This obstacle seems to be, and really is, insuperable. But Mr.
Frazer, undaunted, writes: 'The identification of the months of the
Syro-Macedonian Calendar is a matter of some uncertainty; as to the
month Lous in particular the evidence of ancient writers appears to be
conflicting, and until we have ascertained beyond the reach of doubt
when Lous fell at Babylon in the time of Berosus' (say 200 B.C.) 'it
would be premature to allow much weight to the seeming discrepancy
in the dates of the two festivals' (namely Zakmuk and the Sacæa).
Henceforth Mr. Frazer's hypothesis seems to me to proceed on the fancy
that Sacæa and Zakmuk are identical, which is impossible, since the
Sacæa fall in July or September, and Zakmuk in March-April.
It is absolutely certain, historically, that Sacæa and Zakmuk cannot be
identical. They were as remote in date as they well could be. For the
conflicting evidence of ancient writers as to the date of the month of
the Sacæa, namely the Macedonian month Lous _Λῶος_ Mr. Frazer gives two
references. The first is to Mr. Robertson Smith's proof that Lous is
July.[10] That does him no good. The second is to Smith's 'Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Antiquities.'[11] In that work I read that the only
doubt as to the month Lous is whether it fell in July or September.
Smith's 'Dictionary' is a book so common and accessible that I need not
inflict on the reader the nature of the conflicting evidence. It is
enough to say that the month of the Sacæa, Lous, was almost certainly
July, but, if not July, was undeniably September. Now neither July nor
September is Eastertide, or near it. So that the effort to make the
Sacæa identical with Zakmuk, and therefore more or less coincident with
Purim, and with our Easter, is an absolute failure. The Jews, then,
could not (as in Mr. Frazer's theory) borrow abroad a July or September
mock-king, and attach him to a vernal festival, their Purim. Thus, as
Zakmuk is several months remote from the Sacæa, it is not identical
with the Sacæa. Mr. Frazer himself says: 'If the Sacæa occurred in July
and the Zakmuk in March, the theory of their identity could not be
maintained.'[12] But he loses, rather than gains, if the Sacæa were in
September, and that is the only possible alternative. The game is over;
the mock-king of Babylon died, if at all, in July or September, at the
Sacæa; not at Zagmuk or Zakmuk, in March-April. There is not a known
hint that any mock-king died in Babylon about Eastertide, or earlier,
at the feast of Zakmuk.
I confess that when I found Mr. Frazer declining to 'allow much weight
to the seeming discrepancy in the dates of the two festivals,' till it
was 'ascertained beyond the reach of doubt when Lous fell at Babylon
in the time of Berosus,' I presumed that 'the apparently conflicting
evidence of ancient writers' meant a difference of opinion as to
whether Lous was a spring or a midsummer month. But I looked at Smith's
'Dictionary' and found nothing of the sort! The difference of opinion,
the conflict of evidence, is concerned (see Smith) with the question
whether Lous was September (as it seems to have been in the time of
Philip of Macedon) or whether it was July, as in the time of Plutarch.
Neither opinion gives Lous the faintest chance of being a spring month.
Therefore the vernal Zakmuk is not the Sacæa; therefore there is not
the ghost of a reason for guessing that a mock-king was hanged at
Zakmuk; therefore Zakmuk, in April, cannot lend a hanged mock-king to
Purim, in March; therefore Purim, having no slain mock-king, cannot
hand one on to Eastertide, which, moreover, does not occur at the
same date as Purim, but some weeks later, as may happen. Therefore
the mock-king, if he had been divine (which he was not), and if he
had been sacrificed (which he was not), could not have lent his 'halo
of divinity' to gild the Cross at Calvary. But that he did so is Mr.
Frazer's hypothesis--sometimes.