Bible Myths and their Parallels in other Religions by T. W. Doane

XXVI.) that it was not God the Father, who was supposed by the ancients to have been the _Creator_ of the world, but God the Son, the Redeemer and Saviour of Mankind. Now, this Redeemer and Saviour was, as we have seen, the Sun, and Prof. Max Müller tells us that in the _Vedic_ mythology, the Sun is not the bright Deva only, "who performs his daily task in the sky, but he is supposed to perform much greater work. He is looked upon, in fact, as the _Ruler_, as the _Establisher_, as the _Creator of the world_."[496:6] Having been invoked as the "Life-bringer," the Sun is also called--in the Rig-Veda--"the Breath or Life of all that move and rest;" and lastly he becomes "_The Maker of all things_," by whom all the worlds have been brought together.[497:1] There is a prayer in the _Vedas_, called _Gayatree_, which consists of three measured lines, and is considered the holiest and most efficacious of all their religious forms. Sir William Jones translates it thus: "Let us adore the supremacy of that spiritual Sun, the godhead, who illuminates all, who re-creates all, from whom all proceed, to whom all must return; whom we invoke to direct our undertakings aright in our progress toward his holy seat." With Seneca (a Roman philosopher, born at Cordova, Spain, 61 B. C.) then, we can say: "You may call the Creator of all things by different names (Bacchus, Hercules, Mercury, etc.), but they are only different names of the same divine being, the _Sun_."