Bible, Christ & Christianity

Bible- Introduction

2012-02-18T14:54:00.000+05:00

WebpageTranslator

Bible is the sacred scriptures of Judaism and Christianity also revered by Muslims, who as an article faith are required to believe in all the prophets and scriptures. Quran mentions 25 prophets by name and Books, of Abraham [Muhsaf-e-Ibrahim], Torah, Psalms and Gospel [Injeel] to Jesus Christ. Jews and Christians are addressed as 'people of the book'' by Quran with special status. 'The word 'Bible' is derived from Greek biblos (“book”) can be compared with byblos (“Papyrus”: The writing material of ancient times and also the plant from which it was derived). In the fifth century, name ‘Bible’ began to be given to the entire collection of sacred books, the “Library of Divine Revelation.” The name Bible was adopted by Wickliffe, and came gradually into use in the English language. Interestingly the word ‘Bible’ does not exist in the scripture. The order as well as the number of books differs between the Jewish Bible, the Protestant and Roman Catholic versions of the Bible. The suffix "pedia" is from the Greek root 'paideia' [Παιδεία] meaning education, culture. 'Bible-Pedia' is eduction, learning about Bible , its relationship with Jesus Christ & Christianity.

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A Comprehensive Introduction to Bible
"PREFACE" To The Revised Standard Version

Revised Standard Version of the Bible is an authorized revision of the American Standard Version, published in 1901, which was a revision of the King James Version, published in 1611. The first English version of the Scriptures made by direct translation from the original Hebrew and Greek, and the first to be printed, was the work of William Tyndale. He met bitter opposition. He was accused of willfully perverting the meaning of the Scriptures, and his New Testaments were ordered to be burned as "untrue translations." He was finally betrayed into the hands of his enemies, and in October 1536, was publicly executed and burned at the stake.

Yet Tyndale's work became the foundation of subsequent English versions, notably those of Coverdale, 1535; Thomas Matthew (probably a pseudonym for John Rogers), 1537; the Great Bible, 1539; the Geneva Bible, 1560; and the Bishops' Bible, 1568. In 1582 a translation of the New Testament, made from the Latin Vulgate by Roman Catholic scholars, was published atRheims. The translators who made the King James Version took into account all of these preceding versions; and comparison shows that it owes something to each of them. It kept felicitous phrases and apt expressions, from whatever source, which had stood the test of public usage. It owed most, especially in the New Testament, to Tyndale. The King James Version had to compete with the Geneva Bible in popular use; but in the end it prevailed, and for more than two and a half centuries no other authorized translation of the Bible into English was made. The King James Version became the "Authorized Version" of the English-speaking peoples.

The King James Version has with good reason been termed "the noblestmonumentofEnglishprose." Its revisers in 1881 expressed admiration for "its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy turns of expression . . . the music of its cadences, and the felicities of its rhythm." It entered, as no other book has, into the making of the personal character and the public institutions of the English-speaking peoples. We owe to it an incalculable debt.

Yet the King James Version has grave defects. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the development of Biblical studies and the discovery of many manuscripts more ancient than those upon which the King James Version was based, made it manifest that these defects are so many and so serious as to call for revision of the English translation. The task was undertaken, by authority of the Church of England, in 1870. The English Revised Version of the Bible was published in 1881-1885; and the American Standard Version, its variant embodying the preferences of the American scholars associated in the works was published in 1901.

Because of unhappy experience with unauthorized publications in the two decades between 1881 and 1901, which tampered with the text of the English Revised Version in the supposed interest of the American public, the American Standard Version was copyrighted, to protect the text from unauthorized changes. In 1928 this copyright was acquired by the International Council of Religious Education, and thus passed into the ownership of the churches of theUnited States andCanada which were associated in this Council through their boards of education and publication.

The Council appointed a committee of scholars to have charge of the text of the American Standard Version and to undertake inquiry as to whether further revision was necessary. For more than two years the Committee worked upon the problem of whether or not revision should be undertaken; and if so, what should be its nature and extent. In the end the decision was reached that there is need for a thorough revision of the version of 1901, which will stay as close to the Tyndale-King James tradition as it can in the light of our present knowledge of the Hebrew and Greek texts and their meaning on the one hand, and our present understanding of English on the other.

In 1937 the revision was authorized by vote of the Council, which directed that the resulting version should "embody the best results of modern scholarship as to the meaning of the Scriptures, and express this meaning in English diction which is designed for use in public and private worship and preserve those qualities which have given to the King James Version a supreme place in English literature."

Thirty-two scholars have served as members of the Committee charged with making the revision, and they have secured the review and counsel of an Advisory Board of fifty representatives of the co-operating denominations. The Committee has worked in two sections, one dealing with the Old Testament and one with the New Testament. Each section has submitted its work to the scrutiny of the members of the other section; and the charter of the Committee requires that all changes be agreed upon by a two-thirds vote of the total membership of the Committee. The Revised Standard Version of the New Testament was published in 1946. The publication of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments was authorized by vote of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. in 1951.

The problem of establishing the correct Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Old Testament is very different from the corresponding problem in the New Testament. For the New Testament we have a large number of Greek manuscripts, preserving many variant forms of the text. Some of them were made only two or three centuries later than the original composition of the books. For the Old Testament only late manuscripts survive, all (with the exception of the Dead Sea texts of Isaiah and Habakkuk and some fragments of other books) based on a standardized form of the text established many centuries after the books were written.

The present revision is based on the consonantal Hebrew and Aramaic text as fixed early in the Christian era and revised by Jewish scholars (the "Masoretes") of the sixth to ninth centuries. The vowel signs, which were added by the Masoretes, are accepted also in the main, but where a more probable and convincing reading can be obtained by assuming different vowels, this has been done. No notes are given in such cases, because the vowel points are less ancient and reliable than the consonants.

Departures from the consonantal text of the best manuscripts have been made only where it seems clear that errors in copying had been made before the text was standardized. Most of the corrections adopted are based on the ancient versions (translations into Greek, Aramaic, Syriac, and Latin), which were made before the time of the Masoretic revision and therefore reflect earlier forms of the text. In every such instance a footnote specifies the version or versions from which the correction has been derived, and also gives a translation of the Masoretic Text.

Sometimes it is evident that the text has suffered in transmission, but none of the versions provides a satisfactory restoration. Here we can only follow the best judgment of competent scholars as to the most probable reconstruction of the original text. Such corrections are indicated in the footnotes by the abbreviation Cn, and a translation of the Masoretic Text is added.

The discovery of the meaning of the text, once the best readings have been established, is aided by many new resources for understanding the original languages. Much progress has been made in the historical and comparative study of these languages. A vast quantity of writings in related Semitic languages, some of them only recently discovered, has greatly enlarged our knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic. Sometimes the present translation will be found to render a Hebrew word in a sense quite different from that of the traditional interpretation. It has not been felt necessary in such cases to attach a footnote, because no change in the text is involved and it may be assumed that the new rendering was not adopted without convincing evidence. The analysis of religious texts from the ancient Near East has made clearer the significance of ideas and practices recorded in the Old Testament. Many difficulties and obscurities, of course, remain. Where the choice between two meanings is particularly difficult or doubtful, we have given an alternative rendering in a footnote. If in the judgment of the Committee the meaning of a passage is quite uncertain or obscure, either because of corruption in the text or because of the inadequacy of our present knowledge of the language, that fact is indicated by a note. It should not be assumed, however, that the Committee was entirely sure or unanimous concerning every rendering not so indicated. To record all minority views was obviously out of the question.

A major departure from the practice of the American Standard Version is the rendering of the Divine Name, the "Tetragrammaton." The American Standard Version used the term "Jehovah"; the King James Version had employed this in four places, but everywhere else, except in three cases where it was employed as part of a proper name, used the English word lord (or in certain cases god) printed in capitals. The present revision returns to the procedure of the King James Version, which follows the precedent of the ancient Greek and Latin translators and the long established practice in the reading of the Hebrew scriptures in the synagogue. While it is almost if not quite certain that the Name was originally pronounced "Yahweh," this pronunciation was not indicated when the Masoretes added vowel signs to the consonantal Hebrew text. To the four consonants YHWH of the Name, which bad come to be regarded as too sacred to be pronounced, they attached vowel signs indicating that in its place should be read the Hebrew word Adonai meaning "Lord" (or Elohim meaning "God"). The ancient Greek translators substituted the word Kyrios (Lord) for the Name. The Vulgate likewise used the Latin word Dominus. The form "Jehovah" is of late medieval origin; it is a combination of the consonants of the Divine Name and the vowels attached to it by the Masoretes but belonging to an entirely different word. The sound of Y is represented by J and the sound of W by V, as in Latin. For two reasons the Committee has returned to the more familiar usage of the King James Version: (1) the word "Jehovah" does not accurately represent any form of the Name ever used in Hebrew; and (2) the use of any proper name for the one and only God, as though there were other gods from whom He had to be distinguished, was discontinued in Judaism before the Christian era and is entirely inappropriate for the universal faith of the Christian Church.

The King James Version of the New Testament was based upon a Greek text that was marred by mistakes, containing the accumulated errors of fourteen centuries of manuscript copying. It was essentially the Greek text of the New Testament as edited by Beza, 1589, who closely followed that published by Erasmus, 1516-1535, which was based upon a few medieval manuscripts. The earliest and best of the eight manuscripts which Erasmus consulted was from the tenth century, and he made the least use of it because it differed most from the commonly received text; Beza had access to two manuscripts of great value, dating from the fifth and sixth centuries, but he made very little use of them because they differed from the text published by Erasmus.

We now possess many more ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, and are far better equipped to seek to recover the original wording of the Greek text. The evidence for the text of the books of the New Testament is better than for any other ancient book, both in the number of extant manuscripts and in the nearness of the date of some of these manuscripts to the date when the book was originally written.

The revisers in the 1870's had most of the evidence that we now have for the Greek text, though the most ancient of all extant manuscripts of the Greek New Testament were not discovered until 1931. But they lacked the resources which discoveries within the past eighty years have afforded for understanding the vocabulary, grammar and idioms of the Greek New Testament. An amazing body of Greek papyri has been unearthed in Egypt since the 1870's—private letters, official reports, wills, business accounts, petitions, and other such trivial, everyday recordings of the activities of human beings. In 1895 appeared the first of Adolf Deissmann's studies of these ordinary materials. He proved that many words which had hitherto been assumed to belong to what was called "Biblical Greek" were current in the spoken vernacular of the first century A.D. The New Testament was written in the Koine, the common Greek which was spoken and understood practically everywhere throughout the Roman Empire in the early centuries of the Christian era. This development in the study of New Testament Greek has come since the work on the English Revised Version and the American Standard Version was done, and at many points sheds new light upon the meaning of the Greek text.

A major reason for revision of the King James Version, which is valid for both the Old Testament and the New Testament, is the change since 1611 in English usage. Many forms of expression have become archaic, while still generally intelligible—_;the use of thou, thee, thy, thine and the verb endings -est and -edst, the verb endings -etb and -th, it came to pass that whosoever, whatsoever, insomuch that, because that, for that, unto_; howbeit, peradventure, holden, aforetime, must needs, would fain, behooved., to you-ward, etc. Other words are obsolete and no longer understood by the common reader. The greatest problem, however, is presented by the English words which are still in constant use but now convey a different meaning from that which they had in 1611 and in the King James Version. These words were once accurate translations of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures; but now, having changed in meaning, they have become misleading. They no longer say what the King James translators meant them to say. Thus, the King James Version uses the word "let" in the sense of "hinder," "prevent" to mean "precede"allow" in 'the sense of "approve," "communicate" for "share," "conversation" for "conduct,” "comprehend" for "overcome," "ghost" for "spirit," "wealth" for "well-being," "allege" for "prove," "demand" for "ask," "take no thought" for "be not anxious," etc.

The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, was published on September 30, 1952, and has met with wide acceptance. This preface does not undertake to set forth in detail the lines along which the revision proceeded. That is done in pamphlets entitled An Introduction to the Revised Standard Version of the Old Testament and An Introduction to the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, written by members of the Committee and designed to help the general public to understand the main principles which have guided this comprehensive revision of the King James and American Standard versions.

These principles were reaffirmed by the Committee in 1959, in connection with a study of criticisms and suggestions from various readers. As a result, a few changes were authorized for subsequent editions, most of them corrections of punctuation, capitalization, or footnotes. Some of them are changes of words or phrases made in the interest of consistency, clarity or accuracy of translation.

The Second Edition of the translation of the New Testament (1971) profits from textual and linguistic studies published since the Revised Standard Version New Testament was first issued in 1946. Many proposals for modification were submitted to the Committee by individuals and by two denominational committees. All of these were given careful attention by the Committee.

Two passages, the longer ending of Mark (16.9-20) and the account of the woman caught in adultery (John 7.5-3-8.11), are restored to the text, separated from it by a blank space and accompanied by informative notes describing the various arrangements of the text in the ancient authorities. With new manuscript support two passages, Luke 22.19b-20 and 24.51b, are restored to the text, and one passage, Luke 22.43-44 is placed in the note, as is a phrase in Luke 12.39. Notes are added which indicate significant variations, additions, or omissions in the ancient authorities (Mt 9.34; Mk 3.16; 7.4; Lk 24.32, 51, etc.).

Among the new notes are those giving the equivalence of ancient coinage with the contemporary day's or year's wages of a labourer Mt 18.24,28; 20.2, etc.). Some of the revisions clarify the meaning through rephrasing or reordering the text (see Mk 5.42; Lk 22.29-30; Jn 10.33; I Cor 3.9; 2 Cor 5.19; Heb 13.13). Even when the changes appear to be largely matters of English style, they have the purpose of presenting to the reader more adequately the meaning of the text (see Mt 10.8; 12.1; 15.29; 17.20; Lk 7.36; 11.17; 12.40; Jn 16.9; Rom 10.16; 1 Cor 12.24;2 Cor 2.3; 3.5, 6; etc.).

The Revised Standard Version Bible seeks to preserve all that is best in the English Bible as it has been known and used through the years. It is intended for use in public and private worship, not merely for reading and instruction. We have resisted the temptation to use phrases that are merely current usage, and have sought to put the message of the Bible in simple, enduring words that are worthy to stand in the great Tyndale-King James tradition. We are glad to say, with the King James translators: "Truly (good Christian Reader) we never thought from the beginning, that we should need to make a new Translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one ... but to make a good one better."

The Bible is more than a historical document to be preserved. And it is more than a classic of English literature to be cherished and admired. It is a record of God's dealing with men, of God's revelation of Himself and His will. It records the life and work of Him in whom the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among men. The Bible carries its full message, not to those who regard it simply as a heritage of the past or praise its literary style, but to those who read it that they may discern and understand God's Word to men. That Word must not be disguised in phrases that are no longer clear, or hidden under words that have changed or lost their meaning. It must stand forth in language that is direct and plain and meaningful to people today. It is our hope and our earnest prayer that this Revised Standard Version of the Bible may be used by God to speak to men in these momentous times, and to help them to understand and believe and obey His Word.

[Source: "PREFACE" to THE BIBLE , REVISED STANDARD VERSION, Published By WM. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, For The British & Foreign Bible Society, Printed inGreat Britain, RS53P-100M-1972(14) - ISBN 0564 001015]

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See Next: Bible-Analysis

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http://Bible-pedia.blogspot.com

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http://FaithForum.Wordpress.Com

http://Islamphobia.Wordpress.com

http://Pakistan-posts.blogspot.com

http://twitter.com/AbrahamsFaith
http://aftabkhan.blog.com

Interfaith Weblinks

2012-02-18T14:52:00.000+05:00

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bible
An outstandingly comprehensive website that touches upon all the absurdities, contradictions & corruptions found in the Bible -- scroll down for the list)
http://www.evilbible.com/

Certainly one of my personal favourite. They type of website which no Christian would want you to see. But be CAUTIONED! This is an Atheist website that attacks certain aspects of Isa al-Masih (as) and the Christian faith which Muslims regard as true (e.g. the virgin birth, miracles, etc). You must choose your arguments with great care.

http://www.muslim-responses.com/

This website is run by bro. Sami Zaatari, one of the internet's foremost Muslim debater with vast knowledge of comparative religion & Christian polemics. Alhamdulillah! You can also find his videos in YouTube.

http://freetruth.50webs.org/Index.htm

A comprehensive catalogue of horrors & atrocities committed by Christians throughout the centuries. Very good & factual response to those who allege Islam is violent & inhuman.

http://thedebateinitiative.com/

Every Muslim student of comparative religion needs to be acquainted to this remarkable website. It contains a series of articles as well as high-quality video lectures & debates by contemporary preachers & debaters of Islam. Take note of their presentations & use their arguments in your debates for resounding effect

Please visit: http://aftabkhan.blog.com

Ahmed Deedat on Islam & Christianity

2012-02-14T22:12:00.000+05:00

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL60B6B55EC281900D

Please visit: http://aftabkhan.blog.com

Dr.Zakir Naik on Islam & Christianity

2012-02-10T22:19:00.000+05:00

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC8226D85615B7509

Please visit: http://aftabkhan.blog.com

Thomas Jefferson’s secret Bible of Jesus's Moral code

2012-01-13T00:06:00.001+05:00

Thomas Jefferson and his Bible

The 'Jefferson Bible' was Thomas Jefferson's attempt to extract an authentic Jesus from the Gospel accounts.by Marilyn Mellowes.The White House, Washington, D.C. 1804.

Thomas Jefferson was frustrated. It was not the burdens of office that bothered him. It was his Bible. Jefferson was convinced that the authentic words of Jesus written in the New Testament had been contaminated. Early Christians, overly eager to make their religion appealing to the pagans, had obscured the words of Jesus with the philosophy of the ancient Greeks and the teachings of Plato. These "Platonists" had thoroughly muddled Jesus' original message. Jefferson assured his friend and rival, John Adams, that the authentic words of Jesus were still there. The task, as he put it, was one of abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and as separate from that as the diamond from the dung hill.

With the confidence and optimistic energy characteristic of the Enlightenment, Jefferson proceeded to dig out the diamonds. Candles burning late at night, his quill pen scratching "too hastily" as he later admitted, Jefferson composed a short monograph titled The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth. The subtitle explains that the work is "extracted from the account of his life and the doctrines as given by Matthew, Mark, Luke & John." In it, Jefferson presented what he understood was the true message of Jesus.

