john 5 :39 ' 40 "you study the scriptures, because you think that in them you will find eternal life.
and these very scriptures speak about me!
yet you are not willing to come to me in order to have life.
John 5:39
You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
Reniaa, Jesus preached about eternal life. Not a "paradise earth". If you don't think so, then the whole Bible was written for the "anointed" Jehovah's Witnesses and Jesus died in vain.
unwittingly the germans, during wwii, they experimented with many, many ways for killing people, efficiently and quickly.
their records show that when a person is suspended with their hands over their head, as they would be on the jw "torture stake," they can survive for approximately one hour.
if their feet are tied down, as well, the time is reduced to about 15 minutes.. .
Reniaa, you do know that the name JEHOVAH originally came from Christendom?
yes my father has passed on sunday.... all my family brothers, sister, in-laws are jws .
it is occasions like this that.
make me see why i and countless others are just faders .. not taking that bold step of disassociation .
To lose a parent is extremely difficult. I pray that you'll find peace of mind and comfort through your friends and family. My deepest condolences in your time of grief.
john 5 :39 ' 40 "you study the scriptures, because you think that in them you will find eternal life.
and these very scriptures speak about me!
yet you are not willing to come to me in order to have life.
What I don't get is the Jehovah's Witnesses strive to have a DIRECT RELATIONSHIP with the FATHER. That is NOT POSSIBLE! Because of our sinful nature, our relationship with the FATHER is broken. Only JESUS can bridge that gap. Christians are WITNESSES for JESUS.
unwittingly the germans, during wwii, they experimented with many, many ways for killing people, efficiently and quickly.
their records show that when a person is suspended with their hands over their head, as they would be on the jw "torture stake," they can survive for approximately one hour.
if their feet are tied down, as well, the time is reduced to about 15 minutes.. .
Leolaia, does the Watchtower even have any official scholars to translate the Bible?
john 5 :39 ' 40 "you study the scriptures, because you think that in them you will find eternal life.
and these very scriptures speak about me!
yet you are not willing to come to me in order to have life.
tenyearsafter, I can tell you how Reniaa would answer.
1) Christendom removed all references of JEHOVAH from the New Testament. The apostacy of the early church made God's name unknown and the superstition of the Jews who refused to pronounce the Divine Name.
2) Reniaa is inactive. She talks about going back to the meetings and be regular.
john 5 :39 ' 40 "you study the scriptures, because you think that in them you will find eternal life.
and these very scriptures speak about me!
yet you are not willing to come to me in order to have life.
Who are your leaders, Reniaa?
unwittingly the germans, during wwii, they experimented with many, many ways for killing people, efficiently and quickly.
their records show that when a person is suspended with their hands over their head, as they would be on the jw "torture stake," they can survive for approximately one hour.
if their feet are tied down, as well, the time is reduced to about 15 minutes.. .
In 1857 an ancient inscription was found in a building called the domus Gelotiana on Palatine Hill in Rome. The Alexamenos graffito shows a picture of a man with the head of a donkey on a crucifix with a man standing in front of him and the words "Alexamenos worships God." It is believed to have come from a Roman soldier mocking a fellow soldier or from a fellow schoolmate. The grafitto has been dated between 85 A.D and the first half of the third century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito
In 1873 French scholar Charles Clermont-Ganneau reported the discovery of a burial chamber on the Mount of Olives near Bethany. Inside were dozens of ossuaries with skeletal remains and crosses etched on the outside. In the 1950's Italian scholar and archaeologist Bellarmino Bagatti excavated the site of Dominus Flevit ("The Lord Wept") on the Mount of Olives and found more than 40 inscribed ossuaries. One of the ossuaries had the sign of the cross with this inscription: "[Here are the] bones of the younger Judah, a proselyte [to Christianity] from Tyre."
