r/or ^it.fyu,7idin^ ef Lffii4voii fH^Bois i^aKoXovd'^a'avres iyvtapiaafxev i/fuv t^p tov Kvpiov Irjcov XptffToi) d^vafJLiv Kal irapovfflaVj dXX' iirbiTTai yevTjOdvTcs T^s iKelvov fieydKei&TTjTos. —II Peter i : i6. THE BROSS FOUNDATION ^ The Bross Library is an outgrowth of a fund estab lished in 1879 by the late William Bross, lieutenant- governor of Illinois from 1866 to 1870. Desiring some memorial of his son, Nathaniel Bross, who died in 1856, Mr. Bross entered into an agreement vdth the "trustees of Lake Forest University," whereby there was finally transferred to them the sum of forty thousand dollars, the income of wliich was to accumulate in perpetuity for successive periods of ten years, the accumulation of one decade to be spent in the foUo-vdng decade, for the purpose of stimulating the best books or treatises "on the connexion, relation, and mutual bearing of any practi cal science, the history of our race, or the facts in any department of knowledge, -with and upon the Christian Religion." The object of the donor was to "call out the best efforts of the highest talent and the ripest scholar ship of the world to illustrate from science, or from any department of knowledge, and to demonstrate the di'vine origin and the authority of the Christian scriptures; and, further, to show how both science and revelation coin cide and prove the existence, the pro^vddence, or any or all of the attributes of the only li^vdng and true God, 'in finite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, -wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.'" The gift contemplated in the original agreement of 1879 was finaUy consummated in 1890. The first decade of the accumulation of interest ha-ving closed in 1900, the trustees of the Bross Fund began at this time to carry out the provisions of the deed of gift. It was deter mined to give the general title of "The Bross Library" viii THE BROSS FOUNDATION to the series of books purchased and published with the proceeds of the Bross Fund. In accordance -with the express wish of the donor, that the " Evidences of Chris tianity" of his "very dear friend and teacher, Mark Hopkins, D.D.," be purchased and "ever numbered and known as No. i of the series," the trustees secured the copyright of this work, which has been republished in a presentation edition as Volume I of the Bross Library. The trust agreement prescribed two methods by which the production of books and treatises of the nature con templated by the donor was to be stimulated: I. The trustees were empowered to offer one or more prizes during each decade, the competition for which was to be thrown open to "the scientific men, the Chris tian philosophers, and historians of all nations." In ac cordance with this provision, a prize of six thousand dol lars was offered in 1902 for the best book fulfilling the conditions of the deed of gift, the competing manuscripts to be presented on or before June i, 1905. The prize was awarded to the late Reverend James Orr, D.D., professor of apologetics and systematic theology in the United Free Church College, Glasgow, for his treatise on "The Problem of the Old Testament," which was pub lished in 1906 as Volume III of the Bross Library. The second decennial prize of six thousand dollars was offered in 19 13, the competing manuscripts to be submitted by January i, 1915. The judges were Presi dent William Douglas Mackenzie, of Hartford Theo logical Seminary; Professor Rufus M. Jones, of Hav- erford College; and Professor Benjamin L. Hobson, of McCormick Theological Seminary. The prize was awarded by the judges to a manuscript entitled "The Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels," whose author proved to be the Reverend Thomas James Thorburn, D.D., LL.D., St. Helen's Down, Hastings, England. This essay is now issued as Volume VII of the Bross Library. THE BROSS FOUNDATION ix The next Bross Prize will be offered about 1925, and will be announced in due time by the trustees of Lake Forest University. 2. The trustees were also empowered to "select and designate any particular scientific man or Christian phi losopher and the subject on which he shall write," and to "agree -with him as to the sum he shall receive for the book or treatise to be written." Under this pro-vision the trustees have, from time to time, in-vited eminent scholars to deliver courses of lectures before Lake Forest College, such courses to be subsequently published as volumes in the Bross Library. The first course of lec tures, on "Obligatory Morality," was delivered in May, 1903, by the Reverend Francis Landey Patton, D.D., LL.D., president of Princeton Theological Seminary. The copyright of the lectures is now the property of the trustees of the Bross Fund. The second course of lec tures, on "The Bible: Its Origin and Nature," was de livered in May, 1904, by the late Reverend Marcus Dods, D.D., professor of exegetical theology in New College, Edinburgh. These lectures were published in 1905 as Volume II of the Bross Library. The third course of lectures, on "The Bible of Nature," was deKvered in September and October, 1907, by J. Arthur Thomson, M.A., regius professor of natural history in the Uni versity of Aberdeen. These lectures were published in 1908 as Volume IV of the Bross Library. The fourth course of lectures, on "The Religions of Modern Syria and Palestine," was delivered in November and Decem ber, 1908, by Frederick Jones Bliss, Ph.D., of Beirut, Syria. These lectures were published in 191 2 as Volume V of the Bross Library. The fifth course of lectures, on "The Sources of ReUgious Insight," was deUvered in November, 1911, by Professor Josiah Royce, Ph.D., of Harvard University. These lectures were pubUshed in 1912 as Volume VI of the Bross Library. The sixth X THE BROSS FOUNDATION course of lectures, on " The WiU to Freedom, or the Gos pel of Nietzsche and the Gospel of Christ," was deUvered in May, 1915, by the Reverend John Neville Figgis, D.D., Litt.D., of the House of the Resurrection, Mirfield, Eng land. These lectures wiU be pubUshed as Volume VIII of the Bross Library. John Scholte Nollen, President of Lake Forest College. Lake Forest, Illinois, January, 1916. PREFACE It is but fitting that the writer of this volume should introduce his work, which has gained the Bross Prize for 191 5, with an expression of gratitude to the memory of the founder of that bequest, to the present trustees of Lake Forest CoUege, and also to the judges for their courtesy and the trouble involved in deaUng -with the manuscript submitted for their consideration. He may add, however, that the work was not commenced with a view to competing for the Bross, or indeed any, prize; it had been in hand for about two years, and had already progressed considerably towards taking a final shape, when he bethought him that, perhaps, it might be a suit able book for the purpose which the late WilUam Bross, formerly Ueutenant-governor of the State of IlUnois, had in -view when he estabUshed the trust. The subject of this treatise, "The Mythical Interpre tation of the Gospels," as it may be termed, is, it should be widely known, nothing more nor less than the theory that our present four canonical Gospels are in no sense whatever what we nowadays mean by the term "his torical documents." This is, in truth, a most serious proposition to fling down before the world after close upon nineteen centuries of Christian teaching which has been throughout based upon the contrary affirmation. For, if any such theory be a true one, and can be so es tabUshed to the satisfaction not only of scholars but to that of the world at large, then the documents referred to must be in effect probably nothing more than a mere congeries of ancient nature-myths, and their Central Figure also can only be an embodiment of one or more xii PREFACE of the various cult-gods or nature-spirits (demons) with which the imagination of the ancient races who formerly dwelt in the southern parts of western Asia and east- em Europe, with Egypt and Arabia, peopled those lands for many centuries before and subsequent to the Chris tian era. The subject, the present writer repeats, is one of the utmost importance when -viewed from the reUgious stand point; and it has hitherto, in his opinion, been some what too hastily set aside -without examination, and even quietly snubbed by critical as weU as by dogmatic the ologians. It is not thus that any theory, however wrong- headed it may be, is checked, nor by these means are genuine seekers after truth ever con-vinced of its errors. On the contrary, such theories and assertions should be challenged freely and criticised, and their mistakes and assumptions frankly and systematically pointed out. After making the above prefatory statement, it may not be inopportune or superfluous here to give, for the benefit of such readers to whom it wiU be welcome, a brief sketch of the chief mythical and non-historical ex planations of the origin and nature of Christianity which haye been put forth from time to time during the period covered by the past one hundred and twenty years. Pre-viously to the end of the eighteenth century the mythical hypothesis of Christianity was, for all practical purposes, wholly unknown. Going stiU further back, in the earlier centuries of the Christian era, we find the va rious fathers of the church and other contemporary wri ters, secular as well as ecclesiastical, distinguishing most carefully and emphatically the historical Gospel narra tives, as they had received or examined them, and above all the personaUty of Jesus Christ, from the nature- myths and the deities of various classes and grades, whether Olympic gods or cultual nature-spirits (demons), which were held in awe or honour by the peoples in whose PREFACE xiii very midst Christianity had but recentiy been introduced and estabUshed. This is, indeed, an indisputable and accepted fact. Much the same, too, may be said of the Jewish rabbins and others who contributed to that body of authorita tive Jewish teaching, mingled -with fact and fancy, which at an early period took shape and became known as the two Talmuds. To the Christian fathers and the Jewish rabbins aUke both Jesus Christ and the records of his life and teaching had an undoubted historical basis. Even his miracles were in general admitted by the Jews, but were attributed by them either to the agency of de mons or to the magical arts which he was supposed to have learned in, and brought from, Egypt. Neither early Christian nor Jew of any period felt the smaUest doubt as to the historic character of either Christianity or its Founder, whilst even the pagan Romans and Greeks al ways refer to both in professedly historic terms. In deed, the educated Gentiles of aU races included within the Roman Empire of that period regarded the Christian system as whoUy unUke, and in every respect totally opposed to, the stories told of the cult-gods and divine heroes of their myths. These three primary facts are beyond dispute, and aU three taken together form, in the opinion of the present writer, a great and a priori obstacle to any modern scheme that can be devised for the mythicising of the story of the Christian reUgion or the person of its Founder. With the period of the great French Revolution, at the end of the eighteenth century, a great change was ob-viously impending. Its advent was heralded by the pubUcation, in 1794, of the notorious work of Charles Franfois Dupuis (1742-1809), entitled L'origine de tous les Culfes, ou la Religion Universelle, which had followed close upon Volney's Les Ruines, ou M&ditation sur les Reuolutions des Empires, a thinly veiled and dilettante xiv PREFACE attack upon all reUgion, and especiaUy upon the histor ical character and e-vidences of Christianity. In the work of Dupuis all primitive reUgion is connected with a sys tem of astral mythology, and the origin of astral myths is traced to Upper Egj^t. This book excited some in terest at the time of its pubUcation, though it had only a small sale; it is said, however, to have been largely instrumental in bringing about the expedition organised by Napoleon Bonaparte for the exploration, or exploita tion, of that country. Regarding this book, it wiU suffice here to say that a distinguished modern astronomer^ has (March 20, 1914) informed the present writer that Du- puis's "method led him to the conclusion that the con stellations must have been de-vised when the sun was in the constellation Aries at the autumnal equinox, i. e., about 13000 B. C. The e-vidence afforded by the un mapped space round the south pole proves that he was ten or eleven thousand years wrong; in other words, nearly as wrong as he could be"!" Any system which is based upon such a huge and primary error as this stands self-condemned at the outset. The method of Dupuis soon fell into disrepute, but in spite of this fact it has been re-vived in our own day in a somewhat modified form by certain modem mythicists, notably A. Niemojewski (Bog Jezus, 1909, and Goti Jezus im Lichte fremder und eigener Forschungen, samt Darstel- lung der evangelischen Astralstoffe, Astralszenen, und Astral- systeme, 1910) and Fuhrmann (Der Astralmythen von Christus), who have used this once much- vaunted "key" to the origin of reUgions in a manner regardless not only of astronomical facts but even, at times, of common sense. With the downfall, in the early nineteenth century, of the astral theory of Dupuis, which in speculative theology was largely superseded by the unimaginative • Mr. E. -Walter Maunder, F.R.A.S. 'See also Encydopcsdia Britannica, nth ed., art. "Dupuis.'' PREFACE XV rationaUsm of Paulus (1761-1851), the next generation were confronted -with a revival of the mythic theory in a new and improved form. Da-vid Friedrich ' Strauss (1808-74) issued in 1835-6 his famous work, Das Leben Jesu, based to a great extent upon the dialectical method of the then fashionable HegeUan ideaUstic philosophy, in which, while he acknowledged the actual existence of an historical Jesus who formed the subject of the Gospel memoirs, Strauss maintained had had such a complete halo of myth thrown around him that for all practical purposes his Ufe was entirely unknown to us. This work created a great sensation almost throughout Europe, and a fourth edition of it, translated by George EUot, appeared in England in a popular form under the Eng Ush title of The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1846). FinaUy the work was entirely recast and rewritten as Das Leben Jesu fiir das Deutsche Volk bearbeitet (1865) ; in this new form Strauss declared that he viewed the Gospel stories rather as conscious inventions than as poetic myths, as he had maintained in the original Das Leben Jesu. This non-historical and later -view of the Gospel rec ords and the person of Jesus was next taken up by Bruno Bauer (1809-82), a critic belonging, Uke Strauss, in the earUer part of his career, to the HegeUan "Left Wing," and who differed from Strauss chiefly in denying that the Judaism antecedent to the rise of Christianity har boured any potent Messianic expectations. The Messiah, Bauer maintained (Kritik der Evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker, 1841), was the product of the Christian con sciousness, and was rather carried back from the Chris tian system into that of Judaism than borrowed by the former from the latter source. As for the Gospels, they were, he thought, abstract conceptions turned into his tory, probably by one man — the evangeUst Mark. Before, however, dismissing Jesus as a wholly fictitious character in history, Bauer decided to make a further xvi PREFACE critical examination of the structure and contents of the PauUne epistles (Kritik der Paulinischen Briefe, 1 8 50-1). As an outcome of these combined investigations he at last decided that an historical Jesus never existed — a result Uttle, if at aU, removed from the final conclusions of Strauss. With the death of Bauer the mythical hypothesis may be said to have entered upon a new phase. In 1882 Rudolf Seydel pubUshed his Das Evangelium von Jesu in seinen Verhdltnissen zur Buddha-Sage und Buddha-Lehre, which was followed not long afterwards by his Die Buddha- Legende und das Leben Jesu nach den Evangelien (2d ed., 1897), and Buddha und Christus (1884), in which the avowed object was to demonstrate that the Ufe of Jesus, as related by the compilers of the synoptic Gospels, was almost wholly derived from similar anecdotes related of the Buddha in Buddhist legend and myth. The reader of the present book -will find the greater number of these stories quoted and compared -with their (so-called) Chris tian "parallels" and "derivatives." This theory had been, however, already effectively criticised by Bousset in the Theologische Rundschau for February, 1889. At the opening of the twentieth century another Ori ental "source" was proposed by Mr. J. M. Robertson (Christianity and Mythology, 1900; Pagan Christs: Stud ies in Comparative Hierology, 1903, 2d ed., 1912). This author, whose excursions into the field of theology all bear the marks of great haste and extreme recklessness of statement, has been very largely dealt -with in the pres ent volume. It -will suffice, therefore, to add here that he traces the portrait of Jesus, as drawn by the sjoioptic writers, to a s)aicretism of mythological elements de rived primarily, perhaps, from early Hebraic tradition and myth combined (later on) with various pagan myths, European as weU as Asiatic, and especiaUy the stories told about the early Ufe of Krishna and, in some cases. PREFACE xvii those recorded of the Buddha. Indeed, the idea con tained in the story of Jesus is, in the main, for him, very largely a recension of the myth of an old Ephraimitic sun-god "Joshua," which, when historicised, gave rise to a legend regarding a northern IsraeUte Messiah, Joshua ben Joseph. This last-mentioned -view of Christianity and its Founder, again, does not differ very greatly from that of Professor W. B. Smith, of Tulane University, New Or leans, U. S. A., who (Der Vorchristliche Jesus, 1906) de rives the "Christ-myth" from certain alleged "Jesus- cults," dating from pre-Christian times. Jesus is, he thinks, the name of an ancient Western Semitic cult-god, and he finds a reference to the doctrines held by the devotees of this deity in Acts 18 : 25. He also further maintains that "Nazareth" was not in pre-Christian times the name of a village in GaUlee (since no such -viUage then existed), but is a corruption of Nazaraios (Nofapato?), meaning "guardian" or "saviour" — a word identical in its signification -with "Jesus," the name of this ancient cult-god. "Christ," also, in like manner has reference to the same deity, for X/JtffTo? is equatable with ¦Xpi)trT6^, found in the LXX version of Psalm 34 : 8. The above views Professor Smith subsequently devel oped more fully in a later work (Ecce Deus, 1912), in which he maintains, contrary to the commonly accepted ¦view, that Jesus is presented by the evangeUst Mark wholly as a god (i. e., a cult-deity) in an anthropomorphic 'guise. We may, perhaps, here also briefly note another vari ant form of the mythical theory which has been pro posed by the German Assyriologist, P. Jensen. Doctor Jensen states (Das Gilgamesch-epos in der 'Welt- liter atur, 1906; Moses, Jesus, Paulus: drei "Varianten des Babylonischen Gottmenschen Gilgamesch, 1909; Eat der Jesus der Evangelien wirklich gelebt? iqio) that Jesus may xviii PREFACE be identified with not merely one but several of the myth ical heroes in the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, and a series of so-called parallels found in that work and the Gospels are set forth in his Moses, Jesus, Paulus, as estabUshing the truth of his thesis. His theory, however, has been rejected by the almost unanimous consent of scholars, and one American theologian has even gone so far as to pronounce the whole hypothesis "elaborate bosh." But the hypothesis of the mythical origin and nature of Christianity and the unhistorical character of the Gos pel narratives reaches its culminating point in two re cent works of Professor Drews, of Karlsruhe, who, aban doning for a time the exposition of philosophy, appears as the strenuous advocate of a mythical Christianity (Die Christusmyihe, 1910, EngUsh translation The Christ Myth; and The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus,^ 1912). His method and conclusions may be briefly summarised as follows: From Robertson and W. B. Smith he borrows the general mythical -view of the Gospel narratives, and in particular the identification of Jesus with an ancient He brew cult-deity, Joshua, and an old Greek divine healer- hero, Jason — equating Jason = Joshua = Jesus (Joshua forming the intermediate Unk) as aU representing the sun. Further, from Professor W. B. Smith he adopts the theory that the members of these cults had been termed "Nazoraeans" (Nazaraioi). Christianity, he maintains, is primarily and mainly a syncretism of these elements together with (orthodox) Jewish Messianism plus the pa gan (Greco- Roman, etc.) idea of a "redeemer-god," who annually "dies" and "rises," and thereby promotes the welfare of mankind. This synthesis, he thinks, was ef fected in the mind of St. Paul, who "knew no historical Jesus" (II Cor. 5 : 16). This explains, he surmises, the great change which took place in the -views and actions ' An amended version of the second part of The Christ Myth. PREFACE xix of St. Paul. At first, he says, Paul, as a legaUst, vio- lentiy opposed the gospel because the law pronounced cursed every one who had been "hanged upon a tree." But suddenly he became "enUghtened," and a reconciU- ation became possible. He found that he could combine the idea of the expected and orthodox Jewish Messiah of the first century -with the older and self-sacrificing god of the ethnic nature-cults, which latter were closely akin to the pre-Christian Joshua or Jesus cults. "This," con cludes Professor Drews, "was the moment of Christian ity's birth as a reUgion of Paul." ' To sum up: Professor Drews has himself stated his position in the following terms: The Gospels do not contsiin the history of an actual man, but only the myth of the god-man Jesus clothed in an historical dress. Further, such important, and for reUgious purposes sig nificant, events in the Gospels as the Baptism, the Lord's Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection of Jesus are aU borrowed by St. Paul from the cult-worship of the mythical Jesus, being embodied in ancient and pre- Christian systems of reUgious ritual. Yet further: The "historical Jesus" of modern crit ical theology has now become so vague and doubtful a figure in both reUgion and history that he can no longer be regarded as the absolutely indispensable condition of salvation. Doctor Drews Ukewise beUeves that his own works are written in the true interests of reUgion, for which ideas alone— not personaUties — have value, and, by reason of his convictions, that the forms of Christian ity which have hitherto prevailed are no longer sufficient for modern needs. Not the historical Jesus, he urges, but Christ as an idea — as an idea of the divine humanity — must henceforth be the ground of reUgion. And he adds that "when we can and wiU no longer beUeve on acci- 'We have here an example of the application of the three "moments" of the Hegelian dialectic — thesis, antithesis, synthesis ; see Hegel's Logic. XX PREFACE dental [ ! ] personaUties, we can and must beUeve on ideas." ^ It is not our purpose here to deal with this complex mass of crude theories, suppositions, and assumptions, but we may, perhaps, in this place appropriately quote the apposite remarks thereupon of Doctor A. Schweitzer (Paul and His Interpreters, pp. 193 and 239): "In par ticular, these [mythical] works aim at getting hold of the idea of a Greek redeemer-god who might serve as an analogue to Jesus Christ. No figure of this designation occurs in any myth or in any mystery reUgion; it is cre ated by a process of generalisation, abstraction, and re construction." Again: "These writers make a rather extravagant use of the pri-vilege of standing outside the ranks of scien tific theology. Their imagination leaps with playful ele gance over obstacles of fact, and enables them to dis cover everywhere the pre-Christian Jesus whom their souls desire, even in places where an ordinary inteUi gence can find no trace of it." ^ This is true; and it is also true that any discussion of a general nature which may be carried on with reference to these "generaUsations, abstractions, and reconstruc tions" is seldom a fruitful one. Let us, therefore, put the results of the above mental operations to a more con crete test, -viz., that of an actual comparative study in detail. In other words, let us analyse and compare care fully the stories told by the evangeUsts with the mythic episodes from which the former are said to be derived, or which they are confidently stated to resemble. If they fail in this final and supreme test, then we may safely dismiss the whole theory of the mythical interpre tation of the Gospels, with its "generaUsations, abstrac- ' See the Berliner Rdigionsgesprach, 1910, pp. 94 /.; and cf. Die Christus- mythe, p. xi. ^ See also Doctor F. C. Conybeare, The Historicai Christ, p. 29. PREFACE xxi tions, and reconstructions," as an interesting but empty dream. This is, indeed, the practical and only true method of testing aU theories in almost every depart ment of knowledge, and it is the one which the present writer has endeavoured to set before his readers in the foUo-wing pages. Further, the author wishes to express his great obliga tions and sincere thanks to a number of eminent scholars who have kindly furnished him -with expert information upon various special or obscure points where his own knowledge was either wanting or defective. Amongst these the foUo-wing gentlemen may be specially men tioned: Doctor E. M. WalUs Budge, keeper of the As- S3rrian and Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum, London; Doctor A. A. MacdoneU, Boden professor of Sanscrit in the University of Oxford; Doctor L. H. MiUs, professor of Zend phUology in Oxford University; and Doctor W. M. FUnders Petrie, F.R.S., F.B.A., Ed wards professor of Egyptology in University College, London University. His friend the Reverend F. B. AlU- son, M.A., F.R.A.S., formerly fellow of Sidney Sussex CoUege, Cambridge, and E. Walter Maunder, Esq., F.R.A.S., late superintendent of the Solar Department in the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, also gave him valuable assistance on astronomical questions, which he acknowledges with gratitude. Finally, the author's thanks are due to his son, Charles E. A. Thorburn, for his kindness in typing the three copies of the original manuscript which were required by the conditions of the trust. CONTENTS CHAPTER p,lgj; I. Mary and Joseph 3 II. The Annunciation, Conception, and Birth . . 24 III. The Narratives of the Infancy and Childhood 43 IV. Jesus. Christ. Pre-Christian Christ and Jesus Cults 63 V. Bethlehem. Nazareth and the Nazarean. Galilee 89 VI. The Baptism no VII. The Temptation 133 VIII. The Transfiguration 154 IX. The Entry into Jerusalem and the Expulsion OF THE Traders 167 X. The Eucharist and the Mystery-Cults . . 1 . 178 XI. Gethsemane. The Betrayal and Arrest. The Young Man Who Fled Away Naked . . . 208 XII. The Trials. Peter. Pilate. Lithostroton-Gab- batha. Annas and Caiaphas 228 XIII. Judas Iscariot and [Jesus?] Barabbas . . . 248 XIV. The Mockery of Jesus. Simon of Cyrene. Gol gotha AND the Phallic Cones. The Cross and Its Astral Significance. The Crucifixion. The Burial in the New Tomb 270 xxiii XXIV CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XV. The Descension to Hades. The Resurrection AND Ascension to Heaven 302 Appendices: a. the dates of the birth and death of jesus christ 331 B. AGNI and AGNUS 335 C. THE "astral drama" OF THE CRUCIFIXION. 338 Index . 347 THE MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS The Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels CHAPTER I MARY AND JOSEPH It is an almost primary necessity of every theory of a mythical interpretation of the Gospels to demonstrate that Mary and Joseph are ancient deities, the former in particular being identical with the mother-divinities of the pagan nature-cults, who were worshipped under one form or another, and under different-names, by the vari ous nations and races which occupied the countries situ ated round about the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.* We -wiU, therefore, begin our study of this complex question with the statements of this thesis as they are set forth by two of the leading exponents of the theory, and for the most part in their own words. "The whole birth-story," writes Mr. J. M. Robertson (Christianity and Mythology, p. 319), "is indisputably late, and the whole action mythic; and the name [Mary] is also to be presumed mythical. For this there is the double reason that Mary, or Miriam, was already a mythic name for both Jews and Gentiles. The Miriam of Exodus is no more historical than Moses; Uke him and Joshua she is to be reckoned an ancient deity evem- erised, and the Arab tradition that she was the mother of Joshua (= Jesus) raises an irremovable surmise that a ' Similarly, the patriarch Joseph is regarded by Doctor Winckler and others as a form of the sun-god. 3 4 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS Mary, the mother of Jesus, may have been worshipped in Syria long before our era." But Mr. Robertson further continues: "It is not pos sible, from the existing data, to connect historically such a cult with its congeners; but the mere analogy of names and epithets goes far. The mother of Adonis, the slain 'Lord' of the great Syrian cult, is Myrrha; and Myrrha, in one of her myths, is the weeping tree* from which the babe Adonis is born. Again, Hermes, the Greek Logos, has for mother Maia, whose name has further connex ion with Mary. In one myth Maia is the daughter of Atlas (ApoUod., Ill, lo, 2), thus doubUng with Maira, who has the same father (Pans., VIII, 48) and who, hav ing died a -virgin (ibid., X, 30), was seen by Odysseus in Hades. MythologicaUy, Maira is identified with the dog- star, which is the star of Isis. "Yet again, the name appears in the East as Maya, the -virgin mother of the Buddha, and it is remarkable that, according to a Jewish legend, the name of the Egyptian princess who found the babe Moses was Merris (Euseb., PrcBp. Evan., IX, 27). The plot is stiU further thick ened by the fact that, as we leam from the monuments, one of the daughters of Rameses II was named Meri (Brugsch., Egypt Under the Pharaohs, II, p. 117)." Further: "In the matter of names, it is of some though minor interest to recaU that Demeter is associated in Greek mythology with one Jasios, or Jasion, not as mother but as lover (Od., V, 125; Hesiod, Theog., 960). Jason, as we know, actually served as a Greek form of the name Joshua, or Jesous (Jos., Ant., XII, 5, i); and Jasion, who in one story is the founder of the famous Samothracian mysteries (Preller, Griech. Myth., I, 667), is, in the ordinary myth, slain by Zeus. But the partial parallel of his name is of less importance than the possible parallel of his mythical relation to the goddess-mother. ' /. «., it exudes a resinous gum. See aiiipva. (Greek lexicon). MARY AND JOSEPH 5 "In many if not aU of the cults in which there figures a nursing mother, it is found that her name signifies the nurse,! or that becomes one of her epithets. Thus, Maia stands for 'the nurse,' tjoo See The Christ Myth, pp. S3 and 78. ? The last two from authorised translations. 8 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS meaning. We will now proceed to examine, as concisely as may be, these "second-hand statements," as they are truly termed by Doctor Cheyne, who adds: "Even if they were always correct, and had no need of verification, the inferences are impossible."' It wiU have been gathered from these quotations that both Mr. Robertson and Doctor Drews, admitting the silence of history upon these points, very largely base their hypothetical identifications of all the Marys -with the mother-goddesses upon analogy and the etymologies of their numerous local appellations. This is — within Umits — justifiable, and a salutary check upon -wild specu lation; let us, therefore, in the present chapter apply this important test, so far as it is appUcable, and see what results we get from it. The Goddess-Mothers Speaking broadly and generally, it may be affirmed that in the various locaUsed forms of the goddess-mother the root ma ("bring forth") forms part of the name. This is especiaUy e-vident in that very primitive form, Amma^ (Ma), the Hittite name of the mother. But this root certainly cannot be found in all the names enumerated by Professor Drews, who, along with Mr. Robertson, appears to think that because an Oriental female name begins -with M, or contains a syUable in which that con sonant forms the initial letter, it is a sure indication that we are deaUng with some form of the universal mother.