Jefferson set aside his New Testament research, returning to it again in the summer of 1820. This time, he completed a more ambitious work, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French and English. The text of the New Testament appears in four parallel columns in four languages. Jefferson omitted the words that he thought were inauthentic and retained those he believed were original. The resulting work is commonly known as the "Jefferson Bible."

Who was the Jesus that Jefferson found? He was not the familiar figure of the New Testament. In Jefferson's Bible, there is no account of the beginning and the end of the Gospel story. There is no story of the annunciation, the virgin birth or the appearance of the angels to the shepherds. The resurrection is not even mentioned.

Jefferson discovered a Jesus who was a great Teacher of Common Sense. His message was the morality of absolute love and service. Its authenticity was not dependent upon the dogma of the Trinity or even the claim that Jesus was uniquely inspired by God. Jefferson saw Jesus as

a man, of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, (and an) enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions of divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition by being gibbeted according to the Roman law.

In short, Mr. Jefferson's Jesus, modeled on the ideals of the Enlightenment thinkers of his day, bore a striking resemblance to Jefferson himself.

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Editor's note: Mitch Horowitz is editor-in-chief of Tarcher/Penguin and editor of Penguin’s new reissue of The Jefferson Bible. By Mitch Horowitz, Special to CNN

(CNN) – Imagine the following scenario: A U.S. president is discovered to be spending his spare time taking a razor to the New Testament, cutting up and re-pasting those passages of the Gospels that he considered authentic and morally true and discarding all the rest.

Gone are the virgin birth, divine healings, exorcisms and the resurrection of the dead, all of which the chief executive dismissed as “superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications.”

Such an episode occurred, although the revised version of Scripture remained unseen for nearly seven decades after its abridger’s death. Thomas Jefferson intended it that way.

During most of his two terms in the White House, from 1801 to 1809, and for more than a decade afterward, Jefferson – the third U.S. president and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence – committed himself to a radical reinterpretation of the Gospels.

With a razor and glue brush at this side, Jefferson lined up English, French, Greek and Latin editions of Scripture and proceeded to cut up and reassemble the four Gospels into an exquisitely well-crafted, multilingual chronology of Christ’s life.

Jefferson lined up different editions of Scripture.

In Jefferson’s view, this revision represented a faithful record of Christ’s moral code, minus the miracles that the Enlightenment-era founder dismissed as historical mythmaking.

The book eventually became known as The Jefferson Bible and is now being rediscovered in new editions, including one published this month by Tarcher/Penguin, and as the focus of a Smithsonian exhibit.

Ask most people today if they have heard of Jefferson’s Bible and you will receive blank stares. Indeed, for much of American history, The Jefferson Bible was entirely unknown. Jefferson intended it as a work of private reflection, not a public statement.

As contemporary readers discover the work, it is tempting to wonder how American history might look different had Jefferson’s radical document come to light closer to its completion.

Jefferson was still working on his Bible during his presidency, so its theoretical publication wouldn’t have compromised his electability. But if the book had been made public after its final completion in 1820, when Jefferson had only six more years to live, it likely would have become one of the most controversial and influential religious works of early American history.

A curator handles a "source" Bible from which Jefferson cut out passages.

That was a scenario Jefferson took pains to avoid. After being called an “infidel” during his 1800 presidential race, Jefferson knew the calumny he could bring on himself if word spread of his “little book.” Although he had his work professionally bound, he mentioned it only to a select group of friends. Its discovery after his death came as a surprise to his family.

Jefferson’s wish for confidentiality held sway until 1895 when the Smithsonian in Washington made public his original pages, purchased from a great-granddaughter. In 1904, Congress issued a photolithograph edition and presented it for decades as a gift to new legislators, a gesture that would likely cause uproar in today’s climate of political piety.

Because of the book’s long dormancy following Jefferson’s death, and its limited availability for generations after – arguably the first truly accessible edition didn’t appear until 1940 –The Jefferson Bible has remained a curio of American history.

So how would the earlier publication of The Jefferson Bible have changed American history? It's impossible to know for sure, but the 1820s inaugurated a period of tremendous spiritual experiment in America: It was the age of Mormonism, Unitarian Universalism and Shakerism, among other new faiths.

There’s little doubt that many Americans, who were already fiercely independent in matters of religion, would have seen The Jefferson Bible as the manifesto of a reformist movement– call it “Jeffersonian Christianity” – focused not on repentance and salvation but on earthly ethics. Such a movement could have swept America, and also have spread to Europe, where Jefferson was esteemed.

A broad awareness of Jefferson’s work would have surely engendered a more complex view of the religious identity of Jefferson and other founders. Indeed, one of Jefferson’s most trusted correspondents while he was producing his Bible was his White House predecessor, John Adams, who in turn confided to Jefferson his distrust of all religious orthodoxy. These men were impossible to pin pat religious labels on.

Because Jefferson published relatively little during his lifetime, the appearance of The Jefferson Bible would have created a different, and more confounding, public image of the statesman as someone struggling deeply with his own religious beliefs. The Jefferson that appears behind his reconstruction of Scripture is someone who brushed aside notions of miraculous intervention and canonical faith.

As The Jefferson Bible conveys, however, Jefferson considered Jesus’ moral philosophy the most finely developed in history, surpassing the ethics of both the ancient Greeks and the Hebrews. He insisted that Christ’s authentic doctrine was marked by a stark, ascetic tone that clashed with the supernatural powers attributed to him.

“In extracting the pure principles which he taught,” Jefferson wrote in 1813, “we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms. ... There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”

Jefferson’s minimalist approach to the Gospels reveals an attitude that he disclosed only privately, just months before his death: “I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know."

In that sense, Jefferson the politician wouldn’t have stood a chance in the current presidential race, where faith and piety are on constant display. The political process might be more open today to candidates of varying degrees and types of belief if The Jefferson Bible were more central to the nation’s history.

The Jefferson Bible opens a window on Jefferson’s struggle to find a faith with which he could finally come to terms. It was this kind of intimate, inner search – not the outward pronouncement and establishment of religious doctrine – that the man who helped shape modern religious liberty sought to protect in America.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Mitch Horowitz.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/11/my-take-how-thomas-jeffersons-secret-bible-might-have-changed-history/

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► 30:02► 30:02

Jefferson's Bible - C-SPAN Video Library

c-spanvideo.org30 minIn his retirement years Thomas Jefferson compiled his own version of the four ... Former President Jefferson ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826 . The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth: Extracted Textually from the Gospels Greek, Latin, French, and English Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library| The entire work (15 KB) | Table of Contents for this work || All on-line databases | Etext Center Homepage |

Header

Front Matter

Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1

Chapter 2 CHAPTER 2

Chapter 3 CHAPTER 3

Chapter 4 CHAPTER 4

Chapter 5 CHAPTER 5

Chapter 6 CHAPTER 6

Chapter 7 CHAPTER 7

Chapter 8 CHAPTER 8

Chapter 9 CHAPTER 9

Chapter 10 CHAPTER 10

Chapter 11 CHAPTER 11

Chapter 12 CHAPTER 12

Chapter 13 CHAPTER 13

Chapter 14 CHAPTER 14

Chapter 15 CHAPTER 15

Chapter 16 CHAPTER 16

Chapter 17 CHAPTER 17

Courtesy: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefJesu.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Bible: Myths and their Parallels in other religions By T. W. Doane

2011-10-16T01:05:00.018+05:00

“BIBLE MYTHS, AND THEIR PARALLELS IN OTHER RELIGIONS BEING A COMPARISON OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT MYTHS AND MIRACLES WITH THOSE OF HEATHEN NATIONS OF ANTIQUITY CONSIDERING ALSO THEIR ORIGIN AND MEANING” BY T. W. DOANE

"He who knows only one religion knows none." -PROP. MAX MULLER.

" The same thing which is now called CHRISTIAN RELIGION existed among the Ancients. They have begun to call Christianity the true religion which existed before," ST. AUGUSTINE.

" Our love for what is old, our reverence for what our fathers used, makes us keep still in the church, and on the very altar cloths, symbols which would excite the smile of an Oriental, and lead him to wonder why we send missionaries to his land, while cherishing his faith in ours." -JAMES BONWICK.

In pursuing the study of the Bible Myths, facts pertaining thereto, in a condensed form, seemed to be greatly needed, and nowhere to be found. Widely scattered through hundreds of ancient and modem volumes, most of the contents of this book may indeed be found; but any previous attempt to trace exclusively the myths and legends of the Old and New Testament to their origin, published as a separate work, is not known to the writer of this. Many able writers hare shown so-called Sacred Scriptures to be unhistorical, and have pronounced them largely legendary, but have there left the matter, evidently aware of the great extent of the subject lying beyond.

American author Thomas William Doane (1852-1885) is considered one of the most significant contributors to the Free Thought movement, which held the view that belief should be based on the epistemology of scientific and logical laws, rather than on faith. In support of this philosophy, Doane undertook extensive research delving into the parallels between Christianity and pre-existing religions from around the world, ultimately meaning to show the difference between eternal truths, both spiritual and scientific, and fable. His work; “BIBLE MYTHS, AND THEIR PARALLELS IN OTHER RELIGIONS” was first published in 1882. He takes a methodical stroll through each of the most popular Biblical myths from both the Old and New Testaments, including the Creation, Fall, Flood, the Exodus, Samson, Birth of Jesus, Baptism, Original Sin, Trinity, and the temptation of Christ, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, Eucharist, Christian Symbols, Birthday of Christ Jesus, Paganism in Christianity and finally ‘Why Christianity Prospered’?
By providing copious evidence of the pre-existence of the morals and indeed, associated details of each, as well as thorough bibliographic information, the fruit of Doane's labour is a fascinating survey of pre Christianity religions, embedded in the Christian dogmas, a compelling critique of the originality of Christian dogma.
It is unfortunate that very little is known about Thomas William Doane. Many of the early writers on Freethought have been buried in a conspiracy of oblivion. Their books were ignored by respectable journals, apart from an occasional pomposity or outraged condemnation. Public libraries and bookshops banned the books. The literature was prohibited in the mails and frequently seized; the publishers were prosecuted. The authors themselves were cold-shouldered and omitted from standard reference works. Today it is extremely difficult to glean even a few facts about some of these writers.

THOMAS WILLIAM DOANE was born in 1852. Like many pioneers of Freethought, he is not listed in standard biographies. We know that his book became a classic of Freethought for many decades, and that it was his sole literary work. He died young, on August 8, 1885, at Boston, aged 34, only three years after his book had first appeared. That is all we know. The book was first published by J. W. Bouton of New York, the enterprising book dealer who later issued Madame Blavatsky's sensational Isis Unveiled-a book which also owed much to the Anacalypsis of Godfrey Higgins. Doane's book joined company with [author] Kersey Graves' The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors as one of the most popular items in the list of the old Truth Seeker Co. of New York, a trailblazer in Freethought literature.

"BIBLE MYTHS AND THEIR PARALLELS IN OTHER RELIGIONS" By T. W. DOANE, 1882. Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Lisa Reigel, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31885/31885-h/31885-h.htm#Page_36

Index:

Comments/Review-1

The point of the book “BIBLE MYTHS, AND THEIR PARALLELS IN OTHER RELIGIONS” is that Christianity is a religion whose 'holy scriptures' are a hodgepodge of myths from other earlier religions. One meaning that can be drawn from this is that Christianity is not the 'one true religion', but instead is just a creation of ordinary men. Another and more positive meaning which can be drawn is that there is some central core of stories on which many or most of the world's religions are based, a fact which suggests that these stories are representative of some historical truth which we know of only through mythopoeia. The question of whether the myths are true, however, does not tell us whether the religions which have adopted these myths are true, or are a good guide to behavior. My own view is that Christianity has been a dubious behavioural guide, with points both in its favour and against it, but that the church itself has often acted in a most un-Christian way, and that Christianity has been embraced by the Establishment if for no other reason than because it keeps the peons turning the other cheek instead of sticking pitchforks into the oft-deserving cheeks of their leaders.

Comments/Review-2

Is the Bible true? Ever since Tom Paine's daring ‘Age of Reason’ at the end of the eighteenth century, Freethinkers have sought a rational, non-mystical view of the universe, and their arguments against dogmatic Christianity have often been reinforced by appeals to pagan religions which contain myths paralleling the New Testament stories and throwing doubt on their priority or historicity. Banned for many years by narrow-minded bookshops and libraries, Freethinkers wrote aggressive attacks on dogma. Now a days the cause of literary freedom and tolerance demands that the Freethought case be properly heard. “BIBLE MYTHS, AND THEIR PARALLELS IN OTHER RELIGIONS” is one of two important Freethought classics now reissued. Manufactured in the United States of America, this monumental comparison of the basic elements of many different faiths shows unmistakably that the important details of the Christian story have parallels in pre-existing religions. Like the companion work now reissued (The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviours by Kersey Graves), it stemmed from the powerful impact of Godfrey Higgins's masterpiece Anacalypsis, a very rare work reprinted in limited edition by University Books Inc., 1965. Higgins spent twenty years of his life seeking the common thread of all languages and religions, a secret tradition of the mysteries that he believed had been obscured by priest cults and the privileges of establishment. Only the first volume had appeared when he died in 1833; the second volume was published posthumously three years later. This great work was drawn upon equally by Freethinkers and Theosophists, and there are 136 references to Anacalypsis in the present book.

Like Higgins, the author devoted many years to perfecting this study, and consulted nearly a hundred authorities, cited in the bibliography of "Authors and Books quoted."

Comments/Review-3

The book “BIBLE MYTHS, AND THEIR PARALLELS IN OTHER RELIGIONS” is a careful and valuable compilation, the first comprehensive and systematic collation of comparative mythology using the Judeo-Christian Bible as a ground plan. It appeared long before Comparative Religion became a fashionable study at universities, and occupies a position midway between scholarship and the popular polemics of writers like Kersey Graves. It is still an excellent introduction to Comparative Religion, especially for broad-minded Christians who are prepared to consider their faith in the perspective of pre-existing religions. Of course, there are mistakes and misunderstandings, but they stem from the author's sources and from the scholarship and outlook of his time. They are themselves part of the mythic process.

It is the unique problem of scholarship in this field that the factual study of religion is forever dealing with the outside of things, and cannot be better than the measurement of its time. Religion can never be an exact science because it is constantly changing its form, and the real message of the author's stupendously detailed comparisons is one which did not occur to him that certain basic symbols are archetypal in the human situation and are reflections of the divine infinity from which man has his origin and to which he returns. The religious person calls this great mystery "God," and the Freethinker and Atheist may call it "Nature" or "Science" so long as they affirm the rituals and ethical codes that will refine perception of it. Study alone will not enable us to discover that transcendent happiness, that awe and wonder at the marvel of life, which is the secret hope of every human being. If I want to understand how Arjuna felt in his marvellous discussion with Shri Krishna in the Hindu religious classic Bhagavad-Gita, I do not study the scholarly Harvard translation by an impeccable scholar, but rather the four ‘Anna’ (about two cents) Gita mass-produced by a religious temple in India and written by a believer, for here in this cheap, warm-hearted paperback the original inspiration comes alive in a way that dry scholarship could only envy.

The author of “BIBLE MYTHS, AND THEIR PARALLELS IN OTHER RELIGIONS” pins much of his "Explanation" on the then fashionable theory that religion stemmed from man's response to natural phenomena like the sun and the moon, and that all bibles and myths may be reduced to simple allegories. Great scholars of the nineteenth century like Max Muller and G. W. Cox believed something like that and overtaxed etymology to prove it, but it is not so simple. Someone once said: "The whole of life is nothing more than questions which have taken upon themselves shape-questions that are pregnant with their own answers." The physical world surrounds us like the words of a gigantic riddle in an unknown language-the shapes of nature, the wonder of male and female, the mysteries of colour and number, the movement of the year, the pattern of the heavens and the significance of days in the calendar. The novelist Charles Kingsley once wrote "When I walk the fields I am oppressed every now and then with an innate feeling that everything I see has a meaning, if I could but understand it. And this feeling of being surrounded with truths which I cannot grasp amounts to an indescribable awe sometimes! Oh! How I have prayed to have the mystery unfolded, at least hereafter. To see, if but for a moment, the whole harmony of the great system! To hear once the music which the whole universe makes as it performs His bidding!"

There are archetypal themes and processes in nature that tell one great story in a myriad different ways, and every living thing is a symbol of the whole. We cannot explain this great secret through the senses and intellect alone, since no mind can contain the knowledge of all other minds-past present, and future-the awareness of all interrelationships in the cosmos. Myth is the poetry of the spirit, where the emotions enter into the mystery of being through shapes, colours, sounds, and rhythms, and all religions have drawn upon the same symbols through the mystical visions of shamans and prophets. Through symbolic rituals of religion, social duties are aligned with divine meaning and separate lives harmonized in one pattern. Mere theory is a pretty poor substitute for the insight and experience of religion, and it need surprise no one that the same myths are common to all. The story of the hero birth of the patriarch Moses is also told of Sargon of Agade in Mesopotamia in 2,350 B.C. Many religions have featured the mysteries of earth and the serpent which crawls upon it, the androgyne behind the division of the sexes, the garden, the tree, and the first parents. Hindus and Gnostics speak of the stages of divine emanation and return. You may compare the Creation of Genesis with the Hindu Parabrahman, origin of the universe, and the Tetragrammaton of the New Testament gospel of St. John. Much of Jewish Cabbala is foreshadowed in Hindu Tantra, and the beautiful transcendentalism of Hassidic legends springs from the same religious experience as the Zen Buddhist koans or the mystical poetry of the Sufis and Hindu bhakti cults. The mythology of mysticism is a universal art, and the basis of true religion. It has little to do with the politics of religious establishment, which the Freethinkers rightly condemn.

