Men have bowed to it, fought for it and
even died for it. Revered by Christendom, it has come to symbolise the supreme
sacrifice of one perfect man for a grossly imperfect world.
Even today, despite determined attempts
by militant secularists to efface it from schools, council chambers, courts,
colleges and other public buildings, the cross remains a powerful image, a
rallying point for some 41,000 Christian denominations.
So it may came as a shock to learn that,
according to several respected scholars, Jesus didn’t die on a cross at all. Instead, scriptural
accounts indicate that Jesus was impaled upon a single, upright stake.
In his Expository Dictionary of New & Old Testament Words, W E Vine
distinguishes the Greek word ‘stauros’ (‘stake’ or ‘pale’) as used in Matthew’s
account of Jesus’ death, “from the ecclesiastical form of a two beamed cross”. This is backed up by The Imperial Bible-Dictionary which says that the word stauros′
“properly signified a stake, an upright pole, or piece of paling, on
which anything might be hung, or which might be used in impaling a piece of
ground.......Even amongst the Romans the crux (Latin, from which our cross
is derived) appears to have been originally an upright pole.” The Catholic
Encyclopaedia also admits that “the cross originally consisted of a simple
vertical pole, sharpened at its upper end."
Another
Greek word used in the gospels to describe the means of Jesus’ execution is
xy’lon, which in the Critical Lexicon and Concordance
to the English and Greek New Testament
is defines as “a piece of timber, a wooden stake.” This is in agreement with
the King James Version at Acts 5:30: “The God of our
fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree [xy′lon]”,
while other versions, also translate xy′lon as “tree.” At Acts
13:29, The Jerusalem Bible at Acts 13:29 says: “When they had carried out everything that
scripture foretells about (Jesus) they took him down from the tree [xy′lon]
and buried him.”
Origin of the Cross
Vine explains that the cross originated from
ancient Chaldea where it was used “as the symbol of the god Tammuz (being in
the shape of the mystic Tau, the initial of his name) in that country and in
adjacent lands, including Egypt.”
By the middle of the 3rd century CE, the
early Christian faith had been polluted by unscriptural doctrines, many drawn
from pagan beliefs. “In order to increase the prestige of the apostate
ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches....and were
permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T
in its most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered, was adopted to stand
for the cross of Christ.”
Much of the blame for this can be laid on
Rome’s sun-god worshipping Emperor Constantine who, it was claimed, had a vision
of a cross emblazoned on the sun with the words “in hoc vince” (by this
conquer) just before an important military victory. As a result, he supposedly
became a Christian, but was not baptised until just before his death 25 years
later. Questioning his motives, the author of The Non-Christian Cross stated: “He acted rather as if he were converting
Christianity into what he thought most likely to be accepted by his subjects as
a catholic [universal] religion, than as if he had been converted to the teachings
of Jesus the Nazarene."
Interestingly,
the image of the cross is not exclusive to churchgoers. The ancient Egyptians
had their own version with the handle-shaped ansate - a T shape topped by a
circle - while the ‘gamma’ cross venerated by Hindus and Buddhists is more
commonly recognised by its Sanskrit name: “swastika”.
*“TO THE STAKE”
Jesus’ enemies yelled: “To the stake with him!” (John 19:15) The basic Greek word for “stake” used in the Gospel accounts is stau·rosʹ. The book History of the Cross reports: “Stauros means ‘an upright pale,’ a strong stake, such as farmers drive into the ground to make their fences or palisades—no more, no less.”
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