Wow, this thread moves fast!
reniaa...You asked a very important question on the subject of crucifixion: "In both greek and hebrew is there a word for cross other than stauros and xylon that could have been used as an alternative, a definate word that only means Cross?" That's exactly the right question to ask, for if the Society is right and the word stauros could not refer to a crux that had a crosspiece, then there had to have been some other word for this, since such a device was in existence since the third century BC (as Plautus indicates). And the fact is, no such word exists in the literature. The only other word (setting aside xulon, see below) was skolops (originally meaning a thorn, or sharpened stake -- used to impale people through the throat), and this came to refer to execution with or without a crosspiece -- just as it was with stauros. Whereas sources written in Latin referred to criminals carrying the patibulum (crosspiece) to the place of execution (e.g. Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, 359-360, Mostellaria, 55-57, Carbonaria, fr. 2), this term wasn't borrowed into Greek -- Greek writers (e.g. Chariton, Chaereas and Callirhoe 4.2.6-7, Plutarch, Moralia, De Sera Numinus Vindicta 554A, Mark 15:31, John 19:17, Artemidorus Daldianus, Oneirocritica 2.56) simply referred to criminals carrying the stauros (cf. the Glossae Servii Grammatici which gave stauros as the Greek equivalent of patibulum). And in my last post (on p. 8 of this thread!), I gave some quotes from non-Christian Greco-Roman authors who clearly referred to the typical cruciform shape of the instrument. One of these compares the stauros to the letter T and cleverly notes that the name of the letter (tau) is present in the word itself (stauros). So it is hardly true that stauros could not refer to instruments that had a crosspiece. The word already had this referential meaning -- it wasn't invented by later Christians. When you say, "cross is a chicken and egg situation from her arguments, did it become a meaning for cross as well as stake because they wanted it to fit the Cross doctrine and used as such", I can definitely answer that this is not the case. It was pagan Greeks and Romans -- not Christians -- who first described the cross (which was simply an execution apparatus) as having a crosspiece. That crosspiece was comes from a very old Roman custom of executing slaves by forcing them to first parade around carrying this piece of wood, the patibulum. Sometimes they crucified people on just a stake. But often they used a patibulum as well. If a case of crucifixion involves the victim being paraded around to the place of execution carrying something, that is a pretty good indication that a patibulum is involved.
The main point is this -- the actual meaning of the word was not dependent on the shape of the device, for this varied widely. It could be whatever the executioner wanted it to be -- its appearance was limited only by the executioner's imagination. Josephus described the fun that the executioners had in finding new styles of positioning their victims to the stauros (De Bello Judaico 5.451-452), clearly they did not limit themselves to just one kind of stauros. It was the same way with the Latin word for the device, crux. The first-century AD writer Seneca (De Consolatione, 20.3) noted that the crux was not of a single kind but was fabricated in different ways (cruces non unius quiden generis sed aliter ad aliis fabricatas), such that some crucify people upside down (capite quidam conversos interran suspendere), some impale them on a stake through their genitals (alii per obscena stipitem egerunt), and others stretch out the victim's arms on a crossbeam (alii brachia patibulo explicuerunt). So the stauros was not one particular kind of device -- as a general word for this kind of execution, it referred to crucifixion in all its various forms. In other words, it was not the shape of the device but its function that mattered. A crux or stauros was a wooden instrument on which people were executed by being affixed to it -- whether through nails, or rope, or by having it pierce through the body, and whether with one piece of wood, or two, or several. To give another "modern" example, consider the word "car". Are "cars" only four-door vehicles, such that some other word must refer to two-door automobiles? Must a car have a sunroof in order to be called a car? If it is missing a tail light, is it no longer a car? Does the word "car" imply that the vehicle has a red paintjob, or that it has independent rear suspension? All of these things are irrelevant to the meaning of the word "car"; the meaning of the word pertains to its function, it is a kind of vehicle that transports people or things from place to place. The shape or style of the car is not so much part of its meaning, although we probably have an idea of what cars are typically like. Similarly, in the case of writers comparing the stauros to the letter T or a similar shape, or Latin writers referring to the crosspiece, such references do suggest that such a form of the cross was indeed quite common in practice.
Regarding your friend's comments, I am not at all surprised. This is a rather obscure area of knowledge, and although the lexicons themselves bear out the fact that stauros referred to a variety of things including crosses, you really need to study the sources themselves to gain a fuller understanding of the lexical semantics of stauros....I doubt most who read Greek have made such a study. What I know has been informed by an exhaustive study I did when I was a classics student; I looked up every single reference to crucifixion in (non-Christian) Greek and Latin sources. With the Thesaurus Linguae Gracae and similar resources however, I am sure almost anyone can make a similar study for him or herself.
Regarding xulon, it must be observed that this term is only used by Jews and Christians (e.g. Josephus, Antiquitates 11.246-261; Philo, De Somniis 2.213) to refer to the execution instrument. This again has nothing to do with the shape of the device, as if "tree" can only be used to refer to a simple stake (indeed, the Romans referred to the crux as an arbor/lignum infelix, "unhappy tree", even the kind of crux that has a crosspiece, see Seneca, Epistle 101.14). The reason why this word is used is quite clear -- the Jews regarded the commandment in Deuteronomy 21:22-23, which required bodies hung on trees to be buried the same day, as applying to crucifixion. This scripture did not originally refer to crucifixion, at least of the Roman kind; this form of execution did not exist yet. This text referred to a literal hanging on trees. But when the Greeks and then Romans brought the practice of crucifixion to Judea, the Jews applied the commandment to this new form of punishment. Hence, the Jews demanded Pilate to remove Jesus and the thieves from their crosses "to prevent the bodies remaining on the cross during the sabbath" (John 19:31; cf. Luke 23:50-54). The Dead Sea Scrolls dating to the first century BC twice cited Deuteronomy 21:22-23 with reference to crucifixion practiced by the Romans or Hellenized Jews (11QT, 64:6-13; 4QpNah, 3-4:1:1-11; the latter text refers to the crucifixions by Alexander Janneus in 88 BC, compare Josephus, Antiquitates 13.14.2, Bellum Judaicum 1.4.5-6). Similarly, Paul applied the scripture (derived from the LXX, which uses xulon to render the Hebrew word for "tree") to the crucifixion of Jesus:
"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by being cursed for our sake, since the scripture says: 'Cursed be everyone who is hanged on a tree (xulon)'. This was done so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might include the pagans, and so that through faith we might receive the promised Spirit" (Galatians 3:13-14).
That is why xulon is used in the NT to refer to the stauros of Jesus. Such usage of the term is only an indication that the writers understood Deuteronomy 21:22-23 as applying to crucifixion. It doesn't imply anything about the shape of the device used (so xulon refers to a T-shaped stauros in Barnabas 5:13, cf. 9:7-8, 12:1-2).
Finally, in your first reply you presented a quote from http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/newworldtranslation/stauros.htm and in a later post you said: "if you check my sources in all cases I was careful not to quote Witness sites or scripture using other bibles and sites, the one i used on stauