Most proposed reconstructions of Christian origins make the idea of salvation the basal thought of the new religion. The validity of this assumption can scarcely be doubted. Christianity from the beginning was unquestionably and pre-eminently a religion of salvation—a salvation which is primarily of divine origin and which is revealed and mediated in the career of a Jesus who thereby becomes the unique object of men's faith and reverence. These are essential items in Christian thinking at a very early date.
What is the incentive which starts this new religion on its way? This is the question on which opinion divides. Usually it has been supposed that a unique historical personality, known in tradition as Jesus of Nazareth, made so strong an impression upon men that a new faith reared itself about his person. The critics whose views we are investigating propose a very different answer. They think it
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absurd to imagine that any historical individual could be given so elevated a position in the thought of men with whom he had been personally associated. His supposed historical form is merely a fanciful portrait giving a concrete setting to the abstract notion that salvation is the outcome of the deity's own activity. Thus the modern radicals hypostatize the salvation-idea, making it of itself the creative force in the genesis of the new religion. The problem of Christianity's origin then becomes the question, How did this conception come into being, and where and when are its earliest "Christian" manifestations to be found?
Bauer and Kalthoff, it will be remembered, looked for the answer to these questions in the Graeco-Roman life of the first and second centuries A.D. Their solution is now generally discarded even by the radicals, who admit that in the third century Christianity is too strongly entrenched in the Roman empire to bring the date of its origin down as late as Bauer and Kalthoff proposed. Moreover the Jewish background of the new religion is too evident to permit of so unconditional a transfer of its birthplace to heathen soil. The solution more commonly offered nowadays finds the primitive
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Christians' doctrine of salvation to be less a product of their own experience and more a loan from the contemporary heathen religions. It is pointed out that belief in a redeeming divinity was current at an early date and had found expression in nature myths, in the tenets and practices of secret cults, and in gnostic speculations. Christianity represents the result of a borrowing and recasting of this fundamental conception. The beginnings of the process can no longer be traced with certainty, but they are assigned with confidence to pre-Christian times. This evolution went on both in Palestine and in Hellenistic Judaism, and attained the status of an independent religion at about the time Christianity is traditionally said to have come into existence. Such, in outline, is the radicals' understanding of Christianity's origin.
If the kernel of Christianity, the salvation-idea, was thus merely a notion borrowed from the ancient faiths, why did it create for itself a new divinity in the person of Jesus, and whence did it derive its unique vitality? Those would seem to be crucial questions for the radicals' constructive hypothesis to answer.
Bauer and Kalthoff attempted to meet
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similar problems by depicting a new set of human experiences as the source of Christianity's new thought and power. A new type of experience called forth the Jesus-portrait, while the timely elements incorporated in the picture assured his prestige. The later representatives of the radical school do not entirely discard this line of thought, though they find these new experiences to be the product of a different set of surroundings. The struggle of ideas in the life and culture of the ancient world are held to have made important contributions to nascent Christianity. Indeed, its success is ascribed in no small degree to its fortunate practice of gathering to itself the best elements in the thought of the time, yet fundamental to all this is the notion of a redeeming savior god, Jesus. He is not the product of this experience; belief in him was anterior to, and was the norm for determining the interpretation of, these new experiences, according to the more recent theory of Christian origins.
But if Jesus' career is mainly a replica, so to speak, of the career of Adonis-Attis-etc., why was his figure created ? Why posit a new god to embody an old idea? The radicals are now meeting this question by asserting that Jesus is
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not a new god. Just as the various peoples of the Orient were wont to rebaptize old divinities with new or reconstructed attributes, so the Christian Jesus is merely a rehabilitation of Joshua, who is said to be originally the deified personification of the salvation-concept of the Hebrews. By thus admitting a substantial Jewish basis for the new religion, our question as to why Christian thought did not revolve about the person of some heathen deity is answered.
This Jesus-divinity accordingly antedates the Jesus of the gospels, and supplants him as the concrete focus about which that type of thinking, ultimately denominated "Christianity," first gathers. Here our second question, regarding the secret of the new religion's vitality, also would seem to find its answer. To insure effectiveness for the salvation-idea it must be attached to the career of a person. In other words it must be dramatized, even though the dramatis persona be a fictitious character. As evidence of this demand for personification, one may point to the figure of Adonis among the Syrians, Attis among the Phrygians, the Persian Mithra, the Babylonian Tammuz, the Egyptian Osiris. When the historical
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Jesus, who is usually supposed to have played this role for Christians, disappears, his place is filled by this fictitious Joshua-Jesus character whose personality, it is maintained, supplies the vitalizing element for the primitive Christian faith. And by a happy combination, in this idealized person, of the best elements of Jewish as well as heathen thought, he thus becomes a uniquely powerful centrifugal force not only in the genesis but also in the expansion of the new religion, even though this new movement early grew to be a competitor in the same field with its assumed ancestral kinsmen.
Thus this pre-Christian Jesus-divinity is a figure of great importance for the modern radicals. It is true that not all writers of this school place equal stress upon his importance, for they do not all give equal attention to the minuter problems pertaining to a constructive theory of Christian origins. But just in proportion as they overlook him do they fail to make any serious attempt to show why primitive Christianity was so characteristically a religion of faith in Jesus the Messiah, while they also fail to supply in any plausible way a concrete initial force for the origin of the new religion. Nor do they provide any vital focus,
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even theoretically, for the distinctive thought of early Christianity.
But what if it should turn out upon investigation that the doctrine of a pre-Christian Jesus-divinity never had any vogue in ancient times! Can the historicity of this belief be demonstrated? Or is the doctrine created by the modern skeptics in their search for a personal substitute—and most of them are now taking their problem seriously enough to realize the need of this personal substitute—for the alleged Jesus of gospel history? We shall not pronounce upon this question without a careful examination of the data. Therefore we present with some minuteness the supposed evidence for a primitive belief in a pre-Christian Jesus.
