The Necessity of Atheism Part 4

In the first place, it was rather confusing to attempt to obey the behests of conflicting deities; in the second place, the different prophets of Jehovah in Judaism and Christendom had, so far as Mohammed knew, been uniformly successful, for he was familiar with the glorious history of Abraham, Moses, and David, and he always held to the perverse conception that Jesus was not crucified. However deep in the dumps prophets may have been on occasion, they have invariably believed one thing: victory for their particular cause would inevitably come. Neither an unbroken series of worldly failures nor the chastis.e.m.e.nt of his G.o.d have ever shaken the faith of a first-cla.s.s prophet in himself or, as he would doubtless prefer to say, in his Divinity. Arabia, broken, unorganized, inglorious, idolistic Arabia, obviously lacked one Supreme Being whose prerogative was greater than all other Supreme Beings, and that Being, in turn, needed a messenger to exploit His supremacy. The messengers who had served Jehovah had certainly prospered well; but Jehovah Himself appeared to be on the decline. His Unity was steadily disintegrating into a paradoxical Trinity. Why, therefore, not give Allah, the leading icon in Arabia, an opportunity? Such considerations quite probably never entered the head of Mohammed with any definiteness; yet his behavior for the rest of his days seems to indicate that these, or similar conceptions, were subconsciously egging him on.

Of certain facts, moreover, he was definitely aware. He may have had little or no formal education, but his memory was retentive and capacious, and his caravan journeys, together with the scores of conversations he had held at the yearly fairs, as well as at Mecca, with many cultivated strangers, had packed his mind with a ma.s.s of highly valuable matter. In these ways he had learned both the strength and the weakness of the Jews and Christians; their fanatical enthusiasm and despairs; their spasmodic attempts to proselytize as well as the widespread defection from their faiths. "Since his conception of religion was largely personal, for he looked upon Moses, Jesus, and the rest of the prophets as merely capable men who had founded and promulgated religions; and since Arabia had no pre-eminent ruler, why should he not seize the reins of power and carry on the great tradition of prophethood? What a magnificent opportunity beckoned, and how fortunate that he had been the first to recognize the call! By keeping only what was best of the Arabic faith, the Kaaba and the Black Stone, and by a judicious selection of the most feasible ideas which lay imbedded in Jewish and Christian precepts, he might establish a code that would supersede all others, and then might dictate to all Arabs alike. What prophets had done, he would also do and do better."

(_Mohammed--R. F. Dibble._)

Such are the thoughts of a charlatan and _a_ demagogue. If Mohammed actually had such ideas, we can never know; but a study of his further actions and conquests surely shows that he must have had something of the same trend of thought in mind.

His "fits" before the oncoming of a new Sura have been mentioned.

Eventually, he so perfected his technique that he could throw a cataleptic fit and produce a message without any previous preparation.

He would drum up a crowd with his ludicrous snortings and puffings until the resounding cry, "Inspiration hath descended on the Prophet!" a.s.sured him that he had a sufficiently large audience to warrant the out-spurting of a new Sura. While in a room that was obviously empty, he declared that all seats were occupied by angels; he cultivated suave and benign expression; he flattered and astounded his followers by telling them facts which he had presumably acquired through private information; he took the most painstaking care of his person, painting his eyes and perfuming his entire body daily, and wearing his hair long. Ayesha, one of the Prophet's wives, remarked that the Prophet loved three things: women, scent and food, and that he had his heart's content of the first two, but not of the last. In fact, Mohammed, himself, argued that these two innocuous diversions intensified the ecstasy of his prayers. In the Koran's description of heaven so much emphasis was put on food that a jolly Jew objected on the grounds that such continual feasting must of necessity be followed by a purgation. The Prophet, however, swore that it would not even be necessary to blow the nose in Paradise, since all bodily impurities would be carried off by a perspiration "as odoriferous as musk."

When his wife Khadija was dying he comforted her with the a.s.surance that she, together with three other well-known women, the Virgin Mary, Potiphar's wife, and "Kulthum," Moses' sister, would occupy his chamber in Paradise.

On Mohammed's escape to Medina, a long series of holy wars began which, like all holy wars, were characterized by extreme brutality. The Koran of the period contains such pacific doctrines as these: "The sword is the key of Heaven and h.e.l.l; a drop of blood shed in the cause of G.o.d, a night spent in arms is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer; whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven. At the day of Judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim ... G.o.d loveth not the Transgressors; kill them wheresoever ye find them."

