202 



jVA TURE 



[June 27, 1901 



"The keener minds," writes Mr. Frazer, " still pressing 

 forward to a deeper solution of the mysteries of the 

 universe, come to reject the religious theory of nature as 

 inadequate, and to revert in a measure to the older 

 standpoint of magic by postulating explicitly what in 

 magic had only been implicitly assumed, to wit, an in- 

 flexible regularity in the order of natural e\ents, which, 

 if carefully observed, enables us to foresee their course 

 with certainty and to act accordingly. In short, religion, 

 regarded as an explanation of nature, is displaced by 

 science." 



We have here a sane and consistent theory of the pro- 

 gress of human thought, and we wish we had space to 

 quote at greater length ; for further details we must, 

 however, refer the reader to the book itself. 



In passing to the section which treats of "The 

 Saturnalia and Kindred Festivals " we come upon more 

 debatable ground. Here ^Ir. Frazer has expanded his 

 theory of the general prevalence of the custom of killing 

 a human god, so as to include, and to some extent ex- 

 plain, the crucifixion of Christ. We may say at once 

 that we hold no brief for the orthodox view with regard 

 to that event, and, if the evidence tended to prove that 

 the crucifixion, with the mockery which preceded it, was 

 not a punishment specially devised for Christ but 

 merely the fate which annually befell a malefactor who 

 played the part of a mock king during a sort of 

 Saturnalia, there would be no reason, so far as we are 

 concerned, why the theory should not be accepted. Mr. 

 Andrew Lang, in the character of a champion of ortho- 

 doxy, has already made an onslaught upon Mr. Frazer, 

 and we have no intention of following his example or of 

 adopting his methods of controversy. But to our thmk- 

 ing Mr. Frazer has in this portion of his book been in- 

 duced to abandon his excellent practice of following his 

 evidence, and has considerably outrun it. 



In his explanation of the rule of the Arician priesthood 

 Mr. Frazer infers that at an earlier period one of the priests 

 had probably been slain every year in the character of 

 an incarnate deity. In his first edition the only parallel 

 case he could cite was the custom of killing a human 

 god annually in ancient Mexico. Now from a narrative 

 of the martyrdom of St. Dasius, published by Prof 

 Cumont in 1897, it would seem that at the celebration of 

 the Saturnalia the King, or Lord of Misrule, had not 

 always been a mere clown, but that at one time it was 

 the custom, after a riotous rule of thirty days, that he 

 sho\ild put himself to death. This new piece of evidence 

 Mr. Frazer justly claims as a striking confirmation of 

 his theory with regard to the Arician priesthood, but it 

 does not prove, or render likely, the extensive preva- 

 lence in the East of the custom of annually killing a 

 human god which his theory of the crucifixion presup- 

 poses. 



There is some evidence that during the late period of 

 Babylonian history, after the Persian conquest, an annual 

 feast took place in Babylon termed the Sacasa, which 

 resembled the Saturnalia in that masters and servants 

 changed places and a mock king presided over the revels. 

 The evidence for the festival consists of a quotation by 

 Athen;eus from Berosus, while Dio Chrysostom, quoting 

 probably from Berosus or Ctesias, adds the additional 

 detail that the mock king vi'as subsequently executed. 

 Dr. Bruno Meissner has conjectured that the Sacita may 

 NO. 1652, VOL. 64] 



have corresponded to Zag-muk, the Babylonian festival 

 of the New Year. We still know very little about the 

 manner in which Zag-muk was celebrated, but, in spite 

 of a difficulty of dates, it is possible that Sac;ea was a 

 late form of that festival. Moreover, the Jewish feast of 

 Purim, the earliest references to which occur in Esther 

 and the second book of Maccabees, was probably bor- 

 rowed by the Jews during their captivity, and may well 

 have been taken from the Babylonian Zag-muk, as Prof. 

 Zimmern, of Leipzig, has suggested. There is no doubt 

 that both Zag-muk and Purim were celebrated with 

 feasting and revelry ; but Mr. Frazer goes further, and 

 would find in the account of the institution of Purim in 

 the book of Esther traces of the slaying of a mock king 

 such as, according to Dio Chrysostom, took place at the 

 Sacaja. 



It will be remembered that the book of Esther describes 

 the rivalry between Hainan, the vizier of Ahasuerus • 

 (probably a corruption of Khshayarsha^ i.e., Xer.xes), 

 King of Persia, and the Jew Mordecai ; it relates how 

 the Jews, when doomed to destruction through Haman's 

 influence, were delivered by the Queen Esther and her 

 uncle Mordecai, and how Haman perished on the gallows 

 he had prepared for his rival. Prof Jensen, of Marburg, 

 has recently formulated a theory that the names Haman 

 and Vashti are those of an Elamite god and goddess, 

 and that Mordecai and Esther are the Babylonian 

 deities Alarduk and Ishtar ; and, further, that the story 

 reflects an antagonism between the gods of Elam and the 

 gods of Babylon. Mr. Frazer accepts the identifications, 

 and in the story of the death of Haman on the gallows 

 sees a further reflection of the custom of slaying a man 

 in the character of a god. He thinks that such human 

 sacrifice formed part of the original rites of the feast of 

 Purim, and was probably derived from some similar rite 

 among the Babylonians. In the burning of effigies of 

 Haman at the feast of Purim by the later Jews he sees a 

 survival of this human sacrifice. The rite he explains, on 

 lines already familiar to his readers, as a magical cere- 

 mony intended to ensure the revival and reproduction of 

 life in spring. 



In such ceremonies elsewhere the man-god dies only 

 a mimic death and then rises again, or else he was 

 actually slain and was thought to live in the person of a 

 successor who took his place. In the Esther story Mr. 

 Frazer suggests that Mordecai represents the second 

 temporary king, who, on the death of his predecessor, 

 was invested with the royal insignia and exhibited to the 

 people as the god come to life again. In \'ashti and 

 Esther he sees the divine consorts of the mock kings 

 during their brief periods of rule. In this way he ex- 

 plains the story of the struggle between Haman and 

 Vashti, on the one side, and their doubles, Mordecai 

 and Esther, on the other : 



" Both pairs stood for the fertility of plants and per- 

 haps of animals ; but the one pair embodied the failing 

 energies of the past, the other the vigorous and growing 

 energies of the coming year.'' 



In the original form of the rite from which Mr. Frazer 

 supposes the feast of Purim to be derived, he suggests 

 that the Babylonian king was the actual victim who was 

 put to death each year, but that subsequently a substitute 



