1. That Belshazzar was not the king of Babylon.2. That the name of the last king was Nabonidos.3. That the city was taken peacefully, by guile, not by bloodshed.4. That it was Cyrus, not Darius the Median, who took it.5. That Darius, who is said (XI, 1) by Daniel to have been the son of "Ahasuerus" (Xerxes), was really his father.6. That all the Babylonian names in Daniel are absurdly misspelt and quite strange to the writer.7. That the writer described the Chaldeans in a way that no writer could have done before the time of Alexander the Great.
1. That Belshazzar was not the king of Babylon.
2. That the name of the last king was Nabonidos.
3. That the city was taken peacefully, by guile, not by bloodshed.
4. That it was Cyrus, not Darius the Median, who took it.
5. That Darius, who is said (XI, 1) by Daniel to have been the son of "Ahasuerus" (Xerxes), was really his father.
6. That all the Babylonian names in Daniel are absurdly misspelt and quite strange to the writer.
7. That the writer described the Chaldeans in a way that no writer could have done before the time of Alexander the Great.
It is now beyond question that the man who wrote Daniel, and pretended to be alive in 539 B.C. (when Babylon fell), did not live until three or four centuries later. The book is a tissue of errors, as we find by authentic documents and by reading the real Babylonian names on the tablets."
The Martian discovers glaring instances of forgery in the book of Isaiah and the Psalms of David, which, while they pretend to have been written by Isaiah and David, are really compilations by various writers. Similarly, he finds that the Book of Esther has been pronounced by scholars as a clumsy forgery of the second century, and that the story of the slaying of Goliath by David is not consistent with the unlegendary tradition that the slayer of Goliath was Elhanan, and the period of this adventure not in Saul's but in David's reign. The Book of Psalms, although attributed to King David, was not written by King David; and the Book of Proverbs, although attributed to Solomon, was not written by King Solomon.
The Book of Genesis relates the mythical traditions of the Hebrews from the creation of the world to the death of Joseph. "A French physician of the eighteenth century, Astruc, was the first scholar to point out that the two principal designations of God in Genesis, Elohim and Jahveh, are not used arbitrarily. If we place side by side the passages in which God is called Elohim, and those in which he is called by the other name, we get two perfectly distinct narratives, which the author of the Pentateuch, as we possess it, has juxtaposed rather than fused. This one discovery suffices to discredit the attribution of these books to Moses, who could not have been an unintelligent compiler, and also discredits the theory of the divine inspiration of the Bible text. A comparison of the two narratives shows that all which relates to the creation of Eve, the Garden of Eden, and Adam's transgression, exists only in the Jehovist text. Thus it is evident that two versions of the Creation are given in Genesis. But there are traces in the Old Testament of a third legend, akin to that of the Babylonians, in which Marduk creates the world by virtue of a victory over the waters of chaos (Tiamat). This conception of a conflict between the creator and hostile forces was contrary to the monotheistic thesis, and has disappeared from our two versions of Genesis; but the suppression sufficiently proves that it was very ancient and had long been accepted."
The Martian finds that theologians have attempted to crawl out of desperate situations in their interpretation of the Old Testament by a method of reading into a passage or extracting out of it ideas altogether foreign to its original intent. This method they call "Allegory." By means of this process they have been able to extract any meaning which suits their purposes, and by this method of juggling could prove anything. A classic example is that licentious piece of literature called the "Song of Solomon," in which it is claimed that a woman's breasts, thighs, and belly are the symbols of the union of Jahveh and the Synagogue.
Continuing his researches, the Martian notices a number of passages in the Old Testament that lead him to the conclusion that the Hebrews were originally polytheists. The name Elohim, he finds, is plural (singular, Eloah), meaning the gods. Again, in another passage of Genesis, God is described as saying, "Let us make man in our image (I, 26)," and further on, "Theman is become as one of us." It becomes evident to him that the Hebrews, like their neighbors, worshiped "baalim" or the gods of the heathens. The "teraphim," the etymology of which is unknown, were little portable idols which seem to have been the Lares of the ancient Hebrews. David owned some (I Samuel XIX, 13-16), and the prophet Hosea, in the eighth century before Christ, seems still to have considered the "teraphim" as indispensable in worship (Hos. III, 4). These evidences of polytheism and fetichism in the people of Israel destroy, in the mind of the Martian, the claim of these people to have been faithful from their earliest origin to a spiritual monotheism. Rather does he find that they took the religions of other peoples with whom they came in contact.
The Old Testament contains numerous instances of the practice of magic. Moses and Aaron were magicians who rivalled Pharaoh's magicians (Ex. VII, 11-20); and Balaam was a magician who pronounced incantations against Israel and afterwards passed over to the service of Jehovah. Jacob resorted to a kind of sympathetic magic to procure the birth of a speckled sheep (Gen. XXX, 39). "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," is written in Exodus XXII, 18, and this phrase offered an affirmation of the reality of witchcraft during the period of the Witchcraft Delusion. The Martian notes that the sentence, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," has caused more suffering, torture, and death than probably any other sentence ever framed. His mind revolts at the stupidity and the slavish adherence to so-called authority of the human mind, which is manifested in this example of what occurred in the period of the Witchcraft Delusion, when the words of an ignorant and barbaric Hebrew were taken by Christian followers to be the words of a god. And yet ourMartian guest recognizes that in this day all men are aware of the fallacy of this utterance in a book which is still claimed to be infallible.
The Martian then considers the many ancient Hebrew rites and religious taboos that have come down through the ages, and are still practiced in a modified form by the modern Hebrew. Thus, in the Old Testament, there are numerous instances recorded of the practices of slaughtering of innocent animals who were offered as peace offerings to Yahveh. As time passed, the practice of slaughtering and then burning the sacrificial animal gave way to the practice of only giving the blood of the animal as an offering. This custom has come down to the present day in the modern worship of Jehovah; the blood of animals is still forbidden to the modern Hebrew. Therefore, the orthodox Jew has the neck of the chicken slit by a "Shochet" who allows the blood to drip to the ground—a modern blood offering to the Gods. The explanations given by the rabbis of our day are spurious. Similarly, the orthodox Jew of our time still persists in salting the meat before cooking, a process which is intended to remove the blood, which is the portion of the Gods.
The reason that the pious Jew abstains from pork leads to the consideration of Totemism as found in the Old Testament. Totemism is a kind of worship rendered to animals and vegetables considered as allied and related to man. The worship of animals and plants is found as a survival in all ancient societies and is the origin of the belief in the transmigration of souls. Totemism seems to have been as widespread as the animism from which it is derived, and has been closely intertwined in the development of religious beliefs. Totemism in a modified form is found in the Old Testament where animals speak on occasion, as the serpentin Genesis, or Balaam's ass. In the most remote periods it is probable that every clan had at least one totem animal which might no more be killed or eaten than the human individuals of the clan. The totem was protected by taboo. The totem was sacred and in this capacity it was looked upon as a source of strength and holiness, and to live beside it and under its protection was considered as a righteous custom. In certain communities the idea that it was necessary to abstain from eating certain totems survived the progress of material civilization. The cow is taboo to the Hindus, the pig is taboo to the Mohammedans and to the Jews. The pious Jew abstains from pork because his remote ancestors, five or six thousand years before our era, had the wild boar as their totem. This is the origin of this alimentary taboo; among the ancient Hebrews it arose, and only comparatively recently has it been suggested that the flesh of these taboo animals was unwholesome. In the eighteenth century, philosophers propagated the erroneous notion that if certain religious legislators had forbidden various aliments, it was for hygienic motives. Even Renan believed that dread of trichinosis and leprosy had caused the Hebrews to forbid the use of pork. To show the irrational nature of this explanation, it will be enough to point out that in the whole of the Bible there is not a single instance of an epidemic or a malady attributed to the eating of unclean meats; the idea of hygiene awoke very late in the Greek world. To the Biblical writers, as to contemporary savages, illness is supernatural; it is an effect of the wrath of spirits.
