¹ A.R.W., xxxiv (1937), 42–60.

² Ibid., p. 59.

³ I have outlined my position in the Canadian Journal of Religious Thought (1928), 355–364.

⁴ His sisters are mentioned in the plural, and the names of his four brothers given, Mk. 6, 3; Mt. 13, 56. To make them other than his full brothers and sisters is the merest special pleading, arising out of the later dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary.

⁵ Besides the passages quoted in n. 4, see Gal. 1, 19.

⁶ At least, nothing except the pretty and nowise impossible tale of the childhood episode in the Temple (Lk. 2, 41 sqq.) has come down concerning this period. It is of course clear that the indication of his age in Lk. 3, 23, ὡσεì ἐτῶν τριάκοντα, is not to be pressed too closely; by Jewish and Greek ideas alike it was the age of bodily and mental maturity. But a like vagueness concerning the dates of nearly everyone not prominent in public and official life is notoriously common in antiquity.

⁷ Hyginus, fab. 129.

⁸ Numa 4, cf. quaest. conuiu. 718 b.

⁹ Geburt des Kindes, 76 sqq.

¹⁰ Pseudo-Hesiod, Shield, 11, and many later passages.

¹¹ As Iliad, xxiii, 638, cf. Apollod., ii, 139.

¹² Diod. Sic, iv, 9, 6.

¹³ Xenophon, Memor., ii, 1, 21 sqq.

¹⁴ Dion Prus., orat. i, 65 sqq.

¹⁵ The earlier form is in Iliad xxiv, 29–30, a passage absurdly misinterpreted or expunged by editors. Paris ‘railed upon the goddesses when they came into his courtyard (bringing, obviously, unspecified gifts of some kind) and praised her (presumably a supernatural being, perhaps Aphrodite) who gave him grievous desire’ (μαχλοσύνην, specifically lust felt by women; she gave him the power to arouse and control it as he pleased, in other words to make any woman fall in love with him). The later, which Homer does not seem to have heard of, is of course the famous indicium Paridis, in which he prefers Aphrodite to Hera and Athena, i.e., pleasure of love to kingship and prowess, — hardly wisdom at that early date.

¹⁶ Iliad ix, 410 sqq.; xviii, 95–96.

¹⁷ 1 Kings, 3, 5–14.

¹⁸ See Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (FF Communications, Nos. 106–109, 116–117 = Indiana Univ. Studies Nos. 96–97, 100–101, 105–106, 108–112), J200–491, with notes there.

¹⁹ Jesus διῆλθεν εὐεργετῶν καì ἰώμενος πάντας, κτλ., Act. 10, 38; Herakles ἐκείνῳ (Zeus) πειθόμενος περιήει καθαίρων ἀδικίαν καì ἀνομίαν, Epiktetos, dissert., ii, 16, 44.

²⁰ Such as the feeding of the five (or four) thousand, the incident of the tribute-money in the fish's mouth, and the walking on the water. See below.

²¹ Notably the miracles of healing, as above mentioned; the miraculous draught of fishes, in the later version given by John, 21, 6, if this is not a rationalization of the original story, has nothing particularly miraculous about it, since anyone standing on the shore might be able to see a shoal of fish invisible to those in a boat at a lower level.

²² Jesus ἤλθεν έσθίων καί πίνων, Mt. 11, 19, expressly contrasted with John the Baptist's asceticism.

²³ Dion Prus., orat. i, 84, is a good instance.

²⁴ Epikt., diss., ii, 16. 45 (if you cannot rid the world of monsters, rid your own soul of evil passions, and thus imitate Herakles and Theseus).

²⁵ Julian, orat. vii, 219 D.

²⁶ Here. Oet., 1131 sqq.; cf. 1595 sqq., where the chorus are puzzled to account for the thunder-clap which announces the ascension of the hero.

²⁷ Here. Oet., 1472; Pfister does not notice, what is perhaps of some importance, that in both cases the expression means that a fated or foretold end has been reached.

²⁸ This seems to be the meaning of ἰδού, ὁ υἱός σου—ἰδού, ἡ μήτηρ σου, in Jn. 19, 26.

²⁹ Mk. 15, 40–41 and Mt. 27, 56 give a list of names, not including St. Mary; Lk. 23, 27 gives no names but implies that they were all from Jerusalem. Jn. 19, 25 adds St. Mary to the list.

³⁰ See M. P. Nilsson in Nordisk Tidskrift för Vetenskap, Konst och Industri (1923), 123; Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, 547: Rose, Handbook of Greek Mythology, 215, 216.

³¹ There is no need to go into detail on this most interesting theme, which has been handled well and at length by J. Kroll in his excellent monograph Gott und Hölle (Teubner, 1932).

