If these high authorities are right, I at last see my way clear! Haman,
or the victim of the Sacæa, is now neither the representative of the
King of Babylon, nor of Tammuz, nor of both at once, nor of Marduk,
nor of Eabani, nor of Gilgamesh. He is now (if Nöldeke or Jensen is
right) the representative of a conquered and hostile god, Humman of
the Elamites. _Tout va bien_! The human representative of a hostile
and defeated god may well have been whipped and hanged in derision. I
shall grant that Humman was also the Elamite god of vegetation, Tammuz
or the like (what else could he be?), and so had to fall as the leaves
fall, and also had to spring up as the flowers do; and this both in
June-July[22] and also in March-April.[23]
If all this is the case, if the Sacæan victim is Haman, and represents
Humman, and if Humman is a defeated Elamite god, and if Purim is
adapted from a Babylonian feast of rejoicing for 'victory gained by the
Babylonian gods over the gods of their neighbours the Elamites,' as
Nöldeke thinks possible,[24] then all is comparatively plain sailing.
But this is only if we follow Jensen, which I do not understand Mr.
Frazer to do. Indeed, Jensen is only responsible for identifying Haman
with Humman. Jensen does not identify him with the Sacæan victim. It is
Mr. Frazer who does that.
The theory, if Haman is Humman, and is also the victim, has now put on
an aspect which I can almost accept. If Haman stands for Humman, and if
Humman is a vanquished god of the hostile Elamites, then we solve that
hard problem, namely why the human representative of a king or friendly
god was whipped and hanged, and mocked at the Sacæa. The victim, I
shall show, _did_ represent the rightful king, but also personated the
vanquished deity of a race long inimical but now subdued. So his harsh
treatment was, if vulgar, not unnatural.
But all this depends on following Jensen, which we are not to do. Mr.
Frazer seems to hold that though according to 'the view of Jensen,
which some high authorities are disposed to accept, Haman is identical
with Humman or Homman, the national god of the Elamites,'[25] yet
_originally_ this was not really the case.
Let us suppose it to have been the case, and I can suggest an excellent
solution. Fatigued by the task of producing sons who had to be
sacrificed yearly as his substitutes, the king of early Babylon at
one time annually sacrificed as his proxy an Elamite captive, who,
to deride Elamite religion, was also the human representative of
the Elamite god, Humman, and therefore was called Humman, or Haman.
Just so the Aztecs sacrificed captives as representatives of their
own gods.[26] But, as relations between Elam and Babylon grew more
peaceful, Elamite captives were scarce. The king of Babylon then
substituted for an Elamite war-prisoner a condemned criminal, who still
represented the Elamite Humman, or Haman, but also, as in the original
hypothesis, represented the king of Babylon. We must next conjecture
that Humman himself was a god of vegetation; indeed, I can hardly
suppose that any god whatever did not represent the principle of
vegetable life. So Humman must not only die but have a resurrection, as
vegetable gods often do.
Now, thanks to my hypothesis, all is clear, and every difficulty is
removed. We once more see that the kings of Babylon were sacrificed
regularly every year. Let us say that they were burned, as victims
usually were. Indeed, Movers thought that 'at the Sacæa also the
man who played the god for five days was originally burnt at the
end of them.'[27] Mr. Frazer himself suggests that, in the progress
of philanthropy, the man who used to be burned was merely scourged
and hanged or crucified by way of 'a later mitigation of his
sufferings.'[28] Or perhaps he was hanged first, and burned afterwards,
as in our good old-fashioned punishment for treason, whereby many
Jesuits were cut down alive, and many Jacobites, their bowels being
burned before their living eyes.[29] But to burn a man only half hanged
and still capable of feeling pain would not mitigate his sufferings.
My own theory pleases me better. When tired of being sacrificed yearly,
the Babylonian king provided a substitute in a son, or other member of
the royal family, with what sad and ruinous results to the dynasty I
have already shown. Let us suppose that the princely substitutes were
also really sacrificed by burning. But here the merit of my theory
comes in, and, I hope, shines forth. Wearied of sacrificing princes
of his house, the king substitutes Elamite prisoners of war. There
is no objection to whipping and hanging _them_, except the frivolous
objection that they at once cease to be sacrifices, and we can overcome
that difficulty by supposing that they were hanged first, and burned
afterwards, or 'wirryit at are stake' (like George Wishart in St.
Andrews), and then burned. This makes it needless to regard whipping
and hanging as a 'mitigation.'
