Biblical Hebrew Forum

[James Read <J.Read-2 AT sms.ed.ac.uk>]

Hi all,

I've been visiting a lot of byzantine museums and a lot of byzantine  
sites of archaeological importance in my research lately. This has led  
me to places like ancient Phillipi, Thessaloniki, Veria, Athens and  
even the Athos peninsula. Amongst other things one of the things I've  
been trying to trace is the origin of the cross and its many  
variations. In icons depictions seem to vary from anything T shaped to  
anything + (plus) shaped with lots of degrees of variation in between  
but as all the extanct icons are late I've been paying closer  
attention to things like coins and carved images in ancient 4th  
century basilica.

One bapistry of note is to be found near the octagon basilica at  
Philipi. The baptistry is sunk into the ground, large enough to fit a  
whole adult in, and is kind of plus shaped (with curly edges and the  
arms widening out) like a cross pattee  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_pattée

In fact, plus shapes seem to be prevalent in the early byzantine stuff  
(except for the really early stuff which is filled with peacocks and  
vines and flowers but pretty scarce on crosses of any  
description).Also, in the Byzantine museum in Athens there is in fact  
a 4th century wooden cross about a metre in height and breadth in the  
plus shape. Another interesting observation I have made is the  
Orthodox custom of drawing a plus shape with oil on the foreheads of  
their faithful.

So then I started to look at the literature. The earliest explicit  
mention of anything which describes the shape of the instrument of  
Roman execution is Barnabas epistle where he likens it the Greek  
letter Tau which is very much T shaped. Also, some other early  
Christian reference to how Moses was foreshadowing a T shape when he  
kept his arms raised to his sides while Israel was doing battle with  
Joshua (Yehoshua, Yoshua, Isus) doing battle.

Anyway, it was just this evening when my research turned to the  
origins of writing that I saw that the Phoenician symbol which the  
Greek Tau has evolved from is actually also plus shaped:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Canaanite_alphabet

Digging further on the Tau symbol I found this interesting paragraph  
in wikipedia:

Ezekiel 9:4 depicts a vision in which the Tav plays a Passover role  
similar to the blood on the lintel and doorposts of a Hebrew home in  
Egypt.[1] In Ezekiel?s Old Testament vision, the Lord has his angels  
separate the demographic wheat from the chaff by going through  
Jerusalem, the capital city of ancient Israel, and inscribing a mark,  
a Tav, ?upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all  
the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.?
In Ezekiel's vision, then, the Lord is counting Tav Israelites as  
worthwhile to spare, but counts the people worthy of annihilation who  
lack the Tav and the critical attitude it signifies. In other words,  
looking askance at a culture marked by dire moral decline is a kind of  
shibboleth for loyalty and zeal for God.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taw_(letter)#In_Judaism

Could this be the origin of the Orthodox custom of painting a plus  
shape on its faithful's foreheads? Could this also be the origin of  
the prevalent use of a plus shaped symbol in Byzantine archaeology?  
Could all of this combined with Barnabas epistle using a T shape  
description account for the great variation in understanding of the  
shape of the Roman implement of execution.

I apologise in advance if anybody does not sees a relation to Biblical  
Hebrew in this question. The relation is that of the original meaning  
of the individual symbols used in the Biblical Hebrew alphabet which  
according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Canaanite_alphabet Taw  
meant signature.

Regards

James



--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.