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Stake or Cross? How did Jesus die? What proof do we have?


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9 hours ago, JW Insider said:

there is no reason for anyone to claim proof or insist on any particular shape based on any of the evidence so far.

... and here comes to surface, to day light our own, personal Conscience Integrity, Intellect Honesty, Freedom of Speech among/inside WT Organization who, with GB, are standing on Dogmatic Standpoint, dogmatic stance that is ready to declare such, a different opinion as apostasy, and to dfd person because of that. 

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I've used this argument at the door and with Bible studies, too: that supposedly Christians, even if they claim they are not worshiping the item, should still find it wrong to carry around a model of

Interesting stuff, especially the difference between Chi Rho and Tau Rho. Howeve,r he states: "2)............the earliest uses of the tau-rho are not as such free-standing symbols, but form

The PDF linked earlier, "Jehovah's Witnesses and the Cross" Leolaia, 1990, speaks of semantic restriction by which some Watchtower doctrines have developed by focusing on only the simplest etymologica

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With all the evidence so given, which is fantastic, Thank You all.

I come back to one of my original points please.

Why would the GB have it written in their translation of God's word that it was 'holes in the hands where the nails passed through.

Then why would the GB then have a picture showing one nail through the wrists. 

With all the evidence you give I am now totally confused as to which is correct. But no matter and as some have said is it really important.

However another of my original points is that the GB must have found it important as they gave a full page to that picture. 

In my opinion, whichever is correct, the GB have done wrong by contradicting God's word, in the picture. 

 

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2 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Why would the GB have it written in their translation of God's word that it was 'holes in the hands where the nails passed through.

Per the Greek, the translation is correct, and matches most others in this regard.

2 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

Then why would the GB then have a picture showing one nail through the wrists.

They assume there were two nails, and that there was a place through "the hands" where one of those two nails passed through. The assumption about the wrist is very possible. Evidently the traditions about washing of hands refers to a practice of washing the hand and arm up to the elbow. And other examples from the Bible have already been given. From years ago, I remember discussions of an assumption that a nail in the hand(s) would not hold Jesus weight and would rip through. This is probably assumed to be true whether stretched out like a traditional cross or upright.

Personally, I think the "physics" problem goes away with two nails, one in each hand, and therefore wrists aren't a necessary assumption. I give weight to the written Biblical evidence the same as you apparently do, but it is not unusual for Christians of all backgrounds in every generation to make certain assumptions about the meaning of a word or phrase, when that meaning can vary. I think the assumptions in this case are unnecessary, but this is only one of literally hundreds of places where the meaning could be ambiguous even if it can (and should?) be read in a more straightforward way, too. 

I think about the arguments early Christians must have had over whether the Hebrew word for "young woman" needed to be translated "virgin." (LXX vs Hebrew) Or how Christians since the beginning have looked at two slightly divergent accounts and had to come up with an assumed third story to try to resolve the apparent contradiction. Assumptions and acceptance of variations in meaning have been a part of interpreting and translating since the beginning of Christianity. No one can avoid it, and it might be much more common than you think.

2 hours ago, JOHN BUTLER said:

However another of my original points is that the GB must have found it important as they gave a full page to that picture. 

Being different is no doubt considered very important, and this was a good opportunity with some evidence behind it. The clearly correct point is that we don't venerate objects like a cross. Another point of difference is that we look for ways to see Jesus Christ himself in a different light compared to the other religions of Christendom. Others venerate Jesus himself, taking away from the devotion due to the Creator himself. Turning the ideas of Christendom "upside down" is one reason "the GB" have looked so hard for evidence that contradicts the common views of other religions.

That picture is an interpretation based on some assumptions. The assumptions might be valid.

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On 11/10/2018 at 4:38 PM, JW Insider said:

I think the idea that the the Stauros might have been just an upright pole also came many, many years after Jesus' death, long after Christendom had already taken up a two-piece Stauros as a symbol.

