The mythical interpretation of the Gospels; critical studies in the historic narratives

Front matter

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Preface

It is but fitting that the writer of this volume should introduce his work, which has gained the Bross Prize for 191 5, with an expression of gratitude to the memory of the founder of that bequest, to the present trustees of Lake Forest College, and also to the judges for their courtesy and the trouble involved in dealing with the manuscript submitted for their consideration. He may add, however, that the work was not commenced with a view to competing for the Bross, or indeed any, prize; it had been in hand for about two years, and had already progressed considerably towards taking a final shape, when he bethought him that, perhaps, it might be a suitable book for the purpose which the late William Bross, formerly Ueutenant-governor of the State of lUinois, had in view when he established the trust.

The subject of this treatise, "The Mythical Interpretation of the Gtospels," as it may be termed, is, it should be widely known, nothing more nor less than the theory that our present four canonical Gospels are in no sense whatever what we nowadays mean by the term "historical documents." This is, in truth, a most serious proposition to fling down before the world after close upon nineteen centuries of Christian teaching which has been throughout based upon the contrary afl&rmation. For, if any such theory be a true one, and can be so established to the satisfaction not only of scholars but to that of the world at large, then the documents referred to must be in effect probably nothing more than a mere congeries of ancient nature-myths, and their Central Figure also can only be an embodiment of one or more xii PREFACE

of the various cult-gods or nature-spirits (demons) with which the imagination of the ancient races who formerly dwelt in the southern parts of western Asia and eastem Europe, with Egypt and Arabia, peopled those lands for many centuries before and subsequent to the Christian era.

The subject, the present writer repeats, is one of the utmost importance when viewed from the religious standpoint; and it has hitherto, in his opinion, been somewhat too hastily set aside without examination, and even quietly snubbed by critical as well as by dogmatic theologians. It is not thus that any theory, however wrongheaded it may be, is checked, nor by these means are genuine seekers after truth ever convinced of its errors. On the contrary, such theories and assertions should be challenged freely and criticised, and their mistakes and assumptions frankly and systematically pointed out.

After making the above prefatory statement, it may not be inopportune or superfluous here to give, for the benefit of such readers to whom it will be welcome, a brief sketch of the chief mythical and non-historical explanations of the origin and nature of Christiaiuty which have been put forth from time to time during the period covered by the past one hundred and twenty years.

Previously to the end of the eighteenth century the mythical hypothesis of Christianity was, for all practical purposes, wholly unknown. Going still further back, in the earlier centuries of the Christian era, we find the various fathers of the church and other contemporary writers, secular as well as ecclesiastical, distinguishing most carefully and emphatically the historical Gospel narratives, as they had received or examined them, and above all the personality of Jesus Christ, from the nature-myths and the deities of various classes and grades, whether Olympic gods or cultual nature-spirits (demons), which were held in awe or honour by the peoples in whose

PREFACE xiii

very midst Christianity had but recently been introduced and estabhshed. This is, indeed, an indisputable and accepted fact.

Much the same, too, may be said of the Jewish rabbins and others who contributed to that body of authoritative Jewish teaching, mingled with fact and fancy, which at an early period took shape and became known as the two Talmuds. To the Christian fathers and the Jewish rabbins alike both Jesus Christ and the records of his life and teaching had an undoubted historical basis. Even his miracles were in general admitted by the Jews, but were attributed by them either to the agency of demons or to the magical arts which he was supposed to have learned in, and brought from, Egypt. Neither early Christian nor Jew of any period felt the smallest doubt as to the historic character of either Christianity or its Founder, whilst even the pagan Romans and Greeks always refer to both in professedly historic terms. Indeed, the educated Gentiles of all races included within the Roman Empire of that period regarded the Christian system as wholly unlike, and in every respect totally opposed to, the stories told of the cult-gods and divine heroes of their myths. These three primary facts are beyond dispute, and all three taken together form, in the opinion of the present writer, a great and a priori obstacle to any modern scheme that can be devised for the mythicising of the story of the Christian religion or the person of its Founder.

