The Christ Myth. Drews Arthur

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СКАЧАТЬ season of peace and happiness for Egypt.108 On this account he was called in Egypt Psontomphanech, that is, Deliverer of the World, in view of his divine nature, and later passed among the Jews also as a prototype of the Messiah. Indeed, it appears that the Evangelists themselves regarded him in such a light, for the story of the two fellow-prisoners of Joseph, the baker and cupbearer of Pharaoh, one of whom, as Joseph foretold, was hanged,109 while the other was again received into favour by the king, was transformed by them into the story of the two robbers who were executed at the same time as Jesus, one of whom mocked the Saviour while the other besought him to remember him when he entered into his heavenly kingdom.110

      But the Ephraimitic Joshua too must have been a kind of Tammuz or Adonis. His name (Joshua, Syrian, Jeshu) characterises him as saviour and deliverer. As such he also appears in the Old Testament, finally leading the people of Israel into the promised land after long privations and sufferings. According to the Jewish Calendar the commencement of his activity was upon the tenth of Nisan, on which the Paschal lamb was chosen, and it ended with the Feast of the Pasch. Moses introduced the custom of circumcision and the redemption of the first-born male, and Joshua was supposed to have revived it.111 At the same time he is said to have replaced the child victims, which it had been customary to offer to Jahwe in early days, by the offering of the foreskin of the male and thereby to have established a more humane form of sacrificial worship. This brings to our mind the substitution of an animal victim for a human one in the story of Isaac (Jishâks). It also brings to mind Jesus who offered his own body in sacrifice at the Pasch as a substitute for the numberless bloody sacrifices of expiation of prior generations. Again, according to an ancient Arabian tradition, the mother of Joshua was called Mirzam (Mariám, Maria), as the mother of Jesus was, while the mother of Adonis bore the similar sounding name of Myrrha, which also expressed the mourning of the women at the lament for Adonis112 and characterised the mother of the Redeemer God as “the mother of sorrow.”113

      But what is above all decisive is that the son of the “Ploughman” Jephunneh, Caleb (i. e., the Dog), stands by Joshua’s side as a hero of equal rank. His name points in the same way to the time of the summer solstice, when in the mouth of the “lion” the dog-star (Sirius) rises, while his descent from Nun, the Fish or Aquarius, indicates Joshua as representing the winter solstice.114 Just as Joshua belonged to the tribe of Ephraim, to which according to the Blessing of Jacob the Fishes of the the Zodiac refer,115 so Caleb belonged to the tribe of Judah, which Jacob’s Blessing likened to a lion;116 and while the latter as Calub (Chelub) has Shuhah for brother, that is, the Sun descending into the kingdom of shadows (the Southern Hemisphere),117 in like manner Joshua represents the Spring Sun rising out of the night of winter. They are thus both related to one another in the same way as the annual rise and decline of the sun, and as, according to Babylonian ideas, are Tammuz and Nergal, who similarly typify the two halves of the year. When Joshua dies at Timnath-heres, the place of the eclipse of the Sun (i. e., at the time of the summer solstice, at which the death of the Sun-God was celebrated118), he appears again as a kind of Tammuz, while the “lamentation” of the people at his death119 alludes possibly to the lamentation at the death of the Sun-God.120

      It cannot be denied after all this that the conception of a suffering and dying Messiah was of extreme antiquity amongst the Israelites and was connected with the earliest nature-worship, although later it may indeed have become restricted and peculiar to certain exclusive circles.121

      The Jewish representative of Haman suffered death at the Feast of Purim on account of a crime, as a deserved punishment which had been awarded him. The Messiah Jesus, on the other hand, according to the words of Isaiah, took the punishment upon himself, being “just.” He was capable of being an expiatory victim for the sins of the whole people, precisely because he least of all deserved such a fate.

      Plato had already in his “Republic” sketched the picture of a “just man” passing his life unknown and unhonoured amidst suffering and persecution. His righteousness is put to the proof and he reaches the highest degree of virtue, not allowing himself to be shaken in his conduct. “The just man is scourged, racked, thrown into prison, blinded in both eyes, and finally, when he has endured all ills, he is executed, and he recognises that one should be determined not to be just but to appear so.” In Pharisaic circles he passed as a just man who by his own undeserved sufferings made recompense for the sins of the others and made matters right for them before God, as, for example, in the Fourth Book of the Maccabees the blood of the martyrs is represented as the expiatory offering on account of which God delivered Israel. The hatred of the unjust and godless towards the just, the reward of the just and the punishment of the unjust, were favourite themes for aphoristic literature, and they were fully dealt with in the Book of Wisdom, the Alexandrian author of which was presumably not unacquainted with the Platonic picture of the just man. He makes the godless appear conversing and weaving plots against the just. “Let us then,” he makes them say, “lie in wait for the righteous; because he is not to our liking and he is clean contrary to our doings; he upbraideth us with our offending the law and reproacheth us with our sins against our training. He professeth to have the knowledge of God; and he calleth himself the child of the Lord. He proved to be to us for the reproof of our designs. He is grievous unto us even to behold: for his life is not like other men’s, his ways are of another fashion. We are esteemed of him as counterfeits; he abstaineth from our ways as from filth; he pronounceth the end of the just to be blessed and maketh his boast that God is his father. Let us see if his words be true: and let us prove what will happen in the end of him. For if the just man be the son of God, he will help him, and deliver him from the hand of his enemies. Let us examine him with despitefulness and torture that we may know his meekness and prove his patience. Let us condemn him with a shameful death: thus will he be known by his words.”122 “But the souls of the just,” continues the author of the Book of Wisdom, “are in the hands of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us for utter destruction: but they are in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men yet is their hopes full of immortality. And having been a little chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded: for God proved them and found them worthy for himself. As gold in the furnace hath he tried them, and received them as a burnt offering. And in the time of their visitation they shall shine and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble. They shall judge the nations and have dominion over the people and their Lord will rule for ever.”123 It could easily be imagined that these words, which were understood by the author of the Book of Wisdom of the just man in general, referred to the just man par excellence, the Messiah, the “son” of God in the highest sense of the word, who gave his life for the sins of his people. A reason was found at the same time for the shameful death of the Messiah. He died the object of the hatred of the unjust; he accepted contempt and scorn as did the Haman and Barabbas of the Feast of Purim, but only in order that by this deep debasement he might be raised up by God, as is said of the just man in the Book of Wisdom: “That is he whom we had sometimes in derision and a proverb of reproach: We fools accounted his life madness and his end to be without honour: Now is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints.”124

      Now we understand how the picture of the Messiah varied among the Jews between that of a divine and that of a human being; how he was “accounted just among the evil-doers”; how the СКАЧАТЬ