Chapter I HISTORICAL METHOD

Orthodox obscurantism the parent of Sciolism In Myth, Magic, and Morals (Chapter IX) I have remarked that the Church, by refusing to apply in the field of so-called sacred history the canons by which in other fields truth is discerned from falsehood, by beatifying credulous² ignorance and anathematizing scholarship and common sense, has surrounded the figure of Jesus with such a nimbus of improbability that it seems not absurd to some critics of to-day to deny that he ever lived. The circumstance that both in England and in Germany the books of certain of these critics—in particular, Dr. Arthur Drews, Professor W. Benjamin Smith, and Mr. J. M. Robertson—are widely read, and welcomed by many as works of learning and authority, requires that I should criticize them rather more in detail than I deemed it necessary to do in that publication.

B. Croce on nature of History Benedetto Croce well remarks in his Logica (p. 195) that history in no way differs from the physical sciences, insofar as it cannot be constructed by pure reasoning, but rests upon sight or vision of the fact that has happened, the fact so perceived being the only source of history. In a methodical historical treatise⁶ the sources are usually divided into monuments and narratives⁷; by the former being understood whatever is left to us as a trace of the accomplished⁹ fact—e.g., a contract, a letter, or a triumphal arch; [2]while narratives consist of such accounts of it as have been transmitted to us by those who were more or less eye-witnesses thereof, or by those who have repeated the notices or traditions furnished by eye-witnesses.

Relative paucity¹⁰ of evangelic tradition Now it may be granted that we have not in the New Testament¹¹ the same full and direct information about Jesus as we can derive¹² from ancient Latin literature about Julius C?sar or Cicero. We have no monuments of him, such as are the commentaries of the one or the letters and speeches of the other. It is barely credible¹³ that a single one of the New Testament writers, except perhaps St. Paul, ever set eyes on him or heard his voice. It is more than doubtful whether a single one of his utterances¹⁵, as recorded in the Gospels, retains either its original form or the idiom in which it was clothed. A mass of teaching, a number of aphorisms¹⁷ and precepts¹⁸, are attributed to him; but we know little of how they were transmitted to those who repeat them to us, and it is unlikely that we possess any one of them as it left his lips.

and presence of miracles in it, And that is not all. In the four Gospels all sorts of incredible stories are told about him, such as that he was born of a virgin¹⁹ mother, unassisted by a human father; that he walked on the surface of the water; that he could foresee the future; that he stilled a storm by upbraiding²⁰ it; that he raised the dead; that he himself rose in the flesh from the dead and left his tomb empty; that his apostles beheld²¹ him so risen; and that finally he disappeared behind a cloud up into the heavens.

explains and excuses the extreme negative school It is natural, therefore—and there is much excuse for him—that an uneducated man or a child, bidden [3]unceremoniously in the name of religion to accept these tales, should revolt, and hastily make up his mind that the figure of Jesus is through and through fictitious²², and that he never lived at all. One thing only is certain—namely, that insofar as the orthodox blindly accept these tales—nay²³, maintain with St. Athanasius that the man Jesus was God incarnate²⁴, a pre-existent ?on, Word of God, Creator of all things, masked in human flesh, but retaining, so far as he chose, all his exalted²⁵ prerogatives²⁶ and cosmic attributes in this disguise—they put themselves out of court, and deprive themselves of any faculty²⁷ of reply to the extreme negative school of critics. The latter may be very absurd, and may betray an excess of credulity in the solutions they offer of the problem of Christian²⁹ origins; but they can hardly go further along the path of absurdity³⁰ and credulity than the adherents³¹ of the creeds³². If their arguments are to be met, if any satisfactory proof is to be advanced of the historicity of Jesus, it must come, not from those who, as Mommsen remarked, “reason in chains,” but from free thinkers.

Yet Jesus is better attested³³ than most ancients Those, however, who have much acquaintance with antiquity³⁵ must perceive at the outset that, if the thesis that Jesus never existed is to be admitted, then quite a number of other celebrities³⁶, less well evidenced than he, must disappear from the page of history, and be ranged with Jesus in the realm of myth.

Age of the earliest Christian literature Many characteristically Christian documents, such as the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Teaching of the Apostles, are admitted by Drews to have been written before A.D. 100.1 Not [4]only the canonical³⁸ Gospels, he tells us,2 were still current in the first half of the second century, but several never accepted by the Church—e.g., spurious gospels ascribed to Matthew, Thomas, Bartholomew, Peter, the Twelve Apostles. These have not reached us, though we have recovered a large fragment of the so-called Peter Gospel, and find that it at least pre-supposes canonical Mark. The phrase, “Still current in the first half of the second century,” indicates that, in Dr. Drews’s opinion, these derivative³⁹ gospels were at least as old as year 100; in that case our canonical Gospels would fall well within the first. I will not press this point; but, anyhow, we note the admission that within about seventy years of the supposed date of Jesus’s death Christians⁴⁰ were reading that mass of written tradition about him which we call the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They were also reading a mass of less accredited⁴¹ biographies—less trustworthy, no doubt, but, nevertheless, the work of authors who entertained no doubt that Jesus had really lived, and who wished to embellish⁴² his story.

If Jesus never lived, neither did Solon, If, then, armed with such early records, we are yet so exacting⁴³ of evidence as to deny that Jesus, their central figure, ever lived, what shall we say of other ancient worthies—of Solon, for example, the ancient Athenian legislator? For his life our chief sources, as Grote remarks (History of Greece, Pt. II, ch. 11), are Plutarch and Diogenes, writers who lived seven and eight hundred years after him. Moreover, the stories of Plutarch about him are, as Grote says, “contradictory as well as apocryphal⁴⁵.” It is true [5]that Herodotus repeats to us the story of Solon’s travels, and of the conversations he held with Cr?sus, King of Lydia; but these conversations are obviously mere⁴⁷ romance. Herodotus, too, lived not seventy, but nearly one hundred and fifty years later than Solon, so that contemporary evidence of him we have none. Plutarch preserves, no doubt, various laws and metrical aphorisms which were in his day attributed to Solon, just as the Christians attributed an extensive body of teaching to Jesus. If we deny all authenticity⁴⁸ to Jesus’s teaching, what of Solon’s traditional lore⁴⁹? Obviously Jesus has a far larger chance to have really existed than Solon.

or Epimenides, And the same is true of Epimenides of Crete, who was said to be the son of the nymph Balte; to have been mysteriously fed by the nymphs, since he was never seen to eat, and so forth⁵⁰. He was known as the Purifier, and in that r?le healed the Athenians of plagues physical and spiritual. A poet and prophet he lived, according to some, for one hundred and fifty-four years; according to his own countrymen, for three hundred. If he lived to the latter age, then Plato, who is the first to mention him in his Laws, was his contemporary, not otherwise.

or Pythagoras, Pythagoras, again, can obviously never have lived at all, if we adopt the purist canons of Drews. For he was reputed, as Grote (Pt. II, ch. 37) reminds us, to have been inspired by the gods to reveal to men a new way of life, and found an order or brotherhood⁵¹. He is barely mentioned by any writer before Plato, who flourished one hundred and fifty years later than he. In the matter of miracles, prophecy, pre-existence, mystic observances, and asceticism⁵², Pythagoras equalled, if he did not excel, Jesus. [6]

or Apollonius of Tyana Apollonius of Tyana is another example. We have practically no record of him till one hundred and twenty years after his death, when the Sophist Philostratus took in hand to write his life, by his own account, with the aid of memorials left by Damis, a disciple⁵⁴ of the sage⁵⁵. Apollonius, like Jesus and Pythagoras, was an incarnation of an earlier being; he, too, worked miracles, and appeared after death to an incredulous follower⁵⁶, and ascended⁵⁷ into heaven bodily. The stories of his miracles of healing, of his expulsions of demons⁵⁹, and raising of the dead, read exactly like chapters out of the Gospels. He, like Jesus and Pythagoras, had a god Proteus for his father, and was born of a virgin. His birth was marked in the heavens by meteoric⁶⁰ portents⁶². His history bristles⁶³ with tales closely akin⁶⁴ to those which were soon told of Jesus; yet all sound scholars are agreed that his biographer did not imitate the Gospels, but wrote independently of them. If, then, Jesus never lived, much less can Apollonius have done so. Except for a passing reference in Lucian, Philostratus is our earliest authority for his reality; the life written of him by Moeragenes is lost, and we do not know when it was written. On the whole, the historicity of Jesus is much better attested and documented than that of Apollonius, whose story is equally full of miracles with Christ’s.

Miracles do not wholly invalidate a document The above examples suffice. But, with the aid of a good dictionary of antiquity, hundreds of others could be adduced of individuals for whose reality we have not a tithe⁶⁶ of the evidence which we have for that of Jesus; yet no one in his senses disputes their ever having lived. We take it for certain that hundreds—nay, thousands—of people who figure on the pages [7]of ancient and medieval history were real, and that, roughly speaking, they performed the actions attributed to them—this although the earliest notices of them are only met with in Plutarch, or Suidas, or William of Tyre, or other writers who wrote one hundred, two hundred, perhaps six hundred years after them. Nor are we deterred⁶⁷ from believing that they really existed by the fact that, along with some things credible, other things wholly incredible are related of them. Throughout ancient history we must learn to pick and choose. The thesis, therefore, that Jesus never lived, but was from first to last a myth, presents itself at the outset as a paradox⁶⁸. Still, as it is seriously advanced, it must be seriously considered and that I now proceed to do.

Proof of the unhistoricity of Jesus, how attainable⁶⁹ It can obviously not pass muster⁷⁰, unless its authors furnish us with a satisfactory explanation of every single notice, direct or indirect, simple or constructive⁷¹, which ancient writers have transmitted to us. Each notice must be separately examined, and if an evidential document be composite, every part of it. Each statement in its prima facie sense must be shown to be irreconcilable⁷² with what we know of the age and circumstances to which it pretends to relate. And in every case the new interpretation⁷³ must be more cogent⁷⁴ and more probable than the old one. Jesus, the real man, must be driven line by line, verse by verse, out of the whole of the New Testament, and after that out of other early sources which directly or by implication attest³⁴ his historicity. There is no other way of proving so sweeping⁷⁵ a negative as that of the three authors I have named.

How to approach ancient documents For every statement of fact in an ancient author is a problem, and has to be accounted for. If it accords [8]with the context, and the entire body of statement agrees with the best scheme we can form in our mind’s eye of the epoch⁷⁶, we accept it, just as we would the statement of a witness standing⁷⁷ before us in a law court. If, on the other hand, the statement does not agree with our scheme, we ask why the author made it. If he obviously believed it, then how did his error arise? If he should seem to have made it without himself believing it, then we ask, Why did he wish to deceive his reader? Sometimes the only solution we can give of the matter is, that our author himself never penned the statement, but that someone covertly⁷⁸ inserted it in his text, so that it might appear to have contained it. In such cases we must explain why and in whose interest the text was interpolated. In all history, of course, we never get a direct observation, or intuition, or hearing of what took place, for the photographic camera and phonograph did not exist in antiquity. We must rest content with the convictions and feelings of authors, as they put them down in books. To one circumstance, however, amid so much dubiety, we shall attach supreme⁸¹ importance; and that is to an affirmation of the same fact by two or more independent witnesses. One man may well be in error, and report to us what never occurred; but it is in the last degree improbable that two or more Value of several independent witnesses in case of Jesusindependent witnesses will join forces in testifying to what never was. Let us, then, apply this principle to the problem before us. Jesus, our authors affirm, was not a real man, but an astral myth. Now we can conceive of one ancient writer mistaking such a myth for a real man; but what if another and another witness, what if half a dozen or more come along, and, meeting us quite [9]apart from one another and by different routes, often by pure accident, conspire⁸² in error. If we found ourselves in such case, would we not think we were bewitched, and take to our heels?

The oldest sources about Jesus Well, I do not intend to take to my heels. I mean to stand up to the chimeras⁸³ of Messrs. Drews, Robertson, and Benjamin Smith. And the best courage is to take one by one the ancient sources which bear witness to the man Jesus, examine and compare them, and weigh their evidence. If they are independent, if they agree, not too much—that would excite a legitimate⁸⁴ suspicion—but only more or less and in a general way, then, I believe, any rational inquirer would allow them weight, even if none were strictly⁸⁵ contemporaries of his and eye-witnesses of his life. In the Gospel of Mark we have the earliest narrative⁸ document of the New Testament. This is evident from the circumstance that the three other evangelists used it in the composition of their Gospels. Drews, indeed, admits it to be one of the “safest” results of modern discussion of the life of Jesus that this Gospel is the oldest of the surviving four. He is aware, of course, that this conclusion has been questioned; but no one will doubt it who has confronted The Gospel of Mark used in Matthew and LukeMark in parallel columns with Luke and Matthew, and noted⁸⁶ how these other evangelists not only derive from it the order of the events of the life of Jesus, but copy it out verse after verse, each with occasional modifications⁸⁷ of his own. Drews, however, while aware of this phenomenon, has yet not grasped the fact that it and nothing else has moved scholars to regard Mark as the most ancient of the three Synoptics; quite erroneously, as if he had never read any work of modern textual [10]criticism, he imagines that they are led to their conclusion, firstly by the superior freshness and vividness of Mark, by a picturesqueness⁸⁸ which argues him to have been an eye-witness; and, secondly⁸⁹, by the evidence of Papias, who, it is said, declared Mark to have been the interpreter of the Apostle Peter. In point of fact, the modern critical theologians, for whom Drews has so much contempt, attach no decisive weight in this connection either to the tradition preserved by Papias or to the graphic⁷⁹ qualities of Mark’s narratives. They rest their case mainly on the internal evidence of the texts before them.

Contents of Mark What, then, do we find in Mark’s narrative?

Inasmuch as my readers can buy the book for a penny and study it for themselves, I may content myself with a very brief résumé of its contents.

It begins with an account of one John who preached round about Jud?a, but especially on the Jordan, that the Jews must repent⁹¹ of their sins in order to their remission; in token whereof he directed them to take a ritual bath in the sacred waters of the Jordan, just as a modern Hindoo washes away his sins by means of a ritual bath in the River Jumna. An old document generally called Q. (Quelle), because Luke and Matthew used it in common to supplement Mark’s rather meagre story, adds the reason why the Jews were to repent; and it was this, that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. Drews’s account of MessianismDrews, in his first chapter of The Christ Myth, traces out the idea of this Kingdom of God, which he finds so prominent in the Jewish Apocalyptics of the last century before and the first century after Christ, and attributes it to Persian and Mithraic influence. Mithras, he says, was to descend⁹³ upon the earth, and in a last fierce struggle overwhelm [11]Angromainyu or Ahriman and his hosts, and cast them down into the nether⁹⁴ world. He would then raise the dead in bodily shape, and after a general judgment⁹⁵ of the whole world, in which the wicked should be condemned⁹⁷ to the punishments of hell and the good raised to heavenly glory, establish the “millennial kingdom.” These ideas, he continues, penetrated⁹⁸ Jewish thought, and brought about a complete transformation⁹⁹ of the former belief in a messiah, a Hebrew term meaning the anointed—in Greek Christos. For, to begin with, the Christ was merely the Jewish king who represented Jahwe before the people, and the people before Jahwe. He was “Son of Jahwe,” or “Son of God” par¹ excellence¹⁰⁰; later on the name came to symbolize¹⁰¹ the ideal king to come—this when the Israelites lost their independence, and were humiliated¹⁰² by falling under a foreign yoke¹⁰⁴. This ideal longed-for king was to win Jahwe’s favour; and by his heroic deeds, transcending¹⁰⁵ those of Moses and Joshua of old, to re-establish the glory of Israel, renovate¹⁰⁶ the face of the earth, and even make Israel Lord over all nations. But so far the Messiah was only a human being, a new David or descendant of David, a theocratic¹⁰⁷ king, a divinely favoured prince of peace, a just ruler over the people he liberated¹⁰⁸; and in this sense Cyrus, who delivered the Jews from the Babylonian captivity¹⁰⁹, the rescuer and overlord of Israel, had been acclaimed¹¹⁰ Messiah.

At last and gradually—still under Persian influence, according to Drews—this figure assumed divine attributes, yet without forfeiting¹¹¹ human ones. Secret and supernatural as was his nature, so should the birth of the Messiah be; though a divine child, he was to be born in lowly state. Nay, the personality of the [12]Messiah eventually mingled¹¹² with that of Jahwe himself, whose son he was. Such, according to Drews, were the alternations of the Messiah between a human and a divine nature in Jewish apocalypses of the period B.C. 100 to A.D. 100. They obviously do not preclude¹¹³ the possibility of the Jews in that epoch acclaiming¹¹⁴ a man as their Messiah—indeed, there is no reason why they should not have attached the dignity to several; and from sources which Drews does not dispute we learn that they actually did so.

John and Jesus began as messengers of the divine kingdom on earth Let us return to Mark’s narrative. Among the Jews who came to John to confess and repent of their sins, and wash them away in the Jordan, was one named Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee; and he, as soon as John was imprisoned¹¹⁵ and murdered by Herod, caught up the lamp, if I may use a metaphor¹¹⁶, which had fallen from the hands of the stricken saint, and hurried on with it to the same goal. We read that he went to Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe in the gospel or good tidings.”

The rest of Mark is a narrative of what happened to Jesus on this self-appointed errand. We learn that he soon made many recruits, from among whom he chose a dozen as his particular missionaries¹¹⁸ or apostles. These, after no long time, he despatched on peculiar¹¹⁹ beats of their own. Jesus’s anticipations¹²⁰ of its speedy adventHe was certain that the kingdom was not to be long delayed, and on occasions assured his audience that it would come in their time. When he was sending out his missionary¹²¹ disciples¹²², he even expressed to them his doubts as to whether it would not come even before they had [13]had time to go round the cities of Israel. He confined the promises to JewsIt was not, however, this consideration, but the instinct of exclusiveness, which he shared with most of his race, that led him to warn them against carrying the good tidings of the impending¹²³ salvation¹²⁴ of Israel to Samaritans or Gentiles; the promises were not for schismatics and heathens, but only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Some of these details are derived¹²⁵ not from Mark, but from the document out of which, as I remarked above, the first and second evangelists supplemented Mark.

Was rejected by his own kindred Like Luther, Loyola, Dunstan, St. Anthony, and many other famous saints and sinners, Jesus, on the threshold of his career, encountered Satan, and overthrew¹²⁶ him. A characteristically oriental fast of forty days in the wilderness¹²⁷ equipped him for this feat¹²⁸. Thenceforth he displayed, like Apollonius of Tyana and not a few contemporary rabbis, considerable familiarity with the demons of disease and madness. The sick flocked to him to be healed, and it was only in districts where people disbelieved in him and his message that his therapeutic¹²⁹ energy met with a check. Among those who particularly flouted¹³⁰ his pretensions¹³¹ were his mother and brethren, who on one occasion at least followed him in order to arrest him and put him under restraint as being beside himself or exalté. His Parables¹³² all turn on the coming KingdomA good many parables are attributed to him in this Gospel, and yet more in Matthew and Luke, of which the burden usually is the near approach of the dissolution of this world and of the last Judgment, which are to usher¹³⁴ in the Kingdom of God on earth. We learn that the parable¹³³ was his favourite mode of instruction, as it always has been and still is the chosen vehicle of Semitic moral teaching. No hint in the earliest sources of the miraculous¹³⁵ birth of JesusOf the [14]later legend of his supernatural birth, and of the visits before his birth of angels to Mary, his mother, and to Joseph, his putative¹³⁶ father, of the portents subsequently related in connection with his birth at Bethlehem, there is not a word either in Mark or in the other early document out of which Matthew and Luke supplemented Mark. In these earliest documents Jesus is presented quite naturally as the son of Joseph and his wife Mary, and we learn quite incidentally the names of his brothers and sisters.

Late recognition of Jesus as himself the MessiahTowards the middle of his career Jesus seems to have been recognized by Peter as the Son of God or Messiah. Whether he put himself forward for that r?le we cannot be sure; but so certain were his Apostles of the matter that two of them are represented as having asked him in the naivest¹³⁸ way to grant them seats of honour on his left and right hand, when he should come in glory to judge the world. The Twelve expected to sit on thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel, and this idea meets us afresh in the Apocalypse, a document which in the form we have it belongs to the years 92–93.

His hopes shattered at approach of deathBut the simple faith of the Apostles in their teacher and leader was to receive a rude shock. They accompany him for the Passover to Jerusalem. An insignificant¹³⁹ triumphal demonstration¹⁴¹ is organized for him as he enters the sacred city on an ass¹⁶; he beards the priests in the temple, and scatters¹⁴² the money-changers who sat there to change strange coins for pilgrims. The priests, who, like many others of their kind, were much too comfortable to sigh for the end of the world, and regarded enthusiasts¹⁴³ as nuisances, took offence, denounced him to Pilate as a rebel and a danger to the Roman government of [15]Jud?a. He is arrested, condemned to be crucified, and as he hangs on the cross in a last moment of disillusionment utters that most pathetic of cries: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken¹⁴⁴ me?” He had expected to witness the descent of the kingdom on earth, but instead thereof he is himself handed over helpless into the hands of the Gentiles.

Such in outline is the story Mark has to tell. The rival and supplementary¹⁴⁵ document of which I have spoken, and which admits of some reconstruction¹⁴⁶ from the text of Matthew and Luke, consisted mainly of parables and precepts which Jesus was supposed to have delivered. It need not engage our attention here.

The mythical¹⁴⁷ theory of JesusNow the three writers I have named—Messrs. Drews, Robertson, and W. B. Smith—enjoy the singular good fortune to be the first to have discovered what the above narratives really mean, and of how they originated; and they are urgent that we should sell all we have, and purchase their pearl of wisdom. They assure us that in the Gospels we have not got any “tradition of a personality.” Jesus, the central figure, never existed at all, but was a purely¹⁴⁸ mythical personage. The mythical character of the Gospels, so Drews assures us, has, in the hands of Mr. J. M. Robertson, led the way, and made a considerable advance in England; he regrets that so far official learning in Germany has not taken up a serious position regarding the mythic symbolical¹⁴⁹ interpretation of the latter.3 Let us then ask, What [16]is the gist¹⁵¹ of the new system of interpretation. It is as follows:—

Jesus = Joshua, a Sun-god, object of a secret cultJesus, or Joshua, was the name under which the expected Messiah was honoured in a certain Jewish secret society which had its headquarters in Jerusalem about the beginning of our era. In view of its secret character Drews warns us not to be too curious, nor to question either his information or that of Messrs. Smith and Robertson. This recalls to me an incident in my own experience. I was once, together with a little girl, being taken for a sail by an old sailor who had many yarns¹⁵². One of the most circumstantial of them was about a ship which went down in mid⁸⁰ ocean with all hands aboard; and it wound up with the remark: “And nobody never knew nothing about it.” Little girl: “Then how did you come to hear all about it?” Like our brave old sailor, Dr. Drews warns us (p. 22) not to be too inquisitive¹⁵³. We must not “forget that we are dealing¹⁵⁴ with a secret cult²⁸, the existence of which we can decide upon only by indirect means.” His hypothesis, he tells us, “can only be rejected without more ado by such as seek the traces of the pre-Christian cult of Jesus in well-worn places, and will only allow that to be ‘proved’ which they have established by direct original documentary evidence before their eyes.” In other words, we are to set aside our copious¹⁵⁵ and almost (in Paul’s case) contemporary evidence that Jesus was a real person in favour of a hypothesis which from the first and as such lacks all direct and documentary evidence, and is not amenable¹⁵⁶ to any of the methods of proof recognized by sober historians. We must take Dr. Drews’s word for it, and forego all evidence.

But let our authors continue with their new revelation. [17]By Joshua, or Jesus, we are not to understand the personage concerning whose exploits the Book of Joshua was composed, but a Sun-god. The Gospels are a veiled account of the sufferings and exploits of this Sun-god. “Joshua is apparently¹⁵⁸ [why this qualification?] an ancient Ephraimitic god of the Sun and Fruitfulness, who stood in close relation to the Feast of the Pasch and to the custom of circumcision.”4

Emptiness of the Sun-god Joshua hypothesisNow no one nowadays accepts the Book of Joshua offhand¹⁵⁹ as sound history. It is a compilation¹⁶⁰ of older sources, which have already been sifted¹⁶¹ a good deal, and will undergo yet more sifting¹⁶² in the future. The question before us does not concern its historicity, but is this: Does the Book of Joshua, whether history or not, support the hypothesis that Joshua was ever regarded as God of the Sun and of Fruitfulness? Was ever such a god known of or worshipped in the tribe of Ephraim or in Israel at large? In this old Hebrew epic¹⁶³ or saga¹⁶⁴ Joshua is a man of flesh and blood. How did these gentlemen get it into their heads that he was a Sun-god? For this statement there is not a shadow of evidence. They have invented it. As he took the Israelites dryshod over the Jordan, why have they not made a River-god of him? And as, according to Drews, he was so interested in fruitfulness and foreskins, why not suppose he was a Priapic god? They are much too modest. We should at least expect “the composite myth” to include this element, inasmuch as his mystic votaries¹⁶⁵ at Jerusalem [18]were far from seeing eye to eye with Paul in the matter of circumcision.

The Sun-myth stage of comparative mythologyThere was years ago a stage in the Comparative History of Religions when the Sun-myth hypothesis was invoked¹⁶⁷ to explain almost everything. The shirt of Nessus, for example, in which Heracles perished, was a parable of the sun setting amidst a wrack¹⁶⁹ of scattered¹⁷⁰ clouds. The Sun-myth was the key which fitted every lock, and was employed unsparingly by pioneers of comparative mythology¹⁶⁶ like F. Max Müller and Sir George Cox. It was taken for granted that early man must have begun by deifying the great cosmic powers, by venerating¹⁷¹ Sun and Moon, the Heavens, the Mountains, the Sea, as holy and divine beings, because they, rather than humble¹⁷² and homelier objects, impress us moderns by their sublimity¹⁷³ and overwhelming force. Man was supposed from the first to have felt his transitoriness, his frailty¹⁷⁴ and weakness, and to have contrasted therewith the infinities¹⁷⁵ of space and time, the majesty¹⁷⁶ of the starry¹⁷⁷ hosts of heaven, the majestic¹⁷⁸ and uniform march of sun and moon, the mighty¹⁷⁹ rumble¹⁸⁰ of the thunder. Max Müller thought that religion began when the cowering¹⁸¹ savage¹⁸² was crushed by awe¹⁸³ of nature and of her stupendous forces, by the infinite lapses¹⁸⁴ of time, by the yawning abysses of space. As a matter of fact, savages¹⁸⁵ do not entertain these sentiments of the dignity and majesty of nature. On the contrary, a primitive¹⁸⁶ man thinks that he can impose his paltry¹⁸⁷ will on the elements; that he knows how to unchain the wind, to oblige the rain to fall; that he can, like the ancient witches of Thessaly, control sun and moon and stars by all sorts of petty magical rites¹⁸⁸, incantations, and gestures, as Joshua [19]made the sun stand still till his band of brigands¹⁸⁹ had won the battle. It is to the imagination of us moderns alone that the grandeur¹⁹⁰ of the universe appeals, and it was relatively¹⁹¹ late in the history of religion—so far as it can be reconstructed from the scanty¹⁹² data in our possession—that the higher nature cults¹⁹³ were developed. The gods and sacred beings of an Australian or North American native are the humble vegetables and animals which surround him, objects with which he is on a footing of equality. His totems are a duck, a hare, a kangaroo, an emu, a lizard¹⁹⁴, a grub, or a frog. In the same way, the sacred being of an early Semite’s devotion was just as likely to be a pig or a hare as the sun in heaven; the cult of an early Egyptian was centred upon a crocodile, or a cat, or a dog.5 In view of these considerations, our suspicion is aroused at the outset by finding Messrs. Drews and Robertson to be in this discarded and obsolete¹⁹⁵ Sun-myth stage of speculation¹⁹⁶. They are a back number. Let us, however, examine their mythic symbolic¹⁵⁰ theory a little further, and see what sort of arguments they invoke¹⁶⁸ in favour of it, and what their “indirect” proofs amount to.

Examples of the Sun-god theory of Jesus. The Rock-TombWhy was Jesus buried in a rock-tomb? asks Mr. Robertson. Answer: Because he was Mithras, the rock-born Sun-god. We would like to know what other sort of burial was possible round Jerusalem, where soil was so scarce that everyone was buried in a rock-tomb. Scores of such tombs remain. Are they all Mithraic? Surely a score of other considerations would equally well explain the choice of a rock-tomb for him in Christian tradition. [20]

The date of birthdayWhy was Jesus born at the winter-solstice? Answer: Because he was a Sun-god.

Our author forgets that the choice of December 25 for the feast of the physical birth of Jesus was made by the Church as late as 354 A.D. What could the cryptic¹⁹⁷ Messianists of the first half of the first century know about a festival which was never heard of in Rome until the year 354, nor accepted in Jerusalem before the year 440? Time is evidently no element in the calculations of these authors; and they commit themselves to the most amazing anachronisms with the utmost insouciance¹⁹⁸, or, shall we not rather say, ignorance; unless, indeed, they imagine that the mystic worshippers of the God Joshua knew all about the date, but kept it dark in order to mystify all succeeding generations.

The twelve disciples Why did Jesus surround himself with twelve disciples? Answer: Because they were the twelve signs of the Zodiac and he a Sun-god. We naturally ask, Were the twelve tribes of Israel equally representative of the Zodiac? In any case, may not Christian story have fixed¹⁹⁹ the number of Apostles at twelve in view of the tribes being twelve? It is superfluous²⁰⁰ to go as far as the Zodiac for an explanation.

The Sermon on the Mount Why did Jesus preach his sermon on the Mount? Answer: Because as Sun-god he had to take his stand on the “pillar of the world.” In the same way, Moses, another Sun-god, gave his law from the Mount.

I always have heard that Moses got his tables of the law up top of a mountain, and brought them down to a people that were forbidden to approach it. He did not stand up top, and shout out his laws to them, as Mr. Robertson suggests. In any case, we merely read in Matthew v that Jesus went up into a [21]mountain or upland region, and when he had sat down his disciples came to him, and he then opened his mouth and taught them. In a country like Galilee, where you can barely walk a mile in any direction without climbing a hill, what could be more natural than for a narrator to frame such a setting for the teacher’s discourse²⁰¹? It is the first rule of criticism to practise some economy of hypothesis, and not go roaming after fanciful and extravagant²⁰² interpretations²⁰³ of quite commonplace and every-day occurrences.

The last Judgment Why was it believed that Jesus was to judge men after death? Answer: Because he was a Sun-god, and pro³ tanto identical with Osiris.

Surely the more natural interpretation is that, so soon as Jesus was identified in the minds of his followers²⁰⁴ with the Messiah or Christ, the task of judging Israel was passed on to him as part of the r?le. Thus in the Psalms²⁰⁶ of Solomon, a Jewish apocryph of about B.C. 50, we read that the Messiah will “in the assemblies judge the peoples, the tribes of the sanctified” (xvii, 48). Such references could be multiplied; are they all Osirian? If Mr. Robertson had paid a little more attention to the later apocrypha⁴⁶ of Judaism, and made himself a little better acquainted with the social and religious medium which gave birth to Christianity, he would have realized how unnecessary are these Sun-mythic hypotheses, and we should have been spared his books.

The Lamb and Fish symbolism Why is Jesus represented in art and lore by the Lamb and the Fishes? Answer: As a Sun-god passing through the Zodiac.

This is amazing. We know the reason why Jesus was figured as a Lamb by the early Christians. It [22]was because they regarded the paschal lamb as a type of him. Does Mr. Robertson claim to know the reasons of their symbolism better than they did themselves?

And where did he discover that Jesus was represented as Fishes in Art and Lore? He was symbolized²⁰⁷ as one fish, not as several; and Tertullian has told us why. It was because, according to the popular zoology²⁰⁸ of the day, fishes were supposed to be born and to originate in the water, without carnal connection between their parents. For this reason the fish was taken as a symbol of Jesus, who was born again in the waters of the Jordan. A later generation explained the appellation²⁰⁹ of ?χθυ? (ichthus), or Fish, as an acrostic. The letters of the Greek word are the initials of the words: Iesous Christos Theou uios soter—i.e., Jesus Christ of God Son, Saviour²¹⁰; but this later explanation came into vogue²¹¹ in an age when it was already heretical to say that Jesus was reborn in baptism; nor does it explain why the multitude of the baptized were symbolized as little fishes in contrast with the Big Fish, Christ.

The two asses²¹² Why did Jesus ride into Jerusalem before his death on two asses? Answer: Because Dionysus also rides on an ass and a foal in one of the Greek signs of Cancer (the turning point in the sun’s course). “Bacchus (p. 287) crossed a marsh²¹³ on two asses.”