To begin with, there is no gainsaying the fact that the word "Jesus" is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew "Joshua." But this coincidence cannot of itself establish any connection between these individuals. If other men did not bear the same name the case might be different, but the name is a very common one among the Jews. According to Weinel,[1] it belongs to no less than twenty different persons in Josephus' narrative alone. Proof for the
[1] Ist das "liberale" Jesusbild widerlegt? p. 92.
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contention that Jesus is the perpetuation of a Joshua-deity needs a more substantial basis than the mere identity of names. As a further argument it is urged, by Drews for example, that Joshua was a cult-god, and that the points of resemblance between his career and the life of Jesus, portrayed in the gospels, establish the identity of the two as originally a Jewish divinity. To illustrate, each name signifies "deliverer," "savior"; Joshua's mother (according to an Arabic tradition!) was Miriam, and the mother of Jesus was Mary (Miriam); Joshua led Israel out of distress in the wilderness into the land of promise where milk and honey flowed, that is, the land of the Milky Way and the moon, and Jesus also led his followers into the heavenly kingdom. All this is in turn traceable to an ancient cult of the sun, the Greek legend of Jason forming the connecting link. Jason = Joshua = Jesus. Jesus with his twelve disciples passing through Galilee came to the Passover feast at Jerusalem, Joshua with his twelve helpers passed through the Jordan and offered the Paschal lamb on the other shore, Jason with his twelve companions went after the golden fleece of the lamb, and all originally was the myth of the sun's wandering
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through the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Thus Joshua-Jesus was an old Ephraimitish god of the sun and of fertility, worshiped among many Jewish sects as the hero-deliverer of ancient Israel and the future messianic savior.
This is a bold reconstruction, but it is fatally weak at some essential points. When one asks for explicit evidence of a Joshua-cult among the Jews he finds no answer. Again, is there anywhere in Judaism a clear intimation that Joshua was the hero about whom messianic hopes centered? Here also evidence fails. And as for resemblances between the Jesus of the gospels and this alleged cult-god, Joshua, they do not touch the main features in the career of either personage. Take even the notion of the death and resurrection of a savior-god, which is the item so much emphasized by the radicals, and there is no parallel in this respect between Joshua and Jesus. In fact the only real link between them is the identity of name, a feature of no consequence as we have already observed, when one recalls the frequency of this name among the Jews.
The most explicit statement that Jesus belongs to pre-Christian times is found in Epiphanius, and is corroborated by the Babylonian
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Talmud. Epiphanius, arguing that the high-priestly office in the church is in the line of direct succession from David,[1] sees a prophetic significance in such scriptures as Ps. 132:11 f. and Gen. 49:10, which affirm that David's seed should continue to occupy his throne, and the scepter should not depart from Israel, until that final successor of David, in whom the people's hopes were to find consummation, should appear. On this basis Epiphanius interprets history as follows:[2]
The priesthood in the holy church is David's throne and kingly seat, for the Lord joined together and gave to his holy church both the kingly and the high-priestly dignity, transferring to it the never-failing [mh dialeiponta eis ton aiwna] throne of David. For David's throne endured in line of succession until the time of Christ himself, rulers from Judah not failing until he came "to whom the things kept in reserve belonged. And he was the expectation of the gentiles." With the advent of the Christ the rulers in line of succession from Judah, reigning until the time of the Christ himself, ceased. For the line fell away and stopped from the time when he was born in Bethlehem of Judea under Alexander, who was of priestly and royal race. From Alexander on this office ceased—from the days of Alexander and Salina, who is also
[1] Cf. a similar interest in Justin, Dial., LII, 3.
[2] Haer., XXIX, 3. Cf. LI, 22 ff.
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called Alexandra, to the days of Herod the king and Augustus the Roman emperor.
After remarking upon the fact that Alexander was both king and high priest, Epiphanius continues:
Then afterward a foreign king, Herod, and no longer those who were of the family of David, put on the crown; while in Christ the kingly seat passed over to the church, the kingly dignity being transferred from the fleshly house of Judah and Jerusalem; and the throne is set up in the holy church of God forever, having a double dignity because of both its kingly and its high-priestly character.
In this argument Epiphanius' chief interest clearly is dogmatical rather than historical. Thinking, as he does, that Alexander Jannaeus (104-78 B.C.) was the last of the Jewish kings to combine in one person the offices of both king and high priest, he is led by his Old Testament proof-texts to assume that Jesus was the immediate successor of Alexander. Then Jesus must have been born during Alexander's reign.[1] This is the logic of dogma. But with magnificent inconsistency Epiphanius returns to history and speaks of a gap extending from the time of Alexander to the time of Herod. Why
[1] Cf. the anachronism of Justin, Apol., I, 31, making Herod and Ptolemy Philadelphus contemporary.
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mention an interim whose ulterior limit is fixed by the names of Herod and Augustus? Doubtless because this limit marks the actual appearance of Jesus upon the scene, as Epiphanius is well aware. Indeed he is very emphatic in affirming that Jesus was born in the forty-second year of Augustus' reign.[1] By forcing Epiphanius to read us a new lesson in history, when he is primarily concerned to prove the kingly and high-priestly inheritance of the church in an unbroken succession from David, we do him a great injustice. We should remember that the major premise of his thinking is that no word of Scripture fails.[2] It is not at all improbable that he was well aware of the contradiction involved in placing Christ's birth in the time of Alexander—his language does not imply that he held any doctrine about the "hiding" of the Messiah—but he took refuge in the pious reflection that Scripture might be enigmatical but could not be erroneous.[3] Yet his inconsistency ought not to cause serious trouble for moderns, who
[1] Haer., LI, 22. Epiphanius apparently reckons the beginning of Augustus' reign from Julius Caesar's death in 44 B.C.
