DCHindley

I have long been a fan of the critic Albert Schweitzer, active in biblical criticism in the first three decades of the 20th century. He was especially talented at reviewing, digesting, summarizing and commenting upon the works of the historical-critical scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries most influential to German criticism. German criticism was, far and away, the best and most thorough of his time.

He reviews the input of comparative religion (mostly through 1910 or so) as it relates to the study of Paul in Paul & His Interpreters (or via: amazon.co.uk), but also comments on claims that Christianity itself is entirely based on such legends rather than fact. Unfortunately, this book is NOT available online as an editable text (there is an image file of this amazingly well written book, maybe even better than Quest, downloadable at http://www.thedcl.org/christia/s/sch...i/paulahi.html). However, I am in the process of rectifying that.

So, at the risk of boring some with facts and well-thought-out criticism of the critics, many of whose works are discussed or referenced here, I am going to post scans of the relevant passages.

First, the bibliography:

CHAPTER VII:

PAULINISM AND COMPARATIVE RELIGION

Gustav Anrich. Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum. (The Ancient Mysteries in their Influence on Christianity.) 1894.

Martin Brückner. Der sterbende und auferstehende Gottheiland in den orientalischen Religionen und ihr Verhältnis zum Christentum. (The Saviour-God who dies and rises again in the Oriental Religions; and their Relation to Christianity.) 1908.

Karl Clemen. Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments. (An Explanation of the New Testament on the basis of Comparative Religion.) 1909.

Franz Cumont. Les Mystères de Mithra. 1899. (E. T. by T. J. McCormack, 1903.) Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain. 1906.

Adolf Deissmann. Licht vom Osten. 1908. (E. T. by L. R. M. Strachan, " Light from the Ancient East, " 1910.) Die Urgeschichte des Christentums im Lichte der Sprachforschung. (The Early History of Christianity in the Light of Linguistic Research.) 1910.

Albrecht Dieterich. Abraxas. 1891. Nekyia. 1893. Eine Mithrasliturgie. 1903.

Arthur Drews. Die Christusmythe. 1909. (E. T. by C. D. Burns.)

Albert Eichhorn. Das Abendmahl im Neuen Testament. (The Lord's Supper in the New Testament.) 1898.

Johannes Geffken. Aus der Werdezeit des Christentums. (From the Formative Period of Christianity), 2nd ed., 1909.

P. Gennrich. Die Lehre von der Wiedergeburt . . . in der dogmengeschichtlichen und religionsgeschichtlichen Betrachtung. (The Doctrine of Regeneration . . . from the point of view of the History of Dogma and of Comparative Religion.) 1907.

Otto Gruppe. Die griechischen Kulte und Mythen in ihrer Beziehung zu den orientalischen Religionen. (The Greek Cults and Myths in their Relation to the Oriental Religions), vol. i., 1887. Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte. (Greek Mythology and Comparative Religion), 2 vols., 1906.

Hermann Gunkel. Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen Testaments. (Contributions to the Understanding of the New Testament from the point of view of Comparative Religion.) 1903.

Adolf Harnack. Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, vol. i., 1906. (E. T. by J. Moffatt, " The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, " 2nd ed., 1908.)

Hugo Hepding. Attis, seine Mythen und sein Kult. (Attis, his Myths and Cultus.) 1903.

W. Heitmüller. Taufe und Abendmahl bei Paulus. (Baptism and the Lord's Supper in Paul's Teaching.) 1903.

Im Namen Jesu. Eine sprach- und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum neuen Testament, speziell zur altchristlichen Taufe. 1903. (In the Name of Jesus. A Study of the New Testament from the point of view of the History of Language and of Comparative Religion, with Special Reference to Early Christian Baptism.)

Adolf Jacoby. Die antiken Mysterienreligionen und das Christentum. (The Ancient Mystery-religions and Christianity.) 1910.

Georg Mau. Die Religionsphilosophie Kaiser Julians in seinen Reden auf König Helios und die Göttermutter. (The Emperor Julian's Philosophy of Religion as shown in his Orations on King Helios and the Dea Mater.) 1908.

Max Maurenbrecher. Von Jerusalem nach Rom. (From Jerusalem to Rome.) 1910.

Salomon Reinach. Cultes, mythes et religions. (1905-1906-1908.)

Richard Reitzenstein. Poimandres. 1904.

Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen. Ihre Grundgedanken und Wirkungen. (The Hellenistic Mystery-Religions. Their fundamental Ideas and their Influence.) 1910.

E. Rohde. Psyche. 1894. 3rd ed. 1903, 2 vols.

H. R. Roscher. Lexikon der griechisch-römischen Mythologie. (Lexicon of Graeco-Roman Mythology.) 3 vols. 1884-1909.

Ernst Eduard Schwartz. Paulus. Charakterköpfe aus der antiken Literatur. (Character Sketches from Ancient Literature.) 1910.

W. B. Smith. Der vorchristliche Jesus nebst weiteren Vorstudien zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Urchristentums. (The pre-Christian Jesus, with other Preliminary Studies for a History of the Origin and Growth of Christianity.) [1906 - dch]

Wilhelm Soltau. Das Fortleben des Heidentums in der altchristlichen Kirche. (The Survival of Paganism in the Early Christian Church.) 1906.

Hermann Usener. Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen. (Studies in Comparative Religion.) 1889; 1899.

Paul Wendland. Die hellenistisch-römische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judentum und Christentum. (Hellenistic-Roman Civilisation in Relation to Judaism and Christianity.) 1907.

Paul Wernle. Die Anfänge unserer Religion. 1901. (E. T. by G. A. Bienemann, " The Beginnings of Christianity, " 1903.)

Georg Wobbermin. Religionsgeschichtliche Studien zur Frage der Beeinflussung des Urchristentums durch das antike Mysterienwesen. (Studies in Comparative Religion with reference to the Question of the Influence of the Ancient Mysteries on Primitive Christianity.) 1896.

DCH

Digitized text copyright 2008 by David C. Hindley

DCHindley

Schweitzer continued...

SOURCES OF THE CULTS

TO the Bonn philologist Hermann Usener belongs the credit of having been the first to bring the Comparative Study of the pagan religions as they existed at the beginning of the Christian era into contact with theological science. (181n1) In E. Rohde's Psyche the Greek and late-Greek conceptions regarding ghost-worship and immortality were introduced to a wider circle of readers.

A generally intelligible survey of the cults which come into question is offered by Franz Cumont in his work on the Oriental religions in Roman paganism. (181n2)

It was Phrygia in Asia Minor which gave to the world the worship of Attis and the Dea Mater; from Egypt came that of Isis and Serapis; Syria supplied the great sun-god whom Heliogabalus and Aurelian, for reasons of [182] state, proclaimed as the supreme divinity. The religion of Mithra is of Persian origin.

Of these cults, ancient literature, both pagan and Christian, has preserved some records, but it is only since discoveries of inscriptions and papyri have supplemented this information (182n1) that any real understanding of the character and history of these religions has become possible.

The myth on which the worship of Cybele and Attis is based has been handed down in various and conflicting versions.

So much, however, is certain, that Attis, the beloved of the Dea Mater, was represented as having been killed by a boar sent by Zeus, or by the jealous goddess herself. Every year in the spring-time there took place at Pessinus the great orgiastic lamentation for him, which, however, ended with a joyful festival. It seems, therefore, as if a resurrection of the slain Attis was assumed to have taken place, although the myth had nothing to say about that, but only in some of the versions related that he was changed into an evergreen fir tree.

At bottom it is a form of nature-worship, which shows a close relationship with that of the Thracian Dionysus-Sabazios and with that of Adonis as worshipped at Byblos in Syria, arid it has in some respects undergone modification due to contact with these. The primary idea underlying both myth and cultus is the decay and revival of vegetable life.

THE MYSTERIES OF ATTIS

The worship of Cybele and Attis penetrated to Rome as early as the year 204 B.C. In the previous year the Sibylline books had given the oracle that Hannibal would not be driven out of Italy until the sacred stone from Pessinus was brought to Rome. This was done; [183] and the Carthaginians vacated the country. The foreign divinities had a temple assigned to them on the Palatine. But when the Senate came to know of the orgiastic feast which was associated with their worship, it forbade the citizens to take part in it and placed the cult under strict control. Thus, in spite of its official recognition, it led a somewhat obscure existence until Claudius, by the public festival which he established for it—which lasted from the 15 th to the 27th March—gave it a high position in public esteem.

In the deepening of its religious character which it underwent in becoming associated with Greek religious feeling of the decadence period, the worship of Attis was brought into connexion with the thought of immortality. In the " Agape, " in which the partakers were handed food in the " tympanon " and drink in the " cymbalon, " they were initiated as " mystae " of Attis and thereby became partakers of a higher life.

Mysteries were also celebrated in which a dying and rising again was symbolised; and there were others based upon the thought of a union with the divinity in the bridal chamber.

From the middle of the second century onward the " taurobolium " appears in connexion with the service of Cybele and Attis. This is a kind of blood-baptism. The " mystes " lies down in a pit, which is covered with boards. Through the interstices there trickles down on him the blood of a bull offered in sacrifice. The lamentation for the dead Attis sounds forth; the " mystes " applies it to himself. Then when the hymn of jubilation follows, he rises out of the grave as one who is now initiate and deified. (183n1)

The process by which the worship of Attis was transformed into a mystery-religion which gave guarantees of immortality remains for the most part shrouded in obscurity. In view of the scantiness of our information [184] we are thrown back upon hypothetical reconstruction for the details of the development and the significance of the mysteries. (184n1)

THE MYSTERIES OF SERAPIS

The worship of Serapis was a creation of Ptolemy Soter, who desired to unite the Greek and Egyptian populations of his empire by the bond of a common worship. The derivation of the word Serapis is uncertain. Whether it arose from Osiris-Apis or from the Chaldaean Sar-Apsi is a debated point. The cultus language was Greek. Serapis was doubled with Osiris. The new cult went forth into the world as the religion of Serapis and Isis. In Rome it was vehemently opposed as being immoral; the temples of Isis, who was identified with Venus, justified this reputation. It was not officially recognised until the time of Caligula. By this time it was, however, widely diffused wherever the Greek language was spoken. Its adherents were found chiefly among the slaves and freedmen. From the third century onwards it is overshadowed by the worship of Mithra.

The myth, which was represented annually, makes the mourning Isis seek out the scattered fragments of the corpse of Osiris and raise a lament over it. Then the limbs are laid together and wound round with bandages, whereupon Thoth and Horus raise the slain Osiris to life again, and this is announced amid jubilant outcries.

In the service of Osiris-Serapis the worshipper gains assurance of eternal life. Therein consisted the attraction of this religion.

The early Egyptian doctrine was simple enough. After his resurrection Osiris became lord of the world [185] and at the same time judge of the dead. Those who at their trial before him are not approved fall a prey to destruction; others have eternal life with him in a realm below the earth.

Life—and this was the tremendously serious feature of this religion—was therefore regarded as a preparation for death. This is the thought reflected in the mysteries, no doubt modelled on those of Eleusis, (185n1) which were attached to the Egyptian cultus after the worship of Serapis-Osiris had been ordained by authority. They represent the esoteric element. By means of the tests which he undergoes in the Serapeum, of the ecstasy which he experiences and the ceremonies of initiation in which he takes part the believer wins his way, along with Osiris, from death to life, and acquires the assurance of eternal being.

Distinct from these mysteries is the exoteric religion with its daily acts of worship. These consist in the unveiling, awaking, clothing, and feeding of the statues of the gods. The " liturgy, " which was everywhere punctiliously followed, is derived from the primitive Egyptian religion. Speaking generally, the exoteric form of the worship of Osiris could come to terms with any, even the lowest, forms of paganism.

The Syrian Baal-cults had no doubt from the second century onwards become widely diffused, and in the third century enjoyed the favour of the Emperors. For the development of popular religion, however, they were of less significance than the religions of Attis and Osiris, because they were not capable of becoming ennobled and deepened by the religious yearnings of the Greek spirit.

THE RELIGION OF MITHRA

Mithra was the father of the sun-god. (185n2) The origin of [186] the cult is obscure. It first became known through the pirates who were taken prisoners by Pompey. It spread through the Roman armies which in the first century advanced towards the Euphrates; they took it over from their opponents. Thus Mithra was primarily a soldiers' god. With the legions he penetrated to the utmost bounds of the Roman Empire. He therefore passed direct from the barbarians into the Roman world without previously becoming at home in the Greek world. From the middle of the third century onwards the new cult spread so vigorously that it was regarded as the strongest rival of Christianity.

In the intervening period, from the first century onward, it adopted in growing measure elements from all the other cults, and in this way became the universal " worship. "

Regarding the myth, little is known; and in the cultus it played no special part. As the " slayer of the bull " Mithra doubtless belongs to the class of star-gods, and represents the supreme sun-god.

The characteristic feature of this religion is its dualism. Mithra, as the supreme, good god, is opposed by the powers of the evil under-world. Hence the earnest character of its ethic, which is not contemplative as in the Osiris cult, but active.

