Sixteen saviours or one? The Gospels not brahmanic

Introduction

OF making of books there is no end, and every addition to the already overgrown mass of literature should have ample justification. This little volume claims no exemption from the xesponsibility because of its diminutive size, but trusts that its •subject and purpose will sufficiently excuse its appearance.

The skepticism prevalent among well-read people, may be as hostile to revelation as the infidelity of eighty or one hundred years ago, but it is more decorous. It alleges historical criticism and scientific discovery as the bases of its conclusions, and rarely gets into a passion. Yet the iconoclastic school of Paine and Voltaire is not dead. It has only found new pupils. The earliest opponents of the Bible, though radicals in theory, were aristocrats in practice. Anthony Collins, perhaps the ablest of the English deists of the first half of the last century, always sent his servants to church, that they might not rob him. Voltaire denounced with severity Holbaclr's " Good Sense,'' because it taught atheism to valets and chambermaids. It was not until Paine, a man of the people, wrote in a strictly popular manner, that the English masses were provided with a scheme of unbelief suited to their tastes and comprehension.

vi Introduction

During the quarter of a century following our Revolution, the influence of the " Age of Reason" was paramount among the radical democracy of New York. Dr. John W. Francis has given in his. "Old New York" a fearful picture of the demoralization of the period. Elihu Palmer, a blind man and apostate minister, lectured regularly to a chosen circle, by which he was regarded as infallible, and second only to the great Thomas. In his "Principles of Nature" he has left behind him a summary of his deistical scheme.

Thirty years later, the lectures of Frances Wright and Robert Dale Owen, and their paper, the Free Enquirer, spread atheism among the working people of New York. Benjamin Offen, a "philosophical" shoemaker, also lectured at Tammany Hall. The late Gilbert Vale united the callings of a mathematical instrument maker and publisher of skeptical works, and about the same time Abner Kneeland started the Investigator at Boston. "Liberal" papers were also established in other places, but they all, and the Enquirer as well, soon died out. The movement seemed to have culminated. The Investigator alone maintained a somewhat sickly existence, and its publisher issued a list of skeptical works at very high prices. Judging from the persistency with which old editions, were kept on sale the demand was not very large.

Recently a change for the worse has taken place. Infidel Spiritualism has allied itself to out-and-out materialism, and its advocates are pushing the same books and manifesting entire sympathy in the anti-christian warfare of the successors of Kneeland. There are

Introduction. vii now at least three houses in New York, two in Boston and one in Chicago, which publish long lists of books and tracts assailing the Christian faith, the divine existence, and often the sanctity of marriage. Some of these publications have passed through numerous editions, and all are thoroughly adapted to shake the belief of those who are unfamiliar with the questions discussed. Their authors are either persons, who having no reputation to lose, are utterly unscrupulous in their statements, or men who, having prejudged the case, are incapable of fairly weighing evidence. Anything that will serve their purpose in telling against Christianity is good enough for them. Writing in this spirit, it is not strange that their productions should appear very weighty to the unsophisticated. They never fail to make out a " good case."

The great majority of these effusions are not read by what is known as the reading public, and many of their special objections and assertions are not noticed in the standard volumes on the evidences of Christianity. For about fifty years Robert Taylor's Diegesis has been published in Bostonnvith the advertisement that it is deemed "unanswerable in fact and argument," yet it has received little attention. The Rev. George E. Ellis reviewed it in The Christian Examine?' over forty years ago. The paper is excellent as far as it goes, but hardly sufficient as an answer to a work, very dangerous, because extremely dishonest, and so besprinkled with Greek and Hebrew as to wear the appearance of profound scholarship. It will not do to say that noticing books of viii Introduction.

this kind serves to advertise them. They are already advertised, and are sowing the seeds of unbelief, communism and recklessness of all kinds among large numbers of voters. If clergymen and philanthropists wish to know all the reasons for non-attendance at church among the working classes, they will do well to inquire into the circulation of books and pamphlets unknown to them, yet filled with deadly poison.

