ii., 48, etc.) and Plutarch
{De Iside et Osiride, capp. 18, 36, 51) tell us how
closely his worship at last became associated with
phallic rites and indecent orgies. Upon this matter
we cannot dwell, for obvious reasons. But the fact,
which is undisputed, shews us that, in spite of the
“ Negative Confession ” in the Book of the Dead (cap.
cxxv.), Osirianism cannot be correctly regarded as
inculcating moral purity. In this respect it resembled
all other religions which are in any way associated
with Nature-worship. This is the reason why almost
all clearly and fully developed forms of Ethnic
religion among civilised nations have produced such
vile enormities. The central points of religious
thought among the mass of men in heathen lands
have always been the mysteries of birth, marriage and
death, as Albrecht Dieterich has well pointed out.
Each man is deeply concerned to answer the questions,
“ Whence do I come, and whither do I go? ” These
mysteries are closely associated with his deepest
passions, and in them and their results, full of marvels
as they are, he seems to himself most clearly to
recognise the workings of the Incomprehensible, the
Divine. “ Being begotten and dying are the mystery
of man’s beginning and of his end : the procreative
power and impulse constitute the marvel of his
person and life, horror of death is the only dread
which even the strong man cannot wholly banish, the
enigmatic, the most awful thing which ‘ deadly5 foes
can do to the living. . . . Among many peoples . . .
the Earth is considered the Mother of Mankind, from
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS
63
which the children of men issue forth to earthly
birth. . . . The belief is widespread also that the soul
of the dying man returns to the earth ” (A. Dieterich,
Mutter Erde}. Man sees procreation and birth in
the sowing of seed in the earth and in the consequent
growth of plants. In most countries this thought
was developed in such a way that the Sky was con
sidered to be the husband and the Earth the wife ;
hence in Greek mythology the gods themselves
sprang from Ouranos and Gaia—Heaven and Earth
(Hesiod, “ Theogonia,” v. 45), just as they did in Poly
nesia from Rangi and Papa. But in Egypt the
process was reversed, probably because the fertilising
and procreative rain does not there, as elsewhere,
fall from the sky, but the moisture rises instead from
the cornfields flooded by the Nile. So the sky (Nut}
in Egypt was the Mother, Earth (Seb} the Father.
The procreative idea, however, was the same, and,
associated with Osiris as the giver of new life and as
at once brother and husband of Isis, it produced its
usual effects in the degradation alike of religion and of
morals. The thought of Osiris and Isis as brother
and sister may have at first been innocent, but, like
the similar tale of incest between Zeus and Hera in
Hellenic mythology, it soon tended to lower the
moral tone, all the more so when it came to be
forgotten what these deities had primarily represented.
From the legend of Osiris we may, no doubt,
learn how firmly men clung, in Egypt as well as
elsewhere, to their primaeval belief in an after-life,
and how they yearned for a Deliverer from the
terrors of death and the grave. They felt the need
for a God who, by his own experience knowing
something of human suffering and death, could feel
sympathy for men, and would associate them with
himself in the world of spirits in the life beyond the
tomb. “In the fulness of time” the true God was to
�64
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
grant them the fulfilment of all their hopes, the
realisation of the deepest longings of their hearts.
Christ, “the Man Christ Jesus,” came to carry our
sorrows as well as to bear our sins, to die a literal
death of agony, and by rising from the dead evince
“by many infallible proofs ” the truth of His claims,
the certainty of our triumph over death in Him, and
the fact that God had been leading men to the light
and not deceiving them as by a will-o’-the-wisp to
their ruin through the instinctive belief He had
given them in a life to come.
Our examination of the myths of Adonis, Attis,
and Osiris leads to the conclusion that under these
names “the peoples of Egypt and Western Asia
represented the yearly decay and renewal of life,
especially of vegetable life, which they personified
as a god who annually died and” (in some sense)
“rose again from the dead” (Frazer, Adonis, Attis,
Osiris, p. 5). “ Through the veil which mythic fancy
has woven around this tragic figure, we can still
detect the features of those great yearly changes in
earth and sky which, under all distinctions of race
and religion, must always touch the natural human
heart with alternate emotions of gladness and
regret” {Golden Bough, second edition; Vol. III.,
p. 196).
It is clear, therefore, that we are not here dealing
with “ stories of suffering Saviours, similar in all
essentials to the Gospel narratives,” as has been so
positively asserted of late (cf. Mr. Vivian Phelips,
The Churches and Modern Thought, p. 161). On the
contrary, the worshippers of Adonis, Attis, and
Osiris, as well as those of Ceres or Demeter and
similar Nature-Powers, were offering adoration to
what they believed to be the generative power of
Nature, manifesting itself in the birth of men,
animals, and plants alike. The very indecency of
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS
65
their phallic rites shews this. In no respect can
any of these deities be called a “ Saviour ” in the
Christian sense, implying as it does an atoning death
Undergone for man’s salvation from sin1 by One
who was perfect Man as well as perfect God, the
Head of the human race and its representative.
Osiris, Attis, and Adonis were gods, not men, though
the pathos attached to the metaphor which spoke of
their “ deaths ” appealed (as we have seen) to someping _ in man’s heart which testified to his dumb
