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Some two or three years ago the Rev. R. Horton said: "Either
Christ
was the Son of God, and one with God, or He was a bad man, or a
madman.
There is no fourth alternative possible." That is a strange
statement
to make, but it is an example of the shifts to which apologists
are
frequently reduced. No fourth alternative possible! Indeed there is;
and
a fifth!
If a man came forward to-day, and said he was the Son of
God, and one
with God, we should conclude that he was an impostor or a
lunatic.
But if a man told us that another man had said he was a god, we
should
have what Mr. Horton calls a "fourth alternative" open to us.
For
we might say that the person who reported his speech to us
had
misunderstood him, which would be a "fourth alternative"; or that
the
person had wilfully misrepresented him, which would be a
fifth
alternative.
So in the Gospels. Nowhere have we a single word of
Christ's own
writing. His sayings come to us through several hands, and
through more
than one translation. It is folly, then, to assert that Christ
was God,
or that He was mad, or an impostor.
So in the case of the
Gospel stories of the Crucifixion, the
Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ.
Many worthy people may suppose
that in denying the facts stated in the
Gospels we are accusing St.
Matthew and St. John of falsehood.
But
there is no certainty who St. Matthew and the others were. There is
no
certainty that they wrote these stories. Even if they did write them,
they
probably accepted them at second or third hand. With the best faith
in the
world, they may not have been competent judges of evidence. And
after they
had done their best their testimony may have been added to or
perverted by
editors and translators.
Looking at the Gospels, then, as we should look
at any other ancient
documents, what internal evidence do they afford in
support of the
suspicion that they are mythical?
In the first place,
the whole Gospel story teems with miracles. Now, as
Matthew Arnold said,
miracles never happen. Science has made the belief
in miracles impossible.
When we speak of the antagonism between religion
and science, it is this fact
which we have in our mind: that science has
killed the belief in miracles,
and, as all religions are built up upon
the miraculous, science and religion
cannot be made to harmonise.
As Huxley said:
The magistrate
who listens with devout attention to the precept,
"Thou shalt not suffer
a witch to live," on Sunday, on Monday
dismisses, as intrinsically
absurd, a charge of bewitching a
cow brought against some old woman; the
superintendent of a
lunatic asylum who substituted exorcism for rational
modes of
treatment, would have but a short tenure of office; even
parish
clerks doubt the utility of prayers for rain, so long as
the
wind is in the east; and an outbreak of pestilence sends
men,
not to the churches, but to the drains. In spite of prayers
for
the success of our arms, and _Te Deums_ for victory, our
real
faith is in big battalions and keeping our powder dry; in
knowledge of the science of warfare; in energy, courage, and
discipline. In these, as in all other practical affairs, we
act on the
aphorism, _Laborare est orare_; we admit that
intelligent work is the
only acceptable worship, and that,
whether there be a Supernature or
not, our business is with Nature.
We have ceased to believe in miracles.
When we come upon a miracle in
any historical document we feel not only that
the miracle is untrue, but
also that its presence reduces the value of the
document in which it is
contained. Thus Matthew Arnold, in _Literature and
Dogma_, after saying
that we shall "find ourselves inevitably led, sooner or
later," to
extend one rule to all miraculous stories, and that "the
considerations
which apply in other cases apply, we shall most surely
discover, with
even greater force in the case of Bible miracles," goes on to
declare
that "this being so, there is nothing one would more desire for
a
person or document one greatly values than to make them independent
of
miracles."
Very well. The Gospels teem with miracles. If we make
the accounts
of the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ
"independent
of miracles," we destroy those accounts completely. To make
the
Resurrection "independent of miracles" is to disprove the
Resurrection,
which is a miracle or nothing.
We must believe in
miracles, or disbelieve in the Resurrection; and
"miracles never
happen."
We must believe miracles, or disbelieve them. If we disbelieve
them, we
shall lose confidence in the verity of any document in proportion to
the
element of the miraculous which that document contains. The fact
that
the Gospels teem with miracles destroys the claim of the Gospels
to
serious consideration as historic evidence.
Take, for example, the
account of the Crucifixion in the Gospel
according to Matthew. While Christ
is on the cross "from the sixth hour
there was darkness over all the land
until the ninth hour," and when He
dies, "behold, the veil of the temple was
rent in twain from the top to
the bottom; and the earth did quake; and the
rocks were rent; and the
tombs were opened; and many bodies of the saints
that had fallen asleep
were raised; and coming forth out of the tombs after
His Resurrection,
they entered into the holy city, and appeared unto
many."
