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23 CHAPTER 3 The Sulfurous and Sublime The Hell-Bound Goat At a symbolic and structural level, the scapegoat begins its life as a Christian type divided from itself. The personification of Azazel in later Jewish ritual becomes a type of Jesus in the first Christian readings, but the scapegoat’s itinerary remains unchanged. It walks a path of abuse and exile that leads to the netherworld, perditio. With Origen (third century) the scapegoat reverts unambiguously to its demonic identity. “The goat which in the book of Leviticus is sent away (into the wilderness),” Origen says, “and which in the Hebrew language is named Azazel was none other than this [the Devil]”: he is the “wicked one . . . having fallen from heaven . . . the cause of man’s expulsion from the divine Paradise.”1 This is why “it was necessary to send it away into the desert and to treat it as an expiatory sacrifice, because on it the lot fell. For all who belong to the ‘worse’ part, on account of their wickedness, being opposed to those who are God’s heritage, are deserted by God.”2 In one of his homilies on Leviticus, Origen compares the two lots cast on the Day of Atonement to the two thieves crucified on either side of Christ. The one who confesses Christ is taken without delay to paradise, while the other who reviled him “was made the lot of the scapegoat.”3 To this he adds that Christ “fulfilled ‘the lot of the scapegoat’” by fastening 24 Chapter 3 “the principalities and opposing powers upon his cross” and then leading them to damnation: As, I say, no one else could do these things besides him, so no one else could “triumph over” and lead “into the wilderness” of Hell “the principalities and powers and rulers of the world”. . . . Therefore, for that reason, it was necessary for my Lord and Savior not only to be born a man among men but also to descend to Hell that as “a prepared man” he could lead away “the lot of the scapegoat into the wilderness” of Hell. And returning from that place, his work completed, he could ascend to the Father, and there be more fully purified at the heavenly altar so that he could give a pledge of our flesh, which he had taken with him, in perpetual purity.4 This is an important soteriological moment in the history we are telling— striking not simply for its depiction of Christus Victor and the humiliation of the powers but for its tight focus on the cross as the instrument of their defeat and Christ’s subsequent triumphal descent into hell. That all this action takes place within the context of a Day of Atonement typology is remarkable given how little the first readings had to offer in this regard. Of course, Christ is here the “prepared man,” not the scapegoat. The vicarious character of his mission appears briefly in Origen’s reference to “a pledge of our flesh” given at “the heavenly altar,” but it is hardly the dominant theme. In another of his homilies on Leviticus, Origen reworks the Day of Atonement goats to show us Christ’s Passion in a different perspective. Here, Jesus is the immolated goat “offered to God as an offering to atone for sins,” Pilate is the prepared man, and Barabbas the scapegoat.5 Among the church fathers, Origen is the first to offer an extended interpretation of Christ’s death as a propitiatory sacrifice. He cites both Romans 3:25 and 1 John 2:1–2 when he writes of “the day of atonement [that] remains for us until the sun sets; that is, until the world comes to an end,” on which Christ “goes to the Father to make atonement for the human race” and so “propitiates the Father for humans,” interceding “not indeed for those who belong to “the lot of that he-goat which is sent ‘into the wilderness’” but “only for those who ‘are the lot of the Lord.’”6 The motif appears without any attempt to reconcile the idea of divine propitiation with that of satanic conquest. His Commentary on Matthew brings the question of the scapegoat’s diabolical character full circle with its claim that “Barabbas the robber . . . is figuratively the devil, or some evil power.”7 Jerome (fourth to fifth centuries) produces something very close The Sulfurous and Sublime 25 to Origen’s negative reading...

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