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The Rabbinists separate more accurately two conceptions of the Messiah. According to one, in the character of a descendant of David and a great and divine hero he was to release the Jews from servitude, found the promised world-wide empire, and sit in judgment over men. This is the Jewish conception of the Messiah, of which King David was the ideal. According to the other he was to assemble the ten tribes in Galilee and lead them against Jerusalem, only to be overthrown, however, in the battle against Gog and Magog under the leadership of Armillus on account of Jeroboam's sin--that is, on account of the secession of the Israelites from the Jews. The Talmud describes the last-mentioned Messiah, in distinction from the first, as the son of Joseph or Ephraim. This is done with reference to the fact that the kingdom of Israel included above all the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, and that these traced back their origin to the mythical Joseph. He is thus the Messiah of the Israelites who had separated from the Jews, and especially, as it appears, of the Samaritans. This Messiah, "the son of Joseph," it is said, "will offer himself in sacrifice and pour forth his soul in death, and his blood will atone for the people of God." He himself will go to heaven. Then, however, the other Messiah, "the son of David," the Messiah of the Jews in a narrower sense, will come and fulfil the promises made to them, in which connection Zech. xii. 10 sq. and xiv. 3 sq. seem to have influenced this whole doctrine. According to Dalman, the figure of the Messiah ben Joseph first appeared in the second or third century after Christ. Bousset too appears to consider it a "later" tradition, although he cannot deny that the Jewish Apocalypses of the end of the first thousand years after Christ, which are the first to make extensive mention of the matter, may have contained "very ancient" traditions. According to Persian beliefs, too, Mithras was the suffering Redeemer and mediator between God and the world, while Saoshyant, on the other hand, was the judge of the world who would appear at the end of all time and obtain the victory over Ariman . In the same way the Greek myth distinguished from the older Dionysus, Zagreus, the son of Persephone, who died a cruel death at the hands of the Titans, a younger God of the same name, son of Zeus and Semele, who was to deliver the world from the shackles of darkness. Precisely the same relationship exists between Prometheus, the suffering, and Heracles, the triumphant deliverer of the world. We thus obviously have to do here with a very old and wide-spread myth, and it is scarcely necessary to point out how closely the two figures of the Samaritan and Jewish Messiahs correspond to the Haman and Mardachai of the Jewish Purim feast, in order to prove the extreme antiquity of this whole conception. The Gospel united into one the two figures of the Messiah, which had been originally separate. From the Messiah ben Joseph it made the human Messiah, born in Galilee, and setting out from there with his followers for Jerusalem, there to succumb to his adversaries. On the other hand, from the Messiah ben David it made the Messiah of return and resurrection. At the same time it elevated and deepened the whole idea of the Messiah in the highest degree by commingling the conception of the self-sacrificing Messiah with that of the Paschal victim, and this again with that of the God who offers his own son in sacrifice. Along with the Jews it looked upon Jesus as the "son" of King David, at the same time, however, preserving a remembrance of the Israelite Messiah in that it also gave him Joseph as father; and while it said with respect to the first idea that he was born at Bethlehem, the city of David, it assigned him in connection with the latter Nazareth of Galilee as his birthplace, and invented the abstruse story of the journey of his parents to Bethlehem in order to be perfectly impartial towards both views.

And now, who is this Joseph, as son of whom the Messiah was to be a suffering and dying creature like any ordinary man? Winckler has pointed out in his "Geschichte Israels" that under the figure of the Joseph of the Old Testament, just as under that of Joshua, an ancient Ephraimitic tribal God is concealed. Joseph is, as Winckler expresses it, "the heroic offspring of Baal of Garizim, an offshoot of the Sun-God, to whom at the same time characteristics of Tammuz, the God of the Spring Sun, are transferred." Just as Tammuz had to descend into the under-world, so was Joseph cast into the well, in which, according to the "Testament of the twelve Patriarchs," he spent three months and five days. This betokens the winter months and five additional days during which the sun remains in the under-world. And again he is cast into prison; and just as Tammuz, after his return from the under-world, brings a new spring to the earth, so does Joseph, after his release from confinement, introduce a season of peace and happiness for Egypt. On this account he was called in Egypt Psontomphanech, that is, Deliverer of the World, in view of his divine nature, and later passed among the Jews also as a prototype of the Messiah. Indeed, it appears that the Evangelists themselves regarded him in such a light, for the story of the two fellow-prisoners of Joseph, the baker and cupbearer of Pharaoh, one of whom, as Joseph foretold, was hanged, while the other was again received into favour by the king, was transformed by them into the story of the two robbers who were executed at the same time as Jesus, one of whom mocked the Saviour while the other besought him to remember him when he entered into his heavenly kingdom.

But the Ephraimitic Joshua too must have been a kind of Tammuz or Adonis. His name characterises him as saviour and deliverer. As such he also appears in the Old Testament, finally leading the people of Israel into the promised land after long privations and sufferings. According to the Jewish Calendar the commencement of his activity was upon the tenth of Nisan, on which the Paschal lamb was chosen, and it ended with the Feast of the Pasch. Moses introduced the custom of circumcision and the redemption of the first-born male, and Joshua was supposed to have revived it. At the same time he is said to have replaced the child victims, which it had been customary to offer to Jahwe in early days, by the offering of the foreskin of the male and thereby to have established a more humane form of sacrificial worship. This brings to our mind the substitution of an animal victim for a human one in the story of Isaac . It also brings to mind Jesus who offered his own body in sacrifice at the Pasch as a substitute for the numberless bloody sacrifices of expiation of prior generations. Again, according to an ancient Arabian tradition, the mother of Joshua was called Mirzam , as the mother of Jesus was, while the mother of Adonis bore the similar sounding name of Myrrha, which also expressed the mourning of the women at the lament for Adonis and characterised the mother of the Redeemer God as "the mother of sorrow."

But what is above all decisive is that the son of the "Ploughman" Jephunneh, Caleb , stands by Joshua's side as a hero of equal rank. His name points in the same way to the time of the summer solstice, when in the mouth of the "lion" the dog-star rises, while his descent from Nun, the Fish or Aquarius, indicates Joshua as representing the winter solstice. Just as Joshua belonged to the tribe of Ephraim, to which according to the Blessing of Jacob the Fishes of the the Zodiac refer, so Caleb belonged to the tribe of Judah, which Jacob's Blessing likened to a lion; and while the latter as Calub has Shuhah for brother, that is, the Sun descending into the kingdom of shadows , in like manner Joshua represents the Spring Sun rising out of the night of winter. They are thus both related to one another in the same way as the annual rise and decline of the sun, and as, according to Babylonian ideas, are Tammuz and Nergal, who similarly typify the two halves of the year. When Joshua dies at Timnath-heres, the place of the eclipse of the Sun , he appears again as a kind of Tammuz, while the "lamentation" of the people at his death alludes possibly to the lamentation at the death of the Sun-God.

It cannot be denied after all this that the conception of a suffering and dying Messiah was of extreme antiquity amongst the Israelites and was connected with the earliest nature-worship, although later it may indeed have become restricted and peculiar to certain exclusive circles.

The Jewish representative of Haman suffered death at the Feast of Purim on account of a crime, as a deserved punishment which had been awarded him. The Messiah Jesus, on the other hand, according to the words of Isaiah, took the punishment upon himself, being "just." He was capable of being an expiatory victim for the sins of the whole people, precisely because he least of all deserved such a fate.

