Part 12 (2/2)

Finally the Pauline mystery was distinguished from the heathen mysteries by its connection with an historical Person. In the Pauline mystery, it has been said, the divine appeared in a ”concrete and comprehensible guise,” and ”this connection of a religious principle with a Person who had walked upon earth and suffered death was a phenomenon of singular power and originality.”[243] There is a world of difference between the nature-myths, underlying the mysteries, of the annually dying and rising vegetation G.o.ds, without historical reality, and promising to the initiated release from transitoriness and mortality, and the record of Christ who died for our sins, and who being raised from the dead dieth no more. To say that Paul not only conformed the Lord's Supper to the heathen mysteries, but invented it in imitation of the mysteries, is to accuse him of deliberate misstatement; for in a pa.s.sage of unusual solemnity (I Cor. xi. 23 ff.), he says that he received it of the Lord, and relates the circ.u.mstances of the inst.i.tution of the Supper by Jesus Himself.

243: Bousset: ”Kyrios Christos,” p. 148.

The argument from vocabulary is relied upon by Reitzenstein to prove the influence of heathen ideas upon the thought of the Apostle. It is his theory that Paul spent the two years of inner disturbance, in part at least, in the study of h.e.l.lenistic religion and philosophy, and that this influence helped him in the construction of a new religion. In substance Reitzenstein's argument is that Paul shows the use of technical religious terms found in the Hermetic writings, especially in the ”Poimandres”; and that the ”Poimandres” is to be dated earlier than the ”Shepherd” of Hermas; and that the conceptions it embodies were current in the Roman Empire, and in a literary form, in the time of Paul. The argument is twofold, first, that the Hermetic writings were current in the time of Paul, and, second, that Paul shows their influence in his vocabulary. As the date of the ”Poimandres,” the most important of the Hermetic writings, is in dispute, the latter point may be considered first.

In the Pauline vocabulary Reitzenstein believes that we have ”an absolutely certain proof of the immediate influence of h.e.l.lenism upon the Apostle, and at the same time a measure of its strength.”[244] ”Only when the existence and meaning of a religious literature in h.e.l.lenism is a.s.sured and the sort of linguistic dependence is seen to depend on literary mediation is the opportunity of an explanation afforded.”[245]

Many words thought to be characteristically Pauline are said to have been technical terms in the popular mystery cults of the day, before the Apostle adopted them as the expression of his own religious teaching.

244: ”Die h.e.l.lenistische Mysterienreligionen,” p. 58. (Afterward referred to for convenience as ”H. M. R.”)

245: ”H. M. R.,” p. 209.

Without attempting to follow the argument in detail, we may observe (_a_) that Paul uses many of these terms in a different sense from that of the Hermetic literature. Compare, for example, Paul's use of familiar words such as ”salvation,” ”glory,” ”grace,” with that of the Magic Papyri. In ”Hermes-Prayer I,” the pet.i.tion is for ”health, salvation, prosperity, glory, victory, power, loveliness.”[246] So in ”Prayer II,”

”Give me grace, food, victory, good luck, loveliness, etc.”[247] Again in ”Hermes-Prayer III,” we read, ”Save me always from drugs and deceit, and all witchcraft and evil tongues and all trouble, from all hate both of G.o.ds and men. Give me grace and victory and business and success; for Thou art I, and I am Thou.... I am thy image.”[248] In these prayers from the later Hermes-Thot religion, the Pauline terms are evidently used in a worldly sense, contrasting strongly with their use by Paul.

246: Reitzenstein: ”Poimandres: Studien zur griechisch-agyptischen und fruhchristlichen Literatur,” 1904, p. 18.

247: _Ibid._, p. 20.

248: Reitzenstein: ”Poimandres,” p. 21.

(_b_) Much of the technical phraseology common to Paul and the Hermetic literature is current in the Old Testament; and with the language of the Old Testament we know that Paul's mind was saturated. Clemen's maxim should be observed, and we should seek the source of an idea (or word) in the native religion before going farther afield. Thus before Paul's doctrine of the Spirit is a.s.signed with confidence to h.e.l.lenistic sources, the use of the term Spirit both in the Old Testament and in pre-Pauline Christianity should be studied. Paul quotes the pa.s.sage from Joel which promises the outpouring of the Spirit (Rom. x. 13 f.; see Acts ii. 21). He brings the Spirit into connection with the blessing of Abraham (Gal. iii. 14). The Spirit is also mentioned in the introduction to the ministry of Jesus alike by Mark and by the non-Markan source. A sufficient and natural explanation of Paul's doctrine of the Spirit is to be found in the Old Testament, in Evangelical tradition and in the experience of the church at Pentecost, and in his own experience. When Paul speaks of ”the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, 'Abba, Father'”

(Rom. viii. 15; Gal. iv. 6), we have to do not with remote literary influences nor with the dry bones of any technical theology, Hebraic or Hermetic, but with the heart-throb of personal experience.

