The Christ Myth
by Arthur Drews · English · Gutenberg #45540 · 563,184 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Christ Myth
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Christ Myth
Author: Arthur Drews
Translator: C. Delisle Burns
Release date: April 30, 2014 [eBook #45540]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/45540
Credits: Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously
made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRIST MYTH ***
THE CHRIST MYTH
BY
ARTHUR DREWS, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE
TECHN. HOCHSCHULE, KARLSRUHE
TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD EDITION
(REVISED AND ENLARGED)
BY C. DELISLE BURNS, M.A.
T. FISHER UNWIN
LONDON: 1 ADELPHI TERRACE
LEIPZIC: INSELSTRASSE 20
TO
MY FRIEND
WILHELM VON SCHNEHEN
PREFACE TO THE FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS
Since David Frederick Strauss, in his "Life of Jesus," attempted for
the first time to trace the Gospel stories and accounts of miracles
back to myths and pious fictions, doubts regarding the existence of an
historical Jesus have never been lulled to rest. Bruno Bauer also in
his "Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte und der Synoptiker" (1841-42,
2nd ed. 1846), [1] disputed the historical existence of Jesus; later,
in his "Christ und die Cäsaren, der Ursprung des Christentums aus
dem römischen Griechentum" (1877), he attempted to show that the
life of Jesus was a pure invention of the first evangelist, Mark,
and to account for the whole Christian religion from the Stoic
and Alexandrine culture of the second century, ascribing to Seneca
especially a material influence upon the development of the Christian
point of view. But it was reserved for the present day, encouraged by
the essentially negative results of the so-called critical theology,
to take up the subject energetically, and thereby to attain to results
even bolder and more startling.
In England John M. Robertson, in "Christianity and Mythology" (1900),
in "A Short History of Christianity" (1902), as well as in his work
"Pagan Christs: Studies in Comparative Hierology" (1903), has traced
the picture of Christ in the Gospels to a mixture of mythological
elements in heathenism and Judaism.
In France, as early as the end of the eighteenth century, Dupuis
("L'origine de tous les cultes," 1795) and Voltaire ("Les Ruines,"
1791) traced back the essential points of the history of the Christian
redemption to astral myths, while Émile Burnouf ("La science des
religions," 4th ed., 1885) and Hochart ("Études d'histoire religieuse,"
1890) collected important material for the clearing up of the origin
of Christianity, and by their results cast considerable doubt upon
the existence of an historical Christ.
In Italy Milesbo (Emilio Bossi) has attempted to prove the
non-historicity of Jesus in his book "Gesù Christo non è mai esistito"
(1904).
In Holland the Leyden Professor of Philosophy, Bolland, handled the
same matter in a series of works ("Het Lijden en Sterven van Jezus
Christus," 1907; "De Achtergrond der Evangeliën. Eene Bijdrage tot
de kennis van de Wording des Christendoms," 1907; "De evangelische
Jozua. Eene poging tot aanwijzing van den oorsprong des Christendoms,"
1907).
In Poland the mythical character of the story of Jesus has been shown
by Andrzej Niemojewski in his book "Bóg Jezus" (1909), which rests on
the astral-mythological theories of Dupuis and the school of Winckler.
In Germany the Bremen Pastor Kalthoff, in his work, "Das
Christusproblem, Grundlinien zu einer Sozialtheologie" (1903),
thought that the appearance of the Christian religion could be
accounted for without the help of an historical Jesus, simply from a
social movement of the lower classes under the Empire, subsequently
attempting to remove the one-sidedness of this view by his work
"Die Entstehung des Christentums. Neue Beiträge zum Christusproblem"
(1904). (Cf. also his work "Was wissen wir von Jesus? Eine Abrechnung
mit Professor D. Bousset," 1904.) A supplement to the works of Kalthoff
in question is furnished by Fr. Steudel in "Das Christusproblem und
die Zukunft des Protestantismus" (Deutsche Wiedergeburt, 1909).
Finally, the American, William Benjamin Smith, in his work, "The
Pre-Christian Jesus" (1906), has thrown so clear a light upon a number
of important points in the rise of Christianity, and elucidated so many
topics which give us a deeper insight into the actual correlation of
events, that we gradually commence to see clearly in this connection.
"The time is passed," says Jülicher, "when among the learned the
question could be put whether an 'historical' Jesus existed at
all." [2] The literature cited does not appear to justify this
assertion. On the contrary, that time seems only commencing. Indeed,
an unprejudiced judge might find that even Jülicher's own essay, in
which he treated of the so-called founder of the Christian religion in
the "Kultur der Gegenwart," and in which he declared it "tasteless"
to look upon the contents of the Gospels as a myth, speaks rather
against than for the historical reality of Jesus. For the rest,
official learning in Germany, and especially theology, has, up to
the present, remained, we may almost say, wholly unmoved by all the
above-mentioned publications. To my mind it has not yet taken up a
serious position regarding Robertson. Its sparing citations of his
"Pagan Christs" do not give the impression that there can be any talk
of its having a real knowledge of his expositions. [3]
It has, moreover, passed Kalthoff over with the mien of a better
informed superiority or preferably with silent scorn, and up to the
present it has avoided with care any thoroughgoing examination of
Smith. [4] And yet such a distinguished theologian as Professor Paul
Schmiedel, of Zürich, who furnished a foreword to Smith's work, laid
such an examination upon his colleagues as a "duty of all theologians
making any claim to a scientific temper," and strongly warned them
against any under-estimation of Smith's highly scientific work! "How
can one then confidently stand by his former views," Schmiedel cries to
his theological colleagues, "unless he investigates whether they have
not in whole or in part been undermined by these new opinions? Or is it
a question of some secondary matter merely, and not rather of exactly
what for the majority forms the fundamental part of their Christian
conviction? But if these new opinions are so completely futile,
then it must be an easy matter, indeed a mere nothing, to show this."
In the meantime there are many voices which speak out against the
existence of an historical Jesus. In wide circles the doubt grows
as to the historical character of the picture of Christ given in
the Gospels. Popular works written with a purpose, such as the
investigations of the Frenchman Jacolliot, worked up by Plange into
"Jesus ein Inder" (1898), have to serve to alleviate this thirst for
knowledge and confuse views more than they clear them. In a short
work, "Die Entstehung des Christentums" (1905), Promus has afforded
a brief résumé of the most important matter bearing on the point,
without any working up of it on its own account, and attacked the
existence of an historical Jesus. Lately Karl Voller, the prematurely
deceased Jena Orientalist, in his valuable work, "Die Weltreligionen
in ihrem geschichtlichen Zusammenhange" (1907), voiced the opinion
"that weighty reasons favour this radical myth interpretation, and
that no absolutely decisive arguments for the historicity of the
person of Jesus can be brought forward" (op. cit. i. 163).
Another Orientalist, P. Jensen, in his work "Das Gilgamesch-Epos in der
Weltliteratur" (1906), even thinks that he can show that both the main
lines of the Old Testament story and the whole narrative of the life
of Jesus given in the Gospels are simply variations of the Babylonian
Gilgamesh Epic (about 2000 B.C.), and consequently a pure myth. [5]
While criticism of the Gospel documents is advancing more boldly and
always leaving in existence less of an historical Jesus, the number
of works in popular religious literature intended to glorify Jesus the
man grows enormously. These endeavour to make up for the deficiency in
certain historical material by sentimental phrases and the deep tone
of conviction; indeed, the rhetoric which is disseminated with this
design [6] seems to find more sympathy in proportion as it works with
less historical restraint. And yet learning as such has long come to
the point when the historical Jesus threatens to disappear from under
its hands. The latest results in the province of Oriental mythology
and religion, the advances in the comparative history of religion,
that are associated in England with the names of Frazer and Robertson
especially, and in Germany with those of Winckler, Jeremias, Gunkel,
Jensen, &c., have so much increased our knowledge of the religious
position of Nearer Asia in the last century before Christ, that we
are no longer obliged to rely exclusively upon the Gospels and the
other books of the New Testament for the rise of Christianity. [7] The
critical and historical theology of Protestantism has itself thrown
so deep a light upon the origins of the Christian religion that the
question as to the historical existence of Jesus loses all paradox
which hitherto may have attached to it in the eyes of many. So, too,
Protestant theology no longer has any grounds for becoming excited
if the question is answered in a sense opposed to its own answer.
The author of the present work had hoped until lately that one
of the historians of Christianity would himself arise and extract
the present results of the criticisms of the Gospel, which to-day
are clear. These hopes have not been fulfilled. On the contrary,
in theological circles religious views continue to be quietly drawn
from the "fact" of an historical Jesus, and he is considered as the
impassable height in the religious development of the individual,
as though nothing has occurred and the existence of such a Jesus was
only the more clearly established by the investigations of critical
theology in this connection. The author has accordingly thought that he
should no longer keep back his own views, which he long since arrived
at out of the works of specialists, and has taken upon himself the
thankless task of bringing together the grounds which tell against
the theory of an historical Jesus.
Whoever, though not a specialist, invades the province of any
science, and ventures to express an opinion opposed to its official
representatives, must be prepared to be rejected by them with anger,
to be accused of a lack of scholarship, "dilettantism," or "want
of method," and to be treated as a complete ignoramus. This has
been the experience of all up to now who, while not theologians,
have expressed themselves on the subject of an historical Jesus. The
like experience was not spared the author of the present work after
the appearance of its first edition. He has been accused of "lack of
historical training," "bias," "incapacity for any real historical way
of thinking," &c., and it has been held up against him that in his
investigations their result was settled beforehand--as if this was
not precisely the case with theologians, who write on the subject of
a historical Jesus, since it is just the task of theology to defend
and establish the truth of the New Testament writings. Whoever has
looked about him in the turmoil of science knows that generally each
fellow-worker is accustomed to regard as "method" that only which he
himself uses as such, and that the famous conception of "scientific
method" is very often ruled by points of view purely casual and
personal. [8] Thus, for example, we see the theologian Clemen, in
his investigation into the method of explaining the New Testament
on religious-historical lines, seriously put the question to himself
whether one "could not dispense himself from refuting such books as
finally arrive at the unauthenticity of all the Pauline epistles and
the non-historicity of the whole, or at least of almost the whole,
tradition concerning Jesus; for example, not only that of Bauer, but
also those of Jensen and Smith." This same Clemen advances the famous
methodological axiom: "An explanation on religious-historical lines is
impossible if it of necessity leads to untenable consequences or sets
out from such hypotheses," [9] obviously thinking here of the denial of
an historical Christ. For the rest, the "method" of "critical theology"
consists, as is well known, in applying an already settled picture of
Jesus to the Gospels and undertaking the critical sifting of their
contents according to this measure. This picture makes the founder
of the Christian religion merely a pious preacher of morality in the
sense of present-day liberalism, the "representative of the noblest
individuality," the incarnation of the modern ideal of personality, or
of some other fashionable theological view. Theologians commence with
the conviction that the historical Jesus was a kind of "anticipation
of modern religious consciousness." They think that they discern the
real historical import of the Gospels in their "moral-religious kernel"
so far as this is good for all time, and they arrive in this manner
at its "strictly scientific conception" of Jesus by casting out all
such features as do not fit this picture, thus recognising only the
"everlasting human" and the "modern" as historical. [10]
If one keeps this before his eyes he will not be particularly moved by
the talk about "method" and "lack of scientific system." One could then
at most wonder that it should be forbidden to philosophers particularly
to have a say in theological matters. As though the peace at present
reigning between philosophy and theology and their mutual efforts at a
rapprochement did not clearly indicate that upon one of the two sides,
or upon both, something cannot be in order, and that consequently
it was high time, if no one else undertakes it, for a philosopher to
notice theology in order to terminate the make-believe peace which is
for both so fateful. For what does Lessing say? "With orthodoxy God be
thanked one had arrived at a tolerable understanding. Between it and
philosophy a partition had been raised behind which each could continue
its way without hindering the other. But what is now being done? The
partition is again being demolished, and under the pretext of making
us reasonable Christians we are being made unreasonable philosophers."
The author of this book has been reproached with following in
it tendencies merely destructive. Indeed, one guardian of Zion,
particularly inflamed with rage, has even expressed himself to this
effect, that the author's researches do not originate in a serious
desire for knowledge, but only in a wish to deny. One who, as I
have done, has in all his previous work emphasised the positive
nature of the ethical and religious life against the denying and
destroying spirit of the age, who has in his work "Die Religion als
Selbst-Bewusstsein Gottes" (1906) sought to build up anew from within
the shattered religious outlook upon the world, who in the last chapter
of the present work has left no doubt remaining that he regards the
present falling away of religious consciousness as one of the most
important phenomena of our spiritual life and as a misfortune for our
whole civilisation, should be protected against such reproaches. In
reality, "The Christ Myth" has been written pre-eminently in the
interests of religion, from the conviction that its previous forms
no longer suffice for men of to-day, that above all the "Jesuanism"
of historical theology is in its deepest nature irreligious, and
that this itself forms the greatest hindrance to all real religious
progress. I agree with E. v. Hartmann and W. v. Schnehen in the opinion
that this so-called Christianity of the liberal pastors is in every
direction full of internal contradiction, that it is false through and
through (in so saying naturally no individual representative of this
movement is accused of subjective untruthfulness). I agree that by
its moving rhetoric and its bold appearance of being scientific it is
systematically undermining the simple intellectual truthfulness of our
people; and that on this account this romantic cult of Jesus must be
combated at all costs, but that this cannot be done more effectually
than by taking its basis in the theory of the historical Jesus [11]
from beneath its feet.
This work seeks to prove that more or less all the features of
the picture of the historical Jesus, at any rate all those of any
important religious significance, bear a purely mythical character,
and no opening exists for seeking an historical figure behind the
Christ myth. It is not the imagined historical Jesus but, if any one,
Paul who is that "great personality" that called Christianity into life
as a new religion, and by the speculative range of his intellect and
the depth of his moral experience gave it the strength for its journey,
the strength which bestowed upon it victory over the other competing
religions. Without Jesus the rise of Christianity can be quite well
understood, without Paul not so. If in spite of this any one thinks
that besides the latter a Jesus also cannot be dispensed with, this can
naturally not be opposed; but we know nothing of this Jesus. Even in
the representations of historical theology he is scarcely more than
the shadow of a shadow. Consequently it is self-deceit to make the
figure of this "unique" and "mighty" personality, to which a man may
believe he must on historical grounds hold fast, the central point
of religious consciousness. Jesus Christ may be great and worthy of
reverence as a religious idea, as the symbolical personification
of the unity of nature in God and man, on the belief in which the
possibility of the "redemption" depends. As a purely historical
individual, as liberal theology views him, he sinks back to the level
of other great historical personalities, and from the religious point
of view is exactly as unessential as they, indeed, more capable of
being dispensed with than they, for in spite of all rhetoric he is
in the light of historical theology of to-day, even at best only
"a figure swimming obscurely in the mists of tradition." [12]
PROFESSOR DR. ARTHUR DREWS.
Karlsruhe, January, 1910.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
The time since the appearance of the second edition was too short
for any material alterations to be undertaken in the third edition
now appearing. However, the phraseology here and there has been
improved and many things put more strongly. Above all, the famous
passage in Tacitus and the passage 1 Cor. ii. 23 et seq. has been so
handled that its lack of significance as regards the existence of an
historical Jesus should now appear more clearly than hitherto. That
Paul in reality is not a witness for an historical Jesus and is wrongly
considered as the "foundation" of the faith in such a figure, should
be already established for every unprejudiced person as the result
of the discussion so far on the "Christ Myth." The Protestantenblatt
finds itself now compelled to the admission that the historical image
of the person of Jesus as a matter of fact "can no longer be clearly
recognised" (No. 6, 1910). How then does it fare with the new "bases"
of Schmiedel? To no refutation of the assertions which I represent has
greater significance been hitherto ascribed on the theological side
than to those supposed supports of a "really scientific life of Jesus"
(in the discussions of "the Christ Myth" this has again received the
strongest expression). And yet these bases were advanced by their
originator obviously with a view to a conception quite different from
mine, and, as I have now shown, do not affect, generally speaking, the
view represented by me regarding the rise of the supposed historical
picture of Jesus. When, above all, the "historical references to
Jesus" are supposed to be contained in them, and these, according to
the Protestantenblatt, lie "like blocks of granite" in my path--then
this is a pure illusion of the theologians.
As can be conceived, my assertion that a pre-Christian cult
of Jesus existed has found the most decisive rejection. This,
however, is for the most part only due to the fact that the
researches in this connection of the American, Smith, and the
Englishman, Robertson, were not known, and, moreover, the opinion
was held that one need not trouble about these "foreigners," who
further were not "specialists." And yet Gunkel, in his work "Zum
religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen Testaments," had
already sufficiently prepared that view, as one might have thought,
when, among other things, he declares "that even before Jesus there
existed in Jewish syncretistic circles a belief in the death and
resurrection of Christ." [13] Again, it can only be rejected without
more ado by such as seek the traces of the pre-Christian cult of
Jesus in well-worn places and will only allow that to be "proved"
which they have established by direct original documentary evidence
before their eyes. In this connection it is forgotten that we are
dealing with a secret cult, the existence of which we can decide upon
only by indirect means. It is forgotten also that the hypothesis of a
pre-Christian cult of Jesus, if urged upon us from another quarter,
cannot be forthwith rejected because it does not suit the current
views, and because it may be that it is impossible for the time being
to place it beyond all doubt. Where everything is so hypothetical,
uncertain, and covered with darkness, as is the case with the origins
of Christianity, every hypothesis should be welcomed and tested
which appears to be in some way or the other suitable for opening up
a new point of view and clearing away the darkness. For as Dunkmann
says in his sympathetic and genuine discussion of "The Christ Myth":
"Irregularities and even violences of combination must be borne in
science for the simple reason that our sources are too scanty and
full of contradictions. Our hypotheses will in all such cases have
something rash, bold, and surprising in them; if even they are in the
main correct, i.e., if they are irrefutable according to the method
of investigation" ("Der historische Jesus, der mythologische Jesus,
und Jesus der Christ," 1910, 55). But if that very hypothesis is
not established, yet this makes no difference in the fact that there
existed a pre-Christian Jesus Christ, at least as a complex myth, and
this quite suffices for the explanation of the Pauline Christology and
the so-called "original community" of Jerusalem. I can, accordingly,
only regard it as a misleading of the public when the other side,
after rejecting the hypothesis of a pre-Christian cult of Jesus, bear
themselves as though they had thereby taken away the foundations for
the whole body of my views regarding an historical Jesus.
Meanwhile the storm which has been raised against my book in
theological circles and in the Press, and has even led to mass
meetings of protest in the Busch Circus and in the Dom at Berlin,
shows me that I have "hit the bull's-eye" with my performance and
have in truth touched the sore point of Christianity. The way in which
the battle is being waged, the means by which my opponents attempt to
disparage the author of "The Christ Myth," or to make me ridiculous
in the eyes of the public by personal slanders, their habit of trying
to injure me by throwing doubt on my intellectual capabilities, and
to undermine my scientific honour and official position (Bornemann,
Beth)--all this can only make me more determined to continue the
work of illumination that I have begun, and only proves to me that my
"Christ Myth" cannot be so absolutely "unscientific" and so completely
a quantité négligeable as its opponents are disposed to represent it.
The means by which the "Christ Myth" is opposed to-day are exactly
the same as those which were employed against Strauss's "Leben Jesu,"
without, however, the least result being attained. I accordingly
await the further attacks of the enemy with complete coolness of
mind, confident in the fact that what is true in my book will make
its way of itself, and that a work which, like mine, has arisen from
serious motives, and has been carried through with a disregard of
personal advantages, cannot be lost but will be serviceable to the
spiritual progress of mankind. The attacks which have so far come to
my notice in pamphlets (Bornemann, v. Soden, Delbrück, Beth) and in
the Press have not had the effect of making any weaker my fundamental
convictions. On the contrary, they have only served to reveal to me
still further the weakness of the opposing position, which is much
greater than I myself had hitherto imagined. I am, however, at all
times ready and pleased--and I have shown this too by the corrections
undertaken since the first edition of this work--to give attention to
real objections and to put right possible errors. All that matters to
me is simply the fact as such. The question before us in "The Christ
Myth," as it is not unnecessary to point out here once again, is a
purely scientific one. For possible suggestions and advice in this
direction I will accordingly at all times be grateful. On the contrary,
I am left perfectly cold by personal slanders, anonymous threats, and
pious corrections, meetings of protest in which the Minister of Public
Worship takes part with obbligato trombone choirs and professions of
faith, as well as by the uproar of the multitude roused to fanaticism
in this manner by the "guardian of their souls." They are everything
except refutations.
