Note 92 — V THE BIRTH OF THE MESSIAH. THE BAPTISM

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.92 This idea, too, is found in the Gospels, in the story of the transfiguration of Jesus upon the mountain.93 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 Mēn 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 (cf. Manu among the Indians, Minos among the Greeks, Men (Min) among the Egyptians).94 According to Justin,95 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 (e.g., Mithras), paling before the splendour of the young Light-God, as we have seen in the case of Buddha,96 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.97 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.98