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Is the Symbol of the Cross Idolatry? (Part One)Most of us have watched a baseball game. Chances are we have all seen a batter about to enter the batter's box make the sign of the cross. Or perhaps we are basketball fans. We have seen it there too: As certain players prepare to shoot a free throw, they will also make the sign of the cross. It is common to see little silver crosses hanging on a chain around a person's neck or dangling from the rearview mirrors of cars. Is this merely the affirmation of one's faith or something much more serious, such as idolatry? A website selling religious jewelry had this to say about the cross:
Is this true? Will wearing a small silver cross around one's neck keep a person from harm? Will it stay the hand of Satan? Will it allow a baseball player to hit home runs and a basketball player to sink free throws with ease? Of course not! So why do so many believe otherwise? Where did the use of the symbol of the cross originate? Did it start with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ? Are we honoring His tremendous gift to us by displaying the cross on the bumpers of our cars? Did Jesus even die on a cross, and if He did, should we worship Him through the instrument of His death? The quotation from the religious jewelry website looked vaguely familiar, and a bit of research quickly showed that it was lifted, out of context and uncredited, from Alexander Hislop's book, The Two Babylons. Here is the entire section containing this quote from Hislop's book:
The tau is the original form of the letter T, the initial of the name of Tammuz, the sun god, which is another name for Nimrod. The tau, or the cross, was a revered symbol in ancient times, at least 1,500 years before Christ. Variations of the cross, used as a religious symbol, can be found in almost every ancient religion except Judaism and Islam. It is yet another example of pagan beliefs brought into the Catholic Church to add numbers. It is not even syncretism, which is the merging of differing beliefs, but more along the lines of a wholesale addition of pagan beliefs to the teaching of the so-called Christian church. Assume for a moment that Christ died on a tau cross. Are we to worship or venerate the instrument of His death? If Christ had died by electrocution, would we have symbolic electric chairs hanging from our necks? If He had been hanged, would we have charms made of tiny nooses? The point is clear. The more important significance for us is not the instrument on which He died, but the fact that He died to pay the penalty for the sins of His creatures. The New Testament uses two Greek words to describe the instrument of Jesus' death. One is xulon, which means "tree." An example of this appears in Acts 5:30, where the apostle Peter says, "The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a tree." Other examples of this translation are Acts 10:39; 13:29; Galatians 3:13; and I Peter 2:24. The other Greek word is stauros, meaning "a stake." Used 28 times in the New Testament, it is almost always translated as "cross." Robert Young, in his Analytical Concordance to the Bible, gives the meaning of stauros as "a stake," yet he shows that it is rendered as "cross" in each of its 28 appearances in Scripture. Note the "cross, crucify" entry in Vine's Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words:
It is already clear that the cross has origins deep in paganism, and its connection to anything biblical is tenuous at best. We will look further into this question in Part Two. Mike Ford |
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