PROFESSOR DR. ARTHUR DREWS.
Karlsruhe, March, 1910.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface to the First and Second Editions 7
Preface to the Third Edition 21
THE PRE-CHRISTIAN JESUS 29
I. The Influence of Parseeism on the Belief in
a Messiah 37
II. The Hellenistic Idea of a Mediator (Philo) 46
III. Jesus as Cult-God in the Creed of Jewish Sects 51
IV. The Sufferings of the Messiah 64
V. The Birth of the Messiah. The Baptism 88
VI. The Self-Offering of the Messiah. The Supper 128
VII. Symbols of the Messiah. The Lamb and the Cross 140
THE CHRISTIAN JESUS 163
I. The Pauline Jesus 165
II. The Jesus of the Gospels 214
a. The Synoptic Jesus 214
Jesus in Secular Literature 230
b. The Objections against a Denial of the
Historicity of the Synoptic Jesus 235
c. The True Character of the Synoptic Jesus 265
d. Gnosticism and the Johannine Jesus 273
THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM OF THE PRESENT 283
THE CHRIST MYTH
THE PRE-CHRISTIAN JESUS
"If you see a man undaunted by dangers, undisturbed by passions,
happy when fortune frowns, calm in the midst of storms, will you not be
filled with reverence for him? Will you not say that here is something
too great and grand to be regarded as of the same nature as the trivial
body in which it dwells? A divine force has descended here--a heavenly
power moves a soul so wonderful, so calm, one which passes through all
life as though it were of small account, and smiles at all our hopes
and fears. Nothing so great can exist without the help of God, and
therefore in the main it belongs to that from which it came down. Just
as the rays of the sun touch the earth, but belong to that from which
they are sent, so a great and holy spirit, sent here that we may
have a more intimate knowledge of deity, lives indeed in our midst,
but remains in contact with its source. On that it depends, thither
its eyes are turned, thither its life tends: among men it dwells as a
noble guest. What then is this soul? One which relies upon no goodness
but its own. What is proper to man is his soul and the perfect reason
in the soul: for man is a rational animal: therefore his highest good
is reached when he is filled with that of which he is born."
With these words the Roman philosopher Seneca (4 B.C.-65 A.D.) portrays
the ideally great and good man that we may be moved to imitate
him. [14] "We must choose some good man," he says, "and always have him
before our eyes; and we must live and act as if he were watching us. A
great number of sins would remain uncommitted were there a witness
present to those about to sin. Our heart must have someone whom it
honours, and by whose example its inner life can be inspired. Happy is
he whose reverence for another enables him to fashion his life after
the picture living in his memory. We need some one upon whose life we
may model our own: without the rule you cannot correct what is amiss"
(Ep. 11). "Rely on the mind of a great man and detach yourself from
the opinions of the mob. Hold fast to the image of the most beautiful
and exalted virtue, which must be worshipped not with crowns but
with sweat and blood" (Ep. 67). "Could we but gaze upon the soul of
a good man, what a beautiful picture should we see, how worthy of
our reverence in its loftiness and peace. There would justice shine
forth and courage and prudence and wisdom: and humanity, that rare
virtue, would pour its light over all. Every one would declare him
worthy of honour and of love. If any one saw that face, more lofty
and splendid than any usually found among men, would he not stand
in dumb wonder as before a God, and silently pray that it might be
for his good to have seen it? Then, overcome by the inviting grace
of the vision, he would kneel in prayer, and after long meditation,
filled with wondering awe, he would break forth into Virgil's words:
'Hail to thee, whoe'er thou art! O lighten thou our cares!' There is
no one, I repeat, who would not be inflamed with love were it given
him to gaze upon such an ideal. Now indeed much obscures our vision:
but if we would only make our eyes pure and remove the veil that
covers them, we should be able to behold virtue even though covered
by the body, and clouded by poverty, lowliness and shame. We should
see its loveliness even through the most sordid veils" (Ep. 115).
The attitude expressed in these words was widespread in the whole of
the civilised world at the beginning of the Christian era. A feeling
of the uncertainty of all things human weighed like a ghastly dream
upon most minds. The general distress of the time, the collapse of the
nation states under the rough hand of the Roman conquerors, the loss
of independence, the uncertainty of political and social conditions,
the incessant warfare and the heavy death-roll it involved--all this
forced men back upon their own inner life, and compelled them to
seek there for some support against the loss of outer happiness in
a philosophy which raised and invigorated the soul. But the ancient
philosophy had spent itself. The naïve interplay of nature and spirit,
that ingenuous trust in external reality which had been the expression
of a youthful vigour in the Mediterranean peoples, from which indeed
the ancient civilisation was derived, now was shattered. To the eyes
of men at that time Nature and Spirit stood opposed as hostile and
irreconcilable facts. All efforts to restore the shattered unity were
frustrated by the impossibility of regaining the primitive attitude. A
fruitless scepticism which satisfied no one, but out of which no
way was known, paralysed all joy in outward or inner activities,
and prevented men from having any pleasure in life. Therefore all
eyes were turned towards a supernatural support, a direct divine
enlightenment, a revelation; and the desire arose of finding once
again the lost certainty in the ordering of life by dependence upon
an ideal and superhuman being.
Many saw in the exalted person of the Emperor the incarnation of
such a divine being. It was not then always pure flattery, but often
enough the expression of real gratitude towards individual Imperial
benefactors, combined with a longing for direct proximity with and
visible presence of a god, which gave to the worship of the Emperor
its great significance throughout the whole Roman Empire.
An Augustus who had put an end to the horrors of the civil war must, in
spite of everything, have appeared as a prince of peace and a saviour
in the uttermost extremity, who had come to renew the world and to
bring back the fair days of the Golden Age. He had again given to
mankind an aim in life and to existence some meaning. As the head of
the Roman State religion, a person through whose hands the threads of
the policy of the whole world passed, as the ruler of an empire such
as the world had never before seen, he might well appear to men as a
God, as Jupiter himself come down to earth, to dwell among men. "Now
at length the time is passed," runs an inscription, apparently of
the ninth year before Christ, found at Priene not long ago, "when man
had to lament that he had been born. That providence, which directs
all life, has sent this man as a saviour to us and the generations
to come. He will put an end to all feuds, and dispose all things
nobly. In his appearance are the hopes of the past fulfilled. All
earlier benefactors of mankind he has surpassed. It is impossible
that a greater should come. The birthday of the God has brought for
the world the messages of salvation (Gospels) which attend him. From
his birth a new epoch must begin." [15]
It was not only the longing of mankind for a new structure of society,
for peace, justice, and happiness upon earth, which lay at the root of
the cult of the Emperors. Deeper minds sought not only an improvement
in political and social circumstances, but felt disturbed by thoughts
of death and the fate of the soul after its parting from its bodily
shell. They trembled at the expectation of the early occurrence
of a world-wide catastrophe, which would put a terrible end to all
existence. The apocalyptic frame of mind was so widespread at the
commencement of the Christian era that even a Seneca could not keep
his thoughts from the early arrival of the end of the world. Finally,
there also grew up a superstitious fear of evil spirits and Dæmons,
which we can scarcely exaggerate. And here no philosophic musings could
offer a support to anxious minds, but religion alone. Seldom in the
history of mankind has the need for religion been so strongly felt as
in the last century before and the first century after Christ. But it
was not from the old hereditary national religions that deliverance was
expected. It was from the unrestrained commingling and unification of
all existing religions, a religious syncretism, which was specially
furthered by acquaintance with the strange, but on that account all
the more attractive, religions of the East. Already Rome had become
a Pantheon of almost all religions which one could believe, while in
the Far East, in Nearer Asia, that breeding-place of ancient Gods and
cults, there were continually appearing new, more daring and secret
forms of religious activity. These, too, in a short while obtained
their place in the consciousness of Western humanity. Where the public
worship of the recognised Gods did not suffice, men sought a deeper
satisfaction in the numberless mystic associations of that time, or
formed themselves with others of like mind into private religious
bodies or pious brotherhoods, in order to nourish in the quiet of
private ritualistic observance an individual religious life apart
from the official State religion.
I
THE INFLUENCE OF PARSEEISM ON THE BELIEF IN A MESSIAH
Among no people was the longing for redemption so lively and the
expectation of a speedy end of the world so strong as among the
Jews. Since the Babylonian captivity (586-536 B.C.) the former Jewish
outlook upon the world had undergone a great change. Fifty years had
been spent by the Israelites in the land of the stranger. For two
hundred years after their return to their own land they were under
Persian overlordship. As a consequence of this they were in close
connection politically and economically with the Achæmenidean Empire,
and this did not cease when Alexander overthrew the Persian power
and brought the whole Eastern world under Greek influence. During
this lengthy period Persian modes of thinking and Persian religious
views had influenced in many ways the old Jewish opinions, and had
introduced a large number of new ideas. First of all the extreme
dualism of the Persians had impressed a distinctly dual character
upon Jewish Monotheism. God and the world, which in the old ideas
had often mingled with one another, were separated and made to stand
in opposition to each other. Following the same train of thought,
the old national God Jahwe, in imitation of the Persian Ahuramazda
(Ormuzd), had developed from a God of fire, light, and sky into a God
of supernatural purity and holiness. Surrounded by light and enthroned
in the Beyond, like Ahuramazda, the source of all life, the living
God held intercourse with his creatures upon the earth only through
the instrumentality of a court of angels. These messengers of God or
intermediate beings in countless numbers moved between heaven and earth
upon his service. And just as Angromainyu (Ahriman), the evil, was
opposed to Ahuramazda, the good, and the struggle between darkness and
light, truth and falsehood, life and death, was, according to Persian
ideas, reproduced in the course of earthly events, so the Jews too
ascribed to Satan the rôle of an adversary of God, a corrupter of the
divine creation, and made him, as Prince of this world and leader of
the forces of hell, measure his strength with the King of Heaven. [16]
In the struggle of the two opposing worlds, according to Persian
ideas, Mithras stood in the foreground, the spirit of light,
truth, and justice, the divine "friend" of men, the "mediator,"
"deliverer," and "saviour" of the world. He shared his office with
Honover, Ahuramazda's Word of creation and revelation; and indeed in
most things their attributes were mingled. An incarnation of fire or
the sun, above all of the struggling, suffering, triumphant light,
which presses victoriously through night and darkness, Mithras was
also connected with death and immortality, and passed as guide of
souls and judge in the under-world. He was the "divine son," of whom
it was said that Ahuramazda had fashioned him as great and worthy
of reverence as his own self. Indeed, he was in essence Ahuramazda
himself, proceeding from his supernatural light, and given a concrete
individuality. As companion in creation and "protector" of the world
he kept the universe standing in its struggle against its enemies. At
the head of the heavenly host he fought for God, and with his sword
of flame he drove the Dæmons of Darkness in terror back into the
shadows. To take part in this combat on the side of God, to build up
the future kingdom of God by the work of a life-giving civilisation,
by the rendering fruitful of sterile wastes, the extinction of noxious
animals, and by moral self-education, seemed the proper end of human
existence. But when the time should have been fulfilled and the present
epoch come to an end, according to Persian belief, Ahuramazda was
then to raise up from the seed of Zarathustra, the founder of this
religion, the "virgin's son," Saoshyant (Sraosha, Sosiosch, which
signifies the Saviour), or, as it ran according to another rendering,
Mithras himself should descend upon the earth and in a last fierce
struggle overwhelm Angromainyu and his hosts, and cast them down
into the Nether World. He would then raise the dead in bodily shape,
and after a General Judgment of the whole world, in which the wicked
should be condemned to the punishments of hell and the good raised
to heavenly glory, establish the "millennial Kingdom of Peace." Hell
itself was not to last for ever, for a great reconciliation was to
be finally held out even to the damned. Then Angromainyu also would
make peace with Ahuramazda, and upon a new earth beneath a new heaven
all were to be united to one another in everlasting blessedness.
These ideas entered the circle of Jewish thought and there brought
about a complete transformation of the former belief in a Messiah.
Messiah--that is, the Anointed (in Greek, Christos)--originally
signified the king as representative of Jahwe before the people and of
the people before Jahwe. According to 2 Sam. vii. 13 sq., he was placed
in the same relation of an obedient "son" to his "father," in which
the whole people was conscious of standing. [17] Then the opposition
between the holy dignity of the "Anointed" of God and the humanly
imperfect personality of the Jewish kings led to the ideal of the
Messiah being transferred to the future and the complete realisation
of the rule of Jahwe over his people being expected only then. In
this sense the ancient prophets had already celebrated the Messiah
as an ideal King of the future, who would experience in the fullest
sense the high assurances of Jahwe's favour, of which David had been
deemed worthy, since he would be completely worthy of them. They had
described him as the Hero, who would be more than Moses and Joshua,
who would establish the promised glory of Israel, dispose the people
anew, and bring Jahwe's religion even to the heathen. [18] They had
glorified him in that he would span the heavens afresh, establish a
new earth, and make Israel Lord over all nations. [19] In this they
had at first understood the Messiah only as a human being, as a new
David or of his seed--theocratic king, divinely favoured prince of
peace and just ruler over his people, just as the Persian Saoshyant
was to be a man of the seed of Zarathustra. In this sense a Cyrus,
the deliverer of the people from the Babylonian captivity, the rescuer
and overlord of Israel, had been acclaimed Messiah. [20] But just as
Saoshyant had been undesignedly transfigured in the imagination of the
people into a divine being and made one with the figure of Mithras,
[21] so also among the prophets the Messiah was more and more assigned
the part of a divine king. He was called "divine hero," "Father of
Eternity," and the prophet Isaiah indulged in a description of his
kingdom of peace, in which the wolf would lie down by the lamb, men
would no longer die before their time, and would enjoy the fruit of
their fields without tithe, while right and justice would reign upon
earth under this king of a golden age as it had never done before. [22]
Secret and supernatural, as was his nature, so should the birth of
the Messiah be. Though a divine child, he was to be born in lowly
state. [23] The personality of the Messiah mingled with that of Jahwe
himself, as though it were God himself of whose ascending the throne
and journey heavenwards the Psalmists sing. [24]
These alternations of the Messiah between a human and a divine nature
appear still more clearly in the Jewish apocalyptics of the last
century before and the first century after Christ. Thus the Apocalypse
of Daniel (about 165 B.C.) speaks of one who as Son of Man will descend
upon the clouds of heaven and will be brought before the "Ancient of
Days." The whole tone of the passage leaves no doubt that the Son of
Man (barnasa) is a superhuman being representing the Deity. To him the
majesty and kingdom of God have been entrusted in order that, at the
end of the existing epoch, he should descend upon the clouds of heaven,
surrounded by a troop of angels, and establish an everlasting power, a
Kingdom of Heaven. In the picture-language of Enoch (in the last decade
before Christ) the Messiah, the "Chosen One," the "Son of Man," appears
as a supernatural pre-existing being, who was hidden in God before the
world was created, whose glory continues from eternity to eternity and
his might from generation to generation, in whom the spirit of wisdom
and power dwells, who judges hidden things, punishes the wicked, but
will save the holy and just. [25] Indeed, the Apocalypse of Esdras
(the so-called fourth Book of Esdras) expressly combats the opinion
that the judgment of the world will come through another than God,
and likewise describes the Messiah as a kind of "second God," as the
"Son of God," as the human incarnation of the Godhead. [26]
In all of this the influence of Persian beliefs is unmistakable,
whether these arose in Iran itself directly, or whether the idea of
a God-appointed king and deliverer of the world was borrowed by the
Persians from the circle of Babylonian ideas. Here this conception
had taken deep root and was applied at different times now to this
king, now to that. [27] Just as in the Persian religion the image
of Saoshyant, so also in the Jewish view the picture of the Messiah
wavered between a human king of the race of David and a supernatural
being of divine nature descended from heaven. And just as in the
Persian representation of the coming of Saoshyant and the final victory
of the Kingdom of Light there would be a preceding period during which
threatening signs would appear in the heavens, the whole of nature
would find itself in upheaval and mankind would be scourged with
fearful plagues, so also the Jewish Apocalypse speaks of the "woes"
of the Messiah and describes a period of terror which would precede
the coming of the Messiah. The coming of the power of God was looked
upon as a miraculous catastrophe suddenly breaking in from on high,
as a conflagration of the world followed by a new creation. The Jewish
agreed with the Persian view in this also, that it made a heavenly
kingdom of undisturbed bliss "in the light of the everlasting life
and in likeness of the angels" follow the earthly world-wide empire
of the Messiah. This they imagined on exactly the same lines as the
Persian Paradise. There would the holy drink of the "Water of Life"
and nourish themselves on the fruit which hang upon the "Tree of
Life." The wicked, on the other hand, would be cast into hell and
suffer in fearful torments the just punishment of their sins. [28]
The conception of a resurrection of the dead and a last judgment had
hitherto been strange to the Jews. In pre-exilic days they allowed the
body to die and the soul after death to go down as a shadow without
feeling into Hades (Sheol), without disturbing themselves further
about its fate. Now, however, with the doctrine of the destruction
of the world by fire and the general judgment, the idea of personal
immortality entered the world of Jewish thought. Thus it is said by
Daniel that on the day of judgment the dead will rise again, some
waking to everlasting life, others to everlasting perdition. "But the
teachers will shine as the brightness of heaven, and those who led
the multitude to justice as the stars for ever and ever." [29] With
the acceptance of personal immortality the whole tone of religious
thought was deepened and enriched in the direction of thought for
the individual. Former Jewish morality had been essentially of a
collective kind. It was not so much the individual as the people
viewed collectively that was looked upon as the object of divine
solicitude. At this point the position, the road to which had been
already prepared by the prophets, was definitely established, that
the individual hoped for a personal religious salvation and as a
consequence felt in direct personal relationship with Jahwe. God
indeed remained, as the Persians had taught them to understand
him, the superhuman lord of heaven enthroned in pure light, the
source of all life, the living God. His metaphysical qualities,
however, his dazzling glory and unconquerable might were ever more
and more overshadowed by his moral attributes: goodness, grace,
and mercy appeared as the most prominent features in the character
of Jahwe. God seemed a loving father who leads his children through
life with kindly care, and without whose consent not a hair of one of
his creatures could be touched. The strong tendency within Judaism,
represented by the upper currents of pharisaic rabbinism, continually
drew the national boundaries closer, and was ever more anxiously
occupied with a painfully strict observance of the letter of the
law and a conscientious observance of ritualistic ordinances. Ethics
threatened to be extinguished under a system of conventional rules
of an essentially juristic nature. Yet all the while a more human
and natural morality was arising, an inward piety, warm-hearted,
popular, and sound, which broke through the narrow limits of Jewish
nationalism, and sent a fresh current into the heavy atmosphere of
official legality. It was then that the groundwork of later Christian
ethics was laid in the purified morality of the psalms, aphorisms,
and other edificatory writings of a Job, Baruch, Jesus son of Sirach,
&c. It was then that the Jewish Monotheism set itself to extend
its sway beyond the boundaries of its own land and to enter into
competition with the other religions of antiquity, from which it was
to draw back vanquished only before a matured Christianity.
II
THE HELLENISTIC IDEA OF A MEDIATOR (PHILO)
With Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire Palestine also was
drawn within the circle of Hellenistic culture. It was at first a
vassal state of the Egyptian Ptolemies, and consequently at the
commencement of the second century before Christ came under the
overlordship of the Syrian Seleucids. The customs and intellectual life
of Greece forced their way into the quiet isolation of the priest-ruled
Jewish state and could not be expelled again, despite the national
reaction under the Maccabees against foreign influences. Above all,
however, the dispersal of the Jews contributed to bring about a
settlement of opposing views. Since the Exile the Jews had spread
over all the countries of the East Mediterranean. Some had remained
in Babylon, others were permanently settled especially in the ports
as tradesmen, bankers, and merchants. They controlled the entire
money market and trade of the East through their assiduous industry,
mercantile sharpness, their lack of scruples, and the tenacity with
which they held together, supported therein by their worship in common
in the Synagogue. In the atmosphere of Greek philosophy and morality a
still further transformation and purification of Jahwe took place. All
common human and material lineaments were dropped, and he developed
into a spiritual being of perfect goodness, such as Plato had described
the Godhead. Here the Jews found themselves face to face with the same
problem that had long occupied the Greek philosophers. This was the
reconciliation of the supernatural loftiness and aloofness from the
world of their God with the demands of the religious consciousness
that required the immediate presence of Godhead.
