of about the date 1060 is considered as the first certain example of a dead crucified Christ. [291] The conception of Christ being put to death upon the cross is, comparatively speaking, a late one. The connection of Christ with the cross was originally not a reproduction of the manner of his death. It rather symbolises, as in the ancient Mysteries, precisely the reverse--the victory of the Christian Cult-God over death--the idea of resurrection and life. Hence it is obvious that the above-mentioned juxtaposition of the cross and lamb must have expressed the same idea. Here, too, the cross was originally only the symbol of fire and life. The lamb encircled by the sun's orb refers to the ceremonial burning of the lamb at the spring equinox as an expiatory sacrifice and as a pledge of a new life. It appears the more plainly to be a figure of Agni (Agnus), since it is usually placed exactly at the point of intersection of the two arms--that is, at the place whence the divine spark first issued at the kindling of the fire with the two aranî. [292] THE CHRISTIAN JESUS I THE PAULINE JESUS The faith in a Jesus had been for a long time in existence among innumerable Mandaic sects in Asia Minor, which differed in many ways from each other, before this faith obtained a definite shape in the religion of Jesus, and its adherents became conscious of their religious peculiarities and their divergence from the official Jewish religion. The first evidence of such a consciousness, and also the first brilliant outline of a new religion developed with Jesus as its central idea, lies in the epistles of the tent-maker of Tarsus, the pilgrim-apostle Paul. Of the epistles in his name which have been handed down to us, that to the Hebrews is quite certainly not Paul's. But also the two epistles to the Thessalonians, that to the Ephesians, as well as the so-called pastoral epistles (to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon), are considered by the overwhelming majority of theologians to be forgeries; and also the authenticity of the epistles to the Colossians and Philippians is negatived by considerations of great weight. But with all the more certainty modern critical theologians believe that Paul was the writer of the four great didactic epistles--one to the Galatians, two to the Corinthians, and one to the Romans; and they are wont to set aside all suspicion of these epistles as a "grave error" of historical hypercriticism.