Mr. Robertson does not attempt to prove that the earliest Christians, who were Jews, must have been familiar with the rare legend of Bacchus crossing a marsh on two asses; still less with the rare representation of the zodiacal sign Cancer as an ass and its foal. It is next to impossible; and, even if they were, what induced them to transform the myth into [23]the legend of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on two donkeys at once? If they had so excellent a legend of Bacchus on his asses crossing a marsh, why not be content with it? And the same question may be asked in regard to all the other transformations²¹⁴ by which these “mystic sectaries,” who formed the early Church, changed myths culled²¹⁶ from all times and all religions and races into a connected story of Jesus, as it lies before us in the Synoptic Gospels.

Mr. Robertson disdains²¹⁷ any critical and comparative study of the Gospels, and insists on regarding them as coeval²¹⁸ and independent documents. Everything inside the covers of the New Testament is for him, as for the Sunday-school teacher, on one dead level of importance. All textual criticism has passed over his head. He has never learned to look in Mark for the original form of a statement which Luke or Matthew copied out, and in transferring them to their Gospels scrupled²¹⁹ not to alter or modify. Accordingly, to suit the exigencies²²¹ of his theory that the Gospels are an allegory of a Sun-god’s exploits, he here claims to find the original text not in Mark, but in Matthew; as if a transcript²²² and paraphrase²²³ could possibly be prior to, and more authoritative²²⁴ than, the text transcribed²²⁵ and brodé. Accordingly, he writes (p. 339) as follows: “In Mark xi and Luke xix, 30, the two asses become one?…. In the Fourth Gospel, again, we have simply the colt.” And yet by all rules of textual criticism and of common sense the underlying²²⁶ and original text is Mark xi, 1–7. In it the disciples merely bring a colt which they had found tied at a door. The author of the Gospel called of Matthew, eager to discern in every incident, no matter how commonplace, which [24]he found in Mark, a fulfilment of some prophecy, or another, drags in a tag of Zechariah: “Behold, the King cometh to thee, meek²²⁷, and riding on an ass and upon a colt, the foal of an ass.” Then, to make the story told of Jesus run on all fours with the prophecy, he writes that the disciples “brought the ass and the colt, and put on them their garments, and he (Jesus) sat on them.” He was unacquainted with Hebrew idiom, and so not aware that the words, “a colt the foal of an ass,” are no more than a rhetorical reduplication6 of an ass. There was, then, but one animal in the original form of the story, and, as the French say, it saute aux yeux that the importation of two is due to the influence of the prophecy on the mind of the transcriber²²⁹. Why, therefore, go out of the way to attribute the tale to the influence of a legend of Bacchus, so multiplying empty hypotheses? Mr. Robertson, with hopeless perversity²³⁰, takes Dr. Percy Gardner to task for repeating what he calls “the fallacious explanation, that ‘an ass and the foal of [25]an ass’ represents a Greek misconception of the Hebrew way of saying ‘an ass,’ as if Hebrews in every-day life lay under a special spell of verbal absurdity.”7 Jewish abhorrence²³¹ of Pagan mythsBut did Hebrews in every-day life mould their ideas of the promised Messiah on out-of-the-way legends of Bacchus? Were they likely to fashion a tale of a Messianic triumph out of Gentile myths? Do we not know from a hundred sources that the Jews of that age, and the Christians who were in this matter their pupils, abhorred²³² everything that savoured of Paganism. They were the last people in the world to construct a life of the Messiah out of the myths of Bacchus, and Hermes, and Osiris, and Heracles, and the fifty other heathen gods and heroes whom Mr. Robertson rolls up into what he calls the “composite myth” of the Gospels. But let us return to his criticism of Dr. Gardner. Why, it may be asked, was it à priori more absurd of Matthew to turn one ass into two in deference²³³ to Hebrew prophecy, than for Hebrews to set their Messiah riding into the holy city on two asses in deference to a myth of Bacchus crossing a marsh on two of them? Is it not Mr. Robertson, rather than Robertson on Drs. Gardner and CarpenterDr. Gardner, who here lies under a special spell of absurdity? “A glance at the story of Bacchus,” writes Mr. Robertson, “crossing a marsh on two asses … would have shown him that he was dealing with a zodiacal myth.” The boot is on the other foot. Had Mr. Robertson chosen to glance at the Poeticon Astronomicon of Hyginus, a late and somewhat worthless Latin author, who is the authority for this particular tale of Bacchus, he would have read [26](ii, 23) how Liber (i.e., Dionysus) was on his way to get an oracle²³⁴ at Dodona which might restore his lost sanity²³⁵: Sed cum venisset ad quandam paludem magnam, quam transire non posset, de quibusdam duobus asellis obviis factis dicitur unum deprehendisse eorum, et ita esse transvectus, ut omnino aquam non tetigerit.

In English: “But when he came to a certain spacious²³⁶ marsh, which he thought he could not get across, he is said to have met on the way two young asses, of which he caught one, and he was carried across on it so nicely that he never touched the water at all.”

Here there is no hint of Bacchus riding on two asses, and Mr. Robertson’s entire hypothesis falls to the ground like a house of cards. The astounding²³⁷ thing is that, although he insists on pages 287 and 4538 that Bacchus rode on two asses, and that here is the true Babylonian explanation of Jesus also riding on two, he gets the Greek, or rather Latin, myth right on p. 339, and recognizes that Dionysus was only mounted on one of the asses when he passed the morass²³⁸ or river on his way to Dodona. Thus, by Mr. Robertson’s own admission, Bacchus never rode on two asses at all.

The Pilate myth Why was Jesus crucified by Pilate? For an answer to this let us for a little quit “the very stimulating²³⁹ and informing works,” as Dr. Drews calls them, of Mr. Robertson, and turn to Dr. Drews’s own work on The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus.9 For there we find the true “astral myth interpretation” in all [27]its glory. The Pilate of Christian legend was, so we learn, not originally an historical person at all; the whole story of Christ is to be taken in an astral sense; and Pilate in particular represents the story of Orion, the javelin-man (Pilatus), with the Arrow or Lance constellation²⁴⁰ (Sagitta), which is supposed to be very long in the Greek myth, and reappears in the Christian legend under the name of Longinus?…. In the astral myth the Christ hanging on the cross or world-tree (i.e., the Milky²⁴¹ Way) is killed by the lance of Pilatus?…. The Christian population of Rome told the legend of a javelin-man, a Pilatus, who was supposed to have been responsible for the death of the Saviour. Tacitus heard the myth repeated, and, like the fool he was, took it that Pilate the javelin-man was no other than Pilate the Roman procurator of Jud?a under Tiberius, who must have been known to him from the books of Josephus.10 Accordingly, Tacitus sat down and penned his account of the wholesale²⁴² massacre²⁴³ and burning of Christians by Nero in the fifteenth book of his Annals.

We shall turn to the evidence of Tacitus later on. Meanwhile it is pertinent²⁴⁴ to ask where the myth of Pilatus, of which Drews here makes use, came from. The English text of Drews is somewhat confused; but presumedly Orion, with his girdle sword and lion’s skin, is no other than Pilatus; and his long lance, with which he kills Christ, further entitles him to the name of Longinus. Or is it Pilatus who stabs [28]Orion? It does not matter. Let us test this hypothesis in its essential parts.

The Longinus myth Firstly, then, Longinus was the name coined by Christian legend-mongers of the third or fourth century for the centurion²⁴⁵ who stabbed Jesus with a lance as he hung on the cross. How could so late a myth influence or form part of a tradition three centuries older than itself? The incident of the lance being plunged²⁴⁶ into the side of Jesus is related only in the Fourth Gospel, and is not found in the earlier ones. The author of that Gospel invented it in order to prove to his generation that Jesus had real blood in his body, and was not, as the Docetes maintained, a phantasm mimicking²⁴⁸ reality to the ears and eyes alone of those who saw and conversed²⁴⁹ with him. This Gospel, even according to the Christian tradition of its date, is barely earlier than A.D. 100, and the name Longinus was not heard of before A.D. 250 at the earliest. Yet Drews is ready to believe that it was on the lips of Christians in the reign¹⁰³ of Nero, say in A.D. 64.

Secondly, what evidence is there that Pilatus could mean the “javelin-man” for the earliest generations of Roman Christians? The language current among them was Greek, not Latin, as the earliest Christian inscriptions²⁵⁰ in the catacombs of Rome testify. The language of Roman rites and popes remained Greek for three centuries. Why, then, should they have had their central myth of the crucifixion in a Latin form?

Thirdly, what evidence is there that Pilatus could mean a javelin-man even to a Latin? Many lexicographers interpret it in Virgil in the sense of packed together or dense²⁵¹, and in most authors it bears the sense of bald or despoiled²⁵². [29]

Inadequacy²⁵³ of the mythic theory But, letting that pass, we ask what evidence is there that Orion ever had the epithet²⁵⁴ Pilatus in this sense? What evidence that such a myth ever existed at all? There is none, absolutely none. It is not enough for these authors to ransack²⁵⁵ Lemprière and other dictionaries of mythology in behalf of their paradoxes²⁵⁶; but when these collections fail them, they proceed to coin myths of their own, and pretend that they are ancient, that the early Christians believed in them, and that Tacitus fell into the trap; as if these Christians, whom they acknowledge to have been either Jews or the converts of Jews, had not been constitutionally opposed to all pagan myths and cults alike; as if a good half of the earliest Christian literature did not consist of polemics²⁵⁷ against the pagan myths, which were regarded with the bitterest scorn and abhorrence; as if it were not notorious that it was their repugnance²⁵⁸ to and ridicule²⁵⁹ of pagan gods and heroes and religious myths that earned for the Christians, as for the Jews, their teachers, the hatred²⁶⁰ and loathing²⁶¹ of the pagan populations in whose midst they lived. And yet we are asked to believe that the Christian Church, almost before it was separated from the Jewish matrix, fashioned for itself in the form of the Gospels an allegory of a Sun-god Joshua, who, though unknown to serious Semitic scholars, is yet so well known to Mr. Robertson and his friends that he identifies him with Adonis, and Osiris, and Dionysus, and Mithras, and Krishna, and Asclepius, and with any other god or demi-god that comes to hand in Lemprière’s dictionary. After hundreds of pages of such fanciful writing, Drews warns us in solemn language against the attempts “of historical theologians to reach the [30]nucleus²⁶² of the Gospels by purely philological²⁶³ means.” The attempt, he declares, is “hopeless, and must remain hopeless, because the Gospel tradition floats in the air.” One would like to know in what medium his own hypotheses float. Joshua the Sun-god a pure invention of the mythic school Like Dr. Drews, Mr. Robertson adopts the Joshua myth as if it were beyond question. His faith in “the ancient Palestinian Saviour-Sun-God” is absolute. This otherwise unknown deity²⁶⁴ was the core of what is gracefully²⁶⁵ styled “the Jesuist myth.” On examination, however, the Joshua Sun-god turns out to be the most rickety of hypotheses. Because the chieftain who, in old tradition, led the Jews across the Jordan into the land of promise was named Joshua, certain critics, who are still in the sun-myth phase of comparative mythology—in particular, Stade and Winckler—have conjectured²⁶⁷ that the name Joshua conceals²⁶⁸ a solar hero worshipped locally by the tribe of Ephraim. Even if there ever existed such a cult, it had long vanished when the book of Joshua was compiled; for in this he is no longer represented as a solar hero, but has become in the popular tradition a human figure, a hero judge, and leader of the armies of Israel. Of a Joshua cult the book does not preserve any trace or memory; that it ever existed is an improbable and unverifiable hypothesis. We might just as well conjecture²⁶⁶ that Romulus, and Remus, and other half or wholly legendary²⁶⁹ figures of ancient history, were sun-gods and divine saviours²⁷⁰. But it is particularly in Jewish history that this school is apt to revel¹⁵⁷. Moses, and Joseph, and David were all mythical beings brought down to earth; and the god David and the god Joshua, the god Moses, the god Joseph, form in the imagination of these gentlemen [31]a regular Hebrew prehistoric²⁷¹ Pantheon. I say in their imagination, for it is certain that when the Pentateuch was compiled—at the latest in the fifth century B.C.—the Jews no longer revered²⁷² David, and Joshua, and Joseph as sun-gods; while of what they worshipped even locally before that date we have little knowledge, and can form only conjectures²⁷³. In any case, that they continued to worship a sun-god under the name of Joshua as late as the first century of our era must strike anyone who has the least knowledge of Hebrew religious development, who has ever read Philo or Josephus, or studied Jewish sapiential and apocalyptic⁹² literature of the period B.C. 200–A.D. 100, as a wildly improbable supposition. Supposed secrecy²⁷⁴ of early Christian cult a literary trick Sensible that their hypothesis conflicts with all we know about the Jews of these three centuries, these three authors—Messrs. Drews, Robertson, and W. B. Smith—insist on the esoterism and secrecy of the cryptic society which in Jerusalem harboured the cult. This commonest of literary tricks enables them to evade²⁷⁵ any awkward questions, and whenever they are challenged to produce some evidence of the existence of such a cult they can answer that, being secret and esoteric, it could leave little or no evidence of itself, and that we must take their ipse dixit and renounce²⁷⁶ all hope of direct and documentary evidence. They ask of us a greater credulity than any Pope of Rome ever demanded.

Joshua ben Jehozadak also a Sun-god The divine stage of Joshua, then, if it ever existed, was past and forgotten as early as 500 B.C. It has left no traces. Of the other Joshuas, who meet us in the pages of the Jewish scriptures²⁷⁷, the most important one is Jeshua or Joshua ben Jehozadak, a high priest who, together with Zerubbabel, is often mentioned [32](according to the Encyclop?dia Biblica) in contemporary writings. Not only, then, have we contemporary evidence of this Joshua as of a mere man and a priest, but we know from it that he stooped to such mundane²⁷⁹ occupations as the rebuilding of the Temple. He also had human descendants, who are traced in Nehemiah xii, 10 fol. down to Jaddua. Of this epoch of Jewish history, in which the Temple was being rebuilt, we have among the Jewish and Aramaic papyri lately recovered at Elephantine documents that are autographs of personages with whom this Joshua may well have been in contact. His contemporaries are mentioned and even addressed in these documents, so that he and his circle are virtually as well evidenced for us as Frederick the Great and Voltaire. Is it credible in the face of such facts that the authors we are criticizing should turn this Joshua, too, into a solar god? Yet Drews turns with zest²⁸⁰ to the notice of this Joshua, the high priest in Zechariah iii, as “one of the many signs” which attest that “Joshua or Jesus was the name under which the expected Messiah was honoured in certain Jewish sects²⁸¹.” Unless he regards this later Joshua also as a divine figure, and no mere man of flesh and blood, why does he thus drag him into his argument?

The suspicion that the compilers of the Old Testament burked evidence favourable²⁸² to the Sun-myth hypothesis But, after all, Messrs. Drews and Robertson are uneasy about the book of Joshua, and not altogether capable of the breezy optimism of their instructor²⁸³, Mr. W. B. Smith, who, in Ecce Deus (p. 74), commits himself to the naive¹³⁷ declaration that, “even if we had no evidence whatever of a pre-Christian Jesus cult, we should be compelled to affirm its existence with undiminished decision.” Accordingly, they both go out of their way to hint that the ancient Jews [33]suppressed the facts of the Joshua or Jesus Sun-God-Saviour cult. Thus Mr. Robertson (Christianity and Mythology, p. 99, note 1), after urging us to accept a late and worthless tradition about Joshua, the Son of Nave²⁸⁴, remarks that “the Jewish books would naturally drop the subject.” How ill-natured, to be sure, of the authors of the old Hebrew scriptures to suppress evidence that would have come in so handy for Mr. Robertson’s speculations²⁸⁵. Dr. Drews takes another line, and in a note draws our attention to the fact that the Samaritans possessed²⁸⁶ an apocryphal book of the same name as the canonical book of Joshua. This book, he informs us, is based upon an old work composed in the third century B.C., containing stories which in part do not appear in our Book of Joshua.

He here suggests that something was omitted in canonical Joshua by its authors which would have helped out his hypothesis of a Joshua Sun-god cult. He will not, however, find the Samaritan book encouraging, for it gives no hint of such a cult; of that anyone who does not mind being bored by a perusal²⁸⁷ of it can satisfy himself. Drews’s statement that it is based on an old work composed in the third century B.C. is founded on pure ignorance, and the Encyclop?dia Biblica declares it to be a medieval production of no value to anyone except the student of the Samaritan sect²¹⁵ under Moslem²⁸⁸ rule.

The evidence of El Tabari about Joshua Mr. Robertson thinks he has got on a better trail in the shape of a tradition as to Joshua which he is quite sure the old Jewish scripture²⁷⁸ writers suppressed. Let us examine it, for it affords a capital example of his ideas of what constitutes historical evidence. “Eastern tradition,” he writes, “preserves a variety [34]of myths that the Bible-makers for obvious reasons suppressed or transformed.” In one of those traditions “Joshua is the son of the mythical Miriam; that is to say, there was probably an ancient Palestinian Saviour-Sun-God, Jesus, the son of Mary.” So on p. 285 we learn that the cult of Jesus of Nazareth was “the Survival of an ancient solar or other worship of a Babe Joshua, son of Miriam.” And he continually alludes²⁸⁹ to this ancient form of devotion, not as a mere hypothesis, but as a well-ascertained²⁹⁰ and demonstrable fact.11

Let us then explore this remarkable²⁹¹ tradition by which “we are led to surmise²⁹² that the elucidation²⁹³ of the Christ myth is not yet complete.” For such is the grandiose²⁹⁴ language in which he heralds²⁹⁵ his discovery. And what does it amount to? An Arab, El Tabari, who died in Bagdad about the year 925, compiled a Chronicle, of which some centuries later an unknown native of Persia made an abridgement in his own tongue, and inserted in it as a gloss²⁹⁷ “the remarkable Arab tradition,” as it is called in the Pagan Christs (p. 157) of Mr. Robertson, albeit²⁹⁸ he acknowledges in a footnote that it is “not in the Arabic original.” He asks us accordingly, on the faith of an unknown Persian glossator of the late Middle Ages, to believe that the canonical Book of Joshua originally contained this absurd tradition, and why? Because it would help out his hypothesis that [35]Jesus was an ancient Palestinian Saviour-Sun-God, worshipped by a cryptic society of Hebrews in Jerusalem, both before and after the beginning of the Christian era; and this is the man who writes about “the psychological resistance to evidence” of learned men, and sets it down to “malice and impercipience” that anyone should challenge his conclusions. As usual, Dr. Drews, who sets Mr. Robertson on a level with the author of the Golden Bough12 as a “leading exponent²⁹⁹ of his new mythico-symbolical method,” plunges³⁰⁰ into the pit which Mr. Robertson has dug for him, and writes that, “according to an ancient Arabian tradition, the mother of Joshua was called Mirzam (Mariam, Maria, as the mother of Jesus was).”

W. B. Smith’s hypothesis of a God Joshua The source from which Messrs. Drews and Robertson have drawn³⁰¹ this particular inspiration is Dr. W. B. Smith’s work, The Pre-Christian Jesus (Der Vorchristliche Jesus). This book, we are told, “first systematically³⁰² set forth the case for the thesis of its title.” Let us, therefore, consider its main argument. We have the following passages in Acts xviii, 24:—

    Now a certain Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by race, a learned man, came to Ephesus; and he was mighty in the Scriptures. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and, being fervent³⁰⁴ in spirit, he spake and taught carefully the things concerning Jesus, knowing only the baptism of John: and he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. But [36]when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him unto them, and expounded³⁰⁵ unto him the way of God more carefully. And when he was minded to pass over into Achaia, the brethren encouraged him, and wrote to the disciples to receive him: and when he was come, he helped them much which had believed through grace: for he powerfully confuted the Jews, publicly, showing by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.

Availing ourselves of the canons of interpretation laid down by Drews and Robertson, we may paraphrase the above somewhat as follows by way of getting at its true meaning:—

“A certain sun-myth hero, as his name Apollos signifies, came to Ephesus, which, being the centre of Astarte or Aphrodite worship, was obviously the right place for such a hero to pilgrimage unto. He was mighty in the Jewish Scriptures, and had been instructed in the way of the Lord Joshua, the Sun-God-Saviour of ancient Ephraim. He spake and taught carefully the things concerning this Joshua (or Adonis, or Osiris, or Dionysus, or Vegetation-god, or Horus—for you can take your choice among these and many more). But he knew only of the prehistoric ritual of baptism of Cadmus or of Oannes-Ea, the ancient culture-god of the Babylonians, who appeared in the form of a Fish-man, teaching men by day and at night going down into the sea—in his capacity of Sun-god.” This Cadmus or Oannes was worshipped at Jerusalem in the cryptic sect of the Christists or Jesuists under the name of John. His friend Apollos, the solar demi-god, began to speak boldly in the synagogue. Priscilla (presumably Cybele, mother of the gods), and Aquila, the Eagle-God, or Jupiter, heard him; she took him forthwith and [37]expounded to him the way of Jahve, who also was identical with Joshua, the Sun-god, with Osiris, etc.

His forced and far-fetched interpretations of common phrases Professor W. B. Smith is a little more modest and less thorough-going in his application of mythico-symbolic methods. He only asks us to believe that the trite³⁰⁶ and hackneyed phrase, “the things concerning Jesus,” refers not, as the context requires, to the history and passion of Jesus of Galilee, but to the mysteries of a prehistoric Saviour-God of the same name. We advisedly say prehistoric, for he was never mentioned by anyone before Professor Smith discovered him. The name Jesus, according to him, means what the word Essene also meant, a Healer.13 Note, in passing, that this etymology³⁰⁷ is wholly false, and rests on the authority of a writer so late, ignorant, and superstitious³⁰⁸ as Epiphanius. Now, why cannot the words, “the things about Jesus,” in this context mean the tradition of the ministry³⁰⁹ of Jesus as it had shaped itself at that time, beginning with the Baptism and ending with the Ascension, as we read in Acts i, 22? Apollos and the Baptism of JohnIt cannot, argues Professor Smith, because Apollos only knew the baptism of John. The reference to John’s baptism may be obscure, as much in early Christianity is bound to be obscure, except to Professor Smith and his imitators. Yet this much is clear, that it here means, what it means in the sequel, the baptism of mere repentance³¹⁰ as opposed to the baptism of the Spirit, which was by laying on of hands, and conferred [38]the charismatic gifts of the Holy Ghost. The Marcionites, and after them the Manichean and Cathar sects, retained the latter rite¹⁴, and termed it Spiritual or Pneumatic Baptism; while they dropped as superfluous the Johannine baptism with water. It would appear, then, that Apollos was perfectly³¹¹ acquainted with the personal history of Jesus, and understood the purport³¹² of the baptism of repentance as a sacrament preparing followers of Jesus for the kingdom of Heaven, soon to be inaugurated on earth. Perhaps we get a glimpse in this passage of an age when the mission of Jesus in his primitive r?le as herald²⁹⁶ of the Messianic kingdom and a mere continuer of John’s mission was familiar to many who yet did not recognize him as the Messiah. For, after instruction by Priscilla and Aquila, Apollos set himself to confute the Jews who denied Jesus to have been Messiah, which, as a mere herald of the approaching kingdom of God, he was not. We know that Paul regarded him as having attained³¹³ that dignity only through, and by, the fact of the Spirit having raised him from the dead; and did not regard him as having received it through the descent of the Spirit on him in the Jordan, as the oriental Christians presently believed. Still less did Paul know of the later teaching of the orthodox churches—viz., that the Annunciation was the critical moment in which Christ became Jesus. In any case, we must not interpret the words, “the things about Jesus,” in this passage in a forced and unnatural³¹⁴ sense wholly alien to the writer of Acts. This writer again and again recapitulates³¹⁵ the leading facts of the life and ministry of Jesus, and the phrase, “the things concerning Jesus,” cannot in any work of his bear any [39]other sense. Moreover, the same author uses the very same phrase elsewhere (Luke xxiv, 19) in the same sense. Here Cleopas asks Jesus (whom he had failed to recognize), and says:—

    Dost thou alone sojourn³¹⁶ in Jerusalem, and not know the things which are come to pass there in these days? And he said unto him, What things? And they said unto him, the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him.

Such, then, were “the things about Jesus,” and to find in them, as Professor W. B. Smith does, an allusion³¹⁷ to a pre-Christian myth of a God Joshua is to find a gigantic mare’s-nest, and fly in the face of all the evidence. He verges³¹⁸ on actual absurdity when he sees the same allusion in Mark v, 26, where a sick woman, having heard “the things concerning Jesus,” went behind him, touched his garment, and was healed. Her disease was of a hysterical³¹⁹ description, and in the annals of faith-healing such cures are common. What she had heard of was obviously not his fame as a Sun-god, but his power to heal sick persons like herself. Magical papyrus³²⁰ of Wessely Professor Smith tries to find support for his hardy³²¹ conjecture in a chance phrase in a magical papyrus of Paris, No. 3,009, edited first by Wessely, and later by Dieterich in his Abraxas, p. 138. It is a form of exorcism to be inscribed³²² on a tin plate and hung round the neck of a person possessed by a devil, or repeated over him by an exorcist. In this rigmarole the giants, of course, are dragged in, and the Tower of Babel and King Solomon; and the name of Jesus, the God of the Hebrews, is also invoked in the following terms: “I [40]adjure thee by Jesus the God of the Hebrews, Iabaiae Abraoth aia thoth ele, el?,” etc. The age of this papyrus is unknown; but Wessely puts it in the third century after Christ, while Dieterich shows that it can in no case be older than the second century B.C. It is clearly the composition of some exorcist who clung on to the skirts of late Judaism, for he is at pains to inform us in its last line that it is a Hebrew composition and preserved among pure men. In that age, as in after ones, not a few exorcists, trading on the fears and sufferings of superstitious people, affected³²³ to be pure and holy; and the mention of Jesus indicates some such charlatan³²⁴, who was more or less cognisant of Christianity and of the practice of Christian exorcists. He was also aware of the Jewish antecedents of Christianity, and did not distinguish clearly between the mother religion and its daughter. That is why he describes Jesus as a Hebrew God. We know from other sources that even in the earliest Christian age Gentiles used the name of Jesus in exorcisms. The author of the document styles Jesus God, just as Pliny informs us that the Christians sang hymns³²⁵ “to Christ as to God”—Christo quasi deo. How Professor Smith can imagine that this papyrus lends any colour to his thesis of a pre-Christian Jesus it is difficult to imagine.

Jesus a Nazor?an in what sense Still less does his thesis really profit by the text of Matthew ii, 23, in which a prophecy is adduced to the effect that the Messiah should be called a Nazor?an, and this prophecy is declared to have been fulfilled in so far as Jesus was taken by his parents to live at Nazareth in Galilee.

What prophecy the evangelist had in mind is not [41]known. But Professor W. B. Smith jumps to the conclusion that the Christians were identical with the sect of Nazor?i mentioned in Epiphanius as going back to an age before Christ; and he appeals in confirmation³²⁶ of this quite gratuitous³²⁷ hypothesis14 to Acts xxiv, 5, where the following of Jesus is described as that of the Nazor?i. It in no way helps the thesis of the non-historicity of Jesus, even if he and his followers were members of this obscure sect; it would rather prove the opposite. Drews, following W. B. Smith, pretends in the teeth of the texts that the name is applied³²⁸ to Jesus only as Guardian³²⁹ of the World, Protector and Deliverer of men from the power of sins and d?mons, and that it has no reference to an obscure and entirely³³⁰ unknown village named Nazareth. He also opines that Jesus was called a Nazarene, because he was the promised Netzer or Zemah who makes all things new, and so forth. Such talk is all in the air. Why these writers boggle so much at the name Nazor?an is not [42]easy to divine; still less to understand what Professor Smith is driving at when he writes of those whom he calls “historicists,” that “They have rightly felt that the fall of Nazareth is the fall of historicism itself.” Professor Burkitt has suggested that Nazareth is Chorazin spelt backwards³³¹. Wellhausen explains Nazor?an from Nesar in the name Gennessaret. In any case, as we have no first-century gazetteer³³² or ordnance³³³ survey of Galilee, it is rash to suppose that there could have been no town there of the name. True the Talmuds and the Old Testament do not name it; but they do not profess⁴ to give a catalogue of all the places in Galilee, so their silence counts for little.15 All we know for certain is that for the evangelist Nazor?an meant a dweller³³⁴ in Nazareth, and that he gave the word that sense when he met with it in an anonymous³³⁵ prophecy.

Mr. Robertson on myths I feel that I ought almost to apologize to my readers for investigating at such length the hypothesis of a pre-Christian Jesus, son of a mythical Mary, and for exhibiting over so many pages its fantastic, baseless, and absurd character. But Mr. Robertson himself warns us of the necessity of showing no mercy to myths when they assume the garb³³⁶ of fact. For he adduces (p. 126) the William Tell myth by way of illustrating³³⁷ once for all “the fashion in which a fiction can even in a historical [43]period find general acceptance.” Even so it is with his own fictions. We see them making their way with such startling rapidity over England and Germany as almost to make one despair of this age of popular enlightenment. It is not his fault, and I exonerate³³⁸ him from blame. His methods those of old-fashioned orthodoxyFor centuries orthodox theologians have been trying to get out of the Gospels supernaturalist conclusions which were never in them, nor could with any colour be derived from them except by deliberately³⁴⁰ ignoring the canons of evidence and the historical methods freely employed in the study of all other ancient monuments and narratives. They have set the example of treating the early writings of Christianity as no other ancient books would be treated. Mr. Robertson is humbly³⁴¹ following in their steps, but à rebours, or in an inverse³⁴² sense. They insist on getting more out of the New Testament than any historical testimony³⁴³ could ever furnish; he on getting less. In other respects also he imitates their methods. Thus they insist on regarding the New Testament, and in particular the four Gospels, as a homogeneous block, and will not hear of the criticism which discerns in them literary development, which detects earlier and later couches of tradition and narrative. This is what I call the Sunday-school attitude, and it lacks all perspective and orientation³⁴⁴. Mr. Robertson imbibed³⁴⁵ it in childhood, and has never been able to throw it off. For him there is no before and after in the formation of these books, no earlier and later in the emergence³⁴⁶ of beliefs about Jesus, no stratification of documents or of ideas. If he sometimes admits it, he withdraws the admission on the next page, as militating against his cardinal³⁴⁷ hypothesis. He seems never to have submitted himself [44]to systematic³⁰³ training in the methods of historical research—never, as we say, to have gone through the mill; and accordingly in the handling of documents he shows himself a mere wilful³⁴⁸ child.

Thus he insists on the priority in Christian tradition of the Virgin Birth legend His treatment of the legend of the Virgin Birth is an example of this mental attitude, which might be described as orthodoxy turned upside down and inside out. The Gospel of Mark is demonstrably older than those of the other two synoptists who merely copied it out with such variations, additions, omissions³⁴⁹, and modifications as a growing reverence³⁵⁰ for Jesus the Messiah imposed. It contains, no more than the Pauline Epistles and the Johannine Gospel, any hint of the supernatural birth of Jesus. It regards him quite simply and naturally as the son of Joseph and Mary. In it the neighbours of Jesus enumerate³⁵¹ by way of contumely the names of his brothers and sisters. I have shown also in my Myth, Magic, and Morals that this naturalist³³⁹ tradition of his birth dominates no less the whole of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke apart from the first two chapters of each, and that even in the first chapter of Matthew the pedigree in early texts ended with the words “Joseph begat Jesus.” I have shown furthermore that the belief in the paternity of Joseph was the characteristic belief of the Palestinian Christians for over two centuries, that it prevailed in Syria to the extent of regarding Jesus and Thomas as twin brothers. I have pointed¹¹⁷ out that the Jewish interlocutor Trypho in Justin Martyr³⁵²’s dialogue (c. 150) maintains that Jesus was born a man of men and rejects the Virgin Birth legend as a novelty unworthy of monotheists, and that he extorts³⁵³ from his Christian antagonist³⁵⁴ the admission that the great majority [45]of Christians still believed in the paternity of Joseph.

His exceptional treatment of Christian tradition Now Mr. Robertson evidently reads a good deal, and must at one time or another have come across all these facts. Why, then, does he go out of his way to ignore them, and, in common with Professors Drews and W. B. Smith, insist that the miraculous tradition of Jesus’s birth was coeval with the earliest Christianity and prior to the tradition of a natural birth? Yet the texts stare him in the face and confute him. Why does he shut his eyes to them, and gibe³⁵⁵ perpetually at the critical students who attach weight to them? The works of all the three writers are tirades³⁵⁶ against the critical method which tries to disengage in the traditions of Jesus the true from the false, fact from myth, and to show how, in the pagan society which, as it were, lifted Jesus up out of his Jewish cradle, these myths inevitably³⁵⁷ gathered round his figure, as mists at midday thicken around a mountain crest³⁵⁸.

