Chapter XIV: Appendix: B (1)

THE MYTH OF SIMON MAGUS

I

Two questions are raised under this heading--the question whether, as was argued by F. C. Baur, the "Simon Magus" of the "Clementine Recognitions" and "Homilies" is a mask-name for a polemic directed primarily at the Apostle Paul; and the more fundamental question whether the Simon Magus of the Acts is or is not a historical character.

The reasons for holding Simon to be a mythical personage (as apart from the reasons for supposing the Clementine Simon to be meant for Paul, and the story of the Acts to be a misconceiving adaptation of the Clementine narrative) are overwhelming. To begin with, Justin Martyr, a Samaritan born, expressly says [531] that almost all the Samaritans worshipped Simon. [532] This alone might dispose of the notion that the "Simonians" dated merely from the time of Paul and Peter. It is absurd to suppose that nearly all the Samaritans, a people with old cults, could be converted within a century to a new Deity originating in one man. The cult must date further back than that. And that Justin, though of Samaritan birth, could widely misconceive the cults around him, is pretty clear from his famous blunder of finding his Simon Magus as Simo Sanctus in the Semo Sancus of Rome, the old Sabine counterpart of the Eastern Semo. [533]

For there is abundant evidence, to begin with, that a name of which the basis is Sem is one of the oldest of Semitic God-names. We have the forms Shem, Sime-on, Sams-on, S(h)amas (the Babylonian name of the sun; Hebrew Shemesh), San-d-on, or Samdan [534] Semen and Sem, all plainly connected with a sun-myth. Shamas or Samas was an Assyrian Sun-God, the duplicate of Melkarth and Hercules. Samson or Simson or Shimshai (= the Sun-man), the Hebrew Sun-hero, is unquestionably a mere variant of that myth. Sand-on, also a Sun-God, is the same myth over again. Baal-Samen, "the Lord of Heaven," [535] is the same conception as Baal-Melkarth; Baal, "the Lord," a Sun-God himself as well as Supreme God, being joined with the Sun-God proper. The name Sem, again, is found as signifying Hercules, in conjunction with those of Harpocrates and the Egyptian Hermes, [536] and is probably involved in the mythical queen-name Semiramis (Sammuramat), since she in one of the myths gets her name from Simmas, "keeper of the king's flocks," who rears her [537]--another form of the Sun-God, belike. Simeon, in the myth of the twelve tribes, is one of the twin-brethren, who in all mythologies are at bottom solar deities. The "on" means "great," as in Samson, Dagon, Solomon, etc.; [538] and the Dioscuri of the Greek and Roman myth were "the Great Twin Brethren." It was added to the name of the Samaritan God Êl Êlyon, "Great Êl," [539] who is just the Êl (singular of Elohim) of the Hebrews. But the name Shem itself means "the Lofty"; [540] and the name of the mythical ancestor of the Shemites is at bottom a God-name, just as are those of Noach, Abram, Jacob, and Isra-el. It may also, it appears, have had the significance of "red-shining." [541] And, last but not least, the same vocable also has the significance of "name," so that the Semites or sons of S(h)em were also "the men with names" [542]; and the Hebrew "Shem hemmaphorash" or Tetragrammaton was the name of four letters (IEUE = Yahweh) or "the peculiar name." [543] Lenormant declares [544] that this last tenet came from Chaldea, where "they considered the divine name, the Shem, as endowed with properties so special and individual that they succeeded in making of it a distinct person." But this idea of the sacredness of the God-name was one of the most prevalent of ancient religious notions. It was still devoutly held by the Christian Origen, who argued [545] that the Hebrew divine names must be held to because they alone were potent to conjure with. It appears in the Judaic Teaching of the Twelve Apostles in its Christianised form (c. x), in the passage of thanksgiving beginning, "We thank thee, holy Father, for thy holy name, which thou hast made to dwell in our hearts." In the Jewish Sepher Toledoth Jeschu, Jesus is made to do his magic works by virtue of the "Shem hemmaphorash," the Tetragrammaton, of which he has furtively possessed himself. Thus could an ancient God-name retain its mysterious prestige even after the mystery-mongers (reversing the process imagined by Lenormant) had taken the name-quality out of it, and left only the word for "name." In other ways it clung to the Jewish cult. It is highly probable that the pre-eminent Jewish prayer, the "Shema" (or the "Shemoneh Esreh"), of which the name is explained away into insignificance, is an extremely ancient prayer to the Sun-God. [546] Even this is sought to be connected with a historical "Simon." [547] And all the while the original God Sem survives in the Jewish mythology as "Shamma-el," the Prince of Demons and angel of death, who has power over all peoples except the Jews; [548] and at the same time in the legend of Samu-el, the unshorn, the child of the heretofore sterile mother (vexed by her rival as Rachel by Leah), the potentate who makes and unmakes kings, and who is called up as a "God" [549] from the earth by incantation.

But all this connects decisively with Samaria. It is not improbable that the name Samaria itself was derived from the name of the Sun-God, it being very much more likely that the mountain would be named from the God who was worshipped on it than from a man Shemer. [550] The last is obviously a worthless gloss. A reasonable alternative view is that as the God-name Asshur is identified with the name of the Assyrian country and people, whether giving or following their race-name, so the Semitic God-name Shem is bound up with the name Samaria, as that of Athênê with Athens. It is at all events clear that, as is claimed by Volkmar, [551] Sem or Simon was the chief God of the Samaritans. They declared to Antiochus, according to Josephus, [552] that their temple on Mount Gerizim had no name, but was that of "the greatest God"; and this squares with the other evidence, whether or not it be true that they offered, as Josephus states, to dedicate the temple to Zeus of the Hellenes. For, S(h)em being "the high," Sem-on would be the Great High One or Greatest God, just as Êl Êlyon was the great Êl, the Great Power, Greatest of Powers. And as Sem-on was also the Great Name, the God was in that sense without a name, which circumstance is the explanation of the otherwise pointless phrase of the Johannine Jesus (John iv, 22) to the Samaritan woman, "Ye worship that which ye know not what." And all the ideas converge in the phrases in the Acts (viii, 9-10), that Simon claimed to be "some great one" (heauton megan) and was spoken of as "that power of God which is called Great." In fine, Simon Magus, the Mage, is just a version of Simon Megas, Great Simon.

