Vridar: Tim Widowfield, Euhemerism and Richard Carrier

[outhouse]

I recognize that Carrier is wrong only when he says that 'Mark' was an euhemerist.

.

No sir. That factually is unsubstantiated.

I would listen to DC if I were you. If I had to pick one of two teachers I would pick DC before Carrier.

[Giuseppe]

I read this by DCH:

I think that all online dictionaries have a very similar definition. In short, stories about renowned humans (kings, warriers, etc) were embellished until they were "deified" on account of their contributions to the welfare of mankind in general.

DCH's view is wrong insofar he assumes in advance Zeus agnosticism, Uranus agnosticism, Poseidon agnosticism, etc. While he should start with the solid premise that Zeus, Uranus, Poseidon are purely mythical people. Period. Therefore ''to conclude'' from this that Zeus, Uranus, Poseidon were men later 'deified' means to claim to be rationalist people when really an invention is at work here.

Carrier is wrong because he says that Mark would be the first Jesus euhemerist, but Mark is not a Jesus ehuemerist for the simple fact that Mark is not a rationalist.
But pagans who were historicists after reading the Gospel (pagans as Celsus, as Tacitus, as Porphiry, Julianus, etc) are real euhemerists. The same DCH or outhouse (if not Christian) is an euhemerist, since he believes to be a rationalist person when he talks about a historical Jesus distinct from the Christ of faith, but he doesn't realize that he is inventing one Historical Jesus in order to rationalize the Gospels.

[outhouse]

I read this by DCH:

I think that all online dictionaries have a very similar definition. In short, stories about renowned humans (kings, warriers, etc) were embellished until they were "deified" on account of their contributions to the welfare of mankind in general.

DCH's view is wrong insofar he assumes in advance Zeus agnosticism, Uranus agnosticism, Poseidon agnosticism, etc. While he should start with the solid premise that Zeus, Uranus, Poseidon are purely mythical people. Period. Therefore ''to conclude'' from this that Zeus, Uranus, Poseidon were men later 'deified' means to claim to be rationalist people when really an invention is at work here.

.

You may be taking him out of context


DCH is speaking of examples such as the living Emperor who held the title "son of god" and was deified.

He does not assume what you propose

[iskander]

I read this by DCH:

I think that all online dictionaries have a very similar definition. In short, stories about renowned humans (kings, warriers, etc) were embellished until they were "deified" on account of their contributions to the welfare of mankind in general.

DCH's view is wrong insofar he assumes in advance Zeus agnosticism, Uranus agnosticism, Poseidon agnosticism, etc. While he should start with the solid premise that Zeus, Uranus, Poseidon are purely mythical people. Period. Therefore ''to conclude'' from this that Zeus, Uranus, Poseidon were men later 'deified' means to claim to be rationalist people when really an invention is at work here.

Carrier is wrong because he says that Mark would be the first Jesus euhemerist, but Mark is not a Jesus ehuemerist for the simple fact that Mark is not a rationalist.
But pagans who were historicists after reading the Gospel (pagans as Celsus, as Tacitus, as Porphiry, Julianus, etc) are real euhemerists. The same DCH or outhouse (if not Christian) is an euhemerist, since he believes to be a rationalist person when he talks about a historical Jesus distinct from the Christ of faith, but he doesn't realize that he is inventing one Historical Jesus in order to rationalize the Gospels.

Where does Mark say that Jesus is God?

[Giuseppe]

DCH is speaking of examples such as the living Emperor who held the title "son of god" and was deified.

I am not so sure about what you say, since DCH and I accept the Tim's definition of euhemerism:
Euhemerism is rationalization of mythological figures by the invention of historical figures behind them
The difference is that I am more coherent with that definition, since I assume a priori that we are talking of mythological figures (and not simply of dubious existence), while DCH suspects that maybe Euhemerus could be right (that behind a mythical Zeus there was an historical man later deified as Zeus), just as he suspects that maybe Celsus could be right (that behind a Gospel Jesus there was a historical man deified as Jesus Christ).

Where does Mark say that Jesus is God?

Jesus of Mark: a human + grandiose miracles.

Jesus of the first Pagan who reads Mark (without become a Christian) : a simple human.

[iskander]

Jesus of Mark: a human + grandiose miracles.

Jesus of the first Pagan who reads Mark (without become a Christian) : a simple human.

Thank you. Jesus is only a man in Mark's
Prophets also made miracles and the men of the pharaoh also made miracles .Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea. ...
Mark never said that Jesus is God.
Did Luke say Jesus is God?

[outhouse]

I am not so sure about what you say, since DCH and I accept the Tim's definition of euhemerism:
Euhemerism is rationalization of mythological figures by the invention of historical figures behind them

.

But that does not discount the fact real people were used and Euhemerism applied in history.

He would not argue the fact and his own statements verify such

[DCHindley]

Be there a Pre-Christian cult of Jesus?

Arthur O. Lovejoy, "The Theory of a Pre-Christian Cult of Jesus," (The Monist, Vol. 18-4, Oct, 1908, 597-609)
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27900140
“Courtesy of JSTOR.”

Prof. W. Benjamin Smith's collection of essays in German(1) on the origin of Christianity-which is sufficiently paradoxical in the circumstances of its publication, since it is the work of a distinguished American writer on mathematics-employs no small learning in the defence of a theory that is a still greater paradox.

No [598] historical hypothesis put forward by any competent scholar was ever more revolutionary, or more important, if true. For, while it is certain to seem startling, beyond any other possible hypothesis, to religious orthodoxy and critical conservatism, it is equally at variance with the fundamental presuppositions of the whole advanced school of New Testament criticism. Yet the argument is so skilfully handled, and so much apparent new evidence is extracted from familiar data, that one of the most eminent and most radical of the critics of the prevailing school commends the book, in a friendly preface, to the serious consideration of the Biblical scholars of Germany, and, while certainly not professing conversion, declares that the reasoning is "really by no means so easy to refute."

What we know as primitive Christianity, Dr. Smith contends, was the product of a vast and slow syncretism. The more fundamental and distinctive elements in it were derived from Gnosticism of which movement, therefore, it was the child, and not, as has been supposed, the parent.

The Christian faith of the second century emerged, through certain processes of fusion and modification, out of the doctrines of quasi-Gnostic sects that flourished in Syria at least a generation before the Christian era.

The name of its reputed founder, Jesus Nazoraeus, was originally that of a divine being or Aeon reverenced by the sect of the Naassenes, - and probably by others.

The semi-human figure who is the hero of the Synoptic Gospels was evolved (chiefly as the result of the partial transformation of this Gnostic theosophy through its merging with Jewish Messianism) out of the celestial object of this primitive Jesus-cult.

The resurrection-belief originated in a sort of etymological myth, due to the ambiguity of such words as anistimi, anastasis, egeirw; the doctrine of 'the raising-up of the Christ' at first related, not to the reappearance of a body once entombed, but to the divine legation and the final triumph of the heaven-descended Messiah.

The ethical and religious content of the extant Gospels consists, not of the utterance of a great Teacher more or less diluted and corrupted by the inferior media through which they are transmitted, but of the ultimate deposit of the reflection and discussion of several generations of men profoundly stirred by one form of that movement of mysticism, otherworldliness and aspiration after inner regeneration, which was then sweeping over the entire Hellenistic world.

