Читать книгу The Jesus Problem: A Restatement of the Myth Theory - J. M. Robertson - Страница 12

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The question here arises, however, whether the triple execution was a customary rite. All executions being, as aforesaid, quasi-sacrificial, an ordinary execution might conceivably be combined with a specific sacrifice. It is to be observed that no mention of the triple execution occurs outside of the gospels: the Acts and the Epistles have no allusion to it. It is thus conceivably, as was hinted by Strauss, a late addition to the myth, motived by the verse now omitted as spurious from Mark (xv, 28), but preserved in Luke (xxii, 37): “And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, And he was reckoned with transgressors.” But we are bound to consider the possibility that the triple execution was ritually primordial.

The story of such an execution in the “Acts of Saint Hitzibouzit,” martyred at some time in Persia, is evidently doubtful evidence for the practice, as Sir J. G. Frazer observes. The record runs that the saint was “offered up as a sacrifice between two malefactors on a hill top opposite the sun and before all the multitude,”81 suggesting that the sacrifice was a solar one. This is possible; but martyrology is dubious testimony. On the other hand Mr. W. R. Paton has suggested that the triple execution was a Persian practice, and was made to a triple God.82 There is the notable support of the statement in a fragment of Ctesias (36) that the Egyptian usurper Inarus was crucified by Artaxerxes the First between two thieves. In addition to the cases of Greek sacrifices of three victims may be noted one among the Dravidians of Jeypore;83 and the practice among the Khonds of placing the victim between two shrubs. In the Jeypore case one victim was sacrificed at the east, one at the west, and one at the centre of a village; and in another case two victims were sacrificed every third year. A triple execution might be a special event, in which two victims were both actually and ritually criminals, in order to enhance the divinity of the third. And we know that triple sacrifices did occur. The throwing of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace was ostensibly a triple sacrifice: it will hardly be claimed as a historical episode in its subsisting form.

On a careful balance, however, the presumption seems rather against a triple rite. What is quite clear is that for the early Jesuists the “prophecy” in 53rd Isaiah possessed the highest importance. For us, that lyric chapter is still somewhat enigmatic. Gunkel, who is here followed by Professor Drews,84 takes the view that the suffering figure described is really that of the typical victim of the human sacrifice; and it certainly fits that conception at points where it does not easily compose with that of the figure of oppressed Israel.85 The victim was “wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities”; and conceptually “with his stripes we are healed.” On the other hand, who were “we” for “Isaiah” if not Israel itself? The only interpretation seems to be that the past generations had suffered for the present; and this does not yield an intellectually satisfying figure. But still more improbable, on the whole, is the suggestion that the Hebrew prophet or quasi-prophetic lyrist—whatever date we may assign to the chapter—has really perceived and figured the tragic vision of the sacrificial victim as he is here supposed to have done. It would be a psychological feat extremely remarkable even for that highly gifted writer;86 and moreover it would finally compose still less with the general idea of the context than does the supposed presentment of the suffering People. It is difficult to reach any satisfying notion of Isaiah’s general meaning on the view of Gunkel and Drews.

We are thus far held, then, to the inference that, as Isaiah’s chapter was certainly taken by the early Christists87 who had adopted the Messianic idea to be a prophecy of their Messiah, the Christ myth was shaped in accordance with it. There are three main strands in the Christ myth, the Jesuist, the Christist or Messianic, and that of the Teaching God. The “suffering” motive serves to bind the three together; and the concrete item, “he was numbered with the transgressors,” bracketed as it is with “he poured out his soul unto death,” gives a very definite ground for the item of the forced companionship of the malefactors in the Crucifixion scene. It is, in short, apparently one of the specifically Judaic motives in the myth construction. Earlier in the narrative the Messiah is frequently grouped with “publicans and sinners”: he comes “eating and drinking,” in contrast with the ascetic figure of the Baptist. That feature is probably part of the atmosphere of the myth-motive of the sacrificial victim, with the leper-host and the anointing by the “sinner.” But the “two thieves” are inferribly supplied from another side.

In the first two gospels, the character of the unnamed anointress is tacitly suggested by the very reticence of the description, “a woman.” In Jewry and in the East generally, the woman who went freely into men’s houses was declassed; and the “sinner” of Luke was only a specification of the already hinted. But the story in Luke of the homage of the good thief is clearly new myth, coming of the widened ethic of the “gospel of the Gentiles.” Matthew and Mark have no thought of anything but the association of the Messiah with typical transgressors in death: for them the two thieves are hostile. The “Gentile” gospel improves the occasion by converting one of the transgressors. No critical inquirer, presumably, now fails to see doctrinal myth at the second stage. It is only the atmosphere of presupposition that can keep it imperceptible in the first. In the making of the gospels, ritual myth, doctrinal myth, and traditional myth are co-factors; and it may be that even where doctrinal myth is quite clearly at work, as in the staging of the Messianic death “with transgressors,” an actual ritual is also commemorated.