The secret of the power of this new faith lies indeed mainly in the impulse to action which essentially belongs to it, and in the large and simple ethical life to which this conception of the divinity gives rise. The Mithra-religion, differing in this from the Egyptian cults, places the scene of eternal life in an upper realm of light and not in the under-world. The supreme divinity himself guides the souls of departed believers through the seven planetary spheres to the land of the blessed, and thus becomes their " Redeemer. "

As Mysteries there are observed here, as in other cults, sacred meals and baptismal rites. Above these again there was, according to Dieterich, a supreme initiation, [187] which represented a progress to the throne of Mithra. The actions and the formulae used in this ceremony are, he thinks, preserved almost complete in the great Parisian " magic " papyrus. Dieterich, who is opposed on this point by Cumont and Reitzenstein, denominates this document a " Mithra-liturgy, " and supposes the prayers to be used in the course of the ascent which conducts the " mystes " from the world of the four elements through the stars to the realm of the gods, where, under the guidance of the sun-god, he passes through the heaven of the fixed stars and attains to the presence of the highest god. (187n1)

This process he conceives as having been represented, as part of the cultus, in the Mithra-grottos, which is rendered not improbable by the discoveries of objects which might have to do with a mise en seine corresponding to this conception. In any case there was some sacramental representation of the heavenward journey of the soul towards the attainment of immortality. It remains questionable whether, as the supreme mystery which the religion possessed, it was " experienced " by the believers only once, or had its regular place in the cultus.

The prayers extol in lofty language re-birth from the mortal to the immortal life. The invocation with which the " mystes " approaches Mithra is highly impressive. " Hail to thee, lord, ruler of the water; hail to thee, stablisher of the earth; hail to thee, disposer of the spirit. Lord, I that am born again take my departure, being exalted on high, and since I am exalted, I die; born by the birth which engenders life, I am redeemed unto death, [188] and go the way which thou hast appointed, as thou hast made for a law and created the sacrament . . . " (188n1) Here the text breaks off. Perhaps later on the return of the initiate to earth was described. Dieterich, however, thinks this improbable.

According to Dieterich the liturgy arose in the second century, and belongs to the Graeco-Egyptian Mithra-cult; about 200 A.D. it was annexed by the " magians " and from that time forward was preserved among them; about 300 it was embodied in the Paris manuscript which has come down to us.

A valuable insight into the feelings and impressions associated with the Mysteries is given by the Hermetic writings, preserved mainly in " Poimandres. " (188n2) They profess to be derived from Hermes, who in the thought of later times became the god of revelation, and in the prominence which they give to the philosophico-religious element they mark a stage in the development of Greek religious thought from the Mystery-religions to Neo-Platonism. In their present form the documents of this later Hermetic religion, which is marked by a certain profundity, doubtless belong to about the third century; but the original form dates, perhaps, from before the beginning of the second century.

These are the cults and religions which have to be taken into account. They are parallel to Christianity in so far that they, like it—though in general doubtless somewhat later—make their appearance in the ancient world as religions of redemption. Certain analogies are not to be denied. The only question is how far these go, and how far the Mystery-religions really exercised an influence upon the views and the [189] cultus-forms of the early, and especially of the primitive, church. (189n1)

181n1) Hermann Usener, Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen: " Das Weihnachtsfest " (1889, 337 pp.); " Die Sintflutsagen " (1899, 276 pp.) ( " Studies in Comparative Religion, 'Christmas,' 1889. 'The Flood-legends,' 1899 " ). Other works which played an important part in creating the new horizon were Albrecht Dieterich's works on Comparative Religion, Abraxas (1891, 221 pp. On a Hellenistic myth of the Creation, and Judaeo-Orphico-Gnostic cults) and Nekyia, contributions to the explanation of the " Apocalypse of Peter " (1893, 238 pp.). The description of the torments of hell in the Akhmim fragment is based, he thinks, not on Jewish eschatology, but on conceptions which are found in the Orphic literature.

181n2) Les Religions orientales dans le paganisme romain, 1st ed., 1906; and ed., 1909, 427 pp. Based on Lectures delivered in the year 1905 in the Collège de France.

We may note also some of the essays in Salomon Reinach's Cultes, mythes et religions, 3 vols., 1905—1906—1908 (466, 466, and 537 pp.).

Otto Gruppe, Die griechischen Kulte und Mythen in ihrer Beziehung zu den orientalischen Religionen ( " Greek cults and Myths in their relation to the Oriental Religions " ), vol. i., 1687, 706 pp.; and Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte ( " Greek Mythology and the History of Greek Religions " ). In Iwan Müller's Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft ( " Handbook of Classical Antiquities " ), 1906, 2 vols., embracing 1923 pp.

Georg Mau. Die Religionsphilosophie Kaiser Julians in seinen Reden auf König Helios und die Göttermutter ( " The Emperor Julian's Philosophy of Religion in his Orations on King Helios and the Dea Mater " ), 1908, 169 pp. In the appendix there is a German translation of both discourses.

Of a popular and unscientific character is H. E. de Jong's Das antike Mysterienwesen in religionsgeschichtlicher, ethnologischer und psychologischer Beleuchtung ( " The Ancient Mystery-religions in the Light of Comparative Religion, Ethnology, and Psychology " ), 1909, 362 pp. The author is disposed to cite the modern occult " mani-festations " in relation to the astral body in order to explain certain " appearances " in the ceremonies of initiation to the mysteries.

182n1) On what follows see Hugo Hepding, Attis, seine Mythen und sein Kult, 1903, 224 pp. First volume of the series of " Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, " edited by Dieterich and Wünsch. Cf. also Ernst Schmidt, Kultübertragungen (Cultus-Transferences: " Magna Mater, " " Asklepios, " " Sarapis " ). In the same series vol. viii., 1909.

183n1) On the original significance of the Taurobolium see Cumont, Les Religions oritntales, pp. 101-103.

184n1) Note the admission of Hugo Hepding at the close of his chapter on the Mysteries ([ibid. – dch] p. 199):— " I am well aware that this account of the Phrygian Mysteries is in its details mainly hypothetical. In view of the paucity'of the information which has come down to us, nothing else is possible. In particular the association of the blood baptism with the March festival cannot be shown from our documentary material . . . ." He wants to distinguish between an earlier and a later form of the taurobolium. The earlier form is not a ceremony of initiation but a sacrifice. It was only the later which had in view the initiation of the individual. " The first person whom we know by literary evidence to have undergone the ceremony of the taurobolium is Heliogabalus. "

185n1) On the Eleusinian Mysteries see Rohde, Psyche (3rd ed., 1909) pp. 278-300. From his account it clearly appears how little we know about these ceremonies of initiation. In any case they were quite different from those of the later Mystery-religions. They belong to early Greek religion.

185n2) Franz Cumont, Les Mystères de Mithra (1st ed., 1899; 2nd ed., 1902).

187n1) Albrecht Dieterich, Eine Mithrasliturgie, 1st ed., 190-5; 2nd ed., 1910 (edited after the author's death by Richard Wünsch), 248 pp. The excursuses, pp. 92-212, really give a sketch of the fundamental ideas of the Mystery-religions in general. Cumont refuses to regard the document as a fragment belonging to a Mithras-liturgy because he cannot find in it the specific characteristics of the Persian eschatology and conception of heaven. On this controversy see the 2nd edition of the Mithras-liturgy, pp. 225-228. It would certainly have been better if Dieterich had not given the book the unnecessary and contentious title.

188n1) From Dieterich, p. 15.

188n2) Richard Reitzenstein, Poimandres. Studies in Graeco-Egyptian and Early Christian literature, 1904, 382 pp. The Poimandres " community " [Gemeinde, the word is in quotation marks in the German, perhaps to recall its frequent use in speaking of the Early Christian Church [- TRANSLATOR]] is supposed to have been founded in Egypt about the time of the birth of Christ. Its main characteristic is the mystical basis of the doctrine. Later on, in the course of the third century (?) the Poimandres community was gradually merged in the general Hermetic communities.

189n1) From the literature we may note: Hermann Gunkel, Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen Testaments ( " Contributions to the Understanding of the New Testament on the Basis of Comparative Religion " ), 1903, 96 pp.

Paul Wendland, Die hellenislisch-römische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judentum und Christentum ( " The Hellenistic - Roman Civilisation in Relation to Judaism and Christianity " ), 1907, 190 pp.

Adolf Deissmann, Licht vom Osten ( " Light from the Ancient East " ), 1908, 364 pp. This book, which is rather rhetorically written, treats mainly the general literary side of the matter without entering specially into the religious problems and the ideas of the Mystery-religions. The same author has published a lecture, Die Urgeschichte des Christentums im Lichte der Sprachforschung ( " The History of Primitive Christianity in the Light of Linguistic Research " ), 1910, 48 pp.

Karl Clemen, Religionsgeschichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments ( " Interpretation of the New Testament on the Basis of Comparative Religion " ), 1909, 301 pp.

Works which to a large extent deal with the same class of subject are : Wilhelm Soltau, Das Fortleben des Heidentums in der altchristlichen Kirche ( " The Survival of Paganism within the Early Christian Church " ), 1906, 307 pp. Adolf Harnack, Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten ( " Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the first three Centuries " ), vol. i., 1906, 421 pp.

189n2) Gustav Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum, 1894, 237 pp. From the same stand-point, and in some respects supplementing Anrich's work, is Georg Wobbermin's Religionsgeschichtlicht Studien zur Frage der Beeinflussung des Urchristentums durch das antike Mysterienwesen ( " Studies from the Point of View of Comparative Religion on the Question of the Influence of the ancient Mysteries upon Christianity " ), 1896, 190 pp.

Johannes Geffken in his popular work, Aus der Werdezeit des Christentums, 2nd ed., 1909, 126 pp. ( " From the Formative Period of Christianity " ), does not hold that any very deep influence was exercised by the Graeco- Roman Syncretism on early Christianity. He is, however, of opinion that Paul " adopted all kinds of oriental views. "

DCH

Digitized text copyright 2008 by David C. Hindley

DCHindley

Schweitzer continued...

FIRST COMPARATIVE STUDIES

The first to examine the facts with any closeness was Anrich in his work, " The Ancient Mysteries and their Influence on Christianity. " (189n2)

He comes to the conclusion that both the Pauline and the Johannine views of Christianity " are to be understood as in the main original creations of the Christian spirit on the basis of genuine Judaism, " and if they show the influence of Greek thought, it is at most in a secondary fashion. There is, he asserts, " no apparent reason to refer the views on baptism and the communion-meal which meet us in the two cases to influences of the latter character. " It is only at a later time that a real influence comes into question.

[190]

This negative conclusion has since been much disputed. That the author, in accordance with the position of Pauline scholarship at that period, did not sufficiently take into account the " physical " element in the mystical doctrine of redemption and in the conception of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and consequently does not give sufficient weight to the analogy between the religion of the Apostle of the Gentiles and that of the Mysteries, is certain. But it ought to be recognised as equally certain that to many points he has given the prominence which they deserved, and that the students of Comparative Religion would have in many respects done better if they had allowed their bold advance to be somewhat checked by his prudent warnings, and had learned something from him in regard to the formulation of the problems.

A point which ought to be more clearly grasped than it has hitherto been, in the investigation of Paul's relation to the Mystery-religions, is that for purposes of comparison Paulinism must be regarded as a distinct entity; very often Paul's doctrine has been included in the " Religion of the New Testament " or taken together with the Johannine and the Early Greek theology. On this method only false results can be looked for. Paulinism, and therein lies the special problem which it offers to scholarship, is an original phenomenon which is wholly distinct from Greek theology.

This implies, too, that only the literal sense of the language of the Epistles must be considered, and that it is not permissible to interpret it through the Johannine theology, as is almost always done. It is nothing less than incredible that, to take the most flagrant example, philologists like Dieterich and others in discussing Paulinism, always calmly talk about " Re-birth, " although in the Epistles which rank as certainly genuine, this word and the corresponding verb never occur. (190n1) That [191] many theologians fall into the same confusion is no excuse. (191n1)

" RESURRECTION " NOT " RE-BIRTH "

The surprising thing is precisely that Paul, when he is speaking of the transformation of the man into a new creature, always makes use of the two words death and resurrection, and describes the new thing that comes about as an already experienced resurrection, without ever introducing the conception of re-birth which seems to lie so near at hand. In this limitation lies his as yet unexplained peculiarity, and therewith the problem of his relation to Greek theology and, in general, to everything that can be called Greek religious life.

The Johannine doctrine, that of the earlier Greek Fathers, and the Mystery-religions, have this in common, that they make use of the conception of re-birth. In that, they show themselves to be growths of the same soil, and stand together over against Paulinism. Any one who interprets the language of the Apostle of the Gentiles in accordance with the conception of re-birth, has, by the aid of the Johannine theology, first conformed it to the Mystery-religions, and has himself introduced the conception which forms the common basis.

The same procedure has been followed in regard to other points also. The Paulinism which the students of Comparative Religion have in view is mainly an artificial product which has been previously treated with the acids and reagents of Greek theology.

