§ 7. The Cross
It is not at all certain, and it is not probable, that in the earlier stages of the myth the cross as such was prominent. Early crucifixion was not always a nailing of outstretched hands in the cross form, but often a hanging of the victim by the arms, tied together at the wrists, with or without a support to the body at the thighs.[100] The stauros was not necessarily a cross: it might be a simple pile or stake. In the Book of Acts ([v, 30]) Peter and the Apostles are made to speak of Jesus “whom ye slew, hanging him on a tree.” This was in itself a common sacrificial mode; and all sacrificial traditions are more or less represented in the New Testament compilation.
But there was an irresistible compulsion to a divinizing of the cross as of the victim. Ages before the Christian era the symbol had been mystic and sacrosanct for Semites, for Egyptians, for Greeks, for Hindus; and the Sacred Tree of the cults of Attis, Dionysos, and Osiris lent itself alike to many symbolic significances.[101] The cross had reference to the equinox, when the sacred tree was cut down; to the victim bound to it; to the four points of the compass; to the zodiacal sign Aries, thus connected with the sacrificial lamb;[102] and to the universe as symbolized in the “orb” of the emperor, with the cross-lines drawn on it. The final Christian significance of the cross is a composite of ideas associated with it everywhere, from Mexico to the Gold Coast, in both of which regions it was or is a symbol of the Rain-God.[103] The Dravidian victim, the deified sacrifice, was as-it-were crucified;[104] as was a victim in a Batak sacrifice, where, as on the Gold Coast, the St. Andrew’s-cross form is enacted.[105] The commonness of some such procedure in African sacrificial practice points to its general antiquity.
It would appear, too, that in the mysteries of the Saviour Gods not only a crucified aspect of the God but a simulation of that on the part of the devotees was customary. Osiris was actually represented in crucifix form;[106] and in the ritual the worshipper became “one with Osiris,” apparently by being “joined unto the sycamore tree.”[107] When, then, in the Epistle to the Galatians[108] we find “Paul” addressing the converts as “those before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth (προεγράφη) crucified,” and declaring of himself:[109] “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus,” we are at once pointed to the Syrian practice of stigmata, which appears to connect with both Osirian and Christian usage. In his remarkable account of the life of the sacred city of Hierapolis—a microcosm of eastern paganism—Lucian, after telling how children are sacrificed with the votive pretence that they are oxen, records that it is the universal practice to make punctures in the neck or in the hands, and that “all” Syrians bear such stigmata.[110] One of the principal cults of the place was that of Attis, the castrated God of Vegetation, in whose mysteries the image of a youth was bound to a tree,[111] with a ritual of suffering, mourning, resurrection and rejoicing. As Dionysos was also “he of the tree,” it is not improbable that he, who also died to rise again, may have been similarly adored. On the other hand, the representation of the Saviour Prometheus suffering in a crucified posture tells of an immemorial concept.[112]
For the Jews, finally, the cross symbol was already mystically potent, being a mark of salvation in connection with the massacre-sacrifice of the Passover, and by consequence salvatory in times of similar danger.[113] When with this was combined the mystic significance of the sign in Platonic lore as pointing to the Logos,[114] the mythic foundation for Christism was of the broadest. The crucifix is late in Christian art; but the wayside cross is as old as the cult of Hermes, God of boundaries.[115]
§ 8. The Suffering Messiah
By way of accounting for the Jewish refusal to see in Jesus the promised Messiah, orthodox exegesis has spread widely the belief that it was no part of the Messianic idea that the Anointed One should die an ignominious death; and some of us began by accepting that account of the case. Clearly it was not the traditional or generally prevailing Jewish expectation. Yet in the Acts we find Peter and Paul alike ([iii, 18]; [xvii, 3]; [xxvi, 23]) made to affirm that the prophets in general predicted that Christ should suffer; and in Luke ([xxiv, 26–27], [44–46]) the same assertion is put in the mouth of Jesus. Either then the exegetes regard these assertions as unfounded or they admit that one school of interpretation in Jewry found a number of “prophetical” passages which foretold the Messiah’s exemplary death. And the A. V. margin refers us to [Ps. xxii]; [Isa. l, 6]; [liii, 5], etc.; [Dan. ix, 26].
Now, these are adequate though not numerous documentary grounds for the doctrine, on Jewish principles of interpretation. Jewish, indeed, the Messianic idea is not in origin: it is Perso-Babylonian;[116] and the idea of a suffering or re-arising Messiah may well have come in from that side. But equally that may have found some Jewish acceptance. We can see very well that in Daniel “the Anointed One”—that is, “the Messiah” and “the Christ”—refers to the Maccabean hero; but that as well as the other passages, on Jewish principles, could apply to the Messiah of any period; and the Septuagint reading of [Psalm xxii, 16]: “They pierced my hands and my feet,” was a specification of crucifixion. It is not impossible that that reading was the result of the actual crucifixion of Cyrus, who had been specified as a “Christ” in Isaiah. We have nothing to do here with rational interpretation: the whole conception of prophecy is irrational; but the construing of old texts as prophecies was a Jewish specialty.
When then a theistic rationalist of the last generation wrote of the gospel Jesus:—