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
[Greek: genethlia], 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 duni 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.
[Greek: epiphaneia]; Cotelerius _In constit. Apost._ (Antwerp, 1698),
lib. v. cap. 13; R. Bingham, _Antiquities_ (London, 1834), bk. xx.;
Ad. Jacoby, _Bericht uber 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.)