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Pagan and Christian creeds: their origin and meaning

Edward Carpenter

Section 13 of 18 - Table of Contents
XIII. THE GENESIS OF CHRISTIANITY

Referring back to the existence of something resembling
a great World-religion which has come down the centuries,
continually expanding and branching in the process, we have
now to consider the genesis of that special brand or
branch of it which we call Christianity. Each religion or
cult, pagan or Christian, has had, as we have seen, a vast
amount in common with the general World-religion; yet each
has had its own special characteristics. What have been the
main characteristics of the Christian branch, as differentiating
it from the other branches?

We saw in the last chapter that a certain ascetic attitude
towards Sex was one of the most salient marks of the Christian
Church; and that whereas most of the pagan cults
(though occasionally favoring frightful austerities and
cruel sacrifices) did on the whole rejoice in pleasure and
the world of the senses, Christianity--following largely on
Judaism--displayed a tendency towards renunciation of
the world and the flesh, and a withdrawal into the inner and
more spiritual regions of the mind. The same tendency
may be traced in the Egyptian and Phrygian cults of that
period. It will be remembered how Juvenal (Sat. VI,
510-40) chaffs the priests of Cybele at Rome for making
themselves "eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake,"
or the rich Roman lady for plunging in the wintry Tiber
for a propitiation to Isis. No doubt among the later pagans
"the long intolerable tyranny of the senses over the soul"
had become a very serious matter. But Christianity represented
perhaps the most powerful reaction against this;
and this reaction had, as indicated in the last chapter, the
enormously valuable result that (for the time) it disentangled
love from sex and established Love, pure and undefiled, as
ruler of the world. "God is Love." But, as also indicated,
the divorce between the two elements of human nature,
carried to an extreme, led in time to a crippling of both
elements and the development of a certain morbidity and
self-consciousness which, it cannot be denied, is painfully
marked among some sections of Christians--especially those
of the altruistic and 'philanthropic' type.

Another characteristic of Christianity which is also very
fine in its way but has its limits of utility, has been its
insistence on "morality." Some modern writers indeed have
gone so far--forgetting, I suppose, the Stoics--as to
claim that Christianity's chief mark is its high morality,
and that the pagans generally were quite wanting in
the moral sense! This, of course, is a profound
mistake. I should say that, in the true sense of the
word, the early and tribal peoples have been much more
'moral' as a rule--that is, ready as individuals to pay
respect to the needs of the community--than the later and
more civilized societies. But the mistake arises from the
different interpretations of the word; for whereas all
the pagan religions insisted very strongly on the just-
mentioned kind of morality, which we should call CIVIC DUTY
TO ONE'S NEIGHBOR, the Christian made morality to consist
more especially in a mans DUTY TO GOD. It became
with them a private affair between a mans self and-God,
rather than a public affair; and thus led in the end to a
very obnoxious and quite pharisaic kind of morality, whose
chief inspiration was not the helping of one's fellow-man
but the saving of one's own soul.

There may perhaps be other salient points of differentiation
between Christianity and the preceding pagan religions; but
for the present we may recognize these two--(a) the tendency
towards a renunciation of the world, and the consequent
cultivation of a purely spiritual love and (b) the insistence on
a morality whose inspiration was a private sense of duty
to God rather than a public sense of duty to one's neighbor
and to society generally. It may be interesting to trace the
causes which led to this differentiation.

Three centuries before our era the conquests of Alexander
had had the effect of spreading the Greek thought and
culture over most of the known world. A vast number
of small bodies of worshipers of local deities, with their
various rituals and religious customs, had thus been broken up,
or at least brought into contact with each other and
partially modified and hellenized. The orbit of a more
general conception of life and religion was already being traced.
By the time of the founding of the first Christian Church
the immense conquests of Rome had greatly extended
and established the process. The Mediterranean had
become a great Roman lake. Merchant ships and routes
of traffic crossed it in all directions; tourists visited its
shores. The known world had become one. The numberless
peoples, tribes, nations, societies within the girdle of the
Empire, with their various languages, creeds, customs,
religions, philosophies, were profoundly influencing each
other.[1] A great fusion was taking place; and it was becoming
inevitable that the next great religious movement would have
a world-wide character.

[1] For an enlargement on this theme see Glover's Conflict of
Religions in the early Roman Empire; also S. J. Case, Evolution
of Early Christianity(University of Chicago, 1914). The Adonis
worship, for instance (a resurrection-cult), "was still thriving
in Syria and Cyprus when Paul preached there," and the worship of
Isis and Serapis had already reached then, Rome and Naples.


It was probable that this new religion would combine many
elements from the preceding rituals in one cult. In
connection with the fine temples and elaborate services of
Isis and Cybele and Mithra there was growing up a powerful
priesthood; Franz Cumont[1] speaks of "the learned priests
of the Asiatic cults" as building up, on the foundations
of old fetichism and superstition, a complete religious
philosophy--just as the Brahmins had built the monism
of the Vedanta on the "monstrous idolatries of Hinduism."
And it was likely that a similar process would evolve the
new religion expected. Toutain again calls attention to
the patronage accorded to all these cults by the Roman
Emperors, as favoring a new combination and synthesis:
--"Hadrien, Commode, Septime Severe, Julia Domna,
Elagabal, Alexandre Severe, en particulier ont contribue
personnellement a la popularite et au succes des cultes
qui se celebraient en l'honneur de Serapis et d'Isis, des
divinites syriennes et de Mithra."[2]

[1] See Cumont, Religions Orientales dans le Paganisme Romain
(Paris, 1906), p. 253.

