The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

“If a man could be that, why could not a man or an age conceive that it ought to be? All that can fairly be assumed is, that there must have been an impressive life (or lives) behind all the construction; and this is not denied. But the necessities of the religious life in that time produced Jesus. Why could they not magnify their own product and improve upon it ideally as they developed into new and larger demands? If we are to insist that the idealizing faculty cannot go beyond actuality, no meaning will be left to the word ideal, and no such faculty will remain. This is the irony to which the old belief comes....

“A pure and simple worship of the Infinite and Eternal is the necessity of philosophy; it is the goal of science; it is the true ground of trust and prayer and love, of philosophic Theism and spiritual Pantheism alike; it is the parent of prophets, of mystics, of reformers, of all true builders of man’s social unity and religious communion.”

No reasonable man can doubt that the Christ of Paul and the Gospels is largely, if not altogether, ideal; and in the succeeding chapter we proceed to give more specifically our reasons for thinking so.

CHAPTER XII. JESUS AND OTHER CHRISTS

“Come now, let us reason together.”—Isa. 1:18.

“Let me reason the case with thee.”—Jer. 12: 1.

THAT there should be held so many different views concerning the character and work of Christ is itself a very suggestive circumstance. It implies that the evidence in the case is not direct and clear, and that there are grounds for doubt and uncertainty. That honest, well-meaning men should be left in doubt regarding the most wonderful event in history, involving their salvation, is still more astounding. One would suppose that if so wonderful an event as the incarnation of God had taken place it would have been made so manifest that the most skeptical could not doubt it. There seems to have been great neglect or indifference regarding the matter. Contemporaneous history takes no notice of Jesus, and the biographies that we have of him cannot be shown to have had an existence until nearly two centuries after he is said to have made his advent; and Paul, who had written concerning him before these Gospels were compiled, was so ambiguous that the most learned theologians differ as to whether he regarded the Christ as an actual person or merely an impersonation. The early records of the life of Christ, if any existed, seem to have been destroyed or lost, and there are no original documents nor authenticated copies of such records. There can be no true faith, no genuine intelligent belief, without evidence; and where is the evidence? To believe without some reason for believing is blind credulity. The most intelligent Christian writers do not even pretend to have any documents relating to the existence of Jesus that by any strain of language can be called evidence.

Neander, an eminent Christian writer, author of a Life of Christ, acknowledges in so many words his painful consciousness of the utter lack of historic evidence in regard to him, his acts, and wonderful performances. He demands, as an imperative necessity, to be permitted at the beginning to take the most important matters for granted. He asks: “What, then, is the special presupposition with which we must approach the life of Christ? It is, in a word, the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God in a sense that cannot be predicated of any human being, the truth that Christ is God-man being presupposed.” Neander, by making this confession, surrenders the whole question. There is no direct evidence of the existence of such a person as Jesus of Nazareth, and all fair-minded, intelligent Christian writers admit it. What is called evidence is found only in the short sketches of the New Testament, which have been shown to be no evidence at all.

We might rest the case here. It is admitted that it cannot be proved that Jesus existed, and when we undertake to show to the contrary we undertake to prove a negative—a thing which is never required in a court of justice. Yet we do undertake it, and reverently invite the reader to impartially consider the points in our case.

There is in the biography of Jesus an utter want of originality. It is a copy of other lives. It is a significant fact that all the principal claims made for Jesus of Nazareth had been made for others long before him. We can only mention a few.

The birth of Buddha, like the birth of Jesus, was announced in the heavens by an asterism on the horizon which is singularly called the “Messianic star.” When Chrishna was born his star was pointed out by Nared, a great astronomer.

The birth of every East Indian avatar was announced by celestial signs. Even the Jews have similar traditions regarding Moses and Abraham. Canon Farrar admits in his Life of Christ that the Greeks and Romans always held this idea of the birth and death of great men being presaged by mysterious stars, and Tacitus affirms this regarding the dethronement of Nero. All candid theologians admit that this doctrine of the announcement of the birth of extraordinary persons by the appearance of stars was a universal belief among ancient peoples.

Luke is the only evangelist who records the fact that the birth of Jesus was attended with the songs of angels from the heavenly world, and there is good reason for believing that this professed compiler drew his information from the apocryphal Gospel called “Protevangelion.” But there is nothing novel in this idea, for the same thing had long before been recorded of Chrishna at his birth, that “the quarters of the horizon were irradiate with joy,”… that “the spirits and nymphs of heaven danced and sang, and at midnight the clouds emitted low pleasing sounds and poured down rain of flowers.” It is only necessary here to state that similar demonstrations are alleged to have attended the advent of other Hindoo saviors, and also of Confucius, of Osiris, of Apollonius, of Apollo, of Hercules, and of Esculapius.