Mohammed, no less than many other religiously-minded emperors and tsars, appears to have conducted himself in battle according to the wise principle that a head without a halo is infinitely more desirable than a halo without a head. Yet he was profoundly convinced that the ultimate victory of Islam depended upon the sword. The Koran of this period breathes defiance against the enemies of Islam on almost every page. Its profuse maledictions, once confined to the evildoers of Mecca, now include all unbelievers everywhere. When Mohammed once had captured a fortress inhabited by a tribe of Jews, his judgment was, "The men shall be put to death, the women and children sold into slavery, and the spoil divided amongst the army." Then, trenches were dug, some seven hundred men were marched out, forced to seat themselves in rows along the top of the trenches, beheaded, and then tumbled into a long gaping grave.

Meanwhile, the Prophet looked on until, tiring of the monotonous spectacle, he departed to amuse himself with a Jewess whose husband had just perished.

He continued these conquests until, at his death, in 632, he was the master of nearly all Arabia and revered almost as a G.o.d. Yet, when Omar, his first lieutenant, captured Jerusalem in 636, he ensured the conquered Jews and Christians free exercise of their religion, and the security of their persons and their goods. But when the Crusaders took Jerusalem in 1099, they ma.s.sacred all the Mohammedans, and burnt the Jews alive. It is estimated that 70,000 persons were put to death in less than a week to attest the superior morality of the Christian faith.

The successors of Mohammed, the Caliphs, in less than a century conquered Syria, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Turkestan, Spain, Northern Africa, Sicily, and Southern France. Today, 160,000,000 are followers of Mohammed,--a man who began as a humble religious leader, and ended as an adroit politician and powerful general; a man who hid during battles, who often broke faith with friend and foe alike, a charlatan and demagogue of general intellectual incompetency, and a victim of mental disease.

JESUS

When we come to consider the life of Jesus, a far different and more intricate problem is met with. None but the most illogical and purposely ignorant of religious apologists will admit that the life of Jesus has been misrepresented by his followers to suit their particular aims. Had the followers of the moralist Epictetus or the Rabbi Hillel written lives of these two teachers they would be quite similar to the reputed life of Jesus. The moral sentiments attributed to Christ in the Gospels were borrowed from the Jewish rabbis and the numerous cults that flourished in that age. The birth, death, and resurrection of Christ is quite similar to the myths of that time concerning the savior G.o.ds Adonis, Isis, Osiris, Attis, Mithra, and a mult.i.tude of others. (_For a full exposition of the subject, the reader is referred to E. Carpenter, "Pagan and Christian Creeds."_)

The evidence for the point of view that Jesus was actually a historic character is so slight that such scholars as J. M. Robertson, Prof. W.

B. Smith, Professor Drews, Dr. P. L. Couchoud, and many others deny the historic reality of Christ on the ground that the Gospels are totally unreliable as history, that Paul bears no witness to a human Jesus, and that the pagan and Jewish writers are strangely silent about the Messiah Jesus.

There are in existence only twenty-four lines from Jewish and Pagan writers referring to Jesus. These include a reference in Tacitus'

Annals, and brief references by Suetonius and Pliny the Younger. These three references are considered spurious by many scholars, and even if they were all to be accepted it would mean that the total pagan testimony as to the historicity of Jesus is confined to three very vague and brief references written a century after the reputed time of Jesus.

The longest reference to Jesus is in the writings of the Jewish historian, Josephus. The pa.s.sage referring to Jesus in his "Jewish Antiquities" has been considered as spurious even by conservative scholars. A group of scholars has always deemed it very probable, however, that this spurious reference may have replaced an unfavorable reference to Jesus in the original. Working on this theory, Dr. Eisler has purged of interpolations this work by a painstaking and scholarly investigation.

However, it must be pointed out that with regard to Jesus' actual existence, what divided the Christians and non-Christians was not the question whether or not Jesus existed; but the vastly more pertinent and essentially different question whether or not the obscure Galilean carpenter, executed by a Roman governor as king of the Jews, was really a superhuman being who had overcome death, the longed-for-savior of mankind, foretold by the Prophets, the only-begotten Son of G.o.d Himself.

To the Jews, Jesus was indeed a heretic and an agitator of the lower orders; to the pagans, he was a magician who through sham miracles and with subversive words had incited the people to rebellion, and as a leader of a gang of desperate men had attempted to seize the royal crown of Judaea, as others had done before and after him. The non-Christian writers referred to Jesus as a wizard, a demagogue, and a rebel.