[2] Cultes paiens dans l'Empire Romain (2 vols., 1911), vol. ii,
p. 263.


It was also probable that this new Religion would show
(as indicated in the last chapter) a reaction against mere
sex-indulgence; and, as regards its standard of Morality
generally, that, among so many conflicting peoples with
their various civic and local customs, it could not well
identify itself with any ONE of these but would evolve an
inner inspiration of its own which in its best form would
be love of the neighbor, regardless of the race, creed or
customs of the neighbor, and whose sanction would not
reside in any of the external authorities thus conflicting
with each other, but in the sense of the soul's direct
responsibility to God.

So much for what we might expect a priori as to the
influence of the surroundings on the general form of the
new Religion. And what about the kind of creed or creeds
which that religion would favor? Here again we must
see that the influence of the surroundings compelled a
certain result. Those doctrines which we have described
in the preceding chapters--doctrines of Sin and Sacrifice, a
Savior, the Eucharist, the Trinity, the Virgin-birth,
and so forth--were in their various forms seething, so to
speak, all around. It was impossible for any new religious
synthesis to escape them; all it could do would be to
appropriate them, and to give them perhaps a color of its
own. Thus it is into the midst of this germinating mass
that we must imagine the various pagan cults, like fertilizing
streams, descending. To trace all these streams would
of course be an impossible task; but it may be of use, as
an example of the process, to take the case of some particular
belief. Let us take the belief in the coming of a
Savior-god; and this will be the more suitable as it is a
belief which has in the past been commonly held to be
distinctive of Christianity. Of course we know now that
it is not in any sense distinctive, but that the long tradition
of the Savior comes down from the remotest times, and
perhaps from every country of the world.[1] The Messianic
prophecies of the Jews and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah
emptied themselves into the Christian teachings, and infected
them to some degree with a Judaic tinge. The
"Messiah" means of course the Anointed One. The
Hebrew word occurs some 40 times in the Old Testament;
and each time in the Septuagint or Greek translation
(made mainly in the third century BEFORE our era) the word
is translated , or Christos, which again means
Anointed. Thus we see that the idea or the word "The
Christ" was in vogue in Alexandria as far back certainly
as 280 B.C., or nearly three centuries before Jesus. And what
the word "The Anointed" strictly speaking means, and from
what the expression is probably derived, will appear later.
In The Book of Enoch, written not later than B.C. 170,[2]
the Christ is spoken of as already existing in heaven,
and about to come as judge of all men, and is definitely
called "the Son of Man." The Book of Revelations is
FULL of passages from Enoch; so are the Epistles of Paul;
so too the Gospels. The Book of Enoch believes in a Golden
Age that is to come; it has Dantesque visions of Heaven
and Hell, and of Angels good and evil, and it speaks of a
"garden of Righteousness" with the "Tree of Wisdom" in its
midst. Everywhere, says Prof. Drews, in the first century
B.C., there was the longing for a coming Savior.

[1] Even to-day, the Arabian lands are always vibrating with
prophecies of a coming Mahdi.

[2] See Edition by R. H. Charles (1893).


But the Savior-god, as we also know, was a familiar figure
in Egypt. The great Osiris was the Savior of the world, both
in his life and death: in his life through the noble
works he wrought for the benefit of mankind, and in
his death through his betrayal by the powers of darkness
and his resurrection from the tomb and ascent into heaven.[1]
The Egyptian doctrines descended through Alexandria
into Christianity--and though they did not influence the
latter deeply until about 300 A.D., yet they then succeeded
in reaching the Christian Churches, giving a color to their
teachings with regard to the Savior, and persuading them to
accept and honor the Egyptian worship of Isis in the Christian
form of the Virgin Mary.

[1] See ch. ii.


Again, another great stream of influence descended from
Persia in the form of the cult of Mithra. Mithra, as we
have seen,[1] stood as a great Mediator between God and man.
With his baptisms and eucharists, and his twelve disciples,
and his birth in a cave, and so forth, he seemed to the
early Fathers an invention of the devil and a most dangerous
mockery on Christianity--and all the more so because his
worship was becoming so exceedingly popular. The cult
seems to have reached Rome about B.C. 70. It spread
far and wide through the Empire. It extended to Great
Britain, and numerous remains of Mithraic monuments
and sculptures in this country--at York, Chester and other
places--testify to its wide acceptance even here. At
Rome the vogue of Mithraism became so great that in
the third century A. D., it was quite doubtful[2] whether it
OR Christianity would triumph; the Emperor Aurelian in 273
founded a cult of the Invincible Sun in connection
with Mithraism;[3] and as St. Jerome tells us in his letters,[4]
the latter cult had at a later time to be suppressed in Rome
and Alexandria by PHYSICAL FORCE, so powerful was it.

