According to legend, Constantine sent his mother to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where she excavated and brought back to Rome the Titulus Crucis, or the headboard of the cross on which was written the words "King of the Jews." Using philological, literary and archeological evidence, the authors argue against this legend, claiming instead that the earliest Christians must have begun a tradition of venerating Jesus' cross. When did Christians begin to venerate the cross of Jesus? Thiede and d'Ancona, who stirred up controversy about the dating of the Gospels in The Jesus Papyrus, challenge the prevailing scholarly opinion that the cross became a central symbol only after the emperor Constantine adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century.
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