Alexamenos Graffito

✦ The earliest known depictions of the crucifixion include the Alexamenos Graffito (shown above) and the Constanza gemstones. These depictions show Jesus tied to a T-shaped cross, without the use of nails.

✦ Jews and Christians of that time were mocked for worshiping a donkey god. The source of this mockery originated from an event documented by the ancient Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (60 BCE - 30 BCE) in Bibliotheca Historica, 34.1. The Hellenistic King Antiochus Epiphanes of the Seleucid Empire attacked Jerusalem and executed many Jews in 168 BCE. Diodorus wrote that Antiochus entered the inner sanctuary of the Jewish Temple and found an image of a bearded man (whom he supposed to be Moses) seated on an ass carved in stone.

✦ The Roman historian, Cornelius Tacitus (56 CE - 120 CE), wrote in Histories, 5.4 (c. 105 CE):

They [the Jews] consecrated, in the inner sanctuary, an effigy of that creature (the ass) whose guidance ended their thirst and wandering.

✦ The Hellenized Egyptian orator, Apion Mochthos (c. 25 BCE - c. 47 CE), was known to entertain a great hatred of the Jews and promoted the claim of Jewish onolatry (donkey worship). Flavius Josephus objected to this insult and wrote in Against Apion (97 CE):

Within this sanctuary, Apion has the effrontery to assert that the Jews kept an ass’s head, worshipping that animal and deeming it worthy of the deepest reverence. The fact was disclosed, he maintains, on the occasion of the spoliation of the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes when the head made of gold and worth a high price, was discovered.

✦ The charge of ass-worship carried over to the Christian movement. The Christian apologist, Minucius Felix (c. 150 CE - c. 250 CE), wrote in Octavius (c. 190 CE):

Chapter 9, paragraph 3 [comment from a pagan]: I hear that they [Christians] venerate the head of that vilest of all animals, the ass, consecrated by some foolish conceit or other.

Chapter 28, paragraph 7 [Christian defense response]: From them comes the story that you say you hear that among us the head of the ass is divine. Who is so stupid that he would worship it?

✦ The Christian theologian, Tertullian (155 CE - 220 CE), wrote in Apologeticum, 16.1-5 (197 CE):

For some of you have dreamed of an ass’s head being our God; a suspicion of this sort Cornelius Tacitus hath introduced… but now a new report of our God hath been lately set forth in this City [Rome] since a certain wretch hired to cheat the wild beasts, put forth a picture with some title as this, “The God of the Christians conceived of an ass.” This was a creature with ass’s ears, with a hoof on one foot, carrying a book and wearing a gown… And so, I suppose, it was thence presumed that we, as bordering on the Jewish religion, were thought to worship such a figure.

✦ The Christian bishop of Salamis, Epiphanius (c. 315 CE - 403 CE), wrote in Panarion, I.26.10.6 (Against Gnostics, 378 CE), “Some say Sabaoth [epithet of God in his role as protector of the Israelite army] has the face of an ass.” Then in Chapter 12, he quotes an explanation for the death of priest Zechariah (9th century BCE) at the Jerusalem temple, alluded to in Matthew 23:35 (5th century BCE prophet Zechariah?) and Luke 11:51, but with odd similarities to the muting of the father of John the Baptist in Luke 1:21-22 (also named Zechariah):

On its authority [a book from that time called The Genealogy of Mary] they say that Zechariah was killed in the temple because he had seen a vision, and when he wanted to reveal the vision his mouth was stopped from fright. For at the hour of incense, while he was burning it, he saw a man standing there, they say, with the form of an ass. And when he had come out and wanted to say “Woe to you, whom are you worshiping?” the person he had seen inside in the temple stopped his mouth so that he could not speak. But when his mouth was opened so that he could speak, then he revealed it to them and they killed him.

✦ The Alexamenos Graffito was discovered in 1857 on a wall of a room from Caligula’s imperial palace. The palace was converted to a boarding house for imperial page boys after his death in 41 CE. The graffito is dated from between this time to as late as 180 CE and is thought to have been carved by students mocking one of their classmates. The inscription reads, “Alexamenos worships his god.” The figure on the T-shaped cross appears to be Jesus with an ass’s head. The arms are below a horizontal cross beam supported by ropes. The figure is standing on a smaller horizontal cross beam and there is no indication of nails.