[1] Ch. ii.

[2] See Cumont, op. cit., who says, p. 171:--"Jamais, pas meme a
1'epoque des invasions mussulmanes, l'Europe ne sembla plus pres
de devenir asiatique qu'au moment ou Diocletien reconnaissait
officiellement en Mithra, le protecteur de l'empire reconstitue."
See also Cumont's Mysteres de Mithra, preface. The Roman Army, in
fact, stuck to Mithra throughout, as against Christianity; and so
did the Roman nobility. (See S. Augustine's Confessions, Book
VIII, ch. 2.)

[3] Cumont indeed says that the identification of Mithra with the
Sun (the emblem of imperial power) formed one reason why
Mithraism was NOT persecuted at that time.

[4] Epist. cvii, ad Laetam. See Robertson's Pagan Christs, p.
350.


Nor was force the only method employed. IMITATION is
not only the sincerest flattery, but it is often the most
subtle and effective way of defeating a rival. The priests
of the rising Christian Church were, like the priests of ALL
religions, not wanting in craft; and at this moment
when the question of a World-religion was in the balance, it
was an obvious policy for them to throw into their own scale
as many elements as possible of the popular Pagan cults.
Mithraism had been flourishing for 600 years; and it is, to
say the least, CURIOUS that the Mithraic doctrines and legends
which I have just mentioned should all have been
adopted (quite unintentionally of course!) into Christianity;
and still more so that some others from the same source,
like the legend of the Shepherds at the Nativity and the
doctrine of the Resurrection and Ascension, which are
NOT mentioned at all in the original draft of the earliest
Gospel (St. Mark), should have made their appearance, in
the Christian writings at a later time, when Mithraism
was making great forward strides. History shows that
as a Church progresses and expands it generally feels
compelled to enlarge and fortify its own foundations by inserting
material which was not there at first. I shall shortly
give another illustration of this; at present I will
merely point out that the Christian writers, as time
went on, not only introduced new doctrines, legends,
miracles and so forth--most of which we can trace to
antecedent pagan sources--but that they took especial pains
to destroy the pagan records and so obliterate the evidence
of their own dishonesty. We learn from Porphyry[1] that
there were several elaborate treatises setting forth the
religion of Mithra; and J. M. Robertson adds (Pagan
Christs, p. 325): "everyone of these has been destroyed by
the care of the Church, and it is remarkable that even the
treatise of Firmicus is mutilated at a passage (v.) where
he seems to be accusing Christians of following Mithraic
usages." While again Professor Murray says, "The polemic
literature of Christianity is loud and triumphant; the
books of the Pagans have been DESTROYED."[2]

[1] De Abstinentia, ii. 56; iv. 16.

[2] Four Stages, p. 180. We have probably an instance of this
destruction in the total disappearance of Celsus' lively attack
on Christianity (180 A.D.), of which, however, portions have been
fortunately preserved in Origen's rather prolix refutation of the
same.


Returning to the doctrine of the Savior, I have already
in preceding chapters given so many instances of belief
in such a deity among the pagans--whether he be called
Krishna or Mithra or Osiris or Horus or Apollo or Hercules
--that it is not necessary to dwell on the subject any further
in order to persuade the reader that the doctrine was 'in the
air' at the time of the advent of Christianity. Even
Dionysus, then a prominent figure in the 'Mysteries,'
was called Eleutherios, The Deliverer. But it may be of
interest to trace the same doctrine among the PRE-CHRISTIAN
sects of Gnostics. The Gnostics, says Professor Murray,[1]
"are still commonly thought of as a body of CHRISTIAN
heretics. In reality there were Gnostic sects scattered over
the Hellenistic world BEFORE Christianity as well as after.
They must have been established in Antioch and probably
in Tarsus well before the days of Paul or Apollos. Their
Savior, like the Jewish Messiah, was established in men's
minds before the Savior of the Christians. 'If we look
close,' says Professor Bousset, 'the result emerges with
great clearness that the figure of the Redeemer as such did
not wait for Christianity to force its way into the religion
of Gnosis, but was already present there under various
forms.' "

[1] Four Stages, p. 143.


This Gnostic Redeemer, continues Professor Murray, "is
descended by a fairly clear genealogy from the 'Tritos
Soter' ('third Savior')[1] of early Greece, contaminated
with similar figures, like Attis and Adonis from Asia Minor,
Osiris from Egypt, and the special Jewish conception of the
Messiah of the Chosen people. He has various names, which
the name of Jesus or 'Christos,' 'the Anointed,' tends
gradually to supersede. Above all, he is in some
sense Man, or 'the second Man' or 'the Son of Man' . . .
He is the real, the ultimate, the perfect and eternal Man,
of whom all bodily men are feeble copies."[2]

[1] There seems to be some doubt about the exact meaning of this
expression. Even Zeus himself was sometimes called 'Soter,' and
at feasts, it is said, the THIRD goblet was always drunk in his
honor.

[2] See also The Gnostic Story of Jesus Christ, by Gilbert T.
Sadler (C. W. Daniel, 1919).


