Firstly, they are all agreed that the method they would apply to all other figures in ancient history—for example, to Apollonius—shall not be used in connection with Jesus. They carelessly deride3 “the attempt of historical theologians to reach the historical nucleus4 of the Gospels by purely5 philological6 means” (The Witnesses, p. 129). “The process,” writes Mr. Robertson, “of testing the Synoptic Gospels down to an apparent nucleus of primitive9 narrative10” … “this new position is one of retreat, and is not permanently11 tenable” (Christianity and Mythology13, p. 284).
If this be so, we had better abolish our chairs of history at the universities, and give up teaching it in the schools; for, in the absence of the camera and gramophone, this method is the only one we can use. When a Mommsen sets Polybius’s, Livy’s, and Plutarch’s lives of Hannibal side by side and “tests them down to an apparent nucleus of primitive narrative,” does Mr. Robertson take him as a text for a disquisition on “the psychological Resistance to Evidence”? If not, why does he forbid us to take the score or so of independent memories and records of the career of Jesus which we have in ancient literature [168]between the years A.D. 50 and 120, and to try to sift14 them down? Why, without any evidence, should we rush to the conclusion that the figure on whom they jointly15 converge16 was a Sun-god, solar myth, or vegetation sprite?
New Testament17 literature taken en bloc18 Secondly19, we may note how this disinclination to sift sources and test documents prompts them to take en bloc sources and documents which arose separately and in succession. Yet it is not simple laziness which dictates20 to them this short and easy method of dealing21 with ancient documents. Rather they have inherited it from the old-fashioned orthodox teachers of a hundred years ago, who, convinced of the verbal inspiration of the Bible, forbade us to estimate one passage as evidence more highly than another. All the verses of the Bible were on a level, as also all the incidents, and to argue that one event might have happened, but not another, was rank blasphemy22. All were equally certain, for inspiration is not given by measure. Their mantle23 has fallen on Mr. Robertson and his friends. All or none is their method; but, whereas all was equally certain, now all is equally myth. “A document,” says (p. 159) the excellent work by MM. Langlois and Seignobos which I cited above,
(still more a literary work) is not all of a piece; it is composed of a great number of independent statements, any one of which may be intentionally25 or unintentionally false, while the others are bona fide and accurate?…. It is not, therefore, enough to examine a document as a whole; each of the statements in it must be examined separately; criticism is impossible without analysis.
We have beautiful examples of such mixed criticism and analysis in the commentaries on the Synoptics of [169]Wellhausen and Loisy, both of them Freethinkers in the best sense of the word.
Incapacity of this school to understand evolution of Christian12 ideas, I have given several minor26 examples of the obstinacy27 with which the three writers I am criticizing shut their eyes to the gradual evolution of Christian ideas; they exhibit the same perversity28 in respect of the great development of Christological thought already traceable in the New Testament.
Paul conceived of Jesus as a Jewish teacher elevated through his death and resurrection to the position of Messiah and Son of God. On earth he is still a merely human being, born naturally, and subject to the law—a weak man of flesh. Raised from the dead by the energy of the Spirit, he becomes future judge of mankind, and his gospel transcends30 all distinctions of Jew and Gentile, bondsman or free. In Mark he is still merely human; he is the son of Joseph and Mary, born and bred like their other sons and daughters. As a man he comes to John the Baptist, like others, to confess and repent31 of his sins, and wash them away in Jordan’s holy stream. Not till then does the descent of the Spirit on him, as he goes up from the Jordan, confer a Messiahship on him, which his followers33 only recognize later on. Astounding35 miracles and prodigies36, however, are already credited to him in this our earliest Gospel. In the non-Marcan document, or Q, so far as we can reconstruct it, he has become Messiah through baptism (supposing this section to have belonged to Q, and not to some other document used by Luke and Matthew); but few or no miracles1 are as yet credited [170]to him, and the document contained little except his teaching. His death has none of the importance assigned to it by Paul, and is not mentioned; his resurrection does not seem to have been heard of by the author of this document. In Matthew and Luke the figure before us is much the same as in Mark; but human traits, such as his mother’s distrust of his mission, are effaced38. We hear no more of his inability to heal those who did not believe in him, and we get in their early chapters hints of his miraculous39 birth. In John there is, indeed, no hint of such birth; but, on the other hand, the entire Gospel is here rewritten to suit a new conception of him as the divine, eternal Logos. Demonology tales are ruled out. His r?le as a Jewish Messiah, faithful to the law, has finally retired40 into the background, together with that tense expectation of the end of the world, of the final judgment41 and installation in Palestine of a renovated42 kingdom of David, which inspires the teaching and parables44 of the Synoptic Gospels, just as it inspired Philo, and the Apocalypse of the Fourth Esdras and other contemporary Jewish apocrypha45.
especially in connection with the legend of Virgin47 Birth, Now, in Mr. W. B. Smith’s works this development of doctrine48 about Jesus, this succession of phases, is not only reversed, but, with singular perversity, turned upside down. Similarly, Mr. Robertson and Dr. Drews, in order to secure a favourable49 reception for their hypothesis that Jesus was a Sun-god, insist in the teeth of the evidence that the belief in the Virgin Birth was part and parcel of the earliest tradition. As a matter [171]of fact, it was comparatively late, as the heortology or history of the feasts of the Church shows. Of specially46 Christian feasts, the first was the Sunday, which commemorated50 every week the Resurrection, and the hope of the Parousia, or Second Coming. The next was the Epiphany, on January 6, commemorative of the baptism when the Holy Spirit descended51 on Jesus and conferred Messiahship.
This feast we cannot trace before the year 125 or 150, and then only among Basilidians; among Catholics hardly before 300. Just as the story of the Virgin Birth was the latest addition to evangelical tradition, so it was the latest of the dominical feasts; and not till 354 did it obtain separate recognition in Rome on December 25. Of the feast of the Annunciation and of the other feasts of the Virgin we first hear in the sixth and succeeding centuries. From this outline we can realize at how late a period the legend of the Virgin Birth influenced the mind of the Church at large; yet Mr. Robertson, to smooth the way for his “mythic” theory, pretends that it was the earliest of all Christian beliefs, and without a tittle of evidence invents a pre-Christian Saviour52-Sun-god Joshua, born of a virgin, Miriam. The whole monstrous53 conception is a preposterous54 coinage of his brain, a figment unknown to anyone before himself and bristling55 with impossibilities. Witness the following passage (p. 284 of Christianity and Mythology), containing nearly as many baseless fancies as it contains words:—
The one tenable historic hypothesis left to us at this stage is that of a preliminary Jesus “B.C.,” a vague cult56-founder57 such as the Jesus ben Pandira of the Talmud, put to death for (perhaps anti-Judaic) teachings now lost; round whose movement there [172]might have gradually clustered the survivals of an ancient solar or other worship of a Babe Joshua son of Miriam.
Such is the gist58 of the speculations59 of Messrs. Drews and Robertson, as far removed from truth and reality as the Athanasian Creed60 and from sane61 criticism as the truculent62 buffooneries of the Futurists from genuine art.
We have more than once criticized this tendency of Mr. Robertson to insist on the primitiveness63 of the Virgin Birth legend. He urges it throughout his volume, although here and there he seems to see the truth, as, e.g., on p. 189, where he remarks that “only the late Third Gospel tells the story” of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem to be taxed, and “that the narrative in Matthew” was “added late to the original composition, which obviously began at what is now the third chapter.” If the legend was part of the earliest tradition, why does it figure for the first time in the late Third Gospel and in a late addition to the first? In another passage he assures us that chapters i and ii of Luke are “a late fabulous64 introduction.” Clearly, his view is that, just in proportion as any part of the Gospels is late, the tradition it contains must be early; and he it is who talks about “the methodless subjectivism” of Dr. Pfleiderer, who, he says, “like Matthew Arnold, accepts what he likes” (p. 450).
and in connection with Schmiedel’s “Pillars” The same inability to distinguish what is early from what is late is shown by Mr. Robertson in his criticism of Dr. Schmiedel’s “pillars”—i.e., the nine Gospel texts (seven of them in Mark)—“which cannot have been invented by believers in the godhood of Jesus, since they implicitly65 negate66 that godhood.” Of these, one is Mark x, 17 ff., where Jesus uses—to one who [173]had thrown himself at his feet with the words: “Good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (i.e., life in the kingdom to come)—the answer: “Why callest thou me good? No one is good, save one—to wit, God.” Here many ancient sources intensify67 Jesus’s refusal of a predicate which is God’s alone; for they run: “Call thou me not good.” This apart, the Second and Third Gospels may be said to agree in reading, “Good master,” and, “Why callest thou me good?”
