The Christ Myth

IV THE SUFFERINGS OF THE MESSIAH

C. Delisle Burns translation

In this way we understand the 53rd chapter of Isaiah: “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, yet he humbled himself, and opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb; yea, he opened not his mouth. He was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And they made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death; although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul [? sufferings], and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Here we obviously have to do with a man who dies as an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of his people, and by his death benefiting the lives of the others is on that account raised to be a God. Indeed, the picture of the just man suffering, all innocent as he is, itself varies between a human and a divine being.

And now let us enter into the condition of the soul of such an unhappy one, who as “God man” suffers death upon the gibbet, and we understand the words of the 22nd Psalm: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou answereth not; and in the night season, and am not silent. But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. Our fathers trusted in thee; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered; they trusted in Thee, and were not ashamed. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the lip, saying, Commit thyself unto the Lord, let him deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighteth in him.... Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gape upon me with their mouth, as a ravening and a roaring lion. I am poured out like water. And all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax: it is melted in the midst of my bowels.... They pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones. They look and stare upon me: they part my garments among them, and upon my vesture do they cast lots. But be not thou far off, O Lord: O Thou, my succour, haste Thee to help me.... Save me from the lion’s mouth, yea, from the horns of the wild oxen....”

When the poet of the psalms wished to describe helplessness in its direst extremity, before his eyes there came the picture of a man, who, hanging upon the gibbet, calls upon God’s aid, while round about him the people gloat over his sufferings, which are to save them; and the attendants who had taken part in the sacrifice divide among themselves the costly garments with which the God-king had been adorned.

The Jewish representative of Haman suffered death at the Feast of Purim on account of a crime, as a deserved punishment which had been awarded him. The Messiah Jesus, on the other hand, according to the words of Isaiah, took the punishment upon himself, being “just.” He was capable of being an expiatory victim for the sins of the whole people, precisely because he least of all deserved such a fate.

Now we understand how the picture of the Messiah varied among the Jews between that of a divine and that of a human being; how he was “accounted just among the evil-doers”; how the idea became associated with a human being that he was a “Son of God” and at the same time “King of the Jews”; and how the idea could arise that in his shameful and undeserved death God had offered himself for mankind. Now too we can understand that he who died had after a short while to rise again from the dead, and this in order to ascend into heaven in splendour and glory and to unite himself with God the Father above. These were ideas which long before the Jesus of the Gospels were spread among the Jewish people, and indeed throughout the whole of Western Asia. In certain sects they were cherished as secret doctrines, and were the principal cause that precisely in this portion of the ancient world Christianity spread so early and with such unusual rapidity.