With the period of the great French Revolution, at the end of the eighteenth century, a great change was obviously impending. Its advent was heralded by the publication, in 1794, of the notorious work of Charles Francois Dupuis (1742-1809), entitled L'origine de tous les Cultes, ou la Riligion Universelle, which had followed close upon Volney's Les Ruines, ou Meditation sur les Revolutions des Empires, a thinly veiled and dilettante xiv PREFACE

attack upon all religion, and especially upon the historical character and evidences of Christianity. In the work of Dupuis all primitive religion is connected with a system of astral mythology, and the origin of astral myths is traced to Upper Egypt. This book excited some interest at the time of its publication, though it had only a small sale; it is said, however, to have been largely instrumental in bringing about the expedition organised by Napoleon Bonaparte for the exploration, or exploitation, of that country. Regarding this book, it will sufl&ce here to say that a distinguished modem astronomer^ has (March 20, 1914) informed the present writer that Dupuis's "method led him to the conclusion that the constellations must have been devised when the sun was in the constellation Aries at the autumnal equinox, *. e., about 13000 B. C. The evidence afforded by the unmapped space round the south pole proves that he was ten or eleven thousand years wrong; in other words, nearly as wrong as he could be"P Any system which is based upon such a huge and primary error as this stands self-condemned at the outset.

The method of Dupuis soon fell into disrepute, but in spite of this fact it has been revived in our own day in a somewhat modified form by certain modem mythidsts, notably A. Niemojewski (Bog Jezus, 1909, and GoU Jezus im Lichte fremder und eigener Forschungen, samt Darstellung der evangelischen Astralstoffe, Astralszenen, und AstraU systeme, 1910) and Fuhrmann {Der Aslralmythen von Ckristus), who have used this once much- vaunted "key" to the origin of religions in a manner regardless not only of astronomical facts but even, at times, of common sense.

With the downfall, in the early nineteenth century, of the astral theory of Dupuis, which in speculative theology was largely superseded by the unimaginative

> Mr. E. Walter Maunder, F.R.A.S.

' See also Encyclopedia Britannica, nth ed., art. "Dupuis."

PREFACE XV

rationalism of Paulus (1761-1851), the next generation were confronted with a revival of the mythic theory in a new and improved form. David Friedrich ' Strauss (1808-74) issued in 1835-6 his famous work, Das Leben Jesu, based to a great extent upon the dialectical method of the then fashionable Hegelian idealistic philosophy, in which, while he acknowledged the actual existence of an historical Jesus who formed the subject of the Gospel memoirs, Strauss maintained had had such a complete halo of myth thrown around him that for all practical purposes his life was entirely unknown to us. This work created a great sensation almost throughout Europe, and a fourth edition of it, translated by George Eliot, appeared in England in a popular form under the English title of The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1846). Finally the work was entirely recast and rewritten as Das Leben Jesufiir das Deutsche Volk bearbeitet (1865); in this new form Strauss declared that he viewed the Gospel stories rather as conscious inventions than as poetic myths, as he had maintained in the original Das Leben Jesu.

This non-historical and later view of the Gospel records and the person of Jesus was next taken up by Bruno Bauer (1809-82), a critic belonging, like Strauss, in the earlier part of his career, to the Hegelian "Left Wing," and who differed from Strauss chiefly in denying that the Judaism antecedent to the rise of Christianity harboured any potent Messianic expectations. The Messiah, Bauer maintained (Kritik der Evangelischen Geschickte der Synoptiker, 1841), was the product of the Christian consciousness, and was rather carried back from the Christian system into that of Judaism than borrowed by the former from the latter source. As for the Gospels, they were, he thought, abstract conceptions turned into history, probably by one man — the evangelist Mark.

Before, however, dismissing Jesus as a wholly fictitious character in history, Bauer decided to make a further xvi PREFACE

critical examination of the structure and contents of the Pauline epistles {Kritik der PauUnischen Brief e, 1850-1). As an outcome of these combined investigations he at last decided that an historical Jesus never existed— a result little, if at all, removed from the final conclusions of Strauss.

With the death of Bauer the mythical hypothesis may be said to have entered upon a new phase. In 1882 Rudolf Seydel published his Das Evangelium von Jesu in seinen Verhaltnissen zur Buddha-Sage und Buddha-Lehre, which was followed not long afterwards by his Die Buddha- Legende und das Leben Jesu nach den Evangelien (2d ed., 1897), and Buddha und Christus (1884), in which the avowed object was to demonstrate that the Ufe of Jesus, as related by the compilers of the synoptic Gospels, was almost wholly derived from similar anecdotes related of the Buddha in Buddhist legend and myth. The reader of the present book will find the greater number of these stories quoted and compared with their (so-called) Christian "parallels" and "derivatives." This theory had been, however, already effectively criticised by Bousset in the Theologische Rundschau for February, 1889.