Primitive man ascribed all diseases either to the wrath of God, or the malice of an evil being. The curing of disease by the casting out of devils and by prayers were the means of relief from sickness recognizedand commanded by the Old Testament. The hygienic explanation of an alimentary prohibition as still insisted upon by the rabbis is entirely erroneous and marks the expounder of such an explanation as one who is entirely ignorant of the evolution of religious beliefs. The entire matter is well stated in one sentence by Reinach, "Nothing can be more absurd, generally speaking, than to explain the religious laws and practices of the remote past by considerations based on modern science."
The Martian is able to trace some curious customs that were exhibited by the ancient Hebrews as well as most other ancient peoples, and which have persisted to this day. The customs remain the same, the meanings have become lost in the blind adherence to custom. It is known that the old Jewish mourning customs originated with the desire for protection from the liberated spirit of the deceased. The loud cries uttered by the mourners were thought to frighten away the spirits. The change of dress, the covering of the head with ashes, and the shaving of the hair of the mourners were done with the purpose of making themselves unrecognizable to the spirits. Hence, the custom still prevails of wearing the mourning veil. The covering of mirrors when death occurs in the household may well be an attempt to prevent the spirit from lingering in the vicinity. Similarly, even today, the orthodox Jew, in case of grave illness in his family, changes the given name of the sufferer. To confuse the evil spirit causing the disease?
Further survivals of totemism as found in the Old Testament are illustrated by the worship of the bull and the serpent. Portable gilded images of bulls were consecrated and Hosea protested against the worship of the bull in the kingdom of Israel (Hos. VIII, 5; X, 5).The famous golden calf of the Israelites, which was the object of Moses' anger, was a totemic idol. The worship of the serpent was practiced by Moses himself (Num. XXI, 9). A brazen serpent was worshiped in the temple of Jerusalem, and was only destroyed by Hezekiah about 700 B.C. (2 Kings XVIII, 4).
The ancient Hebrews, as well as their neighbors, were phallic worshipers. To primitive people it is but a natural phase to have the phallus become the exponent of creative power, and as such to be worshiped. To these primitive minds there was nothing immoral in genuine phallic worship. Signs of phallicism among the ancient Hebrews can be clearly pointed out; the serpent was a phallic symbol. "That the serpent was the phallus is proved by the Bible itself. The Hebrew word used for serpent is 'Nachash,' which is everywhere else translated in the Bible in a phallic sense, as in Ezekiel XVI, 36, where it is rendered 'filthiness' in the sense of exposure, like the 'having thy Boseth naked' of Micah." (J. B. Hannay, "Christianity, the Sources of its Teaching and Symbolism.") The ark itself was a feminine symbol, and phallicism would explain why Moses made an ark and put in it a rod and two stones. "The Eduth, the Shechina, the Tsur, and the Yahveh were identical; simply different names for the same thing, the phallus. They occupied the female ark with which they formed the double sexed life symbol. The Hebrew religion had thus a purely phallic basis, as was to be expected from a ritual and symbolism derived from two extremely phallic nations, Babylon and Egypt." (J. B. Hannay, Ibid.) An intelligent reading of Exodus XXXIV, 13, and 1 Kings XIV, 23 and 24, will prove the above contention.
Once more our Martian guest is besieged by the Hebrew Zealot to examine the divine revelation of hisreligion. This time the Martian notes, "I, Yahveh, thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations" (Deut.), which seems to him to savor of a cruel and monstrous being. He cannot perceive of a just being favoring slavery (Ex. XI), or of a merciful father ordering human sacrifice (Ex. XIII), (Lev. XXVII, 29), (Num. XIII, 3). He is dumbfounded to find references to cannibalism (Lev. XXVI, 14-16-28; Deut. XXVIII, 53-58; Jer. XIX, 9; Ezek. V, 10; Kings VI, 26-29-33). A Benevolent Being, he reasons, would not sanction war and destruction of the captured enemy, yet there are instances of this (Deut. XXI, 10-14; Deut. XX, 13-14; Deut. VII, 1-2-16). The reading of Numbers V, 11-29, and Deuteronomy XXII nauseated him. The Hebrew Zealot, observing the utter disgust with which the reader was regarding his revelation, is obliged to explain to the bewildered barbarian unbeliever that the Old Testament is the foundation for all of our morals and that without it we would have developed into a very shocking and immoral race.
Since the visitor wishes to remain courteous he proceeds, but with a great deal of hesitation, to further examine the revelation of God. At this point he is assured that this work is read in most schools and taught to small children. However, our guest is again disillusioned; for no sooner does he arrive at Genesis, XII, 11-20, than he finds that Abraham, good Abraham, the pure, the father of all Hebrews, makes of the sacred relationship of marriage a means of personal gain and safety by betraying his own wife. Now it is the Martian's turn to inquire of the Hebrew whether the latter had ever read this story to his own daughter? Or, the story of Abraham's affair with Hagar, his handmaiden? Was the Hebrew's young daughter aware that Isaac,son of Abraham, was as ready and willing to prostitute his wife for protection for himself as was his father Abraham?
The Martian is puzzled by the word "sporting" in Genesis, XXVI, 8-11, and is informed of its meaning. A few moments after reading Genesis XIX, 1-7, he informs his would-be converter that if Lot had lived in Mars and had offered his daughters to appease the mob, the account of that incident would never have found its way into any work on morals. Moreover, he failed utterly to see how the account of Lot's daughters getting him into a drunken state, followed by a statement such as, "Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father," could ever have any moral value.
The story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel does not appeal to this infidel Martian, since he still believes that integrity and faithfulness are virtues. Yet, in his endeavor to respect the courtesy due to his host, he reaches for pencil and pad, and notes the various moral lessons he had derived thus far from the Old Testament. He wrote lust, incest, infidelity, and prostitution; arriving at the story of Dinah, Genesis XXXIV, 1-2, he wrote that in addition to those vices already listed, rape should be given a prominent place. The stories of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, Judah and Tamar, King David and his wives, the rape of Tamar by her brother Ammon, did not impress the Martian as stories for the delectation of children, since he was crude enough to hold that anything which would shock the mind of a child, could not have any moral value and would thus be automatically excluded from any religion. He, therefore, returned the volume to the Hebrew with the remark that as an adult he found the stories of De Maupassant and Balzac more interesting, even though they belonged to the same genre.
