Of a great number of modes of expression and images in the New
Testament we know that they originated from the common treasury of
the languages of the secret sects of the Orient, having their source
above all in Mandaism and the Mithraic religion. Thus "the rock,"
"the water," "the bread," "the book," or "the light of life,"
[247] "the second death," "the vine," "the good shepherd," &c.,
are simply expressions which in part are known also by the Rigveda
and there belong to the ideas grouped about Agni, the God of Fire,
Life, and Shepherds. Of the latter, too, as of Jesus, it is said
that he loses not a single one of the flock entrusted to his care,
[248] for Pushan, to whom the hymn in this connection is addressed,
is only a form of Agni. In its symbols also the earliest Christianity
coincides with Indian thought in such a striking manner that it can
scarcely be explained as chance. Thus the horse, [249] the hare, and
the peacock, which play so great a part in symbolic pictures of the
catacombs, point to an ultimately Vedic origin, where they all stand in
connection with the nature of Agni. Again, the Fish was already to be
found in the Indian Fire Worship and appears to have here originally
represented Agni swimming in the water of the clouds, the ocean of
heaven. [250] In the hymn of the Rigveda itself Agni is often invoked
as "the Bull." This was probably originally a simple nature symbol,
the Bull as image of the strength of the God; then the Fire-God and
Sun-God, in his capacity of preparer of the Soma cup, was identified
with the moon (Manu), whose crescents were taken as the horns of a
bull. Later, however, the image of the Bull was driven out by that
of the Ram. As early as in the Rigveda there is frequent mention of
the God's "banner of smoke." Thus he was accustomed to be represented
leading a ram with a banner in his hand or simply with a banner in his
hand with the picture of a ram upon it, just as Christ is portrayed
under the shape of a ram or lamb bearing a banner like a cross.
About the year 800 B.C. the sun, the heavenly Agni, which had hitherto
been at the commencement of spring in the constellation of the Bull,
entered (as a consequence of the advance of equality between day and
night) that of the Ram. Thus it became, according to astrological
modes of thought, itself a ram. [251] While it had formerly, in the
shape of a bull, opened the spring and released the world from the
power of winter--an image which was still retained in the Mithras
Cult--these functions were now transferred to the ram, and this became
a symbol of the God and the beast offered in expiatory sacrifices. Now
the constellation of the Ram was described by the Persians in a word
which could also mean lamb. In other cases also the lamb often took
the place of the ram in the sacrificial worship of Nearer Asia; for
example, among the Jews, who were accustomed to consume the Paschal
lamb at the beginning of the year in spring. This is the explanation
of the mystical lamb in the Revelation of John (which is scarcely an
original Christian work, but shows signs of a pre-Christian Cult of
Jesus [252]), being depicted by seven horns or rays in a way which
rather implies the idea of a ram.
The fifth chapter of Revelation describes the lamb in its quality
of heavenly victim of expiation. No one can open the book with the
seven seals, which God holds in his right hand, in which the fate of
the world appears to be written, but the lamb alone succeeds in so
doing--"In the midst of the four-and-twenty elders who, clad in white
garments and with crowns on their heads, sit around the divine throne,
and in the midst of the four beasts who sit around it, the lamb,
suddenly and without anything happening, stands as though it had been
slain, having seven horns and seven eyes which are the seven spirits of
God, sent forth into all the earth. And when he had taken the book the
four living creatures and the four-and-twenty elders fell down before
the lamb, having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense,
which are the prayers of the saints. And they sing a new song saying,
Worthy art thou to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for
thou wast slain and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every
tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and madest them to be unto
our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth." [253]
The scene recalls to mind the self-offering of Agni in the midst of
the Gods, Priests, and victims, and the ascension of the God which
then took place. Just as the sacrifice of the lamb in Revelation
