Pagan and Christian Creeds [8]
instances in the Early Fathers of their indignant ascription of these similarities to the work of devils; but we need not dwell over them. There is no need for US to be indignant. On the contrary we can now see that these animadversions of the Christian writers are the evidence of how and to what extent in the spread of Christianity over the world it had become fused with the Pagan cults previously existing.
[1] The Zodiacal sign of Capricornus, iii.).
It was not till the year A.D. 530 or so--five centuries after the supposed birth of Christ--that a Scythian Monk, Dionysius Exiguus, an abbot and astronomer of Rome, was commissioned to fix the day and the year of that birth. A nice problem, considering the historical science of the period! For year he assigned the date which we now adopt,[2] and for day and month he adopted the 25th December --a date which had been in popular use since about 350 B.C., and the very date, within a day or two, of the supposed birth of the previous Sungods.[3] From that fact alone we may fairly conclude that by the year 530 or earlier the existing Nature-worships had become largely fused into Christianity. In fact the dates of the main pagan religious festivals had by that time become so popular that Christianity was OBLIGED to accommodate itself to them.[1]
[1] As, for instance, the festival of John the Baptist in June took the place of the pagan midsummer festival of water and bathing; the Assumption of the Virgin in August the place of that of Diana in the same month; and the festival of All Souls early in November, that of the world-wide pagan feasts of the dead and their ghosts at the same season.
[2] See Encycl. Brit. art. "Chronology."
[3] "There is however a difficulty in accepting the 25th December as the real date of the Nativity, December being the height of the rainy season in Judaea, when neither flocks nor shepherds could have been at night in the fields of Bethlehem" (!). Encycl. Brit. art. "Christmas Day." According to Hastings's Encyclopaedia, art. "Christmas," "Usener says that the Feast of the Nativity was held originally on the 6th January (the Epiphany), but in 353-4 the Pope Liberius displaced it to the 25th December . . . but there is no evidence of a Feast of the Nativity taking place at all, before the fourth century A.D." It was not till 534 A.D. that Christmas Day and Epiphany were reckoned by the law-courts as dies non.
This brings us to the second point mentioned a few pages back--the analogy between the Christian festivals and the yearly phenomena of Nature in the Sun and the Vegetation.
Let us take Christmas Day first. Mithra, as we have seen, was reported to have been born on the 25th December (which in the Julian Calendar was reckoned as the day of the Winter Solstice AND of the Nativity of the Sun); Plutarch says (Isis and Osiris, c. 12) that Osiris was born on the 361st day of the year, when a Voice rang out proclaiming the Lord of All. Horus, he says, was born on the 362nd day. Apollo on the same.
Why was all this? Why did the Druids at Yule Tide light roaring fires? Why was the cock supposed to crow all Christmas Eve ("The bird of dawning singeth all night long")? Why was Apollo born with only one hair (the young Sun with only one feeble ray)? Why did Samson (name derived from Shemesh, the sun) lose all his strength when he lost his hair? Why were so many of these gods --Mithra, Apollo, Krishna, Jesus, and others, born in caves or underground chambers?[1] Why, at the Easter Eve festival of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem is a light brought from the grave and communicated to the candles of thousands who wait outside, and who rush forth rejoicing to carry the new glory over the world?[2] Why indeed? except that older than all history and all written records has been the fear and wonderment of the children of men over the failure of the Sun's strength in Autumn--the decay of their God; and the anxiety lest by any means he should not revive or reappear?
[1] This same legend of gods (or idols) being born in caves has, curiously
[1] The Zodiacal sign of Capricornus, iii.).
It was not till the year A.D. 530 or so--five centuries after the supposed birth of Christ--that a Scythian Monk, Dionysius Exiguus, an abbot and astronomer of Rome, was commissioned to fix the day and the year of that birth. A nice problem, considering the historical science of the period! For year he assigned the date which we now adopt,[2] and for day and month he adopted the 25th December --a date which had been in popular use since about 350 B.C., and the very date, within a day or two, of the supposed birth of the previous Sungods.[3] From that fact alone we may fairly conclude that by the year 530 or earlier the existing Nature-worships had become largely fused into Christianity. In fact the dates of the main pagan religious festivals had by that time become so popular that Christianity was OBLIGED to accommodate itself to them.[1]
[1] As, for instance, the festival of John the Baptist in June took the place of the pagan midsummer festival of water and bathing; the Assumption of the Virgin in August the place of that of Diana in the same month; and the festival of All Souls early in November, that of the world-wide pagan feasts of the dead and their ghosts at the same season.
[2] See Encycl. Brit. art. "Chronology."
[3] "There is however a difficulty in accepting the 25th December as the real date of the Nativity, December being the height of the rainy season in Judaea, when neither flocks nor shepherds could have been at night in the fields of Bethlehem" (!). Encycl. Brit. art. "Christmas Day." According to Hastings's Encyclopaedia, art. "Christmas," "Usener says that the Feast of the Nativity was held originally on the 6th January (the Epiphany), but in 353-4 the Pope Liberius displaced it to the 25th December . . . but there is no evidence of a Feast of the Nativity taking place at all, before the fourth century A.D." It was not till 534 A.D. that Christmas Day and Epiphany were reckoned by the law-courts as dies non.
This brings us to the second point mentioned a few pages back--the analogy between the Christian festivals and the yearly phenomena of Nature in the Sun and the Vegetation.
Let us take Christmas Day first. Mithra, as we have seen, was reported to have been born on the 25th December (which in the Julian Calendar was reckoned as the day of the Winter Solstice AND of the Nativity of the Sun); Plutarch says (Isis and Osiris, c. 12) that Osiris was born on the 361st day of the year, when a Voice rang out proclaiming the Lord of All. Horus, he says, was born on the 362nd day. Apollo on the same.
Why was all this? Why did the Druids at Yule Tide light roaring fires? Why was the cock supposed to crow all Christmas Eve ("The bird of dawning singeth all night long")? Why was Apollo born with only one hair (the young Sun with only one feeble ray)? Why did Samson (name derived from Shemesh, the sun) lose all his strength when he lost his hair? Why were so many of these gods --Mithra, Apollo, Krishna, Jesus, and others, born in caves or underground chambers?[1] Why, at the Easter Eve festival of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem is a light brought from the grave and communicated to the candles of thousands who wait outside, and who rush forth rejoicing to carry the new glory over the world?[2] Why indeed? except that older than all history and all written records has been the fear and wonderment of the children of men over the failure of the Sun's strength in Autumn--the decay of their God; and the anxiety lest by any means he should not revive or reappear?
[1] This same legend of gods (or idols) being born in caves has, curiously