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PAGE Preface to the First and Second Editions 7 Preface to the Third Edition 21

THE PRE-CHRISTIAN JESUS 29

THE CHRISTIAN JESUS 163

THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM OF THE PRESENT 283

THE CHRIST MYTH

THE PRE-CHRISTIAN JESUS

"If you see a man undaunted by dangers, undisturbed by passions, happy when fortune frowns, calm in the midst of storms, will you not be filled with reverence for him? Will you not say that here is something too great and grand to be regarded as of the same nature as the trivial body in which it dwells? A divine force has descended here--a heavenly power moves a soul so wonderful, so calm, one which passes through all life as though it were of small account, and smiles at all our hopes and fears. Nothing so great can exist without the help of God, and therefore in the main it belongs to that from which it came down. Just as the rays of the sun touch the earth, but belong to that from which they are sent, so a great and holy spirit, sent here that we may have a more intimate knowledge of deity, lives indeed in our midst, but remains in contact with its source. On that it depends, thither its eyes are turned, thither its life tends: among men it dwells as a noble guest. What then is this soul? One which relies upon no goodness but its own. What is proper to man is his soul and the perfect reason in the soul: for man is a rational animal: therefore his highest good is reached when he is filled with that of which he is born."

With these words the Roman philosopher Seneca portrays the ideally great and good man that we may be moved to imitate him. "We must choose some good man," he says, "and always have him before our eyes; and we must live and act as if he were watching us. A great number of sins would remain uncommitted were there a witness present to those about to sin. Our heart must have someone whom it honours, and by whose example its inner life can be inspired. Happy is he whose reverence for another enables him to fashion his life after the picture living in his memory. We need some one upon whose life we may model our own: without the rule you cannot correct what is amiss" . "Rely on the mind of a great man and detach yourself from the opinions of the mob. Hold fast to the image of the most beautiful and exalted virtue, which must be worshipped not with crowns but with sweat and blood" . "Could we but gaze upon the soul of a good man, what a beautiful picture should we see, how worthy of our reverence in its loftiness and peace. There would justice shine forth and courage and prudence and wisdom: and humanity, that rare virtue, would pour its light over all. Every one would declare him worthy of honour and of love. If any one saw that face, more lofty and splendid than any usually found among men, would he not stand in dumb wonder as before a God, and silently pray that it might be for his good to have seen it? Then, overcome by the inviting grace of the vision, he would kneel in prayer, and after long meditation, filled with wondering awe, he would break forth into Virgil's words: 'Hail to thee, whoe'er thou art! O lighten thou our cares!' There is no one, I repeat, who would not be inflamed with love were it given him to gaze upon such an ideal. Now indeed much obscures our vision: but if we would only make our eyes pure and remove the veil that covers them, we should be able to behold virtue even though covered by the body, and clouded by poverty, lowliness and shame. We should see its loveliness even through the most sordid veils" .

The attitude expressed in these words was widespread in the whole of the civilised world at the beginning of the Christian era. A feeling of the uncertainty of all things human weighed like a ghastly dream upon most minds. The general distress of the time, the collapse of the nation states under the rough hand of the Roman conquerors, the loss of independence, the uncertainty of political and social conditions, the incessant warfare and the heavy death-roll it involved--all this forced men back upon their own inner life, and compelled them to seek there for some support against the loss of outer happiness in a philosophy which raised and invigorated the soul. But the ancient philosophy had spent itself. The na?ve interplay of nature and spirit, that ingenuous trust in external reality which had been the expression of a youthful vigour in the Mediterranean peoples, from which indeed the ancient civilisation was derived, now was shattered. To the eyes of men at that time Nature and Spirit stood opposed as hostile and irreconcilable facts. All efforts to restore the shattered unity were frustrated by the impossibility of regaining the primitive attitude. A fruitless scepticism which satisfied no one, but out of which no way was known, paralysed all joy in outward or inner activities, and prevented men from having any pleasure in life. Therefore all eyes were turned towards a supernatural support, a direct divine enlightenment, a revelation; and the desire arose of finding once again the lost certainty in the ordering of life by dependence upon an ideal and superhuman being.

Many saw in the exalted person of the Emperor the incarnation of such a divine being. It was not then always pure flattery, but often enough the expression of real gratitude towards individual Imperial benefactors, combined with a longing for direct proximity with and visible presence of a god, which gave to the worship of the Emperor its great significance throughout the whole Roman Empire.

An Augustus who had put an end to the horrors of the civil war must, in spite of everything, have appeared as a prince of peace and a saviour in the uttermost extremity, who had come to renew the world and to bring back the fair days of the Golden Age. He had again given to mankind an aim in life and to existence some meaning. As the head of the Roman State religion, a person through whose hands the threads of the policy of the whole world passed, as the ruler of an empire such as the world had never before seen, he might well appear to men as a God, as Jupiter himself come down to earth, to dwell among men. "Now at length the time is passed," runs an inscription, apparently of the ninth year before Christ, found at Priene not long ago, "when man had to lament that he had been born. That providence, which directs all life, has sent this man as a saviour to us and the generations to come. He will put an end to all feuds, and dispose all things nobly. In his appearance are the hopes of the past fulfilled. All earlier benefactors of mankind he has surpassed. It is impossible that a greater should come. The birthday of the God has brought for the world the messages of salvation which attend him. From his birth a new epoch must begin."

It was not only the longing of mankind for a new structure of society, for peace, justice, and happiness upon earth, which lay at the root of the cult of the Emperors. Deeper minds sought not only an improvement in political and social circumstances, but felt disturbed by thoughts of death and the fate of the soul after its parting from its bodily shell. They trembled at the expectation of the early occurrence of a world-wide catastrophe, which would put a terrible end to all existence. The apocalyptic frame of mind was so widespread at the commencement of the Christian era that even a Seneca could not keep his thoughts from the early arrival of the end of the world. Finally, there also grew up a superstitious fear of evil spirits and Daemons, which we can scarcely exaggerate. And here no philosophic musings could offer a support to anxious minds, but religion alone. Seldom in the history of mankind has the need for religion been so strongly felt as in the last century before and the first century after Christ. But it was not from the old hereditary national religions that deliverance was expected. It was from the unrestrained commingling and unification of all existing religions, a religious syncretism, which was specially furthered by acquaintance with the strange, but on that account all the more attractive, religions of the East. Already Rome had become a Pantheon of almost all religions which one could believe, while in the Far East, in Nearer Asia, that breeding-place of ancient Gods and cults, there were continually appearing new, more daring and secret forms of religious activity. These, too, in a short while obtained their place in the consciousness of Western humanity. Where the public worship of the recognised Gods did not suffice, men sought a deeper satisfaction in the numberless mystic associations of that time, or formed themselves with others of like mind into private religious bodies or pious brotherhoods, in order to nourish in the quiet of private ritualistic observance an individual religious life apart from the official State religion.

