with similar pomp rode through the city like "the Beardless One," and had to purchase his freedom with the amusement which he afforded the people. In this connection he recalls a statement of Philo according to which, on the occasion of the entry of the Jewish King Agrippa into Alexandria, a half-crazy street sweeper was solemnly chosen by the rabble to be king. After the manner of "the Beardless One," covered with a robe and bearing a crown of paper upon his head and a stick in his hand for a sceptre, he was treated by a troop of merry-makers as a real king. [84] Philo calls the poor wretch Karabas. This is probably only a corruption of the Hebrew name Barabbas, which means "Son of the Father." It was accordingly not the name of an individual, but the regular appellation of whoever had at the Purim feast to play the part of Mordecai, the Babylonian Marduk, that is, the new year. This is in accordance with the original divine character of the Jewish mock king. For as "sons" of the divine father all the Gods of vegetation and fertility of Nearer Asia suffered death, and the human representatives of these gods had to give their lives for the welfare of their people and the renewed growth of nature. [85] It thus appears that a kind of commingling of the Babylonian Feast of the Sakæes and the Persian feast of "the Beardless One" took place among the Jews, owing to their sojourn in Babylon under Persian overlordship. The released criminal made his procession as Marduk (Mordecai) the representative of the new life rising from the dead, but it was made in the ridiculous rôle of the Persian "Beardless One"--that is, the representative of the old year--while this latter was likewise represented by another criminal, who, as Haman, had to suffer death upon the gallows. In their account of the last events of the life of the Messiah, Jesus, the custom at the Jewish Purim feast, already referred to, passed through the minds of the Evangelists. They described Jesus as the Haman, Barabbas as the Mordecai of the year, and in so doing, on account of the symbol of the lamb of sacrifice, they merged the Purim feast in the feast of Easter, celebrated a little later. They, however, transferred the festive entry into Jerusalem of "the Beardless One," his hostile measures against the shopkeepers and money-changers, and his being crowned in mockery as "King of the Jews," from Mordecai-Barabbas to Haman-Jesus, thus anticipating symbolically the occurrences which should only have been completed on the resurrection of the Marduk of the new year. [86] According to an old reading of Math. xxvii. 18 et seq., which, however, has disappeared from our texts since Origen, Barabbas, the criminal set against the Saviour, is called "Jesus Barabbas"--that is, "Jesus, the son of the Father." [87] May an indication of the true state of the facts not lie herein, and may the figure of Jesus Barabbas, the God of the Year, corresponding to both halves of the year, that