Part 141 (1/2)

[509:1] ”The Christ of Paul was not a person, but an _idea_; he took no pains to learn the facts about the individual Jesus. He actually boasted that the Apostles had taught him nothing. _His_ Christ was an ideal conception, evolved from his own feeling and imagination, and taking on new powers and attributes from year to year to suit each new emergency.”

(John W. Chadwick.)

[510:1] This subject is considered in Appendix D.

[510:2] _Scythia_ was a name employed in ancient times, to denote a vast, indefinite, and almost unknown territory north and east of the Black Sea, the Caspian, and the Sea of Aral.

[510:3] See Herodotus, book 4, ch. 82.

[510:4] See Dupuis, p. 264.

[510:5] See Knight's Anct. Art and Mythology, p. 96, and Mysteries of Adoni, p. 90.

[510:6] See Dupuis, p. 264.

[510:7] See Bell's Pantheon, vol. i. p. 7.

[510:8] See Ibid. vol. i. p. 27.

[510:9] Ibid.

[510:10] Ibid. vol. i. p. 2, and Bonwick, p. 155.

[510:11] See Chambers, art. ”Jonah.”

[510:12] See Bible for Learners, vol. i. p. 152, and Goldzhier, p. 280.

[510:13] See Curious Myths, p. 264.

[511:1] ”Whilst, in one part of the Christian world, the chief objects of interest were the _human_ nature and _human_ life of Jesus, in another part of the Christian world the views taken of his person because so _idealistic_, that his humanity _was reduced to a phantom without reality_. The various _Gnostic_ systems generally agreed in saying that the Christ was an _aeon_, the redeemer of the _spirits_ of men, and that he had little or no contact with their corporeal nature.”

(A. Reville: Hist. of the Dogma of the Deity of Jesus.)

[511:2] Epiphanius says that there were TWENTY heresies BEFORE CHRIST, and there can be no doubt that there is much truth in the observation, for most of the rites and doctrines of the Christians of all sects existed before the time of Jesus of Nazareth.

[512:1] ”Accipis avengelium? et maxime. Proinde ergo et natum accipis Christum. Non ita est. Neque enim sequitur ut si evangelium accipio, idcirco et natum accipiam Christum. Ergo non putas c.u.m ex Maria Virgine esse? Manes dixit, Absit ut Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum per naturalia pudenda mulieris de scendisse confitear.” (Lardner's Works, vol. iv. p.

20.)

[512:2] ”I maintain,” says he, ”that the Son of G.o.d was _born_: why am I not ashamed of maintaining such a thing? Why! because it is itself a shameful thing--I maintain that the Son of G.o.d _died_: well, _that_ is wholly credible because it is monstrously absurd. I maintain that after having been buried, _he rose again_: and _that_ I take to be absolutely true, _because it was manifestly impossible_.”

[512:3] King's Gnostics, p. 1.

[512:4] I. John, iv. 2, 3.

[512:5] II. John, 7.

[512:6] 1st Book Hermas: Apoc., ch. iii.

[512:7] Chapter II.

[513:1] Chapter II.