It is certainly very singular that all the circumstances connected with the birth of Jesus are recorded of several other persons long before. Chrishna was cradled among shepherds, to whom his birth was first announced, and the prophet Nared visited his father and mother and declared the child to be of divine descent. An aged hermit named Asita, like Simeon of our Gospels, visited the infant Buddha and predicted wonderful things of his life and mission, and wept because he was too old to see the day. Not only was the infant Chrishna adored by the shepherds and magi, but was presented with “gifts of sandal-wood and perfume,” very like “frankincense and myrrh;” and he was also presented with gifts of “costly jewels and precious substances,” very like “gold.” Substantially the same things are recorded of Mithras, the Persian savior, of Socrates, and many of the Grecian and Roman demigods.

It must suffice it to say that these incidents are too numerous and circumstantial to be mere coincidences. King Kansa was jealous of the infant Chrishna, and ordered a general slaughter of the infants under a certain age and in a# certain district, just as Herod is falsely charged with having done when Jesus was born; and as Joseph and Mary were warned in a dream to flee into Egypt to save the young child’s life, so the foster-father of Chrishna was warned of danger by a “heavenly voice,” and he was taken to Mathura; and Canon Farrar, speaking of the sojourn of Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus in Egypt, writes: “Ancient legends say that they remained two years absent from Palestine, and lived at Matarieh, a few miles northeast of Cairo.” This seems to be the same legend, but the one regarding Chrishna is sculptured upon the rocks and temples of India, while contemporary history makes no mention of the slaughter of the innocents by Herod; and further embarrassment arises from the fact that Herod was not king at that time, as the taxing under Quirinus did not take place under the reign of Herod, he having been dead for several years.

It would be easy to present more than a score of instances in which persons who came to be regarded as demigods and heroes had been obliged to flee from the wrath of the reigning monarch at their birth, as is recorded of the infant Jesus. In all centuries of olden times the reigning monarch has generally been jealous of some mysterious child, whose parents or caretakers were obliged to hide him away in some safe resort.

The long fast and temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, found in the Gospel “according” to Matthew, have numerous parallels in the experience of other Messiahs, even in minor details. The fast generally, as in the case of Moses, the Ninevites, and Jesus, lasted forty days, but that of Buddha continued forty-seven days, and in his weakness and attenuation of body he was tempted by Mara, the prince of evil, who promised him all the kingdoms of the earth, “universal empire,” on certain conditions; but, like Jesus, he said, “Avaunt! get thee away from me!” After the temptation and triumph both Buddha and Jesus were ministered unto by visiting angels! Zoroaster, the founder of the Persian religion, had a similar experience with the devil, of which there are fully detailed reports.

Both Chrishna and Jesus were precocious boys, disputing with doctors and astonishing their teachers with their learning, which had not been acquired in the usual way; and both wandered away from their parents and became objects of anxiety and search to anxious mothers. Both preached a celebrated sermon, wrought numerous and very similar miracles, were hated and opposed by the priests of their day, and both suffered premature violent deaths at about the same age, and then arose from the dead.

These parallels might be given to an indefinite extent, as they appear in Asiatic Researches, by Sir William Jones; Upham’s History and Doctrine of Buddhism; Hardy’s Manual of Buddhism; numerous other ancient and modern writings on this subject; and the parallel facts presented by these authorities are admitted by the most distinguished Christian writers not a few.

In regard to miracles it is thought best to say only a passing word.

It is admitted by the ablest theologians of the orthodox schools that miracles are indispensable to establish the claim of a special supernatural revelation, and great reliance is made upon the miracles accredited to the Christian Christ; and yet we find other saviors and heroes credited not only with the same miracles substantially, but with a larger number of even more wonderful miracles. It would be easy to fill a large volume with the alleged miracles of Buddha and Chrishna, and Prof. Max Müller affirms that the Buddhistic miracles “surpass in wonderfulness the miracles of all other religions.” Zoroaster, Buddha, Osiris, Isis, and Horus all wrought miracles, even the raising of the dead; Serapis, Marduk, Bacchus, Esculapius, and Apollonius did the same; and the early Christian Fathers admitted the reality of heathen miracles, but very conveniently attributed them to the devil. In short, it may safely be affirmed that more wonderful and better-authenticated accounts of miracles are given of numerous other persons, both before and after the advent of the Christian Christ, than are given of his miracles in the Gospels.

