Sea Breeze
Dominic Enyart exposes Watchtower deception regarding their demonization of the Cross. Information packed. Interesting take on paganism as well.
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What bunkum. Scholar is wary of a fellow who purports to represent scholarship wears a cap for it is not a good look.
Seriously his arguments are weak and absurd. The simple fact of the matter is that the lexical evidence for stauros in both its noun and verbal form means 'a upright pole or stake'. Over time the word came to mean a two-pieced instrument, a cross and this is given as second meaning for the Greek word. The Gospel writers who witnessed the execution of Jesus described the instrument as a stake- a single piece of wood and not as two-pieced instrument. It would have been impossible for Jesus to carry a cross over some distance over a rough road for some distance in a severely weakened state. The argument that he carried the patibulum is fanciful.
Although we cannot be dogmatic about the instrument of Jesus 'execution the NWT was quite correct in rendering the Greek word as 'torture stake' based on lexicography rather than 'cross' which is based on tradition.
Leolaia's thesis is simply nonsense failing to comprehend the compelling lexical and testimony of eyewitnesses relying mainly on a translation of the Greek word as 'cross' or 'crucify' in her use of the historic materials. which has become a trap for many scholars writing on this subject as an assumption. A good example of such folly is Marin Hengel's Crucifixion, 1977, Fortress Press.
For the latest scholarship on this subject, one should read Gunnar Samuelsson's PhD' thesis.'Crucifixion in Antiquity An Inquiry into the Background and Significance of the New Testament Terminology', 2011
scholar JW
scholar JW