WW Chaos
Now … let us take the Greek word chaos, chaos. Hesiod, in his Theogony, says "[[greek char]]," "first chaos was." The singularity of this verb, [[greek char]], is that it signifies to become. Obviously enough, not to become from nothing; but Chaos first became in the sense of the first dawn of manifestation, the first flutter of awakening life on a plane below that of material homogeneity. As you will remember, last week we spoke of hierarchies, and of one common life running through all; the gods of one being the elementals of the next higher, and the elementals of one being the gods of the next lower. Now Chaos may be called the first material extension in (not of) space. Milton speaks of the "void and formless infinite" when he refers to chaos; and when we study the first verse in the Hebrew Bible, which I hope to take up today, we will see that "void" must not be taken in the sense of absolute vacuity, but as void of manifestation, void of what is here, void of heterogeneity. Milton again speaks of it as being "matter unformed and void"; and this is a typically Greek sense of the word chaos. Ovid speaks of "rudis indigestaque moles" (Metam., 1, 7), "the rude, confused mass." This is the primal manifestation of matter conceived of from another viewpoint. Get the thought, the meaning, of the thing: the rude and unformed, inchoate mass of the Roman, conceived of as emptiness by the Greek. Gas may be conceived of from one point of view as being as thick and coarse and heavy as mud, but looked at from our material plane a gas is tenuous, invisible, thin. So Chaos, as it is often conceived of, may be called the yawning abyss, and this is the very translation given to a certain word in the Scandinavian Eddas. This word is Ginungagap, translated as the yawning abyss; the same meaning, the same conception, that is applied to chaos. The difference between chaos and space is finally this: that space is limitless boundlessness, limitless duration, whereas chaos is the conception of extension as applied to the dawn of a solar system, or of a universe. First, voidness, so far as condensed matter is concerned; then the first quiver of life runs through the homogeneity of that part, if I may use that term, of space; and, as H. P. Blavatsky so beautifully expresses it in The Secret Doctrine, "the mother awakens from her sleep after seven eternities". Manifestation begins, and through ages upon ages of constant thickening and coarsening, matter is formed -- first so subtle, thin, diaphanous that we have no conception of it, vastly more tenuous than our gas; then thickening, coarsening constantly, until we arrive at our own rocky sphere.You see then that Chaos is the opposite of Kosmos; as Kosmos is that which is marshalled, arranged, set in order, the handiwork of the Lord, as the Hebrew Bible puts it, the handiwork of the gods, or the handiwork of the angels, as the Kabbalah puts it. So Chaos is the opposite of it, the lack of material shape, form, order -- not disorder, though it is often conceived of by the ancient poets under that figure merely by force of contrast as compared with the word Kosmos. As I have said, when Ovid speaks of "the rude and unformed mass", he looks at it from one point of view; he does not mean spiritual atoms floating about without law; it is a conception higher than that of atoms. To use a material symbol, we may speak of it as water. Water is colorless, we will say, transparent; and if we were marine or aquatic animals we could live in water as we now live in air. We will conceive of water as being infinitely fluid, instead of being only partially so, and as possessing no properties whatever except that of its own characteristic. Now the animals that dwell in water, the plants that have their being in water, we may conceive of as analogies to the divine beings in the waters of space, in the waters of chaos. "And the spirit of the Gods (Elohim) played upon the waters", as the Hebrew Bible says; and every word of that is full of meaning, as we shall see when we come to it. When Milton talks of chaos as that "where eldest Night and Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold eternal anarchy" (Paradise Lost, II, 95), he is partly right and partly wrong. It is true that the ancient poets speak of eldest night, and Hesiod, from whom Milton draws, speaks of Night and Chaos as the ancestors of nature, (Theogony, 123.) But there can be no anarchy where there is no manifestation; there can only be anarchy (which means a condition of being or society without a center or head, without a government) in manifestation. Homogeneity is oneness; and anarchy can only exist in heterogeneity, or, in other words, where there is conflict of wills. Were man perfect we would have no need of any government, or law. Man is not perfect, therefore law is imposed by man in self-protection. Man invents laws, finds out the way of governing himself and his fellows, studies to stimulate his own sense of duty, teaches the necessity of self-control, etc. But Milton is right if he uses "anarchy" as the opposite of "Kosmos."
SEE SERAPHIM, THRONES, DOMINATIONS, VIRTUES, POWERS, PRINCIPALITIES, ARCHANGELS, ANGELS, HIERARCHIES
CHRISTIANITY
WW Christianity [[T]]he Christian religion … is, as I have said, an evolution. Its most important doctrines, the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Logos, the Virgin Birth of the Savior of men, the Angelical Governance of the World -- all these we have seen to be archaic pagan doctrines. I wish to emphasize one fact before we go further, that while it is undoubtedly true that everything that is in Christianity is based upon a Theosophical foundation -- that is, everyone of these doctrines, at least -- there is no question that these doctrines have been so modified, so stultified, so strangled in the effort to hold them, to explain them and expound them to critics, sceptics, and religious iconoclasts, that they have lost their true life. The Church has lost the key. It never had it beyond the first 75 or 100 years. It would seem as if scarcely 50 years had passed from the accepted time of birth of the founder of Christianity before disagreement and dissention began to creep in. The Christian brotherhood, which seems in its original to have been a kind of Theosophical sodality, the Theosophical Society of its day, suffered the same disintegration that we see to be almost inherent in human affairs unless indeed great men, great minds, are at the head of society. Some man of an inquiring mind, quick intellect, ambitious character, will spring up. Sincerely or insincerely, it is hard to say, perhaps both, he founds a society within the mother society, by drawing together sympathetic spirits. He is following his own desires, possibly sincere ones. He is not intellectual enough, keen enough, to see and feel the meaning, the necessity, the beauty of harmony, of the unity which makes strength. His society grows, it may separate itself from the mother society, it may start on a career of its own. If it grows, indeed, another man similar to the first one springs up in it, and we find it like the branches of a tree splitting into other branches, every little society following its own leader. Some have more real life than others. In some cases these innovations may be for the good. Many of the Christian sects seem to have been founded on a desire to get back to the original Theosophical aspect of the Christian faith from which it had so largely departed. We have thus Arianism, founded by Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, which nearly split the Christian Church in twain, and whose doctrines were condemned at the General Council at Nicaea in 325, when the Nicene Creed, which we examined in our first and second studies, was set forth. He (Arius) thought, for instance, (and he had a great following) that Jesus was not the second person of the Trinity, which idea seemed then to be growing in Christian faith, but that he was divine in the sense of being the first creature, the first creation, of God, hence the Logos, but he was not one of the Trinity. He in fact denied the Trinity; and it was largely to condemn these doctrines of Arius that the orthodox Church, that is, those who accepted the current ideas of the day, met by order of the Emperor Constantine in 325 A.D. at Nicaea and set forth the Nicene Creed, its declaration of faith.
There is a very interesting historical record about Isis (Neith). In the town of Sais, which is on the Canopic mouth of the Nile, in the Delta, in Egypt, there was a magnificent temple, and in it a statue, on which it is said there was this written, which has come down to us in Greek. (Probably it was not originally in Greek, but in the native language. It reads: "I am Isis, all which has been, which is, and shall be; and no one of mortals has ever revealed (or removed) my garment -- and the fruit that I brought forth became the sun." This line "the fruit that I brought forth became the sun", is only reported to us by Proclus, the Neo-Platonic philosopher, though the rest of the inscription has come down to us from both Plutarch and Proclus.
Now it is a very interesting fact, which has its own value, that the fruit of the womb of Mary called Virgin was Jesus, and in the Christian writers, particularly in the writers of the earlier centuries, he is connected very closely in symbology and in philosophical thought with the sun. There is a Christian hymn to Jesus Christ, to Jesus as the Christ, dating from the 6th or 7th century, which runs as follows in Latin:
Verusque Sol, illabere,
Micans nitore perpeti,
Jubarque Sancti Spiritus Infunde nostris sensibus!
[Cf. the metrical hymn of the Rig-Veda (iii, 62, 10), Tat savitur varenyarn bhargo devasya dhimai dhiyo yo nah prachodayat. Literally, Let us meditate on that most excellent light of the divine Sun, that it may illumine our minds.-- PLP EDS.]
