The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ

by Kersey Graves

THE monstrous scientific paradox (as coming ages will regard it) comprehended in the conception of an almighty, omnipresent, and infinite Being, "the Creator of innumerable worlds," ("by him [Christ] were all things made that were made," John i. 3-10), being born of a frail and finite woman, as taught by both the oriental and Christian religion, is so exceedingly shocking to every rational mind, which has not been sadly warped, perverted, and coerced into the belief by early psychological influence, that we would naturally presume that those who, on the assumption of the remotest possibility of its truth, should venture to put forth a doctrine so glaringly unreasonable and so obviously untenable, would of course vindicate it and establish it by the strongest arguments and by the most unassailable and most irrefragable proofs; and that in setting forth a doctrine so manifestly at war with every law and analogy of nature and every principle of science, no language should have been used, nor the slightest admission made, that could possibly lead to the slightest degree of suspicion that the original authors and propagators of this doctrine had either any doubt of the truth of the doctrine themselves, or were wanting in the most ample, the most abundant proof to sustain it. No language, no text, not a word, not a syllable should have been used making the most remote concession damaging to the validity of the doctrine, so that not "the shadow of a shade of doubt" could be left on any mind of its truth. Omnipotent indeed should be the logic, and irresistible the proof, in support of a thesis or a doctrine which so squarely confronts and contradicts all the observation, all the experience, the whole range of scientific knowledge, and the common sense of mankind. How startling then, to every devout and honest professor of the Christian faith ought to be the recent discovery of the fact, that the great majority of the texts having any bearing upon the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus Christ,—a large majority of the passages in the very book on which the doctrine is predicated, and which is acknowledged as the sole warranty for such a belief,—are actually at variance with the doctrine, and actually amount to its virtual denial and overthrow. For we find, upon a critical examination of the matter, that at least three-fourths of the texts, both in the Gospels and Epistles, which relate to the divinity of Christ, specifically or by implication either teach a different and a contrary doctrine, or make concessions entirely fatal to it, by investing him with finite human qualities utterly incompatible with the character and attributes of a divine or infinite Being. How strange, then, how superlatively strange, that millions should yet hold to such a strange "freak of nature," such a dark relic of oriental heathenism, such a monstrously foolish and childish superstition, as that which teaches the infinite Creator and "Upholder of the universe" could be reduced so near to nonentity, as was required to pass through the ordinary stages of human generation, human birth, and human parturition, —a puerile notion which reason, science, nature, philosophy, and common sense, proclaim to be supremely absurd and self-evidently impossible, and which even the Scriptures fail to sustain,—a logical, scriptural exposition, of which we will here present a brief summary:—

1. The essential attributes of a self-existing God and Creator, and "Upholder of all things." are infinitude, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, and any being not possessing all these attributes to repletion, or possessing any quality or characteristic in the slightest degree incompatible with any one of these attributes, cannot be a God in a divine sense, but must of necessity be a frail, fallible, finite being.

2. Jesus Christ disclaims, hundreds of times over, directly or impliedly, the inherent possession of any one of these divine attributes.

3. His evangelical biographers have invested him with the entire category of human qualities and characteristics, each one of which is entirely unbefitting a God, and taken together are the only distinguishing characteristics by which we can know a man from a God.

4. Furthermore, there issued from his own mouth various sayings and concessions most fatal to the conception of his being a God.

5. His devout biographers have reported various actions and movements in his practical life which we are compelled to regard as absolutely irreconcilable with the infinite majesty, lofty character, and supreme attributes of an almighty Being.

6. These human qualities were so obvious to all who saw him and all who became acquainted with him, that doubts sprang up among his own immediate followers, which ultimately matured into an open avowal of disbelief in his divinity in that early age.

7. Upon the axiomatical principles of philosophy it is an utter and absolute impossibility to unite in repletion the divine and the human in the same being.

8. And then Christ had a human birth.

9. He was constituted in part, like human beings, of flesh and blood.