consciousness of his need of a God who could suffer,
and could therefore sympathise with man in suffer
ing and death. We who believe in a Divine Purpose
forking through all things, and who know the love
of God as revealed to us in our Lord Jesus Christ,
can readily understand that He wished to lead men,
even by such dim thoughts as these, to know some
thing of their need of a Saviour, so that when He
came they might receive Him. The other theory,
that there is nothing in the Christian doctrine of our
Lord’s atoning death and of His resurrection which
was not believed ages before by the Gentiles through
put a very large part of the ancient world, and that
this widely accepted myth is the source of these
essential parts of the Christian faith, will hardly
|tand the test of a candid enquiry. It is absolutely
unhistorical, in the first place, as our examination of
the chief Ethnic legends on the subject proves. We
See that any supposed resemblance to the Christian
view is due almost entirely to the unscientific use of
Christian terms. Deceived by their employment of
these, men have fancied that the Ethnic myth con
tained proof that the leading features of the Christian
faith were largely pre-Christian. This is not unlike
the experience of simple-minded passengers a
generation ago, who not unfrequently clearly saw
1 Matthew i. 21.
F
�66
--
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
the Equator—or fancied they did—when “ crossing
the line.” It was afterwards shewn that the reason
why they saw it was because a thread had been
carefully placed inside the telescope. On the other
hand, as has already been pointed out, the evidence
for our Lord’s actual resurrection1 is so strong that
it is incapable of being explained away. It was not
necessary therefore that Christians, when going forth
at the risk of their lives, in obedience to the com
mand they had heard from Christ’s own lips after
His resurrection, to preach the Gospel to all creation,
should undertake the Herculean task of forming an
eclectic but holy religion for themselves from the
faiths which had filled the world with vice unspeak
able. Nor was it possible for them to mistake a
myth for a fact and imagine that their Master had
risen from the dead because, forsooth, in an abso
lutely different sense, Tammuz was said to have
returned to earth for some months every year, or
Osiris to reign as king of the dead in the Egyptian
1 It is noteworthy that there is not, and, as far as we know, never
has been in the world any religion except the Christian based upon
the real or alleged resurrection of its Founder. We have seen that
the religions dealt with in this chapter are not so supported. Nor is
Buddhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, or any other faith. When the
Bab was in danger of being put to death in Persia, his followers
believed that bullets could not hurt him. But when he was killed,
though he had claimed to be the Messiah (among other things), and
though the Babis knew that Christ was stated to have risen from the
dead, they did not once try to assert that their Prophet, though an
Incarnation, had come to life again. The fact is that such an event
is in the highest degree incredible, and nothing short of the most
absolutely indisputable proof could convince anyone of it. This
proof was present only in a single instance—the resurrection of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Of no other great Teacher could it even be
asserted. Yet Mr. Vivian Phelips ventures to affirm about St. Paul’s
time, “We know that this was an age when the resurrection of any
great prophet was taken to be a normal event” ! 1! (0/. «’A, p. 58).
It would be very interesting to know the names of some of the great
prophets of whom Mr. Vivian Phelips was thinking when he wrote
this romantic assertion.
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS
67
Hades. Had it not been for their Master’s resurrec
tion they would have had neither a Gospel nor
,a commission, nor faith for their task, nor a motive
for undertaking it, with the assured prospect that
the world would hate them as it had hated Christ,
and that in it they would have tribulation.1 But the
theory we are considering makes greater demands
upon our credulity than even this implies. The early
Christians, when they began to spread their faith,
must have known something of the Master from
Whom their enemies derived the name they gave the
“brethren.” They could have been in no doubt
about His actual existence. They must have known
at least as much as did Tacitus, that “the originator
of that name, Christ, had been executed by the pro
curator Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius.” 1
2
As He was a historical person whom they had known
and loved, they at least were hardly likely to mistake
Him for a sun-myth.
We have in our Gospels, and to a less degree in the
Epistles, a portraiture 3 of Christ, evidently the image
of Him which dwelt in the hearts of His early
disciples and justified some in the next generation in
speaking of themselves4 as carrying Christ with
them. His Resurrection is in keeping with His pre
dictions and with His whole character and the purpose
of His life and His death as there described and
explained. To what is that portrait due? Is it the
work of honest men imperfectly depicting a character
So perfect that they have failed to do it justice? Or
is it due to Fiction,5 Myth, or Hallucination ?
1 Cf. e.g, John xvi., 33.
2 Tacitus, Annates, Lib. xv., 44.
8 See Row’s Jesus of the Evangelists ; Seeley’s Ecce Homo ; Simpson,
77z« Fact of Christ.
4 Martyrium S. Ignatii, cap. 2.
s Mr. Vivian Phelips writes: “Nothing is more conceivable than
that the Bible story may spuriously embellish the real life of Jesus
�68
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
A study of the whole literature of the world—
ancient and modern—is now possible to us, and we
are thus able to judge for ourselves what success all
these factors, together or apart, have had in enabling
the most talented writers and most gifted thinkers,
philosophers, and poets of any or every age and
clime to represent the ideally Perfect Man. Indian
literature depicts for us the characters of Rama and
Krishna; Greek, those of Achilles, Agamemnon, and
Ulysses; Latin, that of the pious Jineas. Which
of these can we compare with the Gospel portraiture
of Christ? Yet the Evangelists were not poets,
philosophers, or men of great learning, or talented
writers. “The1 very language which they used was
not classical Greek. On internal evidence we should
conclude that only one or two of them at most can
possibly have been writing in their native language.
They were, therefore, very heavily handicapped
indeed. Hardly any great secular writer has won
distinction, and perhaps not one has come to the
very front rank, in writing in any but his native
tongue. But the Evangelists have, if the theory”
as much as the mythical accounts of Buddha, for instance, spuriously
embellish the real life of Prince Siddhartha” {The Churches and
Modern Thought, pp. 58, 59). This writer has apparently never read
the Apocryphal Gospels, or at least has never considered the character
.of the Jesus there spoken of. In that character and in the incidents
there related we have the product of the romantic spirit of that time.
Had “spurious embellishments” been employed in our Gospels, how
entirely different would have been the portraiture presented to us !
It is safe to say that the Apocryphal Gospels are invaluable, because
they shew us what our genuine books would have been had the mythic
influence been at work in them. That they differ toto ccelo in spirit
from these Apocryphal romances shews that the same tendency could
not have given rise to two such entirely opposite results. As the
Apocryphal Gospels are the result of the growth of myth or fiction, the
canonical Gospels cannot be such. Mr. E. Benson well says, “His
reporters, the Gospel writers, had but an imperfect conception of His
majesty, His ineffable greatness—it could not well be otherwise”
{The House of Quiet, chap. xii.).
1 Religio Critici, pp. 39, 40.
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS 69
(that their account is unhistorical) “ be correct, con
tended successfully with all the greatest writers of the
world, meeting them on their own ground, and have
. produced a romance which, in the universal judgment
of the whole civilised world, has utterly eclipsed all
others in abiding interest and sustained charm. This
is what we are asked to believe as the only alterna
tive to accepting the Gospels as simple records of
historical facts. But the difficulty of their task is
not done full justice to by stating it thus. Other
writers have for the most part undertaken merely
to draw pictures of a perfect man. The Evangelists
did more; they endeavoured to represent the Perfect
Man shewing Himself such under the most trying
circumstances, but they had to perform their task in
Such a manner that every recorded word and deed
of this character should be in perfect keeping with
the claim which they represent Him as making to be
One with God and the one Manifestation of God.
Still more, they have actually succeeded in doing all
this so successfully that the conception of God thus
formed in their minds has become the only one
possible to even the highest minds in all lands,
even at the beginning of the twentieth century
after the birth of Christ. Moreover, they, without
any model to guide them, had to make their romance
so real that it would be accepted as true for many
ages, and would be acknowledged, even by those who
disbelieved it, to be the lifelike delineation of ‘ the
one character, without the idea of whom in the mind
personal piety is impossible.’ Can any imaginable
degree of credulity accept such a theory as this?
Yet, if the character of the Jesus of the Evangelists
be not strictly true and real, this is what the Evan
gelists did.”
In conclusion, we must consider the vast difference
between the effects produced by the Ethnic myth -
�70
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
of Osiris, Attis, Adonis, and those which resulted from
the Christian Gospel of the Resurrection of Christ
Jesus. Seldom has the evidence of the universal
corruption of morals which quite naturally and in
evitably1 flowed from the Nature-myth been more
carefully detailed than by Dr. Frazer. What, on the
other hand, was the result produced as a necessary
consequence of the reception of faith in the Risen2
Christ ?
Let us hear in the first place what Pliny, their
judge, torturer, and in some cases executioner, states
that he learnt from early Christian converts as
to the duties imposed upon them by their faith.
“ They3 used to assert that the sum of (be it their
fault or) their error was this, that they had been
accustomed on a fixed day to meet together before
dawn, and to repeat to one another alternately a
hymn to Christ as God, and to bind themselves by
a sacrament not to the commission of any crime, but
not to commit thefts, robberies, adulteries, not to
break their word, not to deny a thing entrusted
to them when called upon to restore it.” Even
1 Seneca says of poets who ascribed evil deeds to the gods : “ Quid
aliud est vitia nostra incendere, quam auctores illis inscribere deos ? ”
[De Erev. Vitae, cap. 16).
2 Dr. Frazer’s method of treating this matter is unworthy of any
unbiased investigator. He implies that, as Zela in Eastern Pontus
appears to have been the chief religious centre of the district, as
Christianity had spread there very .much by the time Pliny wrote
(a.d. i 12), as Zela was noted for its great sanctuary of Anaitis or
Semiramis, as at Comana in the same district a religious festival of a
vile nature was held in honour of this goddess, and as Corinth,
famous for debauchery, was likewise a place where Christianity was
early preached, therefore there was a close connexion between Chris
tianity and these abominations. “ Such,” he says, “ were some of the
hotbeds in which the seeds of Christianity first struck root.” It would
have been more honest if he had quoted, for example, St. Paul’s letters
to or from these “hotbeds” (as in the text I have quoted one written
from Corinth itself, i.e. I Thess.) to show us what connexion, if any,
the evil practices of those places had with Christian precepts.
3 Pliny, Epp. Lib. x., No. 96.
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS 71
tender women1 under torture could not be compelled
to confess that Christians were guilty of any worse
crimes than these, nor did renegades themselves
accuse those whom they had deserted of working
w the1 desire of the Gentiles ” and of having, like the
2
worshippers of the Powers of Nature, “walked in
lasciviousness, lusts, winebibbings, revellings, carousings, and abominable idolatries.” On the contrary,
Pliny himself tells us that, in consequence of the
large number of those who had been converted from
heathenism to Christianity, the temples of the gods
had “already3 been almost deserted,” doubtless
because Christians had felt themselves called out
of darkness to light and bound to walk as children
of light. It required all the tortures that he could
inflict to compel some of the weaker sort to abandon
Christ. When this was done, “the4 temples once
more began to be thronged, and the sacred sdlemnities which had long ceased began to be observed
again,” those of Anaitis and other Nature-goddesses
doubtless among them. Braver Christians preferred
death5 to returning to these abominations. Such
was the contrast which both Christians and heathens
perceived between Christianity and the worship of
those Nature-powers for which the district had long
been 6 noted. They were in no danger of confound
ing the two religions—the one pure, the other
impure; the one resting on personal knowledge
of the Crucified and Risen Christ, the other on an
1 “Quo magis necessarium credidi ex duabus ancillis, quae minigtrae dicebantur, quid esset veri et per tormenta quaerere. Sed nihil
aliud inveni quam superstitionem pravam et immodicam” (ibid.}.
2 1 Peter iv. 3. Peter wrote to the “Dispersion” in Pontus and
that neighbourhood.
3 Pliny, op cit.
4 Ibid.
8 “ Supplicium minatus : perseverantes duci iussi” (ibid.}.
6 Strabo, xii., 3, 32, and 36; also xii., 2, 3.
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MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
allegorical representation of the annual “ decay1 and
revival of plant life.”
We turn now from external testimony to internal.
St. Paul, the great Apostle of the Gentiles, the
founder of so many Churches, has left us his epistles
to those very Churches, and from them we can judge
what attitude Christianity adopted from a moral
standpoint with regard to the prevalent heathenism
of the time. From Corinth, notorious for its sen
suality, he writes to the Thessalonians, reminding1
2
them what he had taught them. “ For3 this is
the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye
abstain from fornication ; that each one of you know
how to possess himself of his own vessel in sanctifi
cation and honour, not in the passion of lust, even as
the Gentiles which know not God.” It is hardly
necessary to quote from his other epistles to shew
how sternly he denounced all such evils whether in
Corinth4 or elsewhere. The attitude which Chris
tianity from the very first assumed to all these crimes
was that of absolute opposition. No one who com
mitted them had “ any 5 inheritance in the kingdom
of Christ and God.” Hence those very practices
which were of compulsory observance in the case
of the Nature-gods and the goddesses associated
with them—Cybele, Ishtar, Anaitis, and the rest—
were so contrary to Christianity that indulgence in
them ipso facto put the sinner out of the Church.
Nay more, corrupt as many portions of the Universal
Church have since at various times become, this
particular series of sins, which were essentially sacred
actions in the belief of the worshipper of Adonis and
1
2
3
4
5
Adonis, Attis, Osiris, p. 186.
i Thessalonians iv. 2.
1 Thessalonians iv. 3-5.
1 Corinthians vi. 9-11 ; v. 9-13, etc.
Ephesians v. 5.
�THE MYTH OF ADONIS, ATTIS, AND OSIRIS 73
Attis, have never by Christians been met with any
thing but the sternest denunciation as deadly to
body, soul, and spirit.
In our own day, when the predicted “ falling away ”■*■
has begun, when our newspapers speak cheerfully of
the fading of belief in historical or “dogmatic”
Christianity, as a natural consequence we see a revival
of those very theories and practices with which
Christianity engaged in. a life and death struggle in
.tile early days. Man, held to have sprung from the
brute, is too often excused if he tries to return thither.