THE INFLUENCE OF PARSEEISM ON THE BELIEF IN A MESSIAH

Among no people was the longing for redemption so lively and the expectation of a speedy end of the world so strong as among the Jews. Since the Babylonian captivity the former Jewish outlook upon the world had undergone a great change. Fifty years had been spent by the Israelites in the land of the stranger. For two hundred years after their return to their own land they were under Persian overlordship. As a consequence of this they were in close connection politically and economically with the Achaemenidean Empire, and this did not cease when Alexander overthrew the Persian power and brought the whole Eastern world under Greek influence. During this lengthy period Persian modes of thinking and Persian religious views had influenced in many ways the old Jewish opinions, and had introduced a large number of new ideas. First of all the extreme dualism of the Persians had impressed a distinctly dual character upon Jewish Monotheism. God and the world, which in the old ideas had often mingled with one another, were separated and made to stand in opposition to each other. Following the same train of thought, the old national God Jahwe, in imitation of the Persian Ahuramazda , had developed from a God of fire, light, and sky into a God of supernatural purity and holiness. Surrounded by light and enthroned in the Beyond, like Ahuramazda, the source of all life, the living God held intercourse with his creatures upon the earth only through the instrumentality of a court of angels. These messengers of God or intermediate beings in countless numbers moved between heaven and earth upon his service. And just as Angromainyu , the evil, was opposed to Ahuramazda, the good, and the struggle between darkness and light, truth and falsehood, life and death, was, according to Persian ideas, reproduced in the course of earthly events, so the Jews too ascribed to Satan the r?le of an adversary of God, a corrupter of the divine creation, and made him, as Prince of this world and leader of the forces of hell, measure his strength with the King of Heaven.

In the struggle of the two opposing worlds, according to Persian ideas, Mithras stood in the foreground, the spirit of light, truth, and justice, the divine "friend" of men, the "mediator," "deliverer," and "saviour" of the world. He shared his office with Honover, Ahuramazda's Word of creation and revelation; and indeed in most things their attributes were mingled. An incarnation of fire or the sun, above all of the struggling, suffering, triumphant light, which presses victoriously through night and darkness, Mithras was also connected with death and immortality, and passed as guide of souls and judge in the under-world. He was the "divine son," of whom it was said that Ahuramazda had fashioned him as great and worthy of reverence as his own self. Indeed, he was in essence Ahuramazda himself, proceeding from his supernatural light, and given a concrete individuality. As companion in creation and "protector" of the world he kept the universe standing in its struggle against its enemies. At the head of the heavenly host he fought for God, and with his sword of flame he drove the Daemons of Darkness in terror back into the shadows. To take part in this combat on the side of God, to build up the future kingdom of God by the work of a life-giving civilisation, by the rendering fruitful of sterile wastes, the extinction of noxious animals, and by moral self-education, seemed the proper end of human existence. But when the time should have been fulfilled and the present epoch come to an end, according to Persian belief, Ahuramazda was then to raise up from the seed of Zarathustra, the founder of this religion, the "virgin's son," Saoshyant , or, as it ran according to another rendering, Mithras himself should descend upon the earth and in a last fierce struggle overwhelm Angromainyu and his hosts, and cast them down into the Nether World. He would then raise the dead in bodily shape, and after a General Judgment of the whole world, in which the wicked should be condemned to the punishments of hell and the good raised to heavenly glory, establish the "millennial Kingdom of Peace." Hell itself was not to last for ever, for a great reconciliation was to be finally held out even to the damned. Then Angromainyu also would make peace with Ahuramazda, and upon a new earth beneath a new heaven all were to be united to one another in everlasting blessedness.

These ideas entered the circle of Jewish thought and there brought about a complete transformation of the former belief in a Messiah.

Messiah--that is, the Anointed --originally signified the king as representative of Jahwe before the people and of the people before Jahwe. According to 2 Sam. vii. 13 sq., he was placed in the same relation of an obedient "son" to his "father," in which the whole people was conscious of standing. Then the opposition between the holy dignity of the "Anointed" of God and the humanly imperfect personality of the Jewish kings led to the ideal of the Messiah being transferred to the future and the complete realisation of the rule of Jahwe over his people being expected only then. In this sense the ancient prophets had already celebrated the Messiah as an ideal King of the future, who would experience in the fullest sense the high assurances of Jahwe's favour, of which David had been deemed worthy, since he would be completely worthy of them. They had described him as the Hero, who would be more than Moses and Joshua, who would establish the promised glory of Israel, dispose the people anew, and bring Jahwe's religion even to the heathen. They had glorified him in that he would span the heavens afresh, establish a new earth, and make Israel Lord over all nations. In this they had at first understood the Messiah only as a human being, as a new David or of his seed--theocratic king, divinely favoured prince of peace and just ruler over his people, just as the Persian Saoshyant was to be a man of the seed of Zarathustra. In this sense a Cyrus, the deliverer of the people from the Babylonian captivity, the rescuer and overlord of Israel, had been acclaimed Messiah. But just as Saoshyant had been undesignedly transfigured in the imagination of the people into a divine being and made one with the figure of Mithras, so also among the prophets the Messiah was more and more assigned the part of a divine king. He was called "divine hero," "Father of Eternity," and the prophet Isaiah indulged in a description of his kingdom of peace, in which the wolf would lie down by the lamb, men would no longer die before their time, and would enjoy the fruit of their fields without tithe, while right and justice would reign upon earth under this king of a golden age as it had never done before. Secret and supernatural, as was his nature, so should the birth of the Messiah be. Though a divine child, he was to be born in lowly state. The personality of the Messiah mingled with that of Jahwe himself, as though it were God himself of whose ascending the throne and journey heavenwards the Psalmists sing.

These alternations of the Messiah between a human and a divine nature appear still more clearly in the Jewish apocalyptics of the last century before and the first century after Christ. Thus the Apocalypse of Daniel speaks of one who as Son of Man will descend upon the clouds of heaven and will be brought before the "Ancient of Days." The whole tone of the passage leaves no doubt that the Son of Man is a superhuman being representing the Deity. To him the majesty and kingdom of God have been entrusted in order that, at the end of the existing epoch, he should descend upon the clouds of heaven, surrounded by a troop of angels, and establish an everlasting power, a Kingdom of Heaven. In the picture-language of Enoch the Messiah, the "Chosen One," the "Son of Man," appears as a supernatural pre-existing being, who was hidden in God before the world was created, whose glory continues from eternity to eternity and his might from generation to generation, in whom the spirit of wisdom and power dwells, who judges hidden things, punishes the wicked, but will save the holy and just. Indeed, the Apocalypse of Esdras expressly combats the opinion that the judgment of the world will come through another than God, and likewise describes the Messiah as a kind of "second God," as the "Son of God," as the human incarnation of the Godhead.

In all of this the influence of Persian beliefs is unmistakable, whether these arose in Iran itself directly, or whether the idea of a God-appointed king and deliverer of the world was borrowed by the Persians from the circle of Babylonian ideas. Here this conception had taken deep root and was applied at different times now to this king, now to that. Just as in the Persian religion the image of Saoshyant, so also in the Jewish view the picture of the Messiah wavered between a human king of the race of David and a supernatural being of divine nature descended from heaven. And just as in the Persian representation of the coming of Saoshyant and the final victory of the Kingdom of Light there would be a preceding period during which threatening signs would appear in the heavens, the whole of nature would find itself in upheaval and mankind would be scourged with fearful plagues, so also the Jewish Apocalypse speaks of the "woes" of the Messiah and describes a period of terror which would precede the coming of the Messiah. The coming of the power of God was looked upon as a miraculous catastrophe suddenly breaking in from on high, as a conflagration of the world followed by a new creation. The Jewish agreed with the Persian view in this also, that it made a heavenly kingdom of undisturbed bliss "in the light of the everlasting life and in likeness of the angels" follow the earthly world-wide empire of the Messiah. This they imagined on exactly the same lines as the Persian Paradise. There would the holy drink of the "Water of Life" and nourish themselves on the fruit which hang upon the "Tree of Life." The wicked, on the other hand, would be cast into hell and suffer in fearful torments the just punishment of their sins.