Plato had already in his "Republic" sketched the picture of a "just man" passing his life unknown and unhonoured amidst suffering and persecution. His righteousness is put to the proof and he reaches the highest degree of virtue, not allowing himself to be shaken in his conduct. "The just man is scourged, racked, thrown into prison, blinded in both eyes, and finally, when he has endured all ills, he is executed, and he recognises that one should be determined not to be just but to appear so." In Pharisaic circles he passed as a just man who by his own undeserved sufferings made recompense for the sins of the others and made matters right for them before God, as, for example, in the Fourth Book of the Maccabees the blood of the martyrs is represented as the expiatory offering on account of which God delivered Israel. The hatred of the unjust and godless towards the just, the reward of the just and the punishment of the unjust, were favourite themes for aphoristic literature, and they were fully dealt with in the Book of Wisdom, the Alexandrian author of which was presumably not unacquainted with the Platonic picture of the just man. He makes the godless appear conversing and weaving plots against the just. "Let us then," he makes them say, "lie in wait for the righteous; because he is not to our liking and he is clean contrary to our doings; he upbraideth us with our offending the law and reproacheth us with our sins against our training. He professeth to have the knowledge of God; and he calleth himself the child of the Lord. He proved to be to us for the reproof of our designs. He is grievous unto us even to behold: for his life is not like other men's, his ways are of another fashion. We are esteemed of him as counterfeits; he abstaineth from our ways as from filth; he pronounceth the end of the just to be blessed and maketh his boast that God is his father. Let us see if his words be true: and let us prove what will happen in the end of him. For if the just man be the son of God, he will help him, and deliver him from the hand of his enemies. Let us examine him with despitefulness and torture that we may know his meekness and prove his patience. Let us condemn him with a shameful death: thus will he be known by his words." "But the souls of the just," continues the author of the Book of Wisdom, "are in the hands of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery, and their going from us for utter destruction: but they are in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men yet is their hopes full of immortality. And having been a little chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded: for God proved them and found them worthy for himself. As gold in the furnace hath he tried them, and received them as a burnt offering. And in the time of their visitation they shall shine and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble. They shall judge the nations and have dominion over the people and their Lord will rule for ever." It could easily be imagined that these words, which were understood by the author of the Book of Wisdom of the just man in general, referred to the just man par excellence, the Messiah, the "son" of God in the highest sense of the word, who gave his life for the sins of his people. A reason was found at the same time for the shameful death of the Messiah. He died the object of the hatred of the unjust; he accepted contempt and scorn as did the Haman and Barabbas of the Feast of Purim, but only in order that by this deep debasement he might be raised up by God, as is said of the just man in the Book of Wisdom: "That is he whom we had sometimes in derision and a proverb of reproach: We fools accounted his life madness and his end to be without honour: Now is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints."

Now we understand how the picture of the Messiah varied among the Jews between that of a divine and that of a human being; how he was "accounted just among the evil-doers"; how the idea became associated with a human being that he was a "Son of God" and at the same time "King of the Jews"; and how the idea could arise that in his shameful and undeserved death God had offered himself for mankind. Now too we can understand that he who died had after a short while to rise again from the dead, and this in order to ascend into heaven in splendour and glory and to unite himself with God the Father above. These were ideas which long before the Jesus of the Gospels were spread among the Jewish people, and indeed throughout the whole of Western Asia. In certain sects they were cherished as secret doctrines, and were the principal cause that precisely in this portion of the ancient world Christianity spread so early and with such unusual rapidity.

THE BIRTH OF THE MESSIAH. THE BAPTISM

It is not only the idea of the just man suffering, of the Messiah dying upon the gibbet, as "King of the Jews" and a criminal, and his rising again, which belongs to the centuries before Christ. The stories which relate to the miraculous birth of Jesus and to his early fortunes also date back to this time. Thus in the Revelation of John we meet with the obviously very ancient mythical idea of the birth of a divine child, who is scarcely brought into the world before he is threatened by the Dragon of Darkness, but is withdrawn in time into heaven from his pursuer; whereupon the Archangel Michael renders the monster harmless. Gunkel thinks that this conception must be traced back to a very ancient Babylonian myth. Others, as Dupuis and Dieterich, have drawn attention to its resemblance to the Greek myth of Leto, who, before the birth of the Light god Apollo, being pursued by the Earth dragon Pytho, was carried by the Wind god Boreas to Poseidon, and was brought safely by the latter to the Island of Ortygia, where she was able to bring forth her son unmolested by the hostile monster. Others again, like Bousset, have compared the Egyptian myth of Hathor, according to which Hathor or Isis sent her young son, the Light god Horus, fleeing out of Egypt upon an ass before the pursuit of his uncle Seth or Typhon. Pompeian frescoes represent this incident in such a manner as to recall feature for feature the Christian representations of the flight of Mary with the Child Jesus into Egypt; and coins with the picture of the fleeing Leto prove how diffused over the whole of Nearer Asia this myth must have been. The Assyrian prince Sargon also, being pursued by his uncle, is said to have been abandoned on the Euphrates in a basket made of reeds, to have been found by a water-carrier, and to have been brought up by him--a story which the Jews have interwoven into the account of the life of their fabulous Moses. And very similar stories are related both in East and West, in ancient and in later times, of other Gods, distinguished heroes and kings, sons of the Gods, of Zeus, Attis, Dionysus, OEdipus, Perseus, Romulus and Remus, Augustus, and others. As is well known, the Indian God-man Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu, is supposed to have been sought for immediately after his birth by his uncle, King Kansa, who had all the male children of the same age in his country put to death, the child being only saved from a like fate by taking refuge with a poor herdsman. This recalls Herodotus's story of Cyrus, according to which Astyages, the grandfather of Cyrus, being warned by a dream, ordered his grandson to be exposed, the latter being saved from death, however, through being found by a poor herdsmen and being brought up in his house. Now in Persian the word for son is Cyrus , and Kyris or Kiris is the name of Adonis in Cyprus. Thus it appears that the story of the birth of Cyrus came into existence through the transfer to King Cyrus of one of the myths concerning the Sun-God, the God in this way being confused with a human individual. Now since Cyrus, as has been said, was in the eyes of the Jews a kind of Messiah and was glorified by them as such, we can understand how the danger through which the Messianic child is supposed to have passed found a place in the Gospels. Again, a similar story of a king, who, having been warned by a dream or oracle, orders the death of the children born within a specified time, is found in the "Antiquities" of Josephus in connection with the story of the childhood of Moses. Moses, however, passed like Cyrus for a kind of forerunner and anticipator of Christ; and Christ was regarded as a Moses reappearing. Again Joab, David's general, is said to have slaughtered every male in Edom; the young prince Hadad, however, escaped the massacre by fleeing into Egypt. Here he grew up and married the sister of the king, and after the death of his enemy King David he returned to his home. But Hadad is, like Cyrus, a name of the Syrian Adonis.

Another name of Adonis or Tammuz is D?d, Dodo, Daud, or David. This signifies "the Beloved" and indicates "the beloved son" of the heavenly father, who offers himself for mankind, or "the Beloved" of the Queen of heaven . As is well known, King David was also called "the man after the heart of God," and there is no doubt that characteristics of the divine Redeemer and Saviour of the same name have been intermingled in the story of David in the same way as in that of Cyrus. According to Jeremiah xxx. 8 and Ezekiel xxxiv. 22 sqq. and xxxvii. 21, it was David himself who would appear as the Messiah and re-establish Israel in its ancient glory. Indeed, this even appears to have been the original conception of the Messiah. The Messiah David seems to have been changed into a descendant of David only with the progress of the monotheistic conception of God, under the influence of the Persian doctrine concerning Saoshyant, the man "of the seed of Zarathustra." Now David was supposed to have been born at Bethlehem. But in Bethlehem there was, as Jerome informs us, an ancient grove and sanctuary of the Syrian Adonis, and as Jerome himself complains the very place where the Saviour first saw the light resounded with the lamentations over Tammuz. At Bethlehem, the former Ephrata , Rachel is said to have brought forth the youngest of the twelve month-sons of Jacob. She herself had christened him Benoni, son of the woeful lament. He was, however, usually called Benjamin, the Lord or Possessor of light. In the Blessing of Moses he is also called "a Darling of the Lord," and his father Jacob loved him especially. He is the God of the new year born of the ashes of the past, at whose appearance lament and rejoicings are commingled one with another; and thus he is only a form of Tammuz bringing to mind the Christian Redeemer in that he presided over the month of the Ram.

