[131] “Il est à supposer,” are M. Loisy’s words. Jésus et la trad. évang., p. 107. [↑]
[132] Myth, Magic, and Morals, 2nd edit. p. 297. [↑]
[133] G.B. iv, 56. Cp. 154. [↑]
Chapter III
ROOTS OF THE MYTH
§ 1. Historical Data
It does not follow from the proved existence of mystery-dramas in pagan cults in the Roman empire in the first century, C.E., that the Jesuists had a similar usage; but when we find in the New Testament an express reference to such parallelism, and in the early Fathers a knowledge that such parallels were drawn, we are entitled to ask whether there is not further evidence. When “Paul”[1] tells his adherents: “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of daimons:[2] ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of daimons,” he is complaining that some converts are wont to partake indifferently of the pagan and Christian sacraments. Few students now, probably, will assent to the view that the “tables of daimons,” with their similar rites, were sudden imitations of the Christian sacraments. They were of old standing. But the Jesuist rite also was in all likelihood much older, in some form, than the Christian era.
If there is any principle of comparative mythology that might fairly have been claimed as generally accepted by experts a generation ago, it is that “the ritual is older than the myth: the myth derives from the ritual, not the ritual from the myth.”[3] This principle, expressly posited by himself as by others before him, Sir James Frazer resolutely puts aside when he comes to deal with the Christian mythus. Disinterested science cannot assent to such a course.