In secular³⁵⁹ history he uses other canons and methods, Their insistence³⁶⁰ that in the case of Christian origins the miraculous and the non-miraculous form a solid block of impenetrable myth is all the more remarkable, because in secular history they are prepared, nay anxious, for the separation of truth from falsehood, of history from myth, and continually urge not only its possibility, but its necessity. Mr. Robertson in particular prides himself on meting³⁶¹ out to Apollonius of Tyana a measure which he refuses to Jesus the Messiah. e.g., in criticizing the story of Apollonius“The simple purport,” he writes in the Literary Guide, May 1, 1913, “of my chapter on Apollonius was to acknowledge his historicity, despite the accretions³⁶² of myth and more or less palpable fiction to his biography.” And yet [46]there are ten testimonies³⁶³ to the historicity of Jesus where there is one to that of Apollonius; yet Apollonius was reputed to have been born miraculously³⁶⁴, and his birth accompanied by the portent⁶¹ of a meteor from heaven, as that of Jesus by a star from the east. Like Jesus, he controlled the devils of madness and disease, and by the power of his exorcisms dismissed them to be tortured in hell. Like Peter, he miraculously freed himself from his bonds; like Jesus, he revealed himself after death to a sceptical disciple and viva voce convinced him of his ascent³⁶⁵ to heaven; like him, he ascended in his body up to heaven amid the hymns of maiden³⁶⁶ worshippers. In life he spent seven days in the bowels³⁶⁷ of the earth, and gathered a band of disciples around him who acclaimed him as a divine being; long after his death temples were raised to him as to a demigod, miracles wrought³⁶⁸ by his relics³⁶⁹, and prayer and sacrifice offered to his genius. So considerable was the parallelism between his story and that of Jesus that the pagan enemies of the Christians began about the year 300 to run his cult against theirs, and it was only yesterday that the orthodox began to give up the old view that the Life of Apollonius was a blasphemous³⁷⁰ réchauffé of the Gospels. “There is no great reason to doubt that India was visited by Apollonius of Tyana,” writes Mr. Robertson (Christianity and Mythology, p. 273); and yet his visit in the only relation we have of it is a tissue of marvels³⁷¹ and prodigies³⁷², his Indian itinerary³⁷³ is impossible, and full of contradictions not only of what we know of Indian geography to-day, but of what was already known in that day. Yet about his pilgrimage thither³⁷⁴, declares Mr. Robertson, there is no more uncertainty³⁷⁵ than about the embassies [47]sent by Porus to Augustus, and by the king of “Taprobane” to Claudius. “There is much myth,” he writes again, p. 280, “in the life of Apollonius of Tyana, who appears to be at the bottom a real historical personage.” In the Gospels we have the story of Jairus’s daughter being raised to life from apparent death. “A closely similar story is found in Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana, the girl in each case being spoken of in such a way as to leave open the question of her having been dead or a cataleptic.” So writes Mr. Robertson, p. 334, who thinks that “the simple form preserved in Matthew suggests the derivation from the story in Philostratus,” overlooking here, as elsewhere, the chronological³⁷⁶ difficulties. We can forgive him for that; but why, we must ask, does the presence of such stories in the Gospel irrevocably condemn⁹⁶ Jesus to non-historicity, while their presence in the Life of Apollonius leaves his historical reality intact and unchallenged? Is it not that the application of his canons of interpretation to Apollonius would have deprived him of one of the sources from which the mythicity of Jesus by his anachronistic³⁷⁷ methods could be deduced?

The early passion play of the Sun-god Joshua Mr. Robertson endeavours in a halting manner to justify³⁷⁸ his partiality for Apollonius. “We have,” he writes (Pagan Christs, p. 283, § 16), “no reason for doubting that there was an Apollonius of Tyana?…. The reasons for not doubting are (1) that there was no cause to be served by a sheer fabrication; and (2) that it was a much easier matter to take a known name as a nucleus for a mass of marvels and theosophic teachings than to build it up, as the phrase goes about the canon, ‘round a hole.’ The [48]difference between such a case and those of Jesuism and Buddhism³⁷⁹ is obvious. In those cases there was a cultus and an organization to be accounted for, and a biography of the founder³⁸⁰ had to be forthcoming. In the case of Apollonius, despite the string of marvels attached to his name, there was no cultus.”

Let us examine the above argument. In the case of “Jesuism” (Mr. Robertson’s argot³⁸¹ for early Christianity) there had to be fabricated a biography of Jesus, because there existed an organized sect that worshipped Jesus.

The organized sect consisted, according to Mr. Robertson, of “Christists” or “Jesuists,” and the chief incident for which they were organized was an annual play in which the God Jesus was betrayed, arrested, condemned, was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again. Ober Ammergau has supplied him with his main conception, and his annually³⁸² recurring³⁸³ “Gospel mystery play,” as he imagines it to have been acted by the “Jesuists,” who were immediate³⁸⁴ ancestors of the Christians, is a faithful copy of the modern Passion Play. He supposes it to have been acted annually because the hypothetical Sun-God-Saviour Joshua, whose mythical sufferings and death it commemorated³⁸⁵, was an analogue³⁸⁶ of Osiris, whose sufferings and death were similarly represented in Egypt each recurring spring; also of Adonis, of Dionysus, of Mithras, and of sundry³⁸⁷ vegetation gods, annually slain³⁸⁸ to revive vegetation and secure the life of the initiate³⁸⁹ in the next world. Be it remarked also that the annually slain God of the Jesuists was not only an analogue of these other gods, but a “composite myth” made up of their myths. As we have seen, Mr. Robertson is ready to exhibit to us in [49]one or another of their mythologies³⁹⁰ the original of every single incident and actor in the Jesuist play.

Such was the cultus and organization which, according to Mr. Robertson and his imitator Dr. Drews, lies behind the Christian religion. The latter began to be when the “Jesuist” cult, having broken away from Judaism, was also concerned to break away from the paganism in contact with which the play would first arise.

The Gospels a transcript of this play A biography of the Founder of the cult was now called for, by the Founder oddly enough being meant the God himself, and not the hierophant who instituted the play. The Christian Gospels are the biography in question. They are a transcript of the annually performed ritual drama, just as Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare are transcripts³⁹¹ of Shakespeare’s plays.

The first performances of the play, we learn, probably took place in Egypt. It ceased to be acted when “it was reduced to writing as part of the gospel.” How far away from Jerusalem it was that the momentous³⁹² decision was taken by the sect to give up play acting⁴⁴ and be content with the transcript Mr. Robertson “can hardly divine.” He hints, however, that some of the latest representations took place in the temples built by Herod at Damascus and Jericho and in the theatres of the Greek town of Gadara. “The reduction of the play to narrative form put all the Churches on a level, and would remove a stumbling block from the way of the ascetic⁵³ Christists who objected to all dramatic shows as such.”

But where did the play come from? What inspired it? Mr. Robertson makes a tour round the Mediterranean³⁹³, [50]and collects in Part II, Ch. I, of his Pagan Christs a lot of scrappy information about mock sacrifices and mystery dramas, all of them “cases and modes of modification” of actual human sacrifices that were “once normal in the Semitic world.” He assumes without a tittle of proof, and against all probability, that the annual sacrifice of a king or of a king’s son, whether in real or mimic²⁴⁷, held its ground among Jews as a religious ceremony right down into our era, and was “reduced among them to ritual form, like the leading worships of the surrounding Gentile world.” He fashions a new hypothesis in accordance with these earlier ones as follows:—

Joshua or Jesus slain once a year “If in any Jewish community, or in the Jewish quarter of any Eastern city, the central figure in this rite (i.e., of a mock sacrifice annually recurring of a man got up to represent a god) were customarily called Jesus Barabbas, ‘Jesus the Son of the Father’—whether or not in virtue³⁹⁴ of an old cultus of a God Jesus who had died annually like Attis and Tammuz—we should have a basis for the tradition so long preserved in many MSS. of the first gospel, and at the same time a basis for the whole gospel myth of the crucifixion.”

Here we have a whole string of hypotheses piled one on the other. Let us see which have any ground in fact, or cohere³⁹⁵ with what we know of the past, which are improbable and unproven.

Hypothesis of human sacrifice among Jews That human sacrifice was once in vogue among the Jews is probable enough, and the story of the frustrated³⁹⁶ sacrifice of Isaac was no doubt both a memory and a condemnation³⁹⁷ of the old rite of sacrificing first-born children with which we are familiar in ancient Ph?nicia and her colony of [51]Carthage. That such rites in Jud?a and in Israel did not survive the Assyrian conquest of Jerusalem is certain. The latest allusion to them is in Isaiah xxx, 27–33. This passage is post-exilic indeed; but, as Dr. Cheyne remarks (Encycl. Biblica, art. Molech, col. 3,187): “The tone of the allusion is rather that of a writer remote from these atrocities³⁹⁸ than of a prophet in the midst of the struggle against them.”

We may then assume (1) that the custom of human sacrifice disappeared among Jews centuries before our era; (2) that in the epoch 100 B.C. to 100 A.D. every Jew, no matter where he lived, would view such rites and reminiscences with horror. As a matter of fact, Philo dwells in eloquent³⁹⁹ language on the horror and abomination of them as they were still in his day sporadically⁴⁰⁰ celebrated⁴⁰¹, not among Jews, but among pagans.

This being so, is it likely that any Jewish community would keep up even the simulacrum of such rites? In Josephus and Philo, who are our most important witnesses to the Judaism that just preceded or was contemporary with early Christianity, there is no hint of such rites as might constitute a memory and mimicry⁴⁰² of human victims, whether identified with a god or not. No serious pagan writer of that age ever accused the Jews of keeping up such rites openly or in secret among themselves. Evidence of Apion accepted by Mr. RobertsonApion alone had a cock-and-bull story of how Antiochus Epiphanes, when he took Jerusalem (c. 170 B.C.), found a Greek being fattened⁴⁰³ up by the Jews in the adytum of the temple about to be slain and eaten in honour of their god. Of course Mr. Robertson catches at this, and writes (Pagan Christs, p. 161) that, “in view of all the clues, we cannot pronounce that story incredible.” [52]What clues has he? The undoubted survival of ritual murder among the pagans of Ph?nicia in that age is no clue, though it explains the genesis of Apion’s tale. And Mr. Robertson has one other treasure trove—to wit, the obscure reading “Jesus Barabbas” in certain MSS. of Matthew xxvii, 17: “Pilate said unto them, Whom will ye that I release unto you? (Jesus) Barabbas, or Jesus which is called Christ?”

The sacrificing of the mock king It has been plausibly⁴⁰⁴ suggested that the addition Jesus is due to a scribe’s reduplication, such as is common in Greek manuscripts, of the last syllable⁴⁰⁵ of the word humin = unto you. The in in uncials is a regular compendium⁴⁰⁶ for Iesun Jesus. In this way the name Jesus may have crept in before Barabbas. The entire story of Barabbas being released has an apocryphal air, for Pilate would not have let off a rebel against the Roman rule to please the Jewish mob; and the episode presupposes that it was the Sanhedrin which had condemned Jesus to death, which is equally improbable. What is probable, however, is that the Syrian soldiery to whom Pilate committed Jesus for crucifixion were accustomed to the Sac?a festival of Babylonian origin, and perhaps to the analogous⁴⁰⁷ Roman feast of the Saturnalia. In such celebrations a mock king was chosen, and vested with the costume, pomp, and privileges of kingship perhaps for as long as three days. Then the mimicry of slaying⁴⁰⁸ him was gone through, and sometimes the mock king was really put to death. Among Syrians the name Barabbas may—it is a mere hypothesis—have been the conventional appellation of the victim slain actually or in mock show on such occasions; and the soldiers of Pilate may have treated [53]him en Barabbas. Loisy suggests in his Commentary on the Synoptics that this was the genesis of the Barabbas story. That a pagan soldiery treated Jesus as a mock king, when they dressed him in purple and set a crown of thorns on his head, and, kneeling before him, cried “Hail King of the Jews,” is quite possible; and serious scholars like Paul Wendland (Hermes, Vol. XXXIII (1898), fol. 175) and Mr. W. R. Paton long ago discerned the probability.

But it was one thing for Syrians and pagans to envisage⁴⁰⁹ the crucifixion of Jesus under the aspect of a sacrifice to Molech, quite another thing for Jews—whether as his enemies or as his partisans—to do so; nor does the Gospel narrative suggest that any Jews took part in the ceremony. Perhaps it was out of respect for Jewish susceptibilities—and they were not likely to favour any mockery of their Messianic aspirations⁴¹⁰—that Pilate caused Jesus to be divested⁴¹¹ of the purple insignia of royalty⁴¹² and clad in his usual garb before he was led out of the guardroom and through the streets of Jerusalem on his way to Golgotha.

Evidence of Philo We read in Philo (In Flaccum, vi) of a very similar scene enacted⁴¹³ in the streets of Alexandria within ten years of the crucifixion. The young Agrippa, elevated by Caligula to the throne of Jud?a, had landed in that city, where feeling ran high between Jews and pagans. The latter, by way of ridiculing⁴¹⁴ the pretensions of the Jews to have a king of their own, seized on a poor lunatic named Carabas who loitered night and day naked about the streets, ran him as far as the Gymnasium, and there stood him on a stool, so that all could see him, having first set a mock diadem⁴¹⁵ of byblus on his head and thrown [54]a rug over his shoulders as a cloak of honour. In his hand they set a papyrus stem by way of sceptre. Having thus arrayed him, as in a mime⁴¹⁶ of the theatre, with the insignia of mock royalty, the young men shouldering sticks, as if they were a bodyguard⁴¹⁷, encircled him, while others advanced, saluted⁴¹⁸ his mock majesty, and pretended that he was their judge and king sitting on his throne to direct the commonwealth⁴¹⁹. Meanwhile a shout went up from the crowd around of Marin, which in the Syrian language signified Lord.

This passage of Philo goes far to prove that the mockery of Jesus in the Gospels was no more than a public ridiculing of the Jewish expectations of a national leader or Messiah who should revive the splendours of the old Davidic kingdom. In any case, the mockery is conducted at Jerusalem by Pilate’s soldiers (who were not Jews, but a pagan garrison⁴²⁰ put there to overawe the Jews), at Alexandria by such Greeks as Apion penned his calumnies⁴²¹ to gratify. Mr. Robertson’s suggestion that the mock ceremony of the crucifixion was performed by Jews or Christians is thus as absurd as it is gratuitous. It was held in bitter despite of Jews and Christians, it was a mockery and reviling⁴²² of their most cherished hopes and ideals; and yet he does not scruple²²⁰ to argue that it is “a basis for the whole gospel myth of the crucifixion.”

Evidence of the Khonds Thus he is left with the single calumny⁴²³ of Apion, which deserves about as much credence⁴²⁴ as the similar tales circulated to-day against the Jews of Bessarabia. That is the single item of evidence he has to prove what is the very hinge of his theory—the supposition, namely, that the Jews of Alexandria first, and afterwards [55]the Jews of Jerusalem, celebrated in secret once a year ritual dramas representing the ceremonial slaying of a Sun-God-Saviour Joshua, Son of the Father and of the Virgin Miriam. It is a far cry to the horrible rites of the Khonds of modern India; but Mr. Robertson, for whom wide differences of age and place matter nothing when he is explaining Christian origins, has discovered in them a key to the narrative of the crucifixion of Jesus. He runs all round the world and collects rites of ritual murder and cannibal sacraments of all ages, mixes them up, lumps them down before us, and exclaims triumphantly⁴²⁵, There is my “psychological clue” to Christianity. The most superficial resemblances satisfy him that an incident in Jerusalem early in our era is an essential reproduction of a Khond ritual murder in honour of the goddess Tari. Was there ever an author so hopelessly uncritical in his methods?

Origin of the Gospels The Gospels, then, are a transcript of a mock murder of the Sun-god Joshua annually performed in secret by the Jews of Jerusalem, for it had got there before it was written down and discontinued. One asks oneself why, if the Jews had tolerated so long a pagan survival among themselves, they could not keep it up a little longer; and why the “Christists” should be so anxious “to break away from paganism” at exactly the same hour. Moreover, their breach⁴²⁶ with paganism did not amount to much, since they kept the transcript of a ritual drama framed on pagan lines and inspired throughout by pagan ideas and myths; not only kept it, but elevated it into Holy Scripture. At the same time they retained the Old Testament, which as Jews they had immemorially [56]venerated as Holy Scripture; and for generations they went on worshipping in the Jewish temple, kept the Jewish feasts and fasts, and were zealous⁴²⁸ for circumcision. What a hotchpotch of a sect!

How could a Sun-god slain annually be slain by Pontius Pilate? It occurs to me to ask Mr. Robertson a few questions about this transcript. It was the annual mystery play reduced to writing. The central event of the play was the annual death and resurrection of a solar or vegetation god, whose attributes and career were borrowed from the cults of Osiris, Adonis, Dionysus, and Co. All these gods died once a year; and, I suppose, had you asked one of the votaries when his god died, he would have answered, Every spring. Now all the Gospels (in common with all Christian tradition) are unanimous that Jesus only died once, about the time of the Passover, when Pilate was Roman Governor of Jud?a, when Annas and Caiaphas were high-priests and King Herod about. This surely is an extraordinary record for a Sun-god who died once a year. And it was not in the transcript only that all these fixities of date crept in, for Mr. Robertson insists most vehemently⁴²⁹ that Pilate was an actor in the play. “Even the episode,” he writes (Pagan Christs, p. 193), “of the appeal of the priests and Pharisees to Pilate to keep a guard on the tomb, though it might be a later interpolation, could quite well have been a dramatic scene.” In Mark and Matthew, as containing “the earlier version” of the drama, he detects everywhere a “concrete theatricality⁴³⁰.” Thus he commits himself to the astonishing paralogism that Pilate and Herod, Annas and Caiaphas, and all the other personages of the closing chapters of the Gospels, were features in an annually recurring passion play of the Sun-god Joshua; and [57]this play was not a novelty introduced after the crucifixion, for there never was a real crucifixion. On the contrary, it was a secret survival among paganized Jews, a bit of Jewish pagan mummery that had been going on long ages before the actors represented in it ever lived or were heard of. Such is the reductio ad absurdum of the thesis which peeps out everywhere in Mr. Robertson’s pages. And now we have found what we were in search of—namely, the cultus and organization to account for which a biography of Jesus had to be fabricated. The Life of Apollonius, argues Mr. Robertson, cannot have been built up round a hole, and as there was no organized cult of him (this is utterly⁴³¹ false), there must have been a real figure to fit the biography. In the other case the organized and pre-existing cult was the nucleus around which the Gospels grew up like fairy rings around a primal⁴³² fungus⁴³³. It is not obvious why a cult should exclude a real founder, or, rather, a real person, in honour of whom the cult was kept up. In the worship of the Augustus or of the ancient Pharaoh, who impersonated and was Osiris, we have both. Why not have both in the case of Jesus, to whose real life and subsequent deification the Augusti and the Pharaohs offer a remarkable parallel? But there never was any pre-Christian cult and organization in Mr. Robertson’s sense. It is a monstrous⁴³⁴ outgrowth of his own imagination.

Historicity of Plato falls by the canons of the mythicists And as in the case of Apollonius, so in the case of other ancients, he is careful not to apply those methods of interpretation which he yet cannot pardon scholars for not applying to Jesus. Let us take another example. Of the life of Plato we know next to nothing. In the dialogues attributed to him his [58]name is only mentioned twice; and in both cases its mention could, if we adopt Mr. Robertson’s canons of interpretation, be with the utmost ease explained away as an interpolation. The only life we have of him was penned by Diogenes Laertius 600 years after he lived. The details of his life supplied by Aristoxenus, a pupil of Aristotle, are obviously false. The only notices preserved of him that can be claimed to be contemporary are the few derived from his nephew Speusippus. Now what had Speusippus to tell? Why, a story of the birth of Plato which, as Mr. Robertson (p. 293) writes, scarcely differs from the story of Matthew i, 18–25:

“In the special machinery⁴³⁵ of the Joseph and Mary myth—the warning in a dream and the abstention of the husband—we have a simple duplication of the relations of the father and mother of Plato, the former being warned in a dream by Apollo, so that the child was virgin-born.”

Again, just as the Christians chose a “solar date” for the birthday of Jesus, so the Platonists, according to Mr. Robertson, p. 308, “placed the master’s birthday on that of Apollo—that is, either at Christmas or at the vernal equinox.”

Now in the case of Jesus such legends and events as the above suffice to convince Mr. Robertson that the history of Jesus as told in the Gospels is a mere survival of “ancient solar or other worship of a babe Joshua, son of Miriam,” of which ancient worship nothing is known except that it looms⁴³⁶ large in the imagination of himself, of Dr. Drews, and of Professor W. B. Smith. On the other hand, we do know that a cult of Apollo existed, and that it is no fiction of these modern writers. Surely, then, it is time we [59]changed our opinion about the historicity of Plato. Is it not as clear as daylight that he was the survival of a pre-Platonic Apollo myth? We know the r?le assigned to Apollo of revealer of philosophic⁴³⁷ truth. Well, here were the dialogues and letters of Plato, calling for an explanation of their origin; a sect of Platonists who cherished these writings and kept the feast of their master on a solar date. On all the principles of the new mythico-symbolic system Plato, as a man, had no right to exist. “Without Jesus,” writes Drews, “the rise of Christianity can be quite well understood.” Yes, and, by the same logic⁵, no less the rise of Platonism without Plato, or of the cult of Apollonius without Apollonius. What is sauce for the goose is surely sauce for the gander. With a mere change of names we could write of Plato what on p. 282 Mr. Robertson writes of Jesus. Let us do it: “The gospel Jesus (read dialogist Plato) is as enigmatic from a humanist as from a supernaturalist point of view. Miraculously born, to the knowledge of many (read of his nephew Speusippus, of Clearchus whose testimony ‘belongs to Plato’s generation,’ of Anaxilides the historian and others), he reappears as a natural man even in the opinion of his parents (read of nephew Speusippus and the rest); the myth will not cohere. Rationally considered, he (Plato) is an unintelligible⁴³⁸ portent; a Galilean (read Athenian) of the common people, critically untraceable till his full manhood, when he suddenly appears as a cult-founder.”

The Virgin Birth no part of the earliest Gospel tradition Why does Mr. Robertson so incessantly⁴³⁹ labour the point that the belief in the supernatural birth of Jesus came first in time, and was anterior⁴⁴⁰ to the belief that he was born a man of men? This he [60]implies in the words just cited: “Miraculously born, to the knowledge of many, he reappears as a natural man.” A story almost identical with that of the Massacre of the Innocents by Herod was, Mr. Robertson tells us (p. 184), told of the Emperor Augustus in his lifetime, and appears in Suetonius “as accepted history.” And elsewhere (p. 395) he writes: “It was after these precedents⁴⁴¹ (i.e., of Antiochus and Ptolemy) that Augustus, besides having himself given out, like Alexander, as begotten⁴⁴² of a God, caused himself to be proclaimed in the East … as being born under Providence⁴⁴³ a Saviour and a God and the beginning of an Evangel of peace to mankind.” Like Plato’s story, then, so the official and contemporary legends of Augustus closely resembled the later ones of Jesus. Yet Mr. Robertson complacently⁴⁴⁴ accepts the historicity of Plato and Augustus, merely brushing aside the miraculous stories and supernatural r?le. Nowhere in his works does he manifest the faintest desire to apply in the domain⁴⁴⁵ of profane⁴⁴⁶ history the canons which he so rigidly⁴⁴⁷ enforces in ecclesiastical.

Yet there are passages in Mr. Robertson’s works where he seems, to use his own phrase, to “glimpse” the truth. Thus, on p. 124 of Christianity and Mythology he writes: “Jesus is said to be born of a Virgin; but not in the original version of the first gospel; and not in the second; and not in the fourth; and not in any writing or by any mouth known to or credited by the writers of the Pauline Epistles. Here we see how a myth may be superimposed on a cult.”

Does not this mean that a cult of Jesus already existed before this myth was added, and that the myth is absent in the earliest documents of the cult? Again, on p. 274, he writes that “the Christian [61]Virgin-myth and Virgin-and-child worship are certainly of pre-Christian origin, and of comparatively late Christian acceptance.” Yet, when I drew attention in the Literary Guide of December 1, 1912, to the inconsistency with this passage of the later one above cited, which asserts that, “Miraculously born, to the knowledge of many, he reappears as a natural man,” he replied (January 1, 1913) that “a reader of ordinary candour would understand that ‘acceptance’ applied to the official action of the Church.” It appears, therefore, that in the cryptic secret society of the Joshua Sun-God-Saviour, which held its séances at Jerusalem at the beginning of our era, there was an official circle which lagged behind the unofficial multitude. The latter knew from the first that their solar myth was miraculously born; but the official and controlling inner circle ignored the miracle until late in the development of the cult, and then at last issued a number of documents from which it was excluded. One wonders why. Why trouble to utter these documents in which Jesus “reappears as a natural man,” long after the sect as a whole were committed to the miraculous birth? What is the meaning of these wheels within wheels, that hardly hunt together? We await an explanation. Meanwhile let us probe the new mythico-symbolism a little further.

The cleansing⁴⁴⁸ of the temple Why did the solar God Joshua-Jesus scourge⁴⁴⁹ the money-changers out of the temple? Answer: Because it is told of Apollonius of Tyana, “that he expelled from the cities of the left bank of the Hellespont some sorcerers who were extorting⁴⁵⁰ money for a great propitiatory⁴⁵¹ sacrifice to prevent earthquakes.” [62]

The connection is beautifully obvious like the rest of our author’s rapprochements; but we must accept it, or we shall lay ourselves open to the reproach of “psychological resistance to evidence.” Nor must we ask how the memoirs⁴⁵² of Damis, that lay in a corner till Philostratus got hold of them in the year 215, enjoyed so much vogue among the “Christists” of Jerusalem long years before they can conceivably have been written.

Why on the occasion in question did Jesus make a scourge of cords with which to drive the sheep and oxen out of the Temple? Answer: “Because in the Assyrian and Egyptian systems a scourge-bearing god is a very common figure on the monuments … it is specially⁹⁰ associated with Osiris, the Saviour, Judge, and Avenger⁴⁵³. A figure of Osiris, reverenced⁴⁵⁴ as ‘Chrestos’ the benign⁴⁵⁵ God, would suffice to set up among Christists as erewhile among pagans the demand for an explanation.”

Here we get a precious insight into the why and wherefore of the Gospels. They were intended by the “Christists” to explain the meaning of Osiris statues. Why could they not have asked one of the priests of Osiris, who as a rule might be found in the neighbourhood of his statues, what the emblem⁴⁵⁶ meant? And, after all, were statues of Osiris so plentiful⁴⁵⁷ in Jerusalem, where the sight even of a Roman eagle aroused a riot?

Janus-Peter the bifrons Who was Peter? Answer: An understudy of Mithras, who in the monuments bears two keys; or of Janus, who bears the keys and the rod, and as opener of the year (hence the name January) stands at the head of the twelve months.

Why did Peter deny Jesus? Answer: Because [63]Janus was called bifrons. The epithet puzzled the “Christists” or “Jesuists” of Jerusalem, who, instead of asking the first Roman soldier they met what it meant, proceeded to render the word bifrons in the sense of “double-faced,” quite a proper epithet they thought for Peter, who thenceforth had to be held guilty of an act of double-dealing. For we must not forget that it was the epithet which suggested to the Christists the invention of the story, and not the story that of the epithet. But even Mr. Robertson is not quite sure of this; and it does not matter, where there is such a wealth of alternatives. For Peter is also an understudy of “the fickle⁴⁵⁹ Proteus.” Janus’s double head was anyhow common on coins, and with that highly relevant observation he essays to protect his theories of Janus-Peter from any possible criticisms. Indeed, we are forbidden to call in question the above conclusions. They are quite certain, because the “Christists” were intellectually “about the business of forming myths in explanation of old ritual and old statuary” (p. 350). Wonderful people these early “Christists,” who, although they were, as Mr. Robertson informs us (p. 348), “apostles of a Judaic cult preaching circumcision,” and therefore by instinct inimical to all plastic art, nevertheless rivalled the modern arch?ologist in their desire to explain old statuary. They seem to have been the prototypes of the Jews of Wardour Street. No less wonderful were they as philologists⁴⁶⁰, in that, being Hebrews and presumably speaking Aramaic, they took such a healthy interest in the meaning of Latin words, and discovered in bifrons a sense which it never bore in any Latin author who ever used it! [64]

The keys of Peter It appears to have escaped the notice of Professor Franz Cumont that Mithras carries in his monuments two keys. The two keys were an attribute of the Mithraic Kronos, in old Persian Zervan, whom relatively late the Latins confused with Janus, who also had two heads and carried keys. That late Christian images of Peter were imitated from statues of these gods no one need doubt, and Fr. Cumont (Monuments de Mithras, i, 85) does not reject such an idea. It is quite another thing to assume dogmatically that the text Matthew xvi, 19 was suggested by a statue of Janus or of Zervan. To explain it you need not leave Jewish ground, but merely glance at Isaiah xxii, 22, where the Lord is made to say of Eliakim: “And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; and he shall open and none shall shut; and he shall shut and none shall open.” The same imagery meets us in Revelation iii, 7 (copied from Isaiah), Luke xi, 52, and elsewhere. A. Sulzbach (in Ztschr. f.d. Neutest. Wissenschaft, 1903, p. 190) points out that every Jew, up to A.D. 70, would understand such imagery, for he saw every evening the temple keys ceremoniously taken from a hole under the temple floor, where they were kept under a slab⁴⁶¹ of stone. The Levite watcher locked up the temple and replaced the keys under the slab, upon which he then laid his bed for the night. In connection with the magic power of binding⁴⁶² and loosing the keys had, of course, a further and magical significance, not in Jud?a alone, but all over the world, and the Evangelists did not need to examine statues of Janus or Zervan in order to come by this bit of everyday symbolism.

N.B.—No connection of Janus-Peter of the Gospels [65]with Peter of the Pauline Epistles! The one was a mythical companion of the Sun-god, the other a man of flesh and blood, according to Mr. Robertson.

Joseph and his ass Who was Joseph? Answer: Forasmuch as “the Christian system is a patchwork⁴⁶³ of a hundred suggestions drawn from pagan art and ritual usage” (p. 305), and “Christism was only neo-Paganism grafted⁴⁶⁴ on Judaism” (p. 338), Joseph must be regarded as “a partial revival⁴⁶⁵ of the ancient adoration⁴⁶⁶ of the God Joseph as well as of that of the God Daoud” (p. 303). He was also, seeing that he took Mary and her child on an ass into Egypt, a reminiscence; or, shall we not say, an explanation of “the feeble old man leading an ass in the sacred procession of Isis, as described by Apuleius in his Metamorphoses.”

There is no mention of Joseph’s ass in the Gospels, but that does not matter. Dr. Drews is better informed, and would have us recognize in Joseph an understudy of Kinyras, the father of Adonis, who “is said to have been some kind of artisan, a smith, or carpenter. That is to say, he is supposed to have invented the hammer,” etc. Might I suggest the addition of the god Thor to the collection of gospel aliases⁴⁶⁷? The gods Joseph and Daoud are purely modern fictions; no ancient Jew ever heard of either.

Why was Jesus crucified?

The Crucifixion “The story of the Crucifixion may rest on the remote datum⁴⁶⁹ of an actual crucifixion of Jesus Ben Pandira, the possible Jesus of Paul, dead long before, and represented by no preserved biography or teachings whatever.”

The Christists were clearly pastmasters in the art of explaining ignotum per ignotius. For on the next page we learn that it is not known whether this [66]worthy “ever lived or was crucified.” In Pagan Christs he is acknowledged to be a “mere name.” However this be, “it was the mythic significance of crucifixion that made the early fortune of the cult, with the aid of the mythic significance of the name Jeschu = Joshua, the ancient Sun-god.”

The meaning of this oracular pronouncement is too profound for me to attempt to fathom⁴⁷⁰ it. Let us pass on to another point in the new elucidation of the Gospels.

W. B. Smith on exorcisms of devils What were the exorcisms of evil spirits ascribed to the ancient Sun-god Joshua, under his alias⁴⁶⁸ of Jesus of Nazareth?