The Greeks were accustomed to say, “Miracles for fools,” and the Romans shrewdly said, “The common people like to be deceived—deceived let them be;” and even the Christian Father St. Chrysostom declared that “miracles are proper only to excite sluggish and vulgar minds; men of sense have no occasion for them.” The modern theological idea of proving the record by the miracle, and the miracle by the record, has become too transparent for even the most credulous.

There is also great confusion about the time of the birth of Jesus, though the Church in a sort of perfunctory manner settled this by saying he was born December 25, A. D. One. But the Church adopted this date for reasons of an astronomical character. More than one hundred different dates, some extending back nearly a century, have been fixed as to his birth, showing that no one knew anything about it. A blundering notice of his birth assigns its date to the period when Cyrenius was governor of Syria, and makes the enrolment ordered by that official the occasion of Joseph’s temporary sojourn at Bethlehem when that event took place. This enrolment, however, was not made till after the displacement of Archelaus from the kingdom of Judea and some ten years or more after the death of Herod, and the story is accordingly in direct contradiction with the account of the flight of Joseph into Egypt, while Herod was still alive, to preserve the life of his son from that monarch’s jealousy. But what is very significant is the fact that when Cyrenius commanded the enrolment Judas of Galilee arose and denounced it. He established a distinct sect which continued till the overthrow of the Jewish people.

Josephus says: “When Cyrenius had now disposed of Archelaus’s money, and when the taxings were come to a conclusion, which were made in the thirty-seventh year of Caesar’s victory over Antony at Actium,” Antiq. xviii. 2. The battle of Actium, in which Octavianus gained his final victory over Antony, occurred in b. c. 31. Counting thirty-seven years, would bring the date of the taxings down to A. d. 6. Archelaus after reigning ten years was deposed for misconduct, and banished into Gaul. Cyrenius, a Roman senator, had been sent by the government to settle up his finances and take an account of the substance of the Jews, or, in other words, to assess their property in order to apportion their taxes. These things were done in the thirty-seventh year after the battle of Actium, or in 6 A. d. Counting ten years back, we would be at the year 4 b. c., or the year Archelaus began to reign. As Herod of course was dead before Archelaus ascended the throne, he consequently died before Christ was born, and hence the entire story of the slaying of the infants, the journey of the wise men, and the flight into Egypt falls helplessly to the ground.

“But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea, in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee.” Matt. 2:22.

Here we have a strange state of affairs. Joseph and the young child turned from Judea to Galilee when Archelaus was as powerful in the one country as in the other, for his ethnarchy included both!

In reading the first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel we find an inexplicable mystery. The very first verse reads: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Then in the sixteenth verse it is said, “And Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ.” In the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth verses the Holy Ghost is represented as the real Father of Jesus by a virgin; and his miraculous divine descent is elsewhere specifically taught in the Gospels, and the divine Sonship of Jesus has been accepted as a fact by the general Church—Roman Catholic, Greek, and Protestant.

On the other hand, there is proof positive, if the record is accepted, that Jesus claimed for himself simple humanity, and consequent inferiority and subjection to God; and Roman Catholics and orthodox Protestants very conveniently settle these contradictions by affirming that he was both God and man; while Unitarians reject the divinity of Jesus, and by way of apology for so doing magnify his manhood so as to make him quite divine, a human god.

It would be easy to fill volumes with accounts, with very slight variations, of the miraculous conception and birth of divine personages born of virgin mothers, who, after laboring and suffering for the good of men, came to a tragic death, which was generally followed by a triumphant resurrection and subsequent deification. The cases are so numerous that one hardly knows where to begin to enumerate them. It would be easy to furnish a roll containing the names of scores of incarnate deities, and it would be tedious to describe the many things in which they substantially agree.

According to some modern writers, supported by abundant sculptures in temples, caves, and rocks, Vishnu, the second person of the Hindoo trinity, has been incarnated eight or nine times, Buddha being the first, Chrishna the eighth, and Gautama, also called Sakya-Muni, the ninth. The fact that these alleged incarnations took place at uniform intervals show their astronomical origin.

Equally suggestive is the fact that there are so many peculiarities connected with the birth of these gods, and also so many incidents in their lives and deaths absolutely identical.

The name of the mother of Buddha was Maia and the same name was given to the mother of the Greek Mercury and even to later divinities; which, like the name Mary, typifies the sea and sometimes the month of May.