The literary excellence and the moral profundity of many of the sayings and parables in the Gospels is the result, not of the [599] inspiration of a single Master, but of the long social attrition through which they were sharpened and polished, and of the gradual process of spiritual selection of which they are the fit survivors.

All of this Dr. Smith believes to be capable of proof. And, though further evidence is promised in subsequent publications, the substance of the proof to be offered seems to have been already exhibited chiefly in Der vorchristliche Jesus.(2)

There is, or ought to be, no chose jugée in history; and the present theory, revolutionary though it is, deserves - since it undeniably has extensive erudition behind it - to receive an unprejudiced and careful examination.

Fortunately the main argument is reducible to a few clear and definite contentions. I shall try to state these in consecutive order; to indicate the principal evidence offered for each; and to give an opinion concerning the genuineness and adequacy of that evidence.

I. It is undeniable, Dr. Smith maintains, that sects adhering to a characteristically Gnostic type of doctrines and 'mysteries' flourished widely in the Hellenistic world during the first century B. C. and at the period of the diffusion of Christianity; and, by the showing of the canonical writings themselves, such sects looked upon the Christian teaching as akin to their own.

The argument for this preliminary generalization rests chiefly upon the case of Simon Magus (Acts viii. 9-24, supplemented by Justin, Apol. I, 26 and 56; Irenaeus, c. Haeres. I, 22; II, 126; IV, 6).

If we take the passage in Acts as the reflection - distorted under the influences of very obvious motives - of a historic character and a real situation, and if we identify this first-century Simon with the originator of the Simonian heresies described by Justin and Irenaeus, we get a representation of an immensely influential leader who owed nothing to Christian teaching and whose propaganda began earlier than that of Christianity; who was no mere sorcerer, but the preacher of a universal religion based upon a philosophical monotheism combined with Gnostic dualism and emanationism; who was deified by his followers; whose own traditional attitude towards Christianity was friendly enough; whose followers were, in the early second century, not generally distinguished from the Christians; and whom patristic tradition regarded as the father of all the Gnostic heresies.

The assumptions upon which this representation is based seem to me [600] fairly probable ones. But the fact remains that the Simon-legend constitutes a historical conundrum of an almost insoluble complexity. There were, as Schmiedel has pointed out, at least four figures of Simon, one of them being apparently the Apostle Paul (Enc. Bib., s. v.); it is impossible to affirm, with any considerable degree of confidence, just where one of these figures ends and another begins.

The whole matter is involved in the controversies over the authenticity and date of the Pauline Epistles; the sources and date of the Book of Acts; the date and sources of the Clementina; the respective characteristics and the precise relations of Petrine and Pauline Christianity.

Dr. Smith can hardly be said to have settled all these related issues; and for the present, therefore, any argument founded upon the passages relating to Simon Magus must be regarded as somewhat less than conclusive.

For all that it may be considered a reasonable probability, to which facts of several sorts point, that tendencies or organized sects characterized by some or most of the distinguishing elements of Gnosticism, and especially by a fusion of Jewish, Greek and Persian ideas, were not rare about the beginning of the Christian era; and that Christianity was only one example of a common type of innovating religious movement at this period.

II. The great point of Dr. Smith's argument, however, lies in the assertion that the name Ihsous o Nazwraios is to be found as that of a Logos or divine emanation among one or more quasi-Gnostic sects of unmistakably pre-Christian date.

In point of fact, no example is offered of the employment of the two words in conjunction anywhere outside of the New Testament. It will therefore be advisable to consider the evidence concerning each of the two terms separately.

A: The name "Ihsous".

The proof of the existence of a Gnostic Jesus-cult in the first century B.C., Dr. Smith finds, first and foremost, in a passage of the Refutatio of Hippolytus. There we are told (V, 6) that the sect of the Naassenes adored as the primary manifestation of the ineffable Deity an archetypal, celestial Man, whom they also spoke of as "Son of Man"; and in a Naassene hymn cited by Hippolytus (V, 10) the name Jesus occurs as that of a pre-existent heavenly being sent by the Father to the lower world as the imparter of the saving Gnosis to suffering humanity.

Now, we have good reason to believe, argues Dr. Smith, that these Naassenes were pre-Christian. For Hippolytus's arrangement of the heresies is plainly meant to follow a chronological order. And [601] it is the Naassenes that he mentions first of all; they, the Peratae, the Sethians and Justin[ians], all come before Simon Magus, whom tradition represents as an older contemporary of the Apostles and the father of all the heresies.

Hippolytus, according to our author (p. 123), "declares repeatedly that the Naassenes were the first of the heretical sects, from whom all the others afterwards known as Gnostics derived (Ref. V, 6, 10, 11)." "We may quite definitely conclude, therefore, in agreement with Hippolytus, that Naassenism was antecedent to Christianity, that it flourished before the Cross was preached, and that the later forms of Gnosticism were its off spring" (p. 124).

If the reader will now turn to Hippolytus* and examine the fifth book of the Refutatio for himself, he will be likely to revert upon these last-quoted sentences with some astonishment. For he will discover two things.

First, Hippolytus in none of the passages cited makes any such statement as that ascribed to him, about the descent of all other Gnostic doctrines from Naassenism. The nearest he comes to it is to say that the Naassenes "afterwards called themselves Gnostics" (which does not imply that they were the only or the first heretics who did so, and that "separating from them, many devised a heresy, in appearance manifold, but in reality one" (V, 6); this last seems to refer merely to the diverse subdivisions of the Ophite sect.

Second, Hippolytus in plain terms describes the Naassenes as Christians. They are classified as a "heresy"; they taught that the archetypal Man "descended in one man, Jesus, who was born of Mary" (V, 6); they traced their doctrine "through Mariamne to James, the brother of the Lord" - which, of course, shows them not only Christian but also, at earliest, of the first or second generation after the Apostles.

Dr. Smith's omission to mention any of these statements of Hippolytus, and his citing of that authority as a witness in favor of a view of the date of the Naassenes which the very same chapters of the Refutatio categorically contradict - this is a thing so amazing that it is difficult to comment upon it with propriety. Perhaps the author proposes to begin his argument by striking out from Hippolytus's text all the numerous passages unfavorable to the theory of a pre-Christian Jesus.

But nothing is said even of such a desperate way of dealing [602] with the difficulty. The unsuspecting reader is simply given to understand that Hippolytus plainly and consistently describes the Naassenes as pre-Christian; in point of fact, he plainly and consistently describes them as a late first-century or second-century Christian school.

In view of this, Dr. Smith's long essay on the Parable of the Sower must also be considered a failure. It is designed to show that the parable is a reworking of a Gnostic cosmogonie myth, relating the Creator's dissemination of the logos spermatikos among the different classes - pneumatic, psychic, choïc - of mankind.

The idea is not without intrinsic plausibility; but the argument for it rests entirely upon the assumption of the pre Christian date of the Naassene version of the parable, given by Hippolytus. And this assumption Hippolytus himself expressly forbids.

It is, indeed, true that there is some (though little good) patristic evidence for the non-Christian - not the pre-Christian - character of the Naassene sect.

"Naassenes" is, of course, only Grecized Hebrew for "Ophites" or "Serpentists"; and of the Ophites Origen avers (c. Cels. VI, 28 - the passage is not noted by our author) that "they spoke against Jesus ... and would not so much as listen to the name of Jesus," (which, of course, proves too much for Dr. Smith's case).