I ask your close attention to this:
"O true Sun, go down," -- (that is, fall as the afternoon sun does; it is evidently sung to the afternoon sun) -- "O thou true Sun, go down!, shining with perpetual light! Radiance of the Holy Spirit, infill our minds!" A beautiful thought. You see the sun here is called true sun, evidently marking a distinction between a true sun and lesser sun. "Shining with perpetual light; O glory of the Holy Spirit" -- (the sun is the glory or radiance of the Holy Spirit, or the third person of the Trinity --), "infill our minds." It is an invocation, a prayer, and a hymn to the Sun, as typical an example of sun-worship as could be found in any one of the so-called sun worshiping religions. The thought is very beautiful, and to a philosophical mind is perfectly clear. So we see that Jesus as late as the 6th and 7th centuries was spoken of as the true Sun and the glory of the Holy Spirit; and the Sun was looked upon as being the representative or prototype in the sky of what Jesus was among men.
Now there is another curious fact which before we go on I would like to advert to. It is very little known, and unquestionably the Christian theologians did as little as they could to have it known. You will remember that in one of the chapters of Matthew it states that when Jesus was brought before Pilate, the Roman governor, he said (at least the writer called Matthew says), that there was a robber in jail called Barabbas, and that he asked the people "Who will you have, Jesus or Barabbas?" -- ("Therefore when they were gathering together, Pilate said unto them, Whom will ye that I release unto you? Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?" (Matthew, 27, 17) And then in verse 21: "The governor answered and said unto them, 'Which of the twain will ye that I release unto you?' They said 'Barabbas' ").
Now one of the greatest, most learned, sincerest, and wisest of the Christian fathers was Origen. He lived in Alexandria at the beginning of the third century, and wrote voluminous works. He was a man of philosophical mind and his writings are very valuable for the information on early Christianity which they contain. In one of his works, a commentary on Matthew, we learn that the Bible in his day, at least Matthew in his day, tells us that the name of this Barabbas was Jesus -- Jesus Barabbas. You will remember that one of the titles of Jesus, or rather one of the ways in which he is described, was "Son of the Father." Barabbas is Syrian for "Son of the Father"; and the interesting point about that is this: that here we have one, the supposed founder of Christianity (accused of blasphemy and insurrection, according to the New Testament tale, by the Jews who sought his death at the hands of the Roman Procurator), whose name was Jesus, frequently referred to as the Son of the Father; and at the same time there was a man in jail called Jesus surnamed the Son of the Father, or insurrectionist; and for some reason for which neither legend nor history has a record, Pilate is said to have offered to give Jesus, the Son of the Father, for Jesus the Son of the Father. And he said: "Which will you have, Jesus the Son of the Father or Jesus the Son of the Father called Christ; and they said: "Jesus, the Son of the Father." The point to notice here is the extreme confusion which in the early days must have existed -- the wheels within wheels as is shown in the variation in the Gospels, thus making their composite nature.
Now Origen, from whom we have this knowledge, wishes to efface the word Jesus on the ground that "the word Jesus should not be applied to a malefactor" against the testimony of the Bible itself. He says it is improper that an evildoer should have the same name as the founder of the Christian faith. Origen was clearly disturbed -- for reasons not hard to divine. Of course the name is a Hebrew name, and means "savior"; Joshua, and Jehoshua are merely variants; it is Latinized as "Jesus." This one little fact gives a glimpse of the critical chaos into which at so early a time as Origen the Christian writings such as then existed had fallen, and of the seeming lack of knowledge which the Christians then possessed. Origen was a learned man, and Bishop Marsh, an eminent English theologian in his translation of Michaelis's (a German writer) Introduction to the New Testament, long ago pointed out that so great was the authority of this early Christian writer Origen in the Church at that time that many of the changes he made were adopted in all subsequent editions of the Christian scriptures, and unquestionably we owe the originals of the best known of the present Greek manuscripts to Origen. You will remember that there was no printing in those days, that manuscripts were copied laboriously by hand by a class of people commonly spoken of as scribes or writers, and papyrus or parchment was costly, and therefore it required the combination of an educated man and a man of some means to issue copies or recensions of any book. So naturally when a man of such authority as Origen, a man also of means and a man of learning, set forth that such and such a thing should be, and had it copied in his own manuscripts which he spread about, we see how easy it was for any changes or emendations which Origen proposed to have taken place.
WW Christianity
There are a number of further points I want to cover. As regards the Virgin Birth we touched upon…: one may merely say that it is a mystical theory based upon a certain philosophical principle which we will deal with later on, and which is found in different countries. We may mention Perseus, the son of the virgin Danae; and the story of Plato being the son of Perictione supposedly by the God Apollo, before she was wife in fact to her husband. Around the lives of founders of religions there are legends of many kinds. Reverence misplaced, idealism misunderstood, the attempts to make an ideal figure, all work very strongly in the human mind. The lives of all great founders of religions, even the lives of founders of philosophies, or the founders of political systems, as time goes on, become enshrouded and enveiled in marvelous tales, wondrous traditions about the way they were born, or the acts they did, or the miracles they accomplished, so that the story of Jesus as regards these is nothing singular.The Roman Church has always gone to extremes. It is said that it is the most logical of the churches, and that may perhaps be true if we can admit the premises, but the premises are frequently impossibilities, and therefore it is the most illogical in fact of the churches. For instance, its Virgin, instead of being the mythical ideal type of the ancients, was a woman, a human. So eager, apparently were the early founders of the church to have something definite, strong, appealing to set before those whom they wished to convert, that they could think of nothing better than to have an ideal figure of the type of the many ideal figures both of mother and son of antiquity. The difference was that the ancient idea was spiritual, the Christian grossly materialistic.
The 'miracles' similar to them or different, have been treasured up by the followers of many other men. History and legend are replete with them. All the Greek heroes, all the Greek gods and demi-gods were supposed to have worked miracles of many kinds. In India, the miracles ascribed to Krishna and to the Buddha, who was also supposed to have been born of the virgin Maya (illusion -- a very philosophical idea), and the miracles ascribed in ancient America to the wonderful type-figures of the New World so called, all have the same general outline: frequently also the Virgin Birth, or the immaculate birth; the legends clustering about the deliverer or savior, etc.; and the miracles he worked when he grew up and started upon his mission. Often he is rejected; frequently he is accepted; but the rule of parallelism holds good. All Heathendom, so-called, to use a Christian term, looked forward to a regeneration, to the return of the reign of Saturn, the Golden Age of Innocence, of purity, and of joy. Besides the Jews who expected this Messiah, the Persians looked forward to the coming of their Sosiosh, and the Hindus to the coming of their Kali-avatara; while the Mexicans longed for the return of their Quetzalcoatl, bringing peace, joy, and plenty in his train.
The marvels of Jesus as contrasted with the miracles or wonderworkings of other saviors have one singular point; that is, they are not particularly wonderful. There were miracles worked by some of the Christian saints which were far more startling. For instance, they say that Saint Columba walked from St. Denis, a town near Paris, to Paris, carrying his head in his hand; but that cannot equal what St. Patrick did, because they say that he swam the Shannon with his head in his mouth! That certainly makes the miracles of Jesus pale into insignificance. A man who can swim a river with his head in his mouth is certainly a very wonderful thaumaturge.
At the time of the beginning of the Christian era there lived another wonderworker, a remarkable man, called Apollonius of Tyana (a town in Asia Minor), whose miracles, so called, were so great and so similar to those of Jesus that it has frequently been supposed that his whole story was a forgery made by the ancients to discredit the life and work of Jesus. His life has come down to us written by Philostratus, a philosopher; and one has but to read Philostratus' work to see the analogy. Apollonius is attended by wonders at his birth; wonders attend his upbringing; he raises the dead; he heals the sick; he vanishes out of sight when accused and on trial before the Emperor Domitian, and appears a few hours later to his disciples at Puteoli, a long distance from Rome, more than three days' journey. Why do we hear so little of Apollonius of Tyana, why he did not also have a following, why he did not also found a religion, is one of the facts in his favor, I was going to say, but perhaps that is a little harsh. But certain it is that at the time the Christian era began the world was agape for the wonderful. New religions were springing up everywhere; the worship of Isis the virgin and of her son Horus had spread, as you will remember we said last week, all over the Roman Empire, which at that time (at the beginning of this era) included all the land from Britain to the frontiers of the Parthian Empire, and from the Scandinavian fiords to the Cataracts of Assuan (Syene, as it was then called). Any religion or philosophy which could talk long enough and insist strongly enough and clamor loud enough could not fail to get a following.
