Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

indifference. The neglect is a thousand times more sinful in such an instance. Enough has been said to demonstrate how essential it now is that some means should be afforded the householder to possess not only a knowledge of his sanitary environment, but a true sense of security, which at present is entirely absent and beyond his reach.

G. WALTER STEEVES.

ZOROASTER AND THE BIBLE

MANY interested but necessarily hasty readers of the Zend Avesta overlook the fact that in the ancient documents comprised under that name we have works of many different ages; and even scholars eminently endowed with the critical faculty as applied to other specialties sometimes fall into a similar error, and ignore a characteristic which the Avesta possesses in common with nearly all other writings of its description; for they sometimes turn over its pages without perceiving, or seeming to perceive, that from leaf to leaf matter comes before them made up of pieces nearly or quite dissimilar, and sometimes separated as to the dates of their authorship by many hundreds of years. They are accordingly apt to make themselves merry over absurdities which prevail in the later but still genuine Avesta, as if they were peculiar to the original Zoroastrian writings.1

But the author or authors of the earlier Avesta had no immediate or certain connection with the superstitions of later centuries; and as to these quaint myths and trivial ceremonials which are preserved in the later Avesta, are we not apt to exaggerate the disadvantages which they bring with them? How can their presence affect the value of the nobler elements in these relics of ancient faith ?

We are pained to read them, but analogous superfluities appear in many modern systems. And indeed some of the later passages in the Zend Avesta which describe the battle with the Demon of Putrefaction, and which might seem to some of us most grotesque, were hardly superfluities, for they showed a sanitation which it would be better for us to follow rather than condemn.2 In tracing the following analogies, which for brevity's sake I take for the most part from the genuine, but still later,3 Avesta, I shall leave out these

1 It is even not uncommon to speak or write of the Avesta as if it were identical with the later Zoroastrianism, the revived system of Sasanian times, which is however as different from both the earlier and the later Avesta as the lives of saints are from the New Testament records.

2 Consciously or unconsciously they anticipated much modern theory on this subject, and led the way in the most practical of all sciences-disinfection.

• The original and earlier Avesta consists of the Gâthas, the original hymns of

grotesque details generally, abandoning them as rare materials to the collectors of ancient bits. What is intended at present is to call attention to the now undoubted, and long since suspected, fact, that it pleased the Divine Power to reveal some of the most important articles of our Catholic creed first to the Zoroastrians, and through their literature to the Jews and ourselves.

But while this last is the prominent object before me, a secondary object is almost as anxiously aimed at, and that is, to destroy a pernicious and dangerous impression, which is, that all doctrines in order to be regarded by the Church as of inspired character need to have been original with the Christians or the Jews.

[ocr errors]

Many indeed are the erroneous statements made by well-meaning tyros in Christian pulpits as to the impossibility of all connection between our great doctrines and analogous truths once held by nations which were brought into contact with the Israelites; and the fervent novice may well be pardoned if in his first sincere efforts he is too enthusiastic in a negative sense, but in men of maturer years let us hope for better things. Surely the first object of religion, next to the suppression of unlawful violence or appropriation, should be the suppression of inaccurate statement; and to deny without any effort to become an expert what every expert knows to be the truth, is, so it seems to me, to commit a crime in the name of Christianity for which Christianity will one day be called upon to account.

It is therefore to help the Church against well-furnished gainsayers, and to re-establish her character for conscientious investigation, that some Christian specialists in Orientalism have given the best years of their lives; and this is scarcely my secondary object here, to save the endeared religion which once inculcated every honourable sentiment from continuing herself the victim of that most sinister of equivocations known as 'pious fraud.' How then should we handle the question of Zoroastrian influence with the Jews?

To state what is intended to be the keynote of the present communication, I would say that any, or all, of the historical, doctrinal, or hortative statements recorded in the Old or the New Testament might, while fervently believed to be inspired by the Divine Power be yet freely traced, if the facts would allow of it, to other religious systems for their mental initiative; that the historical origin of particular doctrines or ideas which are expressed in the Old or the

Zoroaster and his immediate associates or followers. They are most dissimilar to the rest of the Avesta, and still more so to the apocryphal Zoroastrianism. They have been carefully translated by me in the Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxi., and their Zend, Pahlavi, Sanskrit, and Persian texts have been edited and the first three translated by me with a Commentary in my Study of the Gâthas, some 410 pages of which out of 650 are now to be had of F. A. Brockhaus, Leipzig. They may be provisionally placed at about 1500 to 1000 B.C., but if they antedate the cults of Mithra, Haoma (Soma), of the Sun, Moon, &c., &c., all of which they totally ignore, they must be centuries older. The remaining parts of the Avesta are of different ages, say from

:

New Testament does not touch the question of their inspiration,
plenary or otherwise; that, for instance, as St. Paul freely discloses his
mental peculiarities, and (as to citations) quotes a poet of his youth,
so our Lord also reveals a mental constitution, and to a certain degree
expressed, as all others express them, the convictions and enthusiasm
which He had absorbed from early association. And still more than
this, unless we are prepared to accede to a docetic heresy, doubting
the reality of our Saviour's human nature, every sentiment of venera-
tion ought to induce us to trace, if it be possible to trace them, not
only the fountainheads of His human convictions, but the supplying
rills of His expression. If we carefully study the genealogy of His
body, with how much greater earnestness should we examine that of
His mind! For it was His thoughts, humanly speaking, and some-
times His earlier ones, which not only constituted a part of His
momentous history, but, of course, also actually determined His career.
In the source of His thoughts, therefore, the great motives of His
subsequent history are to be sought for. As, for instance, He was
gathering up his resolves for such a scene as that described in the
fourth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, in which He purposed to meet
in one decisive encounter a spiritual power which, as He believed, was
threatening His creation, if there had been anything memorable of
the kind in the experiences of prophets of kindred religions, and if
they were known to Him by the exercise of a supernatural insight,*
it does not seem to me to be at all deniable that such preceding
'temptations' (as He revolved them, with all that they signified)
influenced Him. If He possessed that larger intellect which could
see over the trivial paraphernalia of superstition, and look at the soul
struggling in its sincerity for spiritual life, and for the spiritual lives
of many who revered it, then, if He were a man beyond the common
measure,
this must have moved Him. It would seem, therefore, to be
a very pious act to search diligently for everything which Christ
hallowed by His notice, and it would seem a very mistaken religious
sentiment which would arrest one in such a course.

The most obvious place to search for the doctrines and opinions amid which our Lord grew up is, of course, the Jewish literature of His period, and of that which preceded His appearance. This has been examined to a considerable extent, and much of the greatest interest has been brought to light. The theologies of Egypt should be also examined as well as those of Greece and Rome. From India we have what seem a throng of rich analogies from the Buddhist Scriptures, but our highest authority on the subject is, or

5

600 to 300 B.C., while, as in the case of every other ancient book, spurious additions of an indefinitely later origin occur here and there.

• All who hold to the divinity of our Lord will readily concede the possibility that all previous as well as all future history could become present to Him at will. • See the Talmud article by Dr. Deutsch (Remains, 1874).

was, inclined to doubt the possibility of the historical connection." There remains the ancient Persian theology; and here the historical connection amounts, at one stage at least, to historical identity, and is as such, I believe, universally recognised. Cyrus 'the Persian' brought the Jewish people back when they had become a captive people, and rebuilt the city when it had become a heap. The Book of Nehemiah introduces us to actual scenes with a Persian king. The later Isaiah wrote in the most astonishing terms of one. Book after book of the Bible dates from their reigns, while Magian 7 priests, who were of the religion of Cyrus, came later to do honour to the Son of Mary, and one of the last words uttered by Christ upon the Cross was from the Persian tongue. That Cyrus was originally, or at heart, a Mazda worshipper may be regarded as certain. His name appears in the repeated cuneiform inscription of Murghâb, which, although it is very short, is yet kindred to the extensive inscription of Darius, who is also prominent as a Scripture character, and the latter expresses homage to Auramazda at every period.

8

9

Whether the precise form of Mazda worship present on the Inscriptions was that of Zoroaster or not is of little moment. It seems likely, indeed, that it was an especially original form of Mazda worship. But whether this was the fact or not, it must have possessed the main features which have been more or less preserved to us in the Zend Avesta. The word 'Mazda' (strictly '-dâh'), meaning 'the Great Creator,' or 'the Great Wise One,' is an especially well-adapted name for God, much more so than our own name for Him; and this revering title well expresses the enlightened tone of the book. If then any ancient volume could claim our attention, it would seem to be the Sacred Scripture of that great Mazda-worshipper 10 who, under the providence of God, determined the entire later history of the Jewish people. For had Cyrus, the Mazda-worshipper, not brought the people back, the later prophets might not have spoken at Jerusalem, nor might Jesus have been born at Bethlehem, nor taught in the region. Indeed, the influence of the Great Restorer and his successors over the city was so positive that in the opinion of even popular religious writers Jerusalem was for a considerable period after the Return in many respects 'a Persian city.' The connection between Persia and Jerusalem being thus notorious, what analogies

• See the remark of Prof. Rhys Davids in the Buddhist Suttas, p. 166, vol. xi. S.B.E.

The word Magian' is with little doubt Avestic; the Maga was 'the Holy Cause,' occurring repeatedly in the Gâthas; the changed suffix u in magu is of no importance, and the o of the Avestic moghu results from epenthesis, cp. vohu for vahu, Sk. vasu; gh also = Gâthic g. Maga as pre-Gâthic by centuries may have been carried down to Akkad by Turanians, cp. Y. 46, 12.

• Luke xxiii. 43.

• See my remark in vol. xxxi., S.B.E., Introduction, p. 30.

10 It has been long since suggested that Cyrus coquetted at least with Babylonian idolatries; but his original and probably only sincere religion was that of his

[merged small][ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
« PredošláPokračovať »