But this is flatly contradicted by Epiphanius (Adv. Haeres. 37), by Irenaeus (I, 34); and by Jerome (Adv. Lucif., 23), all better authorities than Origen on heresiology.

It is not impossible that there was a pre-Christian Ophism, under a Hebrew name; but there is no real evidence of its existence. And there is not the least reason for believing (even if such a hypothetical pre-Christian stage of Naassenism be assumed) that in such a stage the sect knew anything of the name "Jesus."

For the only Naassenes of whom Hippolytus has anything to say were definitely Christian.

2. The author also adduces in favor of his theory the fact of the occurrence, in an "old" passage of the Paris Magic Papyrus, of the words: "I adjure thee by the god of the Hebrews, Jesus" (ed. Wessely, 1. 3120).

If, as some authorities suggest, the passage be pre-Christian, it is undoubtedly significant. But so long as the date of it remains essentially conjectural, no argument of any weight can be rested upon it.

3. In the New Testament itself, however, Dr. Smith finds evidence pointing toward his conclusion. In Acts xviii. 25 we are told of Apollos of Alexandria that, coming to teach in Ephesus, "he [603] was wont to speak and teach accurately the doctrine of Jesus (ta peri tou Ihsou)," though "knowing only the baptism of John."

One who "knew only the baptism of John," argues Dr. Smith, can hardly have had any contact with the Christian propaganda. Whence, then, his knowledge of "Jesus" - unless there existed, independently of the Christian Church, and before it, a Gnostic Jesus cult, of which Apollos was one of the itinerant preachers?

The argument has a certain prima facie effectiveness; but Dr. Smith again shows a surprising facility of forgetting the context of his chosen evidential passages. There are two considerations which prevent the story about Apollos from serving our theorist's purpose so well as it at first appears to do.

The essential point of that story, as conceived by the author of Acts, is clear. The conception of the Holy Spirit, and the doctrines of the power of the Apostles to impart it, and of its wonder-working presence in the Church, may be said to be theological hobbies with that writer.

Now "the baptism of John" (in contrast with the orthodox apostolic baptism) had come to be almost a technical term, signifying a "baptism of repentance" merely in which there was no reference to the Holy Spirit and no impartation of it (cf. Acts, i. 15; xi. 6; viii. 16, 17; Matt. iii. 11; Mark i. 8; Luke iii. 16; John i. 33).

And (as is clear from the immediately following passage, Acts xix. 1-6) the fact that the disciples of Apollos had been baptized "into John's baptism," was taken as synonymous with the fact that they "had not so much as learned whether there is a Holy Ghost." Paul thereupon administers the joint ceremonies of baptism and laying on of hands, and "the Holy Ghost came upon them, and they spake with tongues and prophesied."

Now, it is not only possible, but even probable, that there existed early communities of Christians to whom the (probably not primitive) doctrine of the Holy Ghost, and the tale of the marvels of Pentecost, needed to be taught; and in the Apollos-story we very likely have the traces of some such episode. Certainly such an ex planation of it seems far more natural than Dr. Smith's, while it is equally adequate to account for the peculiarities of the incident recorded.

It is, indeed, true (for the second consideration) that we are told that Paul baptized these disciples of Apollos "into the name of the Lord Jesus." This might (though it need not absolutely) imply that they had not before been baptized in that name. Such an interpretation would undoubtedly make the whole character of the doctrine and affiliations of Apollos rather obscure. There seems to be an inexplicable inconsistency between what is asserted [604] by xviii. 25 and what is suggested by xix. 4, 5.

But if the author of Acts really intended to indicate that the disciples of Apollos had not been baptized in the name of Jesus, his testimony would be even more unfavorable to Dr. Smith's hypothesis than it is upon the other interpretation. For if, as Dr. Smith believes, Apollos's whole teaching centered about the "name" and the powers of a divine emanation called Jesus, and if (as the text affirms) Apollos observed the rite of baptism, it would be inconceivable that he should not have baptized his followers "into the name" of that divinity.

Notes:

1) Der vorchristliche Jesus, nebst weiteren Vorstudien zur Entstehungs geschichte des Urchristentums. Mit einem Vorworte von P. W. Schmiedel, Giessen: A. Zöpelmann, 1906.

2) For the reader of English only, a first-hand account of Dr. Smith's hypotheses seems to be available only in his article "New Testament Criticism" in the Encyclopedia Americana. A part of the argument is, however, published in The Monist, XV, pp. 25-45.

* Having seen advance proofs of Professor Lovejoy's criticism, Dr. Smith takes exception to the implication of unfairness on his part in the citation of Hippolytus, and in the January number of The Monist will take the opportunity to maintain his position especially with regard to this point as well as other particulars presented by Professor Lovejoy.-ED.

====
B. The term Nazwraios . For the pre-Christian use of this term Dr. Smith seems to me to make out a not much better case. His principal arguments are these:

1. As every one knows, the traditional explanation of this adjective as derived from the name of a Galilean town has long been unsatisfactory. We have very good reason for disbelieving that, in the first century, any such town existed.(3) Dr. Smith reviews the various theories that have been devised for dealing with this difficulty and finds all of them - even Cheyne's equation of "Nazareth" with Galilee - open to reasonable objections.

Yet the word, for some reason, played a great part in early Christian nomenclature. Epiphanius says (Adv. Haeres. 29, 1) that the followers of Jesus were all called Nazoraeans before they were known as Christians. The name persisted as that of a Judaeo-Christian sect who acknowledged the Messiahship of Jesus, but insisted upon the observance of all the requirements of the Law.

2. It is etymologically possible to derive the word from רצנ [NaTzaR] "to guard, preserve"; "Jesus Nazoraeus" would then mean "Jesus the Preserver" or "Saviour."

If this were the title of a divinity worshipped by Gnostic sects out of which Christianity developed, the early emphasis upon the epithet would be naturally accounted for; while neither the title itself, nor the emphasis on it, can be made intelligible upon the supposition of its reference to a wholly obscure, and probably non-existent, town.

3. Epiphanius speaks (op. cit., 29, 6) of Nasaraioi who "were before Christ and knew not Christ." This seems pretty direct evidence that the word was in use with some special religious significance in the pre-Christian period.

This evidence, also, does not appear conclusive; but it has pertinency and interest, so far as it goes. It may be that Dr. Smith has here hit upon a hypothesis that may eventually yield fruit. Yet [605] even here he overstates the testimony of his sources, especially in his treatment of the evidence of Epiphanius, which he regards as so "conclusive" as to be "in fact the end of controversy."(4)

Epiphanius, in the first place, expressly distinguishes the terms "Nazoraioi" and "Nasaraioi," and plainly differentiates the sects to whom he ascribes those names.

The "Nazoraioi" were a Jewish-Christian or Ebionitish sect, well known to us from the references to them by Jerome and other writers, as well as from the description of Epiphanius. They "adhered to the Law and practised circumcision," they "did not renounce the Law and the Prophets," but "confessed all things exactly as do the Jews," "differing from them only in believing on the Christ" (Epiphanius, Adv. Haeres. 29).(5)

The "Nasaraioi," on the other hand, according to the Bishop of Constantia, were a pre-Christian sect, Jewish by race, and classified by him among the "Jewish heresies"; while they observed the rite of circumcision, the Sabbath and the Jewish feasts, they condemned sacrifices, ate no flesh, and rejected the Pentateuch, professing to be in possession of a more authentic Mosaic revelation.

