scheme, in combination with the ancient cult of the Bacchantian Ies or Iesous. Gautama the Buddha was no doubt an historical personage, but the sun-god mythos has been added to his history to such an extent that it is extremely difficult to distinguish the man Gautama from the mythical Gautama-the Buddha. The same may be said of Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, Cyrus (who set free the Jews from captivity in Babylon), and others. The only records we have of Jesus are from tainted sources; and contemporary history, which must have testified to him and his "wonderful doings," is ominously silent. 66 If Jesus had gone about Judæa, followed by a street rabble, proclaiming himself a "prophet," choosing twelve apostles, riding triumphantly into Jerusalem, while the rabble strewed branches in his way, beating respectable merchants with cords, and turning them out of the market in the Temple court, upsetting their stalls, scattering their goods and money, calling them "fools," "vipers," "hypocrites," sons of hell," and other offensive names (Matt. xxiii. 15-33), we should certainly have seen some mention in contemporary history of the stir that most assuredly would have been made; and we cannot conceive such riotous conduct on the part of a young man against wealthy and respectable merchants, without their immediately taking the law into their own hands and making short work of him. And what were the Roman soldiery doing, a cohort of which was always on duty at the temple, and which, Josephus tells us, were armed, and kept guard at the festivals, to prevent any innovation which the multitude, thus gathered together, might make "*—and at this time, too, they were especially on the alert, for the elements of disorder were abroad? Since the death of Herod great political and social convulsions had taken place. "Between pretenders to the throne of Herod, and aspirants to the Messianic throne of David, Judæa was torn and devastated................Claimant after claimant to the latter dangerous supremacy appeared, raised the banner, gathered a force, was attacked, defeated, and banished or hung." The ridiculous story told in John (ii. 14-16) shows that the writer had not a good acquaintance with Jewish customs, * Wars, ii., xii. I. ABSENCE OF AUTHENTIC RECORDS. 193 or he would not have made Jesus say: "Take these things hence; make not my father's house a home of merchants." Now, there was no profanation of the temple at all, for the market was carried on in the court of the Gentiles, not within the temple, as the Gospel would lead us to believe. This market was a custom, sanctioned by the priests and by ancient usage. * 1. There are the Gospels, which, as we have seen, are too contradictory, and the narratives contained in them too like those told of the numerous pagan Messiahs before him, to be genuine. 2. There is a passing notice of him in the Jewish Talmud. 3. There are two passages in Josephus which can be easily perceived, on examination, to be forged interpolations. And 4. There is a passage in the Annals of Tacitus, also shown to be a forgery. those 1. The Gospel story of Jesus cannot stand a moment's criticism; for the discrepancies are numerous, between the John and the Matthew gospels being especially glaring. If Jesus was the man of the first gospel, he was not the mysterious being of the fourth; if his ministry was only one year long, it was not three years long; if he made but one journey to Jerusalem, he did not make many; if his method of teaching was that of the Synoptics, it was not that of the fourth gospel; and if he were the Jew of the first, he was not the anti-Jew of the fourth. The few facts we may glean about him have to be guessed at from among a number of ghost stories-useless miracles, childish sayings, and borrowed dogmatic statements and platitudes reputed to him. In the Epistles his existence is implied, but hardly an incident in his life is mentioned, or a sentence that he uttered preserved. Paul, writing from twenty to thirty years after his death, has but one reference to anything that he ever said or did. 2. In the Talmud we should expect to find a good deal of notice of a person for whom Messiahship was claimed, with a special mission to the Jews, particularly when this tribe-for they never were a nation-were actually expecting a Messiah. But we have seen the bare mention only that is made of him. 3. In the Antiquities of Josephus (xviii. 3) an obvious Wars, ii., xii. 1. interpolation has been made, as is shown by a purple patch in the original, different to the rest of the MS., between an account of a sedition by the Jews against Pontius Pilate and an account of Anubis and Pauline in the temple of Isis. This is brought forward as historical evidence in favour of the Messiah's actual existence; but it is a clear and distinct insertion, and possesses all the evidences of being a forgery, causing a break in the continuity of the narrative. Josephus -a Jew, be it observed—is made to say: "Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure." Now, it is not likely that a Jew would show such a respect towards Jesus, who was known among his own people as a seditious person; and talk about his teaching "the truth." Further on he is made to say: "He was the Christ, and when Pilate......had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him." These are expressions, not of a Jew, but of a Christian; and surely the writer could not have remained a Jew another hour! Forgeries were easy in those days, when books were written on skins or papyrus, to which fresh