did jesus ever live ?

DID JESUS EVER LIVE?

BY

L. GORDON RYLANDS, B.A., B.Sc.

LONDON:

WATTS & CO.,

5 & 6 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C-4

First published I935

Printed and Published in Great Britain by C. A. Watts & Co. Limited,

5 & 6 Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, London, E.C.4

FOREWORD

IN a work so short as the present one it has been

impossible to set out in any degree of fullness the

evidence in support of all the statements contained

in it. It is hoped, however, that sufficient has been given to make the conclusions reached appear reasonable . Readers who desire more detailed

evidence may consult the works of the writers to

whom reference is made. This book is in no sense an attack upon the Chris

tian religion. My only motive has been the desire to reach historic truth. But if anyone thinks that religion is likely to suffer through the re-transformation of Jesus from a man to the Son of God which he originally was, I would draw his attention to the fact that W. B. Smith, Arthur Drews, Edouard Dujardin, and Albert Kalthoff-with whom, no doubt, love of truth was also a motive-have all undertaken the disproof of the historicity of Jesus in the interest of religion.

L. G. R.

v

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE FoREWORD v

J. THE SEARCH FOR AN HISTORICAL J E�US I

II. THE ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE OUTSIDE THE GOSPELS 13

III. JosHUA-jEsus 35

IV. THE STORY OF THE PASSION 44

v. THE GNOSTIC STREAM 65

VI. jESUS IN RELATION TO EVIL DEMONS 86

VII. THE BEGINNING OF ORGANIZED CHRIS-TIANITY 95

VIII. THE GOSPELS !05

INDEX • II9

vii

I

THE SEARCH FOR AN HISTORICAL JESUS

WHEN G. B. Shaw was lately asked for an answer to the question Did Jesus live ? apparently the best answer he could give was the expression of his opinion that the teaching imputed to Jesus could not have been invented. H. G. Wells also, in his Short History of the World, in a chapter in which the evidence of the Gospels is treated rather uncritically, says of the picture given by them : " Here was a man. This could not have been invented."

Statements of this kind from men who, however able, have made no scientific study of the question are, in any case, of no particular value. It is, indeed, rather surprising that they should be made by men who have the faculty of independent thinking. One can only conclude that those who have that faculty do not choose always to exercise it. Surely, when some of the wonderful characters that have been created by dramatists and novelists are called to mind, the assertion that the drawing of a certain character is out of the range of the human intellect must be considered rash. Can we fix a limit to the imaginative power of human genius ? One may even say that finer characters than Jesus have been created. An essential element of a fine character, considered as that of a man, is selfsacrifice. But, since Jesus was represented as a supernatural being, the opportunity for self-sacrifice

2 THE SEARCH FOR AN HISTORICAL JESUS

did not arise in his case, leaving his death out of consideration for the present. He simply says to a man, Be thou healed, and the man is healed.

The assertion that Jesus cannot have been invented is usually the last desperate attempt by those who have abandoned belief in the historical truth of the Gospels as a whole to save the central figure. They would shrink from affirming that Jesus was a supernatural being. But assuming that Jesus was a man, however gifted, assent must be given to the logically valid proposition that, if it is humanly possible for some man called Jesus to have propounded certain doctrines, it is humanly possible for some other man to have propounded them in his name. The question resolves itself into one of evidence, and is merely begged by anyone who denies, a priori, that anybody but a particular man called Jesus can have taught what Jesus is supposed to have taught, or imagined such behaviour as is ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels. The ethical doctrine of Epictetus reaches a level as exalted as that ascribed to Jesus. The " Golden Rule " was enunciated by Confucius centuries before Christ. Socrates, in the speech he delivered to his judges, is reported to have said :-

We know that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death . . . . I am not angry with my accusers or condemners ; they have done me no harm, though neither of them meant to do me good; and for this I may gently blame them.

J. M. Robertson 1 drew attention to a story related of Lycurgus. A youth named Alcander had struck Lycurgus with a club and dashed out one of his eyes.

1 The Historical Jesus, p. 24.

THE SEARCH FOR AN HISTORICAL JESUS 3

Alcander was given up by the citizens to Lycurgus

for punishment. He, however, took no vengeance; but, keeping Alcander as his servant for a month, treated him kindly, with the result that Alcander's hatred was turned into admiration and respect. If the story is true it follows that there was no need for a unique Jesus to teach forgiveness of enemies ; if it is not true it cannot be said that no one before Jesus was capable of such ethical teaching as is found in the Gospels. In one important respect indeed the Greek ethic was superior to that of Jesus, seeing that he told his followers to do good in order tha

·t they might obtain a heavenly reward, and to

avoid evil so as not to be tortured in hell. Socrates was a real man. Granted. The point

is that there existed in antiquity a body of ethical doctrine and sufficient examples of the finest kind of behaviour to supply the Gospel writers with lineaments for the drawing of the portrait of an ideal man, if that is what they intended to do. Mention must also be made of the persecuted " just man " of Plato, who could have supplied some traits for a portrait of Jesus, and was certainly in the Christian consciousness at the time of the writing of the Gospels ; 1 and of the ideal " wise man " of the Stoics, a teacher without wife and children or home.

M. Hippolyte Rodrigues showed that the Sermon on the Mount is almost completely anticipated in Jewish literature.2 The fatherhood of God is

1 Reference is made to this just man in the A pology and A cts of A pollonius in connection with the Logos.

2 Les Origines du Sermon de la Montagne, Paris, 1 868. See Robertson, Christianity and Mythology, p. 404. The Lord's Prayer also is Jewish and pre-Christian, ibid., p. 415.


taught in the Talmud. The graciousness and mercy of God is stressed by JoeP Oppression of the poor, the widow, and the orphan is continually denounced by the prophets. In the Testament of Gad we read : " Love ye one another from the heart ; and if any man sin against thee, cast forth the poison of hate and speak peaceably to him . . . and if he confess and repent, forgive him." And in the Talmud : " It is better to be wronged by others than to wrong '' (Sanhedrim, 48) .

A good many people no doubt have been much impressed by the three poetic verses, Matt. xi. 28-30, beginning : " Come unto me, all ye that labour." But anyone who will thoughtfully consider them should perceive that no human teacher can have spoken such words about himself. The verses are probably part of a Gnostic hymn, and the speaker is almost certainly the personified Wisdom of Proverbs and Ecclesiasticus. Compare with them the following verses from Ecclesiasticus where Wisdom is the speaker:-

Come unto me, all ye that be desirous of me, and fill yourselves with my fruits. For the remembrance of me is sweeter than honey, and mine inheritance than the honeycomb. They that eat me shall have the more hunger, and they that drink me shall thirst the more. Whoso hearkeneth to me shall not come to confusion.

If someone were asked to specify a matchless utterance of Jesus he would very likely instance the words which Jesus is reported to have spoken upon the cross: " Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do" (Luke xxiii. 34) . Alas ! the words

1 ii. 13.


are recorded only in Luke ; they are altogether absent from some of the best MSS. Westcott and Hart, the foremost English authorities on the text of the New Testament, considered them to be a " Western interpolation" ; and the eminent German critic, Wellhausen, says that beyond all doubt they are interpolated. This utterance, therefore, is due

to someone who was not Jesus. The thoughtful and critical comparison of a Gospel

with real biographies should convince an impartial inquirer that the Gospel as a literary work stands in an entirely different category. This fact possibly contributes to the impression of uniqueness. But in its own category, which does not include historical works, it is not unique, though it has some individual characteristics. There is nothing new in the substance of the Gospel teaching, though the form frequently indicates that the matter has passed through the mind of an original thinker ; and in the Gospels as a whole there is evidence of poetic imagination. And why not ? The supposition that all the Gospel writers were men of limited intelligence is quite wrong,

The inconsistency of the doctrine ascribed to Jesus leads to the opinion that either it did not all emanate from the same man, or the character of Jesus was not after all so very admirable. Compare the following :-

Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire.

Y e fools and blind. Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.

I say unto you, Love your enemies and pray for them that persecute you.


Verily, I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. [The offence being that the emissaries of an unknown preacher had not been welcomed.]

Go not into any way of the Gentiles, and enter not into any city of the Samaritans. It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs [Gentiles].

Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations.

It is very commonly supposed that Jesus was meek and humble ; yet he is reported to have said :-

A greater than Solomon i s here. H e that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

Which was the real Jesus, the particularist or the universalist, the Jesus who enjoined forgiveness of enemies, or the Jesus who consigned to hell-fire those who had not received his disciples ?

Was Jesus meek ? Of course he had to be represented as meek before his captors in order that the scriptures might be fulfilled-" as a sheep before

"her

shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth." 1 But his violent denunciation of Scribes and Pharisees is not an illustration of meekness, nor is his harsh rebuking of his disciples when they were terrified during the storm.2 Do those who think like Wells and Shaw apply to the utterances of Jesus the same norm which they would apply to those of any real person ? Is not Jesus for most people transfigured by a glamour in which they invested him in their childhood and which it has ever afterwards seemed sacrilege to sweep away ? Jesus said : " Judge not that ye be not judged. ' ' Yet he judged and severely condemned the Scribes and Pharisees. If anyone thinks that

1 Isaiah liii. 7. · 2 Matt. viii. 26.


Jesus had the right to do what he forbade all other men to do, he is estimating him not as a man among other men, but as a being apart from and superior to all human beings-in other words, as divine. If you are honest with yourself and judge his recorded words and acts as you would those of any mere man, are you going to expunge from the Gospels everything you think a perfect man would not have said or done until your ideal man is left, and then exclaim, Here is a character which could not be invented ? Is that how you would deal with the biography of any real person ? Such a procedure is arbitrary in the extreme.

Perhaps those who think that Jesus cannot have been invented would say that their opinion is not founded upon specific details, but upon the representation as a whole. If so, are they quite sure that, while they reject miracle stories, their mental picture of Jesus has not been influenced by the suggestion of power which the miracle stories and the authoritative quelling of demons are calculated to give ? If we cut out of the Gospels all stories of that character, and all those passages which the best modern criticism considers to be comparatively late additions and not authentic-even the parable of the Good Samaritan would thus be winnowed out l_

what remains of that impressive portrait which, it is claimed, no human being could have invented ? Extremely little. Loisy observes : " We must now renounce writing the life of Jesus. All the critics agree in recognizing that the materials are insufficient

1 If Jesus likened the Gentiles to dogs the writer of this parable was a better man than he.


for such an enterprise." Bultmann goes farther and admits that of the life and personality of Jesus we can know practically nothing.

With regard to notable men whose lives have been recorded we can form a fairly definite idea of their aims and character. In the case of Jesus it is not so. Wrede says that Jesus was a teacher and no Messiah. Schweitzer says that unless Jesus made Messianic claims the subsequent belief in his resurrection is inexplicable. Theologians conceive in their own minds an ideal Jesus and then reject all passages which do not conform to their ideal.1 The result is that several very dissimilar portraits are offered for our choice. Which of these is the one that could not be invented ?

According to Reimarus, Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion or of teaching anything revolutionary in Ethics or Sociology. He was an entirely orthodox Jew, who believed himself to be the promised Messiah. The kingdom which he declared to be at hand was a Jewish kingdom freed from Roman domination. After his death his disappointed disciples began to teach that he would reappear shortly as a heavenly Messiah.

Venturini took the precisely opposite view, that the purpose of Jesus was to lead the Jewish people away from their hope of a national triumph under the leadership of a militant Messiah, and to raise their ideas up to a: more spiritual plane.

These conflicting views Hase tried to reconcile

1 " Every conception is at the same time a violation of the text."-Schweitzer, Geschichte der Leben-jesu-Forschung, p. 7·

THE SEARCH FOR AN HISTORICAL JES US 9

by postulating two periods in the teaching of Jesus, during the first of which he shared the eschatological and Messianic ideas of his race, but during the second he had abandoned them.

Schleiermacher thought that the fourth Gospel, in which, be it noted, there is no ethical teaching, gives the truest representation of Jesus. Loisy, on the other hand, declares that there is no real man behind the fourth Gospel. And yet how many people have had their idea of Jesus deeply coloured by the picture which the fourth Gospel presents!

Strauss expressed the opinion that the eschatological passages are the most certain ; not that Jesus made the definite prophecies which were put into his mouth by the Evangelists. The principal speeches of Jesus, wrote Strauss, are literary compositions in which the original words of Jesus can no longer be detected. Out of the little that can certainly be known it may be inferred that Jesus during his public career was gradually penetrated by the belief that he was the promised Messiah ; though possibly in his mind the belief did not rise above hope and expectation. He persuaded himself either that during his lifetime God would send an army of angels to place him upon the throne of David and inaugurate the rule of righteousness upon earth, or that he would be sent down by God with the angelic host after his death. The Jesus of Strauss is entirely under the influence of Jewish ideas. His ethical teaching is secondary .1

1 It is right to say that in his later years Strauss modified some of the opinions expressed in his earlier work.

B


C. H. Weisse maintained against Strauss that Jesus, though he believed himself to be the Messiah, did not take the conception in the Jewish apocalyptic sense, but had, by virtue of his deep spiritual vision, reached the idea of the suffering Messiah. He went to Jerusalem with the fixed intention of dying there. His public activity was designed to bring the people to see the Messiah in him. He was not primarily an ethical teacher.

Renan's Jesus began by preaching "a delicious theology of love," and brought men to God by the allurement of a charming personality. After a successful period in Galilee he went to Jerusalem. Embittered and hardened by the unfriendly reception he met with there, he returned to Galilee and commenced to preach the Messianic kingdom of the Jewish Apocalypses. With feelings exalted to religious ecstasy, and seeing that his Messianic claim precluded the possibility of his continuing as a mere preacher, he began to long for persecution and death. Driven by this feeling, he returned to Jerusalem and sought death by affronting the authorities.

After Renan arose a new school of thought to which the Messianic Jesus was displeasing. Some theologians began to say to themselves : Of what value to the world is a Jewish Messiah ? We need a Jesus who will capture the imagination of the modern man. And so a new ideal had to be fashioned. Passages in the Gospels which conflict with the ideal had either to be eliminated or rewritten, on the implied assumption that the Evangelists were either insufficiently informed or must have meant some-

THE SEARCH FOR AN HISTORICAL JESUS I I

thing different from what they actually said.l Finally, the ideal Jesus emerges and exhibits himself as a compassionate Jewish rabbi with pure thoughts, a charming personality, and a liberal outlook; nourishing, possibly, some very unassuming Messianic conception of his own. Quite a pleasing ideal, no doubt; but is it credible that such a man was the originator of the religious earthquake in which, on the hypothesis of a single founder, Christianity came into existence ?

Well may Schweitzer term the more than centurylong discussion of the '' Leben-Jesu" question " a chaos." Where shall we find anything solid in all this medley ? The one conclusion that can be drawn from the discussion is that no consistent picture of the pervading personality can be extracted from any Gospel, except perhaps the fourth, without arbitrary reconstruction of the text. And what logical right has any man, after thoroughly discrediting a document by rejecting half of it as unauthentic and rewriting portions of it so as to bring it into conformity with a preconception, to appeal to the discredited document as evidence for anything whatever ?

The prevalent view about Jesus is that he was a teacher; and yet he is reported to have said that his reason for speaking in parables was that the common people should not understand him !

The reader will perhaps, from the foregoing, get some idea of the reasons which have led a critic like Bultmann to the condusion that of the life and

1 Examples of .this procedure may be found in J . M. Robertson's Jesus

" and Judas, also The Historical Jesus,

p. I63.


personality of Jesus practically nothing can be known. From that conclusion it follows that the Gospel Jesus has been invented ; or that he is a composite picture in which authentic lineaments, if any, are no longer discernible.

II

THE ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE OUTSIDE THE GOSPELS

MoDERN liberal theology begins by assuming the existence of a human Jesus, and hopes to reach some solid knowledge with regard to him by sifting out from the Gospels everything supernatural, while accepting as authentic all details which are not physically or logically impossible, and as genuine utterances all speeches of Jesus which cannot be proved to be interpolations or additions by the writer and do not clash with the preconception.1 But if the primary hypothesis of liberal theologians is wrong, the result of their method is just to throw away all the elements which are of real value in a scientific investigation. The method would be justifiable and logically sound only if any independent evidence of the real existence of Jesus had first been established. That, however, has not been and cannot be done. There is no such evidence.

It is incredible that if Jesus had been endowed with the dynamic personality which must be postulated in the founder of a world religion there should be no contemporary testimony to his existence.

t We might as well argue that since the story of Ruth is possible, therefore it is true. Is it not vivid and touching? Yet all competent critics of the Old Testament agree that the story of Ruth has been " invented." See Encyc. Bibl., Art. " Ruth."

13

14 THE ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE

It is no less incredible that if the events which are stated to have occurred during the last days of Jesus had really taken place in Jerusalem a Jewish historian of the period should have made no mention of them. Theologians, of course, have done their best to explain the silence of Josephus; but their explanations are far from satisfying, and J. Weiss was candid enough to admit that his silence is puzzling. Josephus gives some account of several popular leaders and Messianic agitators. Why then did he not mention Jesus? He has a good deal to tell us in Book XVIII, Chap. iii, of his Antiquities about Pilate, and it is inconceivable that he should not there have mentioned the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, which must have been notable events, if they really occurred. It is evident that at an early date Christians were painfully conscious of this fatal omission ; because between sections 2 and 4 of the chapter referred to there now stands a short section, 3, in which Jesus and the Christians are spoken of. The section is an obvious interpolation, as many competent theological critics have admitted. In the sixteenth century Vossius had a MS. of Josephus from which the passage was wanting. None of the early Christian writers ever quote the passage as evidence in their controversies with Jews and pagans, which, had they known it, they certainly would have done.

A second reference to Jesus is also found in existing copies of Josephus (Antiq. XX, ix, r), where it is said that by order of Ananus, " the brother of Jesus, him called Christ (James was his name)," and some others were stoned. It is extremely unlikely

OUTSIDE THE GOSPELS 15

that Josephus would have made this casual reference to Jesus without having said anything about him elsewhere. This passage seems to imply the existence of the earlier one and falls with it. Origen was evidently unacquainted with it, and no early Christian writer quotes it . Competent theological critics have admitted that the words referring to Jesus have been interpolated. Schiirer and J iilicher do not claim that the passage is genuine; Credner and Weiss regard it as a Christian interpolation.1

Early in the present century there was discovered a North Russian translation of the Wars of the jews, in a MS. dated somewhere in the late Middle Ages, which contains some " Christian " passages. The main passage is evidently an expansion of the interpolated passage in the Antiquities, a few details, some of which are plainly suggested by the Gospels, having been added. The general character of this passage, the late date of the MS., the absence of all the passages from earlier MSS . , the silence of Christian controversialists with regard to them and the known Christian habit of interpolation combine to destroy their evidential value. It is assumed by some who wish to believe they are genuine that Josephus, having written them in his Aramaic original, omitted them from his Greek version. The authenticity of the passages cannot be established by such an assumption, for which no convincing reason can be given.