If the Christian "Nazoraioi" and the pre-Christian "Nasaraioi" were, as Dr. Smith contends, one and the same sect,

it is curious that the vegetarian regimen and the hostility to the orthodox Law, distinctive of the latter "heretics," were not found among the former also.

Moreover, the "Nasaraioi" are the peculiar property of Epiphanius; apparently no other patristic writer gives even a hint of their existence. His own information about them he presents as having come to him rather vaguely at second-hand (ws o eis hmas elqwn periecei logos).

Now a fact so significant as the derivation of Christianity and of the original name of the Christian believers from so peculiar a Jewish movement, could not have been unknown to other apologists and heresiographers. But Dr. Smith supposes that all save Epiphanius suppressed their knowledge, because the fact ran counter to the theory which they wished to establish, about the origination of the Church in the work of a personal Messianic founder.

The "Nasaraioi" were never to be mentioned, lest the whole fatal story of the true descent of Christianity - now first revealed by a mathematician of New Orleans - should be given away.

The supposition is far from plausible. A conspiracy of silence so extensive and effectual, about a fact that (according to the hypothesis) must at [606] the outset have been notorious and undeniable, would be a truly miraculous violation of historical probability.

There is no reason to think that the early Christian writers had the wit to conceal so completely the skeleton in their closet, even if they can be supposed to have been, for some centuries, unanimous in a deliberate design to do so. Nor could such mere evasion have been a natural or effective policy for them. For their opponents, pagan and Jewish, must have known the fact as well as they; and one can well imagine how constantly (under the supposed circumstances) the name "Nasaraioi" would have been thrown into the faces of the Christians, and how imperative it would have been for the apologists to discuss directly, and to explain away, the connection of their Church and doctrine with this (ex hypothesi) familiar school of heterodox pre-Christian Jews.(6)

Out of a single description of a sect of "Nasaraioi" by a late fourth-century writer of not the highest authority [i.e., Epiphanius], who confessedly knew nothing about them at first-hand, Dr. Smith fabricates a whole chapter of church history that is in the highest degree picturesque and engaging, but quite impossible of belief.

The solitary testimony of Epiphanius - in view of the countervailing probabilities - is quite insufficient to assure us that there ever were any such "Nasaraioi" as he describes. He was capable of a great amount of confusion of names and of misapprehension of facts. But assuming that the sect existed as described, the antecedent probabilities concur with Epiphanius's own account of the matter, which is that the pre-Christian "Nasaraioi" and the "Nazoraioi," or early Jewish Christians, were quite distinct bodies, with different tenets and customs, with conflicting attitudes toward the Pentateuchal Law, and, indeed, with little in common beyond a similarity of names.

Finally - and this is perhaps the greatest gap in the argument - Dr. Smith entirely fails to bring his pre-Christian Nasaraeans or Nazoraeans into any sort of relation to a Jesus-cult. The two halves of his principal argument fail to connect.

"Nazarene" may possibly enough have originally been an epithet having some religious rather than geographical import; though we do not know what that import was, and the whole question is merely a field for ingenious and [607] unverifiable conjecture.

But at all events, the first-century Jewish community who (according to Dr. Smith) had the name of Nazoreans, are not said, even by Epiphanius, to have maintained a cult of a divine being called Jesus; and the sect which did (according to Dr. Smith) maintain such a cult was not called Nazorean. We are still a long way from the beginning of a proof of the existence of a Gnostic pre-Christian cult of Ihsous o Nazwraios.

III. The words anisthmi and anastasis, with their Aramaic counterparts, were - so the next argument runs - quasi-technical terms in the vocabulary of Jewish Messianism; they referred to the coming and triumph of the hoped-for Redeemer of Israel or of mankind; and the first preachers of the "Anastasis of the Christ" could only have been understood by their contemporary hearers as heralding the speedy fulfilment of this hope.-This contention Dr. Smith bases chiefly upon two sorts of evidence.

1. An examination of both the classical and Hellenistic use of anisthmi, he maintains, shows that, when not qualified by other expressions, the word did not ordinarily or naturally suggest the idea of resurrection from the dead; while it was very familiar in the sense of the "raising up" or "bringing forward," through providential agency, of a prophet or leader or king or deliverer or "horn of salvation." The latter use unquestionably occurs in the New Testament, e. g., Acts iii. 22, 26; Heb. vii. 11.

But the other meaning is, of course, far more common; and I can see no reason whatever for supposing it to be a later or secondary meaning. The verb is used - and used without ek nekrwn or other explanatory context - with the sense "to restore to life," in what was very nearly the most famous passage in all Greek literature - the speech of Achilles to Priam in the last book of the Iliad (550-551):

"οὐ γάρ τι πρήξεις ἀκαχήμενος υἷος ἑῆος,
οὐδέ μιν ἀνστήσεις"

"For naught shall it avail thee to mourn thy noble son.
Thou canst not raise him."

The same sense occurs again in a familiar choral ode of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus (1361), and the Electra of Sophocles (139).

Dr. Smith assuredly knows these facts; he would, I think, have dealt more fairly with his readers if he had explicitly mentioned them - at least the Homeric instance - especially since he takes the trouble to explain away the significance of Lucian's use of anastasis , in the sense of "resurrection from the dead," on the ground of the [608] late date of the writer. This substantive, it is evident, must always have been capable of suggesting the same range of meanings as the corresponding verb.

As for the Hebrew terms, the author's discussion of them is no more convincing. It is true that the causative (Hiphil) of םוק [QUM], "rise," does not occur in the Old Testament with the meaning "raise from the dead";

but the active form of the stem is used to signify "to rise from the dead" in Isaiah xxvi. 14, and Job, xiv. 12. These pertinent passages our author likewise neglects to quote.

Dr. Smith's sixteen pages of labored reasoning on linguistic grounds seem to me wholly without valuable result.

2. A simpler piece of evidence, however, is found by the author in 2 Timothy ii. 18, where we are told that certain teachers, Hymenaeus and Philetus, declared that "the resurrection had already taken place."

It is a little difficult to see how - even if we knew no more about the meaning of this than the author suggests - the text can be supposed to favor the present theory of the original import of Anastasis.

For, in the first place, the resurrection in question must be either that of Jesus or that of Christian believers generally. But the writer of the pastoral epistles surely cannot have deemed it a damnable heresy to maintain either that Jesus had already been "raised up" as the Messiah, or had already been "raised from the dead."

The question at issue is, then, evidently that of the resurrection of the faithful; and anastasis can therefore be used here only in the precise sense which Dr. Smith is intent upon showing that it did not originally bear.

Furthermore, we know, beyond reasonable doubt, just what Gnostic heresy is here referred to; it is the doctrine - fully described by Tertullian and ascribed by him to the Valentinians, by Irenaeus to "the followers of Simon and of Carpocrates" that the true resurrection of the believer takes place when, by the attainment of the saving gnosis, and through baptism, he is delivered from spiritual death (Tertull., De Res. Carnis 19, De Praesc. Haer. 33, Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. II, 31 ch 2).

Other canonical passages cited by the author in support of his contention are even more surprisingly irrelevant. In favor of his theory about the genesis of the Dogma of the Resurrection he cannot be said to have offered any substantial evidence. Though there remain certain supplementary points urged by Dr. Smith in favor of his principal hypothesis, the foregoing examination covers all the arguments which the author himself appears to regard as fundamental.