Mark mentions the rending of the veil of the temple, but omits
the
darkness, the earthquake, and the rising of the dead saints from
the
tombs. Luke tells of the same phenomena as Mark; John says nothing
about
any of these things.
What conclusion can we come to, then, as to
the story in the first
Gospel? Here is an earthquake and the rising of dead
saints, who quit
their graves and enter the city, and three out of the four
Gospel
writers do not mention it. Neither do we hear another word from
Matthew
on the subject. The dead get up and walk into the city, and "are seen
of
many," and we are left to wonder what happened to the risen saints,
and
what effect their astounding apparition had upon the citizens who
saw
them. Did these dead saints go back to their tombs? Did the
citizens
receive them into their midst without fear, or horror, or doubt?
Had
this stupendous miracle no effect upon the Jewish priests who
had
crucified Christ as an impostor? The Gospels are silent.
History
is as silent as the Gospels. From the fifteenth chapter of the
first volume
of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ I take
the following
passage:
But how shall we excuse the supine inattention of the
Pagan
and philosophic world to those evidences which were
presented
by the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to
their
senses? During the age of Christ, of His Apostles, and of
their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was
confirmed by
innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the
blind saw, the sick were
healed, the dead were raised, demons
were expelled, and the laws of
Nature were frequently suspended
for the benefit of the Church. But the
sages of Greece and
Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and
pursuing the
ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared
unconscious
of any alterations in the moral or physical government of
the
world. Under the reign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at
least
a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in
a
preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous
event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity,
and the
devotion of all mankind, passed without notice in an
age of science and
history. It happened during the lifetime
of Seneca and the elder Pliny,
who must have experienced the
immediate effects, or received the
earliest intelligence of
the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a
laborious work,
has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature,
earthquakes,
meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his
indefatigable
curiosity could collect. But the one and the other
have
omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which mortal
eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A
distinct
chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an
extraordinary nature and
unusual duration; but he contents
himself with describing the singular
defect of light which
followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the
greatest
part of the year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and
without
splendour. This season of obscurity, which surely cannot
be
compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had
been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians
of that
memorable age.
No Greek nor Roman historian nor scientist mentioned that
strange
eclipse. No Jewish historian nor scientist mentioned the rending of
the
veil of the temple, nor the rising of the saints from the dead. Nor
do
the Jewish priests appear to have been alarmed or converted by
these
marvels.
Confronted by this silence of all contemporary
historians, and by the
silence of Mark, Luke, and John, what are we to think
of the testimony
of Matthew on these points? Surely we can only endorse the
opinion of
Matthew Arnold:
And the more the miraculousness of the
story deepens, as after
the death of Jesus, the more does the texture of
the incidents
become loose and floating, the more does the very air and
aspect
of things seem to tell us we are in wonderland. Jesus after
his
resurrection not known by Mary Magdalene, taken by her for
the
gardener; appearing _in another form_, and not known by the
two disciples going with him to Emmaus and at supper with him
there; not
known by His most intimate apostles on the borders
of the Sea of
Galilee; and presently, out of these vague
beginnings, the recognitions
getting asserted, then the ocular
demonstrations, the final commissions,
the ascension; one
hardly knows which of the two to call the most
evident here,
the perfect simplicity and good faith of the narrators,
or
the plainness with which they themselves really say to us
_Behold a legend growing under your eyes!_
Behold a legend growing under
your eyes! Now, when we have to consider
a miracle-story or a legend, it
behoves us to look, if that be possible,
into the times in which that legend
is placed. What was the "time
spirit" in the day when this legend arose? What
was the attitude of
the general mind towards the miraculous? To what stage of
knowledge and
science had those who created or accepted the myth attained?
These are
points that will help us signally in any attempt to understand such
a
story as the Gospel story of the Resurrection.
THE TIME
SPIRIT IN THE FIRST CENTURY
A story emanating from a superstitious
and unscientific people would be
received with more doubt than a story
emanating from people possessing a
knowledge of science, and not prone to
accept stories of the marvellous
without strict and full
investigation.