Notes in this chapter

Note 1 · Ch. vii. 29. ↑Note 2 · Isa. iii. ↑Note 3 · Ch. xii. 10 sqq.; cf. Movers, op. cit., i. 196. ↑Note 4 · Ch. viii. 14. ↑Note 5 · Op. cit., 78. ↑Note 6 · Frazer, “The Golden Bough,” 1900, ii. 196 sq. ↑Note 7 · Frazer, “Adonis, Attis, Osiris,” 1908, 128 sqq. ↑Note 8 · “The Golden Bough,” i., iii. 20 sq. ↑Note 9 · Verse 14. ↑Note 10 · Op. cit., viii. 24–29. ↑Note 11 · 1 Gen. xv. 17. ↑Note 12 · Ghillany, op. cit., 148, 195, 279, 299, 318 sqq. Cf. especially the chapter “Der alte hebräische Nationalgott Jahve,” 264 sqq. ↑Note 13 · J. M. Robertson, “Pagan Christs,” 140–148. It cannot be sufficiently insisted upon that it was only under Persian influence that Jahwe was s Note 14 · “Golden Bough,” iii. 138–146. ↑Note 15 · Movers, op. cit., 480 sqq. ↑Note 16 · VI. 47 sqq., 209 sqq. ↑Note 17 · Cf. Gunkel, “Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit,” 1895. 309 sq. E. Schrader, “Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament,” 1902, 514–Note 18 · Ch. viii. 15. Cf. also vi. 8, 9. ↑Note 19 · “Abhandlungen d. Kgl. Ges. d. Wissenschaften zu Göttingen,” xxxiv. ↑Note 20 · Cf. also P. Wendland, “Ztschr. Hermes,” xxxiii., 1898, 175 sqq., and Robertson, op. cit., 138, note 1. ↑Note 21 · In the same way the Phrygian Attis, whose name characterises him as himself the “father,” was also honoured as the “son,” beloved and spouse Note 22 · Frazer, op. cit., iii. 138–200. Cf. also Robertson, “Pagan Christs,” 136–140. ↑Note 23 · Keim, “Geschichte Jesu,” 1873, 331 note. ↑Note 24 · Ghillany, op. cit., 510 sqq. ↑Note 25 · Id. 505. ↑Note 26 · 2 Sam. xxi. 9; cf. Lev. xxiii. 10–14. ↑Note 27 · “Hist.,” xviii. 7. ↑Note 28 · 2 Kings iii. 27. ↑Note 29 · “Hist. Nat.,” xxxiv. 4, § 26. ↑Note 30 · Mentioned in Eusebius, “Praeparatio Evangelica,” i. 10. Cf. Movers, op. cit., 303 sq. ↑Note 31 · “Der Mythus bei den Hebräern,” 1876, 109–113. ↑Note 32 · Cf. Ghillany, op. cit., 451 sqq.; Daumer, op. cit., 34 sqq., 111. ↑Note 33 · Numb. xx. 22 sqq., xxvii. 12 sqq., xxxiii. 37 sqq., Deut. xxxii. 48 sqq. Cf. Ghillany, op. cit., 709–721. ↑Note 34 · Deut. xviii. 15. ↑Note 35 · Cf. Heb. v. ↑Note 36 · Diodorus Siculus, ii. 44. ↑Note 37 · Justin, “Dial. cum Tryphone,” cap. xc. ↑Note 38 · Schürer, op. cit., ii. 555. Cf. also Wünsche, “Die Leiden des Messias,” 1870. ↑Note 39 · See above, page 40 sqq. ↑Note 40 · Cf. Eisenmenger, op. cit., ii. 720 sqq.; Gfrörer, “Das Jahrhundert des Heils,” 1838, ii. 260 sqq.; Lützelberger, “Die kirchl. Tradition über Note 41 · Op. cit., 21. ↑Note 42 · Op. cit., 71 sq. ↑Note 43 · Kautzsch, “Pseudoepigraphen,” 500. ↑Note 44 · Winckler, op. cit., 67–77. Cf. also Jeremias, op. cit., 40, and his “Das Alte Testament im Lichte des alten Orients,” 1904, 239 sq. ↑Note 45 · Gen. xl. ↑Note 46 · Luke xxiii. 39–43; cf. also Isa. lxxx. 12. ↑Note 47 · Jos. v. 2 sqq. ↑Note 48 · Amos viii. 10; cf. Movers, op. cit., 243. ↑Note 49 · Cf. Robertson, “Pagan Christs,” 157. ↑Note 50 · Numb. xiv. ↑Note 51 · Id. xiii. 9; Gen. xlviii. 16. ↑Note 52 · Id. xiii. 7; Gen. xlix. 9. ↑Note 53 · 1 Chron. iv. 11. ↑Note 54 · Judges ii. 9. ↑Note 55 · Id. iv. ↑Note 56 · Cf. Nork, “Realwörterbuch,” 1843–5, ii. 301 sq. ↑Note 57 · Cf. on whole subject Martin Brückner, “Der sterbende und auferstehende Gottheiland in den orientalischen Religionen und ihr Verhältnis zum C Note 58 · Ch. ii. 12–20. ↑Note 59 · Ch. iii. 1–8. ↑Note 60 · Ch. v. 3–5. ↑Note 61 · The employment of such a picture presupposes that the occurrence depicted was not unknown to the poet and his public, whether it came before Note 62 · Now the putting to death of a man in the rôle of a divine ruler was in ancient times very often connected with the celebration of the new ye Note 63 · In Babylon the Feast of the Sakæes corresponded to the Roman Saturnalia. It was ostensibly a memorial of the inroad of the Scythian Sakes in Note 64 · “Mordecai,” it is said in the Book of Esther, “went out from the king in royal attire, gold and white, with a great crown of gold, and cover Note 65 · The Jewish Pasch was a feast of spring and the new year, on the occasion of which the firstfruits of the harvest and the first-born of men a Note 66 · The Rabbinists separate more accurately two conceptions of the Messiah. According to one, in the character of a descendant of David and a gr Note 67 · And now, who is this Joseph, as son of whom the Messiah was to be a suffering and dying creature like any ordinary man? Winckler has pointed Note 68 · But the Ephraimitic Joshua too must have been a kind of Tammuz or Adonis. His name (Joshua, Syrian, Jeshu) characterises him as saviour and Note 69 · But what is above all decisive is that the son of the “Ploughman” Jephunneh, Caleb (i.e., the Dog), stands by Joshua’s side as a hero of equ Note 70 · It cannot be denied after all this that the conception of a suffering and dying Messiah was of extreme antiquity amongst the Israelites and Note 71 · Plato had already in his “Republic” sketched the picture of a “just man” passing his life unknown and unhonoured amidst suffering and persec Note 72 · It is not only the idea of the just man suffering, of the Messiah dying upon the gibbet, as “King of the Jews” and a criminal, and his risin Note 73 · Another name of Adonis or Tammuz is Dôd, Dodo, Daud, or David. This signifies “the Beloved” and indicates “the beloved son” of the heavenly Note 74 · Now we understand the prophecy of the prophet Micah: “Thou Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of Note 75 · Hadad-Adonis is a God of Vegetation, a God of the rising sap of life and of fruitfulness: but, as was the case with all Gods of a similar na Note 76 · As is well known, later generations were continually setting out this idea in a still more exuberant form. The imagination of the enslaved a