Note 64 — Chapter III · ROOTS OF THE MYTH

The story is equally dramatic to the close. Everything is scenic, detached, episodic: it is left to Luke (who elaborates the Supper scene; gives a positive command of Jesus for the future celebration where the previous documents merely show the rite as it was practised; puts the denial of Peter before the trial; and drops the whole procedure of the witnesses) to interpose the episode of the daughters of Jerusalem between the Roman trial and the crucifixion; and even that is parenthetic and dramatic, as are the burial and the seeking; whereafter, in Mark, the gospel abruptly ends. The rest is supplementary documentation. How much of that may have been dramatized, it is impossible to say. That there had been evolution in the mystery-play is involved in our conception of it. It began with the simple Sacrament, at a remote period, the Sacrament itself being evolved from a primitive and savage to a symbolic form, the God being probably first represented, as in kindred rites,64 by his sacrificial priest; and later by the victim.65 It is after the primitive and localized cult seeks the status of a world-religion that the ritual developes into a quasi-history; and we can see conflicting influences in that. One writer causes Jesus to be buffeted and mocked at the Jewish trial, as if to counterbalance the derision in the Roman trial; even as Luke interposes a third trial before Herod, to make sure that the guilt should ultimately lie with the Jewish government. In the action as in the doctrine, the Gentile influence finally predominates.