A miracle story from an Arab of the Soudan would be
received with a
smile; a statement of some occult mystery made by a Huxley or
a Darwin
would be accorded a respectful hearing and a serious
criticism.
Now, the accounts of the Resurrection in the Gospels belong to
the
less credible form of statement. They emanated from a credulous
and
superstitious people in an unscientific age and country.
The Jews
in the days of which the Gospels are supposed to tell, and the
Jews of Old
Testament times, were unscientific and superstitious people,
who believed in
sorcery, in witches, in demons and angels, and in all
manner of miracles and
supernatural agents. We have only to read the
Scriptures to see that it was
so. But I shall quote here, in support
of my assertion, the opinions taken by
the author of _Supernatural
Religion_ from the works of Dean Milman and Dr.
Lightfoot. In his
_History of Christianity_ Dean Milman speaks of the Jews as
follows:
The Jews of that period not only believed that the
Supreme
Being had the power of controlling the course of Nature,
but
that the same influence was possessed by multitudes of
subordinate
spirits, both good and evil. Where the pious Christian of
the
present day would behold the direct Agency of the Almighty,
the
Jews would invariably have interposed an angel as the author
or ministerial agent in the wonderful transaction. Where the
Christian
moralist would condemn the fierce passion, the
ungovernable lust, or the
inhuman temper, the Jew discerned
the workings of diabolical
possession. Scarcely a malady was
endured, or crime committed, which
was not traced to the
operation of one of these myriad demons, who
watched every
opportunity of exercising their malice in the sufferings
and
the sins of men.
Read next the opinion of John Lightfoot,
D.D., Master of Catherine Hall,
Cambridge:
... Let two things only
be observed: (1) That the nation under
the Second Temple was given to
magical arts beyond measure;
and (2) that it was given to an easiness of
believing all
manner of delusions beyond measure... It is a
disputable
case whether the Jewish nation were more mad with
superstition
in matters of religion, or with superstition in curious
arts:
(1) There was not a people upon earth that studied or
attributed
more to dreams than they; (2) there was hardly any people
in
the whole world that more used, or were more fond of amulets,
charms, mutterings, exorcisms, and all kinds of enchantments.
It is from
this people, "mad with superstition" in religion and
in sorcery, the most
credulous people in the whole world, a people
destitute of the very rudiments
of science, as science is understood
to-day--it is from this people that the
unreasonable and impossible
stories of the Resurrection, coloured and
distorted on every page with
miracles, come down to us.
We do not
believe that miracles happen now. Are we, on the evidence of
such a people,
to believe that miracles happened two thousand years ago?
We in England
to-day do not believe that miracles happen now. Some of us
believe, or
persuade ourselves that we believe, that miracles did happen
a few thousand
years ago.
But amongst some peoples the belief in miracles still
persists, and
wherever the belief in miracles is strongest we shall find that
the
people who believe are ignorant of physical science, are steeped
in
superstition, or are abjectly subservient to the authority of priests
or
fakirs. Scientific knowledge and freedom of thought and speech are
fatal
to superstition. It is only in those times, or amongst those
people,
where ignorance is rampant, or the priest is dominant, or both,
that
miracles are believed.
It will be urged that many educated
Englishmen still believe the Gospel
miracles. That is true; but it will be
found in nearly all such cases
that the believers have been mentally marred
by the baneful authority
of the Church. Let a person once admit into his
system the poisonous
principle of "faith," and his judgment in religious
matters will be
injured for years, and probably for life.
But let me
here make clear what I mean by the poisonous principle of
"faith." I mean,
then, the deadly principle that we are to believe any
statement, historical
or doctrinal, without evidence.
Thus we are to believe that Christ rose
from the dead because the
Gospels say so. When we ask why we are to accept
the Gospels as true, we
are told because they are inspired by God. When we
ask who says that the
Gospels are inspired by God, we are told that the
Church says so. When
we ask how the Church knows, we are told that we must
have faith. That
is what I call a poisonous principle. That is the poison
which saps the
judgment and perverts the human kindness of men.
The
late Dr. Carpenter wrote as follows:
It has been my business lately
to inquire into the mental
condition of some of the individuals who have
reported the
most remarkable occurrences. I cannot--it would not be
fair--
say all I could with regard to that mental condition; but I
can
only say this, that it all fits in perfectly well with the
result of my previous studies upon the subject, namely, that
there is
nothing too strange to be believed by those who have
once surrendered
their judgment to the extent of accepting as
credible things which
common sense tells us are entirely incredible.