No sincere Christian can afford to ignore the terrible record of his own church-the holy wars, centuries of despotism, cruelty, fanaticism, and intolerance of religion turning into politics. It is a tragic story which is not yet over. Yet these things are not the true basis of religion and only contaminate the name. The core of all religions is the mystical experience which reconciles the individual and the divine, the transcendental with the social duties of everyday life. Scholarship cannot validate any single scripture of any one religion over and above that of another. There are history and pseudo-history entangled in all of them, but historicity is not the measure. Their basic strength is myth the poetical truth which is the dark language of the spirit. In modern times, men like Professor C. G. Jung have found that the symbols of myth are the keys to religious experience. More recently Dr. Joseph Campbell has shown how scholarship may be married to insight, and in his fine study The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York, 1949; 1956) he has illustrated how all the myths treat of the same human situation, a theme elaborated further in his tremendous work The Masks of God (4 vols., New York, 1959-68). These are books which valuably supplement the present work. It is interesting to note that many of the old Freethinkers whose quest for truth led them into infidel fields could not resist the urge to discover a greater meaning in life than mere theory or negative attacks on dogmatic Christianity. D. M. Bennett, founder of The Truth Seeker, had originally spent many happy years in the Shaker community at New Lebanon. He left reluctantly when faith declined. During his later career as a Freethinker he became sympathetic to Spiritualism. It should be remembered that the last two decades of the nineteenth century were a golden age of Spiritualism. It may sound highly irrational that down-to-earth rationalists should be drawn to "spiritual" phenomena, but liberal men and women were naturally attracted to any new controversial science or pseudo-science that promised to provide a non-supernatural rationale for miracles, and thus throw new light on the "superstitions" of the Bible.

No devout Christian will suffer loss of faith through knowing that other religions have anticipated some of the noblest portions of the Christian Bible-rather, I think, he may draw greater strength from a sense of kinship with other great souls, past and present. This book is a key reference work that will start many readers on a new and exciting quest for the source of all religions. [Leslie Shepard,1970]

READING LIST

The following books will be of special interest for further study in conjunction with the present work:

CAMPBELL, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces 1949; 1956

The Masks of God 4 vols. 1959-68 (Primitive Mythology; Oriental Mythology; Occidental Mythology; Creative Mythology) FORLONG, J. G. R. Faiths of Man; Encyclopedia of Religions 3 vols. 1906; University Books Inc., 1964

GRAVES, Kersey. The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; or Christianity

Before Christ 1875 etc.; University Books Inc., 1970

HIGGINS, Godfrey. Anacalypsis: An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil of Saitic Isis; or an Inquiry into the Origin of Languages, Nations and Religions 1833-36; University Books Inc., 1965

LEGGE, Francis. Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity from 330 B.C. to 330 A.D. 1915; University Books Inc., 1964

MAETERLINCK, Maurice. The Great Secret 1922; University Books Inc.1969

MEAD, G. R. S. Apollonius of Tyana. 1901; University Books Inc., 1966

Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.? 1903; University Books Inc., 1968

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten 1900 etc.; University Books Inc., 1964

Comments-4

Use of intellect to differenciate right from wrong is urged by Islam, more over God sent messengers and prophets in every nation for guidance. Beginning with the first human and Prophet Adam (peace be upon him), there has been many messengers and prophets from Noah (peace be upon him) through Abraham (peace be upon him) for their respective nations. According to Muslim traditions there has been more than 1,24,000 prophets sent to different nations at different times, it includes 315 Rasool (Messenger) who were granted scriptures (law). God says:

“We did aforetime send Messengers before thee (O’ Muhammad): of them there are some whose story We have related to thee and some whose story We have not related to thee” (Qur’an; 40:78)

With the passage of time the true monotheistic teachings and scriptures got corrupted, mixed with idol worship and many myths. This is particularly obvious in the Christianity, where monotheistic message of Jesus Christ was changed, corrupted, and mixed with many pagan myths. Bible itself admits: "How do you say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? Lo, certainly he made it falsely; the pen of the scribes made it a lie."(Jeremiah; 8:8), "Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write misfortune which they have prescribed; To turn aside the needy from justice, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless!"(Isaiah; 10:1-2)

Hinduism is commonly perceived to be a polytheistic religion because the common Hindus are observed worshiping many gods. However Hindus, well versed in their scriptures, insist that a Hindu should believe in and worship only one God. The sacred Hindu scriptures, urge monotheism (Tawhid), it is stated: “Those whose intelligence has been stolen by material desires surrender unto demigods and follow the particular rules and regulations of worship according to their own natures.”(Bhagavad Gita;7:20); “He is One only without a second.” (Chandogya: Upanishad;6:2:1), “Of Him there are neither parents nor lord.”(Svetasvatara: Upanishad;6:9), “There is no likeness of Him.”(Svetasvatara: Upanishad;4:19), “His form is not to be seen; no one sees Him with the eye.”(Svetasvatara: Upanishad;4:20). According to Vedas: “There is no image of Him.” (Yajurveda;32:3); “He is bodiless and pure.”(Yajurveda;40:8); “They enter darkness, those who worship the natural elements (air, water, fire, etc.);“ They sink deeper in darkness, those who worship sambhuti (created things, for example table, chair, idol, etc)”(Yajurveda;40:9); “O friends, do not worship anybody but Him, the Divine One. Praise Him alone.”(Rigveda;8:1:1).The Brahma Sutra of Hinduism is: “There is only one God, not the second; not at all, not at all, not in the least bit.” (Ekam Brahm, dvitiya naste neh na naste kincha).

Buddhism, is considered non committal on God, historical criticism has proved that the original teachings of Buddha can never be known, because his teachings and doctrines were written down 400 years, after his death. Moreover little attention was paid to its authenticity, genuineness and purity.

God sent the last scripture, Quran, through last Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon hum) which is miraculously preserved in its original revealed language for guidance of humanity. Accuracy of scientific, historic narratives & prophecies is the logocal proof of its truthfulness [details: http://wp.me/PCgrB-7t]. The Qur’an speaks about hundreds of things that were not known fourteen hundred year ago once Qur’an was revealed; but they have been scientifically proved recently, (details are available in the book ‘Qur’an and Science’ by Dr.Zakir Naik & “The Bible, The Qur’an and Science” by Dr. Maurice Bucaille), some of them are referred here:

The creation of the universe by ‘The Big Bang’: “Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of Creation), before We clove them asunder?” (Qur’an;21:30). Initially there was gaseous mass before creation of galaxies: “Moreover, He Comprehended in His design the sky, and it had been (as) smoke: He said to it and to the earth: “Come ye together willingly or unwillingly.” They said: “We do come (together) in willing obedience.”(Qur’an;41:11). The shape of earth; “And the earth, moreover, hath He made egg shaped.” (Qur’an;79:30). Moon has reflected light and sun has its own light; “And (who) made the moon a light (nur, reflected light) in their midst and made the sun as a (Glorious) Lamp(siraja-own light).(Qur’an;71:16). The Sun Rotates:” It is He Who created the Night and the Day, and the sun and the moon: All (the celestial bodies) swim along, each in its rounded course.” (Qur’an;21:33). “It is not permitted to the sun to catch up the moon, nor can the night outstrip the day: Each (just) swims along in (its own) orbit (according to Law).” (Qur’an;36:40). The other examples are: The sun will extinguish;(Qur’an;36:38,13:2). The expanding nature of universe; (Qur’an;51:47).

Atoms can be divided;(Qur’an;10:61). Mountains are like tent pegs firmly fixed providing stability; (Qur’an;78:6-7,21:31,79:32). Darkness in depths of ocean; (Qur’an;24:40). The water cycle;(Qur’an;39:21, 30:24,23:18). Plants & Fruits have male and female; (Qur’an;20:53, 13:3). The bee and its skills; (Qur’an;16:68-69). Lifestyle and communication of ants; (Qur’an;27:17-18). Honey has healing for humankind; (Qur’an;16:69). Creation of man from water;(Qur’an;25:54). Creation of living being;“ We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?” (Qur’an;21:30). Importance of fingerprints: (Qur’an;75:3-4) and the existence of pain receptors in the skin: (Qur’an;4:56). Embryological stages; (Qur’an;23:12-14, 75:37-39,82:7-8). Embryo partly formed and partly unformed; (Qur’an;22:5). First sense of hearing developed then sense of sight; (Qur’an;32:9,23:78). Sex determination factor for child; (Qur’an;53:45-46,75:37-39).

Quran is the criteria to judge the corrupted parts of previous scriptures and restores the original pure monotheistic religion of God.

“O Prophet (Muhammad), surely We have revealed to you the Book (Quran) with the truth, for the instruction of Mankind. He who follows the Right Way shall follow it for his own good; and he who goes astray shall do so at his own peril. You are not set up as a guardian over them.” (Qur’an;39:41)

“To you, O Muhammad, We have revealed this Book with the truth. It confirms whatever has remained intact in the scriptures which came before it and also to safeguard it”. (Qur’an;5:48))

The revelations received by the earlier messengers, some available in the form of books in Bible (Torah, Psalms, Gospel etc) were meant for specific people for specific time, besides not being in the original revealed form, their authenticity can not be established due to variant versions. Allah says: “He has revealed to you (O’ Muhammad) this Book (Qur’an) with the Truth, confirming whatever there still remains of the scripture which preceded it, as He revealed the Torah and Gospel, aforetime as a guidance unto mankind, and it is He who has bestowed (upon man) the standard by which to discern the true from the false. Behold, as for those who are bent on denying God’s messages- grievous suffering awaits them: for God is Almighty, an avenger of evil.”(Qur’an;3:3-4); "Truth has come and Falsehood perished: for Falsehood by its nature is bound to perish.”(Qur’an;17:81). Allah says: “And, verily, (the essence of ) this (revelation, i.e. Qur’an) is indeed found in the ancient books of divine wisdom (as well) (Qur’an;26:196,link 2:42, 61:6), Qur’an was foretold in Bible, Deutronomy;18:15 &18. Hence to discern the true from the false the previous scriptures have been abrogated and replaced with the final revelation.(Qur’an; 2:106-107, 16:101, 5:48). Hence it is for the humanity to now follow it.

Some verses translated from Quran highlight the points mentioned above:

“By the soul and Him Who perfected it and inspired it with knowledge of what is wrong for it and what is right for it: indeed successful will be the one who keeps it pure, and indeed failure will be the one who corrupts it!”(Qur’an;91:7-10)

"It is He Who has created you (and made you grow) and made for you the faculties of hearing seeing feeling and understanding: little thanks it is ye give.”(Qur’an; 67:23).

“Therefore, stand firm in your devotion to the upright faith - the nature made by Allah, the one on which mankind is created - and the laws of Nature ordained by Allah cannot be changed. That is the ‘Standard True Religion’, but most among mankind do not know.”(Qur’an;30:30).

“…And there never was a people, without a Warner having lived among them (in the past)."(Qur’an;35:24).

“Mankind was one single nation, and Allah sent Messengers with glad tidings and warnings; and with them He sent the Book In truth, to judge between people in matters wherein they differed”(Quran; 2:213)

“And verily We have raised in every nation a messenger, (proclaiming): Serve Allah and shun false gods. After that, Allah guided some of them while deviation proved true against the others….”(Qur’an;16:36)

“And there never was a people, without a Warner having lived among them (in the past)”(Qur’an;35:24).

“Possessor of the Highest Rank, the Master of the Throne of Authority sends down the Spirit by His command on those of His servants whom He chooses, that he (the Prophet who received the revelations) may warn mankind of the Day when they shall meet Him.”(Qur’an;40:15 and similarly also at 28:68, 42:13, 16:2).

All the Messengers conveyed good news to mankind and admonished them so that, after conveying the message through the Messengers, people should have no excuse to plead against Allah.(Qur’an;4:165).

“God has created the heavens and the earth to manifest the truth, and to reward each human being according to its deeds, and none of them shall be wronged.”(Qur’an;45:22)

“We charge no soul with more than it can bear; We have a Book of record which shall clearly tell the truth, and they shall not be treated unjustly.”(Qur’an;23:62).

“Say: (O’ Muhammad) "I am but a human like yourselves (but) the inspiration has come to me that your God is one God: whoever expects to meet his Lord let him work righteousness and in the worship of his Lord admit no one as partner."(Qur’an;18:110).

“We have sent Thee (O’ Muhammad) inspiration, As we sent it to Noah and the Messengers after him: we sent inspiration to Abraham, Isma'il, Isaac, Jacob and the Tribes, to Jesus, Job, Jonah, Aaron, and Solomon, and to David we gave the Psalms. Of some apostles we have already told Thee the story; of others we have not…(Quran; 4:163-170 )

“Verily, the vilest of all creatures in the sight of God are those deaf, those dumb ones who do not use their reason.” …(Quran; 8:22)

“O people of the Book! [Jews & Christians] Commit no excesses in your religion: nor say of Allah aught but truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) an Apostle of Allah and His Word which He bestowed on Mary and a Spirit proceeding from Him: so believe in Allah and His Apostles. Say not "Trinity": desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is One Allah: glory be to him: (for Exalted is He) above having a son. To Him belong all things in the heavens and on earth. And enough is Allah as a Disposer of affairs. Christ disdained not to serve and worship Allah nor do the angels those nearest (to Allah): those who disdain His worship and are arrogant He will gather them all together unto himself to (answer). …” (Quran; 4:171-172)

" Say: "O people of the Book! exceed not in your religion the bounds (of what is proper) trespassing beyond the truth nor follow the vain desires of people who went wrong in times gone by who misled many and strayed (themselves) from the even way. Curses were pronounced on those among the Children of Israel who rejected faith by the tongue of David [see Psalms;78, 21,22,31-33, 09:17-18, 78;21-22, 69:22-28, 5:10.] and of Jesus the son of Mary [see Mathew;12:34, 23:33-45]: because they disobeyed and persisted in excesses. Nor did they (usually) forbid one another the iniquities which they committed: evil indeed were the deeds which they did.”(Quran; 5:77-79).

“Say: "O Jews and Christians [people of the Book]! come to common terms As between us and you: that we worship none but [one] God that we associate no partners with Him; that we erect not, from among ourselves, Lords and patrons other than God [Allah]." if then They turn back, say: "Bear witness that we (at least) are bowing to the Will of God [Islam]” (Qur’an;3:64)

“Abraham was not a Jew nor yet a Christian; but He was true in Faith, and bowed His will to Allah’s (which is Islam), and He joined not gods with Allah. Without doubt, among men, the nearest of kin to Abraham, are those who follow him, As are also This Messenger and those who believe: and Allah is the Protector of those who have Faith” (Quran; 3:67-68.)

The Qur’an demands absolute submission (Islam) to God: "Surely Allah’s religion is (Man’s) self surrender to Him (Islam).”(Qur’an;3:19).

At the end of his last sermon during last Hajj (632 C.E) the Prophet (peace be upon him) said:

“O’ People, no Messengers or prophet will come after me and no new faith will be born. Reason well, therefore, O’ People, and understand my words which I convey to you. I leave behind me two things, the Qur’an and my example, the Sunnah and if you follow these you will never go astray. All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others again; and may the last ones understand my words better than those who listen to me directly.” More at http://quran-pedia.blogspot.com/

Connclusion

2011-10-16T00:53:00.001+05:00

We now come to the last, but certainly not least, question to be answered; which is, what do we really know of the man Jesus of Nazareth? How much of the Gospel narratives can we rely upon as fact?

Jesus of Nazareth is so enveloped in the mists of the past, and his history so obscured by legend, that it may be compared to footprints in the sand. We know some one has been there, but as to what manner of man he may have been, we certainly know little as fact. The Gospels, the only records we have of him,[508:1] have been proven, over and over again, unhistorical and legendary; to state anything as positive about the man is nothing more nor less than assumption; we can therefore conjecture only. Liberal writers philosophize and wax eloquent to little purpose, when, after demolishing the historical accuracy of the New Testament, they end their task by eulogizing the man Jesus, claiming for him the highest praise, and asserting that he was the best and grandest of our race;[508:2] but this manner of reasoning (undoubtedly consoling to many) facts do not warrant. We may consistently revere his name, and place it in the long list of the great and noble, the reformers and religious teachers of the past, all of whom have done their part in bringing about the freedom we now enjoy, but to go beyond this, is, to our thinking, unwarranted.

If the life of Jesus of Nazareth, as related in the books of the New Testament, be in part the story of a man who really lived and suffered, that story has been so interwoven with images borrowed from myths of a bygone age, as to conceal forever any fragments of history which may lie beneath them. Gautama Buddha was undoubtedly an historical personage, yet the Sun-god myth has been added to his history to such an extent that we really know nothing positive about him. Alexander the Great was an historical personage, yet his history is one mass of legends. So it is with Julius Cesar, Cyrus, King of Persia, and scores of others. "The story of Cyrus' perils in infancy belongs to solar mythology as much as the stories of the magic slipper, of Charlemagne and Barbarossa. His grandfather, Astyages, is purely a mythical creation, his name being identical with that of the night demon, Azidahaka, who appears in the Shah-Nameh as the biting serpent."

The actual Jesus is inaccessible to scientific research. His image cannot be recovered. He left no memorial in writing of himself; his followers were illiterate; the mind of his age was confused. Paul received only traditions of him, how definite we have no means of knowing, apparently not significant enough to be treasured, nor consistent enough to oppose a barrier to his own speculations. As M. Renan says: "The Christ who communicates private revelations to him is a phantom of his own making;" "it is himself he listens to, while fancying that he hears Jesus."[509:1]

In studying the writings of the early advocates of Christianity, and Fathers of the Christian Church, where we would naturally look for the language that would indicate the real occurrence of the facts of the Gospel—if real occurrences they had ever been—we not only find no such language, but everywhere find every sort of sophistical ambages, ramblings from the subject, and evasions of the very business before them, as if on purpose to balk our research, and insult our skepticism. If we travel to the very sepulchre of Christ Jesus, it is only to discover that he was never there: history seeks evidence of his existence as a man, but finds no more trace of it than of the shadow that flits across the wall. "The Star of Bethlehem" shone not upon her path, and the order of the universe was suspended without her observation.

