The dove and olive branch

Early Christians portrayed baptism accompanied by a dove holding an olive branch in its beak and used the image on their sepulchres as an allegory of peace. The dove appears in many funerary inscriptions in the Roman catacombs, sometimes accompanied by the words in pace (Latin for "in peace"). For example, in the Catacomb of Callixtus there is a representation of a dove and branch next to a Latin inscription NICELLA VIRCO DEI OVE VI XIT ANNOS P M XXXV DE POSITA XV KAL MAIAS BENE MERENTI IN PACE, meaning "Nicella, God’s virgin, who lived for more or less 35 years. She was placed [here] 15 days before the Kalends of May [17th April]. For the well deserving one in peace." In another there is a shallow relief sculpture showing a dove with a branch flying to a figure marked in Greek ΕΙΡΗΝΗ (Eirene, or Peace). The symbol has also been found in the Christian catacombs of Sousse, Tunisia (ancient Carthage), which date from the end of the first century AD.

Christians derived the symbol of the dove and olive branch from two sources. The first was the New Testament comparison between a dove and the Spirit of God that descended on Jesus during his baptism. The second was the pagan symbol of the olive branch. The New Testament comparison has a parallel in the Talmud, which says that "the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters like a dove", but in Jewish tradition the olive branch is not used as a peace symbol and neither the Hebrew Bible nor the New Testament mention the dove or the olive in connection with peace.

In the Bible story of Noah and the Flood, a dove returns to Noah with a freshly plucked olive leaf [] rather than an olive branch. This is not said to represent peace either in the text or in rabbinic explanations, which interpret it as "the young shoots of the Land of Israel" or the dove's preference for bitter food in God's service rather than sweet food in the service of men. But early Christians drew parallels between baptism and the flood, the First Epistle of Peter (composed around the end of the first century AD) comparing the salvation through water in baptism to Noah's salvation through water. The Carthaginian Tertullian (c.160 - c.220) compared Noah's dove, who "announced to the world the assaugement of divine wrath, when she had been sent out of the ark and returned with the olive branch" with the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove that descends in baptism, "bringing us the peace of God, sent out from the heavens". In the fourth century, St. Jerome's Latin Bible, possibly reflecting this Christian comparison between the peace brought by baptism and the ending of the Flood, rendered the Hebrew Bible's "olive leaf" (עלה זית alay zayit) in Noah as "olive branch" (ramum olivae). By the fifth century, St Augustine of Hippo confirmed the Christian reading of the pagan olive branch into Noah, writing that, "perpetual peace is indicated by the olive branch (oleae ramusculo) that the dove brought with it when it returned to the ark."

In the earliest Christian art, the dove represented the peace of the soul rather than civil peace, but from the third century the dove began to be shown in situations of conflict such as Daniel and the lions, the three young men in the furnace, Susannah and the Elders and Noah and the Ark. Before the Peace of Constantine (313 AD), in which Rome ceased its persecution of Christians, Noah is normally shown in an attitude of prayer, a dove with an olive branch nearly always flying toward him or alighting on his outstretched hand. According to Graydon Snyder, "The Noah story afforded the early Christian community an opportunity to express piety and peace in a vessel that withstood the threatening environment" of Roman persecution. For Ludwig Budde and Pierre Prigent, the dove refers to the descending of the Holy Spirit rather than the peace associated with Noah. After the Peace of Constantine, Noah appeared only occasionally in Christian art.

Medieval illuminated manuscripts such as the Holkham Bible showed the dove returning to Noah with a branch, and Wycliffe's Bible, which translated the Vulgate into English in the 14th century, uses "a braunche of olyue tre with greene leeuys" ("a branch of olive tree with green leaves") in Gen. 8:11. Even illuminations in Jewish manuscripts in the middle ages could show Noah's dove with an olive branch, for example, the Golden Haggadah (about 1420). English Bibles from the 17th century King James Bible onwards, which translate Noah direct from Hebrew, use "olive leaf", but by this time the dove with an olive branch as a symbol of peace in Noah was firmly established.