Part 14 (1/2)

(2) See Edition by R. H. Charles (1893).

But the Savior-G.o.d, as we also know, was a familiar figure in Egypt. The great Osiris was the Savior of the world, both in his life and death: in his life through the n.o.ble works he wrought for the benefit of mankind, and in his death through his betrayal by the powers of darkness and his resurrection from the tomb and ascent into heaven. (1) The Egyptian doctrines descended through Alexandria into Christianity--and though they did not influence the latter deeply until about 300 A.D., yet they then succeeded in reaching the Christian Churches, giving a color to their teachings with regard to the Savior, and persuading them to accept and honor the Egyptian wors.h.i.+p of Isis in the Christian form of the Virgin Mary.

(1) See ch. ii.

Again, another great stream of influence descended from Persia in the form of the cult of Mithra. Mithra, as we have seen, (1) stood as a great Mediator between G.o.d and man. With his baptisms and eucharists, and his twelve disciples, and his birth in a cave, and so forth, he seemed to the early Fathers an invention of the devil and a most dangerous mockery on Christianity--and all the more so because his wors.h.i.+p was becoming so exceedingly popular. The cult seems to have reached Rome about B.C. 70. It spread far and wide through the Empire.

It extended to Great Britain, and numerous remains of Mithraic monuments and sculptures in this country--at York, Chester and other places--testify to its wide acceptance even here. At Rome the vogue of Mithraism became so great that in the third century A. D., it was quite doubtful (2) whether it OR Christianity would triumph; the Emperor Aurelian in 273 founded a cult of the Invincible Sun in connection with Mithraism; (3) and as St. Jerome tells us in his letters, (4) the latter cult had at a later time to be suppressed in Rome and Alexandria by PHYSICAL FORCE, so powerful was it.

(1) Ch. ii.

(2) See c.u.mont, op. cit., who says, p. 171:--”Jamais, pas meme a l'epoque des invasions mussulmanes, l'Europe ne sembla plus pres de devenir asiatique qu'au moment ou Diocletien reconnaissait officiellement en Mithra, le protecteur de l'empire reconst.i.tue.” See also c.u.mont's Mysteres de Mithra, preface. The Roman Army, in fact, stuck to Mithra throughout, as against Christianity; and so did the Roman n.o.bility. (See S. Augustine's Confessions, Book VIII, ch. 2.)

(3) c.u.mont indeed says that the identification of Mithra with the Sun (the emblem of imperial power) formed one reason why Mithraism was NOT persecuted at that time.

(4) Epist. cvii, ad Laetam. See Robertson's Pagan Christs, p.

350.

Nor was force the only method employed. IMITATION is not only the sincerest flattery, but it is often the most subtle and effective way of defeating a rival. The priests of the rising Christian Church were, like the priests of ALL religions, not wanting in craft; and at this moment when the question of a World-religion was in the balance, it was an obvious policy for them to throw into their own scale as many elements as possible of the popular Pagan cults. Mithraism had been flouris.h.i.+ng for 600 years; and it is, to say the least, CURIOUS that the Mithraic doctrines and legends which I have just mentioned should all have been adopted (quite unintentionally of course!) into Christianity; and still more so that some others from the same source, like the legend of the Shepherds at the Nativity and the doctrine of the Resurrection and Ascension, which are NOT mentioned at all in the original draft of the earliest Gospel (St. Mark), should have made their appearance, in the Christian writings at a later time, when Mithraism was making great forward strides. History shows that as a Church progresses and expands it generally feels compelled to enlarge and fortify its own foundations by inserting material which was not there at first. I shall shortly give another ill.u.s.tration of this; at present I will merely point out that the Christian writers, as time went on, not only introduced new doctrines, legends, miracles and so forth--most of which we can trace to antecedent pagan sources--but that they took especial pains to destroy the pagan records and so obliterate the evidence of their own dishonesty. We learn from Porphyry (1) that there were several elaborate treatises setting forth the religion of Mithra; and J. M. Robertson adds (Pagan Christs, p. 325): ”everyone of these has been destroyed by the care of the Church, and it is remarkable that even the treatise of Firmicus is mutilated at a pa.s.sage (v.) where he seems to be accusing Christians of following Mithraic usages.” While again Professor Murray says, ”The polemic literature of Christianity is loud and triumphant; the books of the Pagans have been DESTROYED.” (2)

(1) De Abstinentia, ii. 56; iv. 16.

