Note 12 — VI THE SELF-OFFERING OF THE MESSIAH. THE SUPPER

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 (“King of Salem”), 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.”12 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 (i.e., the Moon) and other Divinities.13 Isaiah, too, is indignant against those who prepare a drinking-feast for God and make liquid offerings to Meni.14 Now Meni is none other than Mēn, the Moon-God of Asia Minor, and as such is identical with Selene-Mēne, 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 (Deus Lunus) 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 (Adam Kadmon) two faces and the form of a man and woman, until God separated the two sexes from one another.15 According to this we should probably look upon the fire-worship in Asia Minor also as the foundation of the sacramental meal.