The celebration of sacramental feasts was very widespread throughout the whole of antiquity. They were among the most important acts of worship in the Mystic religions, above all in connection with the idea of the Saviour (Soter) and God of Sacrifices, who gave his life for the world. Thus Mithras, the Persian Agni, is said to have celebrated in a last meal with Helios and the other companions of his toils the end of their common struggle. Those initiated into the Mysteries of Mithras also celebrated this occurrence by common feasts in which they strove to unite themselves in a mystic manner with the God. Saos (Saon or Samon), the son of Zeus or Hermes, the God of Healing, and a nymph, reminds us of the name of Mithras, rejuvenated and risen again, of Saoshyant or Sosiosh. He is said to have founded the Mysteries in Samothrace, and appears to be identical with the mythical Sabus, who is supposed to have given his name to the Sabines, to have founded Italian civilization, and to have invented wine.[20] His name characterises him as the “sacrificer” (Scr., Savana, sacrifice); and he appears to be a Western form of Agni, the God of Sacrifices and preparer of the Soma, since Dionysus also bore the surname of Saos or Saotes and, as distributor of the wine, is supposed to have shed his blood for the salvation of the world, to have died and to have risen again, and thus has a prototype in the Vedic Agni. With Saos are connected Iasios (Jasion), the son and beloved of Demeter or Aphrodite (Maia), and of Zeus or the divine “artificer” Hephaistos (Tvashtar). Just as Saos established the worship of the Cabiri, Iasios is said to have established the worship of Demeter in Samothrace. In this connection he is identified with Hermes-Cadmus, the divine sacrificial priest (Kadmilos, i.e., Servant of God) of the Samothracian religion (cf. Adam-Kadmon of the Kabbala and the Gnostics, who is connected both with Agni-Manu and Jesus). According to Usener his name is connected with the Greek “iasthein,” to cure, and consequently characterises its bearer as “saviour.” But this is also the real meaning of the name Jason, whose bearer, a form of the patron of physicians, Asclepios (Helios), wanders about as a physician, exorciser of demons and founder of holy rites, and was venerated as God of Healing in the whole of Nearer Asia and Greece.[21] The myth also connects him with the establishment of the worship of the twelve Gods.[22]
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.”
[1] Rgv. x. 191; cf. i. 72, 5. [↑]
[3] Max Müller, “Einleitung in die vergl. Religionswissenschaft,” note to p. 219. [↑]
[5] The Rigveda describes Purusha as a gigantic being (cf. the Eddic Ymir) who covers the earth upon all sides and stretches ten fingers beyond. The Talmud, too (Chagiga, xii. 1), ascribes to the first man Adam a gigantic size, reaching as he did with his head to heaven and with his feet to the end of the world. Indeed, according to Epiphanius (“Haeres.” xix. 4), the Essenes made the size of Christ too, the “second Adam,” stretch an immeasurable distance. [↑]
[6] In Hebrew Messiah means “the anointed.” But Agni too as God of Sacrifices bears the name of the anointed, akta (above, p. 99). Indeed, it appears as though the Greek Christ, as a translation of Messiah, stands in relation to Agni. For the God over whom at his birth was poured milk or the holy Soma cup and sacrificial butter, bore the surname of Hari among the members of the cult. The word signified originally the brightness produced by anointing with fat and oil. It appears in the Greek Charis, an epithet of Aphrodite, and is contained in the verb chrio, to anoint, of which Christos is the participial form (cf. Cox, “Mythology of the Aryan Nations,” 1903, 27, 254). [↑]
[7] The Bhagavadgîta shows that the idea of a self-sacrifice was associated with Krishna also, whom we have already learnt to recognise as a form of Agni, and that his becoming man was regarded as such a sacrifice. It (ii. 16) runs: “I am the act of sacrifice, the sacrifice of God and of man. I am the sap of the plant, the words, the sacrificial butter and fire, and at the same time the victim.” And in viii. 4 Krishna says of himself: “My presence in nature is my transitory being, my presence in the Gods is Purusha (i.e., my existence as Purusha), my presence in the sacrifices is myself incorporated in this body.” But Mithras too offers himself for mankind. For the bull whose death at the hands of the God takes the central position in all the representations of Mithras was originally none other than the God himself—the sun in the constellation of the Bull, at the spring equinox—the sacrifice of the bull accordingly being also a symbol of the God who gives his own life, in order by his death to bring a new, richer and better life. Mithras, too, performs this self-sacrifice, although his heart struggles against it, at the command of the God of Heaven, which is brought to him by a raven, the messenger of the God of Gods. (cf. Cumont, op. cit., 98 sqq.). And just as according to Vedic ideas Purusha was torn in pieces by the Gods and Dæmons and the world made out of his parts, so too according to Persian views the World Bull Abudad or the Bull Man Gayomart at the beginning of creation is supposed to have shed his blood for the world, to live again as Mithras (Sepp., op. cit., i. 330, ii. 6 sq.). [↑]