The next step is, when Elamite wars cease, and Elamite captives are not
procurable, to substitute a condemned criminal, who, he also, like the
Elamite prisoners, is called Humman, and represents both the king of
Babylon, and Humman, an Elamite god of vegetation, who, like Tammuz,
has his resurrection. We thus get:
1. Babylonian king. Incarnates the god of vegetation. Is therefore
sacrificed annually to keep the god provided with a succession of fresh
and sturdy subjects to be incarnated in. The king is burned.
2. His sons or nephews are treated in the same way, for the same
reasons, annually. The king escapes.
3. An Elamite war-prisoner becomes the king's substitute. He also
represents the Elamite god of vegetation. In mockery of the Elamites
and their god he is scourged and hanged. Observe the Aztec analogy,
though to be sure the Aztec captive, representing an Aztec god, is
merely sacrificed. But _he_ represents a friendly god.
4. The substitute is next a condemned criminal. He also is whipped
and hanged. Like the Elamite war-captive he represents the king of
Babylon, and dies for him. He also dies as the Elamite god of vegetable
life, and, as such, has a resurrection, in the shape of Mordecai,
who represents the Babylonian supreme god, Marduk (not Tammuz or
another), and is not hanged till next year, when he becomes Haman or
Humman, represents the king of Babylon, represents the Elamite god of
vegetation, and is whipped and hanged, after enjoying (as king) the
caresses of the royal harem, and as Humman the embraces of a sacred
harlot, Vashti, who personates Ishtar. After being hanged (and perhaps
burned) he has a pseudo-resurrection in the Marduk of that year, the
Humman of the next. And so on, both at the Sacæa and at Purim.
This hypothesis appears to be in many ways an advance on any one of
Mr. Frazer's hypotheses. It allows us to keep up the Jewish Haman
as personating Humman; which seems necessary, for how otherwise is
Haman to be explained? We are, moreover, enabled to understand how
a victim who represented a vanquished Elamite god, also, and at the
same time, represented a victorious Babylonian king. Humman being, by
my hypothesis, an Elamite kind of Tammuz, all our anxieties about the
appearance of Marduk and Humman, where Tammuz had previously done duty,
disappear. Purim, which had been a Tammuz feast (if we accept Jensen's
solution) and also a feast where a man died for the king, and then a
feast of triumph for the victory of the Babylonian gods, and 'a wholly
_secular_ merrymaking,' though, if Purim is a Jewish Tammuz feast, it
had been, according to Ezekiel (who perhaps knew best), a religious
rite of a false religion, now becomes all these things at once, though
some may doubt how Purim could be, simultaneously, both religious and
secular. But I would not abandon my theory merely because it involves a
contradiction in terms. Add to all this that we can now have a Tammuz
death and resurrection in June-July, and another in March-April, and
all is translucent. At the summer festival we burn a dummy;[30] at the
vernal feast we hang a man.[31]
Admirably as my hypothesis colligates the facts, it is not the
hypothesis of Mr. Frazer. Though he thinks that 'we can hardly deny
the plausibility of' Nöldeke's theory that the Sacæa is a triumph for
the victory of the Babylonian over the Elamite gods, and that Purim
is an adaptation of the Sacæa,[32] Mr. Frazer does not accept that
idea. Nöldeke is plausible, but not sound; and this is ruinous to my
hypothesis of the Elamite war-prisoner, slain as Humman, merely in
a stage of evolution between the sacrificed prince and the hanged
criminal. We have seen how admirably my humble suggestion worked out
all round, but it must be abandoned if Nöldeke is wrong.
Mr. Frazer thinks that the Sacæa and Purim did _not_ (as in Nöldeke's
scheme) mean _originally_ a triumph of Babylonian over Elamite gods.
No Elamite prisoner was hanged (as I had sagely conjectured) at any
stage of the evolution of the Sacæa. What occurred was this: At the
Sacæa there were originally two divine pairs, let us say Vashti and
Haman to represent the dying, Esther and Mordecai to represent the
renascent, forces of vegetation. There was nothing Elamite in the
business originally. But 'it would be natural enough that in time an
unfavourable comparison should be drawn between the two pairs, and that
people, forgetting their real meaning and religious identity, should
see in their apparent opposition a victory of the gods of Babylon
over the gods of their eternal foes the Elamites. Hence, while the
happy pair retained their Babylonian names of Marduk and Ishtar, the
unhappy pair, who were originally nothing but Marduk and Ishtar in a
different aspect, were renamed after the hated Elamite deities Humman
and Vashti.'[33]
Thus the plausibility of Nöldeke's theory, that Purim was adapted from
rejoicings for a victory of the Babylonian gods over those of Elam,[34]
proves to be no more than merely plausible. We are thus driven back
to Jensen's solution: that the fast and the rejoicings of Purim are a
festival of Tammuz, or of a god or hero of his type, and they cannot,
then, have been borrowed in Babylon, for the Jews had the Tammuz ritual
before the exile. And yet[35] Purim _was_ probably borrowed at Babylon.