We know from their version of the Pentateuch that the later Samaritans, being strong "monotheists" in one of the senses of that elastic and misleading term, sought always to substitute angels for Elohim in the old narratives of divine action (e. g. Gen. iii, 5; v, 1; v, 24; xvii, 22), "lest a corporeal existence should be attributed to the Deity." [553] And it is instructive to note how their theological drift exhibits itself in early Christism. The doctrine of the "Logos" is not merely Alexandrian-Christian, it is Judaic. Some of the Aramaic paraphrasts of the Old Testament at times wrote "the Word of Jehovah" instead of the angel of Jehovah, sometimes the "She-kin-ah," which means "the abode of the Word of Jehovah." [554] On the other hand, we know from the Gospel of Peter that one of the early Christian sects regarded Jesus as having received his dynamis, his power, at baptism, and yielded it up at crucifixion. Here we are close to Samaritanism, in which the angels were regarded [555] as "uncreated influences proceeding from God (dynameis, powers)," pretty much as Simon is described in the Acts. Thus "Simon" for the Samaritans would just be "Êl," which the Samaritan Justin, like the writer of "Peter," held to mean "Power." And at the same time, be it observed, Simon was "the Word."

But still the proof abounds. In Lucian's account of the Syrian Goddess we are told [556] that in the temple at Byblos there was a statue, apparently epicene or double-sexed, called by some Dionysos, by others Deucalion, and by others Semiramis, but to which the Syrians gave no specific name, calling it only Semeion, a word which in Greek properly means "sign," but may mean image. There can be little doubt that Movers [557] was right in surmising this statue to be just the primordial Sem or Sem-on, the Great Sem of the Semitic race. The two-sexed character is in perfect keeping with the ideal duality of the old Assyrian Nature-Gods; [558] and the peculiar detail of the name which was not a name brings us again to the Sem-on of the Samaritans.

Everything in the Christian legend falls in with this identification. The Fathers [559] tell us of one Helen, a prostitute from Tyre, with whom Simon went about, and whom he gave out to be a reincarnation of Helen of Troy, and also his "Thought." Helen is almost unquestionably, as Baur [560] surmised, the Selene or Luna of the old sun-cultus. In the paragraph following his account of the Semeion, Lucian tells us that in the forepart of the same temple stands the throne of Helios, but without a statue; Helios and Selene, the sun and moon, being the only divinities not sculptured in the temple--though he goes on to mention that behind the throne is a statue of a clothed and bearded Apollo, quite different from the Greek form. Here, again, we have a mystic conception of the Sun-God, a conception necessarily confusing to ordinary visitors, even supposing the priests themselves to have had any consistent ideas about it; and the fact [561] that the temple further contained among other statues one of Helena (herself an old Moon-Goddess), gave ample opportunity for the usual mythological variants. Thus it came about that while Justin and Irenæus connect Simon Magus with Helen, Irenæus says the Simonians have "an image of Simon in the likeness of Jupiter, and of Helen in that of Minerva"--a curious statement, which at once recalls that of Lucian [562] that the Hêrê of the temple of Byblos "has something of Athênê and Aphrodite, of Selene and Rhea, of Artemis, of Nemesis, and of the Parcæ." This again squares with the fact that in the Chaldeo-Babylonian system Samas was associated with the goddess Gula, "triform as personating the moon, and sometimes replaced by a group of three spouses of equal rank, Malkit, Gula, and Anunit." [563] And in the Latin translation by Rufinus of the pseudo-Clementine "Recognitions," for Helena we actually have Luna.

The chain is complete. We are dealing not with a historic person or persons, but with an ancient cult, which Christian ignorance and Judaic "monotheism" between them strove to reduce somehow to a historical narrative, as the myths of Abraham and Samson and Israel and Elijah and a dozen others had been reduced, as the mythic ritual had been in the gospels, and as indeed the rituals of Paganism had been in the current pagan mythologies. There was no Samaritan Simon the Mage, who met a Christian Peter; it was not a preaching Simon who taught of himself, but the Samaritan populace who traditionally believed of their God Sem or Simon, that "he appeared among the Jews as the Son, while in Samaria he descended as the Father, and in the rest of the nations he came as the Holy Spirit." [564] The parallel holds down to the last jot. The Semeion of the temple of Byblos had a dove on his head, [565] and there are abundant Jewish charges as to the worship of a dove by the Samaritans at Mount Gerizim; [566] so that Simon was the Logos receiving the Holy Spirit, the dynamis, just as Jesus did in the Gospels; and the Christists' doctrine that the Holy Spirit should be given to the nations is simply an adaptation of the Samaritan syncretism, which they sought to override by a syncretism of their own in their latest gospel, where it comes out that their Galilean Jesus was called a Samaritan by Jews, [567] a charge which curiously enough he does not dispute, denying only that he has "a daimon." This is exactly the myth of Simon turned into a story of an incarnate Messiah, who affirms his reality. [568] Well might the Fathers call their imaginary "Simon" the Father of all heresies. He was the "Father" in a sense of their own creed, as well as of all the Gnosticisms into which it broke.

II

What hinders ordinary students from accepting Baur's view of the "Clementine" Simon, which we have here sought to support, is the existence of the fragments of writings attributed to Simon, together with the circumstantialities of the story in the Acts and the Fathers. But these circumstantialities are just the marks of all the ancient myths, Jewish, Christian, and Gentile; and the attribution of writings to Simon Magus no more proves his historical existence than the same process proves the historical existence of Orpheus and Moses. [569] The fragments and paraphrases preserved by the Fathers are just part of the mass of ancient Occultism; and their connection with the name of Simon the Mage is merely a variation of the Jewish myth which attributes the authorship of the Zohar to Simon Ben Jochaï, a mythical or mythicised personage if ever there was one. He is fabled to have lived in a cave for twelve years, studying the Cabbala, during which time he was visited by Elias. At his death fire was seen in the cave, and a voice from heaven was heard saying, "Come ye to the marriage of Simon Ben Jochaï: he is entering into peace, and shall rest in his chamber." At his burial there was heard a voice crying, "This is he who caused the earth to quake and the kingdoms to shake." [570] Simon is said to have belonged to the first century of the Christian era; while the Zohar is held to have been composed in the 13th century. [571] In all probability the matter of the Zohar is largely ancient; and the association of it (as of the Shema or Shemoneh Esreh prayer) with the name Simon points distinctly to a traditional vogue of the name in Semitic Gnosticism. But there is no more reason to believe that an actual Simon composed the Zohar, or the "Great Denial" (perhaps = antinomy) attributed to Simon the Mage, than to believe in the above stories of the voices from heaven and those of the miracles of the Mage in the Acts. The Talmudic legends clearly point to a sun myth, bringing Simon into connection with Elias, Eli-jah, an unquestionable Sun-God, who combines the names El and Jah, though reduced by the Judaic Evemerising monotheists to the rank of a judge-prophet, as was Samu-el, and as Sams-on was made a "judge." It lay in the essence of ancient religiosity to do this, and at the same time to seek to father all its documents on sacrosanct names. That a real Samaritan Simon of the first century should write a new occultist book and publish it as his own, is contrary to the whole spirit of the time. Only centuries after the period of its composition could such a book be attributed to an ordinary human author by those who accepted it. If it was current in the first century, it must have been either fathered on an ancient and mythical Simon or regarded as a book of the mysteries of the God Simon. The opinions or statements of the Christian Fathers concerning it are quite worthless save as embodying a name-tradition.