In another thread you mentioned that it was 400 years after Jesus' death. Did you have a specific piece of evidence in mind?

I'll bring that statement over here for reference:

 

I am referring to when the cross not even being considered in the church of Christendom until the days of Constantine whereas he himself during the Battle of the Milvian Bridge had a vision, had seen a cross in the sky. It is said that the vision was instructing him to fight in the name of Christ, with his soldiers’ shields bearing the symbol of Christ. On the other side of the spectrum, the writer Eusebius, an apologist of Constantine, described the event in the Life of Constantine, which he wrote after Constantine’s death. Eusebius wrote that Constantine saw a vision of a cross rather than the letters of Christ. That he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, which says conquer by this. At the sight of this he himself was struck with amazement, and his whole army also, which followed him on this expedition, and witnessed the miracle, according to Eusebius.

 

There is more information out there, but I'd have to look some more for it.

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1 hour ago, Space Merchant said:

I am referring to when the cross not even being considered in the church of Christendom until the days of Constantine whereas he himself during the Battle of the Milvian Bridge had a vision, had seen a cross in the sky.

OK. But this was not 400 years after Christ, it was supposed to be October 27, 312, which is about 279 years after Christ and only about 213 years after the traditional death of last apostle (John).

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I thought a little about this stake or cross story today. And I came to the conclusion that Jesus has been put to death on a simple stake.
Here is my reasoning:
It seems that the Romans used to leave in the ground the stakes on which they used to hang the convicts. Indeed, why redo a hole each time? Not to mention the stony ground of Palestine and the fact that a stake planted and replanted many times would end up having trouble standing up after a while. So the theory that the stake was fixed is very plausible.
I read that generally the convict carried with him, not the entire cross, or the stake according to our beliefs, but only the crossbar, which was already weighing very heavy. Then the prisoner was nailed to this crossbar and hoisted on the stake. The crossbar was placed into a notch made on the pole. So we have, stake already in place plus crossbar = cross.
Now, if you are an inhabitant of the region and you are talking about the coming execution and you have before you the instrument where the convict will be hang, a simple piece of wood in the ground, would you speak of it as a cross or as a stake? If one shows the stake to a stranger who knows nothing about how prisoners are put to death and call it a cross, the other man would have difficulties to understand what he is talking about since he does not see any cross but a stake and can not imagine that the convict will come with the crossbar.
In my opinion, but I do not have the infused knowledge, since the crossbar was brought with the prisoner, I think it's likely that people were talking about hanging on a stake at the time, the crossbar being a simple support that was not part of the pole itself. The instrument of punishment was therefore the stake. Once the prisoner hoisted up, his hands tied to the crossbar, we had before our eyes a cross. But it is quite possible that they continued to talk about it as a stake, since that's how it was named the rest of the time.
That could reconcile the Jehovah's Witnesses with the rest of Christendom: for the first, Jesus died on a stake, since that's the name given to it and it was the instrument that was under the eyes of the inhabitants of Jerusalem night and day, for the others he died on a cross since Jesus came with the crossbar and once hoisted, we had before our eyes a cross.

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9 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

Emperor Constantine not only abolished crucifixion but was the originator for the pendant cross to become a symbol for Christianity.

Do you have a citation for this? I'm not saying he didn't do this, I just never saw the evidence. It makes sense that Christians would not necessarily advertise their Christianity with an open symbol until they had a legal standing in the Roman Empire. Of course, they were also known to preach their Christian faith, so this could imply a contradiction.

9 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

Did Constantine know the manner in how Christ was killed?

I suppose it's possible considering he was an Emperor and had access to all Roman records, some still written on tablets, scrolls and kept in libraries. He would have had the full works of known historians along with those long since lost and forgotten. But if he did not know, he apparently would have accepted the word of Christians like Eusebius who had himself bragged about his own large library of historical works, and that of other historians and scholars.  And potentially he still had access to speak with the very grandchildren of first century Christians. In fact, Eusebius speaks of the experiences of Papias a Christian who lived between 60 CE and 160 CE, and who made visits to Palestine for the very purpose of finding witnesses to first century events.