The long concluding essay Saeculi [609] Silentium,(7) dealing with the relatively distinct problem of the date and authorship of the Epistle to the Romans, it is not possible to consider here.

But of the main and most revolutionary theory, that relating to the origin of Christianity, it may be said, by way of recapitulation, that not only does the author's own evidence, when critically examined, fail to yield any material ground for the theory; but also that, in part, the theory is flatly contradicted by evidence in his chosen sources, of which, for unexplained reasons, he neglects to apprise his readers.

It remains to add that, while the foregoing examination has dealt with the hypotheses of Der vorchristliche Jesus as if there were no general, logical presumption either against or for them, they really conflict with all the antecedent probabilities in such a matter, and could therefore be justified only by the most over whelming mass of specific historical evidences.

For the theory of the book requires us to suppose that a being originally worshiped as divine, came, in a century or so, to be thought of as a person so definitely human as the central figure of the Synoptic Gospels: one born in plebeian family in an ill-esteemed province, who hungered and thirsted, who lived with publicans and sinners, who (except in manifestly late and corrupt passages) is represented as speaking little of himself, who denied his own omniscience, who was betrayed and given over to a shameful death, whose serene faith was transiently overcome in one awful moment of physical anguish on the cross; whose story was associated with definite places and historic characters, and whose brothers and kin and personal followers were, in the early second century, remembered as real persons.

The Transformation of the Prophet of Nazareth into the strange, oracular figure found in the Fourth Gospel, is conceivable ; but the transformation of a being even more vague and superhuman than that of the Fourth Gospel into the hero of the Synoptic Tradition, is a process that passes belief.

We are not without historic examples of the apotheosis of great leaders of mankind; but there is surely no historic parallel for such a rapid and definite humanizing of a metaphysical hypostasis.

ARTHUR O. LOVEJOY.

Notes:

1) Der vorchristliche Jesus, nebst weiteren Vorstudien zur Entstehungs geschichte des Urchristentums. Mit einem Vorworte von P. W. Schmiedel Giessen : A. Zöpelmann, 1906.

2) For the reader of English only, a first-hand account of Dr. Smith's hypotheses seems to be available only in his article "New Testament Criticism" in the Encyclopedia Americana. A part of the argument is, however, published in The Monist, XV, pp. 25-45.

* Having seen advance proofs of Professor Lovejoy's criticism, Dr. Smith takes exception to the implication of unfairness on his part in the citation of Hippolytus, and in the January number of The Monist will take the opportunity to maintain his position especially with regard to this point as well as other particulars presented by Professor Lovejoy.-ED.

3) See Dr. Smith's article in The Monist, XV, pp. 25-45.

4) The Monist, XV, p. 34.

5) So Jerome: ita Christum recipiunt ut observations legis veteris non omittant.

6) Lest the reader suspect me of exaggeration in ascribing to Dr. Smith this humorous idea of a conspiracy of silence about the "Nasaraioi," let me quote his own words: "The dumbness of other heresiologists … now becomes more expressive than their speech. It was just because they had wit enough to perceive the danger of discussing these Nasaraioi, that they maintained a prudent but ominous silence, broken only by harmless allusions to their heretical doctrines. But the valor of Epiphanius got the better of his discretion." The Monist, XV, p. 41.

7) Discussed by the same writer in The Hibbert Journal, I, pp. 308-334.

Color highlights are mine. I have not yet laid hands on The Monist vol XV.

[DCHindley]

Smith responds ...

William Benjamin Smith, "Professor Lovejoy on 'Der Vorchristliche Jesus'." The Monist, Vol 19-3, Jul 1909, 409-420
I guess I never downloaded the PDF, so as Seinfeld's "soup Nazi" says, "no link for you!"
"Courtesy of JSTOR"

[409] The following reply to Professor Lovejoy's criticism was promised in a footnote for the January number of The Monist and was in fact written out in full nearly two weeks before October 29, 1908, when I sailed for Chile. But as the protracted absence from the United States that followed rendered it quite impossible either to give the paper final revision or for me to see the proofs, if it should be issued in January, it seemed best to hold it back for the present number. The occasion for any rejoinder whatever is supplied not by the argumentative appeal of the review, which may be safely left to the judgment of readers of the book, but by its strictures upon the author's treatment of authorities, especially of Hippolytus.

Imprimis, let me thank Professor Lovejoy for the general manner of his review. While not exposing fully the argumentative nerve of the work in hand, he seems really to have intended to get at the heart of the matter, and his statement of the main drift of the essays calls for acknowledgement. Moreover, he has not shrunk [410] from making certain concessions, which seem to be far-reaching, however restricted they may have been in the purpose of the Reviewer.

I. It is particularly in dealing with Hippolytus that Professor Lovejoy's criticism calls for comment. He has, in fact, in terms doubtless meant to be as delicate as possible, charged upon me unfairness in citation. He quotes from p. 123 that Hippolytus "declares repeatedly that the Naassenes were the first of the heretical sects, from whom all the others afterwards known as Gnostics derived (Ref. V. 6, 10, n)." "We may quite definitely conclude, therefore, in agreement with Hippolytus, that Naassenism was antecedent to Christianity, that it flourished before the Cross was preached, and that the later forms of Gnosticism were its offspring" (p. 124).

To these sentences, thinks Professor Love joy, the readers of Hippolytus will "revert with some astonishment." First, he denies that H. in the "passages cited makes any such statement as that ascribed to him, about the descent of all other Gnostic doctrines from Naassenism"; secondly, he declares that "H. in plain terms describes the Naassenes as Christians. They are classified as a "heresy"; they taught that the archetypal Man "descended in one man, Jesus, who was born of Mary" (V, 6); they traced their doctrine "through Mariamne to James, the brother of the Lord" which, of course, shows them not only Christian but also, at earliest, of the first or second generation after the Apostles. Dr. Smith's omission to mention any of these statements of H., and his citing of that authority as a witness in favor of a view of the date of the Naassenes which the very same chapters of the Refutatio categorically contradict this is a thing so amazing that it is difficult to comment upon it with propriety." In a word, the gravamen of his charge is that the author has suppressed statements of H. that show precisely the opposite of what the author ascribes to H.