Some time ago my attention was called to the works of Mr. Kersey Graves, a skeptical spiritualist of Richmond, Indiana. I first heard of their wide circulation at the East. As they had passed through several editions, I did not feel that I ran any risk of giving them undue publicity by commenting upon them. It seemed best to make my strictures known in the author's own locality. My friend Mr. Daniel Surface of the Richmond Telegram, kindly gave me ample space in his columns, and I reviewed at length the two volumes of Mr. Graves which have gained the widest circulation.

He replied, and I rejoined. The controversy then closed, not because Mr. Graves had no desire to prolong it, but because the publisher of the Telegram thought the subject had been exhausted. The three articles make up this volume. The public care of course very little about Mr. Graves and myself, but I have chosen to reproduce the discussion, with no changes save the correction of typographical errors, the amendment of a few hastily written sentences, and the addition of a note or two, in my own letters. I have made no alteration in Mr. Graves', defense, but have inserted two or three

Introduction.

short communications in which he corrected or explained what he had said before. The reader will thus be able to see what each side has to urge for itself. It is not as a discussion however,, that I ask attention to the book. I think I can claim first, that the main arguments of Taylor's Diegesis, Volney's Ruins, Higgins' Anacalypsis, and Jacolliot's Bible in India, as well as those of Mr. Graves himself, are fully and fairly met; second, that the materials here gathered must be sought elsewhere in more than one authority and are not to t>e found in the ordinarily accessible defenses of the Bible. The positions refuted are those which compose the stronghold of the infidel working-men throughout the country, and hence deserve the special attention of the clergy. Furthermore, some of them are gaining a revived acceptance among writers of more eminence than the last named, and a new edition of the Anacalypsis, which has long been out of print, is announced.

I make no pretensions to scholarship ; I have simply endeavored to study my subject carefully and thoroughly, and honestly to record my conclusions. The field of comparative mythology is a vast one, and no single person can hope to view, much less to till its entire surface. I have been compelled through lack of space to confine myself to one or two vital issues. If I have shown that Christ is no copy of Krishna, and Christianity no modification of any of the old ethnic beliefs, I have not been unconscious of the many curious ramifications, survivals of a primitive revelation, or proofs of the spiritual unity of all men — which unite the faiths of widely separated

Introduction.

nations. I have glanced at these in passing, but they are much more satisfactorily, though briefly, set forth in a note from Professor Swing, which will be found in the appendix. My authorities are sufficiently credited in the context. I wish, however, to acknowledge special obligations to Hardwick's " Christ and other Masters," a work remarkable for its keen analysis of the differences as well as resemblances between Christianity and the ethnic faiths. Cardinal Wiseman's "Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, " are also no less valuable in regard to certain essential points, because some of their statements respecting natural science have become antiquated during the more than forty years, which have elapsed since their delivery.

No one can be more conscious of the defects of my work than myself. I could plead in extenuation the unceasing demands of a daily newspaper, yet I have yielded to the request of many friends and readers that I should incorporate my articles in a permanent form. I hope their expectations and my desire of the good thus to be attained will not be disappointed.

Gazette Office. J. T. P.

Cincinnati, April 15, 1879.

The Sixteen Crucified Saviors/'

Mr. KERSEY GRAVES AS A THEOLOGIAN AND SCHOLAR.

To the Editor of the Richmond Telegram:

INTRODUCTORY.

The controversy on the evidences of Christianity has assumed various forms. Sometimes one position has been assailed by skeptics, and sometimes another. Each campaign has had its peculiar tactics. While borrowing from those which preceded it whatever seemed serviceable, those weapons that had proved valueless were thrown away. Just now German rationalists and their English and American imitators are chiefly anxious to prove that the Old and New Testament records are not the work of their reputed authors, but of a sufficiently later origin to allow time for mythical and legendary narratives to grow up. There are others who place their reliance on the alleged discrepancies of revelation and science, forgetting that natural philosophers have changed ground in hundreds of particulars within the last quarter of a century, and that the shifting process has by no means ceased.

