the following: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Paul is made to state that this was a saying of Jesus. In the first place, this quotation is not in the epistles of Paul, but in the _Acts_, of which Paul was not the author; in the second place, there is no such quotation in the gospels. The position, then, that there is not a single saying of Jesus in the gospels which is quoted by Paul in his many epistles is unassailable, and certainly fatal to the historicity of the gospel Jesus.

Again, from Paul himself we learn that he was a zealous Hebrew, a Pharisee of Pharisees, studying with Gamaliel in Jerusalem, presumably to become a rabbi. Is it possible that such a man could remain totally ignorant of a miracle worker and teacher like Jesus, living in the same city with him? If Jesus really raised Lazarus from the grave, and entered Jerusalem at the head of a procession, waving branches and shouting, "hosanna"--if he was really crucified in Jerusalem, and ascended from one of its environs--is it possible that Paul neither saw Jesus nor heard anything about these miracles? But if he knew all these things about Jesus, is it possible that he could go through the world preaching Christ without ever once referring to them? It is more likely that when Paul was studying in Jerusalem there was no miraculous Jesus living or teaching in any part of Judea.

If men make their gods they also make their Christs. [Footnote: Christianity and Mythology. J. M. Robertson, to whom the author acknowledges his indebtedness, for the difference between Paul's Jesus and that of the Gospels.] It is frequently urged that it was impossible for a band of illiterate fishermen to have created out of their own fancy so glorious a character as that of Jesus, and that it would be more miraculous to suppose that the unique sayings of Jesus and his incomparably perfect life were invented by a few plain people than to believe in his actual existence. But it is not honest to throw the question into that form. We do not know who were the authors of the gospels. It is pure assumption that they were written by plain fishermen. The authors of the gospels do not disclose their identity. The words, _according_ to Matthew, Mark, etc., represent only the guesses or opinions of translators and copyists.

Both in the gospels and in Christian history the apostles are represented as illiterate men. But if they spoke Greek, and could also write in Greek, they could not have been just plain fishermen. That they were Greeks, not Jews, and more or less educated, may be safely inferred from the fact that they all write in Greek, and one of them at least seems to be acquainted with the Alexandrian school of philosophy. Jesus was supposedly a Jew, his twelve apostles all Jews--how is it, then, that the only biographies of him extant are all in Greek? If his fishermen disciples were capable of composition in Greek, they could not have been illiterate men, if they could not have written in Greek--which was a rare accomplishment for a Jew, according to what Josephus says--then the gospels were not written by the apostles of Jesus. But the fact that though these documents are in a language alien both to Jesus and his disciples, they are unsigned and undated, goes to prove, we think, that their editors or authors wished to conceal their identity that they may be taken for the apostles themselves.

In the next place it is equally an assumption that the portrait of Jesus is incomparable. It is now proven beyond a doubt that there is not a single saying of Jesus, I say this deliberately, which had not already been known both among the Jews and Pagans. [Footnote: Sometimes it is urged by pettifogging clergymen that, while it is true that Confucius gave the Golden Rule six hundred years before Jesus, it was in a negative form. Confucius said, "Do not unto another what you would not another to do unto you." Jesus said, "Do unto others," etc.