Let us see. It may not be necessary to weary the reader with citation, but in any case the matter is too serious to pass over lightly. Does H. declare repeatedly that the Naasseni were the first Gnostics? Book V of the Refutatio opens thus: "The following are the contents of the fifth book of the Refutation of all Heresies: What the assertions are of the Naasseni who style themselves Gnostics." It is not here said of the following Peratae, Sethians, Justinians, that they called themselves Gnostics, but only of the [411] Naasseni. To my mind there is here a general identification of Naassenes and Gnostics, stated almost as clearly as Hippolytus states anything. Again H. proposes here (and the sentiment is repeated in VI, 6 and X, 9), "to begin from those that have dared to celebrate a serpent, the author of the error (ton aiton ths planhs genomenon ofin umnein) . . . .The priests then and champions of the system (dogmatos) have been first those surnamed Naasseni (prwtoi oi epiklhqentes Naasshnoi), in the Hebrew tongue so named for the serpent (o ofis) is called Naas" The decisive adjective first is seemingly unobserved by Professor Lovejoy,* who remarks queerly that the phrase "afterwards called themselves Gnostics" "does not imply that they were the only or the first heretics who did so." Apparently in eagerness to convict the author of misstatement, Professor Lovejoy seems to overlook logical pitfalls. If the Naassenes were not the first Gnostics, then the latter must be even older than the author maintains, which would strengthen the general position of his book perceptibly. These Naassenes who called themselves Gnostics were the first in championship of the dogma (Gnosticism). If this does not mean that they were the first Gnostics, what does it mean? And if they were not the first, who pray were the first? And who were the others, if they were not the only? H. continues: "Afterwards they surnamed themselves Gnostics, declaring they alone knew the depths." There is no hint that they took the name Gnostics from any others; they surnamed themselves so for a specific reason: they nicknamed themselves Knowers, because they alone did know. The only fair understanding of such words is that the surname Gnostics originated with these Naassenes; in the absence of any counter-indication, we must affirm as much. H. proceeds: "From whom many having parted off multifariously constituted the heresy, though essentially one, in different dogmas detailing the same things, as the discussion as it advances shall prove." From this passage, in connection with others similar, I have inferred that H. would represent the Naassenes, surnamed Gnostics, as the first Gnostics, from whom all other Gnostics sprung, the heresy having parted into many subdivisions. Is not the inference fair? Professor Lovejoy holds that it refers "merely to the diverse subdivisions of the Ophite Sect." But Ophite Sect means Ophites, and this is merely the Greek for Naassenes (ofis = naas, says H.), and this was the earlier name for such as "surnamed [412] themselves Gnostics." That my interpretation was not forced, but perfectly natural, is made clear by the remark of Dr. Salmond in a footnote to his translation of H.: "gnwsis, - a term often alluded to by St. John, and which gives its name "Gnosticism" to the various forms of the Ophitic heresy." The position of the great English scholar, who certainly has no bias in favor of Der vorchristliche Jesus, seems to agree precisely with the position which Professor Lovejoy so criticises and yet seems to adopt as his own!

Further on (V, 8) H. designates these same Naassenes outright as "the Gnostics": "Following these and the like, the most marvelous Gnostics, inventors of a new grammatic art...."

Again, in quoting the Naassene Parable of the Sower: "That is, he says, none becomes a hearer of these mysteries except only the gnostici perfecti (oi gnwstikoi teleioi)."

Again, (V, n): "These (the foregoing) doctrines, then, the Naasseni attempt to establish, naming themselves Gnostics. But since the error is many-headed and diversified, as in truth the hydra that history tells of, when at one blow, wielding the wand of truth, we have struck off the heads of this (heresy) by means of refutation, we shall exterminate the whole monster. For neither do the remaining heresies show off much different from this, being mutually connected in spirit of error. But since, altering the words and the names of the Serpent (o<ca>s), they wished there to be many heads of the Serpent, neither so shall we fail to refute them as they will." So closes H. his 38-page long treatment of the Naasseni. The extreme length of this treatment, greater than is given any other single heresy, shows clearly their decisive importance in his eyes. Playing on the terms Naas and Ophis, he likens this Naassenism (Ophism) to a Hydra, he seems to identify it with Gnosticism, he thinks that in beheading it he has beheaded all heresies, since the rest (ai loipai) are held together (with it) in spirit of error; he does not regard the rest as really worth while; nevertheless (all'), since they are heads of the same Serpent (that is, outgrowths of the same Naassenism Ophism), he will smite them also one by one, and this he straightway proceeds to do in the remainder of his work. If not then quite as plain as day, it is at least as plain as anything in the Refutatio, that H. regards his task as in principle fulfilled with the slaughter of the Hydra or Serpent of Naassenism; but to make assurance double sure he will thrice slay the slain, he will smite to death through his following pages every form of the many headed monster. The simile is faulty, but the meaning is clear.

[413] Manifestly H. must and does regard these "remaining heresies" as second in importance and still more in time. The multifission of the Hydra must follow and could not precede the Hydra itself. It is evident beyond argument that H. regards these "other heresies" as later and as offshoots of primitive Naassenism. He does not indeed say "all other heresies," but he does say "the remaining heresies." The meaning is the same. H. is speaking of a class of things, and a single class, and the "all" was not necessary. He was not careful to guard against quibbling that he could not anticipate. This use of the article in a universal sense is regular in Greek. Euclid does not say "All parallelograms on equal bases and between the same parallels are equal to one another" but "the parallelograms" (ta parallhlogramma); so in the famous 47th it is not "in all" but "In the right-angled triangles" (en tois orq. trig.) The case is not different in English; says the master logician, W. Stanley Jevons (Elementary Lessons in Logic, p. 65) "I shall frequently use propositions in the indefinite form as examples, on the understanding that where no sign of quantity appears, the universal quantity is to be assumed. It is probable that wherever a term is used alone, it ought be interpreted as meaning the whole of its class." Such is plainly the necessary interpretation here; for if not all forms of Gnosticism be derived from this primitive (in H's estimation), then he must have supposed some other independent primitive. But is there the slightest shred of evidence that he ever assumed two original sources of Gnosticism? Or that there ever was any other than the one Ophitic source? Entia non multiplicanda sunt praeter necessitate. This razor of Occam shears off any other stem until its necessity is proved, and no proof has ever been attempted. What form of Gnosticism was there that could not be traced back to Naassenism, in H's conception? What Dr. Salmond thought of the matter appears clearly in the heading he has given to this chapter VI: "The Ophites the Grand Source of Heresy," and again to chapter I, Book VI: "The Ophites the Progenitors of Subsequent Heresies."

I should here remark that in my original thought only the first part of Professor Love joy's quotation, was intended as a declaration of H., "That the Naassenes were the first of the heretical sects"; the following clause, "from whom etc. derived," was intended merely as my own inference gathering up the diffuse and disconnected deliverances of H. into a single statement. The reader now has the facts sufficiently presented, and in view of them I maintain with added emphasis that the natural and hardly avoidable inference from [414] the words of H. is that he regarded all "the other heresies" or forms of Gnosticism as diversifications of primitive Naassenism. Possibly the language of the text may sound a little dogmatic, but the explanation is easy to find, by glancing at the opposite page, 122, where it is stated that unfortunately it was not possible to go into details at that point, but that only the general lines of the argument could be laid down. In fact, the detailed treatment of the whole testimony of H. has for some years lain in my desk in manuscript, waiting upon a similar treatment of Irenaeus, not yet completed, the two to be published together. Pages 122-4 merely resumed under heads A, B, C, D in briefest terms some main results of that study. But even as it stands there is naught to retract. The statement of the text is borne out by comparison of all the pertinent passages in H.

Of itself the criticism of Professor Lovejoy may not seem to call for so much attention; but it may be properly used as an occasion to set an important matter in clearer relief.

