46 



REV. CANON R. J. KNOWLING^ D.D._, ON 



With regard farther to St. Paul's dependence in his teaching 

 upon the ancient mysteries, it may be admitted that certain 

 words, common enough in the mystery rehgions, are used by the 

 Apostle. And yet even here we must be careful. When w^ords 

 like reXeto?, cj^cDTi^eLv, /uLvelcrOai, are alleged in this connection, 

 we have been well reminded that the first two may be derived 

 from the LXX and that the verb ixvelaOai, although a technical 

 term, is used only once by the Apostle, and that in a purely 

 figurat^ive sense. 



But it may be said with equal truth that other terms common 

 enough in the mysteries are altogether omitted by St. Paul. 

 And, in this connection, we may again refer to the list which is 

 given us by Dr. James Drummond, which contains such words 

 as reXeTT], reXeo/naL. /jLvarrj^;, /jlv(ttlk6<;, fivaraycoyo^;, KaOapfio^^, 

 opyLa, and others {Hihhert Journal, April, 1912, and see also 

 Cheetham, The Mysteries, Fagmi and Christian, pp. 17, 18 ; and 

 further, p. 31, as against the statements of Eeitzenstein, Die 

 hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, p. 203). 



No doubt certani words and phrases were, as it were, in the 

 air, and St. Paul's Gentile converts could scarcely help being 

 acquainted with them. It was, too, quite likely that St. Paul 

 would take up such words and fill them with a deeper and 

 fuller meaning, as, e.g., a word to which we have already 

 referred like acjrrjp. But this is a very different thing from 

 supposing that St. Paul himself learnt and taught from the 

 mysteries. At the same time we may learn from a man like 

 Clement of Alexandria how often an educated Christian, 

 acquainted with pagan mythology and its cults, might love to 

 use even technical terms proper to the mysteries, and to 

 employ the old language in describing Christian knowledge and 

 experience (Glover, Conjiict of Religions, p. 269). 



Ought we not, too, to bear in mind an influence to which w^e 

 shall recur upon St. Paul's thought and language, that of the 

 Old Testament, even in many cases which are assigned by 

 writers like Eeitzenstein to Hellenistic religious usage, and the 

 documents of the Hellenistic mystery religions. 



It is not too much to say that such terms as "^vxn 

 TTvevfia, with their cognates, may be traced back to Old Testa- 

 ment usage. And the same may be said of two other familiar 

 terms, elKoov and ho^a, which are closely conjoined by Paul in 

 I and II Corinthians. So, too, it certainly seems preferable to find 

 a parallel for the phrase " to put on Christ," Galatians iii, 27, 

 Ptom. xiii, 14, not in the ritual and religion of Mithra as 

 Dr. Pfleiderer did, but in the Old Testament Scriptures. 