The people of Richmond are pretty generally aware, I suppose, that their fellow citizen, Mr. Kersey Graves, published a few years ago a volume with the surprising title of " The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors, or Christianity Before Christ," of which the fourth edition now lies before me. It purports to contain, " new, startling, and extraordinary revelations in religious history, which disclose the oriental origin of all the doctrines, principles, precepts and miracles of the Christian New Testament, and furnishing a key for unlocking many of its sacred mysteries, besides comprising the history of sixteen heathen crucified gods." In an "Address to the Clergy," prefixed to the main work, he informs the teachers of the Christian faith that "The divine claims of your (their) religion are gone — all swept away by the ' logic of history, ' and nullified by the demonstrations of science." He then repeats in detail various alleged coincidences between the scriptural records of the birth, life, and death of Christ and the so-called saviours, who, he says, preceded Him; the inference, of course, being that the claims of all are equally true and equally false, since the "primary constituent elements and properties of human nature being essentially the same in all countries, and all centuries, and the feeling called Religion being a spontaneous outgrowth of the human mind, the coincidence would naturally produce similar feelings, similar thoughts," &c. He further says :

"Researches into oriental history reveal the remarkable fact that the stories of incarnate Gods answering to and resembling the miraculous character of Jesus Christ have been prevalent in most, if not all, the principal religious heathen nations of antiquity ; ( were there any irreligious ones ? ) and the accounts and narratives of some of these deific incarnations bear such a striking example to that of the Christian Savior — not only in their general features, but in some cases in the most minute details, from the legend of the immaculate conception, to that of the crucifixion, and subsequent ascension into heaven — that one might almost be mistaken for the other."

If he has demonstrated, as he claims to have done, the foregoing positions, any further assault on Christianity would be very much like kicking a corpse, yet we fancy that Mr. Graves is not quite as confident, on sober second thought, as he was while the glow of authorship was fresh, for he has just favored the public with a second effusion of the same general character, and involving, we must say, quite a number of repetitions. The new volume is styled, "The Bible of Bibles, or Twenty-seven Divine Revelations,'7 containing a description of twenty-seven Bibles, and an exposition (we suppose he means exposure) of two thousand biblical errors in Science, History, Morals, Religion and General Events; also, a delineation of the character of the principal personages of the Christian Bible, and an examination of their doctrines."

The first of the two books is the more important, but a review of its contents will involve an inquiry into the antiquity and merits of the chief heathen ''bibles,'7 while the author's estimate of the character and evidences of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, being the same in both volumes, may be considered without exclusive reference to either.

Before beginning on the "Sixteen Saviors," Mr. Graves names thirty-five persons, historical and mythological, who have received or claimed divine honors. Among these are Salivahana, of Bermuda I Though the word we have italicized is twice repeated, we will hold the proof reader responsible for relegating an East Indian divinity to the new world. Mohammed is also in the list, though he never pretended to be more than a prophet. Ixion is set down by Mr. Graves as a Roman, though he appears in the classics as a fabulous king of Thessaly, who was tied to a wheel in Hades for being too intimate with Juno. As he was a murderer before he became a libertine in the circles of Olympus he is certainly a queer candidate for supernatural dignity.

THE SIXTEEN "SAVIORS."

But we will pass to the sixteen who, our author asserts, were b>elieved to have been crucified in or about the years affixed to their names. They are Chrishna, of India, 1200 B. C. ; the Hindoo Sakia, 600 B. C. ; Thammuz, of Syria, 11 60 B. C. \ Wittoba, of the Telengonese, 552 B. C. ; Iao, of Nepaul, 622 B. C. ; Hesus, of the Celtic Druids, 834 B. C. ; Quexalcote, of Mexico, 587 B. C. ; Quirinus, of Rome, 506 B. C. ; (Aeschylus) Prometheus, crucified 547 B. C. ; Thulis, of Egypt, 1700 B. C. ; Indra of Thibet, 725 B. C. ; Alcestos (we suppose Alcestis is meant), of Euripides, 600 B. C. \ Atys, of Phrygia, 1170B. C. ; Crite, of Chaldea, 200 B. C. ; Bali, of Orissa, 725 B. C. ; Mithra, of Persia, 600 B. C.