9 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

The point of the crucifixion was to show the people the contempt and the utmost humiliation for a crime. If a crossbeam was used to show the utter discontent for a thief, then how much more of a humiliation or disgrace would it have been to display Jesus in an upright position for all to see. A position to demonstrate that Jesus didn’t have a right to be considered a murderer, and receive a murderer’s death, but to humiliate and disgrace him as the king of the Jews.

That could be true. Of course, we already have a record of what was done specifically to humiliate Jesus in great detail. If this use of an upright stauros instead of a two-beamed stauros was such a powerful symbolic feature of the humiliation, then it certainly seems worthy of recording in the Bible, rather than leaving us to speculate beyond what is written.

9 hours ago, BillyTheKid46 said:

Assumptions are a poor excuse for what the definition of a Greek word actually means.

That's exactly right. We should really explore the entire range of meaning of the Greek word, similar to how we have explored the range of meaning of the Greek word for "hand." I think that a discussion of the PDF that the Librarian referenced provides meanings and utilization of the word, in addition to the basic meanings you provided. In addition we have resources quoted that give us a better context for the rituals of execution that have been related to execution by stauros.

I hadn't seen all of this before when Ann O'maly linked it, but I just finished it, and might have time to discuss tomorrow.

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On 11/11/2018 at 4:35 PM, Outta Here said:

Howeve,r he states:

"2)............the earliest uses of the tau-rho are not as such free-standing symbols, but form part of a special way of writing the Greek words for “cross” (stauros) and “crucify” (stauro-o), in NT texts which refer to the crucifixion of Jesus.

I'm trying to figure out the reason for the word "however" as if these points indicate some potentially different conclusions.

Going to a part of his blog where some of these statements are made https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/the-staurogram-correcting-errors/ I see that his first point is simple: Contrary to the idea 100 years ago when Tau-Rho was considered just another Christogram like Chi-Rho, we now have textual evidence that Tau-Rho is much older:

  • We have instances of the Christian use of the tau-rho considerably earlier than any instances of the chi-rho. These earliest uses of the tau-rho are in Christian manuscripts palaeographically dated ca. 200-250 CE.

In fact, as you quoted: tau-rho served a very different purpose from chi-rho. They are not freestanding symbols that one would use to represent a symbol for Christ, but were clearly a way to depict and represent the word for CROSS and CRUCIFY within some of the earliest texts of the Christian Greek Scriptures. This is what is significant and different about the staurogram. You quoted point #3 that stated this again more directly.

On 11/11/2018 at 4:35 PM, Outta Here said:

3 . . . . the device (adapted from pre-Christian usage) seems to have served originally as a kind of pictographic representation of the crucified Jesus, the loop of the rho superimposed on the tau serving to depict the head of a figure on a cross.

It's possible you are concerned here, as you show yourself to be later, that a superimposed tau-rho was adapted from pre-Christian usage. Of course, the dual-beamed cross itself (as an instrument of torture/execution) is well-known from pre-Christian usage. Even the "nomina sacra" were adapted from the pre-Christian usage, where Jewish copyists sometimes wrote Theos in Greek with only the beginning Theta and the closing Sigma, skipping the vowels -- or perhaps even the Yod-Yod, to abbreviate a Hebrew Tetragrammaton.This is similar to the practice some Jewish writers still follow in English when they write G-d for God. That practice predated the practice in Christian texts of doing the same for Theos, and something similar for Lord, and Jesus and Christ. And the practice of using abbreviations was most well-known on coinage where space is at a premium. I'm not sure if this bit of knowledge means something to you, one way or another. You call it "disturbing" later. Why?

On 11/11/2018 at 4:35 PM, Outta Here said:

There's no denying that this scribal device is employed in some early Greek Scripture manuscripts. How early?