At the opening of the twentieth century another Oriental "source" was proposed by Mr. J. M. Robertson {Christianity and Mythology, 1900; Pagan Christs: Studies in Comparative Hierology, 1903, 2d ed., 1912). This author, whose excursions into the field of theology all bear the marks of great haste and extreme recklessness of statement, has been very largely dealt with in the present volume. It will suflSce, therefore, to add here that he traces the portrait of Jesus, as drawn by the S3moptic writers, to a syncretism of mythological elements derived primarily, perhaps, from early Hebraic tradition and myth combined (later on) with various pagan myths, European as well as Asiatic, and especially the stories told about the early life of Krishna and, in some cases,

PREFACE xvii

those recorded of the Buddha. Indeed, the idea contained in the story of Jesus is, in the main, for him, very largely a recension of the myth of an old Ephraimitic sun-god "Joshua," which, when historicised, gave rise to a legend regarding a northern Israelite Messiah, Joshua ben Joseph.

This last-mentioned view of Christianity and its Founder, again, does not differ very greatly from that of Professor W. B. Smith, of Tulane University, New Orleans, U. S. A., who (Der Vorchristliche Jesus, 1906) derives the "Christ-myth" from certain alleged "Jesus-cults," dating from pre-Christian times. Jesus is, he thinks, the name of an ancient Western Semitic cult-god, and he finds a reference to the doctrines held by the devotees of this deity in Acts 18 : 25. He also further maintains that "Nazareth" was not in pre-Christian times the name of a village in Galilee (since no such village then existed), but is a corruption of Nazaraios (Nafa/aato?), meaning "guardian" or "saviour" — a word identical in its signification with "Jesus," the name of this ancient cult-god. " Christ," also, in Hke manner has reference to the same deity, for X/sto-To's is equatable with XPV'^'ro'i, found in the LXX version of Psalm 34 : 8.

The above views Professor Smith subsequently developed more fully in a later work {Ecce Deus, 1912), in which he maintains, contrary to the commonly accepted view, that Jesus is presented by the evangelist Mark wholly as a god {i. e., a cult-deity) in an anthropomorphic guise.

We may, perhaps, here also briefly note another variant form of the mythical theory which has been proposed by the German Assyriologist, P. Jensen.

Doctor Jensen states {Das Gilgamesch-epos in der Weltliter atur, 1906; Moses, Jesus, Paulus: drei Varianten des Babylonischen Gottmenschen Gilgamesch, 1909; Hat der Jesus der Evangelien wirklich gelebt? 19 10) that Jesus may xviii PREFACE

be identified with not merely one but several of the mythical heroes in the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, and a series of so-called parallels found in that work and the Gospels are set forth in his Moses, Jesus, Paulus, as establishing the truth of his thesis. His theory, however, has been rejected by the almost unanimous consent of scholars, and one American theologian has even gone so far as to pronounce the whole hypothesis "elaborate bosh."

But the hypothesis of the mythical origin and nature of Christianity and the unhistorical character of the Gospel narratives reaches its culminating point in two recent works of Professor Drews, of Karlsruhe, who, abandoning for a time the exposition of philosophy, appears as the strenuous advocate of a mythical Christianity (Die Ckrisiusmythe, 1910, English translation The Christ Myth; and The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus,^ 1912). His method and conclusions may be briefly summarised as follows: From Robertson and W. B. Smith he borrows the general mythical view of the Gospel narratives, and in particular the identification of Jesus with an ancient Hebrew cult-deity, Joshua, and an old Greek divine healerhero, Jason — equating Jason = Joshua = Jesus (Joshua forming the intermediate link) as all representing the sun.

Further, from Professor W. B. Smith he adopts the theory that the members of these cults had been termed "Nazoraeans" (Nazaraioi). Christianity, he maintains, is primarily and mainly a syncretism of these elements together with (orthodox) Jewish Messianism plus the pagan (Greco-Roman, etc.) idea of a "redeemer-god," who annually "dies" and "rises," and thereby promotes the welfare of mankind. This s3Tithesis, he thinks, was effected in the mind of St. Paul, who "knew no historical Jesus" (II, Cor. 5 : 16). This explains, he surmises, the great change which took place in the views and actions ■ An amended version of the second part of The Christ Myth.

PREFACE xix

of St. Paul. At first, he says, Paul, as a legalist, violently opposed the gospel because the law pronounced cursed every one who had been "hanged upon a tree." But suddenly he became "enlightened," and a reconciliation became possible. He found that he could combine the idea of the expected and orthodox Jewish Messiah of the first century with the older and self-sacrificing god of the ethnic nature-cults, which latter were closely akin to the pre-Christian Joshua or Jesus cults. "This," concludes Professor Drews, "was the moment of Christianity's birth as a religion of Paul." ^

To sum up: Professor Drews has himself stated his position in the following terms: The Gospels do not contain the history of an actual man, but only the myth of the god-man Jesus clothed in an historical dress. Further, such important, and for religious purposes significant, events in the Gospels as the Baptism, the Lord's Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection of Jesus are all borrowed by St. Paul from the cult-worship of the mythical Jesus, being embodied in ancient and pre- Christian systems of religious ritual.

Yet further: The "historical Jesus" of modern critical theology has now become so vague and doubtful a figure in both religion and history that he can no longer be regarded as the absolutely indispensable condition of salvation. Doctor Drews likewise believes that his own works are written in the true interests of religion, for which ideas alone — not personalities — ^have value, and, by reason of his convictions, that the forms of Christianity which have hitherto prevailed are no longer sufficient for modern needs. Not the historical Jesus, he urges, but Christ as an idea — as an idea of the divine humanity — must henceforth be the ground of religion. And he adds that "when we can and will no longer believe on acci-

•We have here an example of the application of the three "moments" of the Hegelian dialectic — thesis, antithesis, synthesis ; see Hegel's Logic.

XX PREFACE

dental [ ! ] personalities, we can and must believe on ideas." i

It is not our purpose here to deal with this complex mass of crude theories, suppositions, and assumptions, but we may, perhaps, in this place appropriately quote the apposite remarks thereupon of Doctor A. Schweitzer {Paul and His Interpreters, pp. 193 and 239): "In particular, these [mythical] works aim at getting hold of the idea of a Greek redeemer-god who might serve as an analogue to Jesus Christ. No figure of this designation occurs in any myth or in any mystery religion; it is created by a process of generalisation, abstraction, and reconstruction."

Again: "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 souls desire, even in places where an ordinary intelligence can find no trace of it." ^

This is true; and it is also true that any discussion of a general nature which may be carried on with reference to these "generalisations, abstractions, and reconstructions" is seldom a fruitful one. Let us, therefore, put the results of the above mental operations to a more concrete test, viz., that of an actual comparative study in detail. In other words, let us analyse and compare carefully the stories told by the evangehsts with the mythic episodes from which the former are said to be derived, or which they are confidently stated to resemble. If they fail in this final and supreme test, then we may safely dismiss the whole theory of the mythical interpretation of the Gospels, with its "generahsations, abstrac-

' See the Berliner Rdigionsgesprach, 1910, pp. 94 /.; and cf. Die Ckristttsmytke, p. xi. ^ See also Doctor F. C. Conybeare, The Historical Christ, p. 29.

PREFACE xxi

tions, and reconstructions," as an interesting but empty dream. This is, indeed, the practical and only true method of testing all theories in almost every department of knowledge, and it is the one which the present writer has endeavoured to set before his readers in the following pages.

Further, the author wishes to express his great obligations and sincere thanks to a number of eminent scholars who have kindly furnished him with expert information upon various special or obscure points where his own knowledge was either wanting or defective. Amongst these the following gentlemen may be specially mentioned: Doctor E. M. WaUis Budge, keeper of the Assyrian and Egyptian antiquities in the British Museum, London; Doctor A. A. Macdonell, Boden professor of Sanscrit in the University of Oxford; Doctor L. H. Mills, professor of Zend philology in Oxford University; and Doctor W. M. Flinders Petrie, F.R.S., F.B.A., Edwards professor of Egyptology in University College, London University. His friend the Reverend F. B. Allison, M.A., F.R.A.S., formerly fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and E. Walter Maunder, Esq., F.R.A.S., late superintendent of the Solar Department in the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, also gave him valuable assistance on astronomical questions, which he acknowledges with gratitude.

Finally, the author's thanks are due to his son, Charles E. A. Thorburn, for his kindness in typing the three copies of the original manuscript which were required by the conditions of the trust.

