Note 63 — Chapter II · THE CENTRAL MYTH

The simple fact that the Septuagint does not give the duplication, putting only “a young colt,” will serve to indicate to any careful reader that the evangelist or interpolator was following the Hebrew, and therefore is to be presumed to have known something of Hebrew idiom. And the just critical inference is that both passages had regard to the zodiacal figure of the Two Asses for the sign Cancer, from which we have the myth of Bacchus riding on two asses.63 Further, it is probable that the similar passage in the Song of Jacob64 has also a zodiacal basis. These details, which Dr. Conybeare absolutely withholds from his readers, indicate the mythological induction put by the present writer. In an unconstruable sentence, Dr. Conybeare appears to argue65 that to secure any consideration for such a thesis we must “prove that the earliest Christians, who were Jews, must have been familiar with the rare legend of Bacchus crossing a marsh on two asses,” and “with the rare representation of the zodiacal sign Cancer as an ass and its foal.”