Museum Pic

by peacefulpete 33 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  peacefulpete

  A lot of ink has been spilled on the topic of the cross. The WT felt it had uncovered some deep conspiracy when they found a number of words were used to describe how Jesus was understood to have been killed. There was an extensive thread many years ago that in short strongly supports the conclusion that at least some NT writers envisioned a cross, while others had a tree in mind. The point is simple, it was an evolving idea (even while the NT was being formed) that may well have been influenced by the Roman tradition of crucifixion while perceiving a tree in the earliest layers of the legend. Again, we will never know.

  Went to the Louvre last week and saw this famous statue. It's a scene from the Dionysus myth. Zues has sex with a human and has a son. Hera his wife is very angry and tries to have him killed. Zues hides him and has him tutored by a wise old Satyr named Silenus who raises him like a son. Eventually Silenus is bound to a tree and killed. My point is not to suggest direct lifting of the Jesus story from the mythos around them but that these traditions were certainly in the air. Does it matter? Nope.
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  carla

  Medical evidence

  The Romans choice of using a cross over a stake was apparently due to the cross being able to extend the time it takes a person to die. By staying alive for hours or days the crucified person served as a warning example to others. The site centuryone.org/crucifixion2.html (February 15 2006) looks at some of these issues. Quoting research contained at F.T. Zugibe, 1984 Death by Crucifixion, Canadian Society of Forensic Science 17(1):1-13.6 it shows that on a cross, rather than a rapid death from asphyxiation death it can take hours or days to die from hypovolemic shock. On the other hand, death on a stake is rapid. Summarising research by P. Barbet 1953 Les Cinq Plaies du Christ 2nd ed. Paris: Procure du Carmel de l' Action de Graces;

  "Eye Witness accounts by prisoners of war in Dacchu during WWII reported that victims suspended from beams by their wrist, which were tied, expired within ten minutes if their feet were weighted or tied down and within one hour if their feet were unweighted and the victim was able to raise and lower himself to permit respiration. Death in this manner, which is one form of crucifixion, was the result of suffocation."

  The length of time Jesus and the other two survived after impalement shows they were likely supported on a cross by a sedile.

  https://jwfacts.com/watchtower/cross-or-stake.php
  
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  Balaamsass2

  Watchtower/Rutherford LOVED anything that made them seem different. Therefore the big hoopla over the cross. The Romans like many ancient cultures could be quite brutal, and they became efficient at torture theatre to keep the masses in check. Around 70 BCE they crucified 6,000 followers of Sparticus along the Apian way, so the practice is, and was not a big secret or mystery.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion
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  peacefulpete

  Maybe I need to clarify. My point is simply that it's rather silly and pointless to debate whether the NT authors meant cross or stake. While I personally believe many of the texts themselves strongly indicate 'cross' and the arguments of the WT for 'stake' are inaccurate at best, I wouldn't try to argue for the use of a cross because of a timeline, seeing as the timelines differ.

  Further I'm kind of leaning toward the hypothesis that the earliest layers of Christianity saw the merging of a heavenly 'son of man/son of God' cult with any number of historical personages such as the teacher of righteousness from Qumran. Paul seems to represent an intermediate stage. A few decades later in Rome the anonymous work later named the Gospel of Mark appears to be one of the earliest narrative tales stringing together OT typological elements in Midrashic style to create a new story depicting this new hybrid character engaging in miracles, fulfilling "prophecies" and exposing the established religious order as corrupt. To write that narrative the author naturally drew from the idiom and motifs of the literature of Homer.

  In line with that reconstruction, I find the Wells, Doherty proposals persuasive. One of the most difficult aspects of Doherty's hypothesis is why the earliest Christians might have envisioned a Christ being 'crucified' by spirits upon a cross in a lower heaven. In my estimation a tree represents a much easier proposal. Much like the Ascension of Isaiah reads:

  14 And the god of that world will stretch out [his hand against the Son], and they will lay their hands upon him and hang him upon a tree, not knowing who he is.
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  Anony Mous

  The cross was in use before and after the start of Christianity and seems to have been in common use as early as the second century such as in the Alexamenos graffito.
  
