The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
Eusebius on philo
1. Should it turn out, that the text of Philo, as it may have come down to our times, presents material discrepancies from the report which Eusebius has here made of it; that discovery would bring no relief to the cogency of the demonstration resulting from Eusebius's testimony merely; because it is with Eusebius alone, that we are in this investigation concerned; and,
2. Because Christianity would be but little the gainer by overthrowing the credibility of Eusebius in this instance, at so dear an expense, as the necessary destruction of his credibility in all others. If we are not to give Eusebius credit for ability and integrity, to make a fair and accurate quotation, upon a matter that could have no room for mistake, or excuse for ignorance; if on such a matter he would knowingly and wilfully deceive us; and the variations of the text of Philo, from the quotations he has given us, be held a sufficient demonstration that he has done so: there remains no alternative, but that his testimony must lose its claim on Our confidence, in all other cases whatever: with the credit of Eusebius must go, all that Eusebius's authority upheld, and the three first ages of Christianity, will remain without an historian, or but as
"-------------------------A tale,
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing"
But the evidences of the Christian religion are not yet in this distress. The testimony of Eusebius on this subject, is. neither more nor less valid, for any confirmation or impeachment it might receive, from any extant copies of the writings of Philo.
3. Because, nothing is more likely, than that the text of Philo, might have been altered purposely to produce such an appearance of discrepancy, and so to supply to Christians, (what 'tis known they would stop at no means to come by,) a caveat and evitation of the most unguarded and portentous giving-of-tongue, that ever fell from so shrewd and able an historian; and,
4. Because, nothing is more certain, than that no writings have ever been safe from such interpolations; the text of the New Testament itself, at this day, presenting us with innumerable texts, which were not contained in its earlier copies, and being found deficient of many texts that were in those copies. [See Chapter 16.]
Eusebius or nothing?
5. We have certainly Eusebius's testimony in this chapter, and in such a state as that it may be depended on, as being bona fide his testimony, really and fairly exhibiting to us, what his view and judgment of Christianity was, or - (the Christian is welcome to the alternative?)
6. And Eusebius 's, testimony is valid to the full effect for which we claim it, and that is, to the proof of what the origin of the Christian scriptures was, as it appeared to him.
7. And the validity of his testimony cannot be impeached in this particular instance, without overthrowing the authority of evidence altogether, opening the door to everlasting quibbling, turning history into romance, and making the admission of facts to depend on the caprice or prejudice of a party. [a] In these Corollaries, be it observed, we respect the wide distinction between his testimony to miracles; in which he speaks as a divine, from whom therefore truth is not to be too rigidly expected; and his testimony as an historian, from whom nothing but truth is to be endured.]
8. And if what Eusebius has delivered in this chapter, cannot be reconciled to what he may seem to have delivered in other parts of his writings, it will be for those who refuse to receive his testimony, here, to show how, or where he ever has, or could have, delivered a contrary testimony more explicitly, intelligibly, and positively, than he has this.
9. Nor can they claim from us, that we should respect his testimony in any other case, when they themselves refuse to respect it, where it stands in conflict with their own foregone conclusion.
10. And if, what he may anywhere else have said, be found utterly irreconcilable with what he has here delivered, so as to convict him of being an author who cared not what he said; the Christian again is welcome to the conclusion on which his own argument will drive him, i.e. the total destruction of all evidence that rests on the veracity of Eusebius.
11. And if Eusebius be not competent testimony to what Christianity was in his day, as it appeared to him; we hold ourselves in readiness to receive and respect any other testimony of the same age, which those who shall bring it forward, shall be able to show to be superior to that of Eusebius.
12. But the conflict itself, which, this most important passage has excited in the learned world, has thoroughly winnowed it from all the chaff of sophistication, and in the admissions of those who have contended most strenuously against its pregnant consequences; we possess the strongest species of evidence of which any historical document whatever, is capable.
13. The learned Basnage [Histoire des Juifs. 1. 2, c. 20, et seq.] has been at the pains of examining with the most critical accuracy, the curious treatise of Philo, on which our Eusebius builds his argument, that the ancient sect of Therapeutae were really Christians so many centuries before Christ and were actually in possession of those very writings which have become our gospels and epistles. [Basnage De Beauval, Jacques. 1653 to 1723, a renowned French Protestant, preacher and linguist.]
Gibbon, Henry, 1737 to 1794, member of Parliament, English historian.