* ' See his review of The Christ Myth in the Hibhert Journal, April, 191 1, p. 60. ' Probably akin to Assyr., alittu, " the begetting one," fem. part, of alddu, "to give birth." Thus we get the form mulitta {cf. Herod., I, 199) from Salid-tu, the m reproducing the semi-vowel j and a becoming u through the influence of the labial m. • It will be impossible here to take aU these names in detail. Amongst the striking exceptions to the rule laid down by Drews we may mention Ma-ndani. According to Doctor Mills, professor of Zend philology at Ox ford, Mandane may be derived from any of the following: (i) mad {cf. MARY, OR MARIAM (MIRIAM) 9 Mary, or Mariam (Miriam) But it is when we turn to the alleged connexion of the name "Mary" ("Mariam") with that of the goddess- mothers that this theory is seen to be whoUy untrue to fact. With regard to the derivation and meaning of the Hebrew name "Mariam," Doctor Schmiedel says (Enc. Bib., art. "Mary," sec. i): "There are but two alterna tive roots that can be seriously considered, iTlO, 'to be rebeUious,' and «nn, 'to be fat.' The N of the SID might before the a of -dm pass into i, which in the case of iTlD is already the third consonant. The termination -am indicates substantives as well as adjectives, and is espe cially common in the case of proper names. Mariam, then, might mean either 'the rebeUious' (cf. Num. 12 : 1-15), or 'the corpulent.'" FinaUy, he decides in favour of the latter meaning as according exceUently with the whole analogy of Semitic names; it is associated, he adds, -with the Semitic idea of beauty. Doctor Boyd, on the other hand, thinks (Hastings' D. B., vol. I, art. "Miriam") that the name "is probably of Egyptian derivation," and explains it thus: Miriam = mer Amon (Amun), "beloved of Amon"' — an explana tion equally remote -with that of Doctor Schmiedel from the one sought to be estabUshed by the mythicists. It is clear, therefore, that in the name Mary there is abso lutely no trace of a meaning "begetter," or "nursing mother," which is often found in the names of the mother- goddess. Sansc., mad and mand), " to delight," " the winsome one." (2) man + dha, " the prudent {i. e., " exercising") mind." (3) A form from mana, " house," i. €., manadha, " house-mistress." There can be but Uttle doubt that she is an historical character. ' Similarly, Moses has been connected with mes, mesu, "son." Cf. Ra- mesu (Rameses), "son of Ra," etc. (so Sayce). 10 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS Mr. Robertson, however, at this point attempts to affiUate directly the Mariam (Mary) of the Gospel story with the Miriam of Exodus, who is, he adds with dog matic self-confidence, "no more historical than Moses." This latter theory has, it is true, been somewhat fash ionable of late, and it is zealously advocated by Doctor Hugo Winckler in his Geschichte Israels in Einzendarstel- lungen (1900). But, after aU, it is stiU a mere hypothe sis, and very far from being an estabUshed fact upon which an argument may be based. In short, the entire non-historicity of both Miriam and Moses has yet to be proved. Yet, he insists: "She is to be reckoned an an cient deity evemerised." Men, not deities — we may re mark here — are evemerised by being raised to the rank of gods. Very probably there has been some evemerism at work here, and Moses and Miriam were subsequently deified by the polytheistic Arabians and other neigh bouring races. This, however, would be a more con clusive argument for their historicity, though of course it would not prove that various mythic stories had not gathered round them and their exploits. In any case, Mr. Robertson's "irremovable surmise" that Mary the mother of Jesus "may [he is less dogmatic here!] have been worshipped in Syria as a form of the goddess-mother, long before our era," is nothing but a pure guess unsub stantiated by any admitted facts. We may at this point deal -with Mr. Robertson's ref erence to the Talmud in connexion -with this question. There is an e-vident confusion in this work between Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and the im putation impUed in the term "hair-dresser" was no doubt connected -with the birth-slanders of which Origen (Cont. Cels., I, 25, 32) speaks. Now Mary Magdalene is said (Luke 8 : 2) to have been formerly possessed of "seven demons." But the demoni acal possession of a woman would not of necessity imply MARY, OR MARIAM (MIRIAM) It harlotry as one of its effects. "Possession" frequently resulted in nothing worse than a morose disposition and -violent and mischievous acts (cf. Matt. 8 : 28). Again, Miriam (Mariam) is stated (Num. 12 : 10; cf. Deut. 24 : 9) to have been smitten with leprosy for con tempt of Moses. But this "contempt" in no way indi cates "moral possession by devils." It is true that in those times, and long pre-viously, disease of aU kinds was commonly attributed to maUcious demons, and in Baby lonian and other Uterature many formulae exist for the expulsion of these intruders. But the act is referred by the writers of both Numbers and Deuteronomy to Jah- veh, and the treatment of that disease was not exorcistic (see Lev. 13 and 14). Moreover, Miriam's leprosy (^Vl^) seems to have been only some transient skin affection, simulating perhaps the graver disease, and not the true leprosy (elephantiasis Grcecorum). Neither is there any e-vident connexion between the story of Miriam and the story of the Magdalene; stiU less is there any -with that of Mary the mother of Jesus. The "myths" — ^if myths they be — are apparently quite unconnected. Again, Mr. Robertson's contention that the root of the Hebrew word ^^20 (Migdal, "tower"), from which Magdala is commonly derived, and which yields also the various senses of "nursing" ("rearing"), and especially "hair-dressing," connects Mary Magdalene (who thus becomes a redupUcation of Mary the mother of Jesus) with the pagan goddess-mother, is founded upon the slenderest possible grounds, and reaUy proves nothing. It is true that Migdal has been — more or less plausibly — derived from a root bli, which has various meanings. Amongst these, in the Piel voice, it signifies intensively "to cause or take care that anything shaU grow," etc.; hence "to nourish," "to cultivate," "to bring up chil dren" (II Kings 10 : 6; Isaiah i : 2; 23 : 4); "to train the hair" (Num. 6 : 5), i. e., not to cut it. But there is great 12 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS uncertainty here. Apart from doubt as to the real der ivation, Magadan is a better reading. This, however, has been conjectured to be a "possible corruption of an orig inal Magdala." It is really impossible to frame any trust worthy hypothesis upon such meagre data. And in any case the existence of a to-wn — whatever the derivation and meaning of its name may be — caUed Magdala is amply proved by its mention in the Jerusalem Talmud fErubin, 5, i) which places it -within a Sabbath day's journey of Tiberias. The same authority (Ta'anith, 4, 8) states that it was a place of some wealth, and in the Midrash 'Ekkah, 2, 2, it is said to have been destroyed "because of Ucentiousness," which statement may have some connexion with the sinister post-evangeUcal repu tation of Mary Magdalene. It is much more probable, therefore, that this Mary derived her designation from the town of her origin than from any practise of hair-dressing, of which there is no trace in Christian tradition. Neither is there any e-vidence for the theory of her iden tity -with Mary the mother of the Lord further than the confusion between them which is shown in the Talmud; nor for the concomitant idea of her name indicating "begetting" or "nursing," for, as we have already shown, of this the name Mary (Mariam) contains no trace whatever. In short, Mr. Robertson's excursion into philology is a very precarious one, and proves nothing. ProbabiUty points to the reputation of the town in Jew ish tradition as ha-ving later adversely affected that of its townswoman,! and to a Talmudic misstatement — in advertent or deUberate — as having helped to formulate the confused and scurrilous birth-stories so common in the Je-wish synagogues of the second century. '/. e., the "seven demons" were supposed to cause licentiousness of life. But she is an himprwKbi, not a irbpvi) (Luke 7 : 37). THE "VIRGINITY" OF THE GODDESS-MOTHERS 13 The " Virginity" of the Goddess-Mothers In order to understand rightly the term "-virgin" as used in mythical Uterature, it must be remembered that it means no more than that the goddess in question had no recognised male partner, or, as Doctor Chejoie euphe- misticaUy states it (Bib. Probs., p. 75), that she was not "bound by the marriage-tie." * The mythical idea was .whoUy sexual and "unmoral." In the Gospels, on the contrary, the idea is purely parthenogenetic and has no impUcations of Ucense. In addition, however, to overlooking this important and fundamental distinction, Professor Drews makes vari ous assumptions and faUs into divers errors in connex ion with several of his "mythic mothers." Thus, he refers to Maera as " the -virgin mother of Mithra." Now the actual Mithra-myth is lost; we gather, however, from other sources that Mithra was variously described as ha-ving sprung from the incestuous intercourse of Ahura-Mazda -with his o-wn mother, and as being the ordinary offspring of a common mortal. Moreover, the extant Mithraic sculptures depict the god as originating from a rock (Petra genetrix) at birth Qustin Martyr, Dial. c. Try., 70). Furthermore, Mr. Robertson's assertion (Pagan Christs, p. 339) that "the -virginity" of the mother of Mithra was admitted by cer- ' Franckh says emphatically ("Geburtsgesch. Jes. Chr. im Lichte der altori- entahsch. -Weltansch," Philostia, 1907, pp. 213 /.): "None of these person ages that play the part of a mother-goddess is thought of as a virgin. . . . As mother-goddess Ishtar has no male god who permanently corresponds to her. This is the reason why she is vaguely spoken of as virgin Ishtar." In the Babylonian hturgies, as well as in the incantations, the "divine harlot" Lilitu (Heb., niSiS) is especiaUy described as a virgin {Babyloniaca, IV, 188, 4/., translated by S. Langdon). We also meet with the term "virgin-har lot" {i^-ta-ri-tum). See Haupt, Akkadische und Sumerische Keilschrifttexte, 126. 18. According to Epiphanius {Hcer., LI) the mother of Dusares (the N. Arab, equivalent for Tammuz, etc.) was adored as "the Virgin" {vap- eivoi Kbprj), while her son was worshipped as novoyev'iii tov Aea-ir&rov. 14 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS tain Christian bishops of Armenia in the fourth and fifth centuries A. D. is wholly incorrect. The Armenian his torian EUsaeus says (Concerning the Var dans and the Ar menian War, II, 53, 57) the bishops stated that "The god Mithra was born of a woman"; and again: "The god Mithra was incestuously born of a mortal mother." A similar error is perpetuated by Doctor Drews when he represents (The Christ Myth, p. 39) Saoshyant as the "-virgin's son." According to the mythic story the "seed" of Zarathustra was miraculously preserved in water in which three maidens bathed at different times. Each of them in succession became pregnant in consequence, and they severally afterwards gave birth to Saoshyant and his two precursors. It is in the highest degree absurd to classify stories of this type as "virgin births" in the BibUcal sense of the term. But the most glaring error committed by him is one into which he falls in common with many other modern writers. It is a defiance of all ancient authority to term the mother of the Buddha "the -virgin Maya." Not only the older PaU texts, but the Chinese version of the Abhinishkramana Sutra, and even the later Lalita vistdra,'- of the Northern or TiJjetan canon, plainly state that Maya was a married woman and Uved with her husband after the usual manner. A similar remark appUes to the statement that "the -virgin mother of Krishna" was named "Mariamma," or "Mari tala." The Purdnas (circ. 1000 A. D.), from which we derive our principal knowledge of the family affairs of Krishna, affirm that the name of his mother was Devaki, and that so far from being a "virgin" she had had, be fore the birth of Krishna, seven children by her husband Vasudeva. » A Ufe of the Buddha. THE VIRGIN OF THE ZODIAC .15 The Virgin of the Zodiac FinaUy, the attempt made by several German scholars to identify or connect Mary the mother of Jesus -with the "Virgin" of the zodiac is equaUy futile. This astral concept, if it be a reflection of the great mother-goddess idea, has a very different connotation from the Christian use of the word "virgin" (irapdevo<}) , as we have already sho-wn. Again, when Jeremias (Babylonisches, p. 48) and Cheyne (Bib. Probs., pp. 242 /.) point out that Mary, accord ing to Epiphanius (fourth century A. D.), was at a later period identified -with the mother-goddess, Pro fessor Carl Clemen very properly repUes that this fact proves nothing for earUer times. "StiU less," he adds, "does the fact which the former scholar adduces (foUow ing Dupuis), -viz., that on a side door of Notre Dame, in Paris, Mary is associated -with the signs of the zo diac" (Prim. Christ, and Its Non- Jewish Sources, p. 292, note 9).^ - A consideration of the various facts set forth in the above analysis of this question point, we think, very strongly to the foUowing conclusions upon the matter: (i) That Mary the mother of Jesus has no connexion whatever, Unguistically or analogically, with the great , mother-goddess of the ancient world. (2) That the term "-virgin" is appUed to her in quite a different sense to that which it bore in relation to the various local representa tives 'of the mother-goddess. Further, this last-named conclusion is supported by the additional fact that no where in the New Testament is Mary the mother of Jesus regarded as in any sense divine (cf. Mark 3 : 33 and 34). This fact alone, indeed, would form the greatest possible ' According to Jensen {Die Kosmol. der Babylonier, p. 67) the eariier Babylonians, and the Eastern nations generaUy, had no such name as "Vir gin" for the sign which was later known as Virgo. 16 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS bar to any identification of her -with the pagan goddess- mothers, which forms the basis of the mythical theory. Joseph "The myth of Joseph," writes Mr. Robertson (Chris tianity and Mythology, pp. 236 /.), "arose as a real acces sory to the cult [of the mother]. Once introduced, he would naturaUy figure as an elderly man, not only in the interests of the -virgin birth, but in terms of the Hebrew precedent adopted in the myth of the parentage of John the Baptist." ^ And then he proceeds to state that this, together with the story of "the leading of the laden ass by Joseph in the journey of the 'holy family,' was suggested by old reUgious ceremonial." This ceremonial turns out to be a sacred procession in the cult of Isis, as described by Apuleius (Metamorphoses, book XI), wherein there figures "a feeble old man leading an ass."' The great Isiac cult, he argues, would be unlikely to adopt such an episode from a new system Uke Christianity. The an tiquity of this s)anboUsm may next be traced to Plu tarch's statement (De Is. et Osir., 32) that "in the fore court of the temple of the goddess at Sais there were sculptured a child, an old man, and some animal figures." Lastly: "The Egyptians held that all things came from Saturn (ibid., 59), or a similar Egj^tian god, who signi fied at once time and the Nile (ibid., 32), and was al ways figured as aged." In short, "the Christian system is a patchwork of a hundred suggestions drawn from pagan art and ritual usage." But Mr. Robertson has a further and more importaAt source. Let us hear him patiently a Uttle further (Chris- • Referring here to the Hisl. of Joseph the Carpenter, IV and -VII, and the Gospel of the Birth of Mary, VIII. "This is the view," he adds, "of Chris tian tradition." "Apuleius says: "An ass, on which wings were glued, and which walked near a feeble old man." "These were supposed to represent Pegasus and BeUerophon" (Budge, Osiris, etc., vol. II, p. 297). JOSEPH 17 tianity and Mythology, pp. 326/.): "The first presump tion of the early Judaic myth-makers e-vidently was to present the Messiah as Ben Da-vid, son of the hero-king, himself clothed about with myth, Uke Cyrus. For this purpose were framed the two mythic genealogies. But it so happened," he proceeds, "that the Palestinian tradition demanded a Messias Ben Joseph — a descend ant of the mythic patriarch — as weU as the Messias Ben Da-vid." He decUnes to enter into the origin of the for mer doctrine, which, he says, "suggests a partial revival of the ancient adoration of the god Joseph, as weU as that of the god Daoud [sic], though it may have been," he concludes, "a tribal matter." We have not space to foUow out in further and mi nute detaU this argument, which the reader -wiU find in Mr. Robertson's work, but we -wiU here merely add his summary taken from Fragments of a Samaritan Targum (Nutt, 1874), p. 70, where the author writes: "Messiah the son of Joseph wiU come before Messiah the son of Da-vid, -wiU assemble the ten tribes in GaUlee and lead them to Jerusalem; but wiU at last perish in battle against Gog and Magog for the sins of Jeroboam." This passage, however, he adds, "overlooks the circumstance that in two Talmudic passages the Messiah Ben Da-vid is identified -with the Messiah Ben Joseph, or, as he is styled in one case, Ben Ephraim." ^ Professor Drews, to whom we -will now turn, in gen eral accepts the above presentation of the case and adds various details of his o-wn. Thus, he says (The Christ Myth, pp. 1 1 5-1 1 7): "As is weU known, Jesus, too [Uke Agni], had three fathers [sic], viz., his heavenly Father Jahwe, the Holy Spirit, and also his earthly father Joseph. The latter is also a workmaster, artisan, or car- ' References to Trad. Succa, folio 52, i; Zohar Chadash, foUo 45, i; and Pesikta, foUo 62, quoted by F. H. Reichardt, Relation of the Jewish Chris tians to the Jews (1884), pp. 37 and 38. 18 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS penter, as the word tekton indicates.* Similarly, Kiny- ras, the father of Adonis, is said to have been some kind of artisan, a smith or carpenter. That is to say, he is supposed to have invented the hammer and the lever, and roofing as weU as mining. In Homer he ap pears as the maker of the ingenious coat of mail which Agamemnon received from him as a guest-friend (//., XI, 20; cf. Movers, Die Phon., 242, s.). The father of Hermes is also an artisan." And in a foot-note he adds (p. 116): "According to the Arabian legend. Father Abraham, also, who plays the part of a sa-viour [!], was, under the name of Thare^ [? Terah], a skilful mas ter-workman, understanding how to cut arrows from any wood, and being especially occupied with the prep aration of idols (Sepp, Das Eeid. u. dess. Bedeut. fiir das Christent., 1853, HL 82)." FinaUy, he asserts that "Joseph, as we have already seen, was originaUy a god . . ."; and "In reaUty, the whole of the family and home Ufe of the Messiah, Jesus, took place among the gods. It was only reduced to that of a human being in lowly circumstances by the fact that Paul described the descent of the Messiah upon the earth as an assumption of poverty and a reUnquish- ment of his heavenly splendour (II Cor. 8:9). Hence" — and this is the crucial point in the whole of Drews's hypothesis — "when the myth was transformed into his tory,^ Christ was turned into a poor man in the economic sense of the word, while Joseph, the divine artificer, and father of the sun [ ! ], became an ordinary carpenter." We -wiU now subject this complex mass of confident ' AU clean handicrafts were looked upon by the Jews as honourable occu pations. Even the high priest might be a carpenter. This is quite a Sem itic view. ' See Koran (Sale's translation), pp. 95, 96, and notes. In Jewish records Terah is the father of Abraham. Arab traditions are very inaccurate and untrustworthy. ' ItaUcs ours. JOSEPH 19 assertions, unproved theories, and plausible identifica tions to as detailed an analysis as is here possible. It would be interesting to learn, in the first place, why the myth of Joseph arose as a real accessory to the cult [of a di-vine and virgin mother]. At the outset it is for eign to the pagan myths, and his presence in a story of that type would rather tend to discount it. But that is the reason, Mr. Robertson thinks, why he must be "elderly." The canonical Gospels, however, which con tain by far the oldest version of the story, nowhere de scribe, or appear to regard, him as being elderly. Mat thew, indeed (i : i8, 25 — ^in the latter verse especiaUy), indirectly negatives that -view. It is only in the very late Apocryphs (and in popular Christian art, derived from them) that Joseph is so depicted. And the motive for this newer -view is plain. The church had then become less Jewish, and the normal Hebrew ideal of faithful wedlock had largely given place to an aUen and ultra- ascetic GentUism in which perpetual -virginity was held up as the model -virtue for both men and women. This, however, was reaUy in flat contradiction to the teaching of the earUest church, as weU as that of the synoptic Gospels, which were the expression and the outcome of it. But ha-ving got the elderly man (from the late and un canonical gospels), Mr. Robertson proceeds to make the most of him. He is (apparently) identified with the feeble old man "leading an ass"* in the sacred proces sion of Isis, described by Apuleius in his Metamorphoses. How, may we ask, does Mr. Robertson know this? Apuleius does not explain the symboUsm of this proces sion, and Plutarch, to whom Mr. Robertson would seem to appeal, merely says that in the court of the temple at Sais there were graven figures of "a child and an old man," together with those of a hawk, a fish, and a hip- ' For the symboUsm of the ass, see Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol II, pp. Xift and 367. 20 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS popotamus, and adds that the two first-named stood for "the beginning and end of Ufe." Here we certainly get the elderly man (together -with what Plutarch thought he symboUsed) ; but what both of these examples have to do -with the story of Joseph it is impossible to see. Ap parently Mr. Robertson thinks that because an old man and a donkey figure, in some connexion or other, in a pagan cult, this fact constitutes an origin or source for either the story of the journey of Joseph to Bethlehem, or perhaps that of his subsequent ffight -with Mary and the Child upon an ass to Egypt. This connexion here, as the reader wiU see, is both highly obscure and extremely precarious. The parallel suggested by the aged Zacharias is more plausible. But even here the circumstances and details are very different. Both Zacharias and EUsabeth are aged married people, who, it would seem, greatly desired a son, because barrenness was a subject of reproach amongst the Jews as a mark of God's displeasure. More over, the Matthaean and Lucan stories came from differ ent sources,* and the Lucan is later. In any case, it is most unlikely that it has influenced the story of Mat thew or in any way suggested an elderly Joseph as an accessory to the -virginal (parthenogenetic) conception of Mary. The whole of Mr. Robertson's argument here, in short, is nil ad rem — ^it is beside the mark whether these stories are in any way historical or not. As regards the genealogies, it will be impossible here to deal with them in any detail. But we may advert to two important points which tend to throw some Ught upon them. Mr. Robertson has pronounced them both to be, Uke the birth-stories, mythic, late, and artificially concocted in support of the tradition of a future Messias Ben David. It so happens, however, that in the Jerusalem Talmud 1 This is shown, inter alia, by its difference of treatment and standpoint. JOSEPH 21 (Mishna, Jabamoth, 49a) there is a mention of an official record of the birth of Jesus, with apparently a reference to some. genealogy. It runs thus: "Simeon ben-Azzai* has said: I found in Jerusalem a book of genealogies; therein was written that 'So and So'^ is an iUegitimate son of a married woman (mamser)." Now, it is weU known that very soon after the faU of Jerusalem (A. D. 70) and the destruction of the Jewish state the interest in the Da-vidic descent of the Messiah rapidly decUned; to invent such documents, therefore, after that date, would have been iU-timed and practically useless. It may also be suggested that our present gen ealogies seem to be designed rather -with a -view to trac ing the descent of Jesus respectively from Abraham, "the Father of the Je-wish race," and from Adam, "the father of aU men." But the genealogy of the Messiah was, in any case, more a matter of interest to the Jew than to the GentUe. Our present Usts, too, are very artificial documents, and show signs of redaction and adaptation. FinaUy, as to Mr. Robertson's theory of a rival, and perhaps contemporary, Messias Ben Joseph, it must suf fice here to reply in the words of Doctor Che3Tie (Enc. Bib., ait. "Messiah," sec. 9): "The developed form of this idea is almost certainly a product of the polemic -with Christianity in which the rabbins were hard pressed by arguments from passages, which their own exegesis admitted to be Messianic." There is certainly, we may add, no evidence of its ex istence until after the time of Christ. That the Samar itans, after their rejection by the Jews (Ezra 4:3)* ^^Y have hoped for a non- Jewish Messiah is another matter, » Flourished end of first century A. D. 2 Or " that man," a common Tahnudic and cryptic reference to Jesus, used to avoid suppression by the Cliristian censor. Herod I is said (Eusebius. H. E., 1, 7; cf. Talmud, Pesachim, 62b), to have burnt aU genealogical ro isters in order to conceal traces of his humble birth. 22 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS and not improbable. At the same time, the Samaritan doctrine of the Taheb ("he who returns," or "he who re stores") is founded entirely upon Deut. i8 : 15, where it has no Messianic appUcation whatever. Moreover, in the Gospels, Joseph is not a rival Messiah but the foster-father of the Messias Ben Da-vid (Jesus). The additional and special points added to this argu ment by Professor Drews must be briefly noticed. The comparison which he draws with Agni and his "three fathers"* is almost too absurd to be taken seriously. The reference, in the case of Agni, is to his three succes sive births — a concept whoUy different from the one with which we are deaUng here. Jahveh, too, in the Gospels, is called the Father of Jesus, especiaUy in the sense of source or origin of his divine nature (n?;7^ 0€otjjto?). Joseph is placed in the capacity of foster-father and guardian of the young Child and his mother. The Holy Spirit alone is regarded by "Matthew" as bringing about the conception of Jesus Christ. As to Kinyras, he is stated to have been a son of Apollo, and a king of Cyprus, as weU as priest of the Paphian Aphrodite. But Homer says distinctly that Kinyras, "the man (or 'god') of the harp," gave the breast plate to (not made it for) Agamemnon.^ This would seem to indicate that he was not considered by Homer to be an artisan of any kind, and therefore not at aU comparable -with Joseph, the carpenter.' The real dif ficulty, in regard to Joseph, Ues in none of the points noticed above. It arises rather out of the meagre refer- ' Savitar (sky), Tvashtar (smith), and Matarishvan (wind-god). 2 $(itp7jKa Trepi ffr-^dea-ffiv i^Svvey Tbv irori ol Kivip-ris Siixe (eir^'iov eTvai. —II., XI, 20. ' The concepts vmderlying the Greek god Hermes, next referred to by Drews, are too complex and diflScult for treatment here. If, however, his nature and character are carefuUy studied in the Ught of comparative m-yth- ology, it wiU be seen that he represents no real paraUel whatever with Jesus, as the son of an " artisan." JOSEPH 23 ence that is made to him in the New Testament gener aUy, and, above aU, from the fact that he is not even named in the earUest Gospel (Mark). He is mentioned just fourteen times in all, and only by Matthew and Luke.* Mark, ha-ving no birth-story, does not allude to him, though this does not necessarily imply, as some critics would have it, that he knew nothing of Joseph. Certainly, had Mark been historicising a myth, he must have heard of a birth-story of some kind, and, in that case, he would probably have tried his hand at a trans position of it into history. Whatever conclusion, therefore, we may reach with regard to the nature of these narratives, which are not so late in their origin as Mr. Robertson confidently as sumes, it wiU be weU to remember the caution of Doctor Cheyne (a critic who, as it is well known, is strongly dis posed to discount a great deal for myth) when he says (Enc. Bib., art. "Joseph") : "^It would, however, be hasty to assert that there is no element of truth in the expres sion, 'Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is caUed the Christ (Matt, i : i6)."'2 ' I. €., in Matt, i and 2 seven times, in Luke 1-4 also seven times, the ref erences in both cases being in the introductory sections of the two Gospels. The Sin. Palimp. has " son of Joseph" (for " carpenter's son") in Matt. 13 : SS. The phrase njJ 13 (Baba Bathra, 736), however, simply means "a car penter," tnJi 13, and it has been suggested that, as used in the tradition, it may mean no more than this (see Enc. Bib., art. "Joseph," 9). ^Doctor Cheyne suggests, in the above article, that "Jesus, son of Joseph," may mean Jesus a member of the house [clan] of Joseph (Zech. 10 : 6). CHAPTER II THE ANNUNCIATION, CONCEPTION, AND BIRTH The Annunciation and Conception The narratives describing the annunciations to Mary and EUsabeth, the nature of the conception of Jesus and his birth at Bethlehem have commonly been whoUy ruled out of history not merely by the mythicists but also by many scholars who frankly accept an historical Jesus. The latter, while holding the undoubted histo ricity of Jesus, have been accustomed to regard Matt. I : 16-2 and Luke i and 2 as popular stories relating to an actual man which have undergone in places a super- naturaUsing modification at the hands of pious and weU- meaning, but ill-informed, copyists;* whereas the for mer, who regard the person of the Jesus set forth in the Gospels as purely mythical, have looked upon these rec ords as substantially variants of well-known myths con taining no substratum whatever of historical fact. The birth-stories, they assert, are nothing but old myths, and as such have a meaning, though this meaning is not historical; it is connected with an explanation of the universe, and the gods and mankind.^ ^ E.g., Matt. I : 16 is said to have had an original reading: " And Joseph begat Jesus, who is caUed Christ" ('loKr^j^ Si iyivvriae 'Iijaouv Thv \ey6fjte- vov "Xpurrbv), which was altered to the various readings now found in the MSS. ; Luke i : 34 and 35, and also the " as supposed " (is ivopiierofoi 3 : 23, are later interpolations in the interests of a supernatural birth. The present writer has discussed these questions at considerable length in a former work {A Critical Examination of the Evidences for the Doctrine of the Virgin Birth, 1908), to which the reader is referred for detaUs. ^Dupuis (1742-1809 A. D.) is the real "father" of the more modem form of mythicism. See L'origine de tous les cultes (1794). 24 THE ANNUNCIATION AND CONCEPTION 25 The criticism of Strauss deaUng -with the annunciations and the conception, which we will take first, is, however, less concerned -with any explanation. It is chiefly con centrated on the impossibiUty of the supernatural char acter commonly ascribed to these two events. It may be summed up as foUows: The announcement to the priest Zacharias, by the angel Gabriel, that a son wUl be born to him, is described as "the first point which shocks aU modem conceptions" (The Life of Jesus, EngUsh trans lation, 1838, chap. I, p. 98). By this he means that the thought of the age rejects " the reaUty of angels," who were unquestionably accepted by the Jews (-with the exception of the Sadducees) and the early Christians as actual beings existent in a spiritual world, but also oc- casionaUy manifesting themselves in this material sphere. He finds, too, the "dumbness" which fell upon Zacharias "unreasonable," and the other details of the vision incon sistent and incredible. The pre-vious proposals of Paulus to rationalise these stories are also rejected.