Note 16 — Chapter IV · THE EVOLUTION OF THE CULT

(13) And it is not merely on the Jewish side that we have evidence of elements in the early Jesuist movement which derive from sources alien to the gospel record. M. Loisy16 admits that the hymn of the Naassenes, given by Hippolytus,17 in which Jesus appeals to the Father to let him descend to earth and reveal the mysteries to men, “has an extraordinary resemblance to the dialogue between the God Ea and his son Marduk in certain Babylonian incantations.”18 He disposes of the problem by claiming that before it can weigh with us “it must be proved that the hymn of the Ophites is anterior to all connection of their sect with Christianity.” The implication is that Gnostic syncretism could add Babylonian traits to the Jewish Jesus. But when we find signal marks of a Babylonian connection for the name Jesus in the Apocalypse we cannot thus discount, without further evidence, the Babylonian connection set up by the Naassene hymn. Nor can the defenders of a record which they themselves admit to contain a mass of unhistorical matter claim to have a ground upon which they can dismiss as a copyist’s blunder the formula in which in an old magic papyrus Jesus, as Healer, is adjured as “The God of the Hebrews.”19 The very gospel records present the name of Jesus as one of magical power in places where he has not appeared. A strict criticism is bound to admit that the whole question of the pre-Christian vogue of the name Jesus presents an unsolved problem.