refers to the entrance of the sun into the constellation of the Ram,
and the victory of light over wintry darkness and the beginning of
a new life which it heralds, so were mystic sacrifices of bulls and
rams in the other Sun Cults of Nearer Asia, especially in those of
Attis and Mithras, very customary for purposes of expiation or new
birth. On these occasions the beast was immolated while standing,
and the blood which poured in streams from the victim was looked upon
as a means of cleansing and of life-giving. In any case, throughout
Revelation the lamb plays the part of the heavenly fire revealing
God's illuminatory nature, unfolding his wisdom and enlightening the
world. As it is said of the heavenly Jerusalem: "And the city needed
no sun and no moon to shine upon her, for the glory of God illumined
her, and her light is the lamb." [254]
Again, in the Church of the first century, at Easter, a lamb was
solemnly slaughtered upon an altar and its blood collected in a
chalice. [255] Accordingly in the early days of Christianity the
comparison of Christ with the light and the lamb was a very favourite
one. Above all the Gospel of John makes the widest use of it. As had
already been done in the Vedic Cult of Agni, here too were identified
with Christ the creative word of God that had existed before the
world--the life, the light, and the lamb. And he was also called
"the light of the world" that came to light up the darkness ruling
upon the earth, as well as "the Lamb of God, who bore the sins of the
world." [256] And indeed the Latin expression for lamb (agnus) also
expresses its relation to the ancient Fire-God and its sanctity as a
sacrificial animal. For its root is connected with ignis (Scr. agni,
the purifying fire, and yagna, victim), and also, according to Festus
Pompeius, with the Greek "hagnos," pure, consecrated, and "hagnistes,"
the expiator. [257] In this sense "Agnus Dei," the Lamb of God,
as Christ is very frequently called, is in fact nothing else than
"Agni Deus," since Agnus stands in a certain measure as the Latin
translation for Agni. [258] But in India at the so-called Hulfeast,
at the spring equinox, a ram (lamb) used to be solemnly burnt as an
expiatory victim representing Agni. The "crucifixion" of Jesus, as will
likewise appear, is in a certain sense only the symbol of the burning
of the divine lamb, which by its death redeems man from sin. In both
cases the lamb refers to the lamb of the Zodiac, the constellation of
the Ram, into which the sun enters at the time of the spring equinox,
and with which consequently, in accordance with the astrological way
of looking at things, it is blended, and which is as though burnt up
by it. Thus were completed the victory of the Sun Fire (Agni) over
the night of winter and the resurrection of nature to a new life,
this cosmic process finding its reflection in the sacrifice upon
earth of a lamb (agnus).
During the first century after Christ the lamb in association with
light and fire was among the most popular images in ecclesiastical
language and symbolism. The heathen Romans used to hang "bullæ"
round the necks of their children as amulets. The Christians
used consecrated waxen lambs, which were manufactured out of the
remains of the Easter candles of the preceding year and distributed
during Easter week. The belief then attached itself to these "Agnus
Dei's," that if they were preserved in a house they gave protection
against lightning and fire. Above all the lamps offered a convenient
opportunity for symbolising Christ as a light, and thus making use
of the image of the lamb. [259] The motif of the lamb with the cross
is also found very frequently in old Christian art upon glass bowls,
sarcophagi, and articles of use of all kinds. And indeed in such cases
the cross is sometimes found upon the head or shoulder, sometimes at
the side of the lamb or even behind him, while a nimbus in the shape
of a disc of sunlight surrounds his head and points to the "light"
nature of the lamb. The nimbus, too, is an old Indian symbol, and
thus indicates that the whole conception was borrowed from the circle
of Indian ideas. Later the lamb is also found upon the cross itself,
and indeed at the point of intersection of the two arms surrounded by
the disc of sunlight. This seems to point to the Saviour's death upon
the cross, the cross here appearing to be understood as the gibbet. But
is it really certain that the cross in the world of Christian thought
possessed this significance from the beginning as the instrument by
means of which Jesus was put to death?
