Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 02 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 13. Tribal ethic, then, would progressively mould tribal religion and be moulded by it--that is to say, a moral step enforced by political circumstances would be reflected more or less clearly in religion, as in the case of the blood covenant with...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 04 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 17. Further Pagan Adaptations. One likely result of the non-performance of the mystery-play as such would be a modification of the sacramental meal. When the crucifixion was represented in sequel to the supreme annual eucharist, p. 207 the bread...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 13 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 148 8. The Judaic Evolution. Rejecting, then, as not merely unwarranted but excluded by the evidence, Dr. Frazer's assumption of the historicity of the crucifixion, we have to note carefully the inferences which his research really warrants. When...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 06 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 9. The clear solution, as distinguished from the rebuttal, of all such contradictions is to recognise that, however we may grade religious conceptions and systems, they are all parts of one process, even as are political conceptions and systems...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 09 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 12. The Eucharist In Orthodox Judaism. That there were both orthodox and heterodox forms of a quasi-Mithraic bread-and-wine ritual among the Jews is to be gathered even from the sacred books. In the legend of the Exodus, Aaron and the elders...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 17 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 4. Vogue Of Human Sacrifice. Given the "prima facie" fitness of the hypothesis, however, there at once arises the question, What positive evidence have we for the existence in the Mediterranean world of any such man-sacrificing ritual...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 11 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 4. Putting aside as unscientific all such prejudgments, and leaving the professed religionist his personal remedy of discriminating finally between "true" and "false" religion, let us begin at the beginning by noting that "religious consciousness"...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 3. Derivations : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 3. Derivations Of The Christian Logos. It is significant of the difficulty of winning a hearing for an important new truth in hierology that, a hundred years after the elaborate development of the Logos doctrine in Philo Judus was fully demonstrated...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 8. The Creed : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 8. The Creed. We have thus far briefly examined what may for the most part be termed the skeleton or dry bones of the Mithraic religion, so far as we can trace them, at the period when it seemed to be successfully competing with Christianity. Wh...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 6. Symbols Of Mithra : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 6. Symbols Of Mithra. To point to these Mithraic monuments, of which there are so many examples, is to point out, further, that the old Persian aversion to images of deity had disappeared with the extension of the Mithraic cultus. 2 There is no...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 2. Theory And Ritual Of Human Sacrifice. The sacrifice of a Saviour-God is a specialisation of the general practice of human sacrifice, which takes many forms. 1 The most readily intelligible are those in which ("a"), after a tribal war, captives...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 16 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 5. The Divinity Of The Victim. On the classic side there is thus abundant evidence as to the practice of human sacrifice, and some as to sacramental cannibalism, in the historic period; but what the theory finally requires is either the sacrifice...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 10 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 5. The need for an understanding becomes pressing when we compare with the conceptions of Dr. Jevons those of Dr. J. G. Frazer, as set forth in the revised edition of his great work, "The Golden Bough". Having before the issue of his first editi...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 08 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 13. Special Features Of The Crucifixion Myth. Of the evolution of the Jewish religion between the closing of the Hebrew canon and the rise of Jesuism we know, broadly, that it consisted in (1) the establishment of the doctrine of a future life...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 14 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 1 PART I. THE RATIONALE OF RELIGION CHAPTER I. THE NATURALNESS OF ALL BELIEF 1. It seems probable, despite theological cavils, that Petronius was right in his signal saying, "Fear first made the Gods". In the words of a recent hierologist, "we...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 12 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 9. Specific Survivals In Judaism. Apart from definite revivals, the memory of human sacrifice is clearly stamped not only on the Passover but on the two other typical sacrificial feasts of the Jews--the indeterminate sacrifice of the Red Heifer...