In 1939 ruins were excavated at Ercolona, Italy which was called Herculaneum in first century Rome. It was the sister city of Pompeii and was destroyed in 79 A.D. by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. During the excavation a house was found which had the imprint of a cross in a wall.
In the publication 'Buried History' it said of the discovery "Below this (cross) was a cupboard with a step in front. This has considered to be in the shape of an ara or shrine, but could well have been used as a place of prayer. . . . If this interpretation is correct, and the excavators are strongly in favor of the Christian significance of symbol and furnishings, then here we have the example of an early house church."(Buried History, Vol. 10, No. 1, March, 1974, p. 15)
Other archaeologists who have studied it believe the cross shape was from a cupboard and if that is the case it didn't have sides, top, back or a base, was placed into the wall while it was still somewhat soft or a cross was protruding at least a few inches from the back of the cupboard. One thing that doesn't favor the interpretation of this as an example of a Christian symbol is that, before Constantine, Christians were often persecuted for their beliefs and a cross would identify people as Christians.
In 1945 Professor E.L. Sukenik of the Museum of Jewish Antiquities of the Hebrew University excavated a family tomb in Jerusalem which contained eleven ossuaries. Two of the ossuaries bear the name Jesus in Greek and one had a coin minted for King Herod Agrippa I. According to the 1950 'Official Guide to Israel' published by Israel's Dept. of Tourism the coins and inscriptions prove that the burial in the tomb took place between 41 and 42 A.D.
"As the tomb is dated by pottery, lamps and the character of the letters used in the inscriptions--from the first century B.C. to not later than the middle of the first century A.D. this means that the inscriptions fall within two decades of the Crucifixion at the latest." (Ancient Times, Vol. 3, No. 1, July 1958, p. 35. See also Vol. 5, No. 3, March 1961, p. 13.)
"The plus- and X-shaped crosses have been interpreted as the Hebrew letter taw, the sign of Yahweh in Ezekiel 9:4ff., and thus perhaps of apotropaic significance to protect the bones of the deceased against demonic malevolence or a general expression of faith in deliverance through the use the sign of God's protection in Ezekiel's vision (cf. Rev. 7:3). The mark occurs in Jewish funerary settings (including a Jewish catacomb in Rome) with some frequency."
(Backgrounds of Early Christianity by Everett Ferguson, p. 591)
Ferguson goes on to say the marks on the Jerusalem ossuaries "may have had the utilitarian purpose of marking correspondence of lid and body of the ossuary." If that is the case then why didn't the Jews use numbers or letters, either full or abbreviated indicating who was buried in each particular ossuary? Usually only one family member dies at a time so this would seem unnecessary and to use plus and X-shaped crosses on more than one ossuary may have caused confusion instead of preventing it. The cross is the instrument on which Jesus died and X is the first letter of Christos in Greek. Ironically "tau" is in the word stauros.
In 1968 construction workers uncovered the grave of Johanan Ben Ha'galgol, aged 24-28, in burial caves at Giv’at ha-Mivtar in Jerusalem. His remains show that he had been crucified and died during the first century. Nicu Haas of the Department of Anatomy at Hebrew University published his findings in the Israel Exploration Journal:
"The whole of our interpretation concerning the position of the body on the cross may be described briefly as follows: The feet were joined almost parallel, both transfixed by the same nail at the heels, with the legs adjacent; the knees were doubled, the right one overlapping the left; the trunk was contorted; the upper limbs were stretched out, each stabbed by a nail in the forearm."
('Anthropological Observations on the Skeletal Remains from Giv’at ha-Mivtar', Israel Exploration Journal, 1970, # 20, pp. 38-39)
Researchers after Haas, including Joseph Zias, disagreed with his interpretation of the evidence concerning the limbs. But Zias, who is one of the leading authorities on the Giv’at ha-Mivtar discovery, believes that the man had been crucified on a cross though not in the exact position which Jesus is usually portrayed.