[2] oudemia gar lexiV ths agiaV tou qeou grafhV diapiptei.
[3] ou gar dihmarte ti twn apo thV agiaV grafhV ainigmatwn.
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have discarded the ancient custom of using assumed Old Testament predictions as source materials for the writing of later history. Epiphanius clearly was trapped by the logic of his dogmatic into suggesting that Jesus was born under Alexander.
The Babylonian Talmud twice narrates the story of a certain Jeshu who lived in the days of King Jannaeus, and who is said to have practiced magic, and corrupted and misled Israel.[1] The Christian Jesus is evidently meant, since "Jeshu" is a common Talmudic designation for him. But the historical reliability of the story is very doubtful. It so happens that the older Palestinian Talmud contains a parallel to this story,[2] in which there is no mention of "Jeshu." An undesignated disciple of Jehuda ben Tabai stands in his place. Evidently the Babylonian form of the story has been worked up in the interest of Jewish polemic against Christianity. And since most of the Talmudic references to Jesus seem to have been inspired by some item of Christian teaching,
[1] Sanhedrin 107b and Sola 47a. For the full narrative see Strack, Jesus, die Häretiker und die Christen nach den ältesten jüdischen Angaben (Leipzig, 1910), pp. 10 f.
[2] Hag. 2, 2; cf. Strack, op. cit., pp. 9 f.
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it is barely possible that just the sort of argument Epiphanius used to prove that the church was in the line of direct succession from David, thus connecting Jesus with Alexander, is behind this similar Talmudic tradition.
Epiphanius makes two further statements which are sometimes thought to point to a pre-Christian Jesus. He says that there were Nazarees (or Nasarees)[1] before Christ, and that Philo once wrote a treatise describing the early Christian community in Egypt.[2] If there was a well established Christian church in Egypt in Philo's day, and if the Nazarees were in existence in pre-Christian times, are we not to infer that Christianity was known in the first century B.C.? Epiphanius himself says that Christians were first known as Nazorees, so that the similarity of names suggests a close relation for the two bodies. Moreover Philo, who was a man of advanced age in 40 A.D. when he headed the Jewish embassy to Rome, can hardly
[1] He uses the form Nazaraioi in Haer., XVIII, 1-3, and XIX, 5, but Nasaraioi in XXIX, 6. Cf. Schwen in Protestantische Monatshefte, XIV (1910), 208-13 and Nestle in ibid., 349 f. On the genesis of Epiphanius' phraseology, cf. Schmidtke, Neue Fragmente und Untersuchungen zu den Judenchristlichen Evangelien (Leipzig, 1911), pp. 90 ff.; cf. Bousset in Theologische Rundschau, XIV (1911), 373 ff.
[2] Haer., XXIX, 5.
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have seen Christianity, on the traditional view of its origin, so firmly established in Egypt as is implied in the treatise to which Epiphanius refers. Hence we are to look for the beginnings of the new religion in the first century B.C., so the argument runs.
On examining the data more closely it very soon becomes evident that Epiphanius has no thought of connecting Christianity with the Jewish Nazarite heresy. He places the latter's origin before the Christian era and classes it along with the Hemerobaptists, etc. On the other hand, he describes Christian heretics whom he designates Nazorees [Nazwraioi], distinguishing with perfect clearness between them and the Jewish non-Christian Nazarees. The difference is not merely one of name; they have very distinct characteristics. The Nazarees are distinguished for the unorthodoxy of their Jewish beliefs and practices; the Nazorees are pre-eminently rigid Jews who have added to their Judaism a smattering of Christian belief. Hence they derive their name from Jesus the Nazorite, the name by which the Christians were called before they received the designation "Christians" at Antioch. Epiphanius' thought is often very hazy, but on this
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subject he is perfectly clear. There was among the Jews even before the Christian era a heresy of the Nazarees; then came the Christian movement, which at first was known as the sect of the Nazorees and which finds its proper continuation, as Epiphanius takes great pains to prove, in the catholic church; and finally there was a third class who took upon themselves the primitive Christian name of Nazorees but who adhered so rigidly to Judaism that Epiphanius curtly remarks, "they are Jews and nothing else."[1]
Whether there ever was such an array of sects bearing a similar name—and Epiphanius adds yet another, the Nazirees, represented by Samson in the Old Testament and later by John the Baptist[2]—may be questioned. Judging from the same writer's skill in splitting the original Essenes up into Jessees, Ossenes, and Ossees, we may wonder whether he did not occasionally invent a name, in his ardor to defend Nicene orthodoxy against every "hydra-headed serpent of error" that could ever possibly have existed whether commonly known or not. But one thing at least is clear. His
[1] Haer., XXIX, 7.
[2] Ibid., XXIX, 5.
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statements about Nazarees, Nasarees, Nazorees, and Nazirees involve no ambiguity whatever as to the date of Christianity's origin. The traditional date is the only one suggested. Those who argue for a pre-Christian Jesus can find nothing for their purpose here except the bare mention of the early existence of a Jewish Nazarite heresy. To prove the reliability of this statement, and to show further that the sect was "Christian" in character, is another problem. Epiphanius supplies no argument for this. He does not even so describe the Nazarees as to suggest characteristics which show them to have been precursors of the Christian movement.
