The ox is one of the four living creatures of Ezekiel 1 and Revelation 4, and in the Western standard descending from Victorinus of Pettau through Jerome it is assigned to Luke, on the reasoning that his gospel opens with Zechariah offering incense in the temple and therefore with sacrifice. Other patristic writers assigned the four differently, Irenaeus and Augustine each give a different arrangement, so the familiar scheme is a fourth-century preference that prevailed rather than an original allocation. The winged ox of Luke in manuscript illumination and church sculpture follows from that choice.
Zen. The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures are a sequence of images with verses, in the received form attributed to the twelfth-century Chinese Chan master Kuoan Shiyuan, depicting the stages of practice. The seeker searches for the ox, finds its tracks, glimpses it, catches it, tames it, rides it home, forgets the ox, forgets both ox and self, returns to the source, and finally enters the marketplace with open hands. The ox stands for the mind, or for one's own nature, something never actually absent, which is the point of the later panels. Earlier versions of the sequence had fewer pictures and ended at the empty circle; the addition of the final return to the world is a substantive doctrinal statement about what enlightenment is for.
China. The ox is the second animal of the zodiac, having carried the rat to the finish and been beaten by it at the line, and it is associated with patience, reliability and unglamorous strength. Spring ploughing ceremonies involving a clay or living ox were performed by Chinese and later Vietnamese and Thai monarchs, tying the ruler's legitimacy to the agricultural year.