It appears, then, that this meal, presided over by the High Priest as representative of Aaron, was partaken of by twelve other priests, and Robertson rightly sees herein the Jewish prototype of the Christian Supper and of the number of apostles--the Twelve--present at it. But the High Priest Aaron is a personification of the Jewish Ark of the Covenant, that is, of the visible expression of the Covenant between God and man, one of the chief prototypes of the Messiah. And if the self-offering of the Messiah, as we have seen above (p. 78), has its precedent in the self-offering of Aaron, so also the great solemnity of the Aaronic sacrificial meal would not be wanting in the story of the Christian Redeemer. As is well known, Joshua too, the Jesus of the Old Testament, whom we have learnt to recognise as an ancient Ephraimitic God of the Sun and Fruitfulness, was accompanied in his passage of the Jordan by twelve assistants, one from each tribe. And he is said after circumcising the people to have celebrated the Paschal Feast on the other bank. [239] Hence, taking into account what has been said above concerning Joshua, we are probably justified in drawing the conclusion that his name was permanently connected with the partaking of the Easter lamb. [240] In any case the so-called "Supper" of Christianity did not only later take its place as the central point of religious activity, but from the beginning it held this central position in the cults of those sects out of which Christianity was developed. It was the point of crystallisation, the highest point, of the other ritualistic acts, in a way the germ cell out of which in association with the idea of the death and resurrection of the God Redeemer the Christian outlook upon the world has grown. Just as in the Vedic Agni Cult the sacrifice offered by men to their God was a self-sacrifice of this God as well in a subjective as in an objective sense; just as the participating in common of the sacrificial gifts served the purpose of rendering the sacrifice in an inward sense their very own, and thereby making them immediate participators in its efficacy, so, too, the Christian partakes in the bread of the body of his God and in the wine drinks his blood in order to become as it were himself God. The Evangelists make the Supper coincide with the Feast of the Pasch, because originally a man was immolated on this occasion; and he, as the first-born and most valuable of sacrificial gifts, took the place of the God who offered himself in sacrifice. [241]