The Cross’s Intriguing History Chasing Gods

How did the cross enter the world of Christianity?

It may seem obvious that its symbol is a cross because Jesus was crucified on it. But Jesus also “turned water into wine” and healed hundreds of sick people. Why not a symbol of grapes or a sick person?

Also, it should be noted that Jesus was most likely crucified on a straight or T-shape beam.

 

 

 

Etymology of the Word “Cross”

A lot of information can be found in studying words (etymology)

See, the English word “cross” comes from the Latin word “Crux” to denote the torture device used for capital punishment during the Roman Era. Criminals were put in various inhumane ways on these wooden objects, which were most commonly shaped like a pole or a T, and they were to suffer an excruciating slow death (it’s actually where the word exCRUCiating comes from).

Remember that the new testament, which recounts the life and death of Jesus, was originally written in Koine Greek, an ancient Greek dialect, and later, translated to Latin. So, Crux was actually translated from STAUROS σταυρός, which has the same connotation.

In the original Greek New testament,  Stauros, was often written in an abbreviated form… Like this.

 



The greek letter Tau and letter Rho were superimposed to form a single character. This monogram, called the Tau Rho, (or stavrogram) would later become one of the Christian symbols, but until then, it was just a way of abbreviating the device on which Jesus died on.

 

Original Christian Symbols

In the first 4 centuries of its prominence, Christianity faced a lot of persecution by the Roman Empire. Christians had secret symbols in order to recognize each other. There was the :



* The Ichthys ΙΧΘΥΣ fish

* The letters Alpha and Omega

* The dove

* The anchor



There were more, but the cross was not one of them. Until came Constantine 1st, the first Roman emperor to have converted to Christianity.

 

Constantine and His Dream

Before converting, Constantine was a pagan like the majority of the Roman people and their ancestors, worshipping different gods including the all mighty and All-Seeing Sun God, which is symbolized by a…. cross.

So now you see what I’m getting at, but let’s keep going….

Rome was going through a civil war in the early 300s, and Constantine, then just a ruler of western Rome was about to become the sole Roman emperor. It was said that on his way to battle against the Roman emperor, Maxentius, Constantine and his Gallic troop saw something miraculous in the sky, a huge cross. There was even an inscription saying “By this Conquer”.

The following night, Constantine dreamed of Christ telling him to make what he had seen in the sky, the symbol of God and, to conquer by it.

Affected by this dream, Constantine ordered for all arms and flags to be marked with a Chi cross (X), the first letter of Christ (ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ). Other accounts say that the mark was the Chi-Rho, a superimposed monogram of the first two letters of the Christ. Chi and Rho. (Χ and Ρ).

 



Early biblical authors had a thing with making sacred words into codes by using their first two letters and adding a line on top. The new testament is full of these Nomina Sacras.

In 312, Constantine and his soldiers eventually overthrew Maxentius and his men, and to them, this was done with the divine intervention of God, the Christian god, marked by the cross.

From here on,