It is a remarkable thing that we have no contemporary reports of Jesus whatsoever, except one (and that a forgery) in Josephus, to which I shall allude in a moment. We are told that at the crucifixion of Jesus -- (if indeed there was a crucifixion, which is, as I suggested at the beginning of our study, merely one of the events belonging to the type-figure) -- we are told in Matthew, xvii, 45, that from the sixth hour there was darkness all over the land until the ninth hour -- but not a word of this marvel can be found anywhere in any contemporary writer. We are also told that the veil of the temple in Jerusalem (Jerusalem of course is not in the text) was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and the earth did quake and the rocks rent and the graves were opened and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came out of the graves and went into the holy city and appeared unto many. (Matthew, XVII, 51, 53.) These are wonderful things, but not a word has come down to us outside the Christian records.
Josephus was a Jew living shortly after that time, a voluminous writer, a learned man, very intimate with the Emperors Vespasian and Titus, with friends at court. He wrote the Antiquities of Judea and a History of Jewish Wars, but he makes no mention of these marvels whatsoever. Philo was another Jew of whom we have spoken, a Platonist, also a learned man, devoted to literature. Born a little before the Christian era and living for forty or fifty years afterward, he writes not a word concerning these wonders. Nor are these miracles or even the existence of Jesus mentioned by Justus of Tiberias, [See Jewish Encyclopedia] a contemporary Jewish historian. Nor in any of the so-called pagan writers is there anything about them. We are told in St. Luke, XXIII, 44-46: "it was about the sixth hour and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour, and the sun was darkened, and the veil of the Temple was rent in the midst." That is all that Luke says.
Now concerning what Josephus has to say about Jesus. It was for long supposed by Christians -- and they quoted it as one of the rare proofs of the actuality of the life of Jesus and his mission -- that this passage I am going to quote from Josephus was genuine. But the good sense of Christian critics and the impossible nature of this passage have resulted in causing it to be completely given up as testimony, and to be pronounced by the most cautious of Christian historians today as an out and out forgery. This is the passage: "Now about this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of men, who received the truth with pleasure. He drew over many among the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ, and when Pilate at the information of the leading men among us had condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him at first did not cease to do so, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold this and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians was named from him, and are not extinct at this day." (Antiquities of the Jews, Ch. III, Par. 3.)
Now if you can imagine an orthodox Jew, belonging to the sect of the Pharisees, calling him the Christ whom, according to the Christian records, these Jews punished with death for blasphemy, speaking of this blasphemer as the Messiah, you will see immediately that as a record this passage as it now stands, is an impossibility. It has, besides, the note of exaggeration that we also find in John, Chap. 21, last verse: "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen." So much for Josephus.
Pliny was a learned Roman gentleman, a friend of the Emperor Trajan. He was governor of Bithynia, 103-105 A.D., and he thus lived during the first and part of the second centuries. He was born in the year 62, but the probability is that when he issued the work which has come down to us -- a collection of his letters and correspondence with the Emperor and with his friends -- he was a man of some age, fifty or sixty years old; possibly about the year 110. This is only a little later than the date of Josephus. He writes in Letter No. 97, to the Emperor Trajan, a long epistle, quite unlike his usual style, about the Christians in Bithynia, and how he is dealing with them; because the Roman government was always very jealous of unauthorized associations, unauthorized sodalities, fraternities, guilds, associations of any kind. The Emperor Trajan himself had shortly before issued a rescript, that is a mandate, forbidding such associations, and endorsing to a large extent what his predecessors had done along the same line.
This Letter begins by his saying that he had never been present at any trial concerning those who professed Christianity, and was unacquainted with the nature of their crime and the measure of their punishment, and how far it was proper to enter into an examination concerning them, etc. He says that certain people were accused before him as being Christians -- and you will remember that the Romans cared not a rap what religion their fellow-citizens, or the countries they had conquered, had, provided they obeyed the laws -- and he says he examined them, and "If they admitted it I repeated the question . . . and if they persisted I ordered them to be at once punished . . . They repeated before me an invocation to the gods and other religious rites, and offered wine and incense into the censer before the statue of the Emperor -- [which would be equivalent to the gentleman of the present day bowing before the king, or kissing the hand of the Queen -- nothing more than a recognition of the Imperial majesty] -- and they even reviled the name of Christ; whereas there is no forcing, it is said, those who are really Christians, into any of these compliances -- [This has a Christian flavor.] -- "I thought it proper therefore to discharge them." Then he goes on and gives this as their form of meeting and worship: "They all worship your statue and the images of the gods, uttering the imprecations at the same time against the name of Christ. They affirmed that the whole of their guilt or error was that they met on a stated day before dawn and addressed a form of prayer or invocation to Christ, as to a divinity -- [evidently a form of solar worship] -- binding themselves by a solemn oath, not for the purpose of any wicked design, but never to commit any fraud, theft, or adultery; never to falsify their word, nor to deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to eat in common a harmless meal." Then Pliny goes on to say that after putting two female slaves to the question, all he could discover was "evidence of an absurd and extravagant superstition." That is a Christian's phrase, although found in one or two other Roman writers, because the Christians were very fond of pointing out how the ancients looked upon their religion as a superstition. Then he continues: "In fact, this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread its infection among the neighboring towns and country. Nevertheless, it still seems possible to restrain its progress. The temples, at least, which were once almost deserted, begin now to be frequented, and the sacred rites after a long intermission are again living, while there is a general demand for the victims which until lately found very few purchasers. From all this it is easy to conjecture what numbers might be reclaimed if a general pardon be granted to those who shall repent of their error."
Now the point in all this is the following: This Roman governor writes, only 60 or 70 years after the supposed death of Jesus as a malefactor, that in his province the temples of the gods are deserted, victims were scarcely ever purchased, and all the towns and neighboring country were infected with the Christian superstition, and that it is possible to restrain its progress; and yet we know by contemporary history that later years show no such wonderful dissemination of the Christian religion in that district. If this is based upon a genuine letter of Pliny to Trajan, I feel convinced that it has either been grossly changed and meddled with, or that there is some other explanation at present unknown to me, different from the sense of the letter. Were these people followers of elithroism? The style is different from the rest of Pliny's letters; the elegance, the literary terseness, the large mindedness of the Roman gentleman are all absent. He is addicted in this letter to strong adjectives; he takes an attitude of partisanship against something which on the face of it to him was nothing but a superstition, etc. It is interesting, therefore, to see that Trajan's answer to Pliny would go to show that this letter (how much of it is genuine we know not) is probably a change or modification of some original, because Trajan in answering it says: "You have taken the right course, my dearest Secundus, in investigating the charges against the Christians who were brought before you. It is not possible to lay down any general rule for all such cases. Do not go out of your way to look for them. If indeed they should be brought before you and the crimes proved -- [you will remember that it was a criminal act under Roman law to hold private, secret meetings -- not the crime of their being Christians but the crime of their disobeying the law] -- they must be punished, with the restriction, however, that where the party denied he is a Christian and shall make it evident that he is not by invoking our gods -- [this again has a Christian touch] -- let him, notwithstanding any former suspicion, be pardoned, upon his repentence. Anonymous information ought not to be accepted in any trials, under any circumstances. It is introducing a very dangerous precedent and is entirely foreign to the spirit of our age." (Letter 98)
Later we may have to go into this subject more profoundly, and we shall see that these tales of diabolical persecution by the pagans, and of such sweet-spirited serenity and willing martyrdom by the Christians are largely, like so much else, faked testimony.
Now as regards the crucifixion of Jesus. You will probably recollect that crucifixion was a Roman form of punishment for malefactors of a certain class: the lowest class of malefactors only were crucified. We may look upon it as a barbarous and horrid form of punishment for an enlightened people to have, but I doubt if it be worse than our barbarous method of hanging a man by the neck until he be dead, or the other barbarous punishments which in the most Christian era of Europe were too common, such as boiling a man in oil.
The cross had many forms, but the usual form was what is called the Roman cross an upright stake with a transverse board; and frequently, where the crotch of the man would be, there was a projection, on which the criminal would rest or ride, or towards the foot of the cross there was a horizontal piece set into it, so that he would stand on it. Sometimes the hands were nailed, sometimes they were merely tied, and he was left to die of starvation, which in itself is not a particularly fearful death. Guards were stationed around the cross of punishment to see that the friends of the criminal did not carry him off, and there was strong probability to suppose, from instances in the writings of the Romans which have come down to us, that soporific draughts were given to the criminals before the crucifixion to dull the pain and send them to sleep. If Jesus, according to the story, had been tried for blasphemy, by Jewish law he would have been stoned to death and then perhaps hanged upon a tree, (see the Talmud) as had happened before, and in this stoning to death also the victim was probably given an opiate of some kind, a soporific drink, possibly not always, but it was doubtless frequently so.
