The Matthew narrator informs us that Jesus was born in the days of Herod the King, and the Luke narrator says he was born when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria, or later. This is a very awkward and unfortunate statement, as Cyrenius was not Governor of Syria until some ten years after the time of Herod.' The cause of this dilemma is owing to the fact that the Luke narrator, after having interwoven into his story, of the birth of Jesus, the old myth of the tax or tribute, which is said to have taken place at the time of the birth of some previous virgin-born Saviours, looked among the records to see if a taxing had ever taken place in Judea, so that he might refer to it in support of his statement. He found the account of the taxing, referred to above, and without stopping to consider when this taxing took place, or whether or not it would conflict with the statement that Jesus was born in the days of Herod, he added to his narrative the words: "And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria." We will now show the ancient myth of the taxing. According to the Vishnu Purana, when the infant Saviour Crishna was born, his foster-father, Nanda, had come to the city to pay his tax or yearly tribute to the king. It distinctly speaks of Nanda, and other cowherds, "bringing tribute or tax to Kansa" the reigning monarch.' It also describes a scene which took place after the taxes had been paid. Vasudeva, an acquaintance of Nanda's, "went to the wagon of Nanda, and found Nanda there, rejoicing that a son (Crishna) had been born to him. "Vasudeva spoke to him kindly, and congratulated him on hav ing a son in his old age. ... Accordingly 995 "Thy yearly tribute,' he added, 'has been paid to the king why do you delay, now that your affairs are settled? Up, Nanda, quickly, and set off to your own pastures.' Nanda and the other cowherds returned to their village.' Now, in regard to Buddha, the same myth is found. Among the thirty-two signs which were to be fulfilled by the mother of the expected Messiah (Buddha), the fifth sign was recorded to be, "that she would be on a journey at the time of her 1 See the chapter on "Christmas." It may be that this verse was added by another hand some time after the narrative was written. We have seen it stated somewhere that, in the manuscript, this verse is in brackets. See Vishnu Purana, book v. chap. iii. Here is an exact counterpart to the story of Joseph-the foster-father, so-called-of Jesus. He too, had a son in his old age. • Vishnu Purana, book v. chap. v. child's birth." Therefore, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets," the virgin Maya, in the tenth month after her heavenly conception, was on a journey to her father, when lo, the birth of the Messiah took place under a tree. One account says that "she had alighted at an inn when Buddha was born." The mother of Lao-tsze, the Virgin-born Chinese sage, was away from home when her child was born. She stopped to rest under a tree, and there, like the virgin Maya, gave birth to her son." Pythagoras (B. c. 570), whose real father was the Holy Ghost,' was also born at a time when his mother was away from home on a journey. She was travelling with her husband, who was about his mercantile concerns, from Samos to Sidon.* Apollo was born when his mother was away from home. The Ionian legend tells the simple tale that Leto, the mother of the unborn Apollo, could find no place to receive her in her hour of travail until she came to Delos. The child was born like Buddha and Lao-tsze-—under a tree. The mother knew that he was destined to be a being of mighty power, ruling among the undying gods and mortal men." Thus we see that the stories, one after another, relating to the birth and infancy of Jesus, are simply old myths, and are therefore not historical. See 1 Bunsen: The Angel-Messiah, p. 34. also, Beal: Hist. Buddha, p. 32, and Lillie: Buddha and Early Buddhism, p. 73. • Thornton: Hist. China, 1. 138. As we saw in Chapter XII. CHAPTER XVII. THE GENEALOGY OF CHRIST JESUS. THE biographers of Jesus, although they have placed him in a position the most humiliating in his infancy, and although they have given him poor and humble parents, have notwithstanding made him to be of royal descent. The reasons for doing this were twofold. First, because, according to the Old Testament, the expected Messiah was to be of the seed of Abraham,' and second, because the Angel-Messiahs who had previously been on earth to redeem and save mankind had been of royal descent, therefore Christ Jesus must be so. The following story, taken from Colebrooke's "Miscellaneous Essays," clearly shows that this idea was general: "The last of the Jinas, Vardhamâna, was at first conceived by Devanandă, a Brahmānā. The conception was announced to her by a dream. Sekra, being apprised of his incarnation, prostrated himself and worshiped the future saint (who was in the womb of Devananda); but reflecting that no great saint was ever born in an indigent or mendicant family, as that of a Brahmānā, Sekra commanded his chief attendant to remove the child from the womb of Devanandă to that of Trisala, wife of Siddhartha, a prince of the race of Jeswaca, of the Kasyapa family." In their attempts to accomplish their object, the biographers of Jesus have made such poor work of it, that all the ingenuity Christianity has yet produced, has not been able to repair their blunders. The genealogies are contained in the first and third Gospels, and although they do not agree, yet, if either is right, then Jesus was not the son of God, engendered