There's an article on the PBS website about the discovery in which they say "He was crucified probably between A.D. 7, the time of the census revolt, and 66, the beginning of the war against Rome." In a follow-up article on this archeological find in the Nov/Dec. 1985 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review it says this:
Quote:
| According to the (Roman) literary sources, those condemned to crucifixion never carried the complete cross... Instead, only the crossbar was carried, while the upright was set in permanent place where it was used for subsequent executions. As the first century Jewish historian Josephus noted, wood was so scarce in Jerusalem during the first century A.D. that the Romans were forced to travel ten miles from Jerusalem to secure timber for their siege machinery."(Biblical Archaeology Review, Nov/Dec. 1985, p.21) |
Anchor Cross
Quote:
| Some experts doubt whether the cross became a Christian symbol so early, but the recent discoveries of the cross, the fish, the star, and the plough, all well known from the second century, on ossuaries of the Judaeo-Christian community in Judaea put the possibility beyond all reasonable cavil.(Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church, pp. 214-215) |
Another symbol that was used by early Christians is the anchor. Because of persecution early Christians would disguise the cross in art or symbolic images:
"During the period of persecutions before Constantine I, we generally don't find the cross on monuments and catacomb sepulchres. It is nearly always disguised -- as an anchor, later a trident, or the mainmast of a ship. Other disguised forms of the cross include monograms such as what is called the St. Andrew's cross, in the shape of the Greek letter chi." http://www.jesuswalk.com/christian-symbols/cross.htm
If you click on 'anchor' on that page it links to a webpage with a picture of an anchor cross with a fish on each side found in the catacombs. In the Catacombs of St. Callistus there is an inscription with a lamb lying at the foot of the anchor. The anchor cross is dated to 90 A.D. and is found in the cemeteries of St. Priscilla, Domitilla and Calaxtus and Coemeterium majus. It is believed that the anchor cross was inspired by Hebrews 6:19 - "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain," (NIV). The mariners cross is also called St. Clements cross because Clement of Rome was martyred by being tied to a heavy rock and drowned in the sea. Clement of Alexandria referred to the cross, ship and anchor in his Exhortation to the Heathen:
"Sail past the song; it works death. Exert your will only, and you have overcome ruin; bound to the wood of the cross, thou shalt be freed from destruction: the word of God will be thy pilot, and the Holy Spirit will bring thee to anchor in the haven of heaven."
(Exhortation to the Heathen: Chapter XII)
Besides the fact that Christians would endanger their lives and the lives of their families by displaying a cross there are a couple of other things to consider regarding archaeological evidence. Many artifacts and personal possessions were destroyed in wars and when Christians were imprisoned and killed. Also, before the Edict of Toleration and Edict of Milan crucifixion was still a method of execution used by Rome and the most horrible one. Today we see it as a symbol of the price our Savior paid for us but Christians in the first three centuries of the church would also see this symbol as none of us can today. They had first hand knowledge of crucifixion, had seen what a horrible punishment it was and to them it was also a symbol of the brutality and tyranny of Rome.
unwittingly the germans, during wwii, they experimented with many, many ways for killing people, efficiently and quickly.
their records show that when a person is suspended with their hands over their head, as they would be on the jw "torture stake," they can survive for approximately one hour.
if their feet are tied down, as well, the time is reduced to about 15 minutes.. .
Roman playwright Plautus lived from 254–184 B.C. and made the following statements about crucifixion:
"I suspect you're doomed to die outside the gate, in that position: Hands spread out and nailed to the patibulum" (Miles Gloriosus, 359-360).
"Oh, I bet the hangmen 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" (Mostellaria, 55-57).
Patibulum ferat per urbem, deinde affigatur cruce -- Let him bear the cross through the town, then let him be nailed to the cross.(Carbonaria, fr. 2)
This shows that the custom of carrying the patibulum to the crux existed at the latest in the early second century B.C. Roman Historian Tacitus lived from 56– 117 A.D. and wrote this:
"The Tarracines, however, found comfort in the fact that the slave of Verginius Capito, who had betrayed them, was crucified (patibulo adfixus) wearing the very rings that he had received from Vitellius" (Historia, 4.3)
Patibulo adfixus literally means fastened, attached or to a patibulum.