I'd like to know, too. Those who actually study the age of manuscripts based on their materials and style of lettering and clues from the contents (including vocabulary and abbreviations) will put most of these examples in the 200 to 250 CE range. Some of the arguments that would place at least one of them to a later century are often the same arguments that could place them even earlier. They are often just arguments for the lack of accuracy of paleographic methods.

But the exact date of the manuscripts is not so important to the overall evidence. The point is that the shape of the stauros associated with Jesus' execution is depicted and described very few times that we know of in the first 4 centuries. Basically, it's the Letter of Barnabas, Clement of Alexandria, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Eusebius, and these staurograms in texts that might date between 175 to 300 CE. In every case where the shape is discussed, the consensus is a Tau-shaped or t-shaped stauros for the execution of Jesus Christ. And this is not ALL the evidence, of course. The way that words are translated into other languages during the earliest translations of the CGS/NT can also provide good information. Archaeology can tell us a few things, including a probable cross found at Pompeii, and the graffiti depicted earlier. Even the lack of discussion or controversy about the shape can be revealing. And contemporary historical references about Roman execution practices can have a bearing, too.

Remember, too, that if it were somehow important to note that this date is closer to the fourth century than the first century, then what does this say about the earliest known discussions of a "I" shaped, or pole-shaped stauros with reference to Jesus' execution? For all I can tell, those discussions might first be known only from many centuries later than the fourth century. Therefore, whatever importance we give to the "lateness" of these depictions of a two-beamed cross only further hurts the argument for a one-beamed cross.

In addition, if the shape of the stauros were a double-beamed cross shape, then it seems very reasonable that idolatry-oriented associates of Christians would adapt it to the existing ankh symbol for life, and the existing tau-rho symbol. Related somewhat to the ankh symbol ("life" etc.) Hurtado, in the book I quoted, also believes that IH, the first two letters of Jesus in Greek formed an adaption of the Hebrew word for life which also could appear quite similar to IH, read in the opposite direction. And while Hurtado is not a promoter of gematria, he sees the possibility that it may have been intentional in some NT texts. He even mentions that Matthew's attempt to split the genealogical groups before and after David to conform to a mnemonic of 14 generations each, could very well be because "David" in Hebrew is 14.

But we  do know for sure that "Barnabas" was big on gematria, and he would have had a much easier time if the stauros could have been considered in the shape of an upright pole that would therefore represent "10". Too bad for him that he was stuck trying to fit the stauros in somewhere --anywhere!-- as a "300" instead of a "10." All he had available was an obscure reference to the number of Abram's slaves in Genesis, and he could do very little with it except make a note of it. There would have been dozens of interesting options available if the stauros were some other shape.

Beyond those points I agree with all your later points. Pushing for a specific answer one way or another is not useful as we still have no way of knowing for sure. There were already simple meanings of stauros and xylon which never got expanded upon much in the Bible text itself, and speculating in any way that insists on a specific conclusion will end up in nothing useful.

I have to admit that there is a certain iconoclastic satisfaction that I probably held inside for many years when I thought about how so many people had it wrong, and I just knew we had it right based on unquestioning acceptance of our own publications. Perhaps it would be somewhat satisfying to get that feeling back again, but it's probably for the wrong reasons. There's just a hint of pride and presumptuousness and judgmentalism, bordering on schadenfreude, in that idea that we are right about something and 99% of Christendom has been wrong about one of their major symbols. Besides, we would still know better than to make a big deal about the shape or the symbol even if we did accept that Jesus was executed on a stauros of the two-beamed variety.

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On 11/12/2018 at 12:12 PM, BillyTheKid46 said:

891 Cross     891.01 The instrument of a slave's death, associated with the ideas of pain, guilt, and ignominy. "The very name," writes Cicero (Pro Rab., 5), "ought to be excluded not merely from the body, but from the thought, eyes, and ears of Roman citizens." The Hebrews, having no term for it as not being a punishment in their nation, called it "warp and woof."