Reitzenstein believes that the Pauline vocabulary is best explained by the h.e.l.lenistic parallels, but he recognizes that the parallelism with the Old Testament should be considered. Thus while he thinks that he has shown parallels for all the Pauline uses of the word _pneuma_, he says ”whether with equal ease all may be explained from the Hebraic use of _ruach_ and _nephesh_ or the use of _pneuma_ in the Septuagint the theologian must decide.”[249] Harnack, with some irony, advises Reitzenstein and his school to gain a clearer knowledge of Paul the Jew and Paul the Christian before they take account of secondary elements which he borrowed from the Greek mysteries. A conscious acceptance, he thinks, of such elements is out of the question.[250]

249: ”H. M. R.,” p. 140.

250: ”Date of the Acts and of the Synoptic Gospels,” p. 61 n.

Kennedy believes that the vocabulary of Paul is to be explained from the Old Testament, while much of it was current among the mystery brotherhoods (_Op. cit._, p. 198). Bousset acknowledges that Paul's terminology may perhaps in part be derived from the Old Testament, which would be the most natural source of his use of _pneuma_ instead of _nous_ to describe the spiritual part of man, and of the opposition in words between _pneuma_ and _sarx_ (_Op. cit._, p. 141, note 2). Clemen (”Der Einfluss der Mysterienreligionen auf das alteste Christentums,” 1913, p. 61) says that ”looked at broadly, Paul remains in verbal and much more in actual relations.h.i.+ps untouched by the mystery religions.”

If the Hermetic writings are to be dated later than the time of Paul, then the question of literary influence is reversed. Similarity in words will then be due to coincidence or to the prevalence of a common religious vocabulary, or else, as has recently been said, ”if it is necessary to suppose literary connection, the artificial literary composition of 'Poimandres' makes it more probable that the borrowing was on that side.”[251] The question hinges upon the date of the ”Poimandres,” which it has been usual, at least since the middle of the seventeenth century, to a.s.sign to the age of Porphyry. Hermes has been regarded as ”a convenient pseudonym to place at the head of the numerous syncretic writings in which it was sought to combine Neo-Platonic philosophy, Philonic Judaism and cabalistic theosophy, and so provide the world with some acceptable subst.i.tute for Christianity.”[252]

251: J. M. Creed: ”The Hermetic Writings,” _Journal of Theological Studies_, July, 1914, p. 529.

252: Art. ”Hermes Trismegistus,” Encycl. Britt., 10th ed. For a history of the evolution of opinion, see G. R. S. Mead: ”Thrice-Greatest Hermes,” 1906, Vol. I, pp. 17 ff.

By a brilliant _tour de force_ and with great learning Reitzenstein has sought to reverse this relations.h.i.+p, and to show that the original form of these writings, or at least the fixed religious ideas, vocabulary and ritual which they presuppose, antedated Pauline Christianity and profoundly influenced the writings of Paul and of John. He argues that the ”Shepherd” of Hermas is dependent upon the ”Poimandres,” relying mainly upon two points: the similarity between the two writings in their introductions, and the fact that in the ”Shepherd” the divine messenger appears on a mountain, Arcadia, which was the alleged birthplace of Hermes and a centre of the Hermes cult. The significant points of the introduction may thus be shown:

”POIMANDRES” ”SHEPHERD” OF HERMAS 2. And I do say: ”Who art Revelation 5. As I prayed in thou?” He saith: ”I am the house, and sat on the couch, Man-Shepherd, Mind of all there entered a man glorious in master-hood; I know what thou his visage in the garb of a desirest and I'm with thee shepherd, and with a wallet on his everywhere.” shoulders, and a staff in his hand. And he saluted me, 3. and I saluted him in return. And he immediately sat down by my side, and he saith unto me, ”I was sent by the most holy angel, that I might dwell with thee the remaining days of thy life.”

4. E'n with these words His ”I,” saith he, ”am the shepherd, aspect changed, and unto whom thou wast delivered.”

straightway, in the twinkling While he was speaking, of an eye, all things were his form was changed, and I opened to me, and I see a recognized him as being the same, Vision limitless, etc. to whom I was delivered.[253]

253: For the Greek text of both pa.s.sages see ”Poimandres,” pp. 11, 12; and for the translation see Mead: _Op. cit._, ii, pp. 3, 4, and Lightfoot: ”Apostolic Fathers,” p. 421.

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