Part 13 (2/2)

he says again, ”and yet be altogether in the dark respecting his precise sayings and doings. The condition of the world at this period being such as I have described, it was inevitable that any impressive personality whose career enabled such things, with however small a modic.u.m of truth, to be predicated of it as were predicated of Jesus, should be seized upon and appropriated to the purposes of a new religion....

”For the ma.s.ses the spectacle of an heroic crusade against the authority, respectability, and pharisaism of an established ecclesiasticism, combined with complete self-devotion, with teaching of the most absolute perfection in morals-a perfection readily recognizable by the intuitive perceptions of all-and with a confident mysticism that seemed to imply unbounded supernatural knowledge-_all characteristics of the sect of Essenes to which he and the Baptist manifestly belonged_,-these were amply sufficient to win belief in Jesus as a divine personage. And especially so when they found him persistently reported not only as having performed miracles in his life, but as having shown that traditional superiority to all the limitation of humanity which was ascribed to their previous divinities by rising from the dead and ascending into heaven. Familiar as they were with the notion of incarnations in which the sun played a princ.i.p.al part, and accustomed to a.s.sociate such events with virgin mothers impregnated by deities, births in stables or caves, hazardous careers in the exercise of benevolence, violent deaths, and descents into the kingdom of darkness, resurrections and ascensions into heaven, to be followed by the descent of blessings upon mankind,-it required but the suggestion that Jesus of Nazareth was a new and n.o.bler incarnation of the Deity, who had so often before been incarnate and put to death for man's salvation, to transfer to him the whole paraphernalia of doctrine and rite deemed appropriate to the office.”

There appears no reasonable doubt of the relations.h.i.+p of Jesus to the Essenean brothers. Not only does the name itself imply a personification of that peculiar people, but he is represented as uttering their distinctive doctrines. In the Sermon on the Mount he required from his disciples, as did the Essenean teachers, a righteousness exceeding that of the Scribes and Pharisees; and the Beat.i.tudes are distinctly of the same character. He prohibits the oath, as the Esseneans also did, enjoined non-resistance to violent a.s.sault and forgiveness of injuries, and exhorted to take no thought for the morrow, which he described as serving Mammon. He also charged against divulging the interior doctrines, comparing it to giving the holy bread to dogs and casting pearls to the swine, the latter treading the precious jewels under foot and the dogs turning to rend the giver. Indeed, the whole discourse is one which a teacher of the fraternity would deliver to candidates.

”These things,” he declares, ”are hid from the wise and prudent, but are revealed to babes.” When his disciples demur at his rigid tenets in regard to marriage, permitting divorce only for lewdness or false religion, he sanctions their inference that it is not good to marry. ”He that is able to receive this doctrine,” added he, ”let him receive it.”

To the young man who desired to know the way to perfection he first gave a reproof for calling him good when there was no one so but the one G.o.d, and then commanded him to sell all his possessions and give to the _poor_, probably meaning the _Ebionim_. In the parable in Luke the rich man after death is tormented, while the other, the _ptochos_ or Ebionite Lazarus, is compensated in the lap of Abraham. Yet except the few cases when the terms ”brethren” and ”disciple” are used there are few direct references to the Essenes. But he is continually exhorting against the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and denouncing the former.

Meanwhile, he nowhere fills a page in history. He has left no mark of his individual existence.