Our guest now repaired to one of our golf courses where, during the interval of a few hours, the fresh air, the sunshine, and exercise dispelled the mental nausea which the reading of the Old Testament had occasioned in him. Returning to his quarters, he is approached by one of the Christian Brethren and the New Testament is placed in his hands with these remarks, "The Christian recognizes that in the Old Testament the Jews have given to the Christian world its greatest heritage." The fact that in exchange for this priceless heritage, the Christians have given to the Jews a series of persecutions unequaled in the annals of human warfare is explained by the quality of the Brotherhood of Man that naturally manifests itself after a complete conversion to the Bible's precepts. The Old Testament contains the first revelations of God; the New Testament, the last revelations. Our Christian Brother "forgets" to remind the visitor that the difference of opinion regarding these two Testaments of God has caused more sorrow, bloodshed, harm, devilment, misery, and devastation than any other single item in the life and history of the human race.
The Martian is hard pressed to reconcile the fact that Mohammedanism six hundred years after the appearance of Christianity triumphed over Christianity in a great portion of the earth's surface; yet he is informed that Christianity isthereligion of God, that Allah made the Mohammedans, Jehovah the Jews, the Trinity the Christians, and the rest of the believers were illegitimate children of the above gods, was the only conclusion he could reach. In a few moments the myth of Christ begins to unfold itself before his eyes in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse. He finds, "The so-called Messianic texts which are supposed to prefigureJesus in the Old Testament have all been either misunderstood or deliberately misinterpreted. The most celebrated is that in Isaiah VII, 14, which predicts that a virgin shall bear a son, Emmanuel, but the word, Al-mah, which the Septuagint rendered "virgin" means in Hebrew a young woman, and this passage merely deals with the approaching birth of a son to the king or the prophet himself. This error of the Septuagint is one of the sources of the legend relating to the virginal birth of Jesus. As early as the second century A.D. the Jews perceived it and pointed it out to the Greeks, but the Church knowingly persisted in the false reading, and for over fifteen centuries she has clung to her error."
His attentive reading convinces him that not one of the Gospels is the work of an eyewitness to the scenes recorded; a little side investigation reveals that there were a great many writings called Gospels, from which the Church finally adopted four, guaranteeing their inspiration and absolute veracity, no doubt because they were in favor in four very influential churches, Matthew at Jerusalem, Mark at Rome or at Alexandria, Luke at Antioch, and John at Ephesus. Moreover, what the Gospels tell him, he perceives is what different Christian communities believed concerning Jesus between the years 70 and 100 A.D. In Matthew XXVI, 39, Mark XIV, 35, and Luke XXII, 42, there are words such as those Jesus is supposed to have uttered during the slumber of these very same Apostles. This occurrence enlightens him as to what St. Augustine meant when he wrote, "I should not believe in the Gospel if I had not the authority of the Church for so doing." If the documents are stuffed with the authority of the Church, these Gospels cannot be utilized for a history of the real life of Jesus.
A study of the Epistles of St. Paul reveals that St. Paul taught that sin and death came into the world by Adam's fall. In spite of a diligent search the Martian found no mention of this in the words ascribed to Jesus. From St. Paul's utterances he learns that Christ came to redeem mankind by his voluntary oblation of himself. He was the Son of God! Paul, not knowing that in the future a special form of conception would be superimposed on Jesus, states that he was of human birth. The Martian determined to ascertain what effect the teachings of St. Paul have had on Christianity. He learns that, "Ever since St. Paul, the ruling idea of Christianity has been that of the redemption of man, guilty of a prehistoric fault, by the voluntary sacrifice of a superman. This doctrine is founded upon that of expiation; a guilty person must suffer to atone for his fault; and that of the substitution of victims, the efficacious suffering of an innocent person for a guilty one. Both are at once pagan and Jewish ideas; they belong to the old fundamental errors of humanity. Yet, Plato knew that the punishment inflicted on a guilty person is not, nor should it be, a vengeance; it is a painful remedy imposed on him for his own benefit and that of society. At about the same period Athenian law laid down the principle that punishment should be as personal as the fault, thus St. Paul founded Christian Theology on two archaic ideas which had already been condemned by enlightened Athenians of the fourth century before our era,ideas which no one would dream of upholding in these days, though the structure built upon them still subsists."
In chapter V of the first Epistle of St. John, these words strike the visitor, "There are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, and the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are One." If these twoverses are authentic, they would be an affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinity, dating from the first century, at a time when the Gospels, the Acts, and St. Paul ignore it. It was first pointed out in 1806 that these verses were an interpolation, for they do not appear in the best manuscripts, notably all the Greek manuscripts down to the fifteenth century. The Roman Church refused to bow to evidence. The Congregation of the Index, on January 13, 1897, with the approbation of Leo XIII, forbade any question as to the authenticity of the text relating to the "three heavenly witnesses." It appeared strange to the Martian that a god should need the lies of his disciples to be incorporated in a divine revelation. But his confusion was even greater when he read, "We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the substance—and yet, they are not three Eternals, but One Eternal, not three Almighties, but One Almighty. So, the Father is God, the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, and yet they are not three Gods, but One God.... The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son, neither made nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.... And in this Trinity, none is afore or after the other; none is greater or less than another; but the whole three Persons are coeternal together and coequal."
He thought this would make a great puzzle, truly an insoluble conundrum, to take back to bewilder his Martian friends. However, he was able to comprehend the remarks of Vigilantius, "who returned from a journey in Italy and the Holy Land disgusted with official Christianity. He protested vehemently against the idolatrous worship of images, the legacy of Paganism to theChurch, a practice directly opposed to that of the Mosaic law which Jesus came, not to destroy, but to fulfill. It was idle to reply that these images were the Scriptures of the illiterate, that they were not the object of, but the stimulus to, worship. Experience showed that the majority of the faithful confounded (as indeed they still do) the sign with the thing signified." (Salomon Reinach, "Orpheus.")
The result of the critical examination of the New Testament by the Martian is that just as most of the Old Testament books are not only anonymous but highly composite productions, that as certain writings traditionally ascribed to Moses, David, Solomon, Daniel, and others are utterly lacking in the necessary evidences in support of authorship, but bear unmistakable evidence of having gone through a long compilatory process; so does each gospel, despite its seeming unity, give evidence of being a composite literary product. Scholars have agreed that Mark first set forth the doings of Jesus and "it was out of Mark that both Matthew and Luke took the framework of their own writings, cleverly fitting into its arrangement their own distinctive material and coloring the whole by their own individual treatment." (Trattner, "Unravelling the Book of Books.") It is estimated that Mark was written shortly before the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D. "This means that a chasm of 30 or 40 years separates Mark's written document from the ministry of Jesus—a long enough time to create a plastic body of oral teachings and a highly colored tradition embellished with fanciful stories."
Luke was a Greek physician living somewhere on the shores of the Ægean Sea. He had been a friend of Paul, just as Mark had been with Peter. Luke had no personal acquaintance with Jesus and had to get his information from what others said, or from what the friends of "eye-witnesses" had seen.
The Gospel of "Matthew" is an anonymous composition which, on analysis, has been found to incorporate nearly fifty per cent of what is found in Mark. It is now believed by many scholars to have been written between the years 75 and 80 A.D. at Antioch not, of course, by the Apostle Matthew, but by some unknown editor.
The Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, is vastly different in style, arrangement, and in the description of the words, actions, and general spiritual character of Jesus. Many scholars believe that it was written in the city of Ephesus, somewhere around the year 100 A.D. "Church tradition ascribed it to the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee, one of the fishermen whom Jesus called to be a disciple. Years ago this view was easily entertained, but there now exists too much refractory evidence against assigning this Greek Gospel to an Aramaic-speaking Galilean. That an untutored fisherman could have written so elaborate and so highly philosophical an account of Jesus has always presented a thorny problem. And so to most scholars John's authorship of the Fourth Gospel is unthinkable."