In his Pagan Christs, as in his Christianity and Mythology, Mr. Robertson unkindly leaves us in the lurch⁴⁷¹ about this matter, although we would dearly like to know what were the particular arch?ological researches of the “Christists” and “Jesuists” that led them to coin these myths of exorcisms performed, and of devils cast out of the mad or sick by their solar myth. Nor does Dr. Drews help us much. Never mind. Professor W. B. Smith nobly stands in the breach, so we will let him take up the parable; the more so because, in handling this problem, he may be said to have excelled himself. On p. 57, then, of Ecce Deus, he premises⁴⁷², in approaching this delicate topic, that “in the activity of the Jesus and the apostles, as delineated in the Gospels, the one all-important moment is the casting-out of demons.”

With this all will agree; but what follows is barely consonant⁴⁷³ with the thesis of his friends. He cites in effect Mark iii, 14, 15, and the parallel passages in which Jesus is related to have sent forth the twelve disciples to preach and to have authority to cast [67]out the demons. Now, according to the mythico-symbolical theory, the career of Jesus and his disciples lay not on earth, but in that happy region where mythological⁴⁷⁴ personages live and move and have their being. As Dr. Drews says (The Christ Myth, p. 117): “In reality the whole of the family and home life of the Messiah, Jesus, took place in heaven among the gods.”

Accordingly, Dr. W. B. Smith finds it “amazing that anyone should hesitate an instant over the sense” of the demonological episodes in the Gospels, and he continues: “When we recall the fact that the early Christians uniformly understood the heathen gods to be demons, and uniformly represented the mission of Jesus to be the overthrow⁴⁷⁵ of these demon⁵⁸ gods, it seems as clear as the sun at noon that this fall of Satan from heaven16 can be nothing less (and how could it possibly be anything more?) than the headlong ruin of polytheism—the complete triumph of the One Eternal God. It seems superfluous to insist on anything so palpable?…. Can any rational man for a moment believe that the Saviour sent forth his apostles and disciples with such awful solemnity to heal the few lunatics that languished⁴⁷⁶ in Galilee? Is that the way the sublimist of teachers would found the new and true religion?”

In the last sentence our author nods and lapses into the historical mood; for how can one talk of a mythical Joshua being a teacher and founding a new religion—of his sending forth the apostles and disciples? These things are done on earth, and not up in heaven “among the gods,” as Drews says. It [68]is, perhaps, impertinent, for the rest, to criticize so exalted an argument as Professor Smith’s; yet the question suggests itself, why, if the real object of the mystic sectaries who worshipped in secret the “Proto-Christian God, the Jesus,” was to acquaint the faithful with the triumph of the heavenly Jesus over the demon-gods of paganism—why, in that case, did they wrap it up in purely demonological language? All around them exorcists, Jewish and pagan, were driving out demons of madness and disease at every street corner—dumb devils, rheumatic devils, blind devils, devils of every sort and kind. Was it entirely appropriate for these mystic devotees to encourage the use of demonological terminology⁴⁷⁷, when they meant something quite else? “These early propagandists,” he tells us, p. 143, “were great men, were very great men; they conceived noble and beautiful and attractive ideas, which they defended with curious learning and logic, and recommended with captivating rhetoric²²⁸ and persuasive⁴⁷⁸ oratory⁴⁷⁹ and consuming zeal⁴²⁷.”

Surely it was within the competence⁴⁸⁰ of such egregious⁴⁸¹ teachers to say without disguise what they really meant, instead of beating about the bush and penning stories which so nearly reproduced the grovelling⁴⁸² superstitions⁴⁸³ of the common herd³⁷ around them? They might at least have issued a Delphin edition of their gospels, with a paraphrase in the margin⁴⁸⁵ to explain the text and to save the faithful from taking these stories literally—for so they took them as far back as we can trace the documents; and, what is more, in all those derivative churches all over the world which continued the inner life of Professor Smith’s mystic sectaries, we hear from the earliest age of the appointing of vulgar exorcists, whose duty [69]was to expel from the faithful the demons of madness and of all forms of sickness.

But worse than this. We know from Mr. Robertson and Dr. Drews that the same Proto-Christian Joshua-God, who was waging war in heaven on the pagan gods and goddesses, was himself a composite myth made up of memories of Krishna, ?sculapius, Osiris, Apollo, Dionysus, Apollonius, and a hundred other fiends. Mr. Robertson attests⁴⁸⁶ this, p. 305, in these words: “As we have seen and shall see throughout this investigation⁴⁸⁷, the Christian system is a patchwork of a hundred suggestions drawn from pagan art and ritual usage.”

Is it quite appropriate that the pre-Christian Jesus or Joshua should turn and rend⁴⁵⁸ his pagan congeners in the manner described by Professor W. B. Smith? His mythical antecedents, as ascertained by Mr. Robertson and Dr. Drews, are grotesquely⁴⁸⁸ incompatible⁴⁸⁹ with the r?le of monotheistic founder assigned him by Professor W. B. Smith. Are we to suppose that the learned and eloquent propagandists of his cult were aware of this incompatibility⁴⁹⁰, and for that reason chose to veil their monotheistic propaganda in the decent obscurity of everyday demonological language?

Mary and her homonyms Who was Mary, the mother of Jesus?

Let Dr. Drews speak first:—

    Now if Joseph, as we have already seen, was originally a god, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a goddess. Under the name of Maya, she is the mother of Agni—i.e., the principle of motherhood and creation simply, as which she is in the Rigveda at one time represented by the fire-producing wood, the soft pith, in which the fire-stick was whirled; at another as the earth, with which the sky has mated. She appears under the [70]same name as the mother of Buddha⁴⁹¹ as well as of the Greek Hermes. She is identical with Maira (Maera) as, according to Pausanias, viii, 12, 48, the pleiad Maia, wife of Hephaistos was called. She appears among the Persians as the “virgin” mother of Mithras. As Myrrha she is the mother of the Syrian Adonis; as Semiramis, mother of the Babylonian Ninus (Marduk). In the Arabic legend she appears under the name of Mirzam as mother of the mythical saviour Joshua; while the Old Testament gives this name to the virgin sister of that Joshua who was so closely related to Moses; and, according to Eusebius, Merris was the name of the Egyptian princess who found Moses in a basket and became his foster mother.

The above purpureus pannus is borrowed by Dr. Drews in the second edition of his work from Mr. Robertson’s book, p. 297. Here is the original:—

    It is not possible from the existing data to connect historically such a cult with its congeners; but the mere analogy of names and epithets⁴⁹² goes far. The mother of Adonis, the slain “Lord” of the great Syrian cult, is Myrrha; and Myrrha in one of her myths is the weeping tree from which the babe Adonis is born. Again, Hermes, the Greek Logos, has for mother Maia, whose name has further connections with Mary. In one myth Maia is the daughter of Atlas⁴⁹³, thus doubling with Maira, who has the same father, and who, having “died a virgin,” was seen by Odysseus in Hades. Mythologically⁴⁹⁴, Maira is identified with the Dog-Star, which is the star of Isis. Yet again, the name appears in the East as Maya, the virgin-mother of Buddha; and it is remarkable that, according to a Jewish legend, the name of the Egyptian princess who found the babe Moses was Merris. The plot is still further thickened by the fact that, as we learn from the monuments, one of the daughters of Ramses II was named Meri. And as Meri meant “beloved,” and the name was at times given to men, besides being used in the phrase “beloved of the gods,” the field of mythic speculation is wide.

[71]

And we feel that it is, indeed, wide, when, on p. 301, the three Marias mentioned by Mark are equated⁴⁹⁵ with the three Moirai or Fates!

In another passage we meet afresh with one of these equations, p. 306. It runs thus: “On the hypothesis that the mythical Joshua, son of Miriam, was an early Hebrew deity, it may be that one form of the Tammuz cult in pre-Christian times was a worship of a mother and child—Mary and Adonis; that, in short, Maria = Myrrha, and that Jesus was a name of Adonis.”

Pre-philological arguments From such deliverances we gather that in Mr. Robertson and his disciples we have survivals of a stage of culture which may be called prephilological. A hundred years ago or more the most superficial resemblance of sound was held to be enough of a ground for connecting words and names together, and Oxford⁴⁹⁶ divines were busy deriving⁴⁹⁷ all other tongues from the Hebrew spoken in the Garden of Eden by Adam and Eve. Mr. Robertson sets himself (p. 139) to ridicule these old-fashioned writers, and regales us with not a few examples of that over-facile identification of cult names that have no real mutual⁴⁹⁸ affinity⁴⁹⁹ which was then in vogue. Thus Krishna was held to be a corruption⁵⁰⁰ of Christ by certain oriental missionaries, just as, inversely⁵⁰¹, within my memory, certain English Rationalists argued the name Christ to be a disguise of Krishna. So Brahma was identified with Abraham, and Napoleon with the Apollyon of Revelation. One had hoped that this phase of culture was past and done with; but Messrs. Robertson and Drews revive it in their books, and seem anxious to perpetuate⁵⁰² it. As with names, so with myths. On their every page we encounter—to use the apt phrase [72]of M. émile Durkheim17—ces rapprochements tumultueux et sommaires qui ont discredité la méthode comparative auprès d’un certain nombre de bons esprits.

Right use of comparative method The one condition of advancing knowledge and clearing men’s minds of superstition⁴⁸⁴ and cant¹⁴⁰ by application of the comparative method in religion, is that we should apply it, as did Robertson Smith and his great predecessor⁵⁰³, Dr. John Spencer,18 cautiously, and in a spirit of scientific scholarship. It does not do to argue from superficial resemblances of sound that Maria is the same name as the Greek Moira, or that the name Maia has “connections with Mary”; or, again, that “the name (Maria) appears in the East as Maya.” The least acquaintance with Hebrew would have satisfied Mr. Robertson that the original form of the name he thus conjures⁵⁰⁴ with is not Maria, but Miriam, which does not lend itself to his hardy equations. I suspect he is carried away by the parti pris which leaks out in the following passage of his henchman and imitator, Dr. Drews19: “The romantic cult of Jesus must be combated at all costs?…. This cannot be done more effectually than by taking its basis in the theory of the historical Jesus from beneath its feet.”

If “at all costs” means at the cost of common sense and scholarship, I cannot agree. I am not disposed, at the invitation of any self-constituted high priest of Rationalism, to derive old Hebrew names from Egyptian, Greek, and Buddhist⁵⁰⁵ appellations⁵⁰⁶ that [73]happen to show an initial and one or two other letters in common. I will not believe that a “Christist” of Alexandria or Jerusalem, in the streets of which the Latin language was seldom or never heard, took the epithet bifrons in a wrong sense, and straightway invented the story of a Peter who had denied Jesus. I cannot admit that the cults of Osiris, Dionysus, Apollo, or any other ancient Sun-god, are echoed in a single incident narrated⁵⁰⁷ in the primitive evangelical tradition that lies before us in Mark and the non-Marcan document used by the authors of the first and third Gospels; I do not believe that any really educated man or woman would for a moment entertain any of the equations propounded⁵⁰⁸ by Mr. Robertson, and of which I have given a few select examples.

Marett on method Mr. Marett, in his essay entitled The Birth of Humility⁵⁰⁹, by way of criticizing certain modern abuses of the comparative method in the field of the investigation of the origin of moral ideas and religious beliefs, has justly remarked that “No isolated⁵¹⁰ fragment of custom or belief can be worth much for the purposes of comparative science. In order to be understood, it must first be viewed in the light of the whole culture, the whole corporate⁵¹¹ soul-life, of the particular ethnic⁵¹² group concerned. Hence the new way is to emphasize concrete differences, whereas the old way was to amass⁵¹³ resemblances heedlessly abstracted from their social context. Which way is the better is a question that well-nigh answers itself.”

Apply the above rule to nascent⁵¹⁴ Christianity. In the Synoptic Gospels Jesus ever speaks as a Jew to Jews. Jewish monotheism is presupposed by the authors of them to have been no less the heritage of Jesus than of his audiences. The rare exceptions are [74]carefully noticed by them. This consideration has so impressed Professor W. B. Smith that he urges the thesis that the Christian religion originated as a monotheist propaganda. That is no doubt an exaggeration, for it was at first a Messianic movement or impulse among Jews, and therefore did not need to set the claims of monotheism in the foreground, and, accordingly, in the Synoptic Gospels they are nowhere urged. In spite of this exaggeration, however, Mr. Smith’s book occupies a higher plane than the works of Dr. Drews and Mr. Robertson, insofar as he shows some slight insight into the original nature of the religion, whereas they show none at all. They merely, in Mr. Marett’s phrase, “amass resemblances [would they were even such!] heedlessly abstracted from their context,” and resolve a cult which, as it appears on the stage of history, is Jewish to its core, of which the Holy Scripture was no other than the Law and the Prophets, and of which the earliest documents, as Mr. Selwyn has shown, are saturated⁵¹⁵ with the Jewish Septuagint—they try to resolve this cult into a tagrag and bobtail of Greek and Roman paganism, of Buddhism, of Brahmanism, of Mithraism (hardly yet born), of Egyptian, African, Assyrian, old Persian,20 and any other religions with which these writers have a second-hand⁵¹⁶ and superficial acquaintance. Never once do they pause and ask themselves the simple questions: firstly, how the early Christians came to be imbued⁵¹⁷ with so intimate [75]a knowledge of idolatrous cults far and near, new and old; secondly, why they set so much store by them as the mythico-symbolic hypothesis presupposes that they did; and, thirdly, why, if they valued them so much, they were at pains to translate them into the utterly different and antagonistic⁵¹⁸ form which they wear in the Gospels. In a word, why should such connoisseurs⁵¹⁹ of paganism have disguised themselves as monotheistic and messianic Jews? Mr. Robertson tries to save his hypothesis by injecting a little dose of Judaism into his “Christists” and “Jesuists”; but anyone who has read Philo or Josephus or the Bible, not to mention the Apostolic Fathers and Justin Martyr, will see at a glance that there is no room in history for such a hybrid⁵²⁰.

Methods of Robertson and Lorinser That Mr. Robertson should put his name to such works as Dr. Drews imitates and singles out for special praise is the more remarkable, because, in urging the independence of certain Hindoo cults against Christian missionaries who want to see in them mere reflections of Christianity, he shows himself both critical and wide-minded. These characteristics he displays in his refutation of the opinion of a certain Dr. Lorinser that the dialogue between Krishna and the warrior⁵²¹ Arjuna, known as the Bhagavat G?ta and embodied⁵²² in the old Hindoo Epic of the Mahabharata, “is a patchwork of Christian teaching.” Dr. Lorinser had adduced a chain of passages from this document which to his mind are echoes of the New Testament. Though many of these exhibit a striking conformity⁵²³ with aphorisms of the Gospels, we are nevertheless constrained⁵²⁴ to agree with Mr. Robertson’s criticism, which is as follows (p. 262):— [76]

    The first comment that must occur to every instructed reader on perusing⁵²⁵ these and the other “parallels” advanced by Dr. Lorinser is, that on the one hand the parallels are very frequently such as could be made by the dozen between bodies of literature which have unquestionably never been brought in contact, so strained and far-fetched are they; and that, on the other hand, they are discounted by quite as striking parallels between New Testament texts and pre-Christian pagan writings.

Mr. Robertson then adduces a number of striking parallelisms between the New Testament and old Greek and Roman writers, and continues thus: “Such parallels as these, I repeat, could be multiplied to any extent from the Greek and Latin classics alone?…. But is it worth while to heap up the disproof of a thesis so manifestly idle?”

Dionysus and Jesus It occurs to ask whether it was not worth the while of Mr. Robertson to inquire whether the Evangelist could “unquestionably have been brought in contact” with the Dionysiac group of myths before he assumed so dogmatically, against students of such weight as Professor Percy Gardner and Dr. Estlin Carpenter, that the myth of Bacchus meeting with a couple of asses on his way to Dodona was the “Christist’s” model for the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on an ass? Might he not have reflected that then, as now, there was no other way of entering Jerusalem unless you went on foot? And what has Jerusalem to do with Dodona? What has Bacchus’s choice of one ass to ride on in common with Matthew’s literary deformation⁵²⁶, according to which Jesus rode on two asses at once? Lastly, what had Bacchus to do with Jesus? Has the Latin wine-god a single trait in common with the Christian founder? Is it not [77]rather the case that any conscious or even unconscious assimilation of Bacchus myths conflicts with what Mr. Marett would call “the whole culture, the whole corporate soul-life” of the early Christian community, as the surviving documents picture it, and other evidence we have not? Yet Mr. Robertson deduces from such paltry “parallels” as the above the conclusion that Jesus, on whose real personality a score of early and independent literary sources converge⁵²⁷, never existed at all, and that he was a “composite myth.” There is no other example of an eclectic myth arbitrarily composed by connoisseurs out of a religious art and story not their own; still less of such a myth being humanized and accepted by the next generation as a Jewish Messiah.

In the same context (p. 264) Mr. Robertson remarks sensibly enough that “No great research or reflection is needed to make it clear that certain commonplaces of ethics⁵²⁸ as well as of theology are equally inevitable⁵²⁹ conclusions in all religious systems that rise above savagery⁵³⁰. Four hundred years before Jesus, Plato declared that it was very difficult for the rich to be good; does anyone believe that any thoughtful Jew needed Plato’s help to reach the same notion?”

I would ask, does anyone believe that a thoughtful Jew needed the stimulus⁵³¹ of a statuette of Osiris in order that he should record, or, maybe, invent, the story of Jesus clearing the money-changers out of the temple with a scourge? Even admitting—what I am as little as anyone inclined to admit—that the Peter of the early Gospels is, as regards his personality and his actions, a fable⁵³², a mere invention of a Jewish storyteller, need we suppose that the storyteller in [78]question depended for his inspiration on Janus? You might as well suppose that the authors of the Arabian Nights founded their stories on the myths of Greek and Roman gods. Again, the Jews were traditionally distributed into twelve tribes or clans⁵³³. Let us grant only for argument’s sake that the life of Jesus the Messiah as narrated in the first three Gospels is a romance, we yet must ask, Which is more probable, that the author of the romance assigned twelve apostles to Jesus because there were twelve tribes to whom the message of the impending Kingdom of God had to be carried, or because there are twelve signs in the Zodiac? He agrees (p. 347) that Luke’s story of the choice of the seventy disciples “visibly connects with the Jewish idea that there were seventy nations in the world.” Why, then, reject the view that Jesus chose twelve apostles because there were twelve tribes? Not at all. Having decided⁵³⁴ that Jesus was the Sun-God-Saviour Joshua, a pure figment of his brain, Mr. Robertson is ready to violate the canons of evidence he appeals to on p. 347, and will have it that in the Gospels the apostles are Zodiacal signs, and that their leader is Janus, the opener of the year. “The Zodiacal sign gives the clue” (p. 339), in his opinion, to this as to much else.

Dr. Lorinser Let us return to the case of Dr. Lorinser. “We are asked to believe that Brahmans expounding⁵³⁵ a highly-developed Pantheism went assiduously to the (unattainable) New Testament for the wording of a number of their propositions, pantheistic and other, while assimilating absolutely nothing of distinctively⁵³⁶ Christian doctrine⁵³⁷?…. Such a position is possible only to a mesmerized⁵³⁸ believer.” Surely one may exclaim of Mr. Robertson, De te fabula narratur, and rewrite [79]the above as follows: “We are asked to believe that ‘Christists,’ who were so far Jewish as to practise circumcision, to use the Hebrew Scriptures, to live in Jerusalem under the presidency⁵³⁹ and patronage⁵⁴⁰ of the Jewish High-priest, to foster and propagate Jewish monotheism, went assiduously to the (unattainable) rites, statuary, art, and beliefs of pagan India, Egypt, Ancient Babylon, Persia, etc., for all ‘the narrative myths’ (p. 263) of the story in which they narrated the history of their putative founder Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, while assimilating absolutely nothing of distinctively pagan doctrine.”

Dr. Lorinser, for urging a thesis infinitely⁵⁴¹ less absurd, is denounced as “a mesmerized believer”; and on the next page Dr. Weber, who agrees with him, is rebuked⁵⁴² for his “judicial blindness.” Yet in the same context we are told that “a crude and na?f system, like the Christism of the second gospel and the earlier form of the first, borrows inevitably from the more highly evolved systems with which it comes socially in contact, absorbing myth and mystery and dogma till it becomes as sophisticated as they.”

It is quite true, as Gibbon observed, that the na?f figure of Jesus, as presented in the Synoptic Gospels, was soon overlaid with that of the logos, and all sorts of Christological cobwebs were within a few generations spun⁵⁴³ around his head to the effacement⁵⁴⁴ both of the teacher and of what he taught. But in the earliest body of the evangelical tradition, as we can construct it from the first three Gospels, there is little or nothing that is not essentially⁵⁴⁵ Jewish and racy of the soil of Jud?a. The borrowings of Christianity from pagan neighbours began with the flocking into the new Messianic society of Gentile converts. The [80]earlier borrowings with which Messrs. Robertson and Drews fill their volumes are one and all “resemblances heedlessly abstracted from their context,” and are as far-fetched and as fanciful as the dreams of the adherents of the Banner of Israel, or as the cypher of the Bacon-Shakesperians, over which Mr. Robertson is prone⁵⁴⁶ to make merry. “Is it,” to use his own words, “worth while to heap up the disproof of a thesis so manifestly idle?” [81]

1 Page 20 of The Christ Myth, from a note added in the third edition. ↑

2 Op. cit. p. 214. ↑

3 The Christ Myth, p. 9. (Zu Robertson hat sie meines Wissens noch keiner Weise ernsthaft Stellung genommen, p. vii of German edition.) ↑

4 Christ Myth, p. 57. In the German text (first ed. 1909, p. 21) Mr. Robertson is the authority for this statement (so hat Robertson es sehr wahrscheinlich gemacht). ↑

5 Cp. Emile Durkheim, La Vie Religieuse, Paris, 1912, p. 121, to whom I owe much in the text. ↑

6 Such reduplications are common in Semitic languages, and in John xix, 23, 24, we have an exact analogy with this passage of Matthew. In Psalm²⁰⁵ xxii, 18, we read: “They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.” Here one and the same incident is contemplated⁵⁴⁷ in both halves of the verse, and it is but a single garment that is divided. Now see what John makes out of this verse, regarded as a prophecy of Jesus. He pretends that the soldiers took Jesus’s garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part, so fulfilling the words: “They parted my garments among them.” Next they took the coat without seam, and said to one another: “Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be.” The parallel with Matthew is exact. In each case what is mere rhetorical reduplication is interpreted of two distinct objects, and on this misinterpretation is based a fulfilment of prophecy, and out of it generated a new form of a story or a fresh story altogether. In defiance⁵⁴⁸ of the opinion of competent Hebraists, Mr. Robertson writes (p. 338) that “there is no other instance of such a peculiar tautology⁵⁴⁹ in the Old Testament.” On the contrary, the Old Testament teems⁵⁵⁰ with them. ↑

7 Christianity and Mythology, p. 286. ↑

8 Dr. Carpenter had objected that “It has first to be proved that Dionysos rode on two asses, as well as that Jesus is the Sun-God.” Mr. Robertson complacently answers (p. 453): “My references perfectly prove the currency of the myth in question”! ↑

9 The Witnesses, p. 55 (p. 75 of German edition). ↑

10 Why necessarily from Josephus? Were not other sources of recent Roman history available for Tacitus? Here peeps out Dr. Drews’s conviction that the whole of ancient literature lies before him, and that even Tacitus could have no other sources of information than Dr. Drews. ↑

11 On p. 299, Mary, mother of Joshua, does duty for Mary Magdalen. We there read as follows: “The friendship (of Jesus) with a ‘Mary’ points towards some old myth in which a Palestinian God, perhaps named Yeschu or Joshua, figures in the changing relations of lover and son towards a mythic Mary, a natural fluctuation⁵⁵¹ in early theosophy.” Very “natural” indeed among the Jews, who punished even adultery with death! ↑

12 Needless to say, Dr. Frazer, as any scholar must, rejects the thesis of the unhistoricity of Jesus with derision. Mr. Robertson, in turn, imputes⁵⁵² his rejection⁵⁵³ of it to timidity. “He (Frazer) has had some experience in arousing conservative resistance,” he writes in Christianity and Mythology, p. 111. He cannot realize that any learned man should differ from himself, except to curry⁵⁵⁴ favour with the orthodox, or from fear of them. ↑

13 I could have given Professor Smith a better tip. Philo composed a glossary⁵⁵⁵ of Biblical and other names with their meanings, which, though lost in Greek, survives in an old Armenian version. In this Essene is equated with “silence.” What a magnificent aid to Professor Smith’s faith! For if Essene meant “a silent one,” then the pre-Christian Nazarenes must surely have been an esoteric and secret sect. ↑

14 Of course, it is possible that Jesus, before he comes on the scene, at about the age of thirty, as a follower of John the Baptist, had been a member of the Essene sect, as the learned writer of the article on Jesus in the Jewish Encyclop?dia supposes. If such a sect of Nazor?i, as Epiphanius describes, ever really existed—and Epiphanius is an unreliable author—then Jesus may have been a member of it. But it is a long way from a may to a must. Even if it could be proved that Matthew had such a tradition when he wrote, the proof would not diminish one whit⁵⁵⁶ the absurdity of Professor Smith’s contention⁵⁵⁷ that he was a myth and a mere symbol of a God Joshua worshipped by pre-Christian Nazor?i. The Nazor?i of Epiphanius were a Christian sect, akin to, if not identical with, the Ebionites; and the hypothesis that they kept up among themselves a secret cult of a God Joshua is as senseless as it is baseless, and opposed to all we know of them. In what sense Matthew, that is to say the anonymous compiler of the first Gospel, understood nazor?us is clear to anyone who will take the trouble to read Matthew ii, 23. He understood by it “a man who lived in the village called Nazareth,” and that is the sense which Nazarene (used interchangeably with it) also bears in the Gospel. Mr. Smith scents⁵⁵⁸ enigmas⁵⁵⁹ everywhere. ↑

15 How treacherous⁵⁶⁰ the argumentum a silentio may be I can exemplify. My name and address were recently omitted for two years running from the Oxford directory, yet my house is not one of the smallest in the city. If any future publicist should pry⁵⁶¹ into my life with the aid of this publication, he will certainly infer that I was not living in Oxford during those two years. And yet the Argument from Silence is only valid⁶⁵ where we have a directory or gazetteer or carefully compiled list of names and addresses. ↑

16 See Luke x, 17–20. ↑

17 La Vie Religieuse, p. 134. ↑

18 In his De legibus Hebraeorum ritualibus et earum rationibus libri tres, printed at the Hague in 1686, but largely written twenty years earlier. ↑

19 The Christ Myth, 2nd ed., p. 18. ↑

20 It is possible, of course, that Jewish Messianic and apocalyptic lore in the first century B.C. had been more or less evolved through contact with the religion of Zoroaster; but this lore, as we meet with it in the Gospels, derives⁵⁶² exclusively from Jewish sources, and was part of the common stock of popular Jewish aspirations. ↑

1 par   

n.标准，票面价值，平均数量；adj.票面的，平常的，标准的

参考例句：

• Sales of nylon have been below par in recent years.近年来尼龙织品的销售额一直不及以往。
• I don't think his ability is on a par with yours.我认为他的能力不能与你的能力相媲美。

2 credulous   

adj.轻信的，易信的

参考例句：

• You must be credulous if she fooled you with that story.连她那种话都能把你骗倒，你一定是太容易相信别人了。
• Credulous attitude will only make you take anything for granted.轻信的态度只会使你想当然。

3 pro   

n.赞成，赞成的意见，赞成者

参考例句：

• The two debating teams argued the question pro and con.辩论的两组从赞成与反对两方面辩这一问题。
• Are you pro or con nuclear disarmament?你是赞成还是反对核裁军？

4 profess   

v.声称，冒称，以...为业，正式接受入教，表明信仰

参考例句：

• I profess that I was surprised at the news.我承认这消息使我惊讶。
• What religion does he profess?他信仰哪种宗教？

5 logic   

n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性

参考例句：

• What sort of logic is that?这是什么逻辑？
• I don't follow the logic of your argument.我不明白你的论点逻辑性何在。

6 treatise   

n.专著；(专题)论文

参考例句：

• The doctor wrote a treatise on alcoholism.那位医生写了一篇关于酗酒问题的论文。
• This is not a treatise on statistical theory.这不是一篇有关统计理论的论文。

7 narratives   

记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分

参考例句：

• Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning. 结婚一向是许多小说的终点，然而也是一个伟大的开始。
• This is one of the narratives that children are fond of. 这是孩子们喜欢的故事之一。

8 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

9 accomplished   

adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的

参考例句：

• Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
• Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。

10 paucity   

n.小量，缺乏

参考例句：

• The paucity of fruit was caused by the drought.水果缺乏是由于干旱造成的。
• The results are often unsatisfactory because of the paucity of cells.因细胞稀少，结果常令人不满意。

11 testament   

n.遗嘱；证明

参考例句：

• This is his last will and testament.这是他的遗愿和遗嘱。
• It is a testament to the power of political mythology.这说明，编造政治神话可以产生多大的威力。

12 derive   

v.取得；导出；引申；来自；源自；出自

参考例句：

• We derive our sustenance from the land.我们从土地获取食物。
• We shall derive much benefit from reading good novels.我们将从优秀小说中获得很大好处。

13 credible   

adj.可信任的，可靠的

参考例句：

• The news report is hardly credible.这则新闻报道令人难以置信。
• Is there a credible alternative to the nuclear deterrent?是否有可以取代核威慑力量的可靠办法？

14 rite   

n.典礼，惯例，习俗

参考例句：

• This festival descends from a religious rite.这个节日起源于宗教仪式。
• Most traditional societies have transition rites at puberty.大多数传统社会都为青春期的孩子举行成人礼。

15 utterances   

n.发声( utterance的名词复数 )；说话方式；语调；言论

参考例句：

• John Maynard Keynes used somewhat gnomic utterances in his General Theory. 约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯在其《通论》中用了许多精辟言辞。 来自辞典例句
• Elsewhere, particularly in his more public utterances, Hawthorne speaks very differently. 在别的地方，特别是在比较公开的谈话里，霍桑讲的话则完全不同。 来自辞典例句

16 ass   

n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人

参考例句：

• He is not an ass as they make him.他不象大家猜想的那样笨。
• An ass endures his burden but not more than his burden.驴能负重但不能超过它能力所负担的。

17 aphorisms   

格言，警句( aphorism的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He formulated trenchant aphorisms that caught their attention. 他阐述的鲜明格言引起了人们的注意。
• The aphorisms started following like water as all the old cliches got dusted off. 一些陈词滥调象尘土一样扬起，一些格言警句象洪水一样到处泛滥。

18 precepts   

n.规诫，戒律，箴言( precept的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They accept the Prophet's precepts but reject some of his strictures. 他们接受先知的教训，但拒绝他的种种约束。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The legal philosopher's concern is to ascertain the true nature of all the precepts and norms. 法哲学家的兴趣在于探寻所有规范和准则的性质。 来自辞典例句

19 virgin   

n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的

参考例句：

• Have you ever been to a virgin forest?你去过原始森林吗？
• There are vast expanses of virgin land in the remote regions.在边远地区有大片大片未开垦的土地。

20 upbraiding   

adj.& n.谴责（的）v.责备，申斥，谴责( upbraid的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• His wife set about upbraiding him for neglecting the children. 他妻子开始指责他不照顾孩子。 来自辞典例句
• I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance. 我避免责备，少作规劝。 来自辞典例句

21 beheld   

v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟

参考例句：

• His eyes had never beheld such opulence. 他从未见过这样的财富。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The soul beheld its features in the mirror of the passing moment. 灵魂在逝去的瞬间的镜子中看到了自己的模样。 来自英汉文学 - 红字

22 fictitious   

adj.虚构的，假设的；空头的

参考例句：

• She invented a fictitious boyfriend to put him off.她虚构出一个男朋友来拒绝他。
• The story my mother told me when I was young is fictitious.小时候妈妈对我讲的那个故事是虚构的。

23 nay   

adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者

参考例句：

• He was grateful for and proud of his son's remarkable,nay,unique performance.他为儿子出色的，不，应该是独一无二的表演心怀感激和骄傲。
• Long essays,nay,whole books have been written on this.许多长篇大论的文章，不，应该说是整部整部的书都是关于这件事的。

24 incarnate   

adj.化身的，人体化的，肉色的

参考例句：

• She was happiness incarnate.她是幸福的化身。
• That enemy officer is a devil incarnate.那个敌军军官简直是魔鬼的化身。

25 exalted   

adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的

参考例句：

• Their loveliness and holiness in accordance with their exalted station.他们的美丽和圣洁也与他们的崇高地位相称。
• He received respect because he was a person of exalted rank.他因为是个地位崇高的人而受到尊敬。