It is unwise and immoral
to accept any important statement without
proof. HAVE THE DOCUMENTS BEEN
TAMPERED WITH?
I come now to a phase of this question which I touch
with regret. It
always pains me to acknowledge that any man, even an
adversary, has
acted dishonourably. In this discussion I would, if I could,
avoid the
imputation of dishonesty to any person concerned in the foundation
or
adaptation of the Christian religion. But I am bound to point out
the
probability that the Gospels have been tampered with by unscrupulous
or
over-zealous men. That probability is very strong, and very
important.
In the first place, it is too well known to make denial
possible
that many Gospels have been rejected by the Church as doubtful or
as
spurious. In the second place, some of the books in the accepted
canon
are regarded as of doubtful origin. In the third place, certain
passages
of the Gospels have been relegated to the margin by the translators
of
the Revised Version of the New Testament. In the fourth place,
certain
historic Christian evidence--as the famous interpolation in
Josephus,
for instance--has been branded as forgeries by eminent
Christian
scholars.
Many of the Christian fathers were holy men; many
priests have been, and
are, honourable and sincere; but it is notorious that
in every Church
the world has ever known there has been a great deal of fraud
and
forgery and deceit. I do not say this with any bitterness, I do not
wish
to emphasise it; but I must go so far as to show that the conduct
of
some of the early Christians was of a character to justify us in
believing
that the Scriptures have been seriously tampered with.
Mosheim, writing
on this subject, says:
A pernicious maxim which was current in the
schools, not only
of the Egyptians, the Platonists, and the
Pythagoreans, but
also of the Jews, was very early recognised by the
Christians,
and soon found among them numerous patrons--namely, that
those
who made it their business to deceive, with a view of
promoting
the cause of truth, were deserving rather of commendation
than
of censure.
And if we seek internal evidence in support of
this charge we need go no
further than St. Paul, who is reported (Rom. iii.
7) as saying: "For if
the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto
His Glory, why
yet am I also judged as a sinner?" I do not for a moment
suppose that
Paul ever wrote those words. But they are given as his in the
Epistle
bearing his name. I daresay they may be interpreted in more than
one
way: my point is that they were interpreted in an evil way by
many
primitive Christians, who took them as a warranty that it was right
to
lie for the glory of God.
Mosheim, writing of the Church of the
fifth century, alludes to the
Base audacity of those who did not
blush to palm their own
spurious productions on the great men of former
times, and,
even on _Christ_ Himself and His Apostles, so that they
might
be able, in the councils and in their books, to oppose
names
against names and authorities against authorities. The
whole
Christian Church was, in this century, overwhelmed with
these
disgraceful fictions.
Dr. Giles speaks still more strongly.
He says:
But a graver accusation than that of inaccuracy or
deficient
authority lies against the writings which have come down to
us
from the second century. There can be no doubt that great
numbers
of books were then written with no other view than to
deceive
the simple-minded multitude who at that time formed the
great
bulk of the Christian community.
Dean Milman
says:
It was admitted and avowed that to deceive into
Christianity
was so valuable a service as to hallow deceit
itself.
Bishop Fell says:
In the first ages of the Church, so
extensive was the licence
of forging, so credulous were the people in
believing, that
the evidence of transactions was grievously
obscured.
John E. Remsburg, author of the newly-published American book,
_The
Bible_, says:
That these admissions are true, that primitive
Christianity
was propagated chiefly by falsehood, is tacitly admitted
by
all Christians. They characterise as forgeries, or unworthy
of credit, three-fourths of the early Christian writings.
Mr. Lecky, the
historian, in his _European Morals_, writes in the
following uncompromising
style:
The very large part that must be assigned to
deliberate
forgeries in the early apologetic literature of the
Church
we have already seen; and no impartial reader can, I
think,
investigate the innumerable grotesque and lying legends
that,
during the whole course of the Middle Ages, were
deliberately
palmed upon mankind as undoubted facts, can follow the
history
of the false decretals, and the discussions that were
connected
with them, or can observe the complete and absolute
incapacity
most Catholic historians have displayed of conceiving any
good
thing in the ranks of their opponents, or of stating with
common
fairness any consideration that can tell against their
cause,
without acknowledging how serious and how inveterate has
been
the evil. It is this which makes it so unspeakably
repulsive
to all independent and impartial thinkers, and has led a
great
German historian (Herder) to declare, with much
bitterness,
that the phrase "Christian veracity" deserves to rank with
the
phrase "Punic faith."
