When is it that WT adopted the idea that the cross was actually a steak? I have been looking through things on this and can't find the time frame that this occured. I asked an elder and he said that they had always believed this way, which is obviously not true. Any ideas when it actually was?
Zion watch tower and the cross
by SuperMommy 9 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Leolaia
A cross steak? Oh you must mean a T-bone steak :))) Yummmmm!!
To answer your question, the use of jewelry with images of the cross was first discouraged in 1928 at a Detroit convention, and then the emblem was removed from Watch Tower covers in 1931. Then, finally in 1936, the book Riches declared that "Jesus was crucified, not on a cross of wood, such as exhibited in many images and pictures, and which images are made and exhibited by men; Jesus was crucified by nailing his body to a tree" (p. 27). Note they still used the word "crucified". I think it took even longer before they started using the word (incorrectly, if I might add) "impaled", and the term "torture-stake" was adopted by the time the New World Translation was produced in the 1950s. So it was a rather gradual development.
The insistence the the words stauros, xylon, and crux did not refer to Roman two-beamed crosses is, btw, completely unfounded.
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Stefanie
I asked an elder and he said that they had always believed this way,
Oh brother!
You need to slap that fool with a watchtower!
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Leolaia
By the way, you can tell the elder to look it up on p. 148 of the 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, which explains when and why the Witnesses rejected the cross. It also has a quote from a long-time Witness who described the cross-and-crown symbol the early Bible Students used and described it as "quite attractive and was our idea of what it meant to take up our 'cross' and follow Jesus Christ in order to be able to wear the crown of victory in due time".
Ain't the internet great?
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Double Edge
found this... hope it helps...
Was it a Cross or Stake?
According to the 1975 Yearbook the doctrine did not result from careful biblical analysis, but rather from Judge Rutherford's dislike of the cross symbol. Originally, the Bible Students under Charles T. Russell accepted the cross as a valid Christian emblem. In fact, Russell incorporated it in his symbol of the Millennial Kingdom ? a cross placed inside a crown. This "cross and crown" symbol appeared on Watchtower covers since 1891, and was represented on a plaque hanging in Russell's personal study.1 The Bible Students even wore a pin of this shape. Carey W. Barber, now a member of the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses, described it: "It was a badge really, with a wreath of laurel leaves as the border and within the wreath was a crown with a cross running through it on an angle. It looked quite attractive and was our idea of what it meant to take up our ?cross? and follow Christ Jesus in order to be able to wear the crown of victory in due time."2
Rutherford however did not think it was so "attractive." He perceived the cross as nothing more than a pagan symbol, as a long-time Witness recalled: "This to Brother Rutherford's mind was Babylonish and should be discontinued. He told us that when we went to the people's homes and began to talk, that was the witness in itself."3
It took Rutherford eight years to purge the Bible Students of the cross. His first move against it occurred in 1928, when he instructed his followers at a Detroit convention to discard the "objectionable" and "unnecessary" jewelry.4 Then in 1931 the emblem was removed from the Watchtower covers. At that point the cross symbol became non-biblical, non-Christian, and ungodly ? and was relegated to the forbidden trappings of Satan's organization. The Witnesses however still believed that Jesus was executed on a traditional cross. This contradiction no doubt vexed Rutherford, and he saw the need to revise his assumptions about the Passion. Therefore, without much fanfare, he presented his new view in the book Riches. On page 27, he wrote: "Jesus was crucified, not on a cross of wood, such as exhibited in many images and pictures, and which images are made and exhibited by men; Jesus was crucified by nailing his body to a tree."5 It seems that Rutherford saw nothing wrong (as does the Society today) with using the word "crucify" to denote impalement.
Therefore, according to the Society's own account, scholarship really had no-thing to do with its adoption of the "torture stake" doctrine.
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Pleasuredome
It also has a quote from a long-time Witness who described the cross-and-crown symbol the early Bible Students used and described it as "quite attractive and was our idea of what it meant to take up our 'cross' and follow Jesus Christ in order to be able to wear the crown of victory in due time".
i'd describe it as quite vulgar. used in orders of the york and scottish rites, notably representing a sexual interaction of the male and female energies.
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galaxy7
anything that was enjoyable rutherford got rid of
witnesses used to be like everyone else then along came rutherscrooge
they celebrated christmas and most other holidays I believe
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SuperMommy
If rutherford had never been involved then the JW's that we know today would be a form of Christianity and not a cult as we know it? How interesting is this
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Euphemism
SuperMommy... before Rutherford, the Witnesses were pretty much just another Adventist offshoot. There are still groups of Bible Students today who split off from the Watchtower in the early Rutherford days; and aside from the Russellite theological roots, they're quite different from the Witnesses.
The full cult-form of the Witnesses (specifically the practice of disfellowshipping, the extreme sexual repression, and the bland conformism) didn't develop until the 50's, under Knorr's watch. But the dogmatic authoritarianism, most of the weirder doctrines (cross, birthdays, holidays, flag salute, voting, the rejection of the whole "world" as belonging to Satan) and the obsessive focus on the "preaching work" all developed under Rutherford.
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frankiespeakin
What is the proper understanding of "impalement"?
I thought it was up the rectum and out the mouth am I mistaken??