of Joshua-Kadmiel (Johannes) and the Messiah Jesus? In this regard it is certainly not without significance that the figure of the High Priest Joshua in Zechariah wavers between the Messiah (Zemah) and a mere forerunner of the latter. John's question to Jesus, "Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another?" (Matt. xi. 3) is exactly the question which strikes the reader in reading the corresponding passage of Zechariah. Possibly the presence of the dove at the baptism in the Jordan obtains in this way a still closer explanation, for Semiramis, the Dove Goddess, is the spouse of Oannes (Ninus); John and the dove accordingly are the parents, who are present at the "birth" of the divine son. But the violent death of John at Herod's command and the head of the prophet upon the dish have prototypes in the myth of Cadmus. For the head of the latter is supposed to have been cut off by his brother and to have been buried upon a brazen shield, a cult story which plays a part especially in the Mysteries of the Cabiri Gods, to whom Cadmus belongs (cf. Creuzer, "Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker," 1820, ii. 333). According to Josephus (op. cit.) John was put to death because Herod feared political disorders from his appearance, while Matthew makes him fall a victim to Herod's revenge, the latter having been censured by John for his criminal marriage with the wife of his brother. Moreover, the prophet Elijah, who accuses Ahab of having yielded to his wife Jezebel and of having murdered Naboth (1 Kings xxi.), as well as the prophet Nathan, who reproaches David for having killed Uriah and having married his wife (2 Sam. xii., cf. also Esther v. 7, 2), are also prototypes. According to this a religious movement or sect must, in the minds of posterity, have been condensed into the figure of John the Baptist. Its followers, who closely resembled the Essenes, in view of the imminent nearness of the kingdom of heaven, exhorted men to a conversion of mind, looked upon the Messiah in the sense of Daniel essentially as the God appointed ("awakened") judge over the living and the dead, and sought by baptism to apply to the penitents the magic effects which should flow from the name of their Cult God Johannes (Oannes), the Babylonian-Mandaic Baptism and Water-God. The stern and gloomy character of this sect may have been reflected in the character sketch of the John in the Gospels, and between it and the sect of Jesus many collisions, disagreements, and conversions appear to have taken place (Matt. xi. 1 sq.; Luke vii. 18 sqq.; John i. 37). Possibly the sect of Jesus was originally only an excrescence from, and a development of, the conception which the disciples of John had of the Messiah, as is indicated by the supposed blood relationship between Jesus and John. At any rate, the adherents of the former in their belief in the sufferings, death, and resurrection of the Messiah felt that their point of view was higher and more perfect as compared with that of