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Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian was an American rationalist and secularist of Armenian descent. Mangasarian considered himself a Rationalist or a Secularist not an Atheist, since he considered atheism a non-verifiable belief system. He was pastor at a Presbyterian church in Philadelphia, which he resigned from, becoming an independent preacher and a lecturer on "independent religion" in New YorkAbout Jesus — Is He a Myth? deals with the evidence against the existence of an historical Jesus.
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PREFACE
PART I.
A PARABLE
IN CONFIDENCE
IS JESUS A MYTH?
THE PROBLEM STATED
THE CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS
VIRGIN BIRTHS
THE ORIGIN OF THE CROSS
THE SILENCE OF PROFANE WRITERS
THE JESUS STORY A RELIGIOUS DRAMA
THE JESUS OF PAUL
IS CHRISTIANITY REAL?
PART II.
IS THE WORLD INDEBTED TO CHRISTIANITY?
CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM
PART III.
SOME MODERN OPINIONS ABOUT JESUS.
ANOTHER RHETORICAL JESUS
“WE OWE EVERYTHING TO JESUS”
A LIBERAL JEW ON JESUS
APPENDIX
FROM THE SUNDAY PROGRAMS
The following work offers in book form the series of studies on the
question of the historicity of Jesus, presented from time to time
before the Independent Religious Society in Orchestra Hall. No effort
has been made to change the manner of the spoken, into the more
regular form of the written, word.
M. M. MANGASARIAN.
I am today twenty-five hundred years old. I have been dead for nearly
as many years. My place of birth was Athens; my grave was not far from
those of Xenophon and Plato, within view of the white glory of Athens
and the shimmering waters of the Aegean sea.
After sleeping in my grave for many centuries I awoke suddenly—I
cannot tell how nor why—and was transported by a force beyond my
control to this new day and this new city. I arrived here at daybreak,
when the sky was still dull and drowsy. As I approached the city I
heard bells ringing, and a little later I found the streets astir
with throngs of well dressed people in family groups wending their way
hither and thither. Evidently they were not going to work, for they
were accompanied by their children in their best clothes, and a
pleasant expression was upon their faces.
“This must be a day of festival and worship, devoted to one of their
gods,” I murmured to myself.
Looking about me I saw a gentleman in a neat black dress, smiling, and
his hand extended to me with great cordiality. He must have realized I
was a stranger and wished to tender his hospitality to me. I accepted
it gratefully. I clasped his hand. He pressed mine. We gazed for a
moment silently into each other’s eyes. He understood my bewilderment
amid my novel surroundings, and offered to enlighten me. He explained
to me the ringing of the bells and the meaning of the holiday crowds
moving in the streets. It was Sunday—Sunday before Christmas, and the
people were going to “the House of God.”
“Of course you are going there, too,” I said to my friendly guide.
“Yes,” he answered, “I conduct the worship. I am a priest.”
“A priest of Apollo?” I interrogated.
“No, no,” he replied, raising his hand to command silence, “Apollo is
not a god; he was only an idol.”
“An idol?” I whispered, taken by surprise.
“I perceive you are a Greek,” he said to me, “and the Greeks,” he
continued, “notwithstanding their distinguished accomplishments, were
an idolatrous people. They worshipped gods that did not exist. They
built temples to divinities which were merely empty names—empty
names,” he repeated. “Apollo and Athene—and the entire Olympian lot
were no more than inventions of the fancy.”
“But the Greeks loved their gods,” I protested, my heart clamoring in
my breast.
“They were not gods, they were idols, and the difference between a god
and an idol is this: an idol is a thing; God is a living being. When
you cannot prove the existence of your god, when you have never seen
him, nor heard his voice, nor touched him—when you have nothing
provable about him, he is an idol. Have you seen Apollo? Have you
heard him? Have you touched him?”
“No,” I said, in a low voice.
“Do you know of any one who has?”
I had to admit that I did not.
“He was an idol, then, and not a god.”
“But many of us Greeks,” I said, “have felt Apollo in our hearts and
have been inspired by him.”
“You imagine you have,” returned my guide. “If he were really divine
he would be living to this day.”
