Bible Myths and their Parallels
in other Religions
CHAPTER XXXVII.
(Page) 423
WHY CHRISTIANITY
PROSPERED.
This celebrated
ecclesiastical historian considered it
very probable that the writings
of the
Essenic
Therapeuts,
in Egypt
had been
incorporated into the
gospels of the
New Testament, and into
some
Pauline
epistles.
His words are:
“ It is very likely that
the commentaties (scriptures) which
were among them
(the
Essenes)
were the
Gospels,
and the works of the
Apostles, and certain expositions
of the Hebrews,
and also the other
epistles
of Paul
do contain.” a
a
Eusebius: The Ancient
Ecclesiastical History of
Eusebius Pamphilius,
Bishop of Ceserea
in Palestine,
Lib. 2, ch. xvii.
The principal doctrines
and rites of
the Essenes
can be connected with
the East,
with Parsism,
and especially with
Buddhism.
Among the doctrines which
Essenes
and
Buddhists
had in common
was that
of the
Angel-Messiah.b
b
Bunsen The Angel-Messiah, p. vii.
“ The New Testament
is the
Essene-Nazarene
Glad Tidings!
Adon, Adoni, Adonis,
style of worship.”
(S. F. Dunlap:
Son of the Man, p. iii.
Godfrey Higgins says:
“ The Essenes
were called physicians
of the soul, or
Therapeutœ;
being residents
both in Judea and
Egypt,
they probably
spoke or had their
sacred books in Chaldee.
They were
Pythagoreans, as is proved
by all their forms,
ceremonies, and doctrines,
and they called
themselves sons
of Jesse.
If the Pythagoreans
or Conobitæ,
as they are called
by Jamblicus,
were
Buddhists,
the Essenes
were
Buddhists.
The Essenes
lived in Egypt,
on the lake of Parembole or
Maria, in monasteries.
These are the very places in which
we formerly found
the Gymnosophists,
or Samaneans, or
Buddhist priests
to have lived; which Gymnosophistæ,
are placed also by
Ptolomy in
north-eastern India.”
“ Their (the Essenes)
parishes, churches, bishops,
priests, deacons, festivals
are all identically
the same (as the Christians).
They had apostolic founders;
the manners which distinguished
the immediate apostles
of Christ; scriptures
divinely inspired;
the same allegorical mode of
interpreting them, which has since
obtained among Christians, and the same order
of performing public worship.
They had missionary stations or colonies
of their community established in
Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus,
Phillippi, Colosse, and Thessalonica,
precisely such, and in the same circumstances,
as were those to whom St. Paul
addressed his letters in those places.
All the fine moral doctrines
which are attributed to
the Samaritan Nazarite, and
I doubt not justly attributed to him,
are to be found
among the doctrines
of these ascetics.” c
c
Godfrey Higgins: Anacalypsis,
vol. i. p. 747; vol ii. p. 34.
(Page) 424
BIBLE MYTHS.
And Arthur Lillie says:
“ It is asserted by calm thinkers
like Dean Mansel that
within two generations of the time of
Alexander the Great, the missionaries
of
Buddha
made their appearance
at Alexandria.” d
This theory is confirmed— in the east
by the Asoka monuments—
in the west by Philo.
He expressly maintains
the identity in creed of
the Judaism
and that of the
Gymnosophists of India
who abstained from the
‘Sacrifice of
living animals’ — in a word,
the
BUDDHISTS.
It would follow from this
that the priestly religion
of Babylonia,
Palestine, Egypt, and Greece
were undermined by
certain kindred mystical societies
organized by
Buddha’s missionaries
under the various names of
Therapeutes,
Essenes,
Neo-Pythagoreans Neo-Zoroastrians, &c.
thus
Buddhism
prepared the way
for Christianity.”
e
d
“ In this ”
says Mr. Lillie
“ he was supported
by philosophers of the calibre of
Schilling and Schopenhauer, and
the great sanskrit authority, Lassen.
Renan also sees
traces of this
Buddhist
propagandism in Palestine
before the
Christian era.
Hilgenfeld, Mütter,
Bohlen, King,
all admit the
Buddhist influence.
Colebrooke saw a striking similarity
between the
Buddhist philosophy,
and that of the Pythagoreans.
Dean Milman was convinced that
the Therapeuts
sprung from the ‘ contemplative
and indolent fraternities ’
of India.”
And, he might have added,
the Rev. Robert Taylor in his
“ Diegesis,”
and Godfrey Higgins in his
“ Anacalypsis,”
have brought strong arguments to bear
in support of this theory.
e
Buddha and
early Buddhism p. vi.
