The Forty Days’ Fast and the Temptation.—According to Pliny, Zoroaster lived for thirty years in the wilderness upon cheese. The Devil made Zoroaster magnificent promises; but the temptations were in vain. The ancient Persians had a religious festival, which they annually celebrated, called the “Salutation of Mithras (the sun-god),” and during it forty days were set apart for sacrifice and thanksgiving. Among the ancient Egyptians the priest submitted to abstinence of the most severe description. “The priests in Heliopolis,” says Plutarch, “have many fasts, during which they meditate upon divine things.” Fasting and self-denial were observances required of the Greeks who desired initiation into the mysteries. The same practice was found among the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians. The Mexicans had a forty days’ fast, in memory of Quetzalcoatl, who was tempted and fasted forty days on a mountain. Lord Kingsborough says: “The temptation of Quetzalcoatl and the fast of forty days ... are very curious and mysterious.”[11] Mr. Bonwick says: “The Spaniards were surprised to see the Mexicans keep the vernal forty days’ fast.”[12]
Turning to the Old Testament, we may remind ourselves that Moses went up into a mountain to receive certain instructions from God, and “was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights, and he did neither eat bread nor drink water.” On a second occasion, when he received the Ten Commandments, he was again with the Lord forty days and forty nights, and did neither eat bread nor drink water. Elijah fled to the desert, where an angel gave him cake and water, and in the strength of that meat he went for forty days without food. The number “forty” occurs over and over again in that portion of the Old Testament which the Higher Criticism has shown to be unhistorical. The Rationalist avers that the number “forty” is mythological, and that we have this story of the Forty Days’ Fast and the Temptation in the New Testament because the writer wishes to show that Jesus Christ was proof against all temptation; that He, too, as well as other Christs, could resist the powers of the Prince of Evil. It may be urged that in all these cases the number is quite immaterial. Are we not, then, to take the author of “The Acts” literally when he informs us that Christ spent forty days on earth after His resurrection?
The Miracles.—Not only Krishna and Buddha, but all leaders of religious movements, had the reputation of having performed miracles. Religions were established as much by the miracles as by the preachings. Miracles were needed in those days on all special occasions. Many of them are attested in the gravest manner by the gravest writers, and were firmly believed at the time by the people. Healing miracles, such as those performed by Jesus, were the commonest of all. The Gospel miracles are in no respect singular or more wonderful. Horus, as well as Krishna, raised the dead to life. Bacchus changed water into wine. Æsculapius not only cured the sick, but raised the dead. Pausanias, the eminent Greek geographer and historian, writes that in the temple of Æsculapius at Epidaurus there was an old pillar dedicated to the memory of Hippolytus, who had been raised from the dead.[13] Apollonius of Tyana was celebrated for the wonderful miracles he performed. He caused a devil to depart out of a youth, and he restored a dead maiden to life. The Christian Fathers inform us that Simon Magus, with the Devil’s aid, could make his appearance wherever he pleased at any moment; could poise himself in the air; produce trees from the earth suddenly [the mango tree trick?]; fling himself from high precipices unhurt [the very feat suggested by the Devil in the Temptation]; and walk through the streets accompanied by spirits of the dead. Tacitus, the celebrated Roman historian, tells us that the Emperor Vespasian (born 9 A.D.) performed wonderful miracles for the good of mankind, and among others he describes the cure of a blind man with the emperor’s spittle.
The Atonement.—In China the Holy One (Tien) dies to save the world. “The sufferings and death of Osiris were the great mystery of the Egyptian religion. His being the divine goodness, and the abstract idea of ‘good,’ his manifestation upon earth (like an Indian god), his death and resurrection, and his office as judge of the dead in a future life, look like the early revelation of a future manifestation of the deity converted into a mythological fable.”[14] While Osiris is the judge, Horus, his son, is the mediator. In the Judgment scene in the Book of the Dead, Horus, the son of Isis, leads the deceased, after his heart has been weighed, into the presence of Osiris (see Papyrus of Ani, plates 3 & 4). Mithras, the sun-god of the Persians, was a “Mediator” between God and men—the “Saviour,” who, by his laborious conflicts, worked their salvation. He was also called the “Word.” Attys, called the “Only Begotten Son” and the “Saviour,” was worshipped by the Phrygians, and represented by them as a man tied or nailed to a tree. Adonis was another virgin-born “Saviour” who suffered for mankind. The yearly festival of Adonis in the spring was a special favourite with women. In the Old Testament reference is made to the weeping of the women over Tammuz, the Babylonian equivalent of Adonis ([Ezekiel viii. 14]). According to the Rev. Sir G. W. Cox,[15] he was the crucified Tao (divine love personified). The Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, in the chapter on the Resurrection in his Hebrew lexicon, says: “I find myself obliged to refer Tammuz to that class of idols which were originally designed to represent the promised Saviour, the desire of all nations.” Prometheus was a Saviour who suffered the most fearful tortures as the friend of the human race. Æschylus’s tragedy, Prometheus Vinctus, was acted in Athens five hundred years before the Christian era. Even Bacchus, whom most of us think of as the rollicking wine-god of classical mythology, was a slain Saviour.
