H.G. & Me

I’ve been skimming H.G. Wells’ The Outline of History (yes, THAT H.G. Wells) and came across some interesting passages.  I thought I’d share them with you.  The italicized comments are Mr. Wells’ – the rest are mine.  

We shall tell what men have believed about Jesus of Nazareth, but him we shall treat as being what he appeared to be, a man, just as a painter must needs paint him as a man.  The documents that testify to his acts and teachings we shall treat as ordinary human documents…  This is what we have already done in the case of Buddha, and what we shall do later with Muhammad. (Outline of history, page 497)

We are left, if we do strip this record of these difficult accessories (the great star that brought wise men, the massacre of the male infant children, the flight into Egypt, etc.) with the figure of a being, very human, very earnest and passionate, capable of swift anger, and teaching a new and simple and profound doctrine – namely, the universal loving Fatherhood of God and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven… (page 498)

Now it is a matter of fact that in the gospels all that body of theological assertion which constitutes Christianity finds little support.  There is, as the reader may see for himself, no clear and emphatic assertion in these books of the doctrines which Christian teachers of all denominations find generally necessary to salvation…  …There is no evidence that the apostles of Jesus ever heard of the Trinity – at any rate from him.  The observance of the Jewish Sabbath, again, transferred to the Mithraic Sun-day, is an important feature of many Christian cults; but Jesus deliberately broke the Sabbath, and said that it was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.  Nor did he say a word about the worship of his mother Mary, in the guise of Isis, the Queen of Heaven.  All that is most characteristically Christian in worship and usage, he ignored.  Sceptical[sic] writers have had the temerity to deny that Jesus can be called a Christian at all… (page 499)

As remarkable is the enormous prominence given by Jesus to the teaching of what he called the Kingdom of Heaven, and its comparative insignificance in the procedure and teaching of most of the Christian churches…This doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching of Jesus, and which plays so small a part in the Christian creeds, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines that ever stirred and changed human thought… (page 499)

During this indefinite time (the first two centuries A.D) a considerable amount of a sort of theocrasia seems to have gone on between the Christian cult and the almost equally popular and widely diffused Mithraic cult, and the cult of Serapis-Isis-Horus.  From the former it would seem the Christians adopted Sun-day as their chief day of worship instead of the Jewish Sabbath, the abundant use of candles in religious ceremonies, the legend of the adoration by the shepherds, and probably also those ideas and phrases, so distinctive of certain sects to this day, about being “washed in the blood” of Christ, and of Christ being a blood sacrifice…  The contributions of the Alexandrine cult to Christian thought and practices were even more considerable.  In the personality of Horus, who was at once the son of Serapis and identical with Serapis, it wa natural for the Christians to find an illumination analogue in their struggles with the Pauline mysteries.  From that to the identification of Mary with Isis, and her elevation to a rank quasi-divine… was also a very natural step.  Natural, too, was it for Christianity to adopt, almost insensibly, the practical methods of the popular religions of the time.  Its priests took on the head-shaving and the characteristic garments of the Egyptian priests, because that sort of thing seemed to be the right way of distinguishing a priest.  One accretion followed another.  Almost insensibly the originally revolutionary teaching was buried under these customary acquisitions… (pages 512-513)

Jesus called himself the Son of God and also the Son of Man; but he laid little stress on who he was or what he was, and much upon the teachings of the Kingdom… (page 514)

Mr. Wells certainly did not share the COG view of who and what Jesus was, nor did he have the same understanding of the Kingdom of Heaven – but it’s interesting that he could see that that was the thrust of Jesus’ message while here on earth.