How can we be sure that these copies are reliable? And why are there thousands upon thousands of various readings in these, numerous supposed copies? What means have we of deciding which version or reading to accept? Is it possible that as the result of Jesus" advent into our world, we have only a basketful of nameless and dateless copies and doc.u.ments? Is it conceivable, I ask, that a G.o.d would send his Son to us, and then leave us to wander through a pile of dusty ma.n.u.scripts to find out why He sent His Son, and what He taught when on earth?
The only answer the Christian church can give to this question is that the original writings were purposely allowed to perish. When a precious doc.u.ment containing the testament of Almighty G.o.d, and inscribed for an eternal purpose by the Holy Ghost, disappears altogether there is absolutely no other way of accounting for its disappearance than by saying, as we have suggested, that its divine author must have intentionally withdrawn it from circulation. "G.o.d moves in a mysterious way" is the last resort of the believer. This is the one argument which is left to theology to fight science with.
Unfortunately it is an argument which would prove every cult and "ism"
under the heavens true. The Mohammedan, the Mazdaian, and the Pagan may also fall back upon faith. There is nothing which faith can not cover up from the light. But if a faith which ignores evidence be not a superst.i.tion, what then is superst.i.tion? I wonder if the Catholic Church, which pretends to believe--and which derives quite an income from the belief--that G.o.d has miraculously preserved the wood of the cross, the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem, the coat of Jesus, and quite a number of other mementos, can explain why the original ma.n.u.scripts were lost. I have a suspicion that there were no "original"
ma.n.u.scripts. I am not sure of this, of course, but if nails, bones and holy places could be miraculously preserved, why not also ma.n.u.scripts?
It is reasonable to suppose that the Deity would not have permitted the most important doc.u.ments containing His Revelation to drop into some hole and disappear, or to be gnawed into dust by the insects, after having had them written by special inspiration.
Again, when these doc.u.ments, such as we find them, are examined, it will be observed that, even in the most elementary intelligence which they pretend to furnish, they are hopelessly at variance with one another. It is, for example, utterly impossible to reconcile Matthew"s genealogy of Jesus with the one given by Luke. In copying the names of the supposed ancestors of Jesus, they tamper with the list as given in the book of Chronicles, in the Old Testament, and thereby justly expose themselves to the charge of bad faith. One evangelist says Jesus was descended from Solomon, born of "her that had been the wife of Urias." It will be remembered that David ordered Urias killed in a cowardly manner, that he may marry his widow, whom he coveted.
According to Matthew, Jesus is one of the offspring of this adulterous relation. According to Luke, it is not through Solomon, but through Nathan, that Jesus is connected with the house of David.
Again, Luke tells us that the name of the father of Joseph was _Heli;_ Matthew says it was _Jacob_. If the writers of the gospels were contemporaries of Joseph they could have easily learned the exact name of his father.
Again, why do these biographers of Jesus give us the genealogy of Joseph if he was not the father of Jesus? It is the genealogy of Mary which they should have given to prove the descent of Jesus from the house of David, and not that of Joseph. These irreconcilable differences between Luke, Matthew and the other evangelists, go to prove that these authors possessed no reliable information concerning the subjects they were writing about. For if Jesus is a historical character, and these biographers were really his immediate a.s.sociates, and were inspired besides, how are we to explain their blunders and contradictions about his genealogy?
A good ill.u.s.tration of the mythical or unhistorical character of the New Testament is furnished by the story of John the Baptist. He is first represented as confessing publicly that Jesus is the Christ; that he himself is not worthy to unloose the latchet of his shoes; and that Jesus is the Lamb of G.o.d, "who taketh away the sins of the world." John was also present, the gospels say, when the heavens opened and a dove descended on Jesus" head, and he heard the voice from the skies, crying: "He is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
Is it possible that, a few chapters later, this same John forgets his public confession,--the dove and the voice from heaven,--and actually sends two of his disciples to find out who this Jesus is, [Footnote: Matthew xi.] The only way we can account for such strange conduct is that the compiler or editor in question had two different myths or stories before him, and he wished to use them both.
A further proof of the loose and extravagant style of the Gospel writers is furnished by the concluding verse of the Fourth Gospel: "There are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written, every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." This is more like the language of a myth-maker than of a historian. How much reliance can we put in a reporter who is given to such exaggeration? To say that the world itself would be too small to contain the unreported sayings and doings of a teacher whose public life possibly did not last longer than a year, and whose reported words and deeds fill only a few pages, is to prove one"s statements unworthy of serious consideration.