III

There remains to be considered the theory of the Tübingen school that the Christian legend of Simon Magus is to be found in its earliest form in the "Clementines," that body of early sectarian forged literature which has been made to yield so much light as to the early history of the Christist Church. Here, in a set of writings ("Recognitions" and "Homilies," of which books one is a redaction of the other), purporting to be by Clement of Rome, we have a propaganda that is on the face of it strongly Petrine, and that turns out on analysis to be strongly anti-Pauline, though the gist of the matter is a series of disputations between Peter and Simon the Mage. It is impossible at present to settle what was the first form of these documents, which as they stand bear marks of the third century, and survive only in the Latin translation of Rufinus (d. 410); but it is plain that they preserve elements of the early Ebionitic or Judæo-Christian opposition to the Gentile Christism of Paul. The Tübingen theory is that under the name of Simon Magus Paul is attacked throughout. This, at first sight, certainly seems a fantastic thesis; but an examination of the matter shows that it is very strongly founded. A leading feature in the conduct of Simon Magus in the Clementines, as in the Acts, is his attempt to purchase apostleship with money. Now, this corresponds very closely with the act of Paul in bringing to Jerusalem a subsidy from the Western churches, an act which, on the part of one not recognised as an apostle, and exhibited in the Epistles as always on jealous terms [572] with the Jerusalem apostles, would naturally rank as an attempt to purchase the Holy Ghost with lucre. Again, Simon Magus in the Clementines claims to rest his authority on divine visions, which is exactly the position of Paul; [573] and Peter denies that visions have such authority. Once recognise the primary strife between Judaising and Gentilising Christians, of which there are so many traces in New Testament and Patristic literature, and it is easy to see that these are the very points on which the anti-Paulinists would most bitterly oppose Paul and his movement. In the Clementines, Peter not only opposes the Magus in Palestine, but follows him to Rome, thus carrying the antagonism between the two sects over the whole theoretic field. The fact that both Simon Peter and Simon Magus, Cephas and Paul, are made to journey from East to West, and to die in the West, like the immemorial Sun-God, is suggestive.

That the Judaists should give Paul a symbolical name, again, was quite in keeping with the usual dialectic of the time, in which Rome, for instance, figured as "Babylon," the typical great hostile city of Jewish remembrance. Just as Babylon symbolised heathen oppression, Samaria typified heathen heresy, the divergence from the Jewish cult in a heathen direction. Such divergence was the Judaist gravamen against Paul, who broke away from the law; and as Simon, Semo, typified Samaritan heresy in general, it was peculiarly suited to the arch-heretic who sought to overthrow the supreme privilege of Jerusalem. Simon was the Samaritan "false Christ," and Paul's preaching falsified the Judaic Christ. [574] And nothing is more remarkable in the matter than the way in which the plainly patched-up reconciliatory narrative of the Acts squares with this theory. The book of Acts is explicable only on the hypothesis that it was designed, in its final form, to reconcile the long-opposed sects by reconciling Peter and Paul in a quasi-historical narrative. The narrative plainly clashes with Paul's alleged Epistles. For the rest, it is managed largely on the plan of duplicating the exploits of the two heroes, so that Paul confutes Elymas as Peter does Simon, and closely duplicates one of Peter's miracles. [575] Some legends were in existence to start with, and others were invented to match them. Similarly the dispute between Paul and Barnabas at Antioch was to supersede the strife there between Paul and Peter. [576] If then the composer of the Acts had before him a legend of Peter confuting Simon the Mage, it would suit him to retain it, since thus would he best dissociate the Mage from Paul. But, as Zeller points out, he is careful, first of all, to place the story of the Mage before Paul's conversion; and at the same time he shows he knows the original significance of the charge against Simon Magus as to offering money, by ignoring the most important of Paul's subsidies. [577]

The application of a great mass of the polemic against Simon Magus in the Clementines is so obvious that the evasion of the problem by Harnack and Salmon and others on futile pleas of "false appearances" and "common-sense" is simply a confession of defeat. Baur's case, after being dismissed on pretexts of "common-sense" by those who could not meet it, is irresistibly restated by Schmiedel, on a full survey of its development by Lipsius and others. The only solution is, that the Clementines adapt for new purposes a mass of old anti-Pauline matter. At the time at which they were redacted, Paul had been established as a "catholic" figure; and there could be no such hatred to him as breathes through the fierce impeachments of the teaching of the Paulines in the Recognitions and Homilies. For it is at the Epistles that the bulk of the attacks are directed. What has been done is to use up, for a new polemic with heretics, a quantity of old anti-Pauline literature in which the disguising of Paul under the name of Simon Magus probably blinded the redactors to its purpose. For them Simon was simply the arch-heretic, and it was against his detested memory and persisting influence that they operated.

The theory is no doubt a complicated one; but when taken in its full extent, as recognising the addition of the heresy of the Gnostic Paulinist Marcion to that of Paul, it is perfectly consistent with the documents; and there is really no other view worth discussing, as regards the connection of Simon Magus with Peter. The orthodox belief that Simon was an actual Samaritan who suddenly persuaded the people of Samaria to regard him as a divine incarnation, as told in the Acts, will not explain the mass of identities in the Clementines between the teaching ascribed to him and the actual Pauline Epistles. In explaining the choice of the name Simon for Paul by his Judaic antagonists, the myth-theory is far more helpful than the view of Simon's historicity. A "false God" Simon, the God of the typically misbelieving Samaritans, would be by Jews reduced to human status as a matter of course, unless he were simply classed as a "daimon." A "Simon the Mage" was for them just the type they wanted wherewith to identify Paul, the new False Teacher. To identify, on the other hand, a contemporary or lately deceased Paul with a contemporary or lately deceased Simon would be an idle device, missing the end in view. The name of such a Simon would for purposes of aspersion be worth little or nothing. The name had to be a widely and long notorious one, and the myth supplied it.