As a French writer says, “The2 notion of Law is
obliterated ; between individuals, classes, nations,
appetite is proclaimed as the measure of right; every
where is the unfolding of the Ego, bestial or sancti
monious ; literature is dedicated to various forms of
rut, and extreme intellectual refinement leads back
by every way to the unbridling of the human brute.”
So it was in the last years of the previous dispensa
tion, so it is in France now, and so it must be in
every land in proportion to the progress in it made
by those very same tendencies of thought and con
duct which led to the fearful state of things that
prevailed at the time when our Lord came “ to save
His people from their sins.” But this very fact shews
how great a contrast there is now, and always has
been, between the spirit which animated the wor
shippers of Adonis, Attis, Osiris, and that which
worked in the hearts, minds, and lives of the Apostles
of Christ. Let us not mistake darkness for light,
evil for good, Christ for Belial. Even to the present
day, wherever it has not been overthrown by Chris
tianity, the ancient worship of the procreative powers
of Nature still continues. We find it in India in our
1 2 Thessalonians ii., 3, 7) dirocrracrla, “the Revolt,” cf. Farrar, The
Witness of History to Christ, pp. 6-8.
2 J. Darmesteter, Les Proph'etes <TIsrael, Pref., p. x.
�74
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
own time, where these powers are represented as
Siva, and his wife Durga, where 30,000,000 of stone
phallic emblems are said to be worshipped in different
parts of the country, and where unfortunate girl
children are “ married to the god ” to-day, for exactly
the same form of worship and service as that which
was rendered by the tepoSovXai of the ancient world.
Neither there nor in Syria of old do we find purity
springing from impurity. Christianity is the anti
thesis of this kind of Nature-worship, while at the
same time the Gospel unfolds to man the truth which
underlies all that mass of error, and which, when
perverted, has, in the modern as in the ancient world,
degraded men below the level of the beasts that
perish.
�OUR MODERN MYTHOLOGISTS
versus
THE VIRGIN-BIRTH
RECENT writer informs us that, in his opinion,
there are certain “ ideas, universal in their range,
and found fully developed in the depths of savagery,
which, rising with mankind from plane to plane of
civilisation, have at last been embodied in the faith
and symbolism of the loftiest and most spiritual of
the great religions of the world—the religion of
civilised Europe” (Hartland, Legend of Perseus, Vol.
I., 1894, preface). The one idea of this description
which he selects to prove his thesis is that of a
supernatural Birth.
Another writer expresses himself thus : “ Of all
old-world legends, the death and resurrection of
a virgin-born, or in some way divinely-born, Saviour
was the most widespread ” (Mr. Vivian Phelips, The
Churches and Modern Thought, p. 59).
A third author says, “ Such tales of virgin-mothers
are relics of an age of childish ignorance, when men
had not yet recognised the intercourse of the sexes
as the true cause of offspring. That ignorance, still
shared by the lowest of existing savages, the ab
original tribes of Australia, was doubtless at one time
universal among mankind ” (Dr. Frazer, Adonis, Attis,
Osiris, Bk. II., p. 220).
The first two of these writers make a very definite
assertion, and the third endeavours to frame a theory
75
�76
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
to account for the fact which they have so positively
alleged. We shall see that careful study of the whole
subject proves that the asserted fact of the widespread
belief in the Virgin-birth of a Saviour among the
supporters of Ethnic faiths does not rest upon solid
foundations. But even if it did, Dr. Frazer’s hypothesis
to account for such a belief is hardly satisfactory.
We must briefly examine it before proceeding to test
the alleged fact which it is intended to explain.
Dr. Frazer (i) asserts that the savages of Australia
are ignorant of a certain matter of universal ex
perience ; and (2) then uses the world “ doubtless ”
as all-sufficient evidence (it must suffice, for he has
none other to adduce) in proof of his theory that this
ignorance was once shared by all men, and was the
cause of the asserted widespread belief in Virgin
births. In such a case it would be natural to suppose
that, as the hypothetical savage at first imagined all
births to be Virgin-births, therefore, when he found
that this was not generally the case, he would at once
give up all belief in such phenomena. But Dr.
Frazer supposes that the savage drew this conclusion
in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases, and yet in the
thousandth instance still clung to his “ childish
ignorance.” If so, we have to enquire why he did
this. The theory does not explain it.
It is by no means certain that even the aborigines
of Australia, or any single tribe among them, really
were ever in such a state of ignorance. To say
nothing of the evidence afforded by the vocabularies
of their languages, the very strict rules which exist
in every tribe to regulate marriage within certain
strictly defined limits and the prohibition of adultery
inculcated in the tribal “ mysteries,” both these things
render it more than doubtful whether the Australian
aborigines are or ever were ignorant of the physio
logical fact referred to. There is absolutely no evidence
�VIRGIN-BIRTH
77
then that the supposed original savage “ shared ” an
ignorance which did not exist even in Australia. If
he did not, Dr. Frazer’s explanation falls to the
ground.
It requires a great deal of credulity to enable any
one to accept his theory. The self-mutilation of
Attis in the fable, and that of the Galli in history, do
not look as if people were ever so very ignorant as he
would have us believe. The details which he gives
of the method adopted in order to promote the
fertility of the soil, by imitating what people supposed
to be the fertilising and procreative processes at work
in the world around them, serve rather to shew how
continually such thoughts obsessed men’s minds even
in very ancient days. The widespread idea that the
Sky was the Father of all things in a very literal
sense, and Earth their Mother, tends in the same
direction. When, in addition to this, we consider
the almost universal prevalence of phallic worship,
we are compelled to withhold assent to Dr. Frazer’s
attempted explanation of belief in Virgin-birth.
Some writers have persistently confounded with
one another two very distinct things: (i) Virgin
birth, and (2) birth attributed in some other manner
to supernatural influence. As the Christian faith is
concerned only with the former, and that too only in
the case of our Lord, it is imperatively necessary to
distinguish these from one another. This Mr. Sidney
Hartland has not done. The whole question is of
considerable interest, and doubtless much may be
learnt from studying it carefully. But in order that
this may be possible we must recognise the distinc
tion to which we have called attention. To con
found two different things is quite unscientific, and
can hardly be conducive to clearness of thought or
to an accurate conclusion.