In the whole of Christendom it passes as a settled matter that Jesus
"died upon the cross"; but this has the shape, as it is usually
represented among painters, of the so-called Latin cross, in which the
horizontal crosspiece is shorter than the vertical beam. On what then
does the opinion rest that the cross is the gibbet? The Evangelists
themselves give us no information on this point. The Jews described
the instrument which they made use of in executions by the expression
"wood" or "tree." Under this description it often occurs in the Greek
translation of the Old Testament, in which the gibbet is rendered by
xúlon, the same expression being also found in the Gospels. Usually,
however, the gibbet is described as staurós (i.e., stake), so much
so that staurós and xúlon pass for synonyms. The Latin translation of
both these words is crux. By this the Romans understood any apparatus
for the execution of men generally, without thinking, however, as a
rule of anything else than a stake or gallows (patibulum, stipes) upon
which, as Livy tells us, the delinquent was bound with chains or ropes
and so delivered over to death. [260] That the method of execution in
Palestine differed in any way from this is not in any way shown. Among
the Jews also the condemned used to be hanged upon a simple stake or
beam, and exposed to a lingering death from heat, hunger, and thirst,
as well as from the natural tension of his muscles. "To fasten to the
cross" (stauroun, afigere cruci) accordingly does not mean either in
East or West to crucify in our sense, but at first simply "to torture"
or "martyr," and later "to hang upon a stake or gallows." And in this
connection it appears that the piercing of hands and feet with nails,
at least at the time at which the execution of Jesus is supposed to
have occurred, was something quite unusual, if it was ever employed
at all. The expressions prospassaleuein and proséloun, moreover,
usually signify only to "fasten," "to hang upon a nail," but not at
all "to nail to" in the special sense required. [261]
There is not then the least occasion for assuming that according to
original Christian views an exception to this mode of proceeding was
made at the execution of Jesus. The only place in the Gospels where
there is any mention of the "marks of the nails" (viz., John xx. 25)
belongs, as does the whole Gospel, to a relatively later time,
and appears, as does so much in John, as a mere strengthening and
exaggeration of the original story. For example, Luke xxiv. 39, upon
which John is based, does not speak at all of nail-marks, but merely
of the marks of the wounds which the condemned must naturally have
received as a consequence of being fastened to the stake. Accordingly
the idea that Christ was "nailed" to the cross was in the earliest
Christianity by no means the ruling one. Ambrose, for example, only
speaks of the "cords" of the "cross" and the "ligatures of the passion"
("usque ad crucis laqueos ac retia passionis"), [262] and consequently
knew nothing of nails having been used in this case. [263] If we
consider that the "crucifixion" of Jesus corresponds to the hanging
of Attis, Osiris, and so forth, and that the idea of the gibbeted
gods of Nearer Asia called forth and fixed the Christian view; if we
remember that Haman, the prototype of Jesus at the Purim feast, was
also hanged upon a gallows, [264] then it becomes doubly improbable
that our present ideas on the matter correspond to the views of
the early Christians. For although we have no direct picture of the
hanging of those Gods, yet we possess representations of the execution
of Marsyas by Apollo, in which the God has his rival hauled up on to a
tree by ropes round his wrists, which have been bound together. [265]
But Marsyas, the inventor of the flute, the friend and guide of Cybele
in the search for the lost Attis, is no other than the latter himself,
or at any rate a personality very near akin to Attis. [266] It is not
difficult to conclude that Attis too, or the man who represented him
in the rites, was hung in the same manner to the stake or tree-trunk
and thus put to death. Thus it seems that originally the manner of
death of the Jewish Messiah was imagined in the same way, and so the
heathens too called the new God in scorn "the Hanged One."
How, then, did the idea come into existence that Jesus did not die upon
a simple gallows, but rather upon wood having the well-known form of
the cross? It arose out of a misunderstanding, from considering as
the same and mingling two ideas which were originally distinct but
described by the same word wood, tree, xúlon, lignum, arbor. This word
signifies, as we have already said, on the one hand indeed the stake
or gallows (staurós, crux) upon which the criminal was executed; but
the same word, corresponding to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament,
also referred to the "wood," "the tree of life," which was supposed
to stand in Paradise. According to the Revelation of John it was to
serve as food for the holy in the new Paradise to come, [267] and it
was honoured by the Christians as the "seal" and guarantee of their
salvation under the form of the mystic cross or Tau.