I could go on quoting such passages. I
could give specific instances of
forgery by the dozen, but I do not think it
necessary. It is sufficient
to show that forgery was common, and has been
always common, amongst
all kinds of priests, and that therefore we cannot
accept the Gospels as
genuine and unaltered documents.
Yet upon these
documents rests the whole fabric of Christianity.
Professor Huxley
says:
There is no proof, nothing more than a fair presumption,
that
any one of the Gospels existed, in the state in which we
find
it in the authorised version of the Bible, before the
second
century, or, in other words, sixty or seventy years after
the
events recorded. And between that time and the date of the
oldest extant manuscripts of the Gospel there is no telling
what
additions and alterations and interpolations may have
been made. It may
be said that this is all mere speculation,
but it is a good deal
more. As competent scholars and honest
men, our revisers have felt
compelled to point out that such
things have happened even since the
date of the oldest known
manuscripts. The oldest two copies of the
second Gospel end
with the eighth verse of the sixteenth chapter; the
remaining
twelve verses are spurious, and it is noteworthy that the
maker
of the addition has not hesitated to introduce a speech in
which Jesus promises His disciples that "in My name shall
they cast out
devils."
The other passage "rejected to the margin" is still
more
instructive. It is that touching apologue, with its
profound
ethical sense, of the woman taken in adultery--which,
if
internal evidence were an infallible guide, might well be
affirmed to be a typical example of the teaching of Jesus.
Yet, say the
revisers, pitilessly, "Most of the ancient
authorities omit John vii.
53--viii. 11." Now, let any
reasonable man ask himself this question:
if after an
approximate settlement of the canon of the New
Testament,
and even later than the fourth or fifth centuries,
literary
fabricators had the skill and the audacity to make such
additions and interpolations as these, what may they have
done when no
one had thought of a canon; when oral tradition
still unfixed, was
regarded as more valuable than such
written records as may have existed
in the latter portion
of the first century? Or, to take the other
alternative,
if those who gradually settled the canon did not know
of
the oldest codices which have come down to us; or, if knowing
them, they rejected their authority, what is to be thought
of their
competency as critics of the text?
Since alterations have been made in
the text of Scripture we can never
be certain that any particular text is
genuine, and this circumstance
militates seriously against the value of the
evidence for the
Resurrection.
CHRISTIANITY BEFORE
CHRIST
If the story of Christ's life were true, we should not expect
to
find that nearly all the principal events of that life had
previously
happened in the lives of some earlier god or gods, long
since
acknowledged to be mythical.
If the Gospel record were the
_only_ record of a god coming upon earth,
of a god born of a virgin, of a god
slain by men, that record would seem
to us more plausible than it will seem
if we discover proof that other
and earlier gods have been fabled to have
come on earth, to have been
born of virgins, to have lived and taught on
earth, and to have been
slain by men.
Because, if the events related
in the life of Christ have been
previously related as parts of the lives of
earlier mythical gods, we
find ourselves confronted by the possibilities that
what is mythical
in one narrative may be mythical in another; that if one god
is a myth
another god may be a myth; that if 400,000,000 of Buddhists have
been
deluded, 200,000,000 of Christians may be deluded; that if the
events
of Christ's life were alleged to have happened before to another
person,
they may have been adopted from the older story, and made features
of
the new.
If Christ was God--the omnipotent, eternal, and _only_
God--come on
earth, He would not be likely to repeat acts, to re-act the
adventures
of earlier and spurious gods; nor would His divine teachings be
mere
shreds and patches made up of quotations, paraphrases, and
repetitions
of earlier teachings, uttered by mere mortals, or mere
myths.
What are we to think, then when we find that there are hardly any
events
in the life of Christ which were not, before His birth, attributed
to
mythical gods; that there are hardly any acts of Christ's which may
not
be paralleled by acts attributed to mythical gods before His
advent;
that there are hardly any important thoughts attributed to Christ
which
had not been uttered by other men, or by mythical gods, in
earlier
times? What _are_ we to think if the facts be thus?
