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The Cross Is of Pagan Origin

THE cross you see on the steeple of a neighborhood church, on its altar and as pendants around the necks of many of your neighbors is actually a pagan religious symbol. It was revered throughout the pagan world long before the advent of Christianity. This is admitted by many religious and historical authorities, as we shall see.

In its edition of 1908, The Catholic Encyclopedia states in volume 4, page 517: “The sign of the cross, represented in its simplest form by a crossing of two lines at right angles, greatly antedates, in both the East and the West, the introduction of Christianity. It goes back to a very remote period of human civilization.” The book The Ancient Church by clergyman W. D. Killen concurs by saying, on page 316: “From the most remote antiquity the cross was venerated in Egypt and Syria; it was held in equal honour by the Buddhists of the East; and, what is still more extraordinary, when the Spaniards first visited America, the well-known sign was found among the objects of worship in the idol temples of Anahuac. It is also remarkable that, about the commencement of our era, the pagans were wont to make the sign of a cross upon the forehead in the celebration of some of their sacred mysteries.”

If you belong to one of Christendom’s churches, did the church ever tell you that the cross is a pagan symbol? If it did not, it withheld the truth from you. It has encouraged you to hold in reverence an admittedly pagan symbol. “But,” you may say, “did not the early Christians regard the cross as a symbol of Christianity?” No, they did not. It was not until about the middle of the third century of our Common Era that professed Christians began to use it as such. An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words by W. E. Vine states on page 256 of volume one: “By the middle of the 3rd century A.D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied, certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, 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.”

At the beginning of the third century Minucius Felix wrote to the pagans in Octavius and revealed the attitude that early Christians had toward the cross up to that time. He said: “Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for. You, indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods. . . . Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but also that of a man affixed to it.” (The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 4, p. 191) True Christians never revered the cross or regarded it as a symbol of true Christianity.

Many persons contend that the cross is used by the churches because Christ died on one. That is what the churches say, but it is not the truth. Admitting uncertainty as to whether Christ died on a cross, the church paper of the Evangelical-Lutheran State Church of Schleswig-Holstein, Die kirche der Heimat (The Church of the Homeland), remarked in its issue of August 2, 1951: “Whether the cross on Golgotha had a crossbar or not or whether it was just a plain stake, whether it had the T-form or whether it had a crossbar placed across the upright stake is hardly possible to determine now.”

That the word “cross” appears in many English translations of the Bible does not prove that Christ’s death instrument was in the shape that the churches claim. The word “cross” stands for a number of shapes. There is the simple upright stake, called in Latin crux simplex; the crux commissa, which was shaped like the letter “T”; the crux decussata, which was shaped like the letter “X,” and the crux immissa, which was like the letter “T” but with the crossbar lowered. So when the English word “cross” is used in Bible translations made by the churches, how are you to know which of these forms is meant?

The Greek word from which the English word “cross” is translated by the churches is staurosʹ, but to the Bible writers it did not stand for the cross that churches display as the symbol of Christianity. It meant a plain upright stake. On this the book An Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words by W. E. Vine states on page 256 of volume one: “Stauros denotes, primarily, an upright pale or stake. On such malefactors were nailed for execution. Both the noun and the verb stauroō, to fasten to a stake or pale, are originally to be distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of a two beamed cross. The shape of the latter had its origin in ancient Chaldea, and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz.”

Note also what is stated in The Companion Bible, published by the Oxford University Press. On page 186 in the “Appendixes” it says: “Homer uses the word stauros of an ordinary pole or stake, or a single piece of timber. And this is the meaning and usage of the word throughout the Greek classics. It never means two pieces of timber placed across one another at any angle, but always of one piece alone. Hence the use of the word xulon [which means a timber] in connection with the manner of our Lord’s death, and rendered tree in Acts 5:30; 10:39; 13:29; Gal. 3:13; 1 Pet. 2:24. . . . There is nothing in the Greek N.T. even to imply two pieces of timber. . . . The evidence is thus complete, that the Lord was put to death upon an upright stake, and not on two pieces of timber placed at any angle.”

The cross used by the churches of Christendom has not the remotest connection with Christianity. It is instead a sacred symbol belonging to ancient pagan religions, religions that the God of truth abhorred and against which he warned the nation of Israel. (Deut. 7:16, 25, 26) It was a recognized symbol in the religion of ancient Egypt.

The Egyptian cross, known as the crux ansata, was surmounted by a circle. This combination represented the male and female procreative organs. Referring to the female symbol on this cross—the circle—by the Hindu term yoni, the book Sex and Sex Worship by O. A. Wall states on page 359: “The crux ansata (cross with a handle) was used all over the world from India, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, to Sweden and Denmark (old Runic) and in the Western Continent. . . . It is the ankh of the Egyptians, the symbol of life, because it represents the feminine yoni in union with the masculine tau cross.”

In view of these facts, if your church has a cross on it and uses it in religious services, that labels the worship there as pagan. How can paganized worship win the approval of the true God? You need to separate from all such Babylonish forms of worship and associate with those who worship the Creator in truth.—Rev. 18:4.