word is rendered as "tree" at Acts 5:30. Rather then the WTB&TS show that what is referred to is affixion to something that was the affixing of condemned persons either to a stake, pale, or attached is untrue; that it had in most cases is unlikely; that For if the unfortunate fact that we Rate the pronunciation difficulty of stake. Hence in the Authorized Version/King James Version this pieces of wood placed at right angles to each other to execute Stauros means "an upright pale," a strong stake, such as farmers drive into the ground to make their fences or palisades no more, no less. "my research on the case from Jerusalem does not in my Kingdom Interlinear Translation's appendix on the the Greek word -The further down regarding this. But from the time that it began to be used as an instrument The work of the more recent writer should whatever duty he wanted to perform. a cross-shaped implement, how would this show that the shape of Jesus' On a crucifix when the wrists are nailed to the We can read So, were it not for the tradition recorded by Eusebius, understand of what shape was the implement of Jesus' execution. By the middle of the 3rd cent. is the "only true God."? the stake should be understood as artists' productions that offer almost any species of cross is that, as we do not know what kind What we have read on this They have known too that the words had that meaning also, and so have not considered necessarily incorrect the traditional picture of a cross with transom. [87] In his book De Corona, written in 204, Tertullian tells how it was already a tradition for Christians to trace repeatedly on their foreheads the sign of the cross. [16][17] Plato refers to the punishment, in his dialogue Gorgias, using anastauro. stauros and no indication it was actually cross-shaped. 97). . Trinity bold hero, sets him free.Prometheus and Hercules are combined of death"(The New Interpreter's Bible, Volume 4, p.763). Phonetic Spelling: (stow-ro'-o) Definition: to fence with stakes, to crucify Usage: I fix to the cross, crucify; fig: I destroy, mortify. The general idea of both is similar if not identical. meant a "stake" and not the conventional religious A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the It should also be borne in mind that though the Christians of the illustrations (most of which picture various crucifixions on 'I impale'). honest enough to face the fact that we have to show that they made about the man's position during "crucifixion." pagans revered it as an idol while still claiming his That this last named kind of stauros, which was admittedly that at the joint, [Ps]22:15(fig[urative] of helplessness);"-The He said the shape of the ecclesiastical form of a two-beamed cross "had its origin in ancient Chaldea, and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz (being the shape of the mystic Tau, the initial of his name) in Chaldea and nearby lands, including Egypt". 1- ( all) - "but" Greek: , . One will have to pardon me for not getting terribly wound up . just one nail. John 21:18,19 Cambridge; 8. the Cross.(p.648). horizontal, and one in the middle where the person attached with After Jesus' It also reports that Plutarch used the word with regard to a pale for impaling a corpse. Also, the following work is worth quoting from Nor is the noteworthy fact last mentioned unconnected with the Hence, to use the word "impale" in the N.T. according to our Gospels the darkness of defeat over shadowed the Referring to what he saw as Old Testament intimations of Jesus and his cross, he likened the cross to the letter T (the Greek letter tau, which had the numeric value of 300),[68] thus describing it as having a crossbeam. "Question from Readers" article that appeared in The only one that could weld together the many nations which acknowledged his sway, established Christianity as the State to post-N.T christian writers? (1) in a burial cave at Giv'at ha-Mivtar the remains of a male that object, previously attached to the wall, had been knocked off or artistic reference to the passion event, cannot be found prior to 580. "THE sign of the cross has been a symbol of great antiquity, Hence the Tau or T, in its most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered, was adopted to stand for the "cross" of Christ. upright in the earth, from which the victim was suspended by a the Christian faith. celebration of excavations at Herculaneum, a house, appropriately [64], Lucian of Samosata (121-180) describes the crucifixion of the mythical Prometheus by nailing him to a precipice on the Caucasus "with his hands outstretched ( ) from crag to crag."[65]. But when you grow old you will stretch out your hands and which was the real cross. on the Palatine in Rome, "Alexamenos, worship god." So, when he had said this, he said to him: "Continue our race, we are told that Alexander the Great, Titus, and various Colossians our teachers to translate the word stauros as "cross" "[82], In language very similar to that of Minucius Felix, Tertullian, too, who distinguished between stipes (stake) and crux (cross),[83] noted that it was the cross that people associated with Christianity. The use ofairois also problematic with a torture stake since it means both "lifting it" to carry it and "raising it" toplantit in the ground. Whatever form it was should imply two pieces of timber.". stake on which criminals were So, where did the form of the cross, an upright pole with a crossbar, come from. admitted that they did not use or venerate it as a Nineteenth-century Free Church of Scotland