INTO HA.DES: A STUDY IN COMPARATIVE RELIGION. 215 



not of the righteous, but of those who had disobeyed the God of 

 the Old Testament.* 



The deception idea is perhaps derived from the doctrine of 

 ♦Christ's restraining the beams of His glory, and, save as used by 

 the Gnostics, has no true pagan affinities. The deception 

 tformulse in the Mandaean myths may come from Gnosticism, 

 for in the Babylonian Marduk and Ishtar myths it does not 

 •occur. Perhaps the Gnostics borrowed the idea from Chris- 

 tianity, and altered it in accordance with current beliefs in 

 transformation, making Christ 7ro\v/jLop(f)o<;.'\ This is suggested 

 by the combination of the Gnostic and Christian forms of the 

 idea in the Ascension of Isaiah. 



(2) The bursting of the gates. — This occurs with great simi- 

 larity in patristic and apocryphal literature. Tertullian and 

 Hippolytus already refer to it and it is mentioned in the creed 

 of Sirmium, a.d. 359.^ Most pagan under-worlds — Babylonian, 

 Egyptian, Greek, Eoman, as well as Jewish — had gates and bars. 

 The Babylonian Ishtar threatened to break down the gates of 

 Hades and release the dead, and to this as well as to a supposi- 

 titious form of the Mandaean myth, this idea as well as the 

 whole descent doctrine has been traced.§ But it is found on 

 Jewish soil, and Christian thought, familiar with the idea of 

 -gates of Hades, transferred such Old Testament passages as 

 Psalm 107 to the story of Christ's victorious descent. The idea 

 -of release from sorrow and trouble is pictured under that of 

 release from Sheol — " He hath broken the gates of brass and 

 €ut the bars of iron in s under." jj But pagan conceptions may 

 have coloured later forms of this idea, though its origin is not 

 immediately pagan. 



(3) The binding of Satan. — This idea, common in Apocryphal 

 documents, varies much, and the devil is often identified with 

 Death or Hades, while sometimes a battle is fought between 

 Christ and Hades, the earthquake representing the shock of the 

 conflict.^ Hippolytus, Irenaeus, and Clement connect the 



Iren. i, 27, 3, cf. a Melanesian myth of a woman who gives herself a 

 death-like smell " before going to Hades. Codrington, Ttie MelanesianSy 

 227-8. 



t Acts of Thomas, ch. 48. 



+ Tert., de Res. Car7iis, 44 ; Hipp., Comm. on St. Lidce^ 23. 



§ Pfleiderer, op. cit., 100. 



il Cf Isaiah xlv, 2 ; 4 Mace, xvi, 13. 



•![ Narrative of Joseph., ch. 4 ; Firm. Maternus, 24 ; " Hist, of John,'* 

 Wright, Apoc. Acts, ii, 37. 



P 