By distinguishing between the two different kinds
�78
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
of alleged supernatural birth, we are able to dispense
with the consideration of every instance in which
birth from a Virgin is not distinctly mentioned as an
essential part of the narrative. Those which, though
supposed to be in some manner supernatural, are in
no sense Virgin-births form the vast majority, both
in mythology, Greek, Roman, Hindu, etc., and in
folk-lore and fairy tales. With regard to these it is
sufficient for our present purpose to say that they
bear witness to men’s consciousness that there is no
effect without a cause. They felt that people in any
way specially remarkable required to be accounted
for somehow. Fairy tales may be an evidence of
ancient belief in Animism, perhaps of nothing else.
But legends connected with the birth of actual
historical characters are of interest, because they
shew a belief in Divine interposition, and in some
thing remotely resembling a Divine mission.
What is remarkable is that, while in mythology
supernatural births of the second class are common
enough, yet Virgin-birth hardly ever appears either
in Ethnic mythology or in fables about well-known
historical characters. This is a point upon which it
is necessary to insist, because it is one not generally
recognised. Those who are acquainted with classical
mythology will readily understand what we mean.
The Greek myths about the birth of the off
spring of Zeus by human mothers, such as yEgina,
Alcmena, Europa, Io, and Maia, for example, were
in no sense associated with Virgin-birth. On. the
contrary, the myths are most unpleasantly realistic
from the material point of view. Zeus, we are told,
transformed himself into a bull on one occasion, into
a man on another, always employing a material
form for the purpose. When we remember that the
myth originally denoted that the fertility of the earth
is due to the rain from the sky, we shall see that the
�VIRGIN-BIRTH
79
material element is an essential part of the story.
People were so well aware that the union of the
sexes is necessary to the production of offspring
that they could not conceive of the fertility of the
earth without explaining it in the same way. The
gods and goddesses themselves, as we learn from
Homer, were possessed of material bodies, capable
of being mutilated or wounded in battle, needing
refreshment in sleep, nourishment at the banquet.
Hence the tales told about Zeus’ conduct with
reference to those mortals, who by him became
the mothers of Hercules and other demigods, were
certainly not intended by those who invented and
accepted these myths to imply the Virgin-birth of
these fabulous heroes. Hindu mythology is strikingly
similar to Greek in the carnal vileness of its narra
tives. It is quite possible that these were originally
mere allegories, and as Nature-myths were free from
offence; but in mythology they soon became some
thing very different.
One of the earliest Greek opponents of Christianity,
whose work has in part been preserved to us—Celsus
—refers to the myths relating to the births of
Perseus (thus anticipating Mr. Sidney Hartland),
Amphion, ?Eacus, and Minos, and argues from them
in opposition to the Christian belief in our Lord’s
Virgin-birth. In his reply Origen points to the tales
regarding Danae, Melanippe, Auge, and Antiope
as a proof that even the heathens felt that it was
necessary to account in some supernatural way for
the existence of persons far superior to ordinary
humanity. Reasoning from this admission he
enquires which was the more suitable in Christ’s
case, a birth in accordance with the usual order of
things, or one of quite a different kind. Such a
reply would be unanswerable; but it would have
been well had Origen then gone on to point out
�8o
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
the difference between such myths as those of the
Greeks, which did not imply Virgin-birth, and the
Gospel narratives which his opponent had assailed.
Among persons who have actually played a part
in history, if we may except certain dynasties of
kings such as the Pharaohs, it is rare to find any
whose birth is said to have been in any way super
natural. Mr. Vivian Phelips tells us that “the
disciples of Plato, centuries before the Christian
era,” believed that he was born of a virgin {The
Churches and Modern Thought, p. 128). This is an
error. Diogenes Laertius, who wrote about 200 A.D.,
mentions the fable that Perictione, Plato’s mother,
received a visit from Apollo, but he does not attach
any credit to it, nor does he imply that a single one
of Plato’s disciples really believed anything of the
sort. Nor, in such a case, could it be said that they
held any belief in Virgin-birth. Suidas is also re
ferred to in support of the fable; but, as he wrote
about 1100 A.D., his authority cannot be considered
of any importance. Justin the historian in his
epitome of Trogus Pompeius (Lib. XV., chap. 4)
mentions a similar legend about Seleucus, saying
that it was sometimes stated that, though Laudice
his mother was the wife of Antiochus, one of Philip
of Macedon’s leading generals, his father was Apollo.
Here again the myth did not mention a w>g7>z-birth,
nor was it seriously accepted by anyone. In fact,
such statements seem to have been merely poetical
quotations, so to speak, from the old mythology, the
intention being to flatter Seleucus or Plato, as the
case might be, by comparing him to Aesculapius or
some other legendary character who was said to be
a son of the brilliant god.
Alexander the Great, when his success in war had
turned his head, claimed divine descent, but this was
due to the fact that the priest of Ammon in Egypt
�VIRGIN-BIRTH
81
had, in accordance with Egyptian custom, termed
the king son of that god, whom the Greeks identified
with their own Zeus. Hence it was supposed that
Philip of Macedon had not been his real father.
But this brings us to the consideration of Eastern
hales of this nature. We discover them first among
the Semites of Babylon, where the king came to be
recognised as a god, and hence required divine
descent to be predicated regarding him. According
to Professor Sayce, the deification of the Pharaohs
was due to “the Asiatic element in the Egyptian
population” (Religions of Ancient Eg. and Bab.,
pp. 43j 351j 352)- Hence each Pharaoh was de
clared to be “Son of the Sungod” (Se Ra). But,
though some modern writers have incorrectly spoken
Of the Egyptian texts as teaching the virgin-birth of
one or more of these monarchs, this is not the case.
For example, the expression has been used regard
ing Amon-hotep III (Sayce, op. cit., pp. 249, 250), but
the language of the inscription which tells of that
monarch’s conception is only too unmistakably clear.
The god Amon-Ra is there represented as saying
that he had “ incarnated himself in the royal person
Of this husband, Thothmes IV ” (see Sayce’s own
Version, ibidi). The text explains that, this being
taken for granted, Amon-hotep’s birth was quite in
accordance with the usual order of things, though
his divinity is asserted, according to custom, because
his father, Thothmes IV, being a Pharaoh, was as
such an incarnation of the Sungod.
In China we find, in the case of one historical
person, and one other who may be historical, a fable
which puts us strikingly in mind of some of the
fairy tales which Mr. Sidney Hartland has collected
in reference to beings who have never existed at
all. It is stated that the mother of Fo-hi, the
mythical founder of the Chinese Empire, ate a
G
�82
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
flower which she found lying on her clothes on her
return from bathing. In consequence of this her
son was born. The ancestor of the Manchu dynasty
was also said to have been conceived in almost
exactly the same way, except that his mother ate a
red fruit instead of a flower. Such myths abound in
folk-lore, but they are rarely connected with persons
who really existed {Legend of Perseus, Vol. I., pp. 106,
107). Fo-hi’s existence is very doubtful, which
perhaps accounts for the matter. The same tale
(practically) that was told about him was told about
the founder of a rival dynasty, possibly through con
fusion between them. Not only is it impossible to
discover how many ages after their deaths these tales
first arose, but also there is no proof that they were
ever intended to be believed.