Buddha had no earthly father, but was an immaculate conception of a ray of celestial light through a virgin mother. Chrishna, the eighth Indian incarnation, was born of the left intercostal rib of a virgin. His birth was concealed through fear of the tyrant Kansa. He raised the dead and wrought marvellous miracles, and washed the feet of the Brahmans. It would be tedious to give details, as almost every incident recorded in the Gospels of the life of the alleged Christian incarnation is recorded in circumstantial detail of some ancient pagan deity.

The fact is, that all the great nations of antiquity, and many of the smaller tribes, have had very similar views as to divine manifestations in human flesh; and you need only turn to the pages of any good dictionary of mythology to verify the truth of this allegation.

We might extend these analogies to an indefinite extent. The author of Bible Myths has specified about fifty particulars in which Jesus is said to have resembled Buddha, and as many more particulars in the case of Chrishna. Nobody having any knowledge of the world’s history will doubt that these Indian divinities preceded the Judean Christ by several centuries, as many distinguished writers, like Prof. Max Müller, have admitted.

We challenge the theologians to present one single prominent feature or characteristic said to have been shown in the career of Jesus which did not appear in several other alleged incarnations hundreds of years before. The fact is, that the Christ of modern times is a perfect copy of other Christs who preceded him. Not only are all ancient Oriental scriptures full of incarnated divine saviors, but the same symbols and ceremonies abound in their worship. Take the cross, for an example. In ancient India the cross was as common as in modern Rome, and heathen temples were built in the form of a cross centuries before papists and Puseyites and their liberal imitators ever thought of such a thing. It was a common symbol in the ancient worship of Egypt. It was a Druidic emblem in Britain five hundred years before the introduction of Christianity. Plato, the Grecian philosopher, four hundred or five hundred years before Christ proclaimed the cross to be the best symbol of the divinity next to the supreme. The worshippers of Serapis used it, and Hadrian, the Roman emperor, as late as A. d. 130 mistook them for Christians. The standard portrait of Jesus, so honored by modern Christians, is a copy of the head of Serapis, the well-known sun-god, according to the testimony of Mr. King in his able work, Gnostics and their Remains (p. 68).

The same is true of baptism and the Eucharist, as ceremonies identical with these, in their main aspects, existed among the ancient pagans. The “Lord’s Supper” virtually was in use more than two hundred and fifty years before Christ. Wherever Christian missionaries have gone they have found substantially the same dogmas and religious observances, and Tertullian, a Christian Father of the second century, conveniently explained this fact by saying that the devil had taught the heathen these same things to forestall the preaching of the missionaries.

And yet Justin Martyr in the second century (a. d. 140), in defending the Christian religion against the assaults of pagans, said: “For declaring that the Logos, the first-begotten Son of God, our Master Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin without any human mixture, and to be crucified and dead and to have arisen again into heaven, we say no more in this than what you say of those whom you style the sons of Jove.” Here is a distinct admission in the second century, from one in high authority, that the doctrine of the death and resurrection of miraculously-incarnated deities born of virgin mothers was well known among pagans before the Christian era.

But we are not done with Justin Martyr yet. In his Apology to the emperor Hadrian he makes this most astonishing admission: “In saying that all things were made in this beautiful order by God, what do we seem to say more than Plato? When we teach a general conflagration, what do we teach more than the Stoics? By opposing the worship of the works of men's hands we concur with Menander the comedian.... For you need not be told what a parcel of sons the writers most in vogue among you assign to Jove; there's Mercury, Jove's interpreter, in imitation of the Logos, in worship among you. There's Æsculapius, the physician, smitten by a thunderbolt, and after that ascending into heaven. There's Bacchus, torn to pieces; and Hercules, burnt to get rid of his pains. There's Pollux and Castor, the sons of Jove by Leda, and Perseus by Danæ; and, not to mention others, I would fain know why you always deify the departed emperors, and have a fellow at hand to make affidavit that he saw Cæsar mount to heaven from the funeral pile?

“As to the Son of God, called Jesus, should we allow him to be nothing more than man, yet the title of the Son of God is very justifiable, upon the account of his wisdom, considering that you have your Mercury in worship under the title of the Word and Messenger of God.

“As to the objection of our Jesus being crucified, I say that suffering was common to all the forementioned sons of Jove, but only they suffered another kind of death. As to his being born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance that. As to his curing the lame and the paralytic and such as were cripples from birth, this is little more than what you say of your Æsculapius.”

