The 6 January feast of the Epiphany (Theophany), long associated in the West with the visit of the Magi (Matt. 2.1–12) and often occurring today in Roman Catholic communities on the Sunday between 2 and 8 January, commemorates in the East the event of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan by John, an event that is celebrated today on the Sunday after the Epiphany in Western liturgical calendars. Together with Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan and the visit of the Magi, other epiphanies, manifestations or revelations of Jesus’ identity, such as the wedding at Cana and his transfiguration on Mount Tabor, have also been included as part of the feast’s several themes as well. As noted in the previous chapter, scholarly approaches to the origins of this feast have been divided also between the more traditional Religionsgeschichte (History of Religions) hypothesis and the Calculation hypothesis.
According to the History of Religions approach, Epiphany, like Christmas, was but a Christian replacement feast for, or Christianization of, various pagan festivals celebrated on or near 6 January, especially in ancient Egypt. The pagan festivals in question are the Egyptian celebration in honour of the birth of the god Aion, born of the virgin Kore on 11 Tybi (= 6 January), and another, called Pater Liber, in honour of Dionysius on 5 January. Our principal source for the correlation of Epiphany and a celebration of the birth of the god Aion comes from the Panarion, or Refutation of All Heresies, of Epiphanius of Salamis (315–403).
The Saviour was born in the 42nd year of Augustus, emperor of the Romans, in the Consulate of the same Octavius Augustus for the 13th time and of Silanos as the consulator of the Romans show. For in those this is found: in the consulate of these, that is, of Ocatavius for the 13th time and of Silanos the Christ was born on 8 before the Ides of January, 13 days after the winter solstice and the increasing of the day and of the light. This day is celebrated by the Hellenes, i.e., by the idolaters, on 8 before the Kalends of January, called among the Romans ‘Saturnalia,’ among the Egyptians ‘Kronia,’ among the Alexandrians ‘Kikellia.’ This is the day on which the change takes place, i.e., the solstice, and the day begins to grow, the light receiving an increase. There are accomplished the number of 13 days until 8 before the Ides of January, until the day of the birth of Christ, the thirtieth of an hour being added to each day. As also the wise Ephrem testified to the Syrians in his commentary, saying that ‘thus was established the parousia of our Lord, his birth according to the flesh, that is his perfect incarnation which is called Epiphany, at 13 days interval from the augmentation of the light. That must be the type of the number of our Lord and his twelve disciples, which accomplishes the number of 13 days from the increasing of the light.’ Many other things sustain and testify to this fact; I speak of the birth of the Christ, that he has come and he comes.
For also the leaders of the worship of idols are constrained to recognize a part of the truth, and being shrewd, to deceive the idolaters persuaded by them, they make in many places a very great feast in this same night of the Epiphany, so that those who believe in error may not see the truth. First of all, at Alexandria, in the so-called Koreion – it is a very large temple that is the sanctuary of Kore. They watch all night, celebrating their idol with chants and the sound of flutes and, the vigil ended, after cockcrow, they descend, carrying torches, into a subterranean chapel and they bring back a wooden statue, seated nude upon a litter, having a mark of a cross of gold on the forehead, and on the hands two other such marks and on the two knees two others, the five marks being similarly of gold. And they carry the statue seven times in a circle around the temple with flute playing and kettledrums and hymns, and having revelled they carry it back again to the underground place. And asked what this mystery is, they answer and say: today, at this hour, Kore (that is, the virgin) has given birth to the Aion. And this is done also in Petra, the metropolis of Arabia which is written Edom in the scriptures, and they hymn the virgin in the Arabic dialect, calling her in Arabic ‘Chaamou,’ that is, Kore or virgin, and the one born from her ‘Dousares,’ that is, only begotten of the Master. And this happens also in the city of Eleusis throughout that night, as in Petra and in Alexandria.1
Because Epiphanius refers here to a celebration of the birth of Christ as the content of Epiphany in relationship to the winter solstice (e.g., the Saturnalia), traditional scholarship concluded that, like Christmas supposedly, the feast of Epiphany, the Eastern feast of Christ’s ‘Nativity’, was instituted precisely to counteract the popularity of pagan solstice celebrations in Egypt, Petra and Arabia. Such an approach includes, logically, viewing this as a deliberate attempt to replace a celebration of the virgin Kore giving birth to Aion with the Virgin Mary giving birth to Christ.2 In fact, based on Epiphanius’ incorrect dating of the Roman Saturnalia to ‘8 before the Kalends of January’ (= 25 December) and the birth of Christ 13 days after the winter solstice, that is, ‘8 before the Ides of January’ (6 January), a distinction known also to Ephrem the Syrian,3 some scholars, especially Botte,4 argued that the original date of the solstice in Egypt was 6 January. Owing to calendar errors over the centuries, however, the solstice migrated to 25 December with the end result that there were two Egyptian solstice festivals, 25 December and 6 January.
