Many writers on Gnosticism seem to know no more than the cock on the dunghill knows of the jewels that lie before him. The fact is, that the writings of the so-called Fathers, and of the New Testament itself, have come down to us percolated through Roman sacerdotalism, and must be taken with many grains of allowance. There were many men named Jesus at the commencement of the Christian era, but that a Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead is not supported by a particle of evidence. The anonymous author of the great English book, Supernatural Religion, has shown how utterly valueless the Gospels are as sources of evidence; and where else shall we look for an historical Jesus? We can have no faith in historical “phantoms,” “aions,” and “illusions.” Neither pagan nor Jewish contemporaneous history gives any countenance to the orthodox claim of a personal, crucified, and risen Jesus.
ORIGIN OF THE CHRIST STORY.
The Gospels were doubtless compiled nearly two hundred years after the beginning of the Christian era from the mythological and superstitious lore that was then circulating in great abundance; and Christ himself is only a mythological personage who, if such a person ever had any existence at all, existed many centuries before the Christian era, and was very different from the Christ of the Gospels, being originally Æsculapius or some other character of the like fame, and serving only as the basis of the Christian fable. It is certain that the primitive teachers of Christianity converted to their own purposes the writings of ancient poets and philosophers, mixing together the Oriental Gnosticism and Greek philosophy, and palming them on the world in a new form as things especially revealed to themselves.
It may further be remarked that at a most early period of the Christian era there appears to have been great doubts as to the real existence of Christ. The Manichees, as Augustine informs us, denied that he was a man, while others maintained that he was a man, but denied that he was a God (August. Serm. xxxvii. c. 12). There is, therefore, considerable force in the expressions of a modern writer that the being of no other individual mentioned in history ever labored under such a deficiency of evidence as to its reality, or ever was overset by a thousandth part of the weight of positive proof that it was a creation of imagination only, as that of Jesus Christ. His existence as a man has, from the earliest day on which it can be shown to have been asserted, been earnestly and strenuously denied; and that not by the enemies of the Christian faith, but by the most intelligent, most learned, and most sincere of the Christian name who have left to the world proofs of their intelligence and learning in their writings and of their sincerity in their sufferings. The existence of no individual of the human race that was real and positive was ever by a like conflict of jarring evidence rendered equivocal and uncertain. Nothing, however, is more common than for some persons to assume an air of contempt, and to cry out that those who deny that such a person as Jesus of Nazareth ever existed are utterly unworthy of being answered. It is, truly, very convenient for them thus to shelter themselves by assuming his existence as incontrovertible, instead of fairly meeting historical facts which, to say the least, render his existence very problemetical. It is to no purpose to urge that it might as well be denied that no such a person as Alexander the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte ever existed as to set at defiance the evidence of the existence of Jesus. For the existence of neither Alexander nor Napoleon was miraculous, and there never was on earth one other real personage whose existence, as a real personage, was denied and disclaimed even as soon as ever it was asserted, as was the case with respect to the assumed personality of Christ. But the only common character that runs through the whole body of the evidence of heretics is, that they, one and all, from first to last, deny the existence of Jesus Christ as a man, and, professing their faith in him as a God and Saviour, yet uniformly and consistently hold the whole story of his life and actions to be allegorical. The very earliest Christian writings that have come down to us are of a controversial character and written in attempted refutation of heresies. These heresies must therefore have been of so much earlier date and prior prevalence; they could not have been considered of sufficient consequence to have called (as they seem to have done) for the entire devotion and enthusiastic zeal of the orthodox party to extirpate or keep them under, if they had not acquired deep root and become of serious notoriety—an inference which leads directly to the conclusion that they were of anterior origination to any date that has hitherto been ascribed to the Gospel history.
In accordance with the notion that Christ was a phantom, the writer of the Commentaries which are attributed to Clement of Alexandria, apparently quoting from the Gospel of Nicodemus, tells us that an apostle attempted to touch the body of Christ, but in so doing found no hardness of flesh and met with no resistance from it, although he thrust his hand into the inner part of it. A similar idea is conveyed by Luke where he says that Christ vanished out of the sight of his disciples, but yet shortly after stood in the midst of them—a notion consistent only with that of an apparition (Luke 24: 31, 36). Similar remarks may be made on the words of Christ to Thomas and Mary; to the latter he says, “Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father that is, I am not to be felt;” and to the former he says, “Reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side” (John 20:17, 27). Both these expressions, contradictory as they are with regard to Jesus, still show that the writer knew something of the notion entertained that Christ was a phantom. Luke (24: 37, 39) also has words proving the same point, where he says that the disciples, when they saw Christ after his resurrection, thought they had seen a spirit and that he told them to handle him. Marcion of Pontus, who flourished about A. D. 127, believed Christ not to have been born of a virgin and to have grown up gradually, but that he took the form of a man and appeared as a man without being born, and at once showed himself in Galilee in full maturity. Manes also, according to the testimony of Socrates and others, “denied that Christ was ever really born or had real human flesh, but asserted that he was a mere phantom.” (See Lardner’s Credibility, vol. ii. p. 141.) For men who entertained this notion of “the person of Christ,” his sufferings, death, and resurrection were of course a delusion—were only in appearance. Thus, according to Father Apelles, who wrote about A. D. 160, Christ was not born, nor was his body like ours, but consisted of aërial and ethereal particles. Very probably, Apelles did not think it unlikely that a body composed of such subtile matter as this should rise from the grave and be capable of passing not only through the smallest aperture, but even through solid matter. Barnabas, the companion of Paul, in his Gospel had another way of disposing of the question of the resurrection—namely, by denying that Christ was crucified at all, but was taken up into the third heaven by four angels; that it was Judas Iscariot who was crucified in his stead; and that Christ will not die till the very end of the world (Toland’s Nazarenus, Letter i. chap. v. p. 17.) The Basilidians, about the commencement of the second century, disposed in a similar manner of the miracle of the resurrection by asserting that it was not Christ, but Simon of Cyrene, who was crucified instead of Jesus.
