The Cross-Shaped Signs in the Temple of Serapis

When the temple of Serapis was torn down and laid bare, there were found in it, carved on stones, certain characters of the kind called hieroglyphics, in the shape of crosses. When they saw them, Christians and pagans alike claimed them and applied them to their own religions. The Christians, who hold that the cross is the sign of Christ’s saving passion, claimed this character as peculiarly their own. But the pagans argued that it might belong to Christ and Serapis in common. “For,” they said, “it stands for one thing to Christians and another to pagans.” While this point was being disputed among them, some pagans who had become Christians, and who understood these hieroglyphic characters, interpreted the form of a cross and said that it means “life to come.” The Christians seized on this joyfully as strongly in favor of their religion. But after other hieroglyphics were deciphered containing a prediction that “when the cross should appear,” for this was “life to come,” “the temple of Serapis would be destroyed,” a very great number of the pagans embraced Christianity, confessed their sins, and were baptized. [a]

Such are the reports I have heard about the discovery of this cross-shaped symbol. But I cannot imagine that the Egyptian priests knew beforehand the things concerning Christ when they carved the figure of a cross. For if the coming of our Savior into the world “was a mystery hidden from ages and from generations,” as the apostle declares, and if the devil himself, the prince of wickedness, knew nothing of it, his servants the Egyptian priests are likely to have been even more ignorant of the matter. But no doubt Providence intended that in the inquiry about this character something should happen like what happened long ago in the preaching of Paul. For he, made wise by the divine Spirit, used a similar method with the Athenians and brought many of them to the faith, when he read the inscription on one of their altars and adapted it and applied it to his own preaching. Unless, of course, someone should say that the Word of God worked in the Egyptian priests as it did in Balaam and Caiaphas, for these men spoke prophecies of good things in spite of themselves. This is enough on the subject.