Further, in the earliest extant lectionary evidence we have for Egypt, a fifth-century parchment palimpsest,5 the pericope of the wedding at Cana (John 2.1–7) is already assigned to the third of the three days (or the second of two days) of Epiphany, together with the baptism of Jesus (Mark 1.9–10) and the temptation of Jesus (Matt. 4.2) on 6 January itself. Again it is Epiphanius who draws attention to possible parallel pagan feasts on this day:
Therefore, in many places up to our own day there is reproduced that divine prodigy which took place then in testimony to the unbelieving; thus they testify in many places to springs and rivers changed to wine. Thus the spring of the Cibyra in the city of Cari, at the hour when the servants drew out and he said, ‘give to the ruler of the feast.’ And the spring in Gersa of Arabia gives the same witness. We have drunk from the spring of Cibyra, and our brothers from the spring, which is in the martyrium in Gerasa. And many in Egypt testify the same of the Nile. Therefore on the eleventh of Tybi according to the Egyptians all draw water and set it aside in Egypt itself and in many countries.6
Because other Christian and pagan sources refer either to the Nile’s own inundation process, to festal drawing water out of rivers, to the Alexandrian custom of bathing in water and blessing boats on 6 January, or even to water turning into wine for great feasts (Dionysius),7 scholars have again argued that pre-Christian myths and celebrations in Egypt associated with the waters of the Nile were influential in the adoption of the Cana story as well.
As attractive as the History of Religions approach may be to the origins of Epiphany, including the Cana pericope, Talley’s work has made it very difficult to accept that approach to the subject any longer. At least two reasons may be given for this. First, with regard to the dating of the pre-Christian Egyptian feasts on the supposed two solstice celebrations in Egypt, Talley demonstrated that there is absolutely no reliable correspondence between them and the Christian celebration of Epiphany.8 J. Neil Alexander offers a concise summary of Talley’s conclusions on this issue:
One of the principal explanations of the connection between Christmas on December 25 and Epiphany on January 6 has been sought by means of reconciling the calendrical inconsistencies caused by the quarter days of the annual solar cycle. The most valiant effort in this regard proposed that way back in 1996 B.C.E., during the reign of Amenemhet I, the winter solstice took place on a date that when transferred to the Julian calendrical system yielded January 6. According to this theory, an error in the calendar of one day in every 128 years pushes the date of the winter solstice to December 25 by the fourth century B.C.E… . [H]owever … the originator of this widely accepted hypothesis allowed one error in the sources to slip his otherwise precise calculations. The error is that whatever calendars may have been in use in Egypt, the Julian calendar dates only to 45 B.C.E. and any reconciliation of dates with it before that time, are historically meaningless, no matter how precise their calculation … A close reading of the sources that lie behind these suggestions [therefore] fails to substantiate … a close relationship between any pagan festivals and the Christian feast of Epiphany. The relationship between pagans and Christians at Rome, a relationship that shared a rich repertoire of solar metaphors and images does not have a clear parallel in the development of Epiphany.9
Second, although in the light of the fifth-century palimpsest parchment lectionary the addition of the Cana miracle was incorporated earlier into the immediate Epiphany context in Egypt than Talley assumed, he is certainly correct in noting that the several references to various water rites, including especially Christian blessings of the font on Epiphany in the East and drawing water, appear to be Christian in origin. And, significantly, water rites associated with pagan festivals, with the exception of, at least, one of the four annual feasts of the god Dionysius occurring on 5 January (Pater Liber), do not provide the sort of foundation from which to project a Christian feast. Talley wrote:
When all is said and done … from all the evidence we have considered for a pagan background to Epiphany nothing points definitely to a widespread festival on January 6. Even if we accept Epiphanius’ account of the Aion festival, we are left with severe problems. That festival seems to be distinguished from disquietingly similar observances on December 25 because the Aion feast is the distinctive local observance of the guardian of Alexandria, and thus not a widespread observance.10
As we saw in the previous chapter regarding the origins of Christmas, the alternative to the History of Religions hypothesis is the Calculation hypothesis, that hypothesis advanced originally by Duchesne in 1889, defended further by Engberding in the early 1950s, and reinvigorated by Talley. As with the date of Christmas occurring nine months after 25 March (= 14 Nisan, the traditional date of Jesus’ death and, presumably, his conception, in the West, according to this theory), so Duchesne, Engberding and Talley claimed that for Christians in Asia Minor 6 April (14 Artemisios) was chosen as the solar equivalent to 14 Nisan, the date of the Quartodeciman Pascha in the East, with the result that exactly nine months later 6 January occurs as the date of Jesus’ birth.11 Again, as Alexander summarizes,
once April 6 is established as the eastern date of the death (and conception) of Jesus, the date of his birth, a perfect nine months later, is easily calculated to be January 6. It would appear, once again, that the possibility of the date of Jesus’ birth, having been established on the basis of the acceptance of a particular date for his death, accurate or not, commends itself as the basis of January 6, at least as strongly as any similarity between pagan and Christian festivities.12
The modern appeal of the Calculation hypothesis for both Christmas and Epiphany is due, undoubtedly, to the theologically inviting paschal connotations of the dating, whereby the modern fascination with the ‘paschal mystery’ naturally commends itself even as somehow the origin for these two feasts. That is, it is theologically appealing to say that it is Christ’s death and resurrection, as the root metaphor for Christian life, which even determines and sheds light on the feasts of Jesus’ beginnings (i.e., Pascha + nine months = Epiphany or Christmas). This squares nicely with the approach of Raymond Brown’s excellent work on the infancy narratives (Matt. 1—2 and Luke 1—2) in both his The Birth of the Messiah (New York: Doubleday 1977) and his more popular version, An Adult Christ at Christmas (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press 1978).
One problem with this, however, as Engberding noted for Christmas, is that the calculation of a date does not necessarily mean that a celebration on that date appeared at the same time in history,13 and, hence, the eventual celebration of a feast on a particular date can be related to several factors, cultural, socio-political, as well as theological. Another problem, certainly, is the same as that noted for 25 March in the previous chapter, namely, unlike the birth parallels that proponents of this hypothesis have advocated, the fact remains that for Christmas and Epiphany either 25 March or 6 April become Jesus’ conception day and not the day of his birth. While, then, the Calculation hypothesis may still have much to commend it, perhaps even more for 6 January than for 25 December, based on the rather questionable existence of pagan parallels for 6 January, it does not provide, unfortunately, the definitive answer for the establishment of either Christmas or Epiphany.
