Mr. Frazer's argument about the Ride of the Beardless One, and the
possible traces of a similar burlesque performance preluding to or
succeeding the Crucifixion, is not easy to follow. Perhaps, in the
text, I may have misconceived my author's meaning. We know the ride
of the beardless one in Persia through the work of Hyde, published at
Oxford in 1700, and again in 1760. I condense Hyde's account as given
by Mr. Frazer.[1] The date of the festivity of the beardless one was
'the first day of the first month, which in the most ancient Persian
calendar corresponds to March, so that the date of the ceremony agrees
with that of the Babylonian New Year Festival of Zakmuk.' In Mr.
Frazer's third volume, the Sacæa synchronise with Zakmuk, though in
his second volume the Sacæa are of June-July. We shall suppose him, in
the present passage, to adhere to the date of March for the Sacæa. The
ride of the beardless one, if so, occurs at the Sacæan date. But Hyde
found that some Persians regarded the ride of the beardless one as of
recent institution; if they were right, it has no traceable connection
with the ancient Sacæa. Nor was there any mock-king concerned in the
ride of the beardless one; and there was no probable sacred harlot;
still less were there two beardless ones, with two sacred harlots,
as in Mr. Frazer's theory of the Sacæa. At all events Hyde says no
more about the sacred harlots than Dio Chrysostom or any other ancient
author records in the case of the Sacæa. Far from being attired as a
king, the beardless buffoon was led about naked, on a horse, mule, or
ass, fanning himself and complaining of heat, while people soused him
in ice, snow, or cold water. Attended by the household of the king or
governor, he extorted contributions. The goods seized between dawn and
morning prayers fell to the governor or king; what the buffoon took
between the first and second prayers he kept; and then he vanished. The
populace might beat him later, if they caught him.
Now if this holiday farce existed, at the Sacæa and at Zakmuk, during
the time of the exile, the Jews could not borrow the Sacæan custom
of hanging a mock-king, for, on Mr. Frazer's theory (if I do not
misunderstand it), the ride of the beardless one came in 'after the
serious meaning of the custom' (the hanging of the mock-king) 'had been
forgotten.' The ride of the beardless one is 'a degenerate copy of the
original'--of the Sacæan whipping, hanging, and scourging a condemned
criminal--which had fallen out of use, I presume. Lagarde is not of
that opinion: he thinks that the author of the Book of Esther knew and
combined the colours of the Persian Magophonia, the Sacæa, and the ride
of the beardless. In fact, Dio Chrysostom does not tell us that the
Sacæan mock-king rode, whether naked or in splendour, through the city;
nor that he made a forced collection, which he was not allowed to live
to enjoy. These things may have occurred, but no record proves them.
Yet Mr. Frazer has, provisionally, to conjecture that the Sacæan victim
had a ride of honour, and made a collection, and that our Lord enjoyed
the same privileges. 'The description of His last triumphal ride into
Jerusalem reads almost like an echo of that brilliant progress through
the streets of Susa which Haman aspired to and Mordecai accomplished.'
Our Lord does not appear to have been either naked, like the beardless
one, or clad in splendour, like Mordecai, or crowned and robed,
or attended by the men-at-arms of Pilate or Herod. He borrowed an
ass, with her colt, and the multitude strewed branches and cried,
'Hosanna to the Son of David.' He then 'overthrew the tables of the
money-changers, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the
Temple: 'a raid,' as Mr. Frazer says. But it is not on record that He
seized any property, and His motive has been regarded as an objection
to commercial transactions in a sacred edifice.
It may seem a little arbitrary to connect these acts of Christ, not
with what the Sacæan victim, to our knowledge, ever did, but with what
was done by the beardless buffoon, his degenerate copy. We have first
to guess that the Sacæan mock-king acted like him whom we have to guess
to be his late 'degenerate copy;' and then to read into the Gospels an
idea derived from accounts of the ancient or modern buffoon. Moreover,
while Christ represents the mock-king of the Sacæa in 'the high tragedy
of the ancient ceremony'--for _He_ is put to death--his counterpart,
Barabbas, has a conjectural ride which is mere 'farce,' like that of
the beardless buffoon. Now Mr. Frazer says that, 'after the serious
meaning of the Sacæan custom had been forgotten, and the substitute
was allowed to escape with his fife, the high tragedy of the ancient
ceremony would rapidly degenerate into farce.'[2]
The degeneration was rapid indeed: in the twinkling of an eye. Christ
was _not_ allowed to escape with his life: 'the high tragedy of the
ancient ceremony' existed in his case. But instantly 'the high tragedy'
was forgotten! Barabbas, Christ's counterpart, in Mr. Frazer's theory,
'may very well ... have been going about the streets, rigged out in
tawdry splendour, with a tinsel crown on his head, and a sham sceptre
in his hand, preceded and followed by all the tag-rag and bobtail of
the town, hooting, jeering, and breaking coarse jests at his expense,
while some pretended to salute his mock majesty, and others belaboured
the donkey on which he rode. It was in this fashion, probably, that in
Persia the beardless and one-eyed man made his undignified progress
through the town, to the delight of ragamuffins and the terror of
shopkeepers whose goods he confiscated if they did not hasten to lay
their peace-offerings at his feet.'[3]
All this as to Barabbas implies that the 'high tragedy' of the Sacæa
was already lost in the 'farce' of the 'degenerate copy,' the ride
of the beardless. If so, why did Christ lose his life? If _He_ died
solemnly as a recognised god (which Mr. Frazer seems to me to deny
in iii. 120 and asserts in iii. 194-197), why is his no less sacred
counterpart, Barabbas, also and simultaneously a counterpart of the
beardless buffoon?
