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tained in it could not be known otherwise than on revelation; and since the revelation itself took place only about two thousand years ago (in the case of the teaching of Jesus, at least), it follows, that before that auspicious time, in the history of religion, they could not have been known. For, if the matters revealed were, or could be, known independently of a divine revealer, revelation would lose all its special charm and the Almighty God would stand unmarked as a false pretender, who infringed the copyright of others and passed off their plagiarized knowledge with a label of his own, calling it revealed truth. This alone must be the test of the type of revelation with which we are concerned for the present, so that if knowledge already existed, there could be no revelation of it at all, however much that knowledge might have remained unknown to any particular people in the world. But not only the New Testament, but, also, the older portion of the Holy Bible pales at the very idea of this test. For the Bible, as a whole, and apart from the admixture of the myths woven round some stray historical events of the Jewish nation, contains nothing that did not exist, prior to its compilation, in the Zend Avesta, the Scriptures of the Hindus, or those of the most ancient faith of all, namely, Jainism. And the case with Al Qur'an stands no better, for it is principally based on the Old Testament of the Holy Bible and the Zend Avesta. Even the Zend Avesta has been shown* to be derived from the Vedas which are the oldest nonJaina Scriptures extant. Which, then, can be the properly revealed Word of God, that which is the source, *See "The Fountainhead of Religion' by Ganga Prasad.
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