It Was Never a Cross: The Pagan Lie at the Heart of Christianity

By Dr. Ray Taylor

Let us end this fantasy once and for all. Jesus was never crucified on a cross. Not a T shaped object. Not a lowercase t. Not a pretty golden ornament dangling from your neck. Not some sacred geometry approved by Rome. If Jesus was crucified at all and I do mean if he was executed on a stake. A singular upright piece of timber. The Greek word is stauros and it never meant cross. It never meant anything with a horizontal beam. That whole idea is a pagan fiction retrofitted into the New Testament by desperate theologians and Roman artists centuries later.

The Greek is clear. It was a stake

The New Testament is written in Koine Greek. The word for the instrument of Jesus’s death is stauros. That word does not mean cross. It means stake. It always meant stake. In classical Greek, in Homeric Greek, in Koine Greek. A vertical pole. That is it.

All the iconography with Jesus hanging sideways with arms outstretched is complete and utter nonsense. A Roman hallucination. A Roman revision. There is no archaeological evidence, no linguistic evidence, and no Roman documentation that proves a T shaped object was used in the crucifixion of Jesus. The cross is a retrofitted lie.

Pagan symbolism and astrotheology

The reason the cross became central in Christian symbolism has nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with astrotheology and pagan syncretism.

The cross already existed. It was everywhere. The Egyptian ankh, the key of life, was a cross with a loop on top. The crux in the sky, also known as the Southern Cross constellation, held sacred meaning long before Christianity existed. The T shaped Tau cross was used in Babylonian and Egyptian rites.

Rome did not invent the cross. They just recycled it. And the Church slapped Jesus onto it like a sticker.

A convenient symbol for imperial religion

Think about it. Wood was scarce in first century Palestine. Why would the Romans waste time fashioning a multi piece crucifixion device for a peasant rebel from Galilee? They would not. They used a single vertical pole and they nailed victims above the head, arms stretched upward, not sideways. You do not need a beam. You do not need symmetry. You just need pain and fear. Romans used stauroi as warnings, not sculptures.

If you know anything about Roman efficiency and cruelty, you know they were not building art projects. They were driving stakes into the ground and letting people rot on them. Slowly. Brutally. Usually by starvation and suffocation, not blood loss. Sometimes they tied them. Sometimes they nailed them. But always the purpose was humiliation and terror. The bodies were left for the dogs.

That is the truth of Roman crucifixion. Ugly. Dirty. Real. Not the shiny porcelain Jesus in a mega church foyer.

Church propaganda and the lie of the cross

The symbol of the cross became popular after Constantine. After Rome hijacked Jesus. After theology needed a logo. And what better logo than a shape already honored by mystery religions and imperial cults?

So the Church said Jesus died on a cross. They drew it. They painted it. They gold plated it. But the Bible never describes the shape. Not once. Why? Because the authors were not describing a T. They were describing a stake. A stauros.

And then came the apologists. When confronted with this glaring problem, they invented lies. They said the Greek stauros could imply a crossbeam. No it could not. That is not what the word meant. That is not what it meant ever.

The pastor’s lie

I once asked a pastor about the crucifixion myth and how it parallels the deaths of Osiris, Mithras, Attis, Dionysus, and others. All gods who were killed and resurrected. All of them older than Jesus. The pastor told me that Satan knew what God was going to do, so Satan created false stories beforehand to trick people. You heard that right. Satan was a time traveling plagiarist. A month later, the same pastor said in a sermon that God tricked Satan by crucifying Jesus to defeat him. So which is it?

That is the whole religion in a nutshell. Contradictions. Lies. Cover ups. It is not divine inspiration. It is damage control.

Joseph of Arimathea and the illusion of names

The man who supposedly buried Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea, is another red flag. The name Arimathea is not a known town. It likely comes from the Greek Arimatheas, which means best disciple. So Joseph is just a literary figure. A symbolic name. Just like the Joseph in Genesis who became the viceroy of Egypt. This is recycled storytelling. Not history.

The Bible is full of it. Symbolic names. Recycled myths. Narrative archetypes. The story of Jesus is beautiful in many ways. But it is not history. And the cross he supposedly died on is not even biblical.

If Jesus was crucified, it was on a stake

Let me be crystal clear. If Jesus was executed by the Romans, it was on a single upright stake. That is what stauros means. That is what the Romans used. That is the method the Bible describes without ever mentioning a beam. Arms would have been nailed or tied overhead. The position would cause collapse of the chest, eventual suffocation, or death by dehydration. It was a slow death. And if no one took the body, the dogs would eat it.

That is what happened to most crucifixion victims. That is what happened to thousands of nameless rebels. That is what would have happened to Jesus.

Conclusion

The cross is a lie. A beautifully crafted ancient pagan imperial lie.

If this is your first time hearing it, I understand the shock. But truth is like that. It does not care if it makes you uncomfortable. It just keeps being true.

The cross is not a Christian symbol. It is a Roman pagan symbol, an Egyptian sacred key, and an astrotheological marker of the sun god. Jesus was not nailed to it. He was attached to a stake, or perhaps not crucified at all.

You have been lied to.

And now you know.

Veritas Lux Mea