The whole story of the crucifixion in the Christian Gospel does not bear the stamp of truth. We cannot conceive of a Roman procurator -- proud of his nation, filled with the pride of his birth and his training, looking upon the Syrians as all the Romans did with a feeling akin to contempt -- acting as Pilate did, if indeed Pilate was the Roman magistrate at the time Jesus died, and if indeed Jesus died as it is said he did. This very Pilate is supposed to have aroused an insurrection among the Jews by his contemptuous treatment of them. Pilate is said to have washed his hands and said: "What is truth?" A natural question enough, showing him a philosopher, possibly of the New Academy, or of the Epicurean sect, if indeed he made the remark. It is a question which is asked by men today and always will be asked, I suppose, as long as men think.
Jesus is supposed to have lived 33 years. The early Christians, or at least some of them, gave the time of his ministry as one year, which Irenaeus (Refutation, II, XXIII, 5-6) condemns; and the accepted opinion today among pious Christians is that his mission lasted three years, and that he was crucified in his 33rd year. The idea of the early Christians (Clementine Homilies, XVII, 9; also of the Gnostics) that his mission lasted 12 months and that he died in the 12th month is evidently a form of the work or destiny of the solar god through the twelve months of the year. It has an analogy, mystical perhaps, with the twelve labors of Hercules, he being connected with the sun, as is well known. Now Irenaeus was an early Christian Father living in the 2nd century, and he tells us in his work which has come down to us called The Refutation of all Heresies (II, XXII, 5-6) that those people who say that Jesus perished as a young man, 30 odd years of age, are all wrong, because he came as a type-figure, a symbol, of perfect man; and as he was a child to little children and a youth to youth and man to man, so he must have been an old man to the aged. And he declares on the testimony of John, the disciple of Jesus, and of the Presbyters, who heard it from John in Asia Minor, that Jesus' ministry lasted twenty years, and that he lived to be at least 50 years old. This statement of Irenaeus has caused a great deal of discussion, and it is usually pronounced -- being a very unwelcome kind of Christian testimony -- to be 'a tradition', and you will often read, when learned and pious Christian writers discuss Irenaeus' statement, 'how easy it is for traditions to be misunderstood', etc. Yet this one-year tradition is one of the very earliest.
Now Jesus shortly before his death established what the Christians call the sacrament of the Last Supper. This is considered, and has been for ages, one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith. The Roman Catholics take the extreme view, as always, and claim that they receive their ideas of the celebration of the Communion straight down the ages from Jesus himself. The form in which the Roman Catholics accept the Communion is called transubstantiation -- trans, across, substantiation, from substance, meaning that the elements of the Eucharist, that is, the bread and wine, are transformed, their substance is transformed, into the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Now when Luther in the 15th and 16th century started his controversial writings, he aroused a great storm. The Roman Catholic Church in those days was in a state which seriously needed medicine. It was corrupt, in some senses; the Christian spirit had gone, perhaps fortunately, one can hardly say; but such was the outbreak, such was the clamor of discontent, that this, occurring at the time of the revival of learning, made things very precarious for the Roman Catholic See. So they finally called a Council which they claimed to be Ecumenical, or general, and which assembled at the little town not far from the Italian frontier today and on the line of the railroad running over the Brenner Pass. This Council assembled on December 13th, 1545, and lasted with intermissions until December 4, 1563. It was several times suspended, one suspension lasting nine years. And at this Council were condemned the leading doctrines of the Reformation concerning the Bible, original sin, etc. The decrees of this Council were confirmed by Pope Pius IV in January, 1564. It was composed, according to one reckoning, of 3 patriarchs, 7 cardinals, 33 archbishops, 35 bishops -- 278 in all. Others give the number in all as 4 cardinal lagates, 2 other cardinals, 25 archbishops, 166 bishops, 7 abbots, 7 generals of order, 39 proxies of bishops -- 252.
Now the decrees of this Council gave a definite and set form to the doctrines of the Roman Church for future time; gave them a firm ground to stand upon. Among them was the question of the celebration of the Communion or Eucharist, in connection with which the word transubstantiation is used. The word itself first occurs in the 11th century, and was used in the controversy about the nature of the Eucharist between La France, who was Archbishop of Canterbury and Italian born in Padua, and Berengarius, a Latinized form of the French Berenger, Canon of Tours, in France. Berengarius denied the real presence of the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist; La France, the Italian Englishman, asserted it. Berengarius was born in 998, and died at Tours in 188. He was condemned on account of his opposition to the real presence in the Eucharist by several Synods, and he several times recanted these views. La France was born in 1005 and died at Canterbury in 1085. He was a friend and counsellor of William the Conqueror. The discussion concerning the nature of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist began in the 9th century.
Now transubstantiation as a doctrine was approved by the Council of Rome in 1079. At the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome under Pope Innocent III, this doctrine was declared to be an article of faith. The Greek Church accepted an identical or closely similar doctrine to transubstantiation at the Council of Jerusalem in 1672. The Swiss Zwingli, much later, about the time of Calvin and Luther in the 15th and 16th centuries, taught that the Eucharist was merely in commemoration of the Supper of the Lord Jesus, that there was no real presence and that the bread and the wine were merely symbols of the partaking of the divine nature of Jesus by the pure in heart. Luther taught the real presence, as it is called: that the body and blood of Jesus Christ existed in the Eucharist, but in some unexplained way. He denied that the elements of the Eucharist became the body and blood of Jesus. Calvin taught that by faith the true believer received Jesus Christ's body and blood; merely receiving as it were the heavenly power from the glorified body of Jesus in Heaven; and Calvin's views were generally admitted by the reformed Churches.
The Roman Catholics believe what is set forth in the decrees of the Council of Trent, and I will quote parts of them verbatim: "In the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really and substantially contained in the species [that is to say, the appearance] of these sensible things." (Canons and Decrees of the Church Council at Trent, Section XIII, Chap. 1.) Again:
"By the consecration of the bread and wine the whole substance of the bread is changed into the body of Christ and the whole substance of the blood; which change is truly and fitly called transubstantiation by the Holy Catholic Church." (Section XIII, chap. IV). Again: "Under each species [that is to say, under the bread or under the wine], and under each particle of each substance, [that is, under any crumb or fragment which may be partaken of], Christ is contained, whole and entire." In other words, the Roman Catholics believe that in the bread and in the wine which compose the Eucharist they eat the body of Jesus and drink his blood. Therefore they are theophagists -- they eat their god and drink his blood. So strongly do they feel the nature of this sacrament that, perhaps unconsciously, they have a defiant attitude and call it the "holiest and greatest mystery of their faith." It certainly is.
Now Angelican views are divided into the High Church and the Low Church. Generally speaking they follow the line of Calvin. So does the Presbyterian Church, which is also the Scottish Church. But the High Churchmen of the Anglicans have a view which approximates rather closely to that of the Roman Catholics. For instance, Blunt, in his Dictionary of Theology, p. 761, says as follows: "That the body and blood of Christ exists in those elements [that is to say, in the bread and wine) is as much the belief of the English Church as of the Latin and Greek Churches." And Pusey, who was a famous High Churchman of the Angelican Communion, in his Eirenicon, p. 229, says that "the difference between Anglicans and Romanists is more a dispute about words than a difference in things." That is the extreme High Church view, but it may be said that the general Angelican view is fairly that of Calvin, to wit: that by faith the true believer receives spiritually the body and blood of his Savior, not that the bread and wine become actually the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The Romanists say that the reason the bread does not look and taste and smell like flesh, and the wine does not look and smell and taste like blood, is because while the substances are changed into the body and blood, yet what are called the accidents, that is, the form and shape and taste and smell of the bread and wine, remain.
Now in the early Christian church there seems to have always been a form of the celebration of the Eucharist. In the primitive church, as far as can be known, it was very simple. Almost anybody seems to have been permitted to celebrate, as in the case of friends leaving on a journey from home, and in case of marriages or deaths, possibly; on almost any unusual event happening, they broke bread and drank wine with a prayer. But as time went on, the craving for marvels and the degeneration of the age, the going to sleep of the intellectual nature of man, and the strong development of the love of wonder, worked so forcefully that gradually there grew up a view, an opinion, a feeling, that when Jesus Christ made his last supper, according to the Gospels, with his disciples, he meant it as a type for all good Christians to follow afterwards, and at all times, and that where bread was broken and wine was drunk with a prayer or consecration by the deacon, it partook of a spiritual, divine character or nature; and this view developed more and more until it has now blossomed out into what we see to be the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.
