JESUS—MAN OR MYTH?
It is significant that Jesus was one among many throughout the course of Hebrew history who claimed Messiahship, most of whom were also summarily executed by the Roman power. Such claims were put forth, for example, by Mani, around whom grew the cult of Manichaeism; this group numbered Augustine among its ranks. Tertullian was a member of the cult that advanced the claims of Montanus. Simon Magus, mentioned in the Acts, also figured in the role. A cult grew up around the person of Arion. Sigmund Mowinckel, in his book He That Cometh, expounds the concept of the Messianic hope as it found expression in the religious life of the Jewish people. He states that it assumed two distinct forms. Among the learned of the schools, it was an expectation of the manifestation of the veritable presence of God himself among his people—not in the person of the prophesied scion of David, but in an exaltation of the nation and an overshadowing by a divine influence that was transcendental, universal, and individualistic. This form of the tradition was never popular with the people at large, who looked for the coming of the national Savior in the person of the King, who from his throne in Jerusalem should rule the nations of the world.
This is an understandable hope in times of social unrest. All kinds of speculation thus centered about any outstanding figure, whether he appeared in the political life of the nation or came forward as a religious teacher. Mowinckel speaks, for instance, of a series of such characters mentioned by Josephus. He also lists Zerubbabel, spoken of by Haggai and Zechariah; Simon, mentioned in Maccabees xiv ff.; Pheroras, brother of Herod; Hezekiah, recognized by Hillel; Herod's son, Judas the Galilean, and his brother Menahem; Theudas, a prophet who led a host of followers to the banks of the Jordan, where he had assured them that the Lord would dry up a passage for him across the river; an Egyptian Jew who led his followers to the Mount of Olives to see the walls of Jerusalem fall as he had declared. All these men were executed by the Procurator Felix. Another unnamed Jew had led his group of devotees out into the wilderness, only to be cut down by Roman soldiers. And even the great and illustrious Rabbi Akiba sanctioned the proclamation of the Messiahship of the last military hero of Jewish resistance to Rome, that "Son of the Star," Simonbar Kochba. A number of leaders similarly appeared among the Samaritans.
Jesus was thus preceded by many other claimants to the Messianic mantle. The question must therefore be asked, How can we be assured that all the others were conscious impostors, or sincere but deluded claimants who paid the penalty for their aspirations to Messiahhood with their lives?
The conscientious student of Christianity sooner or later becomes aware of a consideration that grows more significant as he reflects on it. This is the contrast between the Jesus potential and the Jesus accomplishment. The fact is that Jesus' life ended without the institution of any agency to implement his message and that the abrupt termination of his teaching in his thirty-third year brought him only defeat and anguish. The problem the theologians faced was how to resolve this defeat into victory, this failure into the most climactic success in all history.
That spirit can conquer only through the crucifixion of the flesh is the dialectical foundation of Christianity. Its central thesis is that, paradoxically, the glory and triumph of Jesus' life could be sealed only by his yielding to suffering and death. The question that comes to mind, however, is this: If the career of Jesus had been crowned with success during the years of his mission and ended in the conversion of a multitude of followers instead of a mere handful, would the faith still have taken the stand that this was not as it should have been, that he should have agonized in defeat in order to save mankind? The reason why the Jews refused to accept Jesus is precisely this defeat. As Mowinckel expounds it, the Jews could not commit themselves to the cause of a Messiah who suffered ignominy and death. Their Messiah was to be the Davidic King, who should sit on a throne in Jerusalem wearing a crown of gold and whose rule would extend to Rome. The exquisite irony here lies in the fact that the faith that glorified the man of sorrows now sees its leader enthroned in his seat of majesty in that same Rome, while the faith that lived in the hope of seeing its King on that throne has endured the anguish of merciless persecution and defeat for two thousand years.
Jesus was crowned; yet neither Christians nor Jews have proclaimed the truth that the only crown of victory mortal man will ever wear must be shaped by the pure rays of the light of his own spiritual consciousness, once that consciousness has been awakened in him. This is the significance of the nimbus, the halo, and the aureole that ancient symbolic art drew around the heads of its deities. It has been called the hundred-petaled lotus by the Hindus, the Augoeides by the Greeks, the Sahu by the Egyptians, the Shekmah by the Jews, and the Holy Spirit by the Christians. Thus the human imagination has universally dreamed of the immortal crown of glory to be won by man.
