The Pagan Origins of the Cross “The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun.” Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason In reading the New Testament we must cease to think of the man Jesus, and even of the “Son of God”, and think of him rather of the sun of god, for this is a solar myth, and its dying hero, a dying sun. [1] The cross is a pagan symbol that was adored in Egypt thousands of years before Jesus was born. The Roman Catholic Church adopted the cross symbol at least 600 years after Jesus was supposedly crucified. Even the early Christians of North Africa rejected the wooden cross after Tertullian condemned it. Tertullian confessed that pagans worshipped crucified saviors hanging on a cross. "Crosses, moreover, we Christians neither venerate nor wish for. You indeed who consecrate gods of wood venerate wooden crosses, p