* Similar objections are taken to the story of the annun ciation to Mary. Moreover, the accounts of Matthew and Luke are, in several respects, held to be mutuaUy inconsistent and even contradictory. Thus: (i) in the former the "apparition" is merely an "angel of the Lord" (a77e\o? KvpCov); in Luke he is specifically caUed "the angel Gabriel" (0 dyyeXo'', ^J?an'', etc." (see Phoniz., chap. 14, pp. 539-558). Jao, it is true, was a mystical name of Dionysus among the Greeks; but, as that god had probably an Oriental origin, it was doubtless merely a Greek transUteration of his original name, which was not, it would seem, a form of Jahveh. It has Ukewise no connexion, etymo- logically or otherwise, -with the names "Joshua" or "Jesus." Neither can we compare the roaming about of Diony sus as depicted in the various forms of the myth with the traditional work of either Joshua or Jesus. If the accounts are compared the differences are seen to be absolute. Dionysus was, perhaps in one sense, a form of JESUS 73 the sun-god, and Jao was, it may be, the autumnal phase of that deity; that either Joshua or Jesus were solar deities remains, as we have already said, to be proved. Their stories — especiaUy that of the former — in their minor detaUs may have coUected a few mythical traits, during the course of transmission, but the his torical bases remain unshaken. Professor Smith's alternative suggestion that Jao may represent the compound name Jah-Alpha-Omega is no doubt ingenious and plausible, but it rests on no basis of fact, even if that trigrammaton were (as is probable) "in HeUenistic early theosophic circles a favourite desig nation of deity." It is quite as Ukely, if not more so, that such interpretation, if current in the earUer Chris tian centuries (of which, however, we have no proof), sprang from the special use of Alpha and Omega, the first and last letters in the Greek alphabet, in the passage of the Apocalypse to which Smith refers. Before closing this section of the present chapter, we may briefly advert to the pecuUar mythical theory of Professor P. Jensen, according to whom the Jesus of the Gospels is really neither a personified ideal, based upon pre-Christian Jewish and pagan models (Drews), nor an anthropomorphised Je-wish cult-god (Smith, and mainly Robertson), but a reproduction, or reflection, of one or more of the heroes whose exploits are recorded in the ancient Babylonian Gilgamesh epic. He is to be identi fied, Jensen thinks, now -with Eabani, the man-monster of the story, now -with Xisuthros, the Babylonian Noah, and now with Gilgamesh himself, the chief hero of the epic, and the King of Erech (Uruk).* In his Moses, Jesus, Paulus (pp. 28-31), he works out a series of (in the case of Jesus) thirty "paraUels," or "correspondences," in •See Jensen's Das Gilgamesch epos in der Wdtliteratur (1906); Moses, Jesus, Paultis: drei Varianten des babylonischen gottmenschen Gilgamesch (1909); Hat der Jesus der Evangelien wirklich gdebtf (1910). 74 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS which he thinks the Gospels reproduce the chief episodes of the original myth. Moses and Paul have a similar der ivation. It will be impossible here to discuss in detail this theory; but we may remark briefly that it is a priori open to at least two very grave, and indeed insuperable, objections. In the first place, many of the so-called parallels are very forced and artificial. As instances of this, two or three examples must suffice. Sinful human ity and most beasts, including s-wine, are drowned in the great deluge. This is paraUeled by the drowning of the two thousand demons and s-wine in the Sea of GaUlee. Again, on the Mount of Transfiguration Peter and the two other disciples wish to build tabernacles. The origin of this episode is traced to Gilgamesh* feUing some trees before his voyage to Xisuthros, the Chaldean Noah. Many other similar extravagant derivations might be quoted, but these will serve our present purpose. Secondly, the theory entirely overlooks the numerous incidents in the Gospels to which there are no corre spondences in the epic. Moreover, the highly ethical and spiritual note characteristic of the former is entirely unaccounted for upon this h3^othesis. The theory has received a very sUght support upon the Continent, e. g., from Briickner (Christ. Welt., 1907, p. 202) and Beer (Theol. Jahresber., 1906, p. 14); but prac tically none outside Germany. The majority of scholars have regarded it as fanciful, and it has even been de scribed by such a frank and outspoken critic as Professor B. W. Bacon (Hibbert Journal, July, 1911, p. 739) as "elaborate bosh." At all events it cannot be regarded as a reaUy serious contribution to the mythical hypothesis. • For Gilgamesh as a form of Tammuz, see Babylonian Liturgies, by S. Langdon, p. 20, Rev. 3, and Rev. d'Assyriologie, IX, ns, col. 3 : i. CHRIST AND KRISHNA 75 Christ The tide "Christ"— Greek, XpcaTik,^ substantive form of xpicTTo^, "anointed" — is a translation of the Hebrew, n'l^D, mashiakh, "Messiah," i. e., "anointed" (Aram., Km^D, meshihd, more fully meshiakh Jahveh, " Jahveh's anointed.") Christ and Kfishf^a FoUo-wing the example of a number of modern writers. Professor Drews, as we have seen, primarily seeks to identify the Christ of the Gospels -with the Krishna of the modern Hindu cult-worship.^ Thus, he speaks of " the Hindu Krishna, who, as sa-viour, conqueror of drag ons, and crucified, is in many respects as Uke Jesus as one egg is Uke another" (The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, p. 214). As these "many respects" are not detaUed here, though elsewhere (op. cit., p. 197), fol io-wing Mr. Del Mar, he speUs the name of the Hindu god "Crishna," we are driven to an examination of the original story of Krishna, and to contrast this -with its subsequent additions, as also to ascertain the origin of the variant modern spelUng by which it is superficially assimilated to the characteristic Messianic title of Jesus. The authentic sources for the legend of Krishna are the foUowing Sanscrit works: the Mahdbhdrata (book V), the Bhdgavata Purana (book X), the BhagavadgUd (book X), the Harivarfisa (3304 Jff.), and the Vishnu Purdiia (book V). To these, for the more highly leg endary and modern additions, may be added the Prem Sdgar, an edition in the vernacular Hindi of that part of the Bhdgavata which relates to the Ufe of Krishna. For details the reader is referred to the excellent EngUsh •The attempt of Professor W. B. Smith (in Der Vorchristliche Jesus, 1906) to connect xpurrbi with xPV'rf'^, XP'^op^h "to use" (see Psalm 34 : s) is quite untenable. 2 He admits also a subsidiary Buddhist influence. 76 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS translations of these books which are now available. It must suffice here to refer to a few main incidents, and to say that we learn from the most ancient and pre- Christian authorities that the mother of Krishna was not named "Mariamma," * but Devaki; that she was not a "-virgin," but the mother of eight sons, of whom Krishna was the last; that her husband's name was not " Jama- dagni," a village carpenter, but Vasudeva, a descendant of the Lunar Une of kings, and, finally, that Krishna was not "crucified," ^ but (according to even the Vishnu Pu rana) was shot by a hunter in mistake for a deer. But this by the way. Further, the legends about his putative father being called away from home "to pay taxes," ^ his "recogni tion as a god by Magi," his "last supper in company -with ten disciples," and similar stories, are all pure fic tion and undoubtedly owe their origin to imitators of the Gospel narratives. Now, the question arises, when did this extraneous mat ter find its way into the Krishna legend and from what sources did it come? It probably began at an early period. The story of Jesus Christ was carried into India at the latest before the end of the second century A. D. (see Euseb., H. E., V, lo). And, according to Weber's version of a paragraph in the Mahdbhdrata, it was also brought back to India by Brahman travellers. Both Weber and Lassen interpret the passage in question to mean that early in the Chris tian era three Brahmans -visited a community of Chris- •This, and the other statements immediately foUowing, are apparently taken from Del Mar's The Worship of Augustus Ccesar, pp. 89-92. ''The Hindu sculptures of a crucifixion of Kpshija referred to by Mr. Higgins {The Hindoo Pantheon) are unquestionably either representations of Jesus Christ, executed by the early church in India, or later Brahman- ical imitations based upon these. ' This statement is apparently derived from the A. V. of Luke's Gospel (2:3), where &iroypi(pe(reai ("to be enroUed") is wrongly translated "to be taxed." CHRIST AND KRISHNA 77 tians in the East, and that on their return "they were able to introduce improvements [!] into the hereditary creed, and more especiaUy to make the worship of Krishna Vasudeva the most prominent feature of their system." An article by an anon)mious Sanscritist in the Athe nceum for August lo, 1867, may also be consulted. In this the writer shows how the Btahmans took from the Gospels such things as suited them and used these ex tracts in the composition of Krishna episodes which were interpolated into MSS. of the Mahdbhdrata. Another source of interpolations would seem to be documents of an apocryphal character. Doctor L. D. Barnett, of the British Museum, says (Hinduism, 1906, p. 21, note): "A considerable number of the details in the Puranic myths of Krishna's birth and childhood seem to have come from debased Christian sources (apocryphal Gospels and the Uke) such as were current in the Christian church of Malabar." But a great deal of interpolation of matter derived from the Bible into Sanscrit works has undoubtedly taken place since the British occupation of India and the re-vival of Christian missions in that country. In the latter part of the eighteenth century a certain Lieu tenant Wilford, of the East India Company's service, was anxious to ascertain whether many prominent Bib Ucal characters were referred to in the Hindu sacred books. Accordingly, he offered rewards for any informa tion which would show this to be the case. Some time afterwards many pundits came forward and placed in his hands copies of Sanscrit MSS. which contained such information as he was seeking. This discovery at the time produced great enthusiasm throughout Europe, and even such experts as Sir WiUiam Jones were induced to accept the e-vidence as trustworthy. After a time, however, suspicions were aroused, and a critical examination showed that clever forgeries had 78 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS been committed by means of interpolations of BibUcal episodes written in Sanscrit and more or less modified to suit the change. Lieutenant WUford reluctantly ac knowledged that he had been imposed upon; but his Essays upon the subject are stiU quoted by writers who apparentiy are ignorant of the fraud, as also of the sub sequent confession of Lieutenant Wilford that he had been grossly deceived by unscrupulous pundits.* We have now to deal -with the question of the variant spelUng of Krishna as " Crishna," "Chrishna," or " Crist- na," much affected by some writers, especiaUy those of the mythical school. And we will commence our inquiry by quoting a distinguished modern scholar. "There is no authority," writes Doctor MacdoneU,^ the Boden Professor of Sanscrit at Oxford, "for spelUng the name Krshna (or Krishna) 'Crishna,' much less 'Cristna.' The in itial [letter] is a K, and nothing else. I cannot give you references on this question, as any discussion there may be on it (unknown to me) cannot have any value. On the other hand, it is a fact that in some of the ver nacular forms of the word Krishna (both as an adjec tive meaning 'black' and as the name of a river on the southeastern coast) a, 't' often appears. Thus, in Kan- arese you have Krisna, Krstna, Kristna, Krsta, and Kitta, for the Sanskrit Krsna. The Anglo-Indian form of the name is Kistna. In Kanarese and Malayalam, 'Christian' appears in the form of Krisiina, 'Christ' as Kristi; in Tamil, 'Christ' appears as Kiristi." Similarly, Mr. Blumhardt, university lecturer on the modern Indian dialects at Oxford, writes: "The Ben gali always pronounce shn as sht, -with a nasaUsation of the vowel. So Krsna becomes Kristan. Next 'r' is dropped, and the final inherent 'a' is sounded Uke '6.' ¦ See Chips from a German Workshop, F. Max MiiUer, vol. IV, pp. 210- 213. * In a letter to the present writer. CHRIST AND KRISHNA 79 Thus we have Kishton, which form is perhaps more common than Krishton. The similarity of the name with Christ is purely accidental."* From the above-quoted expert information it is quite clear that aU theories of the type, of Mr. Del Mar's (who appears to be foUowed bUndly by Professor Drews) of a pre-Christian Hindu cult-god "Crishna," equatable with "Christ" (and "Jesus"), are merely unconfirmed guesses -with no basis of fact underljdng them. Finally, Krishna, who (as Professor Drews declares) in the oldest Indian Uterature (the Vedas) appears to be not a sun-god — i. e., an incarnation of Vishnu — but a demon, is, only after the Christian era, transformed into a divine being through the agency of such comparatively late works as the Purdnas.^ Hence a later Christian origin of those episodes in the complete Krishna legend which resemble stories found in the Gospels is the most feasible explanation.' • It may also be added that the two names have a fimdamentally differ ent signification: Christ = "Anointed"; Kpsh^a = "the Black one." ^ See Jacob's Manual of Hindu Pantheism, "The Vedantasara" (1891), and Weber in the Indian Antiquary, II, p. 285. The Vishnu Purana dates from about the ninth or tenth century A. D., the Bhagavata Purana from about the thirteenth century A. D. On this question Mr. J. M. Robertson very lamely remarks {Christianity and Mythology, p. 302): "The lateness of Puranic stories in Uterary form is no argument against their antiquity. Scholars are agreed that late doc uments often preserve extremely old mythic material." This statement contains a germ of truth; but we may add that the lateness of Gospel stories in Uterary form is invariably regarded as strong evidence against their an tiquity — and this even by Christian critics. 2 Several other aUeged paraUels to the Jewish-Christian idea of a Messiah (Christ) have been suggested: e. g., (i) When the Babylonian plague-god Dibbarra attacks the city Erech, chaos reigns in the place and district untU after a time the Akkadian -wiU come, overthrow aU, and conquer aU of them. The anointed saviour who wiU remedy aU tUs is Hammurabi, who wiU open up a golden age of peace and prosperity {Relig. of Bab. a-nd Assyr., M. Jastrow, Jr.; cf. Mark 13 : 8-12, and Matt. 10 : 21). (2) A Buddhist paraUel is also quoted (see Rhys David's Hibb. Lects., i88r, p. 141; cf. also Cheyne, Jewish Religious Life, p. loi, and Enc. Bib., art. "Messiah," sec. 10). 80 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS Pre-Christian Christ and Jesus Cults "There was . . . not merely a pre-Christian Christ, as Gunkel admits, a beUef in the death and resurrection of Christ in Judaso-syncretist circles [refer to Gunkel's Zum Religionsgeschichtl. Verstdndnis des Neuen Test. (1903), p. 82], but there was also a pre-Christian Jesus, as Jesus and Christ were only two different names for the suffering and rising servant of God, the root of David [Jesse] in Isaiah, and the two might be combined when one wished to express the high-priesthood of the Mes sianic character of Jesus. Jesus was merely the general name of the sa-viour and redeemer. ..." Thus writes Professor Drews in his more recent supplementary work, The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus (1912), p. 200. Now, if we understand Professor Drews aright, there are two, or rather three, propositions laid down here, all of a highly disputable character. First, it seems to be main tained that there was in pre-Christian times an esoteric Christ-cult, of Judaic origin, in which a worship of (or at least a beUef in) a di-vine redeemer was the chief cult- doctrine; secondly, that there was also a similar and contemporaneous Jesus-cult (?) of Ephraimitic origin — possibly connected -with an old tribal and solar god; thirdly, that these two concepts later on became one and the same.* Let us proceed to consider this thesis with all due care and impartiality and see upon what basis it rests. • Mr. Robertson {Christianity a-nd' ^Mythology, pp. 326 _ff.) and Professor Drews {The Christ Myth, pp. 79-82) lay great stress upon an aUeged pre- Christian twofold idea of a Messiah Ben David and a Messiah Ben Joseph, Drews also {loc. cit.) advancing the theory that our Gospels represent "a reconciUation and fusion of the two concepts." The idea of an unsuccess ful Ephraimitic Messiah is certainly found highly developed in the Talmud, but even its existence in pre-Christian times is problematical (see Enc. Bib., art. "Messiah," sec. 9). CHRIST-CULTS 81 Christ-cults As regards the pre-Christian Christ, the whole of the vaUd part of the argument in its favour reaUy turns upon the meaning to be attached to two particular por tions of the Old Testament Scriptures — Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53.* The two rival interpretations of these docu ments — both probably referring to the "suffering Serv ant of Jahveh" — are that the respective writers had in their minds either (i) an indi-vidual suffering, dying, and rising "superman," or divine man, or God, or (2) that they (primarily, at least) referred to the collective remnant of Israel and its sufferings during and after the exUe and subsequent restoration to God's favour. Now, it is a remarkable but at the same time indis putable fact that aU the extant Jewish Uterature, both pre and post exiUc, apocalj^tic and apocryphal alike, and even such notices as we meet -with in the greater writing prophets, invariably depict the future Messiah ("Christ") as a triumphant conqueror and prince who -wiU in some way restore the ancient glories of Israel and abase the enemies of God's ancient people.^ Even for • Gressmann even goes so far as to suggest that chap. S3 is really a hymn belonging to the "mystery" of the Adonis-cult, simg by Jewish mystce on that god's death-day, and celebrating his birth, death, and resurrection. But there are many and great objections to this view: e. g., Adonis is always depicted as a beautiful youth, whereas the "servant" has "no comeliness" and is "despised and rejected of men." There are also other difierences. Isaiah $5:1-2 was interpreted by post-Christian (and probably by pre- Christian) Jews of Moses, who poured out his soul unto death (Ex. 33 : 32), and was numbered with the transgressors (those who died in the wilderness), and bare the sins of many that he might atone for the sin of the golden calf {Sotah., 14). * The present writer has worked out this view at some length in his Jesus the Christ: Historical or Mythical? (1912), chap, i, to which the reader is referred. Drews, however, claims {The Christ Myth, p. 79) that besides Psalm 22 and Isaiah S3i "™ Daniel 9 : 26 mention is made of a dying Christ." This is a difficult passage but probably has no tme Messianic meaning. Driver quotes Bleek's -view of it, as representing that of many 82 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS Philo Judaeus — a contemporary of Jesus and a man weU versed in the mystical interpretation of the Old Testa ment Scriptures — the Messiah is to be a man of war, who will crush all the foes of Judah.* There is no Jewish literature extant — except, possibly. Psalm 22 and Isaiah S3 — that lend any support to the theory of a pre-Chris tian doctrine of a suffering and rising Christ as being in vogue amongst the Jews, and if such a notion were en tertained by any Judaeo-syncretist circles they have most carefully and successfuUy refrained from placing their -views on record in any Uterary form. On the other hand, the interpretation that the Servant meant the faithful remnant who returned from the exile has been the -view held by Jewish teachers in aU ages and was the universal interpretation in the time of Jesus. Jesus-cults The first EngUsh writer to urge this hypothesis in any full and systematic manner was Mr. J. M. Robertson,'' who states his theory as follows: "That Joshua is a purely mythical personage was long ago decided by the histor ical criticism of the school of Colenso and Kuenen; that he was originally a solar deity can be estabUshed at least as satisfactorily as the solar character of Moses, if not as that of Samson. And when we note that in Semitic tradition (which preserves a variety of myths which the Bible-makers, for ob-vious reasons, suppressed or trans formed) Joshua is the son of the mythical Miriam,' that is to say, there was probably an ancient Palestinian sun- modem scholars. For particulars of this, see Driver's Lit. of the 0. T., s. v. "Daniel," C, 9, and cf. the LXX reading of the passage. ^ KaTao-TpaTapx^v Kal ¦jroXejj.wv e6vr]. ' See especiaUy his Christianity a-nd Mythology (1900), pp. 82 and 83. He has since been foUowed by Professor W. B. Smith; see his Der Vorchrist liche Jesus (1906), passim. 2 Citing Baring Gould, Legends of O. T. Characters (1871), II, 138. The statement rests whoUy upon a comparatively modem and untrustwcwthy Arab tradition. JESUS-CULTS 83 god, Jesus the son of Mary, we are led to surmise that the elucidation of the Christ-myth is not yet complete." The inference drawn from this is, of course, that Jesus Christ was merely a later reflex of the same mythic idea.* It would be, indeed, difficult to meet with a fuller or more complete tissue of assumptions than we have here. It is not going too far to state that not a single one of the above statements has been decided at all. The whole of this theory stiU remains a pure speculation with just suf ficient plausibiUty to render it a debatable proposition. But let us leave Mr. Robertson and turn to a writer who is more precise and careful in his presentment of the case for a pre-Christian Jesus. Professor W. B. Smith starts from the statement found in Acts i8 : 25, that Apollos preached "the things of Jesus" (to, irepX tov 'Irja-ov) while he was only acquainted -with the baptism of John. These "things," he supposes, refer to some doctrines pecuUar to an old cult-god named Jesus, who was worshipped by the Baptist and his followers. But the explanation added by the author of the Acts, when rightly understood, gives the true key to the mean ing of this brief expression. John's baptism was merely one of repentance as a necessary preUminary to the recognition and acceptance of the Coming One (0 'Ep^o'/ie- vo's). Of the doctrines of this Coming One, and, appar ently, even of his identity, John seems to have had very Uttle definite knowledge.^ It is not probable that John was the head, or representative, of any society, or cult, or that he had any cult-doctrines to impart. He seems ' Weinel says of this theory of identity {1st das liberate Jesusbild wider- legt?, p. 91) that any argument based upon the connexion of Jesus with Joshua is "simply grotesque." And he carries with him the great mass of scholars. 2 It is tme that, according to one account (John i : 36), the Baptist once identified Jesus with him; but the synoptists state that just before his execution John sent to Jesus to ask whether he were reaUy the One or whether they had stiU to look for him elsewhere (see Matt. 11 : 3; Luke 7 : 19 and 20). 84 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS to have been an individual bearing a certain Ukeness to the prophets of old, who felt himself compeUed to come forward to announce the speedy advent of the expected Messiah, to say that the latter was at hand. And with this -view the Gospels agree. Such doctrines as the cross, the resurrection, and the gift of the Holy Spirit were yet to be unfolded.* This passage, in fact, affords no proof, or even presumption, of the existence of an ancient cult of Jesus-worshippers -with pecuUar doctrines which then required (so to speak) bringing up to date. Another supposed indication of the existence of a pre- Christian Jesus-cult (or cults) is derived from an obscure sect called the Jessaioi," referred to by Epiphanius (fourth century A. D., Hcer., XXIX), and beUeved by him to have been in existence before the time of Christ. Professor von Soden thinks (Hat Jesus gelebt?, EngUsh transla tion, p. 28; cf. Isaiah 11 : i-io; I Sam. 16 : i; Ro mans 15 : 12) that their name was derived from Jesse. "Perhaps," he says, "it was a sect which beUeved in the Messiah, and expected him, as the Son of Da-vid, to come of the root of Jesse, or Isai." Professor Drews, on the other hand, would prefer to think that they were more probably named after an old cult-god — ^Jesus. But we cannot place any confidence here in Epipha nius, who was a prejudiced and credulous man. No other ancient author even mentions these sectaries amongst the numerous bodies of heretics. It is also impossible to draw any conclusions as to a Jesus-cult from their name; nor can we be even moder ately certain that they existed at aU in pre-Christian times. Much the same also may be said of the Naasenes, or Ophites (serpent- worshippers), a Gnostic sect whose chief tenet was belief in a spiritual Christ-aeon, who de- 'The disciples of John are differentiated in the Acts and elsewhere by their lack of the pentecostal gifts. ^'leo-crawi; also "Jessaer," "Jessaes," and "Jessenes." JESUS-CULTS 85 scended into the material chaos to assist Sophia (Wis dom) in her efforts to emancipate the pre-existing souls of men from the bondage of matter. This Christ-ason for a time tenanted the body of Jesus, entering it at his baptism and lea-ving it before his crucifixion. But here, again, the Christian flavour, which is dis cernible in their doctrines, probably dates from after the time of Jesus. We have no proof whatever that these elements existed among the original tenets of the serpent-worshippers. A great deal has also recently been made out of the ancient Naasene h3rmn, preserved by Hippolytus (Ref. of All Her., V, s). After describing the woes and suffer ings of the human soul during its wanderings upon earth,* the writer of the hynm continues: " But Jesus said: Father, behold a war of e-vils has arisen upon the earth; it comes from thy breath, and ever works: Man strives to shun this bitter chaos, but knows not how he may pass (safely) through it; therefore, do thou, O Father, send me: bearing thy seals I will descend (to earth); throughout the ages I -will pass; all mysteries I wiU unfold, all forms of godhead I will unveil, all secrets of thy holy path styled GNOSIS (knowledge) I will impart [to man]." Now, this h5Tnn — of which the above quotation forms the concluding part — shows clearly that this sect, after the time of Christ, professed a theosophical form of Christianity. But we have no e-vidence to show that they did so before that time, and the identification of the Sa-viour-aeon with Jesus is more Ukely (in the absence of evidence to the contrary) to be a post-Christian im- 1 Metempsychosis (transmigration) is probably meant here. The hymn in its present form is very cormpt and has been much interpolated. 86 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS provement upon an older scheme of pagan Gnosticism. Moreover, we do not know, even approximately, the date of this hymn. Professor W. B. Smith cautiously remarks that it is "old — no one can say how old" — a sufficiently vague statement. Professor Drews subsequently goes beyond this, and tells us that it is, "according to aU ap pearances, a pre-Christian hymn." It would be inter esting to learn what proofs there are of this; but these are not vouchsafed to us. The mere fact that these Naasenes made use of both St. Paul's epistles and the fourth Gospel certainly suggests very strongly that the semi- Christian flavour of their system was derived from post- Christian sources. Moreover, even in the later form of their doctrines, Jesus is not a "god" in any real sense of the term — least of all a dying and rising god. He is merely the temporary embodiment of one of the ceons of the Pleroma, who comes down to impart di-vine and saving knowledge (Fi^wo-t?) to mankind. This fact, in deed, in itself entirely refutes the theory that the Na asenes worshipped a d}ang and revi-ving cult-god of any kind, as the modern mythicist would have us beUeve both the pre- and post-Christian "Jesuists" and "Christists" did. But the most plausible argument advanced so far is found in the document known as the Parisian Magic Papyrus, the date of which is referred to the fourth or fifth century A. D. In this the following Unes occur: 1. 1549. opKi^m ere Kara tov fiapTraKOvpiO' vacraapi. 1. 31 19. opKi^Q) ae Kara tov 6eov tcov 'Ei^paioov \r}(XOv [la/SatTj]. Here vaa-aapi is identified with Nasaria and made inter changeable with TOU 6eov to)v 'E^patoov 'Irjo-ov, the whole being understood to mean, "I conjure you by the Protec tor"; "I conjure you by Jesus the god of the Hebrews" — these being formulce used in the exorcising of demons. JESUS-CULTS 87 Here, once more, we have not a shred of e-vidence to show that these formulce are, in their present shape at least, pre-Christian. It is, indeed, far more probable that the document, if it dates in any form from before the time of Christ, was interpolated with the name Jesus after this had gained repute as a word of power (cf. Acts 3:6; 4 : 10; 19 : 13 with Mark 9 : 38; Luke 9 : 49). In short, there are no safe indications here either of a pre-Christian cult of any kind.* Indeed, Professor Drews seems to be conscious of the weakness of this part of the current mythical hypothesis; for at one of the pubUc discussions, held in Germany during 1910, he was care ful to insist that his thesis that the Founder of Christian ity was a purely mythical character did not depend upon the existence of a pre-Christian cult-god named Jesus, thus differing from both Robertson and Smith, who make it the basis and main support of their respective theories. FinaUy, in regard to the statement that the two ideas — a "Christ" and a "Jesus" — might be combined, and that Jesus was merely the general name for the saviour and redeemer, it would be interesting to learn where, in pre-Christian Uterature, the expected Messiah, or Christ, is, by anticipation, named Jesus,^ or the expectation itself ^As against the cult-god theory, the following passages in the Gospels should be carefuUy studied: Matt. 16 : 22 /.; 20 : 17-19; Mark 8 : 31-33; 9 : 31; 10 : 33; Luke 9 : 22-24. The synoptists unanimously declare that when Jesus annoxmced his resolve to become a sacrifice at Jerusalem his disciples rejected this view of the Messianic office, Luke adding that " they understood none of these things." Had the disciples been members of a cult or brotherhood worshipping a suffering Messiah, or a cult-god named Jesus, as Professor Drews postulates, it would have been at once inteUigible to them and they would have been represented as encouraging him in his resolution. ^ Professor Drews appears to think {The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, p. 19s) that because "Matthew" says that the ChUd of Mary was to be called Jesus (i : 21), and then identifies him with the virgin's son of Isaiah 7 : 14 (Matt, i : 23), Immanuel "is also the meaning of Jesus" ! This is not so in the sense required by his theory; and, moreover, would be, in any case, post- (and not pre-) Christian evidence for that hypothesis. For an analysis and discussion of the Hebrew word hrlmah, and its Greek 88 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS regarded as in any sense identical with the cultual wor ship of a god of that name who had pre-viously effected a temporal salvation for the Hebrew people. Until this evidence is forthcoming the theory must remain a mere unsubstantiated speculation. equivalents, wapBivos and veavts, see the present writer's A Critical Ex amination of the Evidences for the Doctrine of the Virgin Birth, Appendix E (1908). CHAPTER V BETHLEHEM. NAZARETH AND NAZAREAN. GALILEE Bethlehem It is, perhaps, somewhat remarkable, in -view of mod em controversies respecting the birth of Jesus, that there should be in Palestine two places bearing the name of Bethlehem. The less famous of these, now repre sented by the Uttle -viUage caUed Beit Lahm, is situated about seven miles northwest of the present town of Naz areth. It is mentioned in the book of Joshua (19 : 15), where it is stated to be a portion of "the inheritance of the children of Zebulun." * The other Bethlehem — about six miles from Jerusalem — often distinguished from the former by the addition of the word "Judah" (Judges 17 : 8 and 9; 19 : 18; Ruth 1:1), or "Ephratah" (Micah 5:2), is generally sup posed to have derived the latter appellation from be ing situated in a district so named (I Sam. 17 : 12), Bethlehem Ephratah (nrnSK Dil^"n''3) is the reading of the Massoretic text in Micah 5 : 2, though here the LXX has "Bethlehem house of Ephratah" (BrjdXeep. ol/co^ [tov] 'E(f>padd), which doubtless has suggested to Professor G. A. Smith the omission of -lehem and the writing of the word "Beth-Ephratah." The usual interpreta tion of Bethlehem, "house of bread," and of Ephratah, "fruitful," are no doubt allusions to the former fertiUty of the district. A doubtful proposal, however, has re cently been made to find in Bethlehem the name of the • In the Talmud it is termed n""w, commonly regarded as a corruption of n"i!t3, "of Nazareth." 