Among the ideas which were borrowed by Judaism from the Persian
religion belonged those connected with the mediatory "Word." As
the creative power of the Godhead, the bearer of revelation and
representative of God upon earth, the expression "the word" had already
appeared in aphoristic literature. Under Græco-Egyptian influence
the term "wisdom" (sophia) had become the naturalised expression for
it. "Wisdom" served to describe the activities in regard to man of the
God who held aloof from the world. In this connection it may be noted
that according to Persian ideas "Wisdom" under the name of Spenta
Armaiti was considered as one of the six or seven Amesha Spentas
(Amshaspands), those spirits that stood as a bodyguard closest to
the throne of God and corresponded to the Jewish archangels. She
was considered by the Persians as the daughter or spouse of
Ahuramazda. Already, in the so-called "Wisdom of Solomon," written by
an Alexandrian Jew in the last century before Christ, she was declared
to be a separately existing spirit in close relation to God. Under the
guise of a half-personal, half-material being--a power controlling the
whole of nature--she was described as the principle of the revelation
of God in the creation, maintenance, and ruling of the world, as the
common principle of life from on high and as the intermediary organ
of religious salvation. Just as Plato had sought to overcome the
dualism of the ideal and the material world by the conception of a
"world-soul," so "Wisdom" was intended to serve as an intermediary
between the opposites, the God of the Jews and his creation. These
efforts were continued by the Alexandrian Jew Philo (30 B.C. to 50
A.D.), who tried to bring the Perso-Jewish conception of the "Word"
or "Wisdom" into closer accord with the ideas of Greek philosophy
than the author of the "Book of Wisdom" had already done. Philo, too,
commenced with the opposition between an unknowable, unnameable God,
absolutely raised above the world, and material created existence. He
imagined this opposition bridged over by means of "powers" which,
as relatively self-existing individuals, messengers, servants, and
representatives of God, at one time more closely resembled Persian
angels or Greek Dæmons, at another time the Platonic "Ideas," the
originals and patterns of God in creating. Essentially, however,
they bore the character of the so-called "Fructifying powers,"
those creative forces which infused a soul and design into formless
matter and by means of which the Stoic philosophers sought to explain
existence. As the first of these intermediate forces, or, indeed, as
the essence of them all, Philo considered the "Logos," efficacious
reason or the creative word of God. He called him the "first-born
son of God" or the "second God," the representative, interpreter,
ambassador, Archangel of God, or Prince of Angels. He considered him
as the High Priest, who made intercession with God for the world,
the affairs of which he represented before him as the paraclete, the
advocate and consoler of the world, who was the channel to it of the
divine promises; as the tool with which God had fashioned the world,
the original and ideal of it to which God had given effect in its
creation--that which operated in all things; in a word, as the soul
or spirit of the world, which the Stoics had identified with their
God, but which Philo distinguished from the other-world Divinity and
looked upon as his revelation and manifestation.
In essence only an expression for the sum total of all divine forces
and activities, the Logos of Philo also was sometimes an impersonal
metaphysical principle, simply the efficacy of the Godhead, and
sometimes an independent personality distinct from God. Just as the
Stoics had personified their world-reason in Hermes, the messenger of
the Gods, so the Egyptians had raised Amun Ra's magic word of creation
to a self-existing personal mediatory being in Thoth the guide of
souls; the Babylonians, the word of fate of the great God Marduk in
the shape of Nabu; the Persians, the word of Ahuramazda in Vohu mano
as well as in the Spenta Armaiti, the good thought of the creative
God. And just as according to Persian ideas it was at one time the
divine "son" and mediator "Mithras," the collectivity of all divine
forces, at another the ideal man Saoshyant who appeared as Saviour
and Deliverer of the world, and just as both mingled in one form,
so Philo also at one time described the Word as the collectivity of
all creative ideas, at another only as the unembodied idea of man,
the ideal man, the direct divine image and immaterial pattern of
the material exemplars of humanity, that is effective therein as the
subject of all religious redemption. Indeed, he occasionally identified
him with the tree of life in Paradise, since both were everlasting and
"stood in the middle."
According to Philo, man is unable of his own strength to free himself
from the bonds of earthly existence. All deliverance depends upon the
emancipation of the soul from the body and its sensuous desires. In
conformity with his true spiritual and godlike nature, to become
as perfect as God, is the highest virtue and at the same time true
happiness. This is attained by an insight into the divine reality of
things, by whole-hearted trust in God, by grateful recognition of the
goodness and love bestowed by him, showing itself in piety towards God
as well as in charity and justice towards other men. But in addition
the Logos itself must be in us and cause for us the insight into our
divine nature. The Logos must guide us, come to the aid of our human
weakness with his supernatural strength in the struggles against the
world and sin and raise us up to God. Thus the apotheosis of man is
the goal aimed at in all religious activity. The Logos, however, is
the only means to this end, in so far as we are raised through union
with him in faith and love to our true origin and life's source,
"the vision of God," and thereby have participation in his life.
III
JESUS AS CULT-GOD IN THE CREED OF JEWISH SECTS
All religious spirits of the time longed to secure this happy vision
and communion with God, and to obtain even here on earth a foretaste of
the heavenly life. The Jews sought to attain this end by a painfully
exact observance of the ordinances of their law, but in so doing they
became entangled in a mesh of such minute and tiresome regulations
that the more they applied themselves to the service of the law
the more difficult it appeared. It seemed to be no longer possible
to reconcile the demands of everyday life with one's religious
duties. Some therefore withdrew from the life of the world and in
retirement and quiet endeavoured to devote themselves exclusively
to the "inner life." In Egypt the Therapeutes or Physicians, a
religious association composed of Jews and their proselytes, with their
headquarters in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, sought in this manner,
as Philo informs us in his work "On the Contemplative Life," to give
effect to the claims of religion as expressed by Philo himself. [30]
Their religious observances resembled those of the Orphic-Pythagorean
sects, as in abstinence from flesh and wine, admiration for virginity,
voluntary poverty, religious feasts and community singing, and the
use of white garments.
They made a deep study of the mystical writings of revelation that had
been handed down, and these they used as a guide in the allegorical
explanation of the Mosaic law. They united a contemplative piety with
a common religious observance, and thus sought to strengthen themselves
mutually in the certainty of religious salvation. Beyond the Jordan the
Jewish sect of the Essenes (from the Syrian word chase, plural chasen
or chasaja) had their chief settlement. These called themselves, as is
expressed by their name, the "Pious" or "Godfearing." In their esteem
of temperance, celibacy, and poverty, their reprobation of slavery,
private property, the taking of oaths, and blood-sacrifice, in the
honour they paid the sun as a visible manifestation of the divine
light, they agreed with the Therapeutes. They differed from them,
however, in their monastic organisation and the regular manner in which
the life of the community was divided among different classes, their
strict subordination to superiors, their maintenance of a novitiate of
several years, the secrecy of the traditions of the sect, and their
cultivation of the healing art and magic. The Therapeutes passed
their lives in leisurely contemplation and spiritual exercises; the
Essenes, on the other hand, engaged in the rearing of stock, farming,
and bee-culture, or they pursued a handicraft, and in the country
places or towns of Judæa, where they often dwelt together in houses of
the order, they lived as dwellers in a desert the life of purity and
sanctity. Both sects, again, were alike in expecting an early end of
the world and in seeking to prepare themselves for the reception of the
promises of God by the cultivation of brotherly dispositions amongst
themselves, by justice, good works, and benevolence towards their
fellow-men, finding therein the special occupation of their lives. [31]
Of what nature were the secret traditions upon which these sects
rested? We know from the Jewish historian Josephus that the Essenes
clung to an extreme dualism of soul and body, in which, indeed, they
agreed with the other religious associations of antiquity. Like all
mystical sects, they regarded the body as the grave and prison-house
of the immortal soul, to which it had been banished from an earlier
life in light and blessedness. They also grounded their longing for
deliverance from the world of sense and their strivings towards the
glory of a better life of the soul beyond the grave upon pessimism
in regard to human existence. They even regarded the performance
of secret rites as a necessary condition of redemption. But in the
opinion of the Essenes it was essential above all to know the names of
the angels and dæmons who opened the passage to the different heavens,
disposed one above another. This knowledge was to be revealed to men
by one of the higher gods, a god-redeemer. A conception allied to that
lay at the root of the Book of Wisdom, as well as of Philo's work--the
belief in the magic power of the redemptive word of God, mingled by the
Essenes with many strange Egyptian, Persian, and Babylonian ingredients
and removed from the sphere of philosophic thought to the region
of a rankly luxuriant superstition. Thus the closely related Jewish
Apocalypse had expressly supported the revelation of a secret divine
wisdom. [32] Indeed, we now know that this whole world of thought
belonged to an exceedingly manifold syncretic religious system,
composed of Babylonian, Persian, Jewish, and Greek ingredients,
which ruled the whole of Western Asia in the last centuries before
Christ. Its followers called themselves Adonæi, after the name of its
supposed founder, Ado (? Adonis). It is, however, generally described
as the Mandaic religion, according to another name for its followers,
the so-called Mandæi (Gnostics). [33]
Of the numberless sects into which this religion split only a few names
have come down to us, of which some played a part in the history of the
heresies of early Christianity; for example, the Ophites or Nassenes,
the Ebionites, Perates, Sethianes, Heliognostics, Sampsæes, &c. [34]
We are thus much better acquainted with their fundamental ideas,
which were very fantastic and complicated. They all subscribed to
the belief in the redemption of the soul of man from its grave of
darkness by a mediatory being, originally hidden in God and then
expressly awakened or appointed by him for this purpose. In original
Mandaism he bore the name of Mandâ de hajjê--that is, Gnosis, or "word"
of life. In the form of Hibil-ziwâ, the Babylonian Marduk or Nabu,
he was to descend from heaven with the keys thereof, and by means of
his magic obtain the dominion of the world. He was to conquer those
dæmons that had fallen away from God, introduce the end of the world,
and lead back the souls of light to the highest Godhead.
As the Apocalyptics show, this view had numerous adherents among
the Jews of Palestine also. All those who found no satisfaction
in the literalness of the Pharasaic beliefs and the business-like
superficiality of the official Jewish religion, found edification in
ideas of this sort, which excited the imagination. They dealt with
them as "mysteries," and sought, as may well be from fear of conflicts
with traditional religion, to keep them secret from the public. [35]
Hence it is that we have such an incomplete knowledge of this side
of the religious life of the Jews. At any rate they clothed their
expected Messiah with the attributes of the Mandaic God of Mediation,
and they appear, as is clear from the Apocalypse of Daniel and that
of John, to have taken particular pleasure in the description of the
scene where God calls ("awakes") the Redeemer to his mediatory office
and installs him as Deliverer, Ruler of the World, and Judge of the
living and the dead.
We are accustomed to look upon the Jewish religion as strictly
monotheistic. In truth, it never was, even in the Mosaic times,
until after the return from Exile. And this is clear, in spite of the
trouble which the composers of the so-called historic books of the
Old Testament have taken to work up the traditions in a monotheistic
sense and to obliterate the traces of the early Jewish polytheism,
by transforming the ancient gods into patriarchs, heroes, angels,
and servants of Jahwe. It was not entirely Babylonian, Persian, and
Greek opinions which influenced Judaism in a polytheistic direction;
from the beginning, besides the theory of one God, emphasised
by the priesthood and official world, there existed a belief in
other Gods. This constantly received fresh nourishment from foreign
influences, and it appears to have been chiefly cultivated in the
secret societies. On the descent of the Israelites into Canaan each
tribe brought with it its special God, under whose specific guidance it
believed its deeds were accomplished. By the reforms of the Prophets
these Gods were suppressed; but the higher grew the regard for Jahwe
(apparently the God of the tribe of Judah), and the further he was in
consequence withdrawn from the world to an unapproachable distance,
the more strongly the remembrance of the ancient Gods again arose and
assumed the form of the recognition of divine intermediate beings, the
so-called "Sons of God." In these the longing for the direct presence
and visible representation of God sought expression. Such appears to
have been the "Presence," or "Angel of God," with whom Jacob wrestled
in the desert, [36] who led the Israelites out of Egypt and went before
them as a pillar of flame, [37] who fought against their enemies,
drove the Canaanites from their homes, [38] held intercourse with the
prophets Elijah and Ezekiel, [39] and stood by the people of Jahwe in
every difficulty. [40] He is also called the "King" (Melech), or "Son"
of Jahwe, [41] and thus exactly resembles the Babylonian Marduk, the
Persian Mithras, the Phoenician Hercules or Moloch, "the first-born
son" of God (Protogonos), who also appeared among the Orphics under
the name of Phanes (i.e., Countenance), who wrestles with Zeus at
Olympia as Jacob with Jahwe, and, like him, dislocates his hip in
the struggle with Hippokoon. In the rabbinic theology he is compared
with the mystic Metatron, a being related to the Logos, "The Prince of
the Presence," "Leader of Angels," "Lord of Lords," "King of Kings,"
"Commencement of the Way of God." He was also called the "Protector,"
"Sentinel," and "Advocate" of Israel, who lays petitions before God,
and "in whom is the name of the Lord." [42] Thus he is identical with
that Angel promised in the second Book of Moses, in whom also is the
name of Jahwe, who was to lead Israel to victory over the Amorites,
Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites. [43] But
he, again, is no other than Joshua, who was said to have overthrown
these nations with Jahwe's aid. [44] But Joshua himself is apparently
an ancient Ephraimitic God of the Sun and Fruitfulness, who stood
in close relation to the Feast of the Pasch and to the custom of
circumcision. [45]
Now, many signs speak in favour of the fact that Joshua or Jesus was
the name under which the expected Messiah was honoured in certain
Jewish sects. In Zech. iii. Joshua, who, according to Ezra iii. 2,
led back the Jews into their old homes after the Babylonian captivity,
just as the older Joshua brought back the Israelites into Canaan, the
promised land of their fathers, was invested as High Priest by the
"Angel of the Lord," and promised the continuance of his priesthood
so long as he walked in the ways of the Lord. In Zech. vi. 9-15
the High Priest Joshua is crowned as Messiah and brought into
connection with the "branch" under which the glory of God's kingdom
will come to pass. It is true that in this passage under the title
of Messiah Zerubbabel, the leader of the Jews of the race of David,
was originally understood. In him the prophet thought he could
discern that "branch" by which, in accordance with Isaiah xi. 1,
the House of David was again to obtain the rule. Since, however,
the great hopes set upon Zerubbabel as Messiah were not fulfilled,
a correction was made (and this before the Bible was translated
into Greek) in the text of the prophet, as follows: The name of
Zerubbabel was struck out, the plural changed into the singular,
so that Joshua alone was represented as having been crowned, the
promises regarding the Messiah accordingly also passing over to
him (Stade, "Gesch. des Volkes Israel," 1888, ii. 126, note. Hühn,
"Die messianischen Weissagungen des israel. Volkes," 1889, 62 et sq.).
Jesus was a name given, as will be still more clearly shown, not
only to the High Priest of Zechariah and to the successor of Moses,
both of whom were said to have led Israel back into its ancient
home, both having a decidedly Messianic character. The name in
ancient times also belonged to the Healthbringer and Patron of the
Physician--namely, Jasios or Jason, the pupil of Chiron skilled in
healing [46]--who in general shows a remarkable resemblance to the
Christian Redeemer. Consider also the significant fact that three times
at decisive turning-points in the history of the Israelites a Joshua
appears who leads his people into their promised home, into Canaan
and Jerusalem, into the Kingdom of God--the "New Jerusalem." Now, as
Epiphanius remarks in his "History of the Heretics," Jesus bears in
the Hebrew language the same meaning as curator, therapeutes--that
is, physician and curer. But the Therapeutes and Essenes regarded
themselves as physicians, and, above all, physicians of the soul. It
is accordingly by no means improbable that they too honoured the God
of their sect under this name. [47] We, moreover, read in a Parisian
magic-papyrus recently found and published by Wessely (line 3119
et sq.): "I exort thee by Jesus the God of the Hebrews." The words
are found in an ostensibly "Hebrew Logos" of that papyrus, the tone
of which is quite ancient, moreover shows no trace of Christian
influence, and is ascribed by the transcriber to "the Pure," under
which name, according to Dieterich, the Essenes or Therapeutes are to
be understood. [48] The Jessaes or Jessenes (Jessaioi) named themselves
after Jesus, or after "the branch from the root of Jesse." [49] They
were closely connected on one side with the Essenes and on the other
side with the Jewish sect of the Nazarenes or Nazoraes (Nazoraiori),
if they were not absolutely identical. These were, as Epiphanius shows,
in existence long before Christ, and had no knowledge of him. [50]
They were, however, called Nazoraes (Nazarenes (Nazarenos) is only
a linguistic variation of it, cf. Essaes and Essenes) because they
honoured the Mediator God, the divine "son," as a protector and
guardian (Syrian, Nasaryá; Hebrew, Ha-nôsrî) (cf. "the Protector of
Israel," also the fact that Mithras was honoured as "Protector of
the World"). According to Acts xxiv. 5 the first followers of Jesus
were also called Nazoraes or Nazarenes. The expressions "Jesus"
and "Nazorean" were therefore originally of almost like meaning,
and by the addition of "the Nazorean" or "Nazarene" Jesus is not
characterised as the man of Nazareth, as the Evangelists represent it,
but as the Healer and Deliverer.