This passage brings vividly before the mind the process of
which I have spoken, namely, the fusion and mutual
interchange of ideas on the subject of the Savior during the
period anterior to our era. Also it exemplifies to us
through what an abstract sphere of Gnostic religious speculation
the doctrine had to travel before reaching its expression
in Christianity.[1] This exalted and high philosophical
conception passed on and came out again to some degree
in the Fourth Gospel and the Pauline Epistles (especially
I Cor. xv); but I need hardly say it was not maintained.
The enthusiasm of the little scattered Christian bodies--
with their communism of practice with regard to THIS
world and their intensity of faith with regard to the next
--began to wane in the second and third centuries A.D. As
the Church (with capital initial) grew, so was it less
and less occupied with real religious feeling, and more and
more with its battles against persecution from outside, and
its quarrels and dissensions concerning heresies within
its own borders. And when at the Council of Nicaea (325
A.D) it endeavored to establish an official creed, the
strife and bitterness only increased. "There is no wild
beast," said the Emperor Julian, "like an angry theologian."
Where the fourth Evangelist had preached the gospel of
Love, and Paul had announced redemption by an inner
and spiritual identification with Christ, "As in Adam all die,
so in Christ shall all be made alive"; and whereas some
at any rate of the Pagan cults had taught a glorious salvation
by the new birth of a divine being within each man:
"Be of good cheer, O initiates in the mystery of the liberated
god; For to you too out of all your labors and sorrows shall
come Liberation"--the Nicene creed had nothing to propound
except some extremely futile speculations about the
relation to each other of the Father and the Son, and
the relation of BOTH to the Holy Ghost, and of all THREE to
the Virgin Mary--speculations which only served for the renewal
of shameful strife and animosities--riots and bloodshed
and murder--within the Church, and the mockery of
the heathen without. And as far as it dealt with the crucifixion,
death and resurrection of the Lord it did not differ
from the score of preceding pagan creeds, except in the
thorough materialism and lack of poetry in statement
which it exhibits. After the Council of Nicaea, in fact, the
Judaic tinge in the doctrines of the Church becomes
more apparent, and more and more its Scheme of Salvation
through Christ takes the character of a rather sordid and
huckstering bargain by which Man gets the better of God
by persuading the latter to sacrifice his own Son for the
redemption of the world! With the exception of a few episodes
like the formation during the Middle Ages of the noble
brotherhoods and sisterhoods of Frairs and Nuns, dedicated
to the help and healing of suffering humanity,
and the appearance of a few real lovers of mankind (and the
animals) like St. Francis--(and these manifestations can
hardly be claimed by the Church, which pretty consistently
opposed them)--it may be said that after about the fourth
century the real spirit and light of early Christian enthusiasm
died away. The incursions of barbarian tribes from the
North and East, and later of Moors and Arabs from the South,
familiarized the European peoples with the ideas of bloodshed
and violence; gross and material conceptions of life
were in the ascendant; and a romantic and aspiring Christianity
gave place to a worldly and vulgar Churchianity.

[1] When travelling in India I found that the Gnanis or Wise Men
there quite commonly maintained that Jesus (judging from his
teaching) must have been initiated at some time in the esoteric
doctrines of the Vedanta.


I have in these two or three pages dealt only--and that
very briefly--with the entry of the pagan doctrine of the
Savior into the Christian field, showing its transformation
there and how Christianity could not well escape having
a doctrine of a Savior, or avoid giving a color of its own
to that doctrine. To follow out the same course with
other doctrines, like those which I have mentioned above,
would obviously be an endless task--which must be left to
each student or reader to pursue according to his opportunity
and capacity. It is clear anyhow, that all these
elements of the pagan religions--pouring down into the vast
reservoir, or rather whirlpool, of the Roman Empire, and
mixing among all these numerous brotherhoods, societies,
collegia, mystery-clubs, and groups which were at that time
looking out intently for some new revelation or inspiration--
did more or less automatically act and react upon
each other, and by the general conditions prevailing were
modified, till they ultimately combined and took united
shape in the movement which we call Christianity, but which
only--as I have said--narrowly escaped being called
Mithraism--so nearly related and closely allied were these
cults with each other.