Another point which calls for close attention is the chronological question in connexion with the history of the Mystery-religions. It is from the beginning of the [192] second century onwards that these cults become widely-extended in the Roman empire. It is only at this period —the worship of Serapis as an artificial Graeco-Egyptian creation is perhaps an exception—that they come under the influence of late Greek religious thought and feeling, which developed with the decline of the Stoa, and become transformed from imported cults into universal Mystery-religions. The dates and the inner course of this development are for us obscure. So much, however, is certain, that Paul cannot have known the mystery-religions in the form in which they are known to us, because in this fully-developed form they did not yet exist. Assuming the most favourable case, that from his youth up he had had open eyes and ears for the heathen religions by which he was surrounded, he, can only have known the cults as they were in their uncompounded state, not as what they passed into when they became filled with the Greek yearning for redemption, and mutually influenced one another.

Considerations of this kind lead an authority like Cumont to insist again and again upon the difficulties which stand in the way of assuming an influence of the Mystery-cults on the earliest Christianity. (192n1) Especially does he hold it to be quite impossible that the Mithra-religion should have had any point of contact with Paul.

Another point which should be mentioned is that those who are engaged in making these comparisons are rather apt to give the Mystery-religions a greater definite-ness and articulation of thought than they really possess, and do not always give sufficient prominence to the distinction between their own hypothetical reconstruction and the medley of statements on which it is based. Almost all the popular writings fall into this kind of inaccuracy. They manufacture out of the various fragments of information a kind of universal [193] Mystery-religion which never actually existed, least of all in Paul's day. (193n1)

THE " REDEEMER-GOD "

In particular, these works aim at getting hold of the idea of a " Greek Redeemer-god " who might serve as an analogue to Jesus Christ. No figure deserving of this designation occurs in any myth or in any Mystery-religion; it is created by a process of generalisation, abstraction, and reconstruction. Before using the phrase Redeemer-God, one should remember that it means a God who for the sake of men came into the world, died and rose again. Having realised that, one may then try how far the Mystery-religions supply anything corresponding to this—the only adequate—definition. (193n2)

[194]

It is also to be remarked that, on the other hand, there is no " Redeemer-god " in Primitive Christianity. Jesus is, it cannot be sufficiently emphasised, not thought of as a god, but only as a heavenly being, who is entrusted with the mission of bringing in the new world. It was only later in the Greek and Gnostic theology that He was deified. For Paul he is " Son of God " in the simple, Old-Testament and Apocalyptic sense.

We may further recall Cumont's warning that analogies do not necessarily imply dependence. " Resemblances, " he writes in the preface to his Religions orientales, " do not always imply imitation, and the resemblance of views or usages must often be explained by community of origin, not by any kind of borrowing. " In the same essay he points out that analogies are sometimes exaggerated, if not actually created, by the use of language chosen by the critic.

And Dieterich expresses himself in the following terms against this mania for finding analogies. " It is, " he writes, in his edition of the " Mithra-liturgy, " " one of the worst faults of the science of Comparative Religion, which is at present becoming constantly less cautious, to overlook the most natural explanations, not to say ignore and avoid them, in order to have recourse to the most farfetched, and, by the most eccentric methods, to drag out analogies which, to the unsophisticated eye, are absolutely invisible."

These are the principles by which it has to be decided, whether Comparative Religion has hunted down its game according to fair forest-law, or whether its " bag " is poached.

ANALOGUES FOR THE SACRAMENTS

The chief point to which research was at first directed was the discovery of relationships between the two sets of sacramental views.

It seemed so easy to discover common conceptions [195] here, in view of the fact that in both cases cultus-meals and lustrations played a part and had a sacramental value. But, on closer examination, it appears that it is very difficult to get beyond the simple fact of resemblance of a very general character.
Dieterich, in his commentary on the " Mithra-liturgy, " is obliged to admit that we have very little exact knowledge regarding the sacred meals of the Mystery-religions. (195n1) That they were supposed to convey supernatural powers is about the only thing that can be said with safety. Regarding the special conceptions and actions which made this eating and drinking sacramental no information has been preserved. A comparison—not to speak of the establishment of a relation of dependence—is therefore impossible.

As soon as the students of Comparative Religion attempt to bring forward concrete facts, they are obliged to leave the domain of the mystery-religions and draw their material from the primitive Nature-religions. Here they find the primary conception—a man believes that he unites himself with the divinity by eating portions of him, or—this is a secondary stage of the conception—by consuming some substance which has been marked out for this purpose as representative of the divinity and has had his name attached to it.

The following series of examples recurs in all the books:—

The dead Pharaoh, when he enters heaven, causes his servants to seize, bind, and slay the gods, and then devours them in order thus to absorb into himself their strength and wisdom, and to become the strongest of all.

In Egypt anyone who wishes to become truthful swallows a small image of the goddess of truth.

In the Thracian orgiastic worship of Dionysos Sabazios [196] the sacrificial ox is torn to pieces by the participants while yet alive, and swallowed raw.

A Bedouin tribe in the Sinai peninsula slaughters, amid chanting, a camel bound upon the altar, and then eagerly drinks its blood and immediately devours the still bloody flesh half raw.

The Aztecs, before sacrificing and eating their prisoners of war, give them the name of the deity to whom the sacrifice is offered.

Now, by the round-about way of this primitive conception the connexion between Paul's cultus-feast and that of the Mystery-religions—which cannot be directly shown—is supposed to be established.

THE SACRIFICIAL FEAST

It is suggested that this primitive conception of union with the god in the cultus, by an act of eating performed with this special purpose, after it had in the normal development of the various religions been transformed or completely laid aside, came to life again in the mysticism of the Mystery-religions and of Paulinism. Mysticism, according to Dieterich's view, draws its nourishment from the lowest strata of religious ideas. The belief in the union of God and man which, among the cultured classes, was no longer anything but a metaphor, rises up again from below with irrepressible power. " Rising from below, the old ideas acquire new power in the history of religion. The revolution from beneath creates new religious life within the primeval, indestructible forms. " (196n1)

That we have here a combination of two still unproved hypotheses is not sufficiently emphasised. In the Mystery-religions ancient cults certainly enter into direct union with higher religious conceptions, so that the general presupposition on which this hypothesis of Comparative Religion is based is to a certain extent admissible. But whether precisely this primitive conception of the mystic fellowship created by eating and drinking the god awakened to new life in them, must remain an open question, since our information does not suffice to prove [197] it. Of an eating of the god there is nowhere any mention. And the primitive Mysteries were not founded on this idea. Rather, they consist essentially in the representation of the actions performed by the divinity, and rest on the thought that the reproduction of these events will create in the participant some kind of corresponding reality. It is a symbolism which is charged with a certain energy, a drama which becomes real.

This being so, the significance of the cultus-meal comes much less into view than that of the pattern actions which had to be further developed and interpreted. If we possess so few typical statements about the Mystery-feasts, is it not partly because they had no very remarkable features and did not take a very exalted position in the hierarchy of cultus-acts? If in the Paris Magic-papyrus we really possess a Mithra-liturgy, and if the inferences and explanations which Dieterich has attached to it are sound, then we have proof that in this developed cultus of the second century the highest sacrament was a pictorial mystery in which the " mystes " believed that he in some way experienced the heavenly journey of the soul which he, along with others, enacted.

In any case, the assertion that in the Mystery-religions the ancient cultus-conception of a union with the divinity effected by a meal, came to life again, goes far beyond what can be proved. That union is, even in its secondary forms, always closely connected with a sacrificial feast, and cannot properly be detached from it. The sacrificial feast, however, is not a feature in the Mystery-religions, and so far as we can get a glimpse of their beginnings never had any supreme importance in them. The interpretation of these cults on the analogy of the primitive religions of various races, ancient or modern, who devoured oxen, camels, or prisoners of war as substitutes for the divinity, cannot therefore be established.

The vestiges of this ancient conception are to be found, not in the Mystery-religions, but in the ordinary heathen sacrificial worship, in cases where the sacrificial [198] feast has been retained in connexion with it. Here there certainly exists in some form or other the conception of a fellowship with the god set up by eating. It is to be noted that Paul in 1 Cor. x. draws a parallel between the Lord's Supper, which unites us to Christ, and these feasts. How expositors have arrived at the idea of making him refer here to the cultus-meal of the Mystery-religions is quite inexplicable.

The hypothesis that the earliest Christian conception of the Lord's Supper in some way represented the surviving influence of an ancient cultus idea, is at first sight much more plausible than the corresponding hypothesis in the case of the Mystery-religions. At anyrate the existence of the desiderated fact is here proved. The conception of the sacramental eating stands in the centre of the belief; by this act, fellowship with a divine Being who has died and risen again is maintained; and what is eaten and drunk is brought into relation to the person of Christ, inasmuch as it is called, in some sense or other, His body and blood.

Nevertheless in the decisive point the alleged facts break down.

189n2) Gustav Anrich, Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das Christentum, 1894, 237 pp. From the same stand-point, and in some respects supplementing Anrich's work, is Georg Wobbermin's Religionsgeschichtlicht Studien zur Frage der Beeinflussung des Urchristentums durch das antike Mysterienwesen ( " Studies from the Point of View of Comparative Religion on the Question of the Influence of the ancient Mysteries upon Christianity " ), 1896, 190 pp.

Johannes Geffken in his popular work, Aus der Werdezeit des Christentums, 2nd ed., 1909, 126 pp. ( " From the Formative Period of Christianity " ), does not hold that any very deep influence was exercised by the Graeco- Roman Syncretism on early Christianity. He is, however, of opinion that Paul " adopted all kinds of oriental views. "

190n1) See e.g. Dieterich, Mithrasliturgie, 2nd ed., p. 110. Typical also are pp. 176, 177, where he continually speaks of the " death and re-birth " of believers as taught by Paul. [Wiedergeburt has been translated " re-birth " when the general sense implied in the comparison with other religions is in view; " regeneration " when the reference is primarily to the specific Christian doctrine as such. [– TRANSLATOR - dch]]

191n1) P. Gennrich in his book, Die Lehre von der Wiedergeburt . . . in dogmengeschichtlicher und religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung ( " The Doctrine of Regeneration ... in the Light of the History of Dogma, and of Comparative Religion " ), 1907, 363 pp., notes that Paul speaks only of the " new creature " and not of regeneration; but he does not investigate the cause of this peculiarity, but hastens to give a psychological explanation of his utterances as a " precipitate from his personal experience. "

192n1) See the introduction to Les Religions orienitales dans le paganisme romain, 2nd ed., 1909.

193n1) Typical in this respect is the work of Martin Brückner, Der sterbende und auferstehende Gottheiland in den orientalischen Religionen und ihr Verhältnis zum Christentum ( " The divine Saviour who dies and rises again in the Oriental Religions; and their Relation to Christianity " ). In the series of Rehgionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher. 1908,48 pp. " As in Christianity, so in many Oriental religions, a belief in the death and resurrection of a Redeemer-God, who was subordinated to the Supreme God (sometimes as His Son) occupied a central place in the worship and cultus. " What manipulation the myths and rites of the cults in question must have undergone before this general statement could become possible! Where is there anything about dying and resurrection in Mithra? It is instructive to see how the author on p. 30 argues away the effect of this admission!

A popular treatment which is kept within due bounds is Adolf Jacoby's work. Die antiken Mysterienreligionen und das Christentum ( " The ancient Mystery-religions and Christianity " ), 1910, 44 pp., in the series of Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher. The author deserves special credit for offering his readers typical texts from which they can form their own impression.

Dieterich remarks with great justice in the Mithrasliturgie (2nd ed., 207) how necessary it is to get beyond the catchword " Syncretistic, " and point out in every case the source of particular mythological statements and ideas.

193n2) O. Gruppe, too, is obliged to admit that the late Greek religious thought never really had the conception of a " world-redeemer " (Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte), vol. ii., pp. 1488-1489. It cannot, in fact, be otherwise. The " world-redeemer " of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic thought corresponds to the " new world " which he is in some supernatural fashion to bring in, in order to reign in it along with the elect. Graeco-oriental religions did not look for a kingdom of that kind, and therefore the idea of the ruler of such a kingdom was also undiscoverabie and unattainable for them. The Messiah is the World-redeemer or Lord of the coming age. He does not make atonement for the guilt of mankind nor for that of individuals, but suffers and dies vicariously for the elect, and in order to set the events of the End in motion. His earthly fate is nothing in itself, but falls wholly under the conception of the " Messianic woes " which are thought of as the tribulation of the Times of the End. How can it be proposed to find an analogue to a figure of this kind in myths, the scene of which is laid in the dawn of the world, and which have no sort of relation to its ultimate fate.

195n1) P. 102 ff. He has at this point a detailed discussion of the relations between the cultus-meal in Paul and that of the Mystery-religions.

On the sacraments see also K. Clemen, Religionsgesihichtliche Erklärung des Neuen Testaments, 1909, 301 pp. Baptism and the Supper, 165-207.

196n1) Mithrasliturgie, 2nd ed. pp. 107, 108,

DCH

Digitized text copyright 2008 by David C. Hindley

DCHindley

Schweitzer continued ...

DIFFICULTIES OF PAUL'S DOCTRINE

Paul knows nothing of an eating and drinking of the body and blood of the Lord. When Dieterich gives it as the Apostle's view that " Christ is eaten and drunk by the believers and is thereby in them, " and adds that nothing further need be said about the matter, what he has done is, instead of taking Paul's words as they stand, to interpret Paul through John—and through a misunderstanding of John at that.