The mere fact of the partaking of bread and wine (or water) in the name of a god, was not uncommon. The worship of Mithras originated in Persia, or at least became known to the Greeks as from Persia, after the wars of Alexander. It possessed among its other more common rites a Eucharist consisting of bread and water, and a great many of the early Christians also celebrated their Eucharist with bread and water, or bread and water mixed with wine, which latter continued later in the Middle Ages of the Western Church. Mithraism extended all over the Roman Empire, so much so that at one time it might readily have become the dominating religion and have ousted Christianity in the same way that Christianism ousted Mithraism. Medallions or remains of the worship of Mithra have been found in France, Germany, Ireland, England, Egypt, Italy, Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, everywhere. The followers of Mithraism taught that their God was closely connected with the sun, the spiritual force of the sun, as it were, the great light of the world, enlightening the intellects and spirits of men as the sun lighted the material abode of men, the earth. They had a mystical system of initiation, divided into seven degrees; they had a baptism with water in the name of God; they had a Eucharist as I have said, celebrated with bread and water. Justin the Martyr, of whom I have spoken previously today, says it must have been the devil that did all this, so closely 'copying' the Christian rites. As Mithraism existed several hundred years before Christianity was born, possibly the Devil did it by anticipation. But as far as we know, Mithraism could never have been said to have taught that the bread was the body of the sun and the water his solar force. We see, therefore, that so far as regards the "greatest mystery of the Christian faith," in other words, the Eucharist, it was celebrated by Persians, by Greeks, by Romans, Egyptians, Syrians, Germans, Gauls, Britons, Irishmen, followers of Mithraism at the time of the Christian era. And there is strong reason to believe that in the Mysteries celebrated at Eleusis, bread and wine were used as symbolical, bread of the Goddess Ceres, wine of the God Bacchus, celebrated mystically. And we also know from the writings of the Christian priests who accompanied the Spanish soldiery who conquered Mexico under Cortes the Bandit, that the Mexicans celebrated a Eucharist in the name of their God Huitzilpochtli. [Quetzalcoatl] As the Spanish soldiers could not pronounce his name, they called him "Ocho Lobos" (Eight Wolves) -- not a bad name for so sanguinary a god. Huitzilpochtli was a god of war, and of the sun, and while the gory rites of human sacrifice undoubtedly existed in an abhorrent degree in Mexico, nevertheless there was a side of the religion which demanded great purity and asceticism among those who followed it. Its Eucharist was partaken of by people, and consisted of a human figure made of maize, Indian corn (a bread), mixed with the blood of the victim slain to the god -- a singular analogy with the other victim slain on the cross of the Christians whose blood is drunk in the Eucharist. So great was the resemblance that the Spanish padres did not know how to explain it. The Mexicans had their Eucharist, and their Savior; they had their Virgin Birth. So the Spaniards ascribed it either to the wiles of the devil or to the pious labors of Saint Tomas -- a great traveller; and whenever they came across anything like this they said it was due to the hard-working Saint.
It is interesting to remember that when the Spanish banditti arrived in Mexico, although they did put a stop to the terrible custom of human sacrifice, they found a civilization there which was more advanced than their own in some ways. The cities were well policed and kept clean, and in those days the cities of France and Italy were in a shocking state, with mud ankle-deep in the principal streets of the capitals of Europe; it was a common custom to throw sewage and night-soil out of the windows on to the head of any unfortunate traveller who might be passing below. The Mexican cities, on the other hand, were well lighted at night, and the Spaniards found a system of religion, comprising, as I have said, all the essential principles, considered from the mystical standpoint, that they could find in their own, and a priesthood devoted to study, not merely to masses and orisons, but to study and teaching. They found a legal system composed of judges administering justice in the name of the King; they found a calendar correct to within a day or two; where as at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards in Mexico the common calendar as used by them was eleven or twelve days in advance of the true date. Truly, "wonderful are the ways of Karman!"
It seems to me that when we are present together here, in a sense we are on holy ground. In ancient days, when the subjects which we are now studying were taken up, there was observed, as we said in opening this series of studies, an attitude of reverence and devotion not only towards the higher beings in nature, which were called gods or spirits, as the occasion may be, but also by the students towards each other, a sense of reverence towards our very selves, as being incarnations of divine beings, sleeping gods, gods asleep in the flesh, for according to Oriental methods of study the students assembled with a mind filled with thankfulness and a species of joy, by putting themselves in the proper state of mind, come nearer to the beings from whom we draw our higher principles.
In ancient days all initiations were held in the temples or groves, [Groves in Hebrew is AShR, asher, [See Zohar (Wizards Bookshelf, 1979) p. 211] meaning happy or blessed. See S.D. references thereon. -- J.D.] or, in the northern countries, under the spreading boughs of some majestic oak; or they might have been held as sometimes in India, for instance, under the sky, the roof of the world as it was expressed. They saw in that a symbol of the encompassing life, and themselves types or symbols of the hierarchy of beings which move things in nature. And so we, in our way, according to the methods of this century and according to the evolution or rather according to the status of evolution which we have, approach these majestic studies, or at least we should do so, with the same reverence for them and for each other. And these studies do not mean only the Theosophical studies strictly speaking, but also the different religions or religious philosophies of the earth, which contain or enshrine the aspirations of those who have gone before us, who are or rather have been, ourselves; and in studying them we come with the thoughts which we thought and the aspirations which we had, and I dare say that there is no religion and no religious philosophy and no science which in itself could be unfamiliar to us, to our higher natures. Memory … is the fountain of recollection or remembrance of the things stored in our higher natures. So therefore, in taking up a study apparently, as it may seem to some, so untheosophical as the one we studied last week, we really are studying a branch of the activities of the human mind, and we get back into the ideas and ideals which brought about the fabric which is called Christianity now.
With this preface I would like to continue … our study of Jesus the man and Jesus the type-figure, taking up the Jewish historical or semi-historical records of the Syrian sage, and touching lightly upon the Mohammedan teachings regarding him, and still more lightly, because they will come up later, on the apocryphal Christian writings conveyed to us about him. Of course the Jews rejected and reject the Christian claims that Jesus the Nazarene, so called, was their Messiah. They have done so consistently, and the conversions from Judaism to Christianity have not been many. You will remember that we spoke … of the rather extraordinary fact that there were no contemporary records either of Jesus or of the works which he was supposed to have done -- except one, which was found in Josephus, and was a forgery. There is a personal description of Jesus, formerly usually printed at the beginning of most of the editions of the Gospels, and often printed by itself, purporting to be a letter from a Roman called Lentulus, who was supposed to have been the predecessor of Pontius Pilate as the governor of the Roman province of Judea; but this also is now completely given up as a pious forgery probably dating from some time in the early Middle Ages. The language is very poetic, rather enthusiastic; so much so that that has been one of the arguments against its authenticity, because no Roman official would write that way to the Senate. He must either have been a Christian, or the letter a forgery, and as he was not a Christian, the letter is de facto called spurious.
The Jews have a number of written traditions of Yeshu, refusing to give him the full spelling of the Hebrew word for Savior, Yeshua, because, so they said, that being the name of the Savior, it should not be applied to a blasphemer. The Talmud is the great repository in which is found the general rule of life for the Jews. It contains ordinances of conduct, ethical precepts, paraphrases and explanations of obscure passages in the law, that is to say, in the Pentateuch, and other matters. It seems to have first originated in the 5th century before this era, and to have been carried on until the 3rd century. The original writings of the Talmud were called the Mishnah. These were the oldest writings, but taking the writings Mishnah as a text the Jewish doctors, that is to say the learned men of the Jews, have written Gemaras, (a word which means complement or completion). There are two Gemaras, the Babylonian Gemara and the so-called Jerusalem Gemara, because after the taking and destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews carried the sacred writings of their schools to two principal places, Babylon on the Euphrates, and Tiberias in Palestine. Each of these schools had a patriarch, so-called, who was the head of it, and each school, by the efforts of its own commentators and learned men built up a Gemara on the Mishnah common to both. You will frequently hear the Babylonian Talmud spoken of, or the Jerusalem Talmud; that means, as you have seen, that the Mishnah is common to both, but that the Gemara comes from one or the other of the schools respectively.