At this point it will naturally be asked: "And where in
this scheme of the Genesis of Christianity is the chief
figure and accredited leader of the movement--namely
Jesus Christ himself--for to all appearance in the account
here given of the matter he is practically non-existent or
a negligible quantity?" And the question is a very pertinent
one, and very difficult to answer. "Where is the
founder of the Religion?"--or to put it in another form:
"Is it necessary to suppose a human and visible Founder
at all?" A few years ago such a mere question would
have been accounted rank blasphemy, and would only--
if passed over--have been ignored on account of its
supposed absurdity. To-day, however, owing to the enormous
amount of work which has been done of late on the
subject of Christian origins, the question takes on quite
a different complexion. And from Strauss onwards a
growingly influential and learned body of critics is inclined
to regard the whole story of the Gospels as LEGENDARY. Arthur
Drews, for instance, a professor at Karlsruhe, in his celebrated
book The Christ-Myth,[1] places David F. Strauss as
first in the myth field--though he allows that Dupuis in
L'origine de tous les cultes (1795) had given the clue to the
whole idea. He then mentions Bruno Bauer (1877) as
contending that Jesus was a pure invention of Mark's,
and John M. Robertson as having in his Christianity and
Mythology (1900) given the first thoroughly reasoned exposition
of the legendary theory; also Emilio Bossi in Italy, who
wrote Jesu Christo non e mai esistito, and similar authors
in Holland, Poland, and other countries, including W. Benjamin
Smith, the American author of The Pre-christian
Jesus (1906), and P. Jensen in Das Gilgamesch Epos in den
Welt-literatur (1906), who makes the Jesus-story a variant of
the Babylonian epic, 2000 B.C. A pretty strong list![2] "But,"
continues Drews, "ordinary historians still ignore all this."
Finally, he dismisses Jesus as "a figure swimming obscurely
in the mists of tradition." Nevertheless I need hardly
remark that, large and learned as the body of opinion
here represented is, a still larger (but less learned) body
fights desperately for the actual HISTORICITY of Jesus, and some
even still for the old view of him as a quite unique and
miraculous revelation of Godhood on earth.

[1] Die Christus-mythe: verbesserte und erweitezte Ausgabe, Jena,
1910.

[2] To which we may also add Schweitzer's Quest of the historical
Jesus (1910).


At first, no doubt, the LEGENDARY theory seems a little TOO
far-fetched. There is a fashion in all these things, and
it MAY be that there is a fashion even here. But when
you reflect how rapidly legends grow up even in these days of
exact Science and an omniscient Press; how the figure of
Shakespeare, dead only 300 years, is almost completely lost
in the mist of Time, and even the authenticity of his
works has become a subject of controversy; when you find
that William Tell, supposed to have lived some 300
years again before Shakespeare, and whose deeds in minutest
detail have been recited and honored all over Europe, is almost
certainly a pure invention, and never existed; when
you remember--as mentioned earlier in this book[1]--that
it was more than five hundred years after the supposed
birth of Jesus before any serious effort was made to establish
the date of that birth--and that then a purely mythical date
was chosen: the 25th December, the day of the SUN'S new
birth after the winter solstice, and the time of the supposed
birth of Apollo, Bacchus, and the other Sungods;
when, moreover, you think for a moment what the state
of historical criticism must have been, and the general standard
of credibility, 1,900 years ago, in a country like Syria,
and among an ignorant population, where any story circulating
from lip to lip was assured of credence if sufficiently
marvelous or imaginative;--why, then the legendary
theory does not seem so improbable. There is
no doubt that after the destruction of Jerusalem (in A.D.
70), little groups of believers in a redeeming 'Christ' were
formed there and in other places, just as there had certainly
existed, in the first century B.C., groups of Gnostics,
Therapeutae, Essenes and others whose teachings were very
SIMILAR to the Christian, and there was now a demand from
many of these groups for 'writings' and 'histories' which
should hearten and confirm the young and growing Churches.
The Gospels and Epistles, of which there are still extant a
great abundance, both apocryphal and canonical, met this
demand; but how far their records of the person of Jesus
of Nazareth are reliable history, or how far they are merely
imaginative pictures of the kind of man the Saviour might
be expected to be,[2] is a question which, as I have already
said, is a difficult one for skilled critics to answer, and one
on which I certainly have no intention of giving a positive
verdict. Personally I must say I think the 'legendary'
solution quite likely, and in some ways more satisfactory
than the opposite one--for the simple reason that it seems
much more encouraging to suppose that the story of Jesus,
(gracious and beautiful as it is) is a myth which gradually
formed itself in the conscience of mankind, and thus points
the way of humanity's future evolution, than to suppose
it to be the mere record of an unique and miraculous
interposition of Providence, which depended entirely on the
powers above, and could hardly be expected to occur again.

[1] Ch. II.

[2] One of Celsus' accusations against the Christians was that
their Gospels had been written "several times over" (see Origen,
Contra Celsum, ii. 26, 27).


However, the question is not what we desire, but what
we can prove to be the actual fact. And certainly the
difficulties in the way of regarding the Gospel story (or
stories, for there is not one consistent story) as TRUE are
enormous. If anyone will read, for instance, in the four Gospels,
the events of the night preceding the crucifixion and reckon the
time which they would necessarily have taken to enact--
the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden, the betrayal by
Judas, the haling before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, and
then before Pilate in the Hall of judgment (though
courts for the trial of malefactors do not GENERALLY sit in
the middle of the night); then--in Luke--the interposed visit
to Herod, and the RETURN to Pilate; Pilate's speeches and
washing of hands before the crowd; then the scourging
and the mocking and the arraying of Jesus in purple robe
as a king; then the preparation of a Cross and the long and
painful journey to Golgotha; and finally the Crucifixion
at sunrise;--he will see--as has often been pointed out--
that the whole story is physically impossible. As a record
of actual events the story is impossible; but as a record
or series of notes derived from the witnessing of a "mystery-
play"--and such plays with VERY SIMILAR incidents were common
enough in antiquity in connection with cults of a dying
Savior, it very likely IS true (one can see the very dramatic
character of the incidents: the washing of hands, the
threefold denial by Peter, the purple robe and crown
of thorns, and so forth); and as such it is now accepted
by many well-qualified authorities.[1]