It is not of an eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ that Paul speaks in the First Epistle to the Corinthians; he always speaks only of eating and drinking the bread and the cup. He assumes, no doubt, that this somehow or other maintains a communion with the body and blood of Christ (1 Cor. x. 16, 17), and that anyone who partakes unworthily sins against the body and blood of the Lord (1 Cor. xi. 27). He quotes, too, the words [199] in which the Lord, on the historic night, after the Supper, speaks of bread and wine as His body and His blood. But the conception which seems inevitably to arise out of this, that the participant partakes of the body and blood of the Lord, is not found in him.

The recognition of this fact does not make his sacramental doctrine any clearer. It is a question of fulfilling the demand of sound scholarship that we should respect the text, and not interpret it on the basis of inferences which the Apostle neither drew nor could draw. His fundamental view that the feast effects or maintains fellowship with the exalted Christ is perfectly clear. What is not clear is how he brought this view into relation with the historic words of Jesus about the bread and wine as being His body and blood, and interpreted it in accordance therewith. Did it arise out of these words, or did he receive it from some other quarter and afterwards make use of it for the interpretation of the historic words?

The difficulty lies in the fact that for Paul the body and blood of the historic Christ no longer exist, and that, on the other hand, while the glorified Christ has, indeed, a body, it is not a body through which blood flows and which is capable of being consumed on earth. To speak of the body and blood of Christ is, from the stand-point of the Apostle's doctrine, an absurdity. He cannot in his doctrine of the Supper bring the historic words into harmony with his Christology, and yet is obliged to do so. The compromise remains for us obscure.

It is certain, however, that neither he nor the primitive Christian community held that the body and blood of Christ was partaken of in the Supper. That is evident from the fact that the historic words of Jesus did not form part of the service, and this is the case down to a later date. No kind of consecration of the elements as the body and blood of the Lord occurred in the liturgy.

If there is anything which may be considered as a definite result of recent research, it is that the view of primitive and early Christianity regarding the Lord's [200] Supper was not arrived at by way of inference from the words of Jesus about bread and wine and flesh and blood, but, strange as it may appear, arose from a different quarter. The Church's celebration was not shaped by the " words of institution " at the historic Supper; it was the latter, on the contrary, which were explained in accordance with the significance of the celebration.

THE JOHANNINE SACRAMENTS

It is a no less serious error when Dieterich asserts that the Gospel of John in chapter vi. proclaims the Pauline doctrine " only in a still more corporeal fashion. "

In the Evangelist, bread and wine are—as is evident to anyone who will take the trouble to acquaint himself with his presuppositions in the Spiritually related works of Ignatius, Justin, and Tertullian—not the body and blood of Christ, but the flesh and blood of the Son of Man. In this change in the expression lies the logic of the thought. The elements of the Lord's Supper perpetuate the appearance of the Son of Man in the world inasmuch as they, as being the flesh and blood of that historic Personality, possess the capacity of being vehicles of the Spirit. As a combination of matter and Spirit which can be communicated to the corporeity of men, they execute judgment. The elect can in the sacrament become partakers of that Spiritual substance, and can thus be prepared for the resurrection; others who are not from above, and are not capable of receiving the Spirit, receive simply earthly food and drink, and fall a prey to corruption. Therefore the Evangelist makes the Lord close His discourse about the eating and drinking of the flesh and blood of the Son of Man with the words, " It is the spirit that giveth life. "

This is the language of the early Greek theology, which explains the working of the sacraments by the combination of the Spirit with matter which takes place therein. The Fourth Evangelist projects this later view back into the discourses of the historic Jesus, and makes Him prophetically announce that after His exaltation a time will come when the Spirit which is now in Him will unite itself [201] with the bread which, by the miracle of the loaves, has just been raised in a significant way out of the category of simple earthly elements, and will subsequently manifest its power in preparing men for the resurrection.

In this sense, as vehicles of the Spirit, the elements carry on the manifestation of the Son of Man; in this sense it is possible to speak of eating and drinking His flesh and blood, and to regard this as necessary to life. But all this is not thought of " corporeally " in the naïve sense of an eating and drinking of the body and blood of Jesus, but can only be understood on the basis of the doctrine of the working of the Spirit in the sacraments. Apart from the Spirit, there is in the Supper no body and no blood of Christ.

That is for the Fourth Evangelist so much a fixed datum that he is obliged to omit the account of the historic Last Supper of Jesus with His disciples. That the Lord could have so designated the bread which was eaten and the wine which was drunk on that occasion, is for him unthinkable. As long as He Himself is alive there is certainly no Spirit; it is only on His exaltation that the Spirit is liberated from the historic personality of the Son of Man and becomes separated from the Logos as the Holy Spirit, in order in the sacraments to lead a new existence—and this time an existence capable of being communicated to others. From this moment onwards bread and wine become, in the Church's celebration of the sacrament, the flesh and blood of the Son of Man in the sense explained above. Previously this had by no means been the case, any more than there had been a Christian baptism which effected regeneration. The Spirit who associates Himself with the water and produces this effect, did not as yet exist in this form of being. Jesus cannot, therefore, on this view, have baptized, any more than He can celebrate the Supper with His disciples. Therefore, the Fourth Evangelist, in order to guard against possible misunderstandings, definitely asserts that even if the disciples did baptize—a mere baptism with water [202] which is incapable of working regeneration—the Master Himself made no use of water in this fashion. (202n1) His task consisted only in marking out water for this use by the miracle at Cana of Galilee, and, by His discourses about the water of life and regeneration by water and the Spirit, pointing men's minds to the thought that in the future, water, in association with the Spirit, would be necessary to life and blessedness. In that day " out of his body shall flow rivers of living water " because the Spirit will be present (John vii. 37-39).

The students of Comparative Religion are so far in the right as against ordinary theology that they make an end of the unintelligent Spiritualising of the Johannine doctrine, and try to give due weight to the " physical " element in its conception of redemption. They are mistaken, however, in regarding this " physical " element as something primitive, and in thinking to explain it by analogies drawn from the primitive nature-religions.

BASIS OF JOHANNINE DOCTRINE

The Fourth Gospel represents the views of a speculative religious materialism which concerns itself with the problem of matter and spirit, and the permeation of matter by Spirit, and endeavours to interpret the manifestation and the personality of Jesus, the action of the sacraments and the possibility of the resurrection of the elect, all on the basis of one and the same fundamental conception.

According to this theory, Christ came into the world in order to accomplish in His own Person the as yet nonexistent union of the Spirit with the fleshly substance of humanity. In consequence of this act the elect among mankind can in the future become partakers of the Spirit. Jesus Himself, however, cannot as yet impart this to them either as the Spirit of knowledge—that is why the disciples are portrayed as so " unintelligent " —or as the Spirit of life. The Spirit always needs, in the world of sense, to [203] be connected with material vehicles. He cannot work directly, in the sense of communicating Himself from Jesus to believers. He must, therefore, in order to enter into the elect, be received by them in combination with some material element. The material media chosen for this purpose are made known by Jesus by means of miracles and by references to the future.

The naïve—and unhistorical—conception that Jesus instituted the sacraments is not recognised by the Johannine gnosis. According to it He did not establish them, but created and predicted them.

By His incarnation the possibility of the union of humanity and Spirit upon which the working of the sacraments depends, is provided. By His action in regard to the food and wine and the words He spoke in connexion therewith, He pointed to a mystery which was to be revealed in connexion with these substances; by His death, resurrection, and exaltation He abolished His earthly mode of existence and set the Spirit free for the new method of working, in virtue of which He was able to prepare men for the resurrection. Jesus, according to this view, came into the world to introduce the era of effectual sacraments. It was thus that He became the Redeemer.

The teaching of the Johannine theology, therefore, rests upon the two principles, that the Spirit can only work upon men in combination with matter, and that it only becomes present in this state as a consequence of the exaltation of the Lord. Anyone who has once recognised these presuppositions will give up once for all the search for a primitive element which is to be explained from the nature-religions. On the other hand, it is certain that Christianity here presents itself as the most highly developed Greek Mystery-religion which it is possible to conceive.

Now for Paul again. Anyone who ascribes to him the conception of a sacramental eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ does violence to his words.

[204]

But admitting that he really thought in this way, that would prove nothing. It would first need to be shown that it really was a cultus-conception drawn from the primitive nature-religions which came to life again in him. Now, for the Mystery-religions the necessary presuppositions might appear to be present, since they arise out of ancient cults which sprouted and grew up again in later times. Paul, however, is a Jew, and even as a believer in Christ he stands, in spite of his polemic against the law, wholly and solely on the basis of the absolute, transcendent Jewish conception of God. Any relation on his part to the nature-cults cannot be proved and ought not to be assumed. By what wind were the seeds of this primitive conception wafted to his mind? And how could they suddenly sprout and grow in the stony soil of a Jewish heart? The Apostle would certainly be the first and the only Jewish theologian to fall under the spell of the primitive conception of eating the god! And where was such a conception at that time to be found?

But what matter such prosaic considerations when it is a question of great ideas, of ideas, moreover, fathered by Comparative Religion?

When Heitmüller in the spring of 1903 appeared before the members of the Clergy Theological Society (204nl) in Hanover to give them the latest information about baptism and the Lord's Supper, he led them abroad, after an introduction on the " physico-hyperphysical " in Paul, first to the Aztecs, then in the clouds of night, by the torch's gleam, to the Thracian mountain sides, and thence to Sinai. (204n2) And when they had assisted at the slaughtering and devouring of the prisoners of war, the ox, and the camel, he expressed himself to the following effect: " Little as the  of Paul might seem to have in common with these . . . proceedings, and [205] loth as we at first are even to name the Lord's Supper in the same breath with them, as little is it to me a matter of doubt that, when looked at from the point of view of Comparative Religion, the Lord's Supper of primitive Christianity has the closest connexion with them. Those pictures supply the background from which the Lord's Supper stands out; they show us the world of ideas to which the Lord's Supper belongs in its most primitive, and therefore perspicuous, form. "

THE " MYSTERY-BACILLI "

Entering more into detail, this " Hylic " (205n1) of the Comparative method explains that the primeval concrete and sensuous conception of the communio established by partaking of the flesh and blood of the animal in which the divinity itself dwelt, comes to light again in the primitive Christian Lord's Supper, at the highest stage of the development of religion, and under this new form acquires a new life. (205n2) It would be precarious, he further observes, in view of the fragmentary condition of the sources to attempt to prove a direct dependence on definite phenomena—on the cultus feast of the Mithra-mysteries, for example: " It will be safer to point to the general characteristics of the time, which abounded with ideas of that kind. The infant Christianity lived in an atmosphere which, if I may be allowed the expression, was impregnated with Mystery-bacilli, and grew up on a soil which had been fertilised and made friable by the decay and intermixture of the most various religions, and [206] was specially adapted to favour the upgrowth of seeds and spores which had been long in the ground. "

Now, there is no such thing as an atmosphere impregnated with bacteria. Medical science has long since shown that this conception rests on an error, the air being practically free from genns. In theology it is more difficult to get rid of fantastic imaginations, since historical proofs are only available for those who are capable of thinking historically.

It must not be overlooked that the eating and drinking which establishes communion with Christ is only one side of the Pauline conception of the Supper. Alongside of it there exists the other, which sees in the feast a confession of faith in the death and the parousia of the Lord, and is quite as significant as the former. It is—in i Cor. xi.—developed in connexion with the repetition of the historic words of Jesus; on it is based the argument that a careless partaking is a transgression against the body of the Lord. And on the basis of this conception, cases of illness and death in the church are to be understood as a warning chastisement pointing to the Last Judgment. This conception must be somehow or other eschatologically conditioned.

The communion which is established in the Lord's Supper is a communion of the eagerly-waiting man with the coming Lord of Glory. The only thing which remains obscure is how this is brought about. The confession of faith in the death and parousia which is combined with the act of eating and drinking does not suffice to explain this further effect. Further, it remains inherently obscure how by eating and drinking the dying and return of the Lord can be shown forth, especially as the Early Christian celebration consisted only in a common meal, and in no way reproduced, as present - day celebrations do, the actions and words of Jesus at the Last Supper.

What are the results to which the students of Comparative Religion have to point in regard to the Lord's Supper? They are obliged at the outset to give up the [207] attempt to explain it from the Mystery-religions, or even to point out in the latter any very close analogies. In place of this they attempt to make intelligible both the meal which formed part of the mystery-cults, and that of Pauline Christianity, as growths which, from scattered seeds of ancient conceptions of the cultus-eating of the divinity, spring up from the soil of syncretism in two different places at the same time. Neither in the one case nor the other, however, can they render this even approximately probable. Up to the present, therefore, neither a direct nor an indirect connexion between the cultus-meal of Paul and those of the Mystery-religions has been shown. The only thing which is certain is that in both cases a cultus-meal existed. About that of the Mysteries we know almost nothing; about that which Paul presupposes we have more information, but not such as to enable \is at once to understand it.

BAPTISM

The question regarding baptism took from the first a simpler form, since the hypothesis of a renascence of primitive cultus - conceptions has not to be
considered.

Both Paul and the Mystery-religions attach a religious significance to washings. That, however, does not suffice to establish a peculiarity which would connect them together, since the attachment of this significance to lustration is bound up with the elemental symbolism of cleansing and is found more or less in all religions.