Now we understand the prophecy of the prophet Micah: "Thou Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be a ruler in Israel, whose going forth is from of old, from everlasting." Now, too, the story of the slaughter of the children at Bethlehem has its background in religious history. It is said in Matt. ii. 18, with reference to Jer. xxxi. 15, "A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted, because they are not." It is the lamentation of the women over the murdered Adonis which was raised each year at Bethlehem. This was transformed by the Evangelists into the lament over the murder of the children which took place at the birth of Hadad who was honoured at Bethlehem.

Hadad-Adonis is a God of Vegetation, a God of the rising sap of life and of fruitfulness: but, as was the case with all Gods of a similar nature, the thought of the fate of the sun, dying in winter and being born anew in the spring, played its part in the conception of this season God of Nearer Asia. Something of this kind may well have passed before the mind of Isaiah, when he foretold the future glory of the people of God under the image of a new birth of the sun from out of the blackness of night, with these "prophetic" words: "Arise, shine, for thy light has come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For behold darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the peoples: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.... The abundance of the sea shall be turned unto thee, the wealth of the nations shall come unto thee. The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah. They all shall come from Sheba: they shall bring gold and frankincence, and shall proclaim the praises of the Lord."

As is well known, later generations were continually setting out this idea in a still more exuberant form. The imagination of the enslaved and impoverished Jews feasted upon the thought that the nations and their princes would do homage to the Messiah with gifts, while uncounted treasures poured into the temple at Jerusalem: "Princes shall come out of Egypt, Ethiopia shall haste to stretch out her hands unto God. Sing unto God ye kingdoms of the earth." This is the foundation of the Gospel story of the "Magi," who lay their treasures at the feet of the new-born Christ and his "virgin mother." But that we have here in reality to do with the new birth of the sun at the time of the winter solstice appears from the connection between the Magi, or kings, and the stars. For these Magi are nothing else than the three stars in the sword-belt of Orion, which at the winter solstice are opposed in the West to the constellation of the Virgin in the East; stars which according to Persian ideas at this time seek the son of the Queen of Heaven--that is, the lately rejuvenated sun, Mithras. Now, as it has been said, Hadad also is a name of the Sun-God, and the Hadad of the Old Testament returns to his original home out of Egypt, whither he had fled from David. Thus we can understand how Hosea xi. 1, "I called my son out of Egypt," could be referred to the Messiah and how the story that Jesus passed his early youth in Egypt was derived from it.

It may be fairly asked how it was that the sun came to be thus honoured by the people of Western Asia, with lament at its death and rejoicing at its new birth. For winter, the time of the sun's "death," in these southern countries offered scarcely any grounds at all for lament. It was precisely the best part of the year. The night, too, having regard to its coolness after the heat of the day, gave no occasion for desiring the new birth of the sun in the morning.

We are compelled to suppose that in the case of all the Gods of this nature the idea of the dying away of vegetation during the heat of the year and its revival had become intertwined and commingled with that of the declining and reviving strength of the sun. Thus, from this mingling of two distinct lines of thought, we have to explain the variations of the double-natured character of the Sun-Gods and Vegetation-Gods of Western Asia. It is obvious, however, that the sun can only be regarded from such a tragic standpoint in a land where, and in the myths of a people for whom, it possesses in reality such a decisive significance that there are grounds for lamenting its absence or lack of strength during winter and for an anxious expectation of its return and revival. But it is chiefly in the highlands of Iran and the mountainous hinterland of Asia Minor that this is the case to such an extent as to make this idea one of the central points of religious belief. Even here it points back to a past time when the people concerned still had their dwelling-place along with the kindred Aryan tribes in a much more northerly locality. Thus Mithras, the "Sol invictus" of the Romans, struggling victoriously through night and darkness, is a Sun hero, who must have found his way into Persia from the north. This is shown, amongst other things, by his birthday being celebrated on the 25th of December, the day of the winter solstice. Again, the birth of the infant Dionysus, who was so closely related to the season Gods of Nearer Asia, used to be celebrated as the feast of the new birth of the sun at about the same time, the God being then honoured as Liknites, as "the infant in the cradle" . The Egyptians celebrated the birth of Osiris on the 6th of January, on which occasion the priests produced the figure of an infant from the sanctuary, and showed it to the people as a picture of the new-born God. That the Phrygian Attis came thither with the Aryans who made their way from Thrace into Asia Minor, and must have had his home originally in Northern Europe, appears at once from the striking resemblance of the myth concerning him with that of the northern myth of Balder. There can be no doubt that the story in Herodotus of Atys, son of Croesus, who while out boar hunting accidently met his death from the spear of his friend, only gives another version of the Attis myth. This story, however, so closely resembles that of the death of Balder, given in the Edda, that the theory of a connection between them is inevitably forced upon one's mind. In the Edda the wife of Balder is called Nanna. But Nanna was according to Arnobius the name of the mother of the Phrygian Attis.

Now the Sun and Summer God Balder is only a form of Odin, the Father of Heaven, with summer attributes, and he too is said, like Attis, Adonis and Osiris, to have met his death through a wild boar. Just as anemones sprang from the blood of the slain Adonis and violets from that of Attis, so also the blood of the murdered Odin is said to have been changed into spring flowers. At the great feast of Attis in March a post or pine-tree trunk decked with violets, on which the picture of the God was hung, used to form the central point of the rite. This was a reminder of the way in which in ancient times the human representative of the God passed from life to death, in order by sacrifice to revive exhausted nature. According to the verses of the Eddic Havamal, Odin says of himself:--

"I know that I hang on the wind-rocked tree Throughout nine nights, Wounded by the spear, dedicated to Odin, I myself to myself."

At the same time the myth of the Sun God does not take us to the very basis and the real kernel of the stories of the divine child's birth. The Persian religion was not so much a religion of Light and Sun as of Fire, the most important and remarkable manifestation of which was of course the sun. Dionysus too, like all Gods of the life-warmth, of the rising plant sap and of fruitfulness, was in his deepest nature a Fire God. In the Fire Religion, however, the birth of the God forms the centre of all religious ideas; and its form was more exactly fixed through the peculiar acts by means of which the priest rekindled the holy fire.

For the manner in which this occurred we have the oldest authentic testimony in the religious records of the Indian Aryans. Here Agni, as indeed his name betokens, passed for the divine representative of the Fire Element. His mystic birth was sung in numberless passages in the hymns of the Rigveda. At dawn, as soon as the brightening morning star in the east announced that the sun was rising, the priest called his assistants together and kindled the fire upon a mound of earth by rubbing together two sticks in which the God was supposed to be hidden. As soon as the spark shone in the "maternal bosom," the soft underpart of the wood, it was treated as an "infant child." It was carefully placed upon a little heap of straw, which at once took fire from it. On one side lay the mystic "cow"--that is, the milk-pail and a vessel full of butter, as types of all animal nourishment--upon the other the holy Soma draught, representing the sap of plants, the symbol of life. A priest fanned it with a small fan shaped like a banner, thereby stirring up the fire. The "child" was then raised upon the altar. The priests turned up the fire with long-handled spoons, pouring upon the flames melted butter together with the Soma cup. From this time "Agni" was called "the anointed" . The fire flickered high. The God was unfolding his majesty. With his flames he scared away the daemons of darkness, and lighted up the surrounding shadows. All creatures were invited to come and gaze upon the wonderful spectacle. Then with presents the Gods hastened from heaven and the herdsmen from the fields, cast themselves down in deep reverence before the new-born, praying to it and singing hymns in its praise. It grew visibly before their eyes. The new-born Agni already had become "the teacher" of all living creatures, "the wisest of the wise," opening to mankind the secrets of existence. Then, while everything around him grew bright and the sun rose over the horizon, the God, wreathed in a cloud of smoke, with the noise of darting flames, ascended to heaven, and was united there with the heavenly light.