The conception of a resurrection of the dead and a last judgment had hitherto been strange to the Jews. In pre-exilic days they allowed the body to die and the soul after death to go down as a shadow without feeling into Hades , without disturbing themselves further about its fate. Now, however, with the doctrine of the destruction of the world by fire and the general judgment, the idea of personal immortality entered the world of Jewish thought. Thus it is said by Daniel that on the day of judgment the dead will rise again, some waking to everlasting life, others to everlasting perdition. "But the teachers will shine as the brightness of heaven, and those who led the multitude to justice as the stars for ever and ever." With the acceptance of personal immortality the whole tone of religious thought was deepened and enriched in the direction of thought for the individual. Former Jewish morality had been essentially of a collective kind. It was not so much the individual as the people viewed collectively that was looked upon as the object of divine solicitude. At this point the position, the road to which had been already prepared by the prophets, was definitely established, that the individual hoped for a personal religious salvation and as a consequence felt in direct personal relationship with Jahwe. God indeed remained, as the Persians had taught them to understand him, the superhuman lord of heaven enthroned in pure light, the source of all life, the living God. His metaphysical qualities, however, his dazzling glory and unconquerable might were ever more and more overshadowed by his moral attributes: goodness, grace, and mercy appeared as the most prominent features in the character of Jahwe. God seemed a loving father who leads his children through life with kindly care, and without whose consent not a hair of one of his creatures could be touched. The strong tendency within Judaism, represented by the upper currents of pharisaic rabbinism, continually drew the national boundaries closer, and was ever more anxiously occupied with a painfully strict observance of the letter of the law and a conscientious observance of ritualistic ordinances. Ethics threatened to be extinguished under a system of conventional rules of an essentially juristic nature. Yet all the while a more human and natural morality was arising, an inward piety, warm-hearted, popular, and sound, which broke through the narrow limits of Jewish nationalism, and sent a fresh current into the heavy atmosphere of official legality. It was then that the groundwork of later Christian ethics was laid in the purified morality of the psalms, aphorisms, and other edificatory writings of a Job, Baruch, Jesus son of Sirach, &c. It was then that the Jewish Monotheism set itself to extend its sway beyond the boundaries of its own land and to enter into competition with the other religions of antiquity, from which it was to draw back vanquished only before a matured Christianity.

THE HELLENISTIC IDEA OF A MEDIATOR

With Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire Palestine also was drawn within the circle of Hellenistic culture. It was at first a vassal state of the Egyptian Ptolemies, and consequently at the commencement of the second century before Christ came under the overlordship of the Syrian Seleucids. The customs and intellectual life of Greece forced their way into the quiet isolation of the priest-ruled Jewish state and could not be expelled again, despite the national reaction under the Maccabees against foreign influences. Above all, however, the dispersal of the Jews contributed to bring about a settlement of opposing views. Since the Exile the Jews had spread over all the countries of the East Mediterranean. Some had remained in Babylon, others were permanently settled especially in the ports as tradesmen, bankers, and merchants. They controlled the entire money market and trade of the East through their assiduous industry, mercantile sharpness, their lack of scruples, and the tenacity with which they held together, supported therein by their worship in common in the Synagogue. In the atmosphere of Greek philosophy and morality a still further transformation and purification of Jahwe took place. All common human and material lineaments were dropped, and he developed into a spiritual being of perfect goodness, such as Plato had described the Godhead. Here the Jews found themselves face to face with the same problem that had long occupied the Greek philosophers. This was the reconciliation of the supernatural loftiness and aloofness from the world of their God with the demands of the religious consciousness that required the immediate presence of Godhead.

Among the ideas which were borrowed by Judaism from the Persian religion belonged those connected with the mediatory "Word." As the creative power of the Godhead, the bearer of revelation and representative of God upon earth, the expression "the word" had already appeared in aphoristic literature. Under Graeco-Egyptian influence the term "wisdom" had become the naturalised expression for it. "Wisdom" served to describe the activities in regard to man of the God who held aloof from the world. In this connection it may be noted that according to Persian ideas "Wisdom" under the name of Spenta Armaiti was considered as one of the six or seven Amesha Spentas , those spirits that stood as a bodyguard closest to the throne of God and corresponded to the Jewish archangels. She was considered by the Persians as the daughter or spouse of Ahuramazda. Already, in the so-called "Wisdom of Solomon," written by an Alexandrian Jew in the last century before Christ, she was declared to be a separately existing spirit in close relation to God. Under the guise of a half-personal, half-material being--a power controlling the whole of nature--she was described as the principle of the revelation of God in the creation, maintenance, and ruling of the world, as the common principle of life from on high and as the intermediary organ of religious salvation. Just as Plato had sought to overcome the dualism of the ideal and the material world by the conception of a "world-soul," so "Wisdom" was intended to serve as an intermediary between the opposites, the God of the Jews and his creation. These efforts were continued by the Alexandrian Jew Philo , who tried to bring the Perso-Jewish conception of the "Word" or "Wisdom" into closer accord with the ideas of Greek philosophy than the author of the "Book of Wisdom" had already done. Philo, too, commenced with the opposition between an unknowable, unnameable God, absolutely raised above the world, and material created existence. He imagined this opposition bridged over by means of "powers" which, as relatively self-existing individuals, messengers, servants, and representatives of God, at one time more closely resembled Persian angels or Greek Daemons, at another time the Platonic "Ideas," the originals and patterns of God in creating. Essentially, however, they bore the character of the so-called "Fructifying powers," those creative forces which infused a soul and design into formless matter and by means of which the Stoic philosophers sought to explain existence. As the first of these intermediate forces, or, indeed, as the essence of them all, Philo considered the "Logos," efficacious reason or the creative word of God. He called him the "first-born son of God" or the "second God," the representative, interpreter, ambassador, Archangel of God, or Prince of Angels. He considered him as the High Priest, who made intercession with God for the world, the affairs of which he represented before him as the paraclete, the advocate and consoler of the world, who was the channel to it of the divine promises; as the tool with which God had fashioned the world, the original and ideal of it to which God had given effect in its creation--that which operated in all things; in a word, as the soul or spirit of the world, which the Stoics had identified with their God, but which Philo distinguished from the other-world Divinity and looked upon as his revelation and manifestation.

In essence only an expression for the sum total of all divine forces and activities, the Logos of Philo also was sometimes an impersonal metaphysical principle, simply the efficacy of the Godhead, and sometimes an independent personality distinct from God. Just as the Stoics had personified their world-reason in Hermes, the messenger of the Gods, so the Egyptians had raised Amun Ra's magic word of creation to a self-existing personal mediatory being in Thoth the guide of souls; the Babylonians, the word of fate of the great God Marduk in the shape of Nabu; the Persians, the word of Ahuramazda in Vohu mano as well as in the Spenta Armaiti, the good thought of the creative God. And just as according to Persian ideas it was at one time the divine "son" and mediator "Mithras," the collectivity of all divine forces, at another the ideal man Saoshyant who appeared as Saviour and Deliverer of the world, and just as both mingled in one form, so Philo also at one time described the Word as the collectivity of all creative ideas, at another only as the unembodied idea of man, the ideal man, the direct divine image and immaterial pattern of the material exemplars of humanity, that is effective therein as the subject of all religious redemption. Indeed, he occasionally identified him with the tree of life in Paradise, since both were everlasting and "stood in the middle."