After reading the astounding catalogue, the reader will naturally inquire whether the statements are true? We are afraid we shall have to reduce the list very materially before we consider certain theories not original with Mr. Graves, upon which all his conclusions are based. Sakia, who is no other than Buddha, must hrst be dismissed. He is a historical character, a reformer and founder of an important sect. He never was crucified, however, but died a natural death at the age of about eighty, four hundred years or more before Christ. The earliest canon of his writings was not formed until a century and a half after his death. None of the miraculous stories concerning his birth can be traced back to a period preceding the Christian era. The oldest writings concerning him extant — there are two sets, the southern and northern, of which the latter are the more marvelous — are subsequent to the Christian era, in their present form at least.

Thammuz, or the Tammuz, is an Eastern version of the mythical Greek character Adonis, the beloved of Venus, who was killed by a boar, not by crucifixion.

Hesus, sometimes called Esus, not Eros, the god of love, as Mr. Graves prints it, was the Celtic war god, the counterpart of the Roman Mars, and, as some affirm, the chief divinity, whose symbol was the oak.

Quexalcote, or Quetzalcoatl, as Prescott spells his name, was the Mexican god of the air. During his residence on earth, it is said, he instructed the natives in the use of metals, in agriculture, and in the arts of government. From some cause, not explained, the historian of the Conquest of Mexico, tells us "Quetzalcoatl incurred the wrath of one of the principal gods and was compelled to abandon the country. On his way he stopped at the city of Cholula, where a temple was dedicated to his worship, the mossy ruins of which still form one of the most interesting relics of antiquity in Mexico. When he reached the shores of the Mexican gulf, he took leave of his followers, promising that he and his descendants would revisit them hereafter, and then entering his wizard skiff, made of serpents' skins, embarked on the great ocean for the fabled land of Tlapallan."

Quirinus, of Rome, is only our old friend Romulus, under the title given him on his deification after his mysterious disappearance. The name also belongs to Mars, his reputed father. He was no more a savior than any of the later Roman emperors who arrogated to themselves divine honors.

As for Thulis, or Zulis, of Egypt, whom Mr. Graves makes a saviour about the time that Jacob was serving Laban, we are told that he was the same as Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, who was sacrificed if he reached the age of twenty-five years, though it was pretended that he drowned himself. This animal could hardly be called a crucified saviour, though he was supposed to be glorified by the indwelling of Osiris. The biggest bull, however, in the case, is our author's assertion that from the name Thulis that of the mysterious northern island, the Ultima Thule was derived ! Mr. Graves may be a theologian and philosopher, but he is not "up" in philology.

"Alcestos," whom he would have us believe to have been a female saviour, laid down, or offered to lay down her life for her husband, when told by an oracle that he could never be cured of a disease unless one of his friends died in his stead. Some accounts represent her as rescued at the last instant by Hercules. Alcestis or Alceste, as she is sometimes called, is the heroine of a drama by Euripides, and of a modern opera.

Atys, of Phrygia, was a shepherd beloved by the goddess Cybele. She made him a priest, imposing on him a vow of celibacy. This he violated, and being made delirious by the incensed divinity, castrated himself.

Crite, of Chaldea, is affirmed by an imaginative writer from whom our author has derived the main thread of his work, to be set forth in the sacred books of the Chaldeans, as a crucified god, a redeemer and atoning offering, etc. It is enough to say that we have found no mention of him in the investigations of such modern archaeologists as George Smith, nor in the admirable summary of Babylonian beliefs and history in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Wittoba, an incarnation of Vishnu, is the same as Chrishna. Bali is another of the divinities with which, under various names later Brahmanism has swarmed. Iao, of Nepaul, who Mr. Graves thinks may have been the original of the Hebrew Jehovah! is

Sixteen Saviours or One.

probably one of the Jins or deities of the Jains, a heretical sect of Northern India, who have mingled Buddhism and Brahmanism with strange conceits of their own. Indra, of Thibet, is a Buddhistic transformation of Indra, the sky god of early Brahmanism, and later the personal opponent of Chrishna. Mr. Graves has cited at second or third hand the reports of uncritical mediaeval Christian missionaries concerning these latter deities.