IV

In conclusion, let it be noted that the bearing of the myth of Simon Magus on Christianity is not limited to the explanation of the Samaritan origins and the elucidation of the Paul-and-Peter antagonism. The more the matter is looked into, the more reason is seen for surmising that Samaria played a large part in the beginnings of the Christian system. Samaria seems to have been beyond all other parts of Palestine a crucible in which manifold cult-elements tended to be fused by syncretic ideas; and the extent to which Samaria figures in the fourth gospel is a phenomenon not yet adequately explained. The fact that Jesus is there said to have been called a Samaritan reminds us that among the movements of the "false Christs" so often alluded to in the Gospels [578] a Samaritan cult of the mystic Christ may have counted for much. The fourth gospel itself would come under the anti-Pauline ban, inasmuch as, while Simon Magus is said to have sought to substitute Mount Gerizim for Jerusalem, Jesus here [579] is made to set aside both the Samaritan mountain and Jerusalem. The very fact that the Samaritan woman professedly expects the coming of Messiah, is a hint that the story of the well and the living water may be of Samaritan Messianic origin. Nay more, since we know that the Samaritans in particular laid stress on the Messiah Ben Joseph rather than on the Messiah Ben David, they regarding themselves as of Josephite descent, it is probable that the very legend of Jesus being the putative son of one Joseph, which we know was absent from the Ebionite version of Matthew, was framed to meet the Samaritan view. These matters are still far from having been exhaustively considered.

NOTES

[1] The charge of haste is posited as a preliminary to criticism by the Rev. Dr. Thorburn in his work on The Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels. Some examples of Dr. Thorburn's own haste will be found in the following pages.

[2] Twenty years ago a French scholar gently included me in this reproach.

[3] I omit personalities.

[4] Art. by H. G. Wood in The Cambridge Magazine, Jan. 1917.

[5] Cp. H.J. 128-139.

[6] In the course of a second attack, the critic avows that he knows of "no theory of gospel-origins, living or dead," which concedes that the tragedy-story was added to the gospels as a separate block. Reminded that the school of B. Weiss make their "Primitive Gospel" end before the tragedy, he replies in a third attack that that school is "obsolete"--i. e. neither living nor dead?

[7] It seems to have been the view of Mr. Cassels.

[8] Art. Gospels in Encyc. Bibl., ii, col. 1869.

[9] Ecce Deus, p. 93.

[10] Historical Christ, p. 182.

[11] Ecce Deus, pref. p. ix.

[12] Dr. Conybeare, The Historical Christ, p. 5.

[13] H.J. 112, 113, 128, 157 sq., 177 sq.

[14] Hist. of Greece, 10 vol. ed. 1888, ii, 462.

[15] Id. p. 500.

[16] Gesch. des Alterthums, ii (1893), 649. See the context for the historic basis in general.

[17] Id. 427, 564.

[18] Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 2nd ed. p. 91. Cp. 93 sq.

[19] Id. p. 100. Cp. 106-7, 123.

[20] Id. p. 105. Cp. 109.

[21] P.C. 274 sq. A proselytizing Catholic Professor in Glasgow has represented me as denying the historicity of Apollonius, having reached that opinion by intuition.

[22] The Bhagavat Gîta, which glorifies Krishna, is late relatively to the cult.

[23] Cp. Gunkel, Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des N.T., 1903, p. 5 sq.

[24] Apropos d'histoire des religions, p. 290.

[25] Jesus, by William Renton. Pub. by author, Keswick, 1879.

[26] Rep. by R.P.A. 1907.

[27] The Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels, 1916.

[28] E. g. He takes as applying to Jesus (p. 377) a remark applied expressly and solely to the myth of Herakles.

[29] Work cited, p. 10.

[30] Second Leben Jesu, § 91 (3te Aufl. p. 569).

[31] See refs. in Drews, The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, Eng. trans. p. 23.

[32] As cited, p. 572.

[33] Jesus and Israel, Eng. tr., pp. viii, ix, 29.

[34] Putnams, 1912. I had not met with this work when I chose my own title, The Historical Jesus, else I should have framed another.

[35] Work cited, pp. 335-353.

[36] Williams and Norgate, 1895.

[37] Work cited, p. 420.

[38] Id. p. 17, etc.

[39] The Historic Jesus, p. vii.

[40] In this connection he puts the theory--derived from the celebrated Herr Chamberlain--that Jesus was not a Jew but an "Amorite."

[41] H.J. chs. xvii and xix.

[42] H.J. 199. On this compare The Four Gospels as Historical Records, chs. vi-xiii.

[43] Canon Cheetham, Hulsean Lectures on The Mysteries, 1897, p. 115.

[44] "The primitive idea of the sacrificial meal, namely, that it is by participation in the blood of the god that the spirit of the god enters into his worshipper."--Prof. Jevons, Introd. to the Hist. of Religion, 1896, p. 291. "Originally the death of the god was nothing else than the death of the theanthropic victim."--Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 1889, p. 394.

[45] Jésus et la tradition évangélique, 1910, p. 106.

[46] H.J. 202-3.

[47] Loisy, p. 171.

[48] See refs. in H.J. 171; others in G.B. ix. 420 n. An overwhelming case for the reading "Jesus (the) Barabbas" is established by E. B. Nicholson, The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 1879, pp. 141-2.

[49] Mr. Lester translates "Son of a Teacher," but this (adopted by Brandt) is an evasive rendering. He thinks the story, even if true, had no connection with the condemnation of Jesus.

[50] Cp. Nicholson, as cited, p. 142.

[51] G.B. ix, 418; P.C. 146.

[52] G.B. ix, 419.

[53] Id. iv, ch. vi; P.C. 124.

[54] P.C. 152, 64; G.B. iv (Pt. III, The Dying God), 170 sq.

[55] P.C. 161. Cp. Turner, Samoa, 1884, 274-5; G.B. iv, ch. vi.

[56] P.C. 137, 161, 186; G.B. iv (Pt. III), 166.

[57] Macrobius, Saturnalia, i, 7. Cp. Varro, cit. by Lactantius, Div. Inst. i, 21.

[58] G.B. iv, 14 sq., 46 sq., x, 1 sq.

[59] Cp. Ward's View of the Religion of the Hindoos, 5th ed. 1863, p. 92.

[60] See P.C. 105 sq. as to the various motives of human sacrifice.

[61] Livy, viii, 9, 10; Lafcadio Hearn, Japan, 166; P.C., 138.

