Here we have trace of an apparent myth relating to the unction of Jesus at his baptism. Was there any passage to this effect in the Hebrew Gospel translated by St. Jerome? It is hard to believe it. Had there been, we might have expected him to allude to it. But that there was some unction of Christ mentioned in the early Gospels, I think is probable. If there were not, how did Jesus, so early, obtain the name of Christ, the Anointed One? That name was given to him before his divinity was wholly believed in, and when he was regarded only as the Messiah—nay, even before the apostles and disciples had begun to see in him anything higher than a teacher sent from God, a Rabbi founding a new school. It is more natural to suppose that the surname of the Anointed One was given to him because of some event in his life with which they were acquainted, than because they applied to him prophecies at a time when certainly they had no idea that such prophecies were spoken of him. If some anointing did really accompany the baptism, then one can understand the importance attached to the baptism by the Elkesaites and other Gnostic sects; and how they had some ground for their doctrine that Jesus became the Christ only on his baptism. It is remarkable that, according to St. John’s Gospel, it is directly after the baptism that Andrew tells his brother Simon, “We have found the Messias, which is ... the Anointed.”(308) Twice in the Acts is Jesus spoken of as the Anointed: “Thy holy child Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed.”(309) The second occasion is remarkable, for it again apparently associates the anointing with the baptism. St. Peter “opened his mouth and said ... The word which God sent unto the children of Israel ... that word ye know, which was published throughout all Judaea, and began from Galilee after the baptism which John preached; how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power.”(310) I do not say that such an anointing did take place, but that it is probable it did. When Gnosticism fixed on this anointing as the communication to Christ of his divine mission and Messiahship, then mention of it was cut out of the Gospels in possession of the Church, and consequently the Canonical Gospels are without it to this day. But the Christian ceremonial of baptism, which was founded on what took place at the baptism of the Lord, maintained this unction as part of the sacrament, in the Eastern Church never to be dissociated from the actual baptism, but in the Western Church to be separated from it and elevated into a separate sacrament—Confirmation. But if in the original Hebrew Gospel there was mention of the anointing of Jesus at or after his baptism, as I contend is probable, this mention did not include an account of the oil being expressed from the branch of the Tree of Life; that is a later addition, in full agreement with the fantastic ideas which were gradually permeating and colouring Judaic Christianity.