Part 23 (2/2)
How this Doctrine Entered Mazdeism.--This system was not in force in the time of Darius and Artaxerxes (when the dead were buried or, as in the case of Croesus, burned) though the ideas were appearing at that period on which it is founded; and it is plain that it has no necessary or vital connection with the religion of Zarathustra. But in later Mazdeism there are many such importations. This religion, in its course from east to west, came in contact with beliefs and usages with which, though foreign to its own nature, it yet came to terms.
Mazdeism is not originally a markedly priestly religion; it is thought that it became so when planted in Media. No doubt there were germs in the early Iranian religion of a priestly system. Zarathustra himself was a priest and was favourable to due religious observances.
But it is quite contrary to his spirit that life should be governed entirely by ritual law. It was in Media that this came to be the case. The name of Magi, originally perhaps that of a tribe, became in Media the name of the priesthood, and so furnished an additional t.i.tle for Mazdeism. It is to this stage of the religion that the priestly legislation of the Vendidad, with all its puritanical regulation of life, is to be ascribed. (The practice of exposing the bodies of the dead to be devoured by birds of prey is probably of Scythian origin.) In this period also, remote from the origin of the religion, we find a new view of Zarathustra himself and of his revelation. In the earlier sources Zarathustra composes his hymns in a natural manner; he is not an absolute lawgiver, but depends on princes for the carrying out of his views. In the later works the revelation takes place in a series of private interviews between Ahura and Zarathustra; the prophet puts questions to the G.o.d, and the G.o.d dictates in reply sentences which are at once promulgated as sacred laws. Mazdeism, like other religions, has its wooden age, its verbal inspiration, and its priestly code.
To trace the lines by which the influence of the religion of Persia a.s.serted itself in the wider world would be a large enterprise: only a few indications can be given here. One great service which that religion did to the world was undoubtedly that it had sympathy with the Jews, and enabled Jewish monotheism to take a fresh start on its way to become a religion for mankind. Mazdeism itself had a tinge of universalism; Zarathustra expected his religion to spread beyond his own land, and it did spread over all the provinces of Iran. It never became a world-religion, but it might have done so had it not become swathed and choked in Magism or had any new movement arisen in it to a.s.sert the supremacy of its purely human over its artificial elements. But Ahura himself, perhaps, was too abstract and philosophic a G.o.d to inspire missionary ardour; it needed a being more firmly rooted in history, a G.o.d who had done more to prove the energy and intensity of his nature, and, further, a G.o.d more undoubtedly omnipotent than Ahura, to establish a universal rule.
The interesting inquiry remains, how far the Jewish religion was modified by its contact with the Persian. The laws of purity in the Jewish priestly code find a close parallel in the Vendidad; but with the Israelites the notion of religious purity existed, and was worked out in considerable detail, as we see from Deuteronomy, before the exile, and therefore long before the period of the Vendidad. The belief in the resurrection, found among the Jews after the exile, and not before it, has been maintained by many to be a loan from Persia, where the belief in future reward and punishment was a settled thing from the time of Zarathustra. But the Jews do not appear to have grasped this belief all at once or fully formed. They arrived at it gradually, many Old Testament scholars affirm, and by spiritual inferences timidly put forth at first, from their own religious consciousness. A belief which the Jewish religion was capable of producing of itself need not, without clearer evidence than we possess, be regarded as borrowed. We are not on much surer ground when we come to ask whether the angels and demons of Judaism are connected with those of Persia. This belief also arises naturally in Judaism, where G.o.d came to be thought of as very high and very inaccessible, and intermediate beings were therefore needed. Some of the figures of the Jewish spirit-world are, no doubt, due to Persia; the Ashmodeus of the book of Tobit is a Persian figure. Later Judaism is like Parsism in arranging the heavenly beings in a hierarchy, and a.s.signing to the chief angels special functions in the administration of G.o.d's kingdom, and still more so when the upper hierarchy is confronted by a lower one with a great adversary and father of lies at its head. But this takes place long after the Persian contact.