Appendices. Appendix B. Dramatic And Ritual : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 391 APPENDIX B DRAMATIC AND RITUAL SURVIVALS. While the first edition of this volume was passing through the press in 1903, there reached me a cutting from an American newspaper, describing the survival or revival of a quasi-sacrificial Passi...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 4. The Search : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 4. The Search For A Historical Jesus. Thus far there is no difficulty in tracing a purely speculative process: the doctrine of the Logos is indeed the first stumbling-block of those who seek to reconcile the fourth gospel with the synoptics...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 18 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 3. The Christian Crucifixion. To those who have not realised how all religion has been evolved from savage beginnings, it will seem extravagant to suggest that the story of the Christian crucifixion has been built up from a practice such as those...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 06 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 15. The Gospel Mystery-Play. It is not disputed that one of the most marked features of the popular religions of antiquity, in Greece, Egypt, and Greek-speaking Asia, was the dramatic representation of the central episodes in the stories...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 04 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 11. Returning to our immediate problem, the evolution of religious ideas, we note that, all error being but incomplete or illicit induction, "irrational" and relatively "rational" ideas are alike products of the general mental process. The recoil...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 02 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 99 PART II. SECONDARY GOD-MAKING CHAPTER I. THE SACRIFICED SAVIOUR-GOD 1. Totemism And Sacraments. There is an arguable case for the theory that the belief in a dying and re-arising Saviour-God, seen anciently in the cults of Adonis, Attis...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 11. The Vogue Of Mithraism : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 11. The Vogue Of Mithraism. In view of this long series of signal parallels between the Mithraic and the Christian cults, it is difficult to doubt that one has imitated the other; and it may now be left to the candid reader to pass his own judgment...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 9. Mithraism : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 9. Mithraism And Christianity. Of course, we are told that the Mithraic rites and mysteries were borrowed and imitated from Christianity. 8 English scholars of good standing are still found to say that the Mithraic and other mysteries "furnish...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 12 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 3. At the close of his work, apparently forgetting the propositions of his first chapter as to the priority of the sense of obstacle in the primitive man's notion of supernatural forces, Dr. Jevons affirms that the "earliest attempt" towards...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 14 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 7. The Semitic Antecedents. In view of such an evolution, which may or may not have a historical connection with the old Asiatic rite seen surviving among the Khonds and Gonds, we may perhaps infer where we cannot trace the development that preceded...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 10 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 168 11. Private Jewish Eucharists. There arises thus the further presumption that such a cult as we are tracing may have flourished in a Jewish community elsewhere than in Jerusalem. Dr. Frazer, in surmising a celebration of Purim with a real...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 3. Zoroastrianism : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 3. Zoroastrianism. It is thus difficult to formulate precisely the evolution of Mithraism. If the Gthas are really the oldest parts of the Avesta, the cult of Mithra, though older than the Gthas, was for a time or in one region of Irn rejected...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 08 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 7. This contradiction naturally reiterates itself in Dr. Jevonss treatise at a hundred points: being fundamental, it strikes through the entire argument. While premising that religion is "universally human," and finally contending that man is "by...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 8. The Problem : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 8. The Problem Of Buddhist Origins. At the first critical glance into Buddhistic origins, the student becomes aware of a dilemma. The Buddha, we are told, delivered a teaching which, though it did not directly repudiate, yet ignored and treated...
Chapter Ii. Comparison And Appraisement. Part 06 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 4. Hebrews And Babylonians. We must indeed guard against throwing on the side of Assyria and Babylon the balance of prejudice which has so long been cast on the side of Jewry. There can have been no more of general ethical or rational elevati...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 14 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 264 14. The Problem Of Manichus. On the fringes of the historical problem of Buddhism there lies one which is worth at least a passing scrutiny in this connection--that, namely, of the origins of the heretical quasi-Christian sect of Manichans...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 2. Beginnings Of Cult : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 2. Beginnings Of Cult. To trace completely the history of the cultus, however, we should have to make an examination note merely of Mithraism proper, but of at least three older systems. No historical principle p. 284 is better established than this...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 6. Collapse : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 6. Collapse Of The Constructive Case. First, then, he has not recognised (1) the primary reason for doubting the genuineness of every detail of teaching set forth in the gospels--namely, the total ignorance of those teachings shown in the p. 235...
Part Iv. The Religions Of Ancient Americ. Part 09 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 2. Aztecs And Peruvians. All this was recognised by the industrious Swiss historian of the American religions fifty years ago, 4 when the real unity of the human race was still obscure, in that it was affirmed on such fantastic bases as the myth...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 10 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 10. The Buddhist Cruces. Looking, then, for a foothold among the shifting sands of Buddhist tradition, we note the following clashing records:-- 1. The Buddha is represented alike in ostensibly early and in p. 247 late tradition as speaking of "...
