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 John1 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of a divine child, who is scarcely brought into the world before he is threatened by the Dragon of Darkness, but is withdrawn in time into heaven from his pursuer; whereupon the Archangel Michael renders the monster harmless.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.2 Others, as Dupuis3 and Dieterich, have drawn attention to its resemblance to the Greek myth of Leto,4 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.5 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, Œdipus, 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.6 This recalls Herodotus’s story of Cyrus,7 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 (Khoro,8 Greek Kyros), and Kyris or Kiris is the name of Adonis in Cyprus.9 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 Josephus10 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.11 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.12 But Hadad is, like Cyrus, (Kyrus) a name of the Syrian Adonis.

Another name of Adonis or Tammuz is DÔd, 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 (Atargatis, Mylitta, Istar).13 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.14 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,15 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.16 At Bethlehem, the former Ephrata (i.e., Place of Ashes), 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.17 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 (Hadad) bringing to mind the Christian Redeemer in that he presided over the month of the Ram.18

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.”19 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.20

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.”21

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.”22 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.23 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.24

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.25 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.26 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.27 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 winnowing-fan). 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.28 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 (i.e., “mother”) was according to Arnobius29 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 (Hackelbernd) is said to have been changed into spring flowers.30 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:—

By this self-sacrifice and the agonies which he endured, the northern God, too, obtained new strength and life. For on this occasion he not only discovered the Runes of magic power, the knowledge of which made him lord over nature, but he obtained possession at the same time of the poetic mead which gave him immortality and raised the Nature God to be a God of spiritual creative power and of civilisation. This is obviously the same idea as is again found in the cult of Attis and in the belief in the death of the God. The relationship of all these different views seems still more probable in that a sacrificial rite lay at the root of the Balder myth also. This myth is only, so to speak, the text of a religious drama which was performed every year for the benefit of dying nature—a drama in which a man representing the God was delivered over to death.32 As all this refers to the fate of a Sun God, who dies in winter to rise again in the spring, the same idea must have been associated originally with the worship of the Nearer Asiatic Gods of vegetation and fruitfulness, and this idea was only altered under changed climatic conditions into that of the death and resurrection of the plant world, without, however, losing in its new form its original connection with the sun and winter.

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 (ignis, fire) 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 (aranÎ) 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 (ghrita) together with the Soma cup. From this time “Agni” was called “the anointed” (Akta). The fire flickered high. The God was unfolding his majesty. With his flames he scared away the dÆmons 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 (kings) 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.33

Thus in ancient India the holy fire was kindled anew each morning, and honoured with ritualistic observances (Agnihotra). This took place, however, with special ceremony at the time of the winter solstice, when the days began again to increase (Agnistoma). 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” (Evangelium) 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.34 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” (temple) of the holy cow (Isis)—Jesus, too, was born at dead of night in a lowly “stable”35 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.36 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.37

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 (something between 3000 and 800 B.C.) 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 (Bull) and the Great Bear, which anciently was also called the Ass.38 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.39 Shortly afterwards Draco, the Dragon (the snake Pytho), 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 (Astyages, Herod, &c.).40 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 (Magi) 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.41

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.”42 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 Jesus43 even in his early youth astonished the learned by his wisdom, so Prince Siddharta (Buddha) 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.”44 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 (i.e., the divine) 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 (the Hydra in the myth of Hercules, the Python in that of Apollo), 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 (cf. Achilles, Balder, Adonis, and Osiris). 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 (self-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 DÆmon. In the MahÂbbhÂrata, 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 MahÂbhashya, 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” (of the Cloud Women?). 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 dÆmons 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 versÂ, if we are not to consider the Babylonian-Mandaic religion as the intermediary between Krishna and Christ.45

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 ErklÄrung des Neuen Testaments” (1909), that the Gospels were influenced by Indian ideas, or when only a dependence the other way about is allowed;46 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 (246 B.C.), 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.47

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 MandÆi, close to the Persian Gulf, were easily reached by sea from India. Moreover, from ancient times Babylonian trade went down to India and Ceylon.48 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.”49 “Man” (Purusha) is thus here the usual name for the divine nature of Buddha destined for individual incarnations. It is also called the “great man” (Mahapurusha) or the “victorious lord” (Cakravartin). Here we have the original of the Mandaic “son of man,” whom we meet with in the Jewish Apocalyptics (Daniel, Enoch, Ezra), 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.50

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 DÆmons 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 (chap. xiii.) the Seer beholds the “Son of Man” (Purusha) 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.51 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 (Purusha), 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 (Mitra), 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.52