Not one of the Gospels is the work of an eyewitness, and the four Gospels do not complete each other; they contradict each other; and when they do not contradict, they repeat each other. The Christ of John is a totally different person from the Christ of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Loisy, in his "Quelques Lettres," states, "If there is one thing above others that is obvious, but as to which the most powerful of theological interests have caused a deliberate or unconscious blindness, it is the profound, the irreducible incompatibility of the Synoptical Gospels, and the Fourth Gospel. If Jesus spokeand acted as he is said to have spoken and acted in the first three Gospels, he did not speak and act as he is reported to have done in the fourth."
The Martian is forced to the conclusion that the New Testament, with its version of the Virgin Birth, Elizabeth, the cousin of Mary, Zacharias and the Angel Gabriel, Jesus and the Sinner, are on par with the eroticism of the Old Testament. The interpolations, the myth, and fable also compare with the first revelation, and, in his opinion, he prefers Andersen's Fairy Tales, or Æsop's Fables.
Meanwhile, a Protestant Brother mentions the name of Luther, and the conclusions he draws are that the exciting cause of the Reformation was an extravagant sale of indulgences conceded to the German Dominicans. The Augustinians grew jealous of the Dominicans, and an Augustinian Monk, Martin Luther, affixed to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral ninety-five articles against the abuse of indulgences. This started the fray in Germany with Luther at the head of this heresy. The gravest difference of opinion had to do with the Communion. "Luther retained one-half of the mystery, and rejected the other half. He confesses that the body of Jesus Christ is in the consecrated element, but it is, he says, as fire is in the red-hot iron. The fire and the iron subsist together. This is what they called impanation, invination, consubstantiation. Thus, while those they called Papists ate God without bread, the Lutherans ate God and bread; soon afterwards came the Calvinists, who ate bread and did not eat God." In short, Luther was in harmony with the Roman Church in nothing but the doctrines of the Trinity, Baptism, the Incarnation, and the Resurrection. Luther thought it was time to abolish private mass. He pretended the devil had appeared to him and reproached him for saying mass and consecrating the elements. The devil had proved to him, he said, that it was idolatry. Luther declared that the devil was right and must be believed. The mass was abolished in Wittenberg, and soon afterwards throughout Saxony; the images were thrown down, monks and nuns left their cloisters, and, a few years later, Luther married a nun called Catharine von Bora. This tale did not greatly impress our guest.
A Catholic Brother, not to be outdone, extols the glories of his Universal Church, and the Martian again sets out to investigate. This time he finds:
The quotations in the New Testament which the Catholic creed interprets as giving divine authority to its representatives on earth is a late interpolation; the Trinity as stated above is a paradox which no rational being can understand, and its dogmas and idolatry are consistent with a civilization of 4000 years ago.
A study of the lives of its popes put to shame the statement that they could possibly be the earthly representatives of a Benevolent Being. "In the ninth and tenth centuries the papacy passed through a period of shameful disorder. The Rome of John X was a cloaca in which the Popes set the example of the worst misconduct." (For a good short account of the lives of the popes, see Draper's, "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe.")
During the complete control by the Church of civilization in Europe, it has retarded the progress of humanity for at least 2000 years, and its precepts and fundamental principles are today detrimental to the advance of mankind. It has to its credit a long series of judicial murders for differences of opinion. The Crusades, instigated by the popes and seconded by the monks, cost millions of lives and exhausted the resources of Christian Europe; they aggravated fanaticism, exaggerated the worship of saints and relics to the point of mania, and encouraged the abuse of and traffic in indulgences. There had never been a single opinion persecuted by the Church in the Middle Ages the adoption of which would not have brought about a diminution of her revenues; the Church has always primarily considered her finances. The papacy was responsible for the Inquisition, and it actively encouraged and excited its ferocity. It gave birth to the Witchcraft Mania. The first Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada, received the congratulations of the Pope. It diabolically applauded the St. Bartholomew Massacre, and instigated the numerous religious wars that tore Europe asunder, and was the cause of the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and incalculable suffering. With such savage alacrity did it carry out its object of protecting the interests of religion that between 1481 and 1808 it had punished three hundred and forty thousand persons, and of these, nearly 32,000 had been burnt.
"It is perfectly certain that the Catholic Church has taught, and still teaches that intellectual liberty is dangerous, that it should be forbidden. It was driven to take this position because it had taken another. It taught, and still teaches, that a certain belief is necessary to salvation. It has always known that investigation and inquiry led, or might lead, to doubt; that doubt leads, or may lead, to heresy, and that heresy leads to Hell. In other words, the Catholic Church has something more important than this world, more important than the well-being of man here. It regards this life as an opportunity for joining that Church, for accepting that creed, and for the saving of your soul. If the history of the world proves anything, if proves that the Catholic Church was for many centuries the most merciless institution that ever existed among men. We,too, know that the Catholic Church was, during all the years of its power, the enemy of every science. It preferred magic to medicine, relics to remedies, priests to physicians. It hated geologists, persecuted the chemists, and imprisoned the naturalists, and opposed every discovery of science calculated to improve the condition of mankind. There is no crime that the Catholic Church did not commit, no cruelty that it did not reward, and no virtue that it did not persecute. It was the greatest and most powerful enemy of human rights. In one hand, it carried an alms dish, and in the other, a dagger. It argued with the sword, persecuted with poison, and convicted with faggot." R. G. Ingersoll, "Rome or Reason."
"From the time of Newton to our own day, the divergence of science from the dogmas of the Church has steadily increased. The Church declared that the earth is the central and most important body in the Universe, that the sun and moon and stars are tributary to it. On these points she was worsted by astronomy. She affirmed that a universal deluge had covered the earth; that the only surviving animals were such as had been saved in the Ark. In this, her error was established by geology. She taught that there was a first man who, some 6000 or 8000 years ago, was suddenly created or called into existence in a condition of physical and moral perfection, and from that condition he fell. But anthropology has shown that human beings existed far back in geological time, and in a savage state but little better than that of the brute.... Convicted of so many errors, the papacy makes no attempt at explanation. It ignores the whole matter. Nay, more, relying on the efficacy of audacity, although confronted by these facts, it lays claim to infallibility."
The persecutions of Bruno, Galileo, and Copernicus,together with the facts hitherto stated, did not impress the Martian with the "infallibility" of the Church. The only great spiritual power that could have interposed to prevent the outbreak of the World War was the papacy. Pope Pius X had his Nuncio admonish the Austrian emperor, but he failed even to get an audition from that old imbecile. The next Pope, Benedict XV, was under the influence of a majority of pro-German cardinals. He strove to remain neutral. He attempted to solace the Belgians with words, but he did not reprove the murderous invaders. He protested against the new and devilish methods of warfare but he did not condemn, he did not excommunicate those that used them. Had the papacy lost its much-used power of commanding kings and nations, and had it lost its greatest threat, a threat which hitherto could have thrown the masses of its adherents into a panic, the threat of excommunication? No, the papacy still blessed the banners of the armies, just as it did during the middle ages, and sent its adherents out to slaughter; but first took great care that the minds of the devout be completely drugged with the poison of its creed. A creed that told its followers that do what you might, no matter how dastardly that act might be, so long as you repent and confess your sins, life everlasting will be the reward. What is the value of a church that has claimed the moral leadership of the world when such things can happen?
