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]