Questions regarding the Cross/Torture stake

by truthseeker1 29 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  truthseeker1

  This was brought up by My Journey and they requested information regarding it. This is a quote from the page below regarding how the WT takes other's words out of context to fit their own agenda.

  QUOTE..........MISQUOTE:In its "Reasoning From the Scriptures" book, the Watchtower Society quotes from several sources to support their "torture stake" theory.
  These publications not only seem authoritative, but also seem to support the Society's claims regarding the "torture stake" rather than the traditional cross. However, unbeknown to many, the Watchtower Society has not been honest in its quotations of its sources.
  For example, one publication that the Society quotes in its "Reasoning..." book on page 89 is The Imperial Bible Dictionary. Below is the Watchtower quotation, with the words that they omitted in RED:
  "The Imperial Bible Dictionary acknowledges this, saying: "The Greek word for cross, (stauros), properly signified a stake, an upright pole, or piece of paling, on which anything might be hung, or which might be used in impaling (fencing in) a piece of ground. But a modification was introduced as the dominion and usages of Rome extended themselves through Greek-speaking countries. Even amongst the Romans, the crux (from which the word cross is derived) appears to have been originally an upright pole, and always remained the more prominent part. But from the time that it began to be used as an instrument of punishment, a traverse piece of wood was commonly added...about the period of the Gospel Age, crucifixion was usually accomplished by suspending the criminal on a cross piece of wood."
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  amac

  Leolaia has written a very nice paper on this that helped me to understand it much better. She goes into the etymology of stauros and crux. A simple summary is this...if you look at the meaning of the word "gun" it originally meant a musket. But now it can mean everything from the a huge gun on a tank to a liquid dispenser behind a bar. Just as the quote above points out...as the intruments of death changed, so did the meaning of stauros and crux. So it is more important to look at what was common practive at the time...which seems to be a cross.
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  Leolaia

  I have done extensive research on this subject, looking up references in the original Greek and Latin sources. The Watchtower claim is not only erroneous, but it is also disingenuous.
  

  1) The Romans did crucify prisoners and slaves in the first century with a two-beamed cross and the words crux and stauros did denote such an execution instrument (cf. Plautus, Lucian, Artemidorus, Seneca, Tacitus). The Society's repeated claim (1950 NWT, 6/22/1984 Awake!, 1984 Reference NWT) that Livy used crux to only denote impalement is totally without merit; I looked up every time Livy mentioned crux and he never was specific the way the Society claims he was. The claim (cf. 1950 NWT, 1984 Reference Edition) that Lucian used anastaroo to denote impalement in his play on Prometheus is also false; Lucian actually indicated a two-beamed cross. The Jewish historian Josephus described the Romans crucifying the Jews "in different postures" when they attacked Jerusalem (Jewish War, 5,450-451). By claiming that crux and stauros did not mean "cross" until the third century, the Society is intentionally distorting and hiding the facts.

  Here are some ancient Greek and Roman references to crucifixion (stipes is the Latin word for the upright pole and patibulum is the word for the crossbeam):

  "Being crucified is auspicious for all seafarers. For the stauros, like a ship, is made of wood and nails, and the ship's mast resembles a stauros." (Artemidorus, Oneirocritica, 2:53)

  "Men weep and bewail their lot, and curse Cadmus with many curses for introducing Tau into the family of letters; they say it was his body that tyrants took for a model, his shape that they imitated, when they set up the erections on which men are crucified. Stauros the vile engine is called, and it derives its vile name from him. Now, with all these crimes upon him, does he not deserve death, nay, many deaths? For my part I know none bad enough but supplied by his own shape--that shape which he gave to the gibbet named stauros after him by men." (Lucian, Trial in the Court of Vowels, 12)

  "Suppose we crucify [anestaurosthai] him half way up somewhere hereabouts over the ravine, with his hands out-stretched from crag to crag....Do you suppose there is not room on the Caucasus to peg out a couple of us? Come, your right hand! Clamp it down, Hephaestus, and in with the nails; bring down the hammer with a will. Now the left; make sure work of that too." (Lucian, Prometheus, 1-2)

