PAGAN CHRISTS
STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE HIEROLOGY
JOHN M. ROBERTSON
SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND EXPANDED
[ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED]
LONDON:
WATTS & CO.,
17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.
[1911]
Scanned, proofed and formatted by John Bruno Hare at sacred-texts.com, Sept-Oct 2007. This book is in the public domain in the US because it was published prior to 1923.
Pagan Christs, by John M. Robertson, [1911], at sacred-texts.com
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PART I.
THE RATIONALE OF RELIGION
CHAPTER I.
THE NATURALNESS OF ALL BELIEF
section 1.
IT seems probable, despite theological cavils, that Petronius was right in his signal saying, Fear first made the Gods. In the words of a recent hierologist, "we may be sure that primitive man took to himself the credit of his successful attempts to work the mechanism of nature for his own advantage, but when the machinery did not work he ascribed the fault to some over-ruling supernatural power.....It was the violation of [previously exploited] sequences, and the frustration of his expectations, by which the belief in supernatural power was, not created, but first called forth." [*1]
The fact that this writer proceeds to repudiate his own doctrine [*2] is no reason why we should, save to the extent of noting the temerity of his use of the term "supernatural." There are some very strong reasons, apart from the a priori one cited above, for thinking that the earliest human notions of superhuman beings were framed in terms of fear. Perhaps the strongest of all is the fact that savages and barbarians in nearly all parts of the world appear to regard disease and death as invariably due to purposive hostile action, whether normal, magical, or "spiritual." [*3] Not even old age is for
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many of these primitive thinkers a probable natural cause of death. [*1] If then the life of early man was not much less troublous than that of contemporary primitives, he is likely to have been moved as much as they to conceive of the unseen powers as malevolent. "On the Gold Coast," says a close student, "the majority of these spirits are malignant......I believe that originally all were conceived as malignant." [*2]
And how, indeed, could it be otherwise? Those who will not assent have forgotten, as indeed most anthropologists strangely forget when they are discussing the beginnings of religion, that man as we know him is descended from something less human, more brute, something nearer the predatory beast life of fear and foray.
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[paragraph continues] When in the period of upward movement which we term civilisation, as distinct from animal savagery, there could arise thrills of yearning or gratitude towards unknown powers, we are aeons off from the stage of subterhuman growth in which the germs of conceptual religion must have stirred. If the argument is to be that there is no religion until man loves his Gods, let it be plainly put, and let not a verbal definition become a petitio principii. If, again, no numina are to be termed Gods but those who are loved, let that proposition too be put as a simple definition of term. But if we are to look for the beginnings of the human notion of numina, of unseen spirits who operate in Nature and interfere with man, let it be as plainly put that they presumably occurred when fear of the unknown was normal, and gratitude to an Unknown impossible.
But in saying that fear first made the Gods, or made the first Gods, we imply that other God-making forces came into play later; and no dispute arises when this is affirmed of the process of making the Gods of the higher religions, in their later forms. Even here, at the outset, the play of gratitude is no such ennobling exercise as to involve much lifting of the moral standpoint; and even in the higher religions gratitude to the God is often correlative with fear of the evil spirits whom he wards off. This factor is constantly present in the gospels and in the polemic of the early Fathers; [*1] and has never disappeared from religious life. The pietist who in our own day pours out thanks to "Providence" for saving him in the earthquake in which myriads have perished is no more ethically attractive than philosophically persuasive; and the gratitude of savages and barbarians for favours received and expected can hardly have been more refined. It might even be said that a cruder egoism presides over the making of Good Gods than over the birth of the Gods of Fear; [*2] the former having their probable origin in an individualistic as against a tribal instinct. But it may be granted that the God who ostensibly begins as a private guardian angel or family spirit may become the germ of a more ethical cultus than that of the God generically feared. And the process chronically recurs. There is, indeed, no generic severance between the Gods of fear and the Gods of love, most deities of the more advanced races having both aspects: nevertheless, certain specified deities are so largely shaped by men's affections that they might recognisably be termed the Beloved Gods.
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It will on the whole be helpful to an understanding of the subject if we name such Gods, in terms of current conceptions, the Christs of the world's pantheon. That title, indeed, no less fitly includes figures which do not strictly rank as Gods; but in thus widely relating it we shall be rather elucidating than obscuring religious history. Only by some such collocation of ideas can the inquirer surmount his presuppositions and take the decisive step towards seeing the religions of mankind as alike man-made. On the other hand, he is not thereby committed to any one view in the field of history proper; he is left free to argue for a historical Christ as for a historical Buddha.
