The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ. Graves Kersey

these doctrines taught in heathen systems much older than Christianity, and whose antiquity antedates even the birth of Moses. We will first notice the Persian tradition. "According to the doctrine of the Persians," says the Rev. J. C. Pitrat, "Meshia and Meshiane, the first man and first woman, were pure, and submitted to Ormuzd, their maker. But Ahriman (the evil one) saw them, and envied them their happiness. He approached them under the form of a serpent, presented fruits to them, and persuaded them that he was the maker of man, of animals, of plants, and of the beautiful universe in which they dwelt. They believed it. Since that time Ahriman was their master. Their natures became corrupt, and this corruption infested their whole posterity." This story is taken from the Vandidatsade of the Persians, pp. 305 and 428.

      The Indian or Hindoo story is furnished us by the Rev. Father Bouchat, in a letter to the bishops of Avranches, and runs thus: "Our Hindoos say the Gods tried by all means to obtain immortality. After many inquiries and trials, they conceived the idea that they would find it in the tree of life, which is the Chorcan (paradise). In fact they succeeded, and by eating once in a while of the fruits of that tree, they kept the precious treasure they so much valued. A famous snake, named Cheiden, saw that the tree of life had been found by the Gods of the second order. As probably he had been intrusted with guarding that tree, he became so angry because his vigilance had been deceived, that he immediately poured out an enormous quantity of poison, which spread over the whole earth." How much like this story is the story of St. John, "And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood!" (Rev. xii. 15.)

      The idea of a snake or serpent inundating the earth from its mouth, as taught in both stories is so novel, and so far removed from the sphere of natural causes and possible events, that we are compelled to the conclusion that one is borrowed from the other, or both from a common original.

      And as facts cited in other chapters prove beyond dispute that the Hindoo system, containing this story, extends in antiquity far beyond the time of Moses, the question is thus settled as to which system borrowed the story from the other.

      Before closing the chapter, we wish to call the attention of the reader to the important fact that three out of four of the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith are taught in the two heathen mythological stories of creation just presented, viz.: —

      1. Original sin.

      2. The fall of man caused by a serpent

      3. The consequent corruption and depravity of the human race.

      These doctrines, then, it must be admitted, are of heathen origin, and not, as Christians claim, "important truths revealed from heaven." For a historical exposition of the other cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith, viz., man's restoration by the atonement achieved through the crucifixion of a God, see Chapters xvi. and xxi.

      CHAPTER IV. MIRACULOUS AND IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF THE GODS

      THE ancients very naturally concluded that an offspring of God (a son of God) should have a purer, higher and holier maternal origin than is incident to the lot of mortals, and this was to constitute one of the evidences of his emanation from the Deity – that is, of his supernatural or divine origin. He, as a matter of course, must not only have a different origin, but one in the highest degree superior and supernatural. He must not only be able to claim the highest paternal origin, but the highest maternal also. And on the part of the mother, a sexual connection with the great Potentate of heaven would evince for her offspring the very acme of superiority with respect to his origin, moral perfection and authority. That the Savior was born of a woman could not possibly be made a matter of concealment. But his paternal parentage was not so obvious and apparent to general observation, being cognizant alone to the mother. This circumstance furnished the most propititious opportunity to concoct the story that "The Most High" had condescended and descended to become both a father and a grandfather to a human being, or a being apparently human at least.

      We say grandfather, because, if God (as the Christian bible itself frequently asserts, both directly and by implication) is father of the whole human family, then he was father to the maternal parent; so that her son, though deriving existence from him, would be his grandson as well as his son. Hence the corollary, Jesus Christ was a grandson of God as well as a son of God, and Jehovah both his father and grandfather.

      Again, to make the origin and character of the God and Savior stand higher for purity, and partake in the highest degree of the miraculous, the impression must go abroad that he was born of a woman while she was yet a maiden– i. e., before she was contaminated by illicit association with the masculine sex. Hence, nearly all the saviors were reputedly born of virgins. And the process of birth, too, was out of the line of natural causes, in order to invest the character of the savior with the ne plus ultra of the miraculous.

      And hence it is related of Jesus Christ (in an Apocryphal Gospel), of Chrishna of India, and other saviors, that they were born through the mother's side.

      It is true our present canonical gospels are silent as to the manner of Christ's birth; but one of the Apocryphal gospels, which gives the matter in fuller detail, and whose authority in the earlier ages of the Christian church was not disputed, declares that the manner of his birth was as related above. And, besides, some of the early Christian fathers fully indorsed the story. The same is related in the pagan bibles of heathen Gods. The motives which originated the reports of the immaculate conception of the Saviors, it may be further remarked, were of a two-fold character: —

      1. To establish their spotless origin (as the word immaculate means spotless.)

      2. To make it appear that there was a Deific power and agency concerned in their conception.

      And we may observe here that it is not the Saviors alone who are reported to have been ushered into tangible existence without a human father, but it is declared of beings known and acknowledged to be men, as Plato, Pythagoras, Alexander, Augustus and a number of others. Of Plato an author remarks, "He was born of Paretonia, and begotten of Apollo, and not Ariston, his father." Both the manner, or process, and the source of the influence by which the Gods and Saviors were generated, seem to have been different in different countries, though the idea of "overshadowing with the Holy Ghost" seems to have been most current. Mr. Higgins says that "the Supreme First Cause was generally believe to overshadow, or in some other mysterious manner to impregnate, the mother of the God, or personage" (vol. i. 378). We are told that Pythais, the mother of Pythagoras, five hundred and fifty years B. C., conceived by a spectre or ghost (of course the Holy Ghost) of the God Apollo, or God Sol.

      In Malcolm's "History of Persia" (vol. i. 494) the author tells us that "Zoroaster was born of an immaculate conception by a ray from the Divine Reason." The immaculate conception of Juno of Greece is thus described by the poet: —

           "Juno touched the flower;

           Its wondrous virtues such,

           She touched it, and grew pregnant at the touch;

           Then entered Thrace – the Propontic shore;

           When mistress of her touch,

           God Mars she bore."

      This case may certainly be set down as the ne plus ultra of etiquette with respect to sexual commerce or purity of conception. The sweet odor of an expanded flower, we are here taught, is adequate to the conception and production of a God. Here we have "the immaculate conception" in the superlative degree, and while much more beautiful and grand it cannot be more senseless or unreasonable than the conception by a ghost. It proves at least that the doctrine of the immaculate conception is of very ancient date. And this fastidious maiden lady and immaculate virgin, Juno, not only conceived the God Mars by the touch of a flower, but she also (so the story reads) conceived Vulcan by being overshadowed by the wind – exactly a parallel case with that of the virgin Mary, as we find that ghost, in the original, means wind. Thus we observe that Vulcan, long before Jesus Christ, was "born of the Holy Ghost," i. e., both were conceived by the "Holy Wind." And the author of the "Perennial Calendar" speaks of the miraculous conception of Juno Jugulis, "the blessed virgin queen of heaven," and describes it as falling on the second of February, the very day which