³² Lk. 24, 51; Acta 1, 9.

³³ Apollod., ii, 160.

³⁴ Here. Oet., 1595 sqq.

³⁵ Livy, i, 16, 1; Ovid, fast., ii, 491 sqq., where see Frazer.

³⁶ References given by Pfister, p. 56 sq.

³⁷ Diod., iv, 58, 6.

³⁸ Ant. Lib., 33, 3–4.

³⁹ The legend seems to have started from an actual unwrought stone in the precinct in question; but it is worth noting that to use a stone as a substitute for a missing body was not unknown in antiquity. For a grave containing just such a substitute, see J. H. S., lvi (1936), 140.

⁴⁰ Arist., de caelo, 294^b7 sqq.

⁴¹ Mk. 6, 14–17; cf. Mt. 14, 1–2, Lk. 9, 7–9 (here Herod cannot believe that he is John come back again).

⁴² The Ἑλληνισταί, whatever exactly they were, of Acts 6, 1.

⁴³ Rep., 381 d sqq.

⁴⁴ Ovid, Met., viii, 623 sqq.

⁴⁵ Acts 14, 11 sqq.

⁴⁶ Horace, carm. i, 2, 41–44.

⁴⁷ See Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, xi, 25–30.

⁴⁸ See the ancient judgments of the claims of Menekrates Zeus, collected in O. Weinreich, Menekrates-Zeus und Salmoneus (Stuttgart, Kohlhammer, 1933).

⁴⁹ For a summary of the reactions to Euhemeros on the part of the large majority who did not believe his theories, see R. de Block, Évhemère, son livre et sa doctrine, pp. 70–71 (Mons, 1876). He is regarded by them as either an atheist or a liar.

⁵⁰ Described, among others, by A. Erman, Religion der Ägypter (Berlin, de Gruyter, 1934), 58 sqq. I do not go into the question what effect, if any, the documents there quoted, couched in a language they could not read, may have had on non-Egyptians.

⁵¹ For example, Plut., Alex., 2, 3.

⁵² Suet., diu. Aug., 94, citing Asklepiades of Mendes.

⁵³ Pausanias, ii, 10, 3.

⁵⁴ Iulius Paris, epit. Valerii Maximi, i, 2, 2 (Valerius Maximus himself is lost at this point, and Nepotianus omits the last clause): Scipio Africanus non ante ad negotia priuata uel publica ibat quam, in cella louis Capitolini moratus fuisset, el ideo Ioue genitus credebatur.

⁵⁵ Diog. Laert., iii, 2, quoting Speusippos among others; cf. Origen, c. Cels. i, 37, who rightly says there was a tendency to tell such tales περὶ ἀνδρὸς ὂν ἐνόμιζον μείζονα τῶν πολλῶν ἔχοντα σοϕίαν καὶ δύναμιν καὶ ἀπὸ κρειττόνων καὶ θειοτέρων σπερμάτων τὴν ἀρχὴν τῆς συστάσεως τοῦ σώματος εἰληϕέναι.

⁵⁶ Iambl., de uit. Pyth., 5, citing ‘a certain Samian poet.’

⁵⁷ Schol. Pind., 0.7, init.

⁵⁸ Philostratos, uit. Apollon., i, 4–6, who adds however that Apollonios himself made no such claim.

⁵⁹ As Ps. 2, 7; Hos. 11, 1.

⁶⁰ All three synoptics agree (Mk. 14, 61; Mt. 26, 63; Lk. 22, 70) in making the high priest, or the Sanhedrin generally, ask Jesus if he claims to be the Messiah and υἱὸς τοῦ εὐλογητοῦ (τοῦ θεοῦ, Mt. and Lk., presumably as more easily intelligible).

⁶¹ Since Jesus was certainly born earlier than the conventional 1 A.D., Mary can hardly have been less than about 20 by that year; this would make her at least 90 by any probable date for Mark, and the story of the birth being in the two other synoptists only, we have no indication that it existed till a later date still, i.e., till she was either dead or in extreme old age.

⁶² Mt. 2, 13–23.

⁶³ For the story of Herod, cf. Macrob., sat., ii, 4, 11: cum audisset (Augustus) inter pueros quos in Syria Herodes rex Iudaeorum intra bimatum iussit interfici filium quoque eius occisum &c. The words intra bimatum compared with the extraordinary detail ἀπὸ διετοῦς καὶ κατωτέρω in Mt. 2, 16, when the rest of the narrative suggests that Jesus can have been but a few days old, strongly indicates that both are referring to the same incident. Macrobius gives no reason for Herod's murderous action; Matthew finds or invents a very good one, from the point of view of a folktale, that the king was trying to make away with a dangerous rival. The prophecy is of course contained in Mt. 2, 15, oddly interpreted out of Hos. 11, 1 (apparently the Hebrew text misquoted, for no ingenuity could get it from the LXX).

