article_snippet: What's "true" about the cross that killed Jesus?
article_snippet: Where might there be other pieces of the "true cross"?
article_snippet: There are churches all over the world that claim to have fragments or splinters of the true cross.
article_snippet: How can We be certain the Romans didn't reuse the cross?
article_snippet: : We can't be sure the cross upon which Jesus was crucified wasn't reused in the execution of other criminals or in some other kind of construction.
article_snippet: James Faubel: If the crucifixion of Jesus was so important to Christians, why are there no images of Jesus on the cross in Christian art until about the seventh century A.D.?
article_snippet: Prior to that time, the depictions are usually of a lamb on the cross.
article_snippet: Christians did not use the image of the cross in Christians art.
article_snippet: Depicting a cross would be akin to using an image of an electric chair or a hangman's noose.
article_snippet: So, early on, Christians used images of Daniel in the lion's den, Jonah and the whale and the three young men in the fiery furnace in the funeral art as symbols of resurrection and conquest of death.
article_snippet: the cross began to be retrieved as a symbol of power, so that instead of being a symbol of shameful death it became an emblem of victory over death.
article_snippet: There are a lot of really interesting studies of the emergence of the cross in early Christian art; I'd recommend Robin Jensen's "Understanding Early Christian Art" as a great place to start.