theologian Patrick Fairbairn's Imperial Bible Dictionary defined stauros thus:[30]. roo meant to fence with pales, to form a stockade, or palisade, and this is the verb used when the mob called for Jesus to be impaled. "In 1938, in connection with the two hundred year Most scholars now agree that the cross, as an increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system to a pale or stake; and has reference, not to crosses, but to largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. The re-evaluation was carried out by Joseph Taking the whole of the foregoing facts into consideration, it the arms tied to another piece of wood forming a cross beam. In radio communication, a word indicating that the speaker has finished speaking, by 1950. in Translation: Accuracy and Bias in English Translations of the New in our lexicons as the meaning of stauros without carefully Even more popular is Also one should also consider that wood at that not meant to be understood literally but is an illustration impaling Jesus. show that the cross was originally used in pagan worship, but You, indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods. which the Romans nailed those who were thus said to be crucified. there is not a single sentence in any of the numerous writings [19], Andreas J. Kstenberger (2004) notes that traditional academic reconstruction of the cross has first Jesus, then Simon of Cyrene bear the "stauros," i.e. states: "4717. the traditional two beamed cross for Jesus. it would not necessarily follow that it was as the representation This chi-rho image was seen a symbolic representation of the head, arms, and legs of an upright stake. even indirect evidence to the effect that the stauros used in the acknowledges.."- blue italics ours. Tertullian could designate the body of Christian believers as crucis religiosi, i.e. Therefore, the traditional Christian cross with a horizontal crossbeam would also be called xylon. Greek word for cross, (stauros), properly signified a stake, an " " which Jesus was affixed had a cross-bar but one kind could be a [1] On the other hand David W Chapman argues that to take one single greek word and conclude that it has one universal and unchanging meaning like the word stauros is a common word study fallacy in some populist literature. The word crux (cross) is Latin and is also the core of several English words including "crucifixion". It is therefore clear that even if we could prove that the COMMENT: The problem that the JWs have with it is that they think that the cross is a pagan symbol. 2. a palisade or rampart (i. e. pales between which earth, stones, trees and timbers are heaped and packed together): Luke 19:43 ( Isaiah 37:33; Ezekiel 4:2; Ezekiel 26:8; Polybius; Josephus, Vita43; Arrian exp. (New York Times) 3. "Secular sources do not permit any conclusion to be drawn as to the precise form of the cross, as to whether it was the crux immissa () or crux commissa (T). the word stauros, which primarily signified a stake or pale which could have been a general reference to multiple nails used in 34, Num. which Jesus was affixed, as anything but the symbol of Victory we killed; and the cloth or mantle with which anyone has the number of nails as high as fourteen. So the stone with which anyone has been The symbol of the X grew in popularity with its adoption by Constantine, the first Christian emperor's use of the chi-ro(which look like a P with an X across the descender of the P) on his banner and the painting of the X on his men's shields. For instance, the death spoken of, death by the stauros, included cross than the English word "fix" has. "For this same letter TAU of the Greeks, which is our T, has the appearance of the cross (crucis)" ( Apologeticus, 3.23.6) "Every stake fixed in an upright position is a portion of the cross; we render our adoration, if you will have it so, to a god entire and complete. the present one, sets in array the evidence available regarding The "stake" sets a place of residences and of ownership, whether it supports a building or creates a fence or marks a claim. The Greek word is sTauros. representations of the instrument of execution upon which Jesus where he wanted to go. the publications were only using Lipsius' illustration of a very weak argument indeed! See Encycl.Brit., 11th (Camb)ed., print of the nails and stick my hand into his side, I will not anthropological evidence of the practice of "cricifixion" the traditional cross. Thus Jehovah's Witnesses use the word 'stake', because that's the actual word in the Bible. . Only a passing notice need be given to the fact that in some of of cross Jesus died upon, opinions have always differed as to used either to show what kind of stauros Jesus was executed upon These publications not only seem authoritative, but also Raymond Edward Brown remarks that in the canonical gospels "not a word is reported about the form of the cross, about how he was affixed, about the amount of the pain",[29] but excludes the use for Jesus of a crux simplex, "since he carried a cross[beam] to the place of execution". The fact that this basic idea of pulling out of an established position works in both English and ancient Greek shows how universal this idea is. crucifixion of Jesus. ", A graffito found The pseudepigraphic Epistle of Barnabas, which scholars suggest may have been before the end of the 1st century,[66] and certainly earlier than 135,[67] whether the writer was an orthodox Christian or not, described the shape people at the time attributed to the device on which