Though he does not expressly say so,
Jerome seems to have thought that the grove of Adonis had been
planted by the heathen after the birth of Christ for the purpose of
defiling the sacred spot. In this he may have been mistaken. If
Adonis was indeed, as I have argued, the spirit of the corn, a more
suitable name for his dwelling-place could hardly be found than
Bethlehem, "the House of Bread," and he may well have been
worshipped there at his House of Bread long ages before the birth of
Him who said, "I am the bread of life." Even on the hypothesis that
Adonis followed rather than preceded Christ at Bethlehem, the choice
of his sad figure to divert the allegiance of Christians from their
Lord cannot but strike us as eminently appropriate when we remember
the similarity of the rites which commemorated the death and
resurrection of the two. One of the earliest seats of the worship of
the new god was Antioch, and at Antioch, as we have seen, the death
of the old god was annually celebrated with great solemnity. A
circumstance which attended the entrance of Julian into the city at
the time of the Adonis festival may perhaps throw some light on the
date of its celebration.
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