Note 88 — Chapter II · THE CENTRAL MYTH

In the later myth the robbers, as it happens, are made to embody certain features of sacrificial ritual. We are told in the fourth gospel that the Jews “asked of Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away,”—“that the bodies should not remain on the cross upon the sabbath, for the day of that sabbath was a high day.” Accordingly the soldiers break the legs of the two thieves, “but when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs.” The implication is that the men’s legs were to be broken by way of killing them—a patently untrue suggestion.88 The spear-thrust which “howbeit” was given to Jesus would have been the way of killing the others if they were alive: breaking the legs was a brutality which would not ensure death.