[1] Dr. Frazer in The Golden Bough (vol. ix, "The Scapegoat," p.
400) speaks of the frequency in antiquity of a Mystery-play
relating to a God-man who gives his life and blood for the
people; and he puts forward tentatively and by no means
dogmatically the following note:--"Such a drama, if we are right,
was the original story of Esther and Mordecai, or (to give their
older names) Ishtar and Marduk. It was played in Babylonia, and
from Babylonia the returning Captives brought it to Judaea, where
it was acted, rather as an historical than a mythical piece, by
players who, having to die in grim earnest on a cross or gallows,
were naturally drawn from the gaol rather than the green-room. A
chain of causes, which because we cannot follow them might--in
the loose language of common life--be called an accident,
determined that the part of the dying god in this annual play
should be thrust upon Jesus of Nazareth, whom the enemies he had
made in high places by his outspoken strictures were resolved to
put out of the way." See also vol. iv, "The Dying God," in the
same book.


There are many other difficulties. The raising of Lazarus,
already dead three days, the turning of water into wine
(a miracle attributed to Bacchus, of old), the feeding of
the five thousand, and others of the marvels are, to say
the least, not easy of digestion. The "Sermon on the
Mount" which, with the "Lord's Prayer" embedded in
it, forms the great and accepted repository of 'Christian'
teaching and piety, is well known to be a collection of sayings
from pre-christian writings, including the Psalms, Isaiah,
Ecclesiasticus, the Secrets of Enoch, the Shemonehesreh (a
book of Hebrew prayers), and others; and the fact that this
collection was really made AFTER the time of Jesus, and could
not have originated from him, is clear from the stress which
it lays on "persecutions" and "false prophets"--things which
were certainly not a source of trouble at the time
Jesus is supposed to be speaking, though they were at a
later time--as well as from the occurrence of the word
"Gentiles," which being here used apparently in contra-
distinction to "Christians" could not well be appropriate
at a time when no recognized Christian bodies as yet existed.

But the most remarkable point in this connection is the
absolute silence of the Gospel of Mark on the subject of
the Resurrection and Ascension--that is, of the ORIGINAL
Gospel, for it is now allowed on all hands that the twelve
verses Mark xvi. 9 to the end, are a later insertion. Considering
the nature of this event, astounding indeed, if
physically true, and unique in the history of the world,
it is strange that this Gospel--the earliest written of the
four Gospels, and nearest in time to the actual evidence--
makes no mention of it. The next Gospel in point of time
--that of Matthew--mentions the matter rather briefly
and timidly, and reports the story that the body had been
STOLEN from the sepulchre. Luke enlarges considerably and
gives a whole long chapter to the resurrection and ascension;
while the Fourth Gospel, written fully twenty years later
still--say about A. D. 120--gives two chapters and a GREAT
VARIETY OF DETAILS!

This increase of detail, however, as one gets farther
and farther from the actual event is just what one always
finds, as I have said before, in legendary traditions. A
very interesting example of this has lately come to light in
the case of the traditions concerning the life and
death of the Persian Bab. The Bab, as most of my readers
will know, was the Founder of a great religious movement
which now numbers (or numbered before the Great War)
some millions of adherents, chiefly Mahommedans, Christians,
Jews and Parsees. The period of his missionary
activity was from 1845 to 1850. His Gospel was singularly
like that of Jesus--a gospel of love to mankind--only (as
might be expected from the difference of date) with an
even wider and more deliberate inclusion of all classes,
creeds and races, sinners and saints; and the incidents
and entourage of his ministry were also singularly similar.
He was born at Shiraz in 1820, and growing up a promising
boy and youth, fell at the age Of 21 under the influence
of a certain Seyyid Kazim, leader of a heterodox sect, and
a kind of fore-runner or John the Baptist to the Bab. The
result was a period of mental trouble (like the "temptation
in the wilderness"), after which the youth returned
to Shiraz and at the age of twenty-five began his own mission.
His real name was Mirza Ali Muhammad, but he called
himself thenceforth The Bab, i.e. the Gate ("I am the Way");
and gradually there gathered round him disciples, drawn
by the fascination of his personality and the devotion
of his character. But with the rapid increase of his
following great jealousy and hatred were excited among the
Mullahs, the upholders of a fanatical and narrow-
minded Mahommedanism and quite corresponding to the
Scribes and Pharisees of the New Testament. By them
he was denounced to the Turkish Government. He was
arrested on a charge of causing political disturbance, and
was condemned to death. Among his disciples was one
favorite,[1] who was absolutely devoted to his Master and
refused to leave him at the last. So together they were
suspended over the city wall (at Tabriz) and simultaneously
shot. This was on the 8th July, 1850.

[1] Mirza Muhammad Ali; and one should note the similarity of
the two names.