The assertion that the worshippers of Attis,
Mithra, and Krishna all believed in the virgin
birth of their respective deity has already been
tested in these pages and proved devoid of founda
tion. We have also examined a similar statement
made regarding Buddha, and have seen that it is
quite unfounded. The way in which such things
are rashly affirmed nowadays among us well ex
emplifies what Newman somewhere calls “reckless
assertion based on groundless assumption.”
Mr. Vivian Phelips assures us that “in Persia
Zoroaster was miraculously conceived” {The
Churches, etc., p. 128). If by this he means to say
that the Zoroastrians really believed that their great
teacher was born of a virgin, it is at least strange
that nothing whatever is said on the subject, either in
the Avesta itself or in later Zoroastrian works. It
is not too much to say that the idea is entirely due
to modern mythology. In the Avesta itself we
are told that Zoroaster’s father was a man named
Pourushaspa (Vendidad, xix. 6, cf. vv. 6 and 46;
�VIRGIN-BIRTH
83
Yasna, ix. 13; Yasht, V. 18, xxiii. 4, xxiv. 2), and
his genealogy is traced back for ten generations.
His mother’s name, Dughdhova (later Dogdo), does
not occur in the Avesta, so far was any thought of
virgin-birth from occurring to the Zoroastrians, even
in the comparatively late times in which much of
the Avesta was composed. We are informed that
Zoroaster was born to reward his father for being so
faithful in offering libations of the sacred haomajuice. and that is all. Myths did ultimately grow up
about the historical Zoroaster. Pliny, for instance,
tells us that Zoroaster laughed on the day of his
birth, and that he lived for thirty years in the wilder
ness on cheese (Lib., XXX. 1, 2, § 39). Yet he
knew nothing about anything miraculous in con
nexion with his birth. Even in the Dasatir i Asmani,
a Pahlavi work composed at earliest in the time of
the Sasanides, we are merely told that Zoroaster
was son (perhaps descendant) of Spitama and traced
his ancestry to Luhrasp, and that he was a prophet.
In the Shahnamah (beginning of Vol. Ill) we learn
that Zoroaster was a prophet, but nothing is told us
about virgin-birth. Even in the Zaratusht-Namah,
dated A.D. 1278, there is nothing of this kind re
corded. From tradition we learn_that Pourushaspa
drank some
juice, in which Ormazd had placed
Zoroaster’s fravashi (soul). Thereafter Dughdova
conceived her son in the usual way (Dinkart, vii.,
2. 7-10, 14, sqq.\ Yasht, iii., 2, 6; Yasht, xix., 81 ;
Zaratan, sect, iv., vv. 68, sqqij. So far from this
being an instance of virgin-birth, Zoroaster was the
third of five brothers (Zad Sparam, xv., 5).1 Hence
it is clear either that Mr. Phelips uses words with an
esoteric meaning, or that here again facts are so un
fortunate as not quite to agree with his statements.
1 Vide Rosenburgh’s edition of the text of the Zaratusht-Namali,
(St. Petersburg, 1904),
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MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
The same writer, turning to Egypt for a moment,
makes a very important statement about one of
the deities worshipped there. “In Egypt,” he says,
“ Horus, who had the epithet of ‘ Saviour,’ was born
of the virgin Isis. The Egyptian Bible, remember,
is the oldest in the world” (The Churches, etc.,
p. 128). This must mean (1) that the Book of the
Dead styles Horus “ Saviour,” and (2) that the same
book states that his mother Isis was a virgin. These
statements are of great interest, and the only thing
which can in any degree be held to lessen their
importance is the fact that they are not quite correct.
This, of course, is a mere detail, often overlooked
in modern mythology. Maspero tells us that,
amid the tangled wilderness of Egyptian myths,
there is one which represents the cow, Isis, as pro
ducing a son, Horus, independently. But this
might be styled ^z/^r-birth more correctly than
anything else. He explains this as intended to
signify the great fertility of the Delta. No such
myth, however, appears in “the Egyptian Bible,”
nor among the many titles there given to “ Horus,
son of Isis,” is there one that can rightly be trans
lated “ Saviour ” in any possible sense. In the Book
of the Dead, Horus is called “ Horus inhabiter of the
Sun-disc, Horus of the two eyes, Horus without
eyes, Horus the blue-eyed, Horus son of Isis, Horus
son of Hathor, Horus son of Osiris, Horus begotten
of Ptah, Horus dweller in blindness, Horus traveller
of eternity, Horus the avenger of his father, Horus
in the pilot’s place in the boat, Horus of the two
horizons,” many of which titles show that he was a
Sun-god. But he is not called “Saviour.” As for
the virgin-birth of Horus, which is the matter under
consideration, so far is this from being taught in
“the Egyptian Bible,” that, as we have seen, more
than one father is there ascribed to him. Dr. Budge
�VIRGIN-BIRTH
85
well sums up the information on the subject given
us in the book by saying that Isis is represented as
raising up the body of the murdered Osiris and
“ being united to him ” before she conceived and
brought forth her son Horus. Horus was therefore
a posthumous son of Osiris, whose death he under
took to avenge (Introd, to version of Book of the
Dead, p. lxxx.). This fact, that Osiris was Horus’
father, is confirmed by a Hymn to Osiris quoted
by Chabas {Revue Archeologique, 1857, p. 65).
Plutarch’s account agrees with this {De Iside et
Osiride, cap. 19). The details are so fully given
in such clear and undisguised language that they
entirely remove any doubt whatever regarding the
manner of Horus’ conception. Plutarch tells also
of an elder Horus
cit., cap. 12), and his narrative
results in the conviction that even when she herself
was born Isis was no longer a virgin. An instructive
idea of the Egyptian belief regarding Isis is given
in Professor Maspero’s Les Inscriptions des Pyramids
de Saqqarah, from which Dr. Budge gives an extract
{Book of the Dead, Introd., p. cxxxiv.). This should
suffice to shew how far the worship of Isis was from
leading to moral purity of heart or life, as more
than one modern mythologist has asserted it did.
