The Christian Mythology. E. B. Leatherbee
societies is considered. The Kaffres acknowledge no other gods than their monarch, and to him they address those prayers which other nations are wont to prefer to the supreme deity. Every schoolboy knows of the apotheosis of the Roman emperors, and the monarchs of Mexico and Peru were regarded as divinities. Every king of Egypt was added to the list of gods and declared to be the son of Ra, and even, in some cases, was made the third person of a trinity. Each denied that he owed his birth to the father from whom he inherited the crown, and claimed to have been miraculously begotten. Special temples were erected for the worship of the kings, which was conducted by special priests. The Parthian rulers of the Arsacid house, likewise, claimed divinity and styled themselves brothers of the sun and moon.
The fable of the slaughter of the innocents, which was merely a new form of the ancient myth of the dangerous child whose life is a constant menace to some tyrant, was copied from several ancient religions, and the flight of the holy family into Egypt has its counterpart in other tales. King Kansa sought the life of Krishna and sent messengers to kill all infants in the neighboring places, but a heavenly voice warned his foster-father to fly with him across the river Jumna, which was immediately done. Salivahana, a virgin-born savior anciently worshiped in southern India, had a similar experience; and fable tells that at Abraham’s birth Nimrod sought his life, fearing a prophecy that a child was born who should overthrow his power, and, as a result, he murdered 70,000 newly-born male children. At the time of Moses’ birth, Pharaoh is said to have dreamed that a new-born child would cause Egypt’s ruin, and he ordered that all the new-born sons of Israel should be cast into the Nile. Similar stories, familiar to all readers of the classics, are told of Perseus, Herakles, Paris, Jason, Bacchus, Romulus and Remus.
All these tales of the birth and early life of Jesus are similar to those of the other and more ancient saviors, and so is the story of the temptation and the forty days’ fast. Moses fasted “forty days and forty nights” on the mount where he received the law (Ex. xxiv, 18; xxxiv, 28; Deut. ix, 9, 11). Elijah fasted “forty days and forty, nights” on Mt. Horeb (I Kings xix, 8). Joachim, in shame at being childless, retired to the wilderness for a fast of “forty days and forty nights” (Protevangelion i, 6, 7). Buddha fasted and held his breath until he became extremely weak, when Mara, Prince of Evil, appeared and tempted him to break his fast by offering to make him emperor of the world. Quetzalcoatl was also tempted by the devil during a forty days’ fast; and the temptation of Zoroaster forms the subject of many legends.
All these myths readily implanted themselves in the Christian mythology, but the execution of its hero gave a great opportunity for mythical expansion and elaboration.
It is taught that Jesus was crucified; whether he was or not nobody knows, although there are more pieces of the “true cross” extant than could ever have flourished as trees on Mount Calvary.
If such a person as Jesus of Nazareth ever lived and was ever executed by the Romans, it is very probable that he was hanged, and the gallows may, very likely, have been of a form similar to that of a rude cross. The term crucifixion does not necessarily imply that one must be nailed outspread upon a symmetrical cross. It was the ancient custom to use trees as gibbets for execution, or a rude cruciform gallows, often called a “tree” (Deut. xxi, 22, 23; Nicodemus ix, 10). To be hung on such a cross was anciently called hanging on a tree, and to be hung on a tree was crucifixion. This rough method of execution was later modified by the Christians to the present theory of the crucifixion, as they very naturally desired to appropriate the cross for their own especial emblem, owing to the fact that its great antiquity as a universal religious symbol would aid in the propagation of their faith, and since its earliest inception, Christianity has been ever prone to aid its proselyting by the adoption of pagan dogmas, symbols and practices from the so-called heathen theologies.
THE CRUX ANSATA.
This figure is as useful a key to religious symbolism as the triangle is to plane geometry. In its outlines are involved the cross, the trinity, and the male and female principles of creation. It is the mitre of the pope, the crucifix, and the key, and is seen in the vestments of the ancient Romish confessor. The modern pallium of the priest preserves only the suggestion of the female, appropriate to his feminine apparel—lace, painted garments, and millinery.
Of all religious symbols, the cross is the most ancient and sacred. It has from the earliest antiquity been the mystic emblem for reverence and awe, and appears to have been in the aboriginal possession of every ancient people. Populations of essentially different culture, tastes, and pursuits have vied with one another in their superstitious adoration of it. Greek crosses of equal arms adorned the tomb of Midas of Phrygia; and long before the time of the Eutruscans, the inhabitants of northern Italy erected crosses over the graves of their dead. The cross was common to Mexico; white marble crosses were found on the island of Saint Ulloa by its discoverers; and it was greatly revered in Paraguay and Peru.
While the origin of the cross, shrouded as it is in the mists of the remotest antiquity, has been the subject of much speculation which has resulted in numerous theories, it is, undoubtedly, a conventionalized result of primitive phallic ideas. Sexual motives underlie and permeate all known religious systems. The idea of a creative god naturally gave rise to characteristic symbolical expression of the male and female principles, which were gradually modified and reduced to the tau (a Gothic T), representing the male principle, and the ring, representing the female principle. As a complete expression of the creative power, these two symbols were often placed in conjunction; and the most ancient form of the conjunction was, probably, that of the crux ansata, known to the Egyptians as “the emblem of life,” which was very simply formed by placing the ring above the T. This emblem is sometimes called the “cross with the handle,” because in ancient sculpture it is often represented as being carried by the ring. (See Doane, “Bible Myths”; Inman, “Ancient Faiths,” etc.). This handled cross was also sacred to the Babylonians and occurs repeatedly on their cylinders, bricks and gems.
In ancient Scandinavian mythology the great warrior god Thor was always closely associated with a cruciform hammer, this being the instrument with which he killed the great Mitgard serpent, with which he destroyed the giants, and performed other acts of heroism. Cruciform hammers, with a hole at the intersection of the arms for the insertion of the haft, have been discovered in Denmark, and were used in consecrating victims at Thor’s altars. The cross, or hammer, of Thor is still used in Iceland as a magical sign in connection with wind and rain, just as the corresponding sign of the cross is now used among the German peasantry to dispel a thunderstorm; both being expressions of the same idea that the cross is sacred to the god of thunder. As Christians blessed the full goblet with the sign of the cross, so the ancient Vikings made the sign of the hammer over theirs; and the signs were identical.
The practice of making the sign of the cross before eating, which has, in Protestant sects, degenerated to the saying of grace, which again has assumed the form of a prayer of thanks to God for bestowing the sustenance, was originally merely a method of prevention against demonical possession. It was thought that demons abounded everywhere and that one was very likely to imbibe one of these spirits unless he took the precaution of making the sign of the cross, which they could not endure and from which they fled. This belief in the efficacy of a talisman, universal among all peoples from the most barbarous to so-called civilized communities, was not only countenanced but encouraged by Christianity, and even today we find orthodox Christians who—although they cannot be called educated in the highest sense, yet are not to be classed as illiterate—who are still practicing it. Every good Catholic wears a scapular, and many a one carries a little image of some saint to ward off disaster. The sign of the cross is still used in time of danger and is considered a weapon of miraculous power. Sword hilts are still constructed in the form of the cross to give fortune in battle, and the masts of ships with yards were once considered the symbol of the cross.
The burial of the dead about churches is another modern form of the ancient superstition that within the shadow of the cross demons dare not disturb the body, which was necessary for resurrection and immortality. This idea is a descendant of the ancient savage notion that bodies in the vicinity of the idol were protected. Even in our modern Protestant cemeteries we