Either the whole affair was solemn and tragic, the Haman (Christ) and
the Mordecai (Barabbas) being recognised as divine, or the whole affair
was farce, and in neither Christ nor Barabbas was there any recognised
divinity. Mr. Frazer makes the belief in the divinity of Christ depend
on the contemporary recognition of the godhead of the Sacæan victim,
whose male issue was also perhaps recognised as divine.[4] But he
also assures us that the divinity of the Sacæan victim must have been
'forgotten.'[5] In the same way Christ, as victim, was recognised as
divine, and so, necessarily, was his counterpart, Barabbas; 'whether
in sober fact, or pious fiction, the Barabbas or Son of that Divine
Father who generously gave his own Son to die for the world.'[6]
Yet this Son of the Divine Father was so remote from sacred that,
just three pages before his Sonhood is asserted, we have a picture
of him riding about on a donkey among the jeers of the 'tag-rag and
bobtail.'[7] It is difficult to accept both of the theories (not very
self-consistent in my humble opinion), which Mr. Frazer seems able to
hold simultaneously or alternately. If Barabbas rode a donkey amid
the jeers of the ragamuffins, then Christ had no triumphal entry into
Jerusalem. He, too, had merely a burlesque ride, if Barabbas had a
burlesque ride, as Mr. Frazer thinks probable. By the essence of his
theory, Christ and Barabbas were counterparts, both were divine, or
neither was divine, in general opinion. If Barabbas was a personage in
a low farce (as Mr. Frazer supposes), so was Christ, and no halo of
divinity can accrue from taking part in a burlesque, which cannot also
be a high tragedy, with divine actors. As if difficulties were never to
cease, the beardless buffoon is a degenerate copy of the Sacæan victim.
But while _he_ was a proxy for the king, and also a representative of
Humman, or Marduk, or Tammuz, or Gilgamesh, or Eabani, or a god not
yet identified: in his popular form, as the beardless buffoon, 'his
pretence of suffering from heat, and his final disappearance, suggest
that, if he personified either of the seasons, it was the departing
winter rather than the coming summer.'[8]
If so, was the buffoon of the popular ceremony the folklore original
of the Sacæan mock-king, or was he a degenerate copy of that versatile
victim with a new meaning popularly assigned to him? We are to
'recognise in him the familiar features of the mock or temporary
king,'[9] though he has neither crown, sceptre, robes, nor aught
to cover his nakedness. If he is not the popular original of the
mock-king of the Sacæa, how does he, and how does his magic, put us
'in a position finally to unmask the leading personages in the Book
of Esther'?[10] If he is a new popular interpretation of the Sacæan
mock-king, a misconstrued survival, he cannot help to explain the
Sacæa, or 'Esther,' especially if, as a player in a farce which was a
mitigation of the Sacæa, he had not come into existence when 'Esther'
was written. But, if the beardless buffoon represents the popular
germ of the Sacæan victim, then that victim was originally neither
the king's proxy, nor Tammuz, nor Marduk, nor Gilgamesh, nor Eabani,
but perhaps 'the departing winter.' He can only serve the theory, in
that capacity, if provided with a counterpart to represent the coming
summer, while he and his counterpart both have female mates, of whom
there is not a ghost of a trace in our authorities, whether in the
instance of the Sacæa, the Ride of the Beardless, or the Crucifixion.
Nobody says that there were two beardless buffoons, yet there is just
as much evidence for them as for the conjectural two sacred characters,
with two sacred harlots, at the Sacæa. We must avoid the _multiplicatio
entium præter necessitatem_.
[1] _G. B_. iii. 181, 182.
[2] _G. B_. iii. 183.
[3] _G. B_. iii. 192.
[4] _G. B_. iii. 186.
[5] _G. B_. iii. 120.
[6] _G. B_. iii. 195.
[7] _G. B_. iii. 192.
[8] _G. B_. iii. 184.
[9] _G. B_. iii. 182.
[10] _G. B_. iii. 184.