14. Gibbon, with that matchless power of sarcasm, which, in so little said, conveys so much intended, and which carries instruction and conviction to the mind, by making what is said, knock at the door to ask admission for what is not said, [a] significantly tells us that, "by proving that this treatise of Philo was composed as early as the time of Augustus, Basnage has demonstrated, in spite of Eusebius, and a crowd of modern Catholics, that Therapeutae were neither Christians nor monks. It still remains probable, (adds the historian), that they changed their name, preserved their manners, adopted some new articles of faith, and gradually became the fathers of the Egyptian Ascetics." - Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 15, note.
[a] Could any jibe be keener than his remark on the convenience of the time fixed on by divine providence, for the introduction of Christianity; when the Pagan philosophers, and the Pagans generally, were become quite indifferent to the old forms of idolatry: - "Some deities of a more recent and fashionable cast, might soon have occupied the deserted temples of Jupiter and Apollo, if in the decisive moment, the wisdom of providence had not interposed a genuine revelation." - Chap. 15. How honest must the Pagan priests have been, to have owned that their revelations were not genuine?]
15. Under the overt sense of this important criticism, the sagacious historian protects his call on our observance of the monstrous absurdity of a modern theologian attempting to demonstrate what primitive Christianity was, in spite of the only authority from which our knowledge of primitive Christianity can be derived, and challenging our surrender to his peculiar view of the subject, in preference to the conclusions of a crowd of modern Catholics, who are certainly as likely to know, and as able to judge, as himself.
16. Nor are we to overlook the payable inference, that a demonstration that this treatise of Philo was written as early as the time of Augustus; so far from demonstrating the conclusion which the demonstrator aims to establish, demonstrates all the premises and grounds of the very opposite conclusion.
17. The apology for this dilemma, so sarcastically suggested by Gibbon, that "it is probable that these Therapeutae changed their name," conveys the real truth of the matter, in the equally suggested probability, that their name was changed for them. It was not they who embraced Christianity, but Christianity that embraced them.
18. We know that those most admired compositions of Shakespeare and Otway, the "Hamlet" and "Venice Preserved," as now presented to the public, are but little like the first draughts of them, as they fell from the pen of those great authors; yet no one doubts their proper origination, nor thinks of ascribing the merit of them to any other than those authors, though they be re-edited with thousands of various readings, and we are now content to recognise as the best copies, the "Hamlet" according to Malone [Malone, Edward 1741 to 1812, he was an Irish Shakespearean.] or Garrick, [Garrick, David, 1717 to 1779, English actor, playwright and theatre manager.] and the "Venice Preserved" according to Colley Cibber. [Cibber, Colley, 1671 to 1757, English actor, manager, playwright and Poet Laureate.]
Considerations of Antiquity
19. Considering the remote antiquity in which all evidence on the subject must necessarily be obscured. So positive and distinct an avowal as this, of the very highest authority that could possibly be, or be pretended, that the gospels and epistles of the New Testament, constituted the sacred writings of the ancient sect of Therapeutae, before the era which modern Christians have unluckily assigned as that of the birth of Christ; supported as that avowal is, by internal evidence and demonstrations of those scriptures themselves, even in the state in which they have come down to us, and explaining and accounting as that avowal does, for all the circumstances and phenomena that have attended those scriptures, which no other hypothesis can explain or account for, without calling in the desperate madness of supposing the operation of supernatural causes: - we hold ourselves to have presented a demonstration of certainty, than which history has nothing more certain - that the writings contained in the New Testament, are hereby clearly traced up to Therapeutan monks before the Augustan age; and that no ancient, or equally ancient work, was ever by more satisfactory evidence, shown to have been the composition of the author to whom it has been ascribed, than that by which the writings of the New Testament are proved to have been the works of those monks.
20. To be sure they have been re-edited from time to time, and all convenient alterations and substitutions made upon them. "to accommodate them to the faith of the orthodox." [See Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society.] Some entire scenes of the drama have been rejected, and some suggested emendations of early critics have been adopted into the text; the names of Pontius Pilate, Herod, Archelaus, Caiaphas, &c. picked out of Josephus's and other histories, [LN., several of apparent Apostles are named by Josephus, and all are named as being Essenes.] have been substituted in the place of the original dramatis persona: and since it has been found expedient to conceal the plagiarism, to pretend a later date, and a wholly different origination, texts have been introduced, directly impugning the known sentiments and opinions of the original authors: by an exquisite shuffle of ecclesiastical management, what was really the origination of Christianity, has been represented as a corruption of it. The epoch and reign of monkish influence and monkish principles, has been wilfully misdated; those who are known, and demonstrated by the clearest evidence of independent history, to have existed for ages before the Christian era, are represented to have sprung up, in the second, third, or fourth century of that era; and in spite of the still remaining awkwardness and hideousness of the dilemma, that so pure and holy a religion, should come so soon to have been so universally misunderstood; the monks who originated, are branded as the monks who corrupted; the makers for the marrers: and it has remained for Protestant illumination, after sixteen hundred years of dark ages, to, discover evidence that escaped the observance of the very authorities from which it is derived, and to show us divine inspiration, and more than human means for the exaltation and improvement of the human character, in the hands of monks and solitaires, eremites and friars.