  Jesus didn’t die on either, he was a mythical figure. The early church followers may have died on crosses or stakes or hung on trees.
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  peacefulpete

  Anony Mouse...Even if the Christ/son was a mythic/mystic figure we can discuss the elements of the story. Paul's Midrashic style use of Genesis and Deuteronomy may be the key to how he concluded the Christ was hung on a tree in a spirit level above the firmament. In Galatians 3 he combines elements drawn from Deuteronomy "cursed is everyone hanged upon a tree" and the Genesis story of Isaac bearing upon himself the wood to be used for his own death as a sacrifice. Both of these pericopes inspired Jewish commentary and were linked through the use of the word "wood/tree". Note this comment from Wilcox, Max. 1977. “‘Upon the Tree’: Deut 21:22-23 in the New Testament.” Journal of Biblical Literature 96 (1): 85–99. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3265329

  In Genesis 22 it is found in the plural ξύλα . . . for the wood of the burnt-offering and, more specifically, in 22:6 Abraham is depicted as taking the wood and loading it onto Isaac his son. Genesis Rabba comments on this, “like one who carries his cross . . . upon his shoulder.” A moment later Abraham is shown building an altar and setting out the wood upon it; he then binds Isaac and puts him “upon the altar, on top of the wood” . . . . In the NT model, in the fulness of time another comes to the place of sacrifice, carrying his “wood”/“cross” (cf. John 19:17), and is put upon it (cf. esp. 1 Pet 2:24 . . . ). We thus argue that behind the present context in Galatians 3 there is an earlier midrashic link between Gen 22:6-9 and Deut 21:22-23 by way of the common term … ξύλον …). That this has external confirmation we may see from (Ps.)-Tertullian, Adv. Iudaeos 10:6,

  … Isaac, when led by his father as a victim, and himself bearing his own “wood,” was even at that period pointing to Christ’s death; conceded, as he was, as a victim by the Father; carrying, as he did, the “wood” of his own passion.

  In short what is proposed is that the earliest Christians sprung from a Jewish faction that had integrated a son of man/son of God entity. Some of their writings are still available. Paul seems to be introducing the concept of the death of that entity through purely Midrashic means. IOW perceiving it from interpretation of passages in the Tanakh and related works. His contribution to the formation of Christianity as we know it was " Christ hung on a tree (crucified)".

  It's not hard then to imagine the link to the Roman practice of crucifixion on a cross. It cannot be precisely identified who first made this link as the work of Paul have been heavily redacted and selected and very little else has survived from this period. However, by the time the narrative Gospels came along the link to the Roman practice and period was fully established. Therefore, as Wells finally concluded it would be possible an actual historical person's execution became integrated into the Christ composition. This person/s may have been someone from an earlier period such as the Teacher of Righteousness who was killed by the religious leadership or someone like the Jesus the prophet who was supposedly killed with a Roman catapult in Josephus or one of the many would be reformers and messiahs.
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  Diogenesister

  I understood that the Romans, unlike the Greeks, rarely used crucifixion as a method of execution. It was reserved for sedition or rebellion, not run-of-the-mill crimes.

  If Jesus was executed, it's likely he was seen as a rabble rouser at the very least. Romans did not interfere in Jewish religious disputes. That is absolutely sure. They must have portrayed him as marshalling the Jews to overthrow Roman rule.
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  dropoffyourkeylee

  I've always maintained that the primary reason the anti-cross doctrine was adopted by Rutherford was to distance the Watchtower-aligned Bible Students from the breakaway 'evil slave' Bible Students. One of their characteristic beliefs was the cross, and use of the cross and crown lapel pin as an identifier.
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  enoughisenough

  "and use of the cross and crown lapel pin as an identifier." my understanding it is masonic.

  
  
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  Anony Mous

  @peacefulpete: it is unlikely the early Christians would use the stake given the existing symbolism of the cross. Most early text reference not the cross but either the Chi (X), Taw (+), Chi-Rho (XP overlapped) or reference ‘the sign’. Orthodox Christians still use the + over the elongated cross from Western Christianity.

  Note that the Jews (where Christianity originates from) used the sign to mean ‘truth’ or given it was the end of the alphabet, ‘God’. The Jews in turn got it from Egypt and/or Babylon. Likewise Ezekiel, Leviticus and Genesis used the sign for eg. the mark of Cain, the mark of the Passover etc

  These signs are thousands of years old and predate Judaism and Christianity and are heavily found in all those texts. As far as the Greek stauros meaning a “upright stake” in this context is only a 18th/19th century invention, and uses a very dubious set of sources, seemingly in an effort to purify Christianity from pagan and Jewish lore, once again, you see this in Millerite theology, which the Russelites and IBSA were borrowing many of these interpretations which eventually split into the faction we now know as JWs.

  There is no reference to a stake in early Christian “lore”, all references dating as early as 200AD (Christianity wasn’t widespread until ~100AD) use these symbols to mean Jesus (and/or God, depending on branch):