On the other hand, Epiphanius clearly states that there was in Egypt a Christian community about which Philo wrote. If this is so, then in all probability it existed before, or at least contemporaneously with, the Jesus of the gospels. Here it is a question of tracing and testing Epiphanius' sources of information. He was writing in the latter part of the fourth century, and we may suppose that he availed himself of the works of Philo, Josephus, and Eusebius. He may indeed have had other sources of which we now have no knowledge,
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but on the basis of these alone some of his riddles can be unraveled.[1]
Philo, in his tractate Quod omnis probus liber, describes a sect of Jews called Essees ['Essaioi] because of their saintly ['osioV] character. These are readily recognized as the Essenes ['Esshnoi] mentioned by Josephus.[2] Their characteristics are too well known to need further comment.[3] In another treatise[4] Philo
[1] The character of Epiphanius' sources of information and the historical value of his statements are puzzling problems which need reworking. Cf. the still valuable works of Lipsius, Zur Quellenkritik des Epiphanius (Wien, 1865) and Hilgenfeld, Die Ketzergeschichte des Urchristentums (Leipzig, 1884). Tradition represents him to have been a man of great learning who had traveled much and read widely, yet it is evident that he was swayed by a tremendous zeal for orthodoxy.
[2] Philo had no scruples in deriving the name of a Jewish sect from a Greek source. But the variation of spelling seems to point rather to an Aramaic original, [ARAMAIC] and [ARAMAIC], which are plural forms from [ARAMAIC].
[3] See Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi (Leipzig, 1904, II, 561-80. English tr., History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, New York, 1891, Div. II, Vol. II, 188-218); also article "Essenes" in the Bible dictionaries.
[4] The authorship of De vita contemplativa, so long debated, seems finally to have been decided in Philo's favor. See F. C. Conybeare, Philo about the Contemplative Life (Oxford, 1895); Massebieau, "Le traité de la vie contemplative et la question des thérapeutes," Revue de l'histoire des religions, XVI (1887), 170-98 and 284-319; Wendland, "Die Therapeuten" in Jahrbücher für classische Philologie, XXII (Suppl.), 1896, 692-770.
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describes a sect somewhat akin to the Essenes, but less widely diffused among the Jews and more distinctly monastic in its type of life. Its principal colony was on an eminence on the southern shore of Lake Mareotis near Alexandria. The members of the society called themselves Therapeutes [qerapeutai], either meaning "healers" of men's souls, or "servants" of God. In Eusebius' day, when the Christians had come to prize highly the monastic ideal, this early sect seemed to be the natural precursor of Egyptian encratic Christian orders of the late third century A.D. Accordingly it was assumed that at this early date Christianity had been planted in Egypt through the labors of John Mark. And to account for Philo's friendliness toward the movement—for he wrote of the Therapeutes in terms of evident approval—it was suggested that at the time he conducted the embassy to Rome he had met and been favorably impressed by Peter.[1]
When these materials pass under the magic touch of Epiphanius, what is the result? In the first place, the Essees (or Essenes) of Philo and Josephus disappear. Epiphanius' Essenes,
[1] Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., II, 16 f. According to later tradition Philo became a convert under Peter's preaching (Photius, Cod. 105).
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who later become Ossenes and still later Ossees, are one of four subdivisions of the Samaritans. It may seem very strange that he should leave a lacuna in his array of heretics by removing the Essenes from among the Jews. But does he leave any vacancy by this removal? Has he not filled the gap with his pre-Christian Jewish heresy of the Nazarees, of which we have already spoken? In describing them[1] he made it one of their chief characteristics that they rejected the system of animal sacrifice connected with the Temple; and this was a notable tenet of the Essenes, as described by Philo and Josephus. The name "Nazarees" may have been suggested by the Old Testament Nazirees, whom Epiphanius is so careful to distinguish from the Christian heresy of the Nazorees. Thus the Essenes, who straightway become Jessees, Ossenes, etc., are reserved for a yet more important service. We may pass by the Ossenes-Ossees (was the spelling suggested by Philo's derivation of the name from osioV?) without further comment. Our interest is with the Jessees.
Epiphanius adopts the Eusebian tradition that Christianity was planted in Egypt by
[1] Haer., XVIII, 1-3.
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Mark,[1] and that Philo's Therapeutes were the primitive Christians. But the title of Philo's treatise was, according to Epiphanius, Concerning Jessees [peri Iessaiwn]. In the opening paragraph of De vita contemplativa Philo speaks of the Therapeutes in a way to indicate that he regarded them as a type of Essees (Essenes). They were the Essees of the contemplative life in contrast with the Essees of the practical life. So it would not have been wholly incongruous to refer to his tractate as Concerning Essees [peri Essaiwn]. But whence came Concerning Jessees?[2] Epiphanius introduces the subject of the Jessees as a part of his argument for the continuation of the Davidic throne in the catholic church. Speaking of the early followers of Jesus before they were first called Christians at Antioch, he says:
They were called Jessees after Jesse, I think. Since David was descended from Jesse, and Mary was in the direct line of succession from the seed of David, the Divine Scriptures according to the Old Testament are fulfilled, the Lord having said to David, "of the fruit of thy loins I will place one upon thy throne."
[1] Haer., XXIX, 5; LI, 6.
[2] The regular title is peri biou qewrhtikou, or iketai h peri aretwn to d'.
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After carrying through his argument along this line, Epiphanius comes back to the word "Jessees" and admits the opportunist character of his previous explanation. He still thinks it may have come from "Jesse," yet it may have come from "Jesus," "for Jesus in the Hebrew dialect signifies Therapeute [qerapeuths], i.e., physician and savior."[1] Why are we here introduced to the Therapeutes? Evidently because the objective basis of the author's thought in this connection is Philo's Therapeutes, coupled with the Eusebian tradition that these were primitive Christians. Epiphanius wishes to find them a more appropriate name, and this he has done to his satisfaction in the word Jessees. It answers his purpose in several directions. He can check it off theologically with Jesse, etymologically (through Therapeutes) with Jesus, analogically with Essees (the general class of which Philo speaks), and historically with Therapeutes (the specific term used by Philo).