We are fortunate, at this date, to have brought to our attention a masterful work by Dr. Robert Eisler, a work which will be as revolutionary to the study of Christianity as was Darwin's "Origin of the Species" in the realms of science; and, similarly, the former work will be the basis upon which much progress will be made in a great field. Dr. Eisler unfolds a great ma.s.s of hitherto unknown information concerning the life, the actual appearance, and the doings of Jesus. He definitely establishes the proof of Jesus' actual existence, and makes clear many hitherto obscure utterances and deeds of this Prophet.

The descriptions which follow are based on the material in this work of Dr. Eisler, "The Messiah Jesus."

In the complete statement of Josephus on Pilate's governors.h.i.+p, we find, "At that time there appeared a certain man of magical power, if it is permissible to call him a man, whom certain Greeks call a Son of G.o.d, but his disciples, the True Prophet, said to raise the dead, and heal all diseases. His nature and his form were human; a man of simple appearance, mature age, small in stature, three cubits high, _hunchbacked_, with a long face, long nose, and meeting eyebrows, so that they who see him might be affrighted, with scanty hair but with a parting in the middle of his head, after the manner of the Nazarites, and with an undeveloped beard. Only in semblance was he superhuman for he gave some astonis.h.i.+ng and spectacular exhibitions. But again, if I look at his commonplace physique, I, for one, cannot call him an angel.

And everything whatsoever he wrought through some invisible power, he wrought through some word and a command. Some said of him, 'Our first law giver is risen again, and displays many healings and magic arts.

Others said, 'He is sent from G.o.d.' Howbeit in many things he disobeyed the law and kept not the Sabbath according to our fathers' custom.

"And many of the mult.i.tude followed after him and accepted his teachings, and many souls were excited, thinking that thereby the Jewish tribes might be freed from Roman hands. But it was his custom most of the time to abide over against the city on the Mount of Olives, and there, too, he bestowed his healings upon the people. And there a.s.sembled unto him of helpers one hundred and fifty, and a mult.i.tude of the mob.

"Now, when they saw his power, how he accomplished whatsoever he would by a magic word, and when they had made known to him their will, that he should enter into the city, cut down the Roman troops, and Pilate and rule over us, he disdained us not. And having all flocked into Jerusalem, they raised an uproar against Pilate, uttering blasphemies alike against G.o.d and against Caesar.

"And when knowledge of it came to the Jewish leaders, they a.s.sembled together, with the high priests and spake, 'We are powerless and too weak to withstand the Romans. But seeing that the 'bow is bent,' we will go and impart to Pilate what we have heard, and we shall be safe, lest he hear of it from others and we be robbed of our substance and ourselves slaughtered, and the children of Israel dispersed.

"And they went and imparted the matter to Pilate, and he sent and had many of the mult.i.tude slain. And he had that wonder-worker brought up, and after inst.i.tuting an inquiry concerning him, he pa.s.sed this sentence upon him, 'He is a malefactor, a rebel, a robber thirsting for the crown.' And they took him and crucified him according to the custom of their fathers."

Such is the history of Jesus as contrasted with the myth of Jesus in the New Testament. This description of the actual appearance of Jesus for the first time gives us a clue to the mental and physical characteristics of this Prophet.

It must be borne in mind that at the time that Jesus achieved manhood, his people and his nation were under the complete domination of Rome, and oppressed by a race whom the Jews looked upon as cursed barbarians and idolaters. The country was overrun with religious zealots who stormed over the cities and villages preaching the immediate destruction of the world and the proximity of the long-awaited coming of the Messiah.

The fact that Jesus had to bear the hard fate of a deformed body may go far in helping to explain this remarkable character. It is common knowledge how frequently weak and deformed children have to suffer from the cruelty and neglect of environment, a factor which cannot but produce a peculiar reaction on the childish mind which has a far-reaching effect in later life. This accounts for Jesus' indifference towards his mother and brothers; of a delicate const.i.tution, he must have suffered from insults a great deal more than the others, which throws some light on the severe punishment demanded by Jesus for comparatively harmless insults. Under such circ.u.mstances it is easy to explain how every "neighbor," and next-of-kin, although to the weak naturally an "enemy," came to be included in the sphere of that all-embracing love which is the nucleus of Jesus' teaching. For the cripple has to face the dilemma either of warping everything into a powerful, misanthropic hatred, or else to overcome this feeling of revenge for the high moral superiority of a Plato, Mendelssohn, or a Kant. Jesus chose the latter of the two courses, and we may well imagine that it was not at Golgotha that he had the first occasion to cry out, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!"

