Chapter I: Historical Difficulty

This obstacle seems to be, and really is, insuperable. But Mr. Frazer, undaunted, writes: 'The identification of the months of the Syro-Macedonian Calendar is a matter of some uncertainty; as to the month Lous in particular the evidence of ancient writers appears to be conflicting, and until we have ascertained beyond the reach of doubt when Lous fell at Babylon in the time of Berosus' (say 200 B.C.) 'it would be premature to allow much weight to the seeming discrepancy in the dates of the two festivals' (namely Zakmuk and the Sacæa). Henceforth Mr. Frazer's hypothesis seems to me to proceed on the fancy that Sacæa and Zakmuk are identical, which is impossible, since the Sacæa fall in July or September, and Zakmuk in March-April.

It is absolutely certain, historically, that Sacæa and Zakmuk cannot be identical. They were as remote in date as they well could be. For the conflicting evidence of ancient writers as to the date of the month of the Sacæa, namely the Macedonian month Lous _Λῶος_ Mr. Frazer gives two references. The first is to Mr. Robertson Smith's proof that Lous is July.[10] That does him no good. The second is to Smith's 'Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.'[11] In that work I read that the only doubt as to the month Lous is whether it fell in July or September. Smith's 'Dictionary' is a book so common and accessible that I need not inflict on the reader the nature of the conflicting evidence. It is enough to say that the month of the Sacæa, Lous, was almost certainly July, but, if not July, was undeniably September. Now neither July nor September is Eastertide, or near it. So that the effort to make the Sacæa identical with Zakmuk, and therefore more or less coincident with Purim, and with our Easter, is an absolute failure. The Jews, then, could not (as in Mr. Frazer's theory) borrow abroad a July or September mock-king, and attach him to a vernal festival, their Purim. Thus, as Zakmuk is several months remote from the Sacæa, it is not identical with the Sacæa. Mr. Frazer himself says: 'If the Sacæa occurred in July and the Zakmuk in March, the theory of their identity could not be maintained.'[12] But he loses, rather than gains, if the Sacæa were in September, and that is the only possible alternative. The game is over; the mock-king of Babylon died, if at all, in July or September, at the Sacæa; not at Zagmuk or Zakmuk, in March-April. There is not a known hint that any mock-king died in Babylon about Eastertide, or earlier, at the feast of Zakmuk.

I confess that when I found Mr. Frazer declining to 'allow much weight to the seeming discrepancy in the dates of the two festivals,' till it was 'ascertained beyond the reach of doubt when Lous fell at Babylon in the time of Berosus,' I presumed that 'the apparently conflicting evidence of ancient writers' meant a difference of opinion as to whether Lous was a spring or a midsummer month. But I looked at Smith's 'Dictionary' and found nothing of the sort! The difference of opinion, the conflict of evidence, is concerned (see Smith) with the question whether Lous was September (as it seems to have been in the time of Philip of Macedon) or whether it was July, as in the time of Plutarch. Neither opinion gives Lous the faintest chance of being a spring month. Therefore the vernal Zakmuk is not the Sacæa; therefore there is not the ghost of a reason for guessing that a mock-king was hanged at Zakmuk; therefore Zakmuk, in April, cannot lend a hanged mock-king to Purim, in March; therefore Purim, having no slain mock-king, cannot hand one on to Eastertide, which, moreover, does not occur at the same date as Purim, but some weeks later, as may happen. Therefore the mock-king, if he had been divine (which he was not), and if he had been sacrificed (which he was not), could not have lent his 'halo of divinity' to gild the Cross at Calvary. But that he did so is Mr. Frazer's hypothesis--sometimes.

II. PERSIANS ARE NOT BABYLONIANS

The Sacæa, according to all our authorities, was a Persian, not a Babylonian, feast. We have not a tittle of evidence to show that the Babylonians, with whom Zakmuk was a feast of old standing, ever heard of the Sacæa before they were conquered by the Persians (B.C. 536). Mr. Frazer admits this: the Babylonian custom, 'so far as appears from our authorities, does not date from before the Persian conquest; but probably it was much older.'[13] Why 'probably'? On the strength of this 'probably' Mr. Frazer calls the doings at the Persian Sacæa 'a Babylonian custom.'[14] It was a custom of the Persian conquerors of Babylon, if we can believe Dio Chrysostom; but we have no evidence that it was a Babylonian custom. Yet it 'has just got to be' a Babylonian custom that Mr. Frazer may attach it to a vernal Babylonian feast, Zakmuk, and so to Purim, and so to Eastertide.