Chapter Ii. Comparison And Appraisement. Part 02 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 8. Revival And Disintegration. Thus for a second time was a Yahwist remnant selected, the bulk of the educated class passing over to the neighbouring polities, and their place being taken by new popular material of a more zealous order. Judaism w...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 7. The Cultus : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 7. The Cultus. Resembling other cults at various points, the Mithraic was latterly peculiar in others. The great specialty of this worship, as we learn from several writers, is that it was carried on in caves--so far at least as its special...
Part Iv. The Religions Of Ancient Americ. Part 05 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 6. Mexican Ethics. The recital of these facts may load some to conclude that the p. 367 [paragraph continues] Mexican priesthood must have been the most atrocious multitude of miscreants the world ever saw. But that would be a complete misconcepti...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 7. Parallel : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 7. Parallel Problems. The natural impulse to reject this view with violence may be somewhat modified when it is remembered that it does but place the Christ on a historic level with all the other Teaching Gods of antiquity. All the leading Gods...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 16 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 16. The Case Of Apollonius Of Tyana. As regards the historical argument it may be well, finally, to anticipate an objection which may be grounded on the admission that Apollonius of Tyana, who has been plausibly described as a Pagan Christ, 7 w...
Chapter Ii. Comparison And Appraisement. Part 04 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 6. The Hebrew Evolution. At this point the Mesopotamian succession is seen to mingle with that of Juda, which in turn falls to be conceived and appraised, as a total evolution, in terms of the conditions. As has been briefly noted above, Judaic...
Chapter Ii. Comparison And Appraisement. Part 08 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 2. Reform As A Religious Process. The case may become clearer if we look for illustration to the phenomena of fictitious literature. It will hardly be suggested that the Semites and Greeks who wrote religious treatises or hymns and ascribed them...
Appendices. Appendix A. The Eating : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 388 p. 389 APPENDIX A THE EATING OF THE CRUCIFIED HUMAN SACRIFICE. On page 136 I have suggested that the cannibalism of the Bataks of Sumatra would seem to be a survival of an anthropophagous sacrament; and on p. 132 I have put the original...
Part Iv. The Religions Of Ancient Americ. Part 03 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 8. The Fatality Of The Priesthood. The main hope of the humaner thinkers would probably lie in the substitution of a symbolic for an anthropophagous sacrament: if baked effigies could be eaten, effigies might be sacrificed. But in some even...
Title Page : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], This page of advertisements originally appeared facing the title page. It is transcribed here for completeness. "BY THE SAME AUTHOR". "ESSAYS TOWARDS A CRITICAL METHOD. NEW ESSAYS TOWARDS A CRITICAL METHOD. WINNOWINGS FROM WORDSWORTH. WALT WHITMAN:...
Appendices : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 438 p. 439 INDEX Aaron, 175 Abammon, 16 Abipones, the, 49 "n". Abraham, 48, 51 "n"., 175, and Isaac, 64, 65, 124, 153, 162, 302 "n". Abraxas, 334 Abtinas, 159 Achan, 149 "n". Achilles, 106 "n"., 107 "n". Acolhuan civilisation, 348 "n"., 366 "Acts...
Part Iv. The Religions Of Ancient Americ. Part 07 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 4. The Mexican Cultus. When we turn from this stage of religious history to that of Aztec Mexico, the first and most memorable difference that faces us is the immense expansion of the power of the priests. If we can trust the Spanish writers, 2 five...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 13 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 258 13. The Buddha Myth. In the introduction to M. Senart's "Essai sur la lgende de Buddha", the most comprehensive and scientific attempt of the kind yet made, the central problem is thus posited:-- "Either the historical data are the primary...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 1. Introductory : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 281 PART III. MITHRAISM 1. Introductory. In the ninth edition of the "Encyclopdia Britannica", supervised by so eminent a scholar and hierologist as the late Professor Robertson Smith, as against some hundreds of pages on the books of the Bible...
Introduction : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. xxi INTRODUCTION My purpose in grouping the four ensuing studies is to complement and complete the undertaking of a previous volume, entitled "Christianity and Mythology". That was substantially a mythological analysis of the Christian system...
Part Iv. The Religions Of Ancient Americ. Part 10 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 339 PART IV. THE RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT AMERICA 1. American Racial Origins. In the study of the native religions of North and South America, there is a special attraction bound up with the special perplexity of the subject. These religions, like...
Title Page. Part 02 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], PAGAN CHRISTS STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE HIEROLOGY BY JOHN M. ROBERTSON SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND EXPANDED [ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED] LONDON: WATTS & CO., 17 JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C. [1911] Scanned, proofed...