St. Augustine says: “For the thing itself which is now called the Christian religion really was known to the ancients, nor was not wanting at any time from the beginning of the human race until the time when Christ came in the flesh, from whence the true religion which had previously existed began to be called Christian; and this in our day is the Christian religion, not as having been wanting in former times, but as having in later times received this name.”

A fellow and tutor in Trinity College and lecturer on ancient history in the University of Dublin (Mr. Mahaffy) closes one of his lectures in the following manner: “There is, indeed, hardly a great or fruitful idea in the Jewish or Christian system which has not its analogy in the (ancient) Egyptian faith. The development of the one God into a trinity; the incarnation of the mediating deity in a virgin, and without a father; his conflict and his momentary defeat by the powers of darkness; his partial victory (for the enemy is not destroyed); his resurrection and reign over an eternal kingdom with his justified saints; his distinction from, and yet identity with, the uncreate incomprehensible Father, whose form is unknown and who dwelleth not in temples made with hands,—all these theological conceptions pervade the oldest religion of Egypt. So, too, the contrast and even the apparent inconsistencies between our moral and theological beliefs—the vacillating attribution of sin and guilt partly to moral weakness, partly to the interference of evil spirits, and likewise of righteousness to moral worth, and again to help of good genii or angels; the immortality of the soul and its final judgment,—all these things have met us in the Egyptian ritual and moral treatises. So, too, the purely human side of morals and the catalogue of virtues and vices are by natural consequences as like as are the theological systems. But I recoil from opening this great subject now; it is enough to have lifted the veil and shown the scene of many a future contest.”

Indeed, the ablest of the Christian Fathers never claimed that Christianity was a new religion recently and specially revealed by Jesus, but made many admissions quite to the contrary. Clarke in his Evidences says that the most ancient writers of the Church did not scruple to acknowledge the Athenian Socrates a Christian.

Clemens Alexandrinus, of the second century (a. d. 194), wrote: “And those who lived according to the Logos were really Christians that is to say, those who practically accepted the Greek conception of a divine incarnation were really Christians.” And why not, for is not John’s Gospel an elaboration of the Neo-Platonism of the Greeks? and is not the whole Christian scheme an ingenious combination of Judaism and Oriental philosophy?

Lactantius well said: “If there had been one to have collected the truth that was scattered and diffused among the sects into one, and to have reduced it into a system, there would indeed have been no difference between him and us.” Could anything be more emphatic than this admission of a Christian Father of the fourth century that Christianity is made up of fragments of other religions?

A volume might be filled with similar admissions from the highest Christian authority, for it would be easy to show that it was the main argument of Justin Martyr (a. d. 141) that the Christian religion contained nothing that might not be found in all earlier religions, and that therefore its votaries deserved toleration and protection rather than persecution.

Compare the following, furnished by Mr. Johnson, with the teachings of Jesus:

“When you have shut your doors and darkened your room, beware of saying that you are alone, for you are not alone, for God is within, and your genius is within, and what need have they of light to see what you are doing?” (Epictet., i. 14); “Dare look up to God, and say, ‘Use me as thou wilt. I am one with thee. I refuse nothing that seems good to thee. Lead me whither thou wilt’” (ii. 16); “Be not angry with the erring, but pity them rather” (i. 18); “Be patient, mild, ready to forgive, severe to none, knowing that the soul is never willingly deprived of truth” (ii. 22); “No need to lift up the hands or get close to the ears of an image, so as to be heard. God is near thee, with thee, in thee. I tell thee, Lucilius, a holy spirit dwells within us, beholder of our conduct” (Seneca, Ep., xli.); “Between God and good men is friendship, yea, necessary intimacy” (De Prov., i. 5); “What use in concealment from men? Nothing is hid from God” (Ep., lxxxiii. 1); “God escapes the eyes; he is seen by thought only” (Nat. Quest., vii. 30); “No temples are to be built to him. He must be hallowed by each in his own breast” (Seneca, quoted by Lactantius, Ind., vi. 25); “Man’s primal union is with God” (Cicero, De Leg., i. 7); “Virtue is the same in God and man; man therefore is in the likeness of God” (ibid.).

We could multiply these quotations indefinitely, but we forbear. The fact cannot be denied that Christianity is but the continuation and modification of the old pagan religions, and that Egypt has to be largely credited with supplying a great portion of the subject-matter of our so-called “special revelation.” We could take up the sun-gods of Egypt and show that all the titles and offices ascribed to them are given to Jesus, and that often the very language is used. “Out of Egypt have I called my Son” is emphatically true, but in a broader and wider sense than is generally supposed. This will be more clearly shown hereafter.