The more the problem is considered, then, the more clear becomes the solution. As soon as the Jesuist cult reached the stage of propaganda in which it described its Son-God as having died, in circumstances of ignominy, as an atoning sacrifice, it would be met by the memory of the actual Barabbas rite. Given that the Barabbas victim was ritually scourged and "crucified" (a term which has yet to be investigated), it follows that wherever the early propaganda [72] went in areas in which the memory of the rite subsisted, the Christists would be told that their Jesus the Son was simply the Jesus Barabbas of that popular rite; and the only possible--or at least the best--way to override the impeachment was to insert a narrative which reduced the regular ritual Jesus Barabbas to a single person, a criminal whom the wicked Jewish multitude had chosen to save instead of the sinless Jesus of the cult. In the circumstances given it was an absolutely necessary invention; and no other circumstances could conceivably have made it necessary. The story, by the unwilling admission of M. Loisy, who conserves whatever he thinks he critically can of the record, is a myth; and it is a myth which on the biographical theory cannot be explained. The myth-theory has explained it. As for the disappearance of the "Jesus" from the name of Barabbas in the records, it hardly needs explanation. When the memory of the old annual rite died away from general knowledge, the elision of the "Jesus" would be desirable alike for the learned who still knew and the unlearned who did not. [73] § 3. Contingent Elements It is needless for the defender of the biographical theory to interject a protest that the Barabbas story is only one item in the case. The other items will all be dealt with in turn: that has been put in the front because of its crucial significance. Incidentally it may be further noted that the myth-theory explains the plainly unhistorical item of "the thirty pieces of silver," confusedly explained from "the prophet Jeremy" as "the price of him that was priced, whom [certain] of the children of Israel did price" (Mt. xxvii, 9). The reference is really to Zechariah (xi, 12, 13). The story of the Betrayal is fiction on the very face of the narrative, Judas being employed to point out a personage of declared notoriety, about whose movements there had been no secrecy. [74] Judas is demonstrably a somewhat late figure in the gospel legend, coming from the later Mystery Drama, not from the rite on which it was built. But, whatever may be the solution of the cryptogram about the potter's field and the thirty pieces of silver in Zechariah, or the historic fact about Aceldama, one thing is clear: "the price of him that was priced," in Matthew, tells of the usage of paying a price for sacrificial victims.