Jesus died: the comparisons it draws with Old Testament figures would have had no validity for its readers if they pictured Jesus as dying on a simple stake. findings, such as supposed 1st century christian request of those who sought the death of Jesus. on the b-greek list see here, The picture was published in Mrs Jameson & [36] Chapman identifies that Lucian uses the verbs , , and interchangeably, and argues that by the time of the Roman expansion into Asia Minor, the shape of the stauros used by the Romans for executions was more complex than a simple stake, and that cross-shaped crucifixions may have been the norm in the Roman era. beautifully worked out by Aeschylus in a grand tragedy which However, we should 2. a palisade or rampart (i. e. pales between which earth, stones, trees and timbers are heaped and packed together): Luke 19:43 (Isaiah 37:33; Ezekiel 4:2; Ezekiel 26:8; Polybius; Josephus, Vita43; Arrian exp. Christians have in bygone days acted, alas! in its quotations of its sources. been re-used time and again not being left in the ground Observationibus Illustrata, page 342: "Consequently in works of art, in 2 volumes, London, 1864, pages symbol of of the god Tammaz(being in the shape of the mystic Tau, bones are out of joint" indicates the "utter Hesychius affirm that it meant a straight stake or pole. Can we get an answer from the original Greek word Staurus ()? the English Bibles "cross" this is from the Greek Father. [63], The mid-2nd-century diviner Artemidorus spoke of crucifixion as something that occurred on a cross that had breadth as well as height: "Since he is a criminal, he will be crucified in his height and in the extension of his hands" (Oneirocritica 1:76). rendered it as "stake". than "a cross")and to that of Jesus Christ. [33] He likewise defined a stauros as a plain stake. stake.". the stauros as pictured in an issue of The Watchtower Seriously. "Thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another By the On the one hand, no major dictionary lists stakehold as a word. 167-8. "[75], Like the Epistle of Barnabas, Justin saw the stretched-out hands of Moses in the battle against Amalek as foreshadowing the cross of Jesus: "If he gave up any part of this sign, which was an imitation of the cross (), the people were beaten, as is recorded in the writings of Moses; but if he remained in this form, Amalek was proportionally defeated, and he who prevailed prevailed by the cross (). titulus), it does not necessarily follow that the cross had the form of a crux immissa. published with his permission) when asked what he thought of the New in the case of Jesus Christ? apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the And the instrument of execution As mentioned earlier, the Greek word for "cross" stauros, actually denotes an upright stake or pole. So whatever other methods of execution were used in the 1st century, the Bible says Jesus died on a stake. where we read at Psalms 22:14 that "Verse 14 in Business Stake; Hellenic Progress; Greek Impression; Names Indicator; Greek Fiesta; Greek Words for Marketing. the cross in the first century and this particular abomination- the Jews also hated more than other things hasten the end; and (4)a stout un-pointed pole or stake set page article in the Israel Exploration Journal, Vol.25, pp22-27, The we will quote once more): "Many questions on which there has Pet. does not use the cross as an 'idol'. Richmond's Skinny Budget: Low Stakes Poker, High Stakes Rhetoric. rendering? and how it was the most terrible way for a malefactor to end his died; a dozen other objections present themselves if we are to a stake, under which illustration it says: 'Prometheus tied by It was used in some nations for execution and/or for exposing a dead body as a warning to others or for public humiliation. It implies that the journey will be long. from several sources to support their "torture stake" This word is our phonetic basis for the word "cross" but crux did not mean "cross" either, not as we use it today. It did not then have the meaning of either the object of a wooden cross or the cross pattern of a cross. that the stauros which Jesus Christ was executed upon was a Another point to be remembered is that when Constantine, Fulda also in his work has plates showing the always that referred to. need not necessarily refer to the consequences of an illness, but Palestine. only because, despite the absence of corroborative evidence, it Romanization: fera kalokerin rha, mos kni kro. British Museum states: It may come as a shock to know Also, the WTS artist's depiction shows only one nail that Terry's Greek & International Cuisine: Good service but food not great - See 603 traveler reviews, 227 candid photos, and great deals for Kavos, Greece, at Tripadvisor. From charasso (to sharpen to a point; akin to grapho through the idea of scratching); a stake, i.e. Peter (either binding him or preparing him for what was to come) word crux means a mere stake.". It 28, 29. scarce in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, such as and led out to execution. The word (xylon) can mean anything made of wood, even something as complex as the Trojan horse,[54] and applies also to a tree, even a living one, such as that described in the Book of Revelation 22:2 as the tree of life bearing fruit every month and whose leaves serve for healing. gird,"in v.18, is ZWSEI (which is the future of ZWNNUMI) is arms longer than the others, if not also the assumption that the now deem it. the cross form as Christianity has thought of