Whether there was a place called Nazareth in pre-Christian days must
be considered as at least very doubtful. Such a place is not mentioned
either in the Old Testament or in the Talmud, which, however, mentions
more than sixty Galilean towns; nor, again, by the Jewish historian
Josephus, nor in the Apocrypha. Cheyne believes himself justified by
this in the conclusion that Nazareth in the New Testament is a pure
geographical fiction. [51]
It is only in the later phases of the tradition that the name appears
in the New Testament as a place-name. In the earlier ones the Nazorean
(Nazarene) only signifies the follower of a particular sect, or is
a surname of Jesus which characterises the significance attached to
him in the thoughts of his followers. "The Nazorean" appears here
only as an integral part of the whole name of Jesus, as Zeus Xenios,
Hermes Psychopompos, Apollo Pythios, &c., &c. It is applied to Jesus
only as Guardian of the world, Protector and Deliverer of Men from the
power of sin and Dæmons, but without any reference to a quite obscure
and entirely unknown village named Nazareth, which is mentioned in
documents beyond any dispute, only from the fourth century on (see
Eusebius, Jerome, and Epiphanius). Or where else is a sect named after
the birthplace of its founder? [52] Moreover, even in the Gospels it
is not Nazareth but Capernaum which is described as his city; while
Nazareth does not play any part at all in the life of Jesus. For the
passages Matt. xiii. 53-58 and Mark vi. 1-6, according to which he
had no success with his miracles in his "patris" on account of the
unbelief of the people, leave the question open whether under the
name of "patris" one is to understand his father-city Nazareth or
somewhere else. The corresponding passage, Luke iv. 16-31, mentions
Nazareth, it is true, in connection with this incident; but it is
in discrepancy with the older versions of Matthew and Mark, and it
appears otherwise recognisable as a later redaction of the passages
in the other Gospels. [53]
Now the expression nazar or netzer in the sense of twig (sprout)
is found not only in the well-known passage Isaiah xi. 1, where the
Messiah is described as the "rod from the tree of Jesse" or "the twig
from its root." In fine, was not the twig looked upon as a symbol
of the Redeemer in his character of a God of vegetation and life, as
was the case in the worship of Mithras, of Men, a god of Asia Minor,
of Attis, Apollo, [54] &c., and did not this idea also make itself
felt in the name of the Nazareans? "He shall be called a Nazarene,"
[55] accordingly, does not signify that he was to be born in the small
village of Nazareth, which probably did not exist in the time of Jesus,
but that he is the promised netzer or Zemah, who makes all new, and
restores the time when "one loads the other beneath vine and fig-tree,"
[56] and wonderful increase will appear. [57] Again, the possibility
is not excluded of the name of the Nazareans having been confused with
that of the Nasiraes (Nazirites), those "holy" or "dedicated" ones,
who were a survival in Judea from the times when the Israelite tribes
were nomads. These sought to express their opposition to the higher
civilisation of the conquered land by patriarchal simplicity and purity
of life, abstinence from the use of oil, wine, and the shears, &c. [58]
According to this, Jesus (Joshua) was originally a divinity, a
mediator, and God of healing of those pre-Christian Jewish sectaries,
with reference to whom we are obliged to describe the Judaism of the
time--as regards certain of its tendencies, that is--as a syncretic
religion. [59] "The Revelation of John" also appears to be a Christian
redaction of an original Jewish work which in all likelihood belonged
to a pre-Christian cult of Jesus. The God Jesus which appears in it has
nothing to do with the Christian Jesus. Moreover, its whole range of
ideas is so foreign even to ancient Judaism that it can be explained
only by the influence of heathen religions upon the Jewish. [60]
It is exactly the same with the so-called "Doctrine of the Twelve
Apostles." This too displays a Jewish foundation, and speaks of a
Jesus in the context of the words of the supper, who is in no wise
the same as the Christian Redeemer. [61] It is comprehensible that
the later Christians did all they could in order to draw the veil of
forgetfulness over these things. Nevertheless Smith has succeeded
in his book, "The Pre-Christian Jesus," in showing clear evidences
even in the New Testament of a cult of an old God Jesus. Among other
things the phrase "ta peri tou Iesou" ("the things concerning
Jesus") [62] which according to all appearance has no reference to
the history of Jesus, but only means the doctrines concerning him,
and in any case could originally only have had this meaning, involves
a pre-Christian form of belief in a Jesus. But this point is above all
supported by the circumstance that even at the earliest commencement
of the Christian propaganda we meet with the name of Jesus used in
such a manner as to point to a long history of that name. For it
is employed from the beginning in the driving out of evil spirits,
a fact that would be quite incomprehensible if its bearer had been
merely a man. Now we know from the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles
that it was not only the disciples of the Jesus of the Gospels, but
also others even in his lifetime (i.e., even in the first commencement
of the Christian propaganda), healed diseases, and drove out evil
spirits in the name of Jesus. From this it is to be concluded that
the magic of names was associated from of old with the conception
of a divine healer and protector, and that Jesus, like Marduk, was
a name for this God of Healing. [63] Judging by this the Persian,
but above all the Babylonian, religion must have influenced the views
of the above-named sects. For the superstition regarding names, the
belief in the magic power attributed to the name of a divine being,
as well as the belief in Star Gods and Astral mythology, which is
a characteristic of Mandaism, all have Babylon as their home. The
Essenes also appear to have exercised the magical and healing art of
which they boasted in the form of wonder-working and the driving out
of evil spirits by a solemn invocation of the name of their God of
Healing. [64]
IV
THE SUFFERINGS OF THE MESSIAH
In the most different religions the belief in a divine Saviour and
Redeemer is found bound up with the conception of a suffering and dying
God, and this idea of a suffering and dying Messiah was by no means
unknown to the Jews. It may be of no importance that in the Apocalypse
of Esdras [65] the death of Christ is spoken of, since in the opinion
of many this work only appeared in the first century after Christ;
but Deutero-Isaiah too, during the Exile, describes the chosen one
and messenger of God as the "suffering servant of God," as one who
had already appeared, although he had remained unknown and despised,
had died shamefully and been buried, but as one also who would rise up
again in order to fulfil the splendour of the divine promise. [66] This
brings to mind the suffering, death, and resurrection of the Gods of
Babylon and of the whole of Nearer Asia; for example, Tammuz, Mithras,
Attis, Melkart, and Adonis, Dionysus, the Cretan Zeus, and the Egyptian
Osiris. The prophet Zechariah, moreover, speaks of the secret murder of
a God over which the inhabitants of Jerusalem would raise their lament,
"as in the case of Hadad-rimmon (Rammân) in the valley of Megiddon,"
that is, as at the death of Adonis, one of the chief figures among
the Gods believed in by the Syrians. [67] Ezekiel also describes the
women of Jerusalem, sitting before the north gate of the city and
weeping over Tammuz. [68] The ancient Israelites, too, were already
well acquainted with the suffering and dying Gods of the neighbouring
peoples. Now, indeed, it is customary for Isaiah's "servant of God"
to be held to refer to the present sufferings and future glory of
the Jewish people, and there is no doubt that the prophet understood
the image in that sense. At the same time Gunkel rightly maintains
that in the passage of Isaiah referred to, the figure of a God who
dies and rises again stands in the background, and the reference to
Israel signifies nothing more than a new symbolical explanation of
the actual fate of a God. [69]
Every year the forces of nature die away to reawaken to a new life only
after a long period. The minds of all peoples used to be deeply moved
by this occurrence--the death whether of nature as a whole beneath
the influence of the cold of winter, or of vegetable growth under the
parching rays of the summer sun. Men looked upon it as the fate of a
fair young God whose death they deeply lamented and whose rebirth or
resurrection they greeted with unrestrained rejoicing. On this account
from earliest antiquity there was bound up with the celebration
of this God an imitative mystery under the form of a ritualistic
representation of his death and resurrection. In the primitive stages
of worship, when the boundaries between spirit and nature remained
almost entirely indistinct, and man still felt himself inwardly in a
sympathetic correspondence with surrounding nature, it was believed
that one could even exercise an influence upon nature or help it in
its interchange between life and death, and turn the course of events
to one's own interest. For this purpose man was obliged to imitate
it. "Nowhere," says Frazer, to whom we are indebted for a searching
inquiry into all ideas and ritualistic customs in this connection,
"were these efforts more strictly and systematically carried out than
in Western Asia. As far as names go they differed in different places,
in essence they were everywhere alike. A man, whom the unrestrained
phantasy of his adorers clothed with the garments and attributes
of a God, used to give his life for the life of the world. After he
had poured from his own body into the stagnating veins of nature a
fresh stream of vital energy, he was himself delivered over to death
before his own sinking strength should have brought about a general
ruin of the forces of nature, and his place was then taken by another,
who, like all his forerunners, played the ever-recurring drama of the
divine resurrection and death." [70] Even in historic times this was
frequently carried out with living persons. These had formerly been
the kings of the country or the priests of the God in question, but
their place was now taken by criminals. In other cases the sacrifice
of the deified man took place only symbolically, as with the Egyptian
Osiris, the Persian Mithras, the Phrygian Attis, the Syrian Adonis,
and the Tarsic (Cilician) Sandan (Sandes). In these cases a picture
of the God, an effigy, or a sacred tree-trunk took the place of the
"God man." Sufficient signs, however, still show that in such cases
it was only a question of a substitute under milder forms of ritual
for the former human victim. Thus, for example, the name of the High
Priest of Attis, being also Attis, that is, "father," the sacrificial
self-inflicted wound on the occasion of the great feast of the God
(March 22nd to 27th), and the sprinkling with his blood of the picture
of the God that then took place, makes us recognise still more plainly
a later softening of an earlier custom of self-immolation. [71] With
the idea of revivifying dying nature by the sacrifice of a man was
associated that of the "scapegoat." The victim did not only represent
to the people their God, but at the same time stood for the people
before God and had to expiate by his death the misdeeds committed by
them during the year. [72] As regards the manner of death, however,
this varied in different places between death by his own sword or
that of the priest, by the pyre or the gibbet (gallows).
In this way we understand the 53rd chapter of Isaiah: "Surely he
hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement
of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we
like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed,
yet he humbled himself, and opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led
to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb; yea,
he opened not his mouth. He was cut off out of the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And they made
his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death; although
he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. When
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed,
he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper
in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul [? sufferings],
and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant
justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I
divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil
with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was
numbered with the transgressors; yet he bare the sin of many, and made
intercession for the transgressors." Here we obviously have to do with
a man who dies as an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of his people,
and by his death benefiting the lives of the others is on that account
raised to be a God. Indeed, the picture of the just man suffering, all
innocent as he is, itself varies between a human and a divine being.
And now let us enter into the condition of the soul of such an unhappy
one, who as "God man" suffers death upon the gibbet, and we understand
the words of the 22nd Psalm: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my
roaring? O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou answereth not;
and in the night season, and am not silent. But thou art holy, O thou
that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee;
they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and
were delivered; they trusted in Thee, and were not ashamed. But I am
a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All
they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake
the lip, saying, Commit thyself unto the Lord, let him deliver him:
let him deliver him, seeing he delighteth in him.... Many bulls have
compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gape
upon me with their mouth, as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am
poured out like water. And all my bones are out of joint: my heart
is like wax: it is melted in the midst of my bowels.... They pierced
my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones. They look and stare
upon me: they part my garments among them, and upon my vesture do
they cast lots. But be not thou far off, O Lord: O Thou, my succour,
haste Thee to help me.... Save me from the lion's mouth, yea, from
the horns of the wild oxen...."
When the poet of the psalms wished to describe helplessness in its
direst extremity, before his eyes there came the picture of a man, who,
hanging upon the gibbet, calls upon God's aid, while round about him
the people gloat over his sufferings, which are to save them; and the
attendants who had taken part in the sacrifice divide among themselves
the costly garments with which the God-king had been adorned.
The employment of such a picture presupposes that the occurrence
depicted was not unknown to the poet and his public, whether it
came before their eyes from acquaintance with the religious ideas
of their neighbours or because they were accustomed to see it in
their own native usages. As a matter of fact in ancient Israel human
sacrifices were by no means unusual. This appears from numberless
passages of the Old Testament, and has been already exhaustively set
forth by Ghillany in his book "Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebräer"
(1842), and by Daumer in his "Der Feuer- und Molochdienst der alten
Hebräer." Thus we read in 2 Sam. xxi. 6-9 of the seven sons of the
House of Saul, who were delivered over by David to the Gibeonites,
who hung them on the mountain before the Lord. Thus was God appeased
towards the land. [73] In Numb. xxv. 4 Jahwe bade Moses hang the chiefs
of the people "to the Lord before the sun, in order that the bitter
wrath of the Lord might be turned from Israel." And according to the
Book of Joshua this latter dedicated the inhabitants of the city of Ain
to the Lord, and after the capture of the city hung their king upon
a tree, [74] while in the tenth chapter (15-26) he even hangs five
kings at one time. Indeed, it appears that human sacrifice formed a
regular part of the Jewish religion in the period before the Exile;
which indeed was but to be expected, considering the relationship
between Jahwe and the Phoenician Baal. Jahwe himself was, moreover,
originally only another form of the old Semitic Fire- and Sun-God;
the God-king (Moloch or Melech), who was honoured under the image of
a Bull, was represented at this time as a "smoking furnace" [75] and
was gratified and propitiated by human sacrifices. [76] Even during
the Babylonian captivity, despite the voices raised against it by
some prophets in the last years of the Jewish state, sacrifices of
this kind were offered by the Jews; until they were suppressed under
the rule of the Persians, and in the new Jewish state were expressly
forbidden. But even then they continued in secret and could easily be
revived at any time, so soon as the excitement of the popular mind in
some time of great need seemed to demand an extraordinary victim. [77]
Now the putting to death of a man in the rôle of a divine ruler was
in ancient times very often connected with the celebration of the
new year. This is brought to our mind even at the present day by the
German and Slav custom of the "bearing out" of death at the beginning
of spring, when a man or an image of straw symbolising the old year or
winter, is taken round amidst lively jesting and is finally thrown into
the water or ceremonially burnt, while the "Lord of May," crowned with
flowers, makes his entrance. Again, the Roman Saturnalia, celebrated
in December, during which a mock king wielded his sceptre over a world
of joy and licence and unbounded folly, and all relationships were
topsy-turvy, the masters playing the part of slaves and vice-versâ,
in the most ancient times used to be held in March as a festival of
spring. And in this case, too, the king of the festival had to pay
for his short reign with his life. In fact, the Acts of St. Dasius,
published by Cumont, show that the bloody custom was still observed
by the Roman soldiers on the frontiers of the Empire in the year 303
A.D. [78]
In Babylon the Feast of the Sakæes corresponded to the Roman
Saturnalia. It was ostensibly a memorial of the inroad of the Scythian
Sakes into Nearer Asia, and according to Frazer was identical with the
very ancient new year's festival of the Babylonians, the Zakmuk. This
too was associated with a reversal of all usual relationships. A
mock king, a criminal condemned to death, was here also the central
figure--an unhappy being, to whom for a few days was accorded absolute
freedom and every kind of pleasure, even to the using of the royal
harem, until on the last day he was divested of his borrowed dignity,
stripped naked, scourged, and then burnt. [79] The Jews gained a
knowledge of this feast during the Babylonian captivity, borrowed
it from their oppressors, and celebrated it shortly before their
Pasch under the name of the Feast of Purim, ostensibly, as the Book
of Esther is at pains to point out, as a memorial of a great danger
from which in Persia during the reign of Ahasuerus (Xerxes) they
were saved by the craft of Esther and her uncle Mordecai. Jensen,
however, has pointed out in the Vienna Zeitschrift für die Kunde des
Morgenlandes [80] that the basis of the narrative of Esther is an
opposition between the chief Gods of Babylon and those of hostile
Elam. According to his view under the names of Esther and Mordecai
are hidden the names of Istar, the Babylonian Goddess of fertility,
and Marduk, her "son" and "beloved." At Babylon during the Feast
of the Sakæes, under the names of the Elamite Gods Vashti and Haman
(Humman), they were put out of the way as representatives of the old
or wintry part of the year in order that they might rise up again
under their real names and bring into the new year or the summer half
of the year. [81] Thus the Babylonian king of the Sakæes also played
the part of a God and suffered death as such upon the pyre. Now we
have grounds for assuming that the later Jewish custom at the Feast
of Purim of hanging upon a gibbet and burning a picture or effigy
representing the evil Haman, originally consisted, as at Babylon,
in the putting to death of a real man, some criminal condemned to
death. Here, too, then was seen not only a representative of Haman,
but one also of Mordecai, a representative of the old as well as of
the new year, who in essence was one and the same being. While the
former was put to death at the Purim feast, the latter, a criminal
chosen by lot, was given his freedom on this occasion, clothed with
the royal insignia of the dead man and honoured as the representative
of Mordecai rewarded by Ahasuerus for his services.
"Mordecai," it is said in the Book of Esther, "went out from the
king in royal attire, gold and white, with a great crown of gold, and
covered with a robe of linen and purple. And the town of Susa rejoiced
and was merry." [82] Frazer has discovered that in this description we
have before us the picture of an old Babylonian king of the Sakæes,
who represented Marduk, as he entered the chief town of the country
side, and thus introduced the new year. At the same time it appears
that in reality the procession of the mock king was less serious
and impressive than the author of the Book of Esther would out of
national vanity make us believe. Thus Lagarde has drawn attention to
an old Persian custom which used to be observed every year at the
beginning of spring in the early days of March, which is known as
"the Ride of the Beardless One." [83] On this occasion a beardless
and, when possible, one-eyed yokel, naked, and accompanied by a
royal body-guard and a troop of outriders, was conducted in solemn
pomp through the city seated upon an ass, amidst the acclamations of
the crowd, who bore branches of palm and cheered the mock king. He
had the right to collect contributions from the rich people and
shopkeepers along the route which he followed. Part of these went
into the coffers of the king, part were assigned to the collector,
and he could without more ado appropriate the property of another
in case the latter refused his demands. He had, however, to finish
his progress and disappear within a strictly limited time, for in
default of this he exposed himself to the danger of being seized by
the crowd and mercilessly cudgelled to death. People hoped that from
this procession of "the Beardless One" an early end of winter and a
good year would result. From this it appears that here too we have
to do with one of those innumerable and multiform spring customs,
which at all times and among the most diverse nations served to
hasten the approach of the better season. The Persian "Beardless One"
corresponded with the Babylonian king of the Sakæes, and appears to
have represented the departing winter. Frazer concludes from this
that the criminal also who played the part of the Jewish "Mordecai"
with similar pomp rode through the city like "the Beardless One," and
had to purchase his freedom with the amusement which he afforded the
people. In this connection he recalls a statement of Philo according
to which, on the occasion of the entry of the Jewish King Agrippa into
Alexandria, a half-crazy street sweeper was solemnly chosen by the
rabble to be king. After the manner of "the Beardless One," covered
with a robe and bearing a crown of paper upon his head and a stick
in his hand for a sceptre, he was treated by a troop of merry-makers
as a real king. [84] Philo calls the poor wretch Karabas. This is
probably only a corruption of the Hebrew name Barabbas, which means
"Son of the Father." It was accordingly not the name of an individual,
but the regular appellation of whoever had at the Purim feast to
play the part of Mordecai, the Babylonian Marduk, that is, the new
year. This is in accordance with the original divine character of
the Jewish mock king. For as "sons" of the divine father all the
Gods of vegetation and fertility of Nearer Asia suffered death, and
the human representatives of these gods had to give their lives for
the welfare of their people and the renewed growth of nature. [85]
It thus appears that a kind of commingling of the Babylonian Feast of
the Sakæes and the Persian feast of "the Beardless One" took place
among the Jews, owing to their sojourn in Babylon under Persian
overlordship. The released criminal made his procession as Marduk
(Mordecai) the representative of the new life rising from the dead,
but it was made in the ridiculous rôle of the Persian "Beardless
One"--that is, the representative of the old year--while this latter
was likewise represented by another criminal, who, as Haman, had to
suffer death upon the gallows. In their account of the last events of
the life of the Messiah, Jesus, the custom at the Jewish Purim feast,
already referred to, passed through the minds of the Evangelists. They
described Jesus as the Haman, Barabbas as the Mordecai of the year,
and in so doing, on account of the symbol of the lamb of sacrifice,
they merged the Purim feast in the feast of Easter, celebrated a little
later. They, however, transferred the festive entry into Jerusalem of
"the Beardless One," his hostile measures against the shopkeepers
and money-changers, and his being crowned in mockery as "King of
the Jews," from Mordecai-Barabbas to Haman-Jesus, thus anticipating
symbolically the occurrences which should only have been completed
on the resurrection of the Marduk of the new year. [86] According
to an old reading of Math. xxvii. 18 et seq., which, however, has
disappeared from our texts since Origen, Barabbas, the criminal set
against the Saviour, is called "Jesus Barabbas"--that is, "Jesus,
the son of the Father." [87] May an indication of the true state
of the facts not lie herein, and may the figure of Jesus Barabbas,
the God of the Year, corresponding to both halves of the year, that
of the sun's course upwards and downwards, not have separated into
two distinct personalities on the occasion of the new year's feast?