According to Philo, man is unable of his own strength to free himself from the bonds of earthly existence. All deliverance depends upon the emancipation of the soul from the body and its sensuous desires. In conformity with his true spiritual and godlike nature, to become as perfect as God, is the highest virtue and at the same time true happiness. This is attained by an insight into the divine reality of things, by whole-hearted trust in God, by grateful recognition of the goodness and love bestowed by him, showing itself in piety towards God as well as in charity and justice towards other men. But in addition the Logos itself must be in us and cause for us the insight into our divine nature. The Logos must guide us, come to the aid of our human weakness with his supernatural strength in the struggles against the world and sin and raise us up to God. Thus the apotheosis of man is the goal aimed at in all religious activity. The Logos, however, is the only means to this end, in so far as we are raised through union with him in faith and love to our true origin and life's source, "the vision of God," and thereby have participation in his life.

JESUS AS CULT-GOD IN THE CREED OF JEWISH SECTS

All religious spirits of the time longed to secure this happy vision and communion with God, and to obtain even here on earth a foretaste of the heavenly life. The Jews sought to attain this end by a painfully exact observance of the ordinances of their law, but in so doing they became entangled in a mesh of such minute and tiresome regulations that the more they applied themselves to the service of the law the more difficult it appeared. It seemed to be no longer possible to reconcile the demands of everyday life with one's religious duties. Some therefore withdrew from the life of the world and in retirement and quiet endeavoured to devote themselves exclusively to the "inner life." In Egypt the Therapeutes or Physicians, a religious association composed of Jews and their proselytes, with their headquarters in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, sought in this manner, as Philo informs us in his work "On the Contemplative Life," to give effect to the claims of religion as expressed by Philo himself. Their religious observances resembled those of the Orphic-Pythagorean sects, as in abstinence from flesh and wine, admiration for virginity, voluntary poverty, religious feasts and community singing, and the use of white garments.

They made a deep study of the mystical writings of revelation that had been handed down, and these they used as a guide in the allegorical explanation of the Mosaic law. They united a contemplative piety with a common religious observance, and thus sought to strengthen themselves mutually in the certainty of religious salvation. Beyond the Jordan the Jewish sect of the Essenes had their chief settlement. These called themselves, as is expressed by their name, the "Pious" or "Godfearing." In their esteem of temperance, celibacy, and poverty, their reprobation of slavery, private property, the taking of oaths, and blood-sacrifice, in the honour they paid the sun as a visible manifestation of the divine light, they agreed with the Therapeutes. They differed from them, however, in their monastic organisation and the regular manner in which the life of the community was divided among different classes, their strict subordination to superiors, their maintenance of a novitiate of several years, the secrecy of the traditions of the sect, and their cultivation of the healing art and magic. The Therapeutes passed their lives in leisurely contemplation and spiritual exercises; the Essenes, on the other hand, engaged in the rearing of stock, farming, and bee-culture, or they pursued a handicraft, and in the country places or towns of Judaea, where they often dwelt together in houses of the order, they lived as dwellers in a desert the life of purity and sanctity. Both sects, again, were alike in expecting an early end of the world and in seeking to prepare themselves for the reception of the promises of God by the cultivation of brotherly dispositions amongst themselves, by justice, good works, and benevolence towards their fellow-men, finding therein the special occupation of their lives.

Of what nature were the secret traditions upon which these sects rested? We know from the Jewish historian Josephus that the Essenes clung to an extreme dualism of soul and body, in which, indeed, they agreed with the other religious associations of antiquity. Like all mystical sects, they regarded the body as the grave and prison-house of the immortal soul, to which it had been banished from an earlier life in light and blessedness. They also grounded their longing for deliverance from the world of sense and their strivings towards the glory of a better life of the soul beyond the grave upon pessimism in regard to human existence. They even regarded the performance of secret rites as a necessary condition of redemption. But in the opinion of the Essenes it was essential above all to know the names of the angels and daemons who opened the passage to the different heavens, disposed one above another. This knowledge was to be revealed to men by one of the higher gods, a god-redeemer. A conception allied to that lay at the root of the Book of Wisdom, as well as of Philo's work--the belief in the magic power of the redemptive word of God, mingled by the Essenes with many strange Egyptian, Persian, and Babylonian ingredients and removed from the sphere of philosophic thought to the region of a rankly luxuriant superstition. Thus the closely related Jewish Apocalypse had expressly supported the revelation of a secret divine wisdom. Indeed, we now know that this whole world of thought belonged to an exceedingly manifold syncretic religious system, composed of Babylonian, Persian, Jewish, and Greek ingredients, which ruled the whole of Western Asia in the last centuries before Christ. Its followers called themselves Adonaei, after the name of its supposed founder, Ado . It is, however, generally described as the Mandaic religion, according to another name for its followers, the so-called Mandaei .

Of the numberless sects into which this religion split only a few names have come down to us, of which some played a part in the history of the heresies of early Christianity; for example, the Ophites or Nassenes, the Ebionites, Perates, Sethianes, Heliognostics, Sampsaees, &c. We are thus much better acquainted with their fundamental ideas, which were very fantastic and complicated. They all subscribed to the belief in the redemption of the soul of man from its grave of darkness by a mediatory being, originally hidden in God and then expressly awakened or appointed by him for this purpose. In original Mandaism he bore the name of Mand? de hajj?--that is, Gnosis, or "word" of life. In the form of Hibil-ziw?, the Babylonian Marduk or Nabu, he was to descend from heaven with the keys thereof, and by means of his magic obtain the dominion of the world. He was to conquer those daemons that had fallen away from God, introduce the end of the world, and lead back the souls of light to the highest Godhead.

As the Apocalyptics show, this view had numerous adherents among the Jews of Palestine also. All those who found no satisfaction in the literalness of the Pharasaic beliefs and the business-like superficiality of the official Jewish religion, found edification in ideas of this sort, which excited the imagination. They dealt with them as "mysteries," and sought, as may well be from fear of conflicts with traditional religion, to keep them secret from the public. Hence it is that we have such an incomplete knowledge of this side of the religious life of the Jews. At any rate they clothed their expected Messiah with the attributes of the Mandaic God of Mediation, and they appear, as is clear from the Apocalypse of Daniel and that of John, to have taken particular pleasure in the description of the scene where God calls the Redeemer to his mediatory office and installs him as Deliverer, Ruler of the World, and Judge of the living and the dead.

Now, many signs speak in favour of the fact that Joshua or Jesus was the name under which the expected Messiah was honoured in certain Jewish sects. In Zech. iii. Joshua, who, according to Ezra iii. 2, led back the Jews into their old homes after the Babylonian captivity, just as the older Joshua brought back the Israelites into Canaan, the promised land of their fathers, was invested as High Priest by the "Angel of the Lord," and promised the continuance of his priesthood so long as he walked in the ways of the Lord. In Zech. vi. 9-15 the High Priest Joshua is crowned as Messiah and brought into connection with the "branch" under which the glory of God's kingdom will come to pass. It is true that in this passage under the title of Messiah Zerubbabel, the leader of the Jews of the race of David, was originally understood. In him the prophet thought he could discern that "branch" by which, in accordance with Isaiah xi. 1, the House of David was again to obtain the rule. Since, however, the great hopes set upon Zerubbabel as Messiah were not fulfilled, a correction was made in the text of the prophet, as follows: The name of Zerubbabel was struck out, the plural changed into the singular, so that Joshua alone was represented as having been crowned, the promises regarding the Messiah accordingly also passing over to him .