Mr.
Parsons, in _Our Sun God_, quotes the following passage from a Latin
work by
St. Augustine:
Again, in that I said, "This is in our time the
Christian
religion, which to know and also follow is most sure
and
certain salvation," it is affirmed in regard to this name,
not in regard to the sacred thing itself to which the name
belongs. For
the sacred thing which is now called the
Christian religion existed in
ancient times, nor, indeed,
was it absent from the beginning of the
human race until
the Christ Himself came in the flesh, whence the true
religion
which already existed came to be called "the
Christian." So
when, after His resurrection and ascension to heaven,
the
Apostles began to preach and many believed, it is thus
written,
"The followers were first called Christians at
Antioch."
Therefore I said, "This is in our time the Christian
religion,"
not because it did not exist in earlier times, but as
having
in later times received this particular name.
From
Eusebius, the great Christian historian, Mr. Parsons, quotes
as
follows:
What is called the Christian religion is neither new
nor
strange, but--_if it be lawful to testify as to the truth_--
was known to the ancients.
Mr. Arthur Lillie, in _Buddha and Buddhism_,
quotes M. Burnouf as
saying:
History and comparative mythology
are teaching every day
more plainly that creeds grow slowly up. None
came into the
world ready-made, and as if by magic. The origin of
events
is lost in the infinite. A great Indian poet has said:
"The
beginning of things evades us; their end evades us also; we
see only the middle."
Before Darwin's day it was considered absurd and
impious to talk of
"pre-Adamite man," and it will still, by many, be held
absurd and
impious to talk of "Christianity before Christ."
And yet
the incidents of the life and death of Christ, the teachings of
Christ and
His Apostles, and the rites and mysteries of the Christian
Church can all be
paralleled by similar incidents, ethics, and
ceremonies embodied in religions
long anterior to the birth of Jesus.
Christ is said to have been God come
down upon the earth. The idea of a
god coming down upon the earth was quite
an old and popular idea at the
time when the Gospels were written. In the Old
Testament God makes many
visits to the earth; and the instances in the Greek,
Roman, and Egyptian
mythologies of gods coming amongst men and taking part in
human affairs
are well known.
Christ is said to have been the Son of
God. But the idea of a son-god is
very much older than the Christian
religion.
Christ is said to have been a redeemer, and to have descended
from a
line of kings. But the idea of a king's son as a redeemer is very
much
older than the Christian religion.
Christ is said to have been
born of a virgin. But many heroes before Him
were declared to have been born
of virgins.
Christ is said to have been born in a cave or stable while
His parents
were on a journey. But this also was an old legend long before
the
Christian religion.
Christ is said to have been crucified. But
very many kings, kings' sons,
son-gods, and heroes had been crucified ages
before Him.
Christ is said to have been a sacrifice offered up for the
salvation
of man. But thousands and thousands of men before Him had been
slain
as sacrifices for the general good, or as atonements for general
or
particular sins.
Christ is said to have risen from the dead. But
that had been said of
other gods before Him.
Christ is said to have
ascended into Heaven. But this also was a very
old idea.
Christ is
said to have worked miracles. But all the gods and saints of
all the older
religions were said to have worked miracles.
Christ is said to have
brought to men, direct from Heaven, a new message
of salvation. But the
message He brought was in nowise new.
Christ is said to have preached a
new ethic of mercy and peace and
good-will to all men. But this ethic had
been preached centuries before
His supposed advent.
The Christians
changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Sun-day is
the day of the Sun
God.
Christ's birthday was fixed on the 25th of December. But the 25th
of
December is the day of the Winter solstice--the birthday, of Apollo,
the
Sun God--and had been from time immemorial the birthday of the sun
gods
in all religions. The Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Phoenicians,
and
Teutonic races all kept the 25th of December as the birthday of the
Sun
God.
The Christians departed from the monotheism of the Jews, and
made their
God a Trinity. The Buddhists and the Egyptians had Holy Trinities
long
before. But whereas the Christian Trinity is unreasonable, the
older
idea of the Trinity was based upon a perfectly lucid and
natural
conception.
Christ is supposed by many to have first laid down
the Golden Rule, "Do
unto others as you would that they should do unto you."