Thus Epiphanius, as a witness for the pre-Christian date of Jesus and of Christianity, is a distinct failure. We have dwelt thus at length upon this subject because his assertion
[1] See Haer., XXIX, 1, 4.
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that Jesus was born in the time of Alexander Jannaeus, his mention of pre-Christian Nazarees, and his suggestion of a connection between "Jesus" and "Therapeutes" seem to us to represent the most substantial data which the radicals have to offer in support of their position.
There are however a few other items of evidence which they regard as giving further positive substantiation to their hypothesis. Among the most explicit of these are two passages from a papyrus fragment containing formulas of exorcism. They run as follows:[1] orkizw se kata tou marparkouriq·• nasaari· . . . (l. 1549) and orkizw se kata qeou twn Ebraiwn Ihsous· Iaba · Iah · . . . (ll. 3019 f.). The significant word in the first formula is nasaari, since it is thought to be a reference to the "Nazarite." But the import of the second passage is much more certain. Here Jesus is clearly mentioned: "I adjure thee by the god of the Hebrews, Jesus, Jaba, Jae, etc." If the formula is pre-Christian it would seem to be positive evidence for the
[1] The fragment is at Paris in the Bibliothèque Nationale (No. 574, Supplément grec). It has been edited by Wessely, Denk-schriften der philosophisch-historischen Classe der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien (1888, XXXVI, 27-208).
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existence of an early Hebrew deity by the name of "Jesus" or even "Jesus the Nazarite." But the manuscript from which all this is taken is conceded to belong between 300 and 400 A.D. This fact of itself puts the document out of court as first-hand testimony for customs in the first century B.C., especially when we recall how easily magical formulas gathered to themselves all sorts of accretions quite regardless of rhyme or reason. The word "Jesus" is here evidently a pagan supplement made by a copyist who did not distinguish between Jews and Christians.[1]
Another piece of alleged evidence for a pre-Christian Jesus is taken from Hippolytus. This church father, who it will be recalled wrote in the early third century A.D., cites a hymn used by the gnostic sect of the Naassenes in which Jesus' name occurs. He is represented as
[1] Cf. Deissmann, Licht mm Osten (Tübingen, 1908), p. 186, n. 14. The heathen scribe may have been betrayed into the error of calling Jesus "God of the Hebrews" by the custom among Jewish magicians in the Diaspora of employing names borrowed from various sources. And that there was, indeed, some disposition among Jews in the rabbinical period to use the name of the Christian Jesus in magic, is seen in Jacob of Kephar Sama's proposal to heal R. Eleazar of snake bite "in the name of Joshua ben Pandera." Against objections raised by R. Ishmael, R. Eleazar contended that the act could be justified, but he died before the proof was completed. (Tosephta, Hullin, II 1:21-23).
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asking the Father's permission to visit the earth in order to teach men the secrets of "gnosis" and thus to relieve their distressed condition.[1] Both Smith and Drews use this in support of their position, but without making any serious attempt to prove that the passage originated before the Christian era. Smith excuses himself from discussing the date, while Drews says "to all appearances pre-Christian," and cites a Babylonian parallel to the hymn, which, however, may only signify that Babylonian and Christian materials were used in its composition. When we turn to Hippolytus' own testimony we find no hint that the Christian elements in the Naassene system are "pre-Christian." In fact he explicitly affirms that the heretics themselves cited "James the brother of the Lord" as the source of their teaching.[2] Whatever the antiquity of the sect itself may be, as described by Hippolytus it is a heretical Christian sect, and the supposition that the reference to Jesus is a pre-Christian feature lacks support.
Two other points emphasized by W. B. Smith as having special evidential value are the
[1] Hippolytus, Refutation, v, 5.
[2] Ibid., v, 2.
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statement in Acts 18:25 that Apollos was preaching "the things concerning Jesus" while he as yet knew only the baptism of John, and the use of "Nazarite" as an appellation for Jesus. From the former it is inferred that a "doctrine" concerning Jesus, sufficiently definite and vital to form the background of a vigorous propaganda, existed in pre-Christian times. But this can be maintained only by a very liberal reading between the lines in the narrative of Acts. The natural meaning of the passage is quite different. The writer of Acts, perhaps more from necessity than from choice, has left us in the dark regarding many phases of early Christianity. One of these obscure items is the early practice of baptism. Even Paul has very little to say upon this subject, yet he seems to have regarded the ordinance as typifying, if not effecting in some magical way, the believer's entrance "into Christ." Consequently it was naturally attended by the bestowal of the Holy Spirit.[1] Another idea early connected with the ordinance is the notion of repentance. While both repentance and the giving of the Spirit are connected with the rite in Acts, chap. 2, it is not improbable that
[1] Cf. I Cor. 12:13.
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repentance baptism, such as John the Baptist and his followers preached, was the notion adopted by the first Christians. The "mystical union" interpretation, accompanied by the doctrine of endowment by the Holy Spirit, may have been a Pauline contribution to the history of dogma. On this understanding of the situation all becomes clear in Acts 18:25 ff. Apollos had been first introduced to Christianity by non-Pauline Christians. Later he was "Paulinized"—not christianized—by Priscilla and Aquila.
Smith's second point rests upon an argument from silence. No mention of the village of Nazareth, either before or in the early part of the Christian era, has been found anywhere except in Christian writings. Hence it is concluded that this place-name has been derived simply from the phrase "Jesus the Nazarite." Jesus was not, as is commonly supposed, called the "Nazarite" because his home was in Nazareth; an imaginary Nazareth was created because Jesus was called the "Nazarite." The real genesis of the title must therefore be sought in the Hebrew root N-S-R, meaning to watch, protect, etc. The Nazarite then is a primitive cult-god worshiped as the watcher, protector,
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savior. It will be observed that this reversal of the ordinary interpretation of the data rests on the assumption that the village of Nazareth never existed,[1] a conclusion which in turn is derived solely from the silence of non-Christian writers. But this silence about a small Galilean town can hardly be so very significant. Recalling the apologetic difficulties caused by the statement that Jesus' home was Nazareth, when christological speculation felt compelled to connect him with David's city, Bethlehem, it seems quite unlikely that Christians would have invented, or at least have failed to challenge, so unprofitable a fiction.
