Note 2 — Chapter VI · THE ART OF CRITICISM

What, again, have the three Maries in common with the Greek Moirai except the number three and a delusive community of sound? Yet Mr. Robertson insists that the three Maries at the tomb of Jesus were suggested by the Moirai, because these, “as goddesses of birth and death, naturally figured in many artistic presentations of religious death scenes.” As a matter of fact, the representation of the Parcae or Fates in connection with death is rare except on Roman sarcophagi, mostly of later date than the Gospel story. And when they are so found, they represent, not women bringing spices for the corpse or mourning for the dead, but the forces, often thought of as blind and therefore represented as veiled, which govern the events of the world, including birth, life and death. and forget the innate hostility of Jews to PaganismThere was, therefore, nothing in the Moirai to suggest the three Maries at the tomb; nor is it credible that the Hebrew Christists, given as they must have been to monotheism and detesting all statuary, pagan or other, would have chosen their literary motives from such a source. Where could they see such statuary in or about Jerusalem? It is notorious that the very presence of a symbolic eagle used as a military standard was enough to create an émeute in Jerusalem. The scheme of the emperor Caligula or Caius to set up his statue in Jerusalem in 39–40 A.D. provoked a movement of revolt throughout Palestine, with which the Jews of Egypt and elsewhere were in full sympathy. A deputation headed by Philo of Alexandria went to Rome to supplicate the emperor not to goad the entire race to frenzy. In the magnificent statues which surrounded him on the Parthenon hill, Paul could see nothing but idols, monuments of an age of superstition and ignorance which God had mercifully overlooked.2 The hostility of the Jews to all pagan art and sculpture was as great as that of Mohammedans to-day. Yet Mr. Robertson asks us to believe (p. 327) that the Gospel myths, as he assumes them to be, are “evolved from scenes in pagan art.” On the top of that we afterwards learn from him that it was the Jewish high priest with legalistic leanings that presided over the Christists or Jesuists. Imagine such a high priest’s feelings when he beheld his “secret society” evolving their system under such an inspiration as Mr. Robertson outlines in the following canons of criticism:—