(2) Four Stages, p. 180. We have probably an instance of this destruction in the total disappearance of Celsus' lively attack on Christianity (180 A.D.), of which, however, portions have been fortunately preserved in Origen's rather prolix refutation of the same.

Returning to the doctrine of the Savior, I have already in preceding chapters given so many instances of belief in such a deity among the pagans--whether he be called Krishna or Mithra or Osiris or Horus or Apollo or Hercules--that it is not necessary to dwell on the subject any further in order to persuade the reader that the doctrine was 'in the air' at the time of the advent of Christianity. Even Dionysus, then a prominent figure in the 'Mysteries,' was called Eleutherios, The Deliverer. But it may be of interest to trace the same doctrine among the PRE-CHRISTIAN sects of Gnostics. The Gnostics, says Professor Murray, (1) ”are still commonly thought of as a body of CHRISTIAN heretics. In reality there were Gnostic sects scattered over the h.e.l.lenistic world BEFORE Christianity as well as after. They must have been established in Antioch and probably in Tarsus well before the days of Paul or Apollos. Their Savior, like the Jewish Messiah, was established in men's minds before the Savior of the Christians. 'If we look close,' says Professor Bousset, 'the result emerges with great clearness that the figure of the Redeemer as such did not wait for Christianity to force its way into the religion of Gnosis, but was already present there under various forms.'”

(1) Four Stages, p. 143.

This Gnostic Redeemer, continues Professor Murray, ”is descended by a fairly clear genealogy from the 'Tritos Soter' ('third Savior') (1) of early Greece, contaminated with similar figures, like Attis and Adonis from Asia Minor, Osiris from Egypt, and the special Jewish conception of the Messiah of the Chosen people. He has various names, which the name of Jesus or 'Christos,' 'the Anointed,' tends gradually to supersede.

Above all, he is in some sense Man, or 'the second Man' or 'the Son of Man'... He is the real, the ultimate, the perfect and eternal Man, of whom all bodily men are feeble copies.” (2)

(1) There seems to be some doubt about the exact meaning of this expression. Even Zeus himself was sometimes called 'Soter,' and at feasts, it is said, the THIRD goblet was always drunk in his honor.

(2) See also The Gnostic Story of Jesus Christ, by Gilbert T.

Sadler (C. W. Daniel, 1919).

This pa.s.sage brings vividly before the mind the process of which I have spoken, namely, the fusion and mutual interchange of ideas on the subject of the Savior during the period anterior to our era. Also it exemplifies to us through what an abstract sphere of Gnostic religious speculation the doctrine had to travel before reaching its expression in Christianity. (1) This exalted and high philosophical conception pa.s.sed on and came out again to some degree in the Fourth Gospel and the Pauline Epistles (especially I Cor. xv); but I need hardly say it was not maintained. The enthusiasm of the little scattered Christian bodies--with their communism of practice with regard to THIS world and their intensity of faith with regard to the next--began to wane in the second and third centuries A.D. As the Church (with capital initial) grew, so was it less and less occupied with real religious feeling, and more and more with its battles against persecution from outside, and its quarrels and dissensions concerning heresies within its own borders. And when at the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) it endeavored to establish an official creed, the strife and bitterness only increased. ”There is no wild beast,” said the Emperor Julian, ”like an angry theologian.” Where the fourth Evangelist had preached the gospel of Love, and Paul had announced redemption by an inner and spiritual identification with Christ, ”As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive”; and whereas some at any rate of the Pagan cults had taught a glorious salvation by the new birth of a divine being within each man: ”Be of good cheer, O initiates in the mystery of the liberated G.o.d; For to you too out of all your labors and sorrows shall come Liberation”--the Nicene creed had nothing to propound except some extremely futile speculations about the relation to each other of the Father and the Son, and the relation of BOTH to the Holy Ghost, and of all THREE to the Virgin Mary--speculations which only served for the renewal of shameful strife and animosities--riots and bloodshed and murder--within the Church, and the mockery of the heathen without. And as far as it dealt with the crucifixion, death and resurrection of the Lord it did not differ from the score of preceding pagan creeds, except in the thorough materialism and lack of poetry in statement which it exhibits. After the Council of Nicaea, in fact, the Judaic tinge in the doctrines of the Church becomes more apparent, and more and more its Scheme of Salvation through Christ takes the character of a rather sordid and huckstering bargain by which Man gets the better of G.o.d by persuading the latter to sacrifice his own Son for the redemption of the world! With the exception of a few episodes like the formation during the Middle Ages of the n.o.ble brotherhoods and sisterhoods of Frairs and Nuns, dedicated to the help and healing of suffering humanity, and the appearance of a few real lovers of mankind (and the animals) like St. Francis--(and these manifestations can hardly be claimed by the Church, which pretty consistently opposed them)--it may be said that after about the fourth century the real spirit and light of early Christian enthusiasm died away. The incursions of barbarian tribes from the North and East, and later of Moors and Arabs from the South, familiarized the European peoples with the ideas of bloodshed and violence; gross and material conceptions of life were in the ascendant; and a romantic and aspiring Christianity gave place to a worldly and vulgar Churchianity.