“Is he, then, dead?” I asked.
“He never lived; and for the last two thousand years or more his
temple has been a heap of ruins.”
I wept to hear that Apollo, the god of light and music, was no
more—that his fair temple had fallen into ruins and the fire upon his
altar had been extinguished; then, wiping a tear from my eyes, I said,
“Oh, but our gods were fair and beautiful; our religion was rich and
picturesque. It made the Greeks a nation of poets, orators, artists,
warriors, thinkers. It made Athens a city of light; it created the
beautiful, the true, the good—yes, our religion was divine.”
“It had only one fault,” interrupted my guide.
“What was that?” I inquired, without knowing what his answer would be.
“It was not true.”
“But I still believe in Apollo,” I exclaimed; “he is not dead, I know
he is alive.”
“Prove it,” he said to me; then, pausing for a moment, “if you produce
him,” he said, “we shall all fall down and worship him. Produce Apollo
and he shall be our god.”
“Produce him!” I whispered to myself. “What blasphemy!” Then, taking
heart, I told my guide how more than once I had felt Apollo’s radiant
presence in my heart, and told him of the immortal lines of Homer
concerning the divine Apollo. “Do you doubt Homer?” I said to him;
“Homer, the inspired bard? Homer, whose inkwell was as big as the sea;
whose imperishable page was Time? Homer, whose every word was a drop
of light?” Then I proceeded to quote from Homer’s Iliad, the Greek
Bible, worshipped by all the Hellenes as the rarest Manuscript between
heaven and earth. I quoted his description of Apollo, than whose lyre
nothing is more musical, than whose speech even honey is not sweeter.
I recited how his mother went from town to town to select a worthy
place to give birth to the young god, son of Zeus, the Supreme Being,
and how he was born and cradled amid the ministrations of all the
goddesses, who bathed him in the running stream and fed him with
nectar and ambrosia from Olympus. Then I recited the lines which
picture Apollo bursting his bands, leaping forth from his cradle, and
spreading his wings like a swan, soaring sunward, declaring that he
had come to announce to mortals the will of God. “Is it possible,” I
asked, “that all this is pure fabrication, a fantasy of the brain, as
unsubstantial as the air? No, no, Apollo is not an idol. He is a god,
and the son of a god. The whole Greek world will bear me witness
that I am telling the truth.” Then I looked at my guide to see what
impression this outburst of sincere enthusiasm had produced upon him,
and I saw a cold smile upon his lips that cut me to the heart. It
seemed as if he wished to say to me, “You poor deluded pagan! You are
not intelligent enough to know that Homer was only a mortal after all,
and that he was writing a play in which he manufactured the gods of
whom he sang—that these gods existed only in his imagination, and
that today they are as dead as is their inventor—the poet.”
By this time we stood at the entrance of a large edifice which my
guide said was “the House of God.” As we walked in I saw innumerable
little lights blinking and winking all over the spacious interior.
There were, besides, pictures, altars and images all around me. The
air was heavy with incense; a number of men in gorgeous vestments were
passing to and fro, bowing and kneeling before the various lights
and images. The audience was upon its knees enveloped in silence—a
silence so solemn that it awed me. Observing my anxiety to understand
the meaning of all this, my guide took me aside and in a whisper told
me that the people were celebrating the anniversary of the birthday of
their beautiful Savior—Jesus, the Son of God.
“So was Apollo the son of God,” I replied, thinking perhaps that after
all we might find ourselves in agreement with one another.
“Forget Apollo,” he said, with a suggestion of severity in his voice.
“There is no such person. He was only an idol. If you were to search
for Apollo in all the universe you would never find any one answering
to his name or description. Jesus,” he resumed, “is the Son of God. He
came to our earth and was born of a virgin.”
Again I was tempted to tell my guide that that was how Apollo became
incarnate; but I restrained myself.
“Then Jesus grew up to be a man,” continued my guide, “performing
unheard-of wonders, such as treading the seas, giving sight, hearing
and speech to the blind, the deaf and the dumb, converting water into
wine, feeding the multitudes miraculously, predicting coming events
and resurrecting the dead.”