The Jewish Pasch was a feast of spring and the new year, on the
occasion of which the firstfruits of the harvest and the first-born of
men and beasts were offered to the God of sun and sky. Originally this
was also associated with human sacrifices. Here too such a sacrifice
passed, as was universal in antiquity, for a means of expiation,
atoning for the sins of the past year and ensuring the favour of Jahwe
for the new year. [88] "As representing all the souls of the first-born
are given to God; they are the means of union between Jahwe and his
people; the latter can only remain for ever Jahwe's own provided a new
generation always offers its first-born in sacrifice to God. This was
the chief dogma of ancient Judaism; all the hopes of the people were
fixed thereon; the most far-reaching promises were grounded upon the
readiness to sacrifice the first-born." [89] The more valuable such
a victim was, the higher the rank which he bore in life, so much the
more pleasing was his death to God. On this account they were "kings"
who, according to the Books of Joshua and Samuel, were "consecrated"
to the Lord. Indeed, in the case of the seven sons of the house of Saul
whom David caused to be hung, the connection between their death and
the Pasch is perfectly clear, when it is said that they died "before
the Lord" at the time of the barley harvest (i.e., of the Feast of the
Pasch). [90] Thus there could be no more efficacious sacrifice than
when a king or ruler offered his first-born. It was on this account
that, as Justin informs us, [91] the banished Carthaginian general
Maleus caused his son Cartalo, decked out as a king and priest, to be
hung in sight of Carthage while it was being besieged by him, thereby
casting down the besiegers so much that he captured the city after
a few days. It was on this account that the Carthaginian Hamilcar at
the siege of Agrigentum (407 B.C.) sacrificed his own son, and that
the Israelites relinquished the conquest of Moab, when the king of
this country offered his first-born to the Gods. [92] Here, too, the
human victim seems to have been only the representative of a divine
one, as when, for example, the Phoenicians in Tyre until the time of
the siege of that city by Alexander sacrificed each year, according
to Pliny, a boy to Kronos, i.e., Melkart or Moloch (king). [93] This
Tyrian Melkart, however, is the same as he to whom, as Porphyry states,
a criminal was annually sacrificed at Rhodes. According to Philo of
Byblos the God was called "Israel" among the Phoenicians, and on the
occasion of a great pestilence, in order to check the mortality, he
is said to have sacrificed his first-born son Jehud (Judah), i.e.,
"the Only one," having first decked him out in regal attire. [94]
Thus Abraham also sacrificed his first-born to Jahwe. Abraham
(the "great father") is, however, only another name for Israel,
"the mighty God." This was the earliest designation of the God of
the Hebrews, until it was displaced by the name Jahwe, being only
employed henceforth as the name of the people belonging to him. The
name of his son Isaac (Jishâk) marks the latter out as "the smiling
one." This however, does not refer, as Goldzither [95] thinks, to
the smiling day or the morning light, but to the facial contortions
of the victim called forth by the pains he endured from the flames
in the embrace of the glowing oven. These contortions were anciently
called "sardonic laughter," on account of the sacrifices to Moloch
in Crete and Sardinia. [96] When, as civilisation increased, human
sacrifices were done away with in Israel, and with the development
of monotheism the ancient Gods were transformed into men, the story
of Genesis xxii. came into existence with the object of justifying
"historically" the change from human to animal victims. The ancient
custom according to which amongst many peoples of antiquity, kings,
the sons of kings, and priests were not allowed to die a natural
death, but, after the expiration of a certain time usually fixed
by an oracle, had to suffer death as a sacrificial victim for the
good of their people, must accordingly have been in force originally
in Israel also. Thus did Moses and Aaron also offer themselves for
their people in their capacity of leader and high priest. [97] But
since both, and especially Moses, passed as types of the Messiah, the
opinion grew up quite naturally that the expected great and mighty
leader and high priest of Israel, in whom Moses should live again,
[98] had to suffer the holy death of Moses and Aaron as sacrificial
victims. [99] The view that the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah
was unknown to the Jews cannot accordingly be maintained. Indeed,
in Daniel ix. 26 mention is made of a dying Christ. We saw above
that among the Jews of the post-exilic period the thought of the
Messiah was associated with the personality of Cyrus. Now of Cyrus
the story goes that this mighty Persian king suffered death upon
the gibbet by the order of the Scythian queen Tomyris. [100] But in
Justin the Jew Trypho asserts that the Messiah will suffer and die
a death of violence. [101] Indeed, what is more, the Talmud looks
upon the death of the Messiah (with reference to Isaiah liii.) as
an expiatory death for the sins of his people. From this it appears
"that in the second century after Christ, people were, at any rate
in certain circles of Judaism, familiar with the idea of a suffering
Messiah, suffering too as an expiation for human sins." [102]
The Rabbinists separate more accurately two conceptions of the
Messiah. According to one, in the character of a descendant of
David and a great and divine hero he was to release the Jews from
servitude, found the promised world-wide empire, and sit in judgment
over men. This is the Jewish conception of the Messiah, of which
King David was the ideal. [103] According to the other he was to
assemble the ten tribes in Galilee and lead them against Jerusalem,
only to be overthrown, however, in the battle against Gog and Magog
under the leadership of Armillus on account of Jeroboam's sin--that
is, on account of the secession of the Israelites from the Jews. The
Talmud describes the last-mentioned Messiah, in distinction from the
first, as the son of Joseph or Ephraim. This is done with reference
to the fact that the kingdom of Israel included above all the tribes
of Ephraim and Manasseh, and that these traced back their origin
to the mythical Joseph. He is thus the Messiah of the Israelites
who had separated from the Jews, and especially, as it appears,
of the Samaritans. This Messiah, "the son of Joseph," it is said,
"will offer himself in sacrifice and pour forth his soul in death,
and his blood will atone for the people of God." He himself will
go to heaven. Then, however, the other Messiah, "the son of David,"
the Messiah of the Jews in a narrower sense, will come and fulfil the
promises made to them, in which connection Zech. xii. 10 sq. and xiv. 3
sq. seem to have influenced this whole doctrine. [104] According to
Dalman, [105] the figure of the Messiah ben Joseph first appeared
in the second or third century after Christ. Bousset too appears
to consider it a "later" tradition, although he cannot deny that the
Jewish Apocalypses of the end of the first thousand years after Christ,
which are the first to make extensive mention of the matter, may have
contained "very ancient" traditions. According to Persian beliefs,
too, Mithras was the suffering Redeemer and mediator between God and
the world, while Saoshyant, on the other hand, was the judge of the
world who would appear at the end of all time and obtain the victory
over Ariman (Armillus). In the same way the Greek myth distinguished
from the older Dionysus, Zagreus, the son of Persephone, who died a
cruel death at the hands of the Titans, a younger God of the same name,
son of Zeus and Semele, who was to deliver the world from the shackles
of darkness. Precisely the same relationship exists between Prometheus,
the suffering, and Heracles, the triumphant deliverer of the world. We
thus obviously have to do here with a very old and wide-spread myth,
and it is scarcely necessary to point out how closely the two figures
of the Samaritan and Jewish Messiahs correspond to the Haman and
Mardachai of the Jewish Purim feast, in order to prove the extreme
antiquity of this whole conception. The Gospel united into one the
two figures of the Messiah, which had been originally separate. From
the Messiah ben Joseph it made the human Messiah, born in Galilee,
and setting out from there with his followers for Jerusalem, there to
succumb to his adversaries. On the other hand, from the Messiah ben
David it made the Messiah of return and resurrection. At the same time
it elevated and deepened the whole idea of the Messiah in the highest
degree by commingling the conception of the self-sacrificing Messiah
with that of the Paschal victim, and this again with that of the God
who offers his own son in sacrifice. Along with the Jews it looked
upon Jesus as the "son" of King David, at the same time, however,
preserving a remembrance of the Israelite Messiah in that it also gave
him Joseph as father; and while it said with respect to the first idea
that he was born at Bethlehem, the city of David, it assigned him in
connection with the latter Nazareth of Galilee as his birthplace,
and invented the abstruse story of the journey of his parents to
Bethlehem in order to be perfectly impartial towards both views.
And now, who is this Joseph, as son of whom the Messiah was to be
a suffering and dying creature like any ordinary man? Winckler has
pointed out in his "Geschichte Israels" that under the figure of
the Joseph of the Old Testament, just as under that of Joshua, an
ancient Ephraimitic tribal God is concealed. Joseph is, as Winckler
expresses it, "the heroic offspring of Baal of Garizim, an offshoot
of the Sun-God, to whom at the same time characteristics of Tammuz,
the God of the Spring Sun, are transferred." [106] Just as Tammuz had
to descend into the under-world, so was Joseph cast into the well,
in which, according to the "Testament of the twelve Patriarchs,"
[107] he spent three months and five days. This betokens the winter
months and five additional days during which the sun remains in the
under-world. And again he is cast into prison; and just as Tammuz,
after his return from the under-world, brings a new spring to the
earth, so does Joseph, after his release from confinement, introduce
a season of peace and happiness for Egypt. [108] On this account he
was called in Egypt Psontomphanech, that is, Deliverer of the World,
in view of his divine nature, and later passed among the Jews also as
a prototype of the Messiah. Indeed, it appears that the Evangelists
themselves regarded him in such a light, for the story of the two
fellow-prisoners of Joseph, the baker and cupbearer of Pharaoh, one
of whom, as Joseph foretold, was hanged, [109] while the other was
again received into favour by the king, was transformed by them into
the story of the two robbers who were executed at the same time as
Jesus, one of whom mocked the Saviour while the other besought him
to remember him when he entered into his heavenly kingdom. [110]
But the Ephraimitic Joshua too must have been a kind of Tammuz
or Adonis. His name (Joshua, Syrian, Jeshu) characterises him as
saviour and deliverer. As such he also appears in the Old Testament,
finally leading the people of Israel into the promised land after
long privations and sufferings. According to the Jewish Calendar
the commencement of his activity was upon the tenth of Nisan,
on which the Paschal lamb was chosen, and it ended with the Feast
of the Pasch. Moses introduced the custom of circumcision and the
redemption of the first-born male, and Joshua was supposed to have
revived it. [111] At the same time he is said to have replaced the
child victims, which it had been customary to offer to Jahwe in early
days, by the offering of the foreskin of the male and thereby to have
established a more humane form of sacrificial worship. This brings to
our mind the substitution of an animal victim for a human one in the
story of Isaac (Jishâks). It also brings to mind Jesus who offered his
own body in sacrifice at the Pasch as a substitute for the numberless
bloody sacrifices of expiation of prior generations. Again, according
to an ancient Arabian tradition, the mother of Joshua was called Mirzam
(Mariám, Maria), as the mother of Jesus was, while the mother of Adonis
bore the similar sounding name of Myrrha, which also expressed the
mourning of the women at the lament for Adonis [112] and characterised
the mother of the Redeemer God as "the mother of sorrow." [113]
But what is above all decisive is that the son of the "Ploughman"
Jephunneh, Caleb (i.e., the Dog), stands by Joshua's side as a hero of
equal rank. His name points in the same way to the time of the summer
solstice, when in the mouth of the "lion" the dog-star (Sirius) rises,
while his descent from Nun, the Fish or Aquarius, indicates Joshua
as representing the winter solstice. [114] Just as Joshua belonged to
the tribe of Ephraim, to which according to the Blessing of Jacob the
Fishes of the the Zodiac refer, [115] so Caleb belonged to the tribe
of Judah, which Jacob's Blessing likened to a lion; [116] and while
the latter as Calub (Chelub) has Shuhah for brother, that is, the Sun
descending into the kingdom of shadows (the Southern Hemisphere),
[117] in like manner Joshua represents the Spring Sun rising out
of the night of winter. They are thus both related to one another
in the same way as the annual rise and decline of the sun, and as,
according to Babylonian ideas, are Tammuz and Nergal, who similarly
typify the two halves of the year. When Joshua dies at Timnath-heres,
the place of the eclipse of the Sun (i.e., at the time of the summer
solstice, at which the death of the Sun-God was celebrated [118]),
he appears again as a kind of Tammuz, while the "lamentation" of the
people at his death [119] alludes possibly to the lamentation at the
death of the Sun-God. [120]
It cannot be denied after all this that the conception of a suffering
and dying Messiah was of extreme antiquity amongst the Israelites
and was connected with the earliest nature-worship, although later it
may indeed have become restricted and peculiar to certain exclusive
circles. [121]
The Jewish representative of Haman suffered death at the Feast of
Purim on account of a crime, as a deserved punishment which had been
awarded him. The Messiah Jesus, on the other hand, according to the
words of Isaiah, took the punishment upon himself, being "just." He
was capable of being an expiatory victim for the sins of the whole
people, precisely because he least of all deserved such a fate.
Plato had already in his "Republic" sketched the picture of a "just
man" passing his life unknown and unhonoured amidst suffering and
persecution. His righteousness is put to the proof and he reaches
the highest degree of virtue, not allowing himself to be shaken in
his conduct. "The just man is scourged, racked, thrown into prison,
blinded in both eyes, and finally, when he has endured all ills,
he is executed, and he recognises that one should be determined not
to be just but to appear so." In Pharisaic circles he passed as a
just man who by his own undeserved sufferings made recompense for
the sins of the others and made matters right for them before God,
as, for example, in the Fourth Book of the Maccabees the blood of
the martyrs is represented as the expiatory offering on account of
which God delivered Israel. The hatred of the unjust and godless
towards the just, the reward of the just and the punishment of the
unjust, were favourite themes for aphoristic literature, and they
were fully dealt with in the Book of Wisdom, the Alexandrian author
of which was presumably not unacquainted with the Platonic picture
of the just man. He makes the godless appear conversing and weaving
plots against the just. "Let us then," he makes them say, "lie in
wait for the righteous; because he is not to our liking and he is
clean contrary to our doings; he upbraideth us with our offending
the law and reproacheth us with our sins against our training. He
professeth to have the knowledge of God; and he calleth himself
the child of the Lord. He proved to be to us for the reproof of our
designs. He is grievous unto us even to behold: for his life is not
like other men's, his ways are of another fashion. We are esteemed
of him as counterfeits; he abstaineth from our ways as from filth;
he pronounceth the end of the just to be blessed and maketh his boast
that God is his father. Let us see if his words be true: and let us
prove what will happen in the end of him. For if the just man be the
son of God, he will help him, and deliver him from the hand of his
enemies. Let us examine him with despitefulness and torture that we
may know his meekness and prove his patience. Let us condemn him with
a shameful death: thus will he be known by his words." [122] "But
the souls of the just," continues the author of the Book of Wisdom,
"are in the hands of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In
the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is
taken for misery, and their going from us for utter destruction:
but they are in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of
men yet is their hopes full of immortality. And having been a little
chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded: for God proved them and
found them worthy for himself. As gold in the furnace hath he tried
them, and received them as a burnt offering. And in the time of their
visitation they shall shine and run to and fro like sparks among
the stubble. They shall judge the nations and have dominion over the
people and their Lord will rule for ever." [123] It could easily be
imagined that these words, which were understood by the author of the
Book of Wisdom of the just man in general, referred to the just man
par excellence, the Messiah, the "son" of God in the highest sense
of the word, who gave his life for the sins of his people. A reason
was found at the same time for the shameful death of the Messiah. He
died the object of the hatred of the unjust; he accepted contempt and
scorn as did the Haman and Barabbas of the Feast of Purim, but only
in order that by this deep debasement he might be raised up by God,
as is said of the just man in the Book of Wisdom: "That is he whom we
had sometimes in derision and a proverb of reproach: We fools accounted
his life madness and his end to be without honour: Now is he numbered
among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints." [124]
Now we understand how the picture of the Messiah varied among the
Jews between that of a divine and that of a human being; how he was
"accounted just among the evil-doers"; how the idea became associated
with a human being that he was a "Son of God" and at the same time
"King of the Jews"; and how the idea could arise that in his shameful
and undeserved death God had offered himself for mankind. Now too we
can understand that he who died had after a short while to rise again
from the dead, and this in order to ascend into heaven in splendour
and glory and to unite himself with God the Father above. These were
ideas which long before the Jesus of the Gospels were spread among the
Jewish people, and indeed throughout the whole of Western Asia. In
certain sects they were cherished as secret doctrines, and were the
principal cause that precisely in this portion of the ancient world
Christianity spread so early and with such unusual rapidity.
V
THE BIRTH OF THE MESSIAH. THE BAPTISM
It is not only the idea of the just man suffering, of the Messiah dying
upon the gibbet, as "King of the Jews" and a criminal, and his rising
again, which belongs to the centuries before Christ. The stories which
relate to the miraculous birth of Jesus and to his early fortunes
also date back to this time. Thus in the Revelation of John [125]
we meet with the obviously very ancient mythical idea of the birth of
a divine child, who is scarcely brought into the world before he is
threatened by the Dragon of Darkness, but is withdrawn in time into
heaven from his pursuer; whereupon the Archangel Michael renders the
monster harmless. Gunkel thinks that this conception must be traced
back to a very ancient Babylonian myth. [126] Others, as Dupuis [127]
and Dieterich, have drawn attention to its resemblance to the Greek
myth of Leto, [128] who, before the birth of the Light god Apollo,
being pursued by the Earth dragon Pytho, was carried by the Wind god
Boreas to Poseidon, and was brought safely by the latter to the Island
of Ortygia, where she was able to bring forth her son unmolested by
the hostile monster. Others again, like Bousset, have compared the
Egyptian myth of Hathor, according to which Hathor or Isis sent her
young son, the Light god Horus, fleeing out of Egypt upon an ass before
the pursuit of his uncle Seth or Typhon. Pompeian frescoes represent
this incident in such a manner as to recall feature for feature the
Christian representations of the flight of Mary with the Child Jesus
into Egypt; and coins with the picture of the fleeing Leto prove how
diffused over the whole of Nearer Asia this myth must have been. The
Assyrian prince Sargon also, being pursued by his uncle, is said
to have been abandoned on the Euphrates in a basket made of reeds,
to have been found by a water-carrier, and to have been brought up
by him--a story which the Jews have interwoven into the account of
the life of their fabulous Moses. [129] And very similar stories are
related both in East and West, in ancient and in later times, of other
Gods, distinguished heroes and kings, sons of the Gods, of Zeus, Attis,
Dionysus, OEdipus, Perseus, Romulus and Remus, Augustus, and others. As
is well known, the Indian God-man Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu,
is supposed to have been sought for immediately after his birth by his
uncle, King Kansa, who had all the male children of the same age in
his country put to death, the child being only saved from a like fate
by taking refuge with a poor herdsman. [130] This recalls Herodotus's
story of Cyrus, [131] according to which Astyages, the grandfather of
Cyrus, being warned by a dream, ordered his grandson to be exposed,
the latter being saved from death, however, through being found by
a poor herdsmen and being brought up in his house. Now in Persian
the word for son is Cyrus (Khoro, [132] Greek Kyros), and Kyris or
Kiris is the name of Adonis in Cyprus. [133] Thus it appears that the
story of the birth of Cyrus came into existence through the transfer
to King Cyrus of one of the myths concerning the Sun-God, the God in
this way being confused with a human individual. Now since Cyrus, as
has been said, was in the eyes of the Jews a kind of Messiah and was
glorified by them as such, we can understand how the danger through
which the Messianic child is supposed to have passed found a place
in the Gospels. Again, a similar story of a king, who, having been
warned by a dream or oracle, orders the death of the children born
within a specified time, is found in the "Antiquities" of Josephus
[134] in connection with the story of the childhood of Moses. Moses,
however, passed like Cyrus for a kind of forerunner and anticipator
of Christ; and Christ was regarded as a Moses reappearing. [135] Again
Joab, David's general, is said to have slaughtered every male in Edom;
the young prince Hadad, however, escaped the massacre by fleeing into
Egypt. Here he grew up and married the sister of the king, and after
the death of his enemy King David he returned to his home. [136]
But Hadad is, like Cyrus, (Kyrus) a name of the Syrian Adonis.
Another name of Adonis or Tammuz is Dôd, Dodo, Daud, or David. This
signifies "the Beloved" and indicates "the beloved son" of the heavenly
father, who offers himself for mankind, or "the Beloved" of the Queen
of heaven (Atargatis, Mylitta, Istar). [137] As is well known, King
David was also called "the man after the heart of God," and there is
no doubt that characteristics of the divine Redeemer and Saviour of
the same name have been intermingled in the story of David in the same
way as in that of Cyrus. [138] According to Jeremiah xxx. 8 and Ezekiel
xxxiv. 22 sqq. and xxxvii. 21, it was David himself who would appear as
the Messiah and re-establish Israel in its ancient glory. Indeed, this
even appears to have been the original conception of the Messiah. The
Messiah David seems to have been changed into a descendant of David
only with the progress of the monotheistic conception of God, under
the influence of the Persian doctrine concerning Saoshyant, the man
"of the seed of Zarathustra." Now David was supposed to have been
born at Bethlehem. But in Bethlehem there was, as Jerome informs us,
[139] an ancient grove and sanctuary of the Syrian Adonis, and as
Jerome himself complains the very place where the Saviour first saw the
light resounded with the lamentations over Tammuz. [140] At Bethlehem,
the former Ephrata (i.e., Place of Ashes), Rachel is said to have
brought forth the youngest of the twelve month-sons of Jacob. She
herself had christened him Benoni, son of the woeful lament. He was,
however, usually called Benjamin, the Lord or Possessor of light. In
the Blessing of Moses he is also called "a Darling of the Lord," and
his father Jacob loved him especially. [141] He is the God of the
new year born of the ashes of the past, at whose appearance lament
and rejoicings are commingled one with another; and thus he is only
a form of Tammuz (Hadad) bringing to mind the Christian Redeemer in
that he presided over the month of the Ram. [142]
Now we understand the prophecy of the prophet Micah: "Thou Bethlehem
Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah,
out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be a ruler in
Israel, whose going forth is from of old, from everlasting." [143]
Now, too, the story of the slaughter of the children at Bethlehem
has its background in religious history. It is said in Matt. ii. 18,
with reference to Jer. xxxi. 15, "A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping
and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and she would
not be comforted, because they are not." It is the lamentation of
the women over the murdered Adonis which was raised each year at
Bethlehem. This was transformed by the Evangelists into the lament
over the murder of the children which took place at the birth of
Hadad who was honoured at Bethlehem. [144]
Hadad-Adonis is a God of Vegetation, a God of the rising sap of
life and of fruitfulness: but, as was the case with all Gods of a
similar nature, the thought of the fate of the sun, dying in winter
and being born anew in the spring, played its part in the conception
of this season God of Nearer Asia. Something of this kind may well
have passed before the mind of Isaiah, when he foretold the future
glory of the people of God under the image of a new birth of the sun
from out of the blackness of night, with these "prophetic" words:
"Arise, shine, for thy light has come and the glory of the Lord is
risen upon thee. For behold darkness shall cover the earth and gross
darkness the peoples: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his
glory shall be seen upon thee. And nations shall come to thy light,
and kings to the brightness of thy rising.... The abundance of the
sea shall be turned unto thee, the wealth of the nations shall come
unto thee. The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of
Midian and Ephah. They all shall come from Sheba: they shall bring gold
and frankincence, and shall proclaim the praises of the Lord." [145]
As is well known, later generations were continually setting out
this idea in a still more exuberant form. The imagination of the
enslaved and impoverished Jews feasted upon the thought that the
nations and their princes would do homage to the Messiah with gifts,
while uncounted treasures poured into the temple at Jerusalem: "Princes
shall come out of Egypt, Ethiopia shall haste to stretch out her hands
unto God. Sing unto God ye kingdoms of the earth." [146] This is the
foundation of the Gospel story of the "Magi," who lay their treasures
at the feet of the new-born Christ and his "virgin mother." But that we
have here in reality to do with the new birth of the sun at the time
of the winter solstice appears from the connection between the Magi,
or kings, and the stars. For these Magi are nothing else than the
three stars in the sword-belt of Orion, which at the winter solstice
are opposed in the West to the constellation of the Virgin in the East;
stars which according to Persian ideas at this time seek the son of the
Queen of Heaven--that is, the lately rejuvenated sun, Mithras. [147]
Now, as it has been said, Hadad also is a name of the Sun-God, and the
Hadad of the Old Testament returns to his original home out of Egypt,
whither he had fled from David. Thus we can understand how Hosea xi. 1,
"I called my son out of Egypt," could be referred to the Messiah and
how the story that Jesus passed his early youth in Egypt was derived
from it. [148]
It may be fairly asked how it was that the sun came to be thus
honoured by the people of Western Asia, with lament at its death
and rejoicing at its new birth. For winter, the time of the sun's
"death," in these southern countries offered scarcely any grounds
at all for lament. It was precisely the best part of the year. The
night, too, having regard to its coolness after the heat of the day,
gave no occasion for desiring the new birth of the sun in the morning.
We are compelled to suppose that in the case of all the Gods of this
nature the idea of the dying away of vegetation during the heat of
the year and its revival had become intertwined and commingled with
that of the declining and reviving strength of the sun. Thus, from
this mingling of two distinct lines of thought, we have to explain
the variations of the double-natured character of the Sun-Gods and
Vegetation-Gods of Western Asia. [149] It is obvious, however, that the
sun can only be regarded from such a tragic standpoint in a land where,
and in the myths of a people for whom, it possesses in reality such a
decisive significance that there are grounds for lamenting its absence
or lack of strength during winter and for an anxious expectation of
its return and revival. [150] But it is chiefly in the highlands of
Iran and the mountainous hinterland of Asia Minor that this is the
case to such an extent as to make this idea one of the central points
of religious belief. Even here it points back to a past time when
the people concerned still had their dwelling-place along with the
kindred Aryan tribes in a much more northerly locality. [151] Thus
Mithras, the "Sol invictus" of the Romans, struggling victoriously
through night and darkness, is a Sun hero, who must have found his
way into Persia from the north. This is shown, amongst other things,
by his birthday being celebrated on the 25th of December, the day of
the winter solstice. Again, the birth of the infant Dionysus, who
was so closely related to the season Gods of Nearer Asia, used to
be celebrated as the feast of the new birth of the sun at about the
same time, the God being then honoured as Liknites, as "the infant
in the cradle" (the winnowing-fan). The Egyptians celebrated the
birth of Osiris on the 6th of January, on which occasion the priests
produced the figure of an infant from the sanctuary, and showed it to
the people as a picture of the new-born God. [152] That the Phrygian
Attis came thither with the Aryans who made their way from Thrace into
Asia Minor, and must have had his home originally in Northern Europe,
appears at once from the striking resemblance of the myth concerning
him with that of the northern myth of Balder. There can be no doubt
that the story in Herodotus of Atys, son of Croesus, who while out
boar hunting accidently met his death from the spear of his friend,
only gives another version of the Attis myth. This story, however,
so closely resembles that of the death of Balder, given in the Edda,
that the theory of a connection between them is inevitably forced
upon one's mind. In the Edda the wife of Balder is called Nanna. But
Nanna (i.e., "mother") was according to Arnobius [153] the name of
the mother of the Phrygian Attis.
Now the Sun and Summer God Balder is only a form of Odin, the Father
of Heaven, with summer attributes, and he too is said, like Attis,
Adonis and Osiris, to have met his death through a wild boar. Just as
anemones sprang from the blood of the slain Adonis and violets from
that of Attis, so also the blood of the murdered Odin (Hackelbernd)
is said to have been changed into spring flowers. [154] At the great
feast of Attis in March a post or pine-tree trunk decked with violets,
on which the picture of the God was hung, used to form the central
point of the rite. This was a reminder of the way in which in ancient
times the human representative of the God passed from life to death,
in order by sacrifice to revive exhausted nature. According to the
verses of the Eddic Havamal, Odin says of himself:--
"I know that I hang on the wind-rocked tree
Throughout nine nights,
Wounded by the spear, dedicated to Odin,
I myself to myself." [155]
By this self-sacrifice and the agonies which he endured, the northern
God, too, obtained new strength and life. For on this occasion he not
only discovered the Runes of magic power, the knowledge of which made
him lord over nature, but he obtained possession at the same time of
the poetic mead which gave him immortality and raised the Nature God
to be a God of spiritual creative power and of civilisation. This is
obviously the same idea as is again found in the cult of Attis and
in the belief in the death of the God. The relationship of all these
different views seems still more probable in that a sacrificial rite
lay at the root of the Balder myth also. This myth is only, so to
speak, the text of a religious drama which was performed every year
for the benefit of dying nature--a drama in which a man representing
the God was delivered over to death. [156] As all this refers to the
fate of a Sun God, who dies in winter to rise again in the spring,
the same idea must have been associated originally with the worship
of the Nearer Asiatic Gods of vegetation and fruitfulness, and this
idea was only altered under changed climatic conditions into that
of the death and resurrection of the plant world, without, however,
losing in its new form its original connection with the sun and winter.
At the same time the myth of the Sun God does not take us to the
very basis and the real kernel of the stories of the divine child's
birth. The Persian religion was not so much a religion of Light
and Sun as of Fire, the most important and remarkable manifestation
of which was of course the sun. Dionysus too, like all Gods of the
life-warmth, of the rising plant sap and of fruitfulness, was in his
deepest nature a Fire God. In the Fire Religion, however, the birth
of the God forms the centre of all religious ideas; and its form was
more exactly fixed through the peculiar acts by means of which the
priest rekindled the holy fire.
For the manner in which this occurred we have the oldest authentic
testimony in the religious records of the Indian Aryans. Here Agni,
as indeed his name (ignis, fire) betokens, passed for the divine
representative of the Fire Element. His mystic birth was sung in
numberless passages in the hymns of the Rigveda. At dawn, as soon as
the brightening morning star in the east announced that the sun was
rising, the priest called his assistants together and kindled the fire
upon a mound of earth by rubbing together two sticks (aranî) in which
the God was supposed to be hidden. As soon as the spark shone in the
"maternal bosom," the soft underpart of the wood, it was treated as an
"infant child." It was carefully placed upon a little heap of straw,
which at once took fire from it. On one side lay the mystic "cow"--that
is, the milk-pail and a vessel full of butter, as types of all animal
nourishment--upon the other the holy Soma draught, representing the
sap of plants, the symbol of life. A priest fanned it with a small
fan shaped like a banner, thereby stirring up the fire. The "child"
was then raised upon the altar. The priests turned up the fire with
long-handled spoons, pouring upon the flames melted butter (ghrita)
together with the Soma cup. From this time "Agni" was called "the
anointed" (Akta). The fire flickered high. The God was unfolding
his majesty. With his flames he scared away the dæmons of darkness,
and lighted up the surrounding shadows. All creatures were invited to
come and gaze upon the wonderful spectacle. Then with presents the
Gods (kings) hastened from heaven and the herdsmen from the fields,
cast themselves down in deep reverence before the new-born, praying
to it and singing hymns in its praise. It grew visibly before their
eyes. The new-born Agni already had become "the teacher" of all living
creatures, "the wisest of the wise," opening to mankind the secrets
of existence. Then, while everything around him grew bright and the
sun rose over the horizon, the God, wreathed in a cloud of smoke,
with the noise of darting flames, ascended to heaven, and was united
there with the heavenly light. [157]
Thus in ancient India the holy fire was kindled anew each morning,
and honoured with ritualistic observances (Agnihotra). This took
place, however, with special ceremony at the time of the winter
solstice, when the days began again to increase (Agnistoma). They
then celebrated the end of the time "of darkness," the Pitryana, or
time of the Manes, during which the worship of the Gods had been at a
standstill. Then the Angiras, the priestly singers, summoned the Gods
to be present, greeting with loud song the beginning of the "holy"
season, the Devayana, with which the new light arose. Agni and the
other Gods again returned to men, and the priests announced to the
people the "joyful tidings" (Evangelium) that the Light God had been
born again. As Hillebrand has shown, this festival also indicates
the memory of an earlier home in the North whence the Aryan tribes
had migrated, since in India, where the shortest and longest days
only differ by about four hours, no reason exists for celebrating
the "return" of the light. [158] Indeed, it appears that we have to
do here with a rite which reaches back into the very origins of all
human civilisation, and preserves the memory of the discovery of fire
in the midst of the horrors of the Stone Age.
There is no doubt that we have before us in the Vedic Agni Cult the
original source of all the stories of the birth of the Fire-Gods
and Sun-Gods. These Gods usually enter life in darkness and
concealment. Thus the Cretan Zeus was born in a cavern, Mithras,
Dionysus, and Hermes in a gloomy grotto, Horus in the "stable"
(temple) of the holy cow (Isis)--Jesus, too, was born at dead of
night in a lowly "stable" [159] at Bethlehem. The original ground
for this consists in the fact that Agni, in the form of a spark,
comes into existence in the dark hollow of the hole bored in the
stick. The Hymns of the Rigveda often speak of this "secret birth"
and of the "concealment" of Agni. They describe the Gods as they set
out in order to seek the infant. They make the Angiras discover it
"lying in concealment," and it grows up in hiding. [160] But the idea
of the Fire-God being born in a "stable" is also foreshadowed in the
Rigveda. For not only are the vessels of milk and butter ready for
the anointing compared with cows, but Ushas, too, the Goddess of Dawn,
who is present at the birth, is called a red milch-cow, and of men it
is said that they flocked "like cows to a warm stable" to see Agni,
whom his mother held lovingly upon her lap. [161]
It is a common fundamental feature of all Nature religions that they
distinguish between the particular and the general, between earthly
and heavenly events, between human acts and natural occurrences as
little as they do between the spiritual and natural. The Agni Cult
shows, as does the Vedic religion in general, this interplay of the
earthly and heavenly world, of the microcosmic individual and the
macrocosm. The kindling of the fire upon the earth at the same time
betokened the rising of the great light of the skies, the sun. The fire
upon the altar did not merely represent but actually was the sun, the
earthly and the heavenly Agni were one. Thus it was that the nations
of antiquity were able to think of transferring earthly events into
heaven, and conversely were able to read earthly events in heavenly
occurrences such as the relations of the stars to one another. It was
on this that astrology rested. Even the ancient Fire Worship appears
in very early times to have been transformed into astrology, and what
was in the beginning a simple act of worship was generalised by the
priests in a macrocosmic sense and was transferred to the starry
heavens as a forecast. Thus the altar or place of sacrifice upon
which the sacred fire was kindled was enlarged into the Vault of the
Spheres or Grotto of the Planets. Through this the sun completed its
annual journey among the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and in so doing
assumed successively the form and fulfilled the functions of that
constellation with which it entered into astronomical relations. The
metaphorical name of "stable" for the place of sacrifice attains a
new significance from the fact that the sun during a certain epoch of
the world (something between 3000 and 800 B.C.) at the beginning of
spring passed through the constellation of the Bull, and at the time
of the winter solstice commenced its course between the Ox (Bull)
and the Great Bear, which anciently was also called the Ass. [162]
The birth of the God is said to have been in secret because it took
place at night. His mother is a "virgin" since at midnight of the
winter solstice the constellation of the Virgin is on the eastern
horizon. [163] Shortly afterwards Draco, the Dragon (the snake Pytho),
rises up over Libra, the Balance, and seems to pursue the Virgin. From
this comes the story of the Winter Dragon threatening Leto, or Apollo;
or, as it is also found in the Myth of Osiris and the Apocalypse of
John, the story of the pursuit of the child of light by a hostile
principle (Astyages, Herod, &c.). [164] Unknown and in concealment
the child grows up. This refers to the course of the sun as it yet
stands low in the heavens. Or like Sargon, Dionysus, or Moses it is
cast in a basket upon the waters of some great stream or of the sea,
since the sun in its wanderings through the Zodiac has next to pass
through the so-called watery region, the signs of the Water-carrier
and the Fishes, the rainy season of winter. Thus can the fate of the
new-born be read in the sky. The priests (Magi) cast his horoscope like
that of any other child. They greet his birth with loud rejoicings,
bring him myrrh, incense and costly presents, while prophesying
for him a glorious future. The earthly Agni is completely absorbed
in the heavenly one; and in the study of the great events which are
portrayed in the sky, the simple act of sacrificial worship, which had
originally furnished the opportunity for this whole range of ideas,
gradually fell into oblivion. [165]
It has been often maintained that Indian influences have worked
upon the development of the story of the childhood of Jesus, and in
this connection we are accustomed to think of Buddhism. Now, as a
matter of fact, the resemblances between the Christian and Buddhist
legends are so close that we can scarcely imagine it to be a mere
coincidence. Jesus and Buddha are both said to have been born of a
"pure virgin," honoured by heavenly spirits at their birth, prayed
to by kings and loaded with presents. "Happy is the whole world,"
sing the Gods under the form of young Brahmins at the birth of the
child--as we are told in the Lalita Vistara, the legendary biography
of Buddha, dating from before Christ, "for he is indeed born who
brings salvation and will establish the world in blessedness. He
is born who will darken sun and moon by the splendour of his merits
and will put all darkness to flight. The blind see, the deaf hear,
the demented are restored to reason. No natural crimes afflict us any
longer, for upon the earth men have become righteous. Gods and men
can in future approach each other without hostility, since he will
be the guide of their pilgrimage." [166] Just as the significance of
Jesus was announced beforehand by Simeon, in the same way according
to the Buddhist legend, the Seer Asita foresees in his own mind the
greatness of the child and bursts into tears since he will not see him
in the splendour of his maturity and will have no part in his work
of redemption. Again, just as Jesus [167] even in his early youth
astonished the learned by his wisdom, so Prince Siddharta (Buddha)
put all his teachers at school to shame by his superior knowledge, and
so on. The Buddhist legend itself, however, goes back to a still older
form, which is the Vedic Agni Cult. All its various features are here
preserved in their simplest form and in their original relation to the
sacrificial worship of the Fire-God. This was the natural source of the
Indian and Christian legends, and it was the original of those myths
which the Evangelist worked up for his own purposes, which according
to Pfleiderer belonged "to the common tribal property of the national
sagas of Nearer Asia." [168] Again, it could the more easily reappear
in the Evangelists' version of the story of the childhood of Jesus,
since the sacrificial act had been re-interpreted mythologically,
and the corresponding myths transformed into astrology, and, as it
were, written with starry letters upon the sky, where they could be
read without trouble by the most distant peoples of antiquity.
The myth of Krishna offers a characteristic example of the manner in
which in India a sacrificial cult is changed into a myth. Like Astyages
and Herod, in order to ward off the danger arising from his sister's
son, of which he had been warned by an oracle, King Kansa caused his
sister and her husband Vasudewa to be cast into prison. Here, in the
darkness of a dungeon, Krishna comes into the world as Jesus did in
the stable at Bethlehem. The nearer the hour of birth approaches the
more beautiful the mother becomes. Soon the whole dungeon is filled
with light. Rejoicing choirs sound in the air, the waters of the
rivers and brooks make sweet music. The Gods come down from heaven
and blessed spirits dance and sing for joy. At midnight his mother
Dewaki (i.e., the divine) brings the child into the world, at the
commencement of a new epoch. The parents themselves fall down before
him and pray, but a voice from heaven admonishes them to convey him
from the machinations of the tyrant to Gokala, the land of the cow,
and to exchange him for the daughter of the herdsman Nanda. Immediately
the chains fall from the father's hands, the dungeon doors are opened,
and he passes out into freedom. Another Christopher, he bears the
child upon his shoulders through the river Yamuna, the waters of which
recede in reverence before the son of God, and he exchanges Krishna
for the new-born daughter of Nanda. He then returns to the dungeon,
where the chains again immediately fasten of their own accord upon
his limbs. Kansa now makes his way into the dungeon. In vain Dewaki
entreats her brother to leave her the child. He is on the point of
tearing it forcibly from her hands when it disappears before his eyes,
and Kansa gives the order that all newly-born children in his country
under the age of two years shall be killed.
At Mathura in Gokala Krishna grew up unknown among poor herdsmen. While
yet in his cradle he had betrayed his divine origin by strangling,
like Hercules, a dreadful snake which crawled upon him. He causes
astonishment to every one by his precosity and lofty wisdom. As he
grows up he becomes the darling of the herdsmen and playmate of Gopias,
the milkmaid; he performs the most astonishing miracles. When, however,
the time had come he arose and slew Kansa. He then fought the frightful
"Time Snake" Kaliyanaga, of the thousand heads (the Hydra in the
myth of Hercules, the Python in that of Apollo), which poisoned the
surrounding air with its pestilential breath; and he busied himself
in word and deed as a protector of the poor and proclaimer of the
most perfect teaching. His greatest act, however, was his descent
into the Underworld. Here he overpowered Yama, the dark God of death,
obtained from him a recognition of his divine power, and led back the
dead with him to a new life. Thus he was a benefactor of mankind by
his heroic strength and miraculous power, leading the purest life,
healing the sick, bringing the dead back to life, disclosing the
secrets of the world, and withal humbly condescending to wash the
feet of the Brahmins. Krishna finally died of an arrow wound which he
sustained accidentally and in an unforeseen manner on his heel--the
only vulnerable part of his body (cf. Achilles, Balder, Adonis, and
Osiris). While dying he delivered the prophecy that thirty-six years
after his death the fourth Epoch of the World, Caliyuga, the Iron
Age, would begin, in which men would be both unhappy and wicked. But
according to Brahmin teaching Krishna will return at the end of all
time, when bodily and moral need will have reached its highest pitch
upon the earth. In the clouds of heaven he will appear upon his white
steed. With a comet in his right hand as a sword of flame he will
destroy the old earth by fire, founding a new earth and a new heaven,
and establishing a golden age of purity and perfection in which there
will be nothing but pure joy and blessedness.
This reminds us strongly of the Persian Eschatology, of Mithras and
Saoshyant, and of the Jewish Apocalyptics. But following the ancient
sacred poem, the Barta Chastram, the former conception as well as the
doctrine of a Messiah rest upon a prophecy according to which Vishnu
Jesudu (!) was to be born a Brahmin in the city of Skambelam. He was
to hold intercourse with men as a God, to purify the earth from sin,
making it the abode of justice and truth, and to offer a sacrifice
(self-sacrifice?). But still more striking are the resemblances of
the Krishna myth with the Gospels. Does any connection between the two
exist? The question is hard to answer because, owing to the uncertainty
in all Indian citation of dates, the age of the story of Krishna cannot
be settled. In the oldest Indian literature, the Vedas, Krishna appears
to be the name of a Dæmon. In the Mahâbbhârata, the great Indian heroic
epic, he plays indeed a prominent part, and is here on the point of
assuming the place of the God Indra. The age of the poem, however, is
debatable, although it is probably of pre-Buddhist origin. The chief
source of the Krishna myth is the Puranas, especially the Bhagavat
Purana and Vishnu Parana. But since the antiquity of these also is
uncertain, and their most modern portions presumably belong only to
the eighth or ninth century of the Christian era, a decision as to
the date of the appearance of the Krishna myth can only be arrived
at from internal evidence.
