Note 18 — Chapter I · THE APPROACH

The argument from Pythagoras is a still more fatal device. Of him “it is no easy task to give an account that can claim to be regarded as history.”18 And “of the opinions of Pythagoras we know even less than of his life.”19 It is held to be certain that he taught the doctrine of transmigration and originated certain propositions in mathematics; but while the mathematical element has no analogue in the gospels, the residual view of Pythagoras as vending in religion only a “thoroughly primitive” set of taboos20 would sanction, by analogy, the view that the real Jesus was the Talmudic Ben Pandira, who dates about 100 B.C., and was reputed a worker of wonders by sorcery. This is a sufficiently lame and impotent conclusion from a polemic in favour of the gospel Jesus, whom it leaves, in effect, a myth, as the myth-theory maintains. As for Apollonius of Tyana, one holds him historical21 just because his myth-laden story is finally intelligible as history, which is precisely what the Jesus story is not.