Whether or not the History of Religions or the Calculation hypothesis (or some combination thereof) is the correct approach to the origins of Epiphany, one thing is absolutely certain. We know that already in the late second or early third century the date of 6 January was associated in Egypt both with Christ’s birth and with his baptism in the Jordan, and that among some, at least, it was already a liturgical celebration with a vigil. Our source for this is the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria (150–215), his treatise that focuses primarily on the relationship between Christian faith and classic philosophy:
From Julius Caesar, therefore, to the death of Commodus, are two hundred and thirty-six years, six months. And the whole from Romulus, who founded Rome, till the death of Commodus, amounts to nine hundred and fifty-three years, six months. And our Lord was born in the twenty-eighth year, when first the census was ordered to be taken in the reign of Augustus. And to prove that this is true, it is written in the Gospel by Luke as follows: ‘And in the fifteenth year, in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the word of the Lord came to John, the son of Zacharias.’ And again in the same book: ‘And Jesus was coming to His baptism, being about thirty years old,’ and so on … From the birth of Christ, therefore, to the death of Commodus are, in all, a hundred and ninety-four years, one month, thirteen days. And there are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus, and in the twenty-fifth day of Pachon. And the followers of Basilides hold the day of his baptism as a festival, spending the night before in readings.
And they say that it was the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, the fifteenth day of the month Tubi; and some that it was the eleventh of the same month, And treating of His passion, with very great accuracy, some say that it took place in the sixteenth year of Tiberius, on the twenty-fifth of Phamenoth; and others the twenty-fifth of Pharmuthi and others say that on the nineteenth of Pharmuthi the Saviour suffered. Further, others say that He was born on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of Pharmuthi.14
It was Roland Bainton who subjected Clement’s calculations to close scrutiny, with the outcome that the calendrical information given in the Stromateis results in the date of Jesus’ birth being assigned in Egypt to 6 January in 2 BCE.15
If 6 January was thought of as the date of Jesus’ birth, however, it was also the day, at least for the heretical (Gnostic) Basilidians, for celebrating Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, though the date wavers between 10 January (15 of Tybi) and 6 January (11 of Tybi). Whether Clement’s community at Alexandria already celebrated the baptism of Jesus at Epiphany or not, it is abundantly clear that Clement’s own theology of baptism would have been highly consistent with such a celebration. He writes:
But do not find fault with me for claiming that I have such knowledge of God. This claim was rightfully made by the Word, and he is outspoken. When the Lord was baptized, a voice loudly sounded from heaven, as a witness to him who was beloved: ‘You are my beloved Son; this day have I begotten you.’
This is what happens with us, whose model the Lord made himself. When we are baptized, we are enlightened; being enlightened, we become adopted sons [see Gal 4:5]; becoming adopted sons, we are made perfect; and becoming perfect, we are made divine. ‘I have said,’ it is written, ‘you are gods and all the sons of the Most High’ [Ps 81:6]. This ceremony is often called ‘free gift’ [Rom 5:2, 15; 7:24], ‘enlightenment’ [Heb 6:4; 10:32], ‘perfection’ [Jas 1:7; Heb 7:11], and ‘cleansing’ [Titus 3:5; Eph 5:26] – ‘cleansing,’ because through it we are completely purified of our sins; ‘free gift,’ because by it punishments due to our sins are remitted; ‘enlightenment,’ since by it we behold the wonderful holy light of salvation, that is, it enables us to see God clearly; finally, we call it ‘perfection’ as needing nothing further, for what more does he need who possesses the knowledge of God?16
That Jesus’ own baptism by John in the Jordan is Clement’s primary model for interpreting Christian baptism is further expressed by his use of the Old Testament typology of the Israelites crossing the Jordan under Joshua (= Jesus) into the promised land (see Josh. 3—5),17 a major theme also in Origen’s own treatment of baptism in the middle of the third century.18 And what many have suggested is a fragment of an early Epiphany homily in The Letter to Diognetus 11.3–5 points theologically in the same direction as well:
For which reason he sent the Word, that he might be manifested to the world; and he, being despised by the people [of the Jews], was, when preached by the Apostles, believed on by the Gentiles. This is he who was from the beginning, who appeared as if new, and was found old, and yet who is ever born afresh in the hearts of the saints. This is he who, being from everlasting, is today called the Son; through whom the Church is enriched, and grace, widely spread, increases in the saints, furnishing understanding, revealing mysteries, announcing times, rejoicing over the faithful, giving to those that seek, by whom the limits of faith are not broken through, nor the boundaries set by the fathers passed over.19
Whatever the situation may have been for Clement and Origen, liturgically it is Jesus’ baptism on 6 January, not his birth in Bethlehem, which will remain or become the primary content of Epiphany in the Christian East, with the exception of Jerusalem.20 In addition to the fifth-century parchment palimpsest lectionary, which, as we have seen, clearly assigns Jesus’ baptism (Mark 1.10–11) to 6 January, the so-called Canons of Athanasius from, at least, the second half of the fourth century in Egypt also witnesses to the connection between Epiphany and Jesus’ baptism. The relevant portion of Canon 16 reads:
