At the great spring Drômenon the tribe and the growing earth were
renovated together: the earth arises afresh from her dead seeds, the
tribe from its dead ancestors; and the whole process, charged as it is
with the emotion of pressing human desire, projects its anthropomorphic
god or daemon. A vegetation-spirit we call him, very inadequately; he is
a divine Kouros, a Year-Daemon, a spirit that in the first stage is
living, then dies with each year, then thirdly rises again from the
dead, raising the whole dead world with him--the Greeks called him in
this phase 'the Third One', or the 'Saviour'. The renovation ceremonies
were accompanied by a casting off of the old year, the old garments, and
everything that is polluted by the infection of death. And not only of
death; but clearly I think, in spite of the protests of some Hellenists,
of guilt or sin also. For the life of the Year-Daemon, as it seems to be
reflected in Tragedy, is generally a story of Pride and Punishment. Each
Year arrives, waxes great, commits the sin of Hubris, and then is slain.
The death is deserved; but the slaying is a sin: hence comes the next
Year as Avenger, or as the Wronged One re-risen. 'All things pay
retribution for their injustice one to another according to the
ordinance of time.'[33:1] It is this range of ideas, half suppressed
during the classical period, but evidently still current among the ruder
and less Hellenized peoples, which supplied St. Paul with some of his
most famous and deep-reaching metaphors. 'Thou fool, that which thou
sowest is not quickened except it die.'[33:2] 'As He was raised from the
dead we may walk with Him in newness of life.' And this renovation must
be preceded by a casting out and killing of the old polluted life--'the
old man in us must first be crucified'.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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