Here is the more you asked me to send. Just tell me if you want more.
Origen makes a categorical declaration of the esoteric sense when he
says (Contra Celsum): "The learned may penetrate into the significance of all oriental
mysteries, but the vulgar can only see the exterior symbol. It is
allowed by all who have any knowledge of the scriptures that everything
is conveyed enigmatically."
We turn to Philo and Josephus, both living about the time of the
"historical" Jesus. There is a tradition that Philo was converted to
Christianity by Peter. If it is credible it would put him in close touch
with the very earliest Christian sentiment. His testimony should carry
considerable weight in the argument. He writes (D.V.C.): "Now the
interpretation of the sacred scriptures is based upon the understanding in
the allegorical narratives; for these men look upon the whole of their
law-codes being like to a living thing, having for the body the spoken
commands, and for the soul the unseen thought stored up in the words . . .
unwrapping and unrobing of the symbols . . . and bringing to light the naked
inner meanings, for those who are able with a little suggestion to arrive at
the intuition of the hidden sense from the apparent meaning."
Massey says that Philo "Platonizes the myths," reading new ethical
meanings into them. But Philo's forthright declaration on the esoteric
method is found in his terse assertion, when speaking of the rib of
Adam: "The literal statement is a fabulous one; and it is in the
mythical that we shall find the true." For those who in spite of a mass
of such testimony from eminent and godly men of the past continue to assert
that there never was any genuine and sincere esoteric knowledge, it is
desirable to quote another statement from Philo: "Now I bid ye, initiated
men, who are purified as to your ears, to receive these things as mysteries
which are really sacred, in your inmost souls, and reveal them not to any
one who is of the number of uninitiated, but guard them as a sacred
treasure."
"In the Mosaic writings," says Josephus (Preface to Antiq.) "everything
is adapted to the nature of the whole, whilst the lawgiver most adroitly
suggests some things as in a riddle and represents some things with
solemnity as in an allegory; those, however, who desire to dive into the
cause of each of these things, will have to use much and deep
philosophical speculation." He again (Ibid.) says that all the sacred
writings have a reference to the nature of the universe; whilst the
legislator, Moses, speaks some things wisely but enigmatically and others
under a fitting allegory.
What authority from antiquity can be cited with more weight than the
first historian, Herodotus? In dealing with the Mystery celebrations of
the Egyptians held on a lake within the sacred precincts of the temple
as Sais, dramatizing the birth, life, death and regeneration of Osiris,
he says that he considers it impious to divulge the name of the god.
"On these matters," he goes on, "though accurately acquainted with the
particulars of them, I must observe a discreet silence. So, too, with
regard to the Mysteries of Demeter [celebrated at Eleusis in Greece],
which the Greeks term 'The Thesmophoria,' I know them, but I shall not
mention them, except so far as may be done without impiety."
One must ask why such direct testimony from credible men of the ancient
world should be flouted by modern savants. The effort to discredit the
existence of a real esoteric system in the ancient day makes liars of
nearly all the outstanding philosophers of the early world.
H. Y. Evans-Wentz, in his work The Tibetan Book of the Dead, states that
archaeological research has now proven that the Mysteries consisted of
symbolical dramatic performances open only to the initiates and
neophytes fit for initiation, illustrating the universally diffused
esoteric teachings concerning death and resurrection; and that the
doctrine of the transmigration of the soul into animal bodies was not
intended to be taken, as it has been by the uninitiated, literally,
but symbolically, as in Plato's Republic. Herodotus (ii, 122) is cited
as documentary support for the statement.
Alexander Wilder, previously quoted, in reference to the Bacchic
Mysteries says that every act, rite and person engaged in them was
symbolical; and the individual revealing them was put to death without
mercy. So also, he adds, was any uninitiated person who happened to have
heard them. Here is strong evidence that the ancients surely believed
they had a secret supremely worth safeguarding from desecration.
The noted modern Egyptologist A. E. W. Budge, says that every act of the
ceremonial dramas was symbolical in character and represented some
ancient belief or tradition.
"And there was not the smallest action on the part of any member of the
band who acted the Miracle Play of Osiris, and not a sentence in the
Liturgy which did not possess importance or vital significance to the
followers of Osiris."
Again he says that it is this "emblemism," spoken of by moderns as
fetishism and idolatry, that has had a false construction put upon it,
mainly by missionaries and travelers, although the Christian religion,
he asserts, has been evolved from the same identical germ and on
somewhat similar lines. Emblemism he explains as a merely external
formula of an inner cult worship.
Though the charge would have far more fitness if made against the
Christians after the third century, it was made even in the days of
Grecian philosophy by Diodorus Siculus, who tells us that the Egyptians
treated the Greeks as impostors because they reissued the Egyptian
mythology as their own history. If the Greeks were guilty of converting
myth into history, it merely indicates that that process of esoteric
degeneration which inevitably set in in every occult religion had begun
early and has continued ever since. Celsus, the learned Jew in debate
with Origen, chuckles over the (literal) account of the Christian deluge
with its ridiculous ark and impossible physical details, finding it a
part of his own mythology literalized and amplified. Tom Paine, Voltaire
and Ingersol chuckled in the same fashion later.
The Roman poet Sallust even classifies the fables as theology of the
physical and animistic sort. He enlarges on the characteristics of each.
He says the theological belongs to philosophers, the physical and
spiritual to poets, but an intermediate mixture of both belongs to the
initiatory rites (Greek: teletais), "since the intention of all mystic
ceremonies is to conjoin us with the world of the gods."
The Jewish Maimonides comes up with the declaration that Genesis, taken
according to the letter, is absurd and extravagant. Whoever should find
the true sense of it ought to take care not to divulge it. This, he
says, is a maxim which all the sages repeat to us, respecting the exact
meaning of the work of the six days. If anyone should discover the true
meaning, he should be silent, or speak of it only obscurely and in an
enigmatical manner.
