According to the story, Jesus was crucified on a wooden cross on
a hill called Golgotha, “the Place of the Skull” [where Adam's
head is supposed to have been buried, so Jesus is the Second
Adam, "Fruit of the Tree"]. Legend tells that the wood of this
cross had a strange history… It is said that after Adam and Eve
had been expelled from the Garden of Eden, one of the sons of
Adam, named Seth, had managed to obtain a cutting from the fatal
Tree of Knowledge whose fruit had opened his parents’ hearts to
evil. Some versions of the legend say, however, that the branch
was from the Tree of Life, which also stood in the Garden. From
this branch a staff was made, a staff handed down from
generation to generation among the ancient Hebrew patriarchs.
This was the staff which Moses turned into a serpent before the
Egyptian king, the staff with which he opened the passage in the
Red Sea, and struck the rock in the wilderness so that it gave
forth water. And when the Hebrews, escaped from Egypt, were
plagued by snakes in