A poster asked me to add some interesting revelations from Hebraic roots studies here so I thought it would be nice to share this.
The camp of the children of Israel in the wilderness formed a cross with the Levites in the center:
http://asis.com/users/stag/bible/wildcamp.html
Once a year during the day of atonement, yom kippur, the high priest would enter the holy of holies, at the center of the tabernacle, at the center of the camp forming a cross, and sprinkle blood on the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant.
According to the Mishnah, while sprinkling the blood, the high priest would say God's name, the tetragrammation, YHVH. In the pictographic form of Hebrew used in those days, the letters had meaning and looked like objects such as hands, houses and windows.
God's name spelled yod-hey-vav-hey when spoken would have meant and looked like "yod - hand", "hey - behold! (a man with two arms lifted up)", "vav - nail", "hey - behold!". Taken together it would form the sentence "behold the hand! behold the nail!"
http://heavenawaits.wordpress.com/yh...hold-the-nail/
In summary, the high priest would repeat "behold the hand! behold the nail!", while sprinkling blood on the ark of the covenant, while standing in the middle of a huge cross in the wilderness... Viewed from the sky, it would have looked like an epic ceremony commemorating the future sacrifice of the Messiah 1200 years later, well before the cross was ever thought of as an execution method.
Interestingly, the letter tav, the first letter of the word Torah, meant covenant and was written exactly as a cross, foreshadowing the new covenant which would come through the cross of Christ.
Torah in Hebrew is spelled "tav, vav, resh, hey"
In paleo hebrew:
1. the letter tav was written as a cross.
2. vav was a nail
3. resh was written as head or person
4. hey was a window or a man holding up two hands and meant behold! or reveal
Which taken together is "a man nailed to the cross revealed".
The word torah itself reveals Jesus, who was the fulfillment of torah, and his sacrifice on the cross!
more on this here:
http://www.ecclesia.org/TRUTH/torah.html