Now the Pantanjalis Mahâbhashya, i.e., "Great Commentary," of the
second century before Christ, shows that the story of Kansa's death
at the hands of Krishna was at that time well known in India, and was
even the subject of a religious drama. Thus the story of the birth at
least of Krishna, who had already been raised to be a Cult God of the
Hindoos, cannot have been unknown. The other portions of the myth,
however, belong as a whole to the general circle of Indian ideas,
and are in part only transferred from other Gods to Krishna. Thus,
for example, the miraculous birth of the divine child in the darkness,
his precosity, his upbringing among the herdsmen, and his friendship
with Gopias, remind us of Agni, the God of Fire and Herdsmen, who also
is described in the Rigveda as a "friend and lover of the maidens"
(of the Cloud Women?). His combat with the Time Snake, on the other
hand, is copied from the fight of Indra with the wicked dragon Vritra
or Ahi. Again, in his capacity as purifier and deliverer of the world
from evil and dæmons the God bears such a striking resemblance to
Hercules, that Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleucus at the court
of the king at Pataliputra, in the third century before Christ, simply
identified him with the latter. No impartial critic of the matter can
now doubt that the Krishna myth was in existence and was popularised
long before Christianity appeared in the world. The great importance,
however, which the God possesses in present-day India may have been
attained only during the Christian era, and the Puranas may have
been composed only after the appearance of the Gospels; for their
being written down later proves nothing against the antiquity of the
matter they contain. It appears that even Buddhism did not obtain its
corresponding legends direct from the Vedas, but through the channel
of the Krishna myth. Since, however, Buddhism is certainly at least
four hundred years older than Christianity, it must be assumed that
it was the former which introduced the Krishna myth to Christianity,
and not vice versâ, if we are not to consider the Babylonian-Mandaic
religion as the intermediary between Krishna and Christ. [169]
For the rest the supposition of Indian influences in the Gospel
story is not by any means an improbable one. It is pure theological
prejudice, resting upon a complete ignorance of the conditions of
national intercourse in ancient times, when it is denied, as, for
example, by Clemen in his "Religionsgeschichtlichen Erklärung des
Neuen Testaments" (1909), that the Gospels were influenced by Indian
ideas, or when only a dependence the other way about is allowed;
[170] and this although Buddha left to his disciples, as one of
the highest precepts, the practice of missionary activity, and
although as early as 400 B.C. mention is made in Indian sources of
Buddhist missionaries in Bactria. Two hundred years later we read of
Buddhist monasteries in Persia. Indeed, in the last century before the
Christian era the Buddhist mission in Persia had made such progress
that Alexander Polyhistor actually speaks of a period during which
Buddhism flourished in that country, and bears witness to the spread
of the Mendicant Orders in the western parts of Persia. Buddhism
also reached Syria and Egypt at that time with the trade caravans;
as we have to suppose a frequent exchange of wares and ideas between
India and the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, especially
after the campaigns of Alexander. Communication took place, not only
overland by way of Persia, but by sea as well. Indian thought made
advances in the Near East, where Alexandria, the London and Antwerp
of antiquity, and a headquarters of Jewish syncretism, favoured the
exchange of ideas. With the rediscovery of the South-west Monsoon
at the beginning of the first century after Christ the intercourse
by sea between India and the Western world assumed still greater
dimensions. Thus Pliny speaks of great trading fleets setting out
annually for India and of numerous Indian merchants who had their
fixed abode in Alexandria. Indian embassies came to Rome as early as
the reign of Augustus. The renown of Indian piety caused the author
of the Peregrinus Proteus to choose the Indian Calanus as an example
of holiness. Indeed, so lively was the Western world's interest
in the intellectual life of India, that the library at Alexandria,
as early as the time of the geographer Eratosthenes under Ptolemy
Euergetes (246 B.C.), was administered with special regard to Indian
studies. The monastic organisation of the Essenes in Palestine also
very probably points to Buddhist influence. Again, although the
Rigveda, which contains the groundwork of all Indian religions, may
have been unknown in Nearer Asia, yet the Fire Worship of the Mazda
religion at any rate reaches back to the time before the division
between the Indian and Persian Aryans. Certain fundamental ideas,
therefore, of the Fire Religion may through Persian influences on
Nearer Asia have been known to the surrounding peoples. [171]
As a matter of fact, the Mandaic religion contains much that is
Indian. This is the less strange considering that the headquarters
and centre of Mandaism was in Southern Babylonia; and the ancient
settlements of the Mandæi, close to the Persian Gulf, were easily
reached by sea from India. Moreover, from ancient times Babylonian
trade went down to India and Ceylon. [172] Consequently it is by no
means improbable that the many remarkable resemblances between the
Babylonian and Indian religions rest upon mutual influences. Indeed,
in one case the borrowing of a Mandaic idea from India can be looked
upon as quite certain. The Lalita Vistara begins with a description
of Buddha's ante-natal life in heaven. He teaches the Gods the "law,"
the eternal truth of salvation, and announces to them his intention
of descending into the bosom of an earthly woman in order to bring
redemption to mankind. In vain the Gods endeavour to hold him back
and cling weeping to his feet: "Noble man, if thou remainest here
no longer, this abode of heaven will be bright no more." He leaves
them, however, a successor, and consecrates him solemnly to be the
possessor of the future dignity of Buddha: "Noble man, thou art
he who will be endowed after me with the perfect intelligence of a
Buddha." [173] "Man" (Purusha) is thus here the usual name for the
divine nature of Buddha destined for individual incarnations. It is
also called the "great man" (Mahapurusha) or the "victorious lord"
(Cakravartin). Here we have the original of the Mandaic "son of man,"
whom we meet with in the Jewish Apocalyptics (Daniel, Enoch, Ezra),
a figure which plays so great a part in the primitive Gospel records
of Christianity, and has called forth so many explanations. And
the Elcesaitic Gnostics teach a like doctrine when they imagine the
"son of man," or Christ, as a heavenly spirit and king of the world to
come who became incarnate first in Adam, then in Enoch, Noah, Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob and so on, in order finally to appear by a supernatural
virgin-birth in the person of Jesus, and to illumine the dark earth
by his true message of salvation. [174]
Of all the Gods of the Rigveda Agni bears the closest relationship
to the Perso-Jewish Messiah, and it is he also who stands closest
to man's soul. He is rightly called king of the universe, as God of
Gods, who created the world and called into life all beings that are
upon it. He is the lord of the heavenly hosts, the guardian of the
cosmic order and judge of the world, who is present as an invisible
witness of all human acts, who as a "knower of nature" works in every
living thing, and as a party to all earthly secrets illuminates the
unknown. Sent down by his father, the Sky-God or Sun-God, he appears
as the "light of the world." He releases this world from the Powers
of Darkness and returns to his father with the "Banner of Smoke" in
his hand as a token of victory. Agni blazes forth in the lightning
flash from out of the watercloud, the "sea of the sky," in order to
annihilate the Dæmons of Darkness and to release oppressed humanity
from the fear of its tormentors. Thus, according to Isaiah xi.,
4, the Messiah too will burn his enemies with the fiery breath
of his mouth; and in this he is clearly a Fire-God. Again, in the
Apocalypse of Esdras (chap. xiii.) the Seer beholds the "Son of Man"
(Purusha) rise up from out of the sea, fly upon the clouds of heaven,
destroy the hostile forces by the stream of fire which proceeded
from his mouth, free the scattered Israelites from their captivity
and lead them back into their country. [175] But this "first-born"
son of the Sun-God and the Sky-God is at the same time the father and
ancestor of men, the first man (Purusha), the head of the community
of mankind, the guardian of the house and of the domestic flock, who
keeps from the threshold the evil spirits and the enemies who lurk
in the darkness. Agni enters the dwellings of men as guest, friend
(Mitra), companion, brother and consoler of those who honour him. He
is the messenger between this world and the beyond, communicating the
wishes of men to the Gods above, and announcing to men the will of the
Gods. He is a mediator between God and men who makes a report to the
Gods of everything of which he becomes aware among mankind. Although
indeed he takes revenge for the men's faults yet he is a gracious God,
disposed to forgive, in his capacity of an expiatory, propitiatory and
redeeming power, atoning for their sins and bringing them the divine
grace. Finally, he is also the guide of souls--he conducts the Gods
down to the sacrifices offered by man and makes ready for men the path
upon which he leads them up to God. And when their time has come he,
as the purifying fire, consumes their bodies and carries that which
is immortal to heaven. [176]
Agni's father is, as has been said, the sky, or rather the light,
the sun, the source of all warmth and life upon the earth. He bears
the name of Savitar, which means "creator" or "mover," is called "the
lord of creation," "the father of all life," "the living one," or "the
heavenly father" simply. [177] At the same time Tvashtar also passes
as the father of Agni. His name characterises him simply as modeller
(world-modeller) or work-master, divine artist, skilful smith, or
"carpenter," in which capacity he sharpens Brihaspati's axe, and,
indeed, is himself represented with a hatchet in his hand. [178]
He appears to have attained this rôle as being the discoverer of
the artificial kindling of fire, by means of which any fashioning
(welding), any art in the higher sense of the word became possible,
as being the preparer of the apparatus for obtaining fire by friction
or rotation--"the fire cradle"--which consisted of carefully chosen
wood of a specified form and kind. Finally, the production of fire is
ascribed to Matariçvan also, the God of the Wind identical with Vayu,
because fire cannot burn without air, and it is the motion of the
breeze which fans the glimmering spark. [179] All of these different
figures are identical with one another, and can mutually take the
place one of another, for they are all only different manifestations
of warmth. It is this which reveals itself as well in the lightning
of the sky and motion of the air, as in the glimmering of the fire,
and not only as the principle of life, but also as that of thought
and of knowledge or the "word" (Vâc, Veda), appearing on the one side
as the productive, life-giving, and fructifying power of nature, on
the other as the creative, inspiring spirit. This is the reason why,
among the ancients, the God of life and fertility was in his essential
nature a Fire-God, and why the three figures of the divine "father,"
"son," and "spirit," in spite of the differences of their functions,
could be looked upon without inconsistency as one and the same being.
As is well known, Jesus, too, had three fathers, namely, his
heavenly father, Jahwe, the Holy Spirit, and also his earthly father,
Joseph. The latter is also a work-master, artizan, or "carpenter," as
the word "tekton" indicates. Similarly, Kinyras, the father of Adonis,
is said to have been some kind of artizan, a smith or carpenter. That
is to say, he is supposed to have invented the hammer and the lever
and roofing as well as mining. In Homer he appears as the maker of
the ingenious coat of mail which Agamemnon received from him as a
guest-friend. [180] The father of Hermes also is an artizan. Now Hermes
closely resembles Agni as well as Jesus. He is the "good messenger,"
the Euangelos; that is, the proclaimer of the joyful message of
the redemption of souls from the power of death. He is the God of
sacrifices, and as such "mediator" between heaven and earth. He is the
"guide of souls" (Psychopompos) and "bridegroom of souls" (beloved of
Psyche). He is also a God of fertility, a guardian of the flocks, who
is represented in art as the "good shepherd," the bearer of the ram,
a guide upon the roads of earth, a God of the door-hinge (Strophaios)
and guardian of the door, [181] a god of healing as well as of speech,
the model of all human reason, in which capacity he was identified
by the Stoics with the Logos that dwelt within the world. [182] Just
as in the Rigveda Tvashtar stands with Savitar, the divine father of
Agni, and Joseph the "carpenter" with Jahwe, as father of the divine
mediator, so the divine artificer, Hephaistos, whose connection with
Tvashtar is obvious, is looked upon together with Zeus, the father
of heaven, as the begetter of Hermes. [183]
Now if Joseph, as we have already seen, was originally a God, Mary,
the mother of Jesus, was a Goddess. Under the name of Maya she is
the mother of Agni, i.e., the principle of motherhood and creation
simply, as which she is in the Rigveda at one time represented by
the fire-producing wood, the soft pith, in which the fire-stick was
whirled; at another as the earth, with which the sky has mated. She
appears under the same name as the mother of Buddha as well as of
the Greek Hermes. She is identical with Maira (Maera) as, according
to Pausanias, viii. 12, 48, the Pleiad Maia, wife of Hephaistos,
was called. She appears among the Persians as the "virgin" mother
of Mithras. As Myrrha she is the mother of the Syrian Adonis;
as Semiramis, mother of the Babylonian Ninus (Marduk). In the
Arabic legend she appears under the name of Mirzam as mother of the
mythical saviour Joshua, while the Old Testament gives this name to
the virgin sister of that Joshua who was so closely related to Moses;
and, according to Eusebius, [184] Merris was the name of the Egyptian
princess who found Moses in a basket and became his foster-mother.
After all this it seems rather naïve to believe that the parents of the
"historical" Jesus were called Joseph and Mary, and that his father
was a carpenter. In reality the whole of the family and home life
of the Messiah, Jesus, took place in heaven among the Gods. It was
only reduced to that of a human being in lowly circumstances by the
fact that Paul described the descent of the Messiah upon the earth
as an assumption of poverty and a relinquishment of his heavenly
splendour. [185] Hence, when the myth was transformed into history,
Christ was turned into a "poor" man in the economic sense of the word,
while Joseph, the divine artificer and father of the sun, became an
ordinary carpenter.
Now it is a feature which recurs in all the religions of Nearer Asia
that the "son" of the divine "virgin" mother is at the same time the
"beloved" of this Goddess in the sexual sense of the word. This
is the case not only with Semiramis and Ninus, Istar and Tammuz,
Atargatis (Aphrodite) and Adonis, Cybele and Attis, but also with
Aphrodite (Maia) and Hermes, [186] Maia and Iasios, one of the Cabiri,
identical with Hermes or Cadmus, who was slain by his father, Zeus,
with a lightning stroke, but was raised again and placed in the
sky as a constellation. [187] We may conclude from the connection
between Iasios and Joshua that a similar relationship existed between
the latter and his mother Mirzam. Indeed, a glimmer of this possibly
appears even in the Gospels in the relationship of the various Maries
to Jesus, although, of course, in accordance with the character of
these writings, they are transferred into quite a different sphere
and given other emotional connections. [188]
Now in Hebrew the word "spirit" (ruach) is of feminine gender. As a
consequence of this the Holy Ghost was looked upon by the Nassenes and
the earliest Christians as the "mother" of Jesus. Indeed, it appears
that in their view the birth of the divine son was only consummated by
the baptism and the descent of the Spirit. According to the Gospels
which we possess, on the occasion of the baptism in the Jordan a
voice from above uttered these words: "Thou art my beloved son; in
thee I am well pleased." [189] On the other hand, in an older reading
of the passage in question in Luke, which was in use as late as the
middle of the fourth century, it runs, in agreement with Psalm ii. 7:
"Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee." In this case the
spirit who speaks these words is regarded as a female being. This
is shown by the dove which descends from heaven, for this was the
holy bird, the symbol of the Mother Goddess of Nearer Asia. [190]
But it was not the Nassenes alone (Ophites) who called the Holy
Spirit "the first word" and "the mother of all living things:"
[191] other Gnostic sects, such as the Valentinians, regarded the
Spirit which descended in the shape of a dove as the "word of the
mother from above, of wisdom." [192] Viewed in this sense, baptism
also passed in the Mysteries as a new birth. Indeed, its Greek name,
photisma or photismós (i.e., illumination), clearly indicates its
origin in fire-worship. Thus, when Justin [193] too speaks of a
flame appearing at the baptism of Jesus, he alludes thereby to the
connection between that solemn act and the birth of a Fire-God. [194]
Ephrem, the Syrian composer of hymns, makes the Baptist say to Jesus:
"A tongue of fire in the air awaits thee beyond the Jordan. If thou
followest it and wilt be baptized, then undertake to purify thyself,
for who can seize a burning fire with his hands? Thou who art all fire
have mercy upon me." [195] In Luke iii. 16 and Matt. iii. 11 it is
said in the same sense: "I indeed baptize you with water; but there
cometh he that is mightier than I.... He shall baptize you with the
Holy Ghost and with fire." And in Luke xii. 49 sq. we read the words:
"I came to cast fire upon the earth: and what will I, if it is already
kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with." Here is a reference
to fire falling upon the eyes and being made to blaze up by "baptism,"
that is, the pouring on of a nourishing liquid, as we have seen in
the worship of Agni. [196]
Just as John, who was closely related to the Essenes, baptized the
penitents in the Jordan in the open air, so also the Mandæi, whose
connection with the Essenes is extremely probable, used to perform
baptisms in flowing water only, on which account they were also called
"the Christians of John" in later times. This custom among them was
obviously connected with the fact that Hibil Ziwâ, who was venerated by
them as a Redeemer, was a form of Marduk, and the latter was a son of
the great Water-God, Ea; he thus incorporated the healing and cleansing
powers of water in himself. On the other hand, as has been already
said, the "anointing" of the God in the Agni Cult with milk, melted
butter, and the fluid Soma, served to strengthen the vital powers of
the divine child and to bring the sparks slumbering in the fire-wood
to a blaze. There is no doubt that this idea was also present in the
baptism as it was usually practised in the mystic cults. By baptism
the newly admitted member was inwardly "enlightened." Often enough,
too, for example, in the Mysteries of Mithras, with the ceremony
there was also associated the actual flashing forth of a light, the
production of the Cult God himself manifested in light. [197] By this
means the faithful were "born again," in the same way as Agni was
"baptized" at his birth, and thereby enabled to shine forth brightly
and to reveal the disorder of the world hidden in the darkness.