And it is worth our while to note also that the doc.u.ments which have come down to our time and which purport to be the biographies of Jesus, are not only written in an alien language, that is to say, in a language which was not that of Jesus and his disciples, but neither are they dated or signed. Jesus and his twelve apostles were Jews; why are all the four Gospels written in Greek? If they were originally written in Hebrew, how can we tell that the Greek translation is accurate, since we can not compare it with the originals? And why are these Gospels anonymous? Why are they not dated? But as we shall say something more on this subject in the present volume, we confine ourselves at this point to reproducing a fragment of the ma.n.u.script pages from which our Greek Translations have been made.[Footnote: See page 57.] It is admitted by scholars that owing to the difficulty of reading these ancient and imperfect and also conflicting texts, an accurate translation is impossible. But this is another way of saying that what the churches call the Word of G.o.d is not only the word of man, but a very imperfect word, at that.
The belief in Jesus, then, is founded on secondary doc.u.ments, altered and edited by various hands; on lost originals, and on anonymous ma.n.u.scripts of an age considerably later than the events therein related--ma.n.u.scripts which contradict each other as well as themselves. Such is clearly and undeniably the basis for the belief in a historical Jesus. It was this sense of the insufficiency of the evidence which drove the missionaries of Christianity to commit forgeries.
If there was ample evidence for the historicity of Jesus, why did his biographers resort to forgery? The following admissions by Christian writers themselves show the helplessness of the early preachers in the presence of inquirers who asked for proofs. The church historian, Mosheim, writes that, "The Christian Fathers deemed it a pious act to employ deception and fraud." [Footnote: Ecclesiastical Hist., Vol. I, P. 247.]
Again, he says: "The greatest and most pious teachers were nearly all of them infected with this leprosy." Will not some believer tell us why forgery and fraud were necessary to prove the historicity of Jesus. Another historian, Milman, writes that, "Pious fraud was admitted and avowed" by the early missionaries of Jesus. "It was an age of literary frauds," writes Bishop Ellicott, speaking of the times immediately following the alleged crucifixion of Jesus. Dr. Giles declares that, "There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were written with no other purpose than to deceive." And it is the opinion of Dr. Robertson Smith that, "There was an enormous floating ma.s.s of spurious literature created to suit party views." Books which are now rejected as apochryphal were at one time received as inspired, and books which are now believed to be infallible were at one time regarded as of no authority in the Christian world. It certainly is puzzling that there should be a whole literature of fraud and forgery in the name of a historical person. But if Jesus was a myth, we can easily explain the legends and traditions springing up in his name.
The early followers of Jesus, then, realizing the force of this objection, did actually resort to interpolation and forgery in order to prove that Jesus was a historical character.
One of the oldest critics of the Christian religion was a Pagan, known to history under the name of Porphyry; yet, the early Fathers did not hesitate to tamper even with the writings of an avowed opponent of their religion. After issuing an edict to destroy, among others, the writings of this philosopher, a work, called _Philosophy of Oracles,_ was produced, in which the author is made to write almost as a Christian; and the name of Porphyry was signed to it as its author.
St. Augustine was one of the first to reject it as a forgery.
[Footnote: Geo. W. Foote. Crimes of Christianity.] A more astounding invention than this alleged work of a heathen bearing witness to Christ is difficult to produce. Do these forgeries, these apocryphal writings, these interpolations, freely admitted to have been the prevailing practice of the early Christians, help to prove the existence of Jesus? And when to this wholesale manufacture of doubtful evidence is added the terrible vandalism which nearly destroyed every great Pagan cla.s.sic, we can form an idea of the desperate means to which the early Christians resorted to prove that Jesus was not a myth. It all goes to show how difficult it is to make a man out of a myth.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The G.o.ddess Mother in the Grecian Pantheon.]
VIRGIN BIRTHS
Stories of G.o.ds born of virgins are to be found in nearly every age and country. There have been many virgin mothers, and Mary with her child is but a recent version of a very old and universal myth. In China and India, in Babylonia and Egypt, in Greece and Rome, "divine"
beings selected from among the daughters of men the purest and most beautiful to serve them as a means of entrance into the world of mortals. Wishing to take upon themselves the human form, while retaining at the same time their "divinity," this compromise--of an earthly mother with a "divine" father--was effected. In the form of a swan Jupiter approached Leda, as in the guise of a dove, or a _Paracletus,_ Jehovah "overshadowed" Mary.