[A]t the feast of the Lord’s Epiphany, which was in [the month] Tûbah, that is the [feast of] Baptism, they shall rejoice with them. The bishop shall gather all the widows and orphans and shall rejoice with them, with prayers and hymns, and shall give unto each according to his needs; for it is a day of blessing; in it was the Lord baptised of John … The last of all fruits is the olive, which is gathered in that day; wherefore by the Egyptians this is called the feast of the beginning of the year. As with the Hebrews New Year’s Day was at the Pascha, which is the first of Barmûdah. So again in the month of Tûbah did our Saviour appear as God, when, by a wondrous miracle, He made the water wine.21
John Cassian (d. 435) testifies to the same connection and, in passing, also indicates that Egypt had not yet accepted the 25 December date for Christ’s nativity in the early fifth century:
In the country of Egypt this custom is by ancient tradition observed that – when Epiphany is past, which the priests of that province regard as the time, both of our Lord’s baptism and also of His birth in the flesh, and so celebrate the commemoration of either mystery not separately as in the Western provinces but on the single festival of this day – letters are sent from the Bishop of Alexandria through all the Churches of Egypt, by which the beginning of Lent, and the day of Easter are pointed out not only in all the cities but also in all the monasteries.22
Based especially on the Canons of Athanasius, Talley was certainly correct in noting that just as the Chronograph of 354 indicates that at Rome the liturgical year began with Christmas,23 so the evidence for Egypt indicates that it began there with Epiphany.24 And, just as the miracle at Cana is clearly connected to Jesus’ baptism already in the Canons of Athanasius, so John Cassian connects Jesus’ birth in the flesh and baptism in his Conferences. Talley himself, however, tried to argue that the reason why the Canons of Athanasius make no reference to Jesus’ birth in connection with Epiphany, unlike both Epiphanius and Cassian, and, presumably, Clement, is because of the overall influence of Mark’s Gospel in the Alexandrian tradition. But, as we saw in our chapter on Lent, Talley’s theory that particular Gospels shaped the liturgical calendars of particular churches (e.g., the Gospel of Mark in Egypt) is no longer defensible in light of contemporary challenges to that hypothesis.25
What seems more likely to be the case, we would suggest, is that Jesus’ ‘birth’ and baptism in Egypt were seen together early on as essentially one event, namely, his baptism, in spite of what may legitimately be called Adoptionist overtones, and this was also the event of his being ‘begotten’ by God the Father at his baptism in the Jordan, as the textual variant of Luke 3.22 makes clear: ‘Thou art my beloved Son; today I have begotten thee.’ Such is the theology of Clement and Origen for Egypt, a theology highly consonant in associating birth and baptism together, and one that is particularly strong in the early Syrian tradition to which we turn in the next section of this chapter. Whether that indicates that the Gospel of Mark was influential in shaping the entire Egyptian lectionary is not clear, since it is the Lucan variant that is the most suggestive here. Nevertheless, it is Mark 1.10–11 that is read on Epiphany in Egypt and, of course, it is in the first chapter of Mark where the Gospel writer claims to be presenting ‘the beginning of the gospel’ (Mark 1.1, emphasis added). And, the fact that the Cana pericope would be attached to this celebration should not be all that surprising since, as Peter Jeffery has noted, ‘the baptismal interpretation of the Cana story has long-standing importance in Christian Egypt’.26
SYRIA
In her monumental essay, ‘Die Licht-Erscheinung bei der Taufe Jesu und der Ursprung des Epiphanie-festes’,27 Gabriele Winkler not only underscores the overall Eastern origins of Epiphany, arguing for a date within the earliest stratum of Christian history, but, by means of a detailed and exhaustive analysis of early Syrian and Armenian sources, claims precisely that the earliest layer of celebration had to do with Jesus’ pneumatic ‘birth’ in the Jordan, where, according to these texts, the Holy Spirit comes to ‘rest’ on him and the divine voice and fire or shining light reveal the moment of his ‘birth’. She writes:
It must be stressed here with all clarity that in the original understanding of the baptism of Jesus, the issue was first of all his divine conception and birth, not a rebirth, and not a revelation of his deity at the Jordan, as Usener has already indicated. An impartial examination of the material clearly shows that Jesus was born as the Son of God at his baptism – whether that material be the account of the baptism in Mark’s Gospel which, as is well known, combines the beginning of Jesus with his baptism in the Jordan and stresses that the Holy Spirit descended ‘into him,’ or Luke’s Gospel with the well attested variant to the voice from heaven: ‘You are my Son, this day have I begotten you,’ both of which are in striking harmony with the Jewish-Christian Gospels. Traces of this archaic conception can still be detected in Syrian and Armenian sources. Furthermore, it makes one stop and think when one realizes that the Syrian and, in connection with that, the Armenian baptismal rites were originally based on John 3:3–5 and thematize exclusively the birth of the baptizand from the maternal womb of the Spirit (later the raising from the maternal womb of the water) and at the same time stress that the prototype of Christian baptism is the baptism of Jesus. That is to say nothing else than that the baptism of Jesus was understood as a birth.28
At Antioch in the late 380s John Chrysostom, in one of his Epiphany homilies, similarly notes that the content of the feast is the baptism of Jesus, including a rite for the sanctification of waters, and in another he indicates that the 25 December date for Christ’s birth had only been known there for about ten years.29 Within the hymns of Ephrem as well, Winkler concludes that while several themes were connected with the single feast of Jesus’ beginnings on 6 January in Syria, above all it was the birth and baptism of Jesus that emerge as the primary foci. Connell also draws attention to the hymns of Ephrem, noting the important juxtaposition of Incarnation, birth and baptism. In Hymn 23, for example, Ephrem says:
Blessed is Your birth that stirred up the universe! …
[Too] small for You is the earth’s lap,
but large enough for You is Mary’s lap. He dwelt in a lap, and He healed by the hem [of his garment].
