Bible. New Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Jesus Christ -- Historicity
it was only a question of a substitute under milder forms of ritual
for the former human victim. Thus, for example, the name of the High
Priest of Attis, being also Attis, that is, "father," the sacrificial
self-inflicted wound on the occasion of the great feast of the God
(March 22nd to 27th), and the sprinkling with his blood of the picture
of the God that then took place, makes us recognise still more plainly
a later softening of an earlier custom of self-immolation. [71] With
the idea of revivifying dying nature by the sacrifice of a man was
associated that of the "scapegoat." The victim did not only represent
to the people their God, but at the same time stood for the people
before God and had to expiate by his death the misdeeds committed by
them during the year. [72] As regards the manner of death, however,
this varied in different places between death by his own sword or
that of the priest, by the pyre or the gibbet (gallows).
In this way we understand the 53rd chapter of Isaiah: "Surely he
hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement
of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we
like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed,
yet he humbled himself, and opened not his mouth; as a lamb that is led
to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before her shearers is dumb; yea,
he opened not his mouth. He was cut off out of the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And they made
his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death; although
he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. When
thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed,
he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper
in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul [? sufferings],
and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant
justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I
divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil
with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was
numbered with the transgressors; yet he bare the sin of many, and made
intercession for the transgressors." Here we obviously have to do with
a man who dies as an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of his people,
and by his death benefiting the lives of the others is on that account
raised to be a God. Indeed, the picture of the just man suffering, all
innocent as he is, itself varies between a human and a divine being.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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