26 prerogatives   

n.权利( prerogative的名词复数 )；特权；大主教法庭；总督委任组成的法庭

参考例句：

• The tsar protected his personal prerogatives. 沙皇维护了自己的私人特权。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Congressmen may be reluctant to vote for legislation that infringes the traditional prerogatives of the states. 美国国会议员可能不情愿投票拥护侵犯各州传统特权的立法。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

27 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

28 cult   

n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜

参考例句：

• Her books aren't bestsellers,but they have a certain cult following.她的书算不上畅销书，但有一定的崇拜者。
• The cult of sun worship is probably the most primitive one.太阳崇拜仪式或许是最为原始的一种。

29 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

30 absurdity   

n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论

参考例句：

• The proposal borders upon the absurdity.这提议近乎荒谬。
• The absurdity of the situation made everyone laugh.情况的荒谬可笑使每个人都笑了。

31 adherents   

n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙

参考例句：

• He is a leader with many adherents. 他是个有众多追随者的领袖。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The proposal is gaining more and more adherents. 该建议得到越来越多的支持者。 来自《简明英汉词典》

32 creeds   

（尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• people of all races, colours and creeds 各种种族、肤色和宗教信仰的人
• Catholics are agnostic to the Protestant creeds. 天主教徒对于新教教义来说，是不可知论者。

33 attested   

adj.经检验证明无病的，经检验证明无菌的v.证明( attest的过去式和过去分词 )；证实；声称…属实；使宣誓

参考例句：

• The handwriting expert attested to the genuineness of the signature. 笔迹专家作证该签名无讹。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Witnesses attested his account. 几名证人都证实了他的陈述是真实的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

34 attest   

vt.证明，证实；表明

参考例句：

• I can attest to the absolute truth of his statement. 我可以证实他的话是千真万确的。
• These ruins sufficiently attest the former grandeur of the place. 这些遗迹充分证明此处昔日的宏伟。

35 antiquity   

n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹

参考例句：

• The museum contains the remains of Chinese antiquity.博物馆藏有中国古代的遗物。
• There are many legends about the heroes of antiquity.有许多关于古代英雄的传说。

36 celebrities   

n.（尤指娱乐界的）名人( celebrity的名词复数 )；名流；名声；名誉

参考例句：

• He only invited A-list celebrities to his parties. 他只邀请头等名流参加他的聚会。
• a TV chat show full of B-list celebrities 由众多二流人物参加的电视访谈节目

37 herd   

n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• He had no opinions of his own but simply follow the herd.他从无主见，只是人云亦云。

38 canonical   

n.权威的；典型的

参考例句：

• These canonical forms have to existence except in our imagination.这些正规式并不存在，只是我们的想象。
• This is a combinatorial problem in canonical form.这是组合论中的典型问题。

39 derivative   

n.派(衍)生物；adj.非独创性的，模仿他人的

参考例句：

• His paintings are really quite derivative.他的画实在没有创意。
• Derivative works are far more complicated.派生作品更加复杂。

40 Christians   

n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Christians of all denominations attended the conference. 基督教所有教派的人都出席了这次会议。
• His novel about Jesus caused a furore among Christians. 他关于耶稣的小说激起了基督教徒的公愤。

41 accredited   

adj.可接受的；可信任的；公认的；质量合格的v.相信( accredit的过去式和过去分词 )；委托；委任；把…归结于

参考例句：

• The discovery of distillation is usually accredited to the Arabs of the 11th century. 通常认为，蒸馏法是阿拉伯人在11世纪发明的。
• Only accredited journalists were allowed entry. 只有正式认可的记者才获准入内。

42 embellish   

v.装饰，布置；给…添加细节，润饰

参考例句：

• I asked him not to embellish the truth with ideas of his own.我要他不对事实添油加醋。
• Can you embellish your refusal just a little bit?你可以对你的婉拒之辞略加修饰吗？

43 exacting   

adj.苛求的，要求严格的

参考例句：

• He must remember the letters and symbols with exacting precision.他必须以严格的精度记住每个字母和符号。
• The public has been more exacting in its demands as time has passed.随着时间的推移，公众的要求更趋严格。

44 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

45 apocryphal   

adj.假冒的，虚假的

参考例句：

• Most of the story about his private life was probably apocryphal.有关他私生活的事可能大部分都是虚构的。
• This may well be an apocryphal story.这很可能是个杜撰的故事。

46 apocrypha   

n.伪经，伪书

参考例句：

• Although New Testament apocrypha go into these details,some quite extensively.尽管在新约的伪经进一步详细地写这些细节，一些还写得十分广阔。
• Esdras is the first two books of the old testament apocrypha.埃斯德拉斯是第一个关于旧约伪经的两本书。

47 mere   

adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过

参考例句：

• That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
• It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。

48 authenticity   

n.真实性

参考例句：

• There has been some debate over the authenticity of his will. 对于他的遗嘱的真实性一直有争论。
• The museum is seeking an expert opinion on the authenticity of the painting. 博物馆在请专家鉴定那幅画的真伪。

49 lore   

n.传说；学问，经验，知识

参考例句：

• I will seek and question him of his lore.我倒要找上他，向他讨教他的渊博的学问。
• Early peoples passed on plant and animal lore through legend.早期人类通过传说传递有关植物和动物的知识。

50 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

51 brotherhood   

n.兄弟般的关系，手中情谊

参考例句：

• They broke up the brotherhood.他们断绝了兄弟关系。
• They live and work together in complete equality and brotherhood.他们完全平等和兄弟般地在一起生活和工作。

52 asceticism   

n.禁欲主义

参考例句：

• I am not speaking here about asceticism or abstinence.我说的并不是苦行主义或禁欲主义。
• Chaucer affirmed man's rights to pursue earthly happiness and epposed asceticism.乔叟强调人权，尤其是追求今生今世幸福快乐的权力，反对神权与禁欲主义。

53 ascetic   

adj.禁欲的；严肃的

参考例句：

• The hermit followed an ascetic life-style.这个隐士过的是苦行生活。
• This is achieved by strict celibacy and ascetic practices.这要通过严厉的独身生活和禁欲修行而达到。

54 disciple   

n.信徒，门徒，追随者

参考例句：

• Your disciple failed to welcome you.你的徒弟没能迎接你。
• He was an ardent disciple of Gandhi.他是甘地的忠实信徒。

55 sage   

n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的

参考例句：

• I was grateful for the old man's sage advice.我很感激那位老人贤明的忠告。
• The sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.这位哲人是百代之师。

56 follower   

n.跟随者；随员；门徒；信徒

参考例句：

• He is a faithful follower of his home football team.他是他家乡足球队的忠实拥护者。
• Alexander is a pious follower of the faith.亚历山大是个虔诚的信徒。

57 ascended   

v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He has ascended into heaven. 他已经升入了天堂。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The climbers slowly ascended the mountain. 爬山运动员慢慢地登上了这座山。 来自《简明英汉词典》

58 demon   

n.魔鬼，恶魔

参考例句：

• The demon of greed ruined the miser's happiness.贪得无厌的恶习毁掉了那个守财奴的幸福。
• He has been possessed by the demon of disease for years.他多年来病魔缠身。

59 demons   

n.恶人( demon的名词复数 )；恶魔；精力过人的人；邪念

参考例句：

• demons torturing the sinners in Hell 地狱里折磨罪人的魔鬼
• He is plagued by demons which go back to his traumatic childhood. 他为心魔所困扰，那可追溯至他饱受创伤的童年。 来自《简明英汉词典》

60 meteoric   

adj.流星的，转瞬即逝的，突然的

参考例句：

• In my mind,losing weight is just something meteoric.在我眼中，减肥不过是昙花一现的事情。
• His early career had been meteoric.他的早期生涯平步青云。

61 portent   

n.预兆；恶兆；怪事

参考例句：

• I see it as a portent of things to come.我把它看作是将要到来的事物的前兆。
• As for her engagement with Adam,I would say the portents are gloomy.至于她和亚当的婚约，我看兆头不妙。

62 portents   

n.预兆( portent的名词复数 )；征兆；怪事；奇物

参考例句：

• But even with this extra support, labour-market portents still look grim. 但是即使采取了额外支持措施，劳动力市场依然阴霾密布。 来自互联网
• So the hiccups are worth noting as portents. 因此这些问题作为不好的征兆而值得关注。 来自互联网

63 bristles   

短而硬的毛发，刷子毛( bristle的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• the bristles on his chin 他下巴上的胡楂子
• This job bristles with difficulties. 这项工作困难重重。

64 akin   

adj.同族的，类似的

参考例句：

• She painted flowers and birds pictures akin to those of earlier feminine painters.她画一些同早期女画家类似的花鸟画。
• Listening to his life story is akin to reading a good adventure novel.听他的人生故事犹如阅读一本精彩的冒险小说。

65 valid   

adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的

参考例句：

• His claim to own the house is valid.他主张对此屋的所有权有效。
• Do you have valid reasons for your absence?你的缺席有正当理由吗？

66 tithe   

n.十分之一税；v.课什一税，缴什一税

参考例句：

• It's not Christ plus your tithe.这不是基督再加上你的什一税。
• The bible tells us that the tithe is the lords.圣经说十分之一是献给主的。

67 deterred   

v.阻止，制止( deter的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• I told him I wasn't interested, but he wasn't deterred. 我已告诉他我不感兴趣，可他却不罢休。
• Jeremy was not deterred by this criticism. 杰里米没有因这一批评而却步。 来自辞典例句

68 paradox   

n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物)

参考例句：

• The story contains many levels of paradox.这个故事存在多重悖论。
• The paradox is that Japan does need serious education reform.矛盾的地方是日本确实需要教育改革。

69 attainable   

a.可达到的，可获得的

参考例句：

• They set the limits of performance attainable. 它们确定着可达到的运行限度。
• If objectives are to be meaningful to people, they must be clear, attainable, actionable, and verifiable. 如果目标对人们是具有意义的，则目标必须是清晰的，能达到的，可以行动的，以及可供检验的。

70 muster   

v.集合，收集，鼓起，激起；n.集合，检阅，集合人员，点名册

参考例句：

• Go and muster all the men you can find.去集合所有你能找到的人。
• I had to muster my courage up to ask him that question.我必须鼓起勇气向他问那个问题。

71 constructive   

adj.建设的，建设性的

参考例句：

• We welcome constructive criticism.我们乐意接受有建设性的批评。
• He is beginning to deal with his anger in a constructive way.他开始用建设性的方法处理自己的怒气。

72 irreconcilable   

adj.（指人）难和解的，势不两立的

参考例句：

• These practices are irreconcilable with the law of the Church.这种做法与教规是相悖的。
• These old concepts are irreconcilable with modern life.这些陈旧的观念与现代生活格格不入。

73 interpretation   

n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理

参考例句：

• His statement admits of one interpretation only.他的话只有一种解释。
• Analysis and interpretation is a very personal thing.分析与说明是个很主观的事情。

74 cogent   

adj.强有力的，有说服力的

参考例句：

• The result is a cogent explanation of inflation.结果令人信服地解释了通货膨胀问题。
• He produced cogent reasons for the change of policy.他对改变政策提出了充分的理由。

75 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

• The citizens voted for sweeping reforms.公民投票支持全面的改革。
• Can you hear the wind sweeping through the branches?你能听到风掠过树枝的声音吗？

76 epoch   

n.(新)时代；历元

参考例句：

• The epoch of revolution creates great figures.革命时代造就伟大的人物。
• We're at the end of the historical epoch,and at the dawn of another.我们正处在一个历史时代的末期，另一个历史时代的开端。

77 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

78 covertly   

adv.偷偷摸摸地

参考例句：

• Naval organizations were covertly incorporated into civil ministries. 各种海军组织秘密地混合在各民政机关之中。 来自辞典例句
• Modern terrorism is noteworthy today in that it is being done covertly. 现代的恐怖活动在今天是值得注意的，由于它是秘密进行的。 来自互联网

79 graphic   

adj.生动的，形象的，绘画的，文字的，图表的

参考例句：

• The book gave a graphic description of the war.这本书生动地描述了战争的情况。
• Distinguish important text items in lists with graphic icons.用图标来区分重要的文本项。

80 mid   

adj.中央的，中间的

参考例句：

• Our mid-term exam is pending.我们就要期中考试了。
• He switched over to teaching in mid-career.他在而立之年转入教学工作。

81 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

82 conspire   

v.密谋，（事件等）巧合，共同导致

参考例句：

• They'd conspired to overthrow the government.他们曾经密谋推翻政府。
• History and geography have conspired to bring Greece to a moment of decision.历史和地理因素共同将希腊推至作出抉择的紧要关头。

83 chimeras   

n.（由几种动物的各部分构成的）假想的怪兽( chimera的名词复数 )；不可能实现的想法；幻想；妄想

参考例句：

• He was more interested in states of mind than in "puerile superstitions, Gothic castles, and chimeras." 他乐于描写心情，而不愿意描写“无聊的迷信，尖拱式的堡垒和妖魔鬼怪。” 来自辞典例句
• Dong Zhong's series, in its embryonic stage, had no blossoms, birds or surreal chimeras. 董重的这个系列的早年雏形并没有梅花、鸟和超现实的连体。 来自互联网

84 legitimate   

adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法

参考例句：

• Sickness is a legitimate reason for asking for leave.生病是请假的一个正当的理由。
• That's a perfectly legitimate fear.怀有这种恐惧完全在情理之中。

85 strictly   

adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地

参考例句：

• His doctor is dieting him strictly.他的医生严格规定他的饮食。
• The guests were seated strictly in order of precedence.客人严格按照地位高低就座。

86 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

87 modifications   

n.缓和( modification的名词复数 )；限制；更改；改变

参考例句：

• The engine was pulled apart for modifications and then reassembled. 发动机被拆开改型，然后再组装起来。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The original plan had undergone fairly extensive modifications. 原计划已经作了相当大的修改。 来自《简明英汉词典》

88 picturesqueness   

参考例句：

• The picturesqueness of the engineer's life was always attractive to Presley. 这司机的丰富多彩的生活，始终叫普瑞斯莱醉心。
• Philip liked the daring picturesqueness of the Americans'costume. 菲利浦喜欢美国人装束的那种粗犷的美。

89 secondly   

adv.第二，其次

参考例句：

• Secondly,use your own head and present your point of view.第二，动脑筋提出自己的见解。
• Secondly it is necessary to define the applied load.其次，需要确定所作用的载荷。

90 specially   

adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地

参考例句：

• They are specially packaged so that they stack easily.它们经过特别包装以便于堆放。
• The machine was designed specially for demolishing old buildings.这种机器是专为拆毁旧楼房而设计的。

91 repent   

v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔

参考例句：

• He has nothing to repent of.他没有什么要懊悔的。
• Remission of sins is promised to those who repent.悔罪者可得到赦免。

92 apocalyptic   

adj.预示灾祸的，启示的

参考例句：

• The air is chill and stagnant,the language apocalyptic.空气寒冷而污浊，语言则是《启示录》式的。
• Parts of the ocean there look just absolutely apocalyptic.海洋的很多区域看上去完全像是世界末日。

93 descend   

vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降

参考例句：

• I hope the grace of God would descend on me.我期望上帝的恩惠。
• We're not going to descend to such methods.我们不会沦落到使用这种手段。

94 nether   

adj.下部的，下面的；n.阴间；下层社会

参考例句：

• This terracotta army well represents his ambition yet to be realized in the nether-world.这一批兵马俑很可能代表他死后也要去实现的雄心。
• He was escorted back to the nether regions of Main Street.他被护送回中央大道南面的地方。

95 judgment   

n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见

参考例句：

• The chairman flatters himself on his judgment of people.主席自认为他审视人比别人高明。
• He's a man of excellent judgment.他眼力过人。

96 condemn   

vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑

参考例句：

• Some praise him,whereas others condemn him.有些人赞扬他，而有些人谴责他。
• We mustn't condemn him on mere suppositions.我们不可全凭臆测来指责他。

97 condemned   

adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He condemned the hypocrisy of those politicians who do one thing and say another. 他谴责了那些说一套做一套的政客的虚伪。
• The policy has been condemned as a regressive step. 这项政策被认为是一种倒退而受到谴责。

98 penetrated   

adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• The knife had penetrated his chest. 刀子刺入了他的胸膛。
• They penetrated into territory where no man had ever gone before. 他们已进入先前没人去过的地区。

99 transformation   

n.变化；改造；转变

参考例句：

• Going to college brought about a dramatic transformation in her outlook.上大学使她的观念发生了巨大的变化。
• He was struggling to make the transformation from single man to responsible husband.他正在努力使自己由单身汉变为可靠的丈夫。

100 excellence   

n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德

参考例句：

• His art has reached a high degree of excellence.他的艺术已达到炉火纯青的地步。
• My performance is far below excellence.我的表演离优秀还差得远呢。

101 symbolize   

vt.作为...的象征，用符号代表

参考例句：

• Easter eggs symbolize the renewal of life.复活蛋象征新生。
• Dolphins symbolize the breath of life.海豚象征着生命的气息。

102 humiliated   

感到羞愧的

参考例句：

• Parents are humiliated if their children behave badly when guests are present. 子女在客人面前举止失当，父母也失体面。
• He was ashamed and bitterly humiliated. 他感到羞耻，丢尽了面子。

103 reign   

n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势

参考例句：

• The reign of Queen Elizabeth lapped over into the seventeenth century.伊丽莎白王朝延至17世纪。
• The reign of Zhu Yuanzhang lasted about 31 years.朱元璋统治了大约三十一年。

104 yoke   

n.轭；支配；v.给...上轭，连接，使成配偶

参考例句：

• An ass and an ox,fastened to the same yoke,were drawing a wagon.驴子和公牛一起套在轭上拉车。
• The defeated army passed under the yoke.败军在轭门下通过。

105 transcending   

超出或超越（经验、信念、描写能力等）的范围( transcend的现在分词 )； 优于或胜过…

参考例句：

• She felt herself transcending time and space. 她感到自己正在穿越时空。
• It'serves as a skeptical critic of the self-transcending element. 它对于超越自身因素起着一个怀疑论批评家的作用。

106 renovate   

vt.更新，革新，刷新

参考例句：

• The couple spent thousands renovating the house.这对夫妇花了几千元来翻新房子。
• They are going to renovate the old furniture.他们准备将旧家具整修一番。

107 theocratic   

adj.神权的，神权政治的

参考例句：

• The priest caste wields considerable power in this rigidly theocratic society. 祭司阶层(priestcaste)在这个严格的神权社会中掌握着相当大的权力。 来自互联网
• The heartland of Islam, by contrast, is theocratic. 相反，伊斯兰教的核心地带则是神权政治。 来自互联网

108 liberated   

a.无拘束的，放纵的

参考例句：

• The city was liberated by the advancing army. 军队向前挺进，解放了那座城市。
• The heat brings about a chemical reaction, and oxygen is liberated. 热量引起化学反应，释放出氧气。

109 captivity   

n.囚禁；被俘；束缚

参考例句：

• A zoo is a place where live animals are kept in captivity for the public to see.动物园是圈养动物以供公众观看的场所。
• He was held in captivity for three years.他被囚禁叁年。

110 acclaimed   

adj.受人欢迎的

参考例句：

• They acclaimed him as the best writer of the year. 他们称赞他为当年的最佳作者。
• Confuscius is acclaimed as a great thinker. 孔子被赞誉为伟大的思想家。

111 forfeiting   

（因违反协议、犯规、受罚等）丧失，失去( forfeit的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• In his eyes, giving up his job and forfeiting his wages amounted practically to suicide. 辞事，让工钱，在祥子看就差不多等于自杀。 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子
• That would be acknowledging the Railroad's ownership right away-forfeiting their rights for good. 这一来不是就等于干脆承认铁路公司的所有权-永久放弃他们自己的主权吗？

112 mingled   

混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系]

参考例句：

• The sounds of laughter and singing mingled in the evening air. 笑声和歌声交织在夜空中。
• The man and the woman mingled as everyone started to relax. 当大家开始放松的时候，这一男一女就开始交往了。

113 preclude   

vt.阻止，排除，防止；妨碍

参考例句：

• We try to preclude any possibility of misunderstanding.我们努力排除任何误解的可能性。
• My present finances preclude the possibility of buying a car.按我目前的财务状况我是不可能买车的。

114 acclaiming   

向…欢呼( acclaim的现在分词 )； 向…喝彩； 称赞…； 欢呼或拥戴（某人）为…

参考例句：

• But to assent to a consensus acclaiming its virtues is another matter. 但若异口同声地为君主制歌功颂德，则是另一码事。 来自名作英译部分
• Church bells rang in London acclaiming a great victory. 伦敦教堂的钟声响起，宣告了一场伟大的胜利。

115 imprisoned   

下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He was imprisoned for two concurrent terms of 30 months and 18 months. 他被判处30个月和18个月的监禁，合并执行。
• They were imprisoned for possession of drugs. 他们因拥有毒品而被监禁。

116 metaphor   

n.隐喻，暗喻

参考例句：

• Using metaphor,we say that computers have senses and a memory.打个比方，我们可以说计算机有感觉和记忆力。
• In poetry the rose is often a metaphor for love.玫瑰在诗中通常作为爱的象征。

117 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

118 missionaries   

n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Some missionaries came from England in the Qing Dynasty. 清朝时，从英国来了一些传教士。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The missionaries rebuked the natives for worshipping images. 传教士指责当地人崇拜偶像。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

119 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

120 anticipations   

预期( anticipation的名词复数 )； 预测； （信托财产收益的）预支； 预期的事物

参考例句：

• The thought took a deal of the spirit out of his anticipations. 想到这，他的劲头消了不少。
• All such bright anticipations were cruelly dashed that night. 所有这些美好的期望全在那天夜晚被无情地粉碎了。

121 missionary   

adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士

参考例句：

• She taught in a missionary school for a couple of years.她在一所教会学校教了两年书。
• I hope every member understands the value of missionary work. 我希望教友都了解传教工作的价值。

122 disciples   

n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一

参考例句：

• Judas was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. 犹大是耶稣十二门徒之一。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• "The names of the first two disciples were --" “最初的两个门徒的名字是——” 来自英汉文学 - 汤姆历险

123 impending   

a.imminent, about to come or happen

参考例句：

• Against a background of impending famine, heavy fighting took place. 即将发生饥荒之时，严重的战乱爆发了。
• The king convoke parliament to cope with the impending danger. 国王召开国会以应付迫近眉睫的危险。

124 salvation   

n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困

参考例句：

• Salvation lay in political reform.解救办法在于政治改革。
• Christians hope and pray for salvation.基督教徒希望并祈祷灵魂得救。

125 derived   

vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取

参考例句：

• Many English words are derived from Latin and Greek. 英语很多词源出于拉丁文和希腊文。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He derived his enthusiasm for literature from his father. 他对文学的爱好是受他父亲的影响。 来自《简明英汉词典》

126 overthrew   

overthrow的过去式

参考例句：

• The people finally rose up and overthrew the reactionary regime. 人们终于起来把反动的政权推翻了。
• They overthrew their King. 他们推翻了国王。

127 wilderness   

n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠

参考例句：

• She drove the herd of cattle through the wilderness.她赶着牛群穿过荒野。
• Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means.荒凉地区的教育不是钱财问题。

128 feat   

n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的

参考例句：

• Man's first landing on the moon was a feat of great daring.人类首次登月是一个勇敢的壮举。
• He received a medal for his heroic feat.他因其英雄业绩而获得一枚勋章。

129 therapeutic   

adj.治疗的，起治疗作用的；对身心健康有益的

参考例句：

• Therapeutic measures were selected to fit the patient.选择治疗措施以适应病人的需要。
• When I was sad,music had a therapeutic effect.我悲伤的时候，音乐有治疗效力。

130 flouted   

v.藐视，轻视( flout的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• North Vietnam flouted the accords from the day they were signed. 北越从签字那天起就无视协定的存在。 来自辞典例句
• They flouted all our offers of help and friendship. 他们对我们愿意提供的所有帮助和友谊表示藐视。 来自辞典例句

131 pretensions   

自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力

参考例句：

• The play mocks the pretensions of the new middle class. 这出戏讽刺了新中产阶级的装模作样。
• The city has unrealistic pretensions to world-class status. 这个城市不切实际地标榜自己为国际都市。

132 parables   

n.（圣经中的）寓言故事( parable的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Jesus taught in parables. 耶酥以比喻讲道。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• In the New Testament are the parables and miracles. 《新约》则由寓言利奇闻趣事构成。 来自辞典例句

133 parable   

n.寓言，比喻

参考例句：

• This is an ancient parable.这是一个古老的寓言。
• The minister preached a sermon on the parable of the lost sheep.牧师讲道时用了亡羊的比喻。

134 usher   

n.带位员，招待员；vt.引导，护送；vi.做招待，担任引座员

参考例句：

• The usher seated us in the front row.引座员让我们在前排就座。
• They were quickly ushered away.他们被迅速领开。

135 miraculous   

adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的

参考例句：

• The wounded man made a miraculous recovery.伤员奇迹般地痊愈了。
• They won a miraculous victory over much stronger enemy.他们战胜了远比自己强大的敌人，赢得了非凡的胜利。

136 putative   

adj.假定的

参考例句：

• There have been many attempts to track down the putative Loch Ness monster.人们为追踪假定存在的尼斯湖水怪做了许多努力。
• He is the putative father of this child.他是这孩子的推定的父亲。

137 naive   

adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的

参考例句：

• It's naive of you to believe he'll do what he says.相信他会言行一致，你未免太单纯了。
• Don't be naive.The matter is not so simple.你别傻乎乎的。事情没有那么简单。

138 naivest   

naive（幼稚的）的最高级形式

参考例句：

139 insignificant   

adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的

参考例句：

• In winter the effect was found to be insignificant.在冬季，这种作用是不明显的。
• This problem was insignificant compared to others she faced.这一问题与她面临的其他问题比较起来算不得什么。

140 cant   

n.斜穿，黑话，猛扔

参考例句：

• The ship took on a dangerous cant to port.船只出现向左舷危险倾斜。
• He knows thieves'cant.他懂盗贼的黑话。

141 demonstration   

n.表明，示范，论证，示威

参考例句：

• His new book is a demonstration of his patriotism.他写的新书是他的爱国精神的证明。
• He gave a demonstration of the new technique then and there.他当场表演了这种新的操作方法。

142 scatters   

v.（使）散开， （使）分散，驱散( scatter的第三人称单数 )；撒

参考例句：

• He scatters money about as if he were rich. 他四处挥霍，好像很有钱。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Truth raises against itself the storm that scatters its seeds broadcast. 真理引起了反对它自己的狂风骤雨，那场风雨吹散了真理的广播的种子。 来自辞典例句

143 enthusiasts   

n.热心人，热衷者( enthusiast的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A group of enthusiasts have undertaken the reconstruction of a steam locomotive. 一群火车迷已担负起重造蒸汽机车的任务。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Now a group of enthusiasts are going to have the plane restored. 一群热心人计划修复这架飞机。 来自新概念英语第二册

144 Forsaken   

adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词

参考例句：

• He was forsaken by his friends. 他被朋友们背弃了。
• He has forsaken his wife and children. 他遗弃了他的妻子和孩子。

145 supplementary   

adj.补充的，附加的

参考例句：

• There is a supplementary water supply in case the rain supply fails.万一主水源断了，我们另外有供水的地方。
• A supplementary volume has been published containing the index.附有索引的增补卷已经出版。

146 reconstruction   

n.重建，再现，复原

参考例句：

• The country faces a huge task of national reconstruction following the war.战后，该国面临着重建家园的艰巨任务。
• In the period of reconstruction,technique decides everything.在重建时期，技术决定一切。

147 mythical   

adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的

参考例句：

• Undeniably,he is a man of mythical status.不可否认，他是一个神话般的人物。
• Their wealth is merely mythical.他们的财富完全是虚构的。

148 purely   

adv.纯粹地，完全地

参考例句：

• I helped him purely and simply out of friendship.我帮他纯粹是出于友情。
• This disproves the theory that children are purely imitative.这证明认为儿童只会单纯地模仿的理论是站不住脚的。

149 symbolical   

a.象征性的

参考例句：

• The power of the monarchy in Britain today is more symbolical than real. 今日英国君主的权力多为象徵性的，无甚实际意义。
• The Lord introduces the first symbolical language in Revelation. 主说明了启示录中第一个象徵的语言。

150 symbolic   

adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的

参考例句：

• It is symbolic of the fighting spirit of modern womanhood.它象征着现代妇女的战斗精神。
• The Christian ceremony of baptism is a symbolic act.基督教的洗礼仪式是一种象征性的做法。

151 gist   

n.要旨；梗概

参考例句：

• Can you give me the gist of this report?你能告诉我这个报告的要点吗？
• He is quick in grasping the gist of a book.他敏于了解书的要点。

152 yarns   

n.纱( yarn的名词复数 )；纱线；奇闻漫谈；旅行轶事

参考例句：

• ...vegetable-dyed yarns. 用植物染料染过色的纱线 来自辞典例句
• Fibers may be loosely or tightly twisted into yarns. 纤维可以是膨松地或紧密地捻成纱线。 来自辞典例句

153 inquisitive   

adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的

参考例句：

• Children are usually inquisitive.小孩通常很好问。
• A pat answer is not going to satisfy an inquisitive audience.陈腔烂调的答案不能满足好奇的听众。

154 dealing   

n.经商方法，待人态度

参考例句：

• This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
• His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。

155 copious   

adj.丰富的，大量的

参考例句：

• She supports her theory with copious evidences.她以大量的例证来充实自己的理论。
• Every star is a copious source of neutrinos.每颗恒星都是丰富的中微子源。

156 amenable   

adj.经得起检验的；顺从的；对负有义务的

参考例句：

• His scientific discoveries are amenable to the laws of physics.他在科学上的发现经得起物理定律的检验。
• He is amenable to counsel.他这人听劝。

157 revel   

vi.狂欢作乐，陶醉；n.作乐，狂欢

参考例句：

• She seems to revel in annoying her parents.她似乎以惹父母生气为乐。
• The children revel in country life.孩子们特别喜欢乡村生活。

158 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

159 offhand   

adj.临时，无准备的；随便，马虎的

参考例句：

• I can't answer your request offhand.我不能随便答复你的要求。
• I wouldn't want to say what I thought about it offhand.我不愿意随便说我关于这事的想法。

160 compilation   

n.编译，编辑

参考例句：

• One of the first steps taken was the compilation of a report.首先采取的步骤之一是写一份报告。
• The compilation of such diagrams,is of lasting value for astronomy.绘制这样的图对天文学有永恒的价值。

161 sifted   

v.筛( sift的过去式和过去分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审

参考例句：

• She sifted through her papers to find the lost letter. 她仔细在文件中寻找那封丢失的信。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She sifted thistles through her thistle-sifter. 她用蓟筛筛蓟。 来自《简明英汉词典》

162 sifting   

n.筛，过滤v.筛( sift的现在分词 )；筛滤；细查；详审

参考例句：

• He lay on the beach, sifting the sand through his fingers. 他躺在沙滩上用手筛砂子玩。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I was sifting the cinders when she came in. 她进来时，我正在筛煤渣。 来自辞典例句

163 epic   

n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的

参考例句：

• I gave up my epic and wrote this little tale instead.我放弃了写叙事诗，而写了这个小故事。
• They held a banquet of epic proportions.他们举行了盛大的宴会。

164 saga   

n.(尤指中世纪北欧海盗的)故事，英雄传奇

参考例句：

• The saga of Flight 19 is probably the most repeated story about the Bermuda Triangle.飞行19中队的传说或许是有关百慕大三角最重复的故事。
• The novel depicts the saga of a family.小说描绘了一个家族的传奇故事。

165 votaries   

n.信徒( votary的名词复数 )；追随者；（天主教）修士；修女

参考例句：

166 mythology   

n.神话，神话学，神话集

参考例句：

• In Greek mythology,Zeus was the ruler of Gods and men.在希腊神话中，宙斯是众神和人类的统治者。
• He is the hero of Greek mythology.他是希腊民间传说中的英雄。

167 invoked   

v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求

参考例句：

• It is unlikely that libel laws will be invoked. 不大可能诉诸诽谤法。
• She had invoked the law in her own defence. 她援引法律为自己辩护。 来自《简明英汉词典》

168 invoke   

v.求助于(神、法律)；恳求，乞求

参考例句：

• Let us invoke the blessings of peace.让我们祈求和平之福。
• I hope I'll never have to invoke this clause and lodge a claim with you.我希望我永远不会使用这个条款向你们索赔。