A further argument in support of the main passage

1 The two interpolations have been discussed by Drews, The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, p. 9, and W. B. Smith, Ecce Deus, p. 230.


is that it contains a statement about Jesus which no Christian could have written-viz., that Jesus organized a revolt against the Romans. It is by no means easy to decide what a Christian interpolator could or could not have written about Jesus. We have seen from the diversity of the views held by modern theologians how contradictory Christian opinions as to the character and aims of Jesus can be ; and this interpolator was personating Josephus. It would really be extremely unlikely for Josephus to have written the words if there were any truth at all in the Gospel presentation ; but since some modern theologians think he could have written them a Christian interpolator may have thought so. Dr. Eisler, the principal protagonist for an original reference by Josephus, admits that the passages as a whole came from the hand of a Christian interpolator, but argues that the one which contains the reference to Jesus is an expansion of a much shorter primitive statement . This opinion is highly conjectural ; and it is putting the case very moderately to say that the mention of Jesus by Josephus in this work is too dubious to weigh appreciably against any strong arguments by which the historicity of Jesus can be assailed. 1 The opinion of Dr. Eisler on this point is similar to that of the theologians who have conjectured that the interpolated passage in the Antiquities has sup� planted an original one in which Josephus wrote unfavourably of Jesus. The conjecture is negatived by the fact that the interpolated section, 3, causes a breach of continuity between sections z and 4·

Another Jewish writer who might have been 1 See also J. M. Robertson, Jesus and Judas, p. 170.


expected to tell us something about Jesus is Philo. Philo lived until after the year 40 C.E. ; he wrote a good deal, and was particularly interested in contemporary Jewish religious movements and sects. The combined silence of Josephus and Philo is deadly to the hypothesis of an historical Jesus.

There is a reference to " Christ " in a letter which Pliny wrote to the Emperor Trajan about the year II3, in which the writer asks for instructions as to any action that he should take against the Christians in Bithynia, he being Proconsul of that province. He informs the Emperor that the Christians sing hymns to Christ, as to a god, at daybreak. The genuineness of the letter has been doubted ; but, waiving that question, it is for believers in the historicity to explain how a Jewish Rabbi, of whatever commanding personality, came to be worshipped as a god in Bithynia in the year II3. Here is certainly no evidence for the existence of a man Jesus.

The Roman historian Suetonius tells us in his Life of Claudius that that emperor expelled the Jews from Rome because, " at the instigation of Chrestus," they were continually making disturbances. The words " at the instigation of Chrestus" (impulsore Chresto) imply that the instigator was present at the time. And the name " Chrestus " was common enough in Rome.! It is possible that, as " Christus" is Grreco-Latin for " Messiah," the disturbances arose from disputes among the Jews as to the nature of the Messiah. Suetonius may not have clearly understood the matter. In any case, the statement

1 Chrestus was also a name of the god Serapis .


has no evidential value for the historicity of Jesus ; and that fact has been recognized by theologians.

We come next to the evidence of Tacitus. The historian, after referring to the great fire at Rome in the year 64 and to the persistent rumour that the fire had been purposely lit, continues : " In order to put an end to this rumour, Nero accused and visited with severe punishment those men, hateful for their crimes, whom the people called Christians. He from whom the name was derived, Christus, was put to death by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius." Later it is said that " a great number were arrested, who were not so much convicted of the fire as of hatred of the human race."

The authenticity of this passage has been vigorously challenged by Prof. W. B. Smith. Mr. Thos. Whittaker, however, says that the passage " defies all scepticism." Let us accept it as genuine ; its accuracy is nevertheless extremely doubtful. Tacitus cannot have had any direct knowledge of the Christians, or he would not have said that they were hateful for their crimes ; and the words " hatred of the human race" apply better to Jews on account of their national exclusiveness. The passage affords no certain evidence that Christians in our sense were to be found at Rome in the days of Nero. As Mr. Whittaker points out-since Christos = Messiah'' by no other name could Greeks or Romans speak of Messianic Jews." 1 In any case it is unthinkable that there should have been a great number (multitudo ingens) there at that time. Prof. W. B . Smith

1 The Origins of Christianity, 4th ed. , p. 26,

OUTSIDE THE GOSPELS I9

has shown 1 that it is inferrible from passages in the letters of Clement of Rome and " Ignatius " that

neither of these writers had any knowledge of a slaughter of Christians by Nero. In Tertullian's Apologeticum (about zoo c.E.) we first find some vague phrases which may or may not have reference to the circumstances related by Tacitus. The Roman historian must have obtained his information about Pilate from Christians, or someone acquainted with them ; so all that is proved is that at the time he wrote, say about the year rrs, Christians believed that Christ had been put to death by Pilate more than eighty years before. Such belief is not historical evidence of the fact . Moreover, if the " Christians" here mentioned were Messianic Jews, reference to Pilate is irrelevant in its context. We seem, therefore, almost compelled to suppose that the sentence containing that reference has been interpolated. The historian E. Meyer, a firm believer in the historicity of Jesus, says that the statement in Tacitus is apparently based upon the words of the Christian Creed, " suffered under Pontius Pilate."

If Jesus had lived, disputed with the Scribes and Pharisees, and been put to death after a trial by the Sanhedrin, or at the instigation of the chief men among the Jews, the Rabbis would have had independent knowledge of him and there would, it may reasonably be supposed, have been some mention of him in the Talmud. There are, it is true, references to Jesus in the Talmud ; but they are all of such a character as to prove that the Rabbis of the second century had no independent knowledge of

1 Ecce Deus, p. 240.


Jesus and no traditions of their own concerning him. As Jiilicher and other theological critics have recognized, all the knowledge which the Rabbis had of Jesus was obtained by them from the Gospels. Seeing that Jews, even in the present more critical age, take it for granted that the figure of a real man stands behind the Gospel narrative, one need not be surprised if, in the second century, Jews did not think of questioning that assumption. It is certain , however, that some did question it. For Justin, in his Dialogue with Trypho, represents the Jew Trypho as saying, " Ye follow an empty rumour and make a Christ for yourselves." " If he was born and lived somewhere he is entirely unknown."

That the writers of the Talmud had no independent knowledge of Jesus is proved by the fact that they confounded him with two different men neither of whom can have been he. Evidently no other Jesus with whom they could identify the Gospel Jesus was known to them. One of these, Jesus ben Pandira, reputed a wonder-worker, is said to have been stoned to death and then hung on a tree on the eve of a Passover in the reign of Alexander Jannreus (ro6-79 B.c.) at Jerusalem. The other, Jesus ben Stada, whose date is uncertain, but who may have lived in the first third of the second century c.E., is also said to have been stoned and hanged on the eve of a Passover, but at Lydda. There may be some confusion here ; but it is plain that the Rabbis had no knowledge of Jesus apart from what they had read in the Gospels.

Thus there is no contemporary historical evidence


of the existence of Jesus. But, it may be argued, the existence of the Jesus of the Gospels is confirmed by the evidence of the Pauline Epistles. 1 The answer is that, except in a very few interpolated passages, the Jesus of the Pauline Epistles is entirely in the region of dogma. Not only so ; some of the dogmas set forth are mutually incompatible. Since the work of the Tiibingen school very few theologians of the first rank will venture to assert the genuineness of the Epistles beyond the first four. As regards those we may for our present purpose leave the question of authorship undecided, drawing attention, however, to the fact that incompatibility of doctrine proves them to be composite. In one section of Romans, chapters iii. to v . , we find the doctrine of justification by faith in the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ and the distinctive, so-called, Pauline doctrine of grace. The doctrine of the first two chapters is inconsistent with this. As van Manen observed, the man who wrote iii. 20, " By the works of the law shall no man be justified," cannot be the same man as he who wrote ii . 6, " God will render to every man according to his works. " The controversy as to whether justification is by faith or " works " has continued until modem times. Both doctrines are found in this Epistle.

1 The solution of the Pauline problem is a necessary preliminary to the complete solution of the problem of early Christian development. The Pauline problem has been discussed by me in A Critical A nalysis of the Four Chief Pauline Epistles.· Wherever statements are made in the present work about the text or authorship of an Epistle the reader will please understand that the reasons for such statements are to be found in the book named.


The theological doctrine of chapters vi. to vm., again, is quite different from that of chapters iii. to v. The significance of the death of Christ as here expounded is inconsistent with the doctrine of expiation through an atoning sacrifice. It has nothing whatever to do with the " redeeming blood of Jesus Christ." The doctrine is that the Christian, through union with Christ and by metaphorically and symbolically dying with him, becomes spiritual instead of carnal, becomes a new creature and capable of righteousness. The teaching in this section has a strong mystical element and has affinities with the Eastern mystery religions ; for in the mysteries of Attis and of Osiris the worshipper symbolically died and rose again with the god, as the Christian did in the Pauline Gnostic baptism ; and in each case the symbolic act, in addition to its making the participant " a new man " morally, gave him the assurance of immortality. Whether the symbolic act is regarded as a resurrection or a re-birth is immaterial. Throughout this section the thought is Gnostic. There is distinct evidence of Docetism in viii. 3, " God sending his own Son in the similitude (homoiotes) of flesh " ; which implies that Jesus was not a man of flesh, but only appeared to be so. There is good reason to believe that the Gnostic sections are the earliest in the Epistle ; so that, if Paul wrote any, he wrote them.1 A Docetist is hardly to be claimed as a satisfactory witness to the historical reality of Jesus. And, if prepossessions are discarded, there is no more reason for thinking

1 The Docetist Marcion claimed to have received his doctrine from Paul.


that dogmas and symbolisms based upon the death of Jesus guarantee his historical reality than for thinking that those based upon the deaths of Attis and Osiris guarantee theirs.1

The ideas of a suffering Messiah and an atoning sacrifice are given in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah ; and it is certain that this and other passages in the Old Testament supplied details for the story of the crucifixion. The conception of a son of God who came to earth, was a benefactor of me�, died and rose again, was widely prevalent in the preChristian world ; Adonis, Dionysus and Heracles may be mentioned. Naturally, during their stay upon earth these sons of God were supposed to have mortal bodies ; so that the attribution of a mortal body to Jesus and references to his blood in a purely dogmatic disquisition prove nothing whatever as to his historicity. The Pauline writers are interested only in the death and resurrection of Jesus. The writer of Galatians, whom theologians, except those of the Dutch radical school, believe to have been Paul, says that not only had he not learnt what he taught upon this subject from men, but that he did not wish to obtain from men any information with regard to it. A sufficient proof that what he taught was pure dogma.

As I have written elsewhere, suppose that Paul had heard of some man who had lived a pure life, taught wonderful doctrine, died on the cross and risen from the dead, and had come to believe this report, what would he necessarily have done ? He

1 " Paul " apparently had no knowledge of any teaching by Jesus.


would, of course, have sought out those who had known this wonderful man in order to learn all he could about his words and acts. Instead of that he makes a point of saying that he had no communication with those who were Apostles before him. But the most significant thing of all is that the wording of Gal. ii. 6 implies that the Apostles named had not been personal followers of Jesus. Consequently the writer of this Epistle did not know that ] esus had had disciples. Paul does not tell his converts anything about the beautiful life of a good man ; what he does is to " preach Jesus " and the means of redemption offered through his death. In other words, he preaches a dogma ; and the death of Jesus in the Pauline Epistles is no more an historical event than is the death of Osiris.

It is true that a reference to an act of the human Jesus might be seen in I Cor. xi. 23-27, where it is stated that " the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread," etc. But, in the first place, Mr. ]. M. Robertson has proved, and some eminent theologians have admitted, that the story of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas is late legend, 1 so that this passage must be a late interpolation. Since we are told that Jesus went in the evening to the Mount of Olives, the priests could easily have had him followed and taken him when he was alone with his disciples. In the second place, as W. B. Smith has pointed out,2 the description of

1 Jesus and Judas. The great critic Volkmar had reached the same conclusion long before. In the Gospel of Peter the whole twelve are together after the crucifixion.

2 Ecce Deus, pp. 146-5 1 .


the sacrament in I Corinthians xi. as an institution of remembrance puts it into line with the account in Luke. It is, in fact, an elaboration of that. The accounts in Matthew and Mark are inconsistent with this. Hence the one in I Corinthians xi. is not primitive. There is another mention of the Lord's Supper in this Epistle, in a section of much earlier date, x. I6, I7, where the interpretation is different . In this place Jesus is not referred to as the initiator of the rite.

The passage in I Cor. xv. I-8 is poor evidence of historicity, and it also can be shown to be a late insertion. The legend of the reappearances of the risen Christ was a growing one. It is fairly certain that in the earliest form of the Gospel the Ascension followed immediately upon the Resurrection. The best critics agree that Mark's Gospel originally ended with chap. xvi. 8, hence in that Gospel no reappearances were recorded. According to Matthew, Jesus appeared twice ; first to the two Marys and then to the eleven disciples. In Luke, which is later than Matthew, three appearances are recorded -to the two disciples who were journeying to Emmaus, to Simon Peter, and to the eleven and others who were with them. In John's Gospel the number of appearances has increased to four. In I Cor. xv. 5-'J there is still further development. We are bound to conclude that in this passage we liave a very late stage in the growth of the legend. No doubt the passage has suffered later interpolation. But a peculiarity of this account is that there is in it no mention of the women, in which respect it agrees with Luke. In each of these

c


cases, as Steck observed 1 the omission must be regarded as an artificial correction of the earlier narrative ; whence inferribly the account in I Corinthians, as that in Luke, is later than the one in Matthew.

We are told that Jesus was deified as the result of the extraordinary impression produced by his wonderful personality upon the minds of his disciples. If that were true we ought to be able to find some evidence of the impression produced by this personality. There is absolutely none. Not only in the Pauline Epistles, but in all the Epistles, there is not the faintest trace of any impression that had been made by a human personality. If the supposed impression had been made, the experiences through which the disciples had lived in the company of Jesus would have been handed down and the thought of early Christians would have been full of them. But these early writers never reinforce their arguments by anything they had heard that Jesus had done. He is never set before those to whom the Epistles are addressed as an example which they should follow in any human relationship, by pointing to his behaviour on some particular occasion. For the writers of these Epistles Jesus is not a man whose example other men could follow. He is the " Son of God's love, in whom we have our redemption, the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation." 2 And it is commonly supposed that such words as these were written by.a Jew. They might indeed have been written by a Jew about a being who was held to have

1 Der Galaterbrief, p. r85. 2 Colossians i. 13-15.


been divine from time immemorial, but never about a deified man.1 Even if the Epistle to the Colossians was not written by a Jew, the first Christians were Jews. And of all people in the world Jews were the least likely to deify a man. The horror which Jews felt at the idea of worshipping a man was so great that the Roman emperors were obliged to dispense Jews from rendering to them the divine honour which was expected from all other subjects of Rome. The legions were even forbidden to carry into Jerusalem the Emperor's effigies. If prepossessions could be got rid of, this one fact would be a proof that Jesus never lived-viz., that there is not a single anecdote about him in the whole of the early Christian literature. During a full century, up to the date of Justin Martyr, we find nothing but dogma.

It is true that in the Epistle to the Philippians the readers are exhorted to have in them the mind that was in Jesus. But how was the mind of Jesus shown ? Not through the behaviour of a man in intercourse with his fellow-men. No ! Jesus exhibited his humility and obedience in that, " being in the form of God, he counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men." It is not logical to assume that Jesus must have been a man, and then try to account for his deification by the wonderful impression he made upon his disciples. Let those who argue thus produce any genuine early Christian piece

1 Philo wrote in very similar terms of the Logos; and the Logos of Philo was indisputably a divine being.


of writing, not obviously interpolated from a Gospel, which, by referring to an act of the human Jesus, proves that such an impression had been made. To quote a Gospel would be a petitio principii, because the question in dispute is whether or not the aim ,of the Gospels is to give the life-history of a god who became man.

We have in ancient mythology examples of gods who became men, and adventures which as men they experienced ; but there is no recorded case of a man becoming the god of a religion. And this unexampled phenomenon is supposed to have occurred among Jews of all people. According to the Greek myth Attis was originally a shepherd ; but Sir James Frazer, who has written a good deal about Attis, does not venture to say that the shepherd Attis ever lived ; and evidently he does not believe it . One Gnostic writer, Justin, taught that Jesus was a shepherd. How was that possible if it was known that Jesus was a carpenter ? Now we have this dilemma : if the personality of Jesus was so beyond all precedent wonderful, contemporary Jewish historians must have known something about him, and some impression that had been made by this personality must have made itself evident in the early Christian writings. Neither of these is true. Therefore the supposed wonderful human personality n ever existed. There is an Epistle to the Corinthians which is ascribed to Clement of Rome. The writer has occasion to rebuke the Corinthians on various counts, but, though he puts before them the examples of Peter and of Paul, he never drives home his rebukes by


reminding them of what Jesus did on any occasion. He writes of the blood of Christ and of the resurrection, but not of anything that Jesus did. Certainly he quotes from a Gospel, or, more probably, a collection of Logia, some sayings of Jesus ; but he also quotes as a speech of Jesus verses from one of the Psalms ! 1 That illustrates the degree in which he regarded Jesus as an historical person in the usual sense of the term. Everywhere in this early literature we are confronted with a divine being ; never with a mere man.

We meet with a divine Jesus also in the very ancient Naassene Hymn, which, as W. B. Smith says, there is no reason for regarding as postChristian :-

Spake then Diesus [Jesus] : Therefore send me Father ; bearing seals I shall descend, reons all I shall fare through, mysteries all I shall disclose, forms of gods I shall show ; and the secrets of the holy way, having called it gnosis, I shall deliver up.

There is a remarkable resemblance between this hymn and a dialogue between the god Ea and his son Marduk in certain Babylonian incantations. The redeemer Marduk, in the Babylonian myth, is sent to earth for the help of suffering men. He is ill-treated, slain, and rises again.

Another very early document in which the name Jesus occurs is the " Teaching of the Twelve Apostles." 2 Sections written by Christians at

1 1 Clem. 16. 2 These twelve Apostles are, as J . M. Robertson pointed

out, the actual and historical twelve Apostles either of the High-Priest before, or of the Patriarch after, the fall of


various dates have been inserted in the document, 1 but there is general agreement among scholars that the original is Jewish. It can hardly be dated later than the middle of the first century and may be a good deal earlier. The community which used the book revered a Jesus who is not the Jesus of the Gospels. We find in it the words : " We thank thee, our Father, for the holy vine of David thy servant, which thou hast made known to us through Jesus thy servant ." There is some affinity between this Jesus and the Gnostic Logos, since life and knowledge (gnosis) are said to have been made known through him. The " holy vine " has symbolic significance in the literature of the Gnostic Mandreans.2

Seeing that part of the Apocalypse, or Revelation of John, is probably nearly as early as anything in the New Testament, we might expect to find there some traces of the human Jesus, if the assumption of a gradual process of deification were correct . And yet in that book there is no allusion whatever to the acts or words of an historical person. The fearful figure portrayed in the first chapter is as unlike the Jesus of modern liberal theology as well could be. " I was dead and am living," he says. Of course the death and resurrection of the divine being was the central point of the dogma, and there is no reference here to the crucifixion of a man Jesus at Jerusalem. Then

Jerusalem. Of the twelve Apostles of Jesus Dr. Cheyne wrote, " the twelve Apostles are to me as unhistorical as the seventy disciples " (Hibbert Journal, July 19I I } .