Jesus was a name given, as will be still more clearly shown, not only to the High Priest of Zechariah and to the successor of Moses, both of whom were said to have led Israel back into its ancient home, both having a decidedly Messianic character. The name in ancient times also belonged to the Healthbringer and Patron of the Physician--namely, Jasios or Jason, the pupil of Chiron skilled in healing --who in general shows a remarkable resemblance to the Christian Redeemer. Consider also the significant fact that three times at decisive turning-points in the history of the Israelites a Joshua appears who leads his people into their promised home, into Canaan and Jerusalem, into the Kingdom of God--the "New Jerusalem." Now, as Epiphanius remarks in his "History of the Heretics," Jesus bears in the Hebrew language the same meaning as curator, therapeutes--that is, physician and curer. But the Therapeutes and Essenes regarded themselves as physicians, and, above all, physicians of the soul. It is accordingly by no means improbable that they too honoured the God of their sect under this name. We, moreover, read in a Parisian magic-papyrus recently found and published by Wessely : "I exort thee by Jesus the God of the Hebrews." The words are found in an ostensibly "Hebrew Logos" of that papyrus, the tone of which is quite ancient, moreover shows no trace of Christian influence, and is ascribed by the transcriber to "the Pure," under which name, according to Dieterich, the Essenes or Therapeutes are to be understood. The Jessaes or Jessenes named themselves after Jesus, or after "the branch from the root of Jesse." They were closely connected on one side with the Essenes and on the other side with the Jewish sect of the Nazarenes or Nazoraes , if they were not absolutely identical. These were, as Epiphanius shows, in existence long before Christ, and had no knowledge of him. They were, however, called Nazoraes is only a linguistic variation of it, cf. Essaes and Essenes) because they honoured the Mediator God, the divine "son," as a protector and guardian . According to Acts xxiv. 5 the first followers of Jesus were also called Nazoraes or Nazarenes. The expressions "Jesus" and "Nazorean" were therefore originally of almost like meaning, and by the addition of "the Nazorean" or "Nazarene" Jesus is not characterised as the man of Nazareth, as the Evangelists represent it, but as the Healer and Deliverer.

Whether there was a place called Nazareth in pre-Christian days must be considered as at least very doubtful. Such a place is not mentioned either in the Old Testament or in the Talmud, which, however, mentions more than sixty Galilean towns; nor, again, by the Jewish historian Josephus, nor in the Apocrypha. Cheyne believes himself justified by this in the conclusion that Nazareth in the New Testament is a pure geographical fiction.

It is only in the later phases of the tradition that the name appears in the New Testament as a place-name. In the earlier ones the Nazorean only signifies the follower of a particular sect, or is a surname of Jesus which characterises the significance attached to him in the thoughts of his followers. "The Nazorean" appears here only as an integral part of the whole name of Jesus, as Zeus Xenios, Hermes Psychopompos, Apollo Pythios, &c., &c. It is applied to Jesus only as Guardian of the world, Protector and Deliverer of Men from the power of sin and Daemons, but without any reference to a quite obscure and entirely unknown village named Nazareth, which is mentioned in documents beyond any dispute, only from the fourth century on . Or where else is a sect named after the birthplace of its founder? Moreover, even in the Gospels it is not Nazareth but Capernaum which is described as his city; while Nazareth does not play any part at all in the life of Jesus. For the passages Matt. xiii. 53-58 and Mark vi. 1-6, according to which he had no success with his miracles in his "patris" on account of the unbelief of the people, leave the question open whether under the name of "patris" one is to understand his father-city Nazareth or somewhere else. The corresponding passage, Luke iv. 16-31, mentions Nazareth, it is true, in connection with this incident; but it is in discrepancy with the older versions of Matthew and Mark, and it appears otherwise recognisable as a later redaction of the passages in the other Gospels.

Now the expression nazar or netzer in the sense of twig is found not only in the well-known passage Isaiah xi. 1, where the Messiah is described as the "rod from the tree of Jesse" or "the twig from its root." In fine, was not the twig looked upon as a symbol of the Redeemer in his character of a God of vegetation and life, as was the case in the worship of Mithras, of Men, a god of Asia Minor, of Attis, Apollo, &c., and did not this idea also make itself felt in the name of the Nazareans? "He shall be called a Nazarene," accordingly, does not signify that he was to be born in the small village of Nazareth, which probably did not exist in the time of Jesus, but that he is the promised netzer or Zemah, who makes all new, and restores the time when "one loads the other beneath vine and fig-tree," and wonderful increase will appear. Again, the possibility is not excluded of the name of the Nazareans having been confused with that of the Nasiraes , those "holy" or "dedicated" ones, who were a survival in Judea from the times when the Israelite tribes were nomads. These sought to express their opposition to the higher civilisation of the conquered land by patriarchal simplicity and purity of life, abstinence from the use of oil, wine, and the shears, &c.

According to this, Jesus was originally a divinity, a mediator, and God of healing of those pre-Christian Jewish sectaries, with reference to whom we are obliged to describe the Judaism of the time--as regards certain of its tendencies, that is--as a syncretic religion. "The Revelation of John" also appears to be a Christian redaction of an original Jewish work which in all likelihood belonged to a pre-Christian cult of Jesus. The God Jesus which appears in it has nothing to do with the Christian Jesus. Moreover, its whole range of ideas is so foreign even to ancient Judaism that it can be explained only by the influence of heathen religions upon the Jewish. It is exactly the same with the so-called "Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles." This too displays a Jewish foundation, and speaks of a Jesus in the context of the words of the supper, who is in no wise the same as the Christian Redeemer. It is comprehensible that the later Christians did all they could in order to draw the veil of forgetfulness over these things. Nevertheless Smith has succeeded in his book, "The Pre-Christian Jesus," in showing clear evidences even in the New Testament of a cult of an old God Jesus. Among other things the phrase "ta peri tou Iesou" which according to all appearance has no reference to the history of Jesus, but only means the doctrines concerning him, and in any case could originally only have had this meaning, involves a pre-Christian form of belief in a Jesus. But this point is above all supported by the circumstance that even at the earliest commencement of the Christian propaganda we meet with the name of Jesus used in such a manner as to point to a long history of that name. For it is employed from the beginning in the driving out of evil spirits, a fact that would be quite incomprehensible if its bearer had been merely a man. Now we know from the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles that it was not only the disciples of the Jesus of the Gospels, but also others even in his lifetime , healed diseases, and drove out evil spirits in the name of Jesus. From this it is to be concluded that the magic of names was associated from of old with the conception of a divine healer and protector, and that Jesus, like Marduk, was a name for this God of Healing. Judging by this the Persian, but above all the Babylonian, religion must have influenced the views of the above-named sects. For the superstition regarding names, the belief in the magic power attributed to the name of a divine being, as well as the belief in Star Gods and Astral mythology, which is a characteristic of Mandaism, all have Babylon as their home. The Essenes also appear to have exercised the magical and healing art of which they boasted in the form of wonder-working and the driving out of evil spirits by a solemn invocation of the name of their God of Healing.