He was wrapped [in] swaddling clothes in baseness, but they offered Him gifts.
He put on the garments of you, and helps emerged from them.
He put on the water of baptism, and rays flashed out from it.
With His humiliations [came] His exaltations. Blessed is He who joins His glory to His suffering! …
Great One Who became a baby, by Your birth again You begot me.
Pure One Who was baptized, let Your washing wash us of impurity.
Living One Who was embalmed, let us obtain life by Your death.30
Indeed, for Winkler, it is precisely the shining light at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan (translated above as ‘rays flashed out from it’), according also to the ancient Gospel of the Ebionites and reflected even in the name for Epiphany in the Syrian East (Denha, ‘Dawn of the Light’), that ultimately gave rise to the association of the light at Jesus’ birth (Luke 2.8–9) and even within the Synoptic accounts of Jesus’ transfiguration on Mount Tabor, another part of the Epiphany themes in some communities. This Syrian focus Winkler sees reflected already in Clement of Alexandria’s assertion about the date of Epiphany in Egypt.
[I]t is especially interesting that the oldest attestation of the Feast of Epiphany derives from Basilides and his followers who, like Tatian, come from Syria. They too assign the greatest significance to the light … The followers of Basilides celebrated the baptism of Jesus in Egypt on the 11th or the 15th of the Month of Tybi, as Clement of Alexandria is able to report … The 15th of Tybi corresponds with the 10th of January. One should not be dissuaded from this since the selection of the 15th of Tybi is connected with the dating based on the course of the moon, as Usener has already pointed out: The 15th of the month was looked upon in the religious imagination as a day of the full moon and a day of light.31
Further, Winkler summarizes the later development of Epiphany as the separation of Jesus’ birth and baptism:
Just as one may discern in the sources a shift from the shining light at the baptism of Jesus to his equally Spirit-wrought birth in Bethlehem, so also a shift has taken place in the accent of the leitmotivs connected with Epiphany. First, the baptism of Jesus, apparently understood as birth, was most solemnly celebrated. This made room for a shift in emphasis to his birth in Bethlehem. At first, however, his baptism in the Jordan still remained attached to his birth. The witness of Ephrem, for example, shows this. The initial oscillation between the birth and baptism of Jesus as the emphasis of the leitmotivs for the Feast of Epiphany further contrasted the two themes. This oscillation is nothing other than precursor for the separation, whose way was prepared in the fourth century, of the most important contents of Epiphany: the 6th of January established itself as the feast of the baptism of Jesus, and a new separate feast was introduced, i.e., the celebration of the birth of Jesus on December 25.32
One of the major reasons for such a shift is the further development of orthodox Christology, representing a move away from the potential Adoptionist overtones of Jesus’ ‘birth’ in the Jordan. Russo has recently drawn attention to the fact that F. C. Conybeare in 1898 had already noted that Epiphany was the feast of Adoptionist Christianity; that is, the spiritual birth of Christ in the Jordan, the moment at which Jesus became the Father’s only-begotten Son (cf. Ps. 2.7), was the centre of salvation history and the model for humanity’s adoption unto divine sonship.33 Conybeare had also noted that Christ’s baptism was an integral component of early creedal formulae in Syria and Armenia, an understanding that Winkler herself has surveyed in detail within the Syrian and Armenian sources.34 The lack of any mention of it in the Nicene Creed, therefore, is almost certainly deliberate.
This Christological shift Winkler sees further documented especially in the Greek terminology associated with the feast. From the Syriac Denha (‘The Dawn of the Light’) and possibly the Greek τ
φ
τα (‘The Lights’) as the title for the feast in Cappadocia,35 other terminology used as equivalents for both 6 January and 25 December elsewhere in the East, that is, either 
πιφάνεια (plural, τ πιφάνια) and even θεοφάνεια, all underscore the sense of the revelation or manifestation of Jesus’ divine identity in the Bethlehem manger or at the Jordan.36 Such terminology used for the feasts of both Christmas and Epiphany has moved considerably away from viewing Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan as his ‘birth’.
Several years ago Georg Kretschmar, in his study of the baptismal liturgy in Egypt, claimed that Egypt and Syria shared a common ‘root relationship’ in both rite and theology.37 Winkler’s work now suggests that this commonality certainly extended also to the origins and celebration of Epiphany.
