of the Christian propaganda we meet with the name of Jesus used in such a manner as to point to a long history of that name. For it is employed from the beginning in the driving out of evil spirits, a fact that would be quite incomprehensible if its bearer had been merely a man. Now we know from the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles that it was not only the disciples of the Jesus of the Gospels, but also others even in his lifetime (i.e., even in the first commencement of the Christian propaganda), healed diseases, and drove out evil spirits in the name of Jesus. From this it is to be concluded that the magic of names was associated from of old with the conception of a divine healer and protector, and that Jesus, like Marduk, was a name for this God of Healing. [63] Judging by this the Persian, but above all the Babylonian, religion must have influenced the views of the above-named sects. For the superstition regarding names, the belief in the magic power attributed to the name of a divine being, as well as the belief in Star Gods and Astral mythology, which is a characteristic of Mandaism, all have Babylon as their home. The Essenes also appear to have exercised the magical and healing art of which they boasted in the form of wonder-working and the driving out of evil spirits by a solemn invocation of the name of their God of Healing. [64] IV THE SUFFERINGS OF THE MESSIAH In the most different religions the belief in a divine Saviour and Redeemer is found bound up with the conception of a suffering and dying God, and this idea of a suffering and dying Messiah was by no means unknown to the Jews. It may be of no importance that in the Apocalypse of Esdras [65] the death of Christ is spoken of, since in the opinion of many this work only appeared in the first century after Christ; but Deutero-Isaiah too, during the Exile, describes the chosen one and messenger of God as the "suffering servant of God," as one who had already appeared, although he had remained unknown and despised, had died shamefully and been buried, but as one also who would rise up again in order to fulfil the splendour of the divine promise. [66] This brings to mind the suffering, death, and resurrection of the Gods of Babylon and of the whole of Nearer Asia; for example, Tammuz, Mithras, Attis, Melkart, and Adonis, Dionysus, the Cretan Zeus, and the Egyptian Osiris. The prophet Zechariah, moreover, speaks of the secret murder of a God over which the inhabitants of Jerusalem would raise their lament, "as in the case of Hadad-rimmon (Rammân) in the valley of Megiddon," that is, as at the death of Adonis, one of the chief figures among the Gods believed in by the Syrians. [67] Ezekiel also describes the women of Jerusalem, sitting before the north gate of the city and weeping over Tammuz. [68] The ancient Israelites, too, were already well acquainted with the suffering and dying Gods of the neighbouring peoples. Now, indeed, it is customary for Isaiah's "servant of God"