She asks, with the Magi of the East, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews?" and, like them, finds no solution of her inquiry, but the guidance that guides as well to one place as another; descriptions that apply to Æsculapius, Buddha and Crishna, as well as to Jesus; prophecies, without evidence that they were ever prophesied; miracles, which those who are said to have seen, are said also to have denied seeing; narratives without authorities, facts without dates, and records without names. In vain do the so-called disciples of Jesus point to the passages in Josephus and Tacitus;[510:1] in vain do they point to the spot on which he was crucified; to the fragments of the true cross, or the nails with which he was pierced, and to the tomb in which he was laid. Others have done as much for scores of mythological personages who never lived in the flesh. Did not Damus, the beloved disciple of Apollonius of Tyana, while on his way to

India

, see, on Mt. Caucasus, the identical chains with which Prometheus had been bound to the rocks? Did not the Scythians[510:2] say that Hercules had visited their country? and did they not show the print of his foot upon a rock to substantiate their story?[510:3] Was not his tomb to be seen at Cadiz, where his bones were shown?[510:4] Was not the tomb of Bacchus to be seen in Greece?[510:5] Was not the tomb of Apollo to be seen at Delphi?[510:6] Was not the tomb of Achilles to be seen at Dodona, where Alexander the Great honored it by placing a crown upon it?[510:7] Was not the tomb of Æsculapius to be seen in Arcadia, in a grove consecrated to him, near the river Lusius?[510:8] Was not the tomb of Deucalion—he who was saved from the Deluge—long pointed out near the sanctuary of Olympian Jove, in Athens?[510:9] Was not the tomb of Osiris to be seen in Egypt, where, at stated seasons, the priests went in solemn procession, and covered it with flowers?[510:10] Was not the tomb of Jonah—he who was "swallowed up by a big fish"—to be seen at Nebi-Yunus, near Mosul?[510:11] Are not the tombs of Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel, Seth, Abraham, and other Old Testament characters, to be seen even at the present day?[510:12] And did not the Emperor Constantine dedicate a beautiful church over the tomb of St. George, the warrior saint?[510:13] Of what value, then, is such evidence of the existence of such an individual as Jesus of Nazareth? The fact is, "the records of his life are so very scanty, and these have been so shaped and colored and modified by the hands of ignorance and superstition and party prejudice and ecclesiastical purpose, that it is hard to be sure of the original outlines."

In the first two centuries the professors of Christianity were divided into many sects, but these might be all resolved into two divisions—one consisting of Nazarenes, Ebionites, and orthodox; the other of Gnostics, under which all the remaining sects arranged themselves. The former are supposed to have believed in Jesus crucified, in the common, literal acceptation of the term; the latter—believers in the Christ as an Æon—though they admitted the crucifixion, considered it to have been in some mystic way—perhaps what might be called spiritualiter, as it is called in the Revelation: but notwithstanding the different opinions they held, they all denied that the Christ did really die, in the literal acceptation of the term, on the cross.[511:1] The Gnostic, or Oriental, Christians undoubtedly took their doctrine from the Indian crucifixion[511:2] (of which we have treated in Chapters XX. and XXXIX.), as well as many other tenets with which we have found the Christian Church deeply tainted. They held that:

"To deliver the soul, a captive in darkness, the 'Prince of Light,' the 'Genius of the Sun,' charged with the redemption of the intellectual world, of which the Sun is the type, manifested itself among men; that the light appeared in the darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not; that, in fact, light could not unite with darkness; it put on only the appearance of the human body; that at the crucifixion Christ Jesus only appeared to suffer. His person having disappeared, the bystanders saw in his place a cross of light, over which a celestial voice proclaimed these words; 'The Cross of Light is called Logos, Christos, the Gate, the Joy.'"

Several of the texts of the Gospel histories were quoted with great plausibility by the Gnostics in support of their doctrine. The story of Jesus passing through the midst of the Jews when they were about to cast him headlong from the brow of a hill (Luke iv. 29, 30), and when they were going to stone him (John iii. 59; x. 31, 39), were examples not easily refuted.

The Manichean Christian Bishop Faustus expresses himself in the following manner:

"Do you receive the gospel? (ask ye). Undoubtedly I do! Why then, you also admit that Christ was born? Not so; for it by no means follows that in believing the gospel, I should therefore believe that Christ was born! Do you then think that he was of the Virgin Mary? Manes hath said, 'Far be it that I should ever own that Our Lord Jesus Christ . . . . . . .'" etc.[512:1]

Tertullian's manner of reasoning on the evidences of Christianity is also in the same vein, as we saw in our last chapter.[512:2]

Mr. King, speaking of the Gnostic Christians, says:

"Their chief doctrines had been held for centuries before (their time) in many of the cities in Asia Minor. There, it is probable, they first came into existence as Mystæ, upon the establishment of direct intercourse with

India

, under the Seleucidæ and Ptolemies. The college of Essenes and Megabyzæ at Ephesus, the Orphics of Thrace, the Curets of Crete, are all merely branches of one antique and common religion, and that originally Asiatic."[512:3]

These early Christian Mystics are alluded to in several instances in the New Testament. For example:

"Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God."[512:4] "For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh."[512:5]

This is language that could not have been used, if the reality of Christ Jesus' existence as a man could not have been denied, or, it would certainly seem, if the apostle himself had been able to give any evidence whatever of the claim.

The quarrels on this subject lasted for a long time among the early Christians. Hermas, speaking of this, says to the brethren:

"Take heed, my children, that your dissensions deprive you not of your lives. How will ye instruct the elect of God, when ye yourselves want correction? Wherefore admonish one another, and be at peace among yourselves; that I, standing before your father, may give an account of you unto the Lord."[512:6]

Ignatius, in his Epistle to the Smyrnæans, says:[512:7]

"Only in the name of Jesus Christ, I undergo all, to suffer together with him; he who was made a perfect man strengthening me. Whom some, not knowing, do deny; or rather have been denied by him, being the advocates of death, rather than of the truth. Whom neither the prophecies, nor the law of Moses, have persuaded; nor the Gospel itself even to this day, nor the sufferings of any one of us. For they think also the same thing of us; for what does a man profit me, if he shall praise me, and blaspheme my Lord; not confessing that he was truly made man?"

In his Epistle to the Philadelphians he says:[513:1]

"I have heard of some who say, unless I find it written in the originals, I will not believe it to be written in the Gospel. And when I said, It is written, they answered what lay before them in their corrupted copies."

Polycarp, in his Epistle to the Philippians, says:[513:2]

"Whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, he is Antichrist: and whosoever does not confess his sufferings upon the cross, is from the devil. And whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts; and says that there shall neither be any resurrection, nor judgment, he is the first-born of Satan."

Ignatius says to the Magnesians:[513:3]

"Be not deceived with strange doctrines; nor with old fables which are unprofitable. For if we still continue to live according to the Jewish law, we do confess ourselves not to have received grace. For even the most holy prophets lived according to Jesus Christ. . . . Wherefore if they who were brought up in these ancient laws came nevertheless to the newness of hope; no longer observing Sabbaths, but keeping the Lord's Day, in which also our life is sprung up by him, and through his death, whom yet some deny. By which mystery we have been brought to believe, and therefore wait that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only master. . . . . These things, my beloved, I write unto you, not that I know of any among you that be under this error; but as one of the least among you, I am desirous to forewarn you that ye fall not into the snares of vain doctrine."

After reading this we can say with the writer of Timothy,[513:4] "Without controversy, great is the MYSTERY of godliness."

Beside those who denied that Christ Jesus had ever been manifest in the flesh, there were others who denied that he had been crucified.[513:5] This is seen from the words of Justin Martyr, in his Apology for the Christian Religion, written A. D. 141, where he says:

"As to the objection to our Jesus's being crucified, I say, suffering was common to all the Sons of Jove."[513:6]

This is as much as to say: "You Pagans claim that your incarnate gods and Saviours suffered and died, then why should not we claim the same for our Saviour?"

The Koran, referring to the Jews, says:

"They have not believed in Jesus, and have spoken against Mary a grievous calumny, and have said: 'Verily we have slain Christ Jesus, the son of Mary' (the apostle of God). Yet they slew him not, neither crucified him, but he was represented by one in his likeness. And verily they who disagreed concerning him were in a doubt as to this matter, and had no sure knowledge thereof, but followed only an uncertain opinion."[514:1]

This passage alone, from the Mohammedan Bible, is sufficient to show, if other evidence were wanting, that the early Christians "disagreed concerning him," and that "they had no sure knowledge thereof, but followed only an uncertain opinion."

In the books which are now called Apocryphal, but which were the most quoted, and of equal authority with the others, and which were voted not the word of God—for obvious reasons—and were therefore cast out of the canon, we find many allusions to the strife among the early Christians. For instance; in the "First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians,"[514:2] we read as follows:

"Wherefore are there strifes, and anger, and divisions, and schisms, and wars, among us? . . . Why do we rend and tear in pieces the members of Christ, and raise seditions against our own body? and are come to such a height of madness, as to forget that we are members one of another."

In his Epistle to the Trallians, Ignatius says:[514:3]

"I exhort you, or rather not I, but the love of Jesus Christ, that ye use none but Christian nourishment; abstaining from pasture which is of another kind. I mean Heresy. For they that are heretics, confound together the doctrine of Jesus Christ with their own poison; whilst they seem worthy of belief. . . . Stop your ears, therefore, as often as any one shall speak contrary to Jesus Christ, who was of the race of David, of the Virgin Mary. Who was truly born, and did eat and drink; was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate; was truly crucified and dead; both those in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, being spectators of it. . . . But if, as some who are atheists, that is to say, infidels, pretend, that he only seemed to suffer, why then am I bound? Why do I desire to fight with beasts? Therefore do I die in vain."

We find St. Paul, the very first Apostle of the Gentiles, expressly avowing that he was made a minister of the gospel, which had already been preached to every creature under heaven,[514:4] and preaching a God manifest in the flesh, who had been believed on in the world,[514:5] therefore, before the commencement of his ministry; and who could not have been the man of Nazareth, who had certainly not been preached, at that time, nor generally believed on in the world, till ages after that time.[514:6] We find also that:

1. This Paul owns himself a deacon, the lowest ecclesiastical grade of the Therapeutan church.

2. The Gospel of which these Epistles speak, had been extensively preached and fully established before the time of Jesus, by the Therapeuts or Essenes, who believed in the doctrine of the Angel-Messiah, the Æon from heaven.[515:1]

Leo the Great, so-called (A. D. 440-461), writes thus:

"Let those who with impious murmurings find fault with the Divine dispensations, and who complain about the lateness of our Lord's nativity, cease from their grievances, as if what was carried out in later ages of the world, had not been impending in time past. . . .

"What the Apostles preached, the prophets (in

Israel

) had announced before, and what has always been (universally) believed, cannot be said to have been fulfilled too late. By this delay of his work of salvation, the wisdom and love of God have only made us more fitted for his call; so that, what had been announced before by many Signs and Words and Mysteries during so many centuries, should not be doubtful or uncertain in the days of the gospel. . . God has not provided for the interests of men by a new council or by a late compassion; but he had instituted from the beginning for all men, one and the same path of salvation."[515:2]

This is equivalent to saying that, "God, in his 'late compassion,' has sent his Son, Christ Jesus, to save us, therefore do not complain or 'murmur' about 'the lateness of his coming,' for the Lord has already provided for those who preceded us; he has given them 'the same path of salvation' by sending to them, as he has sent to us, a Redeemer and a Saviour."

Justin Martyr, in his dialogue with Typho,[515:3] makes a similar confession (as we have already seen in our last chapter), wherein he says that there exists not a people, civilized or semi-civilized, who have not offered up prayers in the name of a crucified Saviour to the Father and Creator of all things.

Add to this medley the fact that St. Irenæus (A. D. 192), one of the most celebrated, most respected, and most quoted of the early Christian Fathers, tells us on the authority of his master, Polycarp, who had it from St. John himself, and from all the old people of Asia, that Jesus was not crucified at the time stated in the Gospels, but that he lived to be nearly fifty years old. The passage which, most fortunately, has escaped the destroyers of all such evidence, is to be found in Irenæus' second book against heresies,[515:4] of which the following is a portion:

"As the chief part of thirty years belongs to youth, and every one will confess him to be such till the fortieth year: but from the fortieth year to the fiftieth he declines into old age, which our Lord (Jesus) having attained he taught us the Gospel, and all the elders who, in Asia, assembled with John, the disciple of the Lord, testify; and as John himself had taught them. And he (John?) remained with them till the time of Trajan. And some of them saw not only John but other Apostles, and heard the same thing from them, and bear the same testimony to this revelation."

The escape of this passage from the destroyers can be accounted for only in the same way as the passage of Minucius Felix (quoted in Chapter XX.) concerning the Pagans worshiping a crucifix. These two passages escaped from among, probably, hundreds destroyed, of which we know nothing, under the decrees of the emperors, yet remaining, by which they were ordered to be destroyed.

In John viii. 56, Jesus is made to say to the Jews: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it and was glad." Then said the Jews unto him: "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?"

If Jesus was then but about thirty years of age, the Jews would evidently have said: "thou art not yet forty years old," and would not have been likely to say: "thou art not yet fifty years old," unless he was past forty.

There was a tradition current among the early Christians, that Annas was high-priest when Jesus was crucified. This is evident from the Acts.[516:1] Now, Annas, or Ananias, was not high-priest until about the year 48 a. d.;[516:2] therefore, if Jesus was crucified at that time he must have been about fifty years of age;[516:3] but, as we remarked elsewhere, there exists, outside of the New Testament, no evidence whatever, in book, inscription, or monument, that Jesus of Nazareth was either scourged or crucified under Pontius Pilate. Josephus, Tacitus, Plinius, Philo, nor any of their contemporaries, ever refer to the fact of this crucifixion, or express any belief thereon.[516:4] In the Talmud—the book containing Jewish traditions—Jesus is not referred to as the "crucified one," but as the "hanged one,"[516:5] while elsewhere it is narrated he was stoned to death; so that it is evident they were ignorant of the manner of death which he suffered.[516:6]

In Sanhedr. 43 a, Jesus it said to have had five disciples, among whom were Mattheaus and Thaddeus. He is called "That Man," "The Nazarine," "The Fool," and "The Hung." Thus Aben Ezra says that Constantine put on his labarum "a figure of the hung;" and, according to R. Bechai, the Christians were called "Worshipers of the Hung."

Little is said about Jesus in the Talmud, except that he was a scholar of Joshua Ben Perachiah (who lived a century before the time assigned by the Christians for the birth of Jesus), accompanied him into Egypt, there learned magic, and was a seducer of the people, and was finally put to death by being stoned, and then hung as a blasphemer.

"The conclusion is, that no clearly defined traces of the personal Jesus remain on the surface, or beneath the surface, of Christendom. The silence of Josephus and other secular historians may be accounted for without falling back on a theory of hostility or contempt.[517:1] The Christ-idea cannot be spared from Christian development, but the personal Jesus, in some measure, can be."

"The person of Jesus, though it may have been immense, is indistinct. That a great character was there may be conceded; but precisely wherein the character was great, is left to our conjecture. Of the eminent persons who have swayed the spiritual destinies of mankind, none has more completely disappeared from the critical view. The ideal image which Christians have, for nearly two thousand years, worshiped under the name of Jesus, has no authentic, distinctly visible, counterpart in history."

"His followers have gone on with the process of idealization, placing him higher and higher; making his personal existence more and more essential; insisting more and more urgently on the necessity of private intercourse with him; letting the Father subside into the background, as an 'effluence,' and the Holy Ghost lapse from individual identity into impersonal influence, in order that he might be all in all as Regenerator and Saviour. From age to age the personal Jesus has been made the object of an extreme adoration, till now faith in the living Christ is the heart of the Gospel; philosophy, science, culture, humanity are thrust resolutely aside, and the great teachers of the age are extinguished in order that his light may shine." But, as Mr. Frothingham remarks, in "The Cradle of the Christ": "In the order of experience, historical and biographical truth is discovered by stripping off layer after layer of exaggeration, and going back to the statements of contemporaries. As a rule, figures are reduced, not enlarged, by criticism. The influence of admiration is recognized as distorting and falsifying, while exalting. The process of legend-making begins immediately, goes on rapidly and with accelerating speed, and must be liberally allowed for by the seeker after truth. In scores of instances the historical individual turns out to be very much smaller than he was painted by his terrified or loving worshipers. In no single case has it been established that he was greater, or as great. It is, no doubt, conceivable that such a case should occur, but it never has occurred, in known instances, and cannot be presumed to have occurred in any particular instance. The presumptions are against the correctness of the glorified image. The disposition to exaggerate is so much stronger than the disposition to underrate, that even really great men are placed higher than they belong oftener than lower. The historical method works backwards. Knowledge shrinks the man."[518:1]

As we are allowed to conjecture as to what is true in the Gospel history, we shall now do so.

The death of Herod, which occurred a few years before the time assigned for the birth of Jesus, was followed by frightful social and political convulsions in Judea. For two or three years all the elements of disorder were abroad. Between pretenders to the vacant throne of Herod, and aspirants to the Messianic throne of David, Judea was torn and devastated. Revolt assumed the wildest form, the higher enthusiasm of faith yielded to the lower fury of fanaticism; the celestial visions of a kingdom of heaven were completely banished by the smoke and flame of political hate. Claimant after claimant of the dangerous supremacy of the Messiah appeared, pitched a camp in the wilderness, raised the banner, gathered a force, was attacked, defeated, banished or crucified; but the frenzy did not abate.

The popular aspect of the Messianic hope was political, not religious or moral. The name Messiah was synonymous with King of the Jews; it suggested political designs and aspirations. The assumption of that character by any individual drew on him the vigilance of the police.

That Jesus of Nazareth assumed the character of "Messiah," as did many before and after him, and that his crucifixion[520:1] was simply an act of the law on political grounds, just as it was in the case of other so-called Messiahs, we believe to be the truth of the matter.[520:2] "He is represented as being a native of Galilee, the insurgent district of the country; nurtured, if not born, in Nazareth, one of its chief cities; reared as a youth amid traditions of patriotic devotion, and amid scenes associated with heroic dreams and endeavors. The Galileans were restless, excitable people, beyond the reach of conventionalities, remote from the centre of power, ecclesiastical and secular, simple in their lives, bold of speech, independent in thought, thoroughgoing in the sort of radicalism that is common among people who live 'out of the world,' who have leisure to discuss the exciting topics of the day, but too little knowledge, culture, or sense of social responsibility to discuss them soundly. Their mental discontent and moral intractability were proverbial. They were belligerents. The Romans had more trouble with them than with the natives of any other province. The Messiahs all started out from Galilee, and never failed to collect followers round their standard. The Galileans, more than others, lived in the anticipation of the Deliverer. The reference of the Messiah to Galilee is therefore already an indication of the character he is to assume."

To show the state the country must have been in at that time, we will quote an incident or two from Josephus.