A few similar "proofs," as presented by Drews, may be noted in passing. Evidence for a long history of the name Jesus is seen in the magical power attached to the name already "at the beginning of the Christian propaganda," "an entirely inconceivable fact if its bearer had been a mere man." But the ancients who used magic were not given to critical skepticism in such matters. It would be quite sufficient for them to know that Jesus' followers believed him now to occupy a place of authority in the
[1] Cf. the view of Cheyne (Encyclopaedia Biblica, art. "Nazareth") and of Mead, that Nazareth = Galilee, a theory which does not serve Smith's purpose.
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divine realm. Moreover the date and extent of the magical use of Jesus' name is a more doubtful problem than is here assumed to be the case.[1] Another point is made of the type of Christology in the Book of Revelation and in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. The "Jesus" in these books is thought to have "nothing in common with the Christian Jesus" and to be "in all probability" taken over from a pre-Christian cult. But we have previously been told that the Christian Jesus also came from this source. Then why the variation in type? Not only does the assertion that they have nothing in common seem ill-advised, but the differences may easily be accounted for by conditions within the history of Christianity.
The above arguments may be designated "direct" evidence for the existence of Jesus as a pre-Christian cult-god. The effort to find a place for him among the Jews results in a few more arguments of a supplementary character. It is urged that the idea of a suffering Messiah
[1] Paul gives a hint of this practice in his day (Phil. 2:9 f.), and Acts, chap. 3, shows the early believers defending their right so to use Jesus' name. But how extensively this was done at an early date is not known. It was natural enough for the custom to arise, in view of contemporary ideas regarding the magical significance of a name. Cf. Heitmüller, "Im Namen Jesu" (Göttingen, 1903, pp. 132-222).
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is not distinctively Christian but was earlier a Jewish doctrine, having been taken over from the heathen notion of a suffering, dying, and rising god. To be sure, nature myths personifying the death of winter and the revival to new life in the spring are common in the heathen mythologies of Asia Minor. Acquaintance with these on the part of the Jews is possible and even probable, but evidence that these notions formed an important part in the construction of their messianic hope is scanty. Certainly a mere collection of isolated points suggesting similarities of ideas is not sufficient proof of borrowing, particularly when the Jewish literature shows so little to confirm the supposition. Isaiah, chap. 53, is sometimes cited in this connection. But granting that its thought may be of heathen origin and its significance messianic[1]—both doubtful points—it is still true that official Judaism did not interpret the suffering servant of Isaiah messianically; nor did early Christianity, which ex hypothesi represents the unofficial side of Jewish thought, make extensive use of the passage. Paul, whom Drews will concede to be a historical
[1] So Gressmann, Der Ursprung der israelilisch-jüdischen Eschatologie (Göttingen, 1906), pp. 302-33.
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personality of primal importance for the new movement, employs the idea of the offered victim in the Jewish sacrificial system rather than that of the "suffering servant." The gospels show that Jesus' personal associates were utterly unprepared for his death, and Paul says that the early Christian preaching about a dying Messiah was a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks. This is a very strange situation if the notion was originally heathen and had been early adopted by Judaism. The primitive Christians had too much difficulty in defending their belief in a suffering Messiah to allow us to suppose that they found the idea current in Judaism, or even that the heathen notion of a dying and rising divinity was recognized as having any essential similarity with their preaching about "Jesus Christ and him crucified."
The attempt to locate a pre-Christian Jesus in orthodox Judaism is implicitly admitted by the radicals to be hopeless. Hence they resort to the hypothesis of secret sects whose worship, ritual, and dogma centered about this Jesus-god of the cult. That there were divers sects within Judaism in pre-Christian times is a fairly well established fact. Philo, Josephus, the New
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Testament, the early Fathers, and the Talmud, all support, more or less strongly, this opinion. We hear of Samaritans, Pharisees, Herodians, Essenes, Therapeutes, to say nothing of groups of followers collected from time to time by messianic pretenders, and the possible pre-Christian origin of various heresies mentioned at a later date in the Patristic literature and the Talmud. From the time of Antiochus Epiphanes down to about the close of the first century A.D., the Jews were passing through turbulent experiences, when factions within and forces from without were strongly affecting their life and thought. It is not at all impossible that by the end of the first century A.D. there may have been in circulation a body of literature roughly answering to the seventy books of II Esd. 14:46.
But what value have these facts for the idea of a pre-Christian Jesus? Is he mentioned anywhere in connection with these sects, or in any of the non-canonical Jewish writings that have come to us from this period? He certainly is not. In what we know of the tenets and practices of these sects is there anything to indicate his existence? Here, too, specific evidence for an affirmative answer fails. It is
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true that our knowledge of these movements is relatively meager and mostly secondary. Yet such descriptions as are given by Philo and Josephus are usually thought to be reliable, and nothing appears here to indicate that the worship of a special cult-god characterized any of the sects or parties then known. A recently discovered document published by Schechter is of great importance.[1] It gives us new information about one of these obscure Jewish movements, but there is not the slightest intimation that these sectaries worshiped a special cult-god. They looked back with reverence to a "teacher of righteousness" who was the founder of their society, and awaited the time when "the teacher of righteousness shall arise in the last days" and "the anointed shall arise from Israel and Aaron." Whether the teacher yet to appear was the same who had died is disputed,[2] but at any rate this individual
[1] Documents of Jewish Sectaries, I, Fragments of a Zadokite Work. Edited with Translation, Introduction, and Notes by Schechter (Cambridge University Press, 1910).