From the Babylonian Gemara -- (I have made some notes here which I will thread together) -- to the Mishnah of the Tractate Sabbath says: "They stoned the son of Stada [Satda] ["Satda" from Aramaic STDA related to the Hebrew root STH or STA, to be faithless, to deviate from the proper path. -- J.D.] in Lud, and then they crucified him on the evening before the Passover. This son of Stada was the son of Pandirah [Stada means 'unfaithful']; Rabbi Chasda has said that the husband of Stada was the master of Pandirah, that is, Paphes, the son of Yehudah. Now how could Stada become his mother? His mother was a hairdresser for women. As is said in Pembeditha [a Babylonian school] she was unfaithful to her husband." There is a gloss or paraphrase of this, which says, "How came it to be that Stada [or Satda, as it is sometimes written] was his mother? This way, says Rabbi Chasda: Miriam [which is the same as Mary], mother of Pandirah, dressed Satda's hair . . . . Stada became a mother by Pandirah, Miriam's son. As said in Pompeditha 'Stada by name, and Stada [which means "unfaithful"] by nature'." Here Pandirah in this paraphrase is the son of Mary, who is thus Yeshu's or Jesus' grandmother. Again, the Babylonian Gemara on the Mishnah of Tractate Sanhedrin, folio 43, remarks that there was a tradition that they crucified Jesus, Yeshua, on the eve of the Sabbath. Again in Mishnah tractate Sabbath, folio 104, a rule exists against making marks on the skin. On this the Babylonian Gemara says: "The son of Stada made the marks of magic on his skin, and brought them thus out of Egypt."
In the Babylonian Gemara, tractate Sanhedrin, folio 107, it is recorded that when King Alexander Janaeus persecuted the rabbis, Rabbi Jehosua ben Perahhia [that is, Jehoshua, son of Perahhia] fled with his disciple Yoshu or Jesus to Egypt, where both learned magic. Alexander Jannaeus, son of John Hyrcanus, was king of the Jews from 104 to 77 B.C. Now Jehoshua ben Perahhia is a historical character, and was a member of the Sanhedrin under Alexander Jannaeus. This is all that the Talmud says directly about this character called Yeshua the son of Stada. There are a number of other allusions to him in the Talmud, but it is not needful to quote them for our present purpose. I have threaded these allusions together and when you get the report of our study today you will be able to see the connection more easily than you can now, my object being to show that in the Talmud there was a Jesus called the son of Stada and the son of Pandirah, who is supposed to have gone to Egypt under the Rabbi Jehoshua ben Perahhia, and to have studied magic there.
Now about the 13th century of this era it began to be known among the bigoted Christians of the day that the Jews had certain writings in which Jesus was spoken of, and it naturally excited no little interest and a large amount of harsh feelings. It soon became known that these writings spoke in no complimentary terms of the Jesus the Son of Stada connected with the Mary of the Christians. There are two versions of the general subject, the subject being called "The Birth of Jesus," commonly known under the Hebrew name "Toledoth Yeshu." These were published and I believe translated into Latin by two learned scholars. The first one was Wagenseil's edition in 1681, printed at Altdorf, and the other was Huldreich's, printed at Leyden in 1705. Wagensell, whose edition we will very briefly consider today, because the two versions, while differing very greatly in details are based upon the same general theme, gives a subtitle to his edition as follows: "The Fiery Darts of Satan, that is to say, secret and horrible tales of the Jews against Christ God, and the Christian Religion." Wagenseil's edition commences as follows: "In the year of the world 4761 [that is, according to Jewish reckoning, 910 B.C.!!] under King Jannaeus, a misfortune befell Israel. A profligate named Joseph Pandirah then arose. He was handsome, strong, well-made, but spent his time in robbery and hurt to others. He lived in Bethlehem, in Judaea. A widow lived near him who had a daughter, named Miriam [or Mary]. This Miriam dressed women's hair, and is spoken of in the Talmud." It then goes on to say that she became the mother of Yeshu [of Jesus] by Pandirah. Yeshu after a number of years goes into the temple, in search of the Incommunicable Name, cuts open his flesh and places therein the Unutterable Name which he has written on a piece of parchment. He works miracles through his possession of knowledge of the Incommunicable Name. Throughout the Toledoth he is called "The Fatherless", doubtless an allusion to his birth. Now there was one Judas, an Elder of Israel; he goes also into the Temple, in search of the Wonderful Name, so that he may overthrow the Fatherless, and he gets it and he works counter miracles against Yeshua or Jesus, to overthrow him. He does overthrow Yeshua or Jesus, who is finally seized and incarcerated. He escapes through the connivance of his disciples, of whom he had gained a following, washes himself in the Jordan, upon which his magic power returns to him. He then works more miracles; he causes milestones to float on the water, upon one of which he places himself and teaches; he feeds multitudes with fishes, and works many other wonderful miracles. Judas again lays a trap for him and catches him in sleep, and cuts out of his flesh the parchment upon which the Wonderful Name had been written. This of course deprives the Fatherless of his magical power, and he finally comes to so bad a pass that he has to wear a crown of thorns. He thirsts and is given vinegar to drink, and utters the exclamation "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He is sentenced finally to be stoned and hanged on a tree. It was the eve of the Passover. He is taken out of the city and stoned until dead. Judas hides his body under a running stream by first diverting the waters and then allowing them to return into their channel. But his disciples take immediate advantage of this move of Judah, the Jewish Elder, by saying exactly as Yeshu had said, "He is now risen to Heaven, because his body cannot be found." Great excitement prevails, and to still it Judas draws the body from the bed of the brook, attached to a horse's tail, through the streets. Finally Simon Peter, one of Jesus' disciples in his turn gets into the Temple and gets the Wonderful Name, and gives himself out as speaking for Yeshu; he gets a following and finally dies highly respected in a tower built for him in the city, six years later. The Toledoth Yeshu ends here.
The second Toledoth Yeshu, edited by Huldreich, is possibly more full of marvels than the first, but agrees, in all principal points, as for instance, that Yeshu was the son of Miriam by Pandirah. It is of course unnecessary to point out that these tales are full of absurdities and anchronisms; as for instance the birth of the son of Stada is given in the year 4671, [See above, viz. 4761. The year 1980 A.D. is 5700 on the Hebrew calendar. Therefore 910 B.C. is 2750 in the Hebrew. Toledoth Yeshu is unavailable; consequently this discrepancy could not be clarified. -- J.D.] which corresponds to 910 B.C., and at the same time "Queen Helena", the wife of Alexander Jannaeus of the 1st century, B.C. is supposed to have seen and spoken with Yeshu during his life. Now these tales, with the exception of the Talmud itself, which is a sober work, could be dimissed as mere fabrication of feeling, if it were not for the fact that so far back in the Christian era as the 2nd Century we find Origen, the Christian Father, alluding to them. In his work against Celsus, the philosopher, whom you will remember we adverted to last week as having written a work against the Christian religion called The True Word, Origen quotes (Bk. 1, Chap. 32) Celsus as saying that a certain soldier named Panthera, which is merely the Grecized form of Pandirah, committed adultery with Mary, upon which the carpenter turned her out of doors. And again, (1, LXIX) Celsus argues that one Panthera corrupted Mary, and he further says "the body of God would not have generated as you were." This shows that as early as the first or second century these rumors were current not only among the Jews but among the Greeks and the early Christians.
Three or four centuries later there lived and wrote a Christian saint called Epiphanius, and in his work against heresies (the early Christians were particularly fond of writing against heresies, which included every belief that was not their own) he actually gives a genealogy of Jesus as believed in by Christians, at least some Christians -- in which Jacob Panthera is the father -- of two sons, Joseph and Cleophas. Joseph married Mary, and from Mary was born Jesus. So even as late, then, as the 4th century, we find that Christians had accepted the fact that in some way this man Pandirah was connected with, or was a relation in some fashion of, their Savior. To sum up: from what we have said it would seem that however much the Toledoth Yeshu of the Middle Ages may have been based on visionary theorizing, possibly dictated by hatred of the Christians, at whose hands the Jews had suffered so greatly, nevertheless taking into consideration the fact that the Talmud does mention the fact that the son of Stada and Pandira was called Jesus, and lived somewhere about the time of the beginning of this era, possibly a hundred years before in the reign of King Alexander Jannaeus; and in view of the fact that Origen in the 2nd century finds it of sufficient importance to go to the pains of arguing against it, quoting the statement twice, as if uneasy at its circulating in the world; and in view of the fact that in the 4th century another Christian saint, Epiphanius, gives a Christian genealogy in which this man Pandirah is given as the grandfather of Jesus, it would seem that there must be some basis of fact. What that basis of fact may be no one can say, but it is not the baseless fabric of a vision to believe that Joseph Pandirah was in some fashion connected with the story of Jesus the Man. Of course the name Jesus was a common enough name in Judaea; Joshua and Jehoshua were merely variants. It is thought by some Christian scholars that there unquestionably did live a Pandirah who was a lover or husband or grandmother of a Mary (because the name Pandirah is a feminine form which has led to his being considered a woman.)
