The Christ Myth
Description:... Among no people was the longing for redemption so lively and the expectation of a speedy end of the world so strong as among the Jews. Since the Babylonian captivity (586–536 B.C.) the former Jewish outlook upon the world had undergone a great change. Fifty years had been spent by the Israelites in the land of the stranger. For two hundred years after their return to their own land they were under Persian overlordship. As a consequence of this they were in close connection politically and economically with the Achæmenidean Empire, and this did not cease when Alexander overthrew the Persian power and brought the whole Eastern world under Greek influence. During this lengthy period Persian modes of thinking and Persian religious views had influenced in many ways the old Jewish opinions, and had introduced a large number of new ideas. First of all the extreme dualism of the Persians had impressed a distinctly dual character upon Jewish Monotheism. God and the world, which in the old ideas had often mingled with one another, were separated and made to stand in opposition to each other. Following the same train of thought, the old national God Jahwe, in imitation of the Persian Ahuramazda (Ormuzd), had developed from a God of fire, light, and sky into a God of supernatural purity and holiness. Surrounded by light and enthroned in the Beyond, like Ahuramazda, the source of all life, the living God held intercourse with his creatures upon the earth only through the instrumentality of a court of angels. These messengers of God or intermediate beings in countless numbers moved between heaven and earth upon his service. And just as Angromainyu (Ahriman), the evil, was opposed to Ahuramazda, the good, and the struggle between darkness and light, truth and falsehood, life and death, was, according to Persian ideas, reproduced in the course of earthly events, so the Jews too ascribed to Satan the rôle of an adversary of God, a corrupter of the divine creation, and made him, as Prince of this world and leader of the forces of hell, measure his strength with the King of Heaven.
In the struggle of the two opposing worlds, according to Persian ideas, Mithras stood in the foreground, the spirit of light, truth, and justice, the divine “friend” of men, the “mediator,” “deliverer,” and “saviour” of the world. He shared his office with Honover, Ahuramazda’s Word of creation and revelation; and indeed in most things their attributes were mingled. An incarnation of fire or the sun, above all of the struggling, suffering, triumphant light, which presses victoriously through night and darkness, Mithras was also connected with death and immortality, and passed as guide of souls and judge in the under-world. He was the “divine son,” of whom it was said that Ahuramazda had fashioned him as great and worthy of reverence as his own self. Indeed, he was in essence Ahuramazda himself, proceeding from his supernatural light, and given a concrete individuality. As companion in creation and “protector” of the world he kept the universe standing in its struggle against its enemies. At the head of the heavenly host he fought for God, and with his sword of flame he drove the Dæmons of Darkness in terror back into the shadows. To take part in this combat on the side of God, to build up the future kingdom of God by the work of a life-giving civilisation, by the rendering fruitful of sterile wastes, the extinction of noxious animals, and by moral self-education, seemed the proper end of human existence. But when the time should have been fulfilled and the present epoch come to an end, according to Persian belief, Ahuramazda was then to raise up from the seed of Zarathustra, the founder of this religion, the “virgin’s son,” Saoshyant (Sraosha, Sosiosch, which signifies the Saviour), or, as it ran according to another rendering, Mithras himself should descend upon the earth and in a last fierce struggle overwhelm Angromainyu and his hosts, and cast them down into the Nether World. He would then raise the dead in bodily shape, and after a General Judgment of the whole world, in which the wicked should be condemned to the punishments of hell and the good raised to heavenly glory, establish the “millennial Kingdom of Peace.” Hell itself was not to last for ever, for a great reconciliation was to be finally held out even to the damned. Then Angromainyu also would make peace with Ahuramazda, and upon a new earth beneath a new heaven all were to be united to one another in everlasting blessedness.
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