(1) When travelling in India I found that the Gnanis or Wise Men there quite commonly maintained that Jesus (judging from his teaching) must have been initiated at some time in the esoteric doctrines of the Vedanta.

I have in these two or three pages dealt only--and that very briefly--with the entry of the pagan doctrine of the Savior into the Christian field, showing its transformation there and how Christianity could not well escape having a doctrine of a Savior, or avoid giving a color of its own to that doctrine. To follow out the same course with other doctrines, like those which I have mentioned above, would obviously be an endless task--which must be left to each student or reader to pursue according to his opportunity and capacity. It is clear anyhow, that all these elements of the pagan religions--pouring down into the vast reservoir, or rather whirlpool, of the Roman Empire, and mixing among all these numerous brotherhoods, societies, collegia, mystery-clubs, and groups which were at that time looking out intently for some new revelation or inspiration--did more or less automatically act and react upon each other, and by the general conditions prevailing were modified, till they ultimately combined and took united shape in the movement which we call Christianity, but which only--as I have said--narrowly escaped being called Mithraism--so nearly related and closely allied were these cults with each other.

At this point it will naturally be asked: ”And where in this scheme of the Genesis of Christianity is the chief figure and accredited leader of the movement--namely Jesus Christ himself--for to all appearance in the account here given of the matter he is practically non-existent or a negligible quant.i.ty?” And the question is a very pertinent one, and very difficult to answer. ”Where is the founder of the Religion?”--or to put it in another form: ”Is it necessary to suppose a human and visible Founder at all?” A few years ago such a mere question would have been accounted rank blasphemy, and would only--if pa.s.sed over--have been ignored on account of its supposed absurdity. To-day, however, owing to the enormous amount of work which has been done of late on the subject of Christian origins, the question takes on quite a different complexion. And from Strauss onwards a growingly influential and learned body of critics is inclined to regard the whole story of the Gospels as LEGENDARY. Arthur Drews, for instance, a professor at Karlsruhe, in his celebrated book The Christ-Myth, (1) places David F. Strauss as first in the myth field--though he allows that Dupuis in L'origine de tous les cultes (1795) had given the clue to the whole idea. He then mentions Bruno Bauer (1877) as contending that Jesus was a pure invention of Mark's, and John M. Robertson as having in his Christianity and Mythology (1900) given the first thoroughly reasoned exposition of the legendary theory; also Emilio Bossi in Italy, who wrote Jesu Christo non e mai esist.i.to, and similar authors in Holland, Poland, and other countries, including W. Benjamin Smith, the American author of The Pre-christian Jesus (1906), and P. Jensen in Das Gilgamesch Epos in den Welt-literatur (1906), who makes the Jesus-story a variant of the Babylonian epic, 2000 B.C. A pretty strong list! (2) ”But,” continues Drews, ”ordinary historians still ignore all this.” Finally, he dismisses Jesus as ”a figure swimming obscurely in the mists of tradition.” Nevertheless I need hardly remark that, large and learned as the body of opinion here represented is, a still larger (but less learned) body fights desperately for the actual HISTORICITY of Jesus, and some even still for the old view of him as a quite unique and miraculous revelation of G.o.dhood on earth.

(1) Die Christus-mythe: verbesserte und erweitezte Ausgabe, Jena, 1910.

(2) To which we may also add Schweitzer's Quest of the historical Jesus (1910).