as to which the reference is correct, and the interpretation sound and good, but with an utterly different word. The words are—
No wit of man, however scholarly, can save this passage from _falseness of rendering_ on its face; and as so, it becomes a most terrible blow upon the proper first‐face sacredness of the recital.(258)
For ten years or more, sat the revisers (?) of the _Bible_, a most imposing and solemn array of the learned of the land, the greatest Hebrew and Greek scholars of England, purporting to correct the mistakes and blunders, the sins of omission and of commission of their less learned predecessors, the translators of the Bible. Are we going to be told that none of them saw the glaring difference between the Hebrew words in _Psalm_ xxii., _azabvtha‐ni_, and _sabachthani_ in _Matthew_; that they were not aware of the deliberate falsification?
For “falsification” it was. And if we are asked the reason why the early Church Fathers resorted to it, the answer is plain: Because the _Sacramental_ words belonged in their true rendering to Pagan temple rites. They were pronounced after the terrible trials of Initiation, and were still fresh in the memory of some of the “Fathers” when the _Gospel of Matthew_ was edited into the Greek language. Because, finally, many of the Hierophants of the Mysteries, and many more of the Initiates were still living in those days, and the sentence rendered in its true words would class Jesus directly with the simple Initiates. The words “My God, my Sun, thou hast poured thy radiance upon me!” were the final words that concluded the thanksgiving prayer of the Initiate, “the Son and the glorified Elect of the Sun.” In Egypt we find to this day carvings and paintings that represent the rite. The candidate is between two divine sponsors; one “Osiris‐Sun” with the head of a hawk, representing life, the other Mercury—the ibis‐headed, psychopompic genius, who guides the Souls after death to their new abode, Hades—standing for the death of the physical body, figuratively. Both are shown pouring the “stream of life,” the water of purification, on the head of the Initiate, the two streams of which, interlacing, form a cross. The better to conceal the truth, this _basso‐relievo_ has also been explained as a “Pagan presentment of a Christian truth.” The Chevalier des Mousseaux calls this Mercury: