The Non-Christian Cross

The Non-Christian Cross

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Title: The Non-Christian Cross An Enquiry Into the Origin and History
of the Symbol Eventually Adopted as That of Our Religion
Author: John Denham Parsons
Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9071] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 2,
2003]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
NON-CHRISTIAN CROSS ***

THE NON-CHRISTIAN CROSS An Enquiry Into The Origin And
History Of The Symbol Eventually Adopted As That Of Our Religion
BY JOHN DENHAM PARSONS
LONDON
1896
"O CRUX, SPLENDIDIOR CUNCTIS ASTRIS, MUNDO CELEBRIS,
HOMINIBUS MULTUM AMABILIS, SANCTIOR UNIVERSIS."
[_BREVIARIUM ROMANUM,_ _Festival of the Invention of the
Holy Cross._

PREFACE. --------
The history of the symbol of the cross has had an attraction for the
author ever since, as an enquiring youth, he found himself unable to
obtain satisfactory answers to four questions concerning the same
which presented themselves to his mind.
The first of those questions was why John the Baptist, who was
beheaded before Jesus was executed, and so far as we are told never
had anything to do with a cross, is represented in our religious pictures
as holding a cross.
The second question was whether this curious but perhaps in itself
easily explained practice had in its inception any connection with the
non-Mosaic initiatory rite of baptism; which Jesus accepted as a matter
of course at the hands of his cousin John, and in which the sign of the
cross has for ages been the all-important feature. And it was the wonder
whether there was or was not some association between the facts that
the New Testament writers give no explanation whatever of the origin
of baptism as an initiatory rite, that this non-Mosaic initiatory rite was
in use among Sun-God worshippers long before our era, and that the
Fathers admitted that the followers of the Persian conception of the

Sun-God marked their initiates upon the forehead like the followers of
the Christ, which finally induced the author to start a systematic
enquiry into the history of the cross as a symbol.
The third question was why, despite the fact that the instrument of
execution to which Jesus was affixed can have had but one shape,
almost any kind of cross is accepted as a symbol of our faith.
The last of the four questions was why many varieties of the cross of
four equal arms, which certainly was not a representation of an
instrument of execution, were accepted by Christians as symbols of the
Christ before any cross which could possibly have been a
representation of an instrument of execution was given a place among
the symbols of Christianity; while even nowadays one variety of the
cross of four equal arms is the favourite symbol of the Greek Church,
and both it and the other varieties enter into the ornamentation of our
sacred properties and dispute the supremacy with the cross which has
one of its arms longer than the other three.
Pursuing these matters for himself, the author eventually found that
even before our era the cross was venerated by many as the symbol of
Life; though our works of reference seldom mention this fact, and
never do it justice.
He moreover discovered that no one has ever written a complete history
of the symbol, showing the possibility that the stauros or post to which
Jesus was affixed was not cross-shaped, and the certainty that, in any
case, what eventually became the symbol of our faith owed some of its
prestige as a Christian symbol of Victory and Life to the position it
occupied in pre-Christian days.
The author has therefore, in the hope of drawing attention to the subject,
incorporated the results of his researches in the present essay.
14, ST. DUNSTAN'S HILL, LONDON, E.C.

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