"The soldiers stationed to supervise the tribute were seized and nailed to the patibulum (patibulo adfixi )." (Annals, 4.72)
Another from Justin the Martyr:
"...and that lamb which was commanded to be wholly roasted was a symbol of the suffering of the cross which Christ would undergo. For the lamb, which is roasted, is roasted and dressed up in the form of the cross. For one spit is transfixed right through from the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the (fore) legs of the lamb." (Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume I/Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter XL)
"...and that He should be forsaken by His friends and those nearest to Him; and that He should stretch forth His hands the whole day long;" (Irenaus Against Heresies, Book IV, Chapter. 33)
The Greek satirist Lucian lived from 120-180 AD. He wrote that the letter T had received its "evil meaning" because of the "evil instrument tyrants put up to hang people upon them. (Lucian in "Iudicium Vocalium 12", in Crucifixion by Martin Hengel, Fortress Press, 1982, pp. 8-9)
"Suppose we crucify 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 extended my hands and hallowed my Lord. For the expansion of my hands is His sign. And my extension is the upright cross. (The Odes of Solomon , Ode 27, late first century-early second century A.D.)
"For it is right to mount upon the cross of Christ, who is the word stretched out, the one and only, of whom the spirit saith: For what else is Christ, but the word, the sound of God? So that the word is the upright beam whereon I am crucified. And the sound is that which crosseth it, the nature of man. And the nail which holdeth the cross-tree unto the upright in the midst thereof is the conversion and repentance of man." (Acts of Peter, 38 - second half of the second century).
Minucius Felix wrote around 200 A.D.
"We assuredly see the sign of a cross, naturally, in the ship when it is carried along with swelling sails, when it glides forward with expanded oars; and when the military yoke is lifted up, it is the sign of a cross; and when a man adores God with a pure mind, with hands outstretched." (Octavius, 29, 6)
Larry Hurtado is a professor of New Testament Language at the University of Edinburgh. In his book 'The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins' he gives evidence that the cross is found in letters of early N.T. manuscripts and refers to them as the staurogram:
Quote:
| Among the several monograms used by early Christians to refer to Jesus, the so-called “staurogram” or “cross-monogram”, which is comprised of the Greek majuscule forms of the letters tau and rho, the vertical line of the rho superimposed on the vertical stroke of the tau, is of particular historical significance. The specific proposal that I shall support in the present essay is that the Christian use of this device in certain early manuscripts represents the earliest extant visual reference to the crucified Jesus, indeed, considerably prior to what is commonly thought to be the time (fourth or fifth century ce) when Christians began to portray the crucifixion of Jesus visually. |
http://tinyurl.com/2r6mgm (pdf file).
There are illustrations of those letters on page 3 of that paper. If anyone is interested in early Christian iconography or manuscripts that is an excellent article. I had trouble getting the page to load at first but it's worth the effort.
"Though the procedure was subject to wide variation according to the whim and sadism of the executioner, by the Roman period several features were fairly standard. With a placard proclaiming the crime hung around the neck, the condemned prisoner carried the crossbar, not the whole cross, to the place of execution where the upright stake was already in place."
(Harper's Bible Dictionary, 1985 edition, p. 194)
unwittingly the germans, during wwii, they experimented with many, many ways for killing people, efficiently and quickly.
their records show that when a person is suspended with their hands over their head, as they would be on the jw "torture stake," they can survive for approximately one hour.
if their feet are tied down, as well, the time is reduced to about 15 minutes.. .
Justin Martyr's First Apology, Chapter LV.-Symbols of the Cross.
http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01-46.htm
"For the one beam is placed upright, from which the highest extremity is raised up into a horn, when the other beam is fitted on to it, and the ends appear on both sides as horns joined on to the one horn."
