It would appear, too, that in the mysteries of the Saviour Gods not only a crucified aspect of the God but a simulation of that on the part of the devotees was customary. Osiris was actually represented in crucifix form; [130] and in the ritual the worshipper became "one with Osiris," apparently by being "joined unto the sycamore tree." [131] When, then, in the Epistle to the Galatians [132] we find "Paul" addressing the converts as "those before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth (proegraphê) crucified," and declaring of himself: [133] "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus," we are at once pointed to the Syrian practice of stigmata, which appears to connect with both Osirian and Christian usage. In his remarkable account of the life of the sacred city of Hierapolis--a microcosm of eastern paganism--Lucian, after telling how children are sacrificed with the votive pretence that they are oxen, records that it is the universal practice to make punctures in the neck or in the hands, and that "all" Syrians bear such stigmata. [134] One of the principal cults of the place was that of Attis, the castrated God of Vegetation, in whose mysteries the image of a youth was bound to a tree, [135] with a ritual of suffering, mourning, resurrection and rejoicing. As Dionysos was also "he of the tree," it is not improbable that he, who also died to rise again, may have been similarly adored. On the other hand, the representation of the Saviour Prometheus suffering in a crucified posture tells of an immemorial concept. [136] For the Jews, finally, the cross symbol was already mystically potent, being a mark of salvation in connection with the massacre-sacrifice of the Passover, and by consequence salvatory in times of similar danger. [137] When with this was combined the mystic significance of the sign in Platonic lore as pointing to the Logos, [138] the mythic foundation for Christism was of the broadest. The crucifix is late in Christian art; but the wayside cross is as old as the cult of Hermes, God of boundaries. [139] § 8. The Suffering Messiah By way of accounting for the Jewish refusal to see in Jesus the promised Messiah, orthodox exegesis has spread widely the belief that it was no part of the Messianic idea that the Anointed One should die an ignominious death; and some of us began by accepting that account of the case. Clearly it was not the traditional or generally prevailing Jewish expectation. Yet in the Acts we find Peter and Paul alike (iii, 18; xvii, 3; xxvi, 23) made to affirm that the prophets in general predicted that Christ should suffer; and in Luke (xxiv, 26-27, 44-46) the same assertion is put in the mouth of Jesus. Either then the exegetes regard these assertions as unfounded or they admit that one school of interpretation in Jewry found a number of "prophetical" passages which foretold the Messiah's exemplary death. And the A. V. margin refers us to Ps. xxii; Isa. l, 6; liii, 5, etc.; Dan. ix, 26.