Part 108 (1/2)

[373:1] Indian Antiquities, vol. i. p. 127.

[373:2] Higgins: Anacalypsis, vol. ii. p. 14.

The following answer is stated by Manetho, an Egyptian priest, to have been given by an Oracle to Sesostris: ”On his return through Africa he entered the sanctuary of the Oracle, saying: 'Tell me, O thou strong in fire, who before me could subjugate all things? and who shall after me?'

But the Oracle rebuked him, saying, 'First, _G.o.d_; then the _Word_; and with them, the _Spirit_.'” (Nimrod, vol. i. p. 119, in Ibid. vol. i. p.

805.)

Here we have distinctly enumerated G.o.d, the Logos, and the Spirit or Holy Ghost, in a very early period, long previous to the Christian era.

[373:3] I. John, v. 7. John, i. 1.

[373:4] The _Alexandrian_ theology, of which the celebrated _Plato_ was the chief representative, taught that the _Logos_ was ”_the second G.o.d_;” a being of divine essence, but distinguished from the Supreme G.o.d. It is also called ”_the first-born Son of G.o.d_.”

”The _Platonists_ furnished brilliant recruits to the Christian churches of Asia Minor and Greece, and brought with them their love for system and their idealism.” ”It is in the Platonizing or Alexandrian, branch of Judaism that we must seek for the antecedents of the Christian doctrine of the _Logos_.” (A. Reville: Dogma Deity Jesus, p. 29.)

[373:5] Higgins: Anacalypsis, vol. ii. p. 102. _Mithras_, the Mediator, and Saviour of the Persians, was called the _Logos_. (See Dunlap's Son of the Man, p. 20. Bunsen's Angel-Messiah, p. 75.) _Hermes_ was called the _Logos_. (See Dunlap's Son of the Man, p. 39, _marginal note_.)

[373:6] Bonwick's Egyptian Belief, p. 402.

[374:1] Bonwick's Egyptian Belief, p. 404.

[374:2] Ibid.

[374:3] Ibid.

[374:4] Ibid. p. 28.

[374:5] Frothingham's Cradle of the Christ, p. 112.

[374:6] See Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 307.

[374:7] Orpheus is said to have been a native of Thracia, the oldest poet of Greece, and to have written before the time of Homer; but he is evidently a mythological character.

[375:1] See Indian Antiquities, vol. iv. p. 332, and Taylor's Diegesis, p. 189.

[375:2] See Chambers's Encyclo., art. ”Orpheus.”

[375:3] Ibid., art. ”Plato.”

[375:4] John, i. 1.

[375:5] The first that we know of this gospel for certain is during the time of Irenaeus, the great Christian forger.

[375:6] See Taylor's Diegesis, p. 185.

[375:7] Apol. 1. ch. xx.-xxii.

[376:1] See Fiske: Myths and Myth-makers, p. 205. _Celsus_ charges the Christians with a _recoinage_ of the misunderstood doctrine of the Logos.

[376:2] See Higgins' Anacalypsis, vol. i. p. 105.