Thus in ancient India the holy fire was kindled anew each morning, and honoured with ritualistic observances . This took place, however, with special ceremony at the time of the winter solstice, when the days began again to increase . They then celebrated the end of the time "of darkness," the Pitryana, or time of the Manes, during which the worship of the Gods had been at a standstill. Then the Angiras, the priestly singers, summoned the Gods to be present, greeting with loud song the beginning of the "holy" season, the Devayana, with which the new light arose. Agni and the other Gods again returned to men, and the priests announced to the people the "joyful tidings" that the Light God had been born again. As Hillebrand has shown, this festival also indicates the memory of an earlier home in the North whence the Aryan tribes had migrated, since in India, where the shortest and longest days only differ by about four hours, no reason exists for celebrating the "return" of the light. Indeed, it appears that we have to do here with a rite which reaches back into the very origins of all human civilisation, and preserves the memory of the discovery of fire in the midst of the horrors of the Stone Age.

There is no doubt that we have before us in the Vedic Agni Cult the original source of all the stories of the birth of the Fire-Gods and Sun-Gods. These Gods usually enter life in darkness and concealment. Thus the Cretan Zeus was born in a cavern, Mithras, Dionysus, and Hermes in a gloomy grotto, Horus in the "stable" of the holy cow --Jesus, too, was born at dead of night in a lowly "stable" at Bethlehem. The original ground for this consists in the fact that Agni, in the form of a spark, comes into existence in the dark hollow of the hole bored in the stick. The Hymns of the Rigveda often speak of this "secret birth" and of the "concealment" of Agni. They describe the Gods as they set out in order to seek the infant. They make the Angiras discover it "lying in concealment," and it grows up in hiding. But the idea of the Fire-God being born in a "stable" is also foreshadowed in the Rigveda. For not only are the vessels of milk and butter ready for the anointing compared with cows, but Ushas, too, the Goddess of Dawn, who is present at the birth, is called a red milch-cow, and of men it is said that they flocked "like cows to a warm stable" to see Agni, whom his mother held lovingly upon her lap.

It is a common fundamental feature of all Nature religions that they distinguish between the particular and the general, between earthly and heavenly events, between human acts and natural occurrences as little as they do between the spiritual and natural. The Agni Cult shows, as does the Vedic religion in general, this interplay of the earthly and heavenly world, of the microcosmic individual and the macrocosm. The kindling of the fire upon the earth at the same time betokened the rising of the great light of the skies, the sun. The fire upon the altar did not merely represent but actually was the sun, the earthly and the heavenly Agni were one. Thus it was that the nations of antiquity were able to think of transferring earthly events into heaven, and conversely were able to read earthly events in heavenly occurrences such as the relations of the stars to one another. It was on this that astrology rested. Even the ancient Fire Worship appears in very early times to have been transformed into astrology, and what was in the beginning a simple act of worship was generalised by the priests in a macrocosmic sense and was transferred to the starry heavens as a forecast. Thus the altar or place of sacrifice upon which the sacred fire was kindled was enlarged into the Vault of the Spheres or Grotto of the Planets. Through this the sun completed its annual journey among the twelve signs of the Zodiac, and in so doing assumed successively the form and fulfilled the functions of that constellation with which it entered into astronomical relations. The metaphorical name of "stable" for the place of sacrifice attains a new significance from the fact that the sun during a certain epoch of the world at the beginning of spring passed through the constellation of the Bull, and at the time of the winter solstice commenced its course between the Ox and the Great Bear, which anciently was also called the Ass. The birth of the God is said to have been in secret because it took place at night. His mother is a "virgin" since at midnight of the winter solstice the constellation of the Virgin is on the eastern horizon. Shortly afterwards Draco, the Dragon , rises up over Libra, the Balance, and seems to pursue the Virgin. From this comes the story of the Winter Dragon threatening Leto, or Apollo; or, as it is also found in the Myth of Osiris and the Apocalypse of John, the story of the pursuit of the child of light by a hostile principle . Unknown and in concealment the child grows up. This refers to the course of the sun as it yet stands low in the heavens. Or like Sargon, Dionysus, or Moses it is cast in a basket upon the waters of some great stream or of the sea, since the sun in its wanderings through the Zodiac has next to pass through the so-called watery region, the signs of the Water-carrier and the Fishes, the rainy season of winter. Thus can the fate of the new-born be read in the sky. The priests cast his horoscope like that of any other child. They greet his birth with loud rejoicings, bring him myrrh, incense and costly presents, while prophesying for him a glorious future. The earthly Agni is completely absorbed in the heavenly one; and in the study of the great events which are portrayed in the sky, the simple act of sacrificial worship, which had originally furnished the opportunity for this whole range of ideas, gradually fell into oblivion.

It has been often maintained that Indian influences have worked upon the development of the story of the childhood of Jesus, and in this connection we are accustomed to think of Buddhism. Now, as a matter of fact, the resemblances between the Christian and Buddhist legends are so close that we can scarcely imagine it to be a mere coincidence. Jesus and Buddha are both said to have been born of a "pure virgin," honoured by heavenly spirits at their birth, prayed to by kings and loaded with presents. "Happy is the whole world," sing the Gods under the form of young Brahmins at the birth of the child--as we are told in the Lalita Vistara, the legendary biography of Buddha, dating from before Christ, "for he is indeed born who brings salvation and will establish the world in blessedness. He is born who will darken sun and moon by the splendour of his merits and will put all darkness to flight. The blind see, the deaf hear, the demented are restored to reason. No natural crimes afflict us any longer, for upon the earth men have become righteous. Gods and men can in future approach each other without hostility, since he will be the guide of their pilgrimage." Just as the significance of Jesus was announced beforehand by Simeon, in the same way according to the Buddhist legend, the Seer Asita foresees in his own mind the greatness of the child and bursts into tears since he will not see him in the splendour of his maturity and will have no part in his work of redemption. Again, just as Jesus even in his early youth astonished the learned by his wisdom, so Prince Siddharta put all his teachers at school to shame by his superior knowledge, and so on. The Buddhist legend itself, however, goes back to a still older form, which is the Vedic Agni Cult. All its various features are here preserved in their simplest form and in their original relation to the sacrificial worship of the Fire-God. This was the natural source of the Indian and Christian legends, and it was the original of those myths which the Evangelist worked up for his own purposes, which according to Pfleiderer belonged "to the common tribal property of the national sagas of Nearer Asia." Again, it could the more easily reappear in the Evangelists' version of the story of the childhood of Jesus, since the sacrificial act had been re-interpreted mythologically, and the corresponding myths transformed into astrology, and, as it were, written with starry letters upon the sky, where they could be read without trouble by the most distant peoples of antiquity.