pieces could be attached. Another interpolation, and the only other one which mentions Jesus, is also found (xx., ix. 1) where the words in italics are shown to have been surreptitiously inserted in the original: "He assembled the Sandhedrim of Judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, whose name was James, and some others," etc. 4. Tacitus wrote a history, but made no mention of Jesus ; but a forged introduction, called by Beatus Rhenanus in 1533 "the Annals of Tacitus," was found in a Benedictine monastery at Hirschfelde in Saxony, in 1514. It related to the persecutions of Christian by Nero; but this introduction was not found in any other copy of the history of Tacitus, and not one writer, from the time of Tacitus to the above date, had mentioned the existence of the work. It appears that in the time of Wicliffe, when the existence of Christendom was seriously menaced and the 66 Inquisition was instituted, people were inquiring into the origin of Christianity. Large sums of money were offered for the discovery of ancient manuscripts, which would bear testimony to the divine authority of the Church, in consequence of which the supply was equal to the demand, as it generally is, and plenty of manuscripts were forthcoming from needy monks. Among these were the so-called Annals of Tacitus. They are now discovered to have been composed by a late Papal secretary, Poggio Bracciolini, at the price of "500 gold sequins (£10,000)," and re-written by a monk at Hirschfelde, in imitation of a very old copy of the History of Tacitus.* In this Tacitus is represented as saying that " one Christus was put to death under Pontius Pilate, and had left behind him a sect called after him." The forged writings were sent to his friend and employer, Niccoli, with a letter in which the following Occurs: Everything is now complete with respect to the little work, concerning which I will, on some future opportunity, write to you; and, at the same time, send it to you to read in order to get your opinion on it." After its discovery it was deposited in the Library at Florence. Hardouin (who had been "a learned scholar and a writer of high position in the Jesuit College in Paris," 1645-1728) exposes the fictitiousness and worthlessness of the legends of the so-called "Patristic Fathers." He dates the first design of the forgers in France from 1180-1229, which was continued 1245-1314; and the construction of this class of literature went on to an immense extent during the next 150 years. In his Prolegomena (1766) he says: "The ecclesiastical history of the first twelve centuries is absolutely fabulous. The series of Popes is no more authentic than the series of Jewish high priests. The agreement of the monastic chronicles for the year 1215 shows that they were all the product of one monastic 'Scriptoria.' Not one was written by a contemporary of the events described. Gregory 'the great,' elected 1227, is the first of whom we have any historic notice; which leaves a forged and fraudulent list of some 180 popes who never had an existence other than in the worse than imagination of the compilers......There are no tombs or sepulchres of any of the popes prior to this date, nor yet coins, but what are acknowledged to be spurious." So that we see that not one of the writers of the first century-"the Augustan age of letters," as it was called-even mentions the Christian Messiah (with the exception of the casual mention in the Talmud), his apostles, his miracles, or the "ten thousand other wonderful things" mentioned by the interpolators of Josephus; which reminds us very much of a similar statement in the John Gospel: "If all the wonderful things that Jesus did were written, the world could not contain the books” (xxi. 25)! These two pieces of boastful exaggeration—if not pious lies —were probably written by one and the same person. Philo and the two Plinys (father and son), who also wrote about this time, made no mention whatever of Jesus! Can we imagine such silence possible, if such extraordinary events as are recorded in the N. T. about Jesus were true—the feeding of thousands of people with a few small loaves and fishes; the raising of the dead to life again, and their being seen walking about the streets; the miraculous darkness for several hours; earthquakes, mysterious voices from the clouds, bodies rising through the air into the clouds, etc. Such events would have been noised abroad, would have formed topics for general conversation, and could not have failed to have found a place in the literature of the day. Cures said to have been wrought upon incurables, yet no mention by the writers on medicine of the day, who must have been profoundly interested in them. It is incredible that such events could have occurred, and no one except the four interested partizans, reputed writers of the Gospels, have referred to them! It is more than suspicious; it is absolute evidence of pious fraud. If we go to the catacombs, we find no evidence of Jesus. In searching through volumes which have been written on the result of modern excavations, in this burial and worshipping place of the early Christians, full of minute details, we are astounded to find not a mark or sign of anything approaching present Christian emblems; not even a cross! Can it be possible that the dead followers of what is called "the crucified one " could be placed in their last resting place without some affectionate token of what is now cailed the great and final "act of redemption "? Yet in the quiet seclusion and peacefulness of those dark underground miles |