"The world was swallowed up, veiled in darkness,
Light appeared, when Agni was born." [198]
"Shining brightly, Agni flashes forth far and wide,
He makes everything plain in splendour." [199]
A complete understanding of the baptism in the Jordan can only be
attained if here, too, we take into consideration the translation of
the baptism into astrological terms. In other words, it appears that
John the Baptist, as we meet him in the Gospels, was not an historical
personage. Apart from the Gospels he is mentioned by Josephus only,
[200] and this passage, although it was known to Origen [201] in
early days, is exposed to a strong suspicion of being a forgery
by some Christian hand. [202] Again, the account in the Gospels
of the relations between John and Jesus is full of obscurities and
contradictions, as has been pointed out by Strauss. These, however,
disappear as soon as we recognise that under the name John, which
in Hebrew means "pleasing to God," is concealed the Babylonian
Water-God, Oannes (Ea). Baptism is connected with his worship, and
the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan represents the reflection upon
earth of what originally took place among the stars. That is to say,
the sun begins its yearly course with a baptism, entering as it does,
immediately after its birth, the constellations of the Water-carrier
and the Fishes. But this celestial Water Kingdom, in which each year
the day-star is purified and born again, is the Eridanus, the heavenly
Jordan or Year-Stream (Egyptian, iaro or iero, the river), wherein the
original baptism of the divine Saviour of the world takes place. [203]
On this account it is said in the hymn of Ephrem on the Epiphany
of the divine Son: "John stepped forward and adored the Son, whose
form was enveloped in a strange light," and "when Jesus had received
the baptism he immediately ascended, and his light shone over the
world." [204] In the Syrian Baptismal Liturgy, preserved to us under
the name of Severus, we read the words: "I, he said, baptize with
water, but he who comes, with Fire and Spirit, that spirit, namely,
which descended from on high upon his head in the shape of a dove, who
has been baptized and has arisen from the midst of the waters, whose
light has gone up over the earth." According to the Fourth Gospel,
John was not himself the light; but he gave testimony of the light,
"that true light which lighteth every man coming into the world,"
by whom the world was made and of whose fulness we have all received
grace. [205] In this the reference to the sun is unmistakable, while
the story of John's birth [206] is copied from that of the Sun-Gods
Isaac [207] and Samson. [208] In John, the Baptist himself is called
by Jesus "a burning and shining lamp," [209] and he himself remarks,
when he hears of the numerous following of Jesus, "he must increase
but I must decrease," [210] a speech which probably at first referred
to the summer solstice, when the sun, having reached the highest point
in its course, enters the winter hemisphere and loses strength day by
day. John is said to have been born six months before Jesus. [211]
This, too, points to the fact that both are essentially identical,
that they are only the different halves of the year, representing
the sun as rising and setting, these two phases being related to one
another as Caleb and Joshua, Nergal and Tammuz, &c. John the Baptist is
represented as wearing a cloak of camel-hair, with a leathern girdle
about his loins. [212] This brings to mind the garb of the prophet
Elijah, [213] to whom Jesus himself likened him. [214] But Elijah,
who passed among the Jews for a forerunner of the Messiah, is a form
of Sun-God transferred to history. In other words, he is the same as
the Greek Helios, the German Heljas, and Ossetic Ilia, with whom he
coincides in most important points, or at any rate characteristics
of this God have been transferred to the figure of the prophet. [215]
According to Babylonian ideas corresponding to the "baptism of water"
at the commencement of the efficacious power of the sun, was the
"baptism of fire," when it was at the height of its annual course,
at the time of the summer solstice, and its passage was again
inclined downwards. [216] This idea, too, is found in the Gospels,
in the story of the transfiguration of Jesus upon the mountain. [217]
It takes precisely the same place in the context of his life-year,
as depicted by the Evangelists, as the Sun's "baptism of fire"
in the Babylonian world system, since it too marks the highest and
turning-point in the life of the Christian Saviour. On this occasion
Moses and Elijah appeared with the Saviour, who shone like a pillar
of fire, "and his garments became glistening, exceeding white, like
unto snow, so as no fuller on earth can whiten them." And there came
a cloud which overshadowed the three disciples whom Jesus had taken
with him on to the mountain. And a voice came from the cloud, saying,
"This is my beloved Son, hear ye him." As at the baptism, so here,
too, was Jesus proclaimed by a heavenly voice as the Son or beloved
of God, or rather of the Holy Spirit. As the latter is in Hebrew of
the feminine gender, it consequently appears that in this passage we
have before us a parallel to the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. The
incident is generally looked upon as though by it was emphasised
the higher significance of Jesus in comparison with the two chief
representatives of the old order, and as though Jesus was extolled
before Moses and Elijah by the transfiguration. Here too, however,
the Sun-God, Helios, is obviously concealed beneath the form of the
Israelite Elijah. On this account Christianity changed the old places
of worship of Zeus and Helios upon eminences into chapels of Elijah;
and Moses is no other than the Moon-God, the Men of Asia Minor. And
he has been introduced into the story because the divine lawgivers in
almost all mythologies are the same as the moon, the measurer of time
and regulator of all that happens (cf. Manu among the Indians, Minos
among the Greeks, Men (Min) among the Egyptians). [218] According
to Justin, [219] David is supposed to have made the prophecy that
Christ would be born "before the sun and the moon." The sun and moon
often appear upon the pictures of the Nearer Asiatic Redeemer, God
(e.g., Mithras), paling before the splendour of the young Light-God,
as we have seen in the case of Buddha, [220] and as, according to
the narrative of the Rigveda, also happened at the birth of the Child
Agni. Accordingly we have before us in the story of the transfiguration
in the Gospels only another view of the story of the birth of the
Light-God or Fire-God, such as lies at the root of the story of the
baptism of the Christian Saviour. [221] And with the thought of the
new birth of the Saviour is associated that of the baptism of Jesus,
and particularly that of the fire-baptism, of which the sun partakes
at the height of its power. [222]
VI
THE SELF-OFFERING OF THE MESSIAH. THE SUPPER
Like Baptism, the sacrament of the "Supper," the partaking of the
sacred host and wine (in place of which among certain sects water is
also found), has its precedent in the most ancient fire-worship. When
the sacred fire had been kindled upon the altar, the faithful were
accustomed, as the Rigveda shows, to sit down in order to partake of
the sacred cake prepared from meal and butter, the symbol of all solid
food, and of the Soma cup, the symbol of all liquid nourishment. It
was thought that Agni dwelt invisible within these substances: in
the meal as though in the concentrated heat of the sun, in the Soma,
since the drink in its fiery nature and invigorating power disclosed
the nature of the God of Fire and Life. Participation therein opened to
the faithful communion with Agni. Thereby they were incorporated with
the God. They felt themselves transformed into him, raised above the
actuality of every day, and as members of a common body, as though of
one heart and one soul, inflamed by the same feeling of interdependence
and brotherhood. Then some such hymn as follows would mount towards
heaven from their breasts overflowing with thankfulness:--
"Oh great Agni, true-minded
Thou dost indeed unite all.
Enkindled on the place of worship
Bring us all that is good.
Unitedly come, unitedly speak,
And let your hearts be one,
Just as the old Gods
For their part are of one mind.
Like are their designs, like their assembly,
Like their disposition, united their thoughts.
So pray I also to you with like prayer,
And sacrifice unto you with like sacrifice.
The like design you have indeed,
And your hearts are united.
Let your thoughts be in unison,
That you may be happily joined together." [223]
While the faithful by partaking of the sacred cake and the fiery
Soma cup united themselves with the God and were filled with his
"spirit," the sacrificial gifts which had been brought to him burnt
upon the altars. These consisted likewise of Soma and Sacred Cake,
and caused the sacred banquet to be of such a kind that it was
partaken of by Agni and men together. The God was at and present
in the banquet dedicated to him. He consumed the gifts, transformed
them into flame, and in sweet-smelling smoke bore them with him up
to heaven. Here they were partaken of by the other divine beings and
finally by the Father of Heaven himself. Thus Agni became not merely
an agent at the sacrifice, a mystic sacrificial priest, but, since the
sacrificial gifts simply contained him in material form, a sacrificer,
who offered his own body in sacrifice. [224] While man sacrificed God,
God at the same time sacrificed himself. Indeed, this sacrifice was
one in which God was not only the subject but also the object, both
sacrificer and sacrificed. "It was a common mode of thinking among the
Indians," says Max Müller, "to look upon the fire on the altar as at
the same time subject and object of the sacrifice. The fire burnt the
offering and was accordingly the priest as it were. The fire bore the
offering to the Gods and was accordingly a mediator between God and
men. But the fire also represented something divine. It was a God,
and if honour was paid to this God, the fire was at once subject and
object of the sacrifice. Out of this arose the first idea, that Agni
sacrificed to himself, that is, that he brought his own offering to
himself, then, that he brought himself as a victim--out of which the
later legends grew." [225] The sacrifice of the God is a sacrificing of
the God. The genitive in this sentence is in one case to be understood
in an objective, in the other in a subjective sense. In other words,
the sacrifice which man offers to the God is a sacrifice which the
God brings, and this sacrifice of the God is at the same time one in
which the God offers himself as victim.
In the Rigveda Agni, as God of Priests and Sacrifices, also bears
the name of Viçvakarman, i.e., "Consummator of All." Hymn x., 81 also
describes him as the creator of the world, who called the world into
existence, and in so doing gave his own body in sacrifice. Hence,
then, the world, according to x. 82, represents nothing existing
exterior to him, but the very manifestation of Viçvakarman, in which
at the creation he as it were appeared. On the other hand, Purusha,
the first man, is represented as he out of whose body the world was
formed. [226] But Purusha is, as we have seen, the prototype of the
Mandaic and apocalyptic "son of man." Herein lies the confirmation
of the fact that the "son of man" is none other than Agni, the most
human of the Vedic Gods. In the Mazda religion the first mortals were
called Meshia and Meshiane, the ancestors of fallen mankind, who expect
their redemption at the hands of another Meshia. This meaning of the
word Messiah was not strange to the Jews too, when they placed the
latter as the "new Adam" in the middle of the ages. Adam, however,
also means man. [227] The Messiah accordingly, as the new Adam,
was for them too only a renewal of the first man in a loftier and
better form. This idea, that mankind needed to be renewed by another
typical representative of itself, goes back in the last resort to
India, where, after the dismemberment of Purusha, a man arose in
the person of Manu or Manus. He was to be the just king, the first
lawgiver and establisher of civilisation, descending after his death
to rule as judge in the under-world (cf. the Cretan Minos). But Manu,
whose name again meant no more than man or human being (Manusha),
passed as son of Agni. Indeed, he was even completely identified
with him, since life, spirit, and fire to the mind of primitive man
are interchangeable ideas, although it is spirit and intelligence
which are expressed under the name of Manu (Man = to measure, to
examine). [228] We thus also obtain a new reason for the fact that the
divine Redeemer is a human being. We also understand not only why the
"first-born son of God" was, according to the ideas of the whole of
Nearer Asiatic syncretism, the principle of the creation of the world,
but also why the redemption which he brought man could be for this
reason looked upon as a divine self-sacrifice. [229]
The sacrifice of the God on the part of mankind is a sacrifice of the
God himself--it is only by this means that the community between God
and man was completed. The God offers sacrifice for man, while man
offers sacrifice for God. Indeed, more than this, he offers himself
for mankind, he gives his own body that man may reap the fruit of
his sacrifice. The divine "son" offers himself as a victim. Sent
down by the "father" upon the earth in the form of light and warmth,
he enters men as the "quickening and life-giving spirit" under the
appearance of bread and wine. He consumes himself in the fire and
unites man with the father above, in that by his disposal of his
own personality he removes the separation and difference between
them. Thus Agni extinguishes the hostility between God and man, thus
he consumes their sins in the glow of his fiery nature, spiritualising
and illuminating them inwardly. Through the invigorating power of
the "fire-water" he raises men above the actuality of every day
to the source of their existence and by his own sacrifice obtains
for them a life of blessedness in heaven. In the sacrifice, too,
God and man are identified. Therein God descends to man and man is
raised to God. That is the common thought which had already found
expression in the Rigveda, which later formed the special "mystery"
of the secret cults and religious unions of Nearer Asia, which lay
at the root of the sacrament of "the Supper," which guaranteed to man
the certainty of a blessed life in the beyond, and reconciled him to
the thought of bodily death. [230] Agni is accordingly nothing else
than the bodily warmth in individuals, and as such the subject of
their motions and thoughts, the principle of life, their soul. When
the body grows cold in death the warmth of life leaves it, the eyes
of the dead go up to the sun, his breath into the wind; his soul,
however, ascends towards heaven where the "fathers" dwell, into the
kingdom of everlasting light and life. [231] Indeed, so great is the
power of Agni, the divine physician and saviour of the soul, [232]
that he, as the God of all creative power, can, by merely laying on
his hands, even call the dead back to life. [233]
Even in the Old Testament we meet with the idea of a sacramental
meal. This is pointed to in Genesis xiv. 18 sqq., when Melchisedek,
the prince of peace ("King of Salem"), the priest of "God Most
High," prepares for Abraham a meal of bread and wine, and at it
imparts to him the blessing of the Lord God. For Melchisedek, the
ruler of Salem, the city of peace, "the King of Justice," as he is
called in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is even in this book plainly
described as an ancient God: "without father, without mother, without
genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made
like unto the Son of God, he abideth a priest continually." [234]
So also the Prophet Jeremiah speaks of holy feasts, consisting of
cake and wine, of nightly sacrifices of burnt-offerings and liquids,
which were offered to the Queen of Heaven (i.e., the Moon) and other
Divinities. [235] Isaiah, too, is indignant against those who prepare
a drinking-feast for God and make liquid offerings to Meni. [236]
Now Meni is none other than Men, the Moon-God of Asia Minor, and
as such is identical with Selene-Mene, the Goddess of the Moon in
the Orphic hymns. Like her he is a being of a dual sex, at once
Queen and King of Heaven. Consequently a liquid sacrifice appears
to have been offered by all the people of Nearer Asia in honour of
the Moon. As Moon-God (Deus Lunus) and as related to Meni, in whose
worship a sacramental meal also plays the chief part, Agni appears in
the Vedas under the name of Manu, Manus, or Soma. He too is a being
of dual sex. Of this we are again reminded when Philo, the Rabbinic
speculation of the Kabbala, as well as the Gnostics ascribe to the
first man (Adam Kadmon) two faces and the form of a man and woman,
until God separated the two sexes from one another. [237] According
to this we should probably look upon the fire-worship in Asia Minor
also as the foundation of the sacramental meal.
Obviously we have to do with a meal of this kind in the bringing in
of the so-called shew-bread. Every Sabbath twelve cakes were laid by
the priests "upon the pure table before the Lord," "and it shall be
for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, for
it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the Lord, by a perpetual
statute." [238]
It appears, then, that this meal, presided over by the High Priest as
representative of Aaron, was partaken of by twelve other priests, and
Robertson rightly sees herein the Jewish prototype of the Christian
Supper and of the number of apostles--the Twelve--present at it. But
the High Priest Aaron is a personification of the Jewish Ark of the
Covenant, that is, of the visible expression of the Covenant between
God and man, one of the chief prototypes of the Messiah. And if the
self-offering of the Messiah, as we have seen above (p. 78), has its
precedent in the self-offering of Aaron, so also the great solemnity
of the Aaronic sacrificial meal would not be wanting in the story of
the Christian Redeemer.
As is well known, Joshua too, the Jesus of the Old Testament, whom we
have learnt to recognise as an ancient Ephraimitic God of the Sun and
Fruitfulness, was accompanied in his passage of the Jordan by twelve
assistants, one from each tribe. And he is said after circumcising the
people to have celebrated the Paschal Feast on the other bank. [239]
Hence, taking into account what has been said above concerning Joshua,
we are probably justified in drawing the conclusion that his name was
permanently connected with the partaking of the Easter lamb. [240]
In any case the so-called "Supper" of Christianity did not only later
take its place as the central point of religious activity, but from
the beginning it held this central position in the cults of those
sects out of which Christianity was developed. It was the point of
crystallisation, the highest point, of the other ritualistic acts,
in a way the germ cell out of which in association with the idea
of the death and resurrection of the God Redeemer the Christian
outlook upon the world has grown. Just as in the Vedic Agni Cult the
sacrifice offered by men to their God was a self-sacrifice of this
God as well in a subjective as in an objective sense; just as the
participating in common of the sacrificial gifts served the purpose
of rendering the sacrifice in an inward sense their very own, and
thereby making them immediate participators in its efficacy, so, too,
the Christian partakes in the bread of the body of his God and in the
wine drinks his blood in order to become as it were himself God. The
Evangelists make the Supper coincide with the Feast of the Pasch,
because originally a man was immolated on this occasion; and he,
as the first-born and most valuable of sacrificial gifts, took the
place of the God who offered himself in sacrifice. [241]
The celebration of sacramental feasts was very widespread throughout
the whole of antiquity. They were among the most important acts
of worship in the Mystic religions, above all in connection with
the idea of the Saviour (Soter) and God of Sacrifices, who gave his
life for the world. Thus Mithras, the Persian Agni, is said to have
celebrated in a last meal with Helios and the other companions of
his toils the end of their common struggle. Those initiated into
the Mysteries of Mithras also celebrated this occurrence by common
feasts in which they strove to unite themselves in a mystic manner
with the God. Saos (Saon or Samon), the son of Zeus or Hermes,
the God of Healing, and a nymph, reminds us of the name of Mithras,
rejuvenated and risen again, of Saoshyant or Sosiosh. He is said to
have founded the Mysteries in Samothrace, and appears to be identical
with the mythical Sabus, who is supposed to have given his name to the
Sabines, to have founded Italian civilization, and to have invented
wine. [242] His name characterises him as the "sacrificer" (Scr.,
Savana, sacrifice); and he appears to be a Western form of Agni,
the God of Sacrifices and preparer of the Soma, since Dionysus also
bore the surname of Saos or Saotes and, as distributor of the wine, is
supposed to have shed his blood for the salvation of the world, to have
died and to have risen again, and thus has a prototype in the Vedic
Agni. With Saos are connected Iasios (Jasion), the son and beloved of
Demeter or Aphrodite (Maia), and of Zeus or the divine "artificer"
Hephaistos (Tvashtar). Just as Saos established the worship of the
Cabiri, Iasios is said to have established the worship of Demeter in
Samothrace. In this connection he is identified with Hermes-Cadmus,
the divine sacrificial priest (Kadmilos, i.e., Servant of God) of
the Samothracian religion (cf. Adam-Kadmon of the Kabbala and the
Gnostics, who is connected both with Agni-Manu and Jesus). According
to Usener his name is connected with the Greek "iasthein," to cure,
and consequently characterises its bearer as "saviour." But this is
also the real meaning of the name Jason, whose bearer, a form of the
patron of physicians, Asclepios (Helios), wanders about as a physician,
exorciser of demons and founder of holy rites, and was venerated as
God of Healing in the whole of Nearer Asia and Greece. [243] The myth
also connects him with the establishment of the worship of the twelve
Gods. [244]
Now, Iasios (Jason) is only a Greek form of the name Joshua
(Jesus). Just as Joshua crossed the Jordan with twelve assistants and
celebrated the Pasch (lamb) on the further bank, just as Jesus in
his capacity of divine physician and wonder-worker wanders through
Galilee (the district of Galil!) with twelve disciples, and goes to
Jerusalem at the Pasch in order to eat the Easter lamb there with
the Twelve, so does Jason set out with twelve companions in order to
fetch the golden fleece of the lamb from Colchis. [245] And just as
Jason, after overcoming innumerable dangers, successfully leads his
companions to their goal and back again to the homes they so longed
for, so does Joshua lead the people of Israel into the promised land
"where milk and honey flow," and so Jesus shows his followers the
way to their true home, the kingdom of heaven, the land of their
"fathers," whence the soul originally came and whither after the
completion of its journey through life it returns. It can scarcely
be doubted that in all of these cases we have to do with one and the
same myth--the myth of the Saving Sun and Rejoicer of the peoples,
as it was spread among all the peoples of antiquity, but especially
in Nearer Asia. We can scarcely doubt that the stories in question
originally referred to the annual journey of the sun through the
twelve signs of the Zodiac. Even the names (Iasios, Jason, Joshua,
Jesus; cf. also Vishnu Jesudu, see above) agree, and their common
root is contained also in the name Jao (Jahwe), from which Joshua is
derived. Jao or Jehu, however, was a mystical name of Dionysus among
the Greeks, and he, like Vishnu Jesudu (Krishna), Joshua, and Jesus,
roamed about in his capacity of travelling physician and redeemer
of the world. [246] Of all of these wandering Healers, Physicians,
and Deliverers it is true that they were honoured in the Mysteries
by sacramental meals and offered the faithful both the chalice of
corporal and spiritual healing and the "bread of life."
VII
SYMBOLS OF THE MESSIAH: THE LAMB AND THE CROSS
Of a great number of modes of expression and images in the New
Testament we know that they originated from the common treasury of
the languages of the secret sects of the Orient, having their source
above all in Mandaism and the Mithraic religion. Thus "the rock,"
"the water," "the bread," "the book," or "the light of life,"
[247] "the second death," "the vine," "the good shepherd," &c.,
are simply expressions which in part are known also by the Rigveda
and there belong to the ideas grouped about Agni, the God of Fire,
Life, and Shepherds. Of the latter, too, as of Jesus, it is said
that he loses not a single one of the flock entrusted to his care,
[248] for Pushan, to whom the hymn in this connection is addressed,
is only a form of Agni. In its symbols also the earliest Christianity
coincides with Indian thought in such a striking manner that it can
scarcely be explained as chance. Thus the horse, [249] the hare, and
the peacock, which play so great a part in symbolic pictures of the
catacombs, point to an ultimately Vedic origin, where they all stand in
connection with the nature of Agni. Again, the Fish was already to be
found in the Indian Fire Worship and appears to have here originally
represented Agni swimming in the water of the clouds, the ocean of
heaven. [250] In the hymn of the Rigveda itself Agni is often invoked
as "the Bull." This was probably originally a simple nature symbol,
the Bull as image of the strength of the God; then the Fire-God and
Sun-God, in his capacity of preparer of the Soma cup, was identified
with the moon (Manu), whose crescents were taken as the horns of a
bull. Later, however, the image of the Bull was driven out by that
of the Ram. As early as in the Rigveda there is frequent mention of
the God's "banner of smoke." Thus he was accustomed to be represented
leading a ram with a banner in his hand or simply with a banner in his
hand with the picture of a ram upon it, just as Christ is portrayed
under the shape of a ram or lamb bearing a banner like a cross.
About the year 800 B.C. the sun, the heavenly Agni, which had hitherto
been at the commencement of spring in the constellation of the Bull,
entered (as a consequence of the advance of equality between day and
night) that of the Ram. Thus it became, according to astrological
modes of thought, itself a ram. [251] While it had formerly, in the
shape of a bull, opened the spring and released the world from the
power of winter--an image which was still retained in the Mithras
Cult--these functions were now transferred to the ram, and this became
a symbol of the God and the beast offered in expiatory sacrifices. Now
the constellation of the Ram was described by the Persians in a word
which could also mean lamb. In other cases also the lamb often took
the place of the ram in the sacrificial worship of Nearer Asia; for
example, among the Jews, who were accustomed to consume the Paschal
lamb at the beginning of the year in spring. This is the explanation
of the mystical lamb in the Revelation of John (which is scarcely an
original Christian work, but shows signs of a pre-Christian Cult of
Jesus [252]), being depicted by seven horns or rays in a way which
rather implies the idea of a ram.
The fifth chapter of Revelation describes the lamb in its quality
of heavenly victim of expiatio
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/45540