Mr. Frazer is so far from holding by these arguments for the practice of hanging a yearly victim at Purim, as to suggest a conjecture that the victim was not killed at Purim at all, but a month later![39] If he thinks this possible, what becomes of his 'positive grounds' for holding that Purim was the date of the hanging? I have shown the value of the positive grounds for maintaining a theory that the Jews, before our era, annually hanged a mock-king as Haman at Purim. Mr. Frazer himself is so far from being convinced that the Jews hanged a man at Purim[40] as to suggest the supposition that they did not do so.[41] If they did not, it gets him out of the difficulty caused by the unlucky circumstance that our Lord was crucified, not at Purim, but a month after Purim, as we read in the Gospels. But, alas! if the Jews did not (on this theory) hang a Haman at Purim, what becomes of all Mr. Frazer's proofs that they did hang a Haman at Purim? In the total absence of all evidence to that effect, we may be sure that the Jews did not borrow (unrebuked by prophets and legislators) a heathen brutality in March from a heathen brutality occurring, if at all, in July or September. And if they did not, Christ was not the Haman of a year, which it is Mr. Frazer's contention that he may have been. VII. A NEW THEORY OF THE VICTIM We have seen that Purim is either an old Jewish Tammuz feast, existing before the exile, or a post-exilian adaptation of a Persian rite, in which a condemned criminal died to save the king's life; or both.[42] The victim next 'personates not merely a king but a god, whether that god was the Elamite Humman, the Babylonian Marduk, or some other deity not yet identified.'[43] But[44] the victim represented the king: no other god was mentioned. Again Mr. Frazer says: 'At the Sacæan festival, if I am right, a man who personated a god or hero of the type of Tammuz or Adonis enjoyed the favours of a woman, probably a sacred harlot, who represented the great Semitic goddess Ishtar or Astarte....'[45] But did the king also stand for I a god or hero of the type of Tammuz or Adonis'? Did he associate with sacred harlots? And did he, and the victim also 'personate a god, whether that god was the Elamite Humman, the Babylonian Marduk, or some other deity not yet identified'?[46] Were the 'Elamite Humman and the Babylonian Marduk' (or Merodach) gods of vegetation? Marduk, or Merodach, to be sure, was the chief god of Babylon, a solar deity, says Dr. Jastrow. But as Mr. Frazer suggests that the supreme Aryan god, Zeus, may have derived his name, 'the Bright or Shining One,' from the oak tree (he being 'actually represented by an oak,' and oakwood producing _bright_ sparks when used in fire-making),[47] why then another supreme god, Marduk, may also be a god of vegetable life. But, like the horses of Virbius, the Sacæan victim has been plausibly identified with Tammuz or Adonis.[48] 'It seems worth suggesting that the mock-king who