In the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus is found a description of the
rites ordained for the most solemn Day of Atonement. Of these, the
principal was the selection of two goats. "And Aaron shall cast
lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord and the other for the
scapegoat"--(Heb. _Azazel_). The goat on whom Jahveh's lot fell was
sacrificed as a sin offering, but all the iniquities of the children of
Israel were put on the head of Azazel's goat, and it was sent into the
wilderness. The parallelism makes it clear that Azazel was a separate
evil spirit or demon, opposed to Jahveh, and supposed to dwell in the
wilderness. The purification necessary after touching the goat upon
whose head the sins of Israel were put corroborates this.* Yet how often
has Azazel been instanced as a type of the blessed Savior! And indeed
the chief purpose to which Jesus is put by orthodox Christians at the
present day is that of being their scapegoat, the substitute for their
sins.
* Azazel appears to mean the goat god. The goat, like some
other animals, seems to have had a sacred character among
the Jews. (See Ex. xxiii. 19, Lev. ix. 3-15, x. 16, xvii.
17, Jud. vi. 19, xiii. 15, 1 Sam. xix 18-16, 2 Chron. xi. 15.)
The doctrine of the transference of sin was by no means peculiar to the
Jews. Both Herodotus and Plutarch tells us how the Egyptians cursed the
head of the sacrifice and then threw it into the river. It seems likely
that the expression "Your blood be on your own head" refers to this
belief. (See Lev. xx. 9-11, Psalms vii. 16, Acts xviii. 6.)
At the cleansing of a leper and of a house suspected of being tainted
with leprosy, the Jews had a peculiar ceremony. Two birds were taken,
one killed in an earthern vessel over running water, and the living bird
after being dipped in the blood of the killed bird let loose into the
open air (Lev. xiv. 7 and 53). The idea evidently was that the bird by
sympathy took away the plague. The Battas of Sumatra have a rite
they call "making the curse to fly away." When a woman is childless
a sacrifice is offered and a swallow set free, with a prayer that
the curse may fall on the bird and fly away with it. The doctrine
of substitution found among all savages flows from the belief in
sympathetic magic. It arises, as Mr. Frazer says, from an obvious
confusion between the physical and the mental. Because a load of stones
may be transferred from one back to another, the savage fancies it
equally possible to transfer the burden of his pains and sorrows to
another who will suffer then in his stead. Many instances could be given
from peasant folk-lore. "A cure current in Sunderland for a cough is
to shave the patient's head and hang the hair on a bush. When the
birds carry the hair to the nests, they will carry the cough with it. A
Northamptonshire and Devonshire cure is to put a hair of the patient's
head between two slices of buttered bread and give it to a dog. The dog
will get the cough and the patient will lose it."
Mr. Frazer, after showing that the custom of killing the god had been
practised by peoples in the hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages
of society, says (vol. ii., p. 148): "One aspect of the custom still
remains to be noticed. The accumulated misfortunes and sins of the whole
people are sometimes laid upon the dying god, who is supposed to bear
them away for ever, leaving the people innocent and happy." He gives
many instances of scapegoats, of sending away diseases in boats, and of
the annual expulsion of evils, of which, I conjecture, our ringing-out
of the old year may, perhaps, be a survival. Of the divine scapegoat, he
says:
"If we ask why a dying god should be selected to take upon himself and
carry away the sins and sorrow of the people, it may be suggested
that in the practice of using the divinity as a scapegoat, we have
a combination of two customs which were at one time distinct and
independent. On the one hand we have seen that it has been customary to
kill the human or animal god in order to save his divine life from being
weakened by the inroads of age. On the other hand we have seen that it
has been customary to have a general expulsion of evils and sins once
a year. Now, if it occurred to people to combine these two customs, the
result would be the employment of the dying god as scapegoat. He was
killed not originally to take away sin, but to save the divine life from
the degeneracy of old age; but, since he had to be killed at any rate,
people may have thought that they might as well seize the opportunity to
lay upon him the burden of their sufferings and sins, in order that he
might bear it away with him to the unknown world beyond the grave."*
* Golden Bough, vol. ii., p. 206.
The early Christians believed that diseases were the work of devils, and
that cures could be effected by casting out the devils by the spell of
a name (see Mark ix. 25-38, etc.) They believed in the transference of
devils to swine. We need not wonder, then, that they explained the death
of their hero as the satisfaction for their own sins. The doctrine of
the substitutionary atonement, like that of the divinity of Christ,
appears to have been an after-growth of Christianity, the foundations
of both being laid in pre-Christian Paganism. Both doctrines are alike
remnants of savagery.