Note 52 — Chapter II · THE CENTRAL MYTH

At this point a warning must be given against the confusion set up by the habitual assumption that “something of the kind” occurred under Pontius Pilate. It is only on the biographical theory that that date is valid. Pontius Pilate is simply a figure in the later Mystery Drama, originally chosen, probably, because of his notoriety as a shedder of Jewish blood.52 We are not bound to prove that at his date the usage of ritual human sacrifice, real or pretended, survived at Jerusalem, though it may have done, as it survived at Rhodes in the time of Porphyry in the form, perhaps, of a Semitic mystery drama.53