la70119

And it had to have been a Latin Cross. That is, a tropaeum. It was as early as 350 CE that the Laureate Cross was displayed on sarcophagi and god knows where else. It was a Latin Cross (t) surmounted by a rising Chi-Rho symbol surrounded by a laurel wreath.


Domatilla Sarcophagus, 350 CE

The "True Cross" HAD to have been a tropaeum. Likely, a disused one, probably used to deify deceased Emperors with, stashed away with two others in a second-century underground stone reservoir built by Hadrian, which itself later became "The Chapel of the Invention of the Cross." Can't get more honest than that! :funny::biggrin:

Indeed, Constantine and Helena HAD to have known about the resemblence of the "True Cross" and your typical everyday, run-of-the-mill tropaeum:

Google Books - Helena Augusta: the Mother of Constantine the Great and the Legend of her Finding of the True Cross, page 182.

A Google image search will reveal an immense number of pictures and photographs of tropaea; and except for a certain monument in Romania, they are all cruciform! And even the statue on top of the monument, which one could call the tropaeum proper, displays the form of a cross.

It's on marbles, it's on statues, it's on coins. The post-Constantinian Latin Cross, like the tropaeum that preceded it, was in the shape of a modified T.

Duvduv

Can it be confirmed that the Domatilla is actually Christian although it is contained with Christian motifs on other items ?
Why is this format not common, combining the two crosses ?
Does it suggest that the earliest believers thought Jesus was crucified on the Chi Rho?

Duvduv

If the Chi-Rho could also signify Xreston meaning "Good" and if it can also represent Xristos, then isn't it possible that the original Constantine image had nothing to do with a historical physical Christ, but something celestial as expressed in this from wikipedia?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_Rho#CITEREFGrigg1977

Although modern representations of the Chi-Rho sign represent the two lines crossing at ninety degree angles, the early examples of the Chi-Rho cross at an angle that is more vividly representative of the chi formed by the solar ecliptic path and the celestial equator. This image is most familiar in Plato's Timaeus, where it is explained that the two bands which form the "world soul" (anima mundi) cross each other like the letter chi.[9] Not only did the two legs of the chi remind early Christians of the Holy Cross, "it reminded them of the mystery of the pre-existent Christ, the Logos Theou, the Word of God, who extended himself through all things in order to establish peace and harmony in the universe," in Robert Grigg's words.[10]

Hugo Rahner summarized the significance: "The two great circles of the heavens, the equator and the ecliptic, which, by intersecting each other form a sort of recumbent chi and about which the whole dome of the starry heavens swings in a wondrous rhythm, became for the Christian eye a heavenly cross."[11] Of Plato's image in Timaeus, Justin Martyr, the Christian apologist writing in the 2nd century, found a prefiguration of the Holy Cross,[12] and an early testimony may be the phrase in Didache, "sign of extension in heaven" (sēmeion ekpetaseōsen ouranō).[13]

IF the intention was to combine the celestial element with the idea of goodness and the Christ (Xreston plus Xristos), then it is possible the original intent had nothing to do with a historical Jesus who was actually crucified in the physical world, or at least the Jewish messiah gospel figure, who is also absent in the original Nicene Creed.

stephan huller

that was the point of this thread

Duvduv

I was summarizing my thoughts after reviewing the information after thinking over the issue of the original Nicene Creed. Now I am digesting whether the celestial concept could be read into the original Creed along with Xreston and creation Logos, and if devoid of any Jewish implications, unrelated to the teachings of the gospels, and hence a different religion entirely from gospelist Christianity. However, there could be some further relationship in a metaphorical sense, including "suffering" and later "judging". But why wouldn't the link to the Chi-Rho celestial cross be EXPLICIT here?

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ , the Son of God, begotten of the Father [the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God], Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance (homoousion)with the Father; by whom all things were made [both in heaven and on earth]; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; he suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost.

Bingo the Clown-O

Why didn’t you just say so?

stephan huller

Because there is always more than we think we know

mountainman

AFAIK most sources on Nicaea also explicitly mention an agreement at that time concerning the celebration of the vernal equinox, which was to serve for the celebration of the "Christian Easter". This agreement implied agreement (or otherwise) related to an essentially astronomical - celestial - concept.

When this astronomical "agreement" is studied, it would certainly seem probable that Constantine rejected the advice of non-christian astrologers when he decided to chain "Easter" to the Vernal equinox. Not a good thing. This had totally disasterous effects for the entire concept of "astrology" and "astronomy". The knowledge of the celestial precession of the equinoxes was literaly crucified. Further info here.

Therefore, one reason why it the link to the Chi-Rho celestial cross would not need to be be EXPLICIT here is because the "Celestial Issues" were supposedly discussed (explicitly) under the subject of the proper and due celebration of the Vernal Equinox in the year 325 CE, at which time it was legally hijacked as the celebration of Constantine's very own Easter Bunny parade.

The Earthly Cross OTOH was also real for these people but a separate issue altogether. If Helena really discovered it, we might suppose that Constantine publically displayed it. Moreover I cannot find any reports that experts at that time found it to be other than 1st century timber. We can be reasonably sure that Bullneck had his experts, since he refers to them before Nicaea, at the "Council of Antioch", during his momentous "Oration to the Saints", in relation to the truth of the Sibyl's prediction of the 1st Appearance in the Flesh of Bilbo Jesus Baggins ....

stephan huller

I think this is over complicating the Quartodeciman controversy which broke out in the second century not the fourth. If Christianity was invented from scratch why even make reference to a controversy where some people wanted to keep the Pasch Jewish? The questions over a solar and lunar calendar seem more likely to have manifest in the second century. By the fourth century there were no Jewish groups that took an interest in a solar calendar.

The one argument in favor of your proposition is Socrates's strange reference to a Quartodeciman group still surviving to the fourth century. In spite of this, Socrates is familiar with the Polycarp-Anicetus debate in the second century (although he dates Polycarp to the third century strangely).

la70119

And those so-called "1st century timbers" were found in a 2ND century cistern! I have no doubt in my mind that those crosses that the 'experts' for "Bullneck's Queen Mum" had found were discarded tropaea from the local Caesareum of Aelia Capitolina. I mean, what else COULD they be?

It seems to me there were a lot of willingly gullible people around Constantine's reign who were easily fooled because the fakes, forgeries and frauds confirmed what they wanted to believe, or wanted the masses to believe.