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:
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.
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
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[b-hebrew] The hebrew letter Taw,
James Read, 05/05/2009