We have observed that Judaism was chiefly the counterpart of Persian Mazdaism, the Supreme Being, the seven Amesha-spentas, Yazatas, Evil Spirit and devas, being reproduced in Jehovah with his angels and seven archangels, Satan and his wicked crew. Essenism, in turn, appears to have been a form of the Persian religion, including the wors.h.i.+p of the sun, astral and prophetic doctrines, occult science, a cultus and sacraments; and as the Persian doctrines were ascribed to the unknown Zarathustra, so those of the Essenean brotherhood are personified in the character of a gifted teacher, born on the natal day of Mithras, inculcating truth and right action, and in every way representing and personifying the religious system. This was, as has been observed, a common practice in former times. As soon as we consider _Jesus as Essenism personified_ we find the difficulties vanish which every other theory presents. But Essenism was much older than the Christian era, despite the pretense of Eusebius of the absolute ident.i.ty of Essenes and the early Christians. We may also remark that there are fragments of books in existence which treat of a Jew, the son of a soldier and temple-woman, who exhibits characteristics of the Jesus of the Gospels sufficient to intimate the ident.i.ty of the two. They place his career in the time of the earlier Asmonean kings, about the period when the Essenes are first mentioned by that name. We do not attach great importance to these works, except for the fact that they would not have appeared, unless there had existed a comprehensive account of some kind, parabolic or historic, to suggest their preparation. The _Toldoth Jeshu_, or Generations of Jesus, to which we refer, has several characteristics which are worth noting. The father of Jesus, being a soldier, probably denoted a ”soldier of Mithras,” and the alma or Blessed Virgin, a Hebrew maiden set apart for a time, as was the practice for young maids in Athens, to work and be initiated at the temple. It is also a.s.serted that Jesus spent a season in Egypt, where he learned magic. The Therapeutae had communes in that country as well as in Arabia and Palestine, and were addicted to the study of medical knowledge, astrology, and other arts, which, being derived from the Magi or priest-caste of the East, were denominated magic. This term originally carried with it no reproachful meaning, but meant all learning of a liberal character, and occult science was only such knowledge as was considered too sacred for profane individuals. ”He who pours water into a muddy well,” says Jamblichus, ”does but disturb the mud.” Doubtless the primitive Essenean gospel described Jesus as a young man of rare qualities, the son of a Mithraic or Essenean adept, who was instructed at the school of Alexandria or in the priest-colleges of ancient Egypt, and became expert in the technic of religious and scientific wisdom. Thus, the great Siddartha was taught by the Jaina sage Mahavira before he became himself a teacher and a sage. As the sacraments of the Church are like the observances of the Essenes and those which are also celebrated at the Mithraic initiations, this is abundantly plausible. The departure made by Paul and others from the methods of the order afford the reason for the a.s.signed origin of Christianity at the period known as the ”year of our Lord,” _Anno Domini._

The original books from which the Gospels were compiled have perished.

There was a Gospel in the possession of the Ebionites carefully guarded as a sacred or arcane book, a copy of which Jerome procured with great difficulty, but which has since been lost and forgotten. The sect disappeared, melting away into the church or the synagogue, and we now read of them loaded with the opprobrious slanders of Irenaeus and Epiphanius. They were the original disciples in Judea, and were subjected, in common with other Jews, to the hards.h.i.+ps and persecutions which followed upon the destruction of the national polity. This Hebrew Gospel and such writings as the Catholic Epistles of James and Peter contained their peculiar doctrines. They regarded Jesus as a teacher or exemplar, but not as a superhuman being in any sense of the term. That notion came from the pagans.

Indeed, it was not their belief that such a man had literally existed.

The Doketae (or Illusionists) held that he was a symbolic being, an ideality. The Gnostics generally, whom Gibbon describes as ”the most polite, the most learned, and most wealthy of the Christian name,”

described him as an _aion_ or spiritual principle; and considered the crucifixion as metaphorical and not a literal event. The real Christ, Chrestos or divine principle, they regarded as still in heaven, intact.

The apostle Paul was the great innovator upon the Ebionite and Essenean doctrines. He was too broad and far-seeing to overlook the fact that the exclusiveness of Judaism would arrest any universal dissemination of the faith in the world. Hence he struck out boldly on his own account. He had a gospel, he declares to the Galatians, which he had received from no man; it was not ”_according_ to any man,” but a distinct, differentiated matter, the apocalypse of Jesus Christ. ”Let the man, or even angel, that preaches any other gospel be anathema,” he declares. He did not hesitate to denounce the Ebionist apostles, nor they in turn to set him forth as an impostor, holding the doctrine of Balaam and teaching faith without works or rites. At Antioch he withstood Peter to the face, and declares him condemned. Writing to the Corinthians, he denounces the schisms and deprecates the influence of Apollos, a Jew from Alexandria. ”I, the wise architect, have laid the foundation,” says he, ”but another has built upon it. That foundation is Christ.” It is very plain, however, that the Christ that he taught was rather an ideal than a literal personage. ”I have seen the Lord,” he declares, and again avows that he preached ”Jesus Christ and the Crucified One.” Yet when he refers to the death and resurrection he always treats of them as figurative matters, pertaining to the spiritual and not to the corporeal nature. A Christ that he had seen could but be a spiritual ent.i.ty.

”Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of G.o.d,” he declares, ”neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” This is a complete setting aside of any gross, literal sense to be given to his language.

Others who received the gospel were crucified as Christ was, and rose again to a new life while yet embodied in mortal flesh. He was the type, the model, the exemplar, and they who believed were walking in his footsteps. ”Know ye not,” he asks the Roman believers, ”that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? We then are buried with him by this baptism into his death; so that as Christ was raised up from the dead, even so we should walk in a new life. For if we have become planted together in the likeness of his death, we are also, on the other hand, in that of his resurrection: knowing this, that our old man was crucified together, that the body of sin might be made inert, that we may no longer be enslaved to sin. If we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live to him; being aware that Christ having risen from the dead is no longer dying, death no longer rules him. For wherein he died, he died to sin once for all; but wherein he lives, he lives to G.o.d. So likewise reckon ye yourselves dead to sin, but alive to G.o.d in Christ Jesus.”

A spiritual crucifixion, death, and resurrection, in strict a.n.a.logy with the equinoctial crucifixion, death, and resurrection of the mystic rites, is the foremost idea of this pa.s.sage. The baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan and his forty days' temptation in the wilderness were of the same character. There was no literal dying signified in the case.

Indeed, n.o.body knew better than Paul that the Jewish Sanhedrim did not sit and that capital punishments were not inflicted at the period of the Pa.s.sover, the day of the crucifixion, being, according to the law, ”a day of holy convocation.” The crucifixion being figurative and suggested by an astrological period, we are fully warranted in the hypothesis that the victim likewise was a symbolic personage of an astral character.

This ideal Jesus, with the emphatic but ambiguous phrase of Paul-”Him crucified”-was not sufficient for the exigencies of the Christian leaders of the subsequent century. The Gnostics and other cultured men were satisfied, but the lower cla.s.ses wanted a more tangible character, a physical corporeity. The great want, therefore, was some proof of the literal existence of the individual by the evidence of men that had seen him and been familiar with him. This was now furnished by the production of the three synoptic Gospels and their adoption in the place of other evangelical literature. Afterward, Irenaeus or some one with his approval added the Gospel according to John. The fiction of an apostolic succession was then originated, and forgery for religious purposes was a general practice. The quarrels of Christians with Christians were for centuries more scandalous than all the atrocities of actual martyrdom.

Previous to this the Church had labored indefatigably and successfully to destroy the influence and reputation of Paul. He was now taken into favor; his Epistles were revised, interpolated, toned down, and accepted as canonical. The Acts of the Apostles was next produced. It is a work in two parts-one set apart to the story of the apostle Peter, and the other to the achievements of Paul. The purpose evidently was to indicate that the two were not at variance, but were laborers in the same field.

The work of harmonizing must have been difficult. In our day it would not have been possible. Books cannot be got out of the way as in former centuries, and inconsistencies of writers are sure to be exposed.

Justin Martyr lived at Rome in the reign of the Antonines and wrote a _Defence of the Christians_. Yet he makes no mention of ”St. Peter the first bishop.” He had never heard of him. Irenaeus, however, did not hesitate to say anything to advance the gospel, and accordingly boldly a.s.serts that Peter and Paul founded the church at Rome; overlooking their reciprocal animosity, and the fact that the Epistle of Paul to the Romans addresses the ”saints,” but makes no mention of a church.

Claudius had banished the Jews from Rome for their turbulent conduct under the instigations of Chrestos, and the emperors Trajan and Adrian seem to have known of Christians only from information which they had derived solely from the provinces in the East. But all this made no difficulty for Irenaeus. This French prelate also declared that the ministry of Jesus lasted upward of ten years; also that he lived to be an elderly man. The anachronisms and bad geography of the Gospels are notorious, but they do not compare with the absurdities of Irenaeus. He invented the name _Antichrist_, and hurled it with ferocious rage whenever he had been a.s.sailed and hard pushed in controversy. He was never so much in his element as when quarrelling; and his designation of Irenaeus (a man of peace) is one of the most stupendous misnomers ever heard of.

We have alluded to the fact that pa.s.sages had been interpolated into the Epistles of Paul. The object was to harmonize the Logos of Philo and his school with the Christ or Chrestos of the apostle. It would have been a futile attempt if it had been made when Paul was castigating the Corinthian Christians in regard to Apollos. A dead man's words, however, can be mutilated and perverted without his resistance. We accordingly find the st.u.r.dy Hebrew diction of the apostle interlarded with Gnostic utterances, and new epistles purporting to have been written by him which give a different complexion to his doctrines. The _pleroma_ or fulness which is treated of in the Epistle to the Ephesians was taken bodily from the Gnostics.