[62] Cp. Kalisch, Comm. on Leviticus, 1867, i, 366; P.C. 121.

[63] Robertson Smith, Semites, 391; F. B. Jevons, Introd. to Hist. of Religion, pp. 274-93.

[64] P.C. 363.

[65] Id. 108 sq.

[66] Cp. G.B. Pt. III, The Dying God (vol. iv), 166 n., 214 sq.; P.C. 116-117, 140.

[67] P.C. 364-8.

[68] Cp. Kalisch, as cited; G.B., as last cited; Ps. 106, etc.

[69] P.C. 158 sq. Hebrews, ix, 7, 25, suggests a cryptic meaning for the sacrifice of atonement.

[70] As to Hebrew private sacraments, see P.C. 168 sq.

[71] P.C. 166. I do not find that Mr. R. T. Herford deals with this matter in his valuable work on Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, 1903.

[72] See below, p. 104, as to the inferrible early forms of the propaganda of the crucifixion.

[73] Mr. Joseph McCabe (Sources of Gospel Morality, p. 21) argues against the myth-theory that the early Rabbis never question the historicity of Jesus. But it is extremely likely that early Rabbis did use the Barabbas argument before the gospel story was framed. In an age destitute of historical literature and of critical method or practice, it sufficed to turn their flank.

[74] C.M. 352, § 21, and refs. A fair "biographical" inference would be that the betrayed Jesus had been an obscure person, not publicly known. This inference, however, is never drawn.

[75] Ward's View of the Religion of the Hindoos, 5th ed. 1863, p. 91.

[76] Cp. Prof. Drews, The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, Eng. tr. p. 54 sq., for Niemojewski's theory that Pilate = the constellation Orion, pilatus, the javelin-bearer. This theory is not endorsed by Drews.

[77] P.C. 137.

[78] G.B. ix, 412 sq.

[79] G.B. ix, 415, note.

[80] Justin Martyr, Dial. with Trypho, c. 40.

[81] G.B. ix, 357 sq.

[82] P.C. 146; G.B. ix, 359.

[83] Second Leben Jesu, § 83.

[84] Die evang. Geschichte, p. 156.

[85] G.B. Pt. III (vol. iv), 113-114.

[86] "Upon an ass and [even in R.V.] upon a colt, the foal of an ass," Zech. ix, 9. I should explain that in denying that such "tautologies" were normal in the Old Testament I had in view narrative passages.

[87] C.M. 338-341.

[88] Gen. xlix, 11.

[89] The Historical Christ, p. 22.

[90] See p. 19, note, ref. to M. Durkheim. M. Durkheim is one of the greatest of anthropologists; he is not a mythologist at all.

[91] C.M. 340.

[92] Id. 341.

[93] Id. 218, note.

[94] Work cited, p. 14.

[95] Id. p. 76.

[96] See his Myth, Magic, and Morals, 2nd ed. p. 302.

[97] Comm. in Joh. x, 16, cited by Strauss. See his first Life of Jesus, Pt. II, ch. vii, § 88, for the views of the commentators on the episode.

[98] G.B. ix, 417.

[99] Cultes, mythes, et religions, i, 338.

[100] In John, the high priest is actually made to remonstrate from a Jewish point of view, by way of enforcing the Christian conclusion.

[101] Jésus et la tradition, p. 76.

[102] There might be involved, again, a reminiscence of the crucifixion of the last independent king of the Jews, Antigonus, by Mark Antony. C.M. 364.

[103] C.M. 365.

[104] P.C. 130 sq., 363. Cp. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 391; Greenidge, Roman Public Life, p. 55, citing Pliny, H.N. xviii, iii, 12.

[105] Apology and Acts of Apollonius, etc., ed. by F. C. Conybeare, 1894, p. 270. Here Dr. Conybeare momentarily appears as a myth-theorist.

[106] Id. p. 258.

[107] P.C. 115.

[108] The Christ Myth, Eng. trans. pp. 65-68.

[109] Cp. Cheyne, Introd. to Isaiah, 1895, pp. 304-5, as to Ewald's theory that Jeremiah may have been meant.

[110] So to be estimated whether he be "the" Deutero-Isaiah or a song-writer whose work has been incorporated. Cp. Cheyne, as cited, and his art. Isaiah in Encyc. Bib.

[111] The terms "Christists" and "Jesuists" are, it need hardly be said, used for the sake of exactitude. The term "early Christians" would often convey a different and misleading idea. There were Jesuists and Christists before the "Christian" movement arose. Dr. Conybeare pronounces such terms "jargon" (Histor. Christ, p. 94). In the next line he illustrates the delicacy of his own academic taste by the terms "tag-rag and bobtail." Such slang abounds in his book, and this particular phrase recurs (p. 183).

[112] It is interesting to note that in the Gospel of Peter one of the malefactors is represented as speaking to the Jews in defence of Jesus, whereupon they break his legs in vengeance.

[113] Ex. xii, 46; Num. ix, 12. Cp. Ps. xxxiv, 20.

[114] P.C. 113, 155.

[115] Granum turis in poculo vini, ut alienetur mens ejus. Talmud, tract. Sanhedrin.

[116] Vinegar in the Alexandrian Codex.

[117] C.M. 367.

[118] John xi, 50.

[119] See the whole question minutely discussed in Strauss, Pt. III, ch. iv, § 134.

[120] Zech. xii, 10.

[121] P.C. 125-6.

[122] Ps. xxii, 18. The citation in Mt. xxvii, 35 (omitted in R.V.) is a late interpolation, found in the Codex Sangallensis.

[123] C.M. 380.

[124] C.M. 364.

[125] C.M. 369 sq.; P.C. 150 sq.

[126] P.C. 319.

[127] P.C. 151, 368, note.

[128] P.C. 113, top. The preceding hypothesis with regard to the Meriah post is an error. Mr. H. G. Wood informs me he has learned from the Museum authorities at Madras that the apparent cross-bar was really a projection, representing the head of an elephant, to the trunk of which the victim was tied.

[129] P.C. App. A.

[130] C.M. 376.

[131] P.C. 196.

[132] Gal. iii, 1.

[133] vi, 17.

[134] De Dea Syria, 59.

[135] C.M. 373.

[136] P.C. 371.

[137] P.C. 157.

[138] C.M. 375.

[139] Id. 377.

[140] P.C. 166. Cp. Drews, Christ Myth, 42.

[141] Judge T. L. Strange, Contributions, etc., 1881. "The Portraiture and Mission of Jesus," p. 6.

[142] Cp. Charles, introd. to The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 1908, p. xvi, as to John Hyrcanus.