How is it that Jesus came and went, leaving the world in ignorance of the meaning of his death? No Christian has ever advanced a rational explanation of how Jesus' bodily crucifixion on Golgotha became the power of salvation for human souls. The doctrine that the seed of Christ-consciousness must experience imprisonment in the flesh and endure the pangs of mortal life on the cross of matter is a mystical truth.
The sacrifice inherent in the act of pouring out the essence of his spiritual life, symbolized as his blood, for the eventual transfiguration of his lower nature is the dynamic of man's evolutionary aspiration. Had the knowledge that this Christ power was the divine potential within every mortal man been retained, the causal nexus between the "death" of the Christ soul and the redemption of the human man of flesh would also have been kept in clear perspective. For this God-seed, which lies so long dormant within the body, suffering a constant trial under the wild instincts of the flesh—a veritable crucifixion—nevertheless works as a leaven in the ferment of the psychic forces that long dominate man's consciousness. In spite of, or rather through, suffering, it is destined to transmute these psychic energies into agents of its own higher ends. Greek esoteric philosophy had framed the concept of the descent of souls into incarnation in the allegory of their descent into the realm of death, believing that the soul's imprisonment in the body is like a death that lasts until the resurrection out of latency into dynamic self-consciousness and awareness of kingly power. True enough, the Christ soul from the heavens of higher consciousness does pour out its lifeblood for the divinization of the baser part of man, infusing body with spirit and thus metamorphosing the creeping fleshly creature into a winged being. This is the sum and substance of all that the shedding of a God's blood for the salvation of man could ever mean.
The Christian version of this allegory withdrew from man his confidence in the power available to him and left him a nonentity, a helpless chip adrift on the ocean of life, crying to be led to some safe harbor. The historization of the Christos-principle severed the dynamic, living connection between man human and man divine, which, in fact, is the true mediation between man and his salvation. A medieval saint warned the church of this danger. Angelus Silesius put it thus:
Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born
But not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn;
The cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain
Unless within thyself it be set up again.
The Christian dogma has thus thrust man into a position of hopeless denigration, for on the one hand it asserts that he is morally responsible for his sins and answerable thereto, but on the other hand it holds that man's redemption is not within his power to achieve, since it is due to a spiritual agency above and beyond him. Christianity first blackens man as a sinner, then admonishes him that nothing he can do will avert his punishment save appeal to a higher agency. Earnestly as he may strive to merit some credit or consideration, obey as he will every demand of the law, his fate nevertheless hangs upon the will of heavenly power, even though it is said to have been focused in Palestine for humanity's benefit. Goodness alone will avail him nothing if he be not saved by Christian grace; yet a life of crime and violence may be redeemed by last-minute repentance and acknowledgment of allegiance and obedience to Christian codes. This is the inequity established for man in the moral sphere.
Life is today universally rated as being under the governance of natural law, and one of the principles of law is that of causation; cause produces consequent proportional effect. The forces at play being known, one and only one series of effects is possible, but everywhere and always the operation remains within the area of the forces involved. This abstraction finds immediate relevance to the theological predicament set up by Christianity. Christian doctrine does not apply the principle of law to the moral-spiritual problem in man. It segregates man's moral action from the realm of moral consequences. This has the effect of making moral and spiritual law inoperable in the sphere of man's daily life. So long as men assume that action motivated by good intent will bring good results, they will have a proper incentive to right conduct. But if they are deprived of the right to look for such reward, they will become hopeless of the success of moral action. The drive to do one's best is sapped at its source, which is man's will to the good.
The doctrine that human life is, in the final analysis, to be weighed, judged, and recompensed by an Intelligence, a Power, which is totally beyond human control or even human understanding, can only vitiate human dignity. Herein can be found no evolutionary goal toward which man can purposefully strive; he can only try to propitiate these external forces. Evolution itself will not save him. If he yearns for salvation, he can only hope and pray. What is more, Christianity asserts, the source and power of such salvation only became available for man in the year 33 AD, and those born prior to that date were fated to live and die oblivious to spiritual truth, for no true light pierced the heathen darkness until the advent of Jesus. This has been the stated position of most Christian writers in the past, in spite of the fact that the very founder of Christian doctrinism, the sainted Augustine of the fourth century, stated in unequivocal terms that the religion that in his day came to be called Christianity had been in the world since remotest time and therefore was the cherished treasure and legacy of the pagan world.