A nymph bathing in a river in China is touched by a lotus plant, and the divine Fohi is born.
In Siam, a wandering sunbeam caresses a girl in her teens, and the great and wonderful deliverer, Codom, is born. In the life of Buddha we read that he descended on his mother Maya, "in likeness as the heavenly queen, and entered her womb," and was "born from her right side, to save the world." [Footnote: Stories of Virgin Births.
Reference: Lord Macartney. Voyage dans "interview de la Chine et en Tartarie. Vol. I, P. 48. See also Les Vierges Meres et les Naissance Miraculeuse. P. Saintyves. P. 19, etc.] In Greece, the young G.o.d Apollo visits a fair maid of Athens, and a Plato is ushered into the world.
In ancient Mexico, as well as in Babylonia, and in modern Corea, as in modern Palestine, as in the legends of all lands, virgins gave birth and became divine mothers. [Footnote: Stories of Virgin Births.
Reference: Lord Macartney. Voyage dans "interview de la Chine et en Tartarie. Vol. I, P. 48. See also Les Vierges Meres et les Naissance Miraculeuse. P. Saintyves. P. 19, etc.]
But the real home of virgin births is the land of the Nile. Eighteen hundred years before Christ, we find carved on one of the walls of the great temple of Luxor a picture of the _annunciation, conception and birth_ of King Amunothph III, an almost exact copy of the annunciation, conception and birth of the Christian G.o.d. Of course no one will think of maintaining that the Egyptians borrowed the idea from the Catholics nearly two thousand years before the Christian era.
"The story in the Gospel of Luke, the first and second chapters is, "says Malvert, "a reproduction, "point by point," of the story in stone of the miraculous birth of Amunothph." [Footnote: Science and Religion P. 96.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Annunciation, Birth, and Adoration of Amenophis of Egypt, Nearly 2000 Years Before Christ.]
Sharpe in his Egyptian Mythology, page 19, gives the following description of the Luxor picture, quoted by G. W. Foote in his _Bible Romances,_ page 126: "In this picture we have the annunciation, the conception, the birth and the adoration, as described in the first and second chapters of Luke"s Gospel." Ma.s.sey gives a more minute description of the Luxor picture. "The first scene on the left hand shows the G.o.d Taht, the divine Word or Loges, in the act of hailing the virgin queen, announcing to her that she is to give birth to a son. In the second scene the G.o.d Kneph (a.s.sisted by Hathor) gives life to her. This is the Holy Ghost, or Spirit that causes conception....Next the mother is seated on the midwife"s stool, and the child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the G.o.ds and gifts from men." [Footnote: Natural Genesis. Ma.s.sey, Vol. II, P.
398.] The picture on the wall of the Luxor temple, then, is one of the sources to which the anonymous writers of the Gospels went for their miraculous story. It is no wonder they suppressed their own ident.i.ty as well as the source from which they borrowed their material.
Not only the idea of a virgin mother, but all the other miraculous events, such as the stable cradle, the guiding star, the ma.s.sacre of the children, the flight to Egypt, and the resurrection and bodily ascension toward the clouds, have not only been borrowed, but are even scarcely altered in the New Testament story of Jesus.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Nativity of the G.o.d Dionysius, Museum of Naples. ]
That the early Christians borrowed the legend of Jesus from earthly sources is too evident to be even questioned. Gerald Ma.s.sey in his great work on Egyptian origins demonstrates the ident.i.ty of Mary, the mother of Jesus, with Isis, the mother of Horus. He says: "The most ancient, gold-bedizened, smoke-stained Byzantine pictures of the virgin and child represent the mythical mother as Isis, and not as a human mother of Nazareth." [Footnote: Vol. ii, P. 487.] Science and research have made this fact so certain that, on the one hand ignorance, and on the other, interest only, can continue to claim inspiration for the authors of the undated and unsigned fragmentary doc.u.ments which pa.s.s for the Word of G.o.d. If, then, Jesus is stripped of all the borrowed legends and miracles of which he is the subject; and if we also take away from him all the teachings which collected from Jewish and Pagan sources have been attributed to him--what will be left of him? That the ideas put in his mouth have been culled and compiled from other sources is as demonstrable as the Pagan origin of the legends related of him.