In Matthew, however (xix, 16), we read as follows: “Behold68, one came to him and said: Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him, Why askest thou me concerning that which is good? One there is who is good,” etc.
Now, it is a result of criticism universally accepted to-day that Matthew and Luke compiled their Gospels with Mark before them, and that any reading in which either of them agrees with Mark must be more original than the discrepant69 reading of a third. Here Matthew is the discrepant witness, and he has remodelled70 the text of Mark to suit the teaching which had established itself in the Church about A.D. 100 that Jesus was without sin. He accordingly makes Jesus reply as a Greek sophist might reply, and not as a Jewish rabbi; and, by omitting the predicate “good” before teacher, he turns the words, “One there is who is good,” into nonsense. By adding it before “thing” he creates additional nonsense; for how could any but a good action merit eternal life? The epithet71 is here superfluous72. Even then, if we were not sure on other grounds that the Marcan story is the only source of the Matth?an deformed73 text, we could be sure that it [174]was, because in Mark we have simplicity74 and good sense, whereas in Matthew we have neither. Mr. Robertson, on an earlier page, has, indeed, done lip-service to the truth that Mark presents us with the earliest form of evangelical tradition; but here he betrays the fact that he has not really understood the position, nor grasped the grounds (set forth76 by me in Myth, Magic, and Morals) on which it rests. For he is ready to sacrifice it the moment it makes havoc77 of his “mythological78” argument, and writes (p. 443): “On the score of simple likelihood, which has the stronger claim? Surely the original text in Matthew.”
Even if Matthew, Mark, and Luke were rival and independent texts, instead of the first and third being, as they demonstrably are, copies and paraphrases80 of Mark, the best—if not the only—criterion of originality81 would be such an agreement of two of them as Mark and Luke here present against Matthew. Mr. Robertson, with entire ignoratio elenchi, urges in favour of the originality of Matthew’s variant82 the circumstance that the oldest MS. sources of that Gospel reproduce it. How could they fail to do so, supposing it to be due to the redactor or editor of Mark, who was traditionally, but falsely, identified with the apostle Matthew? If the reading of Mark be not original, how came Luke to copy it from him? The most obvious critical considerations are wasted on Mr. Robertson and his friends.
Schmiedel on the disbelief of Mary in her son Dr. Schmiedel again draws attention to the narrative of how Jesus, at the beginning of his ministry83, was declared by his own household to be out of his senses, and of how, in consequence, his mother and brethren followed him in order to put him under restraint. The story offended the first and third [175]evangelists, and they partly omit it, partly obscure its drift. The fourth evangelist limits the disbelief to the brethren of Jesus. The whole narrative is in flagrant antagonism84 to the Birth stories in the early chapters of Matthew and Luke, and to the whole subsequent drift of Church tradition. Being gifted with common sense, Schmiedel argues that it must be true, because it could never have been invented. It, anyhow, makes for the historicity of Jesus. What has Mr. Robertson to say about it? He writes (p. 443): “Why should such a conception be more alien to Christian consciousness than, say, the story of the trial, scourging85, and crucifixion?” Here he ignores the point at issue. In Christian tradition, whether early or late, it was not the mother and brethren of Jesus who tried and scourged86 and crucified him, but inimical Jews and pagans. The latter are at no time related to have received an announcement of his birth from an angel, as his mother was presently believed to have done. We have, therefore, every reason for averring87 that the conception or idea of his being flouted88 by his own mother and brethren was a thousand times more alien to Christian consciousness—at least, any time after A.D. 100—than that of his being flouted by a Sadducean priesthood and by Roman governors. Once the legend of the Virgin Birth had grown up, such a story could not have been either thought of or committed to writing in a Gospel. It is read in Mark, and must be what we call a bed-rock tradition. If Mr. Robertson cannot see that, he is hopeless. Did he not admit (p. 443) that it is “certainly an odd text,” so revealing his inmost misgivings89 about it, we should think him so. [176]
Jesus is not deified in the earliest documents, nor do they reveal a “cult” of him The same vice75 of mixing up different phases of the Christian religion shows itself in the insistence90 of this school of critic that it was from the first a cult of a deified Jesus. Thus Mr. Smith writes (Ecce Deus) as follows (p. 6):—
We affirm that the worship of the one God under the name, aspect, or person of the Jesus, the Saviour, was the primitive and indefectible essence of the primitive teaching and propaganda.
On the contrary, in the two basal documents, Mark and Q, no such worship is discernible. Jesus first comes on the scene as the humble91 son of Joseph and Mary to repent of his sins and purge92 them away in Baptism; he next takes up the preaching of the imprisoned93 John, which was merely that Jews should repent of their sins because the kingdom of God, involving a dissolution of the existing social and political order, was at hand. This was no divine r?le, and he is represented not as God, but only as the servant of God; for such in the Aramaic dialect of that age was the connotation of the title “Son of God.” In Mark there is no sign of his deification, not even in the transfiguration scene; for in that he is merely the human Messiah attended by Elias and Moses. From a hundred early indicia we know that in the Semitic-speaking churches of the East he remained a human figure for centuries; and the Syrian Father Aphraat, as late as 336 in Persia, is careful to explain in his homilies that Jesus was only divine as Moses was, or as human kings are. It was not till the religion was diffused94 in a pagan medium in which gods had children by mortal women that the gross deification of Jesus emerged. The purport96 of these basal documents, moreover, is not to deify [177]Jesus, but to establish as against the Jews that he was their promised Messiah and the central figure of the Messianic kingdom he preached. That figure, however, was never identified with Jehovah, but was only Jehovah’s servant, anointed king and judge of Israel, restorer of Israel’s damaged fortunes, fulfiller of her political ideals and hopes. Mr. Smith argues that Jesus was deified from the first because his name was so often invoked97 in exorcisms. He even makes the suggestion (p. 17) that the initial letter J of Jesus “must have powerfully suggested Jehovah to the Jewish consciousness.” There is no evidence, and less likelihood, of any such thing. The name of Jesus was during his lifetime invoked against demons79 by exorcists who rejected his message; just as they used the names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so they were ready to exploit his powerful name; but neither Jews nor Christians98 ever confounded with Jehovah the names or personalities99 they thus invoked; any Jew in virtue100 of his birth and breeding would have regarded such a confusion of a man with his God as flat blasphemy.
Worship of a slain101 God no part of the earliest Christianity Messrs. Robertson and Drews similarly insist that Jesus was from the first worshipped as a slain God. In the Gospel documents there is no sign of anything of the sort. It was Paul who first diffused the idea that the crucified Jesus was a victim slain for the redemption of human sins. We already have Philo proclaiming that the just man is the ransom102 of the many, so that there is no need to go to pagan circles, no need to go outside the pale of Greek Jews, of whom Paul was one, for the origin of the idea. He probably found it even in the teaching of Gamaliel, in which he was brought up. Mark asks no more of [178]his readers than to attribute the Messiahship—a thoroughly103 human r?le—to his hero, Jesus of Nazareth. Nor does Matthew, who seeks at every turn to prove that the actions of Jesus reported by Mark were those which, according to the old prophets, a Messiah might be expected to perform. How can writers who end their record of Jesus by telling us how in the moment of death he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken104 me?” realizing no doubt that all his expectations of the advent105 of God’s kingdom were frustrated106 and set at naught107; how, I say, can such writers have believed that Jesus was Jehovah? The idea is monstrous. The truth is these writers transport back into the first age of Christianity the ideas and beliefs of developed Catholicism, and are resolved that the first shall be last and the last first. They have no perspective, and no capacity for understanding the successive phases through which a primitive Messianism, at first thoroughly monotheistic and exclusively Jewish in outlook and ideals, gradually evolved itself, with the help of the Logos teaching, into the Athanasian cult of an eternal and consubstantial Son of God.