169 wrack   

v.折磨；n.海草

参考例句：

• Periodic crises wrack the capitalist system,and they grow in size and duration.周期性的危机破坏着资本主义制度，这种危机的规模在扩大，时间在延长。
• The wrack had begun to stink as it rotted in the sun.海草残骸在阳光下腐烂，开始变臭了。

170 scattered   

adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的

参考例句：

• Gathering up his scattered papers,he pushed them into his case.他把散乱的文件收拾起来，塞进文件夹里。

171 venerating   

敬重（某人或某事物），崇敬( venerate的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Indulgences were normally conditional on venerating a relic, performing some religious practice, or making a gift. 免罪罚通常以崇拜圣物、从事一些宗教活动或施舍钱物为条件。 来自英汉非文学 - 文明史

172 humble   

adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低

参考例句：

• In my humble opinion,he will win the election.依我拙见，他将在选举中获胜。
• Defeat and failure make people humble.挫折与失败会使人谦卑。

173 sublimity   

崇高，庄严，气质高尚

参考例句：

• It'suggests no crystal waters, no picturesque shores, no sublimity. 这决不会叫人联想到晶莹的清水，如画的两岸，雄壮的气势。
• Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom's facility in writing, and the sublimity of his language. 对汤姆流利的书写、响亮的内容，哈克贝利心悦诚服。

174 frailty   

n.脆弱；意志薄弱

参考例句：

• Despite increasing physical frailty,he continued to write stories.尽管身体越来越虛弱，他仍然继续写小说。
• He paused and suddenly all the frailty and fatigue showed.他顿住了，虚弱与疲惫一下子显露出来。

175 infinities   

n.无穷大( infinity的名词复数 )；无限远的点；无法计算的量；无限大的量

参考例句：

176 majesty   

n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权

参考例句：

• The king had unspeakable majesty.国王有无法形容的威严。
• Your Majesty must make up your mind quickly!尊贵的陛下，您必须赶快做出决定！

177 starry   

adj.星光照耀的, 闪亮的

参考例句：

• He looked at the starry heavens.他瞧着布满星星的天空。
• I like the starry winter sky.我喜欢这满天星斗的冬夜。

178 majestic   

adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的

参考例句：

• In the distance rose the majestic Alps.远处耸立着雄伟的阿尔卑斯山。
• He looks majestic in uniform.他穿上军装显得很威风。

179 mighty   

adj.强有力的；巨大的

参考例句：

• A mighty force was about to break loose.一股巨大的力量即将迸发而出。
• The mighty iceberg came into view.巨大的冰山出现在眼前。

180 rumble   

n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说

参考例句：

• I hear the rumble of thunder in the distance.我听到远处雷声隆隆。
• We could tell from the rumble of the thunder that rain was coming.我们根据雷的轰隆声可断定，天要下雨了。

181 cowering   

v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He turned his baleful glare on the cowering suspect. 他恶毒地盯着那个蜷缩成一团的嫌疑犯。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He stood over the cowering Herb with fists of fury. 他紧握着两个拳头怒气冲天地站在惊魂未定的赫伯面前。 来自辞典例句

182 savage   

adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人

参考例句：

• The poor man received a savage beating from the thugs.那可怜的人遭到暴徒的痛打。
• He has a savage temper.他脾气粗暴。

183 awe   

n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧

参考例句：

• The sight filled us with awe.这景色使我们大为惊叹。
• The approaching tornado struck awe in our hearts.正在逼近的龙卷风使我们惊恐万分。

184 lapses   

n.失误，过失( lapse的名词复数 )；小毛病；行为失检；偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 )；陷入；倒退；丧失

参考例句：

• He sometimes lapses from good behavior. 他有时行为失检。 来自辞典例句
• He could forgive attacks of nerves, panic, bad unexplainable actions, all sorts of lapses. 他可以宽恕突然发作的歇斯底里，惊慌失措，恶劣的莫名其妙的动作，各种各样的失误。 来自辞典例句

185 savages   

未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There're some savages living in the forest. 森林里居住着一些野人。
• That's an island inhabited by savages. 那是一个野蛮人居住的岛屿。

186 primitive   

adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物

参考例句：

• It is a primitive instinct to flee a place of danger.逃离危险的地方是一种原始本能。
• His book describes the march of the civilization of a primitive society.他的著作描述了一个原始社会的开化过程。

187 paltry   

adj.无价值的，微不足道的

参考例句：

• The parents had little interest in paltry domestic concerns.那些家长对家里鸡毛蒜皮的小事没什么兴趣。
• I'm getting angry;and if you don't command that paltry spirit of yours.我要生气了，如果你不能振作你那点元气。

188 rites   

仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• to administer the last rites to sb 给某人举行临终圣事
• He is interested in mystic rites and ceremonies. 他对神秘的仪式感兴趣。

189 brigands   

n.土匪，强盗( brigand的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They say there are brigands hiding along the way. 他们说沿路隐藏着土匪。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The brigands demanded tribute from passing vehicles. 土匪向过往车辆勒索钱财。 来自辞典例句

190 grandeur   

n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华

参考例句：

• The grandeur of the Great Wall is unmatched.长城的壮观是独一无二的。
• These ruins sufficiently attest the former grandeur of the place.这些遗迹充分证明此处昔日的宏伟。

191 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

192 scanty   

adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的

参考例句：

• There is scanty evidence to support their accusations.他们的指控证据不足。
• The rainfall was rather scanty this month.这个月的雨量不足。

193 cults   

n.迷信( cult的名词复数 )；狂热的崇拜；（有极端宗教信仰的）异教团体

参考例句：

• Religious cults and priesthoods are sectarian by nature. 宗教崇拜和僧侣界天然就有派性。 来自辞典例句
• All these religions were flourishing side by side with many less prominent cults. 所有这些宗教和许多次要的教派一起，共同繁荣。 来自英汉非文学 - 历史

194 lizard   

n.蜥蜴，壁虎

参考例句：

• A chameleon is a kind of lizard.变色龙是一种蜥蜴。
• The lizard darted out its tongue at the insect.蜥蜴伸出舌头去吃小昆虫。

195 obsolete   

adj.已废弃的，过时的

参考例句：

• These goods are obsolete and will not fetch much on the market.这些货品过时了，在市场上卖不了高价。
• They tried to hammer obsolete ideas into the young people's heads.他们竭力把陈旧思想灌输给青年。

196 speculation   

n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机

参考例句：

• Her mind is occupied with speculation.她的头脑忙于思考。
• There is widespread speculation that he is going to resign.人们普遍推测他要辞职。

197 cryptic   

adj.秘密的，神秘的，含义模糊的

参考例句：

• She made a cryptic comment about how the film mirrored her life.她隐晦地表示说这部电影是她人生的写照。
• The new insurance policy is written without cryptic or mysterious terms.新的保险单在编写时没有隐秘条款或秘密条款。

198 insouciance   

n.漠不关心

参考例句：

• He replied with characteristic insouciance:"So what?"他以一贯的漫不经心回答道：“那又怎样？”
• What explains this apparent insouciance?用什么能够解释这种视而不见呢？

199 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

200 superfluous   

adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的

参考例句：

• She fined away superfluous matter in the design. 她删去了这图案中多余的东西。
• That request seemed superfluous when I wrote it.我这样写的时候觉得这个请求似乎是多此一举。

201 discourse   

n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述

参考例句：

• We'll discourse on the subject tonight.我们今晚要谈论这个问题。
• He fell into discourse with the customers who were drinking at the counter.他和站在柜台旁的酒客谈了起来。

202 extravagant   

adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的

参考例句：

• They tried to please him with fulsome compliments and extravagant gifts.他们想用溢美之词和奢华的礼品来取悦他。
• He is extravagant in behaviour.他行为放肆。

203 interpretations   

n.解释( interpretation的名词复数 )；表演；演绎；理解

参考例句：

• This passage is open to a variety of interpretations. 这篇文章可以有各种不同的解释。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The involved and abstruse passage makes several interpretations possible. 这段艰涩的文字可以作出好几种解释。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

204 followers   

追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件

参考例句：

• the followers of Mahatma Gandhi 圣雄甘地的拥护者
• The reformer soon gathered a band of followers round him. 改革者很快就获得一群追随者支持他。

205 psalm   

n.赞美诗，圣诗

参考例句：

• The clergyman began droning the psalm.牧师开始以单调而低沈的语调吟诵赞美诗。
• The minister droned out the psalm.牧师喃喃地念赞美诗。

206 psalms   

n.赞美诗( psalm的名词复数 )；圣诗；圣歌；(中的)

参考例句：

• the Book of Psalms 《〈圣经〉诗篇》
• A verse from Psalms knifed into Pug's mind: "put not your trust in princes." 《诗篇》里有一句话闪过帕格的脑海：“不要相信王侯。” 来自辞典例句

207 symbolized   

v.象征，作为…的象征( symbolize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• For Tigress, Joy symbolized the best a woman could expect from life. 在她看，小福子就足代表女人所应有的享受。 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子
• A car symbolized distinction and achievement, and he was proud. 汽车象征着荣誉和成功，所以他很自豪。 来自辞典例句

208 zoology   

n.动物学，生态

参考例句：

• I would like to brush up my zoology.我想重新温习一下动物学。
• The library didn't stock zoology textbooks.这家图书馆没有动物学教科书。

209 appellation   

n.名称，称呼

参考例句：

• The emperor of Russia Peter I was given the appellation " the Great ".俄皇彼得一世被加上了“大帝”的称号。
• Kinsfolk appellation is the kinfolks system reflection in language.亲属称谓是亲属制度在语言中的反应。

210 saviour   

n.拯救者，救星

参考例句：

• I saw myself as the saviour of my country.我幻想自己为国家的救星。
• The people clearly saw her as their saviour.人们显然把她看成了救星。

211 Vogue   

n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的

参考例句：

• Flowery carpets became the vogue.花卉地毯变成了时髦货。
• Short hair came back into vogue about ten years ago.大约十年前短发又开始流行起来了。

212 asses   

n. 驴，愚蠢的人，臀部 adv. (常用作后置)用于贬损或骂人

参考例句：

• Sometimes I got to kick asses to make this place run right. 有时我为了把这个地方搞得像个样子，也不得不踢踢别人的屁股。 来自教父部分
• Those were wild asses maybe, or zebras flying around in herds. 那些也许是野驴或斑马在成群地奔跑。

213 marsh   

n.沼泽，湿地

参考例句：

• There are a lot of frogs in the marsh.沼泽里有许多青蛙。
• I made my way slowly out of the marsh.我缓慢地走出这片沼泽地。

214 transformations   

n.变化( transformation的名词复数 )；转换；转换；变换

参考例句：

• Energy transformations go on constantly, all about us. 在我们周围，能量始终在不停地转换着。 来自辞典例句
• On the average, such transformations balance out. 平均起来，这种转化可以互相抵消。 来自辞典例句

215 sect   

n.派别，宗教，学派，派系

参考例句：

• When he was sixteen he joined a religious sect.他16岁的时候加入了一个宗教教派。
• Each religious sect in the town had its own church.该城每一个宗教教派都有自己的教堂。

216 culled   

v.挑选，剔除( cull的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The herd must be culled. 必须有选择地杀掉部分牧畜。 来自辞典例句
• The facts were culled from various sources. 这些事实是从各方收集到的。 来自辞典例句

217 disdains   

鄙视，轻蔑( disdain的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He disdains going to the cinema/to sit with people like us. 他不屑于去看电影[与我们这等人同席而坐]。
• Ideology transcends limits, eschews restraints, and disdains tolerance or conciliation. 意识形态越出界限，避开遏制，蔑视宽容或和解。

218 coeval   

adj.同时代的；n.同时代的人或事物

参考例句：

• Analysis has proved that this document is coeval with that one.这份文件经分析证明与那一份是同一个时代的。
• He believes that cooking and humanity are coeval.他相信烹饪和人类是同时代的。

219 scrupled   

v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The man scrupled to perjure himself. 这人发伪誓时迟疑了起来。 来自互联网

220 scruple   

n./v.顾忌，迟疑

参考例句：

• It'seemed to her now that she could marry him without the remnant of a scruple.她觉得现在她可以跟他成婚而不需要有任何顾忌。
• He makes no scruple to tell a lie.他说起谎来无所顾忌。

221 exigencies   

n.急切需要

参考例句：

• Many people are forced by exigencies of circumstance to take some part in them. 许多人由于境况所逼又不得不在某种程度上参与这种活动。
• The people had to accept the harsh exigencies of war. 人们要承受战乱的严酷现实。

222 transcript   

n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书

参考例句：

• A transcript of the tapes was presented as evidence in court.一份录音带的文字本作为证据被呈交法庭。
• They wouldn't let me have a transcript of the interview.他们拒绝给我一份采访的文字整理稿。

223 paraphrase   

vt.将…释义，改写；n.释义，意义

参考例句：

• You may read the prose paraphrase of this poem.你可以看一下这首诗的散文释义。
• Paraphrase the following sentences or parts of sentences using your own words.用你自己的话解释下面的句子或句子的一部分。

224 authoritative   

adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的

参考例句：

• David speaks in an authoritative tone.大卫以命令的口吻说话。
• Her smile was warm but authoritative.她的笑容很和蔼，同时又透着威严。

225 transcribed   

（用不同的录音手段）转录( transcribe的过去式和过去分词 )； 改编（乐曲）（以适应他种乐器或声部）； 抄写； 用音标标出（声音）

参考例句：

• He transcribed two paragraphs from the book into his notebook. 他把书中的两段抄在笔记本上。
• Every telephone conversation will be recorded and transcribed. 所有电话交谈都将被录音并作全文转写。

226 underlying   

adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的

参考例句：

• The underlying theme of the novel is very serious.小说隐含的主题是十分严肃的。
• This word has its underlying meaning.这个单词有它潜在的含义。

227 meek   

adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的

参考例句：

• He expects his wife to be meek and submissive.他期望妻子温顺而且听他摆布。
• The little girl is as meek as a lamb.那个小姑娘像羔羊一般温顺。

228 rhetoric   

n.修辞学，浮夸之言语

参考例句：

• Do you know something about rhetoric?你懂点修辞学吗？
• Behind all the rhetoric,his relations with the army are dangerously poised.在冠冕堂皇的言辞背后，他和军队的关系岌岌可危。

229 transcriber   

抄写者

参考例句：

• The compressed symbol allowed the transcriber to complete the letter in a single stroke. 这个压扁的符号让誊写者用单笔划结束书信。
• One the disadvantages of this method is that you are totally strange the transcriber. ( ) 这种方法的一个缺点是你对转录器完全不熟悉。

230 perversity   

n.任性；刚愎自用

参考例句：

• She's marrying him out of sheer perversity.她嫁给他纯粹是任性。
• The best of us have a spice of perversity in us.在我们最出色的人身上都有任性的一面。

231 abhorrence   

n.憎恶；可憎恶的事

参考例句：

• This nation has an abhorrence of terrrorism.这个民族憎恶恐怖主义。
• It is an abhorrence to his feeling.这是他深恶痛绝的事。

232 abhorred   

v.憎恶( abhor的过去式和过去分词 )；（厌恶地）回避；拒绝；淘汰

参考例句：

• He abhorred the thoughts of stripping me and making me miserable. 他憎恶把我掠夺干净，使我受苦的那个念头。 来自辞典例句
• Each of these oracles hated a particular phrase. Liu the Sage abhorred "Not right for sowing". 二诸葛忌讳“不宜栽种”，三仙姑忌讳“米烂了”。 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

233 deference   

n.尊重，顺从；敬意

参考例句：

• Do you treat your parents and teachers with deference?你对父母师长尊敬吗？
• The major defect of their work was deference to authority.他们的主要缺陷是趋从权威。

234 oracle   

n.神谕，神谕处，预言

参考例句：

• In times of difficulty,she pray for an oracle to guide her.在困难的时候，她祈祷神谕来指引她。
• It is a kind of oracle that often foretells things most important.它是一种内生性神谕，常常能预言最重要的事情。

235 sanity   

n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确

参考例句：

• I doubt the sanity of such a plan.我怀疑这个计划是否明智。
• She managed to keep her sanity throughout the ordeal.在那场磨难中她始终保持神志正常。

236 spacious   

adj.广阔的，宽敞的

参考例句：

• Our yard is spacious enough for a swimming pool.我们的院子很宽敞，足够建一座游泳池。
• The room is bright and spacious.这房间很豁亮。

237 astounding   

adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词)

参考例句：

• There was an astounding 20% increase in sales. 销售量惊人地增加了20%。
• The Chairman's remarks were so astounding that the audience listened to him with bated breath. 主席说的话令人吃惊，所以听众都屏息听他说。 来自《简明英汉词典》

238 morass   

n.沼泽，困境

参考例句：

• I tried to drag myself out of the morass of despair.我试图从绝望的困境中走出来。
• Mathematical knowledge was certain and offered a secure foothold in a morass.数学知识是确定无疑的,它给人们在沼泽地上提供了一个稳妥的立足点。

239 stimulating   

adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的

参考例句：

• shower gel containing plant extracts that have a stimulating effect on the skin 含有对皮肤有益的植物精华的沐浴凝胶
• This is a drug for stimulating nerves. 这是一种兴奋剂。

240 constellation   

n.星座n.灿烂的一群

参考例句：

• A constellation is a pattern of stars as seen from the earth. 一个星座只是从地球上看到的某些恒星的一种样子。
• The Big Dipper is not by itself a constellation. 北斗七星本身不是一个星座。

241 milky   

adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的

参考例句：

• Alexander always has milky coffee at lunchtime.亚历山大总是在午餐时喝掺奶的咖啡。
• I like a hot milky drink at bedtime.我喜欢睡前喝杯热奶饮料。

242 wholesale   

n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售

参考例句：

• The retail dealer buys at wholesale and sells at retail.零售商批发购进货物，以零售价卖出。
• Such shoes usually wholesale for much less.这种鞋批发出售通常要便宜得多。

243 massacre   

n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀

参考例句：

• There was a terrible massacre of villagers here during the war.在战争中，这里的村民惨遭屠杀。
• If we forget the massacre,the massacre will happen again!忘记了大屠杀，大屠杀就有可能再次发生！

244 pertinent   

adj.恰当的；贴切的；中肯的；有关的；相干的

参考例句：

• The expert made some pertinent comments on the scheme.那专家对规划提出了一些中肯的意见。
• These should guide him to pertinent questions for further study.这些将有助于他进一步研究有关问题。

245 centurion   

n.古罗马的百人队长

参考例句：

• When Jesus had entered Capernaum,a centurion came to him,asking for help.耶稣进了迦百农，有一个百夫长前来求助。
• A centurion was in charge of 100 soldiers.一个百夫长管理100个士兵。

246 plunged   

v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降

参考例句：

• The train derailed and plunged into the river. 火车脱轨栽进了河里。
• She lost her balance and plunged 100 feet to her death. 她没有站稳，从100英尺的高处跌下摔死了。

247 mimic   

v.模仿，戏弄；n.模仿他人言行的人

参考例句：

• A parrot can mimic a person's voice.鹦鹉能学人的声音。
• He used to mimic speech peculiarities of another.他过去总是模仿别人讲话的特点。

248 mimicking   

v.（尤指为了逗乐而）模仿( mimic的现在分词 )；酷似

参考例句：

• She's always mimicking the teachers. 她总喜欢模仿老师的言谈举止。
• The boy made us all laugh by mimicking the teacher's voice. 这男孩模仿老师的声音，逗得我们大家都笑了。 来自辞典例句

249 conversed   

v.交谈，谈话( converse的过去式 )

参考例句：

• I conversed with her on a certain problem. 我与她讨论某一问题。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• She was cheerful and polite, and conversed with me pleasantly. 她十分高兴，也很客气，而且愉快地同我交谈。 来自辞典例句

250 inscriptions   

（作者）题词( inscription的名词复数 )； 献词； 碑文； 证劵持有人的登记

参考例句：

• Centuries of wind and rain had worn away the inscriptions on the gravestones. 几个世纪的风雨已磨损了墓碑上的碑文。
• The inscriptions on the stone tablet have become blurred with the passage of time. 年代久了，石碑上的字迹已经模糊了。

251 dense   

a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的

参考例句：

• The general ambushed his troops in the dense woods. 将军把部队埋伏在浓密的树林里。
• The path was completely covered by the dense foliage. 小路被树叶厚厚地盖了一层。

252 despoiled   

v.掠夺，抢劫( despoil的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• They despoiled the villagers of their belongings. 他们夺走了村民的财物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The victorious army despoiled the city of all its treasures. 得胜的军队把城里的财宝劫掠一空。 来自辞典例句

253 inadequacy   

n.无法胜任，信心不足

参考例句：

• the inadequacy of our resources 我们的资源的贫乏
• The failure is due to the inadequacy of preparations. 这次失败是由于准备不足造成的。

254 epithet   

n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语

参考例句：

• In "Alfred the Great","the Great"is an epithet.“阿尔弗雷德大帝”中的“大帝”是个称号。
• It is an epithet that sums up my feelings.这是一个简洁地表达了我思想感情的形容词。

255 ransack   

v.彻底搜索，洗劫

参考例句：

• He began to ransack his mother's workbox for a piece of thread.他要找一根线,开始翻腾妈妈的针线盒。
• She ransack my apartment for the bankbook.她在我公寓里到处搜索寻找存折。

256 paradoxes   

n.似非而是的隽语，看似矛盾而实际却可能正确的说法( paradox的名词复数 )；用于语言文学中的上述隽语；有矛盾特点的人[事物，情况]

参考例句：

• Contradictions and paradoxes arose in increasing numbers. 矛盾和悖论越来越多。 来自辞典例句
• As far as these paradoxes are concerned, the garden definitely a heterotopia. 就这些吊诡性而言，花园无疑地是个异质空间。 来自互联网

257 polemics   

n.辩论术，辩论法；争论( polemic的名词复数 )；辩论；辩论术；辩论法

参考例句：

• He enjoys polemics, persuasion, and controversy. 他喜欢辩论、说服和争议。 来自辞典例句
• The modes of propaganda are opportunistic and the polemics can be vicious. 宣传的模式是投机取巧的，诡辩是可恶性的。 来自互联网

258 repugnance   

n.嫌恶

参考例句：

• He fought down a feelings of repugnance.他抑制住了厌恶感。
• She had a repugnance to the person with whom she spoke.她看不惯这个和她谈话的人。

259 ridicule   

v.讥讽，挖苦；n.嘲弄

参考例句：

• You mustn't ridicule unfortunate people.你不该嘲笑不幸的人。
• Silly mistakes and queer clothes often arouse ridicule.荒谬的错误和古怪的服装常会引起人们的讪笑。

260 hatred   

n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨

参考例句：

• He looked at me with hatred in his eyes.他以憎恨的眼光望着我。
• The old man was seized with burning hatred for the fascists.老人对法西斯主义者充满了仇恨。

261 loathing   

n.厌恶，憎恨v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的现在分词)；极不喜欢

参考例句：

• She looked at her attacker with fear and loathing . 她盯着襲擊她的歹徒，既害怕又憎恨。
• They looked upon the creature with a loathing undisguised. 他们流露出明显的厌恶看那动物。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

262 nucleus   

n.核，核心，原子核

参考例句：

• These young people formed the nucleus of the club.这些年轻人成了俱乐部的核心。
• These councils would form the nucleus of a future regime.这些委员会将成为一个未来政权的核心。

263 philological   

adj.语言学的，文献学的

参考例句：

• Kanwa dictionary is a main kind of Japanese philological dictionary. 汉和辞典是日本语文词典的一个主要门类。 来自互联网
• Emotional education is the ultimate goal of philological teaching, while humanism the core of the former. 情感教育是语文教育的终极目标，而人文精神是情感教育的核心内容。 来自互联网

264 deity   

n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物)

参考例句：

• Many animals were seen as the manifestation of a deity.许多动物被看作神的化身。
• The deity was hidden in the deepest recesses of the temple.神藏在庙宇壁龛的最深处。

265 gracefully   

ad.大大方方地；优美地

参考例句：

• She sank gracefully down onto a cushion at his feet. 她优雅地坐到他脚旁的垫子上。
• The new coats blouse gracefully above the hip line. 新外套在臀围线上优美地打着褶皱。

266 conjecture   

n./v.推测，猜测

参考例句：

• She felt it no use to conjecture his motives.她觉得猜想他的动机是没有用的。
• This conjecture is not supported by any real evidence.这种推测未被任何确切的证据所证实。

267 conjectured   

推测，猜测，猜想( conjecture的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The old peasant conjectured that it would be an unusually cold winter. 那老汉推测冬天将会异常地寒冷。
• The general conjectured that the enemy only had about five days' supply of food left. 将军推测敌人只剩下五天的粮食给养。

268 conceals   

v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• He conceals his worries behind a mask of nonchalance. 他装作若无其事，借以掩饰内心的不安。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Drunkenness reveals what soberness conceals. 酒醉吐真言。 来自《简明英汉词典》

269 legendary   

adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学）

参考例句：

• Legendary stories are passed down from parents to children.传奇故事是由父母传给孩子们的。
• Odysseus was a legendary Greek hero.奥狄修斯是传说中的希腊英雄。

270 saviours   

n.救助者( saviour的名词复数 )；救星；救世主；耶稣基督

参考例句：

• No saviours are on the ballot. 选举没有救世主。 来自互联网

271 prehistoric   

adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的

参考例句：

• They have found prehistoric remains.他们发现了史前遗迹。
• It was rather like an exhibition of prehistoric electronic equipment.这儿倒像是在展览古老的电子设备。

272 revered   

v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• A number of institutions revered and respected in earlier times have become Aunt Sally for the present generation. 一些早年受到尊崇的惯例，现在已经成了这代人嘲弄的对象了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Chinese revered corn as a gift from heaven. 中国人将谷物奉为上天的恩赐。 来自辞典例句

273 conjectures   

推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• That's weighing remote military conjectures against the certain deaths of innocent people. 那不过是牵强附会的军事假设，而现在的事实却是无辜者正在惨遭杀害，这怎能同日而语！
• I was right in my conjectures. 我所猜测的都应验了。

274 secrecy   

n.秘密，保密，隐蔽

参考例句：

• All the researchers on the project are sworn to secrecy.该项目的所有研究人员都按要求起誓保守秘密。
• Complete secrecy surrounded the meeting.会议在绝对机密的环境中进行。

275 evade   

vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避

参考例句：

• He tried to evade the embarrassing question.他企图回避这令人难堪的问题。
• You are in charge of the job.How could you evade the issue?你是负责人，你怎么能对这个问题不置可否？

276 renounce   

v.放弃；拒绝承认，宣布与…断绝关系

参考例句：

• She decided to renounce the world and enter a convent.她决定弃绝尘世去当修女。
• It was painful for him to renounce his son.宣布与儿子脱离关系对他来说是很痛苦的。

277 scriptures   

经文，圣典( scripture的名词复数 )； 经典

参考例句：

• Here the apostle Peter affirms his belief that the Scriptures are 'inspired'. 使徒彼得在此表达了他相信《圣经》是通过默感写成的。
• You won't find this moral precept in the scriptures. 你在《圣经》中找不到这种道德规范。

278 scripture   

n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段

参考例句：

• The scripture states that God did not want us to be alone.圣经指出上帝并不是想让我们独身一人生活。
• They invoked Hindu scripture to justify their position.他们援引印度教的经文为他们的立场辩护。

279 mundane   

adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的

参考例句：

• I hope I can get an interesting job and not something mundane.我希望我可以得到的是一份有趣的工作，而不是一份平凡无奇的。
• I find it humorous sometimes that even the most mundane occurrences can have an impact on our awareness.我发现生活有时挺诙谐的，即使是最平凡的事情也能影响我们的感知。

280 zest   

n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣

参考例句：

• He dived into his new job with great zest.他充满热情地投入了新的工作。
• He wrote his novel about his trip to Asia with zest.他兴趣浓厚的写了一本关于他亚洲之行的小说。

281 sects   

n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Members of these sects are ruthlessly persecuted and suppressed. 这些教派的成员遭到了残酷的迫害和镇压。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He had subdued the religious sects, cleaned up Saigon. 他压服了宗教派别，刷新了西贡的面貌。 来自辞典例句

282 favourable   

adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的

参考例句：

• The company will lend you money on very favourable terms.这家公司将以非常优惠的条件借钱给你。
• We found that most people are favourable to the idea.我们发现大多数人同意这个意见。

283 instructor   

n.指导者，教员，教练

参考例句：

• The college jumped him from instructor to full professor.大学突然把他从讲师提升为正教授。
• The skiing instructor was a tall,sunburnt man.滑雪教练是一个高高个子晒得黑黑的男子。

284 nave   

n.教堂的中部；本堂

参考例句：

• People gathered in the nave of the house.人们聚拢在房子的中间。
• The family on the other side of the nave had a certain look about them,too.在中殿另一边的那一家人，也有着自己特有的相貌。

285 speculations   

n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断

参考例句：

• Your speculations were all quite close to the truth. 你的揣测都很接近于事实。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• This possibility gives rise to interesting speculations. 这种可能性引起了有趣的推测。 来自《用法词典》

286 possessed   

adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的

参考例句：

• He flew out of the room like a man possessed.他像着了魔似地猛然冲出房门。
• He behaved like someone possessed.他行为举止像是魔怔了。

287 perusal   

n.细读，熟读；目测

参考例句：

• Peter Cooke undertook to send each of us a sample contract for perusal.彼得·库克答应给我们每人寄送一份合同样本供阅读。
• A perusal of the letters which we have published has satisfied him of the reality of our claim.读了我们的公开信后，他终于相信我们的要求的确是真的。

288 Moslem   

n.回教徒，穆罕默德信徒；adj.回教徒的，回教的

参考例句：

• Moslem women used to veil their faces before going into public.信回教的妇女出门之前往往用面纱把脸遮起来。
• If possible every Moslem must make the pilgrimage to Mecca once in his life.如有可能，每个回教徒一生中必须去麦加朝觐一次。

289 alludes   

提及，暗指( allude的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• In the vegetable kingdom Mr. Mivart only alludes to two cases. 在植物界中，密伐脱先生仅提出两点。
• Black-box testing alludes to test that are conducted at the software interface. 黑箱测试是指测试软件接口进行。

290 ascertained   

v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The previously unidentified objects have now been definitely ascertained as being satellites. 原来所说的不明飞行物现在已证实是卫星。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I ascertained that she was dead. 我断定她已经死了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

291 remarkable   

adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的

参考例句：

• She has made remarkable headway in her writing skills.她在写作技巧方面有了长足进步。
• These cars are remarkable for the quietness of their engines.这些汽车因发动机没有噪音而不同凡响。

292 surmise   

v./n.猜想，推测

参考例句：

• It turned out that my surmise was correct.结果表明我的推测没有错。
• I surmise that he will take the job.我推测他会接受这份工作。

293 elucidation   

n.说明，阐明

参考例句：

• The advertising copy is the elucidation text,which must be written according to the formula of AIDA. 文案是说明文，应基本遵照AIDA公式来写作。 来自互联网
• Fourth, a worm hole, elucidation space-time can stretch, compression, rent, also is deduced time-travel this idea. 第四，有了虫洞，就说明时空可以被拉伸、压缩、撕裂，也就推导出了时空旅行这个想法。 来自互联网

294 grandiose   

adj.宏伟的，宏大的，堂皇的，铺张的

参考例句：

• His grandiose manner impressed those who met him for the first time.他那种夸大的举止给第一次遇见他的人留下了深刻的印象。
• As the fog vanished,a grandiose landscape unfolded before the tourists.雾气散去之后，一幅壮丽的景观展现在游客面前。

295 heralds   

n.使者( herald的名词复数 )；预报者；预兆；传令官v.预示( herald的第三人称单数 )；宣布（好或重要）

参考例句：

• The song of birds heralds the approach of spring. 百鸟齐鸣报春到。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The wind sweeping through the tower heralds a rising storm in the mountain. 山雨欲来风满楼。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

296 herald   

vt.预示...的来临，预告，宣布，欢迎

参考例句：

• In England, the cuckoo is the herald of spring.在英国杜鹃鸟是报春的使者。
• Dawn is the herald of day.曙光是白昼的先驱。

297 gloss   

n.光泽，光滑；虚饰；注释；vt.加光泽于；掩饰

参考例句：

• John tried in vain to gloss over his faults.约翰极力想掩饰自己的缺点，但是没有用。
• She rubbed up the silver plates to a high gloss.她把银盘擦得很亮。

298 albeit   

conj.即使；纵使；虽然

参考例句：

• Albeit fictional,she seemed to have resolved the problem.虽然是虚构的，但是在她看来好象是解决了问题。
• Albeit he has failed twice,he is not discouraged.虽然失败了两次，但他并没有气馁。

299 exponent   

n.倡导者，拥护者；代表人物；指数，幂

参考例句：

• She is an exponent of vegetarianism.她是一个素食主义的倡导者。
• He had been the principal exponent of the Gallipoli campaign.他曾为加里波利战役的主要代表人物。

300 plunges   

n.跳进，投入vt.使投入，使插入，使陷入vi.投入，跳进，陷入v.颠簸( plunge的第三人称单数 )；暴跌；骤降；突降

参考例句：

• Even before he plunges into his program, he has his audience in his pocket. 他的节目甚至还没有出场，就已控制住了观众。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• 'Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as a person plunges into the river.' “大人，他头冲下跳下山坡去了，像往河里跳一样。” 来自英汉文学 - 双城记

301 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

302 systematically   

adv.有系统地

参考例句：

• This government has systematically run down public services since it took office.这一屆政府自上台以来系统地削减了公共服务。
• The rainforest is being systematically destroyed.雨林正被系统地毀灭。

303 systematic   

adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的

参考例句：

• The way he works isn't very systematic.他的工作不是很有条理。
• The teacher made a systematic work of teaching.这个教师进行系统的教学工作。

304 fervent   

adj.热的，热烈的，热情的

参考例句：

• It was a debate which aroused fervent ethical arguments.那是一场引发强烈的伦理道德争论的辩论。
• Austria was among the most fervent supporters of adolf hitler.奥地利是阿道夫希特勒最狂热的支持者之一。

305 expounded   

论述，详细讲解( expound的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He expounded his views on the subject to me at great length. 他详细地向我阐述了他在这个问题上的观点。
• He warmed up as he expounded his views. 他在阐明自己的意见时激动起来了。

306 trite   

adj.陈腐的

参考例句：

• The movie is teeming with obvious and trite ideas.这部电影充斥着平铺直叙的陈腐观点。
• Yesterday,in the restaurant,Lorraine had seemed trite,blurred,worn away.昨天在饭店里，洛兰显得庸俗、堕落、衰老了。

307 etymology   

n.语源；字源学

参考例句：

• The hippies' etymology is contentious.关于嬉皮士的语源是有争议的。
• The origin of OK became the Holy Grail of etymology.OK的出典成了词源学梦寐以求的圣杯。

308 superstitious   

adj.迷信的

参考例句：

• They aim to deliver the people who are in bondage to superstitious belief.他们的目的在于解脱那些受迷信束缚的人。
• These superstitious practices should be abolished as soon as possible.这些迷信做法应尽早取消。

309 ministry   

n.(政府的)部；牧师

参考例句：

• They sent a deputation to the ministry to complain.他们派了一个代表团到部里投诉。
• We probed the Air Ministry statements.我们调查了空军部的记录。

310 repentance   

n.懊悔

参考例句：

• He shows no repentance for what he has done.他对他的所作所为一点也不懊悔。
• Christ is inviting sinners to repentance.基督正在敦请有罪的人悔悟。

311 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

312 purport   

n.意义，要旨，大要；v.意味著，做为...要旨，要领是...