Prometheus, a thoroughly mythical character, who was nailed to a rock on Mt. Caucasus — not on a cross — where a vulture was perpetually to feed on his ever growing liver, was rescued by Hercules, after thirty years of torment. He is an interesting character, but it is hardly fair to quote a dramatic poet of the fifth century before Christ, as authority concerning a person who, if he had ever lived at all, must have flourished at least a thousand years earlier. We have thus reduced the catalogue to Mithra and Chrishna, or Krishna, as the best authorities spell the name. " With them we shall deal later, as they, especially the last named, are the chief dependence of Mr. Graves, and the school of writers of which he is the exponent.

MR. GRAVES' SCHOLARSHIP.

The reader has already been furnished with some interesting glimpses of Mr. Graves' scholastic attainments, and it is only just to him, as well as the public, that their full extent should be known.

He himself tells us in the introduction to the " Saviors" that '-ignorance of science and ignorance of history are the two great bulwarks of religious error." It is well, therefore, to be certain that our guide is thoroughly conversant with the paths through which he proposes to lead us, in urging us to desert the well trodden road of old * fashioned beliefs. It certainly does not inspire confidence to find so few of his ' ' saviors " answering the description he gave at the start, and we are puzzled, to say the least, by further information which he vouchsafes us.

What must one think, who has looked over the plates of unintelligible hieroglyphics in Lord Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, to find one set referred to as if it were a printed volume — as an " ancient work called Codex Vaticanus," in which "the immaculate conception is spoken of as part of the history of Quexalcote, the Mexican Savior"? Is it possible that Mr. Graves has never seen the Codex, or the great work in which it is reproduced ?

Again, he regards Alcides and Hercules as two different persons, when they are the same. In another place he refers to Alcides as an Egyptian, and Prometheus as a Roman god ! Are .all the classical writers and lexicographers wrong, or has Mr. Graves been corrected by " spiritual" influences ?

He represents Confucius as miraculously born, when, in truth, he was the son of his father's second marriage, and was the soberest of matter-of-fact men, a kind of Chinese Ben Franklin, who discouraged religious enthusiasm, taught practical morality on purely earthly considerations, and died very unromantically at a good old age. The great Jew Maimonides is styled Mamoides, and Ludwig Feuerbach, whose name the author ought to know, since he professes to quote him, is called Mr. Fleurbach. It is very careless, if not very dishonest, to claim that Herod had fourteen thousand babes massacred at Bethlehem, or more strictly to assert that that number perished, if Matthew has written the truth. There were not anything like fourteen thousand men, women and children, all told, in Bethlehem and its "coasts.'' The village was a little one, and a dozen children under two years old would be a fair estimate.

But his errors are not confined to surmises. He thus garbles Gibbon: "In a note to chapter XV, he (Gibbon) says, ' It is probable that the Therapeuts (Essenes) changed their name to Christians, as some writers affirm, and adopted some new articles of faith." Gibbon really says: " Basnage * * * * has examined with the most critical accuracy the curious treatise of Philo, which describes the Therapeutae. By proving that it was composed as early as the time of Augustus, Basnage has demonstrated, in spite of Eusebius (b n. c 17) and a crowd of modern Catholics, that the Therapeutae were neither Christians nor Monks. It still remains probable that they changed their name, preserved their manners, adopted some new articles of faith, and gradually became the fathers of the Egyptian ascetics."

On page 62, Iao, of Nepaul, appears as Jao Wapaul, a god cf

The Gospels not Brahmanic.

Eritain. The next example of our author's intelligence is very rich. He says : "We will first hear from Colonel Wiseman, for ten years a Christian missionary in India." Then follows a quotation from Cardinal Wiseman's lectures on Science and Religion !

I was surprised that Mr. Graves should misrepresent Gibbon, for if there is honor among thieves there surely ought to be fair dealing between skeptics. Having discovered this rule disregarded, I was prepared to find him slandering an apostle. We are coolly told that Paul, in Romans iii. 7, justifies falsehood when he says: "If the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner?" Why does not Mr. Graves quote the next verse, " And not rather (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say) ' Let us do evil, that good may come', whose damnation is just." Are misquotation and perversion among the methods of breaking down the " bulwarks of religious error?"