In November 1850--or between that date and October 1851,
a book appeared, written by one of the Bb's earliest
and most enthusiastic disciples--a merchant of Kashan--
and giving in quite simple and unpretending form a record
of the above events. There is in it no account of miracles
or of great pretensions to godhood and the like. It is just
a plain history of the life and death of a beloved teacher. It
was cordially received and circulated far and wide; and
we have no reason for doubting its essential veracity. And
even if proved now to be inaccurate in one or two details, this
would not invalidate the moral of the rest of the story--which
is as follows:

After the death of the Bab a great persecution took place
(in 1852); there were many Babi martyrs, and for some
years the general followers were scattered. But in time
they gathered themselves together again; successors to the
original prophet were appointed--though not without
dissensions--and a Babi church, chiefly at Acca or Acre
in Syria, began to be formed. It was during this period
that a great number of legends grew up--legends of miraculous
babyhood and boyhood, legends of miracles performed
by the mature Bab, and so forth; and when the newly-
forming Church came to look into the matter it concluded
(quite naturally!) that such a simple history as I have outlined
above would never do for the foundation of its plans,
now grown somewhat ambitious. So a new Gospel
was framed, called the Tarikh-i-Jadid ("The new History"
or "The new Way"), embodying and including a lot of legendary
matter, and issued with the authority of "the
Church." This was in 1881-2; and comparing this with
the original record (called The point of Kaf) we get
a luminous view of the growth of fable in those thirty brief
years which had elapsed since the Bab's death. Meanwhile
it became very necessary of course to withdraw from circulation
as far as possible all copies of the original record,
lest they should give the lie to the later 'Gospel'; and
this apparently was done very effectively--so effectively
indeed that Professor Edward Browne (to whom the world
owes so much on account of his labors in connection with
Babism), after arduous search, came at one time to the
conclusion that the original was no longer extant. Most
fortunately, however, the well-known Comte de Gobineau
had in the course of his studies on Eastern Religions acquired
a copy of The point of Kaf; and this, after his death, was
found among his literary treasures and identified (as was most
fitting) by Professor Browne himself.

Such in brief is the history of the early Babi Church[1]
--a Church which has grown up and expanded greatly
within the memory of many yet living. Much might be written
about it, but the chief point at present is for us
to note the well-verified and interesting example it gives
of the rapid growth in Syria of a religious legend and the
reasons which contributed to this growth--and to be warned
how much more rapidly similar legends probably grew up
in the same land in the middle of the First Century, A.D.
The story of the Bab is also interesting to us because, while
this mass of legend was formed around it, there is no possible
doubt about the actual existence of a historical nucleus in the
person of Mirza Ali Muhammad.

[1] For literature, see Edward G. Browne's Traveller's Narrative
on the Episode of the Bab (1891), and his New History of the Bab
translated from the Persian of the Tarikh-i-Jadid (Cambridge,
1893). Also Sermons and Essays by Herbert Rix (Williams and
Norgate, 1907), pp. 295-325, "The Persian Bab."


On the whole, one is sometimes inclined to doubt whether
any great movement ever makes itself felt in the world, without
dating first from some powerful personality or
group of personalities, ROUND which the idealizing and myth-
making genius of mankind tends to crystallize. But one
must not even here be too certain. Something of the
Apostle Paul we know, and something of 'John' the
Evangelist and writer of the Epistle I John; and that the
'Christian' doctrines dated largely from the preaching and
teaching of these two we cannot doubt; but Paul
never saw Jesus (except "in the Spirit"), nor does he ever
mention the man personally, or any incident of his actual
life (the "crucified Christ" being always an ideal figure);
and 'John' who wrote the Gospel was certainly not the same
as the disciple who "lay in Jesus' bosom"--though
an intercalated verse, the last but one in the Gospel, asserts
the identity.[1]

[1] It is obvious, in fact, that the WHOLE of the last chapter of
St. John is a later insertion, and again that the two last verses
of that chapter are later than the chapter itself!


There may have been a historic Jesus--and if so, to get
a reliable outline of his life would indeed be a treasure;
but at present it would seem there is no sign of that. If
the historicity of Jesus, in any degree, could be proved,
it would give us reason for supposing--what I have personally
always been inclined to believe--that there was also a
historical nucleus for such personages as Osiris, Mithra,
Krishna, Hercules, Apollo and the rest. The question,
in fact, narrows itself down to this, Have there been in
the course of human evolution certain, so to speak, NODAL
points or periods at which the psychologic currents ran
together and condensed themselves for a new start; and
has each such node or point of condensation been marked
by the appearance of an actual and heroic man (or woman)
who supplied a necessary impetus for the new departure,
and gave his name to the resulting movement? OR is it sufficient
to suppose the automatic formation of such nodes or
starting-points without the intervention of any special
hero or genius, and to imagine that in each case the myth-
making tendency of mankind CREATED a legendary and
inspiring figure and worshiped the same for a long period
afterwards as a god?

As I have said before, this is a question which, interesting
as it is, is not really very important. The main thing being
that the prophetic and creative spirit of mankind HAS from
time to time evolved those figures as idealizations of its
"heart's desire" and placed a halo round their heads.
The long procession of them becomes a REAL piece of History
--the history of the evolution of the human heart, and of
human consciousness. But with the psychology of the whole
subject I shall deal in the next chapter.