“Of course, of your gods, too,” he added, “it is claimed that they
performed miracles, and of your oracles that they foretold the future,
but there is this difference—the things related of your gods are
a fiction, the things told of Jesus are a fact, and the difference
between Paganism and Christianity is the difference between fiction
and fact.”
Just then I heard a wave of murmur, like the rustling of leaves in
a forest, sweep over the bowed audience. I turned about and
unconsciously, my Greek curiosity impelling me, I pushed forward
toward where the greater candle lights were blazing. I felt that
perhaps the commotion in the house was the announcement that the God
Jesus was about to make his appearance, and I wanted to see him. I
wanted to touch him, or, if the crowd were too large to allow me that
privilege, I wanted, at least, to hear his voice. I, who had never
seen a god, never touched one, never heard one speak, I who had
believed in Apollo without ever having known anything provable about
him, I wanted to see the real God, Jesus.
But my guide placed his hand quickly upon my shoulder, and held me
back.
“I want to see Jesus,” I hastened, turning toward him. I said this
reverently and in good faith. “Will he not be here this morning? Will
he not speak to his worshippers?” I asked again. “Will he not permit
them to touch him, to caress his hand, to clasp his divine feet, to
inhale the ambrosial fragrance of his breath, to bask in the golden
light of his eyes, to hear the music of his immaculate accents? Let
me, too, see Jesus,” I pleaded.
“You cannot see him,” answered my guide, with a trace of embarrassment
in his voice. “He does not show himself any more.”
I was too much surprised at this to make any immediate reply.
“For the last two thousand years,” my guide continued, “it has not
pleased Jesus to show himself to any one; neither has he been heard
from for the same number of years.”
“For two thousand years no one has either seen or heard Jesus?”
I asked, my eyes filled with wonder and my voice quivering with
excitement.
“No,” he answered.
“Would not that, then,” I ventured to ask, impatiently, “make Jesus
as much of an idol as Apollo? And are not these people on their knees
before a god of whose existence they are as much in the dark as were
the Greeks of fair Apollo, and of whose past they have only rumors
such as Homer reports of our Olympian gods—as idolatrous as the
Athenians? What would you say,” I asked my guide, “if I were to demand
that you should produce Jesus and prove him to my eyes and ears as
you have asked me to produce and prove Apollo? What is the difference
between a ceremony performed in honor of Apollo and one performed
in honor of Jesus, since it is as impossible to give oracular
demonstration of the existence of the one as of the other? If Jesus is
alive and a god, and Apollo is an idol and dead, what is the evidence,
since the one is as invisible, as inaccessible, and as unproducible
as the other? And, if faith that Jesus is a god proves him a god, why
will not faith in Apollo make him a god? But if worshipping Jesus,
whom for the best part of the last two thousand years no man has seen,
heard or touched; if building temples to him, burning incense upon his
altars, bowing at his shrine and calling him ‘God,’ is not idolatry,
neither is it idolatry to kindle fire upon the luminous altars of the
Greek Apollo,—God of the dawn, master of the enchanted lyre—he with
the bow and arrow tipped with fire! I am not denying,” I said, “that
Jesus ever lived. He may have been alive two thousand years ago, but
if he has not been heard from since, if the same thing that happened
to the people living at the time he lived has happened to him,
namely—if he is dead, then you are worshipping the dead, which fact
stamps your religion as idolatrous.”
And, then, remembering what he had said to me about the Greek
mythology being beautiful but not true, I said to him: “Your temples
are indeed gorgeous and costly; your music is grand; your altars
are superb; your litany is exquisite; your chants are melting; your
incense, and bells and flowers, your gold and silver vessels are
all in rare taste, and I dare say your dogmas are subtle and your
preachers eloquent, but your religion has one fault—it is not
true.”