Contents

CHAPTEI PAGE

I. Mary and Joseph 3

II. The Annunciation, Conception, and Birth . . 24

Chapter I Mary And Joseph

It is an almost primary necessity of every theory of a mythical interpretation of the Gospels to demonstrate that Mary and Joseph are ancient deities, the former in particular being identical with the mother-divinities of the pagan nature-cults, who were worshipped under one form or another, and under different names, by the various nations and races which occupied the countries situated round about the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.^ We will, therefore, begin our study of this complex question with the statements of this thesis as they are set forth by two of the leading exponents of the theory, and for the most part in their own words.

"The whole birth-story," writes Mr. J. M. Robertson (Christianity and Mythology, p. 319), "is indisputably late, and the whole action mythic; and the name [Mary] is also to be presumed mythical. For this there is the double reason that Mary, or Miriam, was already a mythic name for both Jews and Gentiles. The Miriam of Exodus is no more historical than Moses; like him and Joshua she is to be reckoned an ancient deity evemerised, and the Arab tradition that she was the mother of Joshua (= Jesus) raises an irremovable surmise that a

' Similarly, the patriarch Joseph is regarded by Doctor Winckler and others as a form of the sun-god.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, may have been worshipped in Syria long before our era."

But Mr. Robertson further continues: "It is not possible, from the existing data, to connect historically such a cult with its congeners; but the mere analogy of names and epithets goes far. The mother of Adonis, the slain 'Lord' of the great Syrian cult, is Myrrha; and Myrrha, in one of her myths, is the weeping tree' from which the babe Adonis is born. Again, Hermes, the Greek Logos, has for mother Maia, whose name has further connexion with Mary. In one myth Maia is the daughter of Atlas (Apollod., Ill, lo, 2), thus doubling with Maira, who has the same father (Paus., VIII, 48) and who, having died a virgin (ibid., X, 30), was seen by Odysseus in Hades. Mythologically, Maira is identified with the dog-star, which is the star of Isis.

"Yet again, the name appears in the East as Maya, the virgin mother of the Buddha, and it is remarkable that, according to a Jewish legend, the name of the Egj^tian princess who found the babe Moses was Merris (Euseb., Prap. Evan., IX, 27). The plot is still further thickened by the fact that, as we learn from the monuments, one of the daughters of Rameses II was named Men (Brugsch., Egypt Under the Pharaohs, II, p. 117)."

Further: "In the matter of names, it is of some though minor interest to recall that Demeter is associated in Greek mythology with one Jasios, or Jasion, not as mother but as lover {Od., V, 125; Hesiod, Theog., 960). Jason, as we know, actually served as a Greek form of the name Joshua, or Jesous (Jos., Ant., XII, 5, i); and Jasion, who in one story is the founder of the famous Samothracian mysteries (Preller, Griech. Myth., I, 667), is, in the ordinary myth, slain by Zeus. But the partial parallel of his name is of less importance than the possible parallel of his mythical relation to the goddess-mother. * /. e., it exudes a resinous gum. See aiiipva. (Greek lexicon).

MARY AND JOSEPH 5

"In many if not all of the cults in whicli there figures a nursing mother, it is found that her name signifies the nurse/ or that becomes one of her epithets. Thus, Maia stands for 'the nurse,' t/3o<^o'? (Porphyr., De Abstin., IV, 1 6); Mylitta means the child-bearing one (Bahr, Symbolik des tnosatsch. Cult., I, 436); both Demeter and Artemis were styled child-rearers, and Isis was alternately styled 'the nurse' and 'the mother' (Plut., De Is. et Osir., 53, 56).2

"Now one of the most important details of the confused legend in the Talmud concerning the pre-Christian [? ] Jesus Ben Pandira, who is conjoined with Ben Stada,' is that the mother is in one place named Miriam Magdala, Mary the nurse, or the hair-dresser (Jastrow, Diet, of the Targ. and the Midr. Lit., part 2, p. 213, 1888). As Isis, too, plays the part of a hair-dresser (Plut., De Is. et Osir., 15),* it seems clear that we are dealing here also with myth, not with biography. In the Gospels we have Mary the Magdalene, that is, of the supposed place Magdala, which Jesus in one text (Matt. 15 : 39, A. V.) visits. But Magdala at most simply means 'a tower,' or 'high place' (the same root yielding the various senses of nursing, rearing, and hair-dressing); and, in the revised text, Magdala gives way to Magadan, thus disappear-

' So (in Homer) /utta applied, in familiar sense, to old women, "^mother." ' Plutarch says (53) that Isis is the female principle of nature, and is, therefore, styled by Plato the "Nurse" and "All-receiving"; but, by the generality of mankind, the " One of numberless names." In 56 he further remarks that Plato calls matter "mother" and "nurse," while idea is termed "father." This is not quite the same thing as the above. Isis, however, was a special form of the great Mater Nutrix, though it is not directly so stated here.

