Pagan Christs: Studies in Comparative Hierology (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from Pagan Christs: Studies in Comparative Hierology

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 the Christus mythe of Professor Arthur Drews has been the theme of many plat form debates. The hypothesis oi the pre-christian J csus-god, first indicated in Christianity and Mythology, and further propounded in the first edition of this book, has received highly important and independent development at the hands of Professor W. Benjamin Smith in his Der Vorchristliche Jesus and in the later expo sitiou of Professor Drews. For one whose tasks include other busy fields, it is hardly possible to give this the constant attention it deserves; but the present edition has been as fully revised as might be; and some fresh elucidatory material has been embodied, without, however, any pretence of including the results Of the other writers named.

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Christianity and Mythology. That was substantially a mythological analysis of the Christian system, introduced by a discussion of mythological principles in that particular connection and in general. The bulk of the present volume is substantially a synthesis of Christian origins, introduced by a discussion of the principles of hierology. Such discussion is still forced on sociology by the special pleaders of the prevailing religion. But the central matter of the book is its attempt to trace and synthesise the real lines of growth of the Christian cultus ;and it challenges criticism above all by its theses (1) that the Gospel story of theL ast Supper, Passion, Betrayal, Trial, Crucifixion, andR esurrection, is visibly a transcript of aM ystery Drama, and not originally a narrative ;and (2) that that drama is demonstrable (as historic demonstration goes) a symbolic modification of an original rite of human sacrifice, of which it preserves certain verifiable details. That the exact point of historic connection between the early eucharistic rite and the late drama-story has still to be traced, it is needless to remark. Had direct evidence on this head been forthcoming, the problem could not so long have been ignored. But it is here contended that the lines of evolution are established by the details of the record and the institution, in the light of the data of anthropology; and that we have thus at last a scientific basis for a history of Christianity.
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