I may here, however, dwell for a moment on two other
points which belong properly to this chapter. I have
already mentioned the great reliance placed by the advocates
of a unique 'revelation' on the high morality taught in the
Gospels and the New Testament generally. There is no
need of course to challenge that morality or to depreciate it
unduly; but the argument assumes that it is so greatly superior
to anything of the kind that had been taught before
that we are compelled to suppose something like
a revelation to explain its appearance--whereas of course
anyone familiar with the writings of antiquity, among the
Greeks or Romans or Egyptians or Hindus or later Jews,
knows perfectly well that the reported sayings of Jesus and
the Apostles may be paralleled abundantly from these sources.
I have illustrated this already from the Sermon on
the Mount. If anyone will glance at the Testament of
the Twelve Patriarchs--a Jewish book composed about
120 B. C.--he will see that it is full of moral precepts, and
especially precepts of love and forgiveness, so ardent and
so noble that it hardly suffers in any way when compared
with the New Testament teaching, and that consequently no
special miracle is required to explain the appearance of the
latter.

The twelve Patriarchs in question are the twelve sons of
Jacob, and the book consists of their supposed deathbed
scenes, in which each patriarch in turn recites his own
(more or less imaginary) life and deeds and gives pious
counsel to his children and successors. It is composed in
a fine and poetic style, and is full of lofty thought, remindful
in scores of passages of the Gospels--words and all--
the coincidences being too striking to be accidental. It
evidently had a deep influence on the authors of the Gospels,
as well as on St. Paul. It affirms a belief in the coming of
a Messiah, and in salvation for the Gentiles. The following
are some quotations from it:[1] Testament of Zebulun
(p. 116): "My children, I bid you keep the commands of
the Lord, and show mercy to your neighbours, and have
compassion towards all, not towards men only, but also
towards beasts." Dan (p. 127): "Love the Lord through all
your life, and one another with a true heart." Joseph
(p. 173): "I was sick, and the Lord visited me; in prison,
and my God showed favor unto me." Benjamin (p. 209):
"For as the sun is not defiled by shining on dung and mire,
but rather drieth up both and driveth away the evil
smell, so also the pure mind, encompassed by the defilements
of earth, rather cleanseth them and is not itself defiled."

[1] The references being to the Edition by R. H. Charles (1907).


I think these quotations are sufficient to prove the high
standard of this book, which was written in the Second Century
B. C., and FROM which the New Testament authors copiously
borrowed.

The other point has to do with my statement at the beginning
of this chapter that two of the main 'characteristics'
of Christianity were its insistence on (a) a tendency
towards renunciation of the world, and a consequent cultivation
of a purely spiritual love, and (b) on a morality
whose inspiration was a private sense of duty to God rather
than a public sense of duty to one's neighbor and to society
generally. I think, however, that the last-mentioned
characteristic ought to be viewed in relation to a third, namely,
(c) the extraordinarily DEMOCRATIC tendency of the new
Religion.[1] Celsus (A.D. 200) jeered at the early Christians
for their extreme democracy: "It is only the
simpletons, the ignoble, the senseless--slaves and womenfolk
and children--whom they wish to persuade [to join their
churches] or CAN persuade"--"wool-dressers and cobblers
and fullers, the most uneducated and vulgar persons," and
"whosoever is a sinner, or unintelligent or a fool, in
a word, whoever is god-forsaken (), him the
Kingdom of God will receive."[2] Thus Celsus, the accomplished,
clever, philosophic and withal humorous critic,
laughed at the new religionists, and prophesied their speedy
extinction. Nevertheless he was mistaken. There is little
doubt that just the inclusion of women and weaklings
and outcasts did contribute LARGELY to the spread of Christianity
(and Mithraism). It brought hope and a sense of
human dignity to the despised and rejected of the earth.
Of the immense numbers of lesser officials who carried on
the vast organization of the Roman Empire, most perhaps,
were taken from the ranks of the freedmen and quondam
slaves, drawn from a great variety of races and already
familiar with pagan cults of all kinds--Egyptian, Syrian,
Chaldean, Iranian, and so forth.[3] This fact helped to give
to Christianity--under the fine tolerance of the Empire--
its democratic character and also its willingness to accept
all. The rude and menial masses, who had hitherto been
almost beneath the notice of Greek and Roman culture,
flocked in; and though this was doubtless, as time went on,
a source of weakness to the Church, and a cause of dissension
and superstition, yet it was in the inevitable line of human
evolution, and had a psychological basis which I must now
endeavor to explain.

[1] It is important to note, however, that this same democratic
tendency was very marked in Mithraism. "Il est certain," says
Cumont, "qu'il a fait ses premieres conquetes dans les classes
inferieures de la societe et c'est l'a un fait considerable; le
mithracisme est reste longtemps la religion des humbles."
Mysteres de Mithra, p. 68.

[2] See Glover's Conflict of Religions in the early Roman Empire,
ch. viii.

[3] See Toutain, Cultes paiens, vol. ii, conclusion.
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