⁶⁴ If I may quote my former article (see note 3), I still hold the view there expressed (p. 362): Jesus shows, in the story in Lk. 2, 42–50, ‘just such self-reliance and intelligent interest in the religion of his country as might be expected in a boy of genius and deep natural feeling…. The hero of a folktale would have found his way by some mysterious guidance to the Temple…. A wonder-child in a popular story would have confuted the doctors of the Law, or at least made it clear that he knew all they did and more…. To my mind, the tale cries aloud that it is a perfectly authentic happening.’

⁶⁵ Mt. 1, 20–21; 2, 1 sqq.; Lk. 1, 24 sqq., 41 sqq.; 2, 8 sqq., 25 sqq.

⁶⁶ Suet., August., 94, where also other omens of the greatness of Augustus are told. The story of the magi in Matthew is, as it stands, unintelligible, for it is impossible to say what they are supposed to be guided by, since it is called a star, and yet behaves like a luminous body not many yards above the ground (v. 9). It seems possible that Matthew had hold of a story to the effect that the magi discovered a royal nativity in the heavens (I am not aware whether any calculations have been made to see if there was one at any date reasonably possible for the birth of Jesus) and so were led, not by a literal star but by what the stars had shown them, to visit Judaea.

⁶⁷ Lk. 2, 40; but he had used very similar language, 1, 80, about John the Baptist.

⁶⁸ As Mt. 13, 58 (but ibid., 17, 20 it is the operator, not the patient, who must have strong faith); Mk. 5, 34 (Mt. 9, 22, Lk. 8, 48). His cures cost him something in nervous energy, or whatever we like to term it; his own word for it is reported to have been δύναμις, or presumably its Aramaic equivalent, Lk. 8, 46; no one who has ever calmed a nervous person needs to be told what this means. More examples can be found by consulting any concordance under ‘faith,’ ‘unbelief’ or their equivalents.

⁶⁹ Mk. 5, 1–16; Mt. 8, 28–34; Lk. 8, 26–37.

⁷⁰ If I may quote one personally known to me, a physician of my acquaintance, skilled in the treatment of this sort of case, had had great difficulty in doing any good to a neurotic woman, who had nothing organically wrong with her. At last he told her, as impressively as he could, that she would feel relief at a certain time the next day and afterwards continue steadily to improve. She obeyed him to the letter. It is obvious what a tale of miracle or witchcraft could have been made of this in an age more ignorant than ours of the functions of the nervous system and its diseases.

⁷¹ As Mk. 1, 32–34.

⁷² Lk. 4, 30. The author here does not indicate by a single word that he regarded the occurrence as a miracle, and to walk straight at a mob would be one of the most effective ways possible of daunting its members, each of whom would feel nervous about being the first to act.

⁷³ Mk. 6, 35 sqq., 8, 1 sqq.; Mt. 14, 14 sqq., 15, 32 sqq.; neither of these authors is conscious that the two stories are doublets one of the other, but Luke appears to be, for he gives only one account, 9, 12 sqq.

⁷⁴ Stith Thompson, H 1022.6, cf. 1022.5 (feeding an army from one measure of meal).

⁷⁵ Ibid., D 1472, which gives a long list of varieties of this theme (vessel of some sort, tree, palace, kitchen, table, table-cloth, pot, cauldron, kettle).

⁷⁶ Ibid., D 1652.1 sqq.

⁷⁷ 1 Kings 17, 11 sqq.; 19, 5 sqq.

⁷⁸ Mt. 17, 27.

⁷⁹ Augustine, C. D. xxii, 8. For fish as helpful animals, see Stith Thompson, B 470, and for the bringing of the coin, B 107.4.

⁸⁰ Mk. 5, 37–41; Mt. 8, 26–27; Lk. 8, 23–25.

⁸¹ Mk. 6, 47–52; Mt. 14, 24–35. As in both accounts the storm ceases as soon as Jesus enters the boat, it is fairly clear that this story is a development of the other, which perhaps moved Luke to omit it, as he did the other doublet, cf. note 73.

⁸² Iliad, xx, 228–229, whence Verg., Aen., vii, 810–811. Iphiklos performs the parallel exploit (Iliad, ibid., 226–227, Verg., ibid., 808–809) of running over standing corn without breaking it, Hes. frag. 117 Rzach.

