cross/stauros

Laughed tears when I read the recent thread at movingon...especially rain child has the kind of humor I really appreciate

Anyway..I think/immagine, that many here have informed themselves since they left about the word cross and that it comes from Greek stauros...many years back I did some research about it, since there are so many groups, who claim that the Christian way of portraying the cross on which Jesus died is deeply pagan

http://www.thewordsofeternallife.com/cross.html

just a quick link I called up today...but the whole theme is much broader & deeper...

Several scholars say that Jesus couldn't have been crucified on a mere pole(stauros) because John 20.25 talks about nails (plural) for the hands whereas for getting crucified on a mere pole you would only need one nail...thus people infer, that stauros is a poor rendering of the subject/object Jesus got crucified on...kind of they had no better way of expressing it in Greek...plus poles for fences, which was the usual meaning, can have of course some horizontically fixed attached pieces of wood/poles etc.

The T-form of a crux is also not so likely because of Lk 23:38...you need some space on top of the head for the sign.

Today I found some a site talking about the last letter of the Hebrew alphbet: taw, which in the archaic rendering of the 9th century BC is a lying
cross...kind of an x...Origenes has searched also in that matter, the symbolism of it (that's what Origenes is famous for: the allegorical point of view), asked Hebrew scholars about it and the answers he got are quite fascinating...unfortunately the site is in German & right now I don't have the time to find the equivalent in English...