Who cares? But for those who do, the Watchtower's Diaglott showing the actual Greek always said cross. I discovered that as a jw and was told the Diaglott came from the oldest found Greek scrolls, but they weren't old enough to have been original, and they were sure the original would have stated cross. Ugh!
stake or cross?
by Tekel 46 Replies latest watchtower bible
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oompa
sorry kojack and wolfman but my bs dectector is set at full alert now!! lmao....your idea just sucks ass man....i mean:
1. a small sign would still fit over his head if his hands were up...duh...
2. his hands could have been above his head and nailed to the SIDES of the stake and a BIG sign would still have fit
3. in my movie the sign would be square and the nails would go in the bottom of the sign and into jesus forhead thus posting the sign over jesus damm head...
geeze people....get creative............oompa
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oompa
wow thanks kacky i had forgot about that! i was thinking you meant the purple greek interlinear version but i googled it and wikipedia has a nice piece for links under Emphatic Diaglot and it was very informative..........oompa
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OldGenerationDude
The confusion that lead to members of the Governing Body to making the "stake" dogma in the Jehovah's Witness religion is really a very elementary one.
The original Greek words used in Scripture are indeed "stake" and "tree." They mean nothing else--nothing else in Greek, that is.
Remember, the world that both Jesus and the apostles lived in was controlled not by the Greeks but the Roman Empire. The Romans had conquered the Greeks and taken over their language in addition to territory. While the gospels are written in Greek, the Jews spoke a mishmash form of Hebrew mixed with Aramaic. The Romans spoke Latin. Greek was the language for writing--the "universal" language of text.
The Greeks used to impale victims on an upright stake. Of course the Romans were a bit more advanced (and were not to be outdone by anyone as even the way they tortured people was a matter of state pride). The Romans discovered that by adding two pieces of wood to a stake, namely a cross bar to extend the arms upon and a small shelf on which to slightly support the feet, the agony of being "impaled" could be increased. How so?
On an upright stake, as the Greeks used, people died rather quickly. Greeks had a respect for life not shared by the Romans. They wanted their use of impalement to last long enough to spread fear into others and to lengthen the time one spent alive nailed on the torture device. They also wanted to expose the victim to shame in the process because by lengthening the time spent impaled the victim would have to spend their last days (yes it could last days with the added wood) totally nude before every passerby, forced to urinate and empty their bowels in public this way until they died.
One last thing the added cross-beam and shelf did was create great pressure on the lungs. The Romans actually tested several designs out and found out that by having the arms stretched out to the sides with the legs slightly bent, excruciating weight could be pressed upon the middle of the body, so much so that should the bottom shelf for the feet be removed or the legs broken (which became the Roman's favorite way to do this), this would increase the demand the shift in weight would put on the lungs, causing them to collapse and the victim to expire by drowning in his own bodily fluids (the lungs would fill up with water and blood).
While the Latin term for this was "crux," they never changed the Greek form. In fact, Greek soon lost out to Latin as the language for both speech and the written word.
Not being too keen on history and etymology, the Jehovah's Witnesses gathered they were being "intelligent" by claiming that the word only meant "stake" since that is what the Greek words mean when you look them up in a Greek dictionary.
"That's right, my little pretties, but that ain't what it came to mean once the Romans took over!"
There are also historical accounts, archeological finds which include remains, bodies, and parts of crosses, and the very first illustration of the Jesus on a his "stake" which was drawn by a member of the Roman army--who drew the item as a cross, by the way--all which disprove the superstitions that the Witnesses have thus surrounded the "cross" with (such as its wrong conclusions from Puritan-based witch stories regarding Tau and other gods and worship of the letter T).
It's not a mystery or a controversy. You can see crosses in museums and in books and read about them in secular history from those who were there to witness them and see ancient inscription in stone left by the Romans. If you're not convinced that it was a cross, it's just a temporary left over from the Watchtower that is easily remedied by getting up out of one's chair, away from the Internet, and into a museum or your closest university and asking someone associated with the department of history and the department of archeology.