In the case of Jesus, the whole paradoxical thought of his being the vicarious sin-offering and world redeemer can best be understood as the solution, proposed in the Deutero-Isaiah, of the question which had occupied Job--to wit: Why must the innocent suffer? If the maimed in body refuse to consider himself as forsaken by his G.o.d, as a sinner punished for some guilt of which he is unconscious, he cannot but a.s.sume that there is such a thing as a vocation to suffering, and believe in the inscrutable plan of salvation in which his own life and sufferings are called upon to play some part. Nothing but this conviction of being thus elected can afford him the desired compensation for his depressed and hampered ego.

A repressed nature of this type will, in seeking such a compensation, escape from the harsh reality into the realm of dreams. This is the basis of what the physician recognizes in hysteria, and in the mental disease termed "Dementia Praec.o.x." The glorious daydreams of the millennium, the time of bliss when all strife and all hate will disappear from the earth, when all the crooked will be made straight, find their best explanation in this peculiarity. They console the suffering and heavy-laden for the bitter reality which, in the light of the old messianic prophecies, appears only as a nightmare, promptly to be chased away by the dawn of a new day, a new, a perfect era. The Davidic Jesus, in spite or rather because of his servile form, feels that he is himself the secret incognito king of that wonderful realm, the monarch whom G.o.d some time in the future, nay, right here and before the pa.s.sing of the present generation, will transform while at the same time "revealing" his kingdom.

It is but natural that in the mental development of such individuals they should seek to be great, glorious, and to achieve the supernatural, since they, themselves, are denied the ordinary satisfactions. If, in addition, such individuals believe that they have had a divine call, if the disability of the body so preys on the mind that the sensitive structure gives way to delusions, then there results an aberration from the normal and usual processes of thought,--to be sure not the rabid, violent form of mental disease, but yet a deviation from the normal manner of thinking. Such was the case with the Prophet Jesus.

Afflicted in body but endowed with a sensitive mind, exposed to an unusual environment of seething unrest and political ferment, and firmly convinced in the current fancies regarding the approaching destruction of the world, the conquest of the Evil Power, and the Reign of G.o.d, Jesus became the subject of a delusion that he was the only true Messiah who had been presaged by the prophets of old.

The greatest difficulty encountered in every attempt to present the life and work of Jesus according to the evidence of his own words preserved in the sources is the sharp, irreconcilable contradiction between the so-called "fire and sword" sayings on the one side, and the beat.i.tudes on the peacemakers and the meek, the prohibition to kill, to be angry, to resist wrong, and the command to love one's enemy, contained in the Sermon on the Mount, on the other.

In the early period of his messianic career, the period of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was a thorough quietist. But if we realize that the delusion that he was "The Messiah" had entered his mind so vehemently that he firmly believed that the end of the world was imminent, and that it was his duty to save as many as possible, we can understand his acquiescence to the violence which followed.

Moreover, he was clearly forced to the fatal road by the idea that he must set on foot a movement of hundreds of thousands, the picture of the exodus from Egypt with the fantastic figures given in the Old Testament.

The Messianic rising he was to initiate could not be regarded as realized if he left the country with a band of some hundred elect. If he wished, however, to put at least two-fifths of the population in motion, the method of sending out messengers had proved altogether unsatisfactory. He must try the effect of his own words in a place where, and at a time when, he was sure to reach the greatest mult.i.tude of his people. That could only be in Jerusalem, at the time of the great pilgrimage at the feast of the Pa.s.sover. Moreover, the desired result could only be obtained of course if he openly proclaimed himself to be the Messiah.

Then it was that the Prophet of quiet reversed his words and armed his disciples. Jesus was fully aware of the illegality of this arming of his disciples and of his own direction to purchase a weapon; none the less, he saw no escape from this bitter necessity. The prediction of the prophet must be fulfilled, according to which the righteous servant of the Lord must be numbered among the lawless transgressors. True it is that he did not lead the revolt himself, but tarried with his disciples at the Last Supper at a house near by the fighting. When he becomes aware that his secret hiding place on the Mount of Olives has been betrayed, Jesus hopes for a miracle from G.o.d up to the last. Captured, he is led away to the palace of the high priest's family on the Mount of Olives, where, while Jesus is questioned by the high priest, Peter, unrecognized, warms himself at the fire in the courtyard and thrice denies his master. He was then taken to the Roman governor's court-martial, where sentence was pa.s.sed and he was led off to the place of execution and there deserted by all his followers except a few Galilean women. Then was heard the last despairing cry of the desolate, dying martyr, "My G.o.d, My G.o.d, why hast thou forsaken me?"

