_ATTEMPTS TO PROVE THE SACÆAN CRIMINAL DIVINE_
As our historical evidence does not meet Mr. Frazer's needs, as the
Sacæan victim is not regarded as divine, as he is no 'victim' but a
criminal, as he is not sacrificed, as the feast is not religious but a
secular merrymaking, as no resurrection is mentioned, as the historical
date does not fit Eastertide, Mr. Frazer has to invent theories which
will prove far more than the facts alleged by Dio Chrysostom, Berosus
in Athenæus, Strabo, and Hesychius; or will prove that originally the
facts were the opposite of those historically recorded.
Through his whole argument Mr. Frazer seems to me to present two
distinct theories alternately, and only at the close can I detect
any attempt at reconciliation. A third theory, distinct from either,
appears to be rejected. Indeed, Mr. Frazer's task is not easy. He may
say that the Sacæan victim represents the king, and that the king
being, by the hypothesis, divine, the victim is divine also. But he
needs, moreover, a resurrection of the dead man, hence the theory
that the victim represents not only the king, but a god of the type
of Tammuz or Adonis. At the feasts of that god, a god of vegetable
life, there was wailing for his death, rejoicing for his resurrection.
At Babylon this occurred in June-July. But there is no evidence that
a human victim was slain for Tammuz: none that he was scourged and
hanged. How are the two theories, the victim as divine king, the victim
as Tammuz, to be combined? Their combination is necessary, for the king
is needed to yield the royal robes; while Tammuz is needed to yield the
resurrection, and the fast preceding the feast before Purim, a fast of
wailing for Tammuz. We hear of no fast before the Sacæa, but if Purim
be borrowed from the Sacæa (which is indispensable to the theory), the
Sacæa too must have been preceded by a fast, though it is unrecorded.
Clearly the king theory alone, or the Tammuz theory alone, will not
yield the facts necessary to the hypothesis. Consequently the two
theories must be combined. The king must not only be divine, be a god;
he must also be a god of vegetation, a god of the Tammuz type, who
has a resurrection. Now we have no evidence, or none is adduced, to
prove that the king, whether Babylonian or Persian, was ever deemed
to be an incarnation of Tammuz or any such vegetable deity. Without
sound evidence to that effect the theory cannot move a step. We have
abundance of Babylonian sacred and secular texts: not one is adduced to
prove that the king incarnated any god, especially Tammuz.
Mr. Frazer then, after putting forward alternately the king theory and
the Tammuz theory, does finally, if I understand him, combine them.
He talks of 'the human god, the Saturn, Zoganes, Tammuz, or whatever
he was called.'[1] Thus the victim is the king, and we get the royal
robes, and the five days of royalty. The king is also Tammuz (unless
I fail to grasp the meaning), the victim too is Tammuz, and we get
the fast (though we hear of none before the Sacæa), the feast, and
the resurrection. But this is a late and rather casually introduced
theory, quite destitute of evidence as regards the king's being
recognised for Tammuz.
Previously, throughout two volumes, the victim had _alternately_
derived his necessary divinity from the king and from the Tammuz god.
He derived more: as king he had the _entrée_ of the royal harem; as
Tammuz he was the consort of a woman, 'probably a sacred harlot, who
represented the great Semitic goddess Ishtar or Astarte.' His union
with her magically fertilised the crops.[2] A similar duty, in the
dream-time of Mr. Frazer's hypotheses, had been that of the majesty
of Babylon. 'Originally, we may conjecture, such couples exercised
their function for a whole year, on the conclusion of which the male
partner--the divine king--was put to death; but in historical times it
seems that, as a rule, the human god--the Saturn, Zoganes, Tammuz, or
whatever he was called--enjoyed his divine privileges, and discharged
his divine duties, only for a short part of the year,' namely five
days, at the Sacæa.[3]
The divine duties of the early kings of Babylon (if I understand Mr.
Frazer) were 'to stand for the powers that make for the fertility of
plants and perhaps also of animals.' Are we to conceive that these
pleasing exercises with the lady of the divine pair were all the duties
of the early kings of Babylon? In that case, who carried on the civil
and military control of the Empire? Of course, if the early king did
nothing at all but associate with 'the human goddess who shared his
bed and transmitted his beneficent energies to the rest of nature,'[4]
then he may have been a man-god, a Tammuz, if the texts say so, and his
substitute might die at once as royal proxy, to save the king's life,
and also as Tammuz. Moreover, it would not matter a pin's fee whether
such a king died or not. Only, no man could take the billet of king.
Thus it may be Mr. Frazer's intention to combine in one the two
theories of the victim as Tammuz and as royal proxy. In that case his
two apparently inconsistent theories are one theory.
But, if I apprehend it correctly, it is a very audacious theory. Where
have we a proven case of a king who incarnates a god of vegetation,
plays the part of 'making for the fertility of plants' by the
assistance of 'the human goddess who shares his bed, and transmits
his beneficent energies to the rest of nature,' and who is sacrificed
annually? Does this divine voluptuary also keep a royal harem, or is
that essential and more or less attested part of the Sacæa a later
excrescence?
Without some historical evidence for such a strange array of facts,
including the yearly sacrifice of the monarch, I must hesitate to think
that Mr. Frazer's theory of a king who is both king and Tammuz, and
has, later, a substitute who is both Tammuz and king, is a practical
hypothesis explanatory of 'the halo of divinity which was shed around
the cross of Calvary.' I cannot accept as evidence for a combination
of facts separately so extraordinary, a series of inferences and
presumptions from rural or barbaric revels in spring or at harvest.
The existence of a King or Queen of the May, or of the Bean on Twelfth
Night, with occasional or even frequent mock destructions of the
monarch of a playful day, cannot be used as proof that early Babylonian
kings consorted for a year with a human goddess, and then were burned
to death as gods of vegetable produce; especially when there is no
historical testimony, and only inference from myth, in favour of any
human goddess or of a burned king.
We have not, meanwhile, even any testimony to show that, in any time,
in any place, any human victim was ever slain, let alone a king (and a
king annually), as Tammuz. We have only a guess, founded on the weakest
possible basis, that of analogy, 'The analogy,' says Mr. Frazer, 'of
Lityerses and of folk-custom, both European and savage, suggests that
in Phœnicia the corn-spirit--the dead Adonis--may formerly have been
represented by a human victim.'[5] .... This can hardly persuade me
that the kings of Babylon were annually sacrificed as Tammuz or as
Adonis.
While admitting that Mr. Frazer may really mean to combine his two
theories (the victim as king, the victim as Tammuz), and while he
certainly makes his victim both a king and a god, I shall take the
freedom to examine his theory in the sequence of the passages wherein
it is proposed, and request the reader to decide whether there be one
theory or two theories.
But first, have we any examples of a sacrifice by hanging, not by
burning, the human victim? For the Sacæan victim, though confessedly
hanged, is said, by Mr. Frazer, to be 'sacrificed.'