by the "Holy Ghost," but the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary. In any other sense they amount to nothing. That Jesus can be of royal descent, and yet 1 That is, a passage in the Old Testament was construed to mean this, although another and more plausible meaning might be inferred. It is when Abraham is blessed by the Lord, who is made to say: "In thy seed shall all the be the Son of God, in the sense in which these words are used, is a conclusion which can be acceptable to those only who believe in alleged historical narratives on no other ground than that they wish them to be true, and dare not call them into question. The Matthew narrator states that all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen, from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen, and from the carrying away into Babylon unto Jesus are fourteen generations. Surely nothing can have a more mythological appearance than this. But, when we confine our attention to the genealogy itself, we find that the generations in the third stage, including Jesus himself, amount to only thirteen. All attempts to get over this difficulty have been without success; the genealogies are, and have always been, hard nuts for theologians to crack. Some of the early Christian fathers saw this, and they very wisely put an allegorical interpretation to them. Dr. South says, in Kitto's Biblical Encyclopædia: "Christ's being the true Messiah depends upon his being the son of David and king of the Jews. So that unless this be evinced the whole foundation of Christianity must totter and fall.” Another writer in the same work says: "In these two documents (Matthew and Luke), which profess to give us the genealogy of Christ, there is no notice whatever of the connection of his only earthly parent with the stock of David. On the contrary, both the genealogies profess to give us the descent of Joseph, to connect our Lord with whom by natural generation, would be to falsify the whole story of his miraculous birth, and overthrow the Christian faith." Again, when the idea that one of the genealogies is Mary's is spoken of: "One thing is certain, that our belief in Mary's descent from David is grounded on inference and tradition and not on any direct statement of the sacred writings. And there has been a ceaseless endeavor, both among ancients and moderns, to gratify the natural cravings for knowledge on this subject." Thomas Scott, speaking of the genealogies, says: "It is a favorite saying with those who seek to defend the history of the Pentateuch against the scrutiny of modern criticism, that the objections urged against it were known long ago. The objections to the genealogy were known long ago, indeed; and perhaps nothing shows more conclusively than this knowledge, the disgraceful dishonesty and willful deception of the most illustrious of Christian doctors." 1 Matthew, i. 17. Scott's English Life of Jesus. Referring to the two genealogies, Albert Barnes says: "No two passages of Scripture have caused more difficulty than these, and various attempts have been made to explain them. Most interpreters have supposed that Matthew gives the genealogy of Joseph, and Luke that of Mary. But though this solution is plausible and may be true, yet it wants evidence." Barnes furthermore admits the fallibility of the Bible in his remarks upon the genealogies; 1st, by comparing them to our fallible family records; and 2d, by the remark that "the only inquiry which can now be fairly made is whether they copied these tables correctly." Alford, Ellicott, Hervey, Meyer, Mill, Patritius and Wordsworth hold that both genealogies are Joseph's; and Aubertin, Ebrard, Greswell, Kurtz, Lange, Lightfoot and others, hold that one is Joseph's, and the other Mary's. When the genealogy contained in Matthew is compared with the Old Testament they are found to disagree; there are omissions which any writer with the least claim to historical sense would never have made. When the genealogy of the third Gospel is turned to, the difficulties greatly increase, instead of diminish. It not only contradicts the statements made by the Matthew narrator, but it does not agree with the Old Testament. What, according to the three first evangelists, did Jesus think of himself? In the first place he made no allusion to any miraculous circumstances connected with his birth. He looked upon himself as belonging to Nazareth, not as the child of Bethlehem; he reproved the scribes for teaching that the Messiah must necessarily be a descendant of David, and did not himself make any express claim to such descent." As we cannot go into an extended inquiry concerning the genealogies, and as there is no real necessity for so doing, as many others have already done so in a masterly manner, we will continue our investigations in another direction, and show that Jesus was not the only Messiah who was claimed to be of royal descent. 1 Matthew, xiii, 54; Luke, iv. 24. 2 Mark, ii. 35. "There is no doubt that the authors of the genealogies regarded him (Jesus), as did his countrymen and contemporaries generally, as the eldest son of Joseph, Mary's husband, and that they had no idea of anything miraculous connected with his birth. All the attempts of the old commentators to reconcile the in consistencies of the evangelical narratives are of no avail." (Albert Réville: Hist. Dogma, Deity, Jesus, p. 15.) 4 The reader is referred to Thomas Scott's English Life of Jesus, Strauss's Life of Jesus, The Genealogies of Our Lord, by Lord Arthur Hervey, Kitto's Biblical Encyclopædia, and Barnes' Notes. |