THE SUFFERINGS OF THE MESSIAH

In the most different religions the belief in a divine Saviour and Redeemer is found bound up with the conception of a suffering and dying God, and this idea of a suffering and dying Messiah was by no means unknown to the Jews. It may be of no importance that in the Apocalypse of Esdras the death of Christ is spoken of, since in the opinion of many this work only appeared in the first century after Christ; but Deutero-Isaiah too, during the Exile, describes the chosen one and messenger of God as the "suffering servant of God," as one who had already appeared, although he had remained unknown and despised, had died shamefully and been buried, but as one also who would rise up again in order to fulfil the splendour of the divine promise. This brings to mind the suffering, death, and resurrection of the Gods of Babylon and of the whole of Nearer Asia; for example, Tammuz, Mithras, Attis, Melkart, and Adonis, Dionysus, the Cretan Zeus, and the Egyptian Osiris. The prophet Zechariah, moreover, speaks of the secret murder of a God over which the inhabitants of Jerusalem would raise their lament, "as in the case of Hadad-rimmon in the valley of Megiddon," that is, as at the death of Adonis, one of the chief figures among the Gods believed in by the Syrians. Ezekiel also describes the women of Jerusalem, sitting before the north gate of the city and weeping over Tammuz. The ancient Israelites, too, were already well acquainted with the suffering and dying Gods of the neighbouring peoples. Now, indeed, it is customary for Isaiah's "servant of God" to be held to refer to the present sufferings and future glory of the Jewish people, and there is no doubt that the prophet understood the image in that sense. At the same time Gunkel rightly maintains that in the passage of Isaiah referred to, the figure of a God who dies and rises again stands in the background, and the reference to Israel signifies nothing more than a new symbolical explanation of the actual fate of a God.

Every year the forces of nature die away to reawaken to a new life only after a long period. The minds of all peoples used to be deeply moved by this occurrence--the death whether of nature as a whole beneath the influence of the cold of winter, or of vegetable growth under the parching rays of the summer sun. Men looked upon it as the fate of a fair young God whose death they deeply lamented and whose rebirth or resurrection they greeted with unrestrained rejoicing. On this account from earliest antiquity there was bound up with the celebration of this God an imitative mystery under the form of a ritualistic representation of his death and resurrection. In the primitive stages of worship, when the boundaries between spirit and nature remained almost entirely indistinct, and man still felt himself inwardly in a sympathetic correspondence with surrounding nature, it was believed that one could even exercise an influence upon nature or help it in its interchange between life and death, and turn the course of events to one's own interest. For this purpose man was obliged to imitate it. "Nowhere," says Frazer, to whom we are indebted for a searching inquiry into all ideas and ritualistic customs in this connection, "were these efforts more strictly and systematically carried out than in Western Asia. As far as names go they differed in different places, in essence they were everywhere alike. A man, whom the unrestrained phantasy of his adorers clothed with the garments and attributes of a God, used to give his life for the life of the world. After he had poured from his own body into the stagnating veins of nature a fresh stream of vital energy, he was himself delivered over to death before his own sinking strength should have brought about a general ruin of the forces of nature, and his place was then taken by another, who, like all his forerunners, played the ever-recurring drama of the divine resurrection and death." Even in historic times this was frequently carried out with living persons. These had formerly been the kings of the country or the priests of the God in question, but their place was now taken by criminals. In other cases the sacrifice of the deified man took place only symbolically, as with the Egyptian Osiris, the Persian Mithras, the Phrygian Attis, the Syrian Adonis, and the Tarsic Sandan . In these cases a picture of the God, an effigy, or a sacred tree-trunk took the place of the "God man." Sufficient signs, however, still show that in such cases it was only a question of a substitute under milder forms of ritual for the former human victim. Thus, for example, the name of the High Priest of Attis, being also Attis, that is, "father," the sacrificial self-inflicted wound on the occasion of the great feast of the God , and the sprinkling with his blood of the picture of the God that then took place, makes us recognise still more plainly a later softening of an earlier custom of self-immolation. With the idea of revivifying dying nature by the sacrifice of a man was associated that of the "scapegoat." The victim did not only represent to the people their God, but at the same time stood for the people before God and had to expiate by his death the misdeeds committed by them during the year. As regards the manner of death, however, this varied in different places between death by his own sword or that of the priest, by the pyre or the gibbet .

In this way we understand the 53rd chapter of Isaiah: "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, yet he humbled himself, and opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb; yea, he opened not his mouth. He was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And they made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death; although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul , and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." Here we obviously have to do with a man who dies as an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of his people, and by his death benefiting the lives of the others is on that account raised to be a God. Indeed, the picture of the just man suffering, all innocent as he is, itself varies between a human and a divine being.

And now let us enter into the condition of the soul of such an unhappy one, who as "God man" suffers death upon the gibbet, and we understand the words of the 22nd Psalm: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou answereth not; and in the night season, and am not silent. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered; they trusted in Thee, and were not ashamed. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the lip, saying, Commit thyself unto the Lord, let him deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighteth in him.... Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gape upon me with their mouth, as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water. And all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax: it is melted in the midst of my bowels.... They pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones. They look and stare upon me: they part my garments among them, and upon my vesture do they cast lots. But be not thou far off, O Lord: O Thou, my succour, haste Thee to help me.... Save me from the lion's mouth, yea, from the horns of the wild oxen...."

When the poet of the psalms wished to describe helplessness in its direst extremity, before his eyes there came the picture of a man, who, hanging upon the gibbet, calls upon God's aid, while round about him the people gloat over his sufferings, which are to save them; and the attendants who had taken part in the sacrifice divide among themselves the costly garments with which the God-king had been adorned.

The employment of such a picture presupposes that the occurrence depicted was not unknown to the poet and his public, whether it came before their eyes from acquaintance with the religious ideas of their neighbours or because they were accustomed to see it in their own native usages. As a matter of fact in ancient Israel human sacrifices were by no means unusual. This appears from numberless passages of the Old Testament, and has been already exhaustively set forth by Ghillany in his book "Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebr?er" , and by Daumer in his "Der Feuer- und Molochdienst der alten Hebr?er." Thus we read in 2 Sam. xxi. 6-9 of the seven sons of the House of Saul, who were delivered over by David to the Gibeonites, who hung them on the mountain before the Lord. Thus was God appeased towards the land. In Numb. xxv. 4 Jahwe bade Moses hang the chiefs of the people "to the Lord before the sun, in order that the bitter wrath of the Lord might be turned from Israel." And according to the Book of Joshua this latter dedicated the inhabitants of the city of Ain to the Lord, and after the capture of the city hung their king upon a tree, while in the tenth chapter he even hangs five kings at one time. Indeed, it appears that human sacrifice formed a regular part of the Jewish religion in the period before the Exile; which indeed was but to be expected, considering the relationship between Jahwe and the Phoenician Baal. Jahwe himself was, moreover, originally only another form of the old Semitic Fire- and Sun-God; the God-king , who was honoured under the image of a Bull, was represented at this time as a "smoking furnace" and was gratified and propitiated by human sacrifices. Even during the Babylonian captivity, despite the voices raised against it by some prophets in the last years of the Jewish state, sacrifices of this kind were offered by the Jews; until they were suppressed under the rule of the Persians, and in the new Jewish state were expressly forbidden. But even then they continued in secret and could easily be revived at any time, so soon as the excitement of the popular mind in some time of great need seemed to demand an extraordinary victim.