The real question is whether Paulinism and the Mystery-religions, when they go beyond the most general notions, and advance from the symbolic to the effectively sacramental, follow the same lines and present the same views.

Once again, Paul's view is the more fully, that of the Mystery-religions the less fully known. Developed baptismal doctrines and rites seem only to have been present in the Egyptian cults. These distinguish between the bath of purification and baptism, the latter consisting [208] in a sprinking with a few drops of a consecrated and consecrating fluid. (208n1)

The advance beyond the idea of purification, where it is to be observed, moves in the direction of the idea of Re-birth, Regeneration. A clear formulation of this developed view—comparable in defmiteness with the Early Christian reference to the " bath of regeneration " (208n2) —does not occur. The thought remains hovering between purification and renewal.

That is as much as to say that, so far as our information goes, no typical points of contact with Paulinism present themselves.

POINTS OF DIFFERENCE

The Apostle implies a baptism in the name of a divine person. Of a baptism performed in the name of Osiris, Attis, or Mithra we know nothing, though no doubt the assumption naturally suggests itself that the lustrations and baptisms practised in these cults were considered to be at the same time acts of confession of faith in the divinity with whose worship they were associated. But this character was by no means so distinctly stamped on them as was the case in Christian baptism—as is, indeed, readily intelligible. In the Mystery-religions the confession of the god is naturally implied; in Christianity there is the special confession of faith in the Messiahship of Jesus. To this there was nothing analogous.

As regards the utterance of the name of the divinity and the magical efficacy attaching thereto according to ancient conceptions, many illustrations can be adduced from Comparative Religion. But the really important point, the association of the utterance of the name with a baptismal rite, cannot be directly shown to have existed in the Mystery-religions. (208n3)

[209]

In order to arrive at his sacramental view Paul does not follow the natural method of advancing by way of the thought of purification to that of renewal by regeneration, but follows a different route, which leads him to an estimate of it. that has nothing to do with the fundamental conception of purification, and therefore remains without analogy in the Mystery-religions. This is a fact of great significance.

The Mystery - religions speak, as Paul also does, of the pneuma and its workings, but the possession of the pneuma is never represented as an immediate and inevitable consequence of baptism.

With the Mystery-religions are associated speculations about the renewal of man's being, represented as taking place in regeneration, which they bring into some kind of relation, closer or more remote, with baptism. But when Paul speaks of the new creature which comes into being in the sacrament, the thought of regeneration does not for him come into view, for he makes no use of it at all. Instead of that he asserts in Rom. vi. that in baptism there is an experience of death and resurrection in fellowship with Christ, from which results newness of life and the new ethic associated therewith. How the act and the result are logically connected he does not explain. He is content to place them side by side.

[210]

So far as we know, there exists in the Mystery-religions no analogue to this dying and rising again effected solely by the use of water. To interpret Rqm. vi., as Dieterich does, as referring to a Spiritual death and " new birth " is not permissible, since the text says not a word about that. The post-Pauline theology, that is the Johannine and Early Greek theology, explain baptism as regeneration, and seek to find a logical basis for this effect in the doctrine that the Spirit unites with the water as the generating power. Paul has nothing of all this.

Nor does he show any knowledge of the idea that Christian baptism arose out of the baptism of Jesus as an imitative reproduction of it. He never, in fact, mentions the baptism of Jesus. Nowhere does he suggest that in baptism the new man, the " Child of God, " is born in the believer, as Jesus was in this act raised to His Messianic office.

There is in fact no evidence from the earlier literature which suggests the existence of views of that kind regarding the origin and significance of Christian baptism. In early Christianity it is as far from being an imitative reproduction of the baptism of Jesus as the Church's Lord's Supper was from being an imitative reproduction of the historic Last Supper. The conception of an " imitative reproduction " was first introduced by modern theology.

To cite the taurobolium as an analogue of Paul'sbaptism, with the death and resurrection which it effects, is not admissible. In the first place, the taurobolium is a baptism of blood; in the next place it is closely connected with a sacrifice; in the third place, the burial and rising again are actually represented. The sacramental significance is thus derived from the many-sided symbolism. In Paul there is no trace of all this. "Plain water" effects everything.

202n1) Therefore the statement that Jesus baptized in the Judaean country (Jn. iii. 22) is corrected to the effect that he Himself did not baptize, but only the disciples (Jn. iv. 2).

204n1) Der wissenschafltiche Predigerverein.

204n2) W. Heitmüller, Taufe und Abendmahl bei Paulus ( " Baptism and the Lord's Supper in Paul's teaching " ). A description and an investigation in the light of Comparative Religion, 1903, 56 pp. These journeyings on pp. 40-42.

205n1) i.e. Materialist in his explanation, in contrast, as appears later, with Reitzenstein, who is described as the " Pneumatic " of the science.

205n2) Albert Eichhorn, Das Abendmahl im Neuen Testament ( " The Lord's Supper in the New Testament, " 1898, 31 pp.), similarly holds that in Paul we have before us a sacramental eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ which can only be explained as based on Oriental Gnostic presuppositions. He is, however, constrained to admit that we have no knowledge of a " sacramental meal which could have served as the model for the Lord's Supper. " But this does not shake his faith in his theory. He thinks that proof is only wanting because there is here a gap in our historical knowledge. He has calculated out the position of the planet; the mere fact that it cannot be discovered with the telescope is wholly due to the inadequacy of the instrument.

208n1) See on this R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen ( " The Hellenistic Mystery Religions " ), p. 38.

208n2) Tit. iii. 5 (R. V. marg. : laver of regeneration).

208n3) Wilhelm Heitmüller, Im Namen Jesu. Eine Sprach- und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum Neuen Testament, speciell zur altchristlichen Taufe ( " In the Name of Jesus. A New Testament Study based on Linguistics and Comparative Religion, with special Reference to Early Christian baptism " ), 1903. 347 pp. In this thorough and extremely interesting study the author arrives at the result that in the employment of the name of Jesus it is taken for granted that the name in some way or other represents a power. The Christian " belief in the name, " he holds, stands on the same footing as Jewish and heathen beliefs. " The solemn pronouncement of the name of Jesus at baptism is not a merely symbolic form, having to do, for example, with the confession of the Messiahship of Jesus, but is thought of as associated with real mystical, mysterious effects; the efiects must, however, be similar, mutatis mutandis, to those which are ascribed to the use of the name in other cases : a being actually taken possession of by the power which is designated by the ' name ' of Jesus, the expulsion of all hostile powers, consecration and inspiration. " " Baptism in the name of Jesus represents, therefore, the combination of two sacramental factors—water and the name. "

Unfortunately, Heitmüller has not emphasised the fact that the Mystery-religions offer no typical analogies to this double sacrament.

It is also open to question whether the power of the name and of water suffice, as he thinks, to explain the Pauline view of baptism.

DCH

Digitized text copyright 2008 by David C. Hindley

rfmwinnie

According to Jewish sources a lot of these practices existed in Jewish religion at this time. A specific example would be baptism - before going to the temple Jews had to ritually wash in baths that required full immersion. Jesus (or later Christians) changed the meaning of this ritual cleansing. Same thing with the bread/wine - this ritual was done on Passover with the same emblems used as at Passover. Turning water into wine and resurrecting others (thought not one's own self) were frequently employed by itinerant rabbis in the 1st century - along with circles for rain and other things. The virgin birth/resurrection does not come from Judaism however.

So for the first group perhaps looking at ancient Jewish sources would show pagan influence? I have no doubt there is some overlap between all three groups - no culture exists immune from any influence by other cultures. The virgin birth/resurrection would be different.

Oh my sources for this are from numerous Jewish/Christian books including "Why Jews Rejected Jesus" (which is not that good of a book but the first 1/3 or so has some great historical info) and "Unsettled An Anthropology of the Jews" which was written by Melvin Konner (an atheist) and extensively referenced. I have other resources also but I'm too lazy to find them!

When I started reading about this I was surprised to find how far back Jewish sources record things. I had no idea they recorded Mishnahs so far back. They weren't codified until later but there are also Targums (liberal translations with folk tales added) that go way back to the 1st century. It helps fill out the world Jesus would have lived in (if he is indeed a real person). I think understanding that helps find out what influenced the early Christian church more than anything else.

spamandham

Suppose for a moment that Christianity was a long dead religion. How would we answer these questions if the ranks of academia were not filled with Christian apologists?

It'd be straightforward. We'd recognize that religious practices tend to evolve rather than be created from whole cloth. Then we'd examine Jewish practices, since Christianity clearly has strong Jewish influence, and identify Christian practices that are unlikely to have Jewish origins. What's left over would be assumed to have evolved from non-Jewish influence (aka "pagan" as it's being used here).

DCHindley

Schweitzer continued (almost over, promise) ...

BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD

One point in regard to which great hopes had been placed on the Mystery-religions was the solution of the enigma of 1 Cor. xv. 29. Wernle regarded it as self-evident that the Apostle in permitting and approving [211] baptism for the dead had allowed himself to become infected by the heathen superstition of his Corinthian converts, and took him to task for this lapse in his book on the " Beginnings of Christianity. " In his zeal he forgot to enquire whether the heathen had any superstition of the kind. (211n1)

Those who tried to supply this omission did not meet with much success. The heathen showed themselves better than their reputation and less " superstitious " than the Christians! Of a baptism for the dead, or anything at all of this nature, they show no trace.

Failing more relevant evidence, some have quoted Plato, who in the Republic (ii. 364-5) makes Adeimantos say, appealing in confirmation to the Orphic writings, that by means of offerings and festivals, atonement and purification for past misdeeds is effected for whole towns as well as for single individuals, for the living and also for the dead.

This passage, however, does not refer at all to personal dedications with a view to " renewal, " such as the baptism practised in the Mystery-- eligions and in Christianity, but to expiatory sacrifices in the ancient Greek sense. (211n2)

In the Taurobolia, representation of one living person by another is supposed to have been possible, but there is no mention of a representation of the dead. (211n3)

[212]

The baptism of the dead which is attested by a papyrus is not a baptism for the dead. (212n1)

That living persons went through the ceremonies of initiation for the dead is not known.

Thus baptism for the dead has not, so far at least, proved susceptible of explanation from heathen sources, but must be regarded as a peculiarity of Christianity!

The outcome of the study of the sacraments from the point of view of Comparative Religion is a very curious one. The Apostle thinks sacramentally; in fact his doctrine is much more " mysterious " than that of the Mystery-religions. But the nature of the sacramental conception is quite different in him from what it is in them; it is as if they had grown up on different soils.

The difference relates both to the conception of the supernatural working of the sacraments, and also to the position which the sacramental element takes in the doctrine as a whole.

DIFFERENCE OF ATMOSPHERE

In the Mystery-religions the sacramental idea arises by way of an intensification and materialisation of the symbolic. The act effects what it represents. The result can in a sense be logically understood when once the thought is grasped that the world of appearance and the world of reality stand in mysterious connexion with one another.

In Paul we have an unmediated and naked notion of sacrament such as is nowhere else to be met with. Symbolism is no doubt involved in the most general significance of the act. In this sense baptism is a " cleansing " and a " consecration, " (212n2) and the sacred feast establishes [213] fellowship among the partakers. But the assertions which go beyond this show not the faintest connexion with the outward significance of the rite. Contact with the water is supposed to effect a dying and rising again with Christ, a partaking in His mystical body, and the possession of the Spirit. The eating and drinking at the Lord's Supper is a confession of faith in the death and the parousia of Christ, and is also fellowship with Him.

The sacramental is therefore non-rational. The act and its effect are not bound together by religious logic, but laid one upon the other and nailed together.

With that is connected the fact that in Paul we find the most prosaic conception imaginable of the opus operatum. In the Mystery-religions there is a mysterious procedure surrounded by imposing accessories. The impressive appeal of symbolism is brought to bear in every part. Every detail is significant, and lays hold upon the attention.

In Paul everything is flat and colourless. While some of his references might suggest the impression that his conception of Christianity bore some kind of analogy to the Mystery - religions, yet as a whole it entirely lacks the corresponding atmosphere. There is nothing of the effective mise en scène characteristic of the Greek sacramental beliefs. How lacking in solemnity must have been the method of celebrating the Lord's Supper, when it could degenerate into an ugly and disorderly exhibition of gluttony! How little does the Apostle think of the external act of baptism, when he founds a church in Corinth and himself performs the rite only in the case of one or two individuals! (213n1) He preaches sacraments, but does not feel himself to be a niystagogue; rather, he retains the simplicity in regard to forms of worship which belongs to the Jewish spirit.

There were no long preparations for the cultus ceremonies, and nothing is known of a. distinction between higher and lower grades of initiation, such as form an [214] essential part of the Mystery-religions. The first ceremony of initiation confers at once final perfection. Among those who are admitted there prevails the most complete equality. The conception of the " mystes " does not exist.

In the Mystery-religions everything centres in the sacred ceremonies. They dominate thought, feeling, and will. If they are removed the whole religion collapses.

