I once visited an Israeli primary school in Jerusalem and looked around a classroom. It was much the same as any classroom in the UK, with desks, pots of crayons, bookshelves, and work displayed on walls. But something caught my attention with one set of arithmetic posters. Addition was not symbolised by the plus sign but by an upside-down letter T.
I asked the headteacher and learned that the tradition goes back to at least the 19th century and was a deliberate avoidance of a sign that otherwise looked like the Christian cross. Not all Israelis follow this convention, but it is common among the more orthodox Jews.
That intrigued me, as I don’t think many in the West would associate the plus sign with the cross. In fact, the sign of a cross has many different uses – a first aid kit, a kiss, a simple signature. The addition sign itself has nothing to do with Christian theology and much to do with how the Latin word “et” (and) was written. It would seem to take a lot of sensitivity for anyone to immediately link the addition sign to the Christian faith.
Even the Christian cross, representing the crucifixion, takes many forms. From the Latin cross, most familiar in the Western world, with unequal arms, to the Greek and Jerusalem crosses with equal arms. The England flag is about a thousand years old and associated with St George, but eight countries claim St George as their patron saint. Legends concerning his origins as a Roman soldier give him strong military associations. The banner of St George became the common emblem for the Crusaders of the Middle Ages from across Europe.
While the switch to the inverse T for mathematics can only be traced back a couple of hundred years, it seems that the most likely reason for the Jewish aversion to the cross goes back to this period of the Crusades.
We often portray the Crusades as a conflict between the Christian west and Islamic east, particularly with the capture of Jerusalem. The history is much more complex and darker. The Crusades were born out of European antisemitism and the Crusaders brutally murdered thousands of Jews both in Europe and in the Holy Land. Jews and Muslims even formed alliances to resist the crusaders. The capture of Jerusalem led to the slaughter of many Jews and, we might add, many of the Eastern Arab Christians who were natives of the land.
It should not surprise us that the symbol of the cross has many connotations. There is a long history of the cross being co-opted by other groups for their own purposes. For Christians, it cannot just be a symbol, it is a reminder of a historic event.
What shape should the symbol be? Anyone who has argued (or chatted!) on the doorstep with Jehovah’s Witnesses will know that there are those who deny the cross shape altogether, and consider it a pole (“stauros” in Greek).
Eyewitnesses to Roman crucifixions such as Josephus and Seneca tell us that the Romans made crosses in many forms. But some from the time of Jesus do refer to a cross beam on which arms could be outstretched. One of the earliest Christian writers, Justin Martyr, tells us that the cross was formed of an upright pole and horizontal bar. He compared the cross to the mast of a sailing ship. Simon of Cyrene was probably carrying the crossbar which would be attached to the upright pole.
Further evidence that the T shape is the most likely for the crucifixion is found in the writing of the early Greek New Testament manuscripts. Instead of writing the full Greek word for cross or crucify, copyists would substitute what we call a “staurogram”. It is a symbol formed by a Greek letter T superimposed on a letter P. The result looks like a figure on a cross and would be one of the earliest representations of the crucifixion. When we couple this to an early graffiti illustration found in Rome, and archaeological remains of crucified victims, we have a confident case for the shape of the cross.
The cross is not a flag to wave, but a faith to proclaim. The cross we boast in offers salvation to everyone who will respond in repentance and faith. Not every use of the symbol reflects the same Biblical convictions.
