Note 27 — Chapter II · THE CENTRAL MYTH

The anthropological and hierological data go to show that an annual sacrifice of a “Son of the Father” was a long-standing feature in the Semitic world. A story in Philo Judæus about a mummery in Alexandria in ridicule of the Jewish King Agrippa, the grandson of Herod, points pretty clearly to a local Jewish survival from that usage. A lunatic named Karabas is said to have been paraded as a mock-king, with mock-crown, sceptre and robe.27 In all likelihood the K is a mistranscription for B. In any case, “the custom of sacrificing the son for the father was common, if not universal, among Semitic peoples,”28 as among others; and the Passover29 was originally a sacrifice of firstlings, human and animal,30 the former being probably most prevalent in times of disaster. “Devotion” was the principle: surrogate sacrifices would normally be substituted. Sacrifice of a king’s son, in particular, was held to be of overwhelming efficacy by early Hebrews and other Semites, as among other races in the savage and barbaric stages.31