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.53 At the same time Tvashtar also passes as the father of Agni. His name characterises him simply as modeller (world-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.54 He appears to have attained this rÔle as being the discoverer of the artificial kindling of fire, by means of which any fashioning (welding), 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 MatariÇvan 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.55 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” (VÂc, Veda), 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.56 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” (Psychopompos) and “bridegroom of souls” (beloved of Psyche). 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 (Strophaios) and guardian of the door,57 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.58 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.59

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 (Maera) 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 (Marduk). 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,60 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 naÏve 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.61 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 (Aphrodite) and Adonis, Cybele and Attis, but also with Aphrodite (Maia) and Hermes,62 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.63 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.64

Now in Hebrew the word “spirit” (ruach) is of feminine gender. As a consequence of this the Holy Ghost was looked upon by the Nassenes and the earliest Christians as the “mother” of Jesus. Indeed, it appears that in their view the birth of the divine son was only consummated by the baptism and the descent of the Spirit. According to the Gospels which we possess, on the occasion of the baptism in the Jordan a voice from above uttered these words: “Thou art my beloved son; in thee I am well pleased.”65 On the other hand, in an older reading of the passage in question in Luke, which was in use as late as the middle of the fourth century, it runs, in agreement with Psalm ii. 7: “Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee.” In this case the spirit who speaks these words is regarded as a female being. This is shown by the dove which descends from heaven, for this was the holy bird, the symbol of the Mother Goddess of Nearer Asia.66 But it was not the Nassenes alone (Ophites) who called the Holy Spirit “the first word” and “the mother of all living things:”67 other Gnostic sects, such as the Valentinians, regarded the Spirit which descended in the shape of a dove as the “word of the mother from above, of wisdom.”68 Viewed in this sense, baptism also passed in the Mysteries as a new birth. Indeed, its Greek name, photisma or photismÓs (i.e., illumination), clearly indicates its origin in fire-worship. Thus, when Justin69 too speaks of a flame appearing at the baptism of Jesus, he alludes thereby to the connection between that solemn act and the birth of a Fire-God.70 Ephrem, the Syrian composer of hymns, makes the Baptist say to Jesus: “A tongue of fire in the air awaits thee beyond the Jordan. If thou followest it and wilt be baptized, then undertake to purify thyself, for who can seize a burning fire with his hands? Thou who art all fire have mercy upon me.”71 In Luke iii. 16 and Matt. iii. 11 it is said in the same sense: “I indeed baptize you with water; but there cometh he that is mightier than I.... He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” And in Luke xii. 49 sq. we read the words: “I came to cast fire upon the earth: and what will I, if it is already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with.” Here is a reference to fire falling upon the eyes and being made to blaze up by “baptism,” that is, the pouring on of a nourishing liquid, as we have seen in the worship of Agni.72

Just as John, who was closely related to the Essenes, baptized the penitents in the Jordan in the open air, so also the MandÆi, whose connection with the Essenes is extremely probable, used to perform baptisms in flowing water only, on which account they were also called “the Christians of John” in later times. This custom among them was obviously connected with the fact that Hibil ZiwÂ, who was venerated by them as a Redeemer, was a form of Marduk, and the latter was a son of the great Water-God, Ea; he thus incorporated the healing and cleansing powers of water in himself. On the other hand, as has been already said, the “anointing” of the God in the Agni Cult with milk, melted butter, and the fluid Soma, served to strengthen the vital powers of the divine child and to bring the sparks slumbering in the fire-wood to a blaze. There is no doubt that this idea was also present in the baptism as it was usually practised in the mystic cults. By baptism the newly admitted member was inwardly “enlightened.” Often enough, too, for example, in the Mysteries of Mithras, with the ceremony there was also associated the actual flashing forth of a light, the production of the Cult God himself manifested in light.73 By this means the faithful were “born again,” in the same way as Agni was “baptized” at his birth, and thereby enabled to shine forth brightly and to reveal the disorder of the world hidden in the darkness.

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,76 and this passage, although it was known to Origen77 in early days, is exposed to a strong suspicion of being a forgery by some Christian hand.78 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 (Ea). 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 (Egyptian, iaro or iero, the river), wherein the original baptism of the divine Saviour of the world takes place.79 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.”80 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.81 In this the reference to the sun is unmistakable, while the story of John’s birth82 is copied from that of the Sun-Gods Isaac83 and Samson.84 In John, the Baptist himself is called by Jesus “a burning and shining lamp,”85 and he himself remarks, when he hears of the numerous following of Jesus, “he must increase but I must decrease,”86 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.87 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.88 This brings to mind the garb of the prophet Elijah,89 to whom Jesus himself likened him.90 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.91

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 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 (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