But the Golden
Rule was laid down centuries before the Christian
era.
Two of the most important of the utterances attributed to Christ
are
the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount. But there is very
strong
evidence that the Lord's Prayer was used before Christ's time, and
still
stronger evidence that the Sermon on the Mount was a compilation,
and
was never uttered by Christ or any other preacher in the form in
which
it is given by St. Matthew.
Christ is said to have been tempted
of the Devil. But apart from
the utter absurdity of the Devil's tempting God
by offering Him the
sovereignty of the earth--when God had already the
sovereignty of twenty
millions of suns--it is related of Buddha that he also
was tempted of
the Devil centuries before Christ was born.
The idea
that one man should die as a sacrifice to the gods on behalf
of many, the
idea that the god should be slain for the good of men,
the idea that the
blood of the human or animal "scapegoat" had power to
purify or to save, the
idea that a king or a king's son should expiate
the sins of a tribe by his
death, and the idea that a god should offer
himself as a sacrifice to himself
in atonement for the sins of his
people--all these were old ideas, and ideas
well known to the founders
of Christianity.
The resemblances of the
legendary lives of Christ and Buddha are
surprising: so also are the
resemblances of forms and ethics of the
ancient Buddhists and the early
Christians.
Mr. Arthur Lillie, in _Buddha and Buddhism_, makes the
following
quotation from M. Leon de Rosny:
The astonishing points
of contact between the popular legend
of Buddha and that of Christ, the
almost absolute similarity
of the moral lessons given to the world
between these two
peerless teachers of the human race, the striking
affinities
between the customs of the Buddhists and the Essenes, of
whom
Christ must have been a disciple, suggest at once an Indian
origin to Primitive Christianity.
Mr. Lillie goes on to say that there
was a sect of Essenes in Palestine
fifty years B.C., and that fifty years
after the death of Christ there
existed in Palestine a similar sect, from
whom Christianity was derived.
Mr. Lillie says of these sects:
Each had two prominent rites: baptism, and what Tertullian
calls the
"oblation of bread." Each had for officers, deacons,
presbyters,
ephemerents. Each sect had monks, nuns, celibacy,
community of
goods. Each interpreted the Old Testament in a
mystical way--so
mystical, in fact, that it enabled each to
discover that the bloody
sacrifice of Mosaism was forbidden,
not enjoined. The most minute
likenesses have been pointed
out between these two sects by all Catholic
writers from
Eusebius to the poet Racine... Was there any
connection
between these two sects? It is difficult to conceive
that
there can be two answers to such a question.
The
resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity were accounted for by
the
Christian Fathers very simply. The Buddhists had been instructed by
the
Devil, and there was no more to be said. Later Christian scholars
face the
difficulty by declaring that the Buddhists copied from
the
Christians.
Reminded that Buddha lived five hundred years before
Christ, and that
the Buddhist religion was in its prime two hundred years
before Christ,
the Christian apologist replies that, for all that, the
Buddhist
Scriptures are of comparatively late date. Let us see how the
matter
stands.
The resemblances of the two religions are of two kinds.
There is, first,
the resemblance between the Christian life of Christ and the
Indian life
of Buddha; and there is, secondly, the resemblance between the
moral
teachings of Christ and Buddha.
Now, if the Indian Scriptures
_are_ of later date than the Gospels, it
is just possible that the Buddhists
may have copied incidents from the
life of Christ.
But it is perfectly
certain that the change of borrowing cannot be
brought against Augustus
Caesar, Plato, and the compilers of the
mythologies of Egypt and Greece and
Rome. And it is as certain that
the Christians did borrow from the Jews as
that the Jews borrowed from
Babylon. But a little while ago all Christendom
would have denied the
indebtedness of Moses to King Sargon.
Now, since
the Christian ideas were anticipated by the Babylonians, the
Egyptians, the
Romans, and the Greeks, why should we suppose that
they were copied by the
Buddhists, whose religion was triumphant some
centuries before
Christ?
And, again, while there is no reason to suppose that
Christian
missionaries in the early centuries of the era made any
appreciable
impression on India or China, there is good reason to suppose
that the
Buddhists, who were the first and most successful of all
missionaries,
reached Egypt and Persia and Palestine, and made their
influence felt.
I now turn to the statement of M. Burnouf, quoted by Mr.