It must, apparently, be meant that only the hanging of a mock-king was
really borrowed. The victim may thus represent both the king of Babylon
and also the god of vegetation whom we are to suppose to be incarnated
in the king (?)[36] But why should the Jews borrow that, and why did
the prophets and legislators hold their peace, and how do we know that
the majesty of Babylon incarnated a god of vegetation?
As I sometimes understand Mr. Frazer's whole theory, it is this.[37]
The victim of the Sacæa represents the king, who represents Marduk,
Humman, Tammuz, or some other deity. He gets his royal robes from the
king; his whipping and hanging from the commuted burning alive of the
king; his divinity from the king _plus_ the god; his resurrection
from the king _plus_ Tammuz or Eabani, granting that Eabani _had_ a
resurrection, which I cannot find in Dr. Jastrow's account. But to
do a resurrection plausibly we need another man to take the part of
the re-arisen victim, king, and god. Now the victim for the year is
really, or is called, Marduk, in one shape; his representative in the
resurrection is Marduk in another shape; each man being provided with a
consort, representing Ishtar, though I have yet to learn that she was
the wife, or mistress, either of Marduk or Eabani. But the populace,
not understanding the two Marduks and two Ishtars, preferred to call
the Marduk who died Humman, after an Elamite god, and his sacred lady
of pleasure Vashti, after a possible, but dubious, Elamite goddess.
The Marduk who did not die was still called Marduk till next year, and
his consort till next year was called Ishtar.
All this occurred at the Sacæa, which are Zakmuk (though Jensen does
not appear to see it), and at Purim (which Jastrow and Nöldeke do not
identify with Zakmuk), and in March, not, as chronology has it, in
July. By pushing the proceedings forward only a month, from Purim to
Passover, we can connect them with the Crucifixion, and account for
'the halo of divinity.' The theory seems too ramified.
It may very naturally be thought that I am introducing these
complexities and these difficulties by dint of wilfully or
unconsciously misrepresenting Mr. Frazer's argument. But the argument,
I sincerely think, is really a very tangled one. It seems plain that
originally the victim was only conceived of by Mr. Frazer as dying
to save the life of the king, who otherwise would have been slain as
a god, on Mr. Frazer's hypothesis of religious regicide, as he could
not be trusted 'to remain in full bodily and mental vigour for more
than a year.'[38] The king was 'slain in his character as a god,' who
could not be trusted for more than a year. Nothing was said to indicate
that the mock king incarnated any special known god; say Tammuz. That
conjecture appeared later,[39] and the date of the sacrifice was in
June-July. Nothing was said, even now, about the victim's sacred
harlot. The victim was content with the royal harem. As late as iii.
152 'the central feature of the Sacæa seems to have been the saving
of the king's life,' by the slaying of the victim, and, to that main
end of the rite, no sacred harlot was necessary. But the date had now
been moved from midsummer to early spring, and into the neighbourhood
of the feast of Purim. The religious character of the Sacæa period of
wailing and rejoicing in sympathy with a god (Tammuz) now seemed to be
overlooked, for Mr. Frazer says that the Sacæa 'was a wild Bacchanalian
revel ...' and that Purim was the same: men and women disguising
themselves, drinking, and behaving wantonly.[40]
But Purim was connected, through the Book of Esther, with Haman,
Mordecai, Vashti, and Esther; and now arose the idea of making Haman,
the victim, have a double who represented him in his resurrection. The
Elamite god Humman and the Babylonian god Mordecai crept in through
the Book of Esther, and through the very perilous effort to identify
the Sacæa with Zakmuk, and both with Purim. The Book of Esther also
introduced two female characters, and parts had to be found for _them_
in the Sacæa, though our only authority mentions, in connection with
the Sacæa, no female characters whatever, except the ladies of the
royal harem. By analogy and conjecture, as to Semiramis and her lovers,
parts were next found for the female characters of the Book of Esther
as sacred harlots, representing the goddess of love. The consequent
amours are supposed to stimulate the crops, and, in this part of the
theory, the conjecture that the victim really dies to save the life
of the king does appear to be rather dropped out of sight, though
this idea is the real starting-point of the whole speculation. There
is a come and go between the victim as king, with the royal harem,
and the victim as Tammuz, with the sacred harlot. Conjectures about
the victim as the Elamite Humman, or as the Babylonian Marduk, or as
Marduk representing Eabani, or representing Gilgamesh, flit like the
weaver's shuttle through the strangely woven warp and woof of the
argument. Throughout we ask in vain for any proof that the King of
Babylon was ever, at any time, in any text, regarded or spoken of as an
incarnation of Tammuz, or of Marduk, or of Humman, or of Gilgamesh, or
of Eabani--which the speculation requires.
