Excerpt from Symbolism on Greek Coins

Geoy yloc (=d1v1 F[ilius] on Roman Imperial coins) means 'son of the Deified not 'son of God' as in the acrostic. How ever, one should not beg the question of. Imperial deification which was tacitly acknowledged during the life-time of the reigning emperor as well as openly concurred in after his death. It was only one step more from the cult of: the dead to that of the living emperor.1 The Chris tians of Alexandria may therefore have seen in the phrase an implica tion of divinity.

But Alexandria was not the original home of the symbolism, the monuments on which it first occurs being found in Rome.2 Again, it is doubtful if the symbolism was known as early as the First Century A. D. There are no monuments bearing it which can be dated much before the middle of the Second Century. Furthermore, the fish symbol is not mentioned in the Physiologus (6 (dumoxdyoe), a work on animal symbolism written by an Alexandrian Greek about the first half of this same Century. This treatise is a sort of Natural History, a compendium of marvellous tales explaining the mystical meanings of animals and plants with moral applications, a kind of theological zool ogy and botany. If the fish symbol was in use at the time of this alle gorical manual, we should certainly expect to find it here recorded. The Christian fathers, too, before Tertullian, end of. The Second Cen tury, make no reference to the symbol. It is safe to assume, then, that the symbolism was not widely current in Rome until about 150 A. D. (round date). Mowat's theory which is full of improbabilities, and extremely artificial, would not require more than passing notice if it were not for the fact that it has been adopted as the generally accepted interpretation in a recent handbook on Christian archaeology of con siderable authority, (k. M. Kaufmann, Handbuch der christlichen Archaologie.

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