Abuse of the comparative method by this school of writers Thirdly, these writers abuse the comparative method. Applied108 discreetly109 and rationally, this method helps us to trace myths and beliefs back to their homes and earlier forms. Thus M. Emmanuel Cosquin (in Romania; Paris, 1912) takes the story of the cat and the candle, and traces out its ramifications110 in the medi?val literature and modern folklore111 of Europe, and outside Europe, in the legends of the Pendjab, of Cashmir, Bengal, Ceylon, Tibet, Tunisia, Annam, and elsewhere. But the theme is always sufficiently113 like itself to be really recognizable in the [179]various folklore frames in which it is found encased. The old philologists114 saw in the most superficial resemblance of sound a reason for connecting words in different languages. They never asked themselves how a word got out of Hebrew, say, into Greek, or out of Greek into Mexican. Volumes were filled with these haphazard116 etymologies117, and the idea of the classification of languages into great connected families only slowly made its way among us in the last century. I have pointed118 out that in regard to names Messrs. Drews and Robertson are still in this prephilological stage of inquiry119; as regards myths or stories of incident, they are wholly immersed in it. They fit anything on to anything no matter how ineptly,They never trouble themselves to make sure that the stories they connect bear any real resemblance to one another. For example, what have the Zodiacal signs and the Apostles of Jesus in common except the number twelve? As if number was not the most superficial of attributes, the least characteristic and essential. The scene of the Gospel is laid in Jud?a, where from remote antiquity120 the Jews had classed themselves in twelve tribes. Is it not more likely that this suggested the twelve missionaries121 sent out by Jesus to announce the coming kingdom than the twelve signs of the Zodiac? Even if the story of the Twelve be legendary122, need we go outside Judaism for our explanation of its origin?
What, again, have the three Maries in common with the Greek Moirai except the number three and a delusive123 community of sound? Yet Mr. Robertson insists that the three Maries at the tomb of Jesus were suggested by the Moirai, because these, “as goddesses of birth and death, naturally figured in many artistic124 presentations of religious death scenes.” As a matter [180]of fact, the representation of the Parcae or Fates in connection with death is rare except on Roman sarcophagi, mostly of later date than the Gospel story. And when they are so found, they represent, not women bringing spices for the corpse125 or mourning for the dead, but the forces, often thought of as blind and therefore represented as veiled, which govern the events of the world, including birth, life and death. and forget the innate126 hostility127 of Jews to PaganismThere was, therefore, nothing in the Moirai to suggest the three Maries at the tomb; nor is it credible128 that the Hebrew Christists, given as they must have been to monotheism and detesting129 all statuary, pagan or other, would have chosen their literary motives130 from such a source. Where could they see such statuary in or about Jerusalem? It is notorious that the very presence of a symbolic132 eagle used as a military standard was enough to create an émeute in Jerusalem. The scheme of the emperor Caligula or Caius to set up his statue in Jerusalem in 39–40 A.D. provoked a movement of revolt throughout Palestine, with which the Jews of Egypt and elsewhere were in full sympathy. A deputation headed by Philo of Alexandria went to Rome to supplicate133 the emperor not to goad134 the entire race to frenzy135. In the magnificent statues which surrounded him on the Parthenon hill, Paul could see nothing but idols136, monuments of an age of superstition137 and ignorance which God had mercifully overlooked.2 The hostility of the Jews to all pagan art [181]and sculpture was as great as that of Mohammedans to-day. Yet Mr. Robertson asks us to believe (p. 327) that the Gospel myths, as he assumes them to be, are “evolved from scenes in pagan art.” On the top of that we afterwards learn from him that it was the Jewish high priest with legalistic leanings that presided over the Christists or Jesuists. Imagine such a high priest’s feelings when he beheld138 his “secret society” evolving their system under such an inspiration as Mr. Robertson outlines in the following canons of criticism:—
As we have seen and shall see throughout this investigation139, the Christian system is a patchwork140 of a hundred suggestions drawn141 from pagan art and ritual usage (p. 305).
Christism borrowed myths of all kinds from paganism (p. xii).
… the whole Christian legend, in its present terminology142, is demonstrably an adaptation of a mass of pre-Christian myths (p. 136).
What a budget of mutually destructive paradoxes143; and to crown them all Mr. Robertson claims in his introduction (p. xxii) that the method of his treatise144 is
in general more “positive,” less a priori, more obedient to scientific canons than that of the previous critics … who have reached similar anti-traditionalist results. It substitutes an anthropological145 basis, in terms of the concrete phenomena146 of mythology, for a pseudo-philosophical presupposition.
[182]
Credulity attends hypercriticism Fourthly, it is essential to note the childish, all-embracing, and overwhelming credulity of these writers. To them applies in its full force the paragraph in which MM. Langlois and Seignobos describe the perils147 which beset148 hypercriticism (p. 131, op. cit.):—
The excess of criticism, just as much as the crudest ignorance, leads to error. It consists in the application of critical canons to cases outside their jurisdiction149. It is related to criticism as logic7-chopping is to logic. There are persons who scent32 enigmas150 everywhere, even where there are none. They take perfectly151 clear texts and subtilize on them till they make them doubtful, under the pretext152 of freeing them from imaginary corruptions153. They discover traces of forgery154 in authentic155 documents. A strange state of mind! By constantly guarding against the instinct of credulity they come to suspect everything.
For these writers, in their anxiety to be original and new, see fit to discard every position that earlier historians, like Mommsen, Gibbon, Bury, Montefiore—not to mention Christian scholars—have accepted as beyond doubt. Their temper is that of the Bacon-Shakesperians; and the plainest, simplest, most straightforward156 texts figure in their imaginations as a laborious157 series of charades159, rebuses160, and cryptograms. That Jesus never existed is not really the final conclusion of their researches, but an initial unproved assumption. In order to get rid of him, they feign162, without any evidence of it, a Jewish secret society under the patronage163 of the Jewish High Priest, that existed in Jerusalem well down into the Christian era. This society kept up the worship of an old Palestinian and Ephraimitic Sun-god and Saviour, named Joshua, son of a virgin, Miriam. Where is the proof that such a god was ever heard of [183]in ancient Palestine, either early or late, or that such a cult ever existed? There is none. It is the emptiest and wildest of hypotheses; yet we are asked to accept it in place of the historicity of Jesus. What, again, do we know of secret societies in Jerusalem? Josephus and Philo knew of none. For the Therapeut?, far from affecting secrecy164, were anxious to diffuse95 their discipline and lore112 even among the Hellenes, while the Essenes had nothing secret save the names of the angels they invoked in spells. They were a well-known sect37, and so numerous that a gate of Jerusalem was called the Essene Gate, because they so often came in and went forth by it. Were the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Scribes, or the Sicarii or zealots, secret sects165? We know they were not. But is it likely that a sect composed in the main of Jews, and patronized, as Mr. Robertson argues, by the High Priest, would have kept up in the very heart of monotheistic Judaism a cult of Sun-gods and Vegetation-spirits? Could they there have given themselves up to the study of pagan statuary, art, and ritual dramas? What possible connection is there between the na?ve picture of Hebrew Messianism we have in the Synoptic Gospels and the hurly-burly, the tagrag and bobtail of pagan mythologies166 which Mr. Robertson and his henchman Drews rake together pell-mell in their pretentious167 volumes? How did all this paganism abut168 in a Messianic society which reverenced169 the Old Testament for its sacred scriptures170, which for long frequented the Jewish Temple, took over the feasts and fasts of Judaism, modelled its prayers on those of the Synagogue, cherished in its eastern branches the practice of circumcision?
