Note 61 — Chapter II · THE CENTRAL MYTH
Reading edition
Thus the biographical school itself proffers a myth-theory, without indicating an explanatory motive for the positing of a contradiction. But when we realize that an acclamation of a quasi-king riding on an ass was actually part of the ritual in a sacrificial rite in which he was to be crucified, the two clashing elements in the legend are at once explained in the full myth-theory. Their separate handling and development was, just as intelligibly, part of the process of gospel-making, the creation of an ideal Jesus. But seeing that in the Sacæa festival the mock-king had a five days’ reign between his start and his death,61 the original ritual gave the interval which in the gospel story is filled with the acts of the Teaching God. Five days is the accepted traditional interval from Palm Sunday to Crucifixion Day.