Note 40 — VI THE SELF-OFFERING OF THE MESSIAH. THE SUPPER

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). ↑