One of the oldest critics of the Christian religion was a Pagan, known to history under the name of Porphyry; yet, the early Fathers did not hesitate to tamper even with the writings of an avowed opponent of their religion. After issuing an edict to destroy, among others, the writings of this philosopher, a work, called Philosophy of Oracles, was produced, in which the author is made to write almost as a Christian; and the name of Porphyry was signed to it as its author. St. Augustine was one of the first to reject it as a forgery. [Footnote: Geo. W. Foote. Crimes of Christianity.] A more astounding invention than this alleged work of a heathen bearing witness to Christ is difficult to produce. Do these forgeries, these apocryphal writings, these interpolations, freely admitted to have been the prevailing practice of the early Christians, help to prove the existence of Jesus? And when to this wholesale manufacture of doubtful evidence is added the terrible vandalism which nearly destroyed every great Pagan classic, we can form an idea of the desperate means to which the early Christians resorted to prove that Jesus was not a myth. It all goes to show how difficult it is to make a man out of a myth.
[Illustration: The Goddess Mother in the Grecian Pantheon.]
VIRGIN BIRTHS
Stories of gods born of virgins are to be found in nearly every age and country. There have been many virgin mothers, and Mary with her child is but a recent version of a very old and universal myth. In China and India, in Babylonia and Egypt, in Greece and Rome, "divine" beings selected from among the daughters of men the purest and most beautiful to serve them as a means of entrance into the world of mortals. Wishing to take upon themselves the human form, while retaining at the same time their "divinity," this compromise—of an earthly mother with a "divine" father—was effected. In the form of a swan Jupiter approached Leda, as in the guise of a dove, or a Paracletus, Jehovah "overshadowed" Mary.
A nymph bathing in a river in China is touched by a lotus plant, and the divine Fohi is born.
In Siam, a wandering sunbeam caresses a girl in her teens, and the great and wonderful deliverer, Codom, is born. In the life of Buddha we read that he descended on his mother Maya, "in likeness as the heavenly queen, and entered her womb," and was "born from her right side, to save the world." [Footnote: Stories of Virgin Births. Reference: Lord Macartney. Voyage dans 'interview de la Chine et en Tartarie. Vol. I, P. 48. See also Les Vierges Meres et les Naissance Miraculeuse. P. Saintyves. P. 19, etc.] In Greece, the young god Apollo visits a fair maid of Athens, and a Plato is ushered into the world.
In ancient Mexico, as well as in Babylonia, and in modern Corea, as in modern Palestine, as in the legends of all lands, virgins gave birth and became divine mothers. [Footnote: Stories of Virgin Births. Reference: Lord Macartney. Voyage dans 'interview de la Chine et en Tartarie. Vol. I, P. 48. See also Les Vierges Meres et les Naissance Miraculeuse. P. Saintyves. P. 19, etc.]
But the real home of virgin births is the land of the Nile. Eighteen hundred years before Christ, we find carved on one of the walls of the great temple of Luxor a picture of the annunciation, conception and birth of King Amunothph III, an almost exact copy of the annunciation, conception and birth of the Christian God. Of course no one will think of maintaining that the Egyptians borrowed the idea from the Catholics nearly two thousand years before the Christian era. "The story in the Gospel of Luke, the first and second chapters is, "says Malvert, "a reproduction, 'point by point,' of the story in stone of the miraculous birth of Amunothph." [Footnote: Science and Religion P. 96.]
[Illustration: The Annunciation, Birth, and Adoration of Amenophis of
Egypt, Nearly 2000 Years Before Christ.]
Sharpe in his Egyptian Mythology, page 19, gives the following description of the Luxor picture, quoted by G. W. Foote in his Bible Romances, page 126: "In this picture we have the annunciation, the conception, the birth and the adoration, as described in the first and second chapters of Luke's Gospel." Massey gives a more minute description of the Luxor picture. "The first scene on the left hand shows the god Taht, the divine Word or Loges, in the act of hailing the virgin queen, announcing to her that she is to give birth to a son. In the second scene the god Kneph (assisted by Hathor) gives life to her. This is the Holy Ghost, or Spirit that causes conception….Next the mother is seated on the midwife's stool, and the child is supported in the hands of one of the nurses. The fourth scene is that of the adoration. Here the child is enthroned, receiving homage from the gods and gifts from men." [Footnote: Natural Genesis. Massey, Vol. II, P. 398.] The picture on the wall of the Luxor temple, then, is one of the sources to which the anonymous writers of the Gospels went for their miraculous story. It is no wonder they suppressed their own identity as well as the source from which they borrowed their material.