21. We have here the clearest and most complete solution of the difficulty that seems to have so much perplexed the faith of the Unitarian Christian, Evanson, in his Dissonance of the Four Gospels; [a] namely - that though they are to be received as the composition of Jews, contemporaries, and even witnesses of the scenes and actions they describe; those compositions do nevertheless betray so great a degree of ignorance of the geography, statistics, and circumstances of Judea at the time supposed, as to put it beyond all question, that the writers were neither witnesses nor cotemporaries - neither Jews, nor at any time inhabitants of Judea. [Evanson, Edward, 1731 to 1805, he was a controversial clergyman,] This, the learned Dr Bretschneider [b] has demonstrated with respect to St. John in particular, most convincingly, in his admirable work, modestly entitled, Probabilia de Evangelii Johannis et epistlarum Ioannis Apostoli indole et origine cruditorum: in which he points out such mistakes and errors of the geography, chronology, history, and statistics of Judea, as no person who had ever resided in that country, or had been by birth a Jew, could possibly have committed. [Bretschneider, Karl Gottlieb, 1776 to 1848, was a German Protestant scholar and theologian.]
[a] this very ingenious and interesting work, as published by one who was a preacher in the Unitarian connection, and who professes himself to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, is another, added to the many instances we meet with, of the correct and even powerful acting of the mind, in most able criticism, in deep research, and shrewd discernment, while yet labouring under 'an insanity, with respect to some particular modifications of thought, so egregious as to betray itself even to the observance of a child. Mr. Evanson rejected the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John, and very many parts of St. Luke; he rejected the Epistles to the Romans, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, "o Titus, and the Hebrews, the two Epistles of Peter, the three of John, and the Revelations; each of which he convicts of evident interpolation, and strong marks of forgery; yet, he believed in the resurrection of Christ, and "in all the obvious and simple, but important truths, of the new covenant of the gospel,"- Page 289, (the last.)
[b] Bretschneider's work has been answered, but very ridiculously, by the learned professor Stein, of Brandenburgh, in a work entitled, Authentia Evanigelii Johannis Vindicata, in which Stein throws himself on the unanswerable argument, of having felt that gospel so particularly comfortable to his soul; as a proof of its genuineness.]
Therapeutae, descended from Jews?
22. The Therapeutae, we see, though not Jews, nor inhabitants of Palestine, were, says Eusebius, "it is likely, descended from Hebrews, and therefore were wont to observe very many of the customs of the ancients, after a more Jewish fashion." Now, as those customs of the ancients could have been none other than ancient Pagan customs, their hereditary respect for everything Jewish, accounts for their observing those ancient customs; after a more Jewish fashion and for the Jewish complexion which the ancient Oriental or Grecian mythology would be made to wear, after passing through their hands.
Greek or Jewish myths?
23. This account of the matter is the more confirmed, from the entirely incidental and undersigned character of the admission, as it appears in Eusebius, who lets it fall, without the least observance of the argument with which it teams, and without any intention of sub-serving the uses that that argument will supply; and still further, by the known character of the Jews themselves, who have introduced the stories of the Pagan heroes, disguised in a Jewish garb, into their Old Testament, turning Iphigenia into Jephthah's daughter, Hercules into Samson, Deucalion into Noah, and Arion on the dolphin's back, into Jonah in the whale's belly; &c. &c. [LN., see SV book on Samson, also the labours of Hercules. And amongst the myths of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Canaanites, and Babylonian myths, which can be found in LN, books and in the Encyclopaedic]
[b] Bretschneider's work has been answered, but very ridiculously, by the learned professor Stein, of Brandenburgh, in a work entitled, Authentia Evanigelh Johannis Vindicata, in which Stein throws himself on the unanswerable argument, of having felt that gospel so particularly comfortable to his soul; as a proof of its genuineness.]