A religious enthusiast called the Samaritans together upon Mount Gerizim, and assured them that he would work a miracle. "So they came thither armed, and thought the discourse of the man probable; and as they abode at a certain village, which was called Tirathaba, they got the rest together of them, and desired to go up the mountain in a great multitude together: but Pilate prevented their going up, by seizing upon the roads by a great band of horsemen and footmen, who fell upon those who were gotten together in the village; and when it came to an action, some of them they slew, and others of them they put to flight, and took a great many alive, the principal of whom, and also the most potent of those that fled away, Pilate ordered to be slain."[521:1]

Not long before this Pilate pillaged the temple treasury, and used the "sacred money" to bring a current of water to Jerusalem. The Jews were displeased with this, "and many ten thousands of the people got together and made a clamor against him. Some of them used reproaches, and abused the man, as crowds of such people usually do. So he habited a great number of his soldiers in their habits, who carried daggers under their garments, and sent them to a place where they might surround them. So he bade the Jews himself go away; but they boldly casting reproaches upon him, he gave the soldiers that signal which had been beforehand agreed on; who laid upon them with much greater blows than Pilate had commanded them, and equally punished those that were tumultuous, and those that were not; nor did they spare them in the least: and since the people were unarmed, and were caught by men prepared for what they were about, there were a great number of them slain by this means, and others ran away wounded. And thus an end was put to this sedition."[522:1]

It was such deeds as these, inflicted upon the Jews by their oppressors, that made them think of the promised Messiah who was to deliver them from bondage, and which made many zealous fanatics imagine themselves to be "He who should come."[522:2]

There is reason to believe, as we have said, that Jesus of Nazareth assumed the title of "Messiah." His age was throbbing and bursting with suppressed energy. The pressure of the Roman Empire was required to keep it down. "The Messianic hope had such vitality that it condensed into moments the moral result of ages. The common people were watching to see the heavens open, interpreted peals of thunder as angel voices, and saw divine potents in the flight of birds. Mothers dreamed their boys would be Messiah. The wildest preacher drew a crowd. The heart of the nation swelled big with the conviction that the hour of destiny was about to strike, that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. The crown was ready for any kingly head that might assume it."[522:3]

The actions of this man, throughout his public career, we believe to be those of a zealot whose zeal overrode considerations of wisdom; in fact, a Galilean fanatic. Pilate condemns him reluctantly, feeling that he is a harmless visionary, but is obliged to condemn him as one of the many who persistently claimed to be the "Messiah," or "King of the Jews," an enemy of Cæsar, an instrument against the empire, a pretender to the throne, a bold inciter to rebellion. The death he undergoes is the death of the traitor and mutineer,[522:4] the death that was inflicted on many such claimants, the death that would have been decreed to Judas the Galilean,[522:5] had he been captured, and that was inflicted on thousands of his deluded followers. It was the Romans, then, who crucified the man Jesus, and not the Jews.

"In the Roman law the State is the main object, for which the individual must live and die, with or against his will. In Jewish law, the person is made the main object, for which the State must live and die; because the fundamental idea of the Roman law is power, and the fundamental idea of Jewish law is justice."[523:1] Therefore Caiaphas and his conspirators did not act from the Jewish standpoint. They represented Rome, her principles, interest, and barbarous caprices.[523:2] Not one point in the whole trial agrees with Jewish laws and custom.[523:3] It is impossible to save it; it must be given up as a transparent and unskilled invention of a Gentile Christian, who knew nothing of Jewish law and custom, and was ignorant of the state of civilization in Palestine, in the time of Jesus.

Jesus had been proclaimed the "Messiah," the "Ruler of the Jews," and the restorer of the kingdom of heaven. No Roman ear could understand these pretensions, otherwise than in their rebellious sense. That Pontius Pilate certainly understood under the title, "Messiah," the king (the political chief of the nation), is evident from the subscription of the cross, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews," which he did not remove in spite of all protestations of the Jews. There is only one point in which the four Gospels agree, and that is, that early in the morning Jesus was delivered over to the Roman governor, Pilate; that he was accused of high-treason against Rome—having been proclaimed King of the Jews—and that in consequence thereof he was condemned first to be scourged, and then to be crucified; all of which was done in hot haste. In all other points the narratives of the Evangelists differ widely, and so essentially that one story cannot be made of the four accounts; nor can any particular points stand the test of historical criticism, and vindicate its substantiality as a fact.

The Jews could not have crucified Jesus, according to their laws, if they had inflicted on him the highest penalty of the law, since crucifixion was exclusively Roman.[524:1] If the priests, elders, Pharisees, Jews, or all of them wanted Jesus out of the way so badly, why did they not have him quietly put to death while he was in their power, and done at once. The writer of the fourth Gospel seems to have understood this difficulty, and informs us that they could not kill him, because he had prophesied what death he should die; so he could die no other. It was dire necessity, that the heathen symbol of life and immortality—the cross[524:2]—should be brought to honor among the early Christians, and Jesus had to die on the cross (the Roman Gibbet), according to John[524:3] simply because it was so prophesied. The fact is, the crucifixion story, like the symbol of the crucifix itself, came from abroad.[524:4] It was told with the avowed intention of exonerating the Romans, and criminating the Jews, so they make the Roman governor take water, "and wash his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it." To be sure of their case, they make the Jews say: "His blood be on us, and on our children."[524:5]

"Another fact is this. Just at the period of time when misfortune and ruination befell the Jews most severely, in the first post-apostolic generation, the Christians were most active in making proselytes among Gentiles. To have then preached that a crucified Jewish Rabbi of Galilee was their Saviour, would have sounded supremely ridiculous to those heathens. To have added thereto, that the said Rabbi was crucified by command of a Roman Governor, because he had been proclaimed 'King of the Jews,' would have been fatal to the whole scheme. In the opinion of the vulgar heathen, where the Roman Governor and Jewish Rabbi came in conflict, the former must unquestionably be right, and the latter decidedly wrong. To have preached a Saviour who was justly condemned to die the death of a slave and villain, would certainly have proved fatal to the whole enterprise. Therefore it was necessary to exonerate Pilate and the Romans, and to throw the whole burden upon the Jews, in order to establish the innocence and martyrdom of Jesus in the heathen mind."

That the crucifixion story, as related in the synoptic Gospels, was written abroad, and not in the Hebrew, or in the dialect spoken by the Hebrews of Palestine, is evident from the following particular points, noticed by Dr. Isaac M. Wise, a learned Hebrew scholar:

The Mark and Matthew narrators call the place of crucifixion "Golgotha," to which the Mark narrator adds, "which is, being interpreted, the place of skulls." The Matthew narrator adds the same interpretation, which the John narrator copies without the word "Golgotha," and adds, it was a place near Jerusalem. The Luke narrator calls the place of crucifixion "Calvary," which is the Latin Calvaria, viz., "the place of bare skulls." Therefore the name does not refer to the form of the hill, but to the bare skulls upon it.[525:1] Now "there is no such word as Golgotha anywhere in Jewish literature, and there is no such place mentioned anywhere near Jerusalem or in Palestine by any writer; and, in fact, there was no such place; there could have been none near Jerusalem. The Jews buried their dead carefully. Also the executed convict had to be buried before night. No bare skulls, bleaching in the sun, could be found in Palestine, especially not near Jerusalem. It was law, that a bare skull, the bare spinal column, and also the imperfect skeleton of any human being, make man unclean by contact, and also by having either in the house. Man, thus made unclean, could not eat of any sacrificial meal, or of the sacred tithe, before he had gone through the ceremonies of purification; and whatever he touched was also unclean (Maimonides, Hil. Tumath Meth., iii. 1). Any impartial reader can see that the object of this law was to prevent the barbarous practice of heathens of having human skulls and skeletons lie about exposed to the decomposing influences of the atmosphere, as the Romans did in Palestine after the fall of Bethar, when for a long time they would give no permission to bury the dead patriots. This law was certainly enforced most rigidly in the vicinity of Jerusalem, of which they maintained "Jerusalem is more holy than all other cities surrounded with walls," so that it was not permitted to keep a dead body over night in the city, or to transport through it human bones. Jerusalem was the place of the sacrificial meals and the consumption of the sacred tithe, which was considered very holy (Maimonides, Hil. Beth Habchirah, vii. 14); there, and in the surroundings, skulls and skeletons were certainly never seen on the surface of the earth, and consequently there was no place called "Golgotha," and there was no such word in the Hebrew dialect. It is a word coined by the Mark narrator to translate the Latin term "Calvaria," which, together with the crucifixion story, came from Rome. But after the Syrian word was made, nobody understood it, and the Mark narrator was obliged to expound it."[526:1]

In the face of the arguments produced, the crucifixion story, as related in the Gospels, cannot be upheld as an historical fact. There exists, certainly, no rational ground whatever for the belief that the affair took place in the manner the Evangelists describe it. All that can be saved of the whole story is, that after Jesus had answered the first question before Pilate, viz., "Art thou the King of the Jews?" which it is natural to suppose he was asked, and also this can be supposed only, he was given over to the Roman soldiers to be disposed of as soon as possible, before his admirers and followers could come to his rescue, or any demonstration in his favor be made. He was captured in the night, as quietly as possible, and guarded in some place, probably in the high-priest's court, completely secluded from the eyes of the populace; and early in the morning he was brought before Pilate as cautiously and quietly as it could be done, and at his command, disposed of by the soldiers as quickly as practicable, and in a manner not known to the mass of the people. All this was done, most likely, while the multitude worshiped on Mount Moriah, and nobody had an intimation of the tragical end of the Man of Nazareth.

The bitter cry of Jesus, as he hung on the tree, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" disclosed the hope of deliverance that till the last moment sustained his heart, and betrayed the anguish felt when the hope was blighted; the sneers and hooting of the Roman soldiers expressed their conviction that he had pretended to be what he was not.

The miracles ascribed to him, and the moral precepts put into his mouth, in after years, are what might be expected; history was simply repeating itself; the same thing had been done for others. "The preacher of the Mount, the prophet of the Beatitudes, does but repeat, with persuasive lips, what the law-givers of his race proclaimed in mighty tones of command."[527:1]

The martyrdom of Jesus of Nazareth has been gratefully acknowledged by his disciples, whose lives he saved by the sacrifice of his own, and by their friends, who would have fallen by the score had he not prevented the rebellion ripe at Jerusalem.[527:2] Posterity, infatuated with Pagan apotheoses, made of that simple martyrdom an interesting legend, colored with the myths of resurrection and ascension to that very heaven which the telescope has put out of man's way. It is a novel myth, made to suit the gross conceptions of ex-heathens. Modern theology, understanding well enough that the myth cannot be saved, seeks refuge in the greatness and self-denial of the man who died for an idea, as though Jesus had been the only man who had died for an idea. Thousands, tens of thousands of Jews, Christians, Mohammedans and Heathens, have died for ideas, and some of them were very foolish. But Jesus did not die for an idea. He never advanced anything new, that we know of, to die for. He was not accused of saying or teaching anything original. Nobody has ever been able to discover anything new and original in the Gospels. He evidently died to save the lives of his friends, and this is much more meritorious than if he had died for a questionable idea. But then the whole fabric of vicarious atonement is demolished, and modern theology cannot get over the absurdity that the Almighty Lord of the Universe, the infinite and eternal cause of all causes, had to kill some innocent person in order to be reconciled to the human race. However abstractly they speculate and subtilize, there is always an undigested bone of man-god, god-man, and vicarious atonement in the theological stomach. Therefore theology appears so ridiculous in the eyes of modern philosophy. The theological speculation cannot go far enough to hold pace with modern astronomy. However nicely the idea may be dressed, the great God of the immense universe looks too small upon the cross of Calvary; and the human family is too large, has too numerous virtues and vices, to be perfectly represented by, and dependent on, one Rabbi of Galilee. Speculate as they may, one way or another, they must connect the Eternal and the fate of the human family with the person and fate of Jesus. That is the very thing which deprives Jesus of his crown of martyrdom, and brings religion in perpetual conflict with philosophy. It was not the religious idea which was crucified in Jesus and resurrected with him, as with all its martyrs; although his belief in immortality may have strengthened him in the agony of death. It was the idea of duty to his disciples and friends which led him to the realms of death. This deserves admiration, but no more. It demonstrates the nobility of human nature, but proves nothing in regard to providence, or the providential scheme of government.

The Christian story, as the Gospels narrate it, cannot stand the test of criticism. You approach it critically and it falls. Dogmatic Christology built upon it, has, therefore, a very frail foundation. Most so-called lives of Christ, or biographies of Jesus, are works of fiction, erected by imagination on the shifting foundation of meagre and unreliable records. There are very few passages in the Gospels which can stand the rigid application of honest criticism. In modern science and philosophy, orthodox Christology is out of the question.

"This 'sacred tradition' has in itself a glorious vitality, which Christians may unblameably entitle immortal. But it certainly will not lose in beauty, grandeur, or truth, if all the details concerning Jesus which are current in the Gospels, and all the mythology of his person, be forgotten or discredited. Christianity will remain without Christ.

"This formula has in it nothing paradoxical. Rightly interpreted, it simply means: All that is best in Judæo-Christian sentiment, moral or spiritual, will survive, without Rabbinical fancies, cultured by perverse logic; without huge piles of fable built upon them: without the Oriental Satan, a formidable rival to the throne of God; without the Pagan invention of Hell and Devils."

In modern criticism, the Gospel sources become so utterly worthless and unreliable, that it takes more than ordinary faith to believe a large portion thereof to be true. The Eucharist was not established by Jesus, and cannot be called a sacrament. The trials of Jesus are positively not true: they are pure inventions.[528:1] The crucifixion story, as narrated, is certainly not true, and it is extremely difficult to save the bare fact that Jesus was crucified. What can the critic do with books in which a few facts must be ingeniously guessed from under the mountain of ghost stories,[528:2] childish miracles,[529:1] and dogmatic tendencies?[529:2] It is absurd to expect of him to regard them as sources of religious instruction, in preference to any other mythologies and legends. That is the point at which modern critics have arrived, therefore, the Gospels have become books for the museum and archæologist, for students of mythology and ancient literature.

The spirit of dogmatic Christology hovers still over a portion of civilized society, in antic organizations, disciplines, and hereditary forms of faith and worship; in science and philosophy, in the realm of criticism, its day is past. The universal, religious, and ethical element of Christianity has no connection whatever with Jesus or his apostles, with the Gospel, or the Gospel story; it exists independent of any person or story. Therefore it needs neither the Gospel story nor its heroes. If we profit by the example, by the teachings, or the discoveries of men of past ages, to these men we are indebted, and are in duty bound to acknowledge our indebtedness; but why should we give to one individual, Jesus of Nazareth, the credit of it all? It is true, that by selecting from the Gospels whatever portions one may choose, a common practice among Christian writers, a noble and grand character may be depicted, but who was the original of this character? We may find the same individual outside of the Gospels, and before the time of Jesus. The moral precepts of the Gospels, also, were in existence before the Gospels themselves were in existence.[529:3] Why, then, extol the hero of the Gospels, and forget all others?

As it was at the end of Roman Paganism, so is it now: the masses are deceived and fooled, or do it for themselves, and persons of vivacious fantasies prefer the masquerade of delusion, to the simple sublimity of naked but majestic truth. The decline of the church as a political power proves beyond a doubt the decline of Christian faith. The conflicts of Church and State all over the European continent, and the hostility between intelligence and dogmatic Christianity, demonstrates the death of Christology in the consciousness of modern culture. It is useless to shut our eyes to these facts. Like rabbinical Judaism, dogmatic Christianity was the product of ages without typography, telescopes, microscopes, telegraphs, and power of steam. "These right arms of intelligence have fought the titanic battles, conquered and demolished the ancient castles, and remove now the débris, preparing the ground upon which there shall be the gorgeous temple of humanity, one universal republic, one universal religion of intelligence, and one great universal brotherhood. This is the new covenant, the gospel of humanity and reason."

"——Hoaryheaded selfishness has felt

Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave:

A brighter morn awaits the human day;

War with its million horrors, and fierce hell,

Shall live but in the memory of time,

Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start,

Look back, and shudder at his younger years."

FOOTNOTES:

[508:1]"For knowledge of the man Jesus, of his idea and his aims, and of the outward form of his career, the New Testament is our only hope. If this hope fails, the pillared firmament of his starry fame is rottenness; the base of Christianity, so far as it was personal and individual, is built on stubble." (John W. Chadwick.)

[508:2]M. Renan, after declaring Jesus to be a "fanatic," and admitting that, "his friends thought him, at moments, beside himself;" and that, "his enemies declared him possessed by a devil," says: "The man here delineated merits a place at the summit of human grandeur." "This is the Supreme man, a sublime personage;" "to call him divine is no exaggeration." Other liberal writers have written in the same strain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[510:9]Ibid.

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

[510:11]See Chambers, art. "Jonah."

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

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

[511:1]"Whilst, in one part of the Christian world, the chief objects of interest were the human nature and human life of Jesus, in another part of the Christian world the views taken of his person because so idealistic, that his humanity was reduced to a phantom without reality. The various Gnostic systems generally agreed in saying that the Christ was an Æon, the redeemer of the spirits of men, and that he had little or no contact with their corporeal nature." (A. Réville: Hist. of the Dogma of the Deity of Jesus.)

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

[512:1]"Accipis avengelium? et maxime. Proinde ergo et natum accipis Christum. Non ita est. Neque enim sequitur ut si evangelium accipio, idcirco et natum accipiam Christum. Ergo non putas cum ex Maria Virgine esse? Manes dixit, Absit ut Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum per naturalia pudenda mulieris de scendisse confitear." (Lardner's Works, vol. iv. p. 20.)

[512:2]"I maintain," says he, "that the Son of God was born: why am I not ashamed of maintaining such a thing? Why! because it is itself a shameful thing—I maintain that the Son of God died: well, that is wholly credible because it is monstrously absurd. I maintain that after having been buried, he rose again: and that I take to be absolutely true, because it was manifestly impossible."

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

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

[512:5]II. John, 7.

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

[512:7]Chapter II.

[513:1]Chapter II.

[513:2]Chapter III.

[513:3]Chapter III.

[513:4]I. Timothy, iii. 16.