Thus ended the career of this deformed Prophet with the sensitive deluded mind; a martyr who attempted only to effect reforms amongst his own people, in his own small locality.

MOSES

With regard to the life, the deeds, and the words of the Prophet Moses we have no history; only myth and legend. The existence of Moses is not demonstrated by the Biblical books which are falsely ascribed to him, yet we cannot be certain that such a character did not exist. In any event, we must judge his character from the writings ascribed to him.

The legend of the child cast upon the waters is to be found in the folklore of all nations. This legend, concerning Moses, relates that one day Pharaoh's daughter, while bathing with her maids in the Nile, found a Hebrew child exposed on the waters in obedience to a new decree. She adopted the boy, gave him an Egyptian name, and brought him up in her palace as a prince. She had him educated and the fair inference is that he was schooled in the culture of the Egyptians. The royal lady made of the Hebrew slave-child an Egyptian gentleman.

Yet, although his face was shaved, and outwardly he appeared to be an Egyptian, at heart he remained a Hebrew. One day, when he was grown, Moses went slumming among his own people to look at their burdens, and he spied an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew. He was so overcome by pa.s.sion at this scene that he killed the man on the spot. The crime became known, there was a hue and cry raised, and the king had a search made for Moses with the intention of slaying him. With all hope of a career in Egypt ended, Moses escaped to the Peninsula of Sinai, and entered the family of an Arab sheik.

The Peninsula of Sinai lies clasped between two arms of the Red Sea. It is a wilderness of mountains covered with a thin, almost transparent coating of vegetation which serves as pasture to the Bedouin flocks.

Among the hills that crown the high plateau there is one which at the time of Moses was called the "Mount of G.o.d." It was holy ground to the Egyptians, and also to the Arabs, who ascended as pilgrims and drew off their sandals when they reached the top. Now is it strange that Sinai should have excited reverence and dread? It is indeed a weird land. Vast and stern stand the mountains, with their five granite peaks pointing to the sky. Avalanches like those of the Alps, but of sand, not of snow, rush down their naked sides with a clear tinkling sound. A peculiar property resides in the air, the human voice can be heard at a surprising distance and swells out into a reverberating roar, and sometimes there rises from among the hills a dull booming sound like the distant firing of heavy guns.

Let us attempt to realize what Moses must have felt when he was driven out of Egypt into such a harsh and rugged land. Imagine this man, the adopted son of a royal personage, who was accustomed to all the splendor of the Egyptian court, to the busy turmoil of the streets of the metropolis, to reclining in a carpeted gondola or staying with a n.o.ble at his country house. In a moment all is changed. He dwells in a tent, alone on the mountain side, a shepherd with a crook in his hand. He is married to the daughter of a barbarian; his career is at an end.

He realizes that never again will he enter that palace where once he was received with honor, where now his name is uttered only with contempt.

Never again will he discourse with grave and learned men in his favorite haunts, and never again will he see the people of his tribe whom he loves and for whom he endures this miserable fate. They will suffer but he will not help them; they will mourn, but he will not hear them. In his dreams he hears and sees them. He hears the whistling of the lash and the convulsive sobs and groans. He sees the poor slaves toiling in the fields and sees the daughters of Israel carried off to the harem with struggling arms and streaming hair. He sees the chamber of the woman in labor, the seated, shuddering, writhing form, the mother struggling against maternity, dreading her release, for the king's officer is standing by the door, ready, as soon as a male child is born, to put it to death.

The Arabs who gave him shelter were also children of Abraham, and they related to him legends of the ancient days. They told him of the patriarchs who lay buried in Canaan with their wives; they spoke of the G.o.d whom his fathers had wors.h.i.+ped. Then, as one who returns to a long lost home, the Egyptian returned to the faith of the desert, to the G.o.d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As he wandered on the mountain heights, he looked to the west and saw a desert; beyond it lay Canaan, the home of his ancestors, a land of peace and soon to be a land of hope. For now, new ideas rose tumultuously within him. _He began to see visions and to dream dreams._ He heard voices and beheld no form; he saw trees which blazed with fire and yet were not consumed. He became a prophet and entered into the ecstatic stage. _That is, he began to have illusions and hallucinations._

Dwelling on the misery and suffering of his people, his mind becomes deluded with the idea that he has been chosen by his new-found G.o.d to liberate his people from the tyranny of their oppressors.