1 See J. M . Robertson, The Jesus Problem, p . 13 1 . 2 Mandrean Book of John, 1 31-43 .

\ OUTSIDE THE GOSPELS 31

we read of a Lamb slain from the foundation of the \world, a representation which applies better to the immemorial sacrifice of a god under the form of a lamb than to the execution of a known man.1 The Lamb is said to have been " pierced," as was the common mode in sacrifices. None of the Gospels except the fourth says that Jesus was pierced. The incident was added in that Gospel under the influence of Zechariah xii. ro. The witness of Revelation is solely to a divine, not at all to a human Jesus.

The Epistle to the Hebrews, again, a dogmatic disquisition upon the self-immolation of the great High-Priest, does not seem to presuppose any knowledge of the Gospel or of the Gospel story.

In the Epistle to the Galatians the writer mentions James, " the brother of the Lord." It has been argued from this passage that Jesus had a brother who was known, and that he must consequently have been a real man. But it is pure assumption to say that " brother of the Lord " must mean a brother of Jesus. It need not mean that at all, and it seems to be possible to determine the question. In Galatians this James is mentioned together with Cephas and John as being a pillar of the Jewish Christian community. In Acts also it appears that Peter, James, and John are the three chief Apostles. The connection of these three names points pretty plainly to James the brother of John and son of Zebedee. Three men bearing

1 It was quite usual in ancient sacrifices to identify the victim with the god to whom the sacrifice was made. See Fra�er's Golden Bough, abridged edition, p. 475·


the same names are in the Gospels distinguis;hed from the other disciples as sharing more than the rest the confidence of Jesus, and there James is John's brother. In Acts, indeed, 1 it is stated that James the brother of John was killed by Herod, from which it might be inferred that the James subsequently mentioned was not John's brother. But since it is also stated that Herod immediately afterwards seized Peter, it is plain that the writer meant to represent Herod as seizing the two chief Apostles ; and in chap. xxi. James is still the chief Apostle. It is hopeless to attempt to extract history from such documents. And since it is well established that the Acts of the Apostles is a composite work we can understand the occurrence of inconsistent statements in it. Another disciple of Jesus was called James-viz. , the son of Alpheus. So if it is true that Herod killed the brother of John, the James of chaps. xv. and xxi. might be the other one.2

According to the Gospels no brother of Jesus was his disciple. Brothers of Jesus, it is true, are there mentioned ; but they are represented as hostile to him rather than otherwise ; consequently it seems impossible that one of them can have become a leading Apostle immediately after his death. In Acts " his brethren " are mentioned only once rather perfunctorily and no names of them are given.a Early Christian writers did not interpret the phrase

1 . . Xll. 2 .

2 The James of chap . xv. i s the one referred to in Galatians.

a i. 14. The probable significance of the brothers of Jesus in the Gospels will be explained later.


" brother of the Lord " as implying kinship. Origen says that James was so called on account of his great piety. Jerome makes a similar assertion. The best explanation of the phrase is that it is a grouptitle, given to an inner circle of Church members. The phrase " brothers of the Lord " is found in r Cor. ix. 5. The term " the Lord " (Kurios) is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Adona!, Jehovah ; and standing without a following name it would be used only of God, or a divine being, who could not have brothers in the flesh. Neither in Acts nor in the Epistles is the phrase " brother of Jesus " ever applied to James.

And now a few words about the Apologists who wrote in defence of Christianity during the second century. The most notable fact in connection with these writers is that the earthly life of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels had no interest for them at all. The point of view is given by Melito of Sardes, 1 who describes his religion as " our philosophy " ; and he says that this philosophy began to flourish in the Roman Empire under the sovereignty of the Emperor Augustus. If the philosophy began to flourish then, it must have originated some time before. That is to say, its beginnings were preChristian. The term philosophy may give a misleading impression to modern readers-theosophy would be a better one. For none of these writers was Jesus a teacher. The essence of their theosophy was that God, seeing men being led astray by false gods, took pity upon them and sent to earth his only Son, the Logos, in order that they might learn

1 He wrote somewhere about the year 170.

3-4- THE ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE

to know the true God and thus be saved from eternal destruction.

The Apology of Aristides is probably the earliest of these writings. It consists almost entirely of an attack upon polytheism and a defence of Christian mo�otheism. Aristides gives no details of the life of Jesus. He refers to a Gospel from which he has learnt that " the God of the Christians " descended from heaven and " took flesh " from a Hebrew v1rgm. He is interested only in the descent, death, and resurrection of a god. The Apology of Athenagoras is of a similar character. He says that Christians " acknowledge one God . . . who has created the universe through his Logos, also called his Son " ; and that " they who draw men to idols are demons, who are eager for the blood of sacrifices and lick them." Of course ' it was natural to suppose that the Logos became man in order to reveal to men the true God ; but very little stress is laid upon that. Especially is this the case in the Octavius of Minucius Felix, who never hints at any New Testament story. These Apologists conserved their monotheism by identifying Christ with God as an aspect or emanation. Clement of Alexandria writes of " God's the Christ's Parousy." And they would all have repudiated most emphatically the Jesus so admired by modern liberal theologians.

III

JOSHUA-JESUS

AT this stage perhaps it may be asked : If Christianity did not originate from the teaching of some remarkable man who was afterwards deified, how can it be supposed to have started ? One might reply by asking how Mithraism can be supposed to have started. No one imagines that Mithra was a deified man. Mithraism was for some time a serious rival to Christianity in the Roman Empire and there were some important features common to the two religions. Mithra was a saviour god and the mediator between the supreme god and man. His birthday was celebrated on the 25th of December. A sacrament closely resembling the Christian sacrament of the Lord's Supper was an important element in the Mithraic cult, and on the forehead of those who became members of the cult the priest made the sign of the cross.1 The resemblance was so close that Justin attributed the institution of its principal rites to the agency of demons whose purpose was the discrediting of the Christian religion. No student of ancient religions will assert either that the Mithraic sacrament was instituted by Mithra or that it was copied from the Christians. Misconception is created by the supposition that Christianity originated rather suddenly at a definite

1 Mithra, like ] esus again, is buried in a rock tomb. 35

JOSHUA-JESUS

epoch early in the first century. Christianity in its modern form may have been chiefly the work of some remarkable men who, in the first and second centuries, arrived at it through the development and synthesis of much older material. But for the fundamental dogmas, which are not peculiar to the Christian religion, we must go back to a much earlier period.

The task of tracing the pre-Christian origins of Christianity is a very difficult one, because documents which were likely to lend support to heretical opinions were either neglected and so naturally perished, or were by leading churchmen purposely destroyed. The works of Porphyry were for this reason burnt by order of the Emperor Theodosius II. But here and there evidence can still be found which points to a very different kind of origin from that which has for so long been accepted. Some of this evidence has only become available in recent years.

Now Jesus is a Greek form of the name Joshua ; and there is evidence, not only that Joshua was an ancient Palestinian divinity, but also that Joshua or Jesus was still a divine name in Palestine just previous to the commencement of the Christian era. In the Book of Exodus, xxiii. 20 and 2r, it is written :-

Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him and obey his voice . . . for he will not pardon your transgressions ; for my name is in him.

In verse 23 the promise is made that under the

JOSHUA-JESUS 37

leadership of this angel certain tribes shall be conquered. And those tribes were actually conquered under the leadership of Joshua, as is subsequently related. Joshua is thus identified with an " angel " sent by God. In the passage quoted severity and authority are attributed to him, and God is made to say, " my name is in him." The name " Joshua " (Jeschua) may be interpreted Jab-help, or Jahveh is salvation. This interpretation is affirmed. by Justin in his Dialogue with Trypho ; so that the words " my name is in him " also point to Joshua as having originally been the promised " angel," if not something higher. 1

I t is a mistake t o think that the Jews were all rigid monotheists during the period between the return from Babylon and the commencement of the Christian era. Prophetic denunciations prove the contrary ; and the greater part, at any rate, of the prophetic books is later than has until recently been supposed.2 Robertson Smith wrote that " the obscure rites described by the prophets have a vastly greater importance than has been commonly recognized." It is certain that secret cults existed, and there is evidence in the znd Psalm that some Jews revered a Son of God in the post-exilic period, for it is there written, vers. ro-rz :-

Be wise, 0 ye kings. . . . Serve the Lord with fear. . . . Kiss the Son lest he be angry, and ye perish

1 The legendary character of the Book of Joshua has long been recognized by theological scholars. A classical analogy is the .£neid, whose hero is considered by the Italian scholar, Prof. Pais, to have been an ancient Latin god.

2 See Dujardin, The Source of the Christian Tradition.

JOSHUA-JESUS

from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

The translators of the Authorized Version took this Son to be Christ. The expressions used suggest a divine being. Some modern commentators hold that many of the Psalms were written as the utterance of the personified Israel imagined as the servant, or even as the son, of God. Conceivably that may be the significance of " the Son " in these verses. On the other hand, we have in the Talmud, dating from a period just after the fall of the Temple, mention of the fact that there was a Jewish ritual " Week of the Son, or, as some call it, Jesus the Son," in connection with the circumcision and redemption of the first-born child. 1 This statement gains added significance when we remember that Joshua is said to have reinstituted-or, as would rather appear, instituted-the rite of circumcision,2 and would therefore, in accordance with ancient mythological ideas, have been regarded as the god of the rite.

Until the time of the Maccabees the authority of the priests at Jerusalem did not extend to the northern part of Palestine and in Samaria it was never established. The vitality with which ancient cults and superstitious observances persist is well known. As Sir ]. Frazer has shown, pagan ceremonies exist in England to-day, though their origin has been forgotten. Even when the observance of the national religion had become general, ancient cults would be likely to survive in some parts of

1 J. M. Robertson, The ] esus Problem, p . 38. 2 Joshua v . 2-4.

JOSHUA-JESUS 39

Palestine, secretly practised it may be. There is indeed evidence that such was the case.

The priests who, after the return from Babylon, redacted the ancient documents in the interest of the monotheistic worship of J ahveh may be supposed to have reduced the status of Joshua, first to that of an angel, and then made a distinction between the angel and Joshua as the actual leader of the Israelites. l In the Book of Joshua, v. 13-15, the visit of the promised angel to Joshua is described in order that the separation of Joshua from the angel may be brought about ; but nothing further is heard about this angel ; and, as aforesaid, all the conquests are made under the leadership of Joshua himself. Since Joshua's heavenly visitor describes himself as captain of the Lord's host, we may infer that that is what Joshua himself was previously supposed to have been.

Joshua is said to have been the son of Nun, and the Hebrew word nun is equivalent to fish. Joshua, therefore, was the son of the fish. Now the fish is an important element in some mythologies, partly through connection with the sign of the Fish in the Zodiac, but also for other reasons. The fish was sacred to Ishtar and to the corresponding deity in other countries. There is a bronze statuette which represents Isis suckling the infant Horus, and upon her head is a fish. The fish had a symbolic connection with the worship of Aphrodite and was sacred to Venus ; hence the eating of fish by Catholics

1 An analogous case is seen in Exodus iii. 2 and 4 · In verse 4 we find " God," but in 2 " angel of the Lord " has been substituted. See also Deut. xxxiii. 16.

JOSHUA-JESUS

on Friday, Friday having been in the Roman calendar the day of Venus. 1 Tertullian calls Jesus " the divine fish " ; and Jesus is represented in the Catacombs in the form of a fish, as is mentioned in the book Quo Vadis ? Moreover, there is found an ancient Greek formula which runs as follows : Iesous Christos Theou Uios Soter [Jesus Christ God's Son Saviour] , of which the initial letters make the Greek word Ichthus = fish. Theologians have tried to derive from this formula the application of the name Fish to Jesus ; but, in view of the known facts, it is far more likely that the words were arranged purposely in this order so as to give the name, than that it resulted from their accidental collocation.

In the Talmud it is said that the name of the Messiah already existed before the creation of the world and that it was Inon. The Hebrew name Inon contains the root non, which is cognate with nun. In fact in r Chron. vii. 27 the father of Joshua is actually named Non. Hence there is indicated some early connection between Joshua and the Jewish Messiah. 2 It is possible also that Nun is etymologically related to Nin, the name of an Assyrian fish-god.

Such considerations tend to confirm the suspicion that Joshua was originally a divine being ; and further strong confirmation is found in existing evidence of

1 But it may be suspected that the pagan practice was not the only reason that Christians had for eating fish on a Friday.

2 The Fish, being the twelfth and last sign of the Zodiac, was connected with the end of the world . A link is thus found between the Fish and the heavenly Messiah. The sun-god was identified with the Lamb, or Ram (Aries) as the first sign.

JOSHUA-JESUS

the fact that at a much later period he was still so regarded. Mr. Thomas Whittaker has pointed out that in the Epistle of Jude, in the fifth verse, where the words " the Lord " occur, the older reading, which is recognized in the margin of the Revised Version, was " Jesus." So that the original form of the verse was : " I will therefore put you in remembrance . . . how that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt the second time, destroyed them that believed not." In the next verse this Jesus, or Joshua, is said to have reserved, in everlasting chains, under darkness, the angels who kept not their first estate. But one who had power to bind erring angels could be conceived only as a divine or supernatural Being. Sitting in judgment on fallen angels was a function of the heavenly Messiah according to the Book of Enoch.

Mr. Robertson drew attention to the fact that in the Jewish New Year liturgy to this day Joshua figures as the " Prince of the Presence," which seems to identify him with the Metatron of the Talmud, for Metatron is equivalent to the Greek words meta thronon " behind the throne." Metatron was the Archangel Michael, 1 who is designated in Daniel xii. r " the great prince," a designation which also connects him with Joshua, the " Prince of the Presence." There is another connection in the fact that Michael was the leader of the army of angels according to Revelation xii.-a Jewish sectionseeing that the angel sent to Joshua was " the captain of the Lord's host," and, as previously pointed out, was probably originally Joshua himself. There

1 The name Michael is comparatively late. D

JOSHUA-JESUS

is also mention of an " Angel of the Presence " in Isaiah lxiii. g. This term reminds us of the description of the Messiah in the Book of Enoch as standing before J ahveh at the head of the angelic host. Isaiah says that " the angel of his presence saved them," which might well be a reference to Joshua.

In a miscellaneous collection of Greek verses, prophetic in form, entitled the Sibylline Oracles, evidently written by Jews, occurs the passage :-

Now a certain excellent man shall come again from heaven, who spread forth his hands upon the very fruitful tree, the best of the Hebrews, who once made the sun stand still, speaking with beauteous words and pure lips.

The Sibylline Oracles is a post-Christian work ; in it, in the passage quoted, Jesus Christ is identified with Joshua ; but there is evidence that Jesus was a divine name in Palestine before the Christian era. It is stated in the Gospels that the disciples cast out demons in the name of Jesus in places where Jesus had never been. A statement which implies belief that in the name itself there was magical efficacy, operative before Jesus had made his presence felt at all. The same belief is implied in Mark ix. 38, where we read : " John said unto him, Master, we saw one casting out demons in thy name ; and we forbade him, because he followed not us." The meaning of this may be that there were worshippers of Jesus outside the Christian community ; in other words, Jesus-sects of independent origin. But it is reasonable to infer that the power imagined to inhere in the name " Jesus " was independent of the belief of him who used it. And not only in Palestine ;

JOSHUA-JESUS 43

for we are told in Acts xix. I3 that Jewish exorcists in Asia used to pronounce over those who were possessed by evil spirits the name Jesus, saying, " I adjure you by Jesus." The addition of the words " whom Paul preacheth " is far more likely to have been made by the Christian writer than by the Jewish exorcists themselves. Confirmation of the inference that " Jesus " was already a divine name among Jews is found in the existence of an ancient formula of eXorcism in which occurs the phrase : " I adjure thee by Jesus, the God of the Hebrews." It is unlikely that such a formula originated among Christians. Even if it did, it affords evidence that Joshua was a Hebrew god.

Unhistorical as the Gospels are, they are not, of course, absolutely " in the air. " Their writers' knowledge of contemporary thought and contemporary customs and beliefs is no doubt reflected in the narrative. The evidence presented above is about as much as one could expect under the circumstances. Jewish priestly historians would not wish to preserve traditions of the worship of a divine Jo,shua ; and Christian writers and ecclesiastics of the second century and later would not wish to preserve traditions which conflicted with their belief that the Jesus whom they worshipped had been put to death as a man under Pilate in the year z8 or thereabouts. Further evidence, however, of the existence of a pre-Christian Jesus-cult still remains to be considered. But this will be more conveniently presented in the course of an examination into the origin of the story of the crucifixion and of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

IV

THE STORY OF THE PASSION

SACRIFICING a king to the god of the country, especially in periods of danger or distress, was a widely spread custom in ancient times and it persists among some primitive races to-day. In course of time the sacrifice was evaded by the substitution of a victim. At first probably the substituted victim was the king's son, since a royal victim was required. Instances of the sacrifice of a king's son are on record.! Subsequently a king conceived the idea of having some man crowned as a temporary king who might then be sacrificed in his stead.2 The mock king was crowned, arrayed in royal robes, and allowed a period of licence before being put to death. Voluntary victims were desired, but if such were not forthcoming, criminals or captives were substituted or victims were bought . The victim in these sacrifices came to be identified with the god to whom he was sacrificed, and in ancient times his dead body was eaten by the devotees under the idea that they thereby acquired in some measure the character of the god. In course of time animals began to be sacrificed instead of men, or an effigy was substituted. In such cases there would be a dramatic representation of the sacrificial

1 Cp. 2 Kings iii. 27. 2 The subject is fully treated in Frazer's Golden Bough .

44

THE STORY OF THE PASSION 45

rite followed by a sacred meal at which a baked image or rice, fruit or cakes would be eaten and wine drunk. In the Roman Saturnalia a mock king was chosen by lot. There is some reason to believe, on the authority of an ancient Greek MS. , that he represented Saturn and was at one time sacrificed to the god.

Popular representations of the election of the mock king continued for a long time after sacrifices had ceased. Philo gives an account of a mummery which he had seen at Alexandria. A lunatic was dressed up as a king in robe and crown, and then led in a procession, carrying a sceptre. Philo says the man's name was Karabbas. It has been suggested that the K in this name may be a mistranscription for B, and that the name was really Barabbas.

It was evidently considered important in sacrifices that blood should flow, and in some cases that the devotee should be sprinkled with it ; and so the victim was usually stabbed or pierced. He may afterwards have been bound to a cross or hung upon a tree ; or he may have been hung up first and pierced afterwards. Scourging of the mock king before he was sacrificed was the practice in the Babylonian Saccea. 1

The remarkable similarity between some portions of the story of the Passion and the ancient ritual of the sacrifice of the mock king, sacrificed as a god to a god, is altogether beyond the possibility of coincidence. And let it be borne in mind that, apart from the Gospels, the earliest Christian litera·

1 Golden Bough, p. 584 .

46 THE STORY OF THE PASSION

ture knows nothing of the life of a good man, nor even of a trial and judicial execution, but treats abundantly of the sacrificial death of Jesus and the efficacy of his redeeming blood. As a matter of fact, hardly any blood can have been shed in the crucifixion as described. A possible explanation of this discrepancy will be given later.

Taking the details of the narrative in order we first have the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Several critics have expressed doubts about this. It is very hard to understand how the crowd who acclaimed Jesus on that occasion as " son of David " could, a few days later, have clamoured for his execution. There are other difficulties . 1 But the chief reason for doubting the historical truth of the representation is that it has been made up out of passages in the Old Testament, e.g. Zechariah ix. 9, Psalm cxviii. 26. According to the early Christian manner of thinking, since it had been foretold it must have happened.

