[37] III. 12, vii. 3 sqq., ix. 4, xiv. 1, xx. 4, xxii. 4. [↑]
[38] [Gal. vi. 17]; Ephes. i. 13 sq. [↑]
[39] Mourant Brock, op. cit., 177 sqq., 178 sqq. [↑]
[40] So also in Tertullian when, with reference to the passage of Ezekiel above quoted (ix. 5), he describes the Greek letter Tau as “our [the Christians’] kind of cross” (nostra species crucis), not because it had the shape of the gibbet upon which Jesus is supposed to have died, but because it represented the seal or sign upon the inhabitants of the New Jerusalem (“Contra Marcionem,” iii. 22). And when in the same work (iii. 18) he explains the horns of the “unicorn” (ox?) mentioned in the Blessing of Moses ([Deut. xxxiii. 17]) as the two arms of the cross, this happens only for the reason that the sign of union and uplifting and the gibbet became commingled in his fancy into the one and the same form (cf. also “Adv. Judaeos,” 10, and Justin, “Dial.,” 91; also Hochart, op. cit., 365–369). [↑]
[41] Zöckler, op. cit., 14 sq. [↑]
[42] Frazer, “Adonis, Attis, Osiris,” 174 sq., 276 sqq. [↑]
[43] Cf. on the whole subject Hochart, op. cit., 359 sqq.; P. Schmidt, “Gesch. Jesu,” 386–394. In spite of all his efforts Zöckler has not succeeded in proving that Jesus was nailed to a piece of wood having the form of a four-armed cross. The assertion that this form of gibbet was borrowed by the Romans from the Carthaginians, and was the usual one in late pre-Christian days, is simply a figment of the imagination. All passages usually brought forward in support of this traditional view either prove nothing, as the appeal to [Luke xxiv. 39], [John xx. 20 and 25], or they refer to the symbol, not to the gibbet of the cross, and consequently cannot serve to support the usual view of the matter (Zöckler, op. cit., especially 78; 431 sqq.). [↑]
[44] “Geschichte der christlichen Kunst,” 174. [↑]
[45] Cf. Detzel, “Christl. Ikonographie,” 1894, 392 sqq.; Hochart, op. cit., 378 sqq. [↑]
[46] Moreover, the so-called Flabellum, the fan, which in the early Christian pictures of the birth of Christ a servant holds before the child, shows the connection of the Christ Cult and that of Agni. This fan, which was in use in divine service of the Western Church as late as the fourteenth century, cannot be for the driving away of insects or for cooling purposes, as is usually considered, for this would obviously be in contradiction to the “winter” birth of the Saviour. It refers to the fanning of the divine spark in the ancient Indian fire-worship. In this sense it has been retained until the present day in the Greek and Armenian rites, in which during the Mass the fan is waved to and fro over the altar. A synopsis of all the facts and illustrations bearing on the matter are to be found in A. Malvert’s “Wissenschaft und Religion,” 1904. [↑]