  I suspect you're doomed to die outside the gate, in that position: Hands spread out and nailed to the patibulum....Oh, I bet the executioners will have you looking like a human sieve, the way they'll prod you full of holes as they run you down the streets with your arms on a patibulum, once the old man gets back! .... I'll give two hundred pounds to the first man to charge my crux and take it ? on condition his legs and arms are double-nailed, that is....I shall bear the patibulum through the city; then I shall be nailed to the crux." (Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, 359-360; Mostellaria, 55-57, 359-360; Carbonaria, fragment 2; Plautus wrote about 250 BC)

  "Though they strive to release themselves from their crosses (crucibus)---those crosses to which each one of you nails himself with his own hand--yet they, when brought to punishment hang each one on a single stipes; but these others who bring upon themselves their own punishment are stretched upon as many crosses as they had desires. Yet they are slanderous and witty in heaping insult on others. I might believe that they were free to do so, did not some of them spit upon spectators from their own patibulum!" (Seneca, De Vita Beata, 19,3)

  "I should deem him most despicable had he wished to live up to the very time of crucifixion (ad crucem). . . .Is it worth while to weigh down upon one's own wound, and hang impaled upon a patibulum? . . . . Can any man be found willing to be fastened to the accursed tree (infelix lignum), long sickly, already deformed, swelling with ugly tumours on chest and shoulders, and draw the breath of life amid long drawn-out agony? I think he would have many excuses for dying even before mounting the crux!" (Seneca, Epistle 101,10-14)

  2) The Gospel accounts assume a two-beamed cross, especially in the motif of Jesus or Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross on the way to Golgotha (cf. John 19:17) which is nothing other than the widely-attested practice of patibulum-bearing (the patibulum was the crossbeam). This practice pre-existed the invention of crucifixion as a method to torture disobediant slaves (cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch) and was widely adopted as a prelude to crucifixion (cf. Plautus, Plutarch, Artemidorus, Chariton). The Society would instead require Jesus or Simon to carry a pole to Golgotha (actually pictured in the Greatest Man Who Ever Lived book (1991, chapter 124), which is utterly without any historical support and ignores the copious evidence of patibulum-bearing. The traditional Christian picture of Jesus carrying the whole cross over one of his shoulders (seen in the Passion of the Christ movie) is also unhistorical....what the Romans did was have the prisoner stretch out his hands, nail or tie the hands to the crossbeam, and then having him bear the beam over his back or chest to the stationary stipes (vertical beam), and then hoist him up to the cross. This practice is also possibly alluded to in John 21:18-19 which also assumes a two-beamed cross. Details in John 20:25 and Matthew 27:37 are also best explained by assuming a two-beamed cross.

  3) The use of the word xylon "tree, wood" in Acts 5:30; 10:39; 13:29, Galatians 3:13, and 1 Peter 2:24 does not indicate the kind of stauros Jesus died on, only that the Bible writers understood Roman crucifixion in terms of the law in Deuteronomy 21:23-23. Other Jewish writers referred to Roman crosses in exactly the same manner (including the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus), and Roman writers also referred to Roman crosses metaphorically as "trees" (cf. Seneca, quoted above).

  4) There was a strong tradition in late first century and second century Christianity that repeatedly looked for prophecies and prefigurings of the two-beamed cross of Jesus in the OT, and described the stretching out of the hands from side to side as a sign of Jesus' cross (cf. Barnabas, Justin Martyr, Odes of Solomon, Irenaeus, Tertullian, etc.). Even the pagan Romans, in mocking the Christians, depicted a two-beamed cross (cf. the Palatine graffito).

  There is lots more evidence, but this covers the basics.
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  Leolaia

  The other example I gave is of the word "car". Etymologically it comes from Latin carrus and meant "chariot". Thus in Middle English (which was when the word was borrowed into the language), we find it used to mean chariots:

  1382 WYCLIF Isa. lxvi. 16 His foure horsid carres. 1590 SPENSER F.Q. I. ii. 1 Phoebus fiery carre In hast was climbing up the Easterne hill. 1611 BIBLE 1 Esdras v. 55 They gaue carres that they should bring Cedar trees from Libanus.