However, it is not this quotation that most moves the amazement of Professor Lovejoy, not to say his virtuous indignation. It is the alleged suppression of the alleged counter-testimony of H., that the Naassenes were at the earliest post-apostolic. Now if the pages in question had professed to give full discussion of the matter, this "omission" might justly have excited more than marvel. In fact, however, they profess no such thing; they give intentionally no discussion at all but merely state certain results to which the writer had been led by a minute study, yet unpublished. Now these results were all that the pages professed to state; the minute investigation is a large part of a volume yet in manuscript. In that volume the reader will find a discussion of the passages referred to by Professor Lovejoy a discussion almost painfully minute. The results stated on page 123 are not in the least affected by the passages in question. They hold firmly in spite of those passages. Such being the case, I felt and still feel myself justified in stating the results arrived at, without any mention of passages that do not really invalidate those results. In such a summary statement of conclusions it would be out of place to refer to objections that do not really hold. Their "omission" does not imply that such objections can not be made, but only that in the opinion of the writer they can be satisfactorily answered. In the present case the passages were not quoted, because they appeared trivial. My critic may hold that so far from being trivial they are weighty and even decisive. The reader may judge. Professor Lovejoy says: "H. in plain terms [415] describes the Naassenes as Christians." He does indeed quote a Naassene writer as saying: "And of all men we Christians alone are those who in the third gate celebrate the mystery etc." (V, 9). But what of it? When the Naassenes assumed this name is not said, not hinted, neither do we know how old is the name itself. It may very well be pre-Christian. There is in fact a double reference in the word Christian, to which I had never supposed it would be necessary to advert, namely a chronological and a dogmatic reference. Chronologically Christian refers definitely to the year I of our era and later; before the beginning of that year, everything was pre-Christian. Dogmatically it refers to the general thought content of the propaganda that has spread over Europe and America. This Christian content, I contend, was in large measure pre-Christian in time. The Naassenes might have called themselves Christians before A. D. 1, though I by no means affirm that they did so. "Christians" (i. e., Christ-servants) may have been one of their later names.

Professor Lovejoy continues: "They are classified as a 'heresy.' "This has no significance, no evidential value. "Heresy" simply meant sect, school, set of philosophic or religious principles, and there is no reason for supposing that heterodoxy must be later than orthodoxy. In my judgment the heresies were not in general deviations from existent orthodoxy; on the contrary, they were more ancient forms of faith, which orthodoxy had outgrown and left behind; just as errors in syntax and pronunciation are very often only elder correct forms of speech, which the language has at last rejected.

Professor Lovejoy again: "They traced their doctrine "through Mariamne to James, the brother of the Lord" which of course, shows them not only Christian but also at earliest of the first or second generation after the Apostles." "H. plainly and consistently describes them as a late first-century or second-century school." Indeed! So then they were at earliest near the beginning of the second century! It is hard not to smile at the naivete of these deliverances. Of Mariamne we know little or nought. Origen indeed speaks of the followers of this shadowy character as mentioned by Celsus, but himself had met none of them (C. C. V. 62). But "James, the brother of the Lord"! Here Professor Lovejoy assumes the whole point in controversy. If James was really the flesh-and-blood "brother of the Lord" (i. e., of Jesus), then the book reviewed was not worth reviewing. But can it be that any one really attaches [416] weight to this expression, even when strengthened by the prefix "twin"? Least of all men does Professor Lovejoy need to be taught about kinship in the Orient. Who can forget the answer of this same "Jesus" to the question "Who are my brethren"? How "looking round on them which sat round about him, he saith, Behold, my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." It would be hard to imagine a passage more thoroughly in accord with the contentions of the work reviewed. In Matt, xxviii. 10 the same Jesus says "Fear not; go, announce to my brothers." And in John xx. 17 "Go to my brothers and say to them," clearly meaning disciples. Jerome understood the matter better, for he says, commenting on Gal. i. 19, "James was called the brother of the Lord because of his great character, his incomparable faith, and his extraordinary wisdom." The Epistle attributed to James shows not the faintest trace of blood kinship with Jesus, in fact nowhere suggests the New Testament story, but expounds solely the philosophical morality of the Dispersion. As well might one think of Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius as of its author as consanguineous with Jesus. The phrase "Brothers of the Lord" seems to be merely one of a score of names borne by groups of early propagandists. As such a class name it appears in i Cor. ix. 5, "The Apostles and the Brethren of the Lord and Kephas." We need not then "strike out" anything "from Hippolytus's text"; these "numerous passages" are not "unfavorable to the theory of a pre-Christian Jesus." But even if they were, what would it signify? Simply that H. himself did not embrace that theory, that he occupied the modern standpoint of Professor Lovejoy. And doubtless he did. Like Epiphanius and all the heresiographers he was an Old Catholic and held fast to the view established against the "heretics" in the second century and prevalent to-day. Even had he explicitly declared the Naassenes were post-Christian in origin, it would not matter; for he would merely have been expressing what must have been his faith, whether with or without evidence, whether consistent or inconsistent with acknowledged facts. The truth is, all the heresiologues are special pleaders. They had to make out a certain case against the "heresies"; they had to postdate them, in order to uphold their dogmas. It made no difference that unmanageable facts embarrassed their faith; the more intractable the fact, the more steadfast their faith; with Tertullian they cried out, "I believe it, because it is impossible." Hence the deliberate statements of these excellent men regarding heresiarchs and [417] their dates count but for very little, being divided by such a large factor of prejudice. All the more heavy do their unthoughted statements fall into the scale. Their unmeditated words are also unmedicated. It is these we are to heed most closely, from these we must draw out the implications of which the authors were unconscious. It was Thenius (I believe) who shrewdly said of a datum given by Josephus: "This statement appears to have been made incautiously; we may therefore accept it as correct." Professor Lovejoy smiles at "the humorous idea of a conspiracy of silence about the Nasaraioi"; but why should such a conspiracy be more unlikely in the third century than in the twentieth? It would imply only a general motive operating on the writers: a bewilderment as to how to deal with these ancients, a bewilderment manifest enough among moderns also.

Now let us see how the whole representation of H. impresses a competent English specialist certainly orthodox enough to please Professor Lovejoy. Speaking of Hippolytus on Justinus, Dr. Salmond says: "What H. here states respecting Justinus is quite new. No mention occurs of this heretic in ecclesiastical history. It is evident, however, that, like Simon Magus, he was contemporary with St. Peter and St. Paul [an elder contemporary according to Acts viii. 9, W. B. S.] Justinus, however, and the Ophitic sect to which he belonged, are assigned by H. and Irenseus a prior position as regards the order of their appearance to the system of Simon, or its offshoot Valentinianism. The Ophites engrafted Phrygian Judaism, and the Valentinians Gentilism, upon Christianity; the former not rejecting the speculations and mysteries of Asiatic paganism, and the latter availing themselves of the cabbalistic corruptions of Judaism. The Judaistic element soon became prominent in successive phases of Valentinianism, which produced a fusion of the sects of the old Gnostics and of Simon. Hippolytus, however, now places the Ophitic sect before us prior to its amalgamation with Valentinianism. Here, for the first time, we have an authentic delineation of the primitive Ophites. This is of great value." We need not accept all that Dr. Salmond here says. Some of his constructions may be faulty; the important fact is that he states unequivocally that Justinus was contemporary with St. Peter and St. Paul, and that Hippolytus and Irenaeus assign him a "position prior to the system of Simon," himself prior to the preaching of Peter (Acts viii. 9). Here then Dr. Salmond ranges himself squarely against Professor L. in the matter under debate. What Dr. Salmond [418] neglects to state is that H. writing of Justinus declares that "all these style themselves Gnostics in the peculiar sense that they alone have drunk down the marvelous Gnosis of the Perfect and the Good." Here then was a Gnostic prior (according to H.) to Simon Magus (who was at the latest contemporary with Sts. Peter and Paul), hence in the first half of the first century; moreover he was an Ophite, a Gnostic, full-fledged. Moreover he is placed by this same H. after the Sethians, and these after the Peratae, and all these after the Naassenes, the Ophites proper, the first who surnamed themselves Gnostics. These latter facts are no less important, indeed far more important, than the ones that Dr. Salmond emphasizes, which by themselves are enough to upset Professor Love joy's contention completely.