The myth of Krishna offers a characteristic example of the manner in which in India a sacrificial cult is changed into a myth. Like Astyages and Herod, in order to ward off the danger arising from his sister's son, of which he had been warned by an oracle, King Kansa caused his sister and her husband Vasudewa to be cast into prison. Here, in the darkness of a dungeon, Krishna comes into the world as Jesus did in the stable at Bethlehem. The nearer the hour of birth approaches the more beautiful the mother becomes. Soon the whole dungeon is filled with light. Rejoicing choirs sound in the air, the waters of the rivers and brooks make sweet music. The Gods come down from heaven and blessed spirits dance and sing for joy. At midnight his mother Dewaki brings the child into the world, at the commencement of a new epoch. The parents themselves fall down before him and pray, but a voice from heaven admonishes them to convey him from the machinations of the tyrant to Gokala, the land of the cow, and to exchange him for the daughter of the herdsman Nanda. Immediately the chains fall from the father's hands, the dungeon doors are opened, and he passes out into freedom. Another Christopher, he bears the child upon his shoulders through the river Yamuna, the waters of which recede in reverence before the son of God, and he exchanges Krishna for the new-born daughter of Nanda. He then returns to the dungeon, where the chains again immediately fasten of their own accord upon his limbs. Kansa now makes his way into the dungeon. In vain Dewaki entreats her brother to leave her the child. He is on the point of tearing it forcibly from her hands when it disappears before his eyes, and Kansa gives the order that all newly-born children in his country under the age of two years shall be killed.

At Mathura in Gokala Krishna grew up unknown among poor herdsmen. While yet in his cradle he had betrayed his divine origin by strangling, like Hercules, a dreadful snake which crawled upon him. He causes astonishment to every one by his precosity and lofty wisdom. As he grows up he becomes the darling of the herdsmen and playmate of Gopias, the milkmaid; he performs the most astonishing miracles. When, however, the time had come he arose and slew Kansa. He then fought the frightful "Time Snake" Kaliyanaga, of the thousand heads , which poisoned the surrounding air with its pestilential breath; and he busied himself in word and deed as a protector of the poor and proclaimer of the most perfect teaching. His greatest act, however, was his descent into the Underworld. Here he overpowered Yama, the dark God of death, obtained from him a recognition of his divine power, and led back the dead with him to a new life. Thus he was a benefactor of mankind by his heroic strength and miraculous power, leading the purest life, healing the sick, bringing the dead back to life, disclosing the secrets of the world, and withal humbly condescending to wash the feet of the Brahmins. Krishna finally died of an arrow wound which he sustained accidentally and in an unforeseen manner on his heel--the only vulnerable part of his body . While dying he delivered the prophecy that thirty-six years after his death the fourth Epoch of the World, Caliyuga, the Iron Age, would begin, in which men would be both unhappy and wicked. But according to Brahmin teaching Krishna will return at the end of all time, when bodily and moral need will have reached its highest pitch upon the earth. In the clouds of heaven he will appear upon his white steed. With a comet in his right hand as a sword of flame he will destroy the old earth by fire, founding a new earth and a new heaven, and establishing a golden age of purity and perfection in which there will be nothing but pure joy and blessedness.

This reminds us strongly of the Persian Eschatology, of Mithras and Saoshyant, and of the Jewish Apocalyptics. But following the ancient sacred poem, the Barta Chastram, the former conception as well as the doctrine of a Messiah rest upon a prophecy according to which Vishnu Jesudu was to be born a Brahmin in the city of Skambelam. He was to hold intercourse with men as a God, to purify the earth from sin, making it the abode of justice and truth, and to offer a sacrifice . But still more striking are the resemblances of the Krishna myth with the Gospels. Does any connection between the two exist? The question is hard to answer because, owing to the uncertainty in all Indian citation of dates, the age of the story of Krishna cannot be settled. In the oldest Indian literature, the Vedas, Krishna appears to be the name of a Daemon. In the Mah?bbh?rata, the great Indian heroic epic, he plays indeed a prominent part, and is here on the point of assuming the place of the God Indra. The age of the poem, however, is debatable, although it is probably of pre-Buddhist origin. The chief source of the Krishna myth is the Puranas, especially the Bhagavat Purana and Vishnu Parana. But since the antiquity of these also is uncertain, and their most modern portions presumably belong only to the eighth or ninth century of the Christian era, a decision as to the date of the appearance of the Krishna myth can only be arrived at from internal evidence.

Now the Pantanjalis Mah?bhashya, i.e., "Great Commentary," of the second century before Christ, shows that the story of Kansa's death at the hands of Krishna was at that time well known in India, and was even the subject of a religious drama. Thus the story of the birth at least of Krishna, who had already been raised to be a Cult God of the Hindoos, cannot have been unknown. The other portions of the myth, however, belong as a whole to the general circle of Indian ideas, and are in part only transferred from other Gods to Krishna. Thus, for example, the miraculous birth of the divine child in the darkness, his precosity, his upbringing among the herdsmen, and his friendship with Gopias, remind us of Agni, the God of Fire and Herdsmen, who also is described in the Rigveda as a "friend and lover of the maidens" . His combat with the Time Snake, on the other hand, is copied from the fight of Indra with the wicked dragon Vritra or Ahi. Again, in his capacity as purifier and deliverer of the world from evil and daemons the God bears such a striking resemblance to Hercules, that Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleucus at the court of the king at Pataliputra, in the third century before Christ, simply identified him with the latter. No impartial critic of the matter can now doubt that the Krishna myth was in existence and was popularised long before Christianity appeared in the world. The great importance, however, which the God possesses in present-day India may have been attained only during the Christian era, and the Puranas may have been composed only after the appearance of the Gospels; for their being written down later proves nothing against the antiquity of the matter they contain. It appears that even Buddhism did not obtain its corresponding legends direct from the Vedas, but through the channel of the Krishna myth. Since, however, Buddhism is certainly at least four hundred years older than Christianity, it must be assumed that it was the former which introduced the Krishna myth to Christianity, and not vice vers?, if we are not to consider the Babylonian-Mandaic religion as the intermediary between Krishna and Christ.

For the rest the supposition of Indian influences in the Gospel story is not by any means an improbable one. It is pure theological prejudice, resting upon a complete ignorance of the conditions of national intercourse in ancient times, when it is denied, as, for example, by Clemen in his "Religionsgeschichtlichen Erkl?rung des Neuen Testaments" , that the Gospels were influenced by Indian ideas, or when only a dependence the other way about is allowed; and this although Buddha left to his disciples, as one of the highest precepts, the practice of missionary activity, and although as early as 400 B.C. mention is made in Indian sources of Buddhist missionaries in Bactria. Two hundred years later we read of Buddhist monasteries in Persia. Indeed, in the last century before the Christian era the Buddhist mission in Persia had made such progress that Alexander Polyhistor actually speaks of a period during which Buddhism flourished in that country, and bears witness to the spread of the Mendicant Orders in the western parts of Persia. Buddhism also reached Syria and Egypt at that time with the trade caravans; as we have to suppose a frequent exchange of wares and ideas between India and the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, especially after the campaigns of Alexander. Communication took place, not only overland by way of Persia, but by sea as well. Indian thought made advances in the Near East, where Alexandria, the London and Antwerp of antiquity, and a headquarters of Jewish syncretism, favoured the exchange of ideas. With the rediscovery of the South-west Monsoon at the beginning of the first century after Christ the intercourse by sea between India and the Western world assumed still greater dimensions. Thus Pliny speaks of great trading fleets setting out annually for India and of numerous Indian merchants who had their fixed abode in Alexandria. Indian embassies came to Rome as early as the reign of Augustus. The renown of Indian piety caused the author of the Peregrinus Proteus to choose the Indian Calanus as an example of holiness. Indeed, so lively was the Western world's interest in the intellectual life of India, that the library at Alexandria, as early as the time of the geographer Eratosthenes under Ptolemy Euergetes , was administered with special regard to Indian studies. The monastic organisation of the Essenes in Palestine also very probably points to Buddhist influence. Again, although the Rigveda, which contains the groundwork of all Indian religions, may have been unknown in Nearer Asia, yet the Fire Worship of the Mazda religion at any rate reaches back to the time before the division between the Indian and Persian Aryans. Certain fundamental ideas, therefore, of the Fire Religion may through Persian influences on Nearer Asia have been known to the surrounding peoples.

