What shape was Jesus' cross?

Was the Cross on which our Lord was crucified the cross as shaped to-day?

Is the word used that for a stake and not a cross, a word only implying that which stands up?

It is true that the first meaning of “stauros,” the word translated, “cross,” in the New Testament, is a “stake” (from “histëmi,” to st nd), and this was occasionally used in executions, the victim being sometimes impaled on it. But this stake, called “the simple cross,” was not the Latin cross, which was in the shape of a T, and had an upright above the crossbar, on which the title of accusation was displayed. This was the form of cross the Romans used, and, on which there seems no room to doubt, our Lord was crucified. Because the cross is found in Babylonian cults is no good reason for denying that the Romans crucified Him on the ordinary Latin cross. We are certainly not to wear a cross or display it on “religious buildings,” but to learn the meaning of Christ’s Cross, and bear our own. W.H.

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