Before we dismiss the subject of the birth of Jesus, I would like to call your attention again to two or three things as recorded or rather spoken of in the canonical gospels (canonical, of course, from "canon", an accepted rule.) In Chapter 3 of Mark, verses 13 and on, there is a great deal of interesting matter. For instance, 3, 13: "And he goeth up into a mountain, and calleth unto him whom he would; and they came unto him. And he ordained twelve that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils." That ends verse 15. Then he changes the names of his disciples. "Then they went into a house, and the multitude was so great that they could not so much as eat bread." (verse 20). Now verse 21: "And when his relations heard of this they went out to lay hold of him: for they said, 'He is mad'." And in verse 31 we have: "There came then his brethren and his mother, and standing without, sent unto him, calling him. And he answered, Who is my mother, or my brethren?" (Verse 33). Now is it conceivable that him of whom it had been announced to the Virgin through the angel of God that he was God himself, the son of God, they should seek to restrain from pursuing the course which it was natural that he should pursue, gathering around himself disciples and sending them out to preach? Inconsistency No. 1.
In Chapter 2 of Luke, verse 33, we have this: "And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him." The best manuscripts do not say Joseph, they have the words "his father", which imports a sense tremendously different: "And his father and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him." In verse 41, same chapter: "Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover." And in verse 43, ". . . and Joseph and his mother knew not of it." In other manuscripts they have: ". . . his parents knew not of it." These readings, differing from the accepted version of King James, have been adopted by the eminent English scholars Westcotte and Hort, and the readings "Joseph and his mother" are put in an appendix under the heading "Noteworthy rejected readings."
Now in Matthew, I, verse 16, the genealogy to which we referred last week ends: "And Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ." In the best Greek manuscript we have, one of the oldest and the only complete uncial, the Sinaitic, manuscript, taken from the name of the mountain Sinai where it was found, this verse ends as follows: "Joseph, to whom was betrothed Mary, the virgin, begat Jesus, who is called the Christ." That, of course, makes Jesus the seed of David, and while it is contrary to the accepted canonical Gospels, which both in the originals and in the translations have been accepted as inspired both in text and words, nevertheless it proves, if it be accepted as a standard of authority, that Jesus called the Christ was not born of a Virgin but was born of Mary and Joseph. I may, therefore, call your attention to a quotation which I have taken from Prof. J. Estlin Carpenter, Oxford, in his book The Bible in the 19th Century, p. 494, where he says: "Those who believe that Joseph was the father of Jesus have the authority of the Gospels as fully as those who ascribe his birth to the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit." And we may dismiss the subject of Jesus' birth by referring to a remarkable inscription cut on one of the inner walls of the temple of Luxor, in which the god Amen, one of the mightiest, greatest, and oldest of the Gods in the Egyptian pantheon, is represented as standing by the side of a virgin, wife of the king or betrothed of the king, and telling her that that thing which was in her womb was himself, filled with his own soul. The circumstances [I have seen it myself ] are written out with rather a singular elaborateness. Amenhotep III, of the 18th dynasty, is the king to whom this virgin birth is ascribed.
Now it may interest you to know that about the middle of the last century, the discontent both among continental and American Protestant churches at the constant attacks which were made on the translation of the various versions -- that is the version of King James, both of the New Testament and the Old -- was so strong that it eventuated in an assembling of some of the most learned biblical scholars of Great Britain and of this country to get out an improved translation of the Bible, both of the Old Testament and the New. Co-operation was invited by the originators of the movement from eminent scholars in all parts of the world, and the British and American revisers sat, I believe, at the same time. The British scholars were divided into two companies, one for the Old Testament and one for the New, sitting in London; and the Americans of course, sitting in this country. Later the American translation and suggestions were sent to England and a large number of the suggestions were placed, I believe, as an appendix to the new translation when published. Now the number of manuscripts upon which the translators had to work (that is, manuscripts of the New Testament) numbered some 3,000, but very few of them were complete. Some of them only consisted of portions of the New Testament, and the Sinaitic manuscript is the only uncial which shows no gaps. Now as regards the age of the manuscripts, the latest date only from the 4th or 5th centuries, that is to say from 300 to 400 years after the time that Jesus is supposed to have lived and carried out his mission. There are only two dating from the 4th century: that is to say, the Vatican manuscript of Rome, and the Sinaitic at Petersburg; and there are but two which date from the 5th century, the Alexandrine in the British Museum, and the Codex of Ephrahem in the Library National at Paris. The large majority of the balance of the manuscripts date from the 9th century, 800 years after the time of Jesus.
With regard to the manuscripts of the Old Testament, there are none older than the 10th century, and there is a difference of some 500 or 600 years between the oldest Hebrew and the oldest Greek manuscripts. The reason for that seems to be that according to Jewish custom, in fact, I believe, law, every manuscript or roll, as soon as it began to show wear or the letters to become in the slightest degree illegible or torn, was immediately destroyed, the idea being thus to guarantee the full integrity of the text. It is remarkable that this being the case, a manuscript even so old as the 10th century should have been extant. Naturally enough, the manuscripts of the Old Testament would be written in Hebrew, although it was a dead language even at the time that Jesus lived, just as Latin is a dead language among us now. The language spoken when Jesus lived and worked, no matter who he was and no matter how he worked and lived the language spoken in Palestine at the time of the beginning of this era, was one of the Syriac dialects, or Aramaic, that is to say, a word coming from Aram, found in the Bible and signifying very much what is now called Syria, the land south of the Euphrates to the borders of Phoenicia. There are a number of Aramaic dialects, the Syriac Chaldes, and one or two others. The Semitic languages, of which Hebrew was one, Arabian another, and the Aramaic family of tongues a third branch, seem to have been restricted to the country bounded on the north by the Tigris, on the south by Egypt, on the west by the Mediterranean, and on the east by the Indian Ocean.
If Jesus lived and spoke to his disciples as supposed, he must have used, as I have said, one of the Aramaic dialects then spoken, the common tongue of the people; and there are some interesting facts in connection with this which will come up later. He certainly could hardly have spoken Hebrew to the people, it being practically a dead tongue.
Now why was it that the manuscripts of the New Testament have come down to us in Greek? If Jesus lived in Palestine, why is it that our manuscripts are not in Aramaic, in Syriac, or even in Hebrew? Some manuscripts are in Syriac, but they are of comparatively late date. There was a tradition quoted by a number of the Church Fathers that Matthew, the tax gatherer, one of Jesus' supposed disciples, wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, whatever that may have meant, and that everyone interpreted it as he was able. It would seem from the critical labors of scholars, that from some such distant ancestor all the manuscripts we now have, have been derived, suffering great variation and distortion in the process of constant copying and translation. When Christianity spread from the immediate scene of the labors of the supposed founder, Greek being the tongue then spoken by the learned, the polite, the literary, it took that form, and if the traditions believed in by the early Christians are based on fact, the translations from the original were first made in Alexandria; at any rate, they bear an Alexandrine stamp. The language, the Greek, seems more closely allied to the Alexandrian Greek dialect than to any other; and it is fair to say that the translations themselves, show by a certain staccato style, a certain abruptness and terseness, that the early Christian tradition of their having been derived from some Semitic tongue may be true, because the Semitic tongues are built upon a less developed scheme than the Aryan tongues are; they are shorter in expression, more obscure.
Now it would seem as if Christianity originated in Alexandria, from legends and traditions about a Palestine sage called Jesus; and it is certainly the fact that Alexandria, being a great melting pot of learning of the age, the second city of the Roman Empire in size, was frequented by the most learned men of all nations; Greeks, Romans, Jews, Persians, Egyptians, outlanders -- all gathered there. It would seem that most of the theories which we have studied before, such as the Logos, the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Savior idea, and many others, originated so far as Christianity is concerned, of course, in Alexandria.
