Note 50 — Chapter III · ROOTS OF THE MYTH

But we have stronger documentary grounds than these. The Apocalypse is now by advanced critics in general recognized to have been primarily a Judaic, not a Christian document.50 The critics apparently do not realize that this verdict carries in it the pronouncement that Jesus was probably a divine name for some section of the Jews before the rise of the Christian cult. The twelve apostles enter only in an interpolation:51 in the main document we have the “four and twenty elders” of an older cult,52 answering to the twenty-four Counsellor Gods of Babylonia. Even if we assign the book to a “Christian” writer of the earliest years, at the very beginning of the Pauline mission,53 we are committed to connecting the cult at that stage with the doctrine of the Logos,54 with the Alpha and Omega, and with the Mithraic or Babylonian lore of the Seven Spirits. Of the gospel story there is no trace beyond the mention of slaying: on the other hand the Child-God of the dragon-story is wholly non-Christian, and derives from Babylon.