[513:5]Irenæus, speaking of them, says: "They hold that men ought not to confess him who was crucified, but him who came in the form of man,and was supposed to be crucified, and was called Jesus." (See Lardner: vol. viii. p. 353.) They could not conceive of "the first-begotten Son of God" being put to death on a cross, and suffering like an ordinary being, so they thought Simon of Cyrene must have been substituted for him, as the ram was substituted in the place of Isaac. (See Ibid. p. 857.)

[513:6]Apol. 1, ch. xxi.

[514:1]Koran, ch. iv.

[514:2]Chapter XX.

[514:3]Chapter II.

[514:4]Col. i. 23.

[514:5]I. Timothy, iii. 16.

[514:6]The authenticity of these Epistles has been freely questioned, even by the most conservative critics.

[515:1]See Bunsen's Angel-Messiah, and Chapter XXXVII., this work.

[515:2]Quoted by Max Müller: The Science of Relig., p. 228.

[515:3]

Ch.

cxvii.

[515:4]

Ch.

xxii.

[516:1]

Ch.

iv. 5.

[516:2]Josephus: Antiq., b. xx. ch. v. 2.

[516:3]It is true there was another Annas high-priest at Jerusalem, but this was when Gratus was procurator of Judea, some twelve or fifteen years before Pontius Pilate held the same office. (See Josephus: Antiq., book xviii. ch. ii. 3.)

[516:4]See Appendix D.

[516:5]See the Martyrdom of Jesus, p. 100.

[516:6]According to Dio Cassius, Plutarch, Strabo and others, there existed, in the time of Herod, among the Roman Syrian heathens, a wide-spread and deep sympathy for a "Crucified King of the Jews." This was the youngest son of Aristobul, the heroic Maccabee. In the year 43 B. C., we find this young man—Antigonus—in Palestine claiming the crown, his cause having been declared just by Julius Cæsar. Allied with the Parthians, he maintained himself in his royal position for six years against Herod and Mark Antony. At last, after a heroic life and reign, he fell in the hands of this Roman. "Antony now gave the kingdom to a certain Herod, and, having stretched Antigonus on a cross and scourged him, a thing never done before to any other king by the Romans, he put him to death." (Dio Cassius, book xlix. p. 405.)

The fact that all prominent historians of those days mention this extraordinary occurrence, and the manner they did it, show that it was considered one of Mark Antony's worst crimes: and that the sympathy with the "Crucified King" was wide-spread and profound. (See The Martyrdom of Jesus of Nazareth, p. 106.)

Some writers think that there is a connection between this and the Gospel story; that they, in a certain measure, put Jesus in the place of Antigonus, just as they put Herod in the place of Kansa. (See Chapter XVIII.)

[517:1]Canon Farrar thinks that Josephus' silence on the subject of Jesus and Christianity, was as deliberate as it was dishonest. (See his Life of Christ, vol. i. p. 63.)

[518:1]Many examples might be cited to confirm this view, but the case of Joseph Smith, in our own time and country, will suffice.

The Mormons regard him very much as Christians regard Jesus; as the Mohammedans do Mohammed; or as the Buddhists do Buddha. A coarse sort of religious feeling and fervor appears to have been in Smith's nature. He seems, from all accounts, to have been cracked on theology, as so many zealots have been, and cracked to such an extent that his early acquaintances regarded him as a downright fanatic.

The common view that he was an impostor is not sustained by what is known of him. He was, in all probability, of unbalanced mind, a monomaniac, as most prophets have been; but there is no reason to think that he did not believe in himself, and substantially in what he taught. He has declared that, when he was about fifteen, he began to reflect on the importance of being prepared for a future state. He went from one church to another without finding anything to satisfy the hunger of his soul, consequently, he retired into himself; he sought solitude; he spent hours and days in meditation and prayer, after the true manner of all accredited saints, and was soon repaid by the visits of angels. One of these came to him when he was but eighteen years old, and the house in which he was seemed filled with consuming fire. The presence—he styles it a personage—had a pace like lightning, and proclaimed himself to be an angel of the Lord. He vouchsafed to Smith a vast deal of highly important information of a celestial order. He told him that his (Smith's) prayers had been heard, and his sins forgiven; that the covenant which the Almighty had made with the old Jews was to be fulfilled; that the introductory work for the second coming of Christ was now to begin; that the hour for the preaching of the gospel in its purity to all peoples was at hand, and that Smith was to be an instrument in the hands of God, to further the divine purpose in the new dispensation. The celestial stranger also furnished him with a sketch of the origin, progress, laws and civilization of the American aboriginals, and declared that the blessing of heaven had finally been withdrawn from them. To Smith was communicated the momentous circumstance that certain plates containing an abridgment of the records of the aboriginals and ancient prophets, who had lived on this continent, were hidden in a hill near Palmyra. The prophet was counseled to go there and look at them, and did so. Not being holy enough to possess them as yet, he passed some months in spiritual probation, after which the records were put into his keeping. These had been prepared, it is claimed, by a prophet called Mormon, who had been ordained by God for the purpose, and to conceal them until he should produce them for the benefit of the faithful, and unite them with the Bible for the achievement of his will. They form the celebrated Book of Mormon—whence the name Mormon—and are esteemed by the Latter-Day Saints as of equal authority with the Old and New Testaments, and as an indispensable supplement thereto, because they include God's disclosures to the Mormon world. These precious records were sealed up and deposited A. D. 420 in the place where Smith had viewed them by the direction of the angel.

The records were, it is held, in the reformed Egyptian tongue, and Smith translated them through the inspiration of the angel, and one Oliver Cowdrey wrote down the translation as reported by the God-possessed Joseph. This translation was published in 1830, and its divine origin was attested by a dozen persons—all relatives and friends of Smith. Only these have ever pretended to see the original plates, which have already become traditional. The plates have been frequently called for by skeptics, but all in vain. Naturally, warm controversy arose concerning the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, and disbelievers have asserted that they have indubitable evidence that it is, with the exception of various unlettered interpolations, principally borrowed from a queer, rhapsodical romance written by an eccentric ex-clergyman named Solomon Spalding.

Smith and his disciples were ridiculed and socially persecuted; but they seemed to be ardently earnest, and continued to preach their creed, which was to the effect that the millennium was at hand; that our aboriginals were to be converted, and that the New Jerusalem—the last residence and home of the saints—was to be near the centre of this continent. The Vermont prophet, later on, was repeatedly mobbed, even shot at. His narrow escapes were construed as interpositions of divine providence, but he displayed perfect coolness and intrepidity through all his trials. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was first established in the spring of 1830 at Manchester, N. Y.; but it awoke such fierce opposition, particularly from the orthodox, many of them preachers, that Smith and his associates deemed it prudent to move farther west. They established themselves at Kirtland, O., and won there many converts. Hostility to them still continued, and grew so fierce that the body transferred itself to Missouri, and next to Illinois, settling in the latter state near the village of Commerce, which was renamed Nauvoo.

The Governor and Legislature of Illinois favored the Mormons, but the anti-Mormons made war on them in every way, and the custom of "sealing wives," which is yet mysterious to the Gentiles, caused serious outbreaks, and resulted in the incarceration of the prophet and his brother Hiram at Carthage. Fearing that the two might be released by the authorities, a band of ruffians broke into the jail, in the summer of 1844, and murdered them in cold blood. This was most fortunate for the memory of Smith and for his doctrines. It placed him in the light of a holy martyr, and lent to them a dignity and vitality they had never before enjoyed.

[520:1]When we speak of Jesus being crucified, we do not intend to convey the idea that he was put to death on a cross of the form adopted by Christians. This cross was the symbol of life and immortality among our heathen ancestors (see Chapter XXXIII.), and in adopting Pagan religious symbols, and baptizing them anew, the Christians took this along with others. The crucifixion was not a symbol of the earliestchurch; no trace of it can be found in the Catacombs. Some of the earliest that did appear, however, are similar to figures No. 42 and No. 43, above, which represent two of the modes in which the Romans crucified their slaves and criminals. (See Chapter XX., on the Crucifixion of Jesus.)

[520:2]According to the Matthew and Mark narrators, Jesus' head was anointed while sitting at table in the house of Simon the leper. Now, this practice was common among the kings of

Israel

. It was the sign and symbol of royalty. The word "Messiah" signifies the "Anointed One," and none of the kings of

Israel

were styled the Messiah unless anointed. (See The Martyrdom of Jesus of Nazareth, p. 42.)

[521:1]Josephus: Antiquities, book xviii. ch. iv. 1.

[522:1]Josephus: Antiquities, book xviii. chap. iii. 2.

[522:2]"From the death of Herod, 4 B. C., to the death of Bar-Cochba, 132 A. D., no less than fifty different enthusiasts set up as the Messiah, and obtained more or less following." (John W. Chadwick.)

[522:3]"There was, at this time, a prevalent expectation that some remarkable personage was about to appear in Judea. The Jews were anxiously looking for the coming of the Messiah. This personage, they supposed, would be a temporal prince, and they were expecting that he would deliver them from Roman bondage." (Albert Barnes: Notes, vol. i. p. 7.)

"The central and dominant characteristic of the teaching of the Rabbis, was the certain advent of a great national Deliverer—theMessiah. . . . The national mind had become so inflammable, by constant brooding on this one theme, that any bold spirit rising in revolt against the Roman power, could find an army of fierce disciples who trusted that it should be he who would redeem

Israel

." (Geikie: The Life of Christ, vol. i. p. 79.)

[522:4]"The penalty of crucifixion, according to Roman law and custom, was inflicted on slaves, and in the provinces on rebels only." (The Martyrdom of Jesus, p. 96.)

[522:5]Judas, the Gaulonite or Galilean, as Josephus calls him, declared, when Cyrenius came to tax the Jewish people, that "this taxation was no better than an introduction to slavery," and exhorted the nation to assert their liberty. He therefore prevailed upon his countrymen to revolt. (See Josephus: Antiq., b. xviii. ch. i. 1, and Wars of the Jews, b. ii. ch. viii. 1.)

[523:1]The Martyrdom of Jesus of Nazareth, p. 30.

[523:2]"That the High Council did accuse Jesus, I suppose no one will doubt; and since they could neither wish or expect the Roman Governor to make himself judge of their sacred law, it becomes certain that their accusation was purely political, and took such a form as this: 'He has accepted tumultuous shouts that he is the legitimate and predicted King of Israel, and in this character has ridden into Jerusalem with the forms of state understood to be royal and sacred; with what purpose, we ask, if not to overturn our institutions, and your dominion?' If Jesus spoke, at the crisis which Matthew represents, the virulent speech attributed to him (Matt. xxiii.), we may well believe that this gave a new incentive to the rulers; for it is such as no government in Europe would overlook or forgive: but they are not likely to have expected Pilate to care for any conduct which might be called an ecclesiastical broil. The assumption of royalty was clearly the point of their attack. Even the mildest man among them may have thought his conduct dangerous and needing repression." (Francis W. Newman, "What is Christianity without Christ?")

According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus was completely innocent of the charge which has sometimes been brought against him, that he wished to be considered as a God come down to earth. His enemies certainly would not have failed to make such a pretension the basis and the continual theme of their accusations, if it had been possible to do so. The two grounds upon which he was brought before the Sanhedrim were, first, the bold words he was supposed to have spoken about the temple; and, secondly and chiefly, the fact that he claimed to be the Messiah, i. e., "The King of the Jews." (Albert Réville: "The Doctrine of the Dogma of the Deity of Jesus," p. 7.)

[523:3]See The Martyrdom of Jesus, p. 30.

[524:1]See note 4, p. 522.

[524:2]See Matt. xx. 19.

[524:3]John xviii. 31, 32.

[524:4]That is, the crucifixion story as related in the Gospels. See note 1, p. 520.

[524:5]Matthew xxvii. 24, 25.

[525:1]Commentators, in endeavoring to get over this difficulty, say that, "it may come from the look or form of the spot itself, bald, round, and skull-like, and therefore a mound or hillock," but, if it means "the place of bare skulls," no such construction as the above can be put to the word.

[526:1]The Martyrdom of Jesus of Nazareth, pp. 109-111.

[527:1]O. B. Frothingham: The Cradle of the Christ, p. 11.

The reader is referred to "Judaism: Its Doctrines and Precepts," by Dr. Isaac M. Wise. Printed at the office of the "American Israelite," Cincinnati, Ohio.

[527:2]If Jesus, instead of giving himself up quietly, had resisted against being arrested, there certainly would have been bloodshed, as there was on many other similar occasions.

[528:1]If what is recorded In the Gospels on the subject was true, no historian of that day could fail to have noticed it, but instead of this there isnothing.

[528:2]See Matthew, xxvii. 51-53.

[529:1]See Matt. xiv. 15-22: Mark, iv. 1-3, and xi. 14; and Luke, vii. 26-37.

[529:2]See Mark, xvi. 16.

[529:3]This fact has at last been admitted by the most orthodox among the Christians. The Rev. George Matheson, D. D., Minister of the Parish of Innellan, and a member of the Scotch Kirk, speaking of the precept uttered by Confucius, five hundred years before the time assigned for the birth of Jesus of Nazareth ("Whatsoever ye would not that others should do unto you, do not ye unto them"), says: "That Confucius is the author of this precept is undisputed, and therefore it is indisputable that Christianity has incorporated an article of Chinese morality. It has appeared to some as if this were to the disparagement of Christianity—as if the originality of its Divine Founder were impaired by consenting to borrow a precept from a heathen source. But in what sense does Christianity set up the claim of moral originality? When we speak of the religion of Christ as having introduced into the world a purer life and a surer guide to conduct, what do we mean? Do we mean to suggest that Christianity has, for the first time, revealed to the world the existence of a set of self-sacrificing precepts—that here, for the first time, man has learned that he ought to be meek, merciful, humble, forgiving, sorrowful for sin, peaceable, and pure in heart? The proof of such a statement would destroy Christianity itself, for an absolute original code of preceptswould be equivalent to a foreign language. The glory of Christian morality is that it is NOT ORIGINAL—that its words appeal to something which already exists within the human heart, and on that account have a meaning to the human ear: no new revelation can be made except through the medium of an old one. When we attribute originality to the ethics of the Gospel, we do so on the ground, not that it has given new precepts, but that it has given us a new impulse to obey the moral instincts of the soul. Christianity itself claims on the field of morals this originality, and this alone—'A new commandment give I unto you, that you love one another." (St. Giles Lectures, Second Series: The Faiths of the World. Religion of

China

, by the Rev. George Matheson, D. D., Minister of the Parish of Innellan. Wm. Blackwood & Sons: Edinburgh, 1882.)

Extract from "BIBLE MYTHS AND THEIR PARALLELS IN OTHER RELIGIONS" By T. W. DOANE, 1882. Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Lisa Reigel, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31885/31885-h/31885-h.htm#Page_36

Antiquity of Pagan Religions

2011-10-16T00:36:00.000+05:00

We shall now compare the great antiquity of the sacred books and religions of Paganism with those of the Christian, so that there may be no doubt as to which is the original, and which the copy. Allusions to this subject have already been made throughout this work, we shall therefore devote as little space to it here as possible.

In speaking of the sacred literature of

India

, Prof. Monier Williams says:

"Sanskrit literature, embracing as it does nearly every branch of knowledge is entirely deficient in one department. It is wholly destitute of trustworthy historical records. Hence, little or nothing is known of the lives of ancient Indian authors, and the dates of their most celebrated works cannot be fixed with certainty. A fair conjecture, however, may be arrived at by comparing the most ancient with the more modern compositions, and estimating the period of time required to effect the changes of structure and idiom observable in the language. In this manner we may be justified in assuming that the hymns of the Veda were probably composed by a succession of poets at different dates between 1500 and 1000 years B. C."^[450:1]

Prof. Wm. D. Whitney shows the great antiquity of the Vedic hymns from the fact that,

"The language of the Vedas is an older dialect, varying very considerably, both in its grammatical and lexical character, from the classical Sanscrit."

And M. de Coulanges, in his "Ancient City," says:

"We learn from the hymns of the Vedas, which are certainly very ancient, and from the laws of Manu," "what the Aryans of the east thought nearly thirty-five centuries ago."^[450:2]

That the Vedas are of very high antiquity is unquestionable; but however remote we may place the period when they were written, we must necessarily presuppose that the Hindostanic race had already attained to a comparatively high degree of civilization, otherwise men capable of framing such doctrines could not have been found. Now this state of civilization must necessarily have been preceded by several centuries of barbarism, during which we cannot possibly admit a more refined faith than the popular belief in elementary deities.

We shall see in our next chapter that these very ancient Vedic hymns contain the origin of the legend of the Virgin-born God and Saviour, the great benefactor of mankind, who is finally put to death, and rises again to life and immortality on the third day.

The Geetas and Puranas, although of a comparatively modern date, are, as we have already seen, nevertheless composed of matter to be found in the two great epic poems, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which were written many centuries before the time assigned as that of the birth of Christ Jesus.^[451:1]

The Pali sacred books, which contain the legend of the virgin-born God and Saviour—Sommona Cadom—are known to have been in existence 316 B. C.^[451:2]

We have already seen that the religion known as Buddhism, and which corresponds in such a striking manner with Christianity, has now existed for upwards of twenty-four hundred years.^[451:3]

Prof. Rhys Davids says:

"There is every reason to believe that the Pitakas (the sacred books which contain the legend of 'The Buddha'), now extant in Ceylon, are substantially identical with the books of the Southern Canon, as settled at the Council of Patna about the year 250 B. C.^[451:4] As no works would have been received into the Canon which were not then believed to be very old, the Pitakas may be approximately placed in the fourth century B. C., and parts of them possibly reach back very nearly, if not quite, to the time of Gautama himself."^[451:5]

The religion of the ancient Persians, which corresponds in so very many respects with that of the Christians, was established by Zoroaster—who was undoubtedly a Brahman ^[451:6]—and is contained in the Zend-Avesta, their sacred book or Bible. This book is very ancient. Prof. Max Müller speaks of "the sacred book of the Zoroastrians" as being "older in its language than the cuneiform inscriptions of Cyrus (B. C. 560), Darius (B. C. 520), and Xerxes (B. C.485) those ancient Kings of Persia, who knew that they were kings by the grace of Auramazda, and who placed his sacred image high on the mountain-records of Behistun."^[452:1] That ancient book, or its fragments, at least, have survived many dynasties and kingdoms, and is still believed in by a small remnant of the Persian race, now settled at Bombay, and known all over the world by the name of Parsees.^[452:2]

"The Babylonian and Phenician sacred books date back to a fabulous antiquity;"^[452:3] and so do the sacred books and religion of

Egypt

Prof. Mahaffy, in his "Prolegomena to Ancient History," says:

"There is indeed hardly a great and fruitful idea in the Jewish or Christian systems which has not its analogy in the Egyptian faith, andall these theological conceptions pervade the oldest religion of

Egypt

."^[452:4]

The worship of Osiris, the Lord and Saviour, must have been of extremely ancient date, for he is represented as "Judge of the Dead," in sculptures contemporary with the building of the Pyramids, centuries before Abraham is said to have been born. Among the many hieroglyphic titles which accompany his figure in those sculptures, and in many other places on the walls of temples and tombs, are, "Lord of Life," "The Eternal Ruler," "Manifester of Good," "Revealer of Truth," "Full of Goodness and Truth," etc.

