It was doubtless a deep spiritual experience that led any sons of Israel, in an age of defeat and iron oppression, to realize the vanity of hate, and the one way to cast off its burden. But not only had the lesson been learned in the days “before Christ”: it had actually been embodied in the manual carried by the Twelve Apostles of the High Priest or the Patriarch for the teaching of the Jews scattered throughout the Roman empire. “If anyone ask from thee what is thine,” says the manual simply, “ask it not back, for indeed thou canst not”—a precept to the expatriated Jew to bear with meekness the wrongs for which there was no legal remedy. As little as the Christian, perhaps, did the Jew assimilate the doctrine of forgiveness; but at least let it be noted that the doctrine had been framed by his race.
[1] [Luke xvii, 7–10] (Gr. “Servant” is a wilful mistranslation: the word is “slave”). [↑]
[2] See Miss Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 2nd ed. pp. 413–425. [↑]
[3] A myth of verbal misunderstanding. The original titanoi were “white-clay-men,” men with whitened faces, after the fashion of so many mystic mummeries among savages. (Work cited, p. 493.) [↑]
[4] This also derives from a primitive concept of a Beer-God. See Miss Harrison, as cited, p. 419. [↑]
[5] See “Mithraism” in Pagan Christs, 2nd ed. Pt. III, p. 327 sq. [↑]
[6] See on the whole subject Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. p. 403 sq. [↑]