89 90 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS god Lakhmu, which is known to us from the opening of the Babylonian creation epic. But here Professor Konig protests (Expository Times, September, 1913, p. 547): "Are we to suppose," he asks, "that even Da-vid worshipped Lachmu in Bethlehem?" And he points out that the prefix "Beth- also occurs in combination -with many other words which do not designate any god, as, for instance, in Beth Diblathayim."' Now, since many modern scholars, including the vast majority of German critics, while holding to the historic ity of Jesus, reject the traditional place of his birth for one which they would place in GaUlee, it might be worth while to consider whether there has been, either before or subsequent to the time of Christ, any confusion be tween these two Bethlehems. If the Messiah really were ever said to have been, or to be destined to be, born in GaUlee, according to some Ephraimitic or northern tradition now lost, then the Bethlehem Zebulun— if that place were named either in tradition or prophecy — might possibly have been changed by the compilers of the two birth-stories to Bethlehem- Judah (Ephratah), in order to fulfil the prophecy recorded in our present text of the book of Micah.^ Such a theory, however, would seem to have very Uttle, if any, e-vidence to sup port it. Turning now to the views of the present-day mythi cists, we find Professor Drews asserting a theory some what similar. The Messiah of the Israelite-iaytTa. was, he says (The Christ Myth, p. 81), to be undoubtedly a GaUlean by birth; but the authors of the birth-narra tives "invented the abstruse story of the journey of his parents to Bethlehem" in order to connect Jesus -with ¦Professor Sayce, however, says {Patriarchal Palestine, p. 82): "Mr. Tomkins is probably right in seeing even in Bethlehem the name of the primeval Chaldean deity Lakhmu" (later Anu; cf. also op. cit., p. 260). ' Or, perchance, altered previously in the text of Micah by the Masso retic redactors? BETHLEHEM 91 the House of David, from which the southern, or Judah- ite, mythical Messiah was to be descended (Micah 5:2). Mr. J. M. Robertson, on the other hand, has a rather different explanation of the choice of Bethlehem. It was selected purely for mythical reasons. "The cave of Bethlehem," he asserts (Christianity and Mythology, p. 329), "had been from time immemorial a place of wor ship in the cult of Tammuz, as it actually was in the time of Jerome; and, as the quasi-historic David bore the name of the sun-god Daoud, or Dodo (Sayce, Hibb. Lects., pp. 56 and 57), who was identical with Tammuz, it was not improbable on that account that Bethle hem was traditionally the city of Da-vid, and therefore, no doubt, was deemed by the New Testament myth- makers the most suitable place for the birth of Jesus,* the mythical descendant of that quasi-historical mon arch and the pseudo-historical embodiment of the god Tammuz, or Adonis." We -wiU take Mr. Robertson's view of the matter first of aU. The statement that Bethlehem had been "from time immemorial a place of worship in the cult of Tammuz" has no historical foundation. The emperor Hadrian, it is said, to annoy the Jews, set up an image of Venus (the mother of Adonis) on the site of the temple at Jerusalem, while the Christians were similarly punished by the devastation of Bethlehem and the planting of a grove dedicated to Adonis upon the spot Qerome, Ep. ad Paul., 58, 3). Whether the cult of the latter god had ever been pre-viously carried on in that place is wholly unknown (see Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 3d ed., vol. I, p. 257). As regards his further speculation that Bethlehem was probably caUed "the city of David," because the king thus designated "bore the name of the • Cf. the extraordinary statement in the Jerusalem Talmud (Berakhoth, f. 5, i) that the Messiah was bom at Bethlehem on the day of the destmc- tion of Jerusalem, but carried off from his mother by a strong gale ! 92 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS sun-god Daoud, or Dodo," who was worshipped there. Doctor Sayce (quoted by Mr. Robertson) also points out that while Tammuz bore the epithet (not name) Dod ("beloved"), the same word is also used of Jahveh, who is addressed as Dodi ("my beloved," Isaiah 5 : i), and he truly adds: "We can easily understand how a name of this kind, with such a signification, should have been transferred by popular affection from the deity [Jahveh] to the king, of whom it is said that 'aU Israel and Judah loved him' (I Sam. 18 : 6)." There can be little doubt, therefore, that Bethlehem was called the city of David, not from a local worship of Adonis carried on there, but because all Hebrew tradi tion unanimously declared that the beloved king was the son of a great sheep-master of Bethlehem and was born and spent his early youth in that place.* Thus Mr. Robertson's hypothesis, aU through, is, to say the least of it, purely speculative and improbable. Professor Drews's theory of an abstruse story of a jour ney to Bethlehem, invented to secure for Jesus a place in the pedigree of the Davidic, or southern, Messiah, can now be most satisfactorily met by showing that the story referred to is neither so entirely abstruse nor neces sarily such a pure invention as it was somewhat hastily decided to be by Strauss and later mythicists. The re cent researches of Sir W. M. Ramsay have now at least practically settled two much-disputed historical points in connexion with the birth-story, -viz.: (i) that Qui rinus was, as Luke states, governing Syria about the time of the first census (9-8 B. C.) ordered by Augustus, and (2) the fact that all persons residing out of their own proper names had to return thither for registration therein.* In view of these important facts, so long con- ' David has been explained as meaning either (i) "beloved," (2) "pa ternal imcle" (pron. ^-l¦^), or (3) as an abbreviation of Dodijah, "Jahveh is patron" (= Dodai) — best of aU. •See Appendix A (i). NAZARETH 93 tested, it is for Professor Drews to demonstrate more clearly that this particular journey must have been a pure invention and wholly contrary to estabUshed cus toms. Moreover, that simple and unsophisticated writers Uke the synoptists, in telUng this straightforward story, made such an elaborate and artificial selection from al leged rival and confficting Messianic expectations, and in vented the stories, is in the highest degree unUkely. Such a -view demands considerably greater proof than has been adduced so far. Nazareth Professor Drews is extremely doubtful about the very existence of Nazareth in pre-Christian times (The Christ Myth, p. 59; cf. The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, p. 200). His chief reason for this doubt is: "Such a place is not mentioned either in the Old Testament or in the Talmud, which, however, mentions more than sixty Gal ilean towns, nor again by the Jewish historian Josephus, nor in the Apocrj^ha." This seems, at first sight, a formidable array of adverse evidence, though only of a negative type. But when we look further into the matter such testimony is by no means con-vincing. That a smaU and insignificant -vil lage (cf. John I : 46), buried miles away in the remote GaUlean hiUs, should not be mentioned in our extant Jewish records is in no way remarkable. Why should it be referred to ? Nothing ever happened there. It had — in pre-Christian days and from the point of -view of the writers of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, as also from that of Josephus — no importance whatever. The compilers of the Tahnud, too, which is beUeved to have begun to take a written form towards the end of the second century, must have at least known of its exist ence in the fourth century, and for some time pre-viously, although they do not refer to it; for Epiphanius ob- 94 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS serves (Hcer., I, 136) that until the time of Constantine it was inhabited only by Jews, while Jerome refers (Ep. 86) to Paula passing through it in his time. Ac cordingly, if before the fourth century A. D. there was a -village of that name peopled exclusively by Jews, it is clear that the place did not, at a comparatively late date, owe its origin and name to mythical Christian tradition and piety, while it is also probable that it must have existed there for some time before the reign of Con stantine. We cannot, of course, absolutely prove this, o-wing to the paucity of records; but it is, nevertheless, the most Ukely explanation of the facts of the case as these are kno-wn to us.* Again, in replying to the argument of Weiss that it "cannot be denied that it was firmly beUeved by the Christians of the first century that Jesus came from Nazareth," Drews can merely say that this statement "is based on the unproved assumption that the Gospels already existed then in their present form." It is true that here, again, owing to the Uterary bar renness of the first century, we have little e-vidence of an external character as to the dates of the canonical Gos pels. StiU, there is a great mass of internal e-vidence, * The Jewish Encyclopmdia, art. "Nazareth," says that "Eleazir Kalir (eighth and ninth centuries A. D.), in the elegy 'Ekah Yashebah,' mentions the priestly class of Nazareth (mx: = 'Mishmeret'), doubtless on the basis of some ancient authority." Doctor Cheyne's latest views on Nazareth are expressed in his Fresh Voyages in Unfrequented Waters (1914): Naza reth is an old synonym for GaUl, i. e., the southern GaUlee. The old form of the synonym is Resin or Rezon. But this, again, is a cormption of Bar- Sin, and Bar-Sin is a shortened form of Arab-Sibon, which is Arabian Ish mael, which is — ^Jerahme'el ! The ending of Nazareth, however {-eth), shows that it was reaUy the name of a goddess, not of a town. FinaUy, "the original form of the gracious deity's name was Yarhu-Asshur-Rabsinath" — a remarkable genealogy! Paul Haupt regards Nazareth as the new name of the old city Hinnatuni (Hmnathon, Joshua 19 : 44; Hethlon [ ?], Ezek. 47 : is. The Open Court, April, 1909, p. 198). Their common meaning is supposed to be "defense"; but this and the identifications are very doubtful. NAZORAEAN 95 chiefly appreciable by scholars and impossible to detail here, which goes a very long way to estabUsh that con clusion. And even to the ordinary reader it is very ob-vious that the synoptic Gospels, at least, differ wholly in their Uterary style and phraseology, as well as in matter, from all extant documents of the second and third, and later, centuries. The ideas which they con tain, the references and local colour, no less than the ethical and spiritual standpoint, all belong undoubtedly to the first century A. D. And these facts, amongst others, are at any rate very strong proofs of a relative, if not absolute, character in their favour. Nazoraean For an explanation of this designation of Jesus the modern mythicist usuaUy pins his faith to a critical theory advanced by Professor W. B. Smith in his Der Vorchristliche Jesus (1906) and repeated in Ecce Deus (191 2). According to this hypothesis, Jesus derived it from being the cult-god of a sect who were known as Naz oraeans (Nafeopatot),* and had existed in pre-Christian times (see Epiphanius, Hcer., XXIX, 6). Professor Smith's derivation of the title and its mean ing may be summarised as follows (Der Vorchristliche Jesus, pp. 142^.; cf. 36/.; also The Monist, 1905, "The Meaning of the Epithet Nazorean," pp. 25 f.). It comes, he says, from an old Hebrew root NSR [or NZR], which has the meaning of "guardian," "protector," or ' The chief codices vary between Nofwpafos, TSa^opatos, TSa^apatoi, Nacro- poios, and 'Sa^aprivbs, the last-mentioned being very frequent in the MSS. generaUy, but the first-named now appears uniformly in critical texts. Similarly, the town is commonly -written ISaiapiB or TSafapir-, TSa^api is also found in some MSS., and Keim {Jesus of Nazara) argues strongly in favour of this reading, and regards Nofapj/v^s (Nazarene) as a tme de rivative from it. When the common readings have been corrected, and Jesus appears as the "Nazoraean," there are yet six passages left (Mark I : 9; Matt. 2 : 23; 21 : n; Luke 2 : 4; John i : 45 and 46; also Acts 10 : 38) where Nazareth appears as a place. 96 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS "keeper." This -view is adopted by Drews, who adds (The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, p. 202): "In his [Smith's] opinion the name can be traced to the an cient root N-Z-R, which means something Uke watcher, protector, guardian, sa-viour. Hence Jesus the Nazoraean, or Nazarene, was Jesus the protector, just as Jahveh (Psalm 121 : 5) or the archangel Michael, the angel- prince, who often takes the place of the Messiah, is known as the 'protector of Israel,'* its spokesman -with God, and its deUverer from aU its cares (Daniel 19 : 13; 12 : i; Gen. 48 : 16); the rabbinical Metatron also plays this part of protector and supporter of the Jewish people, and is regarded as the angel of redemp tion, especially of the damned suffering in hell. The fol lowers of Jesus will, therefore, have called themselves Nazoraeans'' because they primarily conceived the ex pected Messiah in the sense of a Michael or Metatron, a protector; that is, at aU events, more probable than that they took their name from the place Nazareth, with which they had no close connection. It is not at all im probable that the place Nazareth took its name from the sect of the Nazoraeans, instead of the reverse, as is ad mitted by so distinguished a scholar as W. Nestie."* • It is claimed that in the nomen restaurationis of Marcus (Irenaeus, Adv. Hcer., I, 21, 3) Jesus has this sumame {Nazaria); fiurther, that in the Parisian Magical Papyrus (1. iS48),a god of that name is mentioned (see chap. 3, p. 36). In the former Jesus Nazaria is taken as Jesus Nazar-jah, i. e., "Jesus (the) Protector Jah." In reply to any objection that Jahveh as protector is described by the psalmist as shomer ("iDi!'), and not as no^er ("iJJ), Drew urges that "we are concemed here not with the word itself but its meaning." But the main point in Smith's argument seems to be the special connexion of the root NZR with divine beings as "protectors of men." The reference to Psahn 121, therefore, falls somewhat flat, as it would be more to the point to quote a case where Jahveh had the latter designation. 2 Smith further maintains: "They were close to the Jessaioi (or Jessees), who adored the same god as Saviour, or Jesus, who were themselves nearly related to the more HeUenic Gnostics, who worshipped the same god as Soter, or Saviour" {The Open Court, January, 1910, p. is). ' Citing Siidwestdeutsche Schulblatter (1910), Heft 4 and s, p. 163. NAZORAEAN 97 This explanation of Professor Smith's is sharply criti cised by Doctor Cheyne, who declares that his view of the word is impossible. "Need I remark," he writes (Hibbert Journal, 1911, p. 892), "that in Hebrew the guardian would be ha-noser, not ha-nosri?"^ Professor Smith's reply to this question wiU be found in his Ecce Deus (pp. 320 and 321): "Inasmuch as three pages of Der Vorchristliche Jesus (47-50) are given to the consideration of this point, the answer would seem to be that one need not.^ "But when it is said that surely neither Hannathon nor Nazareth means defense, it must be said that author ities seem to differ. Professor Chejme refers to 'Han nathon' and 'Nazareth' in the Encyclopcedia Biblica. One may read the nine Unes on 'Hannathon' and the interesting article on 'Nazareth' repeatedly -without finding any reason for the statement just quoted. Pro fessor Haupt declares: 'Both Hittalon and Hinnathon mean protection' — a, judgment, so far as JJinnatuni is concemed, confirmed by other most eminent Assyriolo- gists. As to Nazareth, the force of the termination may be uncertain, even as the termination itself is, but hardly the stem Nazar, which appears in the older form Nasa- raioi; and about the Hebrew Nasar (to guard) there is no doubt." . . . "Nasaree was a reUgious term or des ignation; it expressed some religious pecuUarity of the sect that bore it; and when the multipUed conceits of linguistic ingenuity are aU finaUy laid to rest, the ob-vious ' The Hebrew letter Tsade (x) is variously transUterated as ts, q, tz, ss, and s; also, commonly by Professor Smith (in Na?ar), as z; e. g., Nazar. Modem Hebraists generally write Nasar and Nasoraean for Nazoraean. ' The Talmudic name of Jesus, Jeshu Ha-nosri ('Is-i^O w;,, Sanh. 43, a, etc.), seems to be strong evidence against Smith's theory. Similarly, Nopim (D'lX-ij) cannot be the "protectors." Smith's contention, however, is that either Ha-no^ri = Ha-noser (iJ-i^lI) or it is a rabbinical disguise of that term, or, again, more probably, an abbreviation of N § R I H, "keeper of Jahveh," or "Jahveh, the keeper." 98 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS reference -wiU be seen to be to the perfectly famiUar and apparent Hebrew stem nasar (to guard). As Winckler has so well expressed it: 'From the concept neger [or neser] is named the reUgion of those who beUeve on the "Sa-viour"; Nazarene Christians and Nazairier. Nazareth, as the home of Jesus, forms only a confirmation of his sa-viour nature in the symboUsing play of words.' The notions of guardian and sa-viour are so closely akin that servator and salvator are used almost interchangeably as appUed to the Jesus." It is extremely difficult — ^not to say hazardous — for any one who is not a speciaUst in Hebrew* to pronounce definitely upon the point at issue here. Nevertheless, it seems to the present writer that, so far, the balance of e-vi dence Ues with the Hebraists as against the mythicists. Professor Smith lays great stress upon the e-vidence afforded by Epiphanius in favour of his theory — that "careful and erudite heresiograph," as he caUs him (The Open Court, January, 1910, p. 14). Epiphanius says: "All men caUed the Christians Nazoraeans" — that is, in his time. And again: "The heresy of the Nazarees was before Christ, and knew not Christ." ^ "There!" exclaims Smith, "the cat is out of the bag." But is it? Let us examine into the matter a Uttle more carefully. Beginning -with the statements of Epiphanius, we have: "The heresy of the Nazarees was before Christ, and knew not Christ." Surely, if this means anything, it is that Je sus Christ was not a cult-god of this sect ! Further, Epi- ^ Drews affirms {The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, p. 202, note 2) that " Schmiedel has recently maintained against Weinel, in the Protestant tenblatt (1910, no. 17, p. 438), that Smith's hypothesis is philologicaUy ad missible. Hence the charge of 'gross ignorance of the Semitic languages,' which Weinel brings against Smith, is quite unjustified." ^ Hcer., XXIX, 6, Ijv yip i] oljoeo-is tuv "Sacapalav irpb XpurroS, xal 'S.puTTbv oiK f Set. AXXd Kal irdvTes &v6puwoi Tois XpurriavoOs TSal^wpatovs iKd\ovv. . . . NAZORAEAN 99 phanius gives a very confused account of them, and seems to think that, while the . Nazoraeans were Christians, the Nazaraeans (Nazarees) were Jews.* Indeed, his state ments about them aU through are both careless and un critical, and this fact alone detracts greatly from their value as reaUy serious e-vidence in the case. Again, Marcus, who is called in as -witness (p. 96, note i), was a second -century heretic, and the statement that the invocation of Jesus Nazaria "goes back very obvi ously and probably to the remotest antiquity" has no historical e-vidence to back it. Neither has it been shown that the tJaaaapi of the Paris magical formula is con nected -with the Nafta/aato? of the New Testament. And, even if it be considered as proved that Nazoraean means "guardian," it stiU remains to be shown that this word is practicaUy identical in meaning -with Jesus, and still more that either Jesus or Nazoraios was a pre-Christian cult-god. As a matter of fact, however, from the stem NZR (llti) comes also the substantive nezer, or neser ("l^J), "shoot," "branch" — and, figuratively, "scion" (cf. Isaiah 9 : 21; 60 : 21). And in 11 : i the prophet promises that a "branch" (or "scion") of the stem of Jesse shaU be born; it seems, therefore, most probable that this is what is referred to by Matthew when he says that it was predicted by prophets that Jesus should be caUed a Nazoraean.2 He plays (so to say) upon the similarity between the two words as regards their three root letters, and declares in effect that the iV(a)2(o)?--aean represents ' See Meyboom, "Jezus de Nazoraer," Theol. Tijdschrift. (1905), pp. 529^. Cf. Lepsius, Zur Quellenkritik des Epiphanies (i86s), pp. 130^. « " ''Sa^apatos KSijB-tjrerai.' summarises the prophecies referred to. Isaiah II : 1 had caUed the Messiah (so Targ.) ixj = branch; Jer. 23 : s; 33 : is had caUed him nnx branch, and Isaiah 4 : 2, nnx (Targ. has 'Messiah')." Archdeacon Allen on St. Matthew in loco. The Arabic name for Christians {Nasara, Koran, Sura V) has been derived from nasara, "to help," but this is doubtful. 100 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS the N(e)z(e);'-aean,* whose coming was foretold in proph ecy, not any "watchman-god" or "guardian-god" of some ancient cult-idea. FinaUy — and Doctor Cheyne's explanation of the ori gin and meaning of "Nazareth" supports the conclusion — ^it is also probable that The Nazoraean, or Nasoraean means simply "The GaUlean," a name by which Jesus, especially later on, was known, and particularly by pagan writers. The present-day Mohammedan designation of Christians as Nazarenes (i. e., Nasoraeans) is merely the equivalent of GaUleans, as the Emperor JuUan always insisted on their being caUed, i. e., followers of the Prophet from GaUlee.^ After references to Isaiah 41 : 25; 9 : i, 2, 3, 6, and 7 as having, in the eyes of at least many of the Jews of the time of Christ, a Messianic significance. Professor Drews proceeds as follows (The Witnesses to the Historic ity of Jesus, pp. 210 and 211 and note i): Galilee "It is the word of the prophet [Isaiah], not a hard fact of history, that demands the birth of the Sa-viour. Then Nazareth, with its relation to nazar, occurred at once as the proper birthplace of Jesus, as soon as men began to conceive the episode historicaUy. Astral con siderations may have co-operated. GaUlee, from gdlil, circle, connects with the zodiacal circle,^ which the sun traverses; even in the prophet the Sa-viour is associated with the sun.* The people that walk in darkness and that 'dwell in the land of the shadow' might easily be identified with the 'famiUar spirits' of whom Isaiah * Ancient Hebrew was written originaUy without the vowel-pointing in MSS. "Nezoraeans" would mean "Disciples of the Branch." 2 Doctor Cheyne also notes {E-nc. Bib., art. "Joseph," sec. 9) that the Ara maic n'sar (Heb. -\pi) means to saw; so that "Jesus the Nazarene," or ( ?) "Nasarene," might merely mean "Jesus the carpenter" {cf. Mark 6 : 3). ' Cf. also The Christ Myth, p. 240. * Isaiah merely compares him to the sun. GALILEE 101 speaks (8 : 19), in whom there is no Ught, who 'pass through' the land 'hardly bestead and hungry; and it shaU come to pass that when they shaU be hungry, they shaU fret themselves and curse their king and their god, and look upward; and they shall look into the earth, and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish, and they shaU be driven to darkness.' They suggest," he continues, "the souls in the nether world, the stars in their course below the celestial equator which rejoice at the birth of the 'great Ught' at the winter solstice, and are led to their time of brilUancy.* On this view, GaUlee of the Gentiles (Gdlil ha-goim) coincides with the lower half of the 'water region' of the zodiac, in which are found the aquatic signs of the Southern Fish, Aquarius, the Fishes, the Whale, and Eridanus." In a note to the above he further adds: "In truth, Zebulun, according to Gen. 49, relates to the sign of the zodiac Capricorn and NaphtaU to Aries, both of which belong to the water region of the zodiac, the dark part of the year (cf. A. Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients, p. 398). According to M. MiiUer, gdlil means, in a derivative from the Coptic, the 'water- wheel.' A water-wheel might (according to Fuhrmann) be traced in the constellation Orion, the spokes being represented by the four chief stars and the axis by the stars of the belt, the wheel being set in motion by the faUing water of the Milky Way.^ In so far as Orion is ' It would be interesting to know what evidence there is for the mythical interpretation of these "spirits of the dead" {oboth) as equivalent here either to the people that dweU in darkness (= distressed IsraeUtes) or to stars "below the celestial equator" ! The words here have merely a plain Uteral meaning. The prophet is denouncing the use of necromancy, as a means of prjang into the future, and what it may bring forth, by a suffer ing people, and he means nothing more than this. Any such mythical in terpretation would be purely modem and fanciful. ' Is not Professor Drews here confusing the Milky Way with the constel lation Eridanus f The Chinese, however, seem to have caUed the Mitty Way the Celestial River {tien ho). And the Egyptians (later) regarded the 102 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS the Hanging Figure of the 2 2d Psalm, we may note that the latter is a gdlil (GaUlean), and as the constellation Orion is, as we saw,* astrally related to the nazar (the Hyades), the birth of the Sa-viour in Nazareth might be deduced from this (see Niemojewski, Gott Jesus, pp. 161 and 193)." But to return to the text. "We thus," he continues, "understand why GaUlee, 'the way to the sea, the land by the Jordan,' ^ plays so great a part in the story of Jesus; it was bound to be recognised in a Messianic age. Hence this watery region of the sky is the chief theatre of the Sa-viour's Ufe; hence in the Gospels the 'Sea of GaUlee,' the Sea of Gennesaret, and the many names of places in the district. For the Greeks and Romans they had no ulterior [i. e., mythical] significance, and were mere names, but much Uke the names of places in Homer or Vergil, or the description of the voyage of the Argo naut by ApoUonius of Rhodes. It is incredible that von Soden should seek a proof of the historicity of the Gospel narrative in these names." Again (p. 212), he further seems to attack even the geographical existence of one of the chief towns of GaU lee at that time: "It may be the same -with other sup posed names of places. In regard to the most important of them all, Capernaum, Steudel has caUed attention to Zech. 13 : I, where it is said: ' In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of Da-vid and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness,' Milky Way as the Heavenly Nile. Elsewhere Professor Drews speaks of it as the celestial form of the world-tree! And this, again, is equated with the cross { 1 Note, pp. 203 and 204: "Possibly nazar has also an astral significance as the Hyades iu Taurus have the form of a branch [nazar { ? nezer) ; in Zechariah ?emah]; and Orion, in which we have aheady suspected the Baptist, seems to bring the twig (Fuhrmann)." ' On the next page he says that the Jordan has an astral significance in the Gospels and corresponds to the celestial Eridanus (Egypt., iero, or iera, "the river," see chap, s, p. 107). GALILEE 103 and reminds us that in his Jewish Wars (III, lo, 8) Jose phus mentions 'a very strong' and fertilising spring 'which is called Capharnaum by the inhabitants of the district.' When we read in Josephus the description of the fish-abounding sea of Gennesaret and the country about it, -with its beauty and charm, its palms, nuts and oUves, and fruit-trees of aU kinds, we feel that no other knowledge of the locaUty was needed in order to invent the whole regional background of the Ufe of Jesus with the aid of these indications." Now, in Isaiah 9 : 1-7 we have, in the first place, an historic reference to the northern districts of Israel, which had been ravaged by Assyria in 734 B. C. (II Kings 15 : 29), foUowed by a prediction that a "great Ught" would shine upon the desolate land and its despair ing inhabitants. This reUef is to come through a Da-vidic king, though how he is to exercise authority over a sep arate kingdom of Israel is not clear. Probably the text of this prophecy is corrupt, or we have not the whole of the original, or, again, the prophet perhaps contem plates a reunion by conquest, or agreement, of the two kingdoms as a part of the mission of this Messiah-prince. In 41 : 25 — the work of another "Isaiah" — the deUv erer, who -wiU be raised up by God, is to be a great war rior from the northeast, i. e., Cyrus (vs. 2), who wiU restore "Israel" to his own land. This is a later -view of the contemplated restoration. In 11 : i the deUv erer is to be (as in chap. 9) a Da-vidic prince, more defi nitely a "branch" (1^3) of the stock of Jesse. And here we come again to the main point in this part of Pro fessor Drews's thesis. This nezer, or neser ("branch"), has suggested to the Gospel writers a pseudo-historical Naz areth as the birthplace of this deliverer (Jesus), as soon as the idea came to be historicised.^ ' Similarly, Doctor Winckler {Ex oriente lux. Band II, 1906, p. S9i note) : "From the word neier comes the reUgion of those who beUeve in the 104 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS But this is just what did not happen ! Christian tradi tion, as we have already pointed out, uniformly con nects the birth of Jesus, not with Nazareth, but -with Bethlehem. The Nazareth-birth is a modern critical theory and opposed to all tradition both documentary and oral. And whatever may be the origin of the place Nazareth and its relation to Jesus — it is difficult to be Ueve that almost contemporary writers would be so fooUsh as to Unk him with a then non-existent -viUage — we would maintain that it is more probable that (as Matthew seems to say) an actual Jesus was called the Nazor-aean (i. e., Nezer-aean) and his disciples the Nazor aeans, through a punning upon the identity of the con sonants in both words, which are derived from the same Hebrew root (N Z R or N § R), than that he was a mere pseudo-embodiment of a supposed "guardian-god" which was worshipped by a sect hypothetically existent in pre- Christian days. The play upon the words is a good one in Hebrew, since the ideas of both the branch of proph ecy and the domicile (GaUlee) of the youth and early manhood of Jesus are combined and expressed under the same term.* We will now turn, in conclusion, to the astral con siderations brought forward by Professor Drews. It is very e-vident to a careful and thoughtful reader that, to a great extent underlying the whole conception of a mythical Jesus, there is an a priori astral and zodiacal theory which is assumed to have been current in Pales tine at that time. Into this preconceived and underly- Saviour — the Nazarene Christians, or Nazaraeans. Nazareth as the home of Jesus is merely a confirmation of his character as Saviour for the symbolis ing tendency." (Italics ours.) 