In all private religious associations and secret cults of later
antiquity the members made use of a secret sign of recognition or
union. This they carried about in the form, in some cases, of wooden,
bronze, or silver amulets hung round the neck or concealed beneath
the clothes, in others woven in their garments, or tattooed upon the
forehead, neck, breast, hands, &c. Among these signs was the cross,
and it was usually described under the name "Tau," after the letter
of the old Phoenician alphabet. Such an application of the cross
to mystic or religious ends reaches back into grey antiquity. From
of old the cross was in use in the cult of the Egyptian Gods,
especially of Isis and Horus. It was also found among the Assyrians
and Persians, serving, as the pictures show, in part as the mark
and ornament of distinguished persons, such as priests and kings,
in part also as a religious attribute in the hands of the Gods and
their worshippers. According to some it was the sign which Jahwe
ordered the Israelites to paint upon their doors with the blood of
the lamb when he sent the angel of death to destroy the first-born of
their Egyptian oppressors. It played a similar part also in Isaiah
[268] and Ezekiel, [269] when it was a question of separating
the god-fearing Israelites from the crowd of other men whom Jahwe
purposed to destroy. When the Israelites were pressed in battle by
the Amalekites Moses is said to have been helped by Aaron and Hur to
stretch out his arms in the shape of that magic sign, and thus to have
rendered possible a victory for his people over their enemies. [270]
Among the other nations of antiquity also--the Greeks, Thracians,
the Gaulish Druids, and so on--the Tau was applied in a similar
manner to ritualistic and mystic ends. It appears as an ornament
on the images of the most different divinities and heroes--e.g.,
Apollo, Dionysus, Demeter, Diana (the Phoenician Astarte). It is also
found upon innumerable Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Phoenician coins,
upon vases, pictures, jewellery, &c. In Alexandria the Christians
found it chiselled upon the stone when the temple of Serapis was
destroyed, in 391. In this temple Serapis himself was represented
of superhuman size, with arms outstretched in the form of a cross,
as though embracing the universe. In Rome the Vestal virgins wore
the cross upon a ribbon round the neck. Indeed, it even served as an
ornament upon the weapons of the Roman legions and upon the standards
of the cavalry long before Constantine, by his well-known "vision,"
gave occasion for its being expressly introduced under the form of the
so-called "Monogram of Christ" into the army as a military sign. [271]
But in the North also we find the cross, not only in the shape of the
hooked-cross and the three-armed cross (Triskele), but also in the form
of Thor's hammer, upon runic, stones, weapons, utensils, ornaments,
amulets, &c. And when the heathens of the North, as Snorre informs us,
marked themselves in the hour of death with a spear, they scratched
upon their bodies one of the sacred signs that has been mentioned,
in doing which they dedicated themselves to God. [272]
That here we have to do with a sun symbol is easily recognised wherever
the simple, equally-armed cross appears duplicated with an oblique
cross having the same point of intersection with it, [eight ray star
symbol], or where it has the shape of a perpendicular which is cut
symmetrically by two other lines crossing one another, [six ray star
symbol]. And as a matter of fact this symbol of a sun shedding
its rays is found upon numberless coins and illustrations, in which
it is obvious that a reference to the sun is intended--e.g., upon
the coins of the Egyptian Ptolemies, of the city Gods of Rome, of
Augustus and the Flavian Cæsars. Here the Sun sign appears to have
been adopted as a consequence of the fusing of the Sun Cult of later
antiquity with the cult of the Emperor. Much more frequent, however,
is the simple Tau, sometimes, indeed, in a shape with equal limbs
(Greek cross), +, sometimes with the upright below lengthened (Latin
cross), sometimes upright, sometimes oblique (St. Andrew's cross), ×,
sometimes, again, like the Greek letter Tau, T, sometimes in the
shape of the so-called mirror of Venus, [Venus symbol], in which the
ring plainly refers to the sun, sometimes in that of the Svastika,
or hooked cross, [swastika], sometimes with, sometimes without a
circle, and so on. A form made up of the oblique and the ring cross
of the Egyptians (so-called Key of the Nile) is the cross known under
the description of the "Monogram of Christ." According to the legend
it was first employed by Constantine on account of his "vision"; and
ecclesiastical writers, especially on the Catholic side, try even
to-day to support this view, in spite of all facts. For this form of
the cross also is clearly of pre-Christian origin, and had its