The Last Supper is not really the passover although it is so named. It is a sacrificial meal. Gnostics interpreted the partaking of the bread and wine symbolically. But the account in the Gospels proves that, in the early cult of the saviour god Jesus, the participants believed, as Roman Catholics still believe, that the bread was actually the flesh of the Saviour. There can be no question here of symbolism. Jesus says : " Take, eat, this is my body." And of the cup, " this is my blood, which is shed-

' See J . M. Robertson, The Jesus Problem, p. 43· It is scarcely possible that a Galilean prophet can have been thus acclaimed at Jerusalem.


not' about to be shed-for many." It is certain that in the early Christian Church the bread and wine were believed to be the body and blood of Jesus. In the fourth Gospel we read : " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves." 1 And Irenreus says explicitly that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ . 2 They were named thusia, which is the regular Greek term for a sacrificial victim. And it was customary for the officiating priest, after cutting the bread into the form of a cross, to pronounce the words : " the Lamb of God is sacrificed, he who carries the sin of the world ." It is surprising that thoughtful people can continue to believe that such awful dogmas and rites had gathered about the body of an executed Jewish teacher. In the Gospel narrative the meal is displaced, because the Evangelists were under the necessity of representing Jesus as giving the bread and wine himself. But the flesh of the god could not be eaten while the god was still alive. Originally the meal came after the sacrifice.

In Luke it is related that, when Jesus was going forth for the last time, he said to his disciples :-

He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one. . . . And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough .

What does this mean ? How could the writer imagine that the Jesus who inculcated non-resistance and the love of enemies would bid his followers take swords ? And in Matthew, where it is said that <me

1 John vi. 53· 2 Contra omn. hcer., V. ii. 3 ·


of the disciples struck a servant of the High-Priest, Jesus rebukes him, telling him that " all they that take the �word shall perish with the sword." Where did Luke get these swords from ? He must have had a reason for introducing such an incongruity. The incident was not inserted by Luke as an object lesson, because he omits the second of the two speeches quoted above, purposely, since he substitutes something different . Dujardin has offered a conjecture which seems worth considering. 1 The Evangelist found himself face to face with an ancient tradition which he did not understand and which he has tried somehow to fit into the narrative. The awkwardness of the insertion betrays him. Now the Greek word which is here translated " swords " does not primarily mean that. The word properly signifies a long knife, or else a dagger ; such a knife as would be used for a sacrifice. Salomon Reinach says that the proper meaning was given to the word in this place by Chrysostom, who saw in these two swords the knives which were used for cutting up the paschal lamb. But why make a point of taking them when the meal is over ? Substitute for that explanation the supposition that they were originally the knives intended to be used for the sacrifice. Note that, according to Luke, the order to procure knives is immediately followed by the words : " For . . . this which is written must be fulfilled in me," pointing directly to the sacrifice. Probably we have here a reminiscence of an ancient ritual.

The scene in Gethsemane is impossible as history. How could anybody know what Jesus was feeling

1 Le Dieu jesus, p. 187.


and praying while the disciples were asleep ? The best explanation of the scene is that it is the transcription of part of the mystery-drama of the Jesuscult. 1 Gethsemane is not the name of a real place. It means the " wine-press of olives," and has been made up by connecting the Mount of Olives with a recollection of " the wine-press of divine suffering " (Isaiah lxiii. 2) . 2 In the verse of Isaiah it is written : " I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the peoples there was no man with me." The reference in Isaiah to blood-stained garments contributed to the transference of the simile to Jesus.

In the story of the betrayal by Judas we have a possible reference to the practice of buying victims. Judas sold Jesus to those who were going to sacrifice him for thirty pieces of silver. That hypothesis gives a rational interpretation of an episode which is inexplicable as it stands in the documents. The story of the betrayal has severely exercised the minds of theologians, and some have decided that it cannot be historical.3 Customs that were traditionally known to have existed were absorbed into the fictitious narrative.

In view of all we know about Jewish law and judicial procedure, the trial by the chief priest and the council is quite impossible. A trial during the night was definitely forbidden ; 4 and an arrest by an armed force during the night in which the paschal lamb was eaten is even more inconceivable. Loisy

1 J . M. Robertson, The Jesus Problem, p. 97· 2 W. B. Smith, Ecce Deus, p. 295 . 3 See Encyc. Bibl . , Art. " Judas," § 10 . 4 See also Robertson, The Historical jesus, chap. xvi.


has frankly abandoned this trial ; maintaining, however, the one before Pilate ; not, probably, with much conviction, but because he sees that a judicial execution must have been preceded by a trial of some sort . The trial by Pilate, however, is hardly less incredible than the trial by the Sanhedrin. Roman governors did not cringe before the threat of a tumult. As we learn from Josephus, risings and tumults among the Jews were suppressed with a strong hand. The emperors indeed wished that Jewish customs and national prejudices should be respected , but they would not expect the Procurator to be intimidated by popular clamour ; and Pilate is said to have been brutal and quite careless about offending Jewish susceptibilities. Besides, it is not credible that the people clamoured for the crucifixion of Jesus. Why should they ? And it was said just before that the priests were afraid of arresting Jesus because of the people. According to the account, after a trial which strikes one as having been strangely informal, Pilate decided that Jesus had committed no offence. That a Roman governor should publicly declare the innocence of a prisoner and then immediately sentence him to death is not very easy to believe.

Why was Jesus put to death ? The Gospel narrative seems to vacillate between an offence against the Jewish law and one against the Roman Government. Jesus, when questioned by Pilate, is said to have admitted that he was King of the Jews ; but nowhere in the whole record can there be found any evidence that he had ever made such a claim. Certainly the Jesus of modern liberal

THE STORY OF THE PASSION 5 1

theology never made it . If Jesus really claimed to be King of the Jews, Pilate might have seen reason for executing him. But Pilate declared that he was innocent ; which he probably would have done without evidence of some subversive agitation or popular incitement. On the other hand, there is no apparent reason why the Jewish leaders should have condemned him. Certainly he is said during the course of his ministry to have committed some breaches of the Jewish law ; but he was not charged with those. The story of his turning the sellers and money-changers out of the Temple is absurd ; a single man with a whip would never have been allowed to do it. A claim to be the Messiah was not blasphemy, under the Jewish law. And if Jesus, being a mere man , had publicly declared that he was the only Son of God-a most unlikely supposition-he was self-deluded ; nobody would have believed him, and the Jewish leaders were much more likely to think he was crazy than to kill him.

It is impossible to make sense of the proceedings, however we look at them. If Jesus had been guilty of some offence against the Jewish law deserving of death, Pilate would have handed him over to the Jews, and he would have been stoned in accordance with their law. If he was crucified by order of Pilate he must have committed some offence against the Roman authority. But Pilate found no fault in him. The question remains : Why then was he killed ? Liberal theologians can give no valid answer to the question ; but early Christian writers knew the answer. The god Jesus had to die as a sacrifice ; but woe to the Jews who killed him.


Originally, of course, there was no guilt ; that followed when the sacrifice came to be represented as an historical event.

But while Pilate is made to condemn to death a man whom he had declared innocent, he is said to have released another man who had committed murder in an insurrection against the Roman authority. Such behaviour as that does not seem at all likely. As Loisy and other theological critics have recognized, the release of Barabbas has not the least claim to be accepted as historical fact . And yet, since there is no apparent motive for its invention, but rather the contrary, the probability is that something real lies behind it . When the details are examined some curious facts emerge. In the first place, it is to be noted that in Matt. xxvii. r6, 17 the primitive reading was Jesus Barabbas. l That reading still exists in an old MS. It is not likely to have been inserted ; on the contrary, the offence which it would give to Christian readers is a natural explanation of its having been eliminated.

Now the name Barabbas means Son of the Father, so that Jesus Barabbas is Jesus Son of the Father. A remarkable coincidence which calls for explanation. And since Barabbas is a Jewish name and one would not expect to find in Jerusalem a name half Greek and half Jewish, it may be inferred that originally it was Joshua Barabbas. We may also infer that it was probably not the name of a real man. It has previously been mentioned that the substituted victim in a sacrifice was frequently a

1 Nicholson, The Gospel A ccording to the Hebrews, 1 879, pp. 141-42.


criminal or captive. And the statement in the narrative of the episode that it had been customary to release a prisoner in connection with the feast, taken together with the other details, suggests that the origin of the custom was the provision of a victim for the sacrificial rite. A reasonable reconstruction is that at some time in the past, in connection with a religious festival accompanied by a sacrifice, a prisoner, to whom the n ame Joshua Barabbas, or Jesus Son of the Father, was given for the occasion, was released in order that he might serve as the victim. 1 In the Gospel story a Jesus Son of the Father is actually sacrificed. But since the Gospel writers wished to represent the crucifixion as a unique event, and it would not have suited them at all to have it believed that the Jesus who was killed had been a criminal, they had to feign that Jesus Barabbas was released not to be sacrificed and that their Jesus Christ was the victim. As before mentioned, in sacrifices the victim was identified with the god ; so that in the cult of a god Joshua a Joshua would be sacrificed. There is reason to think that in early times Adonis was sometimes personated by a living man who died a violent death in the character of the god. 2 At a later period images of him, dressed to resemble corpses, were carried out to burial ; in some places his revival was celebrated on the following day, but usually after three days.

A Jesus Barabbas tradition would be a very

1 In the festival of the Persian Sacrea a prisoner who had been condemned to death was released to be the victim. (Dion Chrysostom, Orat. IV. 67.)

2 Golden Bough, p. 339·

5 4 THE STORY OF THE PASSION

awkward one for the Evangelists to deal with and they would not have introduced this name at all unless something had made it necessary for them to do so . Probably the necessity arose from the fact that the Jesus Barabbas tradition was known at the time and they had to deal with it in some way or other. 1 It is not necessary to suppose that the recollection of the sacrifice of a Jesus Barabbas survived at the time when the Gospels were written ; but it is reasonable to assume that the memory of an ancient custom had been perpetuated somewhere in the ritual of a Jesus-cult.

In verses 26 to 3r, Matt. xxvii. , we have the scourging and crowning of the mock king, with accompaniments known to have existed elsewhere. This episode may have been copied from the Babylonian Sacrea, but the cult of a divine Joshua cannot have originated in that.

If the trial by Pilate is unhistorical, Jesus must have been put to death by Jews. Although the Epistles have so much to say about the death of Jesus, the only mention of Pilate is in the late rst Epistle to Timothy.2 But in r Thessalonians ii. rs it is stated that the Jews " killed the Lord Jesus." It is rather a curious fact that in Acts v. 30, Peter does not use the term " crucifixion," nor does he mention Pilate. He says, " The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom ye slew, hanging him upon wood " (a tree, or possibly a cross) . The same words are found again in another speech of Peter in

1 Dujardin offers a different explanation of the Jesus Barabbas episode (Le Dieu jesus, p. 194) .

2 In van Eysinga's opinion the Epistle was written about the year 140.


Acts x. 39· This description would tally with the Jewish mode of executing, which has been called a crucifixion. 1 The word translated " hanging " in the texts referred to means simply " suspending," with no implication of strangling.

If we turn to Deut. xxi. 22, 23, we find the injunction that if a man has committed a crime deserving the punishment of death he shall first be stoned and then hung upon wood . Verse 23 is noteworthy : " His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt . . . bury him that day." If, therefore, Jesus was killed by Jews, we may infer that he was first put to death and afterwards hung upon a tree or rude cross. In either case the body may have been suspended with the arms outstretched, forming a cross, so that it was in a certain sense " crucified ." Especially would that be likely to be the case in a rite of sacrifice, since the cross was a sacred symbol in several ancient religions. This conjecture is supported by the statement in the Sibylline Oracles previously quoted . The Jesus ben Pandira of the Talmud was first stoned and then hung upon a tree.

There is a discrepancy in the Gospel account of the crucifixion which suggests that it has been manipulated to bring it into agreement with a later conception. The Romans crucified alive. The victim lingered in extreme agony for days and was left to be eaten by birds of prey. That he should be dead within a few hours would be an extraordinary thing and almost incredible. Pilate, in

1 What follows is principally based upon an illuminating exposition by Dujardin, Le Dieu ] esus, pp. 1 74-78, 222-27


fact, is made to express astonishment that Jesus had died so soon. In the evening the body of Jesus was taken down and buried in accordance with the injunction in Deuteronomy. These details, which fit so badly into the account as we have it, taken with the conclusion that the crucifixion was a Jewish and not a Roman one, raise more than a suspicion that if Jesus was killed at all he was killed first and crucified afterwards.

The death before crucifixion was not necessarily by stoning when it was not a judicial execution. Joshua, after winning the battle against the five kings of the Amorites, slaughtered a great number of the enemy ; but the five kings were dealt with in a particular manner. 1 Joshua, we are told, " smote them," presumably with a sword or spear, and so killed them ; after which he hung them upon five trees. The difference of treatment may be due to the fact that the five kings were offered up as a sacrifice [to Joshua ?] . The immense stress laid by early Christian writers, and by many Christians to-day, upon the blood of Christ which is said to have been " shed," does not at all agree with the Gospel account of the crucifixion, in which very little blood can have been " shed," if shed can even be considered to be the right word to use in the circumstances ; but it would have agreed very well with a sacrifice in which the victim was pierced with a knife. 2

1 Joshua x. z6, 27 . The story establishes the existence of a custom, even though we do not admit that it was Joshua who did what is related.

2 Aristides in his A pology says that Jesus " was pierced by the Jews." It is quite possible that different accounts were current at the same time in different circles.


When the sacrifice was described as an historic event and a date had been fixed for it in the reign of Tiberius, the Roman Governor had to be brought in, since the Jews would not have been allowed to put Jesus to death without his permission. The manner of killing then had to be either by stoning or a Roman crucifixion. Very possibly the Gnostic belief that the Logos Christ had been crucified turned the scale in favour of the latter. But a determining factor may have been the desire to bring the event into conformity with a verse in the 22nd Psalm : " The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me ; they pierced my hands and my feet . " One of the details of the crucifixion was borrowed from another verse of the same Psalm : " They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture." 1 Thus we get an explanation of the inconsistency of the narrative. Such inconsistencies did not worry the writers.

The site of the crucifixion is shown to visitors to Jerusalem ; but the belief that the site shown is the real Golgotha rests upon a very insecure foundation. " On the whole we must be content to believe that the scene of the greatest event in Jerusalem's history is still unknown." 2 The word Golgotha was written in Aramic Golgoltha, and in Hebrew Gulgoleth. This latter word is found with the meaning " skull " in three places in the Old Testament. The explanation of the name Gulgoleth which is preferred by most scholars is that a hill was named Gulgoleth because it resembled a skull, not because it was a place of

1 Also the cry of Jesus upon the cross, from ver. r . 2 Encyc. Bibl., Art. " Golgotha." E

5s THE STORY OF THE PASSION

skulls. 1 The name as it appears in the Greek Gospels has lost the second " 1." Now in Hebrew " t " or " th " was sometimes added to the end of a name as an expletive ; thus Nazareth from Nazara, Gennesaret from Gennesar. If the final " th " be removed from Gulgoleth we get Gulgola. Moreover, in Hebrew the vowels are represented only by dots or small strokes (tittles) placed under the consonants ; and so in unpointed Hebrew the names Gulgola and Gilgal would be precisely the same. In Greek, Gilgal is usually given as Galgala ; but where the name occurs in Deut. xi. 30, in two of the best Greek MSS. it is written Golgo1.2 So that there is a very close resemblance between the ancient forms of the two names Gulgoleth and Gilgal.

Gilgal, like Golgotha, is not only a place name ; it properly means " the circle," i.e. a sacred circle of stones, of the form now called cromlech by archreologists-there were several of them in Palestine. A Gilgal, therefore, was a place where such a circle existed, and these circles seem always to have been situated upon an elevated place or hill ; in which fact we find another connection between Gulgoleth and Gilgal. But one Gilgal, the one near Jericho, is especially connected with Joshua. He is said to have erected a circle of stones there, and to have reinstituted there the rite of circumcision. It is believed that this Gilgal was an ancient sanctuary. Gulgoleth and Gilgal, therefore, are etymologically and in signification closely connected ; and whereas there is an intimate relation between Gulgoleth and

1 Encyc. Bibl., Art. " Golgotha." z Compare this with the Aramaic Golgoltha.


Jesus, there is a relation equally intimate between Gilgal and Joshua. Can this be a coincidence ? If so, it would be one more added to the number which have already been adverted to. And when we find a number of remarkable coincidences all pointing to the same conclusion, it becomes logical to infer that they are something more than accidental coincidences. The Golgotha where Jesus was sacrificed may accordingly be inferred to be the Gilgal where Joshua was worshipped . This Gilgal is in a desolate place not far from the Dead Sea. There the sacred rites of the Jesus-cult could be practised in secret.1 In ancient times, perhaps for hundreds of years, a human victim was there periodically sacrificed to the god. Later, for the actual sacrifice was substituted a dramatic representation. For some Jews, however, Joshua became the heavenly Messiah.

If Jesus had died in the manner described in the Gospels it is difficult to believe that all knowledge of the site of the crucifixion and of the situation of his tomb would have been lost . Nobody seems ever to have known anything about either of them.

The statement that Pilate had an inscription attached to the cross, " The King of the Jews," is palpable fiction. But if Jesus or, to speak more correctly, some man representing the god Jesus was killed as the sacrificed mock king, it is quite likely that some such label was placed over his head.

According to the Synoptics two Marys stood and watched the crucifixion and afterwards brought spices to the tomb of Jesus that they might anoint

1 After the fall of Jerusalem secrecy was no longer necessary.

6o THE STORY OF THE PASSION

him ; neither of these being his mother. A fourth Mary, closely connected with Jesus, was the sister of Lazarus. It will be interesting to inquire into the significance of all these Marys. No doubt they are not historical ; and to get some light upon them the best way will be to look into the circumstances connected with the death of the saviour god in certain other contemporary cults.

In the myths of these gods the body of the slain god is sought by the goddess, who mourns his death and rejoices at his resurrection. At the festivals of Adonis, who was also named Tammuz, the death o£ the god was annually mourned, chiefly by women. In the Old Testament we read of women weeping for Tammuz. There is reason to believe that these women represented Ishtar for the occasion.1 In the representation of the divine mystery of Osiris two professional mourners enacted the parts of his two sisters, Isis and Nephthys. At the Babylonian New Year's festival the death, burial, and resurrection of Marduk was dramatized ; and in the course of the representation a woman, acting the part of a goddess, went lamenting to the tomb of the god to seek him.3 In Phrygia the death, burial , and resurrection of Attis was represented annually. In this ritual the weeping of Cybele, the great Mother, over the mutilated body of the youth is a ceremonial feature.3 Finally, the grave in which the image of Attis had been buried was opened and found to be empty.4

1 Zimmern, Zum Streit um die Christusmythe, p. 36. 2 Drews, Das Markusevangelium, p. 373 · 3 Arnobius, A dversus Gentes, v. 7 ; vii. 343 · Refs. given

by Robertson, Christianity and Mythology, p. 300. ' Frazer, Golden Bough, p. 347·


As, in the mysteries of these cults, the mourning mother, sister, or mistress of the god was represented, so in the mystery-drama of the Joshua-cult a woman representing Mary would mourn the sacrificed god and visit his tomb, which, like that of Attis, was found empty. In the Gospels the mourning Mary has been separated into two, one of whom is Mary " the Magdalene." The meaning of this separation will be suggested later. The original identity of the two Marys is rendered probable by the fact that in Hebrew " magaddela " means " hairdresser." And it was related by Plutarch that Isis, on her search for the slain Osiris, plaited the hair of the serving-maids of King Malkander (Melkart) and Queen Astarte, whereby a wonderful fragrance flowed out over their bodies. Plutarch's story also reminds us of the woman who anointed the feet of Jesus with costly ointment and wiped them with her hair ; " and the house was filled with the odour." This woman in the fourth Gospel is identified with Mary the sister of Lazarus. We may see in these names and episodes related myths. The mother of Jesus ben Stada is in one place in the Talmud named Mariam Magdala. Presumably the writer had found the mother of the Christian Jesus so named somewhere.