When we turn to the New World we find the worship of a crucified Saviour among the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians. Lord Kingsborough tells us that, according to the belief of the ancient Mexicans, “the death of Quetzalcoatl upon the cross” was “an atonement for the sins of mankind.”[16] Dr. Daniel Brinton relates how the Aztecs had a feast which they celebrated in the early spring, when “victims were nailed to a cross and shot with an arrow.”[17] Alexander von Humboldt, in his American Researches, also speaks of a feast, at which the Mexicans crucified a man and pierced him with an arrow. The Rev. J. P. Lundy, speaking of this, says: “Here is the old story of Prometheus crucified on the Caucasus, and of all other pagan crucifixions of the young incarnate divinities of India, Persia, Asia Minor, and Egypt.”[18]
Moral Teaching.—There is not only an extraordinary similarity in beliefs, but also in moral teachings. The teachings of Confucius, Mencius, and Wang Yang Ming might, as Professor Nitobe points out,[19] just as well be considered plagiarisms from the Divine library, for they furnish numerous remarkable parallels to the New Testament teaching. Taoism, the philosophy of Laotze, for a long time successfully rivalled the more utilitarian system of Confucius, and its close agreement with many of the teachings of Christ is most noticeable. The morals of the ancient Egyptians are clearly set forth in the Book of the Dead, which came into use after 2000 B.C. They indicate a far higher standard than existed in Israel in David’s time. “Yet,” as Dr. Callaway remarks,[20] “in traditions which still linger among us, the law under which David lived and reigned was perfect and divine; while the name of Egypt stands for darkness and sin.”
With regard to the parallels in the moral teaching, Dean Farrar, in his work, Seekers after God, has clearly shown that “to say that pagan morality kindled its faded taper at the Gospel light, whether furtively or unconsciously, that it dissembled the obligation and made a boast of the splendour, as if it were originally her own, is to make an assertion wholly untenable.” He points out that the attempts of the Christian Fathers to make out Pythagoras a debtor to Hebraic wisdom, Plato an “Atticising Moses,” Aristotle a learner of ethics from a Jew, Seneca a correspondent of St. Paul, were due “in some cases to ignorance, in some to a want of perfect honesty in controversial dealing.”
Apocryphal Gospels.—We are assured by Christian writers that the parallels between the accounts of Krishna’s and Buddha’s childhood and those in the apocryphal gospels of Christ’s childhood are due to the Hindoos having borrowed legends current among the early Christians. Dr. Wallis Budge, the keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum, informs us, however, that “several of the incidents of the wanderings of the Virgin with the child in Egypt, as recorded in the Apocryphal Gospels, reflect scenes in the life of Isis as described in the texts found on the Metternich Stele.”[21] And, again, he says: “In the apocryphal literature of the first six centuries which followed the evangelisation of Egypt, several of the legends about Isis and her sorrowful wanderings were made to centre round the mother of Christ.”[22] The evidence is conclusive that certain legends prevalent among the early Christians were borrowed from the ancient Egyptian religion; yet we are to believe that where the Krishna and Buddha parallels are concerned the borrowing process was the other way! So be it. Let us suppose that certain Egyptian superstitions reached the Hindoo through the medium of the Christian; the fact remains that beliefs once held by devout but unlettered Christians have a heathen origin. This is of serious import, for it lends weight to the suspicion that the marvellous tales in the canonical gospels have been similarly derived from heathen legends—legends from which some of the more glaring absurdities and all that would mar the ethical ideals of the Christian religion were eclectically expunged.
ARE THE KRISHNA AND BUDDHA LEGENDS BORROWED FROM CHRISTIANITY?
I have indicated a few of the more striking parallels in other religions besides Krishnaism and Buddhism. Did space permit, it could be shown that there are also parallels to the teaching of Christ, the darkness at the Crucifixion, the descent into Hell, the Resurrection, the claim of Jesus Christ to be “Alpha and Omega” (according to the Revelation of St. John), the prophecy of the Second Coming, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the doctrine of the Trinity, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, the Christian symbols (cross, triangle, I.H.S., fish, serpent, dove, and lamb). I cannot understand what the Christian cause can gain by ascribing the parallels in Hindoo mythology to Christian sources, when there is all this mass of evidence for parallels that are quite as extraordinary (though less numerous) in those ancient religions where the priority to Christianity cannot reasonably be denied. Certainly the Krishna and Buddha parallels are extremely numerous and strikingly exact; but a policy which seeks to explain them in a different manner from that adopted in the case of the same phenomena in other religions, while it serves to confirm the suspicions of the sceptic, is doomed eventually to failure. This being so, it is unnecessary, I think, to enter at any great length into the controversy.