Note 4 — Chapter IV · THE EPISTLES OF PAUL

My readers must by now feel very much like poor little Alice when the Black Queen was dragging her across Wonderland. If they find the sensation delightful, they can, I daresay, enjoy plenty more of it by a closer study of Mr. Robertson’s books on the subject. If they do not like it, then they must not blame me for taking him seriously; for is he not acclaimed by Dr. Drews as our greatest exegete of the New Testament, Dr. Frazer alone excepted? Is he not the spiritual guide of learned German orientalists like Winckler and Jensen? Has not Professor W. B. Smith assured us of how much he feels he can learn from such a scholar and thinker, though “he has preferred not to poach on his preserves.”4 It is, therefore, incumbent on me to probe his work a little further. Let us return to the passage, 1 Cor. xv, 5, where we are told that Jesus appeared first to Cephas. We have already seen that the Peter of the Gospels is in this new system alternately a sign of the Zodiac, a Mithraic myth, an alias of Janus, of Proteus, a member of any other Pantheon you like. Obviously he has nothing to do with Paul’s acquaintance. The latter in turn is “not one of the pupils and companions of the crucified Jesus” (p. 348). How, indeed, could he be, seeing that Jesus is a Sun-god crucified upon the Milky Way? No, he is something much humbler—to wit, “simply one of the apostles of a Judaic cult that preaches circumcision,” and, more definitely, as we have seen, one of the twelve apostles of the Jewish High Priest. James and John must equally have belonged to this interesting band of apostles.