参考例句：

• Many theories purport to explain growth in terms of a single cause.许多理论都标榜以单一的原因解释生长。
• Her letter may purport her forthcoming arrival.她的来信可能意味着她快要到了。

313 attained   

（通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况）

参考例句：

• She has attained the degree of Master of Arts. 她已获得文学硕士学位。
• Lu Hsun attained a high position in the republic of letters. 鲁迅在文坛上获得崇高的地位。

314 unnatural   

adj.不自然的；反常的

参考例句：

• Did her behaviour seem unnatural in any way?她有任何反常表现吗？
• She has an unnatural smile on her face.她脸上挂着做作的微笑。

315 recapitulates   

n.总结，扼要重述( recapitulate的名词复数 )v.总结，扼要重述( recapitulate的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• A player building a SimCity recapitulates Will Wright's sequence in inventing it. 一位《虚拟城市》玩家总结了威尔发明这个游戏的顺序。 来自互联网
• He hesitates, he recapitulates. 他犹豫不决，颠三倒四。 来自互联网

316 sojourn   

v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留

参考例句：

• It would be cruel to begrudge your sojourn among flowers and fields.如果嫉妒你逗留在鲜花与田野之间，那将是太不近人情的。
• I am already feeling better for my sojourn here.我在此逗留期间，觉得体力日渐恢复。

317 allusion   

n.暗示，间接提示

参考例句：

• He made an allusion to a secret plan in his speech.在讲话中他暗示有一项秘密计划。
• She made no allusion to the incident.她没有提及那个事件。

318 verges   

边，边缘，界线( verge的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The small stream verges to the north. 这条小河向北延伸。
• The results ob-tained agree well with those given by Verges using random Bethe lattice model. 所得结果与Verges用非晶的Bethe晶格模型的计算结果相符。

319 hysterical   

adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的

参考例句：

• He is hysterical at the sight of the photo.他一看到那张照片就异常激动。
• His hysterical laughter made everybody stunned.他那歇斯底里的笑声使所有的人不知所措。

320 papyrus   

n.古以纸草制成之纸

参考例句：

• The Egyptians wrote on papyrus.埃及人书写用薄草纸。
• Since papyrus dries up and crumble,very few documents of ancient Egypt have survived.因草片会干裂成粉末所以古埃及的文件很少保存下来。

321 hardy   

adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的

参考例句：

• The kind of plant is a hardy annual.这种植物是耐寒的一年生植物。
• He is a hardy person.他是一个能吃苦耐劳的人。

322 inscribed   

v.写，刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；内接

参考例句：

• His name was inscribed on the trophy. 他的名字刻在奖杯上。
• The names of the dead were inscribed on the wall. 死者的名字被刻在墙上。 来自《简明英汉词典》

323 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

324 charlatan   

n.骗子；江湖医生；假内行

参考例句：

• The charlatan boasted that he could charm off any disease.这个江湖骗子吹牛说他能用符咒治好各种疾病。
• He was sure that he was dealing with a charlatan.他真以为自己遇上了江湖骗子。

325 hymns   

n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌( hymn的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• At first, they played the hymns and marches familiar to them. 起初他们只吹奏自己熟悉的赞美诗和进行曲。 来自英汉非文学 - 百科语料821
• I like singing hymns. 我喜欢唱圣歌。 来自辞典例句

326 confirmation   

n.证实，确认，批准

参考例句：

• We are waiting for confirmation of the news.我们正在等待证实那个消息。
• We need confirmation in writing before we can send your order out.给你们发送订购的货物之前，我们需要书面确认。

327 gratuitous   

adj.无偿的，免费的；无缘无故的，不必要的

参考例句：

• His criticism is quite gratuitous.他的批评完全没有根据。
• There's too much crime and gratuitous violence on TV.电视里充斥着犯罪和无端的暴力。

328 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。

329 guardian   

n.监护人；守卫者，保护者

参考例句：

• The form must be signed by the child's parents or guardian. 这张表格须由孩子的家长或监护人签字。
• The press is a guardian of the public weal. 报刊是公共福利的卫护者。

330 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

331 backwards   

adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地

参考例句：

• He turned on the light and began to pace backwards and forwards.他打开电灯并开始走来走去。
• All the girls fell over backwards to get the party ready.姑娘们迫不及待地为聚会做准备。

332 gazetteer   

n.地名索引

参考例句：

• Any atlas,containing many pages of maps,normally includes an index,called a gazetteer.任何载有多幅地图的地图集，一般都附有一份地名索引。
• The entire "Geographia" is the first atlas and gazetteer.全部《地理学》可说是第一本地图集和地名辞典。

333 ordnance   

n.大炮，军械

参考例句：

• She worked in an ordnance factory during the war.战争期间她在一家兵工厂工作。
• Shoes and clothing for the army were scarce,ordnance supplies and drugs were scarcer.军队很缺鞋和衣服，武器供应和药品就更少了。

334 dweller   

n.居住者，住客

参考例句：

• Both city and town dweller should pay tax.城镇居民都需要纳税。
• The city dweller never experiences anxieties of this sort.城市居民从未经历过这种担忧。

335 anonymous   

adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的

参考例句：

• Sending anonymous letters is a cowardly act.寄匿名信是懦夫的行为。
• The author wishes to remain anonymous.作者希望姓名不公开。

336 garb   

n.服装，装束

参考例句：

• He wore the garb of a general.他身着将军的制服。
• Certain political,social,and legal forms reappear in seemingly different garb.一些政治、社会和法律的形式在表面不同的外衣下重复出现。

337 illustrating   

给…加插图( illustrate的现在分词 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明

参考例句：

• He upstaged the other speakers by illustrating his talk with slides. 他演讲中配上幻灯片，比其他演讲人更吸引听众。
• Material illustrating detailed structure of graptolites has been etched from limestone by means of hydrofluoric acid. 表明笔石详细构造的物质是利用氢氟酸从石灰岩中侵蚀出来。

338 exonerate   

v.免除责任，确定无罪

参考例句：

• Nothing can exonerate her from that.任何解释都难辞其咎。
• There is no reason to exonerate him from the ordinary duties of a citizen.没有理由免除他做公民应尽的义务。

339 naturalist   

n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者)

参考例句：

• He was a printer by trade and naturalist by avocation.他从事印刷业，同时是个博物学爱好者。
• The naturalist told us many stories about birds.博物学家给我们讲述了许多有关鸟儿的故事。

340 deliberately   

adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地

参考例句：

• The girl gave the show away deliberately.女孩故意泄露秘密。
• They deliberately shifted off the argument.他们故意回避这个论点。

341 humbly   

adv. 恭顺地，谦卑地

参考例句：

• We humbly beg Your Majesty to show mercy. 我们恳请陛下发发慈悲。
• "You must be right, Sir,'said John humbly. “你一定是对的，先生，”约翰恭顺地说道。

342 inverse   

adj.相反的，倒转的，反转的；n.相反之物；v.倒转

参考例句：

• Evil is the inverse of good.恶是善的反面。
• When the direct approach failed he tried the inverse.当直接方法失败时，他尝试相反的做法。

343 testimony   

n.证词；见证，证明

参考例句：

• The testimony given by him is dubious.他所作的证据是可疑的。
• He was called in to bear testimony to what the police officer said.他被传入为警官所说的话作证。

344 orientation   

n.方向，目标；熟悉，适应，情况介绍

参考例句：

• Children need some orientation when they go to school.小孩子上学时需要适应。
• The traveller found his orientation with the aid of a good map.旅行者借助一幅好地图得知自己的方向。

345 imbibed   

v.吸收( imbibe的过去式和过去分词 )；喝；吸取；吸气

参考例句：

• They imbibed the local cider before walking home to dinner. 他们在走回家吃饭之前喝了本地的苹果酒。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. 海丝特 - 白兰汲取了这一精神。 来自英汉文学 - 红字

346 emergence   

n.浮现，显现，出现，（植物）突出体

参考例句：

• The last decade saw the emergence of a dynamic economy.最近10年见证了经济增长的姿态。
• Language emerges and develops with the emergence and development of society.语言是随着社会的产生而产生，随着社会的发展而发展的。

347 cardinal   

n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的

参考例句：

• This is a matter of cardinal significance.这是非常重要的事。
• The Cardinal coloured with vexation. 红衣主教感到恼火，脸涨得通红。

348 wilful   

adj.任性的，故意的

参考例句：

• A wilful fault has no excuse and deserves no pardon.不能宽恕故意犯下的错误。
• He later accused reporters of wilful distortion and bias.他后来指责记者有意歪曲事实并带有偏见。

349 omissions   

n.省略( omission的名词复数 )；删节；遗漏；略去或漏掉的事（或人）

参考例句：

• In spite of careful checking, there are still omissions. 饶这么细心核对，还是有遗漏。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• It has many omissions; even so, it is quite a useful reference book. 那本书有许多遗漏之处，即使如此，尚不失为一本有用的参考书。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

350 reverence   

n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬

参考例句：

• He was a bishop who was held in reverence by all.他是一位被大家都尊敬的主教。
• We reverence tradition but will not be fettered by it.我们尊重传统，但不被传统所束缚。

351 enumerate   

v.列举，计算，枚举，数

参考例句：

• The heroic deeds of the people's soldiers are too numerous to enumerate.人民子弟兵的英雄事迹举不胜举。
• Its applications are too varied to enumerate.它的用途不胜枚举。

352 martyr   

n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲

参考例句：

• The martyr laid down his life for the cause of national independence.这位烈士是为了民族独立的事业而献身的。
• The newspaper carried the martyr's photo framed in black.报上登载了框有黑边的烈士遗像。

353 extorts   

v.敲诈( extort的第三人称单数 )；曲解

参考例句：

• Michael extorts a confession from his brother-in-law before having him killed. Michael在杀他的姐夫时，强迫对方忏悔。 来自互联网
• He doesn't do his job well, he just extorts money. 他不办实事，就知道搂钱！ 来自互联网

354 antagonist   

n.敌人，对抗者，对手

参考例句：

• His antagonist in the debate was quicker than he.在辩论中他的对手比他反应快。
• The thing is to know the nature of your antagonist.要紧的是要了解你的对手的特性。

355 gibe   

n.讥笑；嘲弄

参考例句：

• I felt sure he was seeking for some gibe. 我敢说他正在寻找一句什么挖苦话。
• It's impolite to gibe at a foreign student's English. 嘲笑外国学生的英语是不礼貌的。

356 tirades   

激烈的长篇指责或演说( tirade的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• What's the matter with Levin today?Why doesn't he launch into one of his tirades? 你所说得话我全记录下来列文今天怎么啦？没有反唇相讥？

357 inevitably   

adv.不可避免地；必然发生地

参考例句：

• In the way you go on,you are inevitably coming apart.照你们这样下去，毫无疑问是会散伙的。
• Technological changes will inevitably lead to unemployment.技术变革必然会导致失业。

358 crest   

n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖

参考例句：

• The rooster bristled his crest.公鸡竖起了鸡冠。
• He reached the crest of the hill before dawn.他于黎明前到达山顶。

359 secular   

n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的

参考例句：

• We live in an increasingly secular society.我们生活在一个日益非宗教的社会。
• Britain is a plural society in which the secular predominates.英国是个世俗主导的多元社会。

360 insistence   

n.坚持；强调；坚决主张

参考例句：

• They were united in their insistence that she should go to college.他们一致坚持她应上大学。
• His insistence upon strict obedience is correct.他坚持绝对服从是对的。

361 meting   

v.（对某人）施以，给予（处罚等）( mete的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The manager was strict and fair in meting out rewards and punishments. 经理赏罚严明。 来自互联网
• Doris Crockford. Mr. Potter. I can't believe I'm meting you at last. 我叫桃瑞丝。韦斯莱。波特先生。我真不敢相信，总算见到您了。 来自互联网

362 accretions   

n.堆积( accretion的名词复数 )；连生；添加生长；吸积

参考例句：

• The script has been gathering editorial accretions for years. 多年来该剧本一直在修改。 来自辞典例句
• He scraped away the accretions of paint. 他刮掉了漆层。 来自互联网

363 testimonies   

（法庭上证人的）证词( testimony的名词复数 )； 证明，证据

参考例句：

• Davie poured forth his eloquence upon the controversies and testimonies of the day. 戴维向他滔滔不绝地谈那些当时有争论的问题和上帝的箴言。
• Remove from me reproach and contempt; for I have kept thy testimonies. 22求你除掉我所受的羞辱和藐视，因我遵守你的法度。

364 miraculously   

ad.奇迹般地

参考例句：

• He had been miraculously saved from almost certain death. 他奇迹般地从死亡线上获救。
• A schoolboy miraculously survived a 25 000-volt electric shock. 一名男学生在遭受2.5 万伏的电击后奇迹般地活了下来。

365 ascent   

n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高

参考例句：

• His rapid ascent in the social scale was surprising.他的社会地位提高之迅速令人吃惊。
• Burke pushed the button and the elevator began its slow ascent.伯克按动电钮，电梯开始缓慢上升。

366 maiden   

n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的

参考例句：

• The prince fell in love with a fair young maiden.王子爱上了一位年轻美丽的少女。
• The aircraft makes its maiden flight tomorrow.这架飞机明天首航。

367 bowels   

n.肠，内脏，内部；肠( bowel的名词复数 )；内部，最深处

参考例句：

• Salts is a medicine that causes movements of the bowels. 泻盐是一种促使肠子运动的药物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The cabins are in the bowels of the ship. 舱房设在船腹内。 来自《简明英汉词典》

368 wrought   

v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的

参考例句：

• Events in Paris wrought a change in British opinion towards France and Germany.巴黎发生的事件改变了英国对法国和德国的看法。
• It's a walking stick with a gold head wrought in the form of a flower.那是一个金质花形包头的拐杖。

369 relics   

[pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸

参考例句：

• The area is a treasure house of archaeological relics. 这个地区是古文物遗迹的宝库。
• Xi'an is an ancient city full of treasures and saintly relics. 西安是一个有很多宝藏和神圣的遗物的古老城市。

370 blasphemous   

adj.亵渎神明的，不敬神的

参考例句：

• The book was declared blasphemous and all copies ordered to be burnt.这本书被断定为亵渎神明之作，命令全数焚毀。
• The people in the room were shocked by his blasphemous language.满屋的人都对他那侮慢的语言感到愤慨。

371 marvels   

n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The doctor's treatment has worked marvels : the patient has recovered completely. 该医生妙手回春，病人已完全康复。 来自辞典例句
• Nevertheless he revels in a catalogue of marvels. 可他还是兴致勃勃地罗列了一堆怪诞不经的事物。 来自辞典例句

372 prodigies   

n.奇才，天才（尤指神童）( prodigy的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• It'seldom happened that a third party ever witnessed any of these prodigies. 这类壮举发生的时候，难得有第三者在场目睹过。 来自辞典例句
• She is by no means inferior to other prodigies. 她绝不是不如其他神童。 来自互联网

373 itinerary   

n.行程表，旅行路线；旅行计划

参考例句：

• The two sides have agreed on the itinerary of the visit.双方商定了访问日程。
• The next place on our itinerary was Silistra.我们行程的下一站是锡利斯特拉。

374 thither   

adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的

参考例句：

• He wandered hither and thither looking for a playmate.他逛来逛去找玩伴。
• He tramped hither and thither.他到处流浪。

375 uncertainty   

n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物

参考例句：

• Her comments will add to the uncertainty of the situation.她的批评将会使局势更加不稳定。
• After six weeks of uncertainty,the strain was beginning to take its toll.6个星期的忐忑不安后，压力开始产生影响了。

376 chronological   

adj.按年月顺序排列的，年代学的

参考例句：

• The paintings are exhibited in chronological sequence.这些画是按创作的时间顺序展出的。
• Give me the dates in chronological order.把日期按年月顺序给我。

377 anachronistic   

adj.时代错误的

参考例句：

• In remembering historic events,the mistake you tend to make is anachronistic.在记历史事件时，你容易犯的错误是时代错误。
• English public schools are anachronistic.英国的公立学校已经落伍过时了。

378 justify   

vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护

参考例句：

• He tried to justify his absence with lame excuses.他想用站不住脚的借口为自己的缺席辩解。
• Can you justify your rude behavior to me?你能向我证明你的粗野行为是有道理的吗？

379 Buddhism   

n.佛教（教义）

参考例句：

• Buddhism was introduced into China about 67 AD.佛教是在公元67年左右传入中国的。
• Many people willingly converted to Buddhism.很多人情愿皈依佛教。

380 Founder   

n.创始者，缔造者

参考例句：

• He was extolled as the founder of their Florentine school.他被称颂为佛罗伦萨画派的鼻祖。
• According to the old tradition,Romulus was the founder of Rome.按照古老的传说，罗穆卢斯是古罗马的建国者。

381 argot   

n.隐语，黑话

参考例句：

• He knows thieves' argot.他懂盗贼的黑话。
• The argot and proverb created by them enrich Chinese language.他们创造的隐语、谚语丰富了中国的语言。

382 annually   

adv.一年一次，每年

参考例句：

• Many migratory birds visit this lake annually.许多候鸟每年到这个湖上作短期逗留。
• They celebrate their wedding anniversary annually.他们每年庆祝一番结婚纪念日。

383 recurring   

adj.往复的，再次发生的

参考例句：

• This kind of problem is recurring often. 这类问题经常发生。
• For our own country, it has been a time for recurring trial. 就我们国家而言，它经过了一个反复考验的时期。

384 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

385 commemorated   

v.纪念，庆祝( commemorate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Lincoln commemorated the soldiers killed in the battle in his address. 林肯在演说中表扬阵亡将士。 来自辞典例句
• You'll be commemorated for killing a spy, and be specially discharged. 你们每杀一个间谍将会被记录到特殊档案。 来自电影对白

386 analogue   

n.类似物；同源语

参考例句：

• The gill of a fish is the analogue of the lung of a cat.鱼的鳃和猫的肺是类似物。
• But aside from that analogue standby,the phone, videoconferencing is their favorite means of communication.除了备用的相似物电话，可视对话是他们最喜欢的沟通手段。

387 sundry   

adj.各式各样的，种种的

参考例句：

• This cream can be used to treat sundry minor injuries.这种药膏可用来治各种轻伤。
• We can see the rich man on sundry occasions.我们能在各种场合见到那个富豪。

388 slain   

杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词)

参考例句：

• The soldiers slain in the battle were burried that night. 在那天夜晚埋葬了在战斗中牺牲了的战士。
• His boy was dead, slain by the hand of the false Amulius. 他的儿子被奸诈的阿缪利乌斯杀死了。

389 initiate   

vt.开始，创始，发动；启蒙，使入门；引入

参考例句：

• A language teacher should initiate pupils into the elements of grammar.语言老师应该把基本语法教给学生。
• They wanted to initiate a discussion on economics.他们想启动一次经济学讨论。

390 mythologies   

神话学( mythology的名词复数 )； 神话（总称）； 虚构的事实； 错误的观点

参考例句：

• a study of the religions and mythologies of ancient Rome 关于古罗马的宗教和神话的研究
• This realization is enshrined in "Mythologies." 这一看法见诸于他的《神话集》一书。

391 transcripts   

n.抄本（ transcript的名词复数 ）；转写本；文字本；副本

参考例句：

• Like mRNA, both tRNA and rRNA are transcripts of chromosomal DNA. tRNA及rRNA同mRNA一样，都是染色体DNA的转录产物。 来自辞典例句
• You can't take the transfer students'exam without your transcripts. 没有成绩证明书，你就不能参加转学考试。 来自辞典例句

392 momentous   

adj.重要的，重大的

参考例句：

• I am deeply honoured to be invited to this momentous occasion.能应邀出席如此重要的场合，我深感荣幸。
• The momentous news was that war had begun.重大的新闻是战争已经开始。

393 Mediterranean   

adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的

参考例句：

• The houses are Mediterranean in character.这些房子都属地中海风格。
• Gibraltar is the key to the Mediterranean.直布罗陀是地中海的要冲。

394 virtue   

n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力

参考例句：

• He was considered to be a paragon of virtue.他被认为是品德尽善尽美的典范。
• You need to decorate your mind with virtue.你应该用德行美化心灵。

395 cohere   

vt.附着，连贯，一致

参考例句：

• The adornments do not cohere with the basic design.装饰物与设计的基调不协调。
• When you squeeze a handful of snow,the flakes cohere to make a snowball.你把一团雪捏紧，雪就黏合成雪球。

396 frustrated   

adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧

参考例句：

• It's very easy to get frustrated in this job. 这个工作很容易令人懊恼。
• The bad weather frustrated all our hopes of going out. 恶劣的天气破坏了我们出行的愿望。 来自《简明英汉词典》

397 condemnation   

n.谴责; 定罪

参考例句：

• There was widespread condemnation of the invasion. 那次侵略遭到了人们普遍的谴责。
• The jury's condemnation was a shock to the suspect. 陪审团宣告有罪使嫌疑犯大为震惊。

398 atrocities   

n.邪恶，暴行( atrocity的名词复数 )；滔天大罪

参考例句：

• They were guilty of the most barbarous and inhuman atrocities. 他们犯有最野蛮、最灭绝人性的残暴罪行。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The enemy's atrocities made one boil with anger. 敌人的暴行令人发指。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

399 eloquent   

adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的

参考例句：

• He was so eloquent that he cut down the finest orator.他能言善辩，胜过最好的演说家。
• These ruins are an eloquent reminder of the horrors of war.这些废墟形象地提醒人们不要忘记战争的恐怖。

400 sporadically   

adv.偶发地，零星地

参考例句：

• There are some trees sporadically around his house. 他的房子周围零星地有点树木。 来自辞典例句
• As for other aspects, we will sporadically hand out questionnaires. 在其他方面，我们会偶尔发送调查问卷。 来自互联网

401 celebrated   

adj.有名的，声誉卓著的

参考例句：

• He was soon one of the most celebrated young painters in England.不久他就成了英格兰最负盛名的年轻画家之一。
• The celebrated violinist was mobbed by the audience.观众团团围住了这位著名的小提琴演奏家。

402 mimicry   

n.（生物）拟态，模仿

参考例句：

• One of his few strengths was his skill at mimicry.他为数不多的强项之一就是善于模仿。
• Language learning usually necessitates conscious mimicry.一般地说，学习语言就要进行有意识的摹仿。

403 fattened   

v.喂肥( fatten的过去式和过去分词 )；养肥（牲畜）；使（钱）增多；使（公司）升值

参考例句：

• The piglets are taken from the sow to be fattened for market. 这些小猪被从母猪身边带走，好育肥上市。
• Those corrupt officials fattened themselves by drinking the people's life-blood. 那些贪官污吏用民脂民膏养肥了自己。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

404 plausibly   

似真地

参考例句：

• The case was presented very plausibly. 案情的申述似很可信。
• He argued very plausibly for its acceptance. 他为使之认可辩解得头头是道。

405 syllable   

n.音节；vt.分音节

参考例句：

• You put too much emphasis on the last syllable.你把最后一个音节读得太重。
• The stress on the last syllable is light.最后一个音节是轻音节。

406 compendium   

n.简要，概略

参考例句：

• The Compendium of Materia Medica has been held in high esteem since it was first published.“本草纲目”问世之后，深受人们的推重。
• The book is a compendium of their poetry,religion and philosophy.这本书是他们诗歌、宗教和哲学的概略。

407 analogous   

adj.相似的；类似的

参考例句：

• The two situations are roughly analogous.两种情況大致相似。
• The company is in a position closely analogous to that of its main rival.该公司与主要竞争对手的处境极为相似。

408 slaying   

杀戮。

参考例句：

• The man mimed the slaying of an enemy. 此人比手划脚地表演砍死一个敌人的情况。
• He is suspected of having been an accomplice in the slaying,butthey can't pin it on him. 他有嫌疑曾参与该杀人案，但他们找不到证据来指控他。

409 envisage   

v.想象，设想，展望，正视

参考例句：

• Nobody can envisage the consequences of total nuclear war.没有人能够想像全面核战争的后果。
• When do you envisage being able to pay me back?你看你什么时候能还我钱？

410 aspirations   

强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音

参考例句：

• I didn't realize you had political aspirations. 我没有意识到你有政治上的抱负。
• The new treaty embodies the aspirations of most nonaligned countries. 新条约体现了大多数不结盟国家的愿望。

411 divested   

v.剥夺( divest的过去式和过去分词 )；脱去（衣服）；2。从…取去…；1。（给某人）脱衣服

参考例句：

• He divested himself of his jacket. 他脱去了短上衣。
• He swiftly divested himself of his clothes. 他迅速脱掉衣服。 来自《简明英汉词典》

412 royalty   

n.皇家，皇族

参考例句：

• She claims to be descended from royalty.她声称她是皇室后裔。
• I waited on tables，and even catered to royalty at the Royal Albert Hall.我做过服务生， 甚至在皇家阿伯特大厅侍奉过皇室的人。

413 enacted   

制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• legislation enacted by parliament 由议会通过的法律
• Outside in the little lobby another scene was begin enacted. 外面的小休息室里又是另一番景象。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

414 ridiculing   

v.嘲笑，嘲弄，奚落( ridicule的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Proxmire has made himself quite a reputation out of ridiculing government expenditure he disagrees with. 普罗克斯迈尔对于他不同意花的政府开支总要取笑一番，他因此而名声大振。 来自辞典例句
• The demonstrators put on skits ridiculing the aggressors. 游行的人上演了活报剧来讽刺侵略者。 来自互联网

415 diadem   

n.王冠，冕

参考例句：

• The diadem is the symbol of royalty.王冠就是王权的象征。
• Nature like us is sometimes caught without diadem.自然犹如我等，时常没戴皇冠。

416 mime   

n.指手画脚，做手势，哑剧演员，哑剧；vi./vt.指手画脚的表演，用哑剧的形式表演

参考例句：

• Several French mime artists will give some lectures this afternoon.几位法国哑剧表演艺术家将在今天下午做几场讲座。
• I couldn't speak Chinese,but I showed in mime that I wanted a drink.我不会讲汉语，但我作摹拟动作表示要一杯饮料。

417 bodyguard   

n.护卫，保镖

参考例句：

• She has to have an armed bodyguard wherever she goes.她不管到哪儿都得有带武器的保镖跟从。
• The big guy standing at his side may be his bodyguard.站在他身旁的那个大个子可能是他的保镖。

418 saluted   

v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂

参考例句：

• The sergeant stood to attention and saluted. 中士立正敬礼。
• He saluted his friends with a wave of the hand. 他挥手向他的朋友致意。 来自《简明英汉词典》

419 commonwealth   

n.共和国，联邦，共同体

参考例句：

• He is the chairman of the commonwealth of artists.他是艺术家协会的主席。
• Most of the members of the Commonwealth are nonwhite.英联邦的许多成员国不是白人国家。

420 garrison   

n.卫戍部队；驻地，卫戍区；vt.派(兵)驻防

参考例句：

• The troops came to the relief of the besieged garrison.军队来援救被围的守备军。
• The German was moving to stiffen up the garrison in Sicily.德军正在加强西西里守军之力量。

421 calumnies   

n.诬蔑，诽谤，中伤（的话）( calumny的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He doesn't care about scandals, slanders, calumnies, aspersions, or defamation. 他不在乎流言蜚语，诽谤，中伤，造谣，诬蔑。 来自互联网
• Spreading rumors and calumnies and plotting riots. 造谣诽谤，策动骚乱。 来自互联网

422 reviling   

v.辱骂，痛斥( revile的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• A man stood on a wooden box in the park, reviling against civilization. 一个人站在公园的一个木盒上，大肆攻击文明世界。 来自互联网
• The speaker stood on a table, reviling at the evil doings of the reactionaries. 那位演讲者站在桌上痛斥反动派的罪恶行径。 来自互联网

423 calumny   

n.诽谤，污蔑，中伤

参考例句：

• Calumny is answered best with silence.沉默可以止谤。
• Calumny require no proof.诽谤无需证据。

424 credence   

n.信用，祭器台，供桌，凭证

参考例句：

• Don't give credence to all the gossip you hear.不要相信你听到的闲话。
• Police attach credence to the report of an unnamed bystander.警方认为一位不知姓名的目击者的报告很有用。

425 triumphantly   

ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地

参考例句：

• The lion was roaring triumphantly. 狮子正在发出胜利的吼叫。
• Robert was looking at me triumphantly. 罗伯特正得意扬扬地看着我。

426 breach   

n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破

参考例句：

• We won't have any breach of discipline.我们不允许任何破坏纪律的现象。
• He was sued for breach of contract.他因不履行合同而被起诉。

427 zeal   

n.热心，热情，热忱

参考例句：

• Revolutionary zeal caught them up,and they joined the army.革命热情激励他们，于是他们从军了。
• They worked with great zeal to finish the project.他们热情高涨地工作，以期完成这个项目。

428 zealous   

adj.狂热的，热心的

参考例句：

• She made zealous efforts to clean up the classroom.她非常热心地努力清扫教室。
• She is a zealous supporter of our cause.她是我们事业的热心支持者。

429 vehemently   

adv. 热烈地

参考例句：

• He argued with his wife so vehemently that he talked himself hoarse. 他和妻子争论得很激烈，以致讲话的声音都嘶哑了。
• Both women vehemently deny the charges against them. 两名妇女都激烈地否认了对她们的指控。

430 theatricality   

n.戏剧风格，不自然

参考例句：

• The scene breaks out before you with the theatricality of a curtain lifted from a stage. 景色立即如拉开了舞台的帷幕一般充满了戏剧性地出现在你面前。 来自辞典例句

431 utterly   

adv.完全地，绝对地

参考例句：

• Utterly devoted to the people,he gave his life in saving his patients.他忠于人民，把毕生精力用于挽救患者的生命。
• I was utterly ravished by the way she smiled.她的微笑使我完全陶醉了。