Mr. Robertson accepts the historicity of Jesus after allAfter hundreds of pages devoted171 to the task of [184]evaporating Jesus into a Solar or Vegetation-god, and all the personages we meet in the Gospels into zodiacal signs or pagan demigods, Mr. Robertson, as we have noticed above, finds himself, after all, confronted with the same personages in Paul’s Epistles. There they are too real even for Mr. Robertson to dissipate them into cloud-forms, and too numerous to be cut out wholesale172. He feels that, if all Paul’s allusions174 to the crucified Jesus are to be got rid of as interpolations, then no Pauline Epistles will remain. He cuts out, indeed, all he can, but there is a residuum of reality. To identify Paul’s Jesus with the Jesus of the Gospels is too humdrum175 and obvious a course for him. So common-sense and commonplace a scheme does not suit his subtle intelligence; moreover, such an identification would upset the hundreds of pages in which he has proved that Jesus of Nazareth and all his accessories are literary symbols employed by the Jewish “Jesuists” to disguise their pagan art and myths. Accordingly, he asks us to believe that Paul’s Jesus is a certain Jesus Ben Pandira, stoned to death a hundred years earlier. This Jesus is a vague figure fished up out of the Talmud; but, on examination, we found Mr. Robertson’s choice of him as an alias176 for Paul’s Jesus to be most unfortunate, for competent Talmudic scholars are agreed that Jesus Ben Pandira in the Talmud was no other than Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospels. Jesus most unkindly insists on being in at his own death,3 in spite of all Mr. Robertson can say or do; and his house of cards is crowned with the discovery that the apostles whom Paul knew—not [185]being identical with the signs of the Zodiac, like those of the Gospels—were no other than the twelve apostles of the Jewish High Priest, and that they were the authors of the lately-discovered “Teaching of the Apostles.” He is very contemptuous for other early Christian books which affect apostolic authorship in their titles, but falls a ready victim to the relatively177 late and anonymous178 editor of this “teaching,” who to give it vogue179 entitled it “The Teaching of the Lord by the Twelve Apostles to the Gentiles.” “The Jesuist sect,” he writes (p. 345), “founded on it (the Didaché) the Christian myth of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus.” Everywhere else in his books he has argued that the “myth” in question was founded on the signs of the Zodiac. Why give up at the eleventh hour the astral explanation for an utterly180 different one? I may add that in the body of the Didaché the Twelve are nowhere alluded181 to; that it must be a much later document than the Gospels and Paulines, since it quotes them in scores of passages; and that the interpolation of the title, with a reference to the Twelve Apostles, was a literary trick scarcely older than the fourth century, long before which age the Pauline account of the resurrection was cited by a score of Christian writers. Lastly, we are fain to inquire of Mr. Robertson with whom he identifies “the Lord” of the above title—with the Jewish High Priest, or with Jesus Ben Pandira, or with the Sun-God-Saviour Joshua.
Theory of interpolations I have given many examples of the tendency of all these authors to condemn182 as an interpolation any text which contradicts their hypotheses. There is only one error worse than that of treating seriously documents which are no documents at all. It is that of [186]the man who cannot recognize documents when he has got them. It is well, of course, to weigh sources, and the critical investigation of authorship lies at the basis of all true history. But, as the authors above cited justly remark (p. 99):—
We must not abuse it. The extreme of distrust in these matters is almost as mischievous183 as the extreme of credulity. Père Hardouin, who attributed the works of Virgil and Horace to medieval monks184, was every whit185 as ridiculous as the victim of Vrain-Lucas. It is an abuse of the methods of this species of criticism to apply them, as has been done, indiscriminately, for the mere29 pleasure of it. The bunglers who have used this species of criticism to brand as spurious perfectly genuine documents, such as the writings of Hroswitha, the Ligurinus, and the bull unam sanctam, or to establish imaginary filiations between certain annals, on the strength of superficial indications, would have discredited186 criticism before now, if that had been possible.
It is unhappily easier to discredit187 criticism in the realm of ecclesiastical than of secular188 history; and this school of writers are doing their best to harm the cause of true Rationalism. They only afford amusement to the obscurantists of orthodoxy, and render doubly difficult the task of those who seek to win people over to a common-sense and historical envisagement, unencumbered by tradition and superstition, of the problems of early Christianity.
Professor Smith’s monotheistic cult Lastly, it is a fact deserving of notice that the genesis of Christianity as these authors present it is much more mysterious and obscure than before. Their explanation needs explaining. What, we must ask, was the motive131 and end in view of the adherents189 of the pre-Christian Jesus or Joshua in writing the Gospels and bringing down their God to earth, so humanizing in a story their divine myth? Let Professor [187]W. B. Smith speak: “What was the essence, the central idea and active principle, of the cult itself?” Here he means the cult of the pre-Christian Christ that invented the Gospels and diffused them on the market place. “To this latter,” he continues, “we answer directly and immediately: It was a Protest against idolatry; it was a Crusade for monotheism.”
And yet he cannot adduce a single text from the Gospels—not even from the Fourth—which betrays on the part of Jesus, their central figure, any such crusading spirit. Jesus everywhere assumes his hearers to be monotheists like himself—he speaks as a Jew to Jews—and perpetually reminds them of their Father in heaven. Thus Matt. vi, 8: “Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of”; Matt. v, 48: “Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
The monotheism of those who stood around the teacher is ever taken for granted by the evangelists, and in all the precepts191 of Jesus not one can be adduced that is aimed at the sins of polytheism and idolatry. His message lies in a far different region. It is the immediate190 advent of the Messianic kingdom, and the need of repentance192 ere it come. Only when Paul undertakes to bear this message to pagans outside the pale of Judaism do we get teaching directed against idolatry; and in his Epistles such precepts have a second place, the first being reserved to the preaching of the coming kingdom and of the redemption of the world by the merits of the crucified and risen Messiah, the man Jesus. Most of Paul’s letters read as if those for whom he wrote them were already proselytes familiar with the Jewish scriptures. [188]
His great Oriental cryptogram161 Such is Mr. Smith’s fundamental assumption, and it is baseless. On it he bases his next great hypothesis of “the primitive secrecy of the Jesus cult,” which “was maintained in some measure for many years—for generations even” (p. 45). “Why,” he asks, “was this Jesus cult originally secret, and expressed in such guarded parabolic terms as made it unintelligible193 to the multitude?” The reason lay in the fact that “it was exactly to save the pagan multitude from idolatry that Jesus came into the world” (p. 38).
Here the phrase “Jesus came into the world,” like all else he did or suffered, is, of course, to be understood in a Pickwickian sense, for he never came into the world at all. The Gospels are not only a romance concocted194 by “such students of religion as the first Christians were” (p. 65), and inspired by their study of Plato,4 and of the best elements in ancient mythology; they are a romance throughout—an allegory of a secret pre-Christian Nazarene society and of its secret cult (p. 34). Of this society, he tells us, we know nothing; esoterism and cult secrecy were its chief interests; the “silence of the Christians about it was intentional24,”5 and, except for the special revelation vouchsafed195 the other day to Professor W. B. [189]Smith, it would have remained for ever unknown, and Christianity for ever enigmatic.
In accordance with this postulate196 of esoterism and cult secrecy among the pre-Christian Nazarenes, who subsequently revealed themselves to the world as the Christian Church, though even then they “maintained for generations the secrecy6 of their Jesus cult,” the Gospels, as I said, are an allegory or a charade158. Their prima facie meaning is never the true one, never more than symbolic of a moral and spiritual undersense such as old allegorists like Philo and Origen loved to discover in the Bible. Thus, as we saw above, when Jesus is reported to have cast out of the Jews who thronged197 around him devils of blindness, deafness, lameness198, leprosy, death, what is really intended is that he argued pagans out of their polytheism. “It was spiritual maladies, and only spiritual, that he was healing” (p. 38). We ask of Mr. Smith, why was so much mystification necessary? We are only told that “it was in the main a prudential measure, well enough justified199, but intended to be only temporary” (p. 39). What exact risks they were to shun200 which the sect kept itself secret, and only spake in far-fetched allegory, Mr. Smith does not inform us. Is he, too, afraid of being regarded as a “tell-tale” (p. 48)?
Professor Smith resolves all the New Testament as symbolic and allegorical As with the exorcisms, so with all else told of Jesus. None of it really happened. As he never lived, so he never died. His human life and death are an allegory of the spiritual cult and mysteries which the pre-Christian Nazarenes and their [190]descendants, the Christians, so jealously and for so long guarded in silence. If he never lived, then he never taught, not even in parables. By consequence the entire record of his parables, still more of his having chosen the parable43 as his medium of instruction in order to veil his real meaning from his audience, is all moonshine. Here, as elsewhere, the Gospel text does not mean what it says, but is itself only a Nazarene parable conveying, or rather concealing201, a Nazarene secret—what sort of secret no one, save Professor Smith, the self-appointed revealer of their mysterious lore, can tell, and he is silent on the point. On Mr. Smith’s premisses, then, we cannot rely on the Gospels to inform us of anything historical, and, so far as we can follow him, we must, if we would discern through them the mind of their Nazarene authors, take them upside down. We must discern a pagan medium and homilies against polytheism in discourses202 addressed to monotheistic Jews who needed no warnings against idolatry; we must also read the stories of Jesus healing paralytics and demoniacs as secret and disguised polemics203 against idolatry.
