Part 56 (2/2)

As Mr. Greg remarks, there can, we think, remain little doubt in unprepossessed minds, that the whole legend in question was one of those intended to magnify Christ Jesus, which were current in great numbers at the time the Matthew narrator wrote, and which he, with the usual want of discrimination and somewhat omnivorous tendency, which distinguished him as a compiler, admitted into his Gospel.

FOOTNOTES:

[206:1] Luke, xxiii. 44, 45.

[206:2] Matthew, xxvii. 51-53.

[206:3] Amberly: a.n.a.lysis of Religious Belief, p. 268.

[206:4] Life of Christ, vol. ii. p. 643.

[207:1] See Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 71.

[207:2] Rhys David's Buddhism, pp. 36, 37.

[207:3] See Potter's aeschylus, ”Prometheus Chained,” last stanza.

[207:4] Farrar's Life of Christ, p. 52.

[207:5] See Higgins: Anacalypsis, vol. i. pp. 616, 617.

[207:6] See Ibid. and Gibbon's Rome, vol. i. pp. 159 and 590, also Josephus: Jewish Antiquities, book xiv. ch. xii. and _note_.

[207:7]

”c.u.m caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit Impiaquae aeternam timuerunt saecula noctem.”

[207:8] See Gibbon's Rome, vol. i. pp. 159 and 590.

[208:1] Tales of Ancient Greece, p. 46.

[208:2] Ibid. pp. 61, 62.

[208:3] Ibid. p. 270.

[208:4] Anacalypsis, vol. i. p. 822.

[208:5] See Bell's Pantheon, vol. i. p. 106.

[209:1] See Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi. p. 5.

[209:2] The Fathers of the Church seem to cover the whole earth with darkness, in which they are followed by most of the moderns. (Gibbon.

Luke, xxiii. 44, says ”_over all the earth_.”)

[209:3] Origen (a Father of the third century) and a few modern critics, are desirous of confining it to the land of Judea. (Gibbon.)

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