[2] The editor of the document thinks a resurrection is implied; G. F. Moore is of the contrary opinion ("The Covenanters of Damascus; a Hitherto Unknown Jewish Sect" in the Harvard Theological Review, IV [1911], 330-77). Cf. Kohler, "Dositheus, the Samaritan Heresiarch, etc.," in the American Journal of Theology, XV (1911), 404-35, who sees here an example of the Samaritan doctrine of the Messiah's disappearing and reappearing at will.
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is no dying and rising Adonis-like savior-deity. Jehovah the God of Israel is the sole object of worship. So in general the thought-content of Jewish parties or heresies, as far as known at present, did not concern itself with the worship of any special deities, but with the best means of rendering acceptable service to the common god of their fathers. Thus the sectaries were often rigid separatists, but they were not worshipers of other deities.
The extremes to which the radicals are driven in their endeavor to make room for the pre-Christian Jesus of their hypothesis is illustrated in Drews's assertions regarding secret cults in Judaism. He says that not only have the world-views of Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks influenced Judaism polytheistically, but from the beginning, side by side with the priestly and officially accentuated view of the One God, went a faith in other gods, a faith which not only received constantly new nourishment from foreign influences but, above all, which seemed to be fostered in the secret sects. This seems to be a very injudicious statement of the situation. That the main line of Judaism contained syncretistic elements is now generally recognized, and the early and continued activity
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of separatist parties of various types cannot be disputed, but the perpetual and widespread existence of secret polytheistic cults among the Jews is not supported by any substantial evidence.
Jesus' name can be connected with these sects, which are alleged to have worshiped him as a cult-god, only by a precarious process of etymologizing, a method by which one may usually argue much and prove nothing. Already we have noted the futility of the argument based on the equation, Joshua = Jesus. As a sample of the way he is discovered to have been the special object of reverence among the Essenes and Therapeutes, we are reminded that Philo indicates a kinship between the Essenes, whose name means "pious," "God-fearing," and the Therapeutes, meaning "physicians." Also "Jesus" signifies in Hebrew "helper," "deliverer." Then the argument proceeds: "The Therapeutes and Essenes looked upon themselves as physicians"—did the Essenes?—"especially as physicians of souls, accordingly it is not at all improbable that they worshiped their cult-god under this name," that is, the name Jesus. Can an argument of this sort establish even a shadow of likelihood, not to
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mention probabilities? We are also told that the pre-Christian Nazarees mentioned by Epiphanius will unquestionably have worshiped the "Nazarite" whose attributes as protector, savior (Jesus), have already been derived from the Hebrew root N-S-R. In addition to this point of Smith's, Drews notes that the Hebrew word netzer, the "shoot out of Jesse" mentioned in Isaiah, is the symbol of the "Redeemer" in his character of a deity of vegetation and life, "an idea which also may have made itself felt in the name of the Nazarees." The futility of arguments of this sort is self-evident, even without noting their occasional absurdity from a purely linguistic point of view.[1]
When the doctrine of a pre-Christian Jesus is applied more specifically to the origin of Christianity, the inadequacy of the hypothesis becomes still more evident. As a concrete instance, we may take Drews's application of
[1] We can imagine that the Zadokite sectaries, to use Schechter's designation, by the application of a similar argument may also be made worshipers of the pre-Christian Jesus. For do we not find in their writings the statement that God "made bud for Israel and Aaron a root of a plant to inherit his lands"? To be sure, the Hebrew for root is shoresh, but the thought is very similar to Isa. 60:21, where netzer occurs. So we have the progression shoresh, netzer, "Nazarite," the cult-god Jesus. Ridiculous indeed, but hardly impossible, we should think, for one suffering from chronic "etymologitis."
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the theory to explain the Christianity of Paul. In Tarsus, where heathen religious notions flourished, Paul had heard of a Jewish sect-god, Jesus. Paul's sympathies, however, were with official Judaism, and he studied to become a teacher of the law. The gospel of "Jesus," which was originally "nothing other than a Judaized and spiritualized Adonis-cult," was first preached by men of Cyprus and Cyrene, and Paul opposed this preaching because the law pronounced a curse upon everyone who hung upon a tree. Then suddenly there came over him a great enlightenment. The dying Adonis became a self-sacrificing god, surrendering his life for the world. This was "the moment of Christianity's birth as a religion of Paul."
This attempted derivation of Pauline Christianity from the cult of Adonis fails not only because it is too highly fanciful, but because of its serious omissions. On the one hand, important features in Adonis' career find no place in Paul's picture of Jesus—for example, the youthful god slain by the wild boar, and the mourning of his goddess sweetheart. But more significant is the failure of the Adonis legend to suggest some of the most specific and
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important items in Paul's thought of Jesus, such as his human ancestry and family connections,[1] his association with disciples,[2] his righteous life[3] lived in worldly poverty,[4] his self-sacrificing service,[5] his heavenly exaltation as a reward for obedience,[6] the circumstances of his death,[7] the awakening of faith through his appearances,[8] and finally the stress Paul puts on the Messiah's future coming, and his present significance for the spiritual life of believers.
It is also doubtful whether the idea of a suffering deity is so genetically vital to Paul's thought as Drews assumes. Is it the God-man Jesus or the Man-god Jesus that stands as the corner-stone of the Pauline gospel? We must not forget that for Paul there is but one supreme deity, the activity of whose will is manifest in all things. Although Jesus was a pre-existent being who voluntarily surrendered his heavenly position, still it is God who sent him to earth, God raised him from the dead and
[1] Rom. 1:3; 1 Cor. 9:5; Gal. 1:19; 4:4.