Now that the Martian has become acquainted with the three major religions which dominate the world, Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, and has been amazed and shocked at the significance of their teachings in the history of civilization, his curiosity is further aroused, and he decides to obtain some information of the respective personalities responsible for the amassing of devotees to these creeds, all "infallible,"and all detrimental to progress. This time his interest leads him to ancient and contemporary sources, of a literal rather than verbal nature; sources dealing with the three most influential prophets in the history of mankind, Jesus, Moses, and Mohammed.
CHAPTER IIITHE PROPHETS MOHAMMED, JESUS, AND MOSES CHARLATANS OR VICTIMS OF MENTAL AND PHYSICAL DISEASE
The prophet or seer is a man of strong imaginative powers, which have not been calmed by education. The ideas which occur to his mind often present themselves to his eyes and ears in corresponding sights and sounds.... Prophets have existed in all countries and at all times; but the gift becomes rare in the same proportion as people learn to read and write.Winwood Reade.
The prophet or seer is a man of strong imaginative powers, which have not been calmed by education. The ideas which occur to his mind often present themselves to his eyes and ears in corresponding sights and sounds.... Prophets have existed in all countries and at all times; but the gift becomes rare in the same proportion as people learn to read and write.
Winwood Reade.
Religious apologists are forever reminding us that we must interpret both the lives and the works of their prophets and recorders in the spirit and meaning of the ages in which they lived. To this I agree; but the apologists have so mutilated the meaning of the words of the seers and built about them such a mass of nonsense, myth, and fable that it becomes nearly impossible after the lapse of centuries to differentiate the actual man from the fabled man. But there are certain facts that do come down to us recorded by disinterested observers from which can be derived finally some conception of their mode of life, and the content and significance of their teachings.
Although time causes great changes in customs and manners, it only effects a negligible variation in the vast majority of diseases which affect the body and mind of man. We know from the examination of the skeletal remains of prehistoric man that the diseases of thebone of thousands of years ago were similar in their manifestations to those same diseases of bone of today. From the writings of the early Egyptian, Greek, and Roman physicians we identify diseases by their symptoms, and recognize that the symptoms of these diseases have not changed throughout the ages. Therefore, with the knowledge of the signs and symptoms of various diseases which we have today, we can safely assert that if an ancient complained of the same group of signs and symptoms (which is now termed a "disease complex"), he was suffering from the same disease which we can identify in modern man.
What applies to physical disease is just as applicable to mental disease. In speaking of mental disease, it is important for the layman to keep in mind a few fundamental principles held by the physician. The physician in speaking of mental disease means a more or less permanent departure from the normal or usual way of thinking, acting, or feeling. In the examination of a patient with mental disease the physician looks for delusions, illusions, and hallucinations.
A delusion is a false belief, concerning which the individual who holds it is unable to admit evidence such as would be admitted by ordinary individuals.
An illusion is a deception of the senses, a misinterpretation of sensory impressions; the normal person can be convinced of this deception. The mirage, for example, is an optical illusion which has a starting point in an external stimulus.
A hallucination is a deception of any of the five senses, in which there is no starting point but it is fabricated in a disordered mind. Illustrations of hallucinations are the hearing of voices when none are present, smelling of odors, the seeing of visions in a vacuum.
With the elementary understanding of fundamentalsymptoms of mental diseases as a point of departure, let us consider the cases of Mohammed, Jesus, and Moses, three of the most influential prophets in the history of civilization.
Of the three, Mohammed should be considered before the others for several reasons. First, there is no question regarding the actual existence of Mohammed. We know that he was born at Mecca about 571 A.D. and died at Medina on June 8th, 632 A.D. From the facts of his life and the religion which he founded we are able to see the manner in which legend and superstition were superimposed on its original simple form. The historical records of his life and teachings are easier of access since he is nearer our time than the other two prophets, and we can get a better understanding of his character.
It was Gibbon who said, "It may be expected that I should balance his faults and his virtues, that I should decide whether the title of enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to that extraordinary man.... At the distance of twelve centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade through a cloud of incense."
In attempting to peer through this cloud of religious incense we find the following facts: In the city of Mecca, probably in August, in the year 571, Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah, was born. There seems little doubt that he was descended from those lofty Koreish, whose opposition, which at first nearly succeeded in holding his name in perpetual oblivion, eventually caused him to emerge into the light of deathless fame.
His birth was surrounded by all manner of signs and omens, we are told. The labor of his mother, Amina,was entirely painless, earthquakes loosed the bases of mountains and caused great bodies of water, whose names were unfortunately not specified, to wither away or overflow; the sacred fire of Zoroaster which, under the jealous care of the Magi, had spouted ceaseless flames for nearly a thousand years, was extinguished. All the idols in the world except the Kaaba tumbled to earth. Immediately after the babe was born an ethereal light dazzled the surrounding territory, and, on the very moment when his eyes were first opened, he lifted them to heaven and exclaimed: "God is great! There is no God but Allah and I am his Prophet!" All these poetic fancies have been appropriately denounced by Christian scribes, who have claimed that nature would never have dignified the birth of a pagan like Mohammed with such marvelous prodigies as undoubtedly attended the advent of Christ.
However, Mohammed was born shortly after the death of his father. At the age of six his mother died also, and he spent the first ten years among the Bedouins under the care of a foster-mother named Halima. At the age of four it was noticed that the child had signs of convulsive seizures which later commentators thought were of an epileptic nature. He was brought up under the care of his uncle Abu Talib, and his early manhood was spent in caring for the flock and in attending caravan expeditions.
When the prophet was twenty-five years old, his uncle secured for him a position with a caravan owned by a wealthy widow, Khadija. Thanks to Mohammed's keen business sense the caravan was highly successful, and he was induced to personally report his success to Khadija. That lady, a wealthy widow of forty years, and the mother of three children, was highly pleased at Mohammed's story. As she listened to the proof of hisbusiness ability and fondly scanned his large, nobly formed head, his curling coal-black hair, his piercing eyes, and his comely form, it naturally occurred to her that this vigorous and handsome young fellow would make an excellent successor to her deceased husband. She had her way and they were married. During the next fifteen years Mohammed led a tranquil life. His future was provided for and he had plenty of leisure to occupy himself as he chose. In these years Mohammed and his wife continued to be conventional worshipers of idols, who nightly performed rites in honor of various gods and goddesses, among whom were Allah and his female consoler Al-Lat. And so, by the year 610, Mohammed, at the age of forty, was nothing more than a respectable but unknown tradesman who had experienced no extraordinary crises, whose few existing utterances were dull and insipid, and whose life seemed destined to remain as insignificant and unsung as any other Arab's.
At this time, he began to retire for days at a time to a cave in the foothills of Mount Hira, a hill several miles north of Mecca. Meanwhile his business languished. As the months passed, he still continued to act in the same incomprehensible manner; it was noticed that little by little certain members of his immediate family attended him to his refuge or gathered with him in some one of their houses. This continued for several years until it was rumored that Mohammed, the camel driver, was confidently claiming the honor of having made a great discovery; namely, that "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet."
By what process of thought had Mohammed come to exalt Allah not merely above all Arabian gods, but above the gods of all times? Furthermore, why was he so certain of his own intimate association with Allah? We canunderstand this if we consider Mohammed in the light of a victim of mental disease.
