June 27, 1901] 



NA TUBE 



20- 



was always found in one of his sons, or a slave, or a 

 malefactor. His period of rule was also curtailed from 

 a year to a few days each year. 



Now the details of the crucifixion present some re- 

 semblance to the treatment of the mock king in the 

 Sacrea. Both victims were clothed in fine raiment and 

 crowned as kings, and afterwards scourged aud crucified. 

 This, Mr. Frazer thinks, is not a chance resemblance. 

 The Jewish feast of Purim may have been derived from 

 Zag-muk, which in turn may possibly be identified with 

 the Sacaea ; and he suggests that the Jews in the time 

 of Christ may have every year at the feast of Purim 

 compelled a condemned criminal to play the part of 

 Haman and be put to death, in the same way as their 

 later descendants destroyed effigies of him. Briefly, 

 Mr. Frazer's theory is that Christ was put to death as 

 one of these yearly victims. That the crucifixion took 

 place at Passover, i.e. a month after the Feast of Purim, 

 he thinks may be explained by supposing that Christian 

 tradition for purposes of edification shifted the date of 

 the crucifixion from Purim in order to make the sacrifice 

 •coincide with the annual sacrifice of the Passover lamb. 

 He offers the alternative suggestions that the Jews may 

 have sometimes celebrated Purim at about the time of 

 the Passover {i.e. in Nisan) in consequence of its deri- 

 vation from the Babylonian Zag-muk, which was held in 

 Nisan ; or, finally, the Jews may have spared the victim 

 of the feast of Purim for one month, when his death 

 would occur at Passover. Thus, according to Mr. 

 Frazer, Christ was crucified and Barabbas was released 

 as part of the passion-play performed each year by the 

 Jews at Purim. They took the parts of Haman and 

 Mordecai respectively, and at the end of the perform- 

 ance the one who played Haman was crucified, andthe 

 other, who personated Mordecai, was allowed to go free. 

 Following out his theory, Mr. Frazer suggests that the 

 name Barabbas, " Son of the Father," was not the name 

 of an individual, but was the title given to one or both 

 of the actors in the play. Similarly, the description of 

 Christ's triumphal ride into Jerusalem before his death, 

 and the account of the raid he made afterwards upon 

 the stalls of the money-changers in the temple, he 

 thinks may perhaps be traced to those arbitrary rights 

 over property which it has been customary to accord to 

 such temporary kings during their brief period of rule. 

 The hero of the drama, in fact, may have been " no 

 more than a moral teacher whom the fortunate accident 

 of his execution invested with a crown not merely of a 

 martyr, but of a god." 



Such is Mr. Frazer's theory, and we confess to feeling 

 that, unlike the rest of his book, this section contains a 

 great deal of theory and very little evidence. That the 

 rites of the late Saca;a were identical with those of the 

 earlier Babylonian Zag-muk is pure assumption ; and 

 that a Babylonian king was at one time annually slain 

 is unsupported by any evidence, whereas had this been 

 the case the custom must have left some trace in the 

 Babylonian literature. Prof Jensen's identification of 

 the principal personages mentioned in Esther with 

 Elamite and Babylonian deities is, to say the least, a 

 little fanciful, and still more fanciful is Mr. Frazer's im- 

 provement on his theory ; it is hard to recognise in the 

 story a reflection of a passion play. Finally, the question 

 NO. 1652, VOL. 64] 



of dates is a real difficulty of which not one of Mr. 

 Frazer's alternative theories successfully disposes. After 

 careful study we think it easier to explain the resemblance 

 of Christ's crucifixion to the rites of the Sacrea as the 

 result of coincidence rather than to accept the artificial 

 theory we have summarised. Moreover, with a strange 

 absence of logic Mr. Frazer claims that his theory sheds 

 "fresh light on some of the causes which contributed 

 to the remarkably rapid diffusion of Christianity in Asia 

 Minor" ; as a matter of fact, it does the reverse. The 

 political significance of Christ's martyrdom and the 

 prominence it consequently gave his following form the 

 simplest explanation of the rapid spread of Christianity. 

 The more ordinary and normal the crucifixion is repre- 

 sented the harder it is to understand the problem ; Mr. 

 Frazer's theory reduces the crucifixion to an annual 

 event. 



We have dealt in some detail with the two chief 

 novelties of the second edition of the work ; our criticism 

 of one theory, however, should not be taken as detract- 

 ing in any way from the general value of the book, which 

 will always form a storehouse of facts for the student 

 of religion, and which will surely influence for many 

 years the work of those who concern th emselves with 

 that wide and attractive field of study. 



THE ISLAND OF CELEBES. 

 Uber die geologische Geschichte der Insel Celebes auf 

 Grund der Thiefverbreitung. Von Dr. Paul Sarasin 

 und Dr. Fritz Sarasin. Pp. vi -f 169; 15 plates. 

 (Wiesbaden : Kreidel, 1901.) 



THE island of Celebes, as is well known, is comparable 

 in a metaphorical sense to one of the floating islands 

 of antiquity ; it has not definitely come to rest in either 

 the Australian or the Oriental region. By some authori- 

 ties its marsupial inhabitants are held to outweigh in 

 importance its likeness in other respects to the islands 

 of the Malayan archipelago, and it is associated with 

 Mr. Sclater's Australian region ; others, again, place it as 

 definitely with the Oriental region ; while its anomalous 

 and intermediate character has led not a fe^v to fatal 

 hesitation and to consequent abandonment of the problem. 

 The authors of the volume before us dismiss at once, and 

 with some brusqueness, all consideration of this matter. 

 The chief problem of geographical distribution is for 

 them not "whether Celebes belongs to the Oriental or to 

 the Australian region, but what are the land connections, 

 and of what epoch, which must be assumed to account 

 for the condition of its fauna to-day?'' This attitude of 

 mind shows a healthy reaction against the elaborate 

 method adopted by many zoogeographers of late years. 

 The detailed planning and plotting out of the globe into 

 a complicated series of regions, subregions and provinces 

 is not, in the opinion of the present writer, of great use- 

 fulness save in so far as it allows of a rapid and perhaps 

 graphic method of indicating the range of a particular 

 animal. The two authors proceed further to observe that 

 it is better to select, for the purposes of such problems as 

 are presented by Celebes, species and not genera of 

 animals ; and this on the perfectly reasonable grounds 

 that while the limits of genera are most diversely regarded, 

 there is not, at least, so much difference of opinion as to 



