48 



EEV. CANON R. J. KNOWLING^ D.D.^ ON 



One thing is certain, urges Schweitzer, that St. Paul could 

 not have known the mystery-religions as they are presented to 

 us, because in their developed state they did not at the time 

 exist. It is in considerations of this sort, Dr. Schweitzer further 

 maintains, that a great authority like Cumont can point to the 

 difficulties which stand in the way of the view that the 

 mystery-religions had any influence upon the oldest Christianity, 

 and that he specially regards it as quite excluded that St. Paul 

 €ould in any way be connected with the religion of Mithra. 



Schweitzer {Geschichte dcr Faulinischen Forscliung, p. 151) 

 .severely takes to task those who develop out of the accounts of 

 different religions a kind of universal mystery-religion, which 

 in such a form had never existed, least of all in the time of 

 St. Paul. To what pressure must these myths and rites have 

 been subjected, he exclaims, before the statement could be 

 possible that there is present in many Oriental religions a belief 

 in a dying Saviour-God, who dies and rises to life again ? and 

 where, he asks, do we find anything of this death and resurrec- 

 tion in the case of Mithra ? 



But here we come across an important inquiry. No one, we 

 note, has condemned more strenuously than Schweitzer any belief 

 in the borrowing by St. Paul from the matter of the mystery- 

 religions. If we ask to what then does Schweitzer maintain 

 that St.- Paul was indebted, we find that he refers us to those 

 sources which in his belief have been most neglected, viz., those 

 apocalyptic and pseudepigraphical books of the Jews to which we 

 have just referred. He expresses indeed, unbounded astonish- 

 ment at the neglect of the Ezra- Apocalypse, which undoubtedly 

 treats of many of the subjects associated with the teaching of 

 St. I'aul, upon sin and the fall, upon the choice of Israel, the 

 meaning of the law, the Parousia and the judgment. 



But if Schweitzer had condescended to read and study the 

 works of English theologians he would not have tailed to gain a 

 knowledge of the scholarly and exhaustive edition of the Ezra- 

 Apocalypse which has just been given to us by an accomplished 

 Hebraist, Mr. Box. In the prefatory note we are told that 

 whilst there are many points of contact with the Gospels and 

 the Apocalypse, the most striking are the resemblances between 

 this Jewish thinker and St. Paul, resemblances which we may 

 ultimately trace to the school of Gamaliel, and which render the 

 study of iv Ezra second to none in value amongst the 

 apocryphal and pseudepigraphical books in their bearing on the 

 l^ew Testament. 



But whilst we bear in mind all this fresh and growing 