One account informs us that as Mohammed was wandering near the cave at Mount Hira, "an angel from the sky cried to him, 'O Mohammed, I am Gabriel!'" He was terrified and hurried home to impart his experience to his wife.
"I see a light," he said to his wife, "and I hear a sound. I fear that I am possessed." This idea was most distressing to a pious man. He became pale, haggard; he wandered about on the hill near Mecca crying for help to God. More than once he drew near the edge of the cliff and was tempted to hurl himself down, and so put an end to his misery at once. He lived much in the open air, gazing on the stars, watching the dry ground grow green beneath the gentle rain. He pondered also on the religious legends of the Jews, which he had heard related on his journeys; and as he looked and thought, the darkness was dispelled, the clouds disappeared, and the vision of God in solitary grandeur rose within his mind, and there came upon him an impulse to speak of God. There came upon him a belief that he was a messenger of God sent on earth to restore the religion of Abraham, which the pagan Arabs had polluted with idolatry, the Jews in corrupting their holy books. At the same time he heard a Voice, and sometimes he felt a noise in his ears like the tinkling of bells or a low deep hum, as if bees were swarming round his head.
At this period of his life the chapters of the Koran were delivered in throes of pain. The paroxysms were preceded by depression of spirit, his face became clouded, his extremities turned cold, he shook like a man in an ague, and he called for coverings. His face assumed an expression horrible to see, the vein between his eyebrows became distended, his eyes were fixed, hishead moved to and fro, as if he was conversing, and then he gave forth the oracle or Sura.
The hitherto mentally and emotionally normal trader, husband, and father was thus suddenly swept off his feet and carried irresistibly away on a mighty tide. His perturbed spirit now soared to the heights of Heaven, now plunged into the chasms of hell. Moments of ethereal bliss would be followed by periods of profoundest melancholy.
"It is related that the Angel Gabriel, who thus far had labored only in the field of Christian endeavor, was chosen by Allah as bearer of the divine revelation to Mohammed. One day, while the trader-poet was wrestling with his doubts among the foothills of Mount Hira, he saw a wondrous apparition floating downward on celestial wings. 'Thou art God's Prophet, and I am Gabriel,' announced the awe-inspiring guest before he departed to receive the blessing of Allah for having so successfully executed the heavenly command. Gabriel was a very valuable ambassador, for through the to-and-fro journeying of this indefatigable messenger Allah was able to remain at ease in heaven, thus keeping up the appearance of intangible, majestic remoteness so necessary for dignified gods. And thus Mohammed came into his own. From that moment Mohammed looked upon himself as Allah's vice regent, through whom Allah's incontestable decrees were to be given to man." (Mohammed—R. F. Dibble.) Mohammed's every doubt had now vanished, his soul was completely at ease, and from his lips there burst the wildly exultant chant, "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His Prophet."
The obliging Gabriel, he said, had borne him on a winged steed over Medina to the Temple of Jerusalem, and from there he continued his celestial journey untilhe was carried completely out of this world to those ethereal realms of bliss where the Seven Heavens are. Up and up he flew, while he carefully noted the order of precedence of those prophets whose model he had proclaimed himself to be. Jesus and John were in the second or third—he was not quite sure which—Moses was in the sixth, while Abraham alone had the supreme distinction of residing in the Seventh Heaven. There, at the apex of indescribable glory, Mohammed had entered the awful presence of his Maker, Who, after some chit-chat, charged him to see that all Moslems should hereafter prostrate themselves in prayer toward the Temple of Solomon five times a day. The truth of this narrative rests upon two solid facts: from that day to this, all devout Moslems have continued to bow themselves five times daily in prayer, and sceptics may still see, upon the rock where stands the Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem, the identical print of the Prophet's foot where he leaped upon the Heavenly Charger.
His thoughts, whether conceived in a white heat of frenzy, or with deliberate coolness and sly calculations for the main chance, were probably not written down in any definite manner during his lifetime. It is not even certain whether he could read or write. He delighted in the appellation, "The Illiterate Prophet," possibly on account of his humility and possibly because he knew that inspired ignorance had been the indisputable prerogative of all successful prophets in the past. Indeed, the very fact that he was unlearned was rightly supposed to increase the miraculous nature of his revelations. As he tossed the divine emanations from his lips, they were sometimes recorded by hireling scribes upon palm leaves, leather, stones, the shoulder blades or ribs of camels and goats. But often they were not immediately written down at all; the Prophet would go aroundspouting forth his utterances to his followers, who, trained from infancy to memorize verses and songs of every sort with infallible precision, would piously commit them to memory. Such is the Koran, and through its instrumentality, Allah the Wise, The Only Wise, revealed his immutable decrees: to the good, the rewards of a Paradise that utterly beggared the Christian Heaven; to the bad, the punishments of a Hell that contained an infinity of such refined tortures of heat, and even of cold as neither the most imaginatively gifted Jew or Christian had yet conceived.
Reinach aptly states, "It is humiliating to the human intellect to think that this mediocre literature has been the subject of innumerable commentaries and that millions of men are still wasting time in absorbing it." Over one hundred and sixty million are adherents of the Koran.
In an objective analysis, excluding the emotional factors of religious bias, Mohammed would as unquestionably be considered a victim of mental disturbances as an individual living in our own day and manifesting the same symptoms.
Mohammed was the subject of illusions, hallucinations, and delusions. He had suicidal tendencies, and he had alternating periods of exhilaration and depression. To simply assert that he was an epileptic does not explain these symptoms. For epileptics cannot throw a fit at will. However, we know that ten per cent of epileptics develop mental diseases, no particular psychosis but a loss of mental and moral sense.
There are two types of individuals who can produce seizures such as Mohammed was wont to evoke at will. One type is the hysterical, and the other is that degraded individual who for the sake of collecting alms will place a piece of soap in his mouth, enter a crowdedstreet, fall to the ground, and proceed to foam at the mouth and twist and contort himself as an epileptic does. That is the charlatan, the faker, and that brings us to the second aspect of his (Mohammed's) character.
"Outside of Arabia, Paganism was in general disrepute. The dissolute and declining Romans were cracking lewd jokes in the very faces of their gods, the myriad followers of Confucius, Buddha and Zoroaster were either too remote or too helpless to matter in one way or another. Talmudic Judaism and Oriental Christianity despised idolatry and worshipped the same Jehovah, even though they disputed with each other, and indeed, among themselves, concerning the various attributes, amorous pursuits, and lineal descendants of the Godhead. Now, to one who chose to regard himself as a prophet, Monotheism had distinct advantages over Polytheism." (Mohammed—R. F. Dibble.)
In the first place, it was rather confusing to attempt to obey the behests of conflicting deities; in the second place, the different prophets of Jehovah in Judaism and Christendom had, so far as Mohammed knew, been uniformly successful, for he was familiar with the glorious history of Abraham, Moses, and David, and he always held to the perverse conception that Jesus was not crucified. However deep in the dumps prophets may have been on occasion, they have invariably believed one thing: victory for their particular cause would inevitably come. Neither an unbroken series of worldly failures nor the chastisement of his god have ever shaken the faith of a first-class prophet in himself or, as he would doubtless prefer to say, in his Divinity. Arabia, broken, unorganized, inglorious, idolistic Arabia, obviously lacked one Supreme Being whose prerogative was greater than all other Supreme Beings, and that Being, in turn, needed a messenger to exploit His supremacy. The messengerswho had served Jehovah had certainly prospered well; but Jehovah Himself appeared to be on the decline. His Unity was steadily disintegrating into a paradoxical Trinity. Why, therefore, not give Allah, the leading icon in Arabia, an opportunity? Such considerations quite probably never entered the head of Mohammed with any definiteness; yet his behavior for the rest of his days seems to indicate that these, or similar conceptions, were subconsciously egging him on.
Of certain facts, moreover, he was definitely aware. He may have had little or no formal education, but his memory was retentive and capacious, and his caravan journeys, together with the scores of conversations he had held at the yearly fairs, as well as at Mecca, with many cultivated strangers, had packed his mind with a mass of highly valuable matter. In these ways he had learned both the strength and the weakness of the Jews and Christians; their fanatical enthusiasm and despairs; their spasmodic attempts to proselytize as well as the widespread defection from their faiths. "Since his conception of religion was largely personal, for he looked upon Moses, Jesus, and the rest of the prophets as merely capable men who had founded and promulgated religions; and since Arabia had no pre-eminent ruler, why should he not seize the reins of power and carry on the great tradition of prophethood? What a magnificent opportunity beckoned, and how fortunate that he had been the first to recognize the call! By keeping only what was best of the Arabic faith, the Kaaba and the Black Stone, and by a judicious selection of the most feasible ideas which lay imbedded in Jewish and Christian precepts, he might establish a code that would supersede all others, and then might dictate to all Arabs alike. What prophets had done, he would also do and do better." (Mohammed—R. F. Dibble.)
Such are the thoughts of a charlatan andademagogue. If Mohammed actually had such ideas, we can never know; but a study of his further actions and conquests surely shows that he must have had something of the same trend of thought in mind.
His "fits" before the oncoming of a new Sura have been mentioned. Eventually, he so perfected his technique that he could throw a cataleptic fit and produce a message without any previous preparation. He would drum up a crowd with his ludicrous snortings and puffings until the resounding cry, "Inspiration hath descended on the Prophet!" assured him that he had a sufficiently large audience to warrant the out-spurting of a new Sura. While in a room that was obviously empty, he declared that all seats were occupied by angels; he cultivated suave and benign expression; he flattered and astounded his followers by telling them facts which he had presumably acquired through private information; he took the most painstaking care of his person, painting his eyes and perfuming his entire body daily, and wearing his hair long. Ayesha, one of the Prophet's wives, remarked that the Prophet loved three things: women, scent and food, and that he had his heart's content of the first two, but not of the last. In fact, Mohammed, himself, argued that these two innocuous diversions intensified the ecstasy of his prayers. In the Koran's description of heaven so much emphasis was put on food that a jolly Jew objected on the grounds that such continual feasting must of necessity be followed by a purgation. The Prophet, however, swore that it would not even be necessary to blow the nose in Paradise, since all bodily impurities would be carried off by a perspiration "as odoriferous as musk."
When his wife Khadija was dying he comforted her with the assurance that she, together with three otherwell-known women, the Virgin Mary, Potiphar's wife, and "Kulthum," Moses' sister, would occupy his chamber in Paradise.
On Mohammed's escape to Medina, a long series of holy wars began which, like all holy wars, were characterized by extreme brutality. The Koran of the period contains such pacific doctrines as these: "The sword is the key of Heaven and Hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer; whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven. At the day of Judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim ... God loveth not the Transgressors; kill them wheresoever ye find them."
Mohammed, no less than many other religiously-minded emperors and tsars, appears to have conducted himself in battle according to the wise principle that a head without a halo is infinitely more desirable than a halo without a head. Yet he was profoundly convinced that the ultimate victory of Islam depended upon the sword. The Koran of this period breathes defiance against the enemies of Islam on almost every page. Its profuse maledictions, once confined to the evildoers of Mecca, now include all unbelievers everywhere. When Mohammed once had captured a fortress inhabited by a tribe of Jews, his judgment was, "The men shall be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, and the spoil divided amongst the army." Then, trenches were dug, some seven hundred men were marched out, forced to seat themselves in rows along the top of the trenches, beheaded, and then tumbled into a long gaping grave. Meanwhile, the Prophet looked on until, tiring of the monotonous spectacle,he departed to amuse himself with a Jewess whose husband had just perished.
He continued these conquests until, at his death, in 632, he was the master of nearly all Arabia and revered almost as a god. Yet, when Omar, his first lieutenant, captured Jerusalem in 636, he ensured the conquered Jews and Christians free exercise of their religion, and the security of their persons and their goods. But when the Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099, they massacred all the Mohammedans, and burnt the Jews alive. It is estimated that 70,000 persons were put to death in less than a week to attest the superior morality of the Christian faith.
The successors of Mohammed, the Caliphs, in less than a century conquered Syria, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Turkestan, Spain, Northern Africa, Sicily, and Southern France. Today, 160,000,000 are followers of Mohammed,—a man who began as a humble religious leader, and ended as an adroit politician and powerful general; a man who hid during battles, who often broke faith with friend and foe alike, a charlatan and demagogue of general intellectual incompetency, and a victim of mental disease.
When we come to consider the life of Jesus, a far different and more intricate problem is met with. None but the most illogical and purposely ignorant of religious apologists will admit that the life of Jesus has been misrepresented by his followers to suit their particular aims. Had the followers of the moralist Epictetus or the Rabbi Hillel written lives of these two teachers they would be quite similar to the reputed life of Jesus. The moral sentiments attributed to Christ in the Gospels were borrowed from the Jewish rabbis and thenumerous cults that flourished in that age. The birth, death, and resurrection of Christ is quite similar to the myths of that time concerning the savior gods Adonis, Isis, Osiris, Attis, Mithra, and a multitude of others. (For a full exposition of the subject, the reader is referred to E. Carpenter, "Pagan and Christian Creeds.")
The evidence for the point of view that Jesus was actually a historic character is so slight that such scholars as J. M. Robertson, Prof. W. B. Smith, Professor Drews, Dr. P. L. Couchoud, and many others deny the historic reality of Christ on the ground that the Gospels are totally unreliable as history, that Paul bears no witness to a human Jesus, and that the pagan and Jewish writers are strangely silent about the Messiah Jesus.
There are in existence only twenty-four lines from Jewish and Pagan writers referring to Jesus. These include a reference in Tacitus' Annals, and brief references by Suetonius and Pliny the Younger. These three references are considered spurious by many scholars, and even if they were all to be accepted it would mean that the total pagan testimony as to the historicity of Jesus is confined to three very vague and brief references written a century after the reputed time of Jesus. The longest reference to Jesus is in the writings of the Jewish historian, Josephus. The passage referring to Jesus in his "Jewish Antiquities" has been considered as spurious even by conservative scholars. A group of scholars has always deemed it very probable, however, that this spurious reference may have replaced an unfavorable reference to Jesus in the original. Working on this theory, Dr. Eisler has purged of interpolations this work by a painstaking and scholarly investigation.
However, it must be pointed out that with regard to Jesus' actual existence, what divided the Christians and non-Christians was not the question whether or notJesus existed; but the vastly more pertinent and essentially different question whether or not the obscure Galilean carpenter, executed by a Roman governor as king of the Jews, was really a superhuman being who had overcome death, the longed-for-savior of mankind, foretold by the Prophets, the only-begotten Son of God Himself.