If then I am at all capable of comprehending chronological combinations, I must hold unshaken the positions of Der vorchristliche Jesus with regard to H. It should be added that the chronological order given by H. is fully confirmed by analysis of the various doctrines, that of the Naasseni showing itself to be obviously the most primitive. No one, however, would insist upon the particular order of the middle terms, Peratae, Sethians, Justinians, who may well have been nearly contemporary.

II. With regard to the testimony of Epiphanius it seems sufficient merely to refer to the passages quoted in full in Der vorchristliche Jesus, as a correction of the representations of the review. The reader may judge for himself. So far as the general opinion of reviews would seem to go, there is but one escape from the conclusions of the text: to deny outright that Epiphanius knew what he was talking about. The desperation of this last resort needs no comment.

III. With regard to avisthmi and avastasis Professor Lovejoy is at pains to show that the former is used classically to mean "restore to life."

"Thou say'st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way."

The same is distinctly recognized in Der vorchristliche Jesus. The passages referred to by Professor Lovejoy (I. 24, 550-551), Agam. 1361, Electra, 139) were not mentioned, nor Eur. H. F. 719, more apposite though uncited by Steph. or L. and S., because the discussion was not about avisthmi but about anastasis. It was not questioned that "raise up" might be applied to the dead, indeed such an occasional use seems almost inevitable; not quite so, however, [419] the use of "raising up" as the technical term for resurrection from the dead, though this sense was also admitted as "perhaps known from the earliest times." In fact the actuality of the double use was well-nigh essential to the argument of the text. The verses, Is. xxvi. 14 and Job. xiv. 12, mentioned "as pertinent passages our author likewise neglects to quote," are caught by Professor Lovejoy in a net as fine-meshed as a Pasteur filter. "Dead, they shall not live; shades, they shall not rise" (Is. xxvi. 14): "So man lieth down and riseth not" (Job xiv. 12). Such a use of the Kal future of qum in the commonest sense of rise up was surely not under consideration. That the rising is from the couch of death, is given only by the context. The passages have no logical pertinence. If such must be cited, what can be omitted?

Professor Love joy thinks the linguistic argument wholly without valuable results, in striking contrast with a pre-eminent Biblical scholar in England, who declares that "though exceptions may be taken to some details of the argument, a prima facie case is certainly made out." Perhaps it may be well to recall the logical movement, which can hardly be detected in Professor Lovejoy's comments. The reader will find the situation summed up on pp. 81-82: The preachers in Acts use uniformly terms that might indeed mean resurrection (from the dead), but to their hearers at least meant much more naturally and familiarly quite another thing, namely, establishment. They spoke in the same breath of "raising up David" and "raising up Jesus." It would be strange if under the supposed conditions they indulged in an unnecessary pun. They also certainly spoke of this "raising up of Jesus" (Acts iii. 22, 26; xiii. 33) in the sense of establishment; strange that they should also use it then originally in a sense entirely different. Also the text criticism shows that the phrase "from the dead" is in many cases loose and uncertain and bears strong internal marks of being an insertion. But this linguistic argument does not stand alone. It is confirmed by the second half of the essay, which even critics who reject the first half find very significant. The argument must be judged as a unit. In fact, the whole argument of the book is cumulative. It must be answered, if at all, in its entirety, not merely in this or that detail.

IV. The case of Apollos has proved a veritable crux to the critics of Der vorchristliche Jesus. Nearly every one adventures a solution of the difficulty, no two the same solution, and no solution at all acceptable. Loisy, in reviewing Der vorchristliche Jesus, [420] concedes the inadequacy of all solutions and admits (il faut admettre) that the primitive preaching must have taken place under forms more various and conditions more complicated than hitherto supposed. This concession seems to me to go very far, much beyond what Loisy intended. Clemen takes the bull by the horns, frankly declaring that the author of Acts must have erred. Soltau admits that the reference ta peri tou Ihsou must be to the cult (Religionsanschauung) and not to the historic content of the life of Jesus Into this list of warring explanations Professor Lovejoy's may enter with the rest. To my mind it goes far aside into irrelevant matters, leaving the knot of the difficulty untouched. It is at best what a chemist might call a 2% solution.

In conclusion, let me reiterate that the argument of the book cannot be judged save by the laws of cumulative evidence. It is the whole body of facts adduced that must be adjusted into some self consistent scheme of interpretation. We must restore in thought the unity and coherence that undoubtedly bound them together originally. Nor let any one imagine, as does Professor Lovejoy apparently, that practically the whole body of evidence thus far accumulated or at least the most important elements have been presented in Der vorchristliche Jesus. That work was in fact a reconnoissance in force. The mass of evidential matter already gathered is three or four times as great and in my judgment has independently even greater demonstrative power. Of course, the examination is not yet complete; in the nature of the case it cannot be completed, but it seems to have gone far enough even now to indicate clearly that (to quote a distinguished British scholar and philosopher) this new "conception of the Origines of Christianity is in the main on right lines."

WILLIAM BENJAMIN SMITH.
TULANE UNIVERSITY, NEW ORLEANS.

* But not by Mansel, e. g., who repeatedly speaks of these sectaries as "first," "earliest Gnostics." "The Naassenes, the earliest sect according to the arrangement of H., are spoken of by him as the first body who assumed the name of Gnostics" (Gnostic Heresies, 7, 95, 104).

It has occurred to me that this exchange may have inspired the author of the script for the movie Jurassic Park, as the eccentric billionaire who funded the park and the underlying science "spared no expense" to procure "Chilean Sea Bass". Prof. Smith says he went to Chile and could not properly respond sooner. If one is to take a negative attitude towards the eccentric millionaire's project, as Goldbloom does in the movie, the Chilean Sea Bass (Patagonian and Antarctic toothfish) represents the billionaire's distraction from the moral and safety concerns relevant to re-creation of extinct species. So here, the trip the Chile represents a distraction from his focus (the "2% solution" in this response is a euphemism for "cocaine" and hence possibly the reason for the trip to Chile, where coca is grown), causing him to stumble. All of this is, of course, not meant to be taken seriously, but Smith & Lovejoy should be, if only to look at both side of a pre-existent mythic Christ argument, such as adopted by Carrier.

DCH

[MrMacSon]

I think the problem lies in the fact that Carrier does not use the term in the same way that, say, Merriam-Webster's dictionary does: "interpretation of myths as traditional accounts of historical persons and events". I think that all online dictionaries have a very similar definition. In short, stories about renowned humans (kings, warriers, etc) were embellished until they were "deified" on account of their contributions to the welfare of mankind in general.

This is exactly the opposite of what Carrier asserts, that a mythical divine figure is anthropomorphized into a historical man.

I think the problem is that

1. the term euhemerize has been dormant because it has not been relevant until the historical Jesus v mythical Jesus debate hotted up in this internet era;

2. the term euhemerize has been applied after the event - ie after euhemeization - by people not knowing what it really means.

2. the term euhemerize has been misrepresented by apologists not wanting it to be applied to Jesus the Christ of Nazareth.


To say

In short, stories about renowned humans (kings, warriers, etc) were embellished until they were "deified"

is wrong. That is deification --or apotheosis.

euhemeriation is what Euhemerus is alleged to have done to Zeus and Uranus - Euhemerus is alleged to have portrayed these gods as having been human.