Appendices. Appendix C. Replies To Criticisms : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 396 APPENDIX C REPLIES TO CRITICISMS 1. General Opposition: The Hibbert Journal. As has been remarked in the preface, the most notable aspect of the body of criticism passed upon the first edition of the foregoing work is the almost complete...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 10. Further Christi : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 10. Further Christian Parallels. Still further does the parallel hold. It is well known that whereas in the gospels Jesus is said to have been born in an inn p. 321 stable, early Christian writers, as Justin Martyr 1 and Origen, 2 explicitly say he...
Chapter Ii. Comparison And Appraisement. Part 05 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 5. Forces Of Religious Evolution. The true judgment on the comparative merits of religions is to be reached by noting the manner of their evolution; and when this is impartially done the student is led, not to any racial palm-giving on the score...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 13. The Point Of Junction : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 13. The Point Of Junction. And still we have to note what appears to be the strangest concrete survival of all, cherished where we should least count on finding it. At Rome there is religiously preserved a chair which is alleged to be that of St...
Part Iv. The Religions Of Ancient Americ. Part 06 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 5. Mexican Sacrifices And Cannibal Sacraments. Of deeper interest is the moral aspect of the worship of Mexican Gods, especially the most memorable feature of all, human sacrifice. Though this, as we have seen, is primordial in religion, there c...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 5. The Process : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 5. The Process Of Syncretism. In the great polytheistic era, however, the habit of personifying all the forces of nature led first to a universal recognition of the p. 295 actual existence of the deities of foreign peoples, and later on to the ide...
Part Iv. The Religions Of Ancient Americ. Part 02 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 9. The Religion Of Peru. While in Mexico we see a society being ruined by religion, in Peru we find one suffering economically a similar ruin from the principle of empire. In Peru, the religious tendencies are seen at work in a much modified degree...
Chapter Ii. Comparison And Appraisement. Part 09 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 59 CHAPTER II. COMPARISON AND APPRAISEMENT OF RELIGIONS 1. Early Forces Of Reform. The main obstacle to a "science of religion," naturally, is the survival either of simple belief in a given religion or of sociological predilections set up by...
Chapter Ii. Comparison And Appraisement : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 9. Conclusion. There has thus emerged from a survey of the comparative p. 95 evolution of religions the conclusion that not only do all undergo change in spite of the special religious aversion to change, but all evolve by the same laws, their...
Chapter Ii. Comparison And Appraisement. Part 03 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 7. Post-Exilic Phases. If we look first to the vogue of Biblical Judaism in Palestine, we have to note that from the consummation of the Return the cult was jealously closed not only to the people of Samaria, who presumed to worship a Yahweh...
Part Iv. The Religions Of Ancient Americ. Part 08 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 3. Primitive Religion And Human Sacrifice. Whatever may have been the variety of the stocks that immigrated from Asia, it holds good that we may look in the less advanced American races for traces of the steps in the religious and social evoluti...
Preface To The Second Edition : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. x p. xi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION Since the first issue of this work in 1903, but especially within the past few years, its main positions have been brought into extensive discussion by other writers, notably in Germany, where...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 15 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 15. The Manichean Solution. Seeking for a solution, we may assume that whatever tradition the Christians had concerning Manes they got from the east; and it is conceivable that from the datum of Turkestan they evolved the ideas of "Scythianus"...
Chapter Ii. Comparison And Appraisement. Part 07 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 3. Polytheism And Monotheism. Broadly speaking, religious evolution is far from being a steady progress, and, such as it is, is determined in great measure by political and social change. It was certainly a political process, for instance, th...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 4. Evolution Of Mithra : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 4. Evolution Of Mithra. Putting aside as otherwise insoluble the problem of "Zoroastrianism," and recognising that that system and the special cult of Mithra were originally separate but probably fused by some conquest, 4 we proceed to note th...