To the Jews, Jesus was indeed a heretic and an agitator of the lower orders; to the pagans, he was a magician who through sham miracles and with subversive words had incited the people to rebellion, and as a leader of a gang of desperate men had attempted to seize the royal crown of Judæa, as others had done before and after him. The non-Christian writers referred to Jesus as a wizard, a demagogue, and a rebel.
We are fortunate, at this date, to have brought to our attention a masterful work by Dr. Robert Eisler, a work which will be as revolutionary to the study of Christianity as was Darwin's "Origin of the Species" in the realms of science; and, similarly, the former work will be the basis upon which much progress will be made in a great field. Dr. Eisler unfolds a great mass of hitherto unknown information concerning the life, the actual appearance, and the doings of Jesus. He definitely establishes the proof of Jesus' actual existence, and makes clear many hitherto obscure utterances and deeds of this Prophet.
The descriptions which follow are based on the material in this work of Dr. Eisler, "The Messiah Jesus."
In the complete statement of Josephus on Pilate's governorship, we find, "At that time there appeared a certain man of magical power, if it is permissible to call him a man, whom certain Greeks call a Son of God, but his disciples, the True Prophet, said to raise the dead, and heal all diseases. His nature and his form were human; a man of simple appearance, mature age, smallin stature, three cubits high,hunchbacked, with a long face, long nose, and meeting eyebrows, so that they who see him might be affrighted, with scanty hair but with a parting in the middle of his head, after the manner of the Nazarites, and with an undeveloped beard. Only in semblance was he superhuman for he gave some astonishing and spectacular exhibitions. But again, if I look at his commonplace physique, I, for one, cannot call him an angel. And everything whatsoever he wrought through some invisible power, he wrought through some word and a command. Some said of him, 'Our first law giver is risen again, and displays many healings and magic arts. Others said, 'He is sent from God.' Howbeit in many things he disobeyed the law and kept not the Sabbath according to our fathers' custom.
"And many of the multitude followed after him and accepted his teachings, and many souls were excited, thinking that thereby the Jewish tribes might be freed from Roman hands. But it was his custom most of the time to abide over against the city on the Mount of Olives, and there, too, he bestowed his healings upon the people. And there assembled unto him of helpers one hundred and fifty, and a multitude of the mob.
"Now, when they saw his power, how he accomplished whatsoever he would by a magic word, and when they had made known to him their will, that he should enter into the city, cut down the Roman troops, and Pilate and rule over us, he disdained us not. And having all flocked into Jerusalem, they raised an uproar against Pilate, uttering blasphemies alike against God and against Cæsar.
"And when knowledge of it came to the Jewish leaders, they assembled together, with the high priests and spake, 'We are powerless and too weak to withstand the Romans. But seeing that the 'bow is bent,' we will go and impartto Pilate what we have heard, and we shall be safe, lest he hear of it from others and we be robbed of our substance and ourselves slaughtered, and the children of Israel dispersed.
"And they went and imparted the matter to Pilate, and he sent and had many of the multitude slain. And he had that wonder-worker brought up, and after instituting an inquiry concerning him, he passed this sentence upon him, 'He is a malefactor, a rebel, a robber thirsting for the crown.' And they took him and crucified him according to the custom of their fathers."
Such is the history of Jesus as contrasted with the myth of Jesus in the New Testament. This description of the actual appearance of Jesus for the first time gives us a clue to the mental and physical characteristics of this Prophet.
It must be borne in mind that at the time that Jesus achieved manhood, his people and his nation were under the complete domination of Rome, and oppressed by a race whom the Jews looked upon as cursed barbarians and idolaters. The country was overrun with religious zealots who stormed over the cities and villages preaching the immediate destruction of the world and the proximity of the long-awaited coming of the Messiah.
The fact that Jesus had to bear the hard fate of a deformed body may go far in helping to explain this remarkable character. It is common knowledge how frequently weak and deformed children have to suffer from the cruelty and neglect of environment, a factor which cannot but produce a peculiar reaction on the childish mind which has a far-reaching effect in later life. This accounts for Jesus' indifference towards his mother and brothers; of a delicate constitution, he must have suffered from insults a great deal more than the others, which throws some light on the severe punishment demanded by Jesus for comparatively harmless insults. Under such circumstances it is easy to explain how every "neighbor," and next-of-kin, although to the weak naturally an "enemy," came to be included in the sphere of that all-embracing love which is the nucleus of Jesus' teaching. For the cripple has to face the dilemma either of warping everything into a powerful, misanthropic hatred, or else to overcome this feeling of revenge for the high moral superiority of a Plato, Mendelssohn, or a Kant. Jesus chose the latter of the two courses, and we may well imagine that it was not at Golgotha that he had the first occasion to cry out, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!"
In the case of Jesus, the whole paradoxical thought of his being the vicarious sin-offering and world redeemer can best be understood as the solution, proposed in the Deutero-Isaiah, of the question which had occupied Job—to wit: Why must the innocent suffer? If the maimed in body refuse to consider himself as forsaken by his God, as a sinner punished for some guilt of which he is unconscious, he cannot but assume that there is such a thing as a vocation to suffering, and believe in the inscrutable plan of salvation in which his own life and sufferings are called upon to play some part. Nothing but this conviction of being thus elected can afford him the desired compensation for his depressed and hampered ego.
A repressed nature of this type will, in seeking such a compensation, escape from the harsh reality into the realm of dreams. This is the basis of what the physician recognizes in hysteria, and in the mental disease termed "Dementia Præcox." The glorious daydreams of the millennium, the time of bliss when all strife and all hate will disappear from the earth, when all the crooked will be made straight, find their best explanation in thispeculiarity. They console the suffering and heavy-laden for the bitter reality which, in the light of the old messianic prophecies, appears only as a nightmare, promptly to be chased away by the dawn of a new day, a new, a perfect era. The Davidic Jesus, in spite or rather because of his servile form, feels that he is himself the secret incognito king of that wonderful realm, the monarch whom God some time in the future, nay, right here and before the passing of the present generation, will transform while at the same time "revealing" his kingdom.
It is but natural that in the mental development of such individuals they should seek to be great, glorious, and to achieve the supernatural, since they, themselves, are denied the ordinary satisfactions. If, in addition, such individuals believe that they have had a divine call, if the disability of the body so preys on the mind that the sensitive structure gives way to delusions, then there results an aberration from the normal and usual processes of thought,—to be sure not the rabid, violent form of mental disease, but yet a deviation from the normal manner of thinking. Such was the case with the Prophet Jesus.
Afflicted in body but endowed with a sensitive mind, exposed to an unusual environment of seething unrest and political ferment, and firmly convinced in the current fancies regarding the approaching destruction of the world, the conquest of the Evil Power, and the Reign of God, Jesus became the subject of a delusion that he was the only true Messiah who had been presaged by the prophets of old.
The greatest difficulty encountered in every attempt to present the life and work of Jesus according to the evidence of his own words preserved in the sources is the sharp, irreconcilable contradiction between the so-called "fire and sword" sayings on the one side, and the beatitudes on the peacemakers and the meek, the prohibition to kill, to be angry, to resist wrong, and the command to love one's enemy, contained in the Sermon on the Mount, on the other.