s communicated to Mohammed by the
angel Gabriel, even as Zoroaster in the Avesta claims to have received
certain communications in conversation with Ahuramazda.

In Christianity, in whose history the theory of revelation has played so
great a part, there is in fact--and this is frequently overlooked--no
declaration on the subject by Christ or the apostles themselves. That the
Gospels, as they have come down to us, have been revealed, is nowhere
stated in them, nor can it be gathered from the Acts of the Apostles or
the Epistles. No one has ever maintained that any New Testament Scripture
was known to Christ or even to the apostles.(51) On the contrary, if we
take the titles of the Gospels in their natural meaning, they do not
purport to have been written down by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
themselves: they are simply the sacred history as it was recorded by
others according to each of these men. Attempts have indeed been made to
reason away the meaning of {~GREEK SMALL LETTER KAPPA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH OXIA~}, "according to," and interpret it as "by,"
but it is more natural to take it in its ordinary sense. When Paul, in his
second Epistle to Timothy (iii. 16), says, "Every scripture inspired of
God is also profitable for teaching," this is the usual mode of expression
applied to the Scriptures of the Old, not of the New Testament (John v.
39), and would merely signify inspired, breathed in, not revealed in each
word and letter.

In any case we learn this much from a comparative study of religions, that
the majority of them have their holy books, which are usually the oldest
remains of literature, oral or written, that they possess. They look upon
the authors of these Scriptures as extraordinary, even superhuman beings;
and the later theologians in order to remove from the minds of the people
every doubt as to their truth, devised the most ingenious theories, to
show how these books were not produced by men, but were merely seen by
them, and how in the end even the words and letters of the original text
were dictated to certain individuals. It is imagined, therefore, that the
Deity condescended to speak Hebrew or Greek in the dialect of that period,
and that therefore no letter or accent may be disturbed.

This would, of course, make the matter very easy, and this is no doubt the
reason why the theory has found so many adherents. It is only strange that