Justin's "Dialogue With Trypho", Chap XC in ANF, p. 245
In the first century B.C. Dionysius of Halicarnassus described the practice of tying the patibulum across the victims back:
"A Roman citizen of no obscure station, having ordered one of his slaves to be put to death, delivered him to his fellow-slaves to be led away, and in order that his punishment might be witnessed by all, directed them to drag him through the Forum and every other conspicuous part of the city as they whipped him, and that he should go ahead of the procession which the Romans were at that time conducting in honour of the god. The men ordered to lead the slave to his punishment, having stretched out both his arms and fastened them to a piece of wood which extended across his breast and shoulders as far as his wrists, followed him, tearing his naked body with whips."
(Roman Antiquities, 7.69.1-2)
Seneca lived from 4 B.C. - A.D. 65, was a Roman and wrote the following:
*** refigere se crucibus conentur, in quas unusquisque vestrum clavos suos ipse adigit, ad supplicium tamen acti stipitibus singulis pendent; hi, qui in se ipsi animum advertunt, quot cupiditatibus tot crucibus distrahuntur. At maledici et in alienam contumeliam venusti sunt. Crederem illis hoc vacare, nisi quidam ex patibulo suo spectatores conspuerent! "Though they strive to release themselves from their crosses---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!" (De Vita Beata, 19.3).
....alium in cruce membra distendere.... "another to have his limbs stretched upon the crux" (De Ira, 1.2.2).
Video istic cruces non unius quidem generis sed aliter ab aliis fabricatas: capite quidam conversos in terram suspendere, alii per obscena stipitem egerunt, alii brachia patibulo explicuerunt. "Yonder I see crosses, not indeed of a single kind, but differently contrived by different peoples; some hang their victims with head toward the ground, some impale their private parts, others stretch out their arms on a patibulum" (De Consolatione, 20.3).
Contempissimum putarem, si vivere vellet usque ad crucem....Est tanti vulnus suum premere et patibulo pendere districtum.... Invenitur, qui velit adactus ad illud infelix lignum, iam debilis, iam pravus et in foedum scapularum ac pectoris tuber elisus, cui multae moriendi causae etiam citra crucem fuerant, trahere animam tot tormenta tracturam? "I should deem him most despicable had he wished to live up to the very time of crucifixion....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, 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!" (Epistle, 101.10-14).
Cogita hoc loco carcerem et cruces et eculeos et uncum et adactum per medium hominem, qui per os emergeret, stipitem. "Picture to yourself under this head the prison, the crux, the rack, the hook, and the stake which they drive straight through a man until it protrudes from his throat" (Epistle, 14.5).
....sive extendendae per patibulum manus "....or his hands to be extended on a patibulum" (Fragmenta, 124; cf. Lactantius, Divinis Institutionibus, 6.17).
There is also testimony about the form of the cross by early non-Christian writers. The Greek writer Lukianos (c. 120-180 AD) wrote that the letter T had received its "evil meaning" because of the "evil instrument tyrants put up to hang people upon them. (Lukianos in "Iudicium Vocalium 12", in Crucifixion by Martin Hengel, Fortress Press, 1982, pp. 8,9)
Artemidorus lived in the 2nd century AD during the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines. In his five-volume work Oneirocritica (The Interpretation of Dreams) he also compares the stauros to a ship:
"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
We have evidence from the early Bible manuscripts themselves. The manuscripts P66 and P75 are traditionally dated around AD 200, but may be from as early as the last part of the first century. (See BIBLICA , Vol. 69:2, 1988; which dates the much related P46 this early, and preliminary information from Professor George Howard by letter stated P75 and P66 are "not far behind" in date.)
In P75 the word "stauros" is changed so the T and R together depict a cross with a person on in three places where it occurs, and P66 put a cross into the word "stauros."
