Simplicity of thought also characterized Judaism. Mysticism was abhorrent to a pure Jew, though a hellenised Jew like Philo might be steeped in it. Simplicity of worship, too, was a feature of Judaism; for the splendid ritual connected with the temple at Jerusalem was not properly a part of it, but was merely the expression of national pride. When away from Jerusalem, the Jew worshipped in the simplest and purest manner. And, most of all, morality was closely bound up with Judaism. Josephus justly boasted that his religion made virtue an indispensable part of itself.[83] The Jews as a whole were certainly far more moral than the Pagans as a whole.
The opposite of all these qualities characterised Pagan religions. Pagans felt no religious humility, for there was no great difference between their gods and themselves. Pride, a sense of human dignity, distinguished them as men. They had not to lay stress on faith, for this pride made them fully recognize the value of their own good works. Mysticism marked their religious thought, and sensuousness their religious worship. Between morality and their religions there was only the loosest connection.
Keeping these facts in view, we can easily understand the change in Christianity which now began. All the characteristics of Judaism just mentioned distinguished Jewish Christianity. Humility, stress on faith, simplicity of thought and worship, and the closest connection with morality clearly marked the religion of the early Church. This was evidently the case because the first Christians were Jews. When, then, the Pagans came in, having wrapped up in their religious ideas pride, trust in good works, mysticism, a love of sensuous worship, and a loose regard for morality, and when before long they alone made up the Church, Christianity could not remain unchanged. Christianity became Pagan because Pagans became Christians. And this is the full explanation of its corruption. The Jews, in a religious sense, were more highly developed than the Pagans, and so when it passed from Jews to Pagans it necessarily deteriorated.
As Christianity was preached in the Pagan world, it continually reached lower strata of Paganism. At first only the best Pagans could have entered the Church, but afterwards, as it grew in influence, Pagans of a constantly inferior type must have joined it. Thus the corruption of Christianity proceeded, not merely because Pagans in larger numbers professed it, but because, as time went by, a lower, a more Pagan class became included within its ranks. All during the period we are now examining probably belonged to the great middle order of society before mentioned, philosophers and peasants equally being absent. Christianity clung to the cities, and the restlessness of city life contributed to the growth of its theology. We will now trace the results of the direct influence of Paganism on the dogmas of the Church.
This influence naturally showed itself in a tendency towards the exaltation of Christ. He would seem to Pagans the real god of Christianity. God, the purely Jewish divinity, the national deity of Judaism, must have been from the beginning unattractive to Pagans, who disliked Jews, and were accustomed to gods that differed but little from men. The identification by Marcionite Gnosticism of the Jewish god with the malignant creator of matter showed how strong this feeling could become. But for the most part Pagans would simply put God aside, and fix all their attention on Christ. They would honour and exalt him, and regard him as the representative of heaven. Thus Paganism must have tended to develop still further the Christology of Paulinism. The first result of this probably appeared in connection with the Pauline phrase “son of God.” A Jew could not misinterpret the phrase and give it a literal meaning, but a Pagan might do so easily. Familiar with ideas of extremely anthropomorphic gods, Pagans would naturally consider Christ to be the son of God in the sense in which Herakles was the son of Zeus. As the proportion of Jews in the whole number of Christians grew less, the increasing Paganism of the Church developed this tendency, until finally it resulted in the belief in the miraculous conception of Christ, the first distinctly Pagan dogma of Christianity.
The gospels supply us with almost certain evidence that this was the way in which the dogma originated. The genealogies in Matthew and Luke are clear proof that the earlier traditions of the Church made Joseph the father of Christ, and of course the Church was less Pagan then than it was in later times. The doctrine, as Dean Milman points out, is utterly un-Jewish.[84] The Jews always expected the Messiah to be born in the ordinary manner, and they reverenced God too much to put him in the place of a human father. So the dogma shows plainly that it was the first triumph of Christian Paganism. Jewish Christianity was only able slightly to spiritualize it, and to found it in appearance upon an absurd misinterpretation of a passage of Isaiah.[85]
While the beginning of the gospel narratives was being constructed by one influence of Pagan Christianity, the end of them was being constructed by another. When the expectation of the second coming of Christ was abandoned, the Church had to assign a different meaning to his resurrection. Originally, and especially by St. Paul, this was closely connected with the second advent.[86] St. Paul evidently regarded the appearances of Christ to him and to others as preliminaries of the second advent, but now they seemed to stand in another light. Examining the traditions which preserved the remembrance of the visions of Christ seen by the early Christians, the Church found them, of course, clustered most thickly in the period immediately after his death, when the conditions likely to produce them were strongest. Visions seen after that time were probably only occasional and rare, and, with the exception of St. Paul’s, they were sure to have little importance. Finding, then, that nearly all the appearances of Christ had occurred within a short period after his death, the Church would naturally make a distinction between this period and subsequent times. Christ obviously seemed to have been more present then than afterwards. It would not be long before the belief would follow that he had actually stayed on earth during this period, before he had ascended to heaven. With his second coming no longer expected, that he should have done so would seem quite natural. The Church having to face a long life without Christ, it was reasonable that, before leaving it to its lonely struggle, he should have stayed with it for a time to sustain its immaturity and to strengthen it for its work. A solemn ascension of Christ in presence of his disciples would seem to be demanded as a suitable close to this period, and with the addition of it the dogma was complete.
As we can see by comparing Luke’s gospel with the Acts, this stay on earth was made shorter by an earlier than it was by a later belief. It was probably fixed finally at forty days, in order to include different reports of visions with places other than Jerusalem as their scene, and possibly, through the influence of expiring Christian Judaism, to match the forty days of Moses on Mount Sinai. That Christ rose on the third day after his death was a dogma of older times accepted by St. Paul,[87] founded, it is likely, on a passage of Hosea,[88] and there was no difficulty in connecting it with the belief in his stay on earth. So the final doctrine of the Church was that Christ rose again on the third day after his death, stayed then forty days on earth, and afterwards ascended to heaven, not to return till the day of judgment and the end of mortal things.
The evidence in favour of this explanation of the origin of the orthodox doctrine of the resurrection of Christ is exceptionally strong. The accounts in the gospels, so confused and contradictory even in comparison with the rest of them, and telling only of occasional appearances of Christ to his disciples, show us clearly the underlying basis of dreams and visions on which the legend was founded. The belief in the resurrection of Christ on earth, we may conclude with almost historical certainty, arose from the late combination of the early traditions of Christ’s appearances from heaven to his disciples.
Thus at the time to which we have now come the Church in general believed Christ to be the divinely begotten and humanly conceived son of God, who had risen after his death on earth, and then had finally ascended to heavenly glory. Pagan principles had triumphed, and Paganism was every moment growing stronger in Christianity. The tendency to exalt Christ, already far advanced, had now nothing to check it. Forces were at work which were inevitably destined fully to deify Christ, to lift him to the level of the Jewish God. The Jewish elements of Christianity, including monotheism, were thus in great danger of utterly perishing. Christianity, in fact, was tending to become a purely Pagan polytheistic religion, with a human being as its most important god, when it was saved by the influence on it at this critical period of a fortunate development in Jewish hands of Pagan philosophy.