  Then it was used in a more modern sense, not to refer to ancient chariots but to various kinds of vehicles used in their day, especially horse-drawn carriages:

  1576 Act 18 Eliz. x. §4 Cars or Drags, furnished for..Repairing..Highways. 1704 WORLIDGE Dict. Rust. et Urb. s.v. Beech, Some approve it much for Cars. 1716 Lond. Gaz. No. 5446/2 Carts, Drays, Carrs and Waggons. 1824-7 HONE Every-day Bk. II. 240 The common Irish Car is used throughout the province of Leinster..The Irish ?jaunting car? [is a] wholly distinct and superior vehicle. 1838 Murray's Handbk. N. Germany 318 A Russian Mountain, down which visitors descend in cars. Mod. In some provincial towns (e.g. Birmingham) ?car? means a four-wheeled hackney carriage, ?cab? meaning a hansom.

  Then it was used to refer to the part of a hot-air balloon in which aeronauts sit:
  

  1794 G. ADAMS Nat. & Exp. Philos. III. xxxiii. 404 (Of Air Balloons) To this a sort of carr, or rather boat, was suspended by ropes. 1822 J. IMISON Sc. & Art I. 171 The car, or boat, is made of wicker-work covered with leather. 1825 in HONE Every-day Bk. I. 443 Mr. Graham..seated himself in the car of his vehicle.

  Finally the term began to be used to refer to "motor cars", and has become almost exclusively restricted to this meaning:

  1896 L. SERRAILLIER tr. Farman's Auto-Cars 132 The latter drove with a daring which may have been dangerous to himself, but which never affected his car. Ibid. 135 The three cars which came in next after Mr. Levassor's were all Peugeot cars. 1900 W. W. BEAUMONT Motor Vehicles I. 615 Hill-climbing trials alone would not of course be sufficient as a test of the wearing power or durability of a car. 1902 A. C. HARMSWORTH Motors & Motor Driving 23 The first car built by the Daimler Company at Coventry. 1948 A. HUXLEY Ape & Essence (1949) i. 12 He threw the car into gear and we were off.

  So if a historian from the future discovered an advertisement to the latest Lexis cars, would she be justified in looking up what this word originally meant in English or Latin, and conclude that Americans were still driving chariots in the 21st century? Isn't that pretty much what the Society is doing with stauros and crux? Indeed, the Reasoning book is filled with similar examples of citing the etymological or original meanings of Greek words to support their doctrines (e.g. kolasin, "cutting-off" vs. idiomatic "punishment", parousia "presence" vs. "coming"), and its the same problematic approach as well.
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  Room 215

  The JW anti-cross doctine is nothing more than another evidence of their obsessive contrariness; their penchant for splitting hairs; a reflexive, knee-jerk rejection of almost any mainstream belief; being different simply for its own sake.

  Thus: ``we believe the Bible is inerrant, but don't call us `fundamentalists;''' ``we oppose war, but don't call us Christians;" ``and while you're at it, please don't list our Kingdom Halls in under `churches' or `houses of worship' in your Yellow Pages or newspapers."

  JWs love being argumentative; otherwise, they would seem far better advised to argue that, whether stake or cross (or gallows or electric chair, for that matter), the important thing is to not make the instrument of executive an object of veneration, and leave it at that. But no.....
• 

  L_A_Big_Dawg

  The thing that I always had a problem with was the little statement in the Gospels that above Jesus' head was placed the sign Pilate wrote.

  Being that Jehovah is a "god" of order, then my reasoning follows that if, and that is a big if, Jehovah wanted to let us know that Jesus was killed on an upright stake then he should have told the Gospel writers to write, "over his hands."

  I know this is probably an oversimplification of a large issue, but that is how I looked at this issue.
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  M.J.

