In the same way he assumed in Islamism, which also sprang from Judaism, the name of Allah, which also existed earlier in Arabia. Analogous to this, the gods of the Greek Olympus, when in prehistoric times they were transplanted to Italy, also assumed the names of the previously reigning gods: hence among the Romans Zeus is called Jupiter, Hera Juno, Hermes Mercury, &c. In China the first difficulty of the missionaries arose from the fact that the Chinese language has no appellation of the kind and also no word for creating; for the three religions of China know no gods either in the plural or in the singular.[1]
However the rest may be, that (
Greek characters) of the Old Testament is really foreign to true Christianity; for in the New Testament the world is always spoken of as something to which one does not belong, which one does not love, nay, whose lord is the devil.[2] This agrees with the ascetic spirit of the denial of one's self and the overcoming of the world which, just like the boundless love of one's neighbour, even of one's enemy, is the fundamental characteristic which Christianity has in common with Brahmanism and Buddhism, and which proves their relationship. There is nothing in which one has to distinguish the kernel so carefully from the shell as in Christianity, Just because I prize this kernel highly I sometimes treat the shell with little ceremony; it is, however, thicker than is generally supposed.
Protestantism, since it has eliminated asceticism and its
2 For example, John xii. 25, 31, xiv. 30, xv. 18, 19, xvi. 33; Col. ii. 20; Eph. ii. 1-3; 1 John ii. 15-17, iv. 4, 5. On this opportunity one may see how certain Protestant theologians, in their efforts to misinterpret the text of the New Testament in conformity with their rationalistic, optimistic, and unutterably shallow view of life, go so far that they actually falsify this text in their translations. Thus H. A. Schott, in his new version given with the Griesbach text of 1805, has translated the word (Greek characters), John xv. 18, 19, by Judæi, 1 John iv. 4, by profani homines; and Col. ii. 20, (Greek characters) by elementa Judaica; while Luther everywhere renders the word honestly and correctly by "Welt" (world).