The revision of the Bible began on June 22nd, 1870. There were two companies, so called, one from the New Testament and one from the Old Testament, the Old Testament being composed of 27 members, the New Testament comprising 26. The New Testament was completed in 1880 and issued in 1881, and the Old Testament was completed in 1884 and published in 1885. The changes in the New Testament in text (that is, in the original) in translation, and in punctuation, amounted to 36,191; and how many more might have been made may be judged from the fact that no correction was accepted which did not have a majority vote of 2 to 1. In other words, taking the New Testament members as 26, there had to be a majority of 2 to 1, or 16, say 17 to 8, to carry the point. You have heard the first three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, spoken of as 'synoptics'. It may be of interest to remember that this word so commonly used, and meaning those who saw the thing together, or eyewitnesses, who saw the events described together, originated with the German Griesbach, a learned professor, who in 1776 published a Synopsis as he called it, of the first three gospels, to show, as he supposed, their identity of view. John was so obviously different in many points from the others that it could not be called one of the synoptics.
In the early Christian ages there were writings without number. The Christian Fathers and saints seem to have had inexhaustible fecundity in emitting writings of many kinds, Acts, Gospels, memoirs, works against heretics, writings of encouragement, letters, translations, etc. But why or how these four Gospels and the other writings which compose our New Testament came to be accepted as canonical is practically unknown. There are a number of marvellous tales which it would be absurd to refer to because not even the most rigorous opponent of Christianity quotes them otherwise than with a laugh, but the first definite fact to which we can point as showing an established New Testament, is in the third Council of Carthage, held in the year 397, and we there find the New Testament comprising practically the same books that we now have.
Our time is so short, that I must cut down what I want to say about the Apocryphal Gospels (from a Greek word meaning hidden, recondite, or obscure; and the word apocryphal is used in the church writings to signify something which is not accepted; so that the apocryphal gospels will be those gospels which are not accepted by the Church, not canonical). It will be proper to say that in the early days of Christianity, however, a great number of these apocryphal gospels were accepted as fully as any others; were daily read and studied for spiritual benefit. Some of them are very interesting for the subject matter they contain, as showing the state of mind and spirit of the Christians of the early ages. Some of them contain very extraordinary miracles, which are interesting from a psychological standpoint, as a psychological study; and others report traditions of Jesus and his acts, which are also valuable; one of them showing Jesus as flying into a passion with some boy and striking him and killing him. He then resuscitated the boy, on his mother's prayer, by kicking the boy's hinderparts -- Gospel of Matthew, 26. There are 13 apocryphal Acts; and a number of Revelations, 5 or 6, as I remember. All belong to the literature of the early Christian centuries. No one can say how much more of the literature has perished, because so great was the hatred of the different sects of Christians for each other that they never hesitated to detroy the writings of their opponents when they could come upon them.
It is popularly supposed that the Mohammedans reject Jesus. This seems to be the common belief of all Christians; and that they look upon Christians as heretics (and so they do), infidels (and so they do), and that they speak of Mary the Virgin, his mother, in terms of which would bring the flush of shame to the cheek of the pious Christian. During the Middle Ages, at the time of the Crusades (or shortly before) and the wars against the gallant Saladin, the common way the Moslems were spoken of, was infidels, cursed infidels, beastly men-dogs, and various other names of similar character. The Mohammedans, however, accept Jesus as the Messiah; they accept him as the logos of God; but they deny that he was the son of God, and that he was the second person of the Trinity. In fact, they deny the Trinity, as we noticed in our first study. They teach, among many other things, that there has been a succession of 124,000 prophets, or, as it is sometimes given, 224,000; 313 of them of special importance; and out of these, six are of more particular importance; and these six are: Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, and Mohammed, who was the last prophet and the greatest of them all. Mohammedanism is largely based on parts of the Hebrew Bible, combined with a large amount of Persian traditions and religious thought, and with a certain substratum of the native beliefs which were current before Mohammed taught. They believe in the resurrection of the body and of the soul: that the good will be saved, and the bad will be punished; that when a man dies, two angels, Munkar and Nakir, sit, one at his head and one at his feet, and question him as to his good deeds, and if he can be proved to have been a bad man, they punish him with iron maces, but if he can prove himself to have been a good man, obedient to the established laws of the prophet, and to natural morality, he goes to a place of peace, to await the judgment trumpet of God. They believe that when men die the body decays and goes to its elements, but that the coccyx bone, the last bone of the spinal column, contains the seeds of vitality, and that at the time of the resurrection, there will fall a tremendous flood of rain upon the earth, lasting for 40 days, and that the earth will be covered with some 22 feet with water, and that then these bones will sprout like plants, and that these plants will be the bodies of all -- Mohammedans, Jews, pagans, everybody, even the animals. Then men will be judged finally according to their desserts; both good and bad will have to pass across the bridge Al-Sirat, that is finer than hair and sharper than a sword; the evil will be precipitated to one of the seven hills, and the good will pass lightly and swiftly over and will then go to Paradise, which is above the seven heavens. Paradise is a wonderful place. Its soil is composed of the purest wheaten flour, or of musk, or of saffron; accounts differ. Mohammed himself seems not sure to have known. Its stones are the brightest gems, and its walls are of gold and silver. In it grows the wonderful Tuba tree, which produced everything that the faithful need; raiment, horses, food, drink. The faithful will pass their time in the company of the blackeyed women of Paradise, called the Khur-al-Uyum, the 'houris' or women of Paradise. These blackeyed nymphs have none of the imperfections of mortal women, nor any of the unpleasantness common to flesh. They are made of pure musk. They are immortal; they live in hollow pearls, 60 miles long and 60 miles wide. The faithful who dwell in Paradise will be as men are at 30 years of age; suffering nothing, in the fullest enjoyment of health and life; they will have the stature of Father Adam, 110 feet high, and they will live in the bliss of Paradise eternally. The Christian Heaven varies according to the way we look at it, from singing hymns to the Eternal, to contemplating the agony of the damned. It is doubtful if the rather gross imagery of the Mohammedan is worse than the imbecility or ferocity of the Christian scheme.
We are speaking of the Holy Spirit (I am clearing up a number of points now, so that we can continue our regular studies in our next meeting) -- we were speaking of the Holy Spirit on other occasions, and you may remember that we alluded to the fact that a number of the early Christians considered the Holy Spirit as feminine. This seems to have been very common in the early ages of Christianity. In the gospel supposedly written by Matthew [Gospel of the Hebrews], to which we alluded a little while ago, there occurs this verse which is found in the Christian Father Origen. He quotes it twice in his Homily 15: once on Jeremiah and once on John. I will give you the original Greek, as you may care to study it yourself. [[greek char]] (Arti elabe me meter mou to agion pneuma, en mia ton trichon mou, kai anenegkc me eis to oros to mega thabor.)
"Then took my mother, the Holy Spirit, in one of my hairs and brought me up to the mountain, the great Thabor." It is also quoted by the Latin Father Jerome (Michaeas, vii, 6), and he puts it naturally in Latin: "Modo tulit me mater mea Spiritus Sanctus in uno capilorurn meorum" -- "Then took me my mother, the Holy Spirit, in one of my hairs." The point to notice is that the Holy Spirit is spoken of in this gospel of the Hebrews as "my mother," and she speaks of Jesus as "my son". Origen also speaks of the Holy Ghost, that is the Holy Spirit, in the following fashion: -- [[greek char]] (Padiske de kurias tou agiou pneumatos e psuche.) The soul is handmaiden to her mistress, the Holy Spirit.
CHURCH -- SEE CHRISTIANITY
FY | Five Years of Theosophy - 1885 | H. P. Blavatsky, ed.
GH | Gods and Heroes of the Bhagavad Gita - 1939 | Geoffrey A. Barborka
IN | An Invitation to the Secret Doctrine - 1988 | Grace F. Knoche, ed.
IU | Isis Unveiled - 1877 | H. P. Blavatsky
KT | Key to Theosophy - 1889 | H. P. Blavatsky
MO | The Masks of Odin - 1985 | Elsa-Brita Titchenell
OG | Occult Glossary - 1933, 1996 | G. de Purucker
PV | Esotericism of the Popol Vuh | Raphael Girard (glossary by Blair A. Moffett)
SK | Sanskrit Keys the Wisdom Religion - 1940 | Judith Tyberg
SP | Sanskrit Pronunciation - 1992 | Bruce Cameron Hall
TG | Theosophical Glossary - 1892 | H. P. Blavatsky
VS | Voice of the Silence - 1889 | H. P. Blavatsky
WG | The Working Glossary - 1892 | W. Q. Judge