Occasionally his malice gets the better of his consistency. On page 304 ("Saviors") he quotes some verses in eulogy of forgiveness from the "old Persian bible," which say:

"Forgive thy foes nor that alone;

Their evil deeds with good repay : Fill those with joy who leave thee none, And kiss the hand upraised to slay."

To this he adds : "The Christian Bible would be searched in vain to find a moral sentiment -or precept superior to this. Certainly it is the loftiest sentiment of kindness

Sixteen Saviours or One.

toward enemies that ever issued from human lips, or was ever penned by mortal man. And yet is found in an old heathen bible. Think of ' kissing the hand upraised to slay.' Never was love, and kindness, and forbearance toward enemies more sublimely expressed than in the old Persian ballad."

On page 347, he talks differently. After citing the text: " Love your enemies," he adds:

"Then what kind of feeling should we cultivate toward friends? And how much did he love his enemies when he called them fools, liars, hypocrites, generation of vipers, &c ? And yet he is held up as 'our' example in love, meekness and forbearance. But no ?nan ever did love an enemy ; it is a moral impossibility^ as much so as to love bitter or nauseating food. ,"

The italics are my own. The charming harmony of sentiment should be duly credited to Mr. Graves.

Referring to resurrections, we are informed that personages declared by the author to be Egyptian gods, "Tyndarus and Hypolitus, were instances of this kind, both (according to Julius) having been raised from the dead." Who was Julius? Hippolytus, not Hypolitus, and Tyndarus were both personages in Grecian mythology ; the latter being the father of Helen. Mr. Graves may have had access to better authority, perhaps.

We have also the very novel information, on the alleged evidence of ''Col. Hall and Dr. Oliphant," that " no drunkenness, no fighting, no quarrelling, no thefts, no robberies, no rapes, no fornication, no domestic feuds or broils, and no fraudulent dealing take place in Japan." I should prefer to examine these authorities. for myself rather than take Mr. Graves' word for it. If they say any thing of the kind, they contradict other writers, and what the mails so frequently bring in the way of accounts of rebellions, assassinations and wide-spread immorality. So much for the " Sixteen Crucified Saviors," and the author's learning. We have by no means exhausted the fountain, for there remains an abundant supply in both volumes, to some of which we shall apply analytic tests in other connections. We have made it very evident, however, that Mr. Graves is neither well informed nor honest. We shall next proceed to examine the trustworthiness of the authorities on which he has principally relied.

HIS AUTHORITIES.

A casual glance at both books, especially the " Saviors," will, show, that, with much trash and many repetitions, they contain a good deal of curious learning, " important if true." Where did the author get it? The blunders we know are his own, but all is not stupidity. He has been candid enough to say regarding the ■ V Saviors," and the remark is in part applicable to the " Bibles," " Many of the most important facts, were derived from Sir Godfrey Higgins' Anacalypsis, a work as valuable as it is rare." He would not have exaggerated had he admitted that the bulk of his data was borrowed from this source. Had he been more exact, however, he would not have given Mr. Higgins the prefix " Sir." He was an English country gentleman of studious habits, born in 1771, and dying in 1833, before his Anacalypsis, in two volumes quarto, saw the light. He was previously well known to antiquaries by his "Celtic Druids," a work of much research but eccentric conclusions. The Anacalypsis is a vast muddle of undigested information, gathered from all sources, good, bad and indifferent, and shaped to suit his preconceived theory. It is regarded by scholars as curious, but as absurd in argument. Mr. Higgins, though learned, was incapable of weighing authorities. The sub-title of the Anacalypsis is "an Attempt to unveil the Mysteries of the Saitic Isis." Now, it happens that the Saitic Isis was not veiled. Plutarch thus quotes the inscription on the temple of Neith [probably the Egyptian prototype of Athene or Minerva] at Sais : "I am that was, and is, and is to be; and my veil no mortal hath yet drawn aside." Whether Neith or Isis was the embodiment of the divine wisdom which Mr. Higgins endeavored to solve, it is certain that even skeptical scholarship recognizes his utter failure. He was childishly credulous, "believing everything but the Bible."