Now the putting to death of a man in the r?le of a divine ruler was in ancient times very often connected with the celebration of the new year. This is brought to our mind even at the present day by the German and Slav custom of the "bearing out" of death at the beginning of spring, when a man or an image of straw symbolising the old year or winter, is taken round amidst lively jesting and is finally thrown into the water or ceremonially burnt, while the "Lord of May," crowned with flowers, makes his entrance. Again, the Roman Saturnalia, celebrated in December, during which a mock king wielded his sceptre over a world of joy and licence and unbounded folly, and all relationships were topsy-turvy, the masters playing the part of slaves and vice-vers?, in the most ancient times used to be held in March as a festival of spring. And in this case, too, the king of the festival had to pay for his short reign with his life. In fact, the Acts of St. Dasius, published by Cumont, show that the bloody custom was still observed by the Roman soldiers on the frontiers of the Empire in the year 303 A.D.

In Babylon the Feast of the Sakaees corresponded to the Roman Saturnalia. It was ostensibly a memorial of the inroad of the Scythian Sakes into Nearer Asia, and according to Frazer was identical with the very ancient new year's festival of the Babylonians, the Zakmuk. This too was associated with a reversal of all usual relationships. A mock king, a criminal condemned to death, was here also the central figure--an unhappy being, to whom for a few days was accorded absolute freedom and every kind of pleasure, even to the using of the royal harem, until on the last day he was divested of his borrowed dignity, stripped naked, scourged, and then burnt. The Jews gained a knowledge of this feast during the Babylonian captivity, borrowed it from their oppressors, and celebrated it shortly before their Pasch under the name of the Feast of Purim, ostensibly, as the Book of Esther is at pains to point out, as a memorial of a great danger from which in Persia during the reign of Ahasuerus they were saved by the craft of Esther and her uncle Mordecai. Jensen, however, has pointed out in the Vienna Zeitschrift f?r die Kunde des Morgenlandes that the basis of the narrative of Esther is an opposition between the chief Gods of Babylon and those of hostile Elam. According to his view under the names of Esther and Mordecai are hidden the names of Istar, the Babylonian Goddess of fertility, and Marduk, her "son" and "beloved." At Babylon during the Feast of the Sakaees, under the names of the Elamite Gods Vashti and Haman , they were put out of the way as representatives of the old or wintry part of the year in order that they might rise up again under their real names and bring into the new year or the summer half of the year. Thus the Babylonian king of the Sakaees also played the part of a God and suffered death as such upon the pyre. Now we have grounds for assuming that the later Jewish custom at the Feast of Purim of hanging upon a gibbet and burning a picture or effigy representing the evil Haman, originally consisted, as at Babylon, in the putting to death of a real man, some criminal condemned to death. Here, too, then was seen not only a representative of Haman, but one also of Mordecai, a representative of the old as well as of the new year, who in essence was one and the same being. While the former was put to death at the Purim feast, the latter, a criminal chosen by lot, was given his freedom on this occasion, clothed with the royal insignia of the dead man and honoured as the representative of Mordecai rewarded by Ahasuerus for his services.

"Mordecai," it is said in the Book of Esther, "went out from the king in royal attire, gold and white, with a great crown of gold, and covered with a robe of linen and purple. And the town of Susa rejoiced and was merry." Frazer has discovered that in this description we have before us the picture of an old Babylonian king of the Sakaees, who represented Marduk, as he entered the chief town of the country side, and thus introduced the new year. At the same time it appears that in reality the procession of the mock king was less serious and impressive than the author of the Book of Esther would out of national vanity make us believe. Thus Lagarde has drawn attention to an old Persian custom which used to be observed every year at the beginning of spring in the early days of March, which is known as "the Ride of the Beardless One." On this occasion a beardless and, when possible, one-eyed yokel, naked, and accompanied by a royal body-guard and a troop of outriders, was conducted in solemn pomp through the city seated upon an ass, amidst the acclamations of the crowd, who bore branches of palm and cheered the mock king. He had the right to collect contributions from the rich people and shopkeepers along the route which he followed. Part of these went into the coffers of the king, part were assigned to the collector, and he could without more ado appropriate the property of another in case the latter refused his demands. He had, however, to finish his progress and disappear within a strictly limited time, for in default of this he exposed himself to the danger of being seized by the crowd and mercilessly cudgelled to death. People hoped that from this procession of "the Beardless One" an early end of winter and a good year would result. From this it appears that here too we have to do with one of those innumerable and multiform spring customs, which at all times and among the most diverse nations served to hasten the approach of the better season. The Persian "Beardless One" corresponded with the Babylonian king of the Sakaees, and appears to have represented the departing winter. Frazer concludes from this that the criminal also who played the part of the Jewish "Mordecai" with similar pomp rode through the city like "the Beardless One," and had to purchase his freedom with the amusement which he afforded the people. In this connection he recalls a statement of Philo according to which, on the occasion of the entry of the Jewish King Agrippa into Alexandria, a half-crazy street sweeper was solemnly chosen by the rabble to be king. After the manner of "the Beardless One," covered with a robe and bearing a crown of paper upon his head and a stick in his hand for a sceptre, he was treated by a troop of merry-makers as a real king. Philo calls the poor wretch Karabas. This is probably only a corruption of the Hebrew name Barabbas, which means "Son of the Father." It was accordingly not the name of an individual, but the regular appellation of whoever had at the Purim feast to play the part of Mordecai, the Babylonian Marduk, that is, the new year. This is in accordance with the original divine character of the Jewish mock king. For as "sons" of the divine father all the Gods of vegetation and fertility of Nearer Asia suffered death, and the human representatives of these gods had to give their lives for the welfare of their people and the renewed growth of nature. It thus appears that a kind of commingling of the Babylonian Feast of the Sakaees and the Persian feast of "the Beardless One" took place among the Jews, owing to their sojourn in Babylon under Persian overlordship. The released criminal made his procession as Marduk the representative of the new life rising from the dead, but it was made in the ridiculous r?le of the Persian "Beardless One"--that is, the representative of the old year--while this latter was likewise represented by another criminal, who, as Haman, had to suffer death upon the gallows. In their account of the last events of the life of the Messiah, Jesus, the custom at the Jewish Purim feast, already referred to, passed through the minds of the Evangelists. They described Jesus as the Haman, Barabbas as the Mordecai of the year, and in so doing, on account of the symbol of the lamb of sacrifice, they merged the Purim feast in the feast of Easter, celebrated a little later. They, however, transferred the festive entry into Jerusalem of "the Beardless One," his hostile measures against the shopkeepers and money-changers, and his being crowned in mockery as "King of the Jews," from Mordecai-Barabbas to Haman-Jesus, thus anticipating symbolically the occurrences which should only have been completed on the resurrection of the Marduk of the new year. According to an old reading of Math. xxvii. 18 et seq., which, however, has disappeared from our texts since Origen, Barabbas, the criminal set against the Saviour, is called "Jesus Barabbas"--that is, "Jesus, the son of the Father." May an indication of the true state of the facts not lie herein, and may the figure of Jesus Barabbas, the God of the Year, corresponding to both halves of the year, that of the sun's course upwards and downwards, not have separated into two distinct personalities on the occasion of the new year's feast?