  Some quick ADDITIONAL points:

  • Archaeology has firmly established that a cross with a cross-piece was used for crucifixion in the first century AD. (see this article and this article)
  • Archealogical digs have produced 1 st century cross symbols associated with Christians. For instance, digs in Herculaneum, the sister city of Pompeii (destroyed in 78 A.D. by volcano) produced a house where a wooden cross had been nailed to the wall of a room.
  • John 20:25: "The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the NAILS, and put my finger into the print of the NAILS, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe." (caps mine, not John's )

  • Published in 1989, medical research conducted by Frederick T. Zugibe, a professor of pathology at Columbia University concluded that:

  1. An impaled man with arms stretched straight over his head (as Jesus is depicted in WT publications) would suffocate in 6 minutes, due to the inability of the lungs to expand and contract in such a position (confirming what was concluded by previous researchers).
  2. A man with hands outstretched at an angle of 60 o -70 o (as in a cross) could live for hours without suffocating.
  3. The account of the Gospels shows Jesus could not have died of asphyxiation, but rather from shock and trauma, due to a combination of exhaustion, pain, and loss of blood.
  4. Luke 23:44 and Matthew 27:45,46 show that Christ was alive on the cross for about 3 hours.

  • The Apostle Paul boasted of the cross of Christ. In Galatians 6:14 he says:"But may it never be that I would boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."
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  True North

  Leolaia,

  You wrote:

  The Watchtower claim is not only erroneous, but it is also disingenuous....By claiming that crux and stauros did not mean "cross" until the third century, the Society is intentionally distorting and hiding the facts.

  So, do you think that they don't really believe it themselves or that they believe it but are willing to use dishonest means in trying to support it?
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  Leolaia

  They maintain that the words changed meaning in the third century A.D., e.g. by Constantine's time. They cite W. E. Vine as support, and Nicholas Kip in his Awake! article made the same claim. But all they need to do is look at any basic reference work on crucifixion to see the facts of the matter. They are very plain. Yet there is no mention of this weighty contrary evidence, even to diminish its importance. Yet when they do refer to Classical works, as they did with Livy and Lucian, their use of these works is entirely misleading and erroneous. Now maybe they just misread the sources they used and made an honest mistake. If so, they're pretty incompetent because the original 1950 reference to Lucian had no citation, but the 1984 does, showing that they had a specific text in mind and probably rechecked the sources, but somehow it escaped their notice that what Lucian was describing was totally inconsistent with a "torture stake"?? And that Lucian in fact was very explicit in describing the stauros as shaped like the letter Tau?? This fact is mentioned in other reference works on crucifixion that the WTS cites, cf. "The crux commissa or St. Anthony's cross, resembling the letter T, Cf. Barn. 9; Luc. Jud. Vocal. 12)" (Catholic Encyclopedia, p. 397). In the case of Livy, they might have been misled by a Bible encyclopedia (I think it's the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, but I'm not sure), which says:

  "The stauros was originally a pointed stake used in fortifications, and in the earliest uses as an instrument of torture or punishment the sufferer was either bound to this stake, from which he hung by his arms (Livy, xxvi. 13, xxviii. 29)...."

  If they bothered to look up the references (as any decent scholar would do), they would see right away that the word used is palus (i.e. pale) and not stauros. So maybe not intending to deceive, except by falsely presenting themselves as scholarly and familiar with the sources they cite. In that respect, I feel they are disingenuous in this matter.

  I haven't seen any WT literature since 1991, so I really don't know what they've said since or continue to say. I would really love it if someone can post post-1991 stuff where they justify their belief that crux and stauros did not mean cross.
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  Leolaia

  M.J. -- The archaeological stuff is somewhat inconclusive. If you read the report by Zias and Sekeles, they say that they depended on information from Classical sources to reconstruct the position of the arms and not from the actual physical remains which do not indicate one way or another whether a traverse beam was attached to the cross. So it is a little circular to point to their reconstruction as new evidence. The Herculanium material is even less conclusive. It was not determined whether it wasn't a mark created by another object, and if it was a cross object, it is still quite a leap from the votive use of such an object (which was found in other Greco-Roman mystery cults) to the nature of Roman crucifixion....