JERUSALEM
According to the fifth-century Armenian Lectionary, the church at Jerusalem celebrated Christ’s nativity on 6 January, reading Matthew 2.1–11 (the adoration of the Magi), which was prefaced the day before in Bethlehem at 4.00 p.m. by a short station at the Shepherds’ Field, with the reading of Luke 2.8–10 assigned, and by an all-night vigil.38 Unfortunately, the manuscript of Egeria’s pilgrimage diary, our principal source for the feasts and seasons of Jerusalem in the late fourth century, has a lacuna, an entire missing leaf, at the very point when she is beginning to describe Epiphany. In fact, all we learn from her is that at both Jerusalem and Bethlehem the feast is celebrated for eight days, the decorations ‘really are too marvellous for words’, and the bishop has to be in Jerusalem to celebrate the feast.39 Presumably, what Egeria is alluding to in her description is what the Armenian Lectionary contains, and it is the return procession from the vigil at Bethlehem where the manuscript begins. That is, Epiphany at Jerusalem celebrated the nativity of Christ on 6 January. Indeed, we know from Jerome in 411 that the 25 December Christmas still had not yet been accepted in Jerusalem, though Jerome makes the interesting point that 6 January was the day in the Christian East that celebrated Christ’s ‘baptism, at which the heavens opened for Christ …’40
Most recently, Terian’s critical edition and commentary on The Letter of Macarius I to the Armenians provides evidence that in 335, almost 50 years earlier than Egeria’s visit, the Jerusalem church was celebrating baptism on Easter, Pentecost and Epiphany, giving us the earliest date after Clement and, possibly, the Letter to Diognetus, for connecting Epiphany and the conferral of baptism on that day in the Christian East.41 If it is the case, however, that Jerusalem was already celebrating baptisms in conjunction with the ‘Epiphany of the Nativity’ on 6 January, neither Egeria nor the author of the Mystagogical Catecheses demonstrates any knowledge of this. Nevertheless, it is important to note with Kilian McDonnell that even with the strong Romans 6 theology of the Mystagogical Catecheses during the time in which paschal baptism is becoming the theoretical initiatory ‘norm’,42 the interpretation of the post-baptismal anointing with chrism demonstrates that ‘there is no retreating from the Jordan event as being normative for the sacrament of initiation’.43 Combined with this, a clear focus on Jesus’ baptism as paradigmatic for Christian baptism in Cyril of Jerusalem’s Baptismal Catecheses44 suggests that the Epiphany correlation with baptism documented in Macarius’ Letter to the Armenians may still be playing some role, at least theologically, in the Jerusalem rites of the late fourth century.
Further, the lacuna at this location in Egeria becomes quite interesting since, because of it, we really have no idea what was actually being celebrated as Epiphany on 6 January in Jerusalem during her visit. If we take, naturally, the contents of the Armenian Lectionary as representing the late-fourth-century Jerusalem celebration of Epiphany and its octave, one could only conclude, as we have seen, that it is Christ’s birth, including the visit of the Magi (Matt. 2.1–12), that was the focus. Alexander, for example, takes this as a given, arguing that an initial three-day celebration of Epiphany in Jerusalem during Egeria’s visit was structured according to a course reading of the Gospel of Matthew at the beginning of the liturgical year, a principle we have seen before as indicative of Thomas Talley’s approach to the liturgical year in general, where a single Gospel was read sequentially, thus giving shape to the calendar itself. According to Alexander, the list of Matthean Gospel readings for the first three days of the feast originally would have been Matthew 1.18–25 (6 January), Matthew 2.1–12 (7 January) and Matthew 2.13–23 (8 January). By the time of the Armenian Lectionary, however, the Matthew 2.1–12 reading had shifted from 7 January to 5 January, where it became the Gospel reading of the Epiphany vigil at Bethlehem.45 But Alexander’s hypothesis is challenged by the assigned readings for the newly established 25 December feast of Christmas in the Georgian Lectionary, with Matthew 1.18–25 assigned to the 24 December vigil and Matthew 2.1–23 to the liturgy on 25 December itself.46 And what is of great interest is that the next text in Matthean sequence, Matthew 3.1–17, the baptism of Jesus, appearing nowhere in the Armenian Lectionary, is assigned in the Georgian Lectionary to 6 January at the Martyrium, complete with a preliminary baptismal-oriented vigil, including a blessing of water.47
It is well known, of course, that the Armenian Church never accepted the ‘new’ 25 December date for Christ’s nativity and, instead, has maintained the 6 January date until the present day. But what is celebrated by the Armenians on 6 January is both the birth of Christ, with Matthew 1.18–25 (not Matt. 2.1–12) being read at the Badarak (eucharistic liturgy), and a concluding rite focused on the baptism of Jesus, including a blessing of the waters with Matthew 3.1–17 assigned as the Gospel text. Scholars, such as Renoux and Talley, have argued that this Armenian connection between birth and baptism on 6 January represents a later synthesis based upon ‘Monophysite’ doctrinal concerns and polemics against a focus on a separate ‘bodily’ nativity celebration.48 Winkler, however, has challenged this argument, seeing the Armenian connection of these feasts as reflecting a very early stage in the development of Epiphany:
The further development of the celebration of Epiphany in the fourth century and the introduction of the feast of Christmas at this time in several regions of the East has to be tied … to the evolution and change in the christological debates. The initial tension between the baptism of Jesus and his birth in Bethlehem, which lay behind the Gospels and also seems most closely to affect the feast of Epiphany at its beginnings, is thereby gradually resolved: from the one feast on Epiphany, which in its oldest eastern form apparently understood the baptism of Jesus as his birth, there first developed a celebration on January 6 which linked Jesus’ baptism with his birth in Bethlehem (as, for example, in Syria, Armenia, and Egypt). Then, the emphasis shifted either to Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem (as was the case above all in Jerusalem for a considerable length of time), or else a new feast was introduced …49
Both the Letter of Macarius to the Armenians and current Armenian liturgical practice on Epiphany would support strongly Winkler’s hypothesis.