Greek philosophy was essentially anthropocentric; it approached the study of the problem of the universe, and of man's position therein, from the standpoint of man himself. What is more, the Greeks proceeded on the assumption that the elementary factors of the human problem were comprised in the constitution of man himself. They held that the factors in play in the human drama were all in view, or amenable to study, experience, and logic. They saw in man four levels or grades of consciousness: sensation, emotion, thought, and spiritual will, symbolized by the elements earth, water, air, and fire. As the interplay of these four elements in nature generated physical bodies, so the interplay of their counterparts in consciousness, generated the sum of human psychic existence. Absorption of the conscious interests in the two lower forms or energies—sensation and emotion—held men captive to "sin," to "the law which is in my members," as St. Paul phrased it, imprisoned man in "Egyptian bondage." When man learned to enthrone reason and the sweet influence of divine love as the rulers of his life, he liberated his soul from bondage to the flesh or the material world and then enjoyed the "freedom of the Sons of God. The arcane science of the soul was, therefore, the study and cultivation of the balance of these different forces in the constitution of man. If the grosser elements overruled the finer, the mortal was held back in his progress toward the deific state. If he strengthened the authority of reason and the spirit, his advancement proceeded apace. The arena of the battle was his daily conscious experience, and the four modes of consciousness were the forces in contention. The fate of the individual was determined by the success of the struggle within his own heart, as the divine potential burst into fuller expression out of the depths of man's own constitution. Success was essentially a human achievement, failure a human responsibility.
The Christian concept of the Messiah, as previously stated, placed man's source of salvation beyond himself, in heaven, and taught man not to rely upon himself, but to look to others for guidance and strength. One of the results may have been the Dark Ages of superstition, ignorance, and fanaticism.
The expectation of the Messiah's advent involved another belief, the "fulfillment of prophecy." The expectation was universally strong because it had been universally prophesied. In the venerated scriptures, Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah had all foretold this event that would verily bring heaven down upon earth and transfigure dreary human history with celestial radiance. Even the pagan sibyls united their oracular voices, prophecying that a virgin would conceive by Apollo, by the power of the Sun God, by the Holy Spirit, and give birth to the Avatar, the Aeon, the Christos. All Jews were looking forward to the day when the Son of David, the natzer or branch of the Rod of Jesse, would ascend the throne of Israel in Jerusalem, rule the nations, and transform society. This dream was the midriff of the Hebrew theocracy.
A misunderstanding of the meaning of the words prophet and prophecy has perpetuated a misconception. These words derive from the Greek pro, meaning "forth," "forward," or "ahead," and the verb stem phanai, meaning "to speak." A prophet is one who speaks forth; he is a proclaimer, an expositor, a teacher, a preacher. The subtitle of the book of Ecclesiastes is "or the Preacher." The main character in ancient Egyptian spiritual dramas was "the Speaker." Books of Gospel-like nature found in Egypt, containing discourses attributed to Jesus, had the title Logia, or "Sayings," of the Lord. Jesus preached or prophesied the Sermon on the Mount.
It is therefore significant that scholars are now declaring that the prime usage of the word prophet in the purview of scripture writers carried no necessary connotation of prophecy in the sense of prediction of future objective historical events. Prophecy would readily enough include a broad perspective of developments, predicting calamity for Israel for its waywardness from Jahweh, or blessing for obedience to his commands. But the prophets were not concerned with the prediction of specific events. A number of savants in biblical exegesis have gone on record as stating that the several pronouncements in the "prophetic books" of the Old Testament, declaring that a virgin shall bear the Messiah, can not be considered any longer as a reference to the birth of Jesus by Mary. Yet Christianity all along has claimed divine authorization because the events engendering it occurred that Old Testament prophecies might be fulfilled. It has been asserted that some of these "events" have every appearance of having been introduced into the narrative to make sure that the record, if not the reality, did not fail to fulfill ancient prophecy.
Thus the true significance of prophecy as pure preaching of spiritual truth under the guise of symbolic drama, allegory, or parables was debased into the prediction of future events. The central "event" of all such teaching was the birth and growth in human society of the spirit of Christhood; this universal concept, personalized, became the incarnation of spirit in a human body. In this light, we are forced to the conclusion that the Christian religion was born out of a misreading of the cryptic ancient scriptures, by sincere but unschooled minds.
Today, all Christian sects agree on the historicity of Jesus and his authorship of Christianity. Let it be reflected, however, that when Christianity arose there was no such unanimity. The new sect was alone in its predication of the Messianic fulfillment in the babe of the Bethlehem stable. So far was it from universal acceptance that it was looked upon at the time by all cultured ranks of society as the fantasy of poor, deluded fanatics. It was pronounced a dangerous superstition by such thinkers as Pliny, Suetonius, and Celsus, among others.