[143] Cp. Charles, The Apocalypse of Baruch, 1896, pp. 52-53, notes. The Messiah, in the view there discussed, was to have been "concealed"--another cue for the evangelists.

[144] H.J. 153 sq.

[145] P.C. 304-6, 316-18; C.M. 331 and note.

[146] Conybeare, Historical Christ, p. 19.

[147] Col. Conder, The City of Jerusalem, 1909, p. 3, citing Rix.

[148] Id. p. 9.

[149] Id. p. 10; Eusebius, Life of Constantine, iii, 42.

[150] Conder, p. 13.

[151] Walter Menzies, Notes of a Holiday Excursion, 1897, p. 89.

[152] Work cited, pp. 154-5.

[153] Id. p. 156.

[154] Id. p. 140.

[155] "Il est à supposer," are M. Loisy's words. Jésus et la trad. évang., p. 107.

[156] Myth, Magic, and Morals, 2nd edit. p. 297.

[157] G.B. iv, 56. Cp. 154.

[158] 1 Cor. x, 21. I say "Paul" as I say "Matthew" or "John," for brevity's sake, not at all as accepting the ascriptions of the books. Van Manen's thesis that all the Epistles of "Paul" are pseudepigraphic is probably very near the truth.

[159] The retention of "devils" in the Revised Version, with "Gr. demons" only in the margin, is an abuse. For the Greeks, there were good daimons as well as bad; and "demon" is not the real equivalent of "daimon."

[160] C.M. 179, note.

[161] Cp. Athenæus, vi, 26-27; Schömann, Griechische Alterthümer, 3te Aufl. ii, 418-19; Foucart, Des associations religieuses, 50-52; Miss Harrison, Themis, p. 154; Menzies, History of Religion, p. 292.

[162] P.C. 194 sq., 306; C.M. 381, note.

[163] G.B. ix, 374 sq.

[164] On the points enumerated under heads 4-7 see Schürer, Jewish People in the Time of Christ, Eng. tr. Div. II, i, 11-36. In regard to my former specification of such influences (P.C. 204), Dr. Conybeare alleges (p. 49) that I "hint" that the Jesuist mystery-play was performed "in the temples (sic) built by Herod at Damascus and Jericho, and in the theatres of the Greek town at Gadara." This cannot be regarded as one of Dr. Conybeare's hallucinations: it is one of his random falsifications. No "hint" of the kind was ever given. The mystery-play is always represented by me as secretly performed.

[165] Cp. Ezra and Nehemiah.

[166] P.C. 168 sq.

[167] Schürer, as cited, iii, 225.

[168] Thus Dr. Conybeare, constantly. Upon his view, the Essenes can never have existed.

[169] Schürer, as cited, i, 3-4.

[170] Cp. Gunkel, Zum Verständnis des N.T., as cited, p. 20.

[171] The later documentists in such cases substituted an angel; but that was certainly not the early idea. See C.M. 112; Etheridge, Targums on the Pentateuch, i, 1862, p. 5.

[172] Jer. xi, 13.

[173] Ezek. viii, 14.

[174] P.C. 162.

[175] P.C. 321.

[176] E.g. the Biblical accounts of the adoption of Canaanite Gods by Israelites who married Canaanite women.

[177] E.g. the special adoption of Greek deities by Romans, apart from the political practice of enrolling deities of conquered States in the Roman Pantheon.

[178] S.H.F. i, 44-45.

[179] S.H.F. i, 48-49.

[180] C.M. 35, and note.

[181] See many details in C.M., pp. 52-57.

[182] Refs. in P.C. 51, note 6. Dr. Conybeare (pp. 29, 30) meets such conclusions of scholars (Stade, Winckler, Sayce, etc.) by excluding them from his list of "serious Semitic scholars."

[183] Exod. xviii, 12.

[184] Gen. xiv, 18; Ps. cx, 4.

[185] Heb. vii, 3. Cp. v, 6, 10; vii, 11, 17.

[186] P.C. 179.

[187] E.S. 115; Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, p. 291 sq.

[188] Or Jehoshua--the Hebrew name of which Iesous is the Greek equivalent.

[189] P.C. 163.

[190] The miracle of hastening the sun's setting is in Homer (Il. xviii, 239) assigned to Hêrê, the chief Goddess.

[191] P.C. 220.

[192] Josh. v, 13-15 is clearly late. In ch. xxiv the angel is not mentioned.

[193] P.C. 314, 315.

[194] Etheridge, The Targums on the Pentateuch, 1862, p. 5.

[195] The Samaritans have a late book ascribing to him many feats not given in the Jewish records. Concerning this Professor Drews wrote (Christ Myth, p. 57, note):--"The Samaritan Book of Joshua (Chronicon Samaritanum, published 1848) was written in Arabic during the thirteenth century in Egypt, and is based upon an old work compiled in the third century B.C." Dr. Conybeare (Hist. Christ, p. 33) declares the last statement to be "founded on pure ignorance," adding: "and the Encyclopædia Biblica declares it to be a medieval production of no value to anyone except the student of the Samaritan sect under Moslem rule." Be it observed (1) that Dr. Drews had actually described the book as a medieval production; (2), that his whole point was that it was legendary, not historical; and (3) that the Ency. Bib. article, which bears out both propositions, uses no such language as Dr. Conybeare ascribes to it after the word "production," and says nothing whatever on the hypothesis that the book is founded on a compilation of the third century B.C. That hypothesis, framed by Hebraists, is one upon which Dr. Conybeare has not the slightest right to an opinion. Dr. A. E. Cowley, in the Encyc. Brit., describes the book as derived from "sources of various dates." That being so, Dr. Conybeare, who as usual has wholly failed to understand what he is attacking, has never touched the position, which is that Joshua legends so flourished among the Samaritans that they are preserved in a medieval book--unless he means to allege that the legends are of medieval invention, a proposition which, indeed, would fitly consummate his excursion.

[196] Yeho-shua = "Yah [or Yeho] is welfare."

[197] Cp. Josh. v, 2-10.

[198] Canon Charles, The Book of Jubilees, 1902, p. 9, note 29.

[199] This thesis was substantially put by me in the first edition of Pagan Christs (1903). Dr. Conybeare, who appears incapable of accuracy in such matters, ascribes the Joshua theory (Hist. Christ, pp. 32, 35) and the special hypothesis that Joshua was mythically the son of Miriam, to Professor Smith, who never broached either. His pretext is a passage in the preface to the second edition of Christianity and Mythology, which he perverts in defiance of the context. On this basis he proceeds to charge "imitation." Aspersion in Dr. Conybeare's polemic is usually thus independent of fact.

[200] Historical Christ, p. 17.

[201] Id. pp. 8-9.

[202] Neither is it put by Prof. Drews, who merely cites (above, p. 41, note) from Niemojewski, without endorsing it, an "astral" theory of Jesus and Pilate. Dr. Conybeare appears incapable of giving a true account of anything he antagonizes, whether in politics or in religion. Elsewhere Drews speaks of astral elements in the Christ story; but so do those adherents of the biographical school who recognize the zodiacal source of the Woman-and-Child myth in Revelation.

[203] At another point (p. 87, note) Dr. Conybeare triumphantly cites Winckler as saying that "the humanization of the Joshua myth was complete when the book of Joshua was compiled." This grants the whole case. "Humanization" tells of previous deity; and just as Achilles remained a God after being presented in the Iliad, Joshua was "human" only for those whose sole lore concerning him was that of the Hexateuch.

[204] Der vorchristliche Jesus, p. 1 sq.

[205] Mk. v, 27; Lk. xxiv, 19; Acts xviii, 25; xxviii, 31.

[206] Perhaps an exception should be made of Dr. Conybeare, who believes Jesus to have been a "successful exorcist" (M.M.M. p. 142). This writer sees no difficulty in the fact that in Mark Jesus is no exorcist at Nazareth, and refuses to work wonders.

[207] P.C. 164.

[208] Rev. xxi, 14.

[209] iv, 4.

[210] Cp. ii, 9; iii, 9.

[211] iii, 14, 15; xix, 13.

[212] Origins of Christianity, ed. 1914, p. 27.

[213] Found in the Alexandrian and Vatican codices, and preferred by Lachmann, Tregelles, and Westcott and Hort.

[214] to deuteron. The R.V. puts "afterward" in the text, with "Gr. the second time" in the margin. Mr. Whittaker reads "afterward" also, after "the second time"--apparently by oversight.

[215] Deane, Pseudepigrapha, 1891, p. 312.

[216] Josh. xxiv, 31, in Septuagint.

[217] C.M. 352.

[218] Art. by H. G. Wood in The Cambridge Magazine, Jan. 20, 1917, p. 216.

[219] P.C. 202.

[220] Cambridge Magazine, Feb. 3, 1917, p. 289.

[221] G.B. v, 45 sq., 223; P.C. 364, 373-4.

[222] P.C. 112 sq., 131 sq., 140, 142, 144, 352, 362-4, 368.

[223] C.M. 354. I find that Volkmar (there cited) had in one of his later works put the theory that the traitor, whom he held to be an invention of the later Paulinists, would be named Juda as typifying Judaism. The myth-theory is not necessarily committed to the whole of this thesis, but the objections of Brandt (Die evang. Gesch. pp. 15-18) seem to me invalid. He always reasons on the presupposition of a central historicity, and argues as if Mark could not have been interpolated at the points where Judas is named.

[224] C.M. 208, notes.

[225] Der vorchristliche Jesus, 1906, Vorwort by Schmiedel, p. vii, and pp. 27-28. Ecce Deus, 1912, pp. 18, 332.

[226] Ecce Deus, pp. 16, 18, 50 sq., 70, 135; Der vorchr. Jesus, p. 40. But see Ecce Deus, pp. 66 and 196, where the thesis is modified.

[227] In the Literary Guide of June, 1913, Professor Smith defends his thesis against another critic. The reader should consult that article.

[228] S.H.C. 33 sq.

[229] Id. 35-36.

[230] On this problem cp. Prof. Smith, Ecce Deus, 251 sq.; and Prof. Drews, Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, Eng. tr. p. 19.

[231] Enoch, xxxviii, 2; liii, 6.

[232] Id. xl, 5, and often.

[233] Id. xlvi, 2, 3, etc.

[234] Id. xlviii, 10; lii, 4.

[235] Id. lxii, 5.

[236] Schodde's introd. p. 51.

[237] Dr. Rendel Harris, Odes of Solomon, 1909, introd. p. 72.

[238] Harris, as cited, pp. 118, 125, 128, etc.

[239] Dr. Harris pronounces that an account in the Odes of the Virgin Birth (xix) must be later than the first century (p. 116). But this begs the question as to the source of that myth.

[240] Apropos d'hist. des religions, p. 272.

[241] Refutation of all Heresies, v, 5 (11).

[242] Cp. Drews, The Christ Myth, p. 54; and 2nd ed. of original, p. 24.

[243] Drews, p. 59; Loisy, p. 273.

[244] C.M. 316 sq.

[245] C.M. 363.

[246] Id. 364.

[247] Hæres. XXX.

[248] S.H.C. 6; C.M. 316.

[249] C.M. 314.

[250] Der vorchristliche Jesus, pp. 42-70; Ecce Deus, pt. vi.

[251] C.M. 314.

[252] Paper on "The Syriac Forms of New Testament Names," in Proc. of the British Academy, vol. v, 1912, pp. 17-18.

[253] C.M. 312. The thesis was put by me twenty-eight years ago.

[254] Der vorchr. Jesus, p. 54 sq.

[255] C.M. 316.

[256] Der vorchr. Jesus, pp. 56, 65.

[257] Cp. Philo Judæus, De Profugis:--"The Divine Word ... existing as the image of God, is the eldest of all things that can be known, placed nearest, and without anything intervening, to him who alone is the self-existent."

[258] Friedländer's thesis that the Minim were early Gnostics seems to be completely upset by Mr. Herford, Christianity in Talmud, p. 368 sq.

[259] Id. pp. 255-266.

[260] The fact that the Talmudic allusions to the Minim include no discussion of the Christist doctrine of the Messiah (Herford, pp. 277, 279) goes to show that a Messianic doctrine had been no part of the early cult, and that among the Jesuists who kept up their connection with Judaism it gathered, or kept, no hold.

[261] Cp. Volkmar, Die Religion Jesu, 1857, p. 287.

[262] Justin, 1 Apol. 26.

[263] Id. ib.

[264] See the whole subject discussed in Appendix B.

[265] C. 120, end.

[266] See H. J. 182.

[267] Ecce Deus, p. 68. In his article in the Literary Guide, June, 1913, Professor Smith argues that only as a protest against idolatry and a crusade for monotheism could Proto-Christianity have succeeded with the Gentiles. But that was simply the line of Judaism, which had no Son-God to cloud its monotheism. Surely Jesuism appealed to the Gentiles primarily as did other Saviour-cults, ultimately distancing these by reason of organization.