The Jewish Pasch was a feast of spring and the new year, on the occasion of which the firstfruits of the harvest and the first-born of men and beasts were offered to the God of sun and sky. Originally this was also associated with human sacrifices. Here too such a sacrifice passed, as was universal in antiquity, for a means of expiation, atoning for the sins of the past year and ensuring the favour of Jahwe for the new year. "As representing all the souls of the first-born are given to God; they are the means of union between Jahwe and his people; the latter can only remain for ever Jahwe's own provided a new generation always offers its first-born in sacrifice to God. This was the chief dogma of ancient Judaism; all the hopes of the people were fixed thereon; the most far-reaching promises were grounded upon the readiness to sacrifice the first-born." The more valuable such a victim was, the higher the rank which he bore in life, so much the more pleasing was his death to God. On this account they were "kings" who, according to the Books of Joshua and Samuel, were "consecrated" to the Lord. Indeed, in the case of the seven sons of the house of Saul whom David caused to be hung, the connection between their death and the Pasch is perfectly clear, when it is said that they died "before the Lord" at the time of the barley harvest . Thus there could be no more efficacious sacrifice than when a king or ruler offered his first-born. It was on this account that, as Justin informs us, the banished Carthaginian general Maleus caused his son Cartalo, decked out as a king and priest, to be hung in sight of Carthage while it was being besieged by him, thereby casting down the besiegers so much that he captured the city after a few days. It was on this account that the Carthaginian Hamilcar at the siege of Agrigentum sacrificed his own son, and that the Israelites relinquished the conquest of Moab, when the king of this country offered his first-born to the Gods. Here, too, the human victim seems to have been only the representative of a divine one, as when, for example, the Phoenicians in Tyre until the time of the siege of that city by Alexander sacrificed each year, according to Pliny, a boy to Kronos, i.e., Melkart or Moloch . This Tyrian Melkart, however, is the same as he to whom, as Porphyry states, a criminal was annually sacrificed at Rhodes. According to Philo of Byblos the God was called "Israel" among the Phoenicians, and on the occasion of a great pestilence, in order to check the mortality, he is said to have sacrificed his first-born son Jehud , i.e., "the Only one," having first decked him out in regal attire. Thus Abraham also sacrificed his first-born to Jahwe. Abraham is, however, only another name for Israel, "the mighty God." This was the earliest designation of the God of the Hebrews, until it was displaced by the name Jahwe, being only employed henceforth as the name of the people belonging to him. The name of his son Isaac marks the latter out as "the smiling one." This however, does not refer, as Goldzither thinks, to the smiling day or the morning light, but to the facial contortions of the victim called forth by the pains he endured from the flames in the embrace of the glowing oven. These contortions were anciently called "sardonic laughter," on account of the sacrifices to Moloch in Crete and Sardinia. When, as civilisation increased, human sacrifices were done away with in Israel, and with the development of monotheism the ancient Gods were transformed into men, the story of Genesis xxii. came into existence with the object of justifying "historically" the change from human to animal victims. The ancient custom according to which amongst many peoples of antiquity, kings, the sons of kings, and priests were not allowed to die a natural death, but, after the expiration of a certain time usually fixed by an oracle, had to suffer death as a sacrificial victim for the good of their people, must accordingly have been in force originally in Israel also. Thus did Moses and Aaron also offer themselves for their people in their capacity of leader and high priest. But since both, and especially Moses, passed as types of the Messiah, the opinion grew up quite naturally that the expected great and mighty leader and high priest of Israel, in whom Moses should live again, had to suffer the holy death of Moses and Aaron as sacrificial victims. The view that the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah was unknown to the Jews cannot accordingly be maintained. Indeed, in Daniel ix. 26 mention is made of a dying Christ. We saw above that among the Jews of the post-exilic period the thought of the Messiah was associated with the personality of Cyrus. Now of Cyrus the story goes that this mighty Persian king suffered death upon the gibbet by the order of the Scythian queen Tomyris. But in Justin the Jew Trypho asserts that the Messiah will suffer and die a death of violence. Indeed, what is more, the Talmud looks upon the death of the Messiah as an expiatory death for the sins of his people. From this it appears "that in the second century after Christ, people were, at any rate in certain circles of Judaism, familiar with the idea of a suffering Messiah, suffering too as an expiation for human sins."

The Rabbinists separate more accurately two conceptions of the Messiah. According to one, in the character of a descendant of David and a great and divine hero he was to release the Jews from servitude, found the promised world-wide empire, and sit in judgment over men. This is the Jewish conception of the Messiah, of which King David was the ideal. According to the other he was to assemble the ten tribes in Galilee and lead them against Jerusalem, only to be overthrown, however, in the battle against Gog and Magog under the leadership of Armillus on account of Jeroboam's sin--that is, on account of the secession of the Israelites from the Jews. The Talmud describes the last-mentioned Messiah, in distinction from the first, as the son of Joseph or Ephraim. This is done with reference to the fact that the kingdom of Israel included above all the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, and that these traced back their origin to the mythical Joseph. He is thus the Messiah of the Israelites who had separated from the Jews, and especially, as it appears, of the Samaritans. This Messiah, "the son of Joseph," it is said, "will offer himself in sacrifice and pour forth his soul in death, and his blood will atone for the people of God." He himself will go to heaven. Then, however, the other Messiah, "the son of David," the Messiah of the Jews in a narrower sense, will come and fulfil the promises made to them, in which connection Zech. xii. 10 sq. and xiv. 3 sq. seem to have influenced this whole doctrine. According to Dalman, the figure of the Messiah ben Joseph first appeared in the second or third century after Christ. Bousset too appears to consider it a "later" tradition, although he cannot deny that the Jewish Apocalypses of the end of the first thousand years after Christ, which are the first to make extensive mention of the matter, may have contained "very ancient" traditions. According to Persian beliefs, too, Mithras was the suffering Redeemer and mediator between God and the world, while Saoshyant, on the other hand, was the judge of the world who would appear at the end of all time and obtain the victory over Ariman . In the same way the Greek myth distinguished from the older Dionysus, Zagreus, the son of Persephone, who died a cruel death at the hands of the Titans, a younger God of the same name, son of Zeus and Semele, who was to deliver the world from the shackles of darkness. Precisely the same relationship exists between Prometheus, the suffering, and Heracles, the triumphant deliverer of the world. We thus obviously have to do here with a very old and wide-spread myth, and it is scarcely necessary to point out how closely the two figures of the Samaritan and Jewish Messiahs correspond to the Haman and Mardachai of the Jewish Purim feast, in order to prove the extreme antiquity of this whole conception. The Gospel united into one the two figures of the Messiah, which had been originally separate. From the Messiah ben Joseph it made the human Messiah, born in Galilee, and setting out from there with his followers for Jerusalem, there to succumb to his adversaries. On the other hand, from the Messiah ben David it made the Messiah of return and resurrection. At the same time it elevated and deepened the whole idea of the Messiah in the highest degree by commingling the conception of the self-sacrificing Messiah with that of the Paschal victim, and this again with that of the God who offers his own son in sacrifice. Along with the Jews it looked upon Jesus as the "son" of King David, at the same time, however, preserving a remembrance of the Israelite Messiah in that it also gave him Joseph as father; and while it said with respect to the first idea that he was born at Bethlehem, the city of David, it assigned him in connection with the latter Nazareth of Galilee as his birthplace, and invented the abstruse story of the journey of his parents to Bethlehem in order to be perfectly impartial towards both views.

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