Note 23 — VI THE SELF-OFFERING OF THE MESSIAH. THE SUPPER

Now, Iasios (Jason) is only a Greek form of the name Joshua (Jesus). Just as Joshua crossed the Jordan with twelve assistants and celebrated the Pasch (lamb) on the further bank, just as Jesus in his capacity of divine physician and wonder-worker wanders through Galilee (the district of Galil!) with twelve disciples, and goes to Jerusalem at the Pasch in order to eat the Easter lamb there with the Twelve, so does Jason set out with twelve companions in order to fetch the golden fleece of the lamb from Colchis.23 And just as Jason, after overcoming innumerable dangers, successfully leads his companions to their goal and back again to the homes they so longed for, so does Joshua lead the people of Israel into the promised land “where milk and honey flow,” and so Jesus shows his followers the way to their true home, the kingdom of heaven, the land of their “fathers,” whence the soul originally came and whither after the completion of its journey through life it returns. It can scarcely be doubted that in all of these cases we have to do with one and the same myth—the myth of the Saving Sun and Rejoicer of the peoples, as it was spread among all the peoples of antiquity, but especially in Nearer Asia. We can scarcely doubt that the stories in question originally referred to the annual journey of the sun through the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Even the names (Iasios, Jason, Joshua, Jesus; cf. also Vishnu Jesudu, see above) agree, and their common root is contained also in the name Jao (Jahwe), from which Joshua is derived. Jao or Jehu, however, was a mystical name of Dionysus among the Greeks, and he, like Vishnu Jesudu (Krishna), Joshua, and Jesus, roamed about in his capacity of travelling physician and redeemer of the world.24 Of all of these wandering Healers, Physicians, and Deliverers it is true that they were honoured in the Mysteries by sacramental meals and offered the faithful both the chalice of corporal and spiritual healing and the “bread of life.”