'C/. the expression '?'Sj3 B'lj'J ("Kedesh in GaUlee"). The view taken by Doctor E. A. Abbott, in Miscellanea Evangelica (i), is that "Nazarene" and "Nazoraean" are not different forms of the same adjective, but that, while the former means "man of Nazareth," the latter means the neser, or "Rod of Jesse" of Isaiah; and that the people, recognising Jesus as the Ufe-giving healer, called him the "Nazoraean" instead of the "Nazarene." GALILEE 105 ing framework the mythicist UteraUy forces — as we wiU see from time to time — aU (or nearly aU) the Gospel narrative, whether it bears reference to persons, events, or even places. Let us take, first of aU, the term " Gal ilee." The word gdlil, "circle," "circuit," is used in the Bible in reference to a region containing twenty small towns grouped round the city Kedesh,* inhabited mainly by Gentile races, and hence means nothing more than dis trict. It is so used in the Usts of Tiglath-Pileser's con quests (II Kiugs 15 : 29; cf.l Kings 9:11) and also in Isaiah 9 : i (A. V.). In the LXX we find it in the same sense, TaXiXaia dWo^vXai/, "GaUlee of the Gentiles" (I Mace. 5 : 15), and v Ta\i\aia simply occurs often in I Maccabees with the same meaning. But Professor Drews asks us to beUeve that in the Gospels it has simply an "astral" (or mystical) sense; that, in fact, GaUlee rep resents merely the lower haU, the water region, of the zodiac. Now, what proof does he offer for this mystical interpretation of what is, on the surface at least, a plain historical narrative? He instances several zodiacal signs which, he avers, fijid their counterparts (so to speak) in GaUlee. Let us examine these severally. Zebulun, he says, relates to the sign Capricornus (he-goat), referring to Gen. 49 : 13. Now, in the "Blessing of Jacob," the dying patriarch is made to predict mainly that the tribe will, in the fu ture, dweU along some coast-Une and engage in some kind of maritime business (cf. Deut. 33 : 18 and 19). There is certainly no reference to Capricornus here and no mys tical meaning involved ! According to Josephus (Ant., V, I, 22), the Zebulunites were settled in the north as far as the coast of Gennesaret and perhaps touched the Mediterranean shores. Again, Naphtali is described (Gen. 49 : 21, A. V. and R. V., cf. Deut. 33 : 23) as ' See also Nazardh and the Beginnings of Christianity, by C. Burrage. 106 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS "a hind (^7*^, djjdlali) let loose." This, we presume, has suggested the zodiacal Aries (Ram).* But, unfortunately, the Hebrew word never means a "ram" (though a word sUghtly resembUng it [^""M, ajil] has that signification). It means a "female deer," or, according to some author ities, perhaps a "-wild she-goat." Moreover, the text here is probably corrupt; for in the LXX we have in place of the Massoretic reading N. o-reXe^o? aveifievov eVt- StSoir? ev tS) r^evvrjuan KdX\.a<; ("N. [is] a growing stem producing beauty by its budding"). Instead of i^fj^, "hind," many scholars read n7''t<, a "spreading tere binth" (which seems to be implied by a-Te\exo Gesenius, in his Hebrew Lexicon (1833), comments thus: "Ridicule Aqu, et Vulg. cornuta esset." THE TRANSFIGURATION 161 "(the being) endowed with thinking," as we see in the Hindu Manu and the German Mann. In any case^ if Manu and Minos are astral deities, they must be forms of the sun-god and not connected with the moon at all; for, inter alia, the -wife of Minos is Pasiphae, the moon- goddess. Amsu, or Min (Men), is also a personification of the male reproductive powers of nature and was iden tified -with Pan by the Greeks. In short, we have here, in Doctor Drews's book, a mere mass of unverified and loose speculation upon which no sound hypothesis can be raised. Again, -with regard to EUjah, surely he cannot mean to equate EUjah* (Elijahu) -with Helios and (above all) with Jesus.' Elijah means "Jah is my God," while HeUos is derived, according to Peile (Gk. and Lat. Etym., p. 152), from Vus, "to burn," with an original form av(a-)e\io';, aeXco^, -with Cretan a^e\(oboimi and compares the spiritualisation of Stephen's face to the expression of an "angel." THE TRANSFIGURATION 163 ably by many other readers. The brilUance which he failed to understand, and mistook for a physical Ught, is not intended to be taken as a mere physical phenome non. The writers are endeavouring to describe phenomena of an abnormal, superphysical — a spiritual — character in terminology, which is reaUy only adapted to normal and purely physical occurrences (cf. Acts 2 : 4, etc.), and therefore must faU to describe them adequately o-wing to the insufficiency of language itseff. A similar criticism -wiU apply to the "voice" ((fxavij), which is also mentioned* and regarded by the mythi cists as a further mark of pseudo-historicity. But the subjective character of such voices, as regards the merely bodily senses, was recognised at least as far back as the fourth century. "What is meant," writes Basil the Great (Hom. in Ps. 28, "by the voice of the Lord? Are we to understand thereby a disturbance caused in the air by the vocal organs? Is it not rather a Uvely image, a clear and sensible vision imprinted on the mind of those to whom God -wishes to communicate his thought, a -vi sion' analogous to what is imprinted on the mind when we dream." Now, it would be a great error to suppose hastily, as no doubt many readers wiU do, that all such experiences as these may, after all, be referred merely to the imagi- • Jensen identifies this "voice" {Moses, Jesus, Paulus) with the voice of the invisible Xisuthros, who caUs out to his shipmates: "You are to be pious." It is difficult, we repeat, to take such "paraUels" seriously. 2 Schmiedel lays down {Enc. Bib., art. "Res. and Asc. Nar.," sec. 34) the psychological antecedents of a vision (= here hallucination) as foUows: (i) a high degree of psychical excitement; (2) aU the elements which are requisite for the formation of a visionary image, whether it be views or ideas, are previously present in the mind and have engaged its activities." This, no doubt, is true of hallucinatory experiences self-engendered in the subconsciousness; but it is not so of veridical ones, such as a picture or message transmitted telepathicaUy from an agent to a recipient through the superconsciousness. The real difficulty Ues in distinguishing between the two visions. 164 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS nation, perhaps that day-dreaming which belongs to the borderland between waking and sleeping. Luke, it is true, adds (9 : 32) that the disciples were hea-vy -with sleep (virva), but adds directly afterwards that they became fully awake during the -vision itself. Probably he refers here to ordinary sleep; but he may be thinking of that hypnotic condition which often closely resembles sleep and which so frequently accom panies manifestations of the superconsciousness. His re mark, however, has given critics of the type of Mr. J. M. Robertson the welcome opportunity of saying that the incident cannot be historical because Luke practi cally admits that they were all asleep and dreamt the whole thing. But similar phenomena have been fre quently recorded by credible -witnesses as having been manifested by many of the great saints and mystics of various ages. In moments of great spiritual exaltation, and in ecstasies, when the superconscious has come forcibly into play while the ordinary consciousness is, perhaps, not wholly -withdrawn as it is in the state of deep trance, such a Ughting up of the face, and even of the bodily form, has been put on record. Even dying persons who have Uved Uves of pecuUar piety and be nevolence have been observed to undergo a remarkable spirituaUsation of features during their last moments. This view of the transfiguration of Jesus has been re cently very ably urged by a well-known modern writer* upon these obscure reUgious phenomena. She regards — and rightly so, we beUeve — the -visual and auditory phe nomena of this scene as the outcome of a state of spirit ual ecstasy in which all present shared to some extent. "The kernel of this story," she writes, "no doubt elab orated by successive editors, possessed by the passion for the marvellous which Jesus unsparingly condemned, seems to be the account of a great ecstasy experienced ' Miss E. UnderhiU, in The Mystic Way, p. 117. THE TRANSFIGURATION 165 by him in one of these wild and soUtary mountain places where the soul of the mystic is so easily snatched up to communion with the supreme reaUty." With this view of the matter the modern theologian, especially if he be versed in the psychology of the ab normal and superconscious, may weU, in the main at least, agree. But it must also be borne in mind that the habit of describing experiences of a supersensual and reUgious type in terms of a vi-vid and sjinbolic imagery is deeply rooted in the Eastern mind of all ages. It is to this fact, perhaps, rather than to the passion for the marvellous, that we owe this intensely reaUstic picture of a great spiritual event. It was by prayer, too, i. e., by a profound and deUb erate absorption into the di-vine Ufe, Miss UnderhiU thinks — and we may note that Luke (only) records this (vs. 28) — that Jesus attained to this transfigured state. Hence it was that the disciples, whose minds were up- Ufted in some degree, shared in the spiritual exaltation of their Master. And the impression thus made on them was, as we might expect, recorded in a symboUc form. To their minds, fuU of recoUections of the past and of similar experiences to that in which they now had a share, Moses and EUjah appeared and talked with their Master, though not with them. And even when the -vision faded the three disciples were left with a joint and abiding sense of the reaUty of their experience — a reaUty, not in the material and earthly sense, but reaUty in the higher and spiritual sense, which, unUke earthly reaUties, does not pass away but abides with us for ever.* * Certain medical and scientific writers, as, e. g., De Loosten, Hirsch, and Binet-Sanglfi, ascribe the visions of Jesus to paranoia (a chronic form of insanity developing in a neuropathic constitution and presenting systema- tised delusions). But Schweitzer very justly says that their researches have "simply as- 166 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS sumed that what for us is strange and unfamiUar is, therefore, morbid." And, further, that "this identification of the unfamiUar with the morbid, which we find in the statements of the historical and medical writers here in view, is not legitimate, according to the standards estabUshed by mod em psychiatry." As a matter of fact, a precise line of demarcation between the above and the reaUy healthy spiritual experiences is badly needed and is being diU- gently sought for by students of psychical research. MeanwhUe, we may perhaps add that the merely morbid and haUucinatory has — at least as a rule — no ethical note about it. Cf. Strauss, Das Leben Jesu fiir das deutsche Volk bearbeitet (1864), pp. 631 _ff.; also O. Holtzmann, War Jesus Ekstati- ker? (1903). CHAPTER IX THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM AND THE EXPULSION OF THE TRADERS Among the earUer of the recent attacks made upon the historical character of these two narratives, perhaps that of Mr. J. M. Robertson stands out most conspicu ously and, at first sight, as the most plausible. He tells us (Christianity and Mythology, pp. 310 jff.) that these stories contain "not a single item of credible history"; the former, indeed, he avers, is nothing more nor less than an old myth pseudo-historicised.* The Entry into Jerusalem After rebuking Professor Percy Gardner for "repeating once more the fallacious explanation which has imposed (sic) on so many of us," he adds that "a glance at the story of Bacchus [Dionysus] crossing a marsh on two asses" and "at the Greek sign for the consteUation Can cer (an ass and its foal) would have shown him that he was deaUng -with a zodiacal myth." The basis of Mr. Robertson's authority for the above confident statement (though not quoted by him) is the Poeticon Astronomicon of Hyginus (flourished A. D. 4). There we read (book II, "Cancer") that "when Bacchus had come to a certain great marsh, which he was unable to cross, having come across two young asses, he is said to have caught one of them,^ and in this way was carried across so that he did not touch the water at aU." ' Cf. with this treatment that of Renan {Life of Jesus, XXIII). ' Dicitur unum deprendisse eorum. It is obvious, therefore, that even in the myth two asses were not ridden. 167 168 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS Now, in the constellation Cancer there are two stars (7 and B, Cancri) in the body of the Crab which were named by the astronomer Ptolemy "the two asses" — Tw cfyco— (c/. Theoc, Idyl., XXII, 21; Arat., 890-898; Theophr., Sign. Pluv., IV, 2; PUny, XVIII, 20), and the luminous patch (PrcBsepe) seen between these two stars was known as the "Manger" (4>dTvri).^ And the above story of Dionysus has been interpreted to be a symboU cal explanation of the astronomical fact that the sun when in the midst of the zodiacal sign Cancer is said, figuratively speaking, to be "riding upon two asses," as the Greek astronomers expressed it, and shortly after wards reaches the zenith of its power, when its Ught and heat gradually but steadily decUne, until it reaches its death at the hibernal solstice in December. We wiU study this interesting hypothesis, and its appUcation to Christian historic documents, in some detail. The twelve signs of the zodiac are, as is generaUy known, those stellar constellations through which the sun passes in its annual journey across the heavens. At a remote period of past time that orb, when crossing the equator at the vernal equinox, was in the sign Taurus (BuU), and the new year was then opened by the sun, conceived as a buU entering upon the great furrow of heaven (the ecUptic) as he ploughed his way through the starry field which forms the sky. Owing, however, to the astronomical phenomenon known as the preces sion of the equinoxes, the sun each succeeding year en tered upon its annual course, at the equinox, at a sUghtly different point in the heavens, until by the time of Christ it had come to start the year of nature in the sign (or constellation) Aries^ (Ram). The sign of the Crab (Can- 'This figures largely in the Iranian myth of Tigtar, "the angel of the rain." The Greeks undoubtedly borrowed many of their astronomical ideas and terms from the Babylonians. ' It now starts the year from the sign Pisces (Fishes); but the sign for Aries (Ram), -ir, is conventionaUy used by agreement amongst astronomers THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM 169 cer) was, therefore, at that period not reached until the time of the summer solstice (end of June). But if, after the manner of Mr. Robertson, we apply the above astronomical facts to the story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem we are at once involved in serious dis crepancies and difficulties. That entry is clearly stated by all four evangeUsts to have taken place just before the Passover; that is to say, about the time of the vernal equinox, when the sun was in Aries. In other words, the story of Dionysus "riding upon the two asses" (sic) could not be the explanation of a vernal phenomenon, because it could only refer to one taking place at mid summer, namely, when the position of the sun was in Cancer, at the end of June. Indeed, it happened at quite the -wrong time of year to suit any such astronom ical explanation. The truth of the matter, however, is that Robertson's theory is entirely dependent upon the version given by Matthew of that event, which, it so happens, erroneously lends itself to this recondite and ridiculous interpretation. Let us, therefore, turn next to the Gospel narratives and see how this error arose. We -wiU notice, in the first place, that the editor of "Matthew" assures his readers (21 : 4) that this event was a fulfilment of Zechariah's prophecy (9:9). The latter, in the Massoretic text, tells us that the future Messianic King was one day to enter his city riding upon (UteraUy) "An ass, even upon a foal, a son of she-asses." This prophecy is, as prophetic utterances in the Old Testament usually are, expressed in accordance with a as the astronomical starting-point, or equinox. It takes about 2,200 years for the sun to pass through one sign and enter upon the next and about 26,000 years to pass through the twelve signs and reach the original start ing-point. 170 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS notable rule of Hebrew poetical composition, namely, in a system of paraUeUsm in the lines, in which the second half of a Une, or the second member of a couplet, repeats in different words the idea expressed in the first half of the Une or the pre-vious line itself. In such a case the two halves of the line (or the two Unes) are frequently coupled together by the conjunction Vav ()), which, ordinarily, has the meaning "and," but in positions of this kind means "even." * This is termed by gramma rians the epexegetical (explanatory) use of Vav. The Greek equivalent icai has a similar double use and double meaning. Now, let us turn to the Greek LXX translation of Zechariah (Vat. text), and we -will find the foUowing Uteral rendering of the Massoretic version: "Riding upon a beast of burden, even (icaf) a young ass-foal." (eTri^e/3T]icQK eTri viro^-vytov ical tt&Xov veov.) Here the conjunction (/cat) is epexegetical. It should also be noticed that the preposition iirl ("upon") is not repeated after the icai, as it would be if the writer meant, "upon a beast of burden, and upon a young ass," i. e., upon two asses, as the A. V. (but not the R. V.) wrongly translates both versions. But let us turn to the other Gospels and see how far they corroborate this explanation of the matter. Mark (ii : 7) tells us that only one ass, and that a young foal, was brought to Jesus: "They bring the foal to Jesus and put their cloaks upon him, and he sat upon him." ((j)epova-iv rov ircoKov tt/jo? tov 'Irjaovv ical iiri^dWovcnv avTa TO, IfidTia [aincov] ical eKadiaev iir avTov.) ' Some scholars translate it "yea." THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM 171 Luke (19 : 35) records the matter thus: "And they brought him [the foal] to Jesus, and hav ing thrown their cloaks upon the foal they set Jesus upon him." (icai Tjiyayov avTov irpbi tov 'Irjaovv Kal iTnppt-\jravTeJ. e., I Corinthians, 52-55; Mark, 65-68; Matthew, 70-75; Luke, 80-85; Acts, 85-90; John, 90-95 A. D. THE INSTITUTION OF THE EUCHARIST 181 aU, to be met with. In the discourse found in the sixth chapter, following upon the feeding of the five thousand, a meal with probably eucharistic characteristics,* there is absolutely no direct mention of the memorial view. We cannot, therefore, regard the mere fact that Mark and Matthew do not refer to it as a "memorial" as indicating beyond question that this -view of the Eu charist was undeveloped in the original and still earUer written PauUne letter. We cannot, indeed, draw any such sweeping conclusions from a mere omission in two of the records of direct reference to the memorial as pect of the Eucharist. Mark and Matthew are con tent to emphasise the most important portions of the formulce of consecration: "This is my body — this is my blood." To draw further conclusions, on the ground of omission, is just as reasonable as to argue that because Mark (14 : 22) omits the injunction "eat"' it was not customary at first to do more than handle the eucharistic bread, as was done in the case of some of the sacra in the mysteries. Mark also omits the Matthaean injunc tion, "drink ye all of it" — i. e., the -wine; but he adds, nevertheless, that "they all drank of it." The truth is, the argument, from mere omission, is always an unsatis factory and a dangerous one; but the theory of develop ment is more dangerous still when the facts under con sideration have to be seriously distorted in order to justify some preconceived idea, which is certainly the case here. There is also, however, a very strong and direct reason for holding that the idea of a "memorial" (avdp,vr]cnv; this seems clear from the formula then used: e/c TVfjvrrdvov ecfiayoVj iK KVfi^dXov eiriov, eKepvoKa iK KVfi^aXov TrhTooKa' yeyova fiva-TTj? "Attco)?). Here there is a definite eating and drinking — perhaps, in this case, of bread and wine — spoken of. But what did it signify here? Was it anything beyond an identification of the initiate with the Great Mother through the medium of these fruits of the earth, her children? Again, in the Eleusinia, besides the drinking of the ky- ' Equivalent to "I tasted of the first fmits," which were previously under a tabu (= forbidden). THE PURIFICATION IN THE MYSTERIES 197 keon, Clement of Alexandria also specifies certain of the ritual acts: "I took [the sacra] out of the chest (Kla-Tr]<;), and, ha-ving tasted, I placed [them] in the basket (KoXa- Oov), and from the basket into the chest." What were thus taken out, transferred, and put in again ? It -will be worth while to quote Clement's description of them, which is aU the more valuable because he himself was an ini tiate in more than one of the various mysteries (Euse bius, PrcRp. Evan., II, 2, 35). Clement asks: "What are these mystic chests? — for I must expose their sacred things (lepd) and disclose a state of affairs not fit for speech." He then interrogatively enumerates these vari ous sacra as follows: "Are they not sesame-cakes, and p)T:amidal cakes, and globular and flat cakes, embossed aU over, and lumps of salt, and a serpent, the s}mibol of Dionysus Bassareus? And, besides these, are there not pomegranates, and branches, and ivy leaves ? And, fur ther, round cakes and poppy seeds ? In addition to these there are the unmentionable sjonbols of Themis, mar joram, a lamp, a sword, a woman's comb, which is a euphemism and mystical expression for the genitalia mu- liebria"^ (KTeh yi/vaiKelo^, § ecj'Tiv evcj)i]Hco<; Kal imjcttikw eiTreiv, papiov yvvaiKeiov). Truly an edifjdng Ust! And we cannot wonder that the worthy father — ^Uberal-minded and cultured scholar as he was — ^indignantly adds: "Such are the mysteries of the atheists. And -with reason I call those atheists who know not the true God, but pay shameless worship to a boy torn to pieces by the Titans, and to a woman in distress, and to parts of the body which in truth can not be mentioned for shame. . . ." 'The same writer states that the sacra in the mysteries of Dionysus- [Zagreus] were dice, a baU, a hoop, apples, a top {jib/iPos, ? "bull-roarer"), a mirror, and a tuft of wool, -with which, according to the later myth, the Titans beguiled the youthful Dionysus before they tore him Umb from Kmb. He further describes the mysteries of Dionysus as "whoUy inhu man," a conclusion to which we may readily assent. 198 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS Now, the problem which Ues before us is, What con nexion have these cult-meals with the Eucharist as insti tuted in the early church? And the answer to this, despite the opinions of some eminent scholars to the contrary, would seem to be, they have Uttle if, indeed, any at all. When the primitive Eucharist is closely and carefully examined it will be seen, we think, that its afl&nities are almost wholly -with the paschal feast; it is, in fact, an outgrowth from this, but possessing spe cial characteristics and peculiarities of its own. The ancient Passover, as described in Ex. 12 : 11 /., soon underwent considerable modifications, and at the centraUsation of all sacrifices at the one sanctuary by the Deuteronomic code the old spring pastoral feast coalesced with the (later) agricultural Massoth (Deut. 16 : i). In the time of Jesus various additional ceremonies were observed, the chief of which were: (i) Four cups of -wine mixed with water were drunk at different stages of the feast; (2) the Hallel^ was sung; (3) the various articles of food (the lamb and the unleavened cakes) were not dipped in the sauce of bitter herbs; and (4) the feast was not eaten standing, but recUning. The unleavened bread was broken, and this with the wine in each cup, after being duly blessed, was passed round to the guests by the head of the household, though this passing round is nowhere called a irapdBocrK and bore no analogy to that ceremony in the cult-feasts. Mr. Butler refers to a "second irapaBocrei of the cup by Christ." But there were in aU four so-called "para doses," since there were four cups; and it is probable that either the third or fourth cup was the one reserved for the sacrament of the Eucharist. In short, the whole manner of celebrating this supper and the subsequent institution of the Eucharist is clearly based upon the ' Probably not identical with the later Hallel (Psalms 113-118); cf. Bab. Talm., Pesach. 9 : 3. "HANDING OVER" OR "BETRAYAL"? 199 contemporary mode of celebrating the paschal feast, and all such practises as the exhibition of carefully pre served sacra, whether food or sjonboUc objects, all hand ing of these round and kissing of them by the initiates in turn, are altogether absent. In its form, as found in the Gospels, the Eucharist is typically Jewish and in no sense pagan, whatever non- Jewish ideas and prac tises may have crept in during the second century when the church had become flooded -with Gentile converts, many of whom were initiates in the mysteries and brought -with them, at least to some extent, the habits of thought which were characteristic of their pre-Chris tian frame of mind. "Handing Over" or "Betrayal"? We now come to a passage in Mr. Butler's article in which the "handing over" (¦rrapaBoa-i';) of the various sacra in the cult-suppers is deUberately compared by him to the "handing over" of Jesus to the priests by Judas Iscariot. Strictly speaking, of course — as Mr. Butler admits — any such comparison should be with the distribution of the bread and wine to each recipient; but, unfortunately for his purpose, these acts are not termed a irapdBoffv; by the evangeUsts. At the same time it so happens that Jesus remarked during the sup per: "One of you wUl hand me over" (irapaBmaei) . Here, Mr. Butler seems to think, we have the Unk with the irapdBoavi of the mysteries. In the Christian "mystery- drama" the handing over is not that of the objects (sacra), but that of the Christ, or, as Professor W, B, Smith states it, of the "Christ-idea" from the Jews to the GentUes, Now, the somewhat elaborate argument by which Mr. Butler supports his case is wholly dependent for its vaUdity upon a distinction, which he introduces and presses -vigorously, between the meaning of the Greek 200 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS verbs irapaBiBrnfu and rrpoBiBcofu; the former, he argues, always means to "hand over," whilst to "betray" is in variably expressed by the latter verb. This question, which is also raised by Professor Smith in connexion with Judas Iscariot, will be fully dealt with under that heading in chap. 13 (pp. 253-256). Here it must suffice to say (i) that the distinction drawn above, and gener ally (but not invariably) made in classical Greek, does not at all hold good in the popular and post-classical Greek of the first century, as will be shown by examples;* (2) that Judas has in one instance (Luke 6 : 16) the term ttjooSo't?;? ("betrayer") appUed to him, which shows that his act of "handing over" of Jesus was not regarded by first-century Christians as a mere ritual act in some Je-wish or Gentile mystery-drama akin to the Greek Eleu sinia, but was looked upon as a piece of actual treachery on his part. Accordingly, upon the complete breakdown of this aUeged distinction in meaning, the analogy which Mr. Butler attempts to draw between the kissing of the sacra from the chest and the kiss of the traitor' bestowed upon Jesus in Gethsemane loses its entire force. Again, Mr. Butler's further effort to associate the touch ing of the various sacra in the mysteries with the touch referred to in John 20 : 17, where Jesus forbids Mary Magdalene to hold to him (p,r] fiov aTTTov), " for my Trapd- Soo-ts is over and completed," is a pure fiction of Mr. Butier's own mind. The writer of that Gospel says that Jesus forbade the act because " I have not yet ascended to my Father" (ovttco yhp ava^e^rjKa 7r/)os tov iraTepa), a 'We may mention here that LiddeU and Scott quote, as examples of this, Xen., Cyr., V, i, 28; iv, 51, etc. Another case occurs in Thucy., VII, 68; but it is not common in classical times. In the LXX and the New Testament irpoStdu/u appears to be rarely used at aU. ^ The Gospels vary considerably here in detaUs. While Mark and Mat thew say that Judas "kissed him affectionately" {KaTeipCKriaev airbv) — a form of salutation more accordant with deUberate Oriental treachery than the formal kiss of a mystery-drama — ^Luke and John do not mention any kiss at aU. "HANDING OVER" OR "BETRAYAL"? 201 reason which, whatever its precise meaning may be, shows clearly that the author had not Mr, Butier's thought in -view when he penned the passage, Mr. Butler next proceeds to deal with the question, "Is it I?" asked severally by the disciples when Jesus announced his foreknowledge of the coming betrayal, and in so doing lays great stress upon the pecuUar (and ungrammatical) expression used by Mark, ek Kaff ek, "one after one," i.e., "one after the other." "This strange expression," he urges, "seems to indicate that the writer of Mark's Gospel had found the words so written in some Greek note or document which he was using as the foundation of his narrative,^ a note or document of weight or authority suflicient to induce him to retain the phrase in his own history. Otherwise he would have used the ordinary phrase [ek] KaB' eva. If Mr. Butler means by this remark that the above (hypothetical) Greek note or document was, perhaps, a kind of rubric attached to some MS. of a mystery- drama in which there was enacted a ceremonial hand ing over of any sacred things or sacred person by any one, or by a succession of initiates, we can only remark here that this is a purely fanciful hypothesis which practicaUy begs the whole question at issue. There is no e-vidence whatever of such dramas as existent amongst the Jews or early Christians. And, so far as the phrase ek Kaff ek is concerned, it is merely a late and ungram matical variant of the classical [et?] KaO' eva. So far, too, from being absolutely strange and unusual, it is found elsewhere in at least one passage of the New Testament (John 8 : i-n), where we read that the scribes and Pharisees "went out one by one (el? KaO' ek), beginning from the eldest even to the youngest." "^ A diUgent search in the later and popular Greek Utera- ' Italics ours. ' This story is expunged from modem critical texts. 202 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS ture of Asia Minor, etc., would doubtless reveal many more instances of the use of this unclassical expression. Lastly, as regards the question itself, its evident mean ing is that the disciples apprehended some severe crisis to be at hand, and each misdoubted the firmness of his own courage and resolutions. This view is quite in harmony with the psychology of the occasion, and the reference to it is a characteristic touch thoroughly in accordance with human nature as we find it in all ages. A Mithraic Parallel But a prototype of the Christian Eucharist has also been found in the Mithraic mysteries (0. Pfleiderer, Christusbild, EngUsh translation, pp. 129 ff., and Heit- miiller, Taufe, p. 46). This derivation appears to be largely based upon the fact that bas-reUefs representing the sacred repast in the cult of Mithra have been found in recent years in Bosnia and Rome (see Cumont, Textes, I, p. 176; "Notice sur deux bas-reUefs mithriaques," Revue Archaol., 1902, pp. 10 ff.). In these two mystae are shown recUning at a table standing behind a tripod on which small loaves of bread are placed. One of the sur rounding figures ( ? initiates) holds a horn in his hand.