One of their most important credentials as peacemakers was the Flavians’ victory over the Jews, and one of the most common issues of coins under both Vespasian and Titus is the “Judea Capta” series, usually symbolized by a palm tree and a mourning woman or enslaved “Jewess.” Sometimes, the triumphant Titus stands opposite the palm tree, as in this example:
Judea Capta
Even Otho, one of the Flavian predecessors during the chaotic Year of Four Emperors between Nero and the Flavians, prematurely proclaimed a new Pax Orbis Terrarum, or “peace on earth,” which Flavian coinage would later, with more legitimacy, dub Pacis Orbis Terrarum. The emperors of Rome, in bringing “peace on earth,” were saviors not just of Rome, but of all nations, and the whole world.
Otho and Pax Orbis Terrarum
Vespasian and Pacis Orbis Terrarum
This Roman peace was seen as eternal. And the eternity of Rome, or “Aeternitas,” was duly celebrated on their coinage:
Vespasian and Eternity
The Romans never forgot that these benefits were divinely bestowed, the result of both Destiny and Providence (personified by the deity Fortuna), also celebrated by the Flavian mints.
Titus and Providence
Titus honored his father Vespasian’s deification and used it for his own purposes, just as Augustus did Julius Caesar’s, by declaring himself to be the “Son of God”:
Titus Son of God and Judea Capta
While the coincidence of moral concepts regularly depicted by Romans, especially Flavians, with key Christian ideas and values is stunning, their commonality might be ascribed to the fact that Roman propagandists and the first Christian apologists were operating in the same cultural context. After all, the earliest Gospels were written during Flavian rule.
On the other hand, we should not expect any specific sectarian sentiments, especially monotheistic ones, to be expressed on Roman coins since they were cast with an aim of appealing to the widest possible cross-section of a sprawling and diverse empire.
According to one historian of the period:
The ideology [of the Emperor Vespasian] found expression in every medium, notably in buildings restored or freshly constructed in Rome. Coinage was banal. Types were borrowed from past reigns, allusions reassuringly predictable. (49)
So, given their empire-wide purpose, the similarity of themes between Roman propaganda and Christian ideology is all the more remarkable. Far from the cultural clash between Imperial Rome and Christianity that has been promulgated in popular tradition, the truth is that they extolled largely identical virtues.
So, although quasi-divine Hellenistic monarchs of the east had used similar imagery in the distant past, and other emperors had used some dolphin-and-trident motifs, the clear intersection of Christian symbolism with Titus’s dolphin-and-anchor motif during this time is doubly challenging to the traditional idea of Christian and Roman conflict.
How could a symbol so specifically derived from the pagan god Apollo and associated with pagan emperors who had just conquered Judea and destroyed the Jewish Temple become the most prominent symbol adopted by Christians in the city of Rome itself?
Christians were supposed to have regarded all things pagan as corrupt and, during this time, were allegedly persecuted by imperial Roman authorities to such a degree that they had to disguise their symbols. Christians are said to have been willing to die rather than surrender to pagan worship in any form—especially any kind of emperor worship.
As we have seen, it is easy to understand why Emperor Titus would adopt the dolphin-and-anchor motif for himself. Other emperors had used similar images to associate themselves with Apollo. Ancient monarchs from the Hellenistic east used similar images for the same reason. The gods Apollo and Serapis (and in part Aesclepius, Apollo’s son) also made an especially good “fit” for the Flavians, who billed themselves as healers who had “arisen in the east,” like solar deities. And, although it never became a religious symbol for Jews, their monarchs had also used an anchor on their coins frequently enough for it to be associated with Jewish monarchy. This could also be a useful element for the coinage of the Flavian conquerors of Judea.
The anchor may have become a recognizable symbol of Jewish monarchy at this time, and, as we have seen, the fish became a representation of Jesus and a common symbol used in Christianity’s earliest stories and literature. So, it may be argued, these factors led the first Christians to independently come upon the combination of the two as an appropriate way to represent Christianity. That the combined image was previously associated with Apollo, a healing god, would only further associate it with the healing miracles of Jesus. Being a pagan image, it was also “safe,” a form of symbolism that was unlikely to offend the sensibilities of Roman officials.
However tempting this interpretation might be, however, it fails to reckon with the problems we have been considering: only decades after the Crucifixion, Christians in Rome must have already abandoned all Jewish inhibitions against violating the Ten Commandments’ prohibition of graven images and Jewish laws forbidding any representation of the divine. As we have seen, if the earliest Christians were authentically pious Jews, they would never have combined the image of an anchor with any animal, and certainly not one associated with a pagan god or a Roman emperor. Moreover, the pagan symbol they chose was the exact same symbol adopted by a Roman emperor on coins widely circulated at the time. And that emperor’s imperial cult was advertising him as the Jewish Messiah!
Jews, not Christians, forbade graven images, it might be countered. In addition to Kosher diet and circumcision, this appears to have been yet another aspect of Mosaic Law that had been abandoned by Pauline Christians. But this still left Christians free to choose whatever symbols they wished, symbols unlikely to be recognized by outsiders, if that was their concern, while still not affiliating themselves with the emperor.
So why are Christians using readily identified imperial pagan symbols—including trident-and-dolphin images engraved on the Colosseum, of all places, which was only a couple of miles from their catacombs—despite their alleged hostility to and persecution by the Roman government?
Why should Jesus himself have so many characteristics in common with a pagan deity, e.g. a resurrected suffering savior/healing man-god? Indeed, why should he share so many historical parallels with the Roman emperors Vespasian and Titus, especially Jewish messianic claims that are paradoxically combined with the characteristics of a pagan “Mystery Cult” man-god, even a healer god with identical miracles and parallel accomplishments on the Sea of Galilee?
How could they end up using the same symbol—unless it was deliberate?
That they used the same unique symbol at that time cannot be random synchronicity in light of all of the other parallels.
We know that the first Christians did not create their own distinctive and unique symbol. They had an unlimited catalog to choose from at a time rich with visual iconography. Yet they chose the symbolism of pagan imperial propaganda prominently depicted on current coinage and public architecture.
Though visual representations of the divine are forbidden under Jewish law, Jews did employ definite symbols associated with their faith. If the movement originated in Judea, why didn’t the first Christians mine Judaic traditions instead of turning to pagan and imperial references?