In speaking of the "Myth of Osiris," Mr. Bonwick says:

"This great mystery of the Egyptians demands serious consideration. Its antiquity—its universal hold upon the people for over five thousand years—its identification with the very life of the nation—and its marvellous likeness to the creed of modern date, unite in exciting the greatest interest."^[452:5]

This myth, and that of Isis and Horus, were known before the Pyramid time.^[453:1]

The worship of the Virgin Mother in

Egypt

—from which country it was imported into Europe^[453:2]—dates back thousands of years B. C. Mr. Bonwick says:

"In all probability she was worshiped three thousand years before Moses wrote. 'Isis nursing her child Horus, was represented,' says Mariette Bey, 'at least six thousand years ago.' We read the name of Isis on monuments of the fourth dynasty, and she lost none of her popularity to the close of the empire."

"The Egyptian Bible is by far the most ancient of all holy books." "Plato was told that

Egypt

possessed hymns dating back ten thousand years before his time."^[453:3]

Bunsen says:

"The origin of the ancient prayers and hymns of the 'Book of the Dead,' is anterior to Menes; it implies that the system of Osirian worship and mythology was already formed."^[453:4]

And, says Mr. Bonwick:

"Besides opinions, we have facts as a basis for arriving at a conclusion, and justifying the assertion of Dr. Birch, that the work dated from a period long anterior to the rise of Ammon worship at Thebes."^[453:5]

Now, "this most ancient of all holy books," establishes the fact that a virgin-born and resurrected Saviour was worshiped in

Egypt

thousands of year before the time of Christ Jesus.

P. Le Page Renouf says:

"The earliest monuments which have been discovered present to us the very same fully-developed civilization and the same religionas the later monuments. . . . The gods whose names appear in the oldest tombs were worshiped down to the Christian times. The same kind of priesthoods which are mentioned in the tablets of Canopus and Rosetta in the Ptolemaic period are as ancient as the pyramids, and more ancient than any pyramid of which we know the date."^[453:6]

In regard to the doctrine of the Trinity. We have just seen that "the development of the One God into a Trinity" pervades the oldest religion of

Egypt

, and the same may be said of

India

. Prof. Monier Williams, speaking on this subject, says:

"It should be observed that the native commentaries on the Veda often allude to thirty-three gods, which number is also mentioned in the Rig-Veda. This is a multiple of three, which is a sacred number constantly appearing in the Hindu religious system. It is probable, indeed, that although the Tri-murti is not named in the Vedic hymns,^[454:1] yet the Veda is the real source of this Triad of personifications, afterwards so conspicuous in Hindu mythology. This much, at least, is clear, that the Vedic poets exhibited a tendency to group all the forces and energies of nature under three heads, and the assertion that the number of the gods was thirty-three, amounted to saying that each of the three leading personifications was capable of eleven modifications."^[454:2]

The great antiquity of the legends referred to in this work is demonstrated in the fact that they were found in a great measure on the continent of

America

, by the first Europeans who set foot on its soil. Now, how did they get there? Mr. Lundy, in his "Monumental Christianity," speaking on this subject, says:

"So great was the resemblance between the two sacraments of the Christian Church (viz., that of Baptism and the Eucharist) and those of the ancient Mexicans; so many other points of similarity, also, in doctrine existed, as to the unity of God, the Triad, the Creation, the Incarnation and Sacrifice, the Resurrection, etc., that Herman Witsius, no mean scholar and thinker, was induced to believe that Christianity had been preached on this continent by some one of the apostles, perhaps St. Thomas, from the fact that he is reported to have carried the Gospel to India and Tartary, whence he came to America."^[454:3]

Some writers, who do not think that St. Thomas could have gotten to

America

, believe that St. Patrick, or some other saint, must have, in some unaccountable manner, reached the shores of the Western continent, and preached their doctrine there.^[454:4] Others have advocated the devil theory, which is, that the devil, being jealous of the worship of Christ Jesus, set up a religion of his own, and imitated, nearly as possible, the religion of Christ. All of these theories being untenable, we must, in the words of Burnouf, the eminent French Orientalist, "learn one day that all ancient traditions disfigured by emigration and legend,belong to the history of

India

That

America

was inhabited by Asiatic emigrants, and that the American legends are of Asiatic origin, we believe to be indisputable. There is an abundance of proof to this effect.^[454:5]

In contrast to the great antiquity of the sacred books and religions of Paganism, we have the facts that the Gospels were not written by the persons whose names they bear, that they were written many years after the time these men are said to have lived, and that they are full of interpolations and errors. The first that we know of the four gospels is at the time of Irenæus, who, in the second century, intimates that he had received four gospels, as authentic scriptures. This pious forger was probably the author of the fourth, as we shall presently see.

Besides these gospels there were many more which were subsequently deemed apocryphal; the narratives related in them of Christ Jesus and his apostles were stamped as forgeries.

"The Gospel according to Matthew" is believed by the majority of biblical scholars of the present day to be the oldest of the four, and to be made up principally of a pre-existing one, called "The Gospel of the Hebrews." The principal difference in these two gospels being that "The Gospel of the Hebrews" commenced with giving the genealogy of Jesus from David, through Joseph "according to the flesh." The story of Jesus being born of a virgin was not to be found there, it being an afterpiece, originating either with the writer of "The Gospel according to Matthew," or some one after him, and was evidently taken from "The Gospel of the Egyptians." "The Gospel of the Hebrews"—from which, we have said, the Matthew narrator copied—was an intensely Jewish gospel, and was to be found—in one of its forms—among the Ebionites, who were the narrowest Jewish Christians of the second century. "The Gospel according to Matthew" is, therefore, the most Jewish gospel of the four; in fact, the most Jewish book in the New Testament, excepting, perhaps, theApocalypse and the Epistle of James.

Some of the more conspicuous Jewish traits, to be found in this gospel, are as follows:

Jesus is sent only to the lost sheep of the house of

Israel

. The twelve are forbidden to go among the Gentiles or the Samaritans. They are to sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of

Israel

. The genealogy of Jesus is traced back to Abraham, and there stops.^[455:1] The works of the law are frequently insisted on. There is a superstitious regard for the Sabbath, &c.

There is no evidence of the existence of the Gospel of Matthew,—in its present form—until the year 173, A. D. It is at this time, also, that it is first ascribed to Matthew, by Apollinaris, Bishop of Hierapolis. The original oracles of the Gospel of the Hebrews, however,—which were made use of by the author of our present Gospel of Matthew,—were written, likely enough, not long before the destruction of Jerusalem, but the Gospel itself dates from about A. D. 100.^[456:1]

"The Gospel according to Luke" is believed to come next—in chronological order—to that of Matthew, and to have been written some fifteen or twenty years after it. The author was a foreigner, as his writings plainly show that he was far removed from the events which he records.

In writing his Gospel, the author made use of that of Matthew, the Gospel of the Hebrews, and Marcion's Gospel. He must have had, also, still other sources, as there are parables peculiar to it, which are not found in them. Among these may be mentioned that of the "Prodigal Son," and the "Good Samaritan." Other parables peculiar to it are that of the two debtors; the friend borrowing bread at night; the rich man's barns; Dives and Lazarus; the lost piece of silver; the unjust steward; the Pharisee and the Publican.

Several miracles are also peculiar to the Luke narrator's Gospel, the raising of the widow of Nain's son being the most remarkable. Perhaps these stories were delivered to him orally, and perhaps he is the author of them,—we shall never know. The foundation of the legends, however, undoubtedly came from the "certain scriptures" of the Essenes in

Egypt

. The principal object which the writer of this gospel had in view was to reconcile Paulinism and the more Jewish forms of Christianity.^[456:2]

The next in chronological order, according to the same school of critics, is "The Gospel according to Mark." This gospel is supposed to have been written within ten years of the former, and its author, as of the other two gospels, is unknown. It was probably written at Rome, as the Latinisms of the author's style, and the apparent motive of his work, strongly suggest that he was a Jewish citizen of the Eternal City. He made use of the Gospel of Matthew as his principal authority, and probably referred to that of Luke, as he has things in common with Luke only.

The object which the writer had in view, was to have a neutral go-between, a compromise between Matthew as too Petrine (Jewish), and Luke as too Pauline (Gentile). The different aspects of Matthew and Luke were found to be confusing to believers, and provocative of hostile criticism from without; hence the idea of writing a shorter gospel, that should combine the most essential elements of both. Luke was itself a compromise between the opposing Jewish and universal tendencies of early Christianity, but Mark endeavors by avoidance and omission to effect what Luke did more by addition and contrast. Luke proposed to himself to open a door for the admission of Pauline ideas without offending Gentile Christianity; Mark, on the contrary, in a negative spirit, to publish a Gospel which should not hurt the feelings of either party. Hence his avoidance of all those disputed questions which disturbed the church during the first quarter of the second century. The genealogy of Jesus is omitted; this being offensive to Gentile Christians, and even to some of the more liberal Judaizers. The supernatural birth of Jesus is omitted, this being offensive to the Ebonitish (extreme Jewish) and some of the Gnostic Christians. For every Judaizing feature that is sacrificed, a universal one is also sacrificed. Hard words against the Jews are left out, but with equal care, hard words about the Gentiles.^[457:1]

We now come to the fourth, and last gospel, that "according to John," which was not written until many years after that "according to Matthew."

"It is impossible to pass from the Synoptic ^[457:2] Gospels," says Canon Westcott, "to the fourth, without feeling that the transition involves the passage from one world of thought to another. No familiarity with the general teachings of the Gospels, no wide conception of the character of the Saviour, is sufficient to destroy the contrast which exists in form and spirit between the earlier and later narratives."

The discrepancies between the fourth and the Synoptic Gospels are numerous. If Jesus was the man of Matthew's Gospel, he was not the mysterious beingof the fourth. If his ministry was only one year long, it was not three. If he made but one journey to Jerusalem, he did not make many. If his method of teaching was that of the Synoptics, it was not that of the fourth Gospel. If he was the Jew of Matthew, he was not the Anti-Jew of John.^[457:3]

Everywhere in John we come upon a more developed stage of Christianity than in the Synoptics. The scene, the atmosphere, is different. In the Synoptics Judaism, the Temple, the Law and the Messianic Kingdom are omnipresent. In John they are remote and vague. In Matthew Jesus is always yearning for his own nation. In John he has no other sentiment for it than hate and scorn. In Matthew the sanction of the Prophets is his great credential. In John his dignity can tolerate no previous approximation.

"Do we ask," says Francis Tiffany, "who wrote this wondrous Gospel? Mysterious its origin, as that wind of which its author speaks, which bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof and canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. As with the Great Unknown of the book of Job, the Great Unknown of the later Isaiah, the ages keep his secret. The first absolutely indisputable evidence of the existence of the book dates from the latter half of the second century."

The first that we know of the fourth Gospel, for certainty, is at the time of Irenæus (A. D. 179).^[458:1] We look in vain for an express recognition of the fourcanonical Gospels, or for a distinct mention of any one of them, in the writings of St. Clement (A. D. 96), St. Ignatius (A. D. 107), St. Justin (A. D. 140), or St. Polycarp (A. D. 108). All we can find is incidents from the life of Jesus, sayings, etc.

That Irenæus is the author of it is very evident. This learned and pious forger says:

"John, the disciple of the Lord, wrote his Gospel to confute the doctrine lately taught by Cerinthus, and a great while before by those called Nicolaitans, a branch of the Gnostics; and to show that there is one God who made all things by his WORD: and not, as they say, that there is one the Creator, and another the Father of our Lord: and one the Son of the Creator, and another, even the Christ, who descended from above upon the Son of the Creator, and continued impassible, and at length returned to his pleroma or fulness."^[458:2]

The idea of God having inspired four different men to write a history of the same transactions,—or rather, of many different men having undertaken to write such a history, of whom God inspired four only to write correctly, leaving the others to their own unaided resources, and giving us no test by which to distinguish the inspired from the uninspired—certainly appears self-confuting, and anything but natural.

The reasons assigned by Irenæus for there being four Gospels are as follows:

"It is impossible that there could be more or less than four. For there are four climates, and four cardinal winds; but the Gospel is the pillar and foundation of the church, and its breath of life. The church therefore was to have four pillars, blowing immortality from every quarter, and giving life to man."^[459:1]

It was by this Irenæus, with the assistance of Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, one of the Latin Fathers, that the four Gospels were introduced intogeneral use among the Christians.

In these four spurious Gospels, and in some which are considered Apocryphal—because the bishops at the Council of Laodicea (A. D. 365) rejected them—we have the only history of Jesus of Nazareth. Now, if all accounts or narratives of Christ Jesus and his Apostles were forgeries, as it is admitted that all theApocryphal ones were, what can the superior character of the received Gospels prove for them, but that they are merely superiorly executed forgeries? The existence of Jesus is implied in the New Testament outside of the Gospels, but hardly an incident of his life is mentioned, hardly a sentence that he spoke has been preserved. Paul, writing from twenty to thirty years after his death, has but a single reference to anything he ever said or did.

Beside these four Gospels there were, as we said above, many others, for, in the words of Mosheim, the ecclesiastical historian:

"Not long after Christ's ascension into heaven, several histories of his life and doctrines, full of pious frauds and fabulous wonders, were composed by persons whose intentions, perhaps, were not bad, but whose writings discovered the greatest superstition and ignorance. Nor was this all; productions appeared, which were imposed upon the world by fraudulent men, as the writings of the holy apostles."^[459:2]

Dr. Conyers Middleton, speaking on this subject, says:

"There never was any period of time in all ecclesiastical history, in which so many rank heresies were publicly professed, nor in which so many spurious books were forged and published by the Christians, under the names of Christ, and the Apostles, and the Apostolic writers, as in those primitive ages. Several of these forged books are frequently cited and applied to the defense of Christianity, by the most eminent fathers of the same ages, as true and genuine pieces."^[459:3]

Archbishop Wake also admits that:

"It would be useless to insist on all the spurious pieces which were attributed to St. Paul alone, in the primitive ages of Christianity."^[460:1]

Some of the "spurious pieces which were attributed to St. Paul," may be found to-day in our canonical New Testament, and are believed by many to be the word of God.^[460:2]

The learned Bishop Faustus, in speaking of the authenticity of the New Testament, says:

"It is certain that the New Testament was not written by Christ himself, nor by his apostles, but a long while after them, by some unknown persons, who, lest they should not be credited when they wrote of affairs they were little acquainted with, affixed to their works the names of the apostles, or of such as were supposed to have been their companions, asserting that what they had written themselves, was written according to these persons to whom they ascribed it."^[460:3]

Again he says:

"Many things have been inserted by our ancestors in the speeches of our Lord, which, though put forth under his name, agree not with his faith; especially since—as already it has been often proved—these things were not written by Christ, nor his apostles, but a long while after their assumption, by I know not what sort of half Jews, not even agreeing with themselves, who made up their tale out of reports and opinions merely, and yet, fathering the whole upon the names of the apostles of the Lord, or on those who were supposed to follow the apostles, they mendaciously pretended that they had written their lies and conceits according to them."^[460:4]

What had been said to have been done in India, was said by these "half-Jews" to have been done in Palestine; the change of names and places, with the mixing up of various sketches of the Egyptian, Persian, Phenician, Greek and Roman mythology, was all that was necessary. They had an abundance of material, and with it they built. The foundation upon which they built was undoubtedly the "Scriptures," or Diegesis, of the Essenes in Alexandria in Egypt, which fact led Eusebius, the ecclesiastical historian—"without whom," says Tillemont, "we should scarce have had any knowledge of the history of the first ages of Christianity, or of the authors who wrote in that time"—to say that the sacred writings used by this sect were none other than "Our Gospels."

We offer below a few of the many proofs showing the Gospels to have been written a long time after the events narrated are said to have occurred, and by persons unacquainted with the country of which they wrote.

"He (Jesus) came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis," is an assertion made by the Mark narrator (vii. 31), when there were no coasts of Decapolis, nor was the name so much as known before the reign of the emperor Nero.

Again, "He (Jesus) departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judea, beyond

Jordan

," is an assertion made by the Matthew narrator (xix. 1), when the

Jordan

itself was the eastern boundary of Judea, and there were no coasts of Judea beyond it.

Again, "But when he (Joseph) heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea, in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither, notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee, and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene," is another assertion made by the Matthew narrator (ii. 22, 23), when—1. It was a son of Herod who reigned in Galilee as well as Judea, so that he could not be more secure in one province than in the other; and when—2. It was impossible for him to have gone from Egypt to Nazareth, without traveling through the whole extent of Archelaus's kingdom, or making a peregrination through the deserts on the north and east of the Lake Asphaltites, and the country of Moab; and then, either crossing the Jordan into Samaria or the Lake of Gennesareth into Galilee, and from thence going to the city of Nazareth, which is no better geography, than if one should describe a person as turning aside from Cheapside into the parts of Yorkshire; and when—3. There were no prophets whatever who had prophesied that Jesus "should be called a Nazarene."

The Matthew narrator (iv. 13) states that "He departed into Galilee, and leaving Nazareth, came and dwelt in Capernaum," as if he imagined that the city of Nazareth was not as properly in Galilee as Capernaum was; which is much such geographical accuracy, as if one should relate the travels of a hero, who departed into Middlesex, and leaving London, came and dwelt in Lombard street.^[461:1]

There are many other falsehoods in gospel geography beside these, which, it is needless to mention, plainly show that the writers were not the persons they are generally supposed to be.