I shall speak in a straightforward way, and shall say today what
perhaps I should say tomorrow, or ten years from now,—but shall say
it today, because I cannot keep it back, because I have nothing better
to say than the truth, or what I hold to be the truth. But why seek
truths that are not pleasant? We cannot help it. No man can suppress
the truth. Truth finds a crack or crevice to crop out of; it bobs up
to the surface and all the volume and weight of waters can not keep it
down. Truth prevails! Life, death, truth—behold, these three no
power can keep back. And since we are doomed to know the truth, let us
cultivate a love for it. It is of no avail to cry over lost illusions,
to long for vanished dreams, or to call to the departing gods to come
back. It may be pleasant to play with toys and dolls all our life, but
evidently we are not meant to remain children always. The time comes
when we must put away childish things and obey the summons of truth,
stern and high. A people who fear the truth can never be a free
people. If what I will say is the truth, do you know of any good
reason why I should not say it? And if for prudential reasons I should
sometimes hold back the truth, how would you know when I am telling
what I believe to be the truth, and when I am holding it back for
reasons of policy?
The truth, however unwelcome, is not injurious; it is error which
raises false hopes, which destroys, degrades and pollutes, and which,
sooner or later, must be abandoned. Was it not Spencer, whom Darwin
called “our great philosopher,” who said, “Repulsive as is its aspect,
the hard fact which dissipates a cherished illusion is presently found
to contain the germ of a more salutary belief?” Spain is decaying
today because her teachers, for policy’s sake, are withholding the
disagreeable truth from the people. Holy water and sainted bones can
give a nation illusions and dreams, but never,—strength.
A difficult subject is in the nature of a challenge to the mind.
One difficult task attempted is worth a thousand commonplace efforts
completed. The majority of people avoid the difficult and fear danger.
But he who would progress must even court danger. Political and
religious liberty were discovered through peril and struggle. The
world owes its emancipation to human daring. Had Columbus feared
danger, America might have slept for another thousand years.
I have a difficult subject in hand. It is also a delicate one. But
I am determined not only to know, if it is possible, the whole truth
about Jesus, but also to communicate that truth to others. Some people
can keep their minds shut. I cannot; I must share my intellectual
life with the world. If I lived a thousand years ago, I might have
collapsed at the sight of the burning stake, but I feel sure I would
have deserved the stake.
People say to me, sometimes, “Why do you not confine yourself to
moral and religious exhortation, such as, ‘Be kind, do good, love one
another, etc.’?” But there is more of a moral tonic in the open
and candid discussion of a subject like the one in hand, than in a
multitude of platitudes. We feel our moral fiber stiffen into force
and purpose under the inspiration of a peril dared for the advancement
of truth.
“Tell us what you believe,” is one of the requests frequently
addressed to me. I never deliver a lecture in which I do not, either
directly or indirectly, give full and free expression to my faith in
everything that is worthy of faith. If I do not believe in dogma, it
is because I believe in freedom. If I do not believe in one inspired
book, it is because I believe that all truth and only truth is
inspired. If I do not ask the gods to help us, it is because I believe
in human help, so much more real than supernatural help. If I do not
believe in standing still, it is because I believe in progress. If I
am not attracted by the vision of a distant heaven, it is because
I believe in human happiness, now and here. If I do not say “Lord,
Lord!” to Jesus, it is because I bow my head to a greater Power than
Jesus, to a more efficient Savior than he has ever been—Science!
“Oh, he tears down, but does not build up,” is another criticism about
my work. It is not true. No preacher or priest is more constructive.
To build up their churches and maintain their creeds the priests
pulled down and destroyed the magnificent civilization of Greece and
Rome, plunging Europe into the dark and sterile ages which lasted
over a thousand years. When Galileo waved his hands for joy because
he believed he had enriched humanity with a new truth and extended the
sphere of knowledge, what did the church do to him? It conspired to
destroy him. It shut him up in a dungeon! Clapping truth into jail;
gagging the mouth of the student—is that building up or tearing down?
When Bruno lighted a new torch to increase the light of the world,
what was his reward? The stake! During all the ages that the church
had the power to police the world, every time a thinker raised his
head he was clubbed to death. Do you think it is kind of us—does it
square with our sense of justice to call the priest constructive,
and the scientists and philosophers who have helped people to their
feet—helped them to self-government in politics, and to self-help in
life,—destructive? Count your rights—political, religious, social,
intellectual—and tell me which of them was conquered for you by the
priest.