prototype in the ancient Bactrian Labarum cross, as is found, for
example, upon the coins of the Bactrian king Hippostratos (about
130 B.C.), of the Egyptian Ptolemies, of Mithridates, upon Attic
Tetradrachma, &c. [273]
After the careful investigations on this subject which have been
undertaken by French savants especially, there can be no doubt that
we have before us in this so-called "seal" of the Gods and religious
personalities a symbol of the creative force of nature, of the
resurrection and the new life, a pledge of divine protection in this
world and of everlasting blessedness after. As such it appears upon
heathen sarcophagi and tombstones; and on this account in some cases
their Christian character is too quickly assumed. Moreover, the cross
has been preserved in present-day musical notation as the sign of the
raising of a note, [274] while its use in the Mysteries and private
Cult associations is authority for the statement that precisely in
these the thought of a new-birth and resurrection in company with the
hero of the association or God of the union stood as a central point
of faith. One understands the painful feeling of the Christians at the
fact that the private sign used by them and their special sacraments
were in use among all the secret cults of antiquity. They could explain
this to themselves only as the work of spiteful dæmons and an evil
imitation of Christian usages on the heathens' part. [275] In reality
the symbol of the cross is much older than Christianity; and, indeed,
the sign of the cross is found associated in a special manner with the
cult of divinities of nature or life with its alternations of birth,
blossoming, and decay, representatives of the fertility and creative
force of nature, the Light-Gods and Sun-Gods subjected to death and
triumphing victoriously over it. It is only as such, as Gods who
died and rose again, that they were divinities of the soul and so of
the Mysteries and pious fraternities. The idea of the soul, however,
is found everywhere in nature religion considered as being connected
with the warmth of life and with fire, just as the sun was honoured as
the highest divinity and, so to speak, as the visible manifestation
of the world-soul solely on account of its fiery nature. Should not,
then, the symbol of life, which in its developed form plainly refers
to the sun, in its simplest and original shape point to the fire,
this "earliest phenomenon" of all religious worship?
Naturally, indeed, different views can be held as to what the various
forms of the cross betoken. Thus, for example, according to Burnouf,
Schliemann, and others, the Svastika represents the "fire's cradle,"
i.e., the pith of the wood, from which in oldest times in the point
of intersection of the two arms the fire was produced by whirling
round an inserted stick. [276] On the other hand, according to the
view most widespread at the present day, it simply symbolises the
twirling movement when making the fire, and on this, too, rests its
application as symbol of the sun's course. [277] Hochart considers
the cross in the shape of the Greek Tau as the inserted stick
(pramantha) of the Vedic priests. [278] Very likely, however, this
form arose simply through the identity of sound between the Greek and
Phoenician letter, the Greeks having interchanged the like-sounding
foreign letter with their own Tau. That the cross generally speaking,
however, is connected with the Fire Cult, and that both parts of the
sign originally contained a reference to the pieces of wood (aranî)
of which in most ancient times use was made to produce fire, has
been placed beyond doubt by the investigations into the matter. This
is confirmed inter alia by the use of the symbol in the worship of
the Vestals, the Roman fire-priestesses. This is the explanation
of the wide extent of the symbol of the cross. Not only among the
peoples of antiquity and in Europe, but also in Asia among the
Indians and Chinese, it is in use from ancient times. In America,
too, among the Mexicans and Incas, it played a part in worship
long before the arrival of Europeans. In the same way is explained
the close association of that symbol with the priestly office and
kingly dignity, which was itself often connected with that office;
similarly the intimate relations between the sign of the cross and the
Gods of Fertility, Vegetation, and Seasons. For all of these were, as
representatives of the warmth of life and the soul's breath, in their
deepest nature, Fire-Gods special aspects, closer characterisations
and connections of that one divinity, of whom the oldest form known
to us is in the Vedic Agni, and in whose service the priests of all
peoples and times grew to their overwhelming strength. [279] Julius
Firmicus Maternus was thus quite right when he declared that Mithras,
whose followers bore the sign of the cross upon their foreheads and
at their communion-meal had the cross, imprinted upon the holy loaf,