Yet claims, where it suits him, to treat it as historical narrative But here mark Professor Smith’s inconsistency. Why is he sure that the Nazarenes, and after them the earliest Christians, were a secret society with a secret cult? They must have been so, he argues, because Jesus taught in parables. “The primitive esoterism,” he tells us, “is admittedly present in Mark iv, 11, 12, 33, 34.” These verses begin thus: “And he said unto them, unto you is given the mystery of the kingdom of heaven: but unto them that are without, all things are done in parables.”
Now, Mr. Smith’s postulate is that he—i.e., Jesus of Nazareth—never lived, and so never said anything [191]to anyone. How, then, can he appeal to what he said to prove that there was a pre-Christian Jesus or Joshua sect, itself secret with a cult and ritual which its members were ever on their guard not to reveal? Surely he drops here into two assumptions which he has discarded ab initio: first, that there is a core of real history in the Gospels; and, second, that the Gospel can mean what it says, and that its Nazarene author is here not allegorizing, as he usually did.
His theory contradicts itself But even if we allow Mr. Smith to break with his premisses wherever he needs to do so in order to substantiate204 them, do these verses of Mark support his hypothesis of a sect which kept itself, its rites8, and its teaching secret? I admit that it was pretty successful when it veiled its anti-idolatrous teaching under the outward form of demonological anecdotes205, and wrote Jews when it meant Pagans and Polytheists. But in Mark iv, 34, we are told that “to his own disciples206 Jesus privately207 expounded208 all things” after he had with many parables spoken the word to such as “were able to hear it.” It appears, then, that for all their love of secrecy, and in spite of all their precautions against “tell-tale” writing, the Nazarenes on occasions went out of their way, in their allegorical romance of their God Joshua, to inform all who may read it what their parables and allegories meant; for in it Jesus sits down and expounds210 to the reader over some twenty-four verses (verses 10–34) the inner meaning of the parables which he had just addressed to the multitude. What on earth were the Nazarenes doing to publish a Gospel like this, and so let the cat out of the bag? Instead of keeping their secret they were proclaiming it on the housetops. Again, if the Gospels are to [192]such an extent merely allegorical, that we must not assume their authors to have believed that Jesus ever lived, how can we possibly rely on them for information about such an obscure matter as a secret and esoteric pre-Christian Nazarene sect? We can only be sure that the evangelists never under any circumstances meant what they said; yet Mr. Smith, in defiance211 of all his postulates212, writes, p. 40, as follows: “On the basis, then, of this passage alone [i.e., Mark iv, 10–34] we may confidently affirm the primitive secrecy of the Jesus cult.” Even if the passage rightly yielded the sense he tries to extort213 from it, how can we be sure that that sense is not, like the rest of the Gospel, an allegory of something else?
The other passage of the Gospels, Matthew x, 26, 27, to which, with like inconsistency, Mr. Smith appeals by way of showing that the Nazarenes of set purpose hid their light under a bushel, does not bear the interpretation214 he puts on it. It runs thus: “Fear them not therefore: for naught is covered that shall not be revealed, and hidden that shall not be known. What I tell you in the darkness, speak ye on the housetops; and what ye hear in the ear, proclaim upon the housetops.”
Absence of esoterism about Jesus’s teaching The reasonable interpretation of the above is that Jesus, being in possession, as he thought, of a special understanding, perhaps revelation, of the true nature of the Messianic kingdom, and convinced of its near approach, instructed his immediate disciples in privacy concerning it in order that they might carry the message up and down the land to the children of Israel. He therefore exhorts215 them not to be silent from fear of the Jews, who accused him of being [193]possessed216 of a devil, somewhat as his own mother and brethren accused him of being an exalté and beside himself. No, they were to cast aside all apprehensions217; they must go, not to the supercilious218 Pharisees or to the comfortable priests who battened on the people, still less to Gentiles and Samaritans, who had no part in the promises made to Israel, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and they must preach as they went, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. They were to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse219 the lepers, cast out devils, and in general give freely the good tidings which freely they had received from their Master, and he from John the Baptist. If they so acted, discarding all timidity, then no human repression220, no human time-serving, could prevent the spread of the good news. What was now hidden from the poor and ignorant among his compatriots would henceforth, thanks to the courage and devotedness221 of his emissaries, be made known to them; what was now covered, be revealed.
Such is the context of “this remarkable222 deliverance,” as Mr. Smith terms it; and nothing in all the New Testament savours less than it does of a secret cult of mysterious sectaries, waiting for Mr. Smith to manifest their arcana to us twenty centuries later. Here, as everywhere else in the New Testament, he has discovered a monstrous mare’s nest; has banished223 the only possible and obvious interpretation, in order to substitute a chimera224 of his own.
It was not a protest against paganism Mr. Smith credits his hypothetical pre-Christian Nazarenes with an ambition and anxiety to purge away the errors of mankind. The “essence, the central idea, and active principle of the cult itself,” [194]he tells us (p. 45), “was a protest against Idolatry, a crusade for monotheism.” “The fact of the primitive worship of Jesus and the fact of the primitive mission to all the Gentiles are the two cardinal225 facts of Proto-Christianity” (p. xvii). Why on earth, then, in concocting226 that pronunciamento of their cult which we call the Gospels, did these Nazarenes represent the Jesus or Joshua God, even in allegory, as warning his disciples on no account to disseminate227 his cult among Gentiles and Samaritans, but only among Jews, who were notoriously monotheists and bitterly hostile to every form of idolatry? Why carry coals to Newcastle on so huge a scale?
Why turn God Jeshua into a man at all And granted that the Nazarenes, in their anxiety to be parabolical and misunderstood of their readers, wrote Jews when they meant Pagans, was it necessary in the interests of their monotheistic crusade to nickname their One God Jesus, to represent him as a man and a carpenter, with brothers and sisters, and a mother that did not believe in him; as a man who was a Jew with the prejudices of a Jew, a man circumcised and insisting that he came not to destroy the law of Moses, but to fulfil it; as a man who was born like other men of a human father and mother; was crucified, dead and buried; whose disciples and Galilean companions, when in the first flush of their grief they heard from Mary Magdalene the strange story of his first appearing to her after death, still “disbelieved”?7
The comfort of the initial “J” These Nazarenes were, in their quality of “students of religion” (p. 65), intent on converting the world [195]from polytheism. Why, then, did they call their sublime228 deity229 by the name of Jesus? “The word Jesus itself,” writes Mr. Smith,
also made special appeal to the Jewish consciousness, for it was practically identical with their own Jeshua, now understood by most to mean strictly230 Jah-help, but easily confounded with a similar J’shu’ah, meaning Deliverance, Saviour, Witness, Matthew i, 21. Moreover, the initial letter J, so often representing Jah in Hebrew words, must have powerfully suggested Jehovah to the Jewish consciousness.
But what Jew of the first century, however fond of the tales about Joshua which he read in his scriptures, was ever minded to substitute his name for that of Jehovah merely because it began with a J and has been explained by twentieth-century Hebraists as meaning Jah-help? The idea is exquisitely231 humorous. While they were about it why did the Nazarenes not adopt the name Immanuel, which in that allegorical romance (which from Mr. Smith we know to be the character of Matthew’s Gospel) they fished up out of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah? If Jehovah was not good enough for them, Immanuel was surely better than the name Jeshua, with its associations of pillage232 and murder. But apart from these considerations, as the name Jeshua is Hebrew, it follows that the secret sectaries who had this cult must have been of a Jewish cast. But, if so, what Jew, we ask, ever heard of a God called Jeshua or Joshua? As I have already pointed out, the very memory of such a God, if there ever was one, perished long before the Book of Joshua could have been written. Like the gods Daoud and Joseph, with whom writers of this class seek to conjure233 our wits out of our heads, a god Joshua is a mere preposterous superfetation of a [196]disordered imagination. “There were abundant reasons,” writes Mr. Smith (p. 16),
why the name Jesus should be the Aaron’s rod to swallow up all other designations. Its meaning, which was felt to be Saviour, was grand, comforting, uplifting. The notion of the world-Saviour thrust its roots into the loam235 of the remotest antiquity.