Interesting that the Hebrews would have called it "warp and woof."

Wiktionary says of this term (red emphasis mine):

  • Noun. warp and woof (countable and uncountable, plural warps and woofs) The threads in a woven fabric, composed of the warp (threads running lengthwise) and woof (threads running crosswise) to create the texture of the fabric. 

In other words criss-cross, using two different directions at 90 degrees. Makes you wonder how much experience at that time they had with crosses made of criss-crossed beams as opposed to a simple upright stake. The reference of warp and woof comes from creating cloth material on a loom, which also required conspicuous crossbeams at 90 degrees to the rest of the apparatus.

 
Related image

 

 
 
Image result for warp and woof stauros
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3 hours ago, JW Insider said:

I'm trying to figure out the reason for the word "however"

By "however" I mean that whilst Hurtado draws strongly held conclusions from the arguments he presents, we need tp keep in mind that  he recognises that:

  • by "the earliest use"  he means "the earliest use" by Bible copyists
  • he points out that "the device (adapted from pre-Christian usage)"
  • also proposes that "this scribal device employed by ca. 200 CE"
3 hours ago, JW Insider said:

You call it "disturbing" later. Why?

Anything that implies a tampering with the Scriptural text (other than chapters and verses and obvious technical devices for ease of use), I treat with suspicion.

Christians are fully aware of the subtle strategy employed by Satan and his agents to undermine and pollute pure teachings of true Christianity through apostasy, (likened to "gangrene" 2Tim.2:17). Paul at Gal.2:4 speaks of apostates as having been  "smuggled in" (pareisaktous), having "crept in" (pareiselthon).  2Pet. 2:1 speaks of them "smuggling in" (pareisaxousin) their "sects" (haireseis). The fact that this infiltration was well under way long before the employment of "staurogram" in the Scripture text, undermines the integrity of drawing conclusions on doctorine based on what indisputedly are later additions. 

Attractive though "schadenfreude" may be to those prone to such indulgences, it is really against the sprit of true worship and has long been identified as an undesirable trait, (compare "You should not gloat over your brother’s day on the day of his misfortune" Ob.12). I am quite sure we can say in confidence that we "did not learn the Christ to be like this" Eph.4:20. 

Nevertheless, this does not detract from the fascinating nature of the detail on this topic, bearing in mind the one who is often likely to be found in there! Thanks for the research tips. ?

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13 minutes ago, Outta Here said:

Christians are fully aware of the subtle strategy employed by Satan and his agents to undermine and pollute pure teachings of true Christianity through apostasy,

If you by Christians means only JW, then i would make this kind of observation. JW members in each period of time received and accepted "The Truth" as it was in the specific moment when they became JW.

So, if someone been baptized in 1940 period, for him "The Truth" was been in one shape and form. For those in 1970 period, shape and form looks different then few decades before. For those in 1990 era, "The Truth" also changed shape and form in comparison to generations before, ....and until today same process is going on as well. We can call it "new light", "new understanding", "rowing" or with any other terminology that can arise and be invented, incorporated for justification why new interpretations are better, more accurate than old one.

To connect your comment and mine. Strategy by satan is to much perfidious for humans, to be able aware of apostasy. If JW of 1940 era thought how they clearly saw difference between two teachings and was sure how they had "The Truth", then how is possible that JW from 1970 era saw false teaching about 1940 JW brothers, and how is possible that 1990 era brothers was also been able to detected all false teaching that satan used in JW past periods for purpose to undermine and pollute previous periods of pure teachings of WT? And now modern JW also can see how his brothers from 1990 period was been under influence of teachings that was been undermined and polluted by satan, again.

What if process of never ending "new understanding" is nothing else but constantly present impact and process caused by devil and his influence by which he "poisoning" every "new understanding" in different proportions ?

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