⁸³ 1 Cor., 13, 2, a passage which, while of course earlier than the existing Gospels, recalls the language of Mk. 11, 23 (Mt. 17, 20, Lk. 17, 6). But the idea is in no way exclusively Christian, cf. Virg., Aen., xi, 787, where the Hirpi Sorani perform their firewalk freti pietate. The idea seems to be that the faithful follower of a divine power so surrenders himself as to become simply a vehicle through which any manifestation of that power's mana may show itself.

⁸⁴ References to sundry forms of it in Stith Thompson, D 2125. Except for the form mentioned in note 82, this again seems to owe nothing to literary classical tradition, and therefore cannot safely be deduced from popular Greek philosophy.

⁸⁵ Lucan, Phars., v, 577 sqq., Plut., Caes., 38. The story plainly was half-way to being told as a miracle, and probably would have gone the whole way if Caesar had contrived to get to Brundisium instead of being forced back to Dyrrachium.

⁸⁶ Mk. 11, 12 sqq.; Mt. 21, 18 sqq. It is the only pointless miracle related of Jesus, all the rest being marvelous feats intended to benefit someone. Again Luke passes it over in silence, perhaps for that reason.

⁸⁷ Jn. 18, 34–38, surely resting on something more than the author's imagination; such reports of interviews in their nature private are characteristics of popular accounts of important events.

⁸⁸ Mk. 15, 38; Mt. 27, 45; Lk. 23, 44.

⁸⁹ Verg., Georg., i, 466–467 (ille … extincto Caesare … caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit), plainly implying total eclipse at or soon after the murder. See, for the facts given in the text, Nettleship ad loc.

⁹⁰ Suet., Iulius, 81.

⁹¹ Suet., C. Calig., 57.

⁹² Mk. 15, 38; Mt. 27, 51; Lk. 23, 45.

⁹³ There is a certain superficial resemblance, but no more, as the significance of the two objects was totally different, in the alleged rending of Athena's robe mentioned by Philippides ap. Plut., Demetr., 12, cited by Wetstein in his notes on Mt. loc. cit.; the occasion was the profanation of the Parthenon during Demetrios Poliorketes' visit to Athens. The Christian commentators of course did not fail to allegorize the rending of the temple-veil, e.g., Chrysost., hom, in Matth., 88 (89), 1, 825d–826a Monfaucon: ἐποίησε δὲ τοῦτο οὔκ ἐνυβρίζων εἰς τὸν ναόν … ἀλλ᾽ άναξίους αὐτοὺς ἀποϕαίνων καὶ τῆς έκεῖ διατριβῆς … οὔ διὰ τοῦτο δὲ μόνον ταῦτα ἐγίνετο, ἀλλὰ καἰ προϕητεία τῆς μελλούσης ἦν ἐρημίας τὸ συμβαῖνον. This is probably nearer what was supposed to be signified by the rending in the first century than Jerome's interpretation (comm. in Matth., 27, 51, p. 236e Vallarsi): uelum templi scissum est et omnia legis sacramenta quae prius tegebantur prodita sunt atque ad gentium populum transierunt. He cites, ibid., from one of the early apocrypha a further portent: superliminare templi infinitae magnitudinis fractum esse atque diuisum. This is but one instance, where many might be given, of the rarity of the incredible in the canonical Gospels as compared with later imaginings.

⁹⁴ Mt. 27, 53, adding that they did not appear till after the Resurrection.

⁹⁵ Iliad, xx, 61–65.

⁹⁶ For the lexicography of this phrase, see E. C. E. Owen in J. Th. S., xxxviii (1937), 248–250.

⁹⁷ Suet., Vesp., 23.

⁹⁸ Suet., Nero, 46.

⁹⁹ Philostr., uit. Apoll., viii, 31.

¹⁰⁰ Again, if we compare Mk. 16, 4–7 and Lk. 24, 4 sqq., we can see the story growing.

¹⁰¹ I do not of course mean that the dates in the Gospels are to be taken at their face value; but the Jerusalem church, which existed before the conversion of St. Paul (usually placed somewhere in the thirties of the century, see the comparative table in Moffatt, Introduction to the Lit. of the N.T., 62–63), accepted the Resurrection, and therefore belief in it was general among Christians within a very few years of the Passion. Cf. 1 Cor., 15, 4–8.

¹⁰² Suet., Aug., 100.

¹⁰³ Seneca, Apocol., 1, 2.

¹⁰⁴ See note 32. It is perhaps worth while noting, with regard to the epiphanies which intervene between the Resurrection and Ascension in Luke, that they have at times something of the fluctuating inconsistent quality of dreams about them; in Lk. 24, 36 sqq., Jesus appears unexpectedly, after the fashion of a ghost, and then proceeds to give proofs that he is a living man with a body of flesh and blood.