Joshua seems to be a duplicate of Moses ; and there is good reason to believe that Moses was originally a Hebrew deity . 1 In the Eastern religions there was a triad of chief gods and a virgin goddess. One may

1 See Robertson, Christ. and Myth. , pp. 99, roo, 309 . Also Drews, Die Marienmythe, pp. 25 and 34· Philo says that Moses was named god and king of his whole people ( Vita Mos, II . ro6) .

6z THE STORY OF THE PASSION

feel quite certain that, since that was the case with the Assyrians and Chaldeans, it must at one time have been so with the racially connected Hebrews. The ancient Hebrew triad then consisted of Moses, Aaron, and Hur, while Miriam was the related virgin goddess . . In the Septuagint the name Miriam is spelt Mariam, and that is thought to have been the older form of the name.1 Also in the Greek Testament the name which in our English versions is given as Mary is usually Mariam.

A very early, perhaps the earliest , Christian belief was that Jesus was born in a cave.2 But Mihr, the virgin mother of the Saoshyant-Mithra, also gave birth to her son in a cave.3 The Hebrew syllable am means mother. If we join this syllable to Mihr, we get Miriam (Mihr the mother) . The mother of Tammuz, again, was named Myrrha ; and Tammuz in ancient times was worshipped at a cave near Bethlehem. Hermes, the Greek Logos, has for mother Maia, whose name has connections with Mary.4 Hermes was born in a cave and Dionysus reared in one. These gods are both represented as cradled in a basket which, in the East, was also a manger ; and the former in his cradle is seen surrounded by cattle.5

It might be inferred from some observations of Philo, where he is giving an account of the Gnostic sect of the Peratai, which was located in Egypt, that Moses was revered by them as their cult-god.6 And

1 Encyc. Bibl. , Art. " Mary." 2 Justin, Dial. 78. 3 Drews, loc. cit . , p. 46. 4 Robertson, Christ. and Myth . , p. 297. 5 Ibid., p. rgz . 6 Lublinski, Die Entstehung des Christentums, p. 175 .


a choir of women which figured in their mysteries appears to have been a representation of the choir of women headed by Miriam singing the song of triumph after the passage of the Red Sea. 1 The Peratai derived their name from a Greek verb meaning to pass through, because, they said, they alone by their knowledge (gnosis) were able to " pass through " death into life. But Egypt for Jewish Gnostics symbolized either the world or the mortal body ; so that, as Moses saved the Israelites who passed through the Red Sea, the mysteries of the cult-god of the Peratai would enable those who participated in them to pass from the world, or the body, through death into eternal life. The name of the sect, therefore, makes the conclusion that they revered Moses and Miriam as divine beings very probable.

Justin said that Joshua was a prototype of Jesus. We may compare with this statement that of Gregory Nazianzen and others to the effect that Miriam was the prototype of Mary. It may be inferred that identity is indicated in both cases.2 The facts set out above justify the opinion that Mariam, the mother of Jesus, was originally a divine being, and that the Roman Catholics in worshipping her as the mother of God are restoring to her the heavenly dignity of which a rationalizing tendency had deprived her. The Marys of the New Testament may be regarded as variants of one and the same Mariam.

1 Exodus xv. 20, 21. 2 Drews has demonstrated the mythical character of

Miriam and Mary and their identity in Die M arienmythe. In Eastern tradition Joshua is the son of Miriam. Robertson, Christ. and Myth., p. gg.


The belief in the resurrection, which theological critics have striven by diverse and sometimes fantastic theories to explain, is now easy to understand. All the saviour gods were believed to have risen from the dead. Naturally a god who was slain annually in view of his worshippers must have been imagined to be alive in the meantime.

The evidence thus far set forth points insistently to the ancient worship in Palestine of a divine Joshua with an accompanying ritual of sacrifice. During the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era the cult would have been practised secretly, but after the fall of Jerusalem the need for secrecy no longer existed. Probably there were groups of cult members in more places than one, and they may have been particularly numerous in Samaria, wHere it is known Joshua was held in high honour. In the fourth Gospel the Jews, taunting Jesus, assert that he is a Samaritan ; which assertion Jesus does not deny.1 The distance of Gilgal from the southern border of Samaria would be only about ten miles.

1 This assertion invites the conjecture that in the second century Jews taunted Christians with worshipping a Samaritan god. We have no right to assume that every Jewish opinion is represented in the Talmud.

v

THE GNOSTIC STREAM

THE very diverse character of Christian doctrine from its earliest days onwards cannot be reconciled with the traditional view that it emanated from a single man. Some modern theologians indeed have concluded that as regards the formation of doctrine, the only important fact in relation to Jesus is the fact of his death and that dogmatic Christianity was elaborated afterwards. But if the primary impulse originated in a death, it appears from what has been already written that the death need not have been that of an historical personage, particularly seeing that the fundamental dogma, that of a redeeming sacrifice and a resurrection, was by no means peculiar to Christianity.

Of course, by the theologians referred to a great deal is made of the assumed influence of the wonderful character of Jesus upon his disciples. It has, however, already been shown that there is no evidence at all that any such impression had been made. And since the immediate disciples of Jesus are represented as having been unlettered and narrow-minded men, and therefore incapable of elaborating the theology, while Paul (to whom very much of it is attributed) had never come under the influence of the supposed personality, Jesus as a man remains a completely superfluous figure.

65

66 THE GNOSTIC STREAM

The prevalence of heresy and a conflict of divergent sects is a characteristic of Christianity from the very beginning. Contradictory utterances in the Gospels have previously been mentioned . In the Pauline Epistles at least three incompatible doctrines can be discovered. From the first Epistle to the Corinthians we learn that distinct forms of Christian doctrine were taught, connected respectively with the names of Apollos, Cephas, and Paul. The Epistle to the Hebrews, the Pauline Epistles, and the Epistles of James and of John differ considerably from one another in dogmatic content. We may suppose that they were addressed to various communities, or groups of communities, holding different doctrines and not yet bound together by a common organization. Coming to a time somewhat later, there is a very marked contrast between the Christology of Origen and that of Ignatius.

The doctrinal differences which existed cannot possibly be explained from the disputes between Judaic and Gentile Christians with respect to the observance of the Jewish law. They go far deeper than that. And it is an extremely significant fact that these differences nearly all turn upon varying conceptions of Jesus as a divine being and the manner in which redemption is secured through his death. Opinions which might have been expressed by Jesus as a man are never quoted. Logia J esou, sayings of Jesus, or " of the Lord," are indeed sometimes indicated ; but these are in an entirely different category. They will be considered later on.

Another very important point to notice is that the principal divergences can be traced back to pre-

THE GNOSTIC STREAM

Christian origins. It has already been pointed out that the conceptions of Jesus as Messiah, as Son of God, and as redeemer of the world through an expiatory death were pre-Christian. No doubt the sacrifice was first conceived as being exclusively for the benefit of Jewish believers ; but even in the pre-Christian Jewish Apocalyptic writings we find evidence of a broader outlook.

We have now to consider another very important stream of pre-Christian thought which profoundly influenced the development of Christian theological doctrine, namely, the Gnostic stream. It is admitted by comparatively conservative theologians -e.g. Bousset, Pfleiderer, and Harnack-that there were Gnostics before the first century of our era. In an article which appeared in 1925 ,1 Rudolf Bultmann traced a relationship between the Gnosticism of the fourth Gospel and the tenets of the pre-Christian Gnostic sect of the Mandreans, and wrote : " We cannot overlook the possibility that the J ohannine Christianity represents a type more ancient than the Synoptic." Christian Gnosticism did not come suddenly into existence ; it had a long period of growth and its beginnings are found in what has been called the Wisdom literature, the Book of Proverbs, and the Jewish apocryphal books, The Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus. These books were written by Greek-speaking Jews whose theological doctrine had been greatly modified by their acquaintance with Greek philosophy. In particular, their knowledge of the Platonic and

1 Zeitschr. f. d. neutestamentl. Wiss. (Giessen) , 1925, H eft 1-2 . .


Stoic conceptions of God had made it impossible for them any longer to admire the ancient anthropomorphic deity of the Hebrews. And when, under the influence of Greek thought, they had reached a metaphysical idea of the godhead, they began to feel the need of interposing some intermediary agent between the ineffable divine Being and the material world.

The first consequence of this attitude of mind was the personification of the divine Wisdom under the Greek name Sophia. Passages in the Book of Proverbs in which this personification occurs are familiar to most of us. In the Book of " the Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach " (Ecclesiasticus) , Wisdom has practically ceased to be regarded as an abstract quality and has become a divine being who is said to have been created before all things and to have been the agent in the creation of the world. Her throne " is in the pillar of the cloud."

Between the period when the above-mentioned books were written and the date of the composition of The Wisdom of Solomon 1 a marked advance has occurred. The thought of the writer of this fine book has been perceptibly influenced by Greek speculative ideas with regard to man and the cosmos ; such as the Platonic idea of the world-soul and the divine Reason (Logos) . The doctrine of the eternal life of the spirit is now taught, with no resurrection of the body-that persisted as Gnostic doctrine throughout-so that later Gnostics denied a material resurrection of Jesus. It was to combat this

1 Written at Alexandria, probably early in the first c�ntury B .c . , though some authorities place it in the second.

THE GNOSTIC STREAM 6g

opinion of the Gnostics that the passage has been inserted into the fourth Gospel where ] esus bids Thomas put his hand into his side. The passage is an interpolation, for in its origin the fourth Gospel is Gnostic. In The Wisdom of Solomon, Sophia , the divine Wisdom, is identified with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God which moved upon the face of the waters at the creation of the world, but she is still definitely personified. God's Word, the Logos, has also been personified, and is the principal agent in the creation, though Wisdom is regarded as having participated. And the Logos is not merely personified, he appears upon the earth to execute the will of God :-

While all things were in quiet silence and the night was in the midst of her swift course, thine Almighty Word leapt down from heaven out of thy royal throne, as a fierce man of war in the midst of the land that was destroyed, and brought thine unfeigned commandments as a sharp sword.1

Later, the conceptions of Sophia and Logos tended to mingle so that what had been said of one sometimes came to be said of the other. In Ecclesiasticus Wisdom says :-

I will pierce through all the lower parts of the earth : I will look upon all such as are asleep, and lighten all them that trust in the Lord.

This verse contains the germ of the notion that Wisdom descended into hell in order to awaken the righteous dead. The notion could be transferred to the Logos. Early Christians did, in fact, hold this belief about ] esus.

I xviii. 14-16.


The writer of The Wisdom of Solomon was evidently acquainted with Plato's picture of the.,.persecuted Just Man who was " impaled." 1 And that picture originated in his mind a remarkable passage which must have had some influence, perhaps a very important influence, upon the growth of the Christian conception of Jesus :-

The ungodly say . . . let us defraud the righteous 2 man : for he is not for our profit, and he is contrary to our doings . . . . He maketh his boast to have the knowledge of God (gnosis) ; and he calleth himself the son of the Lord. . . . Let us see then if his words be true : let us prove what end he shall have. For if the righteous man be the son of God, he will help him and deliver him from the hands of his enemies. Let us examine him with rebukes and torments that we may know his meekness and prove his patience. Let us condemn him to a shameful death ; for he shall be preserved as he himself saith.

" A shameful death " suggests crucifixion, and in the story of the crucifixion there is an echo of a phrase in this passage. We thus have given, some time before the Christian era, the ideas of Sophia, the Holy Spirit, and of the Logos of God-afterwards named by Philo, who was in the same line of thought, Son of God and Christ. We also have the idea of a son of God persecuted and condemned to a shameful death. The Stoics took great pains to elaborate the conception of the Wise Man-i.e. the perfectly virtuous man ; and they concluded that

1 The Greek word translated "·impaled " could also

mean crucified . 2 The Greek word here translated " righteous " (dikaios)

also means " just."

THE GNOSTIC STREAM 71

no real man ever had or ever could attain to their ideal. Religious thinkers, therefore, who were interested in Greek philosophy would be inclined to identify the righteous son of God, who had the knowledge of God, with the Logos.

In the period preceding the Christian era there was intense theosophical speculation. The national gods seemed remote. Men's minds became impressed with the idea of the divine justice and were hence much concerned with the question : How could men, everyone of whom is sinful and obnoxious to the judgment of God, hope to be saved ? The despair which resulted from the conviction that no man by his own unaided efforts could secure salvation resulted in a great extension of the worship of saviour gods and to the institution of " mysteries," in which, by the performance of certain rites, added to his own endeavour to lead a moral life, the sectary might obtain the assurance of salvation through a divine redeemer. The minds of Jews perhaps were exercised even more than those of pagans by such questions. At any rate a number of Jewish sects, Gnostic in character, came into existence, looking to the Logos as the divine redeemer.

The members of these sects mostly rejected the old Jewish god and had ceased to believe in the literal truth of much of the Old Testament, which they interpreted allegorically. They founded their religious systems upon such allegorical interpretation and also developed the ideas of the Wisdom literature. These early Jewish Gnostic sects, being Jews of the Dispersion, were in close contact with the pagan

THE GNOSTIC STREAM

mystery cults, and there is no doubt that the development of their doctrine and ritual was influenced by their knowledge of these. The Naassenes, as we know from Hippolytus, were much interested in pagan myths, which they interpreted symbolically in accordance with their own theosophical ideas ; and they claimed to understand the meaning of the myths of Attis and Osiris better than the Phrygians and Egyptians themselves. Some Gnostics identified Hermes with the Logos. That the writings of the N aassenes and others in which these ideas were set forth are very early is proved by the fact that their interpretations are inconsistent with the later belief that Attis and Osiris were names of demons. As the chief aim of the pagan mysteries was to secure salvation through symbolic union with the saviour god, so the Jewish Gnostics evolved a ritual which symbolized union with the Logos, who thus became their cult-god. The significance of " gnosis " was expanded so as to include the symbolic interpretation of what they did in their mysteries.

The Peratai believed that the Logos had appeared as Cain and as Esau, probably also as Moses. Since this sect was already established in the time of Philo it was no doubt pre-Christian . Another sect revered Seth ; another Samson. Others, it may be supposed, believed that the Logos had appeared as Joshua. The supposition is strongly confirmed by some observations made by Origen in his commentary upon John's Gospel, where Jesus and Joshua are mixed up in a way which is susceptible of no other explanation. Jesus, he observes,


Said to the people : " Sanctify yourselves, for to-morrow the Lord will do wonders among you." And the priests with the ark of the covenant he ordered to pass (over the Jordan) before the people, when the mystery of the dispensation of the Father with respect to the Son was made manifest ; the Son who was exalted by the grace which the Father bestowed upon him, in order that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . . For the same thing is plainly declared through these words written in the Book of Joshua : And the Lord said unto Jesus, " This day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel." We have also to hear our Lord Jesus speaking to the sons of Israel : " Come hither and hear the words of the Lord your God [spoken by Joshua on the brink of Jordan]. Hereby shall ye know that the living God is among you." For in the being baptized unto Jesus we shall know that the living God is in us.

The use of the word " mystery " in this passage suggests that in the mysteries of some Christian Gnostic sect , or sects, Jesus and Joshua had been identified ; and it is certain that Origen's doctrine came to him, with some modification, from a Gnostic source.

Gnostics carried their belief in the transcendence and spiritual nature of God to such a height and were so penetrated by the conviction of the essential sinfulness of men that they could not believe either that God had created the world or that man could have any direct knowledge of him. That knowledge, they supposed, had been brought by the Logos ; and they reduced the god of the Jews to an inferior deity or angel as the god of this world, or Archon of this reon ; and to him they ascribed th@ creation. At first he was regarded as good, but severely just and not merciful, whereas the supreme

F


God was a God of compassion and love. Later it was thought by some that a good god cannot have created a sinful and corruptible world. The Creator, or chief Archon, was then identified with the chief of seven evil angels or spirits dwelling between earth and heaven. The Greek name applied to the Creator was Demiourgos, which means a workman or handicraftsman. It could therefore signify a carpenter. Now it is to be observed that those people who, according to Matthew, asked the question, " Is not this the carpenter's son ? " were people who did not believe in Jesus, but were " offended in him." A probable explanation of this episode is that some Gnostics who did not accept Jesus as the Logos or Christ asserted that he was the son, not of the supreme God, but of the Jewish god, the Creator or Demiourgos.

Or they may have drawn a distinction between the Logos Jesus and the Messiah Jesus of a Jewish Christian community ; 1 for in the view of some Gnostics the Logos was the son of Sophia ; and the people referred to asked, " Is not his mother called Mary ? " Some others, however, probably regarded Mary as the earthly counterpart of the heavenly Sophia, in accordance with the Platonic opinion that every material object has its perfect image in the world of " ideas." 2 The Naassenes, a pre-Christian sect, taught that the Holy Spirit was the mother of

1 More than one Jesus was " preached " according to z Cor. xi. 4·

2 In the Gospel in use among the N azarenes the Holy Spirit (= Sophia) was the mother of Christ, and Mary was the mother of Jesus. Christ and Jesus were united in one person.

THE GNOSTIC STREAM 75 '

Christ. Subsequently the myth, or allegory, of Sophia was elaborated. By some Gnostics Sophia and the Holy Spirit were divided into two separate beings. Sophia, it was said, fell down from heaven (the Pleroma) and from her the material world was created. 1 She then came under the power of seven evil angels (the Archons) ; but Christ went down and rescued her. From this allegory was probably derived the statement in Mark and Luke that from Mary the Magdalene Jesus had cast out seven devils ; and the parallelism affords confirmation of the supposition that the Marys of the Gospels are variants of one and the same. Mary the mother = Sophia the mother of Christ ; Mary the Magdalene represents Sophia in the power of the seven demons from whom Christ rescued her.

There is in existence an early Jewish Gnostic work entitled the Odes of Solomon in which the ideas of the Wisdom literature have been developed along lines rather different from those we have just been considering. The book is no doubt pre-Christian, since, according to Lactantius, it formed at one time part of the Old Testament canon . The doctrine of the Odes is not specifically Christian ; it exhibits a stage of development intermediate between the Wisdom literature and dogmatic Christology, and the thought is tinged throughout with Jewish ideas. 2 These Odes tell us of a Gnostic sect which revered a divine redeemer, a " Just One," the Son of God, born of a

1 Since Philo also taught that the world was produced from Sophia, the belief existed very early in the first century.

2 The character of the Odes has been fully discussed by Drews, Die Entstehung des Christentums, pp. 134-61 .

THE GNOSTIC STREAM

virgin whose attributes are similar to those of Wisdom in Ecclesiasticus and The Wisdom of Solomon . This Son of God is named Christ, but not definitely Logos, though in a few of the Odes the Word is in some degree personified. He came to earth to save men by bringing them the knowledge of God (gnosis) ; and having died and risen again he had overcome death and made resurrection possible for all who love him. These statements are illustrated in the following extracts :-

Because I did good to everyone was I hated. . . . And they shared my spoil, although I owed them nothing. But I endured it, and was silent. . . . And I bore their bitterness because I would save my people and take them for my inheritance.

