Note 3 — VII SYMBOLS OF THE MESSIAH: THE LAMB AND THE CROSS THE CHRISTIAN JESUS I THE PAULINE JESUS

It is well known that the ancient world was not as yet in possession of the idea of literary individuality in our sense of the word. At that time innumerable works were circulated bearing famous names, whose authors had neither at the time nor probably at any time anything to do with the men who bore those names. Many such productions were circulated among the members of Sects of antiquity, which passed, for example, under the names of Orpheus, of Pythagoras, of Zoroaster, &c., and thereby sought to procure the canonical acceptance of their contents! Of the works of the Old Testament neither the Psalms, nor the Proverbs, nor the so-called Preacher, nor the Book of Wisdom, can be connected with the historical kings David and Solomon, whose names they bear; and the prophet Daniel is just such a fictitious personality as the Enoch and the Ezra of the Apocalypses known under their names. Even the so-called Five Books of Moses are the literary product of an age much later than the one in which Moses is supposed to have lived, while Joshua is the name of an old Israelite God after whom the book in question is called.3 There has never anywhere been such a Moses as the one described in the Old Testament.