CAPPADOCIA (AND CONSTANTINOPLE)
Prior to Terian’s restoration of the Letter of Macarius as an early-fourth-century document, the earliest undisputed testimony to the baptism of converts on the feast of Epiphany was Gregory of Nazianzus’ Homily 40 On Holy Baptism, preached in Constantinople on 6 January 380. Here, in his attempt to convince people not to wait until one of the major feasts to be baptized, Gregory demonstrates that, as at Jerusalem around 335, so also at Constantinople, and most likely Cappadocia, Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost had existed for some time as the three major occasions for conferring baptism.50
Regarding the origins of Epiphany itself in Cappadocia, however, we do not have evidence of it until Christmas on 25 December had already been established as well.51 Similarly, traditional scholarship sought to unpack the various names associated with both of these feasts in Cappadocia – τ φτα, πιφάνεια, τ θεοφάνια, and τ Γενέθλια – claiming that after the establishment of Christmas in 380 the terms Theophany (Θεοφάνια) and Nativity or Birth (τ Γενέθλια) were reserved exclusively for 25 December, and the title ‘The Lights’ (τ φτα) was a new term essentially replacing Epiphany as the designation for the 6 January feast now celebrating exclusively Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan.52 Talley, however, took a rather different approach to the question of terminology for the feast. Claiming that Basil of Caesarea already knew the 25 December feast of Christmas in Cappadocia, according to a homily of Basil’s, In sanctam Christi generationem, which both Botte and Talley assigned to 25 December during Basil’s episcopate (363–79), Talley noted that τ Γενέθλια became the term of choice in the Christian East for 25 December, with both Theophany and the Feast of Lights for 6 January.53 It should also be recalled here that Winkler suggested, however tentatively, that the use of τ φτα for 6 January, together with the Syriac Denha, may well be among the earliest designations for the feast, before an emphasis on the revelation of Jesus’ divine identity became the focus.54
Further, at the end of our previous chapter we expressed some doubt about the traditional scholarly approach to the origins of Christmas, which claims that the adoption of the 25 December feast was a deliberate anti-Arian move focusing on the pre-existence and Incarnation of the Logos. But there can be no question that in Cappadocia, according to the sermons studied by Jill Burnett Comings, Nicene and Constantinopolitan orthodox Trinitarian and Christological concerns played a strong role in the celebration of both 25 December and 6 January.55 While this does not mean necessarily that the adoption of Christmas and Epiphany came about for doctrinal reasons, it does underscore the use of the content of these feasts for promoting and defending orthodox dogma.
The real dogmatic concerns with Epiphany and Christmas in the East, however, have to do with the separation of Jesus’ birth and baptism on 6 January. That is, contemporary scholarship on Epiphany in the East, viewing 6 January, like 25 December in the West, as a feast of Jesus’ ‘beginnings’ at the head of the year, has enabled us to see that Christological issues are part of the mix with 6 January from the start. At the same time that the separation of Jesus’ birth and baptism into distinct feasts is taking place, both now concerned with the revelation of his divine identity, not only are we in the midst of the great Trinitarian and Christological debates but we are precisely in that moment of history when, shortly after the Council of Nicaea, baptism at Easter is becoming the theoretical, but certainly not the practical, norm in both East and West.56 Therefore, as a result of later Christological development in the Church, together with the eventual acceptance of the 25 December Christmas in the East, the apparent Adoptionist overtones of the earlier theology of Jesus’ pneumatic ‘birth’ in the Jordan were suppressed, overtones that would have appealed greatly to the Arian theological position, and a reinterpretation of Epiphany not as the ‘birth’ of Christ in the Jordan but as a commemoration of his baptism alone resulted.
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1 Epiphanius, Panarion 51.22.3–11; ET from Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (New York: Pueblo 1986; 2nd edn, Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 1991), pp. 104–6.
2 See Bernard Botte, Les Origines de la Noël et de l’Épiphanie, Textes et Études liturgiques 1 (Louvain: Abbaye de Mont César 1932), pp. 68–78.
3 See Ephrem, Hymns on the Nativity 5.13. Talley speculates here that both Epiphanius and Ephrem may well be displaying resistance to the Western 25 December date of Christmas by their comments: The Origins of the Liturgical Year, p. 105.
4 See Botte, Les Origines de la Noël et de l’Épiphanie, p. 66.
5 Mario Geymonat, ‘Un antico lezionario della chiesa di Alessandria’ in Laurea Corona: Studies in Honour of Edward Coleiro, ed. Anthony Bonanno and H. C. R. Vella (Amsterdam: Grüner 1987), pp. 186–96.
6 Epiphanius, Panarion 51.30.8–1–3; ET from Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, pp. 112–13.
7 For texts, see Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, pp. 112–17.
8 Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, pp. 103–17.
9 J. Neil Alexander, Waiting for the Coming: The Liturgical Meaning of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany (Washington, DC: The Pastoral Press 1993), pp. 70–1.
10 Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, p. 117.
11 Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, pp. 8ff., 93.
12 Alexander, Waiting for the Coming, p. 72.
13 See above, p. 126.
14 Stromateis 1.21; ET from ANF 2, pp. 332–3.
15 See Roland H. Bainton, ‘Basilidian Chronology and New Testament Interpretation’, Journal of Biblical Literature 42 (1923), pp. 81–134; Roland H. Bainton, ‘The Origins of Epiphany’ in his Early and Medieval Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press 1962), pp. 22–38.
16 Paedagogus 6.25–6; ET from Thomas M. Finn (ed.), Early Christian Baptism and the Catechumenate: Italy, North Africa, and Egypt, Message of the Fathers of the Church 6 (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 1992), p. 186 (emphasis added).
