The story of this one first man, who sinned by eating an apple from a certain forbidden tree, has been proved to be a fable, a myth, an allegory. The legend may shadow forth certain natural truths, but it is nevertheless a myth. The thing never occurred. The alleged facts are not facts. There was no first Adam. There may have been some one whom certain persons called the last Adam, but it is nevertheless true that what is said of him was founded upon an unreality—a thing which never happened. According to biblical chronology, the last Adam did not make his advent until about four thousand years after the first Adam fell, Even this seems to have been a long period to wait, but if we accept the interpretation of certain modern writers, that which is called “the beginning” in Genesis may have been forty thousand or four hundred thousand years before the advent of Jesus. True, this would show certain events to have been a very long way apart (for instance, the creation of Eve after that of Adam) and would make the work of Christ in the “redemptive act” occur ages and ages after the mischief was done.
It is contended that the promise of the sending of a Saviour was made the very day that the first Adam sinned, and that the salvation of the sinner was conditioned upon man’s faith in, and acceptance of, the promise that in due time, not mentioned, the last Adam should come and repair all the mischief which the first Adam had caused. It is claimed by sacerdotalists that the saying in Genesis 3: 15 is the first promise of a Redeemer: “And I will put enmity between thee [the serpent] and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel.” But these very words occur in the pagan fables that were written long before the time that I Genesis was written, and in some of these fables, much more consistently with the passage above quoted, the woman is represented as standing with her heel on the serpent’s head. Then it is claimed that the Creator accepted the sacrifice of Abel because it was a bloody sacrifice, prefiguring the shedding of the blood of
Christ, and that he rejected the offering of Cain because there was no blood in it. We have looked in vain through the Old-Testament Scriptures for a promise of the last Adam who was to come and redeem man, but have failed to find it. A system of “redemption” that is based on expressions so enigmatical must have a very flimsy foundation upon which to stand. It is like the assumption that women generally have an aversion to reptiles because a serpent tempted Eve and brought so many curses on the sex. To such miserable subterfuges will sacerdotalists resort to maintain a theory.
One of the first points emphasized in connection with the advent of Jesus is the claim that it was in exact fulfilment of Hebrew prophecy. Certain orthodox Christian writers claim that there are two hundred prophecies in the Old Testament relating to Jesus, while certain other eminent German and English Christian scholars deny that there is even one prophecy which does not admit of another and a more rational explanation. The quotations from Old-Testament prophecies in the Gospels are, to say the least, unfortunate, and rather suggest the hypothesis that certain things, if done at all, were done to make the history fit the prediction.
Learned Bible critics contend that there is not to be found a single example of such redemptive prophecy, even though the theory of the double sense of prophecy be admitted. These predictions or hopes were intended to apply to eminent characters in Hebrew history as deliverers, and can only be applied to Jesus by a forced and unnatural construction; and, though Cyrus and others appeared, the expectations of the Jews have not yet been realized, and some of them are still awaiting their Messiah, spurning the idea that the predictions of their prophets were fulfilled in the humble Man of Nazareth.
One or two examples of so-called Messianic prophecies must suffice. Matthew (27: 9) says the prophecy of “Jeremy the prophet” regarding the thirty pieces of silver was fulfilled in the betrayal of Jesus; whereas no such prophecy is found in Jeremiah, and, though similar words occur in Zechariah, they have another obvious application. Then in Matthew (chap. 2) Hosea is quoted to prove that Jesus dwelt in Egypt to fulfil a prophecy, whereas it is evident (Hos. 11:1) that it was of Israel, not Jesus, that those words were spoken. Again, in Matt. 22:41 the quotation from the Psalms is obviously misapplied—“The Lord said unto my lord,” etc.—as it was not written by David, but Nathan addressed it to David. It was the poet that called David lord, which spoils the prophecy and ruins the argument of the evangelist. Many things recorded in the New Testament are unwittingly admitted to have been done to fulfil a supposed prophecy—“that it might be fulfilled.” There is one very amusing example of an attempt to fulfil an alleged prophecy—that of Jesus dwelling in Nazareth, because it had been prophesied that he should be called a Naz-arene, no such prophecy ever having been uttered.
The Indian Yedas are full of alleged prophecies relating to coming incarnations, and so are the Chinese sacred books. Even Zoroaster, who lived 570 years b. c., prophesied; “A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and a star shall appear blazing at midday to announce his appearance. When you behold the star (said he), follow it whithersoever it leads you. Adore the mysterious child, offering him gifts with profound humility. He is indeed the Almighty Word which created the heavens. He is indeed your Lord and everlasting King” (History of Idolatry, Faber, vol. ii. p. 92). It was believed that this prophecy was fulfilled by the advent of the Persian god Sosia. It was common among the ancients to presage the birth of a god by the appearance of a mysterious star, and for astronomers to hasten to adore the new-born deity and present him gifts. Greece, Rome, Arabia, and even Mexico, were all familiar with Messianic prophecies. Bishop Hawes says that “the idea that God should in some extraordinary manner visit and dwell with men is found in a thousand forms among ancient heathens.”
The fact is, there is no promise or prophecy of a “last Adam” in the Hebrew Scriptures. The Jews give a very different interpretation to those utterances alleged to be Messianic, and the alleged types of Jesus in the Old Testament are purely fanciful, and many of them are exceedingly childish. The idea that Solomon and Moses and the scapegoat were types of Jesus is simply absurd, and not creditable to the alleged antetype. There is no Jesus of Nazareth in the Hebrew oracles.
The bloody sacrifices of the Old Testament were antedated by heathen nations centuries before the Jews. The sacrificing of brute beasts was heathenism pure and simple, to conciliate an imaginary anthropomorphic god. Twenty generations of innocent animals slaughtered by divine command in order to notify the world beforehand of the coming of the last Adam, yet never saying so, seem to have failed to prepare the people for the alleged spiritual sacrifice of Jesus. It was a signal failure. If these bloody offerings were types of Jesus, there must have been some resemblance. Wherein did it lie? A bullock was forced to the altar; he died like any beast at the shambles. It made the sanctuary a slaughter-house. The involuntary offering of an innocent lamb or pigeon cannot be a type of a willing offering of a human being. The whole scheme of bloody animal sacrifices is a type of nothing but the cruelty of barbarism, and meant a good dinner and fat priests! It is generally condemned by the Hebrew prophets as useless, and was entirely rejected by those who “professed and called themselves Christians.”
Since we can learn absolutely nothing that is rationally reliable concerning the “last Adam” from the Old Testament, it becomes necessary for us to consult comparatively modern history. The advent of Jesus was made, if made at all within the historic period, scarcely nineteen hundred years ago. If such a person appeared among men at that time, there must be some written record of so wonderful an event by contemporary parties.