Supposed confusion of Jesus with iēsomai One regrets to have to criticize such dithyrambic outpourings of Mr. Smith’s heart. But, granted there was a widespread expectation, such as Suetonius records, of Messiahs who were to issue from Jud?a and conquer all the world, who ever heard of the name Joshua being assigned in advance to one of them? Who ever in that age felt the name Jesus to be grand, comforting, uplifting? Is not Mr. Smith attributing his own feelings, as he sat in a Sunday school, to Jews and Gentiles of the first century? I add Gentiles, for he pretends that the name Jesus appealed to the Greek consciousness also as a derivative236 of the Ionic future ??σομαι iēsomai = I will heal. Now what Christian writer ever made this rapprochement? Not a single one. Surely, if we are minded to argue the man Jesus out of existence, we ought to have a vera causa to put in his place, a belief, or, if we like it better, a myth which was really believed, and is known to have entered deeply into the lives and consciences of men? It is true that the idea of a Messiah did so enter, but not in the form in which Mr. Smith loves to conceive it. The Messiah was such a human figure as Suetonius had heard of; he was a man who should, as we read in Acts, restore the kingdom of David. “Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” is the question the apostles are said (Acts i, 7) to have [197]put to Jesus as soon as his apparitions237 before them had revived the Messianic hopes which his death had so woefully dashed. The incident is probably apocryphal238, yet its presence in the narrative illustrates239 what a Messiah was then expected by Christians to achieve. Judas Maccab?us, Cyrus, Bar Cochba, Judas of Galilee—these and other heroes of Israel had the quality of Messiahs. They were all men, and not myths. The suggestion, then, that the name Jesus was one to conjure with is idle and baseless; and if his name had been Obadiah or Nathaniel, Professor Smith would have been equally ready to prove that these were attractive names, bound to triumph and “swallow up all other designations.” He only pitches on the name of Jesus for his pre-Christian Saviour-god because he finds it in the Gospels; but inasmuch as he sees in them mere allegorical romances, entirely240 unhistorical and having no root in facts, there is no reason for adopting from them one name more than another. How does he know that the appellation241 Jesus is not as much of a Nazarene fiction as he holds every other name and person and incident to be which the Gospels contain? Is it not more probable that this highly secretive sect, with their horror of “tell-tale,” would keep secret the name of their Saviour-god, as the Essenes kept secret the names of their patron angels? The truth is, even Mr. Smith cannot quite divest242 himself of the idea that there is some historical basis for the Gospels; otherwise he would not have turned to them for the name of his Saviour-god.
Mr. Smith denies all historicity to Acts and Epistles More consistently, however, than Mr. Robertson, Professor Smith denies that there are any allusions to the real Jesus in the rest of the New Testament. [198]The Acts and Epistles do not, he says (p. 23), “recognize at all the life of Jesus as a man,” though “their general tenour gives great value to the death of Jesus as a God.” This is a new reading of the documents in question, for the Pauline conviction was that Jesus had been crucified and died as a man, and, being raised up from death by the Spirit, had been promoted to be, what he was antenatally, a super-human or angelic figure8—a Christ or Messiah, who was to come again on earth and judge mankind. Of his mere humanity while on this earth, and as long as he was associating with human disciples, Paul entertained no doubts. How could he, inasmuch as he had stayed with them at Jerusalem? Mr. [199]Robertson, as we saw, although he dissipates Jesus in the Gospels into a Sun-God-Saviour Joshua, nevertheless is so impressed by the Pauline “references to a crucified Jesus” (p. 364) that he resuscitates243 Jesus Ben Pandira out of the limbo244 of the Talmud. Perhaps he strains at a gnat234 after swallowing a camel. Anyhow, I will leave Mr. Smith to settle accounts with him, and turn to a fresh point, which has not occurred to either of them.
Contrast of Christian belief in Jesus with cult of Adonis or Osiris It is this. Adonis and Osiris were never regarded by their votaries245 as having been human beings that had recently lived and died on the face of this earth. The Christians, in strong contrast with them and with all other pagans ever heard of, did so regard Jesus from first to last. Why so, when they knew that from the first he was a God and up in heaven? Why has the fact of his unreality, as these writers argue it, left no trace of itself in Christian tradition and literature? According to this new school of critics, the Nazarenes, when they wrote down the Gospels, knew perfectly well that Jesus was a figment, and had never lived at all. And yet we never get a hint that he was only a myth, and that the New Testament is a gigantic fumisterie. Why so? Why from the very first did the followers of Jesus entertain what Mr. Smith denounces as “an a priori concept of the Jesus” (p. 35)? Why, in other words, were they convinced from the beginning that he was a man of flesh and blood, who had lived on earth among them? The “early secrecy,” the “esoterism of the primitive cult” (p. 39), says Mr. Smith, “was intended to be only temporary.” If so, why could not the Nazarenes, primarily interested as they were, not in lies and bogus, but in disseminating246 their lofty monotheism, have thrown [200]off the disguise some time or other, and explained to their spiritual children that the intensely concrete life of Jesus which they had published in our Gospel of Mark meant nothing; that it was all an allegory, and no more, of a Saviour-god, who had never existed as a human being, nor even as the docetic phantasmagoria of the Gnostic? “Something sealed the lips of that (Nazarene) evangelist,” and the Nazarenes have kept their secret so well through the ages that it has been reserved for Mr. Smith first to pierce the veil and unlock their mystery. He it is who has at last discovered that “in proto-Mark we behold the manifest God” (p. 24).
