er way, treatment of Christological themes would have been commonplace and so completely consistent with the personification of the Rood in The Dream of the Rood. Additionally, as Raw observes, it is early apocalyptic Christianity, as manifest in the images of the Apocalypse (Revelation) found in Eastern Mediterranean mosaics, that informs the general tone or "idiom" of The Dream of the Rood. "To someone familiar with the idiom of early Christian art, then, the tree in The Dream of the Rood, with its gold and jewels and worshipping angels would have recalled a number of ideas. In itself the tree symbolizes the relationship between the cross, the tree of life in the Book of Genesis, and the tree of life in the Apocalypse. The tree outlined against the sky is an apocalyptic motif" (Raw 244 5). Raw says that the symbology of the Rood in the poem, which includes the cross not only as the instrument of the crucifixion but also as the Roman vexillum and German battle standards, points to Christian escha
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