CONTENTS OF PAGE THE PREACHING OF JESUS CHRIST. Introduction-Christ and the Pharisees-Christ and His Disciples ORIGIN OF THE ROMAN CHURCH. Introduction-Epistle of Clement-Shepherd of Hermas - Gnos- ERRATA. PAGE 298 340 362 CHAPTER I. ADAM THE REFORMER. ORIGINAL TEXT AND VERBAL TRADITION OF THE ARYANS-MIGRATION FROM 'When the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves.'—Rom. ii. 14. CHAP. RELIGION is a definition and a manifestation of the relations between man and his God; between the free creature and the free Creator. Whatever value we may assign to Introducrecords of other religions, the record of the religion of tion. the chosen people Israel must always be regarded as the pearl of great price. It shows the gradual development of God's revelation to man; the sowing, the growing, and the reaping of the Divine Word. For the Bible is the mirror, which reflects to the believer in God's supernatural action upon his soul, the history of that action upon the chosen men of a chosen people, whilst admitting a similar action on humanity at large, and thus defining the connection. between natural and revealed religion. 6 Abraham, the ancestor of the chosen race, the first de- Abraham. scendant of Shem, was called and chosen by God. He lived in Ur of the Chaldees,' and received the Divine command to quit 'the land of the Chaldæans." Leaving the southern declivity of the Armenian table-land, the mountains of the Chaldæans, the patriarchal family, perhaps followed by many others, pursued its southward CHAP. I. course towards the Land of Promise. The sacred records do not inform us which were the relations of the friend of God,' of the father of the faithful,' with the other inhabitants of Southern Asia. But we know that these same and the adjoining districts were inhabited by mighty tribes, which about the year 12301 were subjugated by the Assyrians. Among the inhabitants of these countries. were the Bactrians, who were at this time ruled over by native kings, and who possessed the north-eastern part of that district which in later times formed the Persian proZoroaster. vince of Iran. Here it was that Zoroaster, the great reformer of the Aryan faith, promulgated his doctrine, the leading principles of which have been transmitted to us by the Avesta,' that is, 'the living Word,' or, as others translate it, 'the original text.' This original text formed the written law, which may have been interpreted, even from the earliest times, by an oral or verbal tradition which was called Zend,' and was in course of time committed to writing. Thus another, or second law, a Deuteronomy, was added to the original text' of the Holy Word.' And the compendiums of the written and the oral law were combined under the title of AvestaZend,' or 'Zend-Avesta.' At first, the written law, the Avesta, and then the oral law, the Zend, would be regarded as most important; and thus the change from AvestaZend to Zend-Avesta might be explained. We shall later refer to a famous passage in the most ancient part of the Avesta, where the two laws, that is the originally written and the originally unwritten tradition are recognised as authoritative. It has been shown that the ancient Yasna,' or sacrifice,' probably formed originally a separate book, called 'the Holy Word;'2 it is several times referred to as authoritative Scripture in the younger Yasna, the Vis 6 Comp. Dunker, 'Geschichte des Alterthums,' I. 274. 6 6 2 Comp. Haug's 'Essays on Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsees,' Bombay 1862. Also Haug's 'Gatha's des Zarathustra;' and Spiegel's Avesta,' Leipz. 1860. 6 parat and the Vendidad, which books form the most ancient part of the Avesta as transmitted to us. According to the opinion of all interpreters of the Avesta, the Yasna contains writings of Zoroaster himself, who had received Divine revelations, for which reason the Yasna is the only part of the Avesta which claims to be Divinely inspired. Zoroaster, or rather Zarathustra Spitama, a messenger' of God, who listens to the voice of the Spirit, lived under the reign of the Bactrian King Vistaspa, who was the sixth king whose name is mentioned by historical tradition. We do not know how many kings ruled in Bactria between the government of Vistaspa and that of Oxathres, who was about the year 1230 conquered by Ninus, the founder of the Assyrian empire. But since the father of Vistaspa is mentioned in the Book of the Kings as the builder of Bactra, the capital, it is more than probable that Vistaspa belonged to the very earliest kings of Bactria. If Oxathres could oppose 400,000 men to the Assyrians, and if Ninus had to bring two millions of warriors into the field (as Ctesias reports), before he could effect the previously attempted subjugation of his Bactrian rival, we may assume that a long period intervened between the founder of the capital and the last of the Bactrian kings. This hypothesis would be strengthened were we to accept the tradition recorded by Pliny and others, according to which Zoroaster lived about the year 6429 B.C. A further confirmation of this view is contained in the fact, that in the Avesta, with the earlier part of which the life of the Aryan Reformer is intimately connected, neither Egbatana, founded about the year 700, nor Pasargarda, nor Persepolis, are mentioned, and that neither Nineveh nor Babylon seem to have existed at the time. when the original text of Zoroaster's revelations were committed to writing. This is all the more remarkable, since the principal places known to the ancient Bactrians are carefully enumerated in the Avesta. It mentions in CHAP. I. |