[24] _G. B_. ii. 253, 254. [25] _G. B_. ii. 254. [26] _G. B_. ii. 123, 124; ii. 253, 254. [27] _G. B_. iii. 152, 154. [28] _G. B_. iii. 171. [29] Jastrow, p. 484. [30] _G. B_. ii. 123, 124. [31] _G. B_. ii. 253, 54. [32] _G. B_. ii. 123, 124. [33] Jastrow, 59, 127, 631, 677, 678-9. [34] _G. B_. ii. 254, note 1. [35] _G. B_. ii. 24-26; i. 80-82. [36] _G. B_. ii. 253, 254. [37] _G. B_. iii. 152. [38] _G. B_. iii. 160. [39] _G. B_. iii. 178. [40] _G. B_. iii. 185. [41] _G. B_. ii. 314. [42] _G. B_. i. 6. VII _ZAKMUK, SACÆA, AND PURIM_ It is necessary to get the death of the Sacæan victim into touch with Easter. The Sacæa, when he died, had been in June-July, in vol. ii., in Mr. Frazer's first edition, before he evolved his theory. When the theory is evolved, in the second edition and third volume, the Sacæa prefer to occur in March-April, which gets the sufferings of the mock-king into touch with the Jewish Purim, and so within measurable distance of our Passion Week, though the June-July date of the first edition survives in the second volume of the new edition. The change of date of the Sacæa is arranged for by the plan, rejected by Meyer and Jastrow, of identifying the Persian Sacæa and the Jewish Purim with the ancient Babylonian Zagmuk or Zakmuk, a New Year festival of March-April.[1] To be sure, if that be the date, we seem bereft of our useful Tammuz, from whom, in ii. 254, it was conjectured that the victim mock-king derived his divinity, an old superstitious belief which 'shed the halo of divinity' on the victim of Calvary. For the Tammuz feast was certainly in June-September. However, perhaps there were three Tammuz feasts, resurrection and all, and Mr. Frazer's last choice of a date, in March-April, has the immense advantage for his theory of getting us near Eastertide. But did the Sacæa actually desert their old date, June-July? To prove that we must identify the Sacæa, a Persian, with Zakmuk, a Babylonian feast, which really fell in March or April. The old Babylonian feast, Zakmuk, is known to the learned through inscriptions. We have seen that M. Cumont and Herr Meissner inclined to regard Zakmuk as identical with the Sacæa, while the feast Zakmuk-Sacæa is supposed by Mr. Frazer to be the origin of the Jewish Purim. But the Sacæa fell in the Macedonian month Lous, as Athenæus tells us according to Berosus, a Babylonian priest, using the Macedonian Calendar. And Lous, as Mr. Robertson Smith proved, was our July.[2] Zakmuk, on the other hand, fell in our March-April, and Purim in our March, neither of which is July, when the Sacæa were held. Now it is desirable for Mr. Frazer's argument that the Sacæa should fall, not in July, as it did in ii. 254, but in or about Eastertide. Mr. Frazer therefore shifts the Sacæa from July to Eastertide in face of difficulties.