Now what possessed the Nazarenes so firmly to impose on the world through the Gospels an erroneous view of their God, that for 2,000 years not only their spiritual offspring, the Christians, but Jews and pagans as well, have believed him to have lived on earth, a man of flesh and blood and of like passions with themselves? Was the deception247 necessary? The votaries of Osiris and Adonis were never so tricked. The adherents of the Augustalian cult, the pious248 Greeks and Syrians who thronged to be healed of their diseases at the shrines249 of Apollonius, believed, of course, that their patron saints and gods had lived, prior to their apotheosis250, upon earth; and so they had. But a follower34 of Osiris or ?sculapius would have opened his eyes wide with astonishment251 if you asked him to believe that his Saviour had died only the other day in Jud?a. Not so a Christian; for the Nazarene monotheists had so thoroughly fooled him with their Gospels that he was ready to supply you with dates and pedigrees and all sorts of other details about his Saviour’s personal history. And yet all the [201]time, had he only known it, his religion laboured under the same initial disadvantage as the cult of Osiris or ?sculapius—that, namely, of its founder never having lived at all. What, then, did “such students of religion, as the first Christians were” (Ecce Deus, p. 65), imagine was to be gained by hood-winking their descendants for the long centuries which have intervened between them and the advent of Professor W. B. Smith? [202]
1 Mr. Robertson recognizes (p. 124), though without realizing how much it damages his theory, that the miracles of the Gospels are “visibly unknown to the Paulinists”—presumably the early churches addressed by Paul in his Epistle. Do we not here get a glimpse of an early stage of the story of Jesus before it was overlaid with [170]miracles? Yet Mr. Robertson, in defiance of logic, argues that the absence of miraculous tales of Jesus in the Paulines confirms what he calls “the mythological argument.” ↑
2 It is true that this is from a speech put into Paul’s mouth by the author of Acts; but Paul himself is no less emphatic252 in Romans i, 23, where of the Greeks he writes that, “though they knew God, they glorified253 him not as God?…. Professing254 themselves wise, they were turned into fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness256 of an image of a corruptible255 man.” Such were the feelings excited in Paul by a statue of Pheidias; how different from those it roused in his contemporary Dion, who wrote as follows of it: [181]“Whoever among mortal men is most utterly toilworn in spirit, having drunk the cup of many sorrows and calamities257, when he stands before this image must utterly forget all the terrors and woes258 of this mortal life.” So strong was the prejudice of the Church (due exclusively to its Jewish origin) against plastic or pictorial259 art that Eusebius and Epiphanius condemned260 pictures of Christ as late as the fourth century, while the Eastern churches, even to-day, forbid statues of Jesus and of the Saints. Of the great gulf261 which separated Jew from Gentile on such points Mr. Robertson seems not to have the faintest notion. ↑
3 I trust my readers will forgive my use of a fox-hunting phrase in so serious a context, but I cannot think of any other so apt. ↑
4 P. 48. After citing the rather problematic allusion173 to Plato (Rep. ii, 361 D) in the apology of Apollonius (c. 172), the just man shall be tortured, he shall be spat262 on, and, last of all, he shall be crucified. Harnack has said that there is no other reference to this passage of Plato in old-Christian literature. “Why?” asks Mr. Smith. “Because Christians were not familiar with it? Impossible. The silence of the Christians was intentional, and the reason is obvious. The passage was tell-tale. Similarly we are to understand their silence about the pre-Christian Nazarenes and many other lions that were safest when asleep.” This is in the true vein263 of a Bacon-Shakesperians armed with his cypher. ↑
5 See note (1). ↑
6 Elsewhere Mr. Smith qualifies this position, p. 35: “Of course, the cult was not intended to remain, and did not in fact remain, secret; it was at length brought into the open.” But perhaps Mr. Smith is here alluding264 to his own revelation. ↑
7 Mark xvi, 9. The circumstance that Mark xvi, 9–20, was added to the Gospel by another hand in no way diminishes the significance of the passage here adduced. ↑
8 In the same manner, as we know from Origen (Com. in Evang. Ioannis, tom. xiii, 27), the Samaritans had a Messiah named Dositheos, who rose from the dead, and professed265 himself to be the Messiah of prophecy. His sect survived in the third century, as also his books, which, as Origen says, were full of “myth” about him to the effect that he had not tasted of death, but was somewhere or other still alive. By all the rules of criticism as used by Mr. Robertson and his friends, we must deny that Dositheos ever lived. The idea of a human hero being an angel or divine power made flesh was common among Jews, and in their apocryph, “The Prayer of Jacob” (see Origen, op. cit., tom. ii, 25), that worthy266 represented himself as such in the very language of Paul and of the Fourth Gospel: “I who spoke209 to you, I, Jacob and Israel, am an angel of God and a primeval spirit, as Abraham and Isaak were created in advance of all creatures. But I, Jacob, … called Israel by God, a man seeing God, because I am first-born of all living beings made alive by God.” We also learn that Uriel was sent forth by God to herald267 Jacob’s descent upon earth, where he “tabernacled among men.” Jacob declares himself to be “archangel of the power of God, and arch-captain among the sons of God, Israel the foremost minister of the Presence.” Paul, we observe, did not need to go outside Judaism for his conceptions of Jesus, nor Justin Martyr268 either, who regularly speaks of Jesus as an archangel. So also among the pagans. In Augustus C?sar his contemporaries loved to detect one of the great gods of Olympus just descended to earth in the semblance115 of a man. He was the god Mercury or some other god incarnate269. His birth was a god’s descent to earth in order to expiate270 the sins of the Romans. Thus Horace, Odes, I, 2, v. 29: Cui dabit partes scelus expiandi Juppiter, and cp. v. 45: Serus in c?lum redeas—“Mayest thou be late in returning to heaven.” ↑
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repudiation
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| n.拒绝；否认；断绝关系；抛弃 | |
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partisans
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| 游击队员( partisan的名词复数 )； 党人； 党羽； 帮伙 | |
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deride
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| v.嘲弄，愚弄 | |
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nucleus
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| n.核，核心，原子核 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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philological
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| adj.语言学的，文献学的 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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rites
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| 仪式，典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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mythology
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| n.神话，神话学，神话集 | |
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sift
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| v.筛撒，纷落，详察 | |
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jointly
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| ad.联合地，共同地 | |
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converge
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| vi.会合；聚集，集中；(思想、观点等)趋近 | |
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testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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bloc
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| n.集团；联盟 | |
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secondly
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dictates
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| n.命令，规定，要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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blasphemy
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| n.亵渎，渎神 | |
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23
mantle
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| n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红 | |
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24
intentional
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| adj.故意的，有意（识）的 | |
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25
intentionally
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| ad.故意地，有意地 | |
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26
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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27
obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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28
perversity
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| n.任性；刚愎自用 | |
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29
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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30
transcends
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| 超出或超越（经验、信念、描写能力等）的范围( transcend的第三人称单数 )； 优于或胜过… | |
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31
repent
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| v.悔悟，悔改，忏悔，后悔 | |
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32
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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33
followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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34
follower
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| n.跟随者；随员；门徒；信徒 | |
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35
astounding
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| adj.使人震惊的vt.使震惊，使大吃一惊astound的现在分词) | |
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36
prodigies
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| n.奇才，天才（尤指神童）( prodigy的名词复数 ) | |
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37
sect
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| n.派别，宗教，学派，派系 | |
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38
effaced
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| v.擦掉( efface的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；超越；使黯然失色 | |
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39
miraculous
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|
| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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40
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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41
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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42
renovated
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| 翻新，修复，整修( renovate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
parable
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| n.寓言，比喻 | |
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44
parables
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| n.（圣经中的）寓言故事( parable的名词复数 ) | |
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45
apocrypha
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| n.伪经，伪书 | |
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46
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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47
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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48
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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49
favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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50
commemorated
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| v.纪念，庆祝( commemorate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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51
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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52
saviour
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| n.拯救者，救星 | |
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53
monstrous
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|
| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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54
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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55
bristling
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| a.竖立的 | |
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56
cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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57
Founder
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| n.创始者，缔造者 | |
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58
gist
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| n.要旨；梗概 | |
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59
speculations
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| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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60
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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61
sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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62
truculent
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| adj.野蛮的，粗野的 | |
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63
primitiveness
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| 原始，原始性 | |
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64
fabulous
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| adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的 | |
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65
implicitly
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| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
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66
negate
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| vt.否定，否认；取消，使无效 | |
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67
intensify
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| vt.加强；变强；加剧 | |
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68
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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69
discrepant
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| 差异的 | |
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70
remodelled
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| v.改变…的结构[形状]( remodel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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71
epithet
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| n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语 | |
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72
superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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73
deformed
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| adj.畸形的；变形的；丑的，破相了的 | |
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74
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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75
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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76
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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77
havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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78
mythological
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| adj.神话的 | |
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79
demons
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|
| n.恶人( demon的名词复数 )；恶魔；精力过人的人；邪念 | |
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80
paraphrases
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|
| n.释义，意译( paraphrase的名词复数 )v.释义，意译( paraphrase的第三人称单数 ) | |
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81
originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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82
variant
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| adj.不同的，变异的；n.变体，异体 | |
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83
ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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84
antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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85
scourging
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|
| 鞭打( scourge的现在分词 )； 惩罚，压迫 | |
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86
scourged
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| 鞭打( scourge的过去式和过去分词 )； 惩罚，压迫 | |
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87
averring
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| v.断言( aver的现在分词 )；证实；证明…属实；作为事实提出 | |
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88
flouted
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|
| v.藐视，轻视( flout的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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89
misgivings
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|
| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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90
insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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91
humble
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|
| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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92
purge
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| n.整肃，清除，泻药，净化；vt.净化，清除，摆脱；vi.清除，通便，腹泻，变得清洁 | |
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93
imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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94
diffused
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| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
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95
diffuse
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| v.扩散；传播；adj.冗长的；四散的，弥漫的 | |
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96
purport
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| n.意义，要旨，大要；v.意味著，做为...要旨，要领是... | |
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97
invoked
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|
| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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98
Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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99
personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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100
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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101
slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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102
ransom
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| n.赎金，赎身；v.赎回，解救 | |
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103
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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104
Forsaken
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| adj. 被遗忘的, 被抛弃的 动词forsake的过去分词 | |
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105
advent
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| n.(重要事件等的)到来，来临 | |
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106
frustrated
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|
| 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 | |
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107
naught
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| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
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108
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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109
discreetly
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| ad.(言行)审慎地，慎重地 | |
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110
ramifications
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| n.结果，后果( ramification的名词复数 ) | |
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111
folklore
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| n.民间信仰，民间传说，民俗 | |
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112
lore
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| n.传说；学问，经验，知识 | |
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113
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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114
philologists
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| n.语文学( philology的名词复数 ) | |
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115
semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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116
haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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117
etymologies
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| n.词源学，词源说明( etymology的名词复数 ) | |
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118
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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119
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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120
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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121
missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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122
legendary
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| adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学） | |
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123
delusive
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| adj.欺骗的，妄想的 | |
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124
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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125
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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126
innate
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| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
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127
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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128
credible
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| adj.可信任的，可靠的 | |
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129
detesting
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| v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的现在分词 ) | |
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130
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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131
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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132
symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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133
supplicate
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| v.恳求；adv.祈求地，哀求地，恳求地 | |
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134
goad
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| n.刺棒，刺痛物；激励；vt.激励，刺激 | |
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135
frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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136
idols
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| 偶像( idol的名词复数 )； 受崇拜的人或物； 受到热爱和崇拜的人或物； 神像 | |
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137
superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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138
beheld
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| 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 | |
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139
investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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140
patchwork
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| n.混杂物；拼缝物 | |
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141
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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142
terminology
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| n.术语；专有名词 | |
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143
paradoxes
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| 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] | |
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144
treatise
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| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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145
anthropological
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| adj.人类学的 | |
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146
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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147
perils
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| 极大危险( peril的名词复数 )； 危险的事（或环境） | |
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148
beset
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| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
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149
jurisdiction
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| n.司法权，审判权，管辖权，控制权 | |
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150
enigmas
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| n.难于理解的问题、人、物、情况等，奥秘( enigma的名词复数 ) | |
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151
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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152
pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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153
corruptions
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| n.堕落( corruption的名词复数 )；腐化；腐败；贿赂 | |
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154
forgery
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| n.伪造的文件等，赝品，伪造（行为） | |
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155
authentic
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| a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的 | |
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156
straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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157
laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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158
charade
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| n.用动作等表演文字意义的字谜游戏 | |
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159
charades
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| n.伪装( charade的名词复数 )；猜字游戏 | |
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160
rebuses
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| n.（以画代词语，尤其是名字的）画谜，组字画( rebus的名词复数 ) | |
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161
cryptogram
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| n.密码 | |
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162
feign
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| vt.假装，佯作 | |
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163
patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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164
secrecy
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| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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165
sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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166
mythologies
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| 神话学( mythology的名词复数 )； 神话（总称）； 虚构的事实； 错误的观点 | |
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167
pretentious
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| adj.自命不凡的，自负的，炫耀的 | |
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168
abut
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| v.接界，毗邻 | |
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169
reverenced
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| v.尊敬，崇敬( reverence的过去式和过去分词 )；敬礼 | |
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170
scriptures
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| 经文，圣典( scripture的名词复数 )； 经典 | |
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171
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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172
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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173
allusion
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| n.暗示，间接提示 | |
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174
allusions
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| 暗指，间接提到( allusion的名词复数 ) | |
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175
humdrum
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| adj.单调的，乏味的 | |
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176
alias
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| n.化名；别名；adv.又名 | |
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177
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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178
anonymous
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| adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的 | |
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179
Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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180
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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181
alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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182
condemn
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| vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑 | |
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183
mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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184
monks
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| n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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185
whit
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| n.一点，丝毫 | |
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186
discredited
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| 不足信的，不名誉的 | |
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187
discredit
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| vt.使不可置信；n.丧失信义；不信，怀疑 | |
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188
secular
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| n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的 | |
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189
adherents
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| n.支持者，拥护者( adherent的名词复数 )；党羽；徒子徒孙 | |
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190
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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191
precepts
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| n.规诫，戒律，箴言( precept的名词复数 ) | |
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192
repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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193
unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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194
concocted
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| v.将（尤指通常不相配合的）成分混合成某物( concoct的过去式和过去分词 )；调制；编造；捏造 | |
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195
vouchsafed
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| v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 )；允诺 | |
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196
postulate
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| n.假定，基本条件；vt.要求，假定 | |
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197
thronged
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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198
lameness
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| n. 跛, 瘸, 残废 | |
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199
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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200
shun
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| vt.避开，回避，避免 | |
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201
concealing
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，遮住( conceal的现在分词 ) | |
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202
discourses
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| 论文( discourse的名词复数 )； 演说； 讲道； 话语 | |
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203
polemics
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| n.辩论术，辩论法；争论( polemic的名词复数 )；辩论；辩论术；辩论法 | |
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204
substantiate
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| v.证实；证明...有根据 | |
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205
anecdotes
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| n.掌故，趣闻，轶事( anecdote的名词复数 ) | |
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206
disciples
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| 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 | |
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207
privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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208
expounded
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| 论述，详细讲解( expound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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209
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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210
expounds
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| 论述，详细讲解( expound的第三人称单数 ) | |
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211
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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212
postulates
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| v.假定，假设( postulate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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213
extort
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| v.勒索，敲诈，强要 | |
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214
interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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215
exhorts
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| n.劝勉者，告诫者，提倡者( exhort的名词复数 )v.劝告，劝说( exhort的第三人称单数 ) | |
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216
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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217
apprehensions
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| 疑惧 | |
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218
supercilious
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| adj.目中无人的，高傲的；adv.高傲地；n.高傲 | |
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219
cleanse
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| vt.使清洁，使纯洁，清洗 | |
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220
repression
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| n.镇压，抑制，抑压 | |
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221
devotedness
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222
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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223
banished
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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224
chimera
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| n.神话怪物；梦幻 | |
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225
cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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226
concocting
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| v.将（尤指通常不相配合的）成分混合成某物( concoct的现在分词 )；调制；编造；捏造 | |
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227
disseminate
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| v.散布；传播 | |
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228
sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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229
deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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230
strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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231
exquisitely
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| adv.精致地；强烈地；剧烈地；异常地 | |
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232
pillage
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| v.抢劫；掠夺；n.抢劫，掠夺；掠夺物 | |
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233
conjure
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| v.恳求，祈求；变魔术，变戏法 | |
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234
gnat
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| v.对小事斤斤计较，琐事 | |
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235
loam
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| n.沃土 | |
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236
derivative
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| n.派(衍)生物；adj.非独创性的，模仿他人的 | |
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237
apparitions
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| n.特异景象( apparition的名词复数 )；幽灵；鬼；（特异景象等的）出现 | |
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238
apocryphal
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| adj.假冒的，虚假的 | |
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239
illustrates
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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240
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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241
appellation
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| n.名称，称呼 | |
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242
divest
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| v.脱去，剥除 | |
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243
resuscitates
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| v.使（某人或某物）恢复知觉，苏醒( resuscitate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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244
limbo
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| n.地狱的边缘；监狱 | |
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245
votaries
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| n.信徒( votary的名词复数 )；追随者；（天主教）修士；修女 | |
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246
disseminating
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| 散布，传播( disseminate的现在分词 ) | |
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247
deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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248
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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249
shrines
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| 圣地，圣坛，神圣场所( shrine的名词复数 ) | |
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250
apotheosis
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| n.神圣之理想；美化；颂扬 | |
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251
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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252
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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253
glorified
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| 美其名的，变荣耀的 | |
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254
professing
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| 声称( profess的现在分词 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉 | |
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255
corruptible
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| 易腐败的，可以贿赂的 | |
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256
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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257
calamities
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| n.灾祸，灾难( calamity的名词复数 )；不幸之事 | |
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258
woes
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| 困境( woe的名词复数 )； 悲伤； 我好苦哇； 某人就要倒霉 | |
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259
pictorial
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| adj.绘画的；图片的；n．画报 | |
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260
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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261
gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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262
spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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263
vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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264
alluding
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| 提及，暗指( allude的现在分词 ) | |
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265
professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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266
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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267
herald
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| vt.预示...的来临，预告，宣布，欢迎 | |
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268
martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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269
incarnate
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| adj.化身的，人体化的，肉色的 | |
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270
expiate
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| v.抵补，赎罪 | |
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