This Is Appendix 162 From The Companion Bible.
In the Greek New Testament two words are used
for "the cross" on which the Lord was put to death.
1. The word stauros; which
denotes an upright pole or stake, to which the crimminals were nailed for
execution.
2. The xulon, which generally
denotes a piece of a dead log of wood, or timber, for fuel or for any
other purpose. Is is not like dendron, which is used of a
living, or green tree, as in Matthew 21: As this latter word xulon is used for
the former stauros, it shows us that the meaning of each is
exactly the same.
The verb stauroõ means to drive
stakes. Our English word "cross" is the
translation of the Latin crux; but the Greek
stauros no more means a crux than the word
"stick" means a "crutch".
Homer uses the word stauros of an
ordinary pole or stake, or a single piece of timber. 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 (No. 2, above) in connection
with the manner of our Lord's death, and rendered "tree" in
Acts 5: There is nothing in the Greek of the New Testament
even to imply two pieces of timber.
The letter chi, These crosses were used as symbols of the Babylonian
sun-god, On the coins of Constantine the most frequent symbol
is The evidence is the same as to the pre-Christian
(phallic) symbol in Asia, Africa, and Egypt, whether we consult
Nineveh by Sir A. H. L Dr. S Dr. M The Catacombs in Rome bear the same testimony :
"Christ" is never represented there as "hanging on a
cross", and the cross itself is only pourtrayed in a veiled and
hesitating manner. In the Egyptian churches the cross was a pagan symbol
of life, borrowed by the Christians, and interpreted in the pagan manner.
See the Encycl. Brit., 11th (Camb.) ed., volume 14, page
273.
In his Letter from Rome Dean Burgon
says : "I question whether a cross occurs on any Christian monument
of the first four centuries".
In Mrs. Jameson's famous History of our Lord as
Exemplified in Works of Art, she says (volume ii, page 315) :
"It must be owned that ancient objects of art, as far as hitherto
known, afford no corroboration of the use of the cross in the simple
transverse form familiar to us, at any period preceding, or even closely
succeeding, the time of Chrysostom"; and Chrysostom wrote half a
century after Constantine!
"The Invention of the Cross" by Helena
the mother of Constantine (in 326), though it means her
finding of the cross, may or may not be true; but the
"invention" of it in pre-Christian times, and the
"invention" of its use in later times, are truths of which
we need to be reminded in the present day. The evidence is thus complete,
that the Lord was put to death upon an upright stake, and not on two piece
of timber placed at any angle. 
, the initial of the word
Christ 
, was originally used for His Name; or 
. This was superseded by
symbols 
and 
, and even the first of these had four equal arms.
, and are first seen on a coin of Julius Cęsar, 100 - 44
; but the same symbol is used
without the surrounding circle, and with the four equal arms vertical and
horizontal; and this was the symbol specially venerated as the
"Solar Wheel". It should be stated that Constantine was a
sun-god worshipper, and would not enter the "Church" till
some quarter of a century after the legend of his having seen such a cross
in the heavens (E
1 There are two
compounds of it used : sustauroo = to put any one thus to
death with another (Matthew 27:44. Mark
15:32. John
19:32. Romans
6:6. Galatians
2:20); and
anastauroo = to rise up and fix upon the stake again
(Hebrews 6:6). Another word
used is equally significant : prospegnumi = to fix or fasten
anything (Acts 2:23).
2
Iliad xxiv. 453. Odyssey xiv. 11.
3 For example,
Thucydides iv. 90. Xenophon, Anabasis v. 2. 21.
4 Other coins with
this symbol were struck by Augustus, also by Hadrian and other Roman
emperors. See Early Christian Numismatics, by C. W. King,
M.A.