Lillie. M.
Burnouf asserts that the Indian origin of Christianity is no
longer
contested:
It has been placed in full light by the
researches of scholars,
and notably English scholars, and by the
publication of the
original texts... In point of fact, for a long time
folks had
been struck with the resemblances--or, rather, the
identical
elements--contained in Christianity and
Buddhism. Writers
of the firmest faith and most sincere piety have
admitted them.
In the last century these analogies were set down to
the
Nestorians; but since then the science of Oriental
chronology
has come into being, and proved that Buddha is many
years
anterior to Nestorius and Jesus. Thus the Nestorian
theory
had to be given up. But a thing may be posterior to
another
without proving derivation. So the problem remained
unsolved
until recently, when the pathway that Buddhism followed
was
traced step by step from India to Jerusalem.
There was
baptism before Christ, and before John the Baptist. There were
gods,
man-gods, son-gods, and saviours before Christ. There were Bibles,
hymns,
temples, monasteries, priests, monks, missionaries, crosses,
sacraments, and
mysteries before Christ.
Perhaps the most important sacrament of the
Christian religion to-day is
the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper. But this idea
of the Eucharist, or the
ceremonial eating of the god, has its roots far back
in the prehistoric
days of religious cannibalism. Prehistoric man believed
that if he ate
anything its virtue passed into his physical system. Therefore
he began
by devouring his gods, body and bones. Later, man mended his manners
so
far as to substitute animal for human sacrifice; still later he
employed
bread and wine as symbolical substitutes for flesh and blood. This
is
the origin and evolution of the strange and, to many of us,
repulsive
idea of eating the body and drinking the blood of
Christ.
Now, supposing these facts to be as I have stated them above, to
what
conclusion do they point?
Bear in mind the statement of M.
Burnouf, that religions are built
up slowly by a process of adaptation; add
that to the statements of
Eusebius, the great Christian historian, and of St.
Augustine, the great
Christian Father, that the Christian religion is no new
thing, but was
known to the ancients, and does it not seem most reasonable to
suppose
that Christianity is a religion founded on ancient myths and
legends,
on ancient ethics, and on ancient allegorical mysteries and
metaphysical
errors?
To support those statements with adequate
evidence I should have to
compile a book four times as large as the present
volume. As I have
not room to state the case properly, I shall content myself
with the
recommendation of some books in which the reader may study the
subject
for himself.
A list of these books I now subjoin:
_The Golden Bough._ Frazer. Macmillan & Co.
_A Short History of
Christianity._ Robertson. Watts & Co.
_The Evolution of the Idea
of God._ Grant Allen. Rationalist
Press Association. _Buddha and
Buddhism._ Lillie. Clark.
_Our Sun God._ Parsons. Parsons.
_Christianity and Mythology._ Robertson. Watts & Co.
_Pagan
Christs._ Robertson. Watts & Co.
_The Legend of
Perseus._ Hartland. Nutt.
_The Birth of
Jesus._ Soltau. Black.
The above are all scholarly and important books,
and should be generally
known.
For reasons given above I claim, with
regard to the divinity and
Resurrection of Jesus Christ:
That
outside the New Testament there is no evidence of any
value to show that
Christ ever lived, that He ever taught,
that He ever rose from the
dead.
That the evidence of the New Testament is anonymous,
is
contradictory, is loaded with myths and miracles.
That
the Gospels do not contain a word of proof by any
eye-witness as to the
fact that Christ was really dead;
nor the statement of any eye-witness
that He was seen to
return to life and quit His tomb.
That
Paul, who preached the Resurrection of Christ, did not
see Christ dead,
did not see Him arise from the dead, did
not see Him ascend into
Heaven.
That Paul nowhere supports the Gospel accounts of
Christ's
life and teaching.
That the Gospels are of mixed
and doubtful origin, that they
show signs of interpolation and
tampering, and that they have
been selected from a number of other
Gospels, all of which
were once accepted as genuine.
And
that, while there is no real evidence of the life or the
teachings, or
the Resurrection of Christ, there is a great
deal of evidence to show
that the Gospels were founded upon
anterior legends and older ethics.
But Christian apologists offer other reasons why we should accept the stories of
the miraculous birth and Resurrection of Christ as true. Let us examine these
reasons, and see what they amount to. |
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