From the Jews the Church took over the feasts of Pascha and Pentecost; and Sunday was a weekly commemoration of the Resurrection. It was inevitable, however, that believers should before long desire to commemorate the Baptism, with which the oldest form of evangelical tradition began, and which was widely regarded as the occasion when the divine life began in Jesus; when the Logos or Holy Spirit appeared and rested on Him, conferring upon Him spiritual unction as the promised Messiah; when, according to an old reading of Luke iii. 22, He was begotten of God. Perhaps the Ebionite Christians of Palestine first instituted the feast, and this, if a fact, must underlie the statement of John of Nice, a late but well-informed writer (c. 950), that it was fixed by the disciples of John the Baptist who were present at Jesus’ Baptism. The Egyptian gnostics anyhow had the feast and set it on January 6, a day of the blessing of the Nile. It was a feast of Adoptionist complexion, as one of its names, viz. the Birthday (Greek γενέθλια, Latin Natalicia or Natalis dies), implies. This explains why in east and west the feast of the physical Birth was for a time associated with it; and to justify this association it was suggested that Jesus was baptized just on His thirtieth birthday. In Jerusalem and Syria it was perhaps the Ebionite or Adoptionist, we may add also the Gnostic, associations of the Baptism that caused this aspect of Epiphany to be relegated to the background, so that it became wholly a feast of the miraculous birth. At the same time other epiphanies of Christ were superadded, e.g. of Cana where Christ began His miracles by turning water into wine and manifested forth His glory, and of the Star of the Magi. Hence it is often called the Feast of Epiphanies (in the plural). In the West the day is commonly called the Feast of the three kings, and its early significance as a commemoration of the Baptism and season of blessing the waters has been obscured; the Eastern churches, however, of Greece, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Egypt, Syria have been more conservative. In the far East it is still the season of seasons for baptisms, and in Armenia children born long before are baptized at it. Long ago it was a baptismal feast in Sicily, Spain, Italy (see Pope Gelasius to the Lucanian Bishops), Africa and Ireland. In the Manx prayer-book of Bishop Phillips of the year 1610 Epiphany is called the “little Nativity” (La nolicky bigge), and the Sunday which comes between December 25 and January 6 is “the Sunday between the two Nativities,” or Jih dúni oedyr ’a Nolick; Epiphany itself is the “feast of the water vessel,” lail ymmyrt uyskey, or “of the well of water,” Chibbyrt uysky.
Authorities.—Gregory Nazianz., Orat. xli.; Suicer, Thesaurus, s.v. ἐπιφάνεια; Cotelerius In constit. Apost. (Antwerp, 1698), lib. v. cap. 13; R. Bingham, Antiquities (London, 1834), bk. xx.; Ad. Jacoby, Bericht über die Taufe Jesu (Strassburg, 1902); H. Blumenbach, Antiquitates Epiphaniorum (Leipzig, 1737); J.L. Schulze, De festo Sanctorum Luminum, ed. J.E. Volbeding (Leipzig, 1841); and K.A.H. Kellner, Heortologie (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1906). (See also the works enumerated under [Christmas].)
(F. C. C.)
[1] For its text see The Key of Truth, translated by F.C. Conybeare, Oxford, and the article [Armenian Church].
[2] These are Matt. iii. 1-11, xi. 2-15, xxi. 1-9; Mark i. 1-8; Luke iii. 1-18. The Pauline lections regard the Epiphany of the Second Advent, of the prophetic or Messianic kingdom.
[3] Translated in Rituale Armenorum (Oxford, 1905).
[4] Epist. ad Himerium, c. 2.
[5] Hom. I. in Pentec. op. tom. ii. 458; “With us the Epiphanies is the first festival. What is this festival’s significance? This, that God was seen upon earth and consorted with men.” For this idea there had soon to be substituted that of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.
[6] See the Paris edition of Augustine (1838), tom. v., Appendix, Sermons cxvi., cxxv., cxxxv., cxxxvi., cxxxvii.; cf. tom. vi. dial. quaestionum, xlvi.; Maximus of Turin, Homily xxx.