me apocryphal.[167] It has been proved that neither
Jesus nor his disciples wrote a single word, and that no version of
the Gospels appeared earlier than the second century.[168] It was at
that time that religious quarrels gave birth to hundreds of gospels,
the writers of which signed them with the name of an apostle or even
with that of Jesus, after forging them in more or less intelligent
fashion.

Celsus, Jortin, Gibbons, and others have shown that Christianity is
directly descended from Paganism; it was by combining the doctrines of
Egypt, Persia, and Greece with the teachings of Jesus that the
Christian doctrine was built up. Celsus silenced all the Christian
doctors of his time by supplying evidence of this plagiarism; Origen,
the most learned doctor of the age, was his opponent, but he was no
more fortunate than the rest, and Celsus came off victorious.
Thereupon recourse was had to the methods usual in those days; his
books were burnt.

And yet it is evident that the author of the _Revelation_ was a
Kabalist; and the writer of the _Gospel of Saint John_ a Gnostic or a
Neoplatonist. The _Gospel of Nicodemus_ is scarcely more than a copy
of the _Descent of Hercules into the Infernal Regions_; the _Epistle
to the Corinthians_ is a distinct reminiscence of the initiatory
Mysteries of Eleusis; and the Roman Ritual, according to H. P.
Blavatsky, is the reproduction of the Kabalistic Ritual.

One gospel only was authentic, the secret or Hebrew _Gospel of
Matthew_, which was used by the Nazareans, and at a later date by
Saint Justin and the Ebionites. It contained the esoterism of the
One-Religion, and Saint Jerome, who found this gospel in the library
of Caesarea about the end of the fourth century, says that he "received
permission to translate it from the Nazareans of Beroea."

These considerations prove that interested and narrow-minded writers
selected from the mass of existing traditions whatever seemed to them
of a nature to support their spiritual views as well as their material
interests, and that they constructed therefrom not only what has come
down to us as the four canonical gospels, but also the whole edifice
of Christian dogma.

Consequently, we need not be surprised to find in the _New Testament_
only unimportant fragments dealing with reincarnation; but even these
are not to be despised, for they prove that the doctrine was, to a
certain extent at all events, known and accepted in Palestine.