<P> According to W.E. Vine, the cross was used by worshipers of Tammuz, an Ancient Near East deity of Babylonian origin who had the cross-shaped taw (tau) as his symbol . </P> <P> John Pearson, Bishop of Chester (c. 1660) wrote in his commentary on the Apostles' Creed that the Greek word stauros originally signified "a straight standing Stake, Pale, or Palisador", but that, "when other transverse or prominent parts were added in a perfect Cross, it retained still the Original Name", and he declared: "The Form then of the Cross on which our Saviour suffered was not a simple, but a compounded, Figure, according to the Custom of the Romans, by whose Procurator he was condemned to die . In which there was not only a straight and erected piece of Wood fixed in the Earth, but also a transverse Beam fastned unto that towards the top thereof". </P> <P> During the first two centuries of Christianity, the cross was rare in Christian iconography, as it depicts a purposely painful and gruesome method of public execution and Christians were reluctant to use it . A symbol similar to the cross, the staurogram, was used to abbreviate the Greek word for cross in very early New Testament manuscripts such as P66, P45 and P75, almost like a nomen sacrum (nomina sacra). The extensive adoption of the cross as Christian iconographic symbol arose from the 4th century . </P> <P> The earliest depiction of the Christian Cross may be the Herculaneum Cross which was found in the city of Herculaneum, which was entombed in pyroclastic material along with Pompeii during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 . Another early depictions of the cross as a Christian symbol is the Alexamenos graffito . </P>

When did the cross become a symbol of christianity