[CHAPTER V.]
JESUS AND MYTHS.
Some learned men, in seeking a way to account for the Jesus of the New Testament without accepting the reality of his existence, have sought to set up a notion like this: It is true that the evangelists did not invent this character, yet Jesus never really lived; he is only the myth of Hebrew history.
We are to think of Jesus, they tell us, as we do of the Greek Theseus, of the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, of the Thor and Odin of the Scandinavian legends, of the Hindustanee Vishnu, or of Buddha, and of scores of other myths that belong to the poetry, traditions, superstitions, and religions of other nations. Much scholarship has been mustered into the service of this notion. All this may appear more absurd than serious to one whose education has made Jesus of Nazareth real to his thoughts. It may indeed be so; but we must be fair even to those who seem to us to advance absurd views. I cannot doubt that some able and sincere minds have accepted a theory of Jesus that makes him out only a Hebrew myth.
Let us look at this theory in a common-sense way, without burdening these pages with tiresome and confusing quotations. There are some things which may be plain enough to those who are unlearned in the writings and legends referred to—some things that the learned cannot deny. Myths are growths, and whatever grows—whether a tree, a man, a thought, or a legend—grows under certain laws that cannot be violated. There may be some laws under which myths develop unknown to me. But some of these laws are unmistakable. I mention them, and you will see for yourself that none of them are observed in the story of Jesus. The story we find in the evangelists violates them all. If the conceptions among other nations that are called myths are myths then Jesus cannot be counted among them.
1. Myths originate and, as conceptions, are complete before written history. In all nations the earliest historians relate mythological stories that antedate all letters and all records. In some nations a fragmentary history went to a sort of record before there was a true written language. Rude pictures engraved on stone or painted, and what are called cuneiform characters, such as are found on the bricks or clay cylinders among the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, and such hieroglyphics as are found on ancient tombs in Egypt, in Mexico, and other countries—these tell us of national myths that belonged to a period ages before even these crude attempts at writing were made. The principle—it is invariable as a law—holds good in every nation that has a myth or written history of any sort.
But the Jesus of the evangelists appeared, and the story of his life was written, long after the most eventful and important history of the Hebrew race was recorded.
2. About all myths there is something grotesque if not monstrous. They are exaggerations of men or animals. Sometimes they are natural forces represented as becoming incarnate in some fantastic shape. If in human form the mythical characters are gigantic, strange, verging upon the unnatural and impossible. But Jesus appears as a man, simply; he has not a personal peculiarity to set him apart from his neighbors and companions. Not a word in the story suggests any thing abnormal or even singular. There is not a word to tell us of his personal appearance; there is no suggestion of any thing un-human or extra-human in his form or manner as he appeared among men. The halo about his head you see in pictures is the pretty conceit of the painters; there is not a hint of this, or any thing like it, in the story of the evangelists. There is not so much as a word concerning his complexion, his stature, the color of his hair or eyes, or the tones of his voice. He is just a man among men—one who might have walked unnoticed in the streets of Jerusalem.
Read what the old books tell you of Grecian, Roman, Egyptian, and other myths. How strange they are, how different from men! Jesus appears as a man, and the evangelists have not one word to indicate that he was peculiar in appearance in any respect.