An important statement is found in that venerated work on the first
three centuries of Christian history, Baron Von Mosheim's "History."
"It is not, therefore, Origen who ought to be termed the parent of
allegories amongst the Christians, but Philo . . . many of the Jews, and
in particular the Pharisees and Essenes, had indulged much in allegories
before the time of Philo, but of this there can be no doubt, that the
praefects of the Alexandrian school caught the idea of interpreting
Scripture upon philosophical principles, or of eliciting philosophical
maxims from the sacred writers by means of allegory, and that by them it
was gradually propagated amongst the Christians at large. It is also
equally certain that by the writings and example of Philo the fondness
for allegories was vastly augmented and confirmed throughout the whole
Christian world; and it moreover appears that it was he who first
inspired the Christians with that degree of temerity which led them not
infrequently to violate the faith of history and wilfully to close their
eyes against the obvious and proper sense of terms and words . . .
particular instances of it . . . may be shown from Origen and others,
who took him for their guide, and who, manifestly, considered a great
part both of the Old and New Testaments as not exhibiting a
representation of things that really occurred, but merely the images of
moral actions."
One can express with a sigh the wish that the discerning practice of
Origen and Philo had persisted down the centuries!
The Schaff-Herzog dictionary of religious terms gives four meanings for
such a name as "Jerusalem," following the gradient of classification
laid down by Philo. Literally the name means the city in Palestine;
morally, the believing soul; allegorically, the Church; and anagogically
the city of heavenly peace, located only of course in consciousness.
While this scheme of interpretation permits it to mean the geographical
town, it by no means confines it to that rendering, which the historical
view does.
In the Anti-Nicene Library (Vol. XXIV, p. 127) in the section of
Selections from the Prophetic Scriptures we read: "We must therefore search
the Scriptures accurately, since they are admitted to be expressed in
parables, and from the names hunt out the thoughts which the Holy Spirit . . .
teaches by imprinting his mind, so to speak, on the expressions . . . that
the names . . . may be explained and that which is hidden under many
integuments may, being handled and learned, come to light and gleam forth."
Jowett, Plato's academically accredited interpreter (Thomas Taylor's
most discerning work being frowned upon) writes: "I am not one of those
who believe Plato to have been a mystic or to have had hidden
meanings,"--this in the face of evidence that is mountainous in height
and weight.
It is now far over a century since C. F. Dupuis published his
once-famous and still valuable work, L'Origine de Tous Les Cultes, in
which he asserted that John the Baptist was a purely mythical personage,
and identified his name with that of the Babylonian Fish-God, Ioannes,
of the Berosan account.
We should not omit reference to a statement by Isaac Myer, the learned
Kabalist scholar, in his work The Oldest Books in the World (VII): "There
was undoubtedly an extremely subtle and sublimated thought in
existence among the learned of the ancient Egyptians which modern
thinkers have not yet fully grasped and which busied itself mostly with
endeavors to arrive at the bond uniting the unknown and the known or
materially existing; this was more especially limited to a religious
philosophy and in that mostly to the spiritual nature in man. The mural
paintings on the walls in ancient Egyptian tombs are not for decoration;
they are symbolical and mystic and the figures thereon are intended for
a religious purpose."
In the Gemara of the Jews, it is said that he who has learned the
scripture and not the Mishna "is a blockhead." The Bible, they say, is
like water, the Mishna like wine, the Gemara liked spiced wine. The law
is as salt, the Mishna as pepper, the Gemara as balmy spice. To study
the Bible can scarcely be considered a virtue; to study the Mishna
is a virtue that will be rewarded, but the study of the Gemara is a
virtue never to be surpassed. Some of the Talmudists assert that to
study the Bible is nothing but a waste of time. The Gemara embodied the
anagogical or esoteric interpretation.
Rabbi Simeon Ben-Jochai, compiler of the Zohar, taught only the esoteric
signification of doctrines, orally and to a limited few, holding that
without the final instruction in the Mercavah the study of the Kabalah
would be incomplete. The Kabalah itself says (iii-folio 1526, quoted in
Myer's Qabbalah, p. 102):
"Each word of the Torah contains an elevated meaning and a sublime
mystery." "The recitals of the Torah are the vestments of the Torah. Woe to him
who takes this garment for the Torah itself. The simple take notice only
of the garments or recitals of the Torah, they know no other thing, they
see not that which is concealed under the vestment. The more instructed
men do not pay attention to the vestment but to the body which it
envelops."
Godbey, in his searching work, The Lost Tribes a Myth (p. 697), asserts
that the Jews lost the origin and meaning of the term "Israel" more than
two thousand years ago.
"There is no agreement in their ancient literature upon that point. All
record and tradition of the old Peniel sanctuary where Jacob became 'an
Israel' has been lost."
But one of the most revealing intimations that the Christian movement
early departed from the genius and spirit of the well-known esoteric
methodology is found in a sensational passage quoted in Mead's Orpheus
from Origen in his work Contra Celsum:
"The story of Dionysus and the Titans is a dramatic history of the
wanderings of the 'Pilgrim-Soul.' And curiously enough we find the story
of the resurrection of Dionysus . . . compared by the most learned of
the Christian Fathers with the resurrection of Christ. Thus Origen
(Contra Celsum IV, 171, Spenc.), after making the comparison, remarks
apologetically and somewhat bitterly: 'Or, forsooth, are the Greeks to
be allowed to use such words with regard to the soul, and speak in
allegorical fashion (tropol egein), and we forbidden to do so?' . . .
thus clearly declaring that the resurrection was an allegory of the soul
and not historical." (Orpheus, pp. 185-6).
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