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In the Acts and Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle Andrew we are told that those who executed Andrew "lifted him up on the stauros," but "did not sever his joints, having received this order from the pro-consul, for he wished him to be in distress while hanging, and in the nighttime as he was suspended to be eaten by dogs."
For these words imply, Blessed are they who, placing their trust in the Stauros, have gone down into the Water." This further reference to the non-Mosaic initiatory rite of baptism is followed by a quotation of Ezekiel xlvii. 12, which speaks of a river by whose side grow trees those who cat the fruit of which grow for ever.
In the Epistle of Barnabas are various references to the stauros; mixed up with various passages from the Hebrew Scriptures, quoted without any justification as referring to the initiatory rite of baptism; a rite, be it noted, that was admittedly of Gentile rather than Israelitish origin, and not unconnected with the Sun-God worship of the Persians and other Orientals of non-Hebrew race.
Being obviously derived in part from the word stauros, which primarily signified a stake or pale which was a single piece of wood and had no cross-bar, sustauroo evidently meant affixion to such a stake or pale.
What the Pagans held in utter horror was the awful death caused by transfixion by or affixion to a stauros, whatever its shape; the symbol of the cross was, upon the contrary, an object of veneration among them from time immemorial. On page 23 Dr. Farrar, alluding to the use of the transient sign of the cross by the Christians of early days, makes the admission
Taking the whole of the foregoing facts into consideration, it will be seen that it is not a little misleading upon the part of our teachers to translate the word stauros as "cross" when rendering the Greek documents of the Church into our native tongue, and to support that action by putting "cross" in our lexicons as the meaning of stauros without carefully explaining that that was at any rate not the primary meaning of the word in the days of the Apostles, did not become its primary signification till long afterwards, and became so then, if at all, only because, despite the absence of corroborative evidence, it was for some reason or other assumed that the particular stauros upon which Jesus was executed had that particular shape.
Now the Greek word which in Latin versions of the New Testament is translated as crux, and in English versions is rendered as cross, i.e., the word stauros, seems to have, at the beginning of our era, no more meant a cross than the English word stick means a crutch.
Further on in the same Gospel, Satan is represented as being told that "All that thou hast gained through the Tree of Knowledge, all hast thou lost through the Tree of the Stauros."
There is nothing to show that the stauros used was other than an ordinary stauros.
For instance, the death spoken of, death by the stauros, included transfixion by a pointed stauros or stake, as well as affixion to an unpointed stauros or stake; and the latter punishment was not always that referred to.
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