Note 26 — Chapter III · ROOTS OF THE MYTH

The hypothesis forced upon us by the whole history, then, is that there had subsisted in Jewry, in original connection with a sacrificial rite of Jesus the Son of the Father, a Sacrament of a Hero-God Jesus, whose Name was strong to save. If it took the form of a Sacrament of Twelve, with the ritual-representative of the God, it would be closely analogous to the traditional Sacrament of Twelve in which Aaron [the Anointed One = Messiah] and the [twelve] elders of Israel “ate bread with Moses’ father-in-law before God.”26 Behind that narrative lies a ritual practice. A sacrament of bread and wine is further indicated in the mention of the mythic Melchisedek, “King of Peace” and priest of “El Elyon,”27 “without father and without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days or end of life, but made like unto the Son of God,” who thus became for Christists a type of Jesus.28 A sacramental banquet of twelve seems to have been involved in the sacrificial ritual of the Temple itself, where a presiding priest and twelve others daily officiated.29