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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
In the early pre-Christian times, the Cross in a Circle was a widely used Pagan symbol. I don't know what it represented, but I'm nearly positive thats where the Christians stole it from. Excuse me, adopted.

Yeahhhh, no. Just no.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
In the early pre-Christian times, the Cross in a Circle was a widely used Pagan symbol. I don't know what it represented, but I'm nearly positive thats where the Christians stole it from. Excuse me, adopted.

I highly recommend researching the Late Republic/Early Empire era of Ancient Rome. Not just for context to this, but also I think you'd find some interesting parallels to 30k and 40k. I for one find it fascinating comparing the histories of the different numbered legions to the Legions of the Great Crusade.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
In the early pre-Christian times, the Cross in a Circle was a widely used Pagan symbol. I don't know what it represented, but I'm nearly positive thats where the Christians stole it from. Excuse me, adopted.

Yes I'm sure they stole the image of the cross from the pagans. The use of the cross has nothing to do with the fact that the central figure in Christianity, Jesus, was crucified on a cross by the Romans in the early first century...
And again you said the Byzantine Cross predated Christianity by centuries...which would somehow make it appear a thousand years prior to the arrival of the actual Byzantines themselves...
Read a book man

 MurphyMcIrish005 wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
In the early pre-Christian times, the Cross in a Circle was a widely used Pagan symbol. I don't know what it represented, but I'm nearly positive thats where the Christians stole it from. Excuse me, adopted.

Yes I'm sure they stole the image of the cross from the pagans. The use of the cross has nothing to do with the fact that the central figure in Christianity, Jesus, was crucified on a cross by the Romans in the early first century...
And again you said the Byzantine Cross predated Christianity by centuries...which would somehow make it appear a thousand years prior to the arrival of the actual Byzantines themselves...
Read a book man

I imagine he did read a book. there's actually some debate on the matter.

Obviously the cross is going to predate Christianity. As you don't _get_ Christianity without crucifixion being a established practice.

For the debate, here you go:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14750495/#:~:text=Probably%20originating%20with%20the%20Assyrians,in%20the%203rd%20century%20BC.

. Probably originating with the Assyrians and Babylonians, it was used systematically by the Persians in the 6th century BC. Alexander the Great brought it from there to the eastern Mediterranean countries in the 4th century BC, and the Phoenicians introduced it to Rome in the 3rd century BC.

The problem there is that ancient writers used the same words to describe both what we call crucifixion and what we call impalement (i.e. "So-and-so nasty rebel was sentenced to die on a pole", with no indication of whether they were tied to it, nailed to it, skewered on it, or whether there might have been a crossbar or whatever). We're pretty sure the Romans used crucifixion and not impalement because we have better written evidence (because the Romans are more recent, and because they really liked writing about themselves), but some of the earlier descriptions of Jesus' crucifixion talk about a pole rather than explicitly a cross, and it's anyone's guess what the Assyrians and Babylonians were doing.

We know that the cross eventually became a symbol of Christianity.

We also know that variations on a 'cross' symbol have been used throughout human history and prehistory.

The 'sun cross' (cross in a circle) seems to have been used as a religious symbol since at least the Bronze Age. But designating a symbol as 'religious' is always slightly speculative. Perhaps better to say they show up on objects that appear to have cultic/ritual significance. Consensus is that it was a representation of the Sun and/or a chariot wheel. The Assyrians used it as a symbol of their god Ashur, but AFAIK it has no connection to any methods of execution they might have used.

... I may possibly have forgotten what the original point of all this was?

EDIT: Oh yeah, I remember. So there are some things we're pretty sure of, a lot of things are theories and speculation (some more supported by evidence than others), but black and white declarations like "Christians stole the cross from the pagans" are just opinions, not facts.

Also, the original fluff for the Emperor in 40K was that he deliberately sowed most human religions and inserted myths, prophecies and symbols he could later use to manipulate societies to work towards his eventual goal of defeating Chaos. Because GW's writers were more honest about being influenced by Dune back in the late 80s / early 90s. The pseudo-Catholicism of the Imperial Cult should therefore be seen as the equivalent of concepts like Buddhislam and the Missionaria Protectiva in Dune.

Later fluff has, of course, turned the Emperor into a rather facile straw atheist and obfuscated or outright thrown out a lot of his earlier (and IMO more interesting) depictions. The only example we have of him deliberately engineering a religion in the newer fluff is the Mechanicum. The strongly mediaeval-Catholic overtones of the Ecclesiarchy therefore don't make as much sense in the setting as they used to.

Not "pretty sure". 100% sure. There is no question as to what form Jesus's crucifixion took. To say that the imagery of a cross was stolen is just false. It's referencing an event, no some nebulous imagery that got cribbed.

Yes, other people have used a cross before and since for other purposes, but its not a stolen image like some other poster was implying.

I think this line of debate isn't going to lead to anywhere positive guys..

the 'sign of the aquila' used to be a crossing of the chest similar to to the catholic method, where the shoulders were the tips of the wings, the abdomen the feed and chest the eagle heads.

The most basic shape to imply the aquila is a wide short cross, so maybe that's what they were doing.

BrianDavion wrote:I think this line of debate isn't going to lead to anywhere positive guys..

I thought I was pretty careful to avoid upsetting anyone's religious sensibilities. But you're right. You can't meaningfully discuss the historical evidence (or lack of) of a thing with someone for whom one very particular portrayal of that thing is literally an article of faith and the opinions of historians just make them angry and defensive.

Hellebore wrote:the 'sign of the aquila' used to be a crossing of the chest similar to to the catholic method, where the shoulders were the tips of the wings, the abdomen the feed and chest the eagle heads.

The way it is described in recent fluff, at least, is laying the hands over the chest, palms inwards, with the fingers splayed to form the wings and the thumbs either overlaid or hooked together to form the heads.

I would say it's a wee bit daft to say Christianity "stole" the cross as a symbol from the earlier religious practices of the Near East. Stealing suggests ownership of a simple symbol and taking with malicious intent. That's not really the same as coopting a symbol to the religion.

Going back to the OP and Dan Abnett's use in Honour Guard, I think there's two ways of looking at it.

1. A cross is just a real easy way to mark a grave and that likely won't have changed much, regardless of how many years go by.

2. It's also perhaps worth considering it from an out of world perspective. It's not so much what the cross is doing as a grave marker in the 41st millennium, but what that means to us as the reader. In the book, the regiment suffers terrible casualties in a short span of time going up against the Baneblade and they put the crosses over a mass grave. It's a simple way of creating a poignant image in the novel through the use of the cross as a grave marker in a war setting. It gets us as the reader to immediately think of other war graves in our own history, particularly that of the first world war and the cemeteries of France and Flanders.