240 THE EEY. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, D.D._, ON MITHRAISM. 



To the serious student the theory that the legend of Mithra 

 and the Gospel account of Christ are one and the same needs 

 little confutation. The facts on which Christianity is based are 

 matters of history. The writers of the New Testament were in 

 many cases eye-witnesses* of the most important of the events 

 which they record, and in other cases they wrote on the 

 authority of eye-witnesses. When, about a.d. 30 or a little 

 later, the Apostles, and especially the other brethren, set out from 

 Jerusalem-]- to begin the task of making all natiocsj disciples, 

 and " went about preaching the Word,"§ it is evident that they 

 must have had some message to proclaim, some news of their 

 Master to tell. What that news was we learn from the New 

 Testament. According to the latest scholarship of our day,|| the 

 Synoptic Gospels were written and published, the earliest 

 about 20, and the latest not more than 40 years after Christ had 

 been crucified under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius.^ 

 Therefore even the most credulous opponent of Christianity can 

 hardly believe that the. heralds of Christ confounded Him with 

 Mithra, whose cruel and barbarous** worship, associate df-f with 



* Cf. I John i, 1-3. t Lk. xxiv, 46-49 ; Acts i, 8. 



\ Matt, xxviii, 19. § Acts viii, 4. 



II Harnack {Neue Untersuchungeii zur Apostelgeschichte und zur Abfas- 

 simgszeit der Syyioptischeii Evangelien) dates the non-Marcan source used 

 by Matthew and Luke as written about or before a.d. 50. (Eamsay 

 thinks it may have been composed even before the Crucifixion : see also 

 Professor Petrie, The (howth of the Gospels.) He dates Mark's Gospel 

 between a.d. 50 and 60, and says it cannot be later ; Matthew's about 

 A.D. 70 ; Luke's before the conclusion of the Acts circa a.d. 60. There is 

 therefore no room for tlie growth of myth, nor is there any possibility 

 that the disciples confounded their beloved Master with the Persian Sun- 

 god. The New Testament portraiture of Christ cannot be resolved into 

 myth, fiction, or hallucination. See, e.g., Row's Jesus of the Evangelists., 

 Seeley's Ecce Honio, Simpson's The Fact of Christ, and my own Religio 

 Critici, ch. II. ^ Tacitus, Anyiales, Lib. xv, 44. 



■^■^ Cf. Lampridius, Vita Commodi, cap. 14 : Socrates, Hist. Ecc, Lib. iii, 

 cap. ii, §§ 2-6 : Prudentius, Peristephanon, Lib. x, vv. 1006-1050 

 (Dressel's Ed.) : Nonnus, ^wci'^nv^iri '^Irnopiwu, 6, 47 : Porphyry, 

 quoted by Cumont, Textes et Monuments figures, \o\. ii, p. 42 : A. Gasquet, 

 Essai sur le cidte et les mysteres de Mithra, p. 27. 



tt In the rites of Cybele, Ma, etc. A. Gasqnet, op. cit, p. 27, states that 

 Artaxerxes I., erecting statues to Mithra and Anahita at Susa, Ecbatana, 

 Babylon, Damascus, and Sardis, identified them with Marduk and Ishtar, 

 and attached to their temples thousands of hierodules of either sex, 

 " voues aux prostitutions sacrees." Professor Dill, Roman Society, p. 625, 

 says : "Through the astral fatalism of Babylon, Mithra was inseparably 

 connected wdth the darkest superstitions of East or West, which covered 

 all sorts of secret crime and perfidy, which lent themselves to seduction, 

 conspirac}', and murder.'' Penan, Marcus Aurelms, Hutchinson's transla- 