Leave it to the Witnesses to make perhaps the one spot where there's literal evidence to support something written in the gospel texts--crosses--and to screw that up by denying everything about them.
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Finkelstein
Leave it to the Witnesses to make perhaps the one spot where there's literal evidence to support something written in the gospel texts--crosses--and to screw that up by denying everything about them.
Well said and I agree with everything you've mentioned about the subject.
The WTS. have never been well studied bible theologians or students of archeology.
The cause of this ignorance happens because the WTS. proclaims they are god's channel and since they proclaim that
all other religions are false and to have a chance to be saved from destruction at Armageddon, you have to accept the WTS. teachings,
thats why most JWS willfully accept everything they are taught by this religious organization.
There is so much pressure and fear imposed on to people in this organization, they are discourged to used open analytical thinking.
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mynameislame
This is one of the things that helped me leave. I realized that the jws spent way too much time trying to prove something that really doesn't matter.
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Finkelstein
My guess is that the WTS. tried to show once again how wrong most Churches of Christendom are in embracing the cross.
Unfortunately they made themselves the ones in the wrong.
But at least they got the biblical instruction to not worship graven images right.
About one of the very few things the WTS. ever did get right.
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kurtbethel
It is a fitting irony that since literary vampires shrink away in horror at the cross, that spiritual vampires would do likewise.
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wolfman85
Great contribution OGD!! And for kurtbethel, since you mention the vampires I'll try to translate into English a very old joke in Spanish.
Was a man walking alone at night in a very dark street. Suddenly he notices a tall figure dressed in black who follows him to a dead end. The man realizes is a vampire and at the moment he shows a crucifix and the vampire frantically starts laughing and says, "fool, I study with the JW and learned that Christ did not die on a cross." And the man says with a smile: "ahaaa, then you can not suck blood because the JW do not accept blood." And the vampire says, "I HAVE NOT STUDIED THAT CHAPTER YET"!!
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OldGenerationDude
Actually, mynameislame, it matters a whole lot.
The whole Jesus of Nazareth thing aside, what the Jehovah's Witnesses are doing is claiming that crucifixion never--ever existed. They are not merely saying that the translation of "starous" is wrong by Christians (and the rest of the world for that matter). The JWs claim that Roman did not kill people via crosses (the 1984 NWT Reference Edition, in the appendix regarding this subject claims that the crucifixion of Sparticus and his army did not occur, that only upright stakes were used, that the term "crucifxion" even in this historical reference has been changed by Satan the Devil via the Roman Catholic Church). They claim that crucifixion was not a part of history.
Their doctrine is that the Roman Catholic Church invented the whole thing and that an entire part of history--including all the artifacts, secular reports, testimony from Rome itself and etymology--is wrong. They claim that people are reading Latin wrong, and that the true definition of "crux" means "upright pole." It's like those Fundamentalists who claim that fossils were placed in the ground by the Devil---that's totally insane.
It doesn't prove that Jesus is the Messiah or that God exists to know the facts about the cross. You can actually see pieces of crosses and remains of bodies that still have the various nails stuck in trough the bones of those who went through this form of torture (bodies and remains and nails that only fit crucifixion, not single beam impalement). This isn't a subject that is up for opinion or debate or interpretation.
They've got millions of people not only believing what they say but keeping themselves from investigating it for themselves and seeing with their own eyes the evidence that the two-beamed "starous" was the type of device created by Roman. Why, they even got exJWs saying it really doesn't matter much if they control people into thinking this part of history can't be fully proven. It isn't a controversy. It is an objective truth.
An organization that gets millions of people to deny something that can be seen and touched and that there is no question of a doubt is real--that doesn't matter? If you believe it's an opinion that the instrument used by Rome was a cross or just a possibility, then you're either under the spell of the Watchtower or too lazy to go see these artifacts themselves.
Getting millions to deny what is fact in history--what is well known by all--which still lingers to this days thousands of years later, that is very important for people to see. This is one of the greatest and easiest ways to show that this is no ordinary religion or group--there is something very, very wrong with what the Governing Body is doing and the type of control they are exercising over people.