In Paulinism it is otherwise. The doctrine of redemption is no doubt closely connected with the sacraments, but the latter are not its be-all and end-all. If baptism and the Lord's Supper are taken away the doctrine is not destroyed, but stands unmoved. It looks as though the weight of the building rested upon these two pillars, but in reality it does not totter even if these supports are withdrawn.

The Johannine and the early Greek doctrine are conceived as real Mystery-religions. The Fourth Evangelist and Ignatius know no other redemption than that which is bound up with the sacraments. In Paul the redemption can be thought of " apart from them, since the whole mystical doctrine of fellowship with Christ rests upon the single conception of faith. Nevertheless he allows it to be closely bound up with the external ceremonies, and seems to have no consciousness of the fact that this connexion is unnecessary and illogical.

PECULIARITY OF PAULINE SACRAMENTS

The remarkable duality in Paulinism lies, therefore, in the fact that the sacramental idea is intensified to an extreme and unintelligible degree, while at the same time the necessity of the sacred ceremonies does not logically result from the system as a whole, as this would lead us to expect.

The sacramental views of the Apostle have thus nothing primitive about them, but are rather of a " theological " character. Paul connects his mystical doctrine of redemption with ceremonies which are not specially designed with reference to it. It is from that fact, and not from a specially deep love for Mysteries, [215] that the exaggeratedly sacramental character of his view of baptism and the Lord's Supper results. It is in the last resort a question of externalisation, not of intensification.

It is therefore useless to ransack the history of religions for analogies to his conceptions. It has none to offer, for the case is unique. The problem lies wholly within the sphere of early Christian history, and represents only a particular aspect of the question of Paul's relation to primitive Christianity. The fact is, he did not introduce the sacramental view into the sacred ceremonies, but found already existing a baptism and a Lord's Supper which guaranteed salvation on grounds which were intelligible from early Christian doctrine. He, however, transformed the primitive view of salvation into the mystical doctrine of the dying and rising again in fellowship with Christ. Since the connexion between redemption and the sacraments was given a priori, he draws the inference that the sacraments effect precisely that wherein, according to his gnosis, the inner essence of redemption consists. How far they are appropriate to the effect which, on the ground of his mystical doctrine, he holds to take place, does not for him come into question.

In the sacraments the believer becomes partaker in salvation. Therefore, he concludes, in them that happens which constitutes redemption, namely, the dying and rising again with Christ.

Paul therefore takes the sacraments by storm. He does not theorise about the ceremony, but ascribes to it without more ado the postulated effect. That is not a procedure which could have been followed either by a Greek or by a modern mind.

Paulinism is thus a theological system with sacraments, but not a Mystery-religion.

This may be confirmed by a further observation. The Apostle occupies a strongly predestinarian stand-point. Those who are " called " inevitably receive salvation; those who are not, can never in any way obtain it. There [216] is no analogue to this in the Mystery-religions. They can only conceive of election in the sense and to the extent of holding that there is a calling and predestination to the receiving of the initiation which confers immortality. And there are actually some beginnings of such a conception. (216n1)

But Pauline predestination is quite different. It is absolute, and seems inevitably to abolish the necessity and meaning of the sacraments. Anyone who belongs to the number of the elect becomes ipso facto partaker of the resurrection. At the end of all things a great company from the generations of long-past times will arise to life without ever having received baptism or partaken of the Lord's Supper. That being so, what becomes of the sacraments? In what respect are they necessary?

A good deal of energy has been expended in seeking analogies from other religions for the Corinthian baptism for the dead; it would really have been much more to the point to enquire why baptism for the dead was considered desirable. If the dead are among the elect, they have no need of it; if not, they could not have inherited life, even if they had received the sacrament during their sojourn on earth. To what end, then, is this baptism for the dead?

ESCHATOLOGICAL BASIS

The most important point to notice is that everywhere in the Pauline sacraments the eschatological interest breaks through. They effect, not re-birth, but resurrection. That which in the near future is to become visible reality, they make in the present invisibly real by anticipation. The Greek Mysteries are timeless. They reach back to primitive antiquity, and they profess to be able to manifest their power in all generations. In Paul the sacraments have temporal boundaries. Their power is derived from the events of the last times. They put believers in the same position as the Lord, in that they [217] cause them to experience a resurrection a few world-moments before the time, even though this does not in any way become manifest. It is a precursory phenomenon of the approaching end of the world.

Separated from the eschatology, the Pauline sacraments would become meaningless and ineffectual. They are confined to the time between the resurrection of Jesus and His parousia, when the dead shall arise. Their power depends on the present, and also on the future, fact. In this sense they are " historically " conditioned.

While therefore in the Mystery-religions and in the Johannine theology the sacraments work of themselves, in Paul they draw their energy from a universal world-event, from which it is, as it were, transmitted.

It now becomes clear why the Apostle cannot describe as a " Re-birth " the condition brought about by baptism. The renewal consists in the fact that the coming resurrection-life is, for the short period which remains of the present course of the world, received by anticipation. Rebirth, on the other hand, implies an uneschatological system of thought in which the individual reckons more or less on a normal span of life, for which he seeks an inner divine being which shall subsist alongside of or above the earthly. It is only at a period when eschatology is falling into the background that the Greek conception of re-birth, such as is associated with the Mysteries, can supersede the old mystico-eschatological conception of the proleptic resurrection. Accordingly it presently appears in Justin and the Fourth Evangelist. From that point onwards baptism brings re-birth. In Paul it produced only an antedated dying and rising again.

The sacramental conception of the Apostle is therefore derived from an entirely different world of thought from that of the Mystery-religions.

It is a different question, however, in what relation his " physical " (217n1) mysticism in itself, apart from the [218] sacraments, bears to the world of ideas associated with the Greek Mystery-religions.

COMMON LINGUISTIC ELEMENT

To this question Reitzenstein, the " pneumatic " (218nl) among the students of Comparative Religion, devotes a careful study. He avoids conventional catchwords and rash conclusions, and endeavours to discover the conceptions and ideas which are common to both, and to follow them out in detail.

With this purpose he brings together everything which he can find in the language of the Mysteries and the Hermetic literature relating to such ideas as " service " and " military service " of God, " justification, " " pre-existence, " " gnosis, " " spirit, " " revelation, " " pneumatic, " " heavenly garment, " and " transformation. "

For the first time the material for a study of Paul from the point of view of Comparative Religion is brought together with a certain completeness, and the impression which it makes is very powerful. The theologian who reads these passages with an open mind will be lifted out of the ruts of conventional interpretation. It is as if a flood of new thought had streamed into the channels of ordinary exegesis, whether critical or otherwise, and swept away the accumulations of rubble.

Whether all the explanations are sound, and whether many expressions, such as e.g. " servant " and " prisoner " of Christ, and imagery—for example, that taken from the military life—could not be just as well explained directly as by the roundabout way of their use in the Mystery-religions, may be left an open question. What is certain is, that Reitzenstein has made an end of the cut-and-dried conception that Paul simply translated his theology from Jewish thought into Greek language, and proves that [219] he knows the scope and exact application of the words of the religious vocabulary, and along with the terms and expressions has taken over suggestions for the presentation of his ideas. Without the possibilities and presuppositions supplied by the religious language of the Greek Orient it would have been more difficult for him to create his mysticism. He found in existence a tone-system in which the modulations necessary for the development of his theme offered themselves for his disposal. (219n1)

Reitzenstein remarks with much justice that particular words and phrases do not of themselves prove very much, but that what is really of importance is the connexion of the passages. Are there sets of ideas in Paul which are allied with those of the Mystery-religions? What realities stand in the two cases behind the references to the mystical doctrine of the miraculous new creation of the man while in his living body?

The description and paraphrasing which commentaries and New Testament theologies bestow upon the Apostle's assertions do not suffice for Reitzenstein. He wants to understand and come to grips with the thought, and to arouse in others the same discontent.

The possibility that the Pauline mysticism might be capable of being explained from within appears to him excluded. With all the reserve which he imposes upon himself he nevertheless believes himself to have proved that the central conception of " the deification and [220] transfiguration of the living man is derived from the Mysteries. " The conviction of a miracle of transformation taking place in his own person, is, he pronounces, not Jewish. Therefore he thinks that Paul represents a kind of ancient Jewish prophetism modified by the influence of the Hellenistic Mystery beliefs.

The " history of the development " of Paul's thought he conceives as follows : The influence of Greek mysticism, with which he had already a literary acquaintance, helped to prepare the way for that momentous inner experience which eventually caused a rupture between the Apostle and his ancestral religion. " This influence, " he thinks, " increased in the two years of solitary struggle for the working out of a new religion. " A renewed study of Greek religious literature became necessary " from the moment when the Apostle dedicated himself to, and began to prepare for, his mission to the " ELLHNES. "

By the method which he applies, Reitzenstein is necessarily driven to adopt this far-reaching view. He makes no effort to take into the field of his argument the Late-Jewish eschatology, as preserved in the post-Danielic literature, in the discourses of Jesus, and the Apocalypses of Baruch and Ezra. Whatever is not self-explanatory, and cannot be explained from the Old Testament, is, according to him, derived from the world of thought associated with the Mystery-religions.

The proper procedure would really have been to examine the conceptions drawn from apocalyptic thought and those from the Mystery-religions independently, and then to decide which of them rendered possible the better explanation. The best way would have been for Reitzenstein to discuss the matter step by step with Kabisch, who had sought to derive the fundamental conceptions of the Pauline mysticism from eschatology.

211n1) Paul Wernle, Die Anfänge unserer Religion, 1901, p. 129.

211n2) In order to preclude this misuse of it the passage may be quoted here in full: —

PEIQONTES OU MONON IDIWTAS ALLA KAI POLEIS WS ARA LUSEIS TE KAI KAQARMOI ADIKHMATWN DIA QUSIWN KAI PAIDIAS HDONWN EISI MEN ETI ZOSIN, EISI DE KAI TETELEUTHKASIN, AS DH TELETAS KALOUSIN, AI TWN EKEI KAKWN APOLOUSIN HMAS, MH QUSANTAS DE DEINA PERIMENEI [forgive my spelling mistakes if any].

" And they persuade, not only individuals, but whole cities that sacrifices and pleasureable amusements afford absolution and purification from crimes committed, both for the living and also for the dead; these they call Mysteries (initiations), and they free us from the torments of the other world, whereas terrible things await those who neglect to offer sacrifice. " On expiation see Rohde, Psyche, i. (1903), 259 ff.

211n3) Regarding the evidence which has a more remote bearing on the question, see Hollmann, Urchristentum in Korinth ( " Primitive Christianity in Corinth " ), 1903, 32 pp., pp. 22-24.

212n1) R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenislischen Mystericnreligionen, p. 84. The dead man is, according to Spiegelberg, represented as standing between two gods, who sprinkle the sacred fluid upon his head.

212n2) In 1 Cor. vi. 11, after saying that thieves, adulterers, slanderers, and robbers cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, the Apostle proceeds, " And such were some of you. But ye were cleansed, ye were consecrated, ye were justified. " The passage is no doubt intended sarcastically, ironically, with reference to the fact that, in spite of their baptism, according to present appearances they have not changed much. In regard to self-delusion on the ground of baptism see also I Cor. x.

213n1) 1 Cor. i. 14-16.

216n1) See Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen (1910), pp. 99, 100.

217n1) See above, p. 162, note 3.

218n1) In contrast with Heitmüller, who was described above as the " hylic, " materialist (see p. 205).

R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen. Ihre Grundgedanken und Wirkungen ("The Hellenistic Mystery-religions. Their fundamental Ideas and Influence"), 1910, 217 pp. The work is composed out of a lecture delivered in the Clerical Theological Society of Alsace-Lorraine (pp. 1-60), along with extensive notes and excursuses (pp. 63-214).

219n1) Especially impressive are the investigations regarding the pneuma. Reitzenstein believes himself to be able to show that all the passages in Paul's writings which refer to this subject " are explicable from Hellenistic usage, " and leaves open the question whether they " are all equally easy to understand on the basis of the Hebraic use of ruach or nephesh, or the LXX. use of PNEUMA. "

A detailed discussion is given of the following passages, Rom. vi. 1-14, xii. i It.; I Cor. ii., xiii., xv. 34 ff.; 2 Cor. iii. 18, v. i ff., v. 6 ff., x.-xiii., and some interesting light is thrown on the Epistle to Philemon (pp. 81, 82).

It may also be mentioned that Eduard Schwartz in his essay " Paulus " (Charakterköpfe aus der antiken Litetatur, 1910, 136 pp. pp. 107-136) estimates very highly the indirect influence of the Hellenistic surroundings and language. In the second edition (1911, 142 pp.) he goes a little more fully into the individual problems of the doctrine.

DCH

Digitized text copyright 2008 by David C. Hindley

DCHindley

Schweitzer continued ...

THE GOD " ANTHROPOS "

The total neglect of eschatology forces him to some curious conclusions. After showing, in opposition to a canonised confusion of thought, that there is not the slightest connexion between Paul's doctrine of the first [221] and second Adam in I Cor. xv. 45-49 and Philo's theory about the two accounts of the creation in Genesis, since in that case the pneumatic heavenly man would be the first, and the psychic earthly man the second, (221n1) he comes to the conclusion that the view set forth in i Corinthians must have underlying it " the belief in a god ' Anthropos,' " who came to be identified with Christ.