As a matter of fact, the Mandaic religion contains much that is Indian. This is the less strange considering that the headquarters and centre of Mandaism was in Southern Babylonia; and the ancient settlements of the Mandaei, close to the Persian Gulf, were easily reached by sea from India. Moreover, from ancient times Babylonian trade went down to India and Ceylon. Consequently it is by no means improbable that the many remarkable resemblances between the Babylonian and Indian religions rest upon mutual influences. Indeed, in one case the borrowing of a Mandaic idea from India can be looked upon as quite certain. The Lalita Vistara begins with a description of Buddha's ante-natal life in heaven. He teaches the Gods the "law," the eternal truth of salvation, and announces to them his intention of descending into the bosom of an earthly woman in order to bring redemption to mankind. In vain the Gods endeavour to hold him back and cling weeping to his feet: "Noble man, if thou remainest here no longer, this abode of heaven will be bright no more." He leaves them, however, a successor, and consecrates him solemnly to be the possessor of the future dignity of Buddha: "Noble man, thou art he who will be endowed after me with the perfect intelligence of a Buddha." "Man" is thus here the usual name for the divine nature of Buddha destined for individual incarnations. It is also called the "great man" or the "victorious lord" . Here we have the original of the Mandaic "son of man," whom we meet with in the Jewish Apocalyptics , a figure which plays so great a part in the primitive Gospel records of Christianity, and has called forth so many explanations. And the Elcesaitic Gnostics teach a like doctrine when they imagine the "son of man," or Christ, as a heavenly spirit and king of the world to come who became incarnate first in Adam, then in Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and so on, in order finally to appear by a supernatural virgin-birth in the person of Jesus, and to illumine the dark earth by his true message of salvation.

Of all the Gods of the Rigveda Agni bears the closest relationship to the Perso-Jewish Messiah, and it is he also who stands closest to man's soul. He is rightly called king of the universe, as God of Gods, who created the world and called into life all beings that are upon it. He is the lord of the heavenly hosts, the guardian of the cosmic order and judge of the world, who is present as an invisible witness of all human acts, who as a "knower of nature" works in every living thing, and as a party to all earthly secrets illuminates the unknown. Sent down by his father, the Sky-God or Sun-God, he appears as the "light of the world." He releases this world from the Powers of Darkness and returns to his father with the "Banner of Smoke" in his hand as a token of victory. Agni blazes forth in the lightning flash from out of the watercloud, the "sea of the sky," in order to annihilate the Daemons of Darkness and to release oppressed humanity from the fear of its tormentors. Thus, according to Isaiah xi., 4, the Messiah too will burn his enemies with the fiery breath of his mouth; and in this he is clearly a Fire-God. Again, in the Apocalypse of Esdras the Seer beholds the "Son of Man" rise up from out of the sea, fly upon the clouds of heaven, destroy the hostile forces by the stream of fire which proceeded from his mouth, free the scattered Israelites from their captivity and lead them back into their country. But this "first-born" son of the Sun-God and the Sky-God is at the same time the father and ancestor of men, the first man , the head of the community of mankind, the guardian of the house and of the domestic flock, who keeps from the threshold the evil spirits and the enemies who lurk in the darkness. Agni enters the dwellings of men as guest, friend , companion, brother and consoler of those who honour him. He is the messenger between this world and the beyond, communicating the wishes of men to the Gods above, and announcing to men the will of the Gods. He is a mediator between God and men who makes a report to the Gods of everything of which he becomes aware among mankind. Although indeed he takes revenge for the men's faults yet he is a gracious God, disposed to forgive, in his capacity of an expiatory, propitiatory and redeeming power, atoning for their sins and bringing them the divine grace. Finally, he is also the guide of souls--he conducts the Gods down to the sacrifices offered by man and makes ready for men the path upon which he leads them up to God. And when their time has come he, as the purifying fire, consumes their bodies and carries that which is immortal to heaven.

Agni's father is, as has been said, the sky, or rather the light, the sun, the source of all warmth and life upon the earth. He bears the name of Savitar, which means "creator" or "mover," is called "the lord of creation," "the father of all life," "the living one," or "the heavenly father" simply. At the same time Tvashtar also passes as the father of Agni. His name characterises him simply as modeller or work-master, divine artist, skilful smith, or "carpenter," in which capacity he sharpens Brihaspati's axe, and, indeed, is himself represented with a hatchet in his hand. He appears to have attained this r?le as being the discoverer of the artificial kindling of fire, by means of which any fashioning , any art in the higher sense of the word became possible, as being the preparer of the apparatus for obtaining fire by friction or rotation--"the fire cradle"--which consisted of carefully chosen wood of a specified form and kind. Finally, the production of fire is ascribed to Matari?van also, the God of the Wind identical with Vayu, because fire cannot burn without air, and it is the motion of the breeze which fans the glimmering spark. All of these different figures are identical with one another, and can mutually take the place one of another, for they are all only different manifestations of warmth. It is this which reveals itself as well in the lightning of the sky and motion of the air, as in the glimmering of the fire, and not only as the principle of life, but also as that of thought and of knowledge or the "word" , appearing on the one side as the productive, life-giving, and fructifying power of nature, on the other as the creative, inspiring spirit. This is the reason why, among the ancients, the God of life and fertility was in his essential nature a Fire-God, and why the three figures of the divine "father," "son," and "spirit," in spite of the differences of their functions, could be looked upon without inconsistency as one and the same being.

As is well known, Jesus, too, had three fathers, namely, his heavenly father, Jahwe, the Holy Spirit, and also his earthly father, Joseph. The latter is also a work-master, artizan, or "carpenter," as the word "tekton" indicates. Similarly, Kinyras, the father of Adonis, is said to have been some kind of artizan, a smith or carpenter. That is to say, he is supposed to have invented the hammer and the lever and roofing as well as mining. In Homer he appears as the maker of the ingenious coat of mail which Agamemnon received from him as a guest-friend. The father of Hermes also is an artizan. Now Hermes closely resembles Agni as well as Jesus. He is the "good messenger," the Euangelos; that is, the proclaimer of the joyful message of the redemption of souls from the power of death. He is the God of sacrifices, and as such "mediator" between heaven and earth. He is the "guide of souls" and "bridegroom of souls" . He is also a God of fertility, a guardian of the flocks, who is represented in art as the "good shepherd," the bearer of the ram, a guide upon the roads of earth, a God of the door-hinge and guardian of the door, a god of healing as well as of speech, the model of all human reason, in which capacity he was identified by the Stoics with the Logos that dwelt within the world. Just as in the Rigveda Tvashtar stands with Savitar, the divine father of Agni, and Joseph the "carpenter" with Jahwe, as father of the divine mediator, so the divine artificer, Hephaistos, whose connection with Tvashtar is obvious, is looked upon together with Zeus, the father of heaven, as the begetter of Hermes.

Now if Joseph, as we have already seen, was originally a God, Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a Goddess. Under the name of Maya she is the mother of Agni, i.e., the principle of motherhood and creation simply, as which she is in the Rigveda at one time represented by the fire-producing wood, the soft pith, in which the fire-stick was whirled; at another as the earth, with which the sky has mated. She appears under the same name as the mother of Buddha as well as of the Greek Hermes. She is identical with Maira as, according to Pausanias, viii. 12, 48, the Pleiad Maia, wife of Hephaistos, was called. She appears among the Persians as the "virgin" mother of Mithras. As Myrrha she is the mother of the Syrian Adonis; as Semiramis, mother of the Babylonian Ninus . In the Arabic legend she appears under the name of Mirzam as mother of the mythical saviour Joshua, while the Old Testament gives this name to the virgin sister of that Joshua who was so closely related to Moses; and, according to Eusebius, Merris was the name of the Egyptian princess who found Moses in a basket and became his foster-mother.

