Part 40 (2/2)

[151:6] Bunsen's Angel-Messiah, p. 6, and Beal: Hist. Buddha, pp. 58, 60.

[152:1] Bunsen's Angel-Messiah, p. 36.

[152:2] See Amberly's a.n.a.lysis p. 231, and Bunsen's Angel Messiah, p.

36.

[152:3] Beal: Hist. Buddha, p. 58.

[152:4] Oriental Religions, p. 491.

[152:5] See Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 200.

[152:6] See Amberly's a.n.a.lysis of Religious Belief, p. 226.

[152:7] See Thornton's Hist. China, vol. i. p. 152.

[152:8] King: The Gnostics and their Remains, pp. 134 and 149.

[152:9] Inman: Ancient Faiths, vol. ii. p. 353.

[152:10] See Higgins: Anacalypsis, vol. ii. p. 96.

[153:1] Taylor's Diegesis, p. 150. Roman Antiquities, p. 136, and Bell's Pantheon, vol. i. p. 27.

[153:2] Higgins: Anacalypsis, vol. i. p. 322.

[153:3] Bell's Pantheon, vol. ii. p. 213.

[153:4] Ibid. vol. i. p. 47.

[153:5] Ibid. p. 20.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BIRTH-PLACE OF CHRIST JESUS.

The writer of that portion of the Gospel according to _Matthew_ which treats of the _place_ in which Jesus was born, implies, as we stated in our last chapter, that he was born in a _house_. His words are these:

”Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea _in the days of Herod the king_, behold, there came wise men from the east” to wors.h.i.+p him. ”And when they were come _into the house_, they saw the young child with Mary his mother.”[154:1]

The writer of the _Luke_ version implies that he was born in _a stable_, as the following statement will show:

”The days being accomplished that she (Mary) should be delivered . . . she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and _laid him in a manger_, there being no room for him in the _inn_.”[154:2]

If these accounts were contained in these Gospels in the time of Eusebius, the first ecclesiastical historian, who flourished during the Council of Nice (A. D. 327), it is very strange that, in speaking of the birth of Jesus, he should have omitted even mentioning them, and should have given an altogether different version. He tells us that Jesus was neither born in a _house_, nor in a _stable_, but in a _cave_, and that at the time of Constantine a magnificent temple was erected on the spot, so that the Christians might wors.h.i.+p in the place where their Saviour's feet had stood.[154:3]

In the apocryphal Gospel called ”_Protevangelion_,” attributed to James, the brother of Jesus, we are informed that Mary and her husband, being away from their home in Nazareth, and when within three miles of Bethlehem, to which city they were going, Mary said to Joseph:

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