Part Iv. The Religions Of Ancient Americ. Part 04 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 7. The Mexican White Christ. Two sets of phenomena tell of the presence among the Aztecs of that instinct of humanity or spirit of reason which elsewhere gradually delivered men from the demoralisation of human sacrifice. One was the practice...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 57 14. We may now circumspectly sum up the constructive argument, and in so doing we arrive at an inductive definition of religion. 1. Religion consists "primarily" in a surmise or conception, reached by way of simple animism, of the causati...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 9. Buddhism : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 9. Buddhism And Buddhas. Our English guide, than whom no man knows more of Buddhism, gives us a definition: "There can be little doubt but that the doctrines of the Four Noble Truths and of the Noble Eightfold Path, the 'Foundation of the Kingdom...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 2. The Logos : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 2. The Logos. All such doctrines, it is probable, were represented in the later, if not in the earlier, Babylonian religion; and the idea of the Logos is probably early in Mazdeism; 2 but in any case it was from the outside that it was pressed up...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 05 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 10. To say this, however, is certainly not to endorse the surprising thesis latterly put forth by Dr. Frazer, to the effect that magic-mongering, after all, has been a great factor in human progress. 2 His first suggestion was, as we have seen, th...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 03 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 18. Synopsis And Conclusion: Genealogy Of Human Sacrifice And Sacrament. Meantime it may be helpful to draw up a tentative genealogical scheme of the history of the sacrificial idea as we have sketched it up to Christianity, and further to reduce...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 07 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 14. Possible Historical Elements. One concrete feature in the crucifixion myth remains to be accounted for--the scourging. Mr. Lang presses this feature of the Saca as an argument against the view that the victim died as representing a God. 1...
Part Iv. The Religions Of Ancient Americ : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 10. Conclusion. On the other hand, the promotion of material well-being is precisely what is oftenest claimed for Christianity; and the argument is presumably changed in the case of Peru and Mexico only because there it would break down...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 11. Sociological : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 11. Sociological Clues. Seeking for sociological explanations, we first turn to the economic conditions. As was to be expected, there are clear traces of an economic pressure that drove men into the Order. In the Milinda Prashnaya ("Questions...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 12. Buddhism : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 12. Buddhism And Asoka. When Buddhism first emerges in what may be termed the light of history, it is as an established system highly favoured by the great king Asoka, about 250 B.C. It is made clear by his edicts that only a small number...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 1. Primary : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 214 CHAPTER II. THE TEACHING GOD 1. Primary And Secondary Ideas. Though the secondary Gods are not always sacrificed, they are nearly always in some measure teachers; and here, of course, they are developed from earlier forms. A general...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 09 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 6. As thus. In terms of many observations, and of some of Dr. Jevonss admissions, we are led to realise that the idea of what we term "the supernatural" not only does not mean for primitive man a consistent distinction: it does not mean it...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 11 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 10. The Pre-Christian Jesus-God. We are thus prepared to interpret the crux set up for Christian commentators by the ancient reading "Jesus Barabbas" in Matt. xxvii, 16, 17. That this was long the accepted reading in the ancient church is to be...
Part Iii. Mithraism. Ss 12. Absorpti : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 12. Absorption In Christianity. Now, however, arises the great question, How came such a cultus to die out of the Roman and Byzantine empire after making its way so far and holding its ground so long? The answer to that question has never, I think...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 13 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 2. In the midst of much dispute, moral science approaches agreement on the proposition that all primitive beliefs and usages, however strange or absurd, are to be understood as primarily products of judgment, representing theories of causati...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 15 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 6. The Cannibal Sacrament. Given such a modification, however, we have to reckon with a tendency that is seen to have been chronic in religious history--the tendency, namely, to revert to a foreign or archaic form of sacrifice or mystery in times...
Chapter Ii. The Teaching God. Ss 5. The Critical : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], p. 231 5. The Critical Problem. The problem is one that has been before now debated on other issues; and it may be well here to take up these by way of illumination and test. Grote, putting in scientific form a thesis sometimes more summarily...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 07 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 8. One sample more may suffice to complete the justification of our criticism that Dr. Jevonss interesting and suggestive treatise is flawed throughout by fatal contradiction. In discussing totemism, he certifies, first, the primitive belief of men...
Chapter I. The Naturalness Of All Belief. Part 03 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 12. It is necessary to clear up the historic problem of ancestor-worship in order to reach a sound definition of religion. And to begin with, we find the historical evidence is all against Dr. Jevonss later thesis. Not only have we the many cases...
Chapter I. The Sacrificed Saviour God. Ss. Part 05 : * "Pagan Christs", by John M. Robertson, [1911], 16. The Mystery-Play And The Cultus. In all probability the performance of the mystery-play was suspended in the churches 1 when it was reduced to narrative form as part of the gospel. The suspension may have occurred either during a time of local...
