Note 89 — Chapter II · THE CENTRAL MYTH

The explanation is that both leg-breaking and spearing were features of sacrificial rites. It may have been by way of purposive contrast to the former procedure that in the priestly ritual89 of the passover it is enacted that no bone of the (unspecified) victim shall be broken. The breaking of the leg-bones in human sacrifice was one of the horrible expedients of the primitive world for securing the apparent willingness of the victim: it is to be found alike in Dravidian and in African sacrifice.90 An alternative method, which tended to supersede the other, was that of drugging or intoxication, of which we find still more widespread evidence. In ancient Jerusalem, we find the practice transferred to ordinary execution on the cross, the humane women making a practice of giving a narcotic potion of wine and incense to the victim.91 Thus associated with the deaths of ordinary criminals, it suggested to some of the Jesuist myth-makers a ground for specializing the record.