Nearly every one of the dogmas and ceremonies in the Christian cult were borrowed from other and older religions. The resurrection myth, the ascension, the eucharisty, baptism, worship by kneeling or prostration, the folding of the hands on the breast, the ringing of bells and the burning of incense, the vestments and vessels used in church, the candles, "holy" water,--even the word _Ma.s.s_ were all adopted and adapted by the Christians from the religions of the ancients. The Trinity is as much Pagan, as much Indian or Buddhist, as it is Christian. The idea of a Son of G.o.d is as old as the oldest cult. The sun is the son of heaven in all primitive faiths. The physical sun becomes in the course of evolution, the Son of Righteousness, or the Son of G.o.d, and heaven is personified as the Father on High. The halo around the head of Jesus, the horns of the older deities, the rays of light radiating from the heads of Hindu and Pagan G.o.ds are incontrovertible evidence that all G.o.ds were at one time--the sun in heaven.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Prehistoric Crosses Discovered in Pagan Sepulchres (Italy).]
THE ORIGIN OF THE CROSS
Only the uninformed, of whom, we regret to say, there are a great many, and who are the main support of the old religions, still believe that the cross originated with Christianity. Like the dogmas of the Trinity, the virgin birth, and the resurrection, the sign of the cross or the cross as an emblem or a symbol was borrowed from the more ancient faiths of Asia. Perhaps one of the most important discoveries which primitive man felt obliged never to be ungrateful enough to forget, was the production of fire by the friction of two sticks placed across each other in the form of a cross. As early as the stone age we find the cross carved on monuments which have been dug out of the earth and which can be seen in the museums of Europe. On the coins of later generations as well as on the altars of prehistoric times we find the "sacred" symbol of the cross. The dead in ancient cemeteries slept under the cross as they do in our day in Catholic churchyards.
[Ill.u.s.tration: House of Goodness, with Cross. Egyptian, 2000 B. C.]
In ancient Egypt, as in modern China, India, Corea, the cross is venerated by the ma.s.ses as a charm of great power. In the Musee Guimet, in Paris, we have seen specimens of pre-Christian crosses. In the Louvre Museum one of the "heathen" G.o.ds carries a cross on his head. During his second journey to New Zealand, Cook was surprised to find the natives marking the graves of their dead with the cross. We saw, in the Museum of St. Germain, an ancient divinity of Gaul, before the conquest of the country by Julius Caesar, wearing a garment on which was woven a cross. In the same museum an ancient altar of Gaul under Paganism, had a cross carved upon it. That the cross was not adopted by the followers of Jesus until a later date may be inferred from the silence of the earlier gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, on the details of the crucifixion, which is more fully developed in the later gospel of John. The first three evangelists say nothing about the nails or the blood, and give the impression that he was hanged.
Writing of the two thieves who were sentenced to receive the same punishment, Luke says, "One of the malefactors that was _hanged_ with him." The idea of a bleeding Christ, such as we see on crosses in Catholic churches, is not present in these earlier descriptions of the crucifixion; the Christians of the time of Origin were called "the followers of the G.o.d who was hanged." In the fourth gospel we see the beginnings of the legend of the cross, of Jesus carrying or falling under the weight of the cross, of the nail prints in his hands and feet, of the spear drawing the blood from his side and smearing his body. Of all this, the first three evangelists are quite ignorant.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Pagan Priest of Herculaneum Wearing the Cross.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Cross of the Chinese Emperor Fou-Hi,2953 Years Before Christ.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Discovered in Newgrange, Ireland. An Ancient Pagan Cross.]
Let it be further noted that it was not until eight hundred years after the supposed crucifixion that Jesus is seen in the form of a human being on the cross. Not in any of the paintings on the ancient catacombs is found a crucified Christ. The earliest cross bearing a human being is of the eighth century. For a long time a lamb with a cross, or on a cross, was the Christian symbol, and it is a lamb which we see entombed in the "holy sepulchre." In more than one mosaic of early Christian times, it is not Jesus, but a lamb, which is bleeding for the salvation of the world. How a lamb came to play so important a role in Christianity is variously explained. The similarity between the name of the Hindu G.o.d, _Agni_ and the meaning of the same word in Latin, which is a lamb, is one theory. Another is that a ram, one of the signs of the zodiac, often confounded by the ancients with a lamb, is the origin of the popular reverence for the lamb as a symbol--a reverence which all religions based on sun-worship shared. The lamb in Christianity takes away the sins of the people, just as the paschal lamb did in the Old Testament, and earlier still, just as it did in Babylonia.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Used by a Priest of Bacchus, Showing the Cross.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Engraving of the XI Century.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Lamb on Cross.]