' It is highly uncertain whether these " Jesuses" are one and the same or not. Mr. Robertson is making an assumption here.

* Plutarch, again, says here that Isis, having come to Byblus, made friends with the servants of the queen of that place by dressing their hair for them. This is hardly being a professional hair-dresser, as implied above, and savours somewhat of special pleading. Moreover, there is a confusion of Marys.

ing entirely from the Gospels. There is no documentary trace of it save as a citadel so named by Josephus.

"Mary Magdalene, finally, plays in the Gospels a purely mythical part, that of one of the finders of the risen Lord. The interpolated text in Luke (8 : 2) baldly describing her as having seven devils cast out of her by Jesus is equally remote from history; but it points towards the probable mythic solution. Maria, the Magdalene, who in the post-evangelical myth becomes a penitent harlot, is probably cognate with the evemerised Miriam of the Mosaic myth, who is morally possessed by devils [ ! ], and is expressly punished for her sin before being forgiven. Something else, evidently, has underlain the pseudo-historical tale; and the Talmudic reference, instead of being a fiction based on the scanty data in the Gospels, is presumptively an echo of a mythic tradition, which may be the real source of the Gospel allusions. In Jewry the profession of hair-dressing seems to have been identified with that of hetaira [courtesan], the character ultimately ascribed in Christian legend to Mary Magdalene."

Thus far Mr. Robertson. The remainder of his section on the "Mythic Maries" deals chiefly with the rdle, in which he thinks they figure in finding the risen Saviour, and which, in his view, is comparable to the parts played by the various representatives of the mother-goddess.

This thesis of Mr. Robertson is practically accepted in its entirety by Professor Drews, who says {The Christ Myth, p. 239): "That the parents of Jesus were called Joseph and Mary, and that his father was a carpenter, were determined by tradition." And, again, he writes {ihid., pp. 116 and 117) : "Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a goddess. Under the name of Maya she is the mother of Agni.i . . . She appears, under the same name, as

* The Vedic fire-god. He was bom, according to the Yajur-Veda from the mouth of a divine being (Prajapati), Muir, SaiKcril Texts, 2d ed., I,' p. 16.

MARY AND JOSEPH 7

the mother of Buddha, as well as of the Greek Hermes. She is identical with Maira (Masra), as, according to Pausanias (VIII, 12, 48), the Pleiad Maia, the wife of Hephaistos, was called.* She appears among the Persians as the 'virgin' mother of Mithras. As Myrrha, she is the mother of the Syrian Adonis; as Semiramis, mother of the Babylonian Ninus (Marduk). In the Arabic legend she appears under the name of Mirzam, as mother of the mythical saviour, Joshua, who was so closely related to Moses; ,and, according to Eusebius, Merris was the name of the Egyptian princess who found Moses in a basket and became his foster-mother."

Finally, in The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus (1912), p. 164, Doctor Drews complains that Weiss' is unable to recognise in Mary Magdalene and the other Marys at the cross and the grave of the Saviour the Indian, Asiatic, and Egyptian mother of the gods — the Maia, Mariamma, or Maritala, as the mother of Krishna is called, the Mariana of Mariandynium (Bithjniia), Mandane, the mother of the Messiah, Cyrus (Isaiah 45 : i), the "great mother" of Pessinunt,' the sorrowing Semiramis, Miriam, Merris,' Myrrha, Maira (Maera), and Maia, "beloved of her son," as the more enlightened mythical school have done.

We have given in the above extracts, as far as possible, the ipsissima verba*^ of these writers in order to preclude any possibility of a misstatement of their views and

• Drews points out (The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus, p. 169, note 2) that Augustus was called the " World Saviour," and referred to by Horace as Maia's winged child. But the former title is used only in a secular sense — saviour of the world from anarchy and bloodshed; and the latter is merely a fulsome compliment paid by Horace. This really shows that historical personages were thus complimented. His actual mother was Atia, niece to JuUus Caesar, as Horace knew very weD. But see also Suetonius, Div. Aug., 94; Dio Cassius, XLV, i, 2.