Of gospel statistics there are many falsehoods; among them may be mentioned the following:

"Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness," is an assertion made by the Luke narrator (Luke iii. 2); when all Jews, or persons living among them, must have known that there never was but one high priest at a time, as with ourselves there is but one mayor of a city.

Again we read (John vii. 52), "Search (the Scriptures) and look, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet," when the most distinguished of the Jewish prophets—Nahum and Jonah—were both Galileans.

See reference in the Epistles to "Saints," a religious order, owing its origin to the popes. Also, references to the distinct orders of "Bishops," "Priests," and "Deacons," and calls to a monastic life; to fasting, etc., when, the titles of "Bishop," "Priest," and "Deacon" were given to the Essenes—whom Eusebius calls Christians—and, as is well known, monasteries were the abode of the Essenes or Therapeuts.

See the words for "legion," "aprons," "handkerchiefs," "centurion," etc., in the original, not being Greek, but Latin, written in Greek characters, a practice first to be found in the historian Herodian, in the third century.

In Matt. xvi. 18, and Matt. xviii. 17, the word "Church" is used, and its papistical and infallible authority referred to as then existing, which is known not to have existed till ages after. And the passage in Matt. xi. 12:—"From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence," etc., could not have been written till a very late period.

Luke ii. 1, shows that the writer (whoever he may have been) lived long after the events related. His dates, about the fifteenth year of Tiberius, and the government of Cyrenius (the only indications of time in the New Testament), are manifestly false. The general ignorance of the four Evangelists, not merely of the geography and statistics of Judea, but even of its language,—their egregious blunders, which no writers who had lived in that age could be conceived of as making,—prove that they were not only no such persons as those who have been willing to be deceived have taken them to be, but that they were not Jews, had never been in Palestine, and neither lived at, or at anywhere near the times to which their narratives seem to refer. The ablest divines at the present day, of all denominations, have yielded as much as this.^[463:1]

The Scriptures were in the hands of the clergy only, and they had every opportunity to insert whatsoever they pleased; thus we find them full of interpolations. Johann Solomo Semler, one of the most influential theologians of the eighteenth century, speaking of this, says:

"The Christian doctors never brought their sacred books before the common people; although people in general have been wont to think otherwise; during the first ages, they were in the hands of the clergy only."^[463:2]

Concerning the time when the canon of the New Testament was settled, Mosheim says:

"The opinions, or rather the conjectures, of the learned concerning the time when the books of the New Testament were collected into one volume; as also about the authors of that collection, are extremely different. This important question is attended with great and almost insuperable difficulties to us in these later times."^[463:3]

The Rev. B. F. Westcott says:

"It is impossible to point to any period as marking the date at which our present canon was determined. When it first appears, it is presented not as a novelty, but as an ancient tradition."^[463:4]

Dr. Lardner says:

"Even so late as the middle of the sixth century, the canon of the New Testament had not been settled by any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged, but Christian people were at liberty to judge for themselves concerning the genuineness of writings proposed to them as apostolical, and to determine according to evidence."^[464:1]

The learned Michaelis says:

"No manuscript of the New Testament now extant is prior to the sixth century, and what is to be lamented, various readings which, as appears from the quotations of the Fathers, were in the text of the Greek Testament, are to be found in none of the manuscripts which are at present remaining."^[464:2]

And Bishop Marsh says:

"It is a certain fact, that several readings in our common printed text are nothing more than alterations made by Origen, whose authority was so great in the Christian Church (A. D. 230) that emendations which he proposed, though, as he himself acknowledged, they were supported by the evidence of no manuscript, were very generally received."^[464:3]

In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius gives us a list of what books at that time (A. D. 315) were considered canonical. They are as follows:

"The four-fold writings of the Evangelists," "The Acts of the Apostles," "The Epistles of Peter," "after these the first of John, and that of Peter," "All these are received for undoubted." "The Revelation of St. John, some disavow."

"The books which are gainsaid, though well known unto many, are these: the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, the latter of Peter, the second and third of John, whether they were John the Evangelist, or some other of the same name."^[464:4]

Though Irenæus, in the second century, is the first who mentions the evangelists, and Origen, in the third century, is the first who gives us a catalogue of the books contained in the New Testament, Mosheim's admission still stands before us. We have no grounds of assurance that the mere mention of the namesof the evangelists by Irenæus, or the arbitrary drawing up of a particular catalogue by Origen, were of any authority. It is still unknown by whom, or where, orwhen, the canon of the New Testament was settled. But in this absence of positive evidence we have abundance of negative proof. We know when it was notsettled. We know it was not settled in the time of the Emperor Justinian, nor in the time of Cassiodorus; that is, not at any time before the middle of the sixth century, "by any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged; but Christian people were at liberty to judge for themselves concerning thegenuineness of writings proposed to them as apostolical."

We cannot do better than close this chapter with the words of Prof. Max Müller, who, in speaking of Buddhism, says:

"We have in the history of Buddhism an excellent opportunity for watching the process by which a canon of sacred books is called into existence. We see here, as elsewhere, that during the life-time of the teacher, no record of events, no sacred code containing the sayings of the Master, was wanted. His presence was enough, and thoughts of the future, and more particularly, of future greatness, seldom entered the minds of those who followed him. It was only after Buddha had left the world to enter into Nirvâna, that his disciples attempted to recall the sayings and doings of their departed friend and master. At that time, everything that seemed to redound to the glory of Buddha, however extraordinary and incredible, was eagerly welcomed, while witnesses who would have ventured to criticise or reject unsupported statements, or to detract in any way from the holy character of Buddha, had no chance of ever being listened to. And when, in spite of all this, differences of opinion arose, they were not brought to the test by a careful weighing of evidence, but the names of 'unbeliever' and 'heretic' were quickly invented in India as elsewhere, and bandied backwards and forwards between contending parties, till at last, when the doctors disagreed, the help of the secular power had to be invoked, and kings and emperors assembled councils for the suppression of schism, for the settlement of an orthodox creed, and for the completion of a sacred canon."^[465:1]

That which Prof. Müller describes as taking place in the religion of Christ Buddha, is exactly what took place in the religion of Christ Jesus. That the miraculous, and many of the non-miraculous, events related in the Gospels never happened, is demonstrable from the facts which we have seen in this work, that nearly all of these events, had been previously related of the gods and goddesses of heathen nations of antiquity, more especially of the Hindoo SaviourCrishna, and the Buddhist Saviour Buddha, whose religion, with less alterations than time and translations have made in the Jewish Scriptures, may be traced in nearly every dogma and every ceremony of the evangelical mythology.

Note.—The Codex Sinaiticus, referred to on the preceding page, (note 2,) was found at the Convent of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai, by Tischendorf, in 1859. He supposes that it belongs to the 4th cent.; but Dr. Davidson (in Kitto's Bib. Ency., Art. MSS.) thinks different. He says: "Probably it is of the 6th cent.," while he states that the Codex Vaticanus "is believed to belong to the 4th cent.," and the Codex Alexandrinus to the 5th cent. McClintock & Strong's Ency. (Art. MSS.,) relying probably on Tischendorf's conjecture, places the Codex Sinaiticus first. "It is probably the oldest of the MSS. of the N. T., and of the 4th cent.," say they. The Codex Vaticanus is considered the next oldest, and the Codex Alexandrinus is placed third in order, and "was probably written in the first half of the 5th cent." The writer of the art. N. T. in Smith's Bib. Dic. says: "The Codex Sinaiticus is probably the oldest of the MSS. of the N. T., and of the 4th cent.;" and that the Codex Alexandrinus "was probably written in the first half of the 5th cent." Thus we see that in determining the dates of the MSS. of the N. T., Christian divines are obliged to resort to conjecture; there being no certainty whatever in the matter. But with all their "suppositions," "probabilities," "beliefs" and "conjectures," we have the words of the learned Michaelis still before us, that: "No MSS. of the N. T. now extant are prior to the sixth cent." This remark, however, does not cover the Codex Sinaiticus, which was discovered since Michaelis wrote his work on the N. T.; but, as we saw above, Dr. Davidson does not agree with Tischendorf in regard to its antiquity, and places it in the 6th cent.

FOOTNOTES:

[450:1]Williams' Hinduism, p. 19. See also, Prof. Max Müller's Lectures on the Origin of Religion, pp. 145-158, and p. 67, where he speaks of "the Hindus, who, thousands of years ago, had reached in Upanishads the loftiest heights of philosophy."

[450:2]The Ancient City, p. 13.

[451:1]See Monier Williams' Hinduism, pp. 109, 110, and Indian Wisdom, p. 493.

[451:2]See Isis Unveiled, vol. ii. p. 576, for the authority of Prof. Max Müller.

[451:3]"The religion known as Buddhism—from the title of 'The Buddha,' meaning 'The Wise,' 'The Enlightened'—has now existed for 2400 years, and may be said to be the prevailing religion of the world." (Chambers's Encyclo.)

[451:4]This Council was assembled by Asoka in the eighteenth year of his reign. The name of this king is honored wherever the teachings of Buddha have spread, and is reverenced from the Volga to

Japan

, from

Ceylon

and

Siam

to the borders of

Mongolia

and Siberia. Like his Christian prototype Constantine, he was converted by a miracle. After his conversion, which took place in the tenth year of his reign, he became a very zealous supporter of the new religion. He himself built many monasteries and dagabas, and provided many monks with the necessaries of life; and he encouraged those about his court to do the same. He published edicts throughout his empire, enjoining on all his subjects morality and justice.

[451:5]Rhys Davids' Buddhism, p. 10.

[451:6]See Chapter VII.

[452:1]Müller: Lectures on the Science of Religion, p. 235.

[452:2]This small tribe of Persians were driven from their native land by the Mohammedan conquerors under the Khalif Omar, in the seventh century of our era. Adhering to the ancient religion of

Persia

, which resembles that of the Veda, and bringing with them the records of their faith, the Zend-Avesta of their prophet Zoroaster, they settled down in the neighborhood of Surat, about one thousand one hundred years ago, and became great merchants and shipbuilders. For two or three centuries we know little of their history. Their religion prevented them from making proselytes, and they never multiplied within themselves to any extent, nor did they amalgamate with the Hindoo population, so that even now their number only amounts to about seventy thousand. Nevertheless, from their busy, enterprising habits, in which they emulate Europeans, they form an important section of the population of Bombay and Western India.

[452:3]Movers: Quoted in Dunlap's Spirit Hist., p. 261.

[452:4]Prolegomena, p. 417.

[452:5]Bonwick's Egyptian Belief, p. 162.

[453:1]Bonwick's Egyptian Belief, p. 163.

[453:2]Ibid. p. 142, and King's Gnostics, p. 71.

[453:3]Bonwick's Egyptian Belief, pp. 135, 140, and 143.

[453:4]Quoted in Ibid. p. 186.

[453:5]Ibid.

[453:6]Renouf: Religion of Ancient

Egypt

, p. 81.

[454:1]That is, the Tri-murti Brahmā, Vishnu and Siva, for he tells us that the three gods, Indra, Agni, and Surya, constitute the Vedic chief triad of Gods. (Hinduism, p. 24.) Again he tells us that the idea of a Tri-murti was first dimly shadowed forth in the Rig-Veda, where a triad of principal gods—Agni, Indra and Surya—is recognized. (Ibid. p. 88.) The worship of the three members of the Tri-murti, Brahmā, Vishnu and Siva, is to be found in the period of the epic poems, from 500 to 308 B. C. (Ibid. pp. 109, 110, 115.)

[454:2]Williams' Hinduism, p. 25.

[454:3]Monumental Christianity, p. 890.

[454:4]See Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi.

[454:5]See Appendix A.

[455:1]The genealogy which traces him back to Adam (Luke iii.) makes his religion not only a Jewish, but a Gentile one. According to this Gospel he is not only a Messiah sent to the Jews, but to all nations, sons of Adam.

[456:1]See The Bible of To-Day, under "Matthew."

[456:2]See Ibid. under "Luke."

[457:1]See the Bible of To-Day, under "Mark."

[457:2]"Synoptics;" the Gospels which contain accounts of the same events—"parallel passages," as they are called—which can be written side by side, so as to enable us to make a general view or synopsis of all the three, and at the same time compare them with each other. Bishop Marsh says: "The most eminent critics are at present decidedly of opinion that one of the two suppositions must necessarily be adopted, either that the three Evangelists copied from each other, or that all the three drew from a common source, and that the notion of an absolute independence, in respect to the composition of the three first Gospels, is no longer tenable."

[457:3]"On opening the New Testament and comparing the impression produced by the Gospel of Matthew or Mark with that by the Gospel of John, the observant eye is at once struck with as salient a contrast as that already indicated on turning from the Macbeth or Othello of Shakespeare to the Comus of Milton or to Spenser's Faerie Queene." (Francis Tiffany.)

"To learn how far we may trust them (the Gospels) we must in the first place compare them with each other. The moment we do so we notice that the fourth stands quite alone, while the first three form a single group, not only following the same general course, but sometimes even showing a verbal agreement which cannot possibly be accidental." (The Bible for Learners, vol. ii. p. 27.)

[458:1]"Irenæus is the first person who mentions the four Gospels by name." (Bunsen: Keys of St. Peter, p. 328.)

"Irenæus, in the second century, is the first of the fathers who, though he has nowhere given us a professed catalogue of the books of the New Testament, intimates that he had received four Gospels, as authentic Scriptures, the authors of which he describes." (Rev. R. Taylor: Syntagma, p. 109.)

"The authorship of the fourth Gospel has been the subject of much learned and anxious controversy among theologians. The earliest, and only very important external testimony we have is that of Irenæus (A. D. 179.)" (W. R. Grey: The Creed of Christendom, p. 159.)

[458:2]Against Heresies, bk. ii. ch. xi. sec. 1.

[459:1]Against Heresies, bk. iii. ch. xi. sec. 8.

[459:2]Mosheim: vol. i. p. 109.

[459:3]Middleton's Works, vol. i. p. 59.

[460:1]Genuine Epist. Apost. Fathers, p. 98.

[460:2]See Chadwick's Bible of To-Day, pp. 191, 192.

[460:3]"Nec ab ipso scriptum constat, nec ab ejus apostolis sed longo post tempore a quibusdam incerti nominis viris, qui ne sibi non haberetur fides scribentibus quæ nescirent, partim apostolorum, partim eorum qui apostolos secuti viderentur nomina scriptorum suorum frontibus indiderunt, asseverantes secundum eos, se scripsisse quæ scripserunt." (Faust, lib. 2. Quoted by Rev. R. Taylor: Diegesis, p. 114.)

[460:4]"Multa enim a majoribus vestris, eloquiis Domini nostri inserta verba sunt; quæ nomine signata ipsius, cum ejus fide non congruant, præsertim, quia, ut jam sæpe probatum a nobis est, nec ab ipso hæc sunt, nec ab ejus apostolis scripta, sed multo post eorum assumptionem, a nescio quibus, et ipsis inter se non concordantibus semi-Judæis, per famas opinionesque comperta sunt; qui tamen omnia eadem in apostolorum Domini conferentes nomina vel eorum qui secuti apostolos viderentur, errores ac mendacia sua secundum eos se scripsisse mentiti sunt." (Faust.: lib. 88. Quoted in Ibid. p. 66.)

[461:1]Taylor's Diegesis.

[463:1]Says Prof. Smith upon this point: "All the earliest external evidence points to the conclusion that the synoptic gospels are non-apostolic digests of spoken and written apostolic tradition, and that the arrangement of the earlier material in orderly form took place only gradually and by many essays."

Dr. Hooykaas, speaking of the four "Gospels," and "Acts," says of them: "Not one of these five books was really written by the person whose name it bears, and they are all of more recent date than the heading would lead us to suppose."

"We cannot say that the "Gospels" and book of "Acts" are unauthentic, for not one of them professes to give the name of its author. They appeared anonymously. The titles placed above them in our Bibles owe their origin to a later ecclesiastical tradition which deserves no confidence whatever." (Bible for Learners, vol. iii. pp. 24, 25.)

These Gospels "can hardly be said to have had authors at all. They had only editors or compilers. What I mean is, that those who enriched the old Christian literature with these Gospels did not go to work as independent writers and compose their own narratives out of the accounts they had collected, but simply took up the different stories or sets of stories which they found current in the oral tradition or already reduced to writing, adding here and expanding there, and so sent out into the world a very artless kind of composition. These works were then, from time to time, somewhat enriched by introductory matter or interpolations from the hands of later Christians, and perhaps were modified a little here and there. Our first two Gospels appear to have passed through more than one such revision. The third, whose writer says in his preface, that 'many had undertaken to put together a narrative (Gospel),' before him, appears to proceed from a single collecting, arranging, and modifying hand." (Ibid. p. 29.)

[463:2]"Christiani doctores non in vulgus prodebant libros sacros, licet soleant plerique aliteropinari, erant tantum in manibus clericorum, priora per sæcula." (Quoted in Taylor's Diegesis, p. 48.)

[463:3]Mosheim: vol. i. pt. 2, ch. ii.

[463:4]General Survey of the Canon, p. 459.

[464:1]Credibility of the Gospels.

[464:2]Marsh's Michaelis, vol. ii. p. 160. The Sinaitic MS. is believed by Tischendorf to belong to the fourth century.

[464:3]Ibid. p. 368.

[464:4]Eusebius: Ecclesiastical Hist. lib. 3, ch. xxii.

[465:1]The Science of Religion, pp. 30, 31.

Extract from CHAPTER XXXVIII THE ANTIQUITY OF PAGAN RELIGIONS, "BIBLE MYTHS AND THEIR PARALLELS IN OTHER RELIGIONS" By T. W. DOANE, 1882. Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Lisa Reigel, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31885/31885-h/31885-h.htm#Page_36

Bible, Christ & Christianity

Bible- Introduction

Interfaith Weblinks

Ahmed Deedat on Islam & Christianity

Dr.Zakir Naik on Islam & Christianity

Thomas Jefferson’s secret Bible of Jesus's Moral code

Jefferson's Bible - C-SPAN Video Library

Bible: Myths and their Parallels in other religions By T. W. Doane

Index:

Comments/Review-1

See also:

Connclusion

FOOTNOTES:

Antiquity of Pagan Religions