The Churches and Modern Thought An inquiry into the...

The resemblances to ancient myths are not confined to the principal incidents in the life of Christ. Many of the most noteworthy events related in the Old Testament have their counterpart in widespread legends. That the stories of the Creation, Fall, and Deluge are legends is well known—a visit to the British Museum should convince the most captious critic on this point—but it is not so well known that ancient folk-lore contains stories similar to those of the Tower of Babel, the trial of Abraham’s faith, Jacob’s vision of the ladder between earth and heaven, the finding of Moses in an ark, the transformation of Moses’ rod into a serpent, the Israelites’ passage through the Red Sea on dry land, Moses smiting the rock and thus producing water, the reception by Moses of the Ten Commandments from God, Balaam’s expostulating ass, Joshua’s command to the sun and the sun’s obedience, Samson and his exploits, Elijah’s ascent to heaven, and Jonah’s sojourn for three days and three nights in the belly of a fish.

This Jonah episode has an important bearing on the subject under discussion, as it is a typical case of an absorption of the universal mythos. Among other authorities, Godfrey Higgins tells us: “The story of Jonas swallowed up by a whale is nothing but part of the fiction of Hercules, described in the Heracleid or Labours of Hercules, of whom the same story was told, and who was swallowed up at the very same place, Joppa, and for the same period of time, three days.”39 Again, with the exception of those who refuse to acknowledge anything damaging to the literal truth of Holy Writ, all professors of theology are agreed that the miracle recorded in the book of Jonah is not a historical fact. This in spite of the alleged personal interviews with God as there recounted; while the plea that we must make allowance for oriental imagery serves only to throw discredit upon historians on whom we are relying for facts upon which the scheme of Christianity depends. Now, the story of the three days’ sojourn of Hercules and other heroes in the bowels of the earth, or the belly of a fish, is only a different version of the myth concerning the death and resurrection of a god which we find to be prevalent over nearly the whole world. And, according to the new Christian theory, this shows an intuition of Christ’s death and resurrection!