The Myths of Christianity. E. B. Leatherbee
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let be do way;
It was s’n boy began this game,
That closhyd was clene and gay,
& ye geve hym now an A’ngel name.
The old prophecy in Isaiah (vii, 14) that a virgin shall bear a son loses its utility when we recognize that this was the sign given Ahaz that God would preserve his kingdom, although he was then threatened by a coalition of the kings of Ephraim and Syria. If the prophecy referred to the Christ, how could it have any influence on Ahaz? How could he be calmed and made to preserve his courage in the face of danger by a sign which would not be given until centuries after he slept with his fathers? But such was not the case. Isaiah made his sign appear as he had promised (vii, 16), “Before the child shall know to refuse evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings” (the rulers of Israel and Syria). Now, this prophecy was fulfilled, either by the trickery of the prophet or the compliance of a virgin, for we find in the next chapter (Isaiah viii, 3), “And I went unto the prophetess; and she conceived and bare a son.” And that is the whole story. To apply it to the mythical birth of Jesus is puerile. No one can doubt that so good a Jew as Josephus believed in the prospect of a messiah, yet so little did Isaiah’s prophecy impress him that he did not even mention the virgin episode. Probably, on the whole, he thought it a rather contemptible bit of trickery and rather detrimental to the memory of Isaiah.
James Orr, in his treatise written expressly to prove the historical fact of the virgin birth, denies that the prophecy of Isaiah could be applied to Jesus. Here we have an orthodox writer who firmly believes in the miraculous conception, shattering the great cornerstone of the church’s foundation for this belief. He says that the word “almah” was not Hebrew for virgin at all, but meant only a marriageable young woman. He says it can have no connection with Jesus, and thus he agrees with Thomas Paine, but for opposite reasons.
While Orr evidently considers that all pagan tales of divine paternity are legends, he affirms that the case of Jesus is genuine. Just why God became Deus Genetrix only once, he does not explain. If God approved of this method of creation, he would surely have performed it more than once. That he should have chosen a woman at all seems strange, when he could have produced Jesus without female assistance. Why should he have given his son, coexistent with the father, and, as such, undoubtedly of a fully developed intelligence, all the discomfort and danger of infantile life? If Jesus were but another phase of the godhead, one of the divine eternal trinity, it was degrading and ridiculous to have inflicted him with the processes of fœtal life, with all the embryonic phases of development from ovule, through vertebrate and lower form to human guise; to have given him the dangers of human gestation and parturition, the inconvenience of childhood, with teething and other infantile discomforts, and the slow years of growth. Why did he inflict all these things on a part, a third, of himself, in many years of preparation for but a few years of preaching, when he could have produced the Christ in a wonderful manner, full grown in all the beauty and dignity and strength of perfect and sublime manhood? Probably some will answer that then Jesus would have been regarded as an impostor. But no more doubt could be cast on such an appearance than has been thrown on the doubtful story of the purity of Mary. Orr, in his haste to prove his belief, gives a very good argument against it (page 82) in the words, “The idea of a Virgin birth … was one entirely foreign to Jewish habits of thought, which honored marriage, and set no premium on virginity.” Therefore, it could not have been of Jewish origin. The Jews never accepted it, and it grew up only under the influence of Gentile converts.
It was an idea of classic paganism, an adoption of universal phallism, this conception of a divine impregnation. The doctrine that by conjunction with a woman, God begat the Christ is merely another phase of the phallic idea of the procreative principles of the deity—it is another form of the deus genetrix, the generative principle of male procreation.
II. Pagan Parallels.
The orthodox church denies that the Christ had any brothers and declares that Jesus was the only child of Mary, in spite of gospel testimony to the contrary. Matthew i, 25, referring to Joseph, says, “And he knew her not till she had brought forth her first-born son,” which implies that after his birth marital relations began between Joseph and Mary, from which other children were born, for how, otherwise, could Jesus have been the “first-born”? That Jesus had both brothers and sisters is declared in Matthew xii, 46; xiii, 55, 56; Mark iii, 31; vi, 3; Luke viii, 19–20; John ii, 12; vii, 3, 5, 10, and Acts i, 14, while Paul in Galatians i, 19, expressly names “James, the Lord’s brother.”
As the veneration for Mary increased under the influence of the pagan conceptions of an immaculate mother-queen of heaven, these simple and natural consequences of her marriage could not be tolerated, even allowing for the exceptional conception of Jesus, and the orthodox began to assert that Mary was not only an uncontaminated virgin at the birth of Jesus, but that by miracle she did not lose her virginity by that event. They attempted to explain the above references, first, by asserting that these children were of Joseph by a previous marriage, and later, when they felt it necessary to endow the consort of their pure mother with perfect celibacy, they named them as cousins only. Jerome was so strong a champion for Joseph’s virginity that he considered Epiphanius guilty of impious invention for supporting the earlier belief regarding Jesus’ brethren.
The Buddhists were far wiser than the Christians and eluded all such difficulties by causing Maya to die seven days after the birth of Sakyamuni, and by asserting such to have been the case with all the mothers of the Buddhas.
At the time of Jesus’ birth a brilliant star is believed to have heralded the event, and has passed into tradition as “the star of Bethlehem.” There is nothing novel in this idea, as all ancient peoples were very superstitious about the celestial bodies, firmly believing in astronomical influences on human affairs, and it seems to have been a common idea that the births of great men were announced by the presence of peculiar stars.
In China, a new star appeared at the birth of Yu, founder of the first dynasty, as was also the case when the sage Laoutze was born, while in Mexico the “morning star” was the symbol of the national savior Quetzalcoatl. The primitive Christians, however, did not have to look so far for such an idea, but easily found a parallel in the unusual star reported by the friends of Terah to have appeared on the night of Abraham’s birth, which they said shone so brightly in the east.
Not only was the birth of the messiah announced by the brilliant star, but it was also celebrated by the singing of the heavenly host. Similar phenomena occurred at the birth of Krishna, when “the clouds emitted low pleasing sounds and poured down a rain of flowers.” On the eve of the birth of Confucius “celestial music sounded in the ears of his mother”; at Buddha’s a “marvelous light illumined the earth”; and at the birth of Osiris a voice was heard proclaiming that the ruler of the earth was born.
The savior having been born, he must necessarily be recognized, so the myth of the wise men and their gifts follows—in a fashion very similar to that told of the other saviors. The marvelous infant Buddha was visited at the time of his birth by wise men who immediately recognized in him all the characteristics of divinity. At the time of Confucius’ birth “five celestial sages entered the house whilst vocal and instrumental music filled the air.” Mithras, the Persian savior, was visited by wise men called magi at the time of his birth, and was presented by them with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh; and the same story is told by Plato in relation to the birth of Socrates.
While it is claimed for all the world’s saviors that they were borne by virgins and begotten by God, genealogies of royal descent are traced for them through the husbands of their mothers in a most illogical manner. As may be seen in the New Testament, the pedigree of Jesus is most elaborately set forth in both Matthew and Luke, who claim that through Joseph (whose parentage is denied) the Christ was a direct descendant of King David, though, strange to relate, the connecting generations are different in one inspired gospel from what they are in the other. Krishna, in the male line, was of royal descent,