Meanwhile the known, or at least the alleged, facts are the mock
royalty, whipping, and death of the man who yearly lorded it as king
for five days in the Persian palace, at the Sacæa, a period of licence,
when every house had its slave-king. The extraordinary complexities in
a matter really very simple are caused by identifying the Sacæa with
Purim and Zakmuk, in the teeth of chronology; and by introducing into
the Sacæa, without any historical evidence, the characters of a Hebrew
historical romance about the origin of Purim. The tendency also to find
gods of vegetation everywhere adds its bewildering enchantment, till
the spirit of system discovers gods of vegetation in the criminals who,
on very slender evidence, are said to have been yearly whipped and
hanged. Nay, even the hypothetical male issue of the criminal, by a
hypothetical harlot, becomes a hypothetical 'infant god,' is brought up
as a criminal, and ends as a mock-king and a divine victim.
Mr. Frazer's whole argument, of course, clashes with the higher
criticism of Wellhausen, who avers that the Jews could keep no feasts
in the exile, and there learned 'the lesson of religious isolation.' On
the other hand, the Jews, by Mr. Frazer's theory, did keep a feast, and
a very abominable feast, and, far from learning the lesson of religious
isolation, borrowed the most execrable heathen cruelties, accompanied
by ritual debaucheries. So Wellhausen must greatly err in his opinions,
which are much revered by the clergy of this island.[41]
[1] _G. B_. iii. 159.
[2] Ezra ii. 2; Nehemiah vii. 7.
[3] Esther ii. 7.
[4] _Encyclop. Bibl. s. v_. 'Esther.'
[5] Jastrow, p. 686, note 2.
[6] _Encyclop. Bibl. s. v_. 'Esther.'
[7] _G. B_. iii. 158, 159.
[8] Jastrow does not indicate that, in the ancient poem on Eabani, he
_did_ 'return to the upper world.' But see L. W. King, _Bab. and Ass.
Rel. and Myth_. p. 146.
[9] _G. B_. iii. 178.
[10] Jastrow, p. 513.
[11] _G. B_. iii. 179.
[12] _G. B_. iii. 180.
[13] _G. B_. iii. 181-184. Laing's _Knox_, ii. 157-160.
[14] Hyde, _Hist. Bel. Pers_.(1760), p. 250, says that some call this
ride an innovation, but they are wrong, and the ride is very ancient,
in his opinion. _G. B_. iii. 183.
[15] Purim, _Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Religion_, p. 51. Von Paul
de Lagarde, Gottingen, 1887.
[16] _G. B_. iii. 183.
[17] _G. B_. iii. 184.
[18] _G. B_. ii. 186.
[19] _G. B_. iii. 183.
[20] Nehemiah vii. 7; Ezra ii. 2.
[21] _G. B_. iii. 158, 159.
[22] _G. B_. ii. 123, 254.
[23] _G. B_. iii. 152.
[24] _G. B_. iii. 159.
[25] _G. B_. iii. 159.
[26] _G. B_. iii. 134-137.
[27] _G. B_. iii. 171; Movers, _Die Phœnizier_, i. 496.
[28] _G. B_. iii. 171.
[29] _G. B_. iii. 171.
[30] _G. B_. ii. 123, 124.
[31] _G. B_. iii. 152.
[32] _G. B_. iii. 159.
[33] _G. B_. iii. 180, 181.
[34] _G. B_. iii. 159.
[35] _G. B_. iii. 155.
[36] _G. B_. iii. 185.
[37] I assume that Jensen's theory of Zakmuk is accepted, for it gets
in a resurrection, through Eabani. This is essential, as we hear
nothing elsewhere of a Tammuz resurrection in March at Babylon.
[38] _G. B_. ii. 24, 26.
[39] _G. B_. ii. 253-254.
[40] _G. B_. iii. 155-156.
[41] Wellhausen, _History of Israel_, pp. 492-493.