The Buddhists
have the “ eight-fold holy path.”
(Dhammapada), eight spiritual states leading up to
Buddhahood.
The first state of
the Essenes,
resulted from baptism,
and it seems to correspond with the first
Buddhistic state,
those who have entered the
(mystic) stream.
Patience, purity, and the mastery of
passion were aimed at
by both devotees in the
other stages. In the last,
magical powers, healing the sick, casting out
evil spirits, etc., were supposed to
be gained.
Buddhists and
Essenes
seem to have doubled up
this eight-fold path into four,
for some reason or other.
Buddhists and
Essenes had
three orders of ascetics
or monks, but
this classification is distinct
from the spiritual
classifications.f
f
Bunsen’s Angel-Messiah, p. 121.
The doctrine of the
“Annointed Angel,” of
the man from heaven,
the Creator of the world,
the doctrine of the
atoning sacrificial death
of Jesus by the blood
of his cross, the doctrine
of the Messianic
antetype of the
Paschal lamb of the
Paschal omer, and thus of
the ressurection of
Christ Jesus,
the third day, according to
the Scriptures,
these doctrines
of Paul
can, with
more
or less
certainty, be connected with
the Essenes.
It becomes almost
a certainty that
Eusebius was right
in surmising
that
Essenic writings
have been used
by Paul
and the evangelists.
Not Jesus but Paul,
is the cause
of the separation
of
the Jews
from
the Christians.
g
g
Bunsen’s Angel-Messiah, p. 240.
The probability,
then, that
that sect of
vagrant
quack-doctors,
the
Therapeutæ,
who were established in Egypt
and its neighborhood
many ages before the period assigned by
later theologians
as that of the birth of Christ Jesus,
were the
original fabricators of the
writings contained in the
New Testament,
becomes a certainty on the basis of
evidence, than which history
has nothing more certain, furnished by
the unguarded, but explicit, unwary,
but most unqualified and positive statement
of the historian Eusebius, that
“ those
ancient Therapeutœ
were Christians, and that
their ancient writings were
our Gospels and epistles.”
WHY CHRISTIANITY
PROSPERED. (Page) 425
The
Essenes,
the
Therapeuts,
the Ascetics,
the Monks,
the Ecclesiastics,
and the Eclectics,
are but
different names for
one and the
self-same sect.
The word
“Essene”
is nothing more than
the Egyptian word for
that of which
Therapeut is
the Greek, each of them
signifying
“ healer”
or
“doctor,”
and
designating
the character of
the sect as
professing to be
endued with the miraculous
gift of healing;
and more especially so
with diseases
of
the mind.
Their
name of “Ascetics ”
indicated the severe discipline
and exercise of
self-mortification, long fastings, prayers,
contemplation, and even
making of
themselves
eunuchs
for the kingdom of Heaven’s sake,
as did Origen, Melito,
and others who
derived their Christianity
from the same school; and Jesus
himself is represented to have recognized
and approved
their practice.
Their name
of “Monks ”
indicated their delight
in solitude, their
contemplative life, and their
entire segregation and abstraction
from the world,
which Jesus,
in the Gospel,
is in like manner
represented as describing,
as characteristic of the community
of which he was
a member.
Their name
of “Ecclesiastics ”
was of the same sense,
and indicated their
being called out, elected, separated from
the general fraternity of
mankind, and set apart
to the more immediate service
and honor
of God.
They had a flourishing university,
or corporate body,
established upon these principles,
at Alexandria in Egypt,
long before the period
assigned for the birth of
Christ Jesus.h
h
“ The Essenes
abounded in Egypt,
especially about
Alexandria.”
(Eusebius Eccl. Hist.,
Lib. 2, ch. xvii.)
From this body they
sent out missionaries,
and had established colonies,
auxiliary branches, and
affiliated communities, in
various cities of Asia Minor,
which colonies were
in a flourishing condition,
before the
preaching of
St. Paul.
“ The very ancient
and Eastern
doctrine
of an
Angel-Messiah
had been applied
to Gautama-Buddha,
and
so
it was applied to
Jesus Christ by
the Essenes,
of Egypt and
of Palestine, who
introduced this new
Messianic doctrine into
Essenic
Judaism, and
Essenic
Christianity.” i
i
Bunsen’s Angel-Messiah, p. 255.
In the Pali
and Sanskrit
texts the word
Buddha
is always
used as
a title,
not as
a name.
It means “ The Enlightened One.