[268] Cp. Les Apôtres, p. 107; Saint Paul, pp. 562-3.

[269] Cp. S.H.C. 82.

[270] 19 Antiq. iii, 3.

[271] Ecce Deus, p. 230 sq.

[272] 20 Antiq. xi, 3.

[273] Life, § 2.

[274] XVIII, i, 6.

[275] 20 Antiq. ix, 1.

[276] Ecce Deus, pp. 235-6.

[277] The Jesus of History and the Jesus of Tradition Identified. By George Solomon. Reeves and Turner, 1880.

[278] Here Mr. Solomon, without offering any explanation, identifies Josephus's Jesus son of Sapphias, who was chief magistrate in Tiberias, with Jesus the robber captain of the borders of Ptolemais (§ 22)--a different person. I give his theory as he puts it. (Work cited, pp. 164-179.)

[279] Dr. Conybeare puts it as axiomatic that Jesus always speaks in Mark "as a Jew to Jews." Thus are facts "gross as a mountain, open, palpable," sought to be outfaced by verbiage.

[280] This aspect of the problem seems to be ignored by Erich Haupt (Zum Verständnis des Apostolats im neuen Testament 1896), who finds the choice of the twelve historical.

[281] See the passage in Baring Gould's Lost and Hostile Gospels, 1874, p. 61; and in Herford's Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, 1903, p. 90.

[282] Hibbert Journal, July, 1911, cited by Prof. Smith, Ecce Deus, p. 318.

[283] C.M. 344. For the convenience of the reader I reprint in an Appendix an annotated translation I published in 1891--a revision of that of Messrs. Hitchcock and Brown, compared with a number of others.

[284] Cp. "His Servant Jesus" in Acts iii, 13, 26; iv, 27, 30.

[285] C.M. 415 sq.

[286] Supernatural Religion, R.P.A. rep. p. 153.

[287] See the notes to translation in Appendix.

[288] It goes back to Jeremiah, xxi, 8.

[289] Encyc. Bib. i, 261.

[290] Cp. Prof. A. Seeberg, Die Didache des Judentums und der Urchristenheit, 1908, p. 8; and his previous works, cited by him.

[291] C.M. 344.

[292] A. Seeberg, work cited, p. 1.

[293] Dr. Conybeare nevertheless (Histor. Christ, p. 3) calls it a "characteristically Christian document," in an argument which maintains the early currency and general historicity of Mark.

[294] This thesis was put in C.M. 345. Yet Dr. Conybeare alleges (p. 20) that I represent Jesus as surrounded by twelve disciples solely because of the twelve signs of the zodiac. The latter item is given simply as an explanation of the calling of the twelve on a mountain (412), which Dr. Conybeare finds quite historical.

[295] It was probably about the year 80 that the Jewish authorities framed the formula by which they sought to mark off "the Minim" from the Judaic fold.--Herford, Christianity in Talmud, pp. 135, 385-7.

[296] Mr. Lester (The Historic Jesus, p. 84) argues that the baptism of Jesus by John must be historical, since to invent it would be gratuitously to make him "in a way subordinate to John." But when John is put as the Forerunner, acclaiming the Messiah, where is the subordination?

[297] C.M. 396.

[298] H.J. 135-6.

[299] Encyc. Bib. art. Baptism.

[300] A temporary Messianic Kingdom is set forth about 100 B.C. in the Book of Jubilees (ed. Charles, 1902, introd. p. lxxxvii).

[301] Charles, introd. to the Assumption of Moses, 1897, pp. xiii-xiv, liv.

[302] Id. pp. xi, 41.

[303] Charles, introd. to the Apocalypse of Baruch, 1896, pp. vii-viii.

[304] Id. p. lv, and refs.

[305] See above, p. 117, n.

[306] Above, p. 66.

[307] Cp. Mk. i, 8.

[308] In Hebrews vi, 2, also, baptism appears to be disparaged. But vv. 1-2 are incoherent. Green's translation gives a passable sense: the R.V. does not.

[309] Acts x, 48.

[310] Mt. xxviii, 19. Cp. Mk. xvi, 16.

[311] Testaments, ed. Charles, 1908, pp. xvi, 121.

[312] H.J. ch. vi.

[313] Van Manen, as summarized by Mr. Whittaker, Origins of Christianity, ed. 1914, p. 78, citing Epiphanius, Hær. xxx, 16.

[314] Id. pp. 124-5, 199.

[315] Eusebius, Eccles. Hist. iii, 24.

[316] Cp. Van Manen in Whittaker, p. 182.

[317] E.g. the dating of the rising of Theudas before the "enrolment" of Luke (6 C.E.); whereas Josephus places it about the year 45.

[318] The reference to "Aretas the King" in 2 Cor. xi, 32, one of the few possible clues in the Epistles, yields no certain date, and indeed creates a crux for the historians. See art. Aretas in Encyc. Bib.

[319] Cp. Van Manen, as cited.

[320] H.J. 199-203.

[321] Cp. Schmiedel, art. Gospels in Encyc. Bib. col. 1890.

[322] P.C. 316 n.

[323] P.C. 281.

[324] See S.H.F., chs. iii and v; and cp. Whittaker, Priests, Philosophers, and Prophets, 1911.

[325] P.C. 67 sq.

[326] S.H.F. ch. iv.

[327] First put by M. Maurice Vernes, Du prétendu polythéisme des Hebreux, 1891.

[328] See The Source of the Christian Tradition, by E. Dujardin: Eng. trans. R.P.A., p. 32; and the citations from MM. Vernes and Dujardin in Mr. Whittaker's Priests, Philosophers, and Prophets, 1911, pp. 124-127.

[329] Mr. Whittaker (p. 128) puts the view that Jewish monotheism was really a reduction of the universalist monotheism of the Mesopotamian priesthoods to the purposes of a nationalist God-cult.

[330] S.H.F. i, 44-46.

[331] Even Dean Inge avows that "The distinctive feature of the Jewish religion is not, as is often supposed, its monotheism. Hebrew religion in its golden age was monolatry rather than monotheism; and when Jehovah became more strictly the only God, the cult of intermediate beings came in, and restored a quasi-polytheism."--Art. "St. Paul" in Quarterly Review, Jan. 1914, p. 54.

[332] See, however, the contrary thesis maintained by Dr. A. Causse, Les Prophètes d'Israel et les religions de l'orient, 1913.

[333] Ecce Deus, pp. 71, 75.

[334] Cp. Whittaker, Priests, Philosophers, and Prophets, p. 45.