[2] 1 Cor. 15:5; Gal. 1:17 f.. etc.
[3] Rom. 5:18 f.; II Cor. 5:21.
[4] II Cor. 8:9; cf. Phil. 2:5 ff.
[5] Rom. 15:3; II Cor. 10:1.
[6] Rom. 1:4; Phil. 2:9 f.
[7] I Cor. 11:23; and numerous references to his crucifixion.
[8] I Cor. 5:5-8; Gal. 1:12, 16.
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delegates to him the conduct of the judgment, and to God at last he submits all things in order that God may be all in all. It is true that Paul speculates about the activity of Jesus in the angelic realm in subordination to God, but the significance of this activity in man's behalf lies not in the abstract thought of an incarnated redeeming divinity but in an actual human life terminated by a violent death. Not some hypothesis about his becoming a man, but the way he lived and the outcome of his career as a man, his success in contrast with the first man's failures, his restoration of the ideal of a perfect man, these are the phases of his activity which make him truly the savior of men. His resurrection and his present activity in the spiritual life of the community are the further assurance of his saving power. In all this the thought of pre-existence is never the stress point. The heavenly man, the earthly Jesus, the exalted Christ (Messiah), the heavenly Lord, are all features in Paul's system; but the point of supreme importance for his gospel, that which he makes the central item of his preaching, is the transition from the second to the third stage of this progression, from "Jesus" to "Christ and him crucified."
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In like manner the application of the pre-Christian Jesus-theory to the gospels fails to take account of the actual situation there depicted. Again using Drews as an illustration, the point of departure for his treatment of the gospel material is a citation from Wrede to the effect that Mark was an apologetic treatise aiming to prove to gentile readers that Jesus was the Son of God. Even granting this, it is not the same as saying that Mark was primarily interested in showing that the Son of God was Jesus. Nor is Drews justified in his conclusion that "in the gospels we have to do not with a deified man but rather with an anthropomorphized god.'' This assertion needs qualifications. It does not truly represent the order in which gospel thought proceeds, nor the situation in which the early Christian apologists found themselves.
What troubled the first missionaries of the new religion was not the reluctance of their hearers to believe that a god had become a man, but their hesitation about believing that a man, especially an obscure Jew who had been ignominiously put to death, was really the Son of God. The oldest type of synoptic tradition does not connect either Jesus' activity or his
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teaching with a deified past. At baptism he first appears as God's son, and his life history is interpreted constantly with reference to his future rather than to his past. His teachings are not of any angelic world out of which he has come, but of the earthly life to be lived in spiritual fellowship with God, and the future welfare of himself and his followers. Belief in the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus is the starting-point for theological elaboration in gospel tradition, and the interpreter's task is seen to be not the problem of reading the divine out of Jesus' career but of so narrating the story of his activity that it might fittingly relate itself to the later faith in him as the exalted Messiah. Only in the later stages of the tradition, as in the Fourth Gospel and in the nativity stories of Matthew and Luke, does the process of elevation reach back as far as the pre-earthly side of Jesus' career.
Consequently the idea of a pre-Christian cult-god, as the starting-point for the gospel religion, does not answer the requirements of the situation. A similar objection holds against Kalthoff's supposition that Jesus is merely the community's ideal personified to save it from perishing. On the contrary, gospel thought
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moves in the opposite direction. It proceeds from the person to his idealization rather than from the ideal to its personification. The extent to which the evangelists' narratives are historical is another problem, but unquestionably this literary activity moves out from the idea of a historical Jesus who has become the heavenly Christ, and so is the object of unique devotion and reverence.
When all the evidence brought against Jesus' historicity is surveyed it is found to contain no elements of strength. All theories that would explain the rise of the New Testament literature by making it a purely fictitious product fail, and the arguments for a pre-Christian Jesus are found to lack any substantial basis. One of the serious defects of the negative procedure is the way in which the great bulk of testimony for the origin of Christianity is unceremoniously set aside in favor of a hypothetical reconstruction based upon obscure and isolated points. This results in a promiscuous forcing of all data into line with an otherwise unverified theory as to how the new religion might possibly have arisen. So it has happened that no advocate of the negative position, at least none since Bauer, has concerned
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himself primarily and comprehensively with the principal data in the field, showing for example that the letters of Paul and the primitive gospel tradition are wholly spurious. A theory of Christianity's origin has been foisted upon our attention before the way has been cleared for it in a field already occupied.
Moreover when the credentials of the negative hypothesis, and its application to Christian origins, are minutely examined, their unsubstantial and fallacious character becomes evident. The chief strength of the whole negative position is the intangibility of the data on which it rests. It is built upon a few isolated points whose chief argumentative value lies in the fact that in their present setting there is some uncertainty as to their exact meaning. Thus they lend themselves to liberal hypothesizing. We have already observed that the detailed items advanced as evidence for a pre-Christian Jesus are of this character. But on closer inspection not only do we find no well-attested references to him but there is also no appropriate place for him in the history of the period where he is supposed to belong. The argument for his existence may sometimes have a semblance of plausibility but this is
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because the data offered in its support are obscure either as to context or content, so that generous reading between the lines, liberal etymologizing, and the like, become the main stock in trade for these theorists. They can, to be sure, claim a certain degree of immunity from the weapons of adverse criticism. This fact, however, is not to be taken, as they would sometimes have us believe, as attesting the strength of their theory. It is just because of the intangible character of its premises that their argument cannot easily be submitted to detailed scientific rebuttal. As Weiss remarks, it is the most difficult task in the world to prove to nonsense that it is nonsense.
Go to The Historicity of Jesus by S.J. Case table of contents.