Gautama Buddha is represented
to have taught
that he was only
one of a
long series of
Buddhas,
who appear at
intervals in the world,
and who
all teach
the same system.
(Page) 426
BIBLE MYTHS.
After the death of each
Buddha his
religion flourishes
for a time,
but finally wickedness
and vice
again rule over
the land. Then a
new Buddha
appears, who again
preaches the lost
Dharma or truth.
The names of twenty-four of
these
Buddhas
who appeared previous to Gautama
have been handed down
to us.
The Buddhavansa, or
“ History of the
Buddhas,”
the last book of
the Khuddaka Nikaya
in the second Pitca,
gives the lives of
all the previous
Buddhas
before commencing its account
of Gautama himself ;
and the Pali commentary
on the Jatakas
gives certain details
regarding
each
of the
twenty-four. j
j
Rhys Davids’
Buddhism, p. 179.
An
Avatar was expected
about every
six-hundred
years.k
At the time of
Jesus of Nazareth
an Avatar was expected,
not by some of
the Jews alone,
but by most every
eastern nation.l
Many persons were thought at that time
to be, and undoubtedly
thought themselves to be,
the Christ,
and the only reason
why the name
of Jesus
of Nazareth
succeeded above all others,
is because the
Essenes—
who were expecting an Angel-Messiah—
espoused it.
Had it
not been
for this almost indisputable fact,
the name of Jesus
of Nazareth would
undoubtedly not be known
at the
present day.
k
This is clearly shown by Mr. Higgins
in his Anacalypsis.
It should be remembered that Gautama Buddha,
the “ Angel-Messiah,”
and Cyrus, the
“ Anointed ”
of the Lord,
are placed
about
six hundred years
before Jesus,
the “ Anointed.”
This cycle of
six hundred years
was called the
“great year.”
Josephus, the Jewish historian,
alludes to it
when speaking of
the patriarchs
that lived to
a great age.
“ God
afforded them a longer
time of life,”
says he “on account of
their virtue, and the
good use they made of it
in astronomical and
geometrical discoveries, which would not
have afforded the time
for foretelling
(the periods of
the stars),
unless they had lived
six hundred years;
for the
great year
is completed
in that interval.”
(Josephus, Antiquities
of the Jews,
bk. i. c. iii.)
“ From this cycle
of
six hundred,”
says Col. Vallancey,
came the
name of the bird Phœnix,
called by the Egyptians
Phenu, with the
well-known story of its
going to Egypt to burn itself
on the altar of
the
Sun
(at Heliopolis)
and rise again from its ashes,
at the end
of a
certain period.”
l
“ Philo’s writings prove the probability,
almost rising to a certainty, that
already in his time
the Essenes
did expect
an Angel-Messiah
as one of a series
of divine incarnations.
Within about fifty years
after Philo’s death, Elkesai
probably applied this doctrine
to Jesus, and it was promulgated
in Rome about the same time,
if not earlier, by the
Pseudo-Clementines.”
(Bunsen:
The Angel-Messiah, p. 118.)
“ There was at this time
(i.e., at the time of
the birth of jesus),
a prevalent expectation
that some remarkable personage
was about to appear
in Judea.
The Jews were
anxiously looking for
the coming of
the Messiah.
By computing the time
mentioned by Daniel (ch. ix. 25-27),
they knew that the period
was approaching when the Messiah
should appear.
This personage they supposed,
would be a
temporal prince, and
they were expecting that
he would deliver them from Roman bondage.
It was natural that this expectation
should spread
into other countries.”
( Barnes’ Notes,
vol. i. p. 27.)
Epiphanius,
a Christian bishop and writer
of the fourth cerntury, says,
in speaking
of the Essenes:
“ They
who believed on Christ
were called
JESSÆI
(or Essenes),
before they
were called Christians.
These derived
their constitution from the signification
of
the name Jesus,
which in Hebrew signifies
the same as
Therapeutes,
that is,
a saviour
or physician.”
Thus we see that,
according to Christian authority,
the Essenes
and Therapeutes
are one, and that
the Essenes
espoused the cause of
Jesus of Nazareth,
accepted him as an angel-messiah,
and became known
to history as Christians,
or believers in the Anointed Angel.
Book available here:
Bible
Myths.
Paul: an Obituary.
Selected Texts from the New Testament.
The Intolerant Gospel.
Gerd Lüdemann.
Doane, Bible Myths
and their Parallels
in other Religions,
7th ed., pp. 427 et seq.
Doane, Bible Myths
pp. 419 et seq.
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