All interesting stuff. It is good to know about the archaeological findings . I am glad this was posted.
The Cross in Pompeii & Herculaneum in 79 AD
by Sea Breeze 18 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Sea Breeze
All powerful evidence of Christianity spreading with lightening speed with a god who was crucified as a criminal by his own people and likened to an ass by the general culture.
Truly one of the most unlikely and fascinating series of events in all history.
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truth_b_known
The Tau (T) cross was the first crucifix symbol used in Christianity. It is still popular in Christian jewelry today.
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FFGhost
The tenacity of the imperviousness to facts continues to astound me.
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Sea Breeze
FFGhost,
What facts would you like considered on this topic?
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Earnest
joe134cd : [The assertion that the cross was not the device used to kill Jesus] is rubbish.
“History is right, perhaps, but let us not forget, it was written by the victors”. That also goes for the shape of the stauros that Christ died on. If any of those who witnessed his death left a description of the stauros we have no record of it. There is evidence that some Christians in the second century believed that Jesus died on a T-shaped cross (crux commissa), however in the dialogue of Octavius (probably written in the mid-second century), Minucius Felix writes (in chapter 29) of both an upright pole (crux simplex) and a latin cross (crux immissa) :
Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for. You, indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods. For your very standards, as well as your banners; and flags of your camp, what else are they but crosses gilded and adorned? Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross [simplicis crucis], but also that of a man affixed to it…Thus the sign of the cross either is sustained by a natural reason [a ship with swelling sails; a military yoke; a man adoring God with hands outstretched], or your religion is formed with respect to it.
But what do we actually know about the shape of the stauros at the time of Christ. Very little, as it turns out. In 2010 Gunnar Samuelsson published a thesis (and in 2011 wrote a book) “Crucifixion in Antiquity” which was discussed here at the time. The fact is that there was no terminology of crucifixion at the time of Jesus, only of suspension. In some cases, stauros is a kind of suspension device, used for the suspension of corpses, torture, or in a few cases executionary suspensions. Very little or nothing is said about what it was made of or how it looked. The fact that xulon is also used (Acts 5:30;10:39;13:29) indicates it was made of wood. The punishment of executionary suspension could be carried out in a way that was simply fitting for the moment. The manner in which Jesus was suspended at Calvary might then have been only a momentary expression of local caprice. Previous and subsequent executions might have been completely different.
He could have died on a latin cross (crux immissa), a T-shaped cross (crux commissa), an upright pole (crux simplex) or any form of suspension using wood. We simply don’t know. Any display of certainty about this is just a display of ignorance.
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Earnest
In Acts 28:13, 14 it says regarding Paul’s journey to Rome “from [Syracuse] we went along and arrived at Rhegium. A day later a south wind sprang up and we made it into Puteoli on the second day. Here we found brothers and were urged to remain with them for seven days, and so we went toward Rome.”
So, we know that there were “brothers” at Puteoli in these early days and it is legitimate to speculate whether they were also in Pompeii and Herculaneum. But at the same time we should not allow wishful thinking to cause us to read more into the evidence than is actually there. And as we have already seen in the previous post that pagans used crosses in their worship, the existence of a cross in itself without a Christian context is not evidence of anything at all.
One reason Christianity may have taken a hold in Puteoli in particular is that there was a Jewish community there as early as 4 B.C.E. Both Philo and Josephus attest to a Jewish presence during the first century. The same cannot be said for Pompeii and Herculaneum.
What about evidence of crosses in Pompeii, referred to in the book “The Crosses of Pompeii” by Bruce W. Longenecker. The item with which Longenecker begins is a cross-shaped imprint on a ground floor wall in a bakery on the western side of Pompeii. Three other objects serve as primary pieces of evidence. These include a graffito of the Latin verb vivit (he lives) in which the final –it are combined into a cross-shaped ligature, another graffito in which Christians are discussed, and a cross found on a stamp ring that appears to have belonged to a certain Meges. He also refers to nineteen crosses faintly inscribed in paving stones around the city, and proposes that the crosses served a good-luck function to protect them from evil where they resided and worked.
Other scholars examined his “evidence” and came to different conclusions. For example, in Vigiliae Christianae (2018), John Cook, who is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at LaGrange College, Georgia, wrote an article “Alleged Christian Crosses in Herculaneum and Pompeii” about this.
Cook gives some further details about the bakery in which the cross-shaped imprint was found. He says on the west wall was a household shrine which consisted of a painting of a snake. Next to it was a brick fixed in the wall, which supported a lamp that “burned in honor of the custodial divinities [Janus, Ferculus, Limentius, and Cardea]. On the east wall was the cross-shaped imprint. Mounted above the oven was a plaque that depicts a large red phallus with an inscription “here lives good luck”. Francois Mazois, who included the cross-shaped imprint in his volume on the ruins of Pompeii in 1824, didn’t think it was a Christian cross and wrote “It is difficult to imagine that the same person could at the same time revere the cross of Christ and worship Janus, Ferculus, Limentius, and Cardea, divinities who guarded the doors. Especially if one considers an obscene image, from an incomprehensible cult, that is found near the same place.” If it was not a cross what could it have been? Lampe (“Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries”) thought it could be a support for a shelf, like the one in Herculaneum. Cook (and Moormann in Pompeii’s Ashes) suggests it depicts a tool used in the bakery, maybe a large pestle. Whatever it depicts, Cook says, “there is no archaeological context for the belief that a Christian lived in the villa or bakery. None of the graffiti are ostensibly Christian. The household shrine and phallus of the bakery fit well into the context of Roman religion … The affirmation that [it] should be identified with the cross of Christ is groundless.”
What about the graffito of the Latin verb vivit (“he lives”)? Cook again shows this is simply unfounded speculation on the part of Longenecker. First, the scrawl on the wall was (perhaps) VIV, or it could have been VN, or possibly VRI, and the intention is vague. It could just be a scrawl. And there is no decisive reason to interpret intersecting lines as the cross of Christ. That is looking at it from a post-Constantinian viewpoint. Martin Langner, who writes about ancient graffiti (“Antike Graffitizeichnungen”, Wiesbaden, 2001), says regarding the intersecting lines “there are many scratchings on Pompeian walls. I do not think they mean anything or at least anything we can recognise today”.
The same goes for the nineteen “crosses” faintly inscribed on paving stones around the city. Longenecker proposes these were to ward off evil. There are many phalluses inscribed on the paving stones too. What was their purpose? The fact is that we simply don’t know in either case, and there is nothing to link these crosses with Christians. They may simply have been markers on the pavement indicating a route (like a cairn does) or some other helpful use.
Essentially, Longenecker’s argument is this :
- objects resembling a cross have been found in Pompeii/Herculaneum
- Evidence from a later period of early Christianity indicates that Christians adopted these symbols to identify themselves
- Therefore the objects found in Pompeii/Herculaneum must be Christian
Unless there is archaeological evidence that these “crosses” were found in a Christian context, it is simply wishful thinking. There is no evidence crosses were used as a Christian symbol before the second century.
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cyberjesus
and the importance of the position of jesus death is important because......
if he died with his arms up he got to heaven faster?
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Earnest
cyberjesus, the importance of the position of Jesus' death cannot be established archaeologically. This thread is about the earliest use of the cross as a Christian symbol, and there is simply no compelling archaeological evidence that it was used by Christians in Pompeii & Herculaneum at the time Vesuvius erupted.