Such are some of the various opinions of the origin of the story of Christ’s resurrection. They are placed before the reader that he may have a choice of theories. After matured reflection, however, he will, most probably, come to the conclusion that this tale originated in the same manner as “The Gospel of the Birth of Mary,” “The Gospels of the Infancy of Christ,” “The Gospel of Nicodemus,” the epistolary correspondence of Christ and Abgarus, of the Virgin Mary and Ignatius, together with hundreds of other similar productions of the ages when facts were not so much appreciated as fables in the form of books. If he arrive at this conclusion, he will see no reason to believe that such a personage as the Christ of the Gospels was ever crucified, much less raised from the dead.
ANCIENT ENIGMAS.
It is amusing to observe how, in ancient times, the dark, enigmatical, and allegorical style was practised, particularly in the East, by all public teachers, both Jews and Gentiles. By this means they explained away the fabulous tales current regarding their gods, and discoursed on every branch of knowledge known to them. They deemed religion a mystery not to be publicly explained, and always delivered its dogmas clothed in dark allegories (Oie. de Nat. Deor. lib. ii. iii.; Spencer de Legibus Heb., p. 182; Clerici Hist. Eccles., p. 23). The Egyptians and Chaldeans were noted for their dark sayings (Simon Hist crû. des Comment, p. 4). Gale (Opuscula Mythologica) gives an account of several ancient books expressly written as instructions to interpret allegories. The Greek poets, Homer not excepted, are by their scholiasts regarded as treating of their gods in a mystical style. The Stoic philosophers dressed the whole heathen theology in allegorical language (Cic. de Nat. Deor., lib. ii.). The Pythagorean philosophy was taught in enigmatical expressions, the meaning of which was studiously concealed from the vulgar mind, and revealed even to the initiated only gradually as their years of maturity were thought to qualify them for its reception. Plato and his followers in the groves of Academia practised the same mode of teaching religion, especially theogony. The writings attributed to Paul the apostle, as has been shown, are replete with mystical and enigmatical expressions. This he confesses, saying that he spoke “the wisdom of God in a mystery,” “comparing spiritual things with spiritual” (1 Cor. 2: 7, 13). Accordingly, he regards the history of Isaac and Ishmael as an allegory (Gal. 4: 22-25), which he condescends to explain. The primitive Fathers of Christianity pursued the same mode of communicating instruction and of defending their religion against the pagans. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Irenæus, Tertullian, Origen, all of them, were very expert in this occult system, in imitation of the heathen philosophers, by whom most of them had been educated. Eusebius (Hist. Eccles.y lib. vi. c. 19), citing what he is pleased to call the assertions of Porphyry, writes that Origen, having been educated in Greek literature, intermingled it with the fictions of Christianity, that he dealt in the works of Plato, Numenius, Cranius, Apollophanes, Longinus Moderatus, Nico-machus, Chæremon, and Cornutus, and that he derived from these pagan authors the allegorical mode of interpretation usual in the mysteries of the Greeks, and applied it to the Jewish Scriptures. Thus, Origen’s mode of teaching was identical with that of the pagans—a mode commended even by the learned Dodwell (Letters of Advice, etc., p. 208), who says that the pagan mystical arts of concealment are of use toward understanding the Scriptures. The Jewish rabbis also delivered their doctrines in the same obscure and mystical manner, as their Talmud, Cabala, Gemara, and other books, besides what we call the Hebrew Scriptures, amply show. The religious teachers of all the nations of antiquity thus delighting in dark sayings, it is therefore by no means wonderful that the writers of the Gospels, whoever they were, attribute similar enigmas to Jesus. This accounts, in a measure, for the obscurity of the Gospels, while, however, it traces their origin to a pagan source.
GODS OF VIRGIN BIRTH.
It is in perfect harmony with what has long ago been demonstrated by some of the most critical writers, not only in English, but also in other languages—namely, that the New Testament has been collected by Eclectic monks—particularly Egyptian monks of Jewish extraction connected with the Alexandrian college—from various legendary tales and other documents then afloat, which they modified to answer their own purposes, and which since their time have been considerably altered to suit the requirements of different religious communities.