We cannot venture to transcribe such passages for
obvious reasons. What has been already said, how
ever, should suffice. Let us hope that in the case
of such a highly imaginative writer as Mr. Vivian
Phelips the dictum of Schlegel may ultimately be
verified. “ The extremes of error, when this has
reached the acme of extravagance, often accelerate
the return to truth” {Philosophy of History, Lecture 1,
finf
Passing from ancient times to time still future, we
find in the religious books of the Zoroastrians the
statement that, before the end of the world, three
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MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
prophets, descendants of Zoroaster, are to be born at
intervals, to teach people his law. They will be
messengers of Ahura Mazda, and will co-operate
with one another in destroying all the mischief
wrought by demops and men {Yasht, xiii., 142).
Though born of three different mothers, they will be
in the most literal? manner sprung from Zoroaster’s
seed. Regarding not a single one of these future
prophets is any hint given that he was expected to
be virgin-born, as is often stated by modern mythologists. The fact is that such clear details are given
about the manner of the conception of each that it is
impossible to translate them into a modern language.
One of the three is Saoshyant,1 also called Astvatereta. His mother’s name will be Vispa-taurvI, and
she will conceive him while bathing in Lake Kasavl.
A slightly different form of the myth, in which
Ormazd is to take the part of Zoroaster as parent of
the child, is mentioned by Eznik {Refutation of
Heresies, Armenian original, Bk. II., cap, x., p. 133
of the Constantinople ed. of 1873). Whichever of the
two accounts we take, Mr. J. M. Robertson’s asser
tion that Saoshyant is Virgin-born in ParsI myth
ology {Pagan Christs, p. 339) is incorrect. He
seems, moreover, to have studied the subject rather
cursorily, as he evidently confounds Saoshyant, the
future prophet, with Sraosha the archangel.
Thus our careful investigation of the subject leads
1 De hoc Horomazae nuntio futuro, illo in libro, qui Creatio
{Bilndihishriih} appellatur, dicitur fore ut, saeculi iam appropin- •
quante fine, haec puella in eo, cuius mentionem fecimus, lacu corpus
abluens, e Zoroastris semine ibi servato gravida facta filium pariat.
Num puella semine virili gravida virgo appellari potest ? The account
of the conception of Saoshyant’s companions, Ukhshat-ereta and
Ukhshat-nemanh, is similar. Vide Vendidad xix, 4-6; Yasht xiii.,
128, 142; Bundihishnih xxxii., 8, 9. The date of Yasht xiii. is
approximately fixed at about 200 b.c. by the fact of the mention of
Gaotema (Gautama Buddha) in § 16.
�VIRGIN-BIRTH
87
to the conclusion: (i) that Virgin-birth, strictly socalled, either forms no part whatever of any great
religion but the Christian, or that it has crept in, if at
all, only very Jate indeed; (2) that even in myth
ology (which Mr. Grant Allen quite wisely dis
tinguishes from religion) mention of anything which
at all resembles Virgin-birth is extremely rare; (3)
but that, on the other hand, tales of supernatural
births of an entirely different kind are found in some
religions, and especially in mythologies. These facts
are well worthy of reflection, but they do not at all
bear out the assertions which we have quoted at
the beginning of this chapter. Folk-lore and myth
ology show that stories of supernatural births which
bear no resemblance to the Gospel narrative were
and are current in different lands among the mass of
the ignorant, though it is clear from the way these
tales are told that they are not taken in earnest even
by the most credulous. They should fittingly be
ranked with fairy tales or such stories as those re
lated in the Arabian Nights, in Appuleius, and in
other works of fiction composed for the amusement
and entertainment of the uneducated, or of those for
whom literature of a more serious character, if it
existed, possessed little charm.
Should evidence ever be forthcoming to prove
what has certainly not yet been proved, that belief in
Virgin-birth was at one time widespread, we shall
then have to try to account for it. Dr. Frazer
assumes that this belief was extensively held, and he
assumes, in order to explain this, (1) that men were
originally in a savage state, and (2) that they were
then ignorant of a physiological fact of some im
portance. We have already briefly commented on
the second of these two assumptions. The former of
the two has been often stated as a fact and not as
a theory. But there are grave difficulties in the way
�88
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
of our accepting it.1 As Professor Sayce says, “ It
has first to be proved that modern savagery is not
due to degeneration rather than to arrested develop
ment, and that the forefathers of the civilised nations
. s of the ancient world were ever on the same level as
' ' the savage of to-day. In fact, the savage of to-day
is not, and cannot be, a representative of primitive
man. If the ordinary doctrine of development is
right, primitive man would have known nothing of
those essentials of human life and progress of which
no savage community has hitherto been found to be
destitute. He would have known nothing of the art
of producing fire, nothing of language, without which
human society would be impossible. On the other
hand, if the civilised races of mankind possessed from
•f- the outset the germs of culture and the power to
develop it, they can in no way be compared with the
savages of the modern world, who have lived,
generation after generation, stationary and un
progressive, like the beasts that perish, even though
at times they may have been in contact with a higher
civilisation. To explain the religious beliefs and
usages of the Greeks and Romans from the religious
ideas and customs of Australians or Hottentots
is in most cases but labour in vain ; and to seek the
origin of Semitic religion in the habits and super
stitions of low-caste Bedawm is like looking to the
gipsies for an explanation of European Christianity ”
(Rel. of Ancient Eg. and Bab., pp. 17, 18). M. Renan
also writes, “No branch of the Indo-European or the
Semitic races has fallen to the savage state. Every
where these two races reveal themselves to us with
a certain degree of culture. ... We must therefore
suppose that civilised races have not passed through
the savage state, and that they bore in themselves
1 See my Comparative Religion, ch. i., Longmans and Co., 1/-.
�VIRGIN-BIRTH
89
from the beginning the germ of future progress ”
{Hist. Gen. des Langues Sems. Vol. I., p. 484).
It is impossible, therefore, to grant the assumption
that men were originally savages, and that modern
savages’ beliefs represent those from which all religions
have sprung. It would be manifestly absurd and
unhistorical to derive our Christian doctrines from
the superstitions of wandering gipsies, but to some
people it seems quite scientific to imagine that they
have practically sprung from savages in the condition
of the Australian aborigines. Until somewhat better
proof is afforded us than has yet been adduced, how
ever, we can hardly be expected, from any point of
view, to admit that, as Mr. SidneyTIartland suggests,
the doctrine of our Lord’s Virgin-birth has become
embodied in the Christian faith on no better ground
than that of the survival of a belief “ fully developed
in the depths of savagery.” There is no proof that
savages hold or have ever held such a doctrine at all;
nor is there any really conclusive proof that the
civilised nations of the world have ever passed
through a condition at all resembling that of the
savages still to be found in a few of the countries of
the world.
