Since God says He is Alpha and Omega in Isaiah 44:6, using half of God's title as a symbol of Christian faith would have been confusing to say the least. Hellenized Jewish Christians would have thought this symbol puzzling and incomplete; Gentiles would have found it meaningless. Just as today marginalized groups adopt and co-opt crude, cruel terms used to describe them and turn them around on their tormentors, get in their faces so to speak with it, so did the early Christians take an instrument of death used on the vilest criminals and use it as a sign of their triumph.