-^ M. Cumont, however, refers this bas-reUef to the third century A. D. If this view be correct, the sculp ture lends no support to any theory of the derivation of the Eucharist from Mithraic sources; it would, indeed, rather suggest a loan from Christianity to Mithraism. ' The sculpture perhaps has reference to the banquet which Mithra cel ebrated along with HeUos (the Sim), after his work of rescuing mankind from the great deluge, which was foUowed by a general conflagration, and before liis retum to heaven. In the supper of the fuUy developed Mithraic mysteries, as depicted on the bas-reUef (reverse) found at Heddernheim, Mithra stands behind the slain bull holding a rhyton (drinking-horn) and receiving from HeUos a bimch of grapes, a symbol of the divine juice into which the blood of the victim was transmuted by celestial alchemy. This is rather an example of a conversion of blood into wine (grape-juice). TAUROBOLIA AND CRIOBOLIA OF MYSTERIES 203 As a matter of fact, we have no reaUy complete and authentic description of the Mithraic cult-supper. The brief notice of it given by Justin Martyr, who says (Apol., I, 66) that "the wicked demons (oi irovTjpol BaC- p.ove'i) have imitated [the Eucharist] in the mysteries of Mithra, commanding the same thing to be done," * does not carry us very far in our search for "origins." The meal may have had (Uke the Eucharist) a sacramental character; but there seems to have been nothing about it reminiscent, or commemorative, of a death or sacrifice, which is one chief characteristic of the Christian institu tion. The Taurobolia and Criobolia of Asian Mysteries This last-named objection, however, has been met by Pfleiderer (op. cit., p. 131) with the following argu ment: "Though there is no parallel in the banquet of Mithras to this blood-symboUsm of the Christian sacra ment, one is certainly found in the blood-baptism of the taurobolia [buU-slaying] and the criobolia [ram-slaying] which belongs to the mysteries of Cybele and perhaps also to those of Mithras." ' In the former of these cere monies a bull was slain on a latticed platform and its blood was aUowed to fall down upon a mystes Ijdng in a pit below. This was a very ancient practise in western Asia, and was carried on in the sanctuaries of Ma and Anahita long before the rise of Mithraism. It was based upon the wide-spread notion among primitive races that the blood is the vehicle of the spiritual Ufe.' M. Cumont ' He says, however, that "bread and a cup of water" were used instead of bread and wine. ' ItaUcs ours. ' Sham ritual-murder was probably practised in the mysteries of Mithra (see Frazer, Golden Bough, 1900, pp. 445/.; Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie, pp. 164 /.). Indeed, the Emperor Commodus is said {Vita Commodi, IX) to have actuaUy murdered a man at one of the celebrations. It was also prob ably the case in the mysteries of Dionysus, though generally the victim was an animal, which was tom in pieces and eaten raw. 204 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS writes (The Mysteries of Mithra, p. i8i) of its meaning in Mithraism: "But, under the influence of the Mazdean beUefs regarding the future Ufe, a more profound sig nificance was attributed to this baptism of blood. In taking it the devotees no longer imagined they acquired the strength of the bull; it was no longer a renewal of physical strength that the Ufe-sustaining Uquid was now thought to communicate, but a renovation, temporary or 6ven perpetual, of the human soul." But this cere mony was no part of the original Mithraic cult, and it was only introduced in the second century A. D. into that of Cybele, from whence it passed into the later Mithraic system. And this fact at once precludes all derivation of the Christian sacraments from Mithraism. A Parallel from Mexico A "parallel," if not a source, has been found in Mexico by Mr. J. M. Robertson, who says (Christianity and Myth ology, p. 408) that there the sacred tree was "made into a cross on which was exposed a baked dough image of a sa-viour-god, and this [image] was, after a time, climbed for, taken down, and sacramentally eaten." This passage at first sight reads very much Uke a blend of a eucha ristic and a crucifixion narrative; but on reference to Mr. H. H. Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, from which it is professedly taken,* we find it stated in vol. II, p. 321, that at the festival of HuitzilopochtU, the Mexican god of war, a Ufe-sized image of the god was made of wickerwork and covered -with dough made of amaranth and other seeds. A paper cap set -with plumes was then put upon the head of this idol. Again, the author says (pp. 330 and 331) that the Te- panecs had a festival in which "a bird of dough" was ' Mr. Robertson (ist ed.) gave the reference as pp. 386 and 509. But this was clearly an error. THE COMMON TERMS 205 placed at the top of a huge tree, and then "women dressed in the finest garments, and holding small dough idols in their hands, danced round the pole, while the youths struggled -wildly to reach and knock down the dough image." When thus resolved into its two original and constituent parts, and stripped of the imaginative additions — "the sacred tree formed into a cross," etc. — the story loses even its superficial resemblance to the narratives of the crucifixion and institution of the Eu charist. Moreover, it is a far cry from Palestine to Mexico, and the parallel, such as it is, cannot have had any suggestive value for either Jews or early Christians. In addition to this fact, there is really very Uttle Ukeness and absolutely no correspondence in meaning between these ceremonies and the Gospel events. The Common Terms But the great gulf which exists between the Christian scheme and the various mystery-cults, even in their highest and best forms, is stiU more clearly shown by the differ ence in meanings attached to the technical terms which are common to both. Thus, the term p,va-Trjpiov, "mys tery" (pi., iivcTTripia) , which is found in Mark 4 : ii; Ro mans II : 25; 16 : 25 and 26; / Cor. 2 : 7, etc., is used in the New Testament in the sense of a secret which can only be known through a revelation from God. In the mystery-cults the whole idea underlpng the term is merely that of concealment from the uninitiated. Thus the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Sa-viour of the world is termed (Romans 16 : 25) a /iva-Ti^piov 'xpovoi'i aloovlon a-ecriyfievov, ' $ irdpa, unnatural under the circumstances and almost untranslatable, is thus ingeniously explained by Cheyne : Eraipe should come after o vapet and is a corruption of a dittographed o iropet. The true reading, he beUeves, is viroKpivet, "thou feignest," "thou actest a part" {Enc. Bib., art. "Judas," sec. 7). THE YOUNG MAN WHO FLED AWAY NAKED 219 contempt. "For nearly eighteen hundred years," he avers (Ecce Deus, pp. 111-113), "this youth has been the despair of exegesis. Wellhausen thinks that he was merely some unknown fellow in the neighbourhood who heard the racket of the arrest, jumped out of bed with only a night-robe around him, and rushed to the scene as young America hastens to a dog fight . . ," ! But, to turn to his criticism: "These verses appear at first sight to be quite inexpUcable, and yet they jdeld their meaning readily enough. We note that the term young man is not frequent in Mark; it occurs only here and in 16 : 5. In both cases it is a 'youth wrapt all about' ('7repi^e/3Xrjfievo<;); in this case in fine and costly Unen cloth (aivBdva), especiaUy used for cerements; in 16 : 5, in a white robe ((ttoXtjv XevKi^v). Even Leib nitz would have admitted the two figures to be almost indiscernibles. The garment in both cases is white, and it is the only garment (eTri yvfivov, 14 : 51; yvfivo^, 52). . . . Are they related ? * ... It seems, then, that we are deaUng with a technical expression for a celestial personage (cf. Rev. 19 : 14). . . . The celestial per sonage is the angel-self of Jewish anthropology, the Persian ferhouer (represented on an extant coin as Sapor II, the rival of JuUan the Emperor), a kind of astral body that follows along with Jesus,' robed in white ' Professor Smith refers here to Ezek. 9 : 2; Daniel 10 : 5; 12:6 and 7. These references, however, are not to the point. The "six men" (Sf &vSpes) of Ezekiel and "the man clad in Uhen cloth" {&v8poi-n-os iveSvriiivos §iav iiriKaKoip£vov, "J., who was sumamed Caiaphas." ANNAS AND CAIAPHAS 247 In the face of this plain historical testimony such guess work mythical identifications as that of Annas with the "Sib-Zi-Anna of the Babylonians" and the "Anna Pe- renna of the Romans," who "corresponds to the star y in Gemini," or to "the constellation Cassiopeia, or, again, that of Caiaphas with "the consteUation Cepheus," are worthless. If the name of Caiaphas does not occur in the extant Talmudic Ust of the high priests, that fact need not prove anything but the faultiness of that record.* Perhaps he was better known as Joseph simply; or is it that we have here another instance of " Christian inter polation" in Josephus, the common and final argument when none other is forthcoming? ' Caiaphas seems to have eamed impopularity amongst the Jews, per haps as an intruder into the high-priesthood. CHAPTER XIII JUDAS ISCARIOT AND [jESUS ?] BARABBAS Judas Iscariot The name Judas Iscariot presents a great puzzle to the modern critical scholar. Its traditional interpreta tion, "Judas, man of Kerioth" (fli"!!? B'J^, ish Kerijjoth), has of late years been much questioned, especially by critics of avowedly mythical views. The chief objections raised to this explanation of the name are: (i) It is doubt ful whether the initial syllable "Is-" really represents the Heb., B'K (ish = man), the 's,' perhaps, belonging rather to the latter word (cf. Syr., skariota), though this conclusion is at least uncertain. (2) Kerioth (Karioth) seems not to be a place, but to refer to a district, or rather a group of to-wns (cf. Joshua 15 : 25, but see Jer. 48 : 24 and 41, where a Kerioth in Moab is mentioned). (3) Had Judas come from any such place, or even district, we would expect his designation to be I. aTro KepimO. Now, there is, as Doctor Cheyne noted (Enc. Bib., art. "Judas Iscariot," 1899), "a well-supported reading in John, aTTO KapvcoTov, which, according to Zahn and Nes tle, confirms the view that it is derived from the Heb., rii^Ilp t^S." Doctor Cheyne, however, thought it more probable that the name may have been incorrectly trans mitted to us, and suggested (loc. cit.) that Judas's true appellation may have been 'lepixTri'i , "man of Jericho." Subsequently, in the light of further inquiry, he seems to have decided (Hibbert Journal, July, 191 1, p. 891, and July, 1913, pp. 919 and 920) that "Iscariot comes from 248 JUDAS ISCARIOT 249 Ashharti, which is practically equivalent to Ashhurite (northern Arabia), a family surname." * It is perhaps too early as yet to pronounce definitely upon this last-mentioned suggestion. Professor Smith, however (Ecce Deus, pp. 319 and 320), admits that it is a "most ingenious hypothesis," though he doubts whether it -wiU hold good; meanwhile, he asks for e-vidence in support of it, and points out that Cheyne elsewhere ad mits that Jesus was not betrayed, or even handed over, to the Jewish authorities by "Judas" or any one else; further, that he says: "the twelve apostles are to me as unhistorical as the seventy disciples," a somewhat effec tive retort in the circumstances of the case. The various etymological difficulties which are encoun tered in the derivation of this word, however, cannot be used, even indirectly, in any proper sense of the term, as an argument against the actual existence of Judas as a man. Names, like numbers, are readily open to serious misimderstanding and corruption in ancient MSS., and it is quite possible, if not probable, that the name has been incorrectly transmitted to us. At the same time it can be affirmed that there is no absolute and insuperable objection to "man from Keri oth (Karioth)," a -view which is stiU held by some com petent scholars (e. g., Holtzmann, Hand-commentar, I, p. 97); and Keim (1867-72) even went so far as to assert (Jesus of Nazara, HI, p. 276) that "undoubtedly Judas Iscariot means man of Kariot," and he identifies the place as "most probably the Kerijot (Josephus, Koreae, Korea) on the northern boundary of Judaea, half a league north of Shiloh, and now Kuriut." He further suggests that perhaps Judas's father had migrated to GaUlee from Judaea, ' It may also be noted here that in the Fourth Gospel Judas is twice designated (6 : 71; 12:4) "son of Simon," to whom (6 : 71) in many old MSS. the, appellation "Iscariot" is transferred. 250 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS But we have of recent years passed from the verbal difficulties and doubts engendered by etymology to those which find their origin in history and myth. In the year 1900 Mr. J. M. Robertson inaugurated a fresh at tack upon the historical character of Judas Iscariot, and urged -with great -vigour that he was but a mere drama tis persona in a primitive "mystery play," or "ritual drama," such as was enacted in the Eleusinian and other mysteries. "In the Gospel of Peter," he writes (Christianity and Mythology, p. 385), "the Jews figure as equivalent factors -with Herod and Pilate in the cruci fixion, and in a ritual drama written for an audience so prepared unnamed Jews would figure as the god's ene mies and captors. At a later period the anti-Jewish animus which led to the presentment of the whole twelve in the Gospel story as deserting their Lord at the su preme moment would easily develop into the idea of the actual treachery of one of the twelve, and to him would be allotted the part of the leading captor, who to start with had been simply loudaios, 'a Jew.' A bag to hold the reward would be a natural stage accessory. In this way would arise the further myth that the traitor who carried the bag was treasurer of the group and a miser and a thief at that; while out of the loudaios would grow the name Judas." * It will be readily seen from the above quotation that Mr. Robertson's whole case practicaUy rests upon the hypothetical existence in the first century A. D., and perhaps pre-viously, of certain mystery-dramas amongst the early Christians, whether Gentile or Jewish. Now, we know that during the Middle Ages the Gospel narra tives were dramatised chiefly for the better instruction of the "masses"; but for the existence of any similar presentation of the tenets of Christianity in the first cen- ' Elsewhere he connects Jesus with a pre-Christian Ephraimitic sun-god Joshua (Jesus). JUDAS ISCARIOT 251 tury there is absolutely no evidence whatever. Even W. B. Smith's "Jesus-cults," * and the supposed worship of a pre-Christian god named "Jesus," fall short of what is presupposed in the above imaginative sketch. It is true that many peoples of Asia Minor, as also the Greeks and the Egyptians, had at that time, and long previ ously, their "mysteries," in which the cosmic processes of birth and death, and rebirth and reproduction, in na ture, and Ufe after death, were mythicised and set forth dramaticaUy at Eleusis and elsewhere. But of any mys teries even remotely resembling those among the Jews of that period, or among the early Christians, we are abso lutely ignorant. The former people had long been sat urated -with the spirit of a post-exilic Mosaic legaUsm and held all kinds of idolatry, however artistically repre sented, in the greatest abhorrence, whilst, as regards the Christians, we have abundant e-vidence to show that, both as indi-viduals and as a body, they shrank from all par ticipation in such pagan mysteries and even from any in tercourse -with their initiates and devotees. Neither can the theory that Judas is merely a dram atised and personified form of loudaios be sustained. Judas is the Hellenistic form of Judah, which name had been, for many years before the time of Christ, not only a tribal or national designation, but also a common and very popular personal, or circumcision, name amongst the Jews. In short, Mr. Robertson's picture of the devel opment of the ideal Jew into Judas, and the evolution of the money-bag, together with the appellations of "miser" and "thief" and "villain," are purely imaginative con structions of history, clever, no doubt, but not facts in any true sense of that term. Again, practically the same view of Judas is taken by Professor Drews (The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, ' This question is treated somewhat fuUy in the present writer's Jesus the Christ : Historical or Mythical ? chap. 7. 252 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS 1912, EngUsh translation, p. 83), who says: "Judas is not an historical personaUty, but, as Mr. Robertson be Ueves, a representative of the Jewish people, hated by the Christians, who [i. e., the Jews] were beUeved to have caused the death of the Saviour." It will be observed, however, from the above statement, that during the last dozen years no conclusive evidence in support of this thesis has been forthcoming; we must, therefore, infer that it still rests upon the same purely h3^othetical basis as when Robertson first advocated it. Professor W. B. Smith, on the other hand, had in the pre-vious year put forth another defense of the mythical hypothesis (Hibbert Journal, April, 191 1, pp. 529-544). After discussing at some length the variant forms (I)ska- riot(h), Iskariotes (Mark 14 : 43), Kariotes (S John 6 : 71, etc.), and Skariotes (D. Matt. 10 : 4, etc.), he dis misses the traditional view of the meaning of the name. "For every reason," he writes, "we must reject the ac cepted interpretation 'man of Kerioth.'" Wellhausen also, he says, rejects the interpretation and wisely in- cUnes to regard it as a "name of reproach Uke Bandit (Sicarius)." He further refers to in passing, but does not adopt, the suggestion of the Honorable WilUs Brown (The Open Court, August, 1909) that the name is connected with the Hebrew root IDiy (S K R) and means "hired" (cf. Matt. 28 : 9 with Zech. 11 : 12); but Mark (probably an older authority than Matthew) omits any mention of hire. There is, however, he continues, another Hebrew root of very nearly the same letters, "l3D (§ K R), which ap pears once (Isaiah 14 : 4) in exactly the sense which is needed in this story. At the same time he admits that this latter stem, as a rule, means "shut up" in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac, and may be rendered thus here (Cheyne); and that in another passage (Ezek. 30 : 12), the initial D (s) may be an error for D (m), as many JUDAS ISCARIOT 253 scholars think. But neither of these facts, in his view, materiaUy affect the question, and the translation of v' sikkarti (''n"l2p1, Isaiah 19 : 4) by the LXX version as KalirapaBaxTOi, "and I will deUver up," corresponds ex actly to the words of Matt. 26 : 15. Accordingly, he infers that since the Greek verb here (irapaBiBovai) means strictly "to hand over," or "sur render," rather than "to betray" (in the bad sense), "Iscariot means merely 'the deUverer up' — not 'the traitor.' * In that case, Iscariot is precisely what Well hausen felt it must be, a 'Schimpfname,' a sobriquet, an opprobrious nickname, the most appropriate and even unavoidable." Finally, the conclusion which he draws is stated thus: "I suspect that the oldest thought was one of the sur render of the great idea of the Jesus of the Jesus-cult by the Jews to the heathen.^ This, in fact, was the supreme, the astounding fact of early Christian history and en gaged intensely the minds of men." Further: "That Judas Iscariot typifies the Jewish people in its rejection of the Jesus-cult seems so ob-vious, it seems to meet us so close to the threshold of the inner sense of the New Testament, that it may move our wonder that any one should overlook it." This critical theory, put forward by Professor Smith, is argued with so much scholarship and persuasive power that even the critically minded reader is disposed on first reading to adopt it. But on a closer inspection it -will not do. Let us examine it carefully and in detail. Now, the foundation of the whole hypothesis is the hard and fast distinction which Professor Smith attempts to draw between the compound Greek verbs irpoBiBmiu and ' Mr. Slade Butier also draws ("The Greek Mysteries and the Gospels," The Nineteenth Century and After, March, 1905, pp. 494 and 495) a sunUar distinction between the use of irapa5lSa)p,i, and irpoSlS(ap.i. See chap. 10, pp. 199-200. * It^cs ours. 254 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS ¦rrapaBiBcofu. The former, he says, means "to betray"; the latter always means merely "to hand over" (in a neutral sense). This is true as a broad general statement ex pressing a grammarian's rule, but it is not true abso lutely and as regards the practise of -W^riters in Greek. An examination of several authoritative Greek lexicons wiU reveal the fact that TrapaBiBcofjn has also a well- estabUshed and subsidiary meaning of "to hand over," with a coUateral notion of treachery; in other words, "to betray." LiddeU and Scott, e. g., give, as examples of this secondary meaning, Xen., Cyr., V, i, 28; V, 4, 51, etc. To these may be added Xen., Hell., VII, 3, 8, and Ceb., Tab., IX, in the latter of which the two verbs occur close to each other in practically a similar sense. A more searching examination would undoubtedly reveal many other instances in classical writers. But let us now turn to the LXX version and the Greek Testament. In the former an example of the sinister use of irapaBiBcofu occurs in I Chron. 12 : 17, where David refers to the possibiUty that certain men of Judah had joined his band with a view to handing him over (= be traying him) to his enemies. Turning next to the New Testament, we find many instances of its use, in the greater number of which the verb can be translated "hand over"; but it would be difficult to maintain that the sinister shade of meaning is wanting in all of them. Thus, in Matt. 24 : 10, "They shall hand over (= be tray, irapaBdycrova-i) one another," there is a decided mean ing of treachery impUcit in the verb. Compare with this the parallels, where irapaBmaei (Mark 13 : 12) and TrapaBcodrja-ecj-de (Luke 21 : 16) have a similar sinister note. We have so far purposely omitted the passages referring specifically to the conduct of Judas,* because ' The chief are Matt. 10 : 4; 17 : 22; 20 : 18; 26 : i5, 21, 24, 46, and 48; Mark 3 : 19; 14 : 11, 18, 21, 41, 42, and 44; Luke 22 ; 4, 6, 21, 22, and 48; John 12:4; 13 : 21; 18 : 2 and 5. In each of these cases the verb is irapaSlSu/u. JUDAS ISCARIOT 255 in these, if they are taken out of the context, it is pos sible to translate the word used "hand over." But the other sense is equaUy — and even more — suitable, if we take the whole context of the passage into considera- tioii. The fact is that in the New Testament the word •jrpoBiBmfu, -with its alUed noun Tr/aoSoV?;? ("a betrayer"), are but seldom used, the chief examples being Luke 6 : i6; Acts 7 : 52; and II Tim. 3 : 4. Luke, however, does once apply the stronger term to Judas (6 : 16), "Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor" (tt/joSo'tt??) — not simply "a deUverer up" (cf. o? Kal irapeBcoKev avTov [Mark] and 0 Kal ¦7rapaBov<; avrdv [Matthew]), We may also allow largely for the unwilUngness of the New Testament writers to use the stronger term to Judas, His conduct is never alluded to in a spirit of harshness, but rather -with a feeUng of sorrow and sym pathy for the unhappy man who had faUen so far below his former estate. The only (apparent) exception to this occurs in John 6 : 70. Here the writer reports Jesus as saying: "Did I not choose you twelve, and one of you is a Bid^oXm?" This last word is rendered, in both A. V. and R. V., "devil." But it is a very doubtful trans lation, making every allowance for the wide-spread de- monism of the age. Aid^oXo<} is UteraUy "slanderer," and hence "adversary" (EaTava^^ '2aTav), and in that role even Peter once figured (Mark 8 : 33 and Matt. 16 : 23). It is preferable, therefore, here to render the word "ad versary," in the malevolent sense of spy or traitor, as Judas afterwards proved himself to be. In short. Professor Smith has not proved his primary contention. He has no real warrant for the hard and fast distinction which he draws, nor for the implication that Judas is never called "a traitor" (tt/soSo'tijs) but always merely "a deUverer up." And, since such is the case, the whole foundation of his argument for the non- historicity of Judas falls to the ground. It was possibly 256 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS the fact of this general distinction between irapaBlBcofii and TrpoBiBoofu which also led De Quincey to frame his famous apology for Judas. The latter, he said, merely handed over Jesus to the Jewish authorities, not with the idea of betraying him to his death, but in order to force his hand — to compel him to come forward as the Messiah. It was time (he thought) to put an end to the timidity and hesitation which was hindering that desired result. This theory, however, has not received any assent from scholars. It is unnecessary to attempt to free irapaBiBtufu from its not unfrequent sinister shade of meaning. And, in any case, before we could accept any mythical explanation of Judas Iscariot it would be nec essary to show that Jesus himself was unhistorical. This has not yet been accompUshed; indeed, it is still very far from having been done. FinaUy, -with regard to the theory that Iscariot is a mere sobriquet, or nickname, expressive of contempt, Doctor Cheyne asserts (op. cit., supra) that "a more thorough examination of the names and surnames of the early disciples should con-vince any one that they were never either opprobrious or nicknames." We may, therefore, conclude this inquiry by saying that Professor Smith has neither estabUshed his views regard ing Judas nor advanced any sound arguments which ren der such a -view even probable.* [? Jesus] Barabbas M. Salomon Reinach reminds us (Orpheus, pp. 229 and 230, English translation, 1909) that "at the so-called ' In the Jewish Quarterly Review (September, 1913, pp. 197-207) Doctor E. Krauss, of Vienna, shows, as against Professor Smith and also Wellhau sen, that there is no philological reason against the explanation of Iscariot as "man (or citizen) of Karioth." He also rejects the theory, which he calls a "methodological enor," that Judas was meant to typify the Jewish people. [? JESUS] BARABBAS 257 feast of the Sacaea, in Babylonia and Persia, there was a triumphant procession of a condemned criminal dressed as a king; at the end of the festival he was stripped of his fine raiment, scourged, hanged [? impaled], or cruci fied." Further: "We know from Philo that the pop ulace of Alexandria gave the name Karabas to one of these improvised kings, who was overwhelmed -with mock honours and afterwards ill treated. "But Karabas," he continues, "has no meaning either in Aramaic or Greek. It must be emended to read Barabbas, which means, in Aramaic, 'son of the father.' In the Gospels we see Jesus called the King of the Jews, crowned with thorns, and given a reed for a sceptre (Matt. 27 : 26-31); he was, therefore, treated exactly like a Barabbas. "But what are we then to believe of the incident of the seditious Barabbas and of the choice given to the populace between Jesus and Barabbas? In addition to aU this, we learn that about the year 250 [A. D.] Origen read in a very ancient MS. of St. Matthew's Gospel that Barabbas was called 'Jesus Barabbas.' By comparing these various statements we are led to the conclusion that Jesus was put to death, not instead of Barabbas, but in the character of a Barabbas. The evangeUsts nei ther understood the ceremony they described nor the nature of the derisive honours bestowed on Jesus; they made a myth of what was palpably a rite. If there is an historic fact embedded in the narrative it is so over laid with legend that it is impossible to disengage it." The question of these mock-kings and their alleged connexion -with the passion of Jesus -will be dealt with directly. We -will, meanwhile, proceed to an examina tion of this interesting extract from M. Reinach's work. It is unfortunate that the distinguished author of Orpheus should have made no less than four distinct errors and misstatements in the space of a single para- 258 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS graph; but such, nevertheless, is the case. Let us, how ever, in the first place, see what Philo himseff says. At the time of King Agrippa's entry into Alexandria, "there was," he says (Works, "Against Flaccus," VI, Yonge's translation, vol. IV, pp. 68 and 69), "a certain madman named Carabbas* (Kapa^d?), afflicted, not -with a wild, savage, and dangerous madness (for that comes on in fits, -without being expected either by the patient or by the bystanders), but -with an intermittent and more gentle kind. This man spent aU his days and nights naked (yvfivd?) in the roads, minding neither cold nor heat, the sport of idle children and wanton youths; and they [the mob of Alexandria], dri-ving the poor wretch as far as the pubUc gymnasium, and setting him up there on high, that he might be seen by everybody, flattened out a leaf of papyrus and put it on his head instead of a diadem, and clothed the rest of his body -with a com mon door-mat instead of a cloak, and instead of a scep tre they put in his hand a small stick of the native papy rus, which they found lying by the wayside and gave to him; and when, Uke the actors in theatrical spectacles, he had received all the insignia of royal authority, and had been dressed and adorned Uke a king, the young men, bearing sticks on their shoulders, stood on each side of him instead of spear-bearers, in imitation of the body guards, and then others came up, some as if to salute him, and others making as though they wished to plead their causes before him, and others pretending to consult with him about the affairs of the state. "Then, from the multitude of those who were stand ing around, there arose a wonderful shout of men calUng out 'Maris.' Now, this is the name by which it is said they call the kings among the Syrians; for they knew that Agrippa was by birth a Syrian and also that he was pos sessed of a great district of Syria of which he was the ' Mr. Yonge has also altered the spelling. [? JESUS] BARABBAS 259 sovereign. When Flaccus* heard, or rather when he saw, this he would have done right if he had apprehended the maniac and put him in prison, that he might not give to those who re-vUed him [Agrippa] an opportunity or excuse for insulting their superiors, and if he had chas tised those who dressed him up, for ha-ving dared both openly and disguisedly, both -with words and actions, to insult a king, and a friend of Caesar, and one who had been honoured by the Roman Senate -with imperial au thority; but he not only did not punish them, he did not think fit even to check them, but gave complete Ucense and impunity to all those who designed ill, and who were disposed to show their enmity and spite to the king, pretending not to see what he did see and not to hear what he did hear." Now, it is perfectiy clear from a comparison of this statement of Philo with that of M. Reinach that (i) the mob did not bestow the name Karabas upon this man. His name was Karabas (whatever that may mean) be forehand. It cannot, therefore, have been the name of a character in a drama or carnival, as the latter sup poses. (2) This Karabas, we find, was not ill treated and put to death afterwards by the mob, as the mock-kings in the spring carnivals are said to have been, but allowed to go his way unharmed after the jest was over. Again, we find (3) in the oldest account (Mark's) it is stated that when the multitude asked Pilate to release the prisoner of their choice, in accordance with his custom, he repUed by offering Jesus. Only Matthew represents him as gi-ving the choice between Jesus and Barabbas. The mob, however, at the instigation of the priests; riot ously demanded Barabbas instead, and Pilate ultimately gave way to avoid a tumult. (4) Furthermore, Jesus is nowhere, in the story, said to have been put to death instead of Barabbas. Neither has it been shown that he ' Appointed viceroy of Alexandria by Tiberius Csesar. 260 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS was executed in the character of a Barabbas. The priests dexterously twisted his avowed claim to be the Mes- siamc king into a charge of treason against Cjesar. In deed, as Monsignor Batiffol has very justly remarked (The Credibility of the Gospel, 1912, pp. 213 and 214): "Salo mon Reinach has taken an incident for a custom, an impro-vised jest for an annual festival, and has never suspected, perhaps from not rereading his Philo, that the students of Alexandria, anti-Semitic and seditious, were that day mocking at the Jews as being friendly to Caesar." Again, -with reference to the name Karabas, M. Rei nach makes one or two rather hasty statements. Karabas, he urges, has no meaning either in Aramaic or Greek; ergo it must be emended to Barabbas. We do not follow this reasoning. To do so will, no doubt, be very conve nient for the mythical theory, but logically it is a non sequitur.^ On the other hand, Lagrange has pointed out (Quelques Remarques, pp. 34 and 48) that a Palmyrene in scription has the word Kilp (Kieraba, "war," "battle") as the name of a female, and remarks that it would be more fitting to a man.^ Certainly it would be very suit able to Barabbas, who was doubtless one of the fanatical body known as Zealots (^rj'XooTaC) , or Assassins (Sicarii), that waged such constant and relentless warfare with the Romans. The meaning of the name Barabbas M, Reinach also assumes to be "son of a father." This is the ordinary explanation; but it does not seem to be estabUshed beyond all doubt. It has been regarded (so Monsignor Batiffol) as signifying "son of a rabbi" (Bar Rabbdn), and Jerome states (Comm. in Matt., XXVI, 16) that it was translated "FiUus magistri eorum" in the ' To quote Monsignor Batiffol again, this is "a twofold fault of criticism, an inexact reading, and an arbitrary correction" (Karabas = Barabas = Barabbas). ' E. g., we might get Bar Kcraba{s), "son of war." [? JESUS] BARABBAS 261 Gospel According to the Hebrews. Mr. Nicholson, however, affirms that there is next to no authority in the New Testament for doubling the r, though this form is met with in the Harklean Syriac (fifth century) and it is the regular form found in the Acta Pilati.^ Let us now turn to Professor Drews. He, in the main, foUows Reinach, and alters Karabas to Barabbas, of which he thinks it is probably a corruption. He then proceeds, in some detail, to Unk up the story of the Pas sion -with the two pagan festivals, closely alUed (he thinks) -with one another, the Babylonian Sacaea' and the Persian feast of "the Beardless One," the former of which he specially identifies -with the Roman Saturnalia. The Babylonian and Persian festivals, he beUeves, were blended and adopted by the Jews during the period of their exUe, and appeared subsequently in their history as the feast of Purim, the origin of which is erroneously stated in the book of Esther. In this last-named festival Drews holds that, while Haman represents the old and dying year, Mordecai is the representative of the new Ufe rising from the dead (i. e., the new year of nature). He says (The Christ Myth, EngUsh translation, pp. 75 and 76) : "WhUe the former was put to death at the Purim feast, the latter, a criminal chosen by lot, was given his free dom on this occasion, clothed with the insignia of the dead man, and honoured as the representative of Mor- ' See, however, Enc. Bib., art. "Barabbas," sec. 2. The word is also found spelt Barrabas (Tert., Marc, IV, 42) and abbreviated as Barba{s) in the Talmiid. ' Identified by Frazer with the Zalmuk, a Babylonian New Year's fes tival. Doctor Cheyne also, but less positively, takes this view. He says {Hib bert Journal, April, 1911, pp. 661 and 662) that "the Barabbas story may be most simply explained from a Babylonian source"; but he admits that "on occasion of what ceremony this took place does not appear." He adds: "As for the name Barabbas, it is surely a corruption of Karabas (the form in the strange story of PhUo), which probably indicates the Arabian origin of this supposed fierce bandit." But why not Karabas from Barabbas ? It is no more unUkely 1 But see Cheyne, Fresh Voyages, etc., p. 163. 262 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS decai rewarded by Ahasuerus [Xerxes] for his services." And further: "In their account of the last events of the life of the Messiah, Jesus, the custom at the Jewish Purim feast, already referred to, passed through the minds of the evangeUsts. They described Jesus as the Haman, Barabbas as the Mordecai of the year, and in so doing, on accoimt of the symbol of the lamb of sacri fice, they merged the Purim feast in the feast of Easter, celebrated a little later.^ They, however, transferred the festive entry into Jerusalem of the Beardless One, his hostile measures against the shopkeepers and money changers, and his being crowned in mockery as 'King of the Jews,' ' from Mordecai-Barabbas to Haman- Jesus, thus anticipating symbolically the occurrences which should only have been completed on the resurrection of the Marduk of the new year." Let us now see what solid facts we can extract from this tangle of theories and suppositions. Most critical scholars seem to be agreed that the Purim festival is not entirely of Jewish origin; further than this they are by no means in accord. But while there may be in Purim sur-vivals of former festivals of some kind, whether of a vegetative or a solar character, there is no e-vidence to indicate that the Jews took over the current interpretation of these festivals into the celebration of their new feast. Neither can there be said to exist any e-vidence to show that the various royal "pri-vileges" of the old festivals were ever attached to Purim. Drews's further sugges- ' ItaUcs ours. ^ Doctors Zimmem and Langdon think that a hsonn from the temple serv ice of the city of Isin commemorates certain Semitic kings who played the part of Tammuz and died for the life of their cities. Doctors Radau and Sayce, however, think that it refers to Istar's visit to Hades where she wishes to rest with the deceased kings of Isin. Doctor Sayce says: "I can find no evidence either in Babylonia or in any other part of the Semitic world for Sir J. G. Frazer's theory of a king who takes the place of a god and has to pay the penalty of his divine kingship by being put to death" {Expository Times, August, 1914, p. 521). [? JESUS] BARABBAS 263 tion that the ironical investiture of Jesus with the crown of thorns, and the inscription over the cross, together with the selection of Barabbas, had anything to do with Purim must also, as Professor Jacobs says (Encyclopadia Britannica, nth ed., art. "Purim"), be rejected. "The connexion of the Passion with the Passover rather than Purim," he rightly adds, "would alone be sufficient to nulUfy the suggestion." Purim was celebrated on the 14th and 15th of Adar (the twelfth month), whilst the Passover was held on the 14th of Abib or Nisan (the first month), that is to say, in any case, several weeks later.* It is most improb able, to say the least, that the Jews, when in Babylonia, should ever have learned to connect the death of a hu man representative of the vegetation (or solar) spirit -with Purim, when a connexion with the Passover would be so much more ob-vious, especially if the latter festival had originaUy that kind of signification. And it is still more incredible that the evangeUsts should commit such a glaring historical error as the merging of the Purim' feast in the feast of Easter, celebrated a Uttle later. Sir James Frazer remarks, apropos of Doctor Drews's derivation of the Crucifixion story (The Golden Bough, part 6, "The Scapegoat," pp. 414 /.), that Jesus may have really perished in the character of Haman; but at the same time he says that the crucifixion occurred at the Passover' on the 14th of Nisan, whereas the feast of Purim, at which the "hanging" of Haman would take place, fell exactly a month earUer, on the 14th of Adar. And he adds (note 2) that Professor C. F. Lehmann- Haupt writes to him as foUows: "I regard it as out of the ' Some two months, if a second and intercalary Adar were inserted, as was sometimes necessary. ' The paschal lamb is considered by some scholars to be merely a later substitute for a human being (see Frazer's theory. The Golden Bough, part 3, "The Dymg God," chap. 6, pp. 166-179). Cf. John 11 : 50 and 51. 264 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS question that Christian tradition shifted the date of the crucifixion by a month. You yourself regard it as im probable; but in my opinion it is impossible. . . . With out the background of the [Passover] festival all that we know of the crucifixion and of what led up to it is totally unintelUgible." Such a proceeding would certainly have made the whole story a confused anachronism, which would at once have been noted by the Jews as unhistorical and untrue. Moreover, we repeat that in most respects the story of Jesus is utterly unlike that of the feast of the Sacaea. The Ucense accorded to the condemned criminal in the latter has absolutely no parallel in the case of Jesus,* whilst the setting free of Barabbas was clearly not part of a predetermined plan, as in the case of the re leased man in the Babylonian carnival, but a mere after thought and desperate expedient of Pilate to evade an issue which he felt unequal to contest. We may, there fore, take it as certain that this story of Jesus and Barab bas has no connexion with either of these feasts, neither does it resemble the story of Karabas in origin or issue; there are, in short, no real parallels in it -with any of these events. We will now proceed to a consideration of the per sonal or circumcision name of Barabbas. It must have been noticed by every careful reader that in our modern texts, at least, all the evangelists concur in withholding it. Now, this must be due to one or other of three reasons: either (i) they did not know it, not an altogether im probable supposition, or (2) they saw no necessity for its insertion, or (3) they inserted it in the original texts from which it was afterwards removed. As the last-mentioned alternative is the one universally adopted by the mythi cists, we will give it a careful and detailed consideration. Professor Drews, indeed, builds upon it one of his proofs ' See The Golden Bough, 1890, vol. I, pp. 226 and 227. [? JESUS] BARABBAS 265 for the mythical character of Jesus. Let us, therefore, hear his statement of the case. He says (The Christ Myth, pp. 75 and 76): "Accord ing to an old reading of Matt. 27 : 17 et seq., which, however, has disappeared from our texts since Origen, Barabbas the criminal set against the Saviour is called Jesus Barabbas, that is, Jesus the son of the Father. May an indication of the true state of the facts not Ue herein, and may the figure of Jesus Barabbas, the God of the year, corresponding to both halves of the year, that is, of the sun's course both upward and downward, not have separated into two distinct personaUties on the occasion of the New Year's feast?" We wiU, however, turn to the text of the Gospel before adventuring any further on this road. In Matt. 27 : 16 and 17 five cursive MSS. (together with the Syriac, Armenian, and Jerome's versions) have the reading Jesus Barabbas instead of Barabbas. In ad dition to this, twenty-one MSS. contain the following marginal note variously ascribed to Chrysostom (who, however, does not refer to the matter in his commentary) and Anastasius of Sinai (end of sixth century A. D.): "In some very ancient MSS. which I came across I found Barabbas himself also called Jesus, so that in these the question of Pilate rah thus, Whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ? For, as it seems, Barabbas, which is interpreted 'teacher's son,' was the robber's sire name." As a set-off against these facts, none of the existing great (and more ancient) uncial MSS. have this reading in these verses. Neither have the numerous other cur sives; even the above-mentioned five do not read Jesus Barabbas elsewhere. But a passage in the Latin trans lation of Origen's Comm. in Matt, should also be noted. It mns in Uteral translation from the Latin (the Greek original being now lost): "In many MSS. it is not con- 266 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS tained that Barabbas was also caUed Jesus, and, per haps, rightly, so that the name Jesus should not belong to any sinner." This would seem, at first sight, to imply that Jesus Barabbas was at that time the reading of most of the MSS. [uncials] that Origen had met with.* Indeed, the late Mr. Nicholson (Gospel According to the Hebrews, p. 141) pronounced this the heaviest external evidence in favour of this reading. But its e-vidence is by no means conclusive; for (i) it is not certain that the Latin is an exact equivalent of Origen's Greek, the latter part of the quotation suggesting the addition of some translator or copyist; and (2) "many" is a vague term and probably does not mean here a small minority. In all probabiUty, too, Origen had not access to a very large and varied number of MSS.' Furthermore, there are several much simpler and at least very probable explanations of the intrusion of "Jesus" into the text of vss. 16 and 17 of Matt. 27. The best of these is undoubtedly that of Tregelles, who thinks that it is due to an instance of the error known as dittography, to which all scribes were very Uable. In his -view, the final iv of vixiv was accidentally written twice, thus: aTToXvacov/jiiviv^apa^^av. k.t.X. Now, IV is the usual cursive abbre-viation for irjcrow ("Jesus"), and Tregelles beUeved that the scribe, on seeing his error, subsequently deleted the superfluous syllable (underlined above) in the usual way -with super posed dots, thus: 0'. This iv was then mistaken by a subsequent scribe (or scribes) for iv, the usual cursive 'Monsignor Batiffol here very aptly remarks {op. cit., p. 212, note i): "If it be tme that the fuU name of Barabbas was Jesus Barabbas, as Origen thought, the name Barabbas would be aU the more the name of an individual." ^ It must also be remarked that in the Latin version of Origen's Commen tary on Matthew Jesus stands before Barabbas in vs. 17 but not in vs. 16. [? JESUS] BARABBAS 267 abbre-viation for irjaovv, and this the more readily be cause ^apa^^av in the passage appears to be a patro nymic. In this way, then, in the course of a number of years, a well-established textual reading would originate and spread especially in a certain group of codices. Alford explains the matter differently. He thought that some ignorant scribe, unwilling to concede the epithet (in the text), eirKrrjfjMv ("notable") to Barabbas, wrote in the margin ir}(Tovv, and that when the MS. was recopied this gloss found its way into the text in vs. i6, and, when once supposed to be a name of Barabbas, from thence into vs. 17 also. Other arguments, both pro and con, are: "Jesus" was a common and popular Jewish cir cumcision, or personal, name; it is, therefore, not im probable that Barabbas may have been also so named. Then "Jesus," in that case, was probably struck out either from motives of reverence or with the idea that it was an accidental and superfluous insertion. The balance of the two clauses also rather suggests that originaUy both had personal names. Furthermore, from vss. 17 to 22 Pilate says: "Jesus who is called Christ." But a strong counter-argument to this will Ue in the fact that in vs. 20 we read: "va aiTijaoovTai tov ^apafi^dv tov Be 'lr](Tovv airaXeaoicnv ("In order that they should ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus"), where both ^apa^^dv and 'Irjo-ovv, by the article tov prefixed to each, appear to indicate that previously he was simply designated "Barabbas." Again, another and stronger contra argument would Ue in the fact that no MSS. of the other synoptic Gospels (and above aU the older Mark) have any vestige of such a reading as "Jesus Barabbas." * It is, of course, quite possible that it had been thoroughly eUminated in these, and only partly so in the MSS. of Matthew, from mis- 'Mark, however (15 : 7), speaks of the "so-caUed Barabbas" {& Xe^i- pevos /3a/>a/3/3as). 268 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS taken notions of reverence; but it is at least curious, if this be so, that the sole traces left of the old reading are to be found in later cursives and in Matthew (in this place only) of all the Gospels, On the whole, it would seem that at present a verdict of "not proven" is alone possible. As, however, the reader may -wish to know the decisions of various emi nent modem textual critics, we wiU conclude this chap ter -with a brief summary of the more important. Meyer and Fritzsche defend the insertion of irjaovv here and think that the copyists erased it from motives of rever ence. Tischendorf inserted it in the earUer editions of his text but omitted it in the later ones. FinaUy, he con cluded that it arose out of Jerome's account of the paral lel reading in the Gospel According to the Hebrews. In more recent times Westcott and Hort and Scrive ner, and most modern textual editors, omit Jesus from before Barabbas in these verses, though not, we think, from motives of reverence. The chief other modern scholars who favour its retention are Zahn -with Burkitt and Nicholson. At the same time it is rejected by such an advanced critic as P. Schmiedel, who says (Enc. Bib., art. "Barabbas"): "In any case, it is remarkable that in aU the MSS. in question Barabbas should have the name Jesus exclusively in Matthew, and there only in two verses, while vss. 20 and 26 have simply tov ^apa0- ^dv, with TOV Be 'Irjaovv, as an antithesis." And he con cludes: "Thus we may be tolerably certain that the name 'Jesus,' as given to Barabbas, has arisen merely from a mistake." But even if we admit the reading Jesus Barabbas, the highly h3rpothetical though picturesque theory of Pro fessor Drews by no means foUows. There can be no doubt in the mind of any one who has not prejudged the case in the interests of the mythical hypothesis that the histori cal explanation best fits the narrative, taken as a whole. [? JESUS] BARABBAS 269 In any case, the Jesus Barabbas of a merely supposed Jewish custom cannot be used as evidence to prop up the theory of a mythical Jesus, which stUl awaits proof of unequivocal character. CHAPTER XIV the' mockery of JESUS. SIMON OF C-^RENE. GOLGOTHA AND THE PHALLIC CONES. THE CROSS AND ITS ASTRAL SIGNIFICANCE. THE CRUCIFIXION. THE BURIAL IN THE NEW TOMB The Mockery of Jesus We have already seen in the last chapter that Pro fessor Drews endeavours to connect the account of the mockery of Jesus after his condemnation to death, as narrated in the first two synoptic Gospels, -with the rid icule heaped upon the doomed criminal in the Babylo nian feast of the Sacaea and the Persian feast of the Beardless One (The Christ Myth, pp. 75 and 76). In these annual solar festivals a malefactor, supposed to be a representative of the decUning sun, was, after derision and ill treatment, put to death, while a fellow criminal was set free. This theory, however, is, as we saw, completely bound up -with and dependent upon another — -viz., that two Jesuses figure here, an h3^othesis which, after a careful examination, was found to be unproven. As a conse quence, therefore, it will be unnecessary to detail its corollary here (see chap. 13, pp. 261-266). But another connexion had pre-viously been proposed and worked out in some detail by Mr. Slade Butler ("The Greek Mysteries and the Gospels," Nineteenth Century and After, March, 1905, pp. 495 /.). He would equate the mockery with the aKd>fiiJ,aTa, "jests," and yejtvpia-pA'i, "abuse," practised in the Eleusinian mys teries and supposed to have been reminiscent of the 270 THE MOCKERY OF JESUS 271 -witticisms by means of which the grief of the goddess- mother Demeter for her lost daughter Persephone was assuaged.* "These jestings and re-viUngs," says Mr. Butler, "were not pecuUar to the Eleusinian mysteries but seem to have been necessary elements in or adjuncts to aU mystical celebrations; thus the Ta ef dfia^&v, 'the words from wagons,' in the mysteries of Dionysus, and the (TT'qvia in the Thesmophoria, were jibes and sneers of the lowest and grossest character. These extraordinary proceedings, so incongruous with reUgious worship, origi nated in very early times, and were probably intended for the purpose of attracting the notice of the populace and by this means inducing them to take some part in the observances and ceremonies which were being cele brated." . Mr. Butler next refers to the account of the mockery given by Justin Martyr and in the fragment of the apocryphal Gospel of Peter. The former says: "The soldiers dragging him about (BiaavpovTe'i) made him sit down upon the judgment-seat, and said [to him]: 'Judge us!' " In the latter narrative we find: "But they took the Lord, and pushed him as they ran, and said: 'Let us drag away the son of God, ha-ving obtained power over him.' And they clothed him -with purple and set him on the seat of judgment, saying: 'Judge righteously, O King of Israel ! ' And one of them brought a crown of thorns and put it on the head of the Lord. And others stood and spat in his eyes and others smote his cheeks; others pricked him with a reed, and some scourged him, saying: 'With this honour let us honour the son of God.' " "These variations," adds Mr. But ler, "seem to indicate some origin not strictly historical, and to a Greek who had seen the mystes upon the bridge ' ApoUodoms (circ. 140 B. C.) relates that when the goddess came to the house of Metanira, in Attica, her servant lambe a-Kii^airo rijv Oebv i-irolri) which had been hewn out of a rock.' Why is this word fivrjfieiov used to signify 'a tomb' instead of the usual and ordi nary word ra^o?? Mv-rjfjieiov (/Jn/jLvi^aKonai, 'to bear in mind'; fido), 'to desire') means 'remembrance,' then 'a memorial,' and so 'a monument' raised in memory of the dead [a cenotaph], but not the tomb in which the dead body was laid; yet in the Gospels the word seems to be intended to signify 'tomb' as well as 'remem brance' — a 'tomb of memory.' The reason for this use of the word ^ivrjfieiov in place of and with the meaning of Td^a cannot be explained by the suggestion that the word Tci^o? had fallen into disuse, for in Matthew's ac count, which was written some time after Mark's Gospel was compiled, we find that the word rac^o? appears ex actly as many times — four times — as ^vrjij^lov is used, as though the writer had some apprehension that the word lxvr]nelov, which he had taken and adapted from Mark (or the source of information used by Mark), might be mis understood." In this thesis presented by Mr. Butler the whole stress of his argument is laid upon the use of the word fivrjuelov instead of rac/io?. Now, undoubtedly, the earliest and general Greek prose word for grave, after the time of Homer, was Td(f)o<;. But in later and post-classical times, as the stones which were set over or before graves be came more and more elaborate, and served more and more the purposes of memorials, especially in the case of notable men, the term Tdj)oo? in such cases. But let us turn to the LXX version and see how far that work supports this -view. In Gen. 23 we readily find four examples (vss. 6, 9, 20 twice). In three of these fivrjfieiov is undoubtedly used where a tomb containing a body is meant. In vs. 20, however, this is first named a Ttt^o?, and then, in the same verse, called a fivrnielov. Other examples in the LXX version, taken at random, are Ex. 14 : 11, where fivrjfj,a means a grave, not a cen otaph or mere memorial place; Num. 11 : 34 and 35; 19 : 16; and Ezek. 33 : 23. Another example occurs [in Josephus, Ant., XIII, 6, 6. In the face of these facts — which might be multipUed considerably — it is impossible to maintain that fivrjfieiov in later times invariably meant a cenotaph, or other mere memorial of a dead person, and never a tomb which was the actual grave of the deceased. This conclusion is further borne out by the New Testa ment use of the word. The present writer, in making a by no means exhaustive Ust, has found therein nineteen examples of fivrj/xeiov (-with three of fivrji^a), as opposed to four cases of Tti^o? in Matthew. Some of these un doubtedly refer to actual graves, e. g.. Matt. 8 : 28, where the aUusion is to the rock tombs by the side of the lake Gennesaret, the abode of the demoniacs who dwelt among the bodies of the dead. As for the subsidiary details, Mr. Butler surely can not mean to compare the memento, wrapped in linen cloth, given to initiates in the higher mysteries, with the body of Jesus wound in Unen bands by Joseph of Ari mathaea ! A corpse was not wrapt in Unen and given to any one as a memento of initiation ! Neither is Joseph himself supposed to be keeping it as a memorial. And Unen cloths have served to enwrap many other things besides bodies and mementos. CHAPTER XV THE DESCENSION TO HADES. THE RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION TO HEAVEN The Descension to Hades The theological tradition of the descent of Jesus to the nether world, which forms a separate article of the faith in the so-called Apostles' Creed (though it was omitted in the symbol of Nicaea), is largely based upon the weU- known passage in I Peter 3:19* (cf. Eph. 8:9). It has been the practise of many scholars for some years past to trace this tradition back to the mytholog ical conceptions of various races and nations — Mandae- ans, Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, etc. Even Buddhist eschatology has been drawn upon in the search for "ori gins" or at least "parallels." We will now examine the chief of these and see how far they can be said to corre spond with Christian ideas and teaching. Perhaps the oldest extant story of this kind is that of the now well-known "Descent of I§tar" to the under world — "the land of no return,"' as it is pathetically ' It is doubtful here, however, whether the preacher is Christ or Enoch. Doctor Rendel Harris reads iv if Kal 'Eyiix {Expositor, AprU, 1901), which is a plausible correction, as a copyist might easily omit 'Eciix after iv tp. It is also uncertain whether the "spirits in prison" are not the rebel angels spoken of in the book of Enoch. Other passages more or less definitely referring to the descent, or perhaps throwing Ught upon it, are: Matt. 12 : 40; Luke 23 : 43; Acts 2 : 24, 27, and 31; Romans 10 : 7 (on Deut. 30 : 13), but note alteration in text of the LXX version here; Eph. 4 : 9; Rev. i : 18. See also Wisd. (Latin text) 24 : 32, where " Penetrabo omnes inferiores partes terrae, et inspiciam omnes dormientes et iUuminabo omnes sperantes in Domino" has been deemed an influence towards formulating the doctrine. ' The ghost {utukku) of Eabani, the man-monster of the Gilgamesh Epic, however, retums when summoned, and appears to Gilgamesh for a brief 302 THE DESCENSION TO HADES 303 termed — preserved in a Babylonian poem probably based upon Sumerian materials. The goddess -visits the abode of the dead, the city of Arallu — "the house of gloom, the dwelUng of IrkaUa, the house from which those who enter depart not.^. . . the house where those who enter are deprived of light; a place where dust is their nourishment, clay their food; ... in thick darkness they dwell; they are clad like bats in a garb of wings; on door and bolt the dust is laid" — in order that she might find Tammuz, the husband of her youth, and give him to drink of the waters of Ufe which gushed up under the throne of the spirits of the earth, and so bring him once more back to the Ught and life of earth. This myth has been commonly interpreted as a version of the ubiquitous story of the mutual wooing of the sun-god and the earth-goddess (or of the latter by the spirit of vegetation) in order that the earth may bring forth its fruits in the foUowing spring. In the Mandaean story of Hibil Ziva's* descent into the underworld we have the Babylonian myth raised to a higher level ethically and spiritually. He was commis sioned by the "great ones" ' to go and wage a successful war -with the king of darkness (Ahriman), and to Uberate the souls of the righteous detained there and to restore them to the world of Ught. The story, it wiU be seen, has now assimilated some of the elements of Persian dual- space. Notable men, or heroes, it was thought, could be recaUed to earth for a Uttle while in order to be consulted {cf. I Sam. 28 : 7-21; Hom., Od., II, 488^.). Hence some scholars derive Sheol from Assyr., SMu {?), and interpret its meaning as "the place where oracles may be obtained." ' A divine hero, son of Manda d' Hajje (see Brandt, Manddische Schrif ten, pp. 138 J-. ; Mand. Relig., pp. 182-184; Gunkel, Schopfung und Chaos, pp. 364 and 382. ' Are these equivalents of the (original) Hebrew Elohim ? 304 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS ism. "The representation of the hero as fighting with the powers of darkness," says Doctor Cheyne (Bib. Probs., p. 104), "seems at first sight to fill a gap in the BibUcal myth. The Christ, as one might think, must have had to fight with these potentates before he could quit the city of death as a victor." And he thinks it very probable that "the Jews had a Messiah story (now lost) which agreed with the Mandaean in this respect." A Zoroastrian "parallel," or at least a story contain ing a similar idea, which has "arisen out of the same need" (noted by Tiele, Geschichte, II, pp. 267 /.) has been found in the Avesta, Vendidad Fargad, II, 42, where, in reply to the question, "Who propagated there the Mazda- yasnian reUgion in these enclosures which Yima made?" Ahura Mazda makes reply: "The bird Karshipta, 0 Spi- tama Zarathustra ! " * Ancient Greek and Roman literature, moreover, abound, comparatively speaking, in stories of legendary," descents" to Hades. For example, there is the descent of Herakles to bring up Cerberus; that of Dionysus to bring back his mother Semele and carry her to heaven; of Orpheus to recover his beloved wife; of .^neas, the Trojan hero, to consult his father Anchises; of Hermes, sent by Zeus to find the lost Persephone, etc. All these have at one time or other been suggested as possible "sources" or as, at least in a sense, "parallels" of the idea of the descent of Jesus to the nether world of the dead. But when we come to look closely into these several stories their insufficiency is very ob-vious. In the cases just quoted the whole object of the journey as well as its mythical framework is totally different. Moreover, in these stories the anthropomorphic hero (or heroine) is generally represented as visiting Hades in his (her) lifetime, not after death. There is, in short, no possible comparison to be made. ' /. e., Zoroaster. THE DESCENSION TO HADES 305 The Avestan parallel, again, is also unlike for similar reasons. It is not the after-death visit of a man. Jesus is thought to have fulfilled this part of his mission dur ing the "three days" immediately succeeding his death. It is worth noting also that Zoroaster's teaching (Khor- dah Avesta, XXII) is that the soul of a deceased man re mains near the head of the corpse for three days and nights; after this it goes to "its own place." A similar Jewish rabbinical belief held that it stayed near the body for that period of time in the hope of being able to return to it; but on the fourth day the face became so changed that it reaUsed the impossibiUty of reanimation (cf. John II : 39 and The Rest of the Words of Baruch, IX, 7-13). This belief would seem to preclude the idea of such a journey arising in the early Christian mind from Zoroastrian or Jewish sources. As compared with the Mandaean story, in the case of Jesus there is no "war" -with the powers of darkness or e-vil. Doctor Cheyne, as we have seen, suggests that, in the Jewish Messianic cycle of ideas this part has been dropped, and that "e-vidently the Christian instinct was against it"; and this because "the New Testament wri ters, as a rule, prefer to represent the battle between Jesus Christ and the demons as having taken place in his earthly Ufetime" (Matt. 12 : 29; Luke 10 : 18; John 12 : 31; 14 : 30; 16 : 11). But these examples do not refer to "battles" with demons. The latter are invaria bly expelled with a word! And in Rev. 12 : 7-1 1 we are told that the divine armies which overcome Satan are led by the archangel Michael. This, it is true, has been unsatisfactorily explained by saying that Michael repre sents Jesus Christ in his relation to the angels ! * But why should not the simpler explanation suffice, -viz., that in the "descent" of Jesus no battle at all, -with an al- ' In vs. II Michael and Jesus (" the Lamb ") appear to be regarded as different persons. 