|
|
Once the Sun and its movement and its effect on mankind had been personified into local stories reflecting the attributes of the Sun (Creator, Sustainer, Protector, Savior), it was natural that these Sun god-men would be glorified and later deified. This is exactly what has happened to Yeshua in the Christian faith. Little wonder as your study is revealing to you how this happened. After what you have seen concerning the numerous virgin born, crucified and resurrected Saviors (as the climax of Sun worship) believed on in the Pagan world for so many centuries before the time assigned for the birth of the Christian Saviour, the questions naturally arise: were these god-men real parsonages? Did they ever exist in the flesh? What was the origin of the stories concerning these virgin born, crucified, and resurrected Saviors? Do these stories have a foundation in truth, or are they simply creations of the imagination ?
The historical theory—according to which all the persons mentioned in mythology were once real human beings, and the legend, and fabulous traditions relating to them were merely the additions and embellishments of later times—which was so popular with scholars of the last century, has been altogether abandoned.
Under the historical point of view the gods are mere deified mortals, either heroes who have been deified after their death, or Pontiff-chieftains who have passed themselves off for gods, and who, it is gratuitously supposed, found people stupid enough to believe in their pretended divinity. This was the manner in which formerly, writers explained the mythology of nations of antiquity but a method that pre-supposed a historical Crishna, a historical Osiris, a historical Mithra, a historical Hercules, a histories Apollo, or a historical Thor, was found untenable, and therefore does not, at the present day, stand in need of a refutation. As a writer of the early part of the present century said: "We shall never have an ancient history worthy of the perusal of men of common sense, till we cease treating poems as history, and send back such personages as Hercules, Theseus, Bacchus, etc., to the heavens, whence their history is taken, and whence they never descended to the earth."
The historical theory was succeeded by the allegorical theory, which supposes that all the myths of the ancients were allegorical and symbolical, and contain some moral, religious, or philosophical truth or historical fact under the form of an allegory, which came in process of time to be understood literally.
In the preceding articles we have spoken of the several virgin-born, crucified and resurrected Saviors, as real personages. We have attributed to these individuals words and acts, and have regarded the words and acts recorded in the several sacred books from which we have quoted, as said and done by them. But in doing this, we have simply used the language of others. These gods and heroes were not real personages; they are merrily personifications of the Sun. As Prof Max Muller observes in his Lectures on the Science of Religion:
"One of the earliest objects that would strike and stir the mind of man, and for which a sign or a name would soon be wanted, is surely the Sun." In the Vedas, the Sun has twenty different names, not pure equivalents, but each term descriptive of the Sun in one of its aspects. It is brilliant (Surya), the friend (Mitra), generous (Aryaman), beneficent (Bhaga), that which nourishes (Pushna), the Creator (Tvashtar), the master of the sky (Divaspati), and so on (Rev. S. Baring-Gould: Orig. Relig. Belief, vol. I, p. 150). Again Prof. Muller says: "It is very hard for us to realize the feelings with which the first dwellers on the earth looked upon the Sun, or to understand fully what they meant by a morning prayer or a morning sacrifice. Perhaps there are few people who have watched a sunrise more than once or twice in their life; few people who have ever known the meaning of a morning prayer, or a morning, sacrifice. But think of man at the very dawn of time.... think of the Sun awakening the eyes of man from sleep, and his mind from slumber! Was not the sunrise to him the first wonder, the first beginning of all redaction, all thought, all philosophy? Was it not to him the first revelation, the first beginning of all trust, of all religion?"
Prof. Muller goes on to say: "Few nations only have preserved in their ancient poetry some remnants of the natural awe with which the earlier dwellers on the earth saw that brilliant being slowly rising from out of the darkness of the night, raising itself by its own might higher and higher, till it stood triumphant on the arch of heaven, and then descended and sank down in its fiery glory into the dark abyss of the heaving and hissing sea. In the hymns of the Veda, the poet still wonders whether the Sun will rise again; he asks how he can climb the vault of heaven? Why he does not fall back ? And when the rays of the morning rouse him from sleep and call him back to new life, when he sees the Sun, as he says, stretching out his golden arms to bless the world and rescue it from the terror of darkness, he exclaims, 'Arise, our life, our spirit has come back... the light approaches."
Many years ago, the learned Sir William Jones said: "We must not be surprised at finding, on a close examination, that the characters of all the Pagan deities, male and female, melt into each other, and at last into one or two; for it seems as well founded opinion, that the whole crowd of gods and goddesses of ancient Rome, mean only the powers of nature, and principally those of the SUN, expressed in a variety of ways, and by a multitude of fanciful names" (Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 267).
So, as you can see the "allegorical" interpretation is the more correct of the two options.