ABSTRACT
The myth and ritual pattern of the ancient Near East, which is at least six thousand years old, centres in a divine king who was killed annually and who was reborn in the person of his successor. In its later development, the king was not killed, but went through an annual symbolic death and a symbolic rebirth or resurrection. 1 Starting out as a magical rite designed to ensure the success of the crops in climates where the outcome of the struggle between water and drought meant literally the difference between life and death, the pattern was gradually transformed into a religious ritual designed this time to promote man’s salvation, and finally became an ethical conviction, freed now of both its magical and religious ritual practices, but still retaining in spiritualized and symbolic form its ancient appeal and emotional certitude. Because it begins with the need to survive, the pattern never loses its force, for it is concerned always with survival, whether physical or spiritual. So far as can be ascertained at present, the pattern had a double growth, one along the lines of the ancient civilizations of the Near East, the Sumerian, the Egyptian, the Babylonian, both South and North, the Palestinian, first with the Canaanites and then with the Hebrews, and from thence into Christianity; the other along the lines of the island civilizations of the Aegean, from Crete to the mainland of Greece, from thence to Rome and once more into Christianity, the two streams of development flowing into each other and reinforcing themselves at this crucial juncture. In a sense, however, the idea of the two parallel streams is actually misleading in that it is over-cautious; the two currents cannot be separated too sharply, geographically speaking, since the ancient world was as much swept by the winds of doctrine as we are to-day; the same needs gave rise to similar solutions; and there was a steady interchange, both of objects and of ideas, between the various parts of the ancient world. 1
