The Christ Myth. Drews Arthur

The Christ Myth

of this work, and there appears to have been rather misunderstood, has recently (1910) appeared more closely worked out and reasoned in an independent form in the Neuer Frankfurter Verlag under the title “Die Petrus Legende. Ein Beitrag zur Mythologie des Christentums.”

13

Op cit., 82.

14

Ep. ad Luc. 41.

15

E. v. Mommsen and Wilamowitz in the Transactions of the German Archæological Institute, xxiii. Part iii.; “Christl. Welt,” 1899, No. 57. Compare as a specially characteristic expression of that period’s longing for redemption the famous Fourth Eclogue of Virgil. Also Jeremias, “Babylonisches im Neuen Testament,” 1905, pp. 57 sqq. Lietzmann, “Der Weltheiland,” 1909.

16

It is certain that the old Israelite Jahwe only attained that spiritualised character for which he is nowadays extolled under the influence of the Persians’ imageless worship of God. All efforts to construct, in spite of this admission, a “qualitative” difference between Jahwe and Ahuramazda, as, for example, Stave does in his work (“Der Einfluss des Parsismus auf das Judentum,” 1898, 122 sq.) are unavailing. According to Stave, the conception of good and evil is not grasped in Mazdeism in all its purity and truth, but “has been confused with the natural.” But is that distinction “grasped in all its purity” in Judaism with its ritualistic legality? Indeed, has it come to a really pure realisation even in Christianity, in which piety and attachment to the Church so often pass as identical ideas? Let us give to each religion its due, and cease to be subtle in drawing such artificial distinctions in favour of our own – distinctions which fall into nothingness before every unprejudiced consideration.

17

Exod. iv. 22; Deut. xxxii. 6; Hosea xi. 1.

18

Isa. xlix. 6, 8.

19

Id. li. 16.

20

Isa. xliv. 28, xlv. 1 sq.

21

Cumont, “Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra,” 1899, vol. i. 188.

22

Isa. xi. 65, 17 sqq.

23

Isa. ix. 6; Micah v. 1.

24

Psa. xlvii. 6, 9, lvii. 12.

25

Ch. xlv.–li.

26

Ch. vi. 1 sqq.

27

Cf. Gunkel, “Zum religionsgesch. Verständnis des Neuen Testaments,” 1903, p. 23, note 4.

28

Revelation xxii.; cf. Pfleiderer, “Das Urchristentum. Seine Schriften und seine Lehren,” 2nd edit., 1902, vol. ii. 54 sqq.

29

Dan. xii. 3.

30

The assertion advanced by Grätz and Lucius that the work mentioned is a forgery of a fourth-century Christian foisted upon Philo with the object of recommending the Christian “Ascesis,” and that a sect of Therapeutes never existed, can now be considered disposed of, since its refutation by Massebiau and Conybeare. Cf. Pfleiderer, “Urchristentum,” ii. 5 sq.

31

Cf. as regards the Essenes, Schürer, “Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi,” 1898, II. 573–584.

32

Regarding the connection between the Essenes and the Apocalypse, cf. Hilgenfeld, “Die jüdische Apokalyptik,” 1857, p. 253 sqq.

33

On this point, cf. Brandt, “Die mandäische Religion,” 1899; “Realenzyklop, f.d. protest. Theologie u. Kirche,” xii. 160 sqq.; Gunkel, op. cit., 18 sqq.

34

Cf. Hilgenfeld, “Ketzergeschichte des Urchristentums,” 1884.

35

Gunkel, op. cit., 29.

36

Gen. xxxii. 24.

37

Numb. xx. 16; Exod. xiii. 21.

38

Exod. xxxiii. 14; 2 Sam. v. 23.

39

1 Kings i. 3; Ezek. xliii. 5.

40

Isa. lxiii. 9 sqq.

41

Psa. ii.

42

Cf. Ghillany, “Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebräer,” 1842, 326–334; Eisenmenger, “Entdecktes Judentum,” 1711, i. 311, 395 sqq. Also Movers, “Die Phönizier,” 1841; i. 398 sq.

43

Exod. xxiii. 20 sqq.

44

Jos. xxiv. 11.

45

Jos. v. 2–10. The unhistorical nature of Joshua is admitted also by Stade. Stade counts him an Ephraimitic myth, recalling to mind in so doing that the Samaritans possessed an apocryphal book of the same name in place of our Book of Joshua (“Gesch. d. Volkes Israel,” 1887, i. 64 sqq., 135). The Samaritan Book of Joshua (Chronicum Samaritanum, published 1848) was written in Arabic during the thirteenth century in Egypt, and is based upon an old work composed in the third century B.C. containing stories which in part do not appear in our Book of Joshua.

46

That the hypothesis of Smith here mentioned is quite admissible from the linguistic point of view has lately been maintained by Schmiedel in opposition to Weinel (Protestantenbl., 1910, No. 17, 438).

47

Epiph., “Hæresiol.” xxix.

48

Smith, op. cit., 37 sq., 54.

49

Isa. ii. 1. Cf. Epiphanius, op. cit.

50

Id. xxix. 6.

51

“Enc. Bibl.,” art. “Nazareth.”

52

“Since ha-nosrîm was a very usual term for guardians or protectors, it follows that when the term or its Greek equivalent hoi Nazoraioi was used the adoption of its well-known meaning was unavoidable. Even if the name was really derived from the village of Nazareth, no one would have thought of it. Every one would have unavoidably struck at once upon the current meaning. If a class of persons was called protectors, every one would understand that as meaning that they protected something. No one would hit upon it to derive their name from an otherwise unknown village named Protection” (Smith, op. cit., 47).

53

Cf. in this connection Smith, op. cit., 36 sq., 42 sqq.

54

Cf. Cumont, op. cit., 195 sq.

55

Matt. ii. 25.

56

Zech. iii. 10.

57

Jeremias, op. cit., 56; cf. also 33 and 46, notes.

58

Robertson, “A Short History of Christianity,” 1902, 9 sqq.

59

Gunkel, op. cit., 34.

60

Id., op. cit., 39–63; cf. also Robertson, “Pagan Christs,” 1903, 155 seq.

61

Cf. Robertson, op. cit., 156.

62

Mark v. 27; Luke xxiv. 19; Acts xviii. 25, xxviii. 31.

63

Luke ix. 49, x. 17; Acts iii. 16; James v. 14 sq. For more details regarding Name magic, see W. Heitmüller, “Im Namen Jesu,” 1903.

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