They seek me who put their hope in me, because I am living. . . . And I throw upon them the yoke of my love. Like the arm of the bridegroom upon the bride, so is my yoke upon those who know me. . . . The underworld saw me and became pitiful, and Death gave me back and many with me.

I spread out my hands and approached my Lord, because the outstretching of my hands is his sign ; my outstretching signifies the outstretched wood on which he who was upreared was hung by the way.

Because I love the Son I shall become a son. The virgin became mother in much compassion.

And she became pregnant and bore a son without suffering. And because it had not happened without purpose, and she had sought no midwife because God kept her in life, she bore of her own will, like a man.

The father of gnosis is the Word of gnosis. The dwelling place of the Word is man, and his truth is

love. Blessed are they who through him have learnt all and have come to know the Lord in his truth.

A Gnostic sect whose great importance for the study


of Christian origins has been recognized by some of the ablest scholars is that of the Mandreans. The sect still exists in Mesopotamia, near the Euphrates, whither it fled at an early date to escape Jewish persecution. The foremost authority upon the literature of the Mandreans, Marc Lidzbarski, came to the conclusion that the sect was in existence before the Christian era.1 The word manda means gnosis.

Although the literature of the Mandreans was produced over a considerable period of time and it is impossible to fix with accuracy the date Qf production of the major part of it, it seems to have been established that some of it is pre-Christian, and, in particular, that the section of Luke's Gospel which relates the circumstances preceding the birth of John the Baptist is taken from a Mandrean hymn which is still in existence. The passages referring to the birth of Jesus have been superimposed by the writer of Luke upon the Mandrean account, which, to a very considerable extent, they duplicate, most of the details connected with the birth of Jesus having in the original narrative been connected with the birth of John. 2

Parallels, however, to the birth stories in Matthew and Luke are found of much greater antiquity than that. On the walls of the temple at Luxor the birth of Amenophis III was depicted 1400 years B.c.3 The Egyptian god Thoth appears to the queen,

1 Bultmann and Lohmeyer are also of this opinion. 2 Rob. Stahl, Les Mandeens et les Origines Chretiennes,

pp. 91 sqq. 3 Lublinski, loc. cit., p. 73 ·

THE GNOSTIC STREAM

his mother, and announces to her that she has been found worthy to bear a divine son. After his birth kings with crosses in their hands come to adore the divine child. Yes ; in ancient times kings, emperors, and some other men were deified. That is true. But these are what Dujardin terms false gods. None of them ever became the god of a religion. Jesus, like Adonis and Mithra, was a true god.

The influence of Mandrean writings is especially observable in the fourth Gospel. Chapter xvii is based upon a prayer of Anosch Uthra,1 the Mandrean god-man. There can be no doubt that the Christian writing is posterior. 2 The priority of Mandreism to Christianity is also indicated by the polemic against John the Baptist with which the fourth Gospel opens. The Mandreans believed that John had descended from heaven ; that he had become man through a supernatural birth and appeared among themselves as the " great Revealer." He thus corresponds to the Christian Logos. His historicity is as doubtful " as that of Jesus.3 The description of him in Matthew is made up out of the Old Testament, 2 Kings i. 8 ; Isaiah xl. 3· If a man wanted to call the Jews to repentance he would not go and stand in a desolate place five hours' journey from Jerusalem. And baptizing in a river was not a Jewish custom.4 The story of John's death (Mark vi.

1 The meaning of this name may be " Man who is suppli-cated "=Mediator.

z Stahl, loc. cit., p. 12 . a Drews, Das Markusevangelium, p. 1 97. 1 Jewish Rabbis said that the water of Jordan was not

suitable for baptism, as it is impure.


14-29) is admittedly unhistorical. The Babylonians connected their god Ea with the sign of Aquarius, the water-carrier. His temple was called the " House of Purification." He was represented carrying a vessel containing the water of life ; and was also pictured as partly fish, partly man. Connected with his worship were bathings of purification from the river bank. Now Berosus, the Babylonian priest, tells of a being half fish, half man, who arose at sunrise from the Persian Gulf and taught men cultivation and the arts. At sunset he sank again into the sea. These details connect him with Aquarius and the southern Fish (Piscis Australis) , adjacent constellations, and with Ea. I Berosus names this being Oannes or Jannes. And the Greek form of John is Johannes (Reb. Jochanan) .2 Mandreism probably developed under Babylonian influence, to which many Jewish ideas can be traced. The river in which John ( = Ea) baptized may be surmised to have been originally the Euphrates.

The emphasis with which John's inferiority to Jesus is asserted in the prologue to the fourth Gospel, where it is declared twice over that he was not the Light but came to bear witness to the Light, is hardly explicable except on the supposition that some contrary doctrine is being denied.

The Christians in their campaign against the Mandreans adopted a very shrewd tactic when,

1 Drews, Zoe. cit., p. 97 . 2 In the Middle Ages John was connected with Aquarius.

" Sun in Aquarius, because John the Baptist baptizes the Saviour in Jordan." (From a calendar of the twelfth century.)

So THE GNOSTIC STREAM

not denying the worth of John, they reduced him to the position of forerunner and preparer of the way, thus enhancing the prestige of Jesus at the expense of John. And the place for a forerunner was open. The Jews believed that the Messiah would have a precursor. If John, at the baptism in the Jordan, had really recognized Jesus as the Messiah, how could it afterwards have been written that he sent some of his disciples to Jesus to ask : " Art thou he who should come or do we look for another ? " There is a contradiction here which is explicable when we realize that the message of John was the outcome of a situation known to exist ; while the story of the baptism, on the other hand, is not in accordance with the facts. Matthew exhibits an uneasy feeling that if the relative positions of Jesus and John had been as represented the baptism of Jesus by John needed some explaining.

The Mandreans also called themselves Nazorreans ; and since " Mandrean " means simply " Gnostic," Nazorrean would be a more specific title. In one Mandrean hymn it is written : " We have Nazorreans and Mandreans who have fallen captive to the Spirit. Ur, the Lord of the shades, devours them." In the Mandrean literature the Holy Spirit, usually termed simply " the Spirit," is an evil thing. In the Mandrean Book of john it is written that Adona! (Jehovah) called the Spirit and said to him, " Let us write a book of abomination and imposture " (the Pentateuch) . Then the Spirit uttered a command and Mercury and the Seven (Planets) composed and wrote the Law.

Hence the phrase " fallen captive to the Spirit "


in a Mandrean writing can only mean that the Mandreans referred to had become Christians or Jews. Now the designation " of Nazareth " applied to Jesus in the Gospels is a mistranslation ; the Greek word so translated is usually " Nazorcean," but sometimes " Nazarene." The fixing of Nazareth as the home town of Jesus was an attempt to explain these terms. It is, however, pretty generally recognized by scholars that the explanation is erroneous, and some of the best authorities agree that it is very doubtful whether there was a village of that name in Palestine at the beginning of the Christian era.1 W. B . Smith explains the term Nasarrean by pointing out that it contains the Hebrew stem N-S-R, which means " to guard." Jesus the Nasarrean would therefore signify jesus the Saviour. Prof. Smith thinks that " Nazorrean " and " Nazarene " are variants of " Nasarrean." It is evident from the use of them in the New Testament that they were employed indiscriminately.

The facts seem rather to point to the conclusion that the Mandrean Nazorreans who had fallen a prey to the Spirit were people who had substituted Jesus for Anosch Uthra as the name of the god-man, and accepted the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Since the Mandreans worshipped a godman, Anosch Uthra, whom no one supposes to have been an historical person, why may not Christians have worshipped a Joshua or Jesus who was not historical ? Belief in the pure humanity of Jesus

1 W . B. Smith, Ecce Deus, pp. 291 and 314 . The article " Nazareth " in the Encyclopcedia Biblica closes with the words : " We cannot perhaps venture to assert positively that there was a ' city called Nazareth ' in Jesus' time."


rests ultimately upon the Gospels ; but his pure humanity is not really proved by them, since the Gospel Jesus is plainly a divine being. The point of view of liberal theologians seems to be that as he cannot actually have been divine he must have been human-which is quite illogical.

In the Mandrean Book of john there is a dialogue between Christ and Anosch Uthra which indicates rivalry between the two ; the claim of Christ to be the god-man is implied, but at the sight of the godroan Anosch Uthra he is abashed and finally confounded. Jesus Christ is stigmatized in the Mandrean writings as an impostor ; 1 but the thought of him does not evoke the intense hatred which flares up against the Jews. This fact rather confirms the suspicion that the Mandreans who had fallen prey to the Spirit had become worshippers of Jesus and not pure Jews. And those apostates from Mandreism are only mildly condemned ; their ultimate salvation is foretold, In the Clementine Recognitions, 2 in the course of a discussion between the disciples, a disciple of John affirms that John , and not Jesus, was the Christ. Simon the Canaanite replies that John was indeed greater than all the sons of women, but not greater than the Son of Man. It is plain that this disciple of John was a Mandrean ; and it is interesting to note that he is represented as conversing familiarly with the disciples of Jesus.

In the fourth Gospel it is said that the first two

1 Mandreans would probably regard Joshua as a son of Jahveh (Demiourgos or " carpenter " ) .

2 I . 5 5 .

THE GNOSTIC STREAM

disciples of Jesus had been disciples of John. The statement may be supposed to indicate some close early relationship between Mandreism and Christianity. It would , however, be a mistake to conclude that Christianity was merely an offshoot from Mandreism. Its origins must have been a good deal more complex than that.

Epiphanius states 1 that there was a pre-Christian sect of Nasarreans who had rejected the Jewish law. We may infer that they were Gnostics. He naturally distinguishes between them and the Nazorreans, since he supposed that the latter sect was of post-Christian origin. But they may have been the same. He says also that the Nazorreans were at one time called Jesseans, and he speculates as to whether they took that name from Jesse the son of David or from Jesus (Jeschua or Joshua) . As an argument in favour of the second alternative he points out that Jeschua means healer or saviour. He implies that the sect existed before the destruction of Jerusalem.

From what has thus far been written it will have become apparent that all the essential elements of Christian dogma are of pre-Christian origin. We have the Logos Christ,2 the Son of God, who descended to earth to bring to men the knowledge of the true God, was killed and went down into hell to awaken the righteous dead and then reascended into heaven. The Logos under various names, Cain, Seth, Joshua and others, was worshipped

1 H<er. xxix. 2 Another and perhaps more usual Gnostic name for the

Logos was Chrestos (serviceable, good, kind) .

THE GNOSTIC STREAM

by several sects, the members of which believed that in their " mysteries," by the performance of appropriate rites, they could secure union with their cult-god and thus ensure for themselves eternal life. We also have the cult of the saviour-god Jesus, from which was derived the Catholic sacrament, and the belief in the redeeming blood of a divine victim.

It is easy to understand why the name ] esus should have eventually displaced all the other names under which Gnostics worshipped the Logos, seeing that jesus signifies helper, healer, or saviour. This name would suggest the Greek word " Iesis " =

healing. I aso (genitive Iasous) was goddess of health and daughter of Asclepios. Jason, again, was revered as a divine being in Thessaly and on the borders of Asia, and was regarded as a healer or saviour. The name ] ason was, in fact, taken as a Greek equivalent of Joshua.1

Somewhat later the Apocalypses began to influence the course of the development of the dogma.

These are Jewish writings in which various conceptions of the Messiah were set forth. Their influence begins to be seen rather late in the first century. Jesus then came to be regarded as Messiah. For since the Greek word for Messiah is Christos, the Messianic idea easily fused with that of the Logos and Son of God, Chrestos. The union of ideas would be assisted by the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which supplied a picture of the suffering Messiah. Messianic features were taken over from the Apocalypses, applied to Jesus and absorbed

1 Josephus, A ntiquities, xix. v. i.

THE GNOSTIC STREAM

into the general body of Christian belief. From them were drawn the eschatological speeches ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels. The fusion probably began hardly, if at all, before the fall of Jerusalem in the year 70. Prior to that there were a number of sects which still considered themselves Jewish and held various doctrines. Some of them were never absorbed, but became Gnostic heretics. In Mark's Gospel the only eschatological speech is an interpolation ; and in John there are none at all. The various Gospels, of which there were at one time a good many, were written for communities holding different Christological opinions.

VI

JESUS IN RELATION TO EVIL DEMONS

A CHARACTERISTIC feature of the period during which Christianity came into existence was the belief in evil demons. Even philosophers shared this belief. The doctrine of the Neo-Pythagoreans was that the purity of God would have been tainted through mingling with gross matter, so that it was necessary to postulate an intermediate order of beings, whose nature was partly spiritual and partly material. 1 This hypothesis also readily provided a means of explaining the old mythical fables, so many of which represented the gods as acting in a manner of which an enlightened conscience could no longer approve. Demons, it was supposed, personated the gods and committed the immoral acts attributed to them ; a notion which supplied Christians with an opening for attacking the pagan deities of which they made good use. And so the earth and the air became peopled with a multitude of demons, some good and some bad. The tendency, however, was to imagine the demons more and more as evil ; or, at any rate, to feel that the evil demons were the only ones that men need trouble themselves about. The evil demons were believed to be continually watching for an opportunity to take possession of the souls

1 The Gnostics made the same division, their psyche being intermediate between pneuma, pure spirit, and flesh.

86

JESUS IN RELATION TO EVIL DEMONS 87

and bodies of men, whenever an opening was made for them by ever so slight a deviation from righteous conduct. Magic words and signs, divine names and symbols-among the latter being the sign of the cross -were used as defences against a possible demonic 1nvas10n.

Belief of this kind existed not only among pagans, but also among Jews. Even the Pharisees were not exempt from it. According to the Gospels, they said that Jesus cast out demons through Beelzebul the prince of the demons. Whatever be the significance of this assertion, the implication it contains that Pharisees believed that Beelzebul was prince of the demons is certainly correct. A papyrus which exists in Paris, containing a Jewish planet-prayer, proves that each of the planets was believed by Jews to be inhabited by a good and an evil spirit. 1 Beelzebul was supposed to inhabit Saturn and to be the lord over the evil spirits which inhabited the other planets. The Gnostics took over this belief to the extent of placing between heaven and earth seven evil demons, which were supposed to lie in wait for the souls of men which tried to pass them. That is why, in the Naassene hymn previously quoted, Jesus says that he will descend " bearing seals. " The seals were needed to enable him to pass by the demons.

The prospect of escaping the demons on earth and passing by them on the way to heaven thus appeared to men to be extremely poor. And the consequent despair of escaping the demons was an important cause of the multiplication of mystery

1 Lublinsld, lac. cit., p. 124.

88 JESUS IN RELATION TO EVIL DEMONS

sects, Jewish as well as pagan, in the period preceding the Christian era. The rites performed, and especially the sacramental meal, were supposed to act as charms against demonic possession. With the sacred food the cult-god entered the body of the partaker and there defended him against the attacks of evil spirits. Frequently men, not being able to decide which of the cult-gods might be expected to be the most powerful defender, would participate in the rites of more than one of the mystery cults. " The believer in Mithra would hasten also to the grottos of the great Mother and to the processions of Isis and to Adonis and others of the many cults that existed at that time. Even children were initiated lest they should become a prey to evil demons. Numerous inscriptions of the time of the Cresars prove that men and women connected themselves with the most various mysteries. " 1 Evidence that some who attended the Christian sacred meal would also frequent that of other cults is afforded in the first Epistle to the Corinthians. From which fact it of course follows that in their estimation Jesus was just a cult-god like any of the others.

From chap. viii. ro of that Epistle we learn that it was the practice of some Christian adherents to " sit at meat in an idol's temple." Which means that their belief in the saving power of the Christian mystery was not so great as to prevent them from making more sure of salvation by participating in the sacred meal of some other saviour-god. In chap. x. zo the same practice is condemned. And we also see here a difference between the Christian

1 Lublinski, lac. cit. , p. g8.


and pagan view which possibly contributed to the eventual triumph of Christianity. In the pagan belief all the cult-gods were true gods. But many Christian writers and Church leaders inheriting Jewish monotheism maintained that the pagan gods were demons. Eventually this became the orthodox opinion of the Church, and Christians were forbidden to participate in the pagan mysteries.

There is plenty of evidence in the early Christian literature that Jesus was believed to have come to earth to save men from the evil demons. The rite of baptism was undoubtedly at one time a formula of exorcism.1 Every pagan convert was supposed to be possessed by a demon. Irenreus wrote of Christians, " some drive out demons firmly and truly, so that often those cleansed from the evil spirits both believe and are in the church." 2 In the Clementine Recognitions Peter says that everyone who worships idols or those whom the pagans name gods, or eats that which is sacrificed to them, becomes imbued with an evil spirit, and consequently needs the purification of baptism that the unclean spirit may go out of him.3

Any thoughtful person reading the Gospels must surely be surprised at the number of demoniacs living in Palestine in those days. The extraordinarily large number of these is simply due to the

1 Carl Schmidt, Gnostische Schriften in Koptischer Sprache mentions " the exorcisms which played a highly significant role at baptism." Quoted by W. B. Smith, Ecce Deus, p. 222.

2 Evidently, as used by Iremeus, the phrase " driving out demons " signified the conversion of Pagans to Christianity.

a II . 7 I . G

go JESUS IN RELATION TO EVIL DEMONS

fact that it was necessary for the writers to illustrate one of the principal functions of the Christ. The reader may also note that when, in Mark vi. 7, Jesus sent out his disciples two by two he gave them authority over the unclean spirits ; and the casting out of demons appears to have been the chief purpose of their mission. The same fact is evident from Luke x. 17, where the only result of the mission of the seventy disciples that is thought worth mentioning is that " the devils are subject to us through thy name." And Jesus in reply said, " I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." This exclamation may be interpreted as expressing the belief of the writer that the god Jesus was prevailing, or would prevail, over the gods of the heathen. Commentators generally agree that this mission of the seventy symbolizes the Christian mission to the Gentiles. Liberal theologians do not know what to make of such passages as those above referred to. They must either exclude them altogether or degrade the chief work of Jesus and his disciples into the restoration to sanity of a certain number of crazy people. It is certain that the Evangelists intended something more significant than that. Jesus was for them a divine being, not a common wonder-worker ; they must have conceived of his operations as proportionate to his divinity. Such an operation would be the liberation of mankind from the tyranny of evil demons, and more particularly of those which acted in the names of the pagan deities. Other early Christian writers had the same conception of the significance of Jesus.