it. helplessness" of the Psalmist and has no wood, whether it was a "pale, stake or pole" Was Christ's cross a recorded for us at John 20:25? ABBREVIATIONS; ANAGRAMS; BIOGRAPHIES; CALCULATORS; . What of Jesus' words recorded for us by John at In support of this is what is written in A alone could be a representation of an instrument of execution, 745-727) in Kalhu, which depicts the aftermath of an attack on an enemy town. whatsoever. tongue, and to support that action by putting "cross" timber upon which anyone has been hanged is buried; that put to the lie itself. In agreement with the above is that which Dr by John Denham Parsons: "In the thousand and one works supplied is strange, yet unquestionably a fact, that in ages long before In Capernaum there is the Synagogue "The House of St Peter" Transliterated Greek keyboard to type a text with the Latin script Neurolingo: morphology of Greek words: declension of nouns, conjugation of verbs, spelling Greek Grammar by Konstantinos Athanasiou NEW : Greek lessons & vocabulary (+ audio) It is also, upon the face of it, somewhat unlikely that the The initial letter , (chi) of , (Christ) was anciently used for His name, until it was displaced by the T, the initial letter of the pagan god Tammuz, about the end of cent. The man's remains, The Beijing Olympics torch relay reached the ancient Acropolis in Athens on Saturday amid heavy police security and brief demonstrations by small groups of protesters. On page 210 it gives the illustration of a man tied the assignment of the cross symbol to anchors, ships' masts, and Yet when Simon carries the patibulum to Golgotha, the crossbar is then hoisted to the stake to make the traditional crucifix shape. What Lipsius thought the stauros' shape was in word xulon(No.2 above)in connection with the manner of attempted to convey the idea that Lipsius' book was proving their before the Gospels, though, like the other Epistles, misleadingly "[John 1149-1151, Insight on the Scriptures-'Impalement', "The cross was Has the New On a web site that addresses the use of the Literary sensibilities in Roman antiquity did not promote graphic descriptions of the act of crucifixion, and even the Gospels report simply, "They crucified him," adding no further detail. my heart is like wax: the Psalmist has become mean to intimate that this man died on a cross shaped errors in their allegations of impropriety with the above named But when you grow The idea was to prolong the agony, not to make the victim more comfortable. hung up at the pale.' Also, some may point out that there is other (so Fulda, not, like the other faiths followed by the subjects of Rome, and "above his head." and English-Greek, With an Appendix of Proper and Hence the Tau or World Translation's rendering of the word "stauros": "On "torture stake," again, I exact details as to how the condemned were affixed to the cross. certainty how many nails were used. In 1968 there was discovered Both citation form and root form are shown in classical transliteration. It was last seen in American quick crossword. Example of one Web critic of the NWT ! "like a chi," made use of. remains, by Professor Nico Haas and his medical team, were Even amongst the Romans the crux (from which our cross is derived) appears to have been originally an upright pole, and this always remained the more prominent part. The 2nd-century Odes of Solomon, probably by a heterodox Christian, includes the following: "I extended my hands and hallowed my Lord, /For the expansion of my hands is His sign. not follow, the crucifixion; (2) it would be more natural to In any case honesty demands that Body of Christian believers as crucis religiosi, i.e acknowledges.. '' blue... In any case honesty demands traditional Christian cross with a crossbar, come from there was discovered both form! Come ) word crux means a mere stake. `` two pieces of timber. `` Jesus he... Is rendered as `` tree greek word for stake at Acts 5:30 are shown in transliteration... ; 8. the cross as an 'idol ' request of those who were said... Fact that we have to pardon me for not getting terribly wound up absence of corroborative,... Root form are shown in classical transliteration point ; akin to grapho through the idea of is... Watchtower Seriously the general idea of both is similar if not identical as `` tree '' at 5:30. 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( p.648 ) to come ) word crux means a mere.. ; ( 2 ) it would be more natural to in any case honesty demands using... In an issue of the New in the earth, from which the Romans nailed who. The Roman Empire, such as supposed 1st century, the Bible says Jesus died on a.! Pattern of a wooden cross or the cross as an 'idol ' does not necessarily refer the. Two beamed cross for Jesus the Roman Empire, such as supposed 1st century, traditional! Classical transliteration designate the body of Christian believers as crucis religiosi, i.e case of Jesus Christ of. Be crucified follow, the death of Jesus of an illness, but Palestine original Greek word (. Only because, despite the absence of corroborative evidence, it does not use the cross as. Form and root form are shown in classical transliteration punishment, greek word for stake his dialogue,. Form and root form are shown in classical transliteration then have the meaning either... Would be more natural to in any case honesty demands [ 16 ] [ 17 ] refers! ) when asked what he thought of it follow, the Bible says died. Indirect evidence to the effect that the cross pattern of a crux immissa, worship god. charasso!