Even on the ground of the concept of evolution, however, scientific agreement is still hindered by persistence in the old classifications. The trouble meets us on one line in arbitrary fundamental separations between mythology and religion, early religion and early ethics, religion and magic, genuine myths and non-genuine myths. [*1] On another line it meets us in the shape of a sudden and local reopening of the problem of theistic intervention in a quasi-philosophical form, or a wilful repudiation of naturalistic method when the inquiry reaches current beliefs. Thus results which were reached by disinterested scholarship a generation ago are sought to be subverted, not by a more thorough scholarship, but by keeping away from the scholarly problem and suggesting a new standard of values, open to no rational tests. It may be well, therefore, to clear the ground so far as may be of such dispute at the outset by stating and vindicating the naturalistic position in regard to it.
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Contents
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction
Part I. The Rationale of Religion
Chapter I. The Naturalness of all Belief
§ 1. Origin of the Gods from Fear
§ 2. All Belief Results of Reasoning
§ 3. Dr. Jevons’ Theories of Religious Evolution
§ 4. Scientific View of the Religious Evolution
§ 5. Dr. Frazer's Definition
§ 6. The Scientific Induction
§ 7. Dr. Jevons’ Series of Self-Contradictions
§ 8. His Contradictory Doctrine of the Conditions of the Survival of Religion
§ 9. The Continuity of Religious Phenomena
§ 10. Dr. Frazer's Sociological Vindication of the Sorcerer
§ 11. The Beginning of the End of Religion
§ 12. Historic View of Ancestor Worship
§ 13. The Authoritarian Element a Mark of Religion
§ 14. Definition of Religion
Chapter II. Comparison and Appraisement of Religions
§ 1. Early Forces of Reform
§ 2. Reform as a Religious Process
§ 3. Polytheism and Monotheism
§ 4. Hebrews and Babylonians
§ 5. Forces of Religious Evolution
§ 6. The Hebrew Evolution
§ 7. Post-Exilic Phases
§ 8. Revival and Disintegration
§ 9. Conclusion
Part II. Secondary God-Making
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour-God
§ 1. Totemism and Sacraments
§ 2. Theory and Ritual of Human Sacrifice
§ 3. The Christian Crucifixion
§ 4. Vogue of Human Sacrifice
§ 5. The Divinity of the Victim
§ 6. The Cannibal Sacrament
§ 7. The Semitic Antecedents
§ 8. The Judaic Evolution
§ 9. Specific Survivals in Judaism
§ 10. The Pre-Christian Jesus-God
§ 11. Private Jewish Eucharists
§ 12. The Eucharist in Orthodox Judaism
§ 13. Special Features of the Crucifixion Myth
§ 14. Possible Historical Elements
§ 15. The Gospel Mystery-Play
§ 16. The Mystery-Play and the Cultus
§ 17. Further Pagan Adaptations
§ 18. Synopsis and Conclusion: Genealogy of Human Sacrifice and Sacrament
Chapter II. The Teaching God
§ 1. Primary and Secondary Ideas
§ 2. The Logos
§ 3. Derivations of the Christian Logos
§ 4. The Search for a Historical Jesus
§ 5. The Critical Problem
§ 6. Collapse of the Constructive Case
§ 7. Parallel Problems
§ 8. The Problem of Buddhist Origins
§ 9. Buddhism and Buddhas
§ 10. The Buddhist Cruces
§ 11. Sociological Clues
§ 12. Buddhism and Asoka
§ 13. The Buddha Myth
§ 14. The Problem of Manichæus
§ 15. The Manichean Solution
§ 16. The Case of Apollonius of Tyana
Part III. Mithraism
§ 1. Introductory
§ 2. Beginnings of Cult
§ 3. Zoroastrianism
§ 4. Evolution of Mithra
§ 5. The Process of Syncretism
§ 6. Symbols of Mithra
§ 7. The Cultus
§ 8. The Creed
§ 9. Mithraism and Christianity
§ 10. Further Christian Parallels
§ 11. The Vogue of Mithraism
§ 12. Absorption in Christianity
§ 13. The Point of Junction
Part IV. The Religions of Ancient America
§ 1. American Racial Origins
§ 2. Aztecs and Peruvians
§ 3. Primitive Religion and Human Sacrifice
§ 4. The Mexican Cultus
§ 5. Mexican Sacrifices and Cannibal Sacraments
§ 6. Mexican Ethics
§ 7. The Mexican White Christ
§ 8. The Fatality of the Priesthood
§ 9. The Religion of Peru
§ 10. Conclusion
Appendices
Appendix A. The Eating of the Crucified Human Sacrifice
Appendix B. Dramatic and Ritual Survivals
Appendix C. Replies to Criticisms
Index
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