After all this it seems rather na?ve to believe that the parents of the "historical" Jesus were called Joseph and Mary, and that his father was a carpenter. In reality the whole of the family and home life of the Messiah, Jesus, took place in heaven among the Gods. It was only reduced to that of a human being in lowly circumstances by the fact that Paul described the descent of the Messiah upon the earth as an assumption of poverty and a relinquishment of his heavenly splendour. Hence, when the myth was transformed into history, Christ was turned into a "poor" man in the economic sense of the word, while Joseph, the divine artificer and father of the sun, became an ordinary carpenter.

Now it is a feature which recurs in all the religions of Nearer Asia that the "son" of the divine "virgin" mother is at the same time the "beloved" of this Goddess in the sexual sense of the word. This is the case not only with Semiramis and Ninus, Istar and Tammuz, Atargatis and Adonis, Cybele and Attis, but also with Aphrodite and Hermes, Maia and Iasios, one of the Cabiri, identical with Hermes or Cadmus, who was slain by his father, Zeus, with a lightning stroke, but was raised again and placed in the sky as a constellation. We may conclude from the connection between Iasios and Joshua that a similar relationship existed between the latter and his mother Mirzam. Indeed, a glimmer of this possibly appears even in the Gospels in the relationship of the various Maries to Jesus, although, of course, in accordance with the character of these writings, they are transferred into quite a different sphere and given other emotional connections.

"The world was swallowed up, veiled in darkness, Light appeared, when Agni was born."

"Shining brightly, Agni flashes forth far and wide, He makes everything plain in splendour."

A complete understanding of the baptism in the Jordan can only be attained if here, too, we take into consideration the translation of the baptism into astrological terms. In other words, it appears that John the Baptist, as we meet him in the Gospels, was not an historical personage. Apart from the Gospels he is mentioned by Josephus only, and this passage, although it was known to Origen in early days, is exposed to a strong suspicion of being a forgery by some Christian hand. Again, the account in the Gospels of the relations between John and Jesus is full of obscurities and contradictions, as has been pointed out by Strauss. These, however, disappear as soon as we recognise that under the name John, which in Hebrew means "pleasing to God," is concealed the Babylonian Water-God, Oannes . Baptism is connected with his worship, and the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan represents the reflection upon earth of what originally took place among the stars. That is to say, the sun begins its yearly course with a baptism, entering as it does, immediately after its birth, the constellations of the Water-carrier and the Fishes. But this celestial Water Kingdom, in which each year the day-star is purified and born again, is the Eridanus, the heavenly Jordan or Year-Stream , wherein the original baptism of the divine Saviour of the world takes place. On this account it is said in the hymn of Ephrem on the Epiphany of the divine Son: "John stepped forward and adored the Son, whose form was enveloped in a strange light," and "when Jesus had received the baptism he immediately ascended, and his light shone over the world." In the Syrian Baptismal Liturgy, preserved to us under the name of Severus, we read the words: "I, he said, baptize with water, but he who comes, with Fire and Spirit, that spirit, namely, which descended from on high upon his head in the shape of a dove, who has been baptized and has arisen from the midst of the waters, whose light has gone up over the earth." According to the Fourth Gospel, John was not himself the light; but he gave testimony of the light, "that true light which lighteth every man coming into the world," by whom the world was made and of whose fulness we have all received grace. In this the reference to the sun is unmistakable, while the story of John's birth is copied from that of the Sun-Gods Isaac and Samson. In John, the Baptist himself is called by Jesus "a burning and shining lamp," and he himself remarks, when he hears of the numerous following of Jesus, "he must increase but I must decrease," a speech which probably at first referred to the summer solstice, when the sun, having reached the highest point in its course, enters the winter hemisphere and loses strength day by day. John is said to have been born six months before Jesus. This, too, points to the fact that both are essentially identical, that they are only the different halves of the year, representing the sun as rising and setting, these two phases being related to one another as Caleb and Joshua, Nergal and Tammuz, &c. John the Baptist is represented as wearing a cloak of camel-hair, with a leathern girdle about his loins. This brings to mind the garb of the prophet Elijah, to whom Jesus himself likened him. But Elijah, who passed among the Jews for a forerunner of the Messiah, is a form of Sun-God transferred to history. In other words, he is the same as the Greek Helios, the German Heljas, and Ossetic Ilia, with whom he coincides in most important points, or at any rate characteristics of this God have been transferred to the figure of the prophet.

According to Babylonian ideas corresponding to the "baptism of water" at the commencement of the efficacious power of the sun, was the "baptism of fire," when it was at the height of its annual course, at the time of the summer solstice, and its passage was again inclined downwards. This idea, too, is found in the Gospels, in the story of the transfiguration of Jesus upon the mountain. It takes precisely the same place in the context of his life-year, as depicted by the Evangelists, as the Sun's "baptism of fire" in the Babylonian world system, since it too marks the highest and turning-point in the life of the Christian Saviour. On this occasion Moses and Elijah appeared with the Saviour, who shone like a pillar of fire, "and his garments became glistening, exceeding white, like unto snow, so as no fuller on earth can whiten them." And there came a cloud which overshadowed the three disciples whom Jesus had taken with him on to the mountain. And a voice came from the cloud, saying, "This is my beloved Son, hear ye him." As at the baptism, so here, too, was Jesus proclaimed by a heavenly voice as the Son or beloved of God, or rather of the Holy Spirit. As the latter is in Hebrew of the feminine gender, it consequently appears that in this passage we have before us a parallel to the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. The incident is generally looked upon as though by it was emphasised the higher significance of Jesus in comparison with the two chief representatives of the old order, and as though Jesus was extolled before Moses and Elijah by the transfiguration. Here too, however, the Sun-God, Helios, is obviously concealed beneath the form of the Israelite Elijah. On this account Christianity changed the old places of worship of Zeus and Helios upon eminences into chapels of Elijah; and Moses is no other than the Moon-God, the Men of Asia Minor. And he has been introduced into the story because the divine lawgivers in almost all mythologies are the same as the moon, the measurer of time and regulator of all that happens among the Egyptians). According to Justin, David is supposed to have made the prophecy that Christ would be born "before the sun and the moon." The sun and moon often appear upon the pictures of the Nearer Asiatic Redeemer, God , paling before the splendour of the young Light-God, as we have seen in the case of Buddha, and as, according to the narrative of the Rigveda, also happened at the birth of the Child Agni. Accordingly we have before us in the story of the transfiguration in the Gospels only another view of the story of the birth of the Light-God or Fire-God, such as lies at the root of the story of the baptism of the Christian Saviour. And with the thought of the new birth of the Saviour is associated that of the baptism of Jesus, and particularly that of the fire-baptism, of which the sun partakes at the height of its power.

THE SELF-OFFERING OF THE MESSIAH. THE SUPPER

Like Baptism, the sacrament of the "Supper," the partaking of the sacred host and wine , has its precedent in the most ancient fire-worship. When the sacred fire had been kindled upon the altar, the faithful were accustomed, as the Rigveda shows, to sit down in order to partake of the sacred cake prepared from meal and butter, the symbol of all solid food, and of the Soma cup, the symbol of all liquid nourishment. It was thought that Agni dwelt invisible within these substances: in the meal as though in the concentrated heat of the sun, in the Soma, since the drink in its fiery nature and invigorating power disclosed the nature of the God of Fire and Life. Participation therein opened to the faithful communion with Agni. Thereby they were incorporated with the God. They felt themselves transformed into him, raised above the actuality of every day, and as members of a common body, as though of one heart and one soul, inflamed by the same feeling of interdependence and brotherhood. Then some such hymn as follows would mount towards heaven from their breasts overflowing with thankfulness:--

"Oh great Agni, true-minded Thou dost indeed unite all. Enkindled on the place of worship Bring us all that is good. Unitedly come, unitedly speak, And let your hearts be one, Just as the old Gods For their part are of one mind.