24. "The extensive commerce of Alexandria, (says Gibbon,) and its proximity to Palestine, gave an easy entrance to the new religion. It was, at first, [Yes, at first! Before the disciples were called Christians at Antioch - before the name of Jesus of Nazareth had been heard of at Jerusalem.] embraced by great numbers of Therapeutae, or Essenes, of the lake Mareotis, a Jewish sect which had abated much of its reverence for the Mosaic ceremonies. The austere life of the Essenes, their feasts and excommunications, the community of goods, their love of celibacy, their zeal for martyrdom, and the warmth, though not the purity of their faith, already offered a very lively image of the primitive discipline. It was in the school of Alexandria, that the Christian theology appears to have assumed a regular and scientific form; and when Hadrian visited Egypt, he found a church composed of Jews and Greeks, sufficiently important to attract the notice of that inquisitive prince." - Gibbon, chap. 15. [Hadrian, Publius Aelius Hadrianus Augustus 76 to 138AD, Emperor from 117 to 138AD.
The fast Spread of Christianity, or not?
The progress of Christianity was for a long time confined within the limits of this single city (of Alexandria); and so slow was the progress of this religion, that notwithstanding the rhetorical flourishes and hyperbolical exaggerations of the Fathers, "we are possessed of an authentic record, which attests the state of religion in the first and most populous city of the then known world. In Rome - about the middle of the third century, and after a peace, of thirty-eight years; the clergy consisted but of one bishop, forty-six presbyters, fourteen deacons, forty-two acolytes, and fifty readers, exorcists and porters. We may venture, (concludes the great historian) to estimate the Christians at Rome, at about fifty thousand, when the total number of inhabitants cannot be taken at less than a million; and of the whole Roman Empire, the most favourable calculation that can be deduced from the examples of Antioch and of Rome, will not permit us to imagine that more than a twentieth part of the subjects of the Empire had enlisted themselves under the banner of the cross, before the important conversion of the Emperor Constantine." - Ibid.
25. It should never be forgotten, that as miraculously rapid as we are sometimes told the propagation of the gospel was, it was first preached in England by Austin, the monk, under commission from Pope Gregory, towards the end of the seventh century. So that the good news of salvation, in travelling from the supposed scene of action to this favoured country, may be calculated as having posted at the rate of almost an inch in a fortnight.
26. This however, when compared with the rate at which the evidence of any beneficial effects of the religion upon the morals of its professors has advanced, may be admitted to be surprising velocity; for certain it is, that not the most distant hearsay of such effects, had reached the Court of King's Bench, Westminster, so late as the 7th of February, 1828.
Egypt first?
27. Here then have we, in the cities of Egypt, and in the deserts of Thebes, the whole already established system of ecclesiastical polity, its hierarchy of bishops, its subordinate clergy, the self-same sacred scriptures, the self-same allegorical method of interpreting those scriptures, so convenient to admit of the evasion or amendment from time to time, of any defects that criticism might discover in them; the same doctrines, rites, ceremonies, festivals, discipline, psalms, repeated in alternate verses by the minister and the congregation, epistles and gospels - in a word, the everything, and every iota of Christianity, previously existing from time immemorial, and certainly known to have been in existence, and as such, recorded and detailed by an historian of unquestioned veracity, living and writing at least fifty years before the earliest date that Christian historians have assigned to any Christian document whatever.
28. Here we see through the thin veil that would hide the truth from our eyes, in the admissions that Christians have been constrained to make, that Therapeutae were certainly the first converts to the faith of Christ; and that the many circumstances of doctrine and discipline, that they had in common with the Christians, had previously prepared and predisposed them to receive the gospel. We find that the faith of Christ actually originated with them, that they were in previous possession, and that those who, by a chronological error, or wilful misrepresentation, are called the first Christians, were not the converters of Therapeutae, but were themselves their converts.
COROLLARIES.
29. This accounts for a phenomenon that everywhere meets us, and which were otherwise utterly unaccountable; that the religion of one who had expressly admonished his disciples, that his kingdom was not of this world, and which purports to have been first preached by unambitious and illiterate fishermen, should in the very first and earliest documents of it that can be produced, present us with all the full ripe arrogance of an already established hierarchy; bishops disputing for their prerogatives, and throne-in-seated prelates demanding and receiving more than the honours of temporal sovereignty, from their cringing vassals, and denouncing worse than inflictions of temporal punishment against the heretics who should presume to resist their decrees, or dispute their authority.
The power of Bishops
30. We find the episcopal form of government, even before the end of the first century, fully established; and if not the very Galilean fishermen themselves, at least those who are called the apostolic fathers, and who are supposed to have received their authority and doctrine immediately from them, established in all the pride, pomp, and magnificence of sovereign pontiffs, and lords of the lives and fortunes, [a] as well as of the faith of their flocks; and everywhere inculcating, as the first axiom of all morality and virtue, that there was no sin so great, as that of resistance to the authority of a bishop.
[a] St. Peter put Ananias and Sapphira to death, for not giving him all the money he wanted. - Acts 5. St. Paul ordered the Corinthian "to be delivered to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, for having overlooked the rules of Therapeutan college, in a love affair." - 1 Corinth, 5. The power of the church could never have been more fully established than when such outrageous injustice was above all responsibility.]
31. "Since the time of Tertullian and Irenaeus, it has been a fact, as well as a maxim, Nulla ecclesia sine episcopo - no church without a bishop." - Gibbon.
32. We find Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, even while the Apostles, or John, at least, is supposed to have been living, venturing to stake his soul for theirs, and himself the expiatory offering, for those who should duly obey their bishop; and,
33. Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria the very seat and centre of Therapeutan doctrine, in his epistles to Novatius, maintains that schismatics, or those who should venture to follow any opinions unsanctioned by the bishop, were "renegadoes, apostates, malingnants, parricides, anti-Christ's, blasphemers, the devil's priests, villainous, and perfidious, were without hope, had no right to the promises, could not be saved, were, no more Christians than the devil, could not go to heaven, the hottest part of hell their portion, their preaching poisonous, their baptism pestiferous, their persons accursed, &c. &c, and much more, to the same heavenly-tempered purport." [Quoted in the Principles of the Cyprianic Age, p. 19. A very rare and curious work (by J. S. that is, John Sage, a Scottish bishop, 1695,) preserved in Sion College library, from whence lent to my use, by the Rev. Dr Gaskin, Secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
34. Such a state of things, such sentiments and language, and the like thereof, invariably found as it is in the very earliest documents of Christianity that can be adduced, and attested by the corroboration of independent historical evidence, is utterly incongruous, wholly irreconcilable and out of keeping with any possibility of the existence of the circumstances under which the Christian revelation is generally supposed to have made its appearance on earth.
Not one of the gospels written in Hebrew?
35. But it is in perfect probability and in entire coincidence with all the circumstances discovered to us by this wonderful passage of Eusebius, from whom we learn that the Evangelist, St. Mark, was believed to have been the first who extended his travels into Egypt, and became the founder of this same Therapeutan church, in the city of Alexandria, by preaching in the first instance to them, the gospel which has come down to us under his name. [But what if Mark himself, as well as his colleagues, were really no Jews at all, but native Egyptians, and bishops of this pre-existent Therapeutan church; the words of Eusebius may present a different sense to the eye of faith, they admit of no other rational understanding; [GK] "But this Mark, they say, first betook himself into Egypt, and preached the gospel, that which he also wrote, and first established the churches of Alexandria; and such a multitude, both of men and women, were assembled upon his first attempt, on account of his more philosophical and severe asceticism, that Philo held it worthy to commit to writing an account of their exercises and assemblies, their meals, and their whole discipline of life." Such is the whole of the 15th chapter of the second book of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, discovering to us, the now demonstrated and indisputable fact, that monkery or asceticism, was the first and earliest type of Christianity; that its first preachers were monks; and that not only the doctrines, but that the gospels which contain them, were already extant in the world, many years before the epoch assigned to the birth of Christ,]
36. Even the necessary decency of supposing that at least one of the Evangelists should have written a gospel in the language of his own country, has been given up with the pitiful apology, that the invincible unbelief of the Hebrew nation, rendered the gospel which St. Matthew may be supposed to have written in Hebrew, not worth preserving. So that no gospel, in the language of the country in which its stupendous events are said to have happened, can be shown to have been ever in existence.
General conclusion
We should naturally think, that anything rather than an account of events that had really happened, must have been intended by English authors, who chose to write the history of England, in any other language than English. But the conduct of the Evangelists is still more unaccountable, in that they must have gone so much out of their way, to deprive their countrymen of the knowledge of salvation, to write in a language, that 'tis certain they could never have understood themselves, without divine inspiration. Are we to suppose that persons of their mean and humble rank, in the most barbarous province of the Roman Empire, were better educated than persons of the same calling at this day in any country in Christendom, and that the fishermen of the Galilean lake, could handle the pen of the ready writer, in an age, ages before the age, in which, as yet, even prelates, priests, and princes, were marksmen, and comprehended their whole extent of literature, in the sign of the X.
-o0o-
Next chapter 11. Chapter 11. Corroborations of the Evidence Arising from the Admissions of Eusebius, In the New Testament Itself.