The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidences of His Existence

by John E. Remsburg

12. The Perfect Man.

The New Testament contains at least five different mythical types or conceptions of Jesus Christ: 1. The Messiah of the synoptics, omitting the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke. 2. The Son of God, or demi-god, introduced in these opening chapters. 3. The incarnate Logos or God of John. 4. The Christ of Paul. 5. Eliminating these more or less supernatural types, there remains in these writings, in addition to the purely natural and purely human Jesus of Nazareth, a type known as the Ideal or Perfect Alan. This type is not only mythical, but, in the stricter sense, supernatural and superhuman; for the perfect man must always remain an ideal rather than a real type of man.

The last type is believed by many to represent the primal stage in the deification of Jesus. This conception of Jesus has been held by many Rationalistic Christians, and by some conservative Rationalists in all ages. This, too, forms a part of the dualistic conception of Christ entertained by orthodox Christians, a conception which supposes him to have combined in his incarnation both a human and a divine element which made him both man and God. The portrayal of the vicarious suffering and death of this man has been one of the most powerful agents in the propagation of Christianity.

The molders of primitive Christianity were greatly influenced by various philosophical speculations—by the teachings of Pythagoras and Plato among the earlier, and by the writings of Philo and Seneca among the later philosophers. To Philo, we have seen, they were indebted largely for the Logos; to Seneca they were indebted chiefly for the Ideal or Perfect Man. The following extracts are from “The Christ Myth” of Mrs. Evans:

“Seneca advises the cherishing of a hope that victory in the form of a wise man will finally appear, because humanity requires that the exemplification of perfection should be visible.”

“Seneca’s conception of perfect humanity was a combination of the wise man of the Platonists and Stoics and the gentle sufferer who endures insult and sorrow.”

“The Logos of Philo was too ethereal to answer all the demands of feeble humanity. The God-man must live and suffer and die among and for the people in order to make the sacrifice complete.”

“Philo endowed the Logos of Heraclitus with the authority of a priestly mediator, who, floating between earth and heaven, brings God and man together; Seneca places this mediator as a suffering man among men. Philo, from his Jewish standpoint, made the Logos the priestly intercessor; Seneca, from the standpoint of his Stoical society, believed in the possibility of a perfect man as savior and guide of weaker men.”

Cognizant of the striking resemblance between some of the writings of the New Testament and the writings of the Stoics, particularly of Seneca, modern Christian apologists affect to believe that this philosopher was acquainted with the history and the gospel of Christ. But the Stoical philosophy propounded by Seneca had been forming ever since the time of Zeno, three centuries before the time of Christ. Seneca himself was born before the Christian era, and no part of the New Testament was in existence when he wrote. Relative to this contention Lecky writes: “It is admitted that the greatest moralists of the Roman empire either never mentioned Christianity, or mentioned it with contempt.... The Jews, with whom the Christians were then identified, he (Seneca) emphatically describes as ‘an accursed race.’” (European Morals, vol. 1, pp. 340, 342). During the second and third centuries Christian scholars ransacked Pagan literature for recognitions of Christ and Christianity. Regarding this, Lecky says: “At the time, when the passion for discovering these connections was most extravagant, the notion of Seneca and his followers being inspired by the Christians was unknown” (Ibid, p. 346). Gibbon says: “The new sect [Christians] is totally unnoticed by Seneca” (Rome, vol. i, 587, note).

Out of all these various religious systems and doctrines—out of sex worship and sun worship—out of the worship of the stars and the worship of the elements—out of the worship of animals and the worship of idols—out of Polytheism and Monotheism—out of the Mediatorial and Messianic ideas—out of the Logos and the Ideal Man of the philosophers—this Christ has come.

CHAPTER XI.

Sources of the Christ Myth—Pagan Divinities.

In the preceding chapter I have noticed some of the typical religious systems and beliefs from which Christ and Christianity were to a great extent derived. I shall next notice more particularly some of the so-called divine beings—some of the gods, and some of the mortals endowed with supernatural gifts, belonging to these systems. I shall show that there were many sons of gods besides Jehovah’s “only begotten Son”; that each of them possessed some attribute possessed by him; that all of them lived or existed in the minds of men, centuries before his time; and that many of them were prototypes of him, and furnished in a large degree the ideas which suggested him, or which are associated with him and his religion. My list will comprise the following, all of whom were believed by their worshipers or followers to be of divine descent: Krishna, Buddha, Confucius, Laou-tsze, Zoroaster, Mithra, Sosiosh, Adonis, Osiris, Horus, Zeus, Apollo, Perseus, Hercules, Dionysos, Prometheus, Esculapius, Plato, Pythagoras, Bacchus, Saturn, Quirinus, Odin, Thor, and Baldur.