“He is irreverent,” is still another hasty criticism I have heard
advanced against the rationalist. I wish to tell you something. But
first let us be impersonal. The epithets “irreverent,” “blasphemer,”
“atheist,” and “infidel,” are flung at a man, not from pity, but from
envy. Not having the courage or the industry of our neighbor who works
like a busy bee in the world of men and books, searching with the
sweat of his brow for the real bread of life, wetting the open page
before him with his tears, pushing into the “wee” hours of the
night his quest, animated by the fairest of all loves, “the love of
truth”,—we ease our own indolent conscience by calling him names. We
pretend that it is not because we are too lazy or too selfish to work
as hard or think as freely as he does, but because we do not want to
be as irreverent as he is that we keep the windows of our minds shut.
To excuse our own mediocrity we call the man who tries to get out
of the rut a “blasphemer.” And so we ask the world to praise our
indifference as a great virtue, and to denounce the conscientious toil
and thought of another, as “blasphemy.”
What is a myth? A myth is a fanciful explanation of a given
phenomenon. Observing the sun, the moon, and the stars overhead, the
primitive man wished to account for them. This was natural. The mind
craves for knowledge. The child asks questions because of an inborn
desire to know. Man feels ill at ease with a sense of a mental vacuum,
until his questions are answered. Before the days of science, a
fanciful answer was all that could be given to man’s questions about
the physical world. The primitive man guessed where knowledge failed
him—what else could he do? A myth, then, is a guess, a story, a
speculation, or a fanciful explanation of a phenomenon, in the absence
of accurate information.
Many are the myths about the heavenly bodies, which, while we call
them myths, because we know better, were to the ancients truths. The
Sun and Moon were once brother and sister, thought the child-man; but
there arose a dispute between them; the woman ran away, and the man
ran after her, until they came to the end of the earth where land and
sky met. The woman jumped into the sky, and the man after her, where
they kept chasing each other forever, as Sun and Moon. Now and
then they came close enough to snap at each other. That was their
explanation of an eclipse. (Childhood of the World.—Edward Clodd.)
With this mythus, the primitive man was satisfied, until his
developing intelligence realized its inadequacy. Science was born of
that realization.
During the middle ages it was believed by Europeans that in certain
parts of the world, in India, for instance, there were people who
had only one eye in the middle of their foreheads, and were more like
monsters than humans. This was imaginary knowledge, which travel and
research have corrected. The myth of a one-eyed people living in India
has been replaced by accurate information concerning the
Hindoos. Likewise, before the science of ancient languages was
perfected—before archaeology had dug up buried cities and deciphered
the hieroglyphics on the monuments of antiquity, most of our knowledge
concerning the earlier ages was mythical, that is to say, it was
knowledge not based on investigation, but made to order. Just as
the theologians still speculate about the other world, primitive
man speculated about this world. Even we moderns, not very long ago,
believed, for instance, that the land of Egypt was visited by ten
fantastic plagues; that in one bloody night every first born in the
land was slain; that the angel of a tribal-god dipped his hand in
blood and printed a red mark upon the doors of the houses of the Jews
to protect them from harm; that Pharaoh and his armies were drowned
in the Red Sea; that the children of Israel wandered for forty years
around Mount Sinai; and so forth, and so forth. But now that we can
read the inscriptions on the stone pages dug out of ancient ruins; now
that we can compel a buried world to reveal its secret and to tell us
its story, we do not have to go on making myths about the ancients.
Myths die when history is born.
It will be seen from these examples that there is no harm in
myth-making if the myth is called a myth. It is when we use our
fanciful knowledge to deny or to shut out real and scientific
knowledge that the myth becomes a stumbling block. And this is
precisely the use to which myths have been put. The king with his
sword and the priest with his curses, have supported the myth against
science. When a man pretends to believe that the Santa Claus of
his childhood is real, and tries to compel also others to play a part,
he becomes positively immoral. There is no harm in believing in Santa
Claus as a myth, but there is in pretending that he is real, because
such an attitude of mind makes a mere trifle of truth.
