PAGE

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

xi

INTRODUCTION

xxi

PART I.

THE RATIONALE OF RELIGION

CHAP. I.—THE NATURALNESS OF ALL BELIEF.

§ 1.

Origin of Gods from fear—from love—Beloved Gods the Christs of the world's pantheon—Arbitrary Classifications

1

§ 2.

All beliefs results of reasoning—Taboo—Formulas of Mr. Lang and Dr. Jevons—Primary and secondary taboo—Moral correlations—Theory of religion and magic

4

§ 3.

Dr. Jevons’s theories of religious evolution—Contradictions—Thesis of "superstition"

7

§ 4.

Scientific view of the "religious consciousness"—idea of "the supernatural"—Fear versus gratitude—Rise of magic—Meaning of "religion"

9

§ 5.

Dr. Frazer's definition—its inadequacy—Conflict of formulas—Antiquity of magic—Analogies of religion, magic, and science—Magic homogeneous with religion—Inconsistencies of magic—Magic in the Old Testament—Inconsistencies of later religion

11

§ 6.

The scientific induction—Magic and religion interfluent—The theory of prayer—Dr. Jevons’s reasoning here reduces the religious type to the Atheists and Agnostics

20

§ 7.

Dr. Jevons’s series of self-contradictions—His coincidence with Dr. Frazer in excluding belief from the concept of religion

22

§ 8.

His contradictory doctrine of the conditions of survival in religion—Value of his work—Causes of its fallacies

27

§ 9.

The continuity of religious phenomena—Homogeneity of all magic and religious ritual—Elijah as magician—Comparative harmfulness of priesthoods and sorcerers—The dilemma of Christian ethics—Philosophy in religion—Dr. Jevons’s psychology—"Impressions" versus "projections"—Results of his classification—Religion "rational" even if not "reasonable"

28

§ 10.

Dr. Frazer's sociological vindication of the sorcerer—Its à priori character—Its antinomianism—Its confusion of the problem of the beginnings of culture with that of the spread of civilisation—Checked by induction—Sketch of the actual evolution—The need to guard against deduction from presuppositions

35

p. vi

PAGE

§ 11.

The beginning of the end of religion—Early interweaving of cosmology and ethics—Fear and gratitude alike operative in time—Ancestor-worship—Dr. Jevons’s thesis of its lateness—His argument finally a petitio principii—Evidence against him from his own pages—"Ghosts" versus "spirits"

39

§ 12.

Historic view of ancestor-worship—Conflict of formulas of Mr. Lang and Dr. Frazer—The anthropological solution—Fluctuations in the status of ancestor-Gods—Taboo of names not necessarily oblivion—Gods’ names tabooed—Gods relatively raised and ancestors depressed—Primary deification of ancestors implied in the facts—Verbalist definitions of "ancestor"—Ancestors one of the types of friendly God—Gods originating from abstractions—Arguments of Von Ihering and Fustel de Coulanges on ancestor-worship—Propitiation from fear and from love—Horde-ancestor Gods and family Gods—Evolution of law-giving God

47

§ 13.

Interactions of norms of conduct—Religion and monarchy—Religious cast given to law and ethics—The authoritarian element a mark of religion

55

§ 14.

Definition of religion

57

CHAP. II.—COMPARISON AND APPRAISEMENT OF RELIGIONS.

§ 1.

Early Forces of Reform. Christian partisanship—Difficulty of being impartial—The authoritarian ideal—Genius and religious reform—Rarity of reform through priesthoods—Reality of priestcraft

59

§ 2.

Reform as a Religious Process. Fictitious literature—Reform by strategy—Conditions of moral betterment for the Hebrews—Conditions of religious survival

63

§ 3.

Polytheism and Monotheism. Religious evolution conditioned politically and socially—Monotheism and polytheism alike thus conditioned—No unique bias in the case of Israel—Pressures towards monotheism and towards polytheism—The former usually an external bias, without psychological sincerity—Hebrew and Roman theology compared—Monotheism does grow out of polytheism—Hebrew monotheism not a monarchic but a sacerdotal creation—Monotheistic and polytheistic ethic compared—The conventional view—Ethic associated with "Supreme" Gods—Rational tests—Ethic of post-exilic Judaism—Economic forces in cult-making—Chastening effects of national disaster

66

§ 4.

Hebrews and Babylonians. Babylonian influences on Judaic thought—Higher developments of polytheism—International ethic lower among monotheists than among polytheists

71

§ 5.

Forces of Religious Evolution. The socio-political factors—Social decadence in Mesopotamia, with religious activity—Fatality of imperialism

78

§ 6.

The Hebrew Evolution. Rise of the cult of Yahweh—Literary beginnings—Practical polytheism—The attempted reforms of Josiah—Probable negative results—Developments of Yahwism

p. vii

PAGE

in the exile—Effects of Persian contact—The Return a process of hierocratic selection—The process of literary fabrication Higher literary fruition

80

§ 7.

Post-Exilic Phases. Cramping effects of racial sectarianism—Change nevertheless inevitable—Modifications of belief—Hebrew thought monotheistic only on the surface—Polytheistic superstition never eliminated—Early Christian and Moslem thought on the same plane—Social failure in Jewry as elsewhere—Expansion of Jewry in Gentile lands—Hellenistic reactions—The Maccabean renascence

85

§ 8.

Revival and Disintegration. The renascence a second process of hierocratic selection—Parallel case of Parsism—Special fecundity of Jews—Renewed process of doctrinal modification—Development of a Secondary God—The Jesuist movement—Its dependent relation to Judaism up till the destruction of the Temple—Fusion of the secondary God-ideas in Jesus—The economic situation—Separate Christism a result of the fall of the Temple—Later Judaism—Persistence of sacrifice up to the political catastrophe—Conventional comparisons of Hebrew and Greek ethic and character

89

§ 9.

Conclusion. All religions processes of evolutionary change—General law of the substitution of Son-Gods for the older—Analogous cases in Greece, Babylon, Egypt, Persia, and Jewry—The psychological process—Modification of Indra—His supersession by Krishna—Adaptations of Osiris—Advent of Serapis—Jesus—Apollo, Dionysos, and Zeus—Recession of the Supreme God—Heresy and dissent phases of the total evolutionary process—Conditions of sect-survival—Conditions of survival for deities—The Holy Spirit—The Virgin Mother—Yahweh and Jesus—Mary and Anna—Joseph and Mary—Christ-making thus a form of Secondary-God-making—All Secondary Gods evolved from prior materials—The moral metamorphosis of Bacchus—"Culture-religion" thus an evolution from "nature-religion"

94

PART II.

SECONDARY GOD-MAKING

CHAP. I.—THE SACRIFICED SAVIOUR-GOD.

§ 1.

Totemism and Sacraments

99

§ 2.

Theory and Ritual of Human Sacrifice

105

§ 3.

The Christian Crucifixion

118

§ 4.

Vogue of Human Sacrifice

122

§ 5.

The Divinity of the Victim

130

§ 6.

The Cannibal Sacrament

140

§ 7.

The Semitic Antecedents

144

§ 8.

The Judaic Evolution

148

§ 9.

Specific Survivals in Judaism

158

p. viii

PAGE

§ 10.

The pre-Christian Jesus-God

162

§ 11.

Private Jewish Eucharists

168

§ 12.

The Eucharist in Orthodox Judaism

175

§ 13.

Special Features of the Crucifixion Myth

180

§ 14.

Possible Historical Elements

188

§ 15.

The Gospel Mystery-Play

194

§ 16.

The Mystery-Play and the Cultus

204

§ 17.

Further Pagan Adaptations

206

§ 18.

Synopsis and Conclusion: Genealogy of Human Sacrifice and Sacrament

209

Diagram

211

CHAP. II.—THE TEACHING GOD.

§ 1.

Primary and Secondary Ideas

214

§ 2.

The Logos

218

§ 3.

Derivations of the Christian Logos

223

§ 4.

The Search for a Historical Jesus

228

§ 5.

The Critical Problem

231

§ 6.

Collapse of the Constructive Case

234

§ 7.

Parallel Problems

237

§ 8.

The Problem of Buddhist Origins

239

§ 9.

Buddhism and Buddhas

241

§ 10.

The Cruces

246

§ 11.

Sociological Clues

249

§ 12.

Buddhism and Asoka

253

§ 13.

The Buddha Myth

258

§ 14.

The Problem of Manichæus

266

§ 15.

The Manichæan Solution

267

§ 16.

The Case of Apollonius of Tyana

274

PART III.

MITHRAISM

§ 1.

Introductory

281

§ 2.

Beginnings of Cult

283

§ 3.

Zoroastrianism

280

§ 4.

Evolution of Mithra

288

§ 5.

The Process of Syncretism

291

§ 6.

Symbols of Mithra

29

§ 7.

The Cultus

303

§ 8.

The Creed

310

§ 9.

Mithraism and Christianity

315

§ 10.

Further Christian Parallels

320

§ 11.

The Vogue of Mithraism

321

§ 12.

Absorption in Christianity

327

§ 13.

The Point of Junction

334

p. ix

PART IV.

THE RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT AMERICA

PAGE

§ 1.

American Racial Origins

339

§ 2.

Aztecs and Peruvians

346

§ 3.

Primitive Religion and Human Sacrifice

349

§ 4.

The Mexican Cultus

355

§ 5.

Mexican Sacrifices and Sacraments

360

§ 6.

Mexican Ethics

366

§ 7.

The Mexican White Christ

370

§ 8.

The Fatality of the Priesthood

373

§ 9.

The Religion of Peru

376

§ 10.

Conclusion

380

APPENDICES.

A.

The Eating of the Crucified Human Sacrifice

389

B.

Dramatic and Ritual Survivals

391

C.

Replies to Criticisms:—

§ 1.

General Opposition—The Hibbert Journal

396

§ 2.

The Rev. Alfred Ernest Crawley

402

§ 3.

The Rev. Dr. St. Clair Tisdall

403

§ 4.

The Rev. Father Martindale

413

§ 5.

Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter

427

§ 6.

Professor Carl Clemen

435

INDEX

439