Thus the memory of that first great act of sacrifice had proved to be indestructible despite all attempts to forget it, and just at the moment when men strove to get as far away as possible from its motives, the undistorted repetition of it had to appear in the form of the god sacrifice. I need not fully indicate here the developments of religious thought which made this return possible in the form of rationalizations. Robertson Smith who is, of course, far removed from the idea of tracing sacrifice back to this great event of man’s primal history, says that the ceremony of the festivals in which the old Semites celebrated the death of a deity were interpreted as a “commemoration of a mythical tragedy” and that the attendant lament was not characterized by spontaneous sympathy, but displayed a compulsive character, something that was imposed by the fear of a divine wrath.[1] We are in a position to acknowledge that this interpretation was correct, the feelings of the celebrants being well explained by the basic situation.
We may now accept it as a fact that in the
- ↑ “Religion of the Semites,” pp. 412-413. “The mourning is not a spontaneous expression of sympathy with the divine tragedy, but obligatory and enforced by fear of supernatural anger. And a chief object of the mourners is to disclaim responsibility for the god’s death—a point which has already come before us in connection with theanthropic sacrifices, such as the ‘ox-murder at Athens.’”