This hypothesis naturally suggests itself to Reitzenstein, because in Poimandres he believes himself to have discovered a myth about Anthropos. (221n2) But is this, even if it were held to be proved, of such a character that the Pauline conception of the first and second Adam could without more ado be derived from it? Is the complicated hypothesis necessary?

Paul's conception can be explained without the least difficulty on eschatological grounds. The first Adam brought mankind under the dominion of death. Christ is the Second Adam because He by His resurrection becomes the founder of a new race, which in virtue of that which has taken place in Him becomes partaker of an imperishable life, and acquires a claim to the future possession of the pneumatic heavenly body which He already bears. The Second Man comes from heaven because the pre-existent Christ, in order to become the founder of the " humanity of the resurrection, " must appear upon earth and assume fleshly corporeity. He is " life-giving spirit " because the pneuma which goes forth from Him as the glorified Christ, works in believers as the power of the resurrection. This being so, what purpose is served by bringing in the very doubtful myths about the god Anthropos, especially as Paul, though he certainly thinks of his Second Adam as a heavenly being, never anywhere speaks of Him as God.

[222]

This is typical of a series of similar cases. (222n1)

On the other hand, it is just this one-sidedness which makes the charm and the significance of the book. Reitzenstein shows, both positively and negatively, how far the analogies from the Mystery-religions will take us. Ordinary theologians—since Kabisch had remained without influence—had simply designated as Greek everything which they could not understand f rom Late Judaism, and described as Late-Jewish whatever they could not understand as Greek. Reitzenstein, the—unconscious?—antipodes of Kabisch, would like to make an end of this simple game and compel people to choose one horn or other of the dilemma. Instead of entering on theoretic discussions, full of " not only, but also, " and " either . . . or. " he goes straight forward as far as he thinks he can feel firm ground under his feet, and has thus contributed, to an extraordinary degree, to the clearing up of the situation.

Contrary to his intention and conviction, however, the outcome is not positive but negative.

Like Dieterich and others, Reitzenstein takes it for granted that Paulinism makes use of the conception of Re-birth, and he feels that that is in itself a sufficient reason for not regarding it as a product of Judaism (222n2)

PAUL'S " CHRIST-MYSTICISM "

The assumption being unsound, all the discussions and arguments based on it fall to the ground. In particular, the fine parallels from the Hermetic literature must be given up. Further, it is not legitimate to treat the [223] mysticism of the Mystery-religions and that of Paul as directly corresponding to one another. The former is a God-mysticism, the latter a Christ-mysticism. The resulting differences are greater than at first sight appears. In the Graeco-Oriental conception, what is in view is the " deification " of the individual man. As the divinity of the particular Mystery which is being celebrated is always thought of as the highest divinity, the mortal enters into union with the being of God as such.

The Pauline Christ, however, even though He is called the Son of God, is not God, but only a heavenly Being. The renewal which is effected by fellowship with Him is not a deification—the word never occurs in the Apostle's writings—but only a transference into a state of super-sensuous corporeity, which has to do with a coming new condition of the world.

Greek thought is concerned with the simple antithesis of the divine world and the earthly world. Paulinism makes out of this duality a triplicity. It divides the super-earthly factor into two, distinguishing between God and the divine super-earthly, which is personified in Christ and made present in Him. God, and therein speaks the voice of Judaism, is purely transcendent. A God-mysticism does not exist for the Apostle—or, at least, does not yet exist. A time will come no doubt in the future, after the termination of the Messianic Kingdom, when God will be " all in all " (i Cor. xv. 28). Until then there is only a Christ-mysticism, which has to do with the anticipation of the super-earthly life of the Messianic Kingdom.

To treat Graeco-Oriental and Pauline mysticism as corresponding factors, is to perform a piece in two-four time and a piece in three-four time together, and to imagine that one hears an identical rhythm in both.

Another point of difference is that Graeco-Oriental mysticism works with permanent factors; the Pauline with temporal and changing ones. The Messianic-Divine drives out the super-earthly angelic powers which [224] previously occupied a place between God and the world. It is in the very act of coming. But in proportion as it advances, there passes away not only the super-sensuous angelic element, but also the earthly and sensuous. Christ-mysticism depends upon the movement of these two worlds, one of them moving towards being, the other towards not-being, and it continues only so long as they are in touch with one another as they move past in opposite directions. The beginning of this contact is marked by the resurrection of the Lord, the end by His parousia. Before the former it is not yet possible to pass from one to the other, after the latter it is no longer possible. A mysticism which is thus bound up with temporal conditions can hardly be derived from the Greek timeless conceptions.

The act, moreover, by which the individual becomes partaker in the new being is in the two cases quite different. The Mystery-religions represent the " transfigxira-tion " of the living being as effected by his receiving into himself a divine essence, by means of the gnosis and the vision of God. It is thus a subjective act. According to Paul's teaching the " transfiguration " is not brought about by the gnosis and vision of God. These are rather the consequence of the renewal, the efficient cause of which is found, not in the act of the individual, and not in the inherent efficacy of the sacrament, but in a world-process. So soon as the individual enters by faith and baptism into this new cosmic process he is immediately renewed in harmony therewith, and now receives spirit, ecstasy, gnosis, and everything that these imply. " What according to the Greek view is the cause, is for Paul the consequence. Thus, even though the conceptions show a certain similarity, they do not correspond, because they are connected with the central event of the mysticism in each case by chains which run in opposite directions.

WHERE THE SOLUTION LIES

A figure which exactly illustrates one's meaning may claim pardon even for somewhat doubtful taste. In the Mystery-religions, individuals climb up a staircase step [225] by step towards deification; in Paulinism they spring in a body into a lift which is already in motion and which carries them into a new world. The staircase is open to all; the lift can only be used by those for whom it is especially provided.

So far as Comparative Religion is concerned, therefore, the case is exactly the same in regard to the " physical " element in the mystical doctrine of redemption as it was in regard to that of the sacramental doctrine. On close examination the historico-eschato-logical character of the Pauline conception is in both cases so all-pervading that it invalidates any parallel with the Mystery-religions, and leaves them with nothing in common but the linguistic expression. The mystical and sacramental aspects of the " physical " element in redemption do not for him stand on the same footing with the eschatological, which is immediately given with the conceptions of transformation and resurrection, but must be in some way capable of being derived from it. Only when that is done will the Pauline doctrine of redemption be explained.

It is to be noted that Reitzenstein tries in vain to render intelligible either the connexion of the soteriological mysticism with the facts of the death and resurrection, or the fellowship which is therein presupposed between the believer and the Lord. In his exposition of Rom. vi. the parallels with the Mystery-religions force him into a wrong line, and compel him to think of the objective process as a subjective one. He assumes that everything becomes clear and simple if once the Apostle is understood to speak of a voluntary dying, which is neither purely physical nor merely metaphysical, but is based upon the thought that we must not sin any more because we have taken upon us Christ's person and lot, and have crucified our natural man.

But in Paul it is not a question of an act which the believer accomplishes in himself; what happens is that in the moment when he receives baptism, the dying and [226] rising again of Christ takes place in him without any cooperation, or exercise of will or thought, on his part. It is like a mechanical process which is set in motion by pressing a spring. The minute force employed in pressing the spring bears no relation to that which thereon comes into play; only serves to release a set of forces already in existence.

In the Mystery-religions the thought is : We desire not to sin any more, therefore we will undergo initiation. Paul's logic is the converse of this, and takes the objective form: Christ's death and resurrection is effectually present in us; therefore, we are no longer natural men and cannot sin any more.

The whole distinction lies in the fact that the mysticism of the Apostle of the Gentiles is based on historico-eschatological events, whereas the Mystery-religions are in their nature non-historical. Where they make use of myths they use them in the last resort merely as pictures of that which the " mystes " performs or undergoes, not as events charged with a real energy, as the death and resurrection of Jesus are for Paul.

But the fact of the far-reaching outward and inward resemblances of language between the Graeco-Oriental and the Pauline mysticism are not affected by that. As though by a pre-established harmony in the history of religion, it came about that the mysticism which developed out of eschatology was able to find complete representation in the language of the Mystery-religions, and found there ready to its hand conceptions and expressions which facilitated, suggested, and in some cases were even indispensable to its fuller development.

Reitzenstein's merit is that of having determined exactly and unmistakably the meaning of Paul's language, and having at the same time shown that Jewish Hellenism and Greek philosophy had practically no part in him.

LOOSE TERMINOLOGY

Of course, it is not possible to decide how much of this [227] religious language Paul found already in existence, and how much he created for his purpose. It must not be forgotten that the Oriental Mystery-religions did not receive their complete development under Greek influence until a considerable time after the appearance of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that he and they found in existence the same Greek religious vocabulary, laid hold of it, and perfected it.

One error of the students of Comparative Religion deserves particular mention, for it is typical. In consequence of the parallelism which they maintain between the Mystery-religions and Paulinism, they come to ascribe to the Apostle the creation of a " religion.'' (227n1) Nothing of the kind ever entered into his purpose. For him there was only one religion : that of Judaism. It was concerned with God, faith, promise, hope and law. In consequence of the coming, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it became its duty to adjust its teachings and demands to the new era thus introduced, and in the process many things were moved from the shadow into the light and others from the light into the shadow. " Christianity " is for Paul no new religion, but simply Judaism with the centre of gravity shifted in consequence of the new era. His own system of thought is certainly for him no new religion. It is his belief, as fully known and worked out in its implications, and it professes to be nothing else than the true Jewish religion, in accord both with the time and with the Scriptures.

Another remark that has to be made is that the students of Comparative Religion are inclined to make an illegitimate use of the word eschatology when it suits their purpose. They think themselves justified in applying it wherever in the Mystery-religions there is mention of death, judgment, and life after death, but they forget that in doing so they are using it in a much more general sense than that which we have to reckon with in the Pauline [228] doctrine. The term eschatology ought only to be applied when reference is made to the end of the world as expected in the immediate future, and the events, hopes, and fears connected therewith. The use of the word to designate the subjective future end of individuals, in connexion with which no imminent catastrophe affecting all mankind is in question, can only be misleading, since it creates the false impression—exempla decent—that the Pauline eschatology can be paralleled and compared with an eschatology belonging to the Mystery-religions. Of eschatology in the late Jewish or early Christian sense there is not a single trace to be found in any Graeco-Oriental doctrine. (228n1)

Therefore, the Mystery-religions and Paulinism cannot in the last resort be compared at all, as is indeed confirmed by the fact that the real analogies both in the mysticism and the sacramental doctrine are so surprisingly few. Reitzenstein's attempt has not succeeded in altering this result, but only in confirming it. What remains of his material when the circle of ideas connected with the thought of " re-birth " is eliminated, and the all-pervading eschatological character of the fundamental ideas and underlying logic of Paulinism are duly considered in making the comparison?

TÜBINGEN DIFFICULTIES AGAIN

Finally, the question may be permitted, What would have been the bearing of the result if Dieterich and Reitzenstein had really proved the dependence of the Apostle's doctrine upon the Mystery-religions? The simple declaration of the result would have been only [229] the beginning of things, for immediately the problem whether, understood in this way, the Apostle's doctrine could still have belonged to primitive Christianity would have arisen and called aloud for solution. The theory that Paul personally transformed the Gospel on the analogy of the Graeco-Oriental Mystery-religions is menaced by the same difficulties which previously brought about the downfall of the theory held by the Baur and post-Baur theology, that he Hellenised the Gospel. The hypothesis advanced by the students of Comparative Religion is only a special form of that general theory, and can do nothing to minimise the a priori difficulties, or those raised by the history of dogma in connexion with it.

How does Paulinism as understood by Dieterich and Reitzenstein fit into the history of the development of Christianity?

If the Apostle during the first generation had introduced such a tremendous innovation as the Greek " physical " mysticism of redemption and the sacraments into primitive Jewish Christianity, could the latter have permitted this and continued to keep him in its midst? How was it possible for it to admit without a struggle, indeed unnoticed, something so entirely alien, and to raise no objections either to the Christology or to the mysticism or to the sacramental doctrine of the Apostle, but simply and solely to his attitude towards the law?

And how, on the other hand, could the later Hellenising theology pass over in silence the man who had been its precursor in uniting the conceptions of Graeco-Oriental religion with the Gospel? The inexplicable fact that Paulinism played no part in the subsequent development, but is left to lie unused and uncomprehended, becomes still more inexplicable if Dieterich and Reitzenstein are right. They assert that the Hellenising force did not issue from philosophy but from the Graeco-Oriental religious movement, and found expression in Paul not less than in the Johannine and early Greek theology.

[230]

Why, then, are the results so different in the two cases that they have no kind of outer or inner relation to one another? If the same force is applied at different times to the same object and in the same line, can the resultant movement vary so much in direction? How is it possible that Paul represents a Hellenisation of Christianity which is so unique in character and so unnoticed by others? How could two different types of Greek transformation of the Gospel come into existence, and in such a way, moreover, that the second discovered nothing Hellenic in the first?

According to the theory of Dieterich and Reitzenstein, Paulinism ought to be detached from early Christianity and closely connected with Greek theology. The contrary is the case. It stands in undisturbed connexion with the former, whereas it shows no connexion whatever with the latter.