Like are their designs, like their assembly, Like their disposition, united their thoughts. So pray I also to you with like prayer, And sacrifice unto you with like sacrifice. The like design you have indeed, And your hearts are united. Let your thoughts be in unison, That you may be happily joined together."

While the faithful by partaking of the sacred cake and the fiery Soma cup united themselves with the God and were filled with his "spirit," the sacrificial gifts which had been brought to him burnt upon the altars. These consisted likewise of Soma and Sacred Cake, and caused the sacred banquet to be of such a kind that it was partaken of by Agni and men together. The God was at and present in the banquet dedicated to him. He consumed the gifts, transformed them into flame, and in sweet-smelling smoke bore them with him up to heaven. Here they were partaken of by the other divine beings and finally by the Father of Heaven himself. Thus Agni became not merely an agent at the sacrifice, a mystic sacrificial priest, but, since the sacrificial gifts simply contained him in material form, a sacrificer, who offered his own body in sacrifice. While man sacrificed God, God at the same time sacrificed himself. Indeed, this sacrifice was one in which God was not only the subject but also the object, both sacrificer and sacrificed. "It was a common mode of thinking among the Indians," says Max M?ller, "to look upon the fire on the altar as at the same time subject and object of the sacrifice. The fire burnt the offering and was accordingly the priest as it were. The fire bore the offering to the Gods and was accordingly a mediator between God and men. But the fire also represented something divine. It was a God, and if honour was paid to this God, the fire was at once subject and object of the sacrifice. Out of this arose the first idea, that Agni sacrificed to himself, that is, that he brought his own offering to himself, then, that he brought himself as a victim--out of which the later legends grew." The sacrifice of the God is a sacrificing of the God. The genitive in this sentence is in one case to be understood in an objective, in the other in a subjective sense. In other words, the sacrifice which man offers to the God is a sacrifice which the God brings, and this sacrifice of the God is at the same time one in which the God offers himself as victim.

In the Rigveda Agni, as God of Priests and Sacrifices, also bears the name of Vi?vakarman, i.e., "Consummator of All." Hymn x., 81 also describes him as the creator of the world, who called the world into existence, and in so doing gave his own body in sacrifice. Hence, then, the world, according to x. 82, represents nothing existing exterior to him, but the very manifestation of Vi?vakarman, in which at the creation he as it were appeared. On the other hand, Purusha, the first man, is represented as he out of whose body the world was formed. But Purusha is, as we have seen, the prototype of the Mandaic and apocalyptic "son of man." Herein lies the confirmation of the fact that the "son of man" is none other than Agni, the most human of the Vedic Gods. In the Mazda religion the first mortals were called Meshia and Meshiane, the ancestors of fallen mankind, who expect their redemption at the hands of another Meshia. This meaning of the word Messiah was not strange to the Jews too, when they placed the latter as the "new Adam" in the middle of the ages. Adam, however, also means man. The Messiah accordingly, as the new Adam, was for them too only a renewal of the first man in a loftier and better form. This idea, that mankind needed to be renewed by another typical representative of itself, goes back in the last resort to India, where, after the dismemberment of Purusha, a man arose in the person of Manu or Manus. He was to be the just king, the first lawgiver and establisher of civilisation, descending after his death to rule as judge in the under-world . But Manu, whose name again meant no more than man or human being , passed as son of Agni. Indeed, he was even completely identified with him, since life, spirit, and fire to the mind of primitive man are interchangeable ideas, although it is spirit and intelligence which are expressed under the name of Manu . We thus also obtain a new reason for the fact that the divine Redeemer is a human being. We also understand not only why the "first-born son of God" was, according to the ideas of the whole of Nearer Asiatic syncretism, the principle of the creation of the world, but also why the redemption which he brought man could be for this reason looked upon as a divine self-sacrifice.

The sacrifice of the God on the part of mankind is a sacrifice of the God himself--it is only by this means that the community between God and man was completed. The God offers sacrifice for man, while man offers sacrifice for God. Indeed, more than this, he offers himself for mankind, he gives his own body that man may reap the fruit of his sacrifice. The divine "son" offers himself as a victim. Sent down by the "father" upon the earth in the form of light and warmth, he enters men as the "quickening and life-giving spirit" under the appearance of bread and wine. He consumes himself in the fire and unites man with the father above, in that by his disposal of his own personality he removes the separation and difference between them. Thus Agni extinguishes the hostility between God and man, thus he consumes their sins in the glow of his fiery nature, spiritualising and illuminating them inwardly. Through the invigorating power of the "fire-water" he raises men above the actuality of every day to the source of their existence and by his own sacrifice obtains for them a life of blessedness in heaven. In the sacrifice, too, God and man are identified. Therein God descends to man and man is raised to God. That is the common thought which had already found expression in the Rigveda, which later formed the special "mystery" of the secret cults and religious unions of Nearer Asia, which lay at the root of the sacrament of "the Supper," which guaranteed to man the certainty of a blessed life in the beyond, and reconciled him to the thought of bodily death. Agni is accordingly nothing else than the bodily warmth in individuals, and as such the subject of their motions and thoughts, the principle of life, their soul. When the body grows cold in death the warmth of life leaves it, the eyes of the dead go up to the sun, his breath into the wind; his soul, however, ascends towards heaven where the "fathers" dwell, into the kingdom of everlasting light and life. Indeed, so great is the power of Agni, the divine physician and saviour of the soul, that he, as the God of all creative power, can, by merely laying on his hands, even call the dead back to life.

Even in the Old Testament we meet with the idea of a sacramental meal. This is pointed to in Genesis xiv. 18 sqq., when Melchisedek, the prince of peace , the priest of "God Most High," prepares for Abraham a meal of bread and wine, and at it imparts to him the blessing of the Lord God. For Melchisedek, the ruler of Salem, the city of peace, "the King of Justice," as he is called in the Epistle to the Hebrews, is even in this book plainly described as an ancient God: "without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of God, he abideth a priest continually." So also the Prophet Jeremiah speaks of holy feasts, consisting of cake and wine, of nightly sacrifices of burnt-offerings and liquids, which were offered to the Queen of Heaven and other Divinities. Isaiah, too, is indignant against those who prepare a drinking-feast for God and make liquid offerings to Meni. Now Meni is none other than Men, the Moon-God of Asia Minor, and as such is identical with Selene-Mene, the Goddess of the Moon in the Orphic hymns. Like her he is a being of a dual sex, at once Queen and King of Heaven. Consequently a liquid sacrifice appears to have been offered by all the people of Nearer Asia in honour of the Moon. As Moon-God and as related to Meni, in whose worship a sacramental meal also plays the chief part, Agni appears in the Vedas under the name of Manu, Manus, or Soma. He too is a being of dual sex. Of this we are again reminded when Philo, the Rabbinic speculation of the Kabbala, as well as the Gnostics ascribe to the first man two faces and the form of a man and woman, until God separated the two sexes from one another. According to this we should probably look upon the fire-worship in Asia Minor also as the foundation of the sacramental meal.

Obviously we have to do with a meal of this kind in the bringing in of the so-called shew-bread. Every Sabbath twelve cakes were laid by the priests "upon the pure table before the Lord," "and it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, for it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the Lord, by a perpetual statute."

It appears, then, that this meal, presided over by the High Priest as representative of Aaron, was partaken of by twelve other priests, and Robertson rightly sees herein the Jewish prototype of the Christian Supper and of the number of apostles--the Twelve--present at it. But the High Priest Aaron is a personification of the Jewish Ark of the Covenant, that is, of the visible expression of the Covenant between God and man, one of the chief prototypes of the Messiah. And if the self-offering of the Messiah, as we have seen above , has its precedent in the self-offering of Aaron, so also the great solemnity of the Aaronic sacrificial meal would not be wanting in the story of the Christian Redeemer.

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