432 primal   

adj.原始的；最重要的

参考例句：

• Jealousy is a primal emotion.嫉妒是最原始的情感。
• Money was a primal necessity to them.对于他们，钱是主要的需要。

433 fungus   

n.真菌，真菌类植物

参考例句：

• Mushrooms are a type of fungus.蘑菇是一种真菌。
• This fungus can just be detected by the unaided eye.这种真菌只用肉眼就能检查出。

434 monstrous   

adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的

参考例句：

• The smoke began to whirl and grew into a monstrous column.浓烟开始盘旋上升，形成了一个巨大的烟柱。
• Your behaviour in class is monstrous!你在课堂上的行为真是丢人！

435 machinery   

n.(总称)机械，机器；机构

参考例句：

• Has the machinery been put up ready for the broadcast?广播器材安装完毕了吗？
• Machinery ought to be well maintained all the time.机器应该随时注意维护。

436 looms   

n.织布机( loom的名词复数 )v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的第三人称单数 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近

参考例句：

• All were busily engaged,men at their ploughs,women at their looms. 大家都很忙，男的耕田，女的织布。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The factory has twenty-five looms. 那家工厂有25台织布机。 来自《简明英汉词典》

437 philosophic   

adj.哲学的，贤明的

参考例句：

• It was a most philosophic and jesuitical motorman.这是个十分善辩且狡猾的司机。
• The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race.爱尔兰人是既重实际又善于思想的民族。

438 unintelligible   

adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的

参考例句：

• If a computer is given unintelligible data, it returns unintelligible results.如果计算机得到的是难以理解的数据，它给出的也将是难以理解的结果。
• The terms were unintelligible to ordinary folk.这些术语一般人是不懂的。

439 incessantly   

ad.不停地

参考例句：

• The machines roar incessantly during the hours of daylight. 机器在白天隆隆地响个不停。
• It rained incessantly for the whole two weeks. 雨不间断地下了整整两个星期。

440 anterior   

adj.较早的；在前的

参考例句：

• We've already finished the work anterior to the schedule.我们已经提前完成了工作。
• The anterior part of a fish contains the head and gills.鱼的前部包括头和鳃。

441 precedents   

引用单元； 范例( precedent的名词复数 )； 先前出现的事例； 前例； 先例

参考例句：

• There is no lack of precedents in this connection. 不乏先例。
• He copied after bad precedents. 他仿效恶例。

442 begotten   

v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 )；产生，引起

参考例句：

• The fact that he had begotten a child made him vain. 想起自己也生过孩子，他得意了。 来自辞典例句
• In due course she bore the son begotten on her by Thyestes. 过了一定的时候，她生下了堤厄斯式斯使她怀上的儿子。 来自辞典例句

443 providence   

n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝

参考例句：

• It is tempting Providence to go in that old boat.乘那艘旧船前往是冒大险。
• To act as you have done is to fly in the face of Providence.照你的所作所为那样去行事，是违背上帝的意志的。

444 complacently   

adv. 满足地, 自满地, 沾沾自喜地

参考例句：

• He complacently lived out his life as a village school teacher. 他满足于一个乡村教师的生活。
• "That was just something for evening wear," returned his wife complacently. “那套衣服是晚装，"他妻子心安理得地说道。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

445 domain   

n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围

参考例句：

• This information should be in the public domain.这一消息应该为公众所知。
• This question comes into the domain of philosophy.这一问题属于哲学范畴。

446 profane   

adj.亵神的，亵渎的；vt.亵渎，玷污

参考例句：

• He doesn't dare to profane the name of God.他不敢亵渎上帝之名。
• His profane language annoyed us.他亵渎的言语激怒了我们。

447 rigidly   

adv.刻板地，僵化地

参考例句：

• Life today is rigidly compartmentalized into work and leisure. 当今的生活被严格划分为工作和休闲两部分。
• The curriculum is rigidly prescribed from an early age. 自儿童时起即已开始有严格的课程设置。

448 cleansing   

n. 净化(垃圾) adj. 清洁用的 动词cleanse的现在分词

参考例句：

• medicated cleansing pads for sensitive skin 敏感皮肤药物清洗棉
• Soap is not the only cleansing agent. 肥皂并不是唯一的清洁剂。

449 scourge   

n.灾难，祸害；v.蹂躏

参考例句：

• Smallpox was once the scourge of the world.天花曾是世界的大患。
• The new boss was the scourge of the inefficient.新老板来了以后，不称职的人就遭殃了。

450 extorting   

v.敲诈( extort的现在分词 )；曲解

参考例句：

• Corrupt government officials were extorting money from him. 腐败的政府官员向他敲诈钱财。 来自辞典例句
• He's been charged with extorting protection money from the shopkeepers. 他被指控对店主敲诈勒索保护费。 来自互联网

451 propitiatory   

adj.劝解的；抚慰的；谋求好感的；哄人息怒的

参考例句：

• She saw the flowers as a propitiatory offering. 在她看来，送花是主动和解的表示。
• He sent her flowers as a propitiatory gesture. 他将花送给她以求好感。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

452 memoirs   

n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数)

参考例句：

• Her memoirs were ghostwritten. 她的回忆录是由别人代写的。
• I watched a trailer for the screenplay of his memoirs. 我看过以他的回忆录改编成电影的预告片。 来自《简明英汉词典》

453 avenger   

n. 复仇者

参考例句：

• "Tom Sawyer, the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main. “我乃西班牙海黑衣侠盗，汤姆 - 索亚。
• Avenger's Shield-0.26 threat per hit (0.008 threat per second) 飞盾-0.26仇恨每击（0.08仇恨每秒）

454 reverenced   

v.尊敬，崇敬( reverence的过去式和过去分词 )；敬礼

参考例句：

• The name of Albert Einstein is still reverenced by the scientists all over the world. 爱因斯坦的名字仍然受到世界各地科学家的崇敬。 来自互联网
• For it is always necessary to be loved, but not always necessary to be reverenced. 一个人总是能得到必要的爱，却不总是能得到必要的尊敬。 来自互联网

455 benign   

adj.善良的，慈祥的；良性的，无危险的

参考例句：

• The benign weather brought North America a bumper crop.温和的气候给北美带来大丰收。
• Martha is a benign old lady.玛莎是个仁慈的老妇人。

456 emblem   

n.象征，标志；徽章

参考例句：

• Her shirt has the company emblem on it.她的衬衫印有公司的标记。
• The eagle was an emblem of strength and courage.鹰是力量和勇气的象征。

457 plentiful   

adj.富裕的，丰富的

参考例句：

• Their family has a plentiful harvest this year.他们家今年又丰收了。
• Rainfall is plentiful in the area.这个地区雨量充足。

458 rend   

vt.把…撕开，割裂；把…揪下来，强行夺取

参考例句：

• Her scrams would rend the heart of any man.她的喊叫声会撕碎任何人的心。
• Will they rend the child from his mother?他们会不会把这个孩子从他的母亲身边夺走呢？

459 fickle   

adj.(爱情或友谊上)易变的，不坚定的

参考例句：

• Fluctuating prices usually base on a fickle public's demand.物价的波动往往是由于群众需求的不稳定而引起的。
• The weather is so fickle in summer.夏日的天气如此多变。

460 philologists   

n.语文学( philology的名词复数 )

参考例句：

461 slab   

n.平板，厚的切片；v.切成厚板，以平板盖上

参考例句：

• This heavy slab of oak now stood between the bomb and Hitler.这时笨重的橡木厚板就横在炸弹和希特勒之间了。
• The monument consists of two vertical pillars supporting a horizontal slab.这座纪念碑由两根垂直的柱体构成，它们共同支撑着一块平板。

462 binding   

有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的

参考例句：

• The contract was not signed and has no binding force. 合同没有签署因而没有约束力。
• Both sides have agreed that the arbitration will be binding. 双方都赞同仲裁具有约束力。

463 patchwork   

n.混杂物；拼缝物

参考例句：

• That proposal is nothing else other than a patchwork.那个建议只是一个大杂烩而已。
• She patched new cloth to the old coat,so It'seemed mere patchwork. 她把新布初到那件旧上衣上，所以那件衣服看上去就象拼凑起来的东西。

464 grafted   

移植( graft的过去式和过去分词 )； 嫁接； 使（思想、制度等）成为（…的一部份）； 植根

参考例句：

• No art can be grafted with success on another art. 没有哪种艺术能成功地嫁接到另一种艺术上。
• Apples are easily grafted. 苹果树很容易嫁接。

465 revival   

n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振

参考例句：

• The period saw a great revival in the wine trade.这一时期葡萄酒业出现了很大的复苏。
• He claimed the housing market was showing signs of a revival.他指出房地产市场正出现复苏的迹象。

466 adoration   

n.爱慕，崇拜

参考例句：

• He gazed at her with pure adoration.他一往情深地注视着她。
• The old lady fell down in adoration before Buddhist images.那老太太在佛像面前顶礼膜拜。

467 aliases   

n.别名，化名( alias的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Can you allow the user to enter aliases for the longer entries? 可以允许用户为过长的文字选择别名吗？ 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
• The criminal has several aliases. 该罪犯有数个化名。 来自辞典例句

468 alias   

n.化名；别名；adv.又名

参考例句：

• His real name was Johnson,but he often went by the alias of Smith.他的真名是约翰逊，但是他常常用化名史密斯。
• You can replace this automatically generated alias with a more meaningful one.可用更有意义的名称替换这一自动生成的别名。

469 datum   

n.资料；数据；已知数

参考例句：

• The author has taught foreigners Chinese manyand gathered rich language and datum.作者长期从事对外汉语教学，积累了丰富的语言资料。
• Every theory,datum,or fact is generated by purpose.任何理论，资料、事实都来自于一定的目的。

470 fathom   

v.领悟，彻底了解

参考例句：

• I really couldn't fathom what he was talking about.我真搞不懂他在说些什么。
• What these people hoped to achieve is hard to fathom.这些人希望实现些什么目标难以揣测。

471 lurch   

n.突然向前或旁边倒；v.蹒跚而行

参考例句：

• It has been suggested that the ground movements were a form of lurch movements.地震的地面运动曾被认为是一种突然倾斜的运动形式。
• He walked with a lurch.他步履蹒跚。

472 premises   

n.建筑物，房屋

参考例句：

• According to the rules,no alcohol can be consumed on the premises.按照规定，场内不准饮酒。
• All repairs are done on the premises and not put out.全部修缮都在家里进行，不用送到外面去做。

473 consonant   

n.辅音；adj.[音]符合的

参考例句：

• The quality of this suit isn't quite consonant with its price.这套衣服的质量和价钱不相称。
• These are common consonant clusters at the beginning of words.这些单词的开头有相同辅音组合。

474 mythological   

adj.神话的

参考例句：

• He is remembered for his historical and mythological works. 他以其带有历史感和神话色彩的作品而著称。
• But even so, the cumulative process had for most Americans a deep, almost mythological significance. 不过即使如此，移民渐增的过程，对于大部分美国人，还是意味深长的，几乎有不可思议的影响。

475 overthrow   

v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆

参考例句：

• After the overthrow of the government,the country was in chaos.政府被推翻后，这个国家处于混乱中。
• The overthrow of his plans left him much discouraged.他的计划的失败使得他很气馁。

476 languished   

长期受苦( languish的过去式和过去分词 )； 受折磨； 变得（越来越）衰弱； 因渴望而变得憔悴或闷闷不乐

参考例句：

• Our project languished during the holidays. 我们的计划在假期间推动得松懈了。
• He languished after his dog died. 他狗死之后，人憔悴了。

477 terminology   

n.术语；专有名词

参考例句：

• He particularly criticized the terminology in the document.他特别批评了文件中使用的术语。
• The article uses rather specialized musical terminology.这篇文章用了相当专业的音乐术语。

478 persuasive   

adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的

参考例句：

• His arguments in favour of a new school are very persuasive.他赞成办一座新学校的理由很有说服力。
• The evidence was not really persuasive enough.证据并不是太有说服力。

479 oratory   

n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞

参考例句：

• I admire the oratory of some politicians.我佩服某些政治家的辩才。
• He dazzled the crowd with his oratory.他的雄辩口才使听众赞叹不已。

480 competence   

n.能力，胜任，称职

参考例句：

• This mess is a poor reflection on his competence.这种混乱情况说明他难当此任。
• These are matters within the competence of the court.这些是法院权限以内的事。

481 egregious   

adj.非常的，过分的

参考例句：

• When it comes to blatant lies,there are none more egregious than budget figures.谈到公众谎言，没有比预算数字更令人震惊的。
• What an egregious example was here!现摆着一个多么触目惊心的例子啊。

482 grovelling   

adj.卑下的，奴颜婢膝的v.卑躬屈节，奴颜婢膝( grovel的现在分词 )；趴

参考例句：

• Can a policeman possibly enjoy grovelling in the dirty side of human behaivour? 一个警察成天和人类行为的丑恶面打交道，能感到津津有味吗？ 来自互联网

483 superstitions   

迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Old superstitions seem incredible to educated people. 旧的迷信对于受过教育的人来说是不可思议的。
• Do away with all fetishes and superstitions. 破除一切盲目崇拜和迷信。

484 superstition   

n.迷信，迷信行为

参考例句：

• It's a common superstition that black cats are unlucky.认为黑猫不吉祥是一种很普遍的迷信。
• Superstition results from ignorance.迷信产生于无知。

485 margin   

n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘

参考例句：

• We allowed a margin of 20 minutes in catching the train.我们有20分钟的余地赶火车。
• The village is situated at the margin of a forest.村子位于森林的边缘。

486 attests   

v.证明( attest的第三人称单数 )；证实；声称…属实；使宣誓

参考例句：

• The child's good health attests his mother's care. 这孩子健康的身体证实他母亲照料周到。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The boy's good health attests to his mother's care. 这个男孩的良好健康就是他母亲细心照顾的明证。 来自辞典例句

487 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

488 grotesquely   

adv. 奇异地,荒诞地

参考例句：

• Her arched eyebrows and grotesquely powdered face were at once seductive and grimly overbearing. 眉棱棱着，在一脸的怪粉上显出妖媚而霸道。 来自汉英文学 - 骆驼祥子
• Two faces grotesquely disfigured in nylon stocking masks looked through the window. 2张戴尼龙长袜面罩的怪脸望着窗外。

489 incompatible   

adj.不相容的，不协调的，不相配的

参考例句：

• His plan is incompatible with my intent.他的计划与我的意图不相符。
• Speed and safety are not necessarily incompatible.速度和安全未必不相容。

490 incompatibility   

n.不兼容

参考例句：

• One cause may be an Rh incompatibility causing kernicterus in the newborn. 一个原因可能是Rh因子不相配引起新生儿的脑核性黄疸。
• Sexual incompatibility is wide-spread in the apple. 性的不亲合性在苹果中很普遍。

491 Buddha   

n.佛；佛像；佛陀

参考例句：

• Several women knelt down before the statue of Buddha and prayed.几个妇女跪在佛像前祈祷。
• He has kept the figure of Buddha for luck.为了图吉利他一直保存着这尊佛像。

492 epithets   

n.（表示性质、特征等的）词语( epithet的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He insulted me, using rude epithets. 他用粗话诅咒我。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He cursed me, using a lot of rude epithets. 他用上许多粗鲁的修饰词来诅咒我。 来自辞典例句

493 atlas   

n.地图册，图表集

参考例句：

• He reached down the atlas from the top shelf.他从书架顶层取下地图集。
• The atlas contains forty maps,including three of Great Britain.这本地图集有40幅地图，其中包括3幅英国地图。

494 mythologically   

神话的； 虚构的

参考例句：

• He is remembered for his historical and mythological works. 他以其带有历史感和神话色彩的作品而著称。
• But even so, the cumulative process had for most Americans a deep, almost mythological significance. 不过即使如此，移民渐增的过程，对于大部分美国人，还是意味深长的，几乎有不可思议的影响。

495 equated   

adj.换算的v.认为某事物（与另一事物）相等或相仿( equate的过去式和过去分词 )；相当于；等于；把（一事物） 和（另一事物）等同看待

参考例句：

• Production costs for the movie equated to around 30% of income. 这部电影的制作成本相当于收益的30%。
• Politics cannot be equated with art. 政治不能同艺术等同起来。

496 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

497 deriving   

v.得到( derive的现在分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取

参考例句：

• I anticipate deriving much instruction from the lecture. 我期望从这演讲中获得很多教益。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He anticipated his deriving much instruction from the lecture. 他期望从这次演讲中得到很多教益。 来自辞典例句

498 mutual   

adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的

参考例句：

• We must pull together for mutual interest.我们必须为相互的利益而通力合作。
• Mutual interests tied us together.相互的利害关系把我们联系在一起。

499 affinity   

n.亲和力，密切关系

参考例句：

• I felt a great affinity with the people of the Highlands.我被苏格兰高地人民深深地吸引。
• It's important that you share an affinity with your husband.和丈夫有共同的爱好是十分重要的。

500 corruption   

n.腐败，堕落，贪污

参考例句：

• The people asked the government to hit out against corruption and theft.人民要求政府严惩贪污盗窃。
• The old man reviled against corruption.那老人痛斥了贪污舞弊。

501 inversely   

adj.相反的

参考例句：

• Pressure varies directly with temperature and inversely with volume. 压力随温度成正比例变化，与容积成反比例变化。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The amount of force needed is inversely proportional to the rigidity of the material. 需要的力度与材料的硬度成反比。 来自《简明英汉词典》

502 perpetuate   

v.使永存，使永记不忘

参考例句：

• This monument was built to perpetuate the memory of the national hero.这个纪念碑建造的意义在于纪念民族英雄永垂不朽。
• We must perpetuate the system.我们必须将此制度永久保持。

503 predecessor   

n.前辈，前任

参考例句：

• It will share the fate of its predecessor.它将遭受与前者同样的命运。
• The new ambassador is more mature than his predecessor.新大使比他的前任更成熟一些。

504 conjures   

用魔术变出( conjure的第三人称单数 )； 祈求，恳求； 变戏法； （变魔术般地） 使…出现

参考例句：

• The word 'birthday' conjures up images of presents and parties. “生日”这个词使人想起礼物和聚会的情景。
• The name Sahara conjures up images of a desert of aridity. "撒哈拉"这个名字使人想起干旱的沙漠情景。

505 Buddhist   

adj./n.佛教的，佛教徒

参考例句：

• The old lady fell down in adoration before Buddhist images.那老太太在佛像面前顶礼膜拜。
• In the eye of the Buddhist,every worldly affair is vain.在佛教徒的眼里，人世上一切事情都是空的。

506 appellations   

n.名称，称号( appellation的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The list of odd appellations goes on, and anything goes-just name it. 像这种奇怪的名字还有许多，但一切还在继续-----学一句流行词，想取就取吧。 来自互联网
• In the present Chinese characters teaching, the radicals' appellations cause much confusion. 目前的识字教学中，部首的名称较混乱。 来自互联网

507 narrated   

v.故事( narrate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Some of the story was narrated in the film. 该电影叙述了这个故事的部分情节。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Defoe skilfully narrated the adventures of Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. 笛福生动地叙述了鲁滨逊·克鲁索在荒岛上的冒险故事。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

508 propounded   

v.提出（问题、计划等）供考虑[讨论]，提议( propound的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• the theory of natural selection, first propounded by Charles Darwin 查尔斯∙达尔文首先提出的物竞天择理论
• Indeed it was first propounded by the ubiquitous Thomas Young. 实际上，它是由尽人皆知的杨氏首先提出来的。 来自辞典例句

509 humility   

n.谦逊，谦恭

参考例句：

• Humility often gains more than pride.谦逊往往比骄傲收益更多。
• His voice was still soft and filled with specious humility.他的声音还是那么温和，甚至有点谦卑。

510 isolated   

adj.与世隔绝的

参考例句：

• His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident. 他的不良行为只是个别事件。
• Patients with the disease should be isolated. 这种病的患者应予以隔离。

511 corporate   

adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的

参考例句：

• This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
• His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。

512 ethnic   

adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的

参考例句：

• This music would sound more ethnic if you played it in steel drums.如果你用钢鼓演奏，这首乐曲将更具民族特色。
• The plan is likely only to aggravate ethnic frictions.这一方案很有可能只会加剧种族冲突。

513 amass   

vt.积累，积聚

参考例句：

• How had he amassed his fortune?他是如何积累财富的呢？
• The capitalists amass great wealth by exploiting workers.资本家剥削工人而积累了巨额财富。

514 nascent   

adj.初生的，发生中的

参考例句：

• That slim book showed the Chinese intelligentsia and the nascent working class.那本小册子讲述了中国的知识界和新兴的工人阶级。
• Despite a nascent democracy movement,there's little traction for direct suffrage.尽管有过一次新生的民主运动，但几乎不会带来直接选举。

515 saturated   

a.饱和的，充满的

参考例句：

• The continuous rain had saturated the soil. 连绵不断的雨把土地淋了个透。
• a saturated solution of sodium chloride 氯化钠饱和溶液

516 second-hand   

adj.用过的，旧的，二手的

参考例句：

• I got this book by chance at a second-hand bookshop.我赶巧在一家旧书店里买到这本书。
• They will put all these second-hand goods up for sale.他们将把这些旧货全部公开出售。

517 imbued   

v.使（某人/某事）充满或激起（感情等）( imbue的过去式和过去分词 )；使充满；灌输；激发（强烈感情或品质等）

参考例句：

• Her voice was imbued with an unusual seriousness. 她的声音里充满着一种不寻常的严肃语气。
• These cultivated individuals have been imbued with a sense of social purpose. 这些有教养的人满怀着社会责任感。 来自《简明英汉词典》

518 antagonistic   

adj.敌对的

参考例句：

• He is always antagonistic towards new ideas.他对新思想总是持反对态度。
• They merely stirred in a nervous and wholly antagonistic way.他们只是神经质地，带着完全敌对情绪地骚动了一下。

519 connoisseurs   

n.鉴赏家，鉴定家，行家( connoisseur的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Let us go, before we offend the connoisseurs. 咱们走吧，免得我们惹恼了收藏家。 来自辞典例句
• The connoisseurs often associate it with a blackcurrant flavor. 葡萄酒鉴赏家们通常会将它跟黑醋栗口味联系起来。 来自互联网

520 hybrid   

n.(动，植）杂种，混合物

参考例句：

• That is a hybrid perpetual rose.那是一株杂交的四季开花的蔷薇。
• The hybrid was tall,handsome,and intelligent.那混血儿高大、英俊、又聪明。

521 warrior   

n.勇士，武士，斗士

参考例句：

• The young man is a bold warrior.这个年轻人是个很英勇的武士。
• A true warrior values glory and honor above life.一个真正的勇士珍视荣誉胜过生命。

522 embodied   

v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含

参考例句：

• a politician who embodied the hopes of black youth 代表黑人青年希望的政治家
• The heroic deeds of him embodied the glorious tradition of the troops. 他的英雄事迹体现了军队的光荣传统。 来自《简明英汉词典》

523 conformity   

n.一致，遵从，顺从

参考例句：

• Was his action in conformity with the law?他的行动是否合法？
• The plan was made in conformity with his views.计划仍按他的意见制定。

524 constrained   

adj.束缚的,节制的

参考例句：

• The evidence was so compelling that he felt constrained to accept it. 证据是那样的令人折服，他觉得不得不接受。
• I feel constrained to write and ask for your forgiveness. 我不得不写信请你原谅。

525 perusing   

v.读（某篇文字）( peruse的现在分词 )；（尤指）细阅；审阅；匆匆读或心不在焉地浏览（某篇文字）

参考例句：

• She found the information while she was perusing a copy of Life magazine. 她在读《生活》杂志的时候看到了这个消息。 来自辞典例句
• Hence people who began by beholding him ended by perusing him. 所以人们从随便看一看他开始的，都要以仔细捉摸他而终结。 来自辞典例句

526 deformation   

n.形状损坏；变形；畸形

参考例句：

• The deformation frequencies are not sufficiently distinctive.其变形频率不是十分明显的。
• The calculated deformation is almost equal to the real situation by measurement.经检测，计算变形量与实际情况基本一致。

527 converge   

vi.会合；聚集，集中；(思想、观点等)趋近

参考例句：

• The results converge towards this truth.其结果趋近于这个真理。
• Parallel lines converge at infinity.平行线永不相交。

528 ethics   

n.伦理学；伦理观，道德标准

参考例句：

• The ethics of his profession don't permit him to do that.他的职业道德不允许他那样做。
• Personal ethics and professional ethics sometimes conflict.个人道德和职业道德有时会相互抵触。

529 inevitable   

adj.不可避免的，必然发生的

参考例句：

• Mary was wearing her inevitable large hat.玛丽戴着她总是戴的那顶大帽子。
• The defeat had inevitable consequences for British policy.战败对英国政策不可避免地产生了影响。

530 savagery   

n.野性

参考例句：

• The police were shocked by the savagery of the attacks.警察对这些惨无人道的袭击感到震惊。
• They threw away their advantage by their savagery to the black population.他们因为野蛮对待黑人居民而丧失了自己的有利地位。

531 stimulus   

n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物

参考例句：

• Regard each failure as a stimulus to further efforts.把每次失利看成对进一步努力的激励。
• Light is a stimulus to growth in plants.光是促进植物生长的一个因素。

532 fable   

n.寓言；童话；神话

参考例句：

• The fable is given on the next page. 这篇寓言登在下一页上。
• He had some motive in telling this fable. 他讲这寓言故事是有用意的。

533 clans   

宗族( clan的名词复数 )； 氏族； 庞大的家族； 宗派

参考例句：

• There are many clans in European countries. 欧洲国家有很多党派。
• The women were the great power among the clans [gentes], as everywhere else. 妇女在克兰〈氏族〉里，乃至一般在任何地方，都有很大的势力。 来自英汉非文学 - 家庭、私有制和国家的起源

534 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

535 expounding   

论述，详细讲解( expound的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Soon Gandhi was expounding the doctrine of ahimsa (nonviolence). 不久甘地就四出阐释非暴力主义思想。
• He was expounding, of course, his philosophy of leadership. 当然，他这是在阐述他的领导哲学。

536 distinctively   

adv.特殊地，区别地

参考例句：

• "Public risks" is a recent term for distinctively high-tech hazards. “公共风险”是个特殊的高技术危害个人的一个最新术语。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• His language was natural, unaffected, distinctively vivid, humorous and strongly charming. 语言既朴实无华，又鲜明生动，幽默而富有艺术魅力。

537 doctrine   

n.教义；主义；学说

参考例句：

• He was impelled to proclaim his doctrine.他不得不宣扬他的教义。
• The council met to consider changes to doctrine.宗教议会开会考虑更改教义。

538 mesmerized   

v.使入迷( mesmerize的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The country girl stood by the road, mesmerized at the speed of cars racing past. 村姑站在路旁被疾驶而过的一辆辆车迷住了。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• My 14-year-old daughter was mesmerized by the movie Titanic. 我14岁的女儿完全被电影《泰坦尼克号》迷住了。 来自互联网

539 presidency   

n.总统(校长，总经理)的职位(任期)

参考例句：

• Roosevelt was elected four times to the presidency of the United States.罗斯福连续当选四届美国总统。
• Two candidates are emerging as contestants for the presidency.两位候选人最终成为总统职位竞争者。

540 patronage   

n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场

参考例句：

• Though it was not yet noon,there was considerable patronage.虽然时间未到中午，店中已有许多顾客惠顾。
• I am sorry to say that my patronage ends with this.很抱歉，我的赞助只能到此为止。

541 infinitely   

adv.无限地，无穷地

参考例句：

• There is an infinitely bright future ahead of us.我们有无限光明的前途。
• The universe is infinitely large.宇宙是无限大的。

542 rebuked   

责难或指责( rebuke的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The company was publicly rebuked for having neglected safety procedures. 公司因忽略了安全规程而受到公开批评。
• The teacher rebuked the boy for throwing paper on the floor. 老师指责这个男孩将纸丢在地板上。

543 spun   

v.纺，杜撰，急转身

参考例句：

• His grandmother spun him a yarn at the fire.他奶奶在火炉边给他讲故事。
• Her skilful fingers spun the wool out to a fine thread.她那灵巧的手指把羊毛纺成了细毛线。

544 effacement   

n.抹消，抹杀

参考例句：

• Self-effacement did not lead to timidity. 谦逊并不会导致胆怯。 来自互联网

545 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

546 prone   

adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的

参考例句：

• Some people are prone to jump to hasty conclusions.有些人往往作出轻率的结论。
• He is prone to lose his temper when people disagree with him.人家一不同意他的意见,他就发脾气。

547 contemplated   

adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式

参考例句：

• The doctor contemplated the difficult operation he had to perform. 医生仔细地考虑他所要做的棘手的手术。
• The government has contemplated reforming the entire tax system. 政府打算改革整个税收体制。

548 defiance   

n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗

参考例句：

• He climbed the ladder in defiance of the warning.他无视警告爬上了那架梯子。
• He slammed the door in a spirit of defiance.他以挑衅性的态度把门砰地一下关上。

549 tautology   

n.无谓的重复；恒真命题

参考例句：

• Modern logicians regard it as little more than tautology.现代的逻辑学家仅仅把它看作同义反复。
• What's the first excellence in a lawyer? Tautology. What the second? Tautology.律师最擅长的是什么？是同义反复。其次呢？同义反复。再其次呢？同义反复。

550 teems   

v.充满( teem的第三人称单数 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注

参考例句：

• The swamp teems with mosquitoes. 这片沼泽地蚊子多极了。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• That book teems with blunders. 那本书错误不少。 来自辞典例句

551 fluctuation   

n.(物价的)波动，涨落；周期性变动；脉动

参考例句：

• The erratic fluctuation of market prices are in consequence of unstable economy.经济波动致使市场物价忽起忽落。
• Early and adequate drainage is essential if fluctuation occurs.有波动感时，应及早地充分引流。

552 imputes   

v.把（错误等）归咎于( impute的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• This imputes a critically important role for marketing. 这为市场营销赋予了一个极其重要的角色。 来自互联网

553 rejection   

n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃

参考例句：

• He decided not to approach her for fear of rejection.他因怕遭拒绝决定不再去找她。
• The rejection plunged her into the dark depths of despair.遭到拒绝使她陷入了绝望的深渊。

554 curry   

n.咖哩粉，咖哩饭菜；v.用咖哩粉调味，用马栉梳，制革

参考例句：

• Rice makes an excellent complement to a curry dish.有咖喱的菜配米饭最棒。
• Add a teaspoonful of curry powder.加一茶匙咖喱粉。

555 glossary   

n.注释词表；术语汇编

参考例句：

• The text is supplemented by an adequate glossary.正文附有一个详细的词汇表。
• For convenience,we have also provided a glossary in an appendix.为了方便，我们在附录中也提供了术语表。

556 whit   

n.一点，丝毫

参考例句：

• There's not a whit of truth in the statement.这声明里没有丝毫的真实性。
• He did not seem a whit concerned.他看来毫不在乎。

557 contention   

n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张

参考例句：

• The pay increase is the key point of contention. 加薪是争论的焦点。
• The real bone of contention,as you know,is money.你知道，争论的真正焦点是钱的问题。

558 scents   

n.香水( scent的名词复数 )；气味；（动物的）臭迹；（尤指狗的）嗅觉

参考例句：

• The air was fragrant with scents from the sea and the hills. 空气中荡漾着山和海的芬芳气息。
• The winds came down with scents of the grass and wild flowers. 微风送来阵阵青草和野花的香气。 来自《简明英汉词典》

559 enigmas   

n.难于理解的问题、人、物、情况等，奥秘( enigma的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The last words of Night Haunter stand as one of the great enigmas of Imperial history. 暗夜幽魂最后的临死前的话成为了帝国历史上的最大谜团之一。 来自互联网
• Heraclitus saith well in one of his enigmas, Dry light is ever the best. 赫拉克里塔斯在他的隐语之一中说得很好，“干光永远最佳”。 来自互联网

560 treacherous   

adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的

参考例句：

• The surface water made the road treacherous for drivers.路面的积水对驾车者构成危险。
• The frozen snow was treacherous to walk on.在冻雪上行走有潜在危险。

561 pry   

vi.窥(刺)探，打听；vt.撬动(开，起)

参考例句：

• He's always ready to pry into other people's business.他总爱探听别人的事。
• We use an iron bar to pry open the box.我们用铁棍撬开箱子。

562 derives   

v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取

参考例句：

• English derives in the main from the common Germanic stock. 英语主要源于日耳曼语系。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He derives his income from freelance work. 他以自由职业获取收入。 来自《简明英汉词典》