Although belief in Virgin-birth, properly so called,
cannot be proved to have been widespread, yet there
can be no doubt that in many parts of the world we do
find stories which assert something supernatural in the
case of fabulous heroes, and to a less degree in that
of certain great men of the past. We have seen that
it is impossible to derive the Christian doctrine of
Christ’s Virgin-birth from such sources, especially as
it arose among Jews, who had no such myths current
among them. But the question remains, How did the
idea of supernatural births arise among the heathen ?
Are these all to be accounted for, as some undoubtedly
may be, by considering them to be Nature-myths?
�90
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
Or may there be a deeper meaning in them ? May
they not have sprung up through some ancient
tradition, misunderstood and corrupted ? And may
not their preservation, if not their origination, evince
the existence of a felt need, the yearning of the human
heart for some proof of the nearness and the care of
the Divine ?
.
Dr. Frazer says, “ The notion . . . of a human being
endowed with divine or supernatural powers belongs
essentially to that earlier period of religious history in
which gods and men are still viewed as beings of much
the same order, and before they are divided by the
impassable gulf which, to later thought, opens out
between them (“Golden Bough” 2nd Ed., Vol. I.,
P- I3i)May it not, on the contrary, be that it was just to
prevent men from feeling themselves separated from
God by a deep “impassable gulf,” that human con
sciousness of need readily grasped the tradition which,
found among so many nations, declared that at one
time the gods had walked with men ? Tradition told
of a Golden Age and of a Fall: but even the narrative
of the occurrence of the latter proved the conviction
that at one time it had been possible for man to enjoy
communion with his Maker. If any lingering remem
brance of that happy age survived—and this we know
was the case—it was not unlikely that men would
enquire whether there was still hope of restoration to
their lost estate. Hence the Divine Promise of a
coming Saviour, to be born of a woman (Gen. iii. 15),
would very naturally be cherished, in some form or
other, among men. It would not be strange were
theories to arise on the subject, and if these theories
were degraded more and more in proportion as the
conception of the Divine declined among the heathen
nations. Men might readily suppose that there would
be something supernatural about the birth of the
*
■ ■ »
t
L *■
�VIRGIN-BIRTH
9i
promised Saviour, and this may, in some measure,
account for such legends on the subject as were really
believed in some parts of the ancient world. The idea
would, no doubt, be easily capable of great abuse ; it
might degenerate into an incident in popular fables ;
but none the less it would, in the minds of the
thoughtful and pious, prevent the growth of that
feeling of an utter and hopeless separation between
God and man which must otherwise have come about.
On the other hand, if we suppose that popular
fancy, quite independently and with no apparent
reason, evolved the idea of supernatural—nay, even
of Virgin—birth, then we must conclude one of two
things: either (1) that it is an unmeaning delusion,
or (2) that it was developed under Divine guidance.
Here again we reach the same conclusion to which
an examination into the question of sacrifice also
leads {vide, my Comparative Religion^ ch, iii., Long
mans and Co.). If we take the Christian view, every
thing readily falls into its place. We see, indeed, in
Ethnic faiths perversions of originally noble concep
tions, we perceive the gradual progress of degrada
tion in all religions, we find religion often turned
into a curse, as Lucretius thought it {De Rerum
Natura, Lib. I., 63, 64; 79-102; 931,932, etc.), and
not a blessing. Yet throughout all “ one unceasing
purpose runs,” a Divine plan for the education of the
human race in things of the utmost importance to
them, a gradual preparation for a fuller revelation of
God in Christ Jesus, for man’s restoration to the
state of peace with God from which he had fallen.
On the other hand, if we reject this view, everything
is meaningless and absurd, and that too in the most
vital department of human life and history. Religion
has always played, for good or ill, a greater part in
the affairs of the human race than anything else.
As no other department of the world’s affairs has
�92
MYTHIC CHRISTS AND THE TRUE
ever been neglected by the Creator, it seems con
trary at once to reason and to analogy to suppose
that this has been overlooked by Him. It is true
that in religious and moral matters we have to make
allowance for the operation of other factors besides
the Divine. Human freewill and the opposition of
evil spiritual powers have, here as elsewhere, intro
duced and continued in existence not only elements
of discord but also evils of the worst description.
Yet all the more on that account, as the religious
instinct has been implanted and perpetuated in man,
must we believe that God’s purpose will ultimately
be wrought out in its guidance and development,
that false views will be gradually eliminated or con
futed, and that every element of truth will be pre
served and caused to shine more and more clearly
for man’s enlightenment and perfecting, until he is at
last restored to that perfect harmony with the will
and character of God which his true and lasting
happiness demands. The more evident may be
come, therefore, the wide diffusion of belief in the
possibility of supernatural birth of whatever kind,
the more clearly shall we see that some truth under
lies the idea, and that there must be some foundation
for the fancy. The false coin presupposes the
genuine, and would never have existed but for it.
In the Gospel, as we learn why men were led to
believe in the possibility of a Divine Incarnation
(see my Comparative Religion, ch. ii.), so we are
taught what is the great fact which accounts for
Ethnic belief in supernatural births. In this respect,
as in others, Christ not only “ fulfilled,l the Law and
the Prophets, but also satisfied and in a sense justi
fied the instinct which in many parts of the world
led men at least to recognise the possibility of a
supernatural birth. The very existence of so many
varied forms of legends of births of this kind shows
�VIRGIN-BIRTH
93
that such a thing is not “unthinkable.” The ex
planation of the belief is not that men were originally
ignorant savages, and that Christianity has incor
porated into itself one of their quite unaccountable
vagaries of thought; on the contrary, it is that, even
when fallen into savagery or into false religious
beliefs, many tribes still preserved in a corrupt form
lingering traces of a remembrance of a Divine Pro
mise which constituted man’s only hope, and which
was fulfilled in the fulness of time.
James Hemetson & Son, Printers, London, N. W.
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Victorian Blogging
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Mythic Christs and the true : a criticism of some modern theories
Creator
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Tisdall, W. St Clair
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: vi,93, [3] p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Annotations in pencil. Publisher's advertisements on unnumbered pages at the end. Published for the North London Christian Evidence League. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Hunter and Longhurst
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1909
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N638
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Jesus Christ
Rationalism
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Text
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English
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ-Rationalistic Interpretations
NSS