Is Jesus a myth? There is in man a faculty for fiction. Before history
was born, there was myth; before men could think, they dreamed. It
was with the human race in its infancy as it is with the child. The
child’s imagination is more active than its reason. It is easier for
it to fancy even than to see. It thinks less than it guesses. This
wild flight of fancy is checked only by experience. It is reflection
which introduces a bit into the mouth of imagination, curbing its pace
and subduing its restless spirit. It is, then, as we grow older, and,
if I may use the word, riper, that we learn to distinguish between
fact and fiction, between history and myth.
In childhood we need playthings, and the more fantastic and bizarre
they are, the better we are pleased with them. We dream, for instance,
of castles in the air—gorgeous and clothed with the azure hue of
the skies. We fill the space about and over us with spirits, fairies,
gods, and other invisible and airy beings. We covet the rainbow. We
reach out for the moon. Our feet do not really begin to touch the firm
ground until we have reached the years of discretion.
I know there are those who wish they could always remain
children,—living in dreamland. But even if this were desirable, it
is not possible. Evolution is our destiny; of what use is it, then, to
take up arms against destiny?
Let it be borne in mind that all the religions of the world were born
in the childhood of the race.
Science was not born until man had matured. There is in this thought a
world of meaning.
Children make religions.
Grown up people create science.
The cradle is the womb of all the fairies and faiths of mankind.
The school is the birthplace of science.
Religion is the science of the child.
Science is the religion of the matured man.
In the discussion of this subject, I appeal to the mature, not to
the child mind. I appeal to those who have cultivated a taste for
truth—who are not easily scared, but who can “screw their courage
to the sticking point” and follow to the end truth’s leading. The
multitude is ever joined to its idols; let them alone. I speak to the
discerning few.
There is an important difference between a lecturer and an ordained
preacher. The latter can command a hearing in the name of God, or in
the name of the Bible. He does not have to satisfy his hearers about
the reasonableness of what he preaches. He is God’s mouthpiece, and
no one may disagree with him. He can also invoke the authority of
the church and of the Christian world to enforce acceptance of his
teaching. The only way I may command your respect is to be reasonable.
You will not listen to me for God’s sake, nor for the Bible’s
sake, nor yet for the love of heaven, or the fear of hell. My only
protection is to be rational—to be truthful. In other words, the
preacher can afford to ignore common sense in the name of Revelation.
But if I depart from it in the least, or am caught once playing fast
and loose with the facts, I will irretrievably lose my standing.
Our answer to the question, Is Jesus a Myth? must depend more or
less upon original research, as there is very little written on the
subject. The majority of writers assume that a person answering to the
description of Jesus lived some two thousand years ago. Even the few
who entertain doubts on the subject, seem to hold that while there is
a large mythical element in the Jesus story, nevertheless there is a
historical nucleus round which has clustered the elaborate legend of
the Christ. In all probability, they argue, there was a man called
Jesus, who said many helpful things, and led an exemplary life, and
all the miracles and wonders represent the accretions of fond and
pious ages.
Let us place ourselves entirely in the hands of the evidence. As far
as possible, let us be passive, showing no predisposition one way or
another. We can afford to be independent. If the evidence proves the
historicity of Jesus, well and good; if the evidence is not sufficient
to prove it, there is no reason why we should fear to say so; besides,
it is our duty to inform ourselves on this question. As intelligent
beings we desire to know whether this Jesus, whose worship is not only
costing the world millions of the people’s money, but which is also
drawing to his service the time, the energies, the affection, the
devotion, and the labor of humanity,—is a myth, or a reality. We
believe that all religious persecutions, all sectarian wars, hatreds
and intolerance, which still cramp and embitter our humanity, would
be replaced by love and brotherhood, if the sects could be made to
see that the God-Jesus they are quarreling over is a myth, a shadow
to which credulity alone gives substance. Like people who have been
fighting in the dark, fearing some danger, the sects, once relieved
of the thraldom of a tradition which has been handed down to them by a
childish age and country, will turn around and embrace one another. In
every sense, the subject is an all-absorbing one. It goes to the root
of things; it touches the vital parts, and it means life or death to
the Christian religion.