But, Leolaia, what would you think of the guy who wrote that book: The UnChristian Cross... You can get it on amazon. Did he just was ALLLL that time writing that book? How could he get it so wrong! I might actually get it and see what he says. See if he quotes those ancient people like Senecca like you did!
He doesn't. It's a very biased work. And you don't have to get it on Amazon, it is available here:
http://members.cox.net/srice1/books/parsons/parsons.htm
Incidentally, Denham Parsons was also either the author of the Companion Bible appendix on the "cross" or Bullinger plagiarized from Parsons because the wording between the two is extremely close. Parsons also seems to be the source of some of the incorrect claims made by the Society. For example, Parsons anticipates the Society's claim that Livy used crux to mean only "stake":
"It is therefore noteworthy that even this Latin word 'crux,' from which we derive our words 'cross' and 'crucify,' did not in ancient days necessarily mean something cross-shaped, and seems to have had quite another signification as its original meaning. A reference, for instance, to the writings of Livy, will show that in his time the word crux, whatever else it may have meant, signified a single piece of wood or timber; he using it in that sense" (Parsons, The Non-Christian Cross, from chapter 2, "The Evidence of Minucius Felix").
Interestingly, Parsons gives in a footnote a citation of Livy, indicating that he is referring to "Livy, xxviii. 29". But this is one of the texts in which Livy used palus, not crux, to refer to the instrument: "Bound to a stake (deligati ad palum) they were scouraged and beheaded" (28.29.11). I don't know where Parsons got the mistaken idea that Livy was using the word crux here; the word crux does appear in 28.37, but this relates an altogether different event sometime later by a different individual (the Carthaginian general Mago, whereas 28.29 concerned the Roman general Scipio). So this looks like a mistake made by Parsons that was picked up by the WTS and repeated ad nauseum.
Parsons also quotes Lucian to support his position, tho a different passage than the one cited by the WTS:
The side light thrown upon the question by Lucian is also worth noting. This writer, referring to Jesus, alludes to "That sophist of theirs who was fastened to a skolops;" which word signified a single piece of wood, and not two pieces joined together.
This is a citation from De Morte Peregrini, but what Parsons does not seem to realize is that the verb anaskolopizoó in the text he quotes is the same one used in Lis Consonantium, 12 to refer to the crucifixion of people on a two-beamed stauros.
There are also many other dubious statements. Here is an argument from silence that is quite unreasonable:
Had there been any such intimation in the twenty-seven Greek works referring to Jesus, which our Church selected out of a very large number and called the "New Testament," the Greek letter chi, which was cross-shaped, would in the ordinary course have been referred to; and some such term as Katà chiasmon, "like a chi," made use of.
There is no compelling reason to necessarily expect such a comparison; whereas other writings dating to the time when books of the NT were still under composition (such as Barnabas) do compare the stauros to the Greek letter tau.
The author frequently intimates that Constantine played a dominant role in introducing the cross and even claims that crux simplex remained the primary meaning of stauros through the Middle Ages:
Even as late as the Middle Ages, the word stauros seems to have primarily signified a straight piece of wood without a cross-bar.
The author seems to also have no idea that the word crux clearly referred to a two-beamed cross in Plautus and Seneca, as well as all throughout Christian writing from the early second century AD onward. Similarly he wrote:
What the ancients used to signify when they used the word stauros, can easily be seen by referring to either the Iliad or the Odyssey. It will there be found to clearly signify an ordinary pole or stake without any cross-bar. And it is as thus signifying a single piece of wood that the word in question is used throughout the old Greek classics.
Referring to the "old Greek classics" like Homer is just fine if one wants to find what the earliest meaning of stauros was, but it has no relevance to what the word meant in later centuries. Why? Because Roman crucifixion didn't even exist when those "old Greek classics" were written. It's like saying the word "car" could NOT refer to automobiles in the 20th century because the oldest writers from the 1500s and the 1600s used it to refer to "chariots". The word stauros meant "simple stake" in the eighth century BC, but just as it had nothing to do with the addition of a second piece of wood, it also had nothing intrinsically to do with the execution of live people to a post. The fact that it was used to refer to such executions from the fifth or fourth century onward shows that it already no longer meant a simple post. The only reason why a second piece of wood would be added is because the Romans invented their own style of crucifixion by fusing it with patibulum-bearing punishment. And since the Romans began adding the patibulum to their practice of crucifixion from the third century BC onward, and since the word stauros is what the Greeks used to refer to Roman crucifixion, it is clear that stauros was the word that referred to the two-beamed cross used throughout the Roman empire. Thus, as early as the first century BC, the Greeks used to word stauros to refer to patibulum-bearing.
The word anastauroo was never used by the old Greek writers as meaning other than to impale upon or with a single piece of timber.
It's again misleading to refer to "old Greek writers" who lived before Roman crucifixion came into existence. Lucian, for instance, most definitely used this verb to refer to crucifixion involving a horizontal outstretching of hands.
In any case honesty demands that we should no longer translate as "cross" a word which at the time our Gospels were written did not necessarily signify something cross-shaped. And it is equally incumbent upon us, from a moral point of view, that we should cease to render as "crucify" or "crucified" words which never bore any such meaning.
Here two things are being confused. Of course, it's true that stauros did not "necessarily" refer to something cross-shaped. Similarly, the word "car" does not necessarily always refer to an automobile. So does not mean that this word can never refer to automobiles? Of course not. The thinking in this passage is very slippery. These words most definitely did bear such meaning, and often did, but this is not considered.
The problem seems to be that the author is so inordinately focused on the word's meaning as referring to a "shape". Perhaps this is because we use the English word "cross" to refer to a "shape". But this is not how it worked in Greek or Latin. The word stauros originally referred to wooden poles, posts, stakes, etc. that stood upright. The fact that the word had this original meaning does not prevent the word from subsequently referring to poles or posts that had other pieces of wood attached. The word referred to a technology, an execution apparatus, that even originally had variety in shape. The addition of a patibulum did not radically change the meaning of the word; it was not the word that really changed but the form of the instrument, just as the Roman cross often also added a sedile (a seat on which the victim rests his weight), the titilus (a board on which the charge was written), and a footrest. It didn't matter what was added to instrument.... it still was a crux or stauros. Just like the word "car" can refer to vehicles in a great variety of shapes. If a person adds a sunroof to his automobile, does that mean it is no longer a car? Or that the word "car" primarily referred to vehicles with motors and wheels, and thus the meaning of the word "car" somehow radically changes if we add a muffler, or sunroof, or stereo speakers in the vehicle? So when we ask whether the word stauros or crux most often referred to two-beamed crosses or not, the question is not answered by anything intrinsic in the word itself but simply how common the two-beamed cross was in the Roman world. If Romans rarely used the patibulum to crucify victims, then the word stauros would not usually refer to a two-beamed cross. But if the Romans most often used the patibulum, then naturally the kind of cross the word stauros would most commonly refer to would be two-beamed. It's a historical question, and the historical evidence is quite clear that the Romans frequently had the victim bear the patibulum prior to crucifixion and added the patibulum to the standing post. Similarly if most cars had four doors, then one would say that the word "car" mostly refers to four-doored vehicles. But if most cars had two doors, then the word "car" would mostly refer to two-doored vehicles. The number of doors to the car is not part of the intrinsic meaning of the word "car"....you wouldn't think of it when trying to define the word's meaning. The meaning is defined the function and operation of the vehicle, not by the number of doors it has. Similarly, the words crux and stauros referred to the instrument used in the execution of live people through nailing or tying of the hands, regardless of what shape it would have had.