It is important to remember that to men of that


period saving men from the tyranny of false gods did not, as it would to a modern mind, signify a mere change of opinion as to the reality of their existence. In the thought of those men demons were very real and very greatly to be dreaded. No one less powerful than a god or the son of a god could be expected to prevail over them. A teacher who went about telling men that belief in demons was a superstition and that demons had no real existence would have been quite ineffective. The writer of the Clementine Recognitions makes Peter express plainly his conviction that men are saved from evil spirits, not at all by coming to disbelieve in their existence, but through believing in him who had the power to save from them. He says :-

The demons, in proportion as they see faith growing in a man, shrink back, settling into that part of him in which alone some infidelity remains ; but from those who believe with a complete faith they withdraw at once. . . . 1 But they insert themselves by means of food and drink consecrated to themselves into the minds and bodies of those who partake.

The identification of evil demons with the pagan deities is here evident ; and we see that the writer, though a Christian, continued to believe in their real existence. Some Gentile adherents might doubt whether Jesus was more powerful than other saviourgods, but they did not doubt that Jesus was a god ; and their religious teachers, by assuring them that the pagan saviour-gods were themselves demons, and supporting their claim on behalf of Jesus by

1 Demons had no power over a believer, because Christ had died as a ransom for him, as will appear later.


proofs from the Old Testament, brought them to the belief that Jesus was the only true Son of God and the only Saviour. Unless those who partook of the sacramental meal had believed that the saviour-god was present in the sanctified food which they took, they would not have considered it of any value.

Aristides wrote that the Son of God became incarnate that he might recall men from the polytheistic error. Certainly not, however, through the conviction that evil spirits do not exist, but through their coming to believe that Jesus was the Son of the true God. Justin makes the same statement in the other form-viz., that Jesus came " for the destruction of demons." This view is put by Mark at the very beginning of the ministry of Jesus, evidently on purpose to show what he considered to be the main object of Jesus in coming into the world. In the first chapter of his Gospel the " unclean spirit " expelled by Jesus at Capemaum cries out : " What have we to do with thee, Jesus Nazarene ? Thou art come to destroy us. We know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God." The very name Capemaum proves that the writer did not intend this case to be understood as one of epilepsy or of mania. There is no independent evidence of the existence of Capemaum at that time. The statements of later writers as to its position are contradictory, and archreologists are unable to agree with regard to its site. Josephus says there was a fountain called Capemaum not far from the Lake of Gennesareth. 1 The Evangelist has evidently coupled this fountain

1 Wars of the Jews, III. x. 8.

J ESUS IN RELATION TO EVIL DEMONS 93

with the Messianic fountain of Zechariah,1 which is connected with the abolition of idols and the expulsion of the " unclean spirit, " and he has accordingly created a symbolic town as the scene of a symbolic episode. Jesus, therefore, in the early days of Christianity was not a teacher, but a cult-god who was able to destroy demons. Historically the destruction came about through the cessation of the worship of Pagan deities. But that was the result, not of the teaching of Jesus, but of belief in his superior divinity.

The sacred rites of the ancient cults were usually termed " mysteries." The frequent use of the term " mystery " by early Christians in reference to their own rites indicates that Christianity began as a mystery religion. New members of these cults were not admitted to the mysteries. They had to undergo a period of probation, passing through several degrees as they proved themselves worthy. The highest class of initiates were called " the perfect," and they alone were admitted to the innermost mystery. There are sufficient indications that this was the rule also in the Christian mystery cults. Here we have the explanation of the saying of Jesus, otherwise so inexplicable, that he spoke in parables so that the common people should not understand him. The state of the case is made perfectly clear by Matt. xiii. II : " Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given." The disciples of course represented the inner circle of " the perfect ." Again, in verse 44 we read, " The kingdom of heaven is like unto a

1 xiii. r, 2 .


treasure hidden in the field ; which a man found and hid ." Even as late as the time of Origen the distinction subsisted, for in his work against Celsus,1 Origen wrote : " Then, and not till then, we invite them to our mysteries. For we speak wisdom among the perfect . "

1 C. Cels. iii. 59·

VII

THE BEGINNING OF ORGANIZED CHRISTIANITY

WE conclude, therefore, that at the beginning of the Christian era there were in existence a number of Jewish sects ; not all of them perhaps mystery cults, though certainly most of them were. Of these, some are known to have been pre-Christian-viz. , the Peratai, the N aassenes, the Cainites, the Essenes and Mandreans and the community which used the Odes of Solomon. It is a fair inference that there were other pre-Christian sects with respect to which we have no information or not sufficient to fix the period of their origin. A very early Judaic sect which revered a Jesus were the Ebionites. They may have been pre-Christian. The Jewish Christian Church mentioned in Acts was probably Ebionite. There is no absolutely certain proof that any of the Gnostic sects in pre-Christian days named the Logos Jesus ; but the occurrence of the name in the Naassene hymn, the early use of the term " Lord Jesus " by Gnostics and the identification of Jesus and Joshua by Origen, the Epistle of Jude and the Sybilline Oracles, render the supposition highly probable. If one of the constituents of the united Christian Church had been a Gnostic Joshua-Jesus cult, by the time when Christian writers began to interest themselves in heretical Gnostic sects it had

95

g6 THE BEGINNING OF

long ceased to have a separate existence. Consequently it is not likely that we should have heard anything about it.

There is good reason to believe that in Gnostic doctrine the Logos was killed, not by men, but by the " Archons of this reon," 1 in other words by evil demons. The Logos allowed himself to be killed as a ransom for those who believed in the true God. But since, of course, the Logos was raised from the dead, the Archons were tricked, and by killing him they irrevocably doomed themselves to destruction.2 We find this view referred to in r Cor. ii. 7, 8 :-

We speak God's wisdom (= gnosis) in a mystery, the wisdom that hath been hidden, which God preordained before the reons unto our glory ; which none of the Archons of this reon 3 knew ; for had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.4

It is not surprising that Gnostics believed the Logos to have been " crucified." For the cross was connected, directly or indirectly, with the death of several saviour-gods. The origin of the connection was the fact that at the moment when the sun is passing down from the summer into the winter hemisphere-i.e. from the realms of life into those of death, he is at the point where the lines of the equator and ecliptic cross one another.

Before the fall of Jerusalem these sects were 1 The Greek phrase means " Rulers of this age," and in

early Christian literature it most decidedly did not signify the chief men at Jerusalem.

2 Lublinski, Die Enstehung des Christentums, pp. 105-8. 3 The translation in the English versions does not give

the real sense of the words. 4 A Jewish Rabbi ?

ORGANIZED CHRISTIANITY 97

tolerated by the Pharisees, who possibly even felt a certain amount of sympathy with their religious outlook ; inasmuch as the Pharisees themselves also believed in the existence of divine beings (angels) , dreaded demons, and used incantations and sacred names as a defence against them. Some evidence of this has been given ; we may also quote Matt. xii. 27 : " if I by Beelzebul cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out ? " The Gnostics, while revering the Logos as Son of God, or as an emanation from God, were nominally monotheists. And even the monotheistic Jew Philo could write of the Logos and Sophia as divine beings.

The credibility of the story of the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts has been seriously questioned by several commentators, and there is no independent historical evidence of it . A difficulty which has been recognized by even comparatively conservative theologians is that " for the Jews to put any criminal thus to death upon their own responsibility was utterly illegal." 1 The endeavour of the writer of these words to get over the difficulty splits upon the fact that the Christian Church in Jerusalem continued there quite unmolested. It is true that in viii. I we are told that a great persecution arose and that the Church was scattered ; except, continues the record, the Apostles ! As if the chief men would have been left alone while all the rest were scattered abroad, and in chapter xxi. the Church is still there, with brethren and elders, no one interfering with them. Even if, as conservative theologians assume, against the positive assertion of the record, the

1 Enclc. Bibl., Art. " Stephen."

g8 THE BEGINNING OF

attack upon Stephen was not official, but a popular tumult, the Roman authorities would have taken some action in regard to it. Of that, however, there is no mention. We must remember also that, though there may have been a Hellenistic Christian community in Jerusalem, the Jewish Gnostic sects were located in the cities of Asia Minor and Greece and in Egypt.

The motive of the writer in inventing this persecution and consequent " scattering " was probably to account for the widespread existence of Christian communities at an earlier date than would have been at all possible on the traditional view of the origin of Christianity. According to Acts, Paul finds believers in places to which no Christian missionary had previously come.

If Jesus had been executed by the Jews there would have been enmity between Christians and Jews from the beginning ; but such was evidently not the case. Let the reader consider thoughtfully the mental attitude to the Jews exhibited by the writers of Romans ii. 17-29,1 and of ix.-xi. , and compare it with the bitter invective against the Scribes and Pharisees in the Synoptics and against Jews generally in John. The admonition in the first of these sections is not directed against Jews as such, but against those Jews who, having the advantage of knowledge of the law, did not behave conformably. Of course there must have been such Jews. In

1 Verse 24 is probably an interpolation, it strikes a discordant note ; but that is not the only reason for believing it to have been interpolated. A Critical A nalysis of the Four Chief Pauline Epistles, p. 45·


this section there is admonition but no bitterness and no invective. The aim of the writer is to show that a good Gentile is better than a bad Jew. In verse 29 he writes that to be spiritually a Jew is his ideal.

The second section is written in sorrow, not at all in anger. l The writer, himself a Jew, is grieved that his Jewish brethren have not accepted the offer of salvation made through Christ , belief in whom has superseded the Jewish law. His Christ is the Logos (the Word) , the Lord, whom God raised from the dead. Note particularly that in neither of these sections is there any ascription of the death of Jesus to the Jews ; though it seems very unlikely that in chaps. ix.-xi., considering the character of the reasoning, the fact should not have been referred to if it had been known. From x. 2-9, where the writer bears witness that the Jews have a zeal for God and then goes on to speak of Christ, finally referring to his resurrection; it appears that in his mind it was just a question of Christ and the law, a matter of dogmatic belief. The Jews had rejected Christ , the divine Logos, and clung to their law ; but from the silence of the writer on the subject it can surely be inferred that they were not believed to have killed him.

The first of these two sections was probably written some time before the fall of Jerusalem ; the second shortly after that event. In I Cor. x. I-II, again,2

1 This section is unfortunately much interpolated ; ix. 14-24, 30-32 ; xi. r-8 are late insertions.

2 Probably written a short time before the fall of J emsalem.

IOO THE BEGINNING OF

the writer, who was also the writer of Romans ix.-xi . , identifies himself with the Jews ; he speaks of " our fathers who passed through the sea." The section comprises a recitation of offences by which Jews had incurred the displeasure of God. In what way could they have incurred God's anger in a greater measure than by killing the Christ ? It seems unlikely that in this section the writer should not have mentioned that offence if he had known it. And he would have written in very different terms of the Jews if he had. He makes no attack upon the Jews, nor does he condemn them as a whole ; but, as one of themselves, he admits the faults of which some of them had been guilty.1 No Gospel, of course, had yet been written.

Before the fall of Jerusalem, then, the Christian mystery sects were purely and simply sects of the Jews, though Gentile converts were accepted, and between them and the Jews there was no hostility. They held various doctrines and their mysteries, though similar, were not identically the same. There was as yet no organized Christian Church.

The fall of Jerusalem quickly brought about a great change. As a result of that catastrophe the very life of the Jewish nation was threatened. The Jewish leaders felt that their religion was now the only bond that could hold the race together and preserve its national existence. Strict observance

1 The difference of tone observable between I Cor. x. I-I I and Romans ix.-xi. is due to the fact that Jerusalem had fallen meanwhile. Grief came first ; hostility and condemnation followed not long afterwards. The passages previously quoted in which the Jews are said to have killed Jesus are of later date than those here referred to.


of the Jewish law was accordingly insisted upon. No one who rejected it could be allowed any longer within the Jewish community. Possibly also the Pharisees believed that the fall of Jerusalem was a punishment from God which the people had incurred by tolerating within their communion men who would not conform to the Jewish standard of legal righteousness. Consequently they would no longer tolerate the Jewish Hellenistic sects. All such Gnostic writings as the Odes of Solomon and all the Apocalypses were condemned. If they had not been taken over by the Christians they would have perished.

There is reason to think that to some of the Jewish Gnostics their exclusion from the Jewish community in general was painful. In spite of differences of doctrine they had still felt themselves to be Jews and were probably proud to be able to name themselves such. And they had hoped to convert to their Christological doctrine the Jewish race. But, however reluctantly, they had to separate. The mystery cults were forced to turn more and more to the Gentiles, and hostility between themselves and the orthodox Jews rapidly increased. Then it was, in the last decades of the first century and during the second, that the situation arose of which we have evidence in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The invective against the Scribes and Pharisees put into the mouth of Jesus in the Gospels was an expression of Christian hatred which had only begun to exist late in the first century. The prophecy of Jesus to his disciples, that they would be scourged in the synagogues and persecuted from city to city

1 0 2 THE BEGINNING OF

represents the actual state of affairs at the time when the Gospels were written. 1

The Christian sects soon became conscious of themselves as a new force in the world ; and they were drawn or driven together by a common purpose and a common persecution. The belief had already existed among Jews who had come under Greek influence that the Jewish race had a divine commission to bring the Gentiles to the knowledge of God. That belief was taken over ; and W. B. Smith is probably right in saying that a war against polytheism was among the first of the unifying influences at work. There were also, no doubt, men who had the vision to see that there was room in the world for a new religious organization which should occupy the place vacated by the Jews, whose religion, as Mr. Whittaker has observed, after the revolt suppressed by Hadrian, retired into the all but complete exclusiveness it has ever since maintained. The union was not rapid ; 2 nor was it achieved without considerable friction, mutual accommodation, and even disruption, of which there is sufficient evidence in the early Christian literature. In fact there seems never to have been a time when all Christians held a common doctrine. Origen was

1 Jewish scholars, Chwolson, Friedlander, Lublinski and others, agree that the Gospel picture describes the Pharisees, ·not of the first but of the second, century.

2 " The ' great Church ' (second century) is not, as scholars assume, the Catholic Church, but a loose federation of communities which had not yet assumed the highly organized forms of government and theology which are called catholic." Dr. W . Voelker, Das Bild vom nichtgnostischen Christentum bei Celsus (Halle, Waisenhaus) .


thought to be heretical ; and nearly all the Apologists ignore the dogma of salvation through the blood of the sacrificed saviour-god. They are in the Gnostic tradition. But the fall of Jerusalem is the historical commencement of the Christian era.

Some people who are aware of the fact that all the principal dogmas of Christianity are of preChristian origin think that, nevertheless, there must have been some man called Jesus who provided a focus, so to speak, or a centre of crystallization around which the dogmas could group themselves. The difficulty of that view, as already pointed out, is to conceive how any man so insignificant as to be unknown to history can have become in a short time, or even in a long time, the central point of dogmas so tremendous_! And the hypothesis is really unnecessary. Already in the Joshua cult there existed a sacrificed Jesus around whom all the other dogmas could collect . All that was necessary was to write a life history of the god in his supposed sojourn upon the earth, and fix his appearance at some definite date. In an uncritical age it would not be long before the story was believed. Very few of those who read it would be in a position to verify the statements made in it, especially when the destruction of Jerusalem had intervened. And thus the Gospels provided the keystone for the arch. If, as seems almost certain, the Logos was already named Jesus, the Logos-Jesus, who had been killed by the Archons

1 There may, however, before the Gospels were written, have been some confusion between the Christ, or Messiah Jesus, and Jesus ben Pandira.

xo4 BEG:rNNING OF ORGANIZED CHRISTIANITY

that men might be saved from the evil demons, and the saviour-god Jesus who had been sacrificed for the redemption, first of Jews, and then of all mankind, naturally tended to coalesce as their worship became more widely spread.

VIII

THE GOSPELS

A VERY important fact in connection with our present subject is the incapacity of the ancient mind to conceive purely abstract ideas. Even the " ideas " of Plato, which he distinguished sharply from material objects, and which we to-day should term abstract notions, were not conceived by him as absolutely immaterial. He supposed them to have some real existence somewhere. For this reason men of his period and later disliked writing in terms of abstractions ; they represented them by symbols or in the form of an allegory. Hence also it was that worshippers had to see an idol. Not that they believed the idol to be the god, but that their minds were incapable of grasping the invisible god without a visible symbol.

The same mental quality impelled Jewish writers to set forth their theological speculations in the form of .a narrative, or to present abstract ideas as concrete figures, in the manner in which God's wisdom and God's word were personified in the Wisdom literature. In the Apocalypses and in the writings of the Gnostics we have theosophical speculations set out allegorically in a narrative. The Clementine Recognitions consists of a narrative which is quite fictitious ; it was composed for the edification of Christian readers. There is no reason

H 105

r o6 THE GOSPELS

to suppose that the Gospels were written with any other purpose. Now that they are no longer regarded as inspired we must judge of their character from that of the other Christian literature of the period.

It is reasonable to suppose that the Gospels, which immediately followed the Apocalypses and were contemporaneous with some of them and with Gnostic writings, were of the same character as these. Their composition was prompted not merely by the desire to write the life history of a god, though that no doubt was operative. Men who believed that the Christ had come to earth would need a concrete representation of him, and would want to know how he came and what he did. Demand creates supply ; and so no doubt it did in this instance. But the writers would also desire to express their theosophical ideas, and it would be natural to them to do so symbolically. It is a mistake to consider the miracle stories in the Gospels as a product of the superstition of ignorant men. The writers were not ignorant men. The belief in demons was not a mere superstition, though it may have been no better than that in the minds of the multitude. Even philosophers held it ; and it arose from the necessity for representing in concrete form the evil influences and impulses which beset the minds of men. We may infer from what was written in the chapter on demons that the aim of early Christian writers was to express their conviction that belief in the Christ had power to save men from their evil inclinations, and that a perfect believer would be sinless. But they were incapable of visualizing

THE GOSPELS 107

their conviction in that way ; they had to represent it concretely. Evil influences had to be personified before their minds could grasp them. Belief in Christ, again, meant belief in God. Christ upon earth was the concrete image of the abstract idea of the presence of God among men.

If we consider the Gospels as symbolism, they at once rise from the incredible products of ignorant superstition to literary compositions of real signifi.cance. 1 We shall also understand how it is that the Evangelists contradict one another flatly with regard to matters about which, on the hypothesis commonly received, the truth must have been known. They were not concerned with facts, but with symbols and dogmas ; and each of them was free to express his own individual opinion. The Gnostic stories of Sophia, Christ, and the Archons are absurd when understood literally ; but they express symbolically the theosophical opinions of the writers. The Gnostic Justin's account of the shepherd boy Jesus who was visited by Baruch, the angel of God, symbolizing God himself, since Baruch was a Hebrew name for God, is allegory ; and it must be held that the Gospels are literature of the same class. There is good reason to believe that the earliest Gospel was a Gnostic work.

The twelve labours of Hercules are symbolism ; and there existed in ancient times a parallel to the Gospels in a tragedy representing the acts of Hercules.

1 Doubtless much credulity and superstition is exhibited in the later apocryphal Gospels, and early Christian writers were entirely devoid of the historic sense. The canonical Gospels do contain myth, certainly. Luke, more· over, was probably a literalizer.

Io8 THE GOSPELS

A tragedy by Seneca, probably founded upon the earlier work, still exists. In this tragedy Hercules, the Son of God, appears upon the earth to bring peace among men, rescue them from fear and defend the right. Though invincible he submits to the sacrifice of his life. By his death he conquers the powers of evil. As he expires, darkness reigns over the earth and the thunder growls. His spirit rises to heaven, where he is received as a god.l The Gospels no more guarantee the pure humanity of Jesus than this work guarantees the pure humanity of Hercules.

