The Open Court
A monthly magazine devoted to the Science of Religion, the Religion of Science,
and the Extension of the Religious Parliament Idea.

Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company
Vol. 33, No. 3, March, 1919, pages 189-191

REGARDING CHRISTIAN ORIGINS.

BY EDGAR A. JOSSELYN.

A number of interesting articles have appeared in The Open Court on the
origin of Christianity, about which there seems to be a rapidly growing interest
among students of the history of religion. So much new information has been
recently published about the early centuries of our era, that we are obliged to
revise our idea of them, and give more serious attention to the "Christ myth"
claim. Your contributors, however, while advancing strong arguments against
various theories, do not appear to give consideration to two very important
phases in the question, the combination of politics and religion in the early
Roman Empire, and the strong hold that the dramatic elements of the ancient
Greek mysteries had upon the people. Other writers ignore the same points,
especially the first. Both points strengthen the Christ myth theory.

At the beginning of the Christian era the Roman emperors were deified
and an acceptance of this deification was forced upon the empire. Apparently
a unified religion was sought, corresponding to the unified political world that
had been achieved. There was not such entire tolerance as Gibbon represents.
To those who would not accept the deification of the emperors there was intolerance.
The Jews resisted. We know that Philo of Alexandria went to
Rome in 40 A. D. to persuade the emperor Gaius to abstain from claiming
divine honor of the Jews. A Jewish religious revolt arose that ultimately led
to the destruction of the Temple in 70 A. D. As is usual with religious wars
the offense was not so much a difference in belief as resistance to the established
government, either Church or State. It is evident that it was considered
desirable to have a uniform religion in the empire, and this idea is found outside
as well as inside governmental circles. Philosophy and religion were
deeply discussed, especially at Alexandria. We are told that "in the first centuries
of Christianity, the religion of Persia was more studied and less understood
than it had ever been before. The real object aimed at, in studying the
old religion, was to form a new one." Christianity ultimately became a fusion
of many elements, without any really new ethics, without any wholly new
dogmas, but with one supreme feature, entirely new to the Roman world, a
unified, established, intolerant, ruling Church, reproducing on a large scale
what had existed in earlier times among the Egyptians, Jews, and other
Orientals. The fusion is well described in Dr. Carus's Pleroma and Gilbert
Sadler's Origin and Meaning of Christianity. The dogmas were principally
Greek. Ethics, as of old (especially as in China), came from the "Mount."
The Church establishment as a form of government was essentially Roman.
Monotheism, or at least a modified monotheism, was of course adopted, as
consistent with the aims and ideals of the movement. It should be noted that
where other governing religions have been forcibly imposed on peoples, they
have been monotheisms, as in the case of the Egyptian Aten, fourteen centuries
before Christ, Judaism, and Mohammedanism, The fact that the new
growth was largely outside of government circles might explain the persecutions.
But Christianity was not alone in the race for supremacy. Mithraism
made a mighty effort for control and nearly succeeded, but was overthrown
and absorbed by Christianity which adopted its observance of Sunday and
Christmas.

The second phase of the question, that of the influence of the Greek
religious drama, presents an entirely different side of the subject. Most writers
agree that Christianity is a Greek religion. The resurrection myth, appearing
as the Osiris myth in Egypt, that of Attis, Adonis, and Mithra in various parts
of western Asia, and as that of Dionysos and others in Greece, seems to be
as old as mankind, and to represent one of the foundation stones of religion.
Moreover its appeal was to the community rather than the individual, was intuitional
rather than intellectual in character, and was essentially dramatic.
Jane Harrison, in her Ancient Art and Ritual, shows that art, especially drama,
was derived from ritual. She also points out that it was a democrat, Peisistratos,
who revived and favored the ancient ritual in the sixth century B. C.
Both Miss Harrison and Gilbert Murray trace the development of Greek
religion from the ancient Cyprian and Greek myths to the anthropomorphic
Olympian gods, after which came the academic philosophies of Plato and
Aristotle, which doubtless did not appeal to the people. Meanwhile in the
centuries just before the Christian era the cult of Osiris was revived in Egypt,
and we know that Egyptian influence, especially in art, spread through the
Greek world after Alexander's conquests. Gerald Massey in Ancient Egypt
the Light of the World provides an Egyptian origin for nearly every Christian
dogma. Now the essence of the Osiris and similar myths,--the resurrection
or rebirth,--reflected the spirit of the times. The Roman Empire itself represented
a birth of a new western world. There was a great drama taking
place before the eyes of the people in the unfolding of a new era. It is also
true that civilization was breaking down as well as starting on a new road,
and a reversion of thought to primitive type would be natural. The masses
could easily welcome a new cult imposed on terms which gave them back the
old myth that they instinctively loved. Meanwhile in the centuries since the
old religion was most revered in Greece, there had come a change in man's
attitude toward mankind. Man was now the measure of all things. The gods
had already been made man-like, now man was to be god-like. The new mystery
drama was to be in terms of men, not bulls and rams. However, the
individual was still to be reborn by rites of initiation,--not of the mysteries,
but of baptism, the ceremony that counted so much in earliest Christianity.
It was no salvation on easy terms or any terms that the Greek world was
seeking, but the old rebirth in new terms. In the Eucharist is found the same
dramatic idea derived from other sources. In the ceremony of the mass the
ancient mystery drama was re-enacted in a new guise.