17 Ecologae propheticae 5–6.
18 See Jean Laporte, ‘Models from Philo in Origen’s Teaching on Original Sin’ in Maxwell E. Johnson (ed.), Living Water, Sealing Spirit: Essays on Christian Initiation (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 1995), pp. 113–15. For more on Origen’s baptismal theology, see also C. Blanc, ‘Le baptême d’après Origène’, SP 11 (1972), pp. 113–24; H. Crouzel, ‘Origène et la structure du sacrement’, Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 2 (1962), pp. 81–92; Jean Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1956), pp. 99–113; Jean Daniélou, Origen (New York: Sheed and Ward 1955), pp. 52–61; Everett Ferguson, ‘Baptism according to Origen’, Evangelical Quarterly 78 (2006), pp. 117–35.
19 ET from ANF 1, p. 29 (emphasis added).
20 See below, pp. 146–8.
21 W. Riedel and W. E. Crum, The Canons of Athanasius of Alexandria (London: Williams & Norgate 1904), pp. 26–7. See also Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, p. 122.
22 John Cassian, Conferences 10.2; ET from NPNF 2nd Series 11, p. 401.
23 See above, p. 123.
24 Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, p. 123.
25 See above, pp. 102–4.
26 Peter Jeffery, The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled: Imagined Rituals of Sex, Death, and Madness in a Biblical Forgery (New Haven: Yale University Press 2007), p. 78.
27 Oriens Christianus 78 (1994), pp. 177–229; ET = ‘The Appearance of the Light at the Baptism of Jesus and the Origins of the Feast of Epiphany’ in Maxwell E. Johnson (ed.), Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 2000), pp. 291–348, from where it will be cited in this chapter.
28 Johnson, Between Memory and Hope, p. 330.
29 See Martin F. Connell, Eternity Today: On the Liturgical Year 1 (New York/London: Continuum 2006), p. 167. In his Epiphany homily in 387 Chrysostom refers to people drawing out sanctified water on 6 January and taking it home with them for use; for ET, see Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, pp. 114–15. Such blessing of water for home use is a practice still done in the Byzantine tradition and elsewhere in the Christian East today.
30 Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns, trans. and intro. Kathleen E. McVey (New York: Paulist Press 1989), pp. 189–90 (emphasis added).
31 Winkler, ‘The Appearance of the Light’, p. 345.
32 Winkler, ‘The Appearance of the Light’, p. 345.
33 Nicholas Russo, ‘The Origins of Lent’ (PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame 2009), p. 393. The reference to Conybeare is to The Key of Truth, p. xcviii, n. 2.
34 See Gabriele Winkler, Über die Entwicklungsgeschichte des armenischen Symbolums. Ein Vergleich mit dem syrischen u. griechischen Formelgut unter Einbezug der relevanten georgischen u. äthiopischen Quellen, OCA 262 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute 2000).
35 On Epiphany in Cappadocia see below, pp. 149–50.
36 Winkler, ‘The Appearance of the Light’, pp. 346–7.
37 Georg Kretschmar, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der Liturgie, inbesondere der Taufliturgie, in Ägypten’, Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie 8 (1963), pp. 47–8.
38 Charles (Athanase) Renoux, Le Codex arménien Jérusalem 121 2, Patrologia Orientalis 36 (Turnhout: Brepols 1971), pp. 211–21.
39 Egeria, Itinerarium 25.8–12.
40 Jerome, Commentary on Ezekiel (PL 25:18).
41 Abraham Terian, Macarius of Jerusalem, Letter to the Armenians, A.D. 335, AVANT: Treasures of the Armenian Christian Tradition 4 (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press 2008), pp. 83–5.
42 See above, pp. 81–6.
43 Kilian McDonnell, The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: The Trinitarian and Cosmic Order of Salvation (Collegeville: Glazier 1996), p. 225.
44 See McDonnell, The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, pp. 218–20.
45 Alexander, Waiting for the Coming, pp. 80–90.
46 Michel Tarchnischvili, Le Grand Lectionnaire de l’Église de Jérusalem (Ve–VIIIe siècles), Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 188 (Louvain 1959), pp. 19–20.
47 Tarchnischvili, Le Grand Lectionnaire, pp. 19–20. See also John Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, OCA 228 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute 1987), pp. 74–5.
48 See Charles (Athanase) Renoux, ‘L’Épiphanie à Jérusalem au IVe et au Ve siècle d’après le Lectionnaire arménien de Jérusalem’, Revue des études arméniennes 2 (1965), pp. 343–59; Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, pp. 139–40.
49 Winkler, ‘The Appearance of the Light’, pp. 294–5.
50 Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 40.24. For understanding the origins and development of the 6 January feast among the Cappadocians, the work of Jill Burnett Comings is indispensable, and we are largely dependent on her in this section: Aspects of the Liturgical Year in Cappadocia (325–430), Patristic Studies 7 (New York: Lang 2005), pp. 61–94. See also Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2009), pp. 582–616; Nancy E. Johnson, ‘Living Death: Baptism and the Christian Life in the Works of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa’ (PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame 2008). For a study and translation of the homilies and other writings of Gregory of Nazianzus, see the recent work of Brian E. Daley, Gregory of Nazianzus (London/New York: Routledge 2006).
51 See above, p. 130.
52 See Christine Mohrmann, ‘Epiphania’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 37 (1953), pp. 655ff.; Botte, Les Origines de la Noël et de l’Épiphanie, pp. 78ff.; Justin Mossay, Les Fêtes de Noël et de l’Épiphanie d’après les sources cappadociennes du IVe siècle (Louvain: Abbaye du Mont César 1965), pp. 214ff.
53 Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, p. 138.
54 See Winkler, ‘The Appearance of the Light’, pp. 346–7.
55 Burnett Comings, Aspects of the Liturgical Year in Cappadocia (325–430), pp. 87–90.
56 See above, pp. 81–6.