page_title: Instrument of Jesus' crucifixion
section_title: Early Christian descriptions
hierarchical_section_title: Instrument of Jesus' crucifixion / Early Christian descriptions
context_page_description: The instrument of Jesus' crucifixion is generally taken to have been composed of an upright wooden beam to which was added a transom, thus forming a "cruciform" or T-shaped structure.
  Most Christian denominations present the Christian cross in this form, and the tradition of the T-shape can be traced to early Christianity and the Church fathers. Nonetheless, some late-19th century scholars maintained that it was a simple stake.
context_section_description: Although there is discussion about the meaning or meanings that the words σταυρός and crux had at that time, and about the shape or shapes that such gibbets had, Christians of the first centuries are unanimous in describing the particular structure on which Jesus died as having a transom, not as a simple upright.
  The pseudepigraphic Epistle of Barnabas, which scholars suggest may have been before the end of the 1st century, and certainly earlier than 135, whether the writer was an orthodox Christian or not, described the shape people at the time attributed to the device on which Jesus died: the comparisons it draws with Old Testament figures would have had no validity for its readers if they pictured Jesus as dying on a simple stake. Referring to what he saw as Old Testament intimations of Jesus and his cross, he likened the cross to the letter T (the Greek letter tau, which had the numeric value of 300), thus describing it as having a crossbeam. He also wrote, with regard to Exodus 17:11-12: "The Spirit saith to the heart of Moses, that he should make a type of the cross and of Him that was to suffer, that unless, saith He, they shall set their hope on Him, war shall be waged against them for ever. Moses therefore pileth arms one upon another in the midst of the encounter, and standing on higher ground than any he stretched out his hands, and so Israel was again victorious."
  Celsus (as quoted by Origen Contra Celsum, II:36)  and Origen himself uses the verb "ἀνασκολοπίζω", which originally meant "to impale", of the crucifixion of Jesus. It was considered synonymous with "σταυρῶ", which also seems to have originally meant "to impale", and was applied also to the gibbet of Jesus' execution; but the shape of the gibbet is compared by Origen to that of the letter Τ. The final words of the Trials in the Court of Vowels,Δίκη Φωνηέντων, 12.4-13 found among the works of Lucian, also identify the shape of the σταυρός with that of the letter Τ. And, as already mentioned, in  Prometheus on Caucasus Lucian describes Prometheus as crucified "with his hands outstretched".
  The 2nd-century Odes of Solomon, probably by a heterodox Christian, includes the following: "I extended my hands and hallowed my Lord, /For the expansion of my hands is His sign. /And my extension is the upright cross (σταυρός)."
  Justin Martyr (100–165) explicitly says the cross of Christ was of two-beam shape: "That lamb which was commanded to be wholly roasted was a symbol of the suffering of the cross which Christ would undergo. For the lamb, which is roasted, is roasted and dressed up in the form of the cross. For one spit is transfixed right through from the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the legs of the lamb."
  Like the Epistle of Barnabas, Justin saw the stretched-out hands of Moses in the battle against Amalek as foreshadowing the cross of Jesus: "If he gave up any part of this sign, which was an imitation of the cross (σταυρός), the people were beaten, as is recorded in the writings of Moses; but if he remained in this form, Amalek was proportionally defeated, and he who prevailed prevailed by the cross (σταυρός). For it was not because Moses so prayed that the people were stronger, but because, while one who bore the name of Jesus (Joshua) was in the forefront of the battle, he himself made the sign of the cross (σταυρός)."
  In his First Apology, 55 Justin refers to various objects as shaped like the cross of Christ: "The sea is not traversed except that trophy which is called a sail abide safe in the ship … And the human form differs from that of the irrational animals in nothing else than in its being erect and having the hands extended, and having on the face extending from the forehead what is called the nose, through which there is respiration for the living creature; and this shows no other form than that of the cross (σταυρός)."
  The apocryphal Acts of Peter, of the second half of the 2nd century, attaches symbolic significance to the upright and the crossbeam of the cross of Jesus: "What else is Christ, but 
caption: Drawing in Justus Lipsius, De cruce. Justin Martyr: "…being erect and having the hands extended…shows no other form than that of the cross"
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