The Greek word translated Gospel signifies good news. There is in it no implication of a narrative, and the word was in use before the Gospels were composed. The Gospels we have are not the first that existed, and the general agreement of the Synoptics proves that they have been based upon a single original, which must have been shorter than any of them. The question whether Matthew or Mark was composed first is academic. Even if Mark was composed later than Matthew, its comparative brevity and simplicity indicate that it more closely reproduces the original, although some sections of it may be later. Raschke has forcibly argued that our second Gospel was written by the Gnostic Marcion. 2 This Gnostic writer is known to have maintained that the original Gospel had been corrupted by interpolations in the Judaic interest ; therefore if Raschke's conclusion is correct, it is inferrible that Mark's Gospel is a more accurate

1 Van Eysinga, La Literature Chretienne primitive, p . 16 . 2 Die Werkstatt des Marcusevangelisten.

THE GOSPELS 109

reproduction of the original than the others. l Van Eysinga's opinion, that the original Gospel was written in Greek and afterwards translated into Aramaic, is in conformity with Marcion's assertion. A Greek Gospel produced at that time would probably be Gnostic. The opinion of some commentators that the story of the Passion is a later addition to the primitive Gospel points in the same direction, since it suggests that the two portions of

the Gospel are of different origin. If, then, the story of the Passion is the sacred drama of the Joshua-cult, we may assume that the earlier portion was written for adherents of the Gnostic mystery cults, or some of them.

A Gnostic would not be likely to begin a Gospel with a birth-story ; and it is noteworthy that in the second and fourth Gospels, in both of which there are indications of Gnostic origin, Jesus appears suddenly without preparation.2 One may suppose that he had just come down from heaven. Jesus, as a spiritual being, would probably not in the earliest accounts appear on the earth as a man of flesh. Gnostics thought that spirit could not mingle with flesh without being contaminated. A Gnostic writer would therefore be likely to clothe the pneumatic Jesus in a psychic body (visible but not material) . In the Naassene hymn Jesus descends straight from heaven to earth. The Ophites, a sect which held similar doctrines to those of the N aassenes,

1 Marcion may have been mistaken, no doubt ; but there are some reasons for thinking otherwise.

2 The " Primitive Gospel " extracted by B. Weiss begins substantially as Mark begins.

I I O THE GOSPELS

and may have been the same,1 were Docetists ; and there is a docetic phrase in the earliest stratum of the Epistle to the Romans.

So long as the readers of the original Gospel were Gnostics this conception would suffice. But in the view of many Christians Jesus had to suffer. Especially was this the case when he had come to be regarded as the suffering Messiah. And in the Catholic Sacrament his body is eaten. The docetic view thus fell into disfavour and Docetism was banned as a heresy. Jesus had to have a body of flesh. Some Gnostics-e.g. Cerinthus, began to teach that the Logos, Christ, descended into Jesus at his baptism. Taking into account the Gnostic view of spirit and flesh, we must conclude that the Jesus into whom the Logos descended was held to be an ideal man, perfectly pure. Soon, no doubt, popular curiosity would demand more details, and so parents had to be found for him. Now, whereas the Jews expected a Messiah ben David, the Samaritans expected a Messiah ben Joseph.2 So, by giving Joseph to Jesus as a father and tracing his genealogy back to David, both these expectations were satisfied. Note that the father of the Joseph of the New Testament, like the father of the Joseph of the Old, is named Jacob. Is this another coincidence ? Luke seems to have thought the coincidence too revealing. He changed the name.

The ideal Jesus prepared for the reception of the 1 These sects worshipped the Logos under the form of a

serpent. Serpent is Nahash in Hebrew, Ophis in Greek. 2 For the evidence of this see Drews, Die Marienmythe,

pp. 73 and 74· " Ben Joseph " is a Messianic title in the Talmud.

THE GOSPELS I I I

Christ, or begotten by the Holy Spirit, could not be supposed to have been born of an ordinary woman. It will be evident from what was previously written upon the subject that the only possible name for his mother was Mariam. Consequently Joseph and Mary became his parents. And he had to be born at Bethlehem, because that was the city of David ; and because of the prophecy in Micah v. 2. The motive in this case is so obvious that in spite of the explicit assertions of Matthew and Luke that Jesus was born at Bethlehem, critical theologians reject the belief. ! Unfortunately the alternative opinion that he was born at Nazareth has become as precarious as the opinion that he was born at Bethlehem.

The date of the birth of Jesus would naturally not be placed in the remote past, and yet it had to be fixed far enough back to have some semblance of historical probability.2 Christian readers would not be critical. Celsus accused them of believing lies ; but Origen answered him, no doubt to the satisfaction of his own readers. · One reason for fixing the birth in the reign of Augustus probably was that Augustus himself was regarded as a saviour-god by the Roman world. And his reign was the commencement of a new era, much better, it was hoped, than the immediately preceding one. But the statements of Luke on the subject have occasioned theologians extreme perplexity. Christians have never had an

1 If the Evangelists did not know where Jesus was born, what can it be supposed that they did know ?

2 No doubt in the primitive Gospel, as in Mark, the date of the appearance of Jesus was indefinite. Matthew's Gospel was probably composed in the first half of the second century.

1 1 2 THE GOSPELS

exact knowledge of the year ; and no one to-day would venture to decide confidently which year it was.

All the saviour-gods died young. Allowing Jesus a life of thirty years, his death would fall into the reign of Tiberius.

Early Christian writers, Origen, Jerome, and others, knew that there is symbolism in the Gospels. Jerome wrote concerning the miracle of the healing of the man with the withered hand in the synagogue :-

Up to the advent of the Saviour the hand was dry in the synagogue of the Jews and works of God were not done in it. After he came to earth the right hand was returned to the Jews that believed and was restored to service.

The interpretation is doubtless correct. And since the story was written as symbolism, we conclude that the Evangelist was not intending to write history or biography. An Origen or a Jerome might believe a story to be at the same time symbolism and literally true ; but the modern mind will pronounce that if this is symbolism it is not history. Volkmar perceived the symbolism in the Gospels ; and so does Schmiedel at the present time, inasmuch as he believes that the diseases healed by Jesus symbolize spiritual diseases,1 although he has not got quite the right point of view.

The marriage feast at Cana in the fourth Gospel symbolizes the marriage of Jewish and Hellenistic

1 The writer, in choosing his symbols, would naturally have in mind the miracles which a Son of God would be expected to perform. Cp. Isaiah xxxv. 5, 6 ; xxix. 18, 1 9.

THE GOSPELS

Christianity. 1 It marks the beginning of the new religion and is naturally said by the writer to have been the first " sign." The wine miraculously produced is the wine of the new doctrine, the water in the jars symbolizes the pharisaic external purifications. The mother of Jesus symbolizes the Jewish race, or religion, out of which the new religion had been born. Jerome perceived this, and he also perceived that the brothers of Jesus represent the heads of the Judaic Christian community. Doubtless the brothers slightly mentioned in the other Gospels are to be explained in the same way. In Mark, the mother and brethren are said to have been " standing without " and Jesus practically disowns them.2 The Gnostic writer of the primitive Gospel would be quite likely to have thus represented the nonacceptance of his Logos Jesus by the Jews and Judaic Christians. And his Jesus, as before mentioned, would most probably not have had a mother in the literal sense.

Note also that in the Gnostic fourth Gospel Jesus speaks harshly to his mother at the marriage ; and throughout this Gospel the mother of Jesus is never named Mary.

The miraculous feeding of the four thousand and of the five thousand is a representation of the sacred meal of a mystery cult. At such a meal a small quantity of food would suffice for a large number of participants. And fishes, of course, were the

1 It is also possible that it symbolizes the union of Jewish religious ideas with Greek philosophy. The writer of the fourth Gospel was capable of such a representation.

2 Mark iii. 3 1-35 .

THE GOSPELS

appropriate food for the sacred meal of a fish-god. The crowds that come to Jesus are pagans who have been wandering in religious error but are now coming to the truth. The loaves and fishes may also symbolize spiritual food, of which, however much is given, plenty always remains.

A remarkable feature of the Gospel is that while Galilee is swarming with sick people and demoniacs, as soon as Jesus comes into Judrea he meets not a single one of either. And yet there must have been as many invalids, lunatics and epileptics there as elsewhere. It is quite certain that the Evangelist intended to signify something important by this distinction. Here is a crucial case. The theory that can explain it has every right to be considered correct . Now the population of Galilee was very mixed ; it could, therefore, properly be taken as a symbol of the pagan world, in which religious error and people possessed by demons abounded. Since in Judrea there was no worship of heathen deities, of course no demoniacs, in the symbolic sense, were to be found there. Note, however, that Jesus almost immediately after entering Judrea meets a blind man. Now spiritual blindness was frequently laid to the charge of the Jews by early Christian writers, and especially their blindness in not being able to see that Jesus was the Christ. As soon as Bartimreus hailed Jesus as the " son of David," the Jewish Messiah, he recovered his sight ; his faith had made him whole.

On the borders of Judrea Jesus meets a man. Mark, however, does not use the term " man " ; he says there ran " one " to him ; as though, by avoid-

THE GOSPELS 1 ! 5

ing the term " man," h e meant to indicate that this " one " was a symbol. If the writer intended to introduce a symbol of the Jewish nation, here obviously was the place to do it. This one is a Jew ; he has kept the commandments from his youth up. He is said-again with significant avoidance of the word " rich "-to have had " great possessions." What were these ? We find the answer in Romans ix. 4 : " Israelites ; whose is the adoption and the covenants, and the law and the promises ; whose are the fathers." Jesus tells the man that he must give all these up, abandon his exclusiveness and accept communion with the Gentiles (the poor) . The Jew refuses . 1 This refusal of the Jew, as appears from Romans ix. to xi. and elsewhere, was a standing puzzle to early Christians, and it was to be expected that the question would have some treatment in the Gospels. We find it treated again in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar (Jew and Gentile) .

It is the general opinion of critics of the New Testament that, in addition to the primitive Gospel, there was current a collection of logia, sayings of the Lord, or of Jesus, from which the didactic portions of the Gospels were mostly taken. In those days no sayings of " the Lord " would have been ascribed to a man. Just as the writers of the Old Testament began their prophecies or declarations with the words " Thus saith the Lord," so would the teachers of religious communities at the beginning of the first century

1 For a more detailed examination of this episode, and for an explanation of other symbolisms, see W . B. Smith, Ecce Deus, pp. 95-125.

I I 6 THE GOSPELS

put forth their exhortations and ethical doctrine under the title " Sayings of the Lord." The contradictory character of some of the sayings that were introduced into the Gospel proves that they did not emanate from a single man. The best authenticated " saying of the Lord " is one preserved by Papias, which no one supposes to have proceeded from Jesus. It was, in fact, taken from the Apocalypse of Baruch, which proves that " sayings of the Lord " could be taken from any approved source. Therefore the existence of such collections of sayings is no evidence of the historicity of Jesus.

It was natural for the scene of the death of the Messiah to be placed in Jerusalem. 1 I n which case, of course, it had to be supposed that the Jews had killed him. The hostility between Christians and Jews at the time when the Gospels were written, and the knowledge that a Jesus-Jesus ben Pandirahad actually been put to death by the Jews at Jerusalem, would contribute to the establishment of this belief. The story of the Passion, as aforesaid, was not contained in the primitive Gospel. It probably displaced an earlier termination in which the death and resurrection of Jesus may have been described in a very different manner. As W. B. Smith observes, the original termination may have been of a docetic character.

In course of time, as the Gospels went through successive editions, insertions were made which reflect the controversies upon which the minds of Christians were exercised at the time ; and speeches were put into the mouth of Jesus in order to give

1 Cp. Zechariah xii. ro.

THE GOSPELS I I 7

authority t o some particular doctrine o r view. The parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, was inserted for the purpose of combating the Judaic exclusiveness exhibited in many passages of earlier Gospels. Meanwhile the Old Testament was ransacked for passages which could be understood as applying to Jesus, and corresponding incidents were introduced into the Gospels, to such an extent that, as Drews has observed, the Old Testament became a " biography of Jesus." And Christian controversialists proved the truth of Christian belief about him, not by contemporary evidence, which surely they would have done if they could, but out of the Prophets and the Psalms.

If the conclusion is accepted that the primitive Gospel was essentially symbolism, with some infusion of myth, the further conclusion must follow, that the writer was not intending to relate the actions of a real man. And thus the only evidence, such as it is, that Jesus ever lived ceases to be any evidence at alP

1 There are some people who think that a mass of weighty evidence can be I).ullified by the supposition that the mind of an early Christian writer cannot have operated in some particular manner. But the modern mind is no norm for the early Christian. See on this subject W. B. Smith, Ecce Deus, pp. 1 82-184 ; 300.

INDEX

AcTs, 32, 43, 54, 87, 98 Adonis, 53, 6o Aeneid, 37 n. Amenophis III, 77 Anosch Utbra, 78, 82 Apocalypses, 84, 101, 105 Apollonius, 3 Apologists, 33, 103 Archons, 73 sq., 96 Aristides, 34, 56 n., 92 Athenagoras, 34 Attis, :22, 28, 6o Augustus, 1 1 1

Barabbas, 5 2 Bartimreus, I I 4 Baruch, xo7 Baruch, Aprx;atypse of, u6 Beelzebul, 87, 97 Bethlehem, 62, u I Brother of the Lord, 31 sq. Brothezs of jesus, II3 Bultmann, 8, u , 67

Cana, marriage at, n z Capemaum, 9 2 Carpenter, son o f the, 74 Celsus, 1 1 1 Cerinthus, no Clement of Alexandria, 34 Clementine Recognitions, 82, 8g, gx, 105 Colossians, Ep. to, 26 Confucius, 2 Corinthians, xst Ep. to, 24, 25, 88, g6, 99 --, Ep. of Clement to, 29 Crucifixion, 54 sq. Cybele, 6o

Daniel, Bk. of, 41 Demiourgos, 74 Demons, 86 sq. Deuteronomy, 55 Dionysus, 62 Docetism, 22, I xo Drews, 1 5 n., 6t n., 63 n., 75 u., 79 n., II 7 Dujardin, 37 n., 4 8 , 55 n.

Ea, 29, 79 Ebionites, 95 Ecclesiasticus, 4, 67 sq. Eisler, 16 Enoch, Bk. of, 41 sq. Epictetus, 2

Epiphanius, 83 Exodus, 36, 39 Eysinga, van, 54 n., xo8 n., 109

Fish, the, 39 Frazer, Sir J., 28, 31 n., 38

Gad, Testament of, 4 Galatians, Ep. to, 23 sq., 31 Gethsemane, 4 9 Gnosis, 30, 70, 72 Golgotha, 57 sq. Good Samaritan, parable of, 7, II7

Hase, 8 Hebrews, Ep. to, 31 Hercules, 107 Hermes, 62, 72 Hippolytus, 72

Inon, 40 IrenamSr47, 89 Ishtar, 39, 6o Isis, 39, 6o sq.

james, 14, 31 sq. jason, 84 jerome, 33, nz sq. jesus ben Paodira, 20, 55, 103 n. -- ben Stada, 20 -- the name, 36, 84 joel, 4 John, Book of, 30 n., 8o, 82 -- the Baptist, 78 sq. -- Gospel, 25, 47, 64, 67, 69, 78, 82,

85, I I 3 joseph, u o Josephus, 1 4 , 9 2 -- the Slavonic, 15 joshua, 36 sq., 56, 63 sq., 72 judas, 24, 49 jude, Epistle, 41 Justin, 20, 35, 92 -- the Gnostic, 28, 107 " Just Man," 3, 70

Karabbas, 45 King, sacrifice of, 44

Lazarus, parable of, 115 Lidzbarski, 77 Logia, 29, 115

I l9

!20 INDEX

Logos, 27 n., go, 33, 57, 6g, 71 sq., 83,96, I IO

Loisy, 7, g, 49, 52 Lord's Supper, 25, 46 Lublinski, 77 n., 87n., 88 n., g6n. Luke, Gospel, 4, 25, 47, 77, go, I II Lycurgus, z

Mandreans, 67, 77 sq. Manen, van, 21 Marcion, zz, roB Marduk, zg, 6o Mariam, 6z Mark, Gospel, 25, 42, 85, go, gz, to8, 113 Mary, 59 sq., 74, I I I, I I J -- the Magdalene, 6r, 75 Matthew, Gospel, 4, 25, 54, 93, roB Melito, 33 Metatron, 41 Meyer, E., rg Michael, 41 Mihr, 62 Miriam, 62 sq. Mithra, 35 Moses, 61 sq. Mother of jesus, I I I , 113 Myrrha, 62 Mysteries, 22, 6o, 63, 71 sq., "88, 93, roo

Naassene Hymn, 29, 87, roB Naassenes, 72, 74 Nasarrean, 81, 83 Naz.arenes, 74 n. Nazareth, 81 Nazorcean, 8r, 83 N eo-Pythagoreans, 86 Nun, 39

Oannes, 79 Octavius, 34 Odes of Solomon, 75 sq., 101 Ophites, rog Origen, 33, 66, 72, 94, roz, 112

Paul, 23, g8 Pauline Epistles, 2 1 sq., 66· Peratai, 63, 72 Peter, Gospel of, 24 n. Pharisees, 87, 97, ror Philippians, Ep. to, 27 Philo, 17, 27 n., 45, 61 n., 6z, 70, 75n., 97 Pilate, 51 sq., 59 Plato, 3, 68, 70 Pliny, 17 Plutarch, 61 Primitive Gospel, ro8, 1 I r " Prince of the Presence," 41

Raschke, xo8 Reimarus, 8 Renan, xo Revelation of john, 30, 41 Robertson, ]. M., 2 , 3 n., II n., 24, 30n.,

41, 46, 49 n., 63 n. Rodrigues, 3 Romans, Ep. to, 21 sq., 98, 1 1 5 Ruth, Bk. of, 13 n.

Sacrea, 45, 53 n., 54 Sanhedrin, trial by, 49 Saturnalia, 45 Schleiermacher, 9 Schmidt, Carl, 89 n. Schmiedel, I I 2 Schweitzer, 8, II Seneca, Io8 Sermon on the Mount, 3 Sibylline Oracles, 42, 55 Smith, Robertson, 37 Smith, W. B., 15 n., r8, 24, 8I, I02, 1 1 5 11.

116, 117 n. Socrates, 2 Sophia, 68 sq., 74 sq. Spirit, the Holy, 69, 75, So Stahl, Rob . , 77n. Steck, 26 Stephen, 97 Strauss, 9 Suetonius, 17 Symbolism in Gospels, II2 sq.

Tacitus, 1 8 Talmud, 4, 1 9 , 3 8 , 40, 61 Tammuz, 6o, 62 Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, 29 Tertullian, 19, 40

Venturini, 8 Voelker, Dr. W., 102 n. Volkmar, 24n., 112 Vossius, 14

u Week of the Son," 38 Weiss, B., 109 --, ]., I4 Weisse, 10 Wellhausen, 5 Westcott and Hort, 5 Whittaker, T., 18, 4I, 102 Wisdom, 4, 68 sq. Wisdom of Soknnon, The, 67 sq. " Wise Man," 3, 70 Wrede, 8

Zechariah, 31, 93, 1 1 6.n.

did jesus ever live ?

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