306 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS most coequal power (as in the -view of Mazdeism) was thought of? But we have stiU to consider the Buddhist "parallels." The first of these is recommended by Mr. J. M. Robert son, who says (Christianity and Mythology, p. 257) : "The motive of the descent into heU [Hades] may have been taken by the Christists from the [Chinese] Buddhists' fable of Buddha's expedition to preach, like all former Buddhas, to his mother* in the upper world of Tawa- deintha" (cf. Bigandet's Life of Gaudama, I, pp. 219- 225). Setting aside the fact that this story is not found in early Buddhist scriptures, and is not improbably derived from corrupt Christian sources, the whole motif is dif ferent to that in the story of Jesus, who does not go dur ing his earthly Ufetime to the "upper world" to preach either to his mother or to the gods, as another version puts it, but, it is said, to proclaim his message to "the spirits in ward, who formerly disobeyed, when the long- suffering of God waited in the days of Noe" — that is, perhaps, in other words, to the generations preceding his advent into the world. Another Buddhist story, regarded apparently as in some sense a "parallel" by Doctor Van den Bergh Van Eysinga (EinflUsse, pp. 87 /.), is the one referred to by the late Professor CoweU as "The Northern Buddhist Legend of Avalokites-?vara's Descent into the Hell A-vichi" (Jour, of Philology, vol. VI, 1876, pp. 222 ff.). He says: "The name and attributes of Avalokites-wara' are entirely ' In the Tibetan version the preaching is to the gods. There is an aUu sion to a visit to heU of the Buddha in the Lalita vistara, 2 Gatha, 8, trad. pour Foucaux, I, 14; cf. Lefmann, Lalita vistdra, I (1874), p. 98, which is declared by Seydel {Evangelium, etc., 183, 267 /., and Buddha-Legende, p. 35) to be a "paraUel." But there is no mention in it of preaching or of re leasing captives. ^ In northern India he was regarded as a Bodhisattva (potential Buddha) ; but iu China he is worshipped, under a female form, as the Buddha's per- THE DESCENSION TO HADES 307 unkno-wn to the southern Buddhists and his worship is one of the later additions which have attached themselves to the simpler original system. . . . The two best-known northern works which contain details respecting Avalo kites-wara are the Karanda--vyuha and the Saddharma- Pundarika. "The first few chapters of the former work are occu pied -with a description of Avalokites-wara's descent into the hell A-vichi ['no- joy'] to deUver the souls there held captive by Yama the lord of the lower world. . . . These seem to me to bear a curious resemblance to the Apocr3T)hal Gospel of Nicodemus. ..." He then sums up the question of priority thus: "Is the resemblance of the two legends accidental, or is it possi ble that in the Buddhist account we have one of those faint reflections of Christian influence (derived, perhaps, from Persian Christians settled in western and southern India) which Professor Weber has endeavoured to trace in the doctrine of faith as taught in the Bhagavad Gita and some of the mediteval schools of the Vedanta ? Much must depend on the date of the Apocr3rphal Gospel of Nicodemus. Maury and Cooper would place it as low as the fifth century; but Tischendorf -with greater prob abiUty would refer it to the second.* Even if the present form in which we have the legend is interpolated, much of it must surely be of an early date; and we find direct aUusions to events described there in the pseudo-Epi- phanius homily 'in Sepulchrum Christi ' and in the fif teenth sermon of Eusebius of Alexandria. "At the same time we have no reason to suppose that the Buddhist legend was connected -with the earUest wor ship of AvalokitesVv^ara. It is not alluded to by Chinese sonified power (see S. Beal, A Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese, pp. 282, note 2; 383-409). ' In more recent times Doctors Hamack and Van Manen have regarded it as "not earUer than the fourth century"; but Doctor Rendel Harris has lately supported the view of the early date. 308 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS travellers in India; and the date of the Karanda-vyuha can only be so far fixed that it seems to have been trans lated into Tibetan in the ninth century." There can be Uttle doubt, we think, that the idea con tained in this story — whatever its historical value' may be — was not borrowed by the early Christians from any of the above-mentioned sources. Jesus, as man, would be universally expected to descend at death to the world of the dead; it would also be natural to suppose that his mission to mankind would be extended to that state of being also. The phraseology in which these concepts are expressed is no doubt largely symboUcal; but we are, at least in the canonical books, spared the lurid sensational ism which marks the account in the Gospel of Nicodemus. The Three Days On the subject of the traditional interval between the death and the resurrection. Professor Drews comments as follows (The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, pp. 164 and 165): "Whether, e.g., the traditional 'after three days' in the account of the resurrection has been chosen on astral grounds, and is related to the three winter months from the shortest day when the sun dies to the vernal equinox when it triumphs definitely over the winter and so the months are condensed into three days in the myth, or whether the moon has furnished the data for the three days and three nights, as it is invisible for that period, and, as so often happens in myths, the moon and the sun have been blended, we need not con sider here. Possibly the number may be explained by the popular belief in Persia and Judaea that the soul re mains three days and three nights in the neighbourhood of the body, only departing to its place on the fourth morning. Possibly, again, the number was determined by Hosea 6:2, where we read: After two days he will revive us. In any case, where there are so many possible THE THREE DAYS 309 explanations, we have no convincing reasons to regard the account in the Gospels as historical." * In discoursing on tliis matter in the neighbourhood of Caesarea PhiUppi, Jesus is variously reported to have said that "after three days" he would rise again (Mark 8 : 31); be raised again "the third day" (Matt. 16 : 21); and be raised "the third day" (Luke 9 : 22). To these statements may be added the testimony of St. Paul who affirms (I Cor. 15:4) that he rose again the third day.' Now, the statement in Mark (which may be taken as the original version, of which the other two are variants) "after three days" is really quite satisfied by the narra tives themselves. These all imply that the body lay in the tomb about thirty-six hours, distributed over three suc cessive days, which corresponds to the Hebraic expres sion "on the third day" of II Kings 20 : 5, and Hosea 6:2; but not to the statement in Jonah i : 17, where the analogy is at best only very approximate. This, again, is corroborated by the form used in Matthew and Luke and by St. Paul. Turning next to Professor Drews's attempt to show that this statement is "unhistorical," we have first the sug gestion that what is really in the writer's mind is, per haps, "the three months from the shortest day, when the sun dies, to the vernal equinox, when it triumphs ' On p. 77 {op. cit.) Doctor Drews refers also to Isaiah 53 and Jonah 2 : i, and adds: "The story of Jonah itself seems to have been originaUy only an historical embodiment of the myth of the dead, buried, and risen Saviour; in fact, Jesus refers to the prophet in this sense (Matt. 12 : 40)." In the next verse, however, Jesus says: "A greater than Jonas is here !" This remark does not harmonise with any view that both were mere histori cal embodiments of the myth of the dead, buried, and risen Saviour. There is comparison of missions but no identity of persons. ^'In the Jewish mode of computing time any portion of a day was popu larly and loosely spoken of as the whole. And the portion of time beyond a whole day was referred to as "a third day" {cf. Gen. 11 : 13; I Sam. 30 : 12; and II Chron. 10 : 5). John says (2 : 19 and 21) iv rpia-lv ¦ijp.ipa^s, "within three days," which is less Hebraic. 310 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS definitely over the winter,' and so" — he continues — "the three months are condensed into three days." But what authority has he for asserting that a definite statement Uke this, repeated over and over again, may mean three months ? This is a monstrous and unwarrantable as sumption. No doubt, for the conveniences of the solar-mythical theory the Uteral three days is quite impossible; hence when a sun-myth proves intractable he naturally turns to the moon, where there is a monthly full three days' obscuration, and consoles himself with the reflection that in myths the sun and moon have been often blended ! ' But the moon has never been concerned in this matter, and its introduction here is plainly a makeshift, as is shown directly afterwards by the fact that the Persian and Jewish beUefs about the soul — though these state ' On p. 95 ot The Christ Myth, he admits, "it is obvious, however, that the Sim can only be regarded from such a tragic standpoint in a land where, and in the myths of a people for whom, it possesses in reaUty such a decisive sig nificance that there are grounds for lamenting its absence or lack of strength during winter and for an anxious expectation of its return and revival " (see Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 691, where the whole theory is disputed). From this dilemma Doctor Drews tries to escape by postulating (i) that the people originaUy came from a more severe cUmate, and (2) that the solar festivals at the solstice became (later) conjoined with vegetative festivals at the equi nox. "UsuaUy," he adds, ..." death and reappearance were joined in one single feast, and this was celebrated at the time in spring when day and night were of equal length, when vegetation was at its highest, and in the East the harvest was begun." Dupuis argues in a similar manner {L'origine de tous les cultes, p. 152). The cult of Dionysus-Zagreus at least affords a striking exception to this aUeged rule. Under the form of a buU he was tom to pieces and eaten raw by women in the winter time, and further rites, repre senting his revival, took place in the spring ! ^ In true Semitic mythology (unlike Aryan) the moon, it is true, is a male divinity, and in some cases it is regarded as a different aspect (? nightiy representative) of the chief, or solar, god. Also there is some relation be tween the moon-god and Tammuz, as there is also between the sun and Tammuz, who, like most of these vegetation spirits, developed solar and lunar characteristics. This fact is shown inter alia by the Osiris variant of the "Dying God" cult. But there is no evidence whatever for the syncretism and confusion postulated by Doctor Drews. THE EMPTY TOMB 311 the exact contrary — are drawn upon as another possible source of the idea; and a yet further source is next found in Hosea 6 : 2, where "after two days" has certainly no reference to the experience of Jesus,* though both the late Doctor Pusey and many of the fathers have professed to find a mystical reference here. But the whole solar-mythical theory here really breaks do-wn owing to the fact that the sun is never out of sight for three months, or even three days, except in very high latitudes, and in the case of the moon its monthly three days of obscuration are not comparable -with the thirty- six hours' sojourn in the tomb, because the latter is ex actly only one-half of three days! Hence the analogy drawn fails to satisfy the conditions, as also does that relating to the fuU three days' sojourn of the soul beside the corpse. The Empty Tomb Much discussion has also taken place upon the subject of the empty tomb. St. Paul, it is urged, in his (the earUest) account of the resurrection, says nothing about it, and the Gospel accounts are discrepant.' But St. Paul asserts that Jesus rose again "on the third day," after being buried, which is another way of stating the same thing! And had his appearances been of an hal lucinatory character, as Professor Schmiedel argues in the Encyclopadia Biblica, and been regarded as appari- tional by St. Paul himself, the latter would not have re ferred at all to any "rising" on the third day, because a mere phantasmal appearance may be seen any day after death, whether the body is or is not lying in the grave. 'Because in the Mass. version of the text the reference is to "us." So also the LXX version reads i^avaaTrja-bp^eBa. There is, it is true, another possible pointing of the Hebrew, but it does not agree so weU with the con text as the above rendering. ''The present writer has discussed these objections in his The Resurrec tion Narratives and Modern Criticism, chap. 8. 312 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS M. Salomon Reinach, on the other hand, re-vives an old and non-mythical objection when he asserts, with Strauss and Volkmar, that Jesus never had a tomb at all. He remarks (Orpheus, p. 255): "The discovery of the empty tomb is the less credible in that Jesus, if he had been exe cuted, would have been thrown by the Roman soldiers into the common grave of malefactors." It is to be feared that the learned French scholar penned this passage hastily and without having pre-viously consulted his au thorities ! In earUer times it was usual for bodies to be left to decay upon the cross; but, according to Quintil- ian {Declam., VI), after the time of Augustus, the bodies, if claimed, were given up to the friends for burial.* The First Day of the Week The vox universa of Christian tradition has in all ages asserted definitely and clearly that the first day of the week was held to be a sacred day, in place of the seventh, in commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This tradition has of late years, how ever, been disputed. Doctor Paul Carus says (The Mon ist, 1906, p. 420): "Sunday was then [temp. Chr.] the great festive day of the Mithraists, and the disciples of St. John [Baptist] as well as the Nazarenes celebrated the day by coming together and breaking bread in a common meal. . . . That Sunday was celebrated prior to Christianity is unquestionably proved by the fact that St. Paul -visits in several cities those circles of disciples who had neither heard of the Holy Ghost nor beUeved as yet on Christ Jesus, and they used to break bread in common on the first day of the week." Doctor Carus here does not state the facts quite fairly. Acts 19 : 1-5 certainly affirms that St. Paul, when at ' The Jews, too, were careful that they should be buried before sunset {irpb StjvTos TjKiov, Josephus). THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK 313 Ephesus, visited a community of the disciples of John the Baptist, who had not heard of the Holy Ghost or re ceived apostoUc baptism. But the passage does not refer to the breaking of bread by them on any day. The Nazarenes, too, seem to have been the more Je-wishly minded of the disciples of Jesus, though the term was also probably often loosely used for aU in the apostoUc fellowship. They would, there fore, naturally foUow the same rule, and possibly ob served both days in some degree. As to the Mithraists, it is true that in the later period of their history at least they observed Sunday, and that in the second and third centuries A. D. their doctrines and practises bore, in some respects, a remarkable re semblance to those of the Christian church. But, owing to the loss of all early Mithraic Uterature, it is by no means certain, or probable, that this was the case in pre- Christian times. Some of the second-century Christian writers, indeed, accuse the Mithraists of travestpng both the sacraments and the doctrines of Christianity. But, whether this be the case or not, it is both -wiser and safer to say, -with M. Franz Cumont (The Mysteries of Mithra, 1910, p. 194): "We cannot presume to unravel to-day a question which di-vided contemporaries and which will doubtless forever remain insoluble. We are too imper fectly acquainted -with the dogmas and Uturgies of Ro man Mazdeism, as well as the development of primitive Christianity, to say definitely what mutual influences were operative in their simultaneous evolution." This pronouncement in effect amounts to a verdict of "not proven" as against the case presented by Doctor Carus, who would suggest a borrowing of the observance of the first day from the Mithraists. We do not know defi nitely whether the pre-Christian Mithraists observed the first day of the week; but we do know that the very earU est Christians firmly beUeved that Jesus rose again on 314 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS that day, and honoured it in consequence instead of the older Jewish Sabbath, which it henceforward superseded in the church.* The Angelophanies at the Tomb We have already seen (chap, ii, pp. 218 ff.) how Pro fessor W. B. Smith has endeavoured to prove that the "young man" (veaviaKm) of Mark 15:5 was nothing else than the fra-vishi (frohar), or "heavenly self," of Jesus. That particular phenomenon, however, we submit, stands on precisely the same footing as the similar figures seen at the tomb and recorded by the other synoptists and in the Fourth Gospel. These "angelophanies," commonly set aside without examination by "liberal" critics, have been briefly no ticed by Fiebig (Babel., p. 7) in the following terms: "In the reports of the resurrection the angelophanies are un doubtedly mythical in character." But why should this conclusion be thus dogmatically stated? There are other possibiUties, e. g., visions of an hallucinatory character. The women may have fancied that they saw these apparitions ! Again, there is at least the possibiUty that these appearances had some objec tive basis. It is true that (granting this possibiUty) the di-viding line in such matters between what is wholly sub jective and hallucinatory and what is (spiritually) ob jective and, therefore, veridical is one which is extremely difficult to draw. But a careful study of the latest mod ern Uterature bearing upon this branch of psychical re search -wiU at least prevent any thinking person from hastily forming the opinion that because a phenomenon of the class known as "supernatural" is reported as oc curring many years ago, therefore it must certainly be mythical. It is really to a very large extent a question ' Gunkel thinks {Verstdndnis, pp. 73/.) that Sunday was already observed by the Jews also; but he offers no proof. OSIRIS 315 of the intelUgence and veracity of the witnesses, and per haps one of the best proofs of the objecti-vity of the phe nomenon is to be found in the fact that all the witnesses in question relate very similar experiences.* Certain Mythical "Resurrections" We wUl now proceed to state and deal with certain aUeged paraUels to the resurrection of Jesus as found among the chief dying and rising sa-viours of the ethnic nature-cults. Osiris In the case of the Eg5^tian cult-god Osiris (Bab., ASari, a form of Marduk), whose body was hacked to pieces, the myth relates, by his brother and adversary Set, the idea of resurrection, in the Christian sense, is but imperfectly expressed and even that of identity is somewhat vague. In the developed form of the Osirian reUgion Osiris be comes identified -with the sun' of to-day (this year) which rises to-morrow (next year) in the form of his son Horus. Osiris himself is regarded as remaining below as king of the underworld and judge of the dead. The idea of res urrection, or rather re-vival, was certainly moraUsed and spirituaUsed as it never was in Babylon or elsewhere; but the whole concept, even in Egypt, was originally ex pressed in a mere materiaUstic form, as is shown by the primitive story told of the membra disjecta of his body, which Anubis pieced together, and Isis, assisted by the snake-goddess ECeptet and other gods and goddesses, ' It is not, however, an absolute test; for coUective haUucinations do oc cur under certain conditions. The present writer has discussed fuUy the phenomena, etc., at the tomb in his The Resurrection Narratives and Modern Criticism (1910). 2 The Book of the Dead (Budge's translation), vol. I, pp. 87 and 88. But, doubtless, in earUer times he was a vegetation spirit and a god of fecundity. Later, however, he became identified, or confused, in some degree with Rs as Osiris-Ra. 316 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS fanned into life again with her wings,* while, according to one account, Horus by means of various magical ceremo nies made him to "stand up " again. Such is the Egyptian resurrection (see Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resur rection, vol. I, pp. 72, 74, and 75) ! These stories point merely to the old material Ufe of nature which is simply revived; hence the practise of mummification, -without which there can be no revi-vification either for Osiris or the Osirian. Adonis A two days' festival in honour of the death and re-vival of Adonis (the Syrian Tammuz^) was celebrated early in February by the Phoenician women of Byblus. The first day was spent in grief and lamentation, the second in joy and triumph. In Greece, whither the rites were sub sequently transferred, the festival took place in summer and was prolonged to eight days. According to the anthropomorphic setting of the myth Adonis was slain by the tusk of a -wild boar, whilst hunt ing in the mountains of Lebanon, and was re-vived annu ally at his festival in the spring or in some places in mid summer.' In 0-vid's poetical version of the myth (Metam., X, 735) his return to Ufe would seem to be e-videnced by ' An image of Osiris was buried in a hoUowed-out pine tmnk, which was kept for a year and then usually bumed, as was done with the image of Attis attached to the pine-tree (see below, and Macrobius, De Err. Prof. Rel., XXVII). The myth should be studied especiaUy in Doctor Budge's Osiris and^ the Egyptian Resurrection (see also his Gods of the Egyptians, vol. II, 131-138, and Frazer's Adonis, Attis, Osiris (3d ed.), vol. II, pp. 12 and 13). Foucart thinks that the drama was enacted at the Anthesteria, Mommensen places it in the foUowing month at the Lesser Mysteries. ' Doctor Radau states {The Bab. Exped. of the Univ. of Penn. : Sumerian Hymns and Prayers to the God Dumuzi, or Bab. Le?it. Songs, 1913) that the resurrection of Tammuz is never mentioned in the [older] dialectal texts of southern Sumer. ' So Milton in his Paradise Lost (book I) : "Thammuz came next behind, Whose wounds in Lebanon aUur'd ATTIS 317 the springing up of the red anemone in the place where his blood was spUt.* During the festival, as described by the Greek poet Bion,' on the first day an image' of the young lover lying on a couch and dying in the a,rms of Aphrodite^ (Astarte) was exhibited. Early on the next day the statue was carried down to the seashore, where its "wounds" were washed by women amid great lamentations. Di rectly afterwards the drama of his "resurrection" was enacted. This is described by Lucian (De Dea Syr., VI) in a few sarcastic words: "They say mythically that he is aUve" (^dyeiv Te niv (ivdoXoyeovcn) . Attis The ritual in the cult of Attis,^ the Phrygian type of the vegetal (-solar?) god, began with the felUng of the The Sjnian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties aU a summer's day.'' But Adonis and Attis, unlike most of these cult-gods, remained to the end almost free from solar characteristics (see Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, vol. I, p. 232, note). ' Cf. also Baudissin, Adon. und. Eshmun, p. 169. 2 See Ahren's Bucolici Greed, sub Bionis reUq. ^ That this part of the ceremonies is based on old Semitic ritual, and is not a later Greek addition, is evidenced by Lampridius, who says {Hdiogab., VII): Salambonam (''ja dSx, "image of Ba'al") etiam omni planctu et jac- tatione Syriaci cultus exhibuit. Doctor Langdon thinks that in the case of Dumu-zi (Tammuz) "a wooden figure of the djring god was probably placed in a skiff and given over to the waters of the Euphrates or the Tigris, precisely as in Egypt the image of Osiris was cast upon the sea. -When the figure ot the god disappeared be neath the waves he was supposed to pass to the underworld and maintain a peaceful existence after the pain of death" {Tammuz and Ishtar, pp. 11 and 12). Dumu-zi figures here as the fertiUsing spirit of the inundation. • Aphrodite (Uke Istar) "descends" to Hades to bring up Adonis. There is no "descent" of Mary in the Christian tradition! ' Attis = " Father" (Frazer). He was variously said to have bled to death as a consequence of self-mutilation at the foot of a pine-tree and to have been kiUed (Uke Adonis) by a wild boar. According to Sir James Frazer he was originaUy a tree spirit. In one passage Firmicus Maternus states {De Err. Prof. Relig., 27) that a ram was sacrificed in the worship of Attis. 318 MYTHICAL INTERPRETATION OF THE GOSPELS sacred pine-tree into which he was said to have been changed at death. The trunk of this, swathed in bands, Uke a mummy, with the effigy of a young man attached to it, was taken to the temple where the mourning broke forth. After a period of fasting the tree trunk was sol emnly buried, and those present stimulated their emo tions by wild dances, during which, Uke the priests of Ba'al, they gashed themselves with knives tiU the blood* flowed. On the evening of the foUo-wing day they again met in the temple to celebrate the restoration of Attis to Ufe; the grave was opened, and when a Ught had been produced the priest anointed the Ups of the worshippers -with oU, and said: "Be of good cheer, initiates, the god has been saved; thus for you also there shall be salvation from your troubles." ' The joy of the mystae was then expressed in a sort of carnival. Dionysus The grave of Dionysus,' who was said to have been torn in pieces by the Titans, according to one form of the myth, was at Thebes. His "resurrection" (revival) is variously related. According to one version — ^probably an earUer form (cf. myth of Osiris) — his mother pieced him together and made him young again (Diodorus Sicu lus, first century A. D., Ill, 62) ; in another form it is merely stated that he rose from the dead * and ascended ' The blood, it must be remembered, was both the seat and the medium of the .Ufe. Hence this act was probably regarded as aiding the develop ment of the new Ufe. 2 dappeire, piarai tov BfoO eser {ha-nosri), 97. Harris, Dr. R., on I Peter 3 : 19, 302 «. Hatch, Dr. E., on the sacrifice of a lamb at Easter, 338, ». Haupt, P., on Nazareth, 94, n. Heavenly Jordan, see Eridanus. Heavenly self, the, 221, 223. Helios, 126. Herakles, ascension ot, to heaven, 32s; descent ot, to Hades, 304. Hermes, birth of, 31. Herod, interview with Jesus, 229. Herodotus, on the Magi, 49. Hesiris, see Jes-iris. Hesus, 69. Hibil Ziva, 303. Hirsch, on the visions of Jesus, 114, «., ISO, »., i6s, n. Holtzmann, on Judas Iscariot, 249. Holy Spirit, the, and the Gnostic femi nine principle in deity, 334, n. INDEX 351 Homer, D. W., 333. Horus, birth of, 34, n. Hosea 6 : 2, and the resurrection, 311. Hour of crucifixion, 231, n. HuitzilopochtU, 204. Hyades, the, 344. lacchus iu the Eleusinian mysteries, 321- 'IS^a, of Plato, 223. Idealism in Germany, toimders of, 27. Isaiah 53, interpretations ot, 81. Iscariot, Judas, 248 ff. Isiac mysteries, 34. Isis, s. Istar, descent ot, 302. Jacobs, Prof., on Purim, 263. Jah-Alpha-Omega, 73. Jahveh, as a fire-god, 126, James, W., on souls, iS2. Janus, 66, 234, 23s, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240. Jao and JHVH, 72. Jasios (Jasion), 4, 64, 65. Jasius, see Jasios. Jensen, on origin ot story ot Jesus, 73; on the temptation, 146; on the trans figuration, 163, «.; on Virgin of zodiac, IS- Jerahme'el, 94, n. Jeremias, on gifts offered to new-bom sun-god, S2; on Virgin of zodiac, 15. Jerome, 94; on Pilate, 240. Jes Crishna, 66. Jes-iris, 66. Jessaioi, 96, «. Jesus [? Barabbas], 2S6. Jesus Barabbas, list of manuscript hav ing this reading, 26s, 266; modem editors who adopt or reject this read ing, 266, 267, 268. Jesus-cults, 82. Jesus, date ot birth of, 12s; as an Ephraimitic sun-god, 231, «.; and John as phases of the sun, 121 ^.; the name, meaning ot, 63, 71. Jewish boys' education, 61. Jewish Enc-yclopadia (Nazareth), 94, n. JHVH, derivation and meaning ot, 72. Jinns, 23s, n. John the Baptist, 108, 118; as Oannes, 122, 123; date of festival of, 129. Jonah, 128, 309, n. Jonah and the three days, 309. Jones, W. S., on the stabbing of the bull, 319, n. Jordan, the astral significance of, io2, ». Joseph (N. T.), 16; (0. T.), 3. Josephus, 93 ; on John the Baptist, iis, «. Joshua (Jesous), 4; meamng of name, 63, 64. 6S, n. Jowett, B., on translation of ivaaxiv- SvKeiia, 291. Judas Iscariot and the betrayal, 188, 199, 217; as Ahitophel, 217; deriva tion of name, 248 ff. Julian, Emperor, 100. Juhus, derivation of, 70. Just man, the, 291, 292. Justin Martyr, and the cave ot Bethle hem, 31, «.; on Mithra, 320; on the mockery ot Jesus, 271; on the Mith raic cult-supper, 203. 'KaSoKayaBbi, 207. Kant, I., a critical ideaUst, 27, «., 328. Karabas, 257, 261. Karshipta, 304. Kautsky, 217. Keim, Th., on Josephus's narrative of the baptism, 118; on Judas Iscariot, 249; on Nazarene, 93, ».; on young man who fled, etc., 226. Kenyon, Sir F. G., on the rescript ot Maximus, 332. Kepler, on star of nativity, 50. ICerata, 260. iipvos, 174. Kiddush, the, 182, ». Kinjrras, 18, 22. Kircher, on gifts offered to new-bom sun-god, S2. Kiss ot Judas, the, 200. K67I bpjiloii Trdf, 296. K67f 6p,Tra^, 296. Konig, Dr., on Bethlehem, 90. Krauss, E., on Judas Iscariot, 256, ». Krauss, S., on the law of the Passover, 182, «. "KpepAvvvpA., 288. Krishna, eighth avatar of Vishnu, 66, «.; birth of, 38, 39; not crucified, 76; in early Hindu literature, 79; and the Magi, 76; mother of, 14; and the shepherds, 44. Kuenen, on blessings of Jesus and Gau tama, 46. 352 INDEX Lachmu, go. Lagrange, on Keraia, 260. Lake, K., on the date of Herod's mar riage, 116, ». Lalila vistdra, 14; on the birth of the Buddha, 40. Lance wound, and the breaking of the legs, 297, 298, 299. Lang, A., 274, ». Langdon, Dr. S., on kings who played the part of Tammuz, 262, ».; on the ascension ot Tammuz, 324, ». Lassen, on introduction ot Christian ity into India, 76. Last Supper as the Passover, 102, n. Last words ot Jesus, the, 293. Lehmann-Haupt, C. E., on the cruci fixion and Purim, 263, 264. Lewis, Mrs., on star of nativity, 31. Liknites, 31, 33. LiUtu, divine harlot, 13, n. Lithostroton-Gabbatha, 242, 243, 244, 245- Lobeck, on the revival of the cult-gods, 310, «. Loosten, De, on the visions of Jesus, 114, »., 150, »., 165, «. Lost Jesus, the, 61. Lucian, on resurrection ot Adonis, 317; on the ascension of Adonis, 323. Ludd (Lydda), 233. Luke 2 : 1-3, translation of, 39. Ma, 8. MabiUon, 333, n. Mariam, derivation and meaning of name, 9. MacdoneU, Prof. A. A., on spellings "Crishna" and "Cristna," 78. McDougall, Dr. W., on vitalism, 132. Mackinlay, Lieutenant-Colonel, 116; on the birth ot Jesus, 331; on the date ot the crucifixion, 333, 334. Macrobius, on the massacre of the children, 57. Magaden, 11. Magdala, 11. Magi, the, 46. Maia, 4, 7. Maira (Maera), 4, 7. Makkedah, 299. Mandane, derivation and meaning of name, .8, m. Manger, the, 33. Mara, 143 #. Marcus, 96, «. Mariamma, 14, 76. Maritala, 14. Mary, 3, 7; derivation and meaning of name, 9, 13, 20. Mary Magdalene, s, 12, 344. Massacre of the children, the, 33. Masseboth, 279. Matthew 2 : n, meaning of, 32, ».; I : 16, reading of, 24, «,; 27 : 17, reading of, 263, 266, 267, 268. Maunder, Mr. E. W., on consteUations of Dupuis, no, ».; on date of cruci fixion, 334. Maximus, G. V., rescript ot, 332. Max MiiUer, Prof., on derivation of Agni, 336; on name "Jes" (Jeseus, Jezeus, -yeseus), 67. Maya, 4; conception of, 40, 43. Mazzikim, 235, n. Meri, 4. Merris, 4. Messiah, Ben David, 17, 80; Ben Joseph, 17, 21, 80. Mexican Eucharist, 204. Migdal, II. Milky Way, the, loi, «., 343; as the gannent ot the crucified Saviour, 340; as a river, 342; as Tiamat, 338; as the world-tree, 342. MUton, on Tammuz, 316, «. Miriam Magdala, s; (Mariam), leprosy of, II. Mirzam, 7. Mithra (Mitra), 124; resurrection of, 319. Mithra-myth, 13, 31, 33. Mithraic buU, stabbing of, 319; mys teries, 202, 203. Mithraists and the first day of the week, 312, 313- Mv-qpsTov (Mv^/ia), 300, 301. Mockery of Jesus, the, 270, 276. Monier Williams, Prof., on name "Jes" (Jeseus, Jezeus, Yeseus), 67. Monokeros (consteUation), modem char acter of, 343. Mordecai-Barabbas, 262. Morgan, Prof. A. de, and the super natural, 28, n. Moses, derivation ot name, 9, »., 139. Mother of the Buddha, special marks of, 40. INDEX 353 Moulton, Dr., on early Zoroastrianism, 223, n. Mountain of the Gods, the, 136, 140. Movers, on identity of Jahveh and Jao, 72; on meaning of JHVH, 72. MiUler, W., loi. M.v<£? ¥W*m^t$emBtmSa^ T*;^^ ^^H-g.^^1^^^