A Short History of Christianity: Second Edition, Revised, With Additions — John Shaqi
A Short History of Christianity: Second Edition, Revised, With AdditionsRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
History
A Short History of Christianity: Second Edition, Revised, With Additions
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Church history
In such matters the literary or myth-making faculty of the
Gentiles, with their many Saviour-Gods, gave them the advantage
over the Judaists; but the strife of the two interests was long
and bitter. It flames out in the Judaic book of Revelation, in
the allusion to those who "say they are apostles and are not";
and long after the time allotted to Paul we find him caricatured in
certain Judaizing writings, the so-called Clementine Recognitions
and Homilies, in the person of Simon Magus, an entirely unhistorical
personage, who also appears in the Acts of the Apostles. Simon Magus
is, in fact, a mythical figure evolved from Semo Megas or Great Sem
(=Sem-on, as Samson is Samas-on), an old Semitic Sun-God worshipped
by the polytheists of Samaria, and in connection with whose cultus
there was evidently a Gentile Christist movement, of a Gnostic or
mythical character, its Christ being conceived as non-human. Such a
movement being competitive with that of the Jewish Jesus, "Simon,"
to whom was ascribed an impressive Gnostic treatise, became the type
of anti-Jewish heresy; whence the late Christian story in the Acts,
where Elymas again (=Great El) is a mythical duplication of Simon.
There are many signs that Samaritan elements entered early into the
Christist movement. The fourth gospel even represents the founder
to have been accepted in Samaria as the Messiah; and in so far as
the cult became Gentilised, even if the Ebionites did not stand for
an ancient local and quasi-Samaritan foundation, Samaritans would
be the more ready to join it, since they were thereby helping to
discomfit the more exclusive Jews. But they too had their Christ-myth;
and the conception of the Holy Spirit as a dove came from them to
the Christians. Seeking to found finally on the Old Testament, the
scripture-makers of the latter movement had to explain away their
Samaritan antecedents by myths of heresy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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