before their eyes, was an ancient Fire-God. [280] But if the cross is
the symbol of fire and also of the Mediator God, who brings earth and
heaven into connection, then the reason can be found why Plato in the
"Timæus" makes the World Soul in the form of a Chi, i.e., an oblique
cross, stretched between heaven and earth. [281] Then, indeed, it is
not strange that the Christians of the first century regarded as an
inspiration of the devil Plato's doctrine of the mediatory office of
the "double-natured" World Soul, which, according to that philosopher,
was formed from a mixture of ideal and sensible matter. It is not
strange that a Justin, "the most foolish of the Christian fathers"
(Robertson), could actually assert that Plato borrowed the idea,
as well as that of a world-conflagration, from--Moses. [282]
In the Old Testament also, as was shown above, we meet the cross. Here
it served as a mark of recognition and distinction of the God-fearing
Israelites from the heathen, and as a magic sign. With a similar
significance we meet it again in the New Testament. In the Revelation
of John it appears as "the seal (sphragís) of the living God." By it
here, too, are the chosen ones of Israel marked off from the rest of
mankind whom judgment has overtaken. At the same time, it is said
that this sign is imprinted upon the foreheads of the inhabitants
of the true Jerusalem. [283] In the Epistles to the Galatians and
Ephesians it is said of the believers in Christ that they were
"sealed" before God by the mystic sign upon their foreheads, hands,
or feet. The sign thus serves them as a pledge of redemption. [284]
Again, in the Epistle of Barnabas ix. 8, the cross contained in the
letter T is expressly interpreted as (charis) "grace." Under the
form of the Greek Tau the cross appears during the first century
of the Christian era, especially among the Christians in Egypt, and
according to many was a symbol of Adonis or Tammuz. [285] Now since
the expressions xúlon and staurós, lignum and crux, were of double
significance and denoted both the "seal" of religious salvation and
the gibbet, it is possible that the two different significations
became of themselves identical in the minds of the faithful. [286]
This was possible so much the more easily since the biblical account
placed by the side of the "tree of life" in Paradise a "tree of
death," the fateful "tree of the knowledge of good and evil," which
was supposed to have been accountable for the death of Adam and so of
the whole of mankind, and as such made the comparison possible with
the wood upon which Jesus died. We meet again with a special form of
the cross in the old Assyrian or Babylonian so-called "mystical tree
of mystery," which was also a symbol of life. Among the Persians it
appears to have had some reference to the holy Haoma tree; and here,
too, as well as in India, where it was connected with the Bodhi tree,
under which Sakyamuni by his devout humility rose to be a Buddha,
it was represented in the artificial shape of a many-armed cross. [287]
One and the same word, then (xúlon, crux), betokens both the gibbet
and the pledge of life. Christ himself appears as the true "Tree of
Life," as the original of that miraculous tree the sight of which
gave life to the first man in Paradise, which will be the food of the
blessed in the world to come, and is represented symbolically by the
mystical cross. It was easy to unite the ideas connected with those
expressions, to look upon the "seal" of Christ (to semeion tou staurou,
signum crucis) as the cross upon which he suffered, and vice-versâ,
and to ascribe to the "wood" upon which Jesus is supposed to have died,
the shape of the mystic sign, the Tau, or cross. The heathens had been
accustomed to regard the stake upon which their Gods were hanged both
as the representative of the God in question and the symbol of life
and fruitfulness. For example, the stake furnished with four oblique
sticks (like a telegraph post), which went by the name of the tatu,
tat, dad, or ded and was planted at the feast of Osiris in Egypt, often
had a rough picture of the God painted upon it, as also the pine-tree
trunk of Attis, in which connection the idea that the seed contained
in the cones of the rock-pine from of old had served men as food,
while the sap found in them was prepared into an intoxicating drink
(Soma), played its part. [288] We are reminded also of the Germanic
custom of the planting of the may-tree. This was not only a symbol
of the Spring God, but also represented the life bestowed by him. In
the same way the cross did not appear to the Christians originally
as the form of the gibbet upon which God died, but as "the tree of
life," the symbol of the new birth and redemption. Since, however,
the word for the mystical sign was identical with the expression for
the gibbet, the double meaning led to the gibbet of Jesus being looked
upon as the symbol of life and redemption, and the idea of the gibbet
