Note 6 — Chapter XVIII · The Last Solomon.

Rousseau’s remark that Socrates died like a philosopher, but Jesus like a god, has in it a truth more important than those who often quote it recognise. Jesus died, legendarily, so much like a god that it is difficult to make out just what happened to the man. Strong arguments have been made to prove that he did not die at all on “the cross” (a word unknown to the New Testament),6 and that Pilate not only “set himself” to save Jesus (John xix. 12), but succeeded. There may have been from the stake a despairing cry, afterwards shaped after a line from a psalm, but it can hardly be determined whether this may not have been part of the first post-resurrectional doctrine that the Son must be absolutely left by his divine Father, and pass unaided through the ordeal of Satan, in order to fulfil the conditions of a return from death. It is true, however, that this primitive idea had almost vanished when the earliest Gospel was written, and, although a relic of it may have been preserved by tradition, there is an equal probability that Jesus did utter at the stake a cry of despair. The whole miserable murderous affair, unforeseen and disappointing, must have appeared to him a horrible display of diabolism; and even after his friends believed in his resurrection, and saw in the tragedy a sacrifice, they regarded it a sacrifice hateful to his Father, and exacted only by the Devil.