The Persian deities had, as a rule, too little legend to enable them to be received in other countries. Ahura does not travel. Anaitis is thought to have pa.s.sed into Greece, changing her name to Aphrodite, but also to the severer Artemis; but she is perhaps not original in Persia. The Persian G.o.d best known in other lands was Mithra, the sun-G.o.d and G.o.d of wisdom. He was a favourite with the Roman armies in the early empire, and representations of him as a hero in the act of slaying a bull in a cave have been found in many lands. There were also mysteries connected with him, in which the candidates had to pa.s.s through a great series of trials and hards.h.i.+ps. Persia influenced Europe and the west of Asia at the same period in another way. Manicheism, a system which was one of the three great universal religions of that time, and had a wors.h.i.+p and a priesthood and a sacred literature of its own, was founded by a native of Persia. He laboured at a distance from his own country, and the doctrines he propounded came more from Chaldea than from Persia, and consisted of great histories, like those of the Gnostics, of the doings and sufferings of cosmic and other persons; a great struggle between the powers of light and those of darkness was one of its princ.i.p.al features. The wors.h.i.+p of this church was spiritual; its morals were in theory of the purest and most ascetic kind, being founded on a principle of dualism in the material world, and requiring much self-denial and long fasts. The higher virtue of the system was not, however, required of the ordinary member. Later Parsism, both in Iran and in India, has shown a disposition to cast off dualism, and to become, both philosophically and practically, a monistic system.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED
_S. B. E._ vols. iv., xxiii. (Darmesteter); x.x.xi. (Mills). _The Zendavesta_, vols. v., xviii., xxiv., x.x.xvii., xlvii. Pahlavi Texts (E. W. West).
_The Histories of Antiquity_ of Duncker, Maspero, and Ed. Meyer.
Haug's _Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis_. Second Edition, 1878,
F. Windischmann, _Zoroastr. Studien_, 1863.
Geldner, ”Zoroaster,” in _Encyclopaedia Britannica_; ”Zoroastrianism,”
in _Encyclopaedia Bibl._
Mills, _A Study of the Five Zarathustrian Gathas_, 1892-94.
Lehmann, in De la Saussaye.
Dadhabai Naoroji, _The Pa.r.s.ee Religion_.
On Mithraism, _Dieterich Eine Mithras-liturgie._
c.u.mont, _The Mysteries of Mithra_, 1903.
PART V UNIVERSAL RELIGION
CHAPTER XXII CHRISTIANITY
The writer is aware that in offering a chapter on Christianity at the conclusion of this work, he attempts a difficult task. If treated at all, Christianity must be dealt with in the same way as the other religions, and no a.s.sumptions must be made for it which were not made for them. And a view of our own religion written, not from the standpoint of the faith and love we feel towards it but of scientific accuracy, must appear to many pious Christians to be cold and meagre.
But, on the other hand, Christianity is the key of the arch we have been building, the consummating member of the development we have sought to trace, and to withhold any estimate of its character would be to leave our work most imperfect. It seems better, therefore, that some hints at least should be offered on this part of the subject.
Christianity cannot indeed be dealt with in the same proportion as the other religions; that would far exceed our s.p.a.ce. But some views are offered regarding its essential nature, which the writer believes to be so firmly founded in fact that even those who are not Christians cannot deny them, and thus to afford a valid criterion for the comparison of Christianity with other faiths.
In the chapter on the religion of Israel we saw how the prophets before and during the exile began to cherish the idea of a new relation between G.o.d and man, which would not depend on sacrifice nor be confined to Israel. G.o.d, they declared, was preparing a new age, in which he would receive man to more intimate communion than before; and man would be guided in the right path, not by covenants and laws, but by the constant inspiration of a present deity. The new religion would be one which all nations could share. Jerusalem, the seat of the true faith, would attract all eyes; all would turn to her because of the Lord her G.o.d.
But, alas, instead of growing broader to realise its universal destiny, the religion of Israel grew narrower after the exile, and seemed to forget the prospects thus opened up to it. Judaism, though immeasurably enriched in its inner consciousness by the teaching of the prophets, maintained its earlier semi-heathenish forms of wors.h.i.+p, only surrounding them with new stateliness and new significance; and clothed itself in a hard sh.e.l.l of public ritual and personal observance. The Jews separated themselves rigorously from the world, and cultivated an exclusive pride; as if their religion had been given them for themselves alone, and not for mankind. Under the Maccabees they displayed the most heroic courage and tenacity, maintaining their own beliefs and rites amid the flood of h.e.l.lenism which at one time almost swept them away. That they carried their nationality unimpaired through this period is one of the most wonderful achievements of the Jewish race. In the succeeding period, however, many signs appeared showing that their religion was losing energy. The rule of the priests and scribes extended more and more over the whole of life, tradition and observance grew more and more extensive, but the moral judgment lost its elasticity. The sense of the divine presence grew faint, and mult.i.tudes of spirits filled the air instead, oppressing human life with a sense of vague anxiety. As political independence was lost, the people became less happy and more easily excited. But while formalism held increasing sway over their actions, imagination was free, and surrounded both the past history of Israel and its future triumphs with manifold embellishments.
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