The pre-existence of Christ as the Creator of the world was a.s.serted in a spurious doc.u.ment purporting to be a letter from him to the Colossians, and interpolations of a corresponding nature were made in the genuine Corinthian Epistles. Thus in the famous chapter on the resurrection we find the following sentiment of Philo in an amplified form: ”Man, being freed by the _Logos_ (or Word) from all corruption, shall be ent.i.tled to immortality.”

Gibbon has shown us that the first regular church government was inst.i.tuted at Alexandria. This is in keeping with the other facts. The dogmas of an incarnate G.o.d, of the Trinity, and the sacred character of the Blessed Virgin were all introduced into the creed by the influence of the Alexandrians, and it would therefore seem to be legitimately their right to inst.i.tute the government. We have noticed already that the Therapeutae of that country had offices with similar t.i.tles and functions as those now possessed by officers of the Church, and as they and the Christians were closely allied, we have good reason for the belief that they had united with the new organization in such numbers as to outvote the original members. Certain it is, that thenceforth the names of Essenes and Therapeutae occurred no more. But the sect which gave shape to the concept had thus, to a certain degree at least, resumed control over the whole matter.

That such an individual as Jesus Christ ever lived is entirely without proof from history. We find Josephus making mention of one and another who acquired notoriety. He describes Judas of Galilee as the founder of a fourth philosophic sect, and tells of Jesus the son of Hanan who predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple years before it occurred. We observe similarity enough in his utterances to those of the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, and in his deportment when brought before the Roman governor to that described in the Gospels, to warrant some little surmise of ident.i.ty with the Jesus of the Gospels. But of Jesus as the founder of the Christian religion, or more properly the Ebionite sect, we have no such delineation. Of him we have only an utterance which is a palpable forgery.

This preaching of Jesus as a veritable individual of like pa.s.sions with other men, having a will not always consonant with the divine will, and yet divine in qualities and attributes, has been very justly ”to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness.” Intelligent men, however reverent and impartial, have been compelled to dissent. The fanatic Tertullian in declaring his own position gave utterance to what many felt to be the substance of the whole matter: ”I reverence it because it is contemptible; I adore it because it is absurd; I believe it because it is impossible.” We are outgrowing a faith and veneration so utterly childlike as to be fatuity itself.

If we search for Jesus at Nazareth in Galilee, we shall not find a footprint. If, however, we look for him in the testimonies of the Nazarim and Essenes as the personification of their school of philosophic thought, thus representing in concept the emanation of G.o.d and the evolution of man as a spiritual being, we shall see him as he is. Hence to surrender the popular notion of a literal man as an infallible teacher and exemplar is not to renounce anything that is vital in truth. We will only dispense with the paganism and raan-wors.h.i.+p. We eliminate the sensuous imagery, but preserve intact the life, the power, and the energy. The parables and aphorisms which are in the Gospels are as true, as wholesome, and inspiring as ever. Jesus the ideal represents, and will continue to represent, all that was implied in the arcane religions in the East. Upon this ground, therefore, it is well that Christianity in its external forms as well as in its esoteric principles should supplant the other wors.h.i.+ps. It repeats what there is of value in them, and at the same time it comes more closely home to the higher consciousness. In the personification of Jesus the true ideal of our humanity is suggested. We are born of our earthly father and mother, whose image and name we accordingly inherit, and we have to pa.s.s through the pains and throes of a second birth as children of the celestial parent. This was outlined distinctly by symbols in the initiations, and the successful candidate, having overcome in the trial, was enthroned and acknowledged as the son of the Most High. Hence Jesus sets forth in the Gospel the last disclosure of the Essenean rite: ”Call no man father on the earth, for one is your Father; he is in the heavens; and you are brothers.” Paul repeats the sentiment in other words: ”As many as are led by the Spirit of G.o.d, they are the sons of G.o.d; heirs of G.o.d and joint-heirs with Christ.” This idea, often too much lost sight of, lies at the core of all real knowledge. The end of all wors.h.i.+p, all philosophic discipline, and all religious teaching is to open the way in every mind to a higher perception and a profounder conscientiousness.

Yet the suggestion of the angel at the sepulchre is pertinent-that we forbear to seek for the living among the dead. The real enlightenment of mankind comes not from teachers, but only from the fountains of interior illumination. We have no call or occasion to go to this man or to that man as a leader. It may be the province of individuals to stand out conspicuously in order to indicate the next advance to be made. But when each has thus performed his service, his glory is outshone by the refulgent light which he has induced others to seek and obtain.

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