Note 98 — Chapter IV · THE EVOLUTION OF THE CULT

Even those who cannot realize the indifference of “Paul” to all personal records of his Jesus—or, recognizing it, are content to explain it away by formulas—must see on consideration that belief in a Saviour God no more needed biographical basis in the case of Paul than in the case of the priests of Mithra, who, it may be noted, had a strong centre at Tarsus.98 There is a certain plausibility in the argument that only a great personality could have made possible the belief in the Resurrection story—though that too is fallacy—but there is no plausibility in inferring that a conception of a personality he had never personally known was needed to impel Paul to his evangel, which is simply one of future salvation by divine sacrifice for all who believe. That is the substitution made by Gentile Christism for the miscarrying Messianism of the Petrine doctrine. It was probably the normal doctrine of many pagan cults—Mithraism for one, which for three hundred years, by common consent, was the outstanding rival of Christianity in the Roman empire.99 It was, then, no specialty of dogma that ultimately determined the success of the one and the disappearance of the other. It was a concatenation of real or “external” causes, not a peculiarity of mere belief.