Any one who thinks of the Apostle's doctrine as in any sense a Hellenisation of the Gospel, whether he owes allegiance to ordinary theology or to Comparative Religion, has gone over to the radicalism of the Ultra-Tübingen party, and must, like it, go forth with his Paul out of primitive Christianity into a later period, unless, indeed, as the Comparative method admits, he is prepared to consider the faith of the early Church as Graeco-Oriental, or Paul as the founder of Christianity.

In any case the hypothesis of a Hcllenising of the Gospel in early Christianity carried out by Paul as an individual is a historic impossibility. From the dilemma, either early Christian or Greek, there is no escape, however one may twist and turn.

If the students of Comparative Religion had been better acquainted with the attempt of the Ultra-Tübingen critics, and had had a more accurate understanding of the difference between Paulinism and the Johannine and early Greek theology, they could hardly have retained the open-mindedness necessary to the commencement of their undertaking; for in that case they would have been [231] forced to reflect on the inconvenient consequences of their possible victory.

221n1) Even Holtzmann shares this confusion. " The Pauline doctrine, " he pronounces in his New Testament Theology (ii. p. 56), " is not exactly Philonian, but doubtless, like the closely allied Philonian doctrines and the more widely divergent later views, grew out of the same stock of Jewish reflection on the Creation-narratives. . . . "

221n2) Poimandres, p. 81 ff.

222n1) Reitzenstein takes much pains to render intelligible, by a series of examples from ancient and modern times, the " dual personality " which often seems to manifest itself in Paul (pp. 53-57, 207, 208). He overlooks the fact that in the form in which it occurs in Paul it is taken for granted by eschatology, and appears in Jesus and the disciples. It is much more primitive than anything found in Hellenistic mysticism or in any form of romanticism, since the distinction of outer appearance and inner being which occurs in Paul, depends upon the contrast of the two worlds which are struggling together for existence. The dual self-consciousness of Paul is, in contradistinction to all other cases, not subjectively but objectively conditioned. Besides, it depends on the temporal opposition oi " then " and " now, " as naturally results from the ardent eschatological expectation. On the " doubling " of one's own personality, such as is possible for Greek sensibility, see Rohde, Psyche, vol. ii. (1909), pp. 413, 414.

222n2) See pp. 57, 58.

227n1) See e.g. Reitzenstein, p. 209.

228n1) That Greek " eschatology " and early Christian are mutually exclusive appears clearly in Albrecht Dieterich's Nekyia (1893, 238 pp.). The fantastic torments of hell as portrayed in the Apocalypse of Peter have nothing to do with the Jewish and primitive Christian eschatology, since the latter are concerned with the in-coming of the new world, and not with the special punishment of individuals. Dieterich is quite right when he explains this detailed description of torment as due to influences from the Orphic literature. Greek religious feeling was concerned with the fate of individuals after death. The thought of a coming world which dominates Jewish and primitive Christian eschatology is alien to it, because its " eschatology " was not created, like the former, by the historico-ethical conceptions and aspirations of successive generations of prophets.

DCH

Final section to follow ...

Digitized text copyright 2008 by David C. Hindley

DCHindley

Schweitzer concluded ...

HARNACK'S ATTITUDE

Since they did not enter on such considerations it was difficult for them to do justice to Harnack. Here and there they took occasion to accuse him of being behind the times and reproach him with having given too much importance to the influence of philosophy in relation to the Hellenising of Christianity, and too little to that of the Mystery-religions. They are not wholly wrong in this. He does not give sufficient recognition to the " physical " and sacramental elements in Paulinism, and does not work out sufficiently fully the parallel between the Mystery-religions and the Johannine and early Greek theology. In laying the foundations of his history of dogma he is too exclusively interested in the development of the Christology, instead of starting from the curious complex of Christology, soteriology, and sacramental doctrine which is characteristic of the Pauline as well as of the Johannine and early Greek theology, and determines the course of the history of dogma.

But this somewhat one-sided view of primitive and early Christianity is far from affording the complete explanation of his attitude of reserve in regard to the results arrived at by the students of Comparative Religion. If he forms a low estimate of the influence of the Mystery-religions upon Paul and the earliest period of Christianity, he is led to that result by pressing considerations from the history of dogma, by which the consequences of the theory put forward by the students of Comparative Religion are made clear to him. Like Anrich, he recognised from the beginning the weaknesses of the theory, which remained hidden from the champions of the method.

It is not possible for any one who holds that Paulinism shows the influence of the Mystery-religions to stop half-way; he has to carry his conclusion back into primitive Christianity in general and to explain even the genesis of the new faith as due to syncretism. The latter [232] stand-point is taken up by Hermann Gunkel (232n1) and Max Maurenbrecher. (232n2)

They hold that the belief in a redeemer-god, such as was present in Jewish Messianism, was also widely current in the Graeco-Oriental religions, and that subsequently, in consequence of the historic corning of Jesus, these two worlds of thought came into a contact which generated a creative energy. From the process thus set in motion primitive Christianity arose. This account of its genesis also explains, they think, why it goes much beyond the " teaching of Jesus " and the religious ideas which formed the content of Late Judaism, and includes mystical and sacramental beliefs.

The historic Jesus did not, according to Gunkel and Maurenbrecher, hold Himself to be the " Redeemer. " Therefore, the real origin of Christianity does not lie with Him but with the disciples. They, having been laid hold of by the power of His personality, and finding themselves compelled to seek a solution of the problem of His death, referred to Him the already existing myth of the Saviour-God, and thereby gave to the set of ideas which had hitherto only existed as such a point of historical attachment, both for Orientals and Jews. From this time forward the religious ideas which attached themselves in the one case and the other to the conception of a redeemer-god flowed into a common bed and formed the stream which, as Christianity, overflowed the world.

MAURENBRECHER'S SYNTHESIS

Maurenbrecher, who seeks to work out the hypothesis in rather fuller detail, holds that in Galilee, which in view of its history had certainly not always been a purely Jewish country, the Messianic idea and the non-Jewish belief in redemption were already present and had to some extent intermingled, and that it was, therefore, no accident that the new religion which after the death of Jesus took [233] its rise in the revelation made to Peter should have gone forth from Galilee. The advantage, he goes on to explain, which the young Christianity possessed among a purely heathen population in comparison with the other competing Oriental religions, arises from the Jewish element, " which in consequence of the peculiar intermixture of which Christianity was the outcome had entered into the universal Oriental religion of redemption. " " Conversely, however, it was precisely the non-Jewish element in the Christian faith which for the Jews made this new religion a really new and higher stage of their religious life. "

This hypothesis is unable to recognise any unique character in Paul. What Dieterich and Reitzenstein claim for him, it finds already completely realised in the primitive community. The result is that Maurenbrecher hardly knows what to make of him, and emphasises his Jewish side much more strongly than his Graeco-Oriental aspect.

The solution of the problem worked out by Gunkel and Maurenbrecher is not based purely on Comparative Religion, but, as the latter writer justly points out, is a kind of synthesis between the views of liberal theology and that of its opponents. The fundamental idea comes from the latter; but in agreement with the former the existence of a historical Jesus is retained.

The retention of this remnant of critical history is, however, unnecessary and illogical. If the origin of Christianity essentially depends on the intermixture of an Oriental belief in a redeemer with the Jewish expectation of the Messiah, and, given a contact and interpenetration between the two, must necessarily have arisen, it is not obvious why the role of a historical Jesus should be—or whether it can be—retained in connexion with it.

In Gunkel and Maurenbrecher it is only a stop-gap, which is brought into a wholly external connexion with the growth of the new religion. They retain His coming as the phenomenon by which the contact of the two religious worlds is set up, but not as a fructifying element.

[234]

There is no obvious reason for continuing to take into account this by no means indispensable auxiliary force. If the Oriental belief in a redeemer and the Jewish Messianic hope were inherently adapted to one another, and destined to produce by their fruitful union a new religion, then, after all, any kind of impulse, even a mere tram of thought, might have set the process in motion. The assumption of the existence and the death of the Galilaean Rabbi becomes superfluous if once it ceases to supply the efficient cause for the arising of Christianity. Since Comparative Religion finds the latter in the mutual interpenetration of Jewish and Graeco-Oriental elements, it can get along just as well with myth as with the questionable history of the Synoptists. Such is the teaching of William Benjamin Smith, (234n1) and Arthur Drews.

Both these writers make a rather extravagant use of the privilege of standing outside the ranks of scientific theology. Their imagination leaps with playful elegance over obstacles of fact and enables them to discover everywhere the pre-Christian Jesus whom their soul desires, even in places where an ordinary intelligence can find no trace of him.

Smith takes it for granted that the " Naasenes, whose origin goes back to the most remote antiquity, worshipped a Jesus as a divinity. " How Christianity grew out of this cult he does not tell us, but consoles us with the promise of later revelations. In the preface he betrays the fact that he is now only publishing " the first quarter of the evidence which he has collected, " and intends to go on quietly collecting and arranging his material " until [235] the whole irresistible host can take the field together, " and further, that it is not the—inevitable—victory which is his main concern, but the stimulus imparted to others.

DREWS' " CHRIST-MYTH "

[Arthur] Drews (235nl) does not play the amateur quite so completely, but endeavours on the basis of his belief in the pre-Christian Jesus to present a coherent picture of the way in which Christianity arose; and he makes Paul its creator. " The Jesus-faith, " so runs his thesis, " had long existed in numerous Mandaean sects in Western Asia, in many respects distinct from one another, before the belief in the Jesus-religion acquired a fixed form and its adherents became conscious of their religious differentia and their independence of the official Jewish religion. " This ancient faith first meets us as a new religion in the letters ascribed to Paul. The citizen of Tarsus, trained as a Pharisee, heard of a sect-god named Jesus, and brought this conception into connexion with the belief in the death and resurrection of Adonis and the thought of the suffering " servant of the Lord " in Isaiah liii., and thus arrived at the idea that a god had appeared in human form, and had by his death and resurrection become the Redeemer, and had enabled men " to become God. " This was the birth-hour of Christianity. For a historic personality, " to serve, so to speak, as the living model for the God-man, " there was no need in order to produce this Jesus-religion, which then entered on its world-wide career of victory.

Drews' thesis is not merely a. curiosity; it indicates the natural limit at which the hypothesis advanced by the advocates of Comparative Religion, when left to its own momentum, finally comes to rest.

Paulinism, in the judgment of the adherents of this much-vaunted method, is to be regarded as a synthesis between primitive Christianity and the conceptions current in the Mystery-religions. If this be taken as the starting-point, it is necessary to proceed to the conclusion—since the synthesis cannot be conceived as [236] accomplished by an individual—that Christianity itself is a product of syncretism. And if the constitutive factor in the new faith is seen in the combination of the Jewish Messianic expectation with a Graeco-Oriental belief in a redeemer-god who dies and rises again, the assumption of the existence of a historic Jesus who was not Himself touched by Hellenic ideas becomes a worthless subsidiary hypothesis. It becomes quite a natural step to leave it on one side and to regard the synthesis as either developing gradually, by an impersonal process, or as coming to birth in the brain of the author of the Pauline Epistles, who thus becomes the creator of early Christianity. Drews is justified in appealing to Gunkel, and asserting that he is only offering his ideas with a logically necessary correction. Of course, every further logical step in this direction involves further sacrifice of historical understanding and an increasing necessity to indulge in imaginary constructions. But all these consequences are already present in germ in the mere assertion that Paul is to be understood from the Mystery-religions, even though those who maintain this view do not want to proceed any further than the facts which have to be explained seem to them to warrant. As between the students of Comparative Religion and Drews the relation is similar to that between the legitimate and illegitimate Tübingen schools. Here, too, the alternative lies between " scientific and inconsistent, and consistent and unscientific. " That means that an absolute antinomy appears between the logic of the attempted solution and that of the data of fact; which is as much as to say that the problem has been wrongly grasped, and that this way, whether it be followed for a certain distance only, or right to the end, can never lead to the goal of a satisfactory solution.

232n1) Hermann Gunkel, Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen Testaments, 1903, 96 pp.

232n2) Max Maurenbrecher, Von Jerusalem nach Rom, 1910, 288 pp. This work is the continuation of Von Nazarelh nach Golgatha, 1909, 274 pp.

234n1) W. B. Smith, Der vorchristliche Jesus, nebst weiteren Vorstudien zur Entstehungsgesckichte des Urchristentums, 243 pp. It was issued in German in 1906 with a preface by P. W. Schmiedel. The author is Professor of Mathematics in Tulane University, New Orleans. The book consists of five somewhat disconnected essays : i. " The Pre-Christian Jesus "; ii. " The Significance of the Nick-name, The Nazarene "; iii. " Anastasis "; iv. " The Sower sows the Logos "; v. " Saeculi silentium. " (Behind this title masquerades a study of the external arguments for the historicity of the Pauline Epistles, in which Smith stammers out confusedly what Steck and van Manen had clearly expressed before him.)

235n1) Arthur Drews, Die Christusmythe, 1909, 190 pp.

That, everyone, is how real criticism is done.

DCH

Digitized text copyright 2008 by David C. Hindley

mountainman

Is this Schweitzer's rhetoric?

Best wishes,



Pete