was mingled with that of the cross, the shape of the latter being
imagined for the former. As Justin in his conversation with the Jew
Trypho informs us, the Jews used to run a spit lengthwise through
the whole body of the Paschal lamb and another cross-wise through
its breast, upon which the forefeet were fastened, so that the two
spits made the shape of a cross. This was to them obviously not a
symbol of execution but rather the sign of reconcilement with Jahwe
and of the new life thereon depending. For the Christians, however,
who compared their Saviour with the Paschal lamb, this may have been an
additional cause for the above-mentioned commingling of ideas, and this
may have strengthened them in the conception that their God died upon
the "cross." The Phrygians, moreover, according to Firmicus Maternus,
at the Spring Feast of Attis, used to fasten a ram or lamb at the foot
of the fig-tree trunk on which the image of their God was hung. [289]
In agreement with this view is the fact that the earliest
representations of Christ in connection with the cross had for their
subject not the suffering and crucified, but the miraculous Saviour
triumphing over sickness and death. He appeared as a youthful God
with the Book of the Law, the Gospel, in his hand, the lamb at his
feet, the cross upon his head or in his right hand, just as the
heathen Gods, a Jupiter, or some crowned ruler, used to be depicted
with a cross-shaped sceptre. Or Jesus' head was placed before the
cross, and this in the orb of the sun--and exactly at the point of
intersection of the arms of the cross, thus at the place where one
otherwise finds the lamb. Even the Church, probably with a right
feeling of the identity of Agnus and Agni, and in order to remove
the connection of ideas therein contained, in the year 692, by the
Quinisext Synod (in Trullo), forbade the pictures of the lamb and
required the representation to be of the Saviour's human shape. In
spite of this even then they did not represent "the Crucified" in
the present-day sense of the word, but portrayed Christ in the form
of one standing before the cross praying with outstretched arms. Or
he was shown risen from the grave, or standing upon the Gospels at
the foot of the cross, out of this arising later the support for the
feet in the pictures of him crucified. Here he was represented with
open eyes, with his head encircled by the sun's orb. In all of these
different representations accordingly the cross only brought again
before the eyes in symbolical form what was at the same time expressed
by the figure of Christ standing at the cross, just as at the feasts
of Osiris or Attis the God was doubly represented, both in his true
shape (as image or puppet) and in the symbolical form of the Jatu or
pine-tree trunk. This mode of depicting Christ lasted a long while,
even though as early as the fifth or sixth century mention is made
of crucifixion, and in arbitrary interpretation of Psa. xxii. 17
he was depicted with the marks of the nails. For, as has been said,
"crux" betokens both the gibbet and the mystical sign, and the marks
of the nails served to symbolise the Saviour's triumph over pain and
death. An ivory plate in the British Museum in London, mentioned and
copied by Kraus, [290] is considered the oldest representation of a
crucifixion in our present sense. It is said to be of fifth-century
origin. This assignment of date is, however, just as uncertain as
the other, according to which the miniature from the Syrian Gospel
manuscript of the monk Rabula of the monastery of Zagba in Mesopotamia,
which also has the crucifixion for subject and is to be found in the
Bibliotheca Laurenziana at Florence, is assigned to the year 586. In
any case, as a general rule until the eleventh century it was not
the dead but the living Christ who was depicted before or on the
cross. Consequently an illustration in the Bibliotheca Laurenziana
of about the date 1060 is considered as the first certain example of
a dead crucified Christ. [291]
The conception of Christ being put to death upon the cross is,
comparatively speaking, a late one. The connection of Christ
with the cross was originally not a reproduction of the manner
of his death. It rather symbolises, as in the ancient Mysteries,
precisely the reverse--the victory of the Christian Cult-God over
death--the idea of resurrection and life. Hence it is obvious that
the above-mentioned juxtaposition of the cross and lamb must have
expressed the same idea. Here, too, the cross was originally only
the symbol of fire and life. The lamb encircled by the sun's orb
refers to the ceremonial burning of the lamb at the spring equinox
as an expiatory sacrifice and as a pledge of a new life. It appears
the more plainly to be a figure of Agni (Agnus), since it is usually
placed exactly at the point of intersection of the two arms--that is,
at the place whence the divine spark first issued at the kindling of
the fire with the two aranî. [292]