Note 67 — Chapter II · THE CENTRAL MYTH

It has only to be added that as regards the documentary problem, in this connection, Dr. Conybeare is equally distracted. It is far from certain that at this point Mark’s “colt” is not a “rectification” of an original which Matthew accepted. The assumption—negatived by themselves—that Mark and Matthew as we have them are both primary forms, Matthew always following and elaborating Mark, is one of the loose hypotheses which such critics when it suits them take for certainties. But the question of priority of form does not affect the fundamental issue. One of the suggestions put by me which Dr. Conybeare has carefully withheld from his readers—if, indeed, he ever really sees what is before him—is that the item of the single ass or colt is probably a myth with another basis. “An ass tied” appears to have been an Egyptian symbol pointing to a solar date or a zodiacal or other myth,67 and this symbol, which is found in the Song of Jacob, is the form put upon the Mark story by Justin Martyr. That the other symbol had a long Christian vogue is indicated first by the fact that there actually exists a Gnostic gem showing an ass suckling its foal, with the figure of the crab (Cancer) above, and the inscription D.N. IHV. XPS., DEI FILIUS = Dominus Noster Jesu (?) Christus, Son of God;68 and, secondly, by the mention of the ass and foal in the third Sermon of St. Proclus (5th c.).69 These details also Dr. Conybeare withholds from his readers, for the purposes of his polemic.