Welcome to the board 5thofNovember!
Yes, the Society's take on the Cross doesn't hold up under scrutiny. And as Leolaia (JWN's resident scholar) already showed, the evidence points to the fact that Jesus would have died on a two-beamed cross, not a single upright stake. The Jewish historian Josephus referred to 'crucifixion', Nero crucified thousands of Christians in 64 CE and used them as human torches. Secular history also confirms that two pieces of wood were used.
Biblical Archaeology Review magazine did an interesting article back in 1985 on the subject:
"...At the end of the first century B.C., the Romans adopted crucifixion as an official punishment for non-Romans for certain limited transgressions. Initially, it was employed not as a method of execution, but only as a punishment. Moreover, only slaves convicted of certain crimes were punished by crucifixion. During this early period, a wooden beam, known as a furca or patibulum was placed on the slave's neck and bound to his arms. ...When the procession arrived at the execution site, a vertical stake was fixed into the ground. Sometimes the victim was attached to the cross only with ropes. In such a case, the patibulum or crossbeam, to which the victim's arms were already bound, was simply affixed to the vertical beam; the victim's feet were then bound to the stake with a few turns of the rope.
If the victim was attached by nails, he was laid on the ground, with his shoulders on the crossbeam. His arms were held out and nailed to the two ends of the crossbeam, which was then raised and fixed on top of the vertical beam. The victim's feet were then nailed down against this vertical stake.
In order to prolong the agony, Roman executioners devised two instruments that would keep the victim alive on the cross for extended periods of time. One, known as a sedile, was a small seat attached to the front of the cross, about halfway down. This device provided some support for the victim's body and may explain the phrase used by the Romans, "to sit on the cross." Both Eraneus and Justin Martyr describe the cross of Jesus as having five extremities rather than four; the fifth was probably the sedile."----BAR magazine, January/February 1985 p. 48,49
In a followup article on this archeological find in the Nov/Dec. issue of BAR, the statement is made:
"...According to the (Roman) literary sources, those condemned to crucifixion never carried the complete cross, despite the common belief to the contrary and despite the many modern re-enactments of Jesus' walk to Golgotha. Instead, only the crossbar was carried, while the upright was set in a permanent place where it was used for subsequent executions. As the first-century Jewish historian Josephus noted, wood was so scarce in Jerusalem during the first century A.D. that the Romans were forced to travel ten miles from Jerusalem to secure timber for their siege machinery." (p. 21)
In 1939 excavations at Herculaneum, which was destroyed in 78 AD by a volcano, discovered a house where a wooden cross had been nailed to the wall of a room:
"...Below this (cross) was a cupboard with a step in front. This has considered to be in the shape of an ara or shrine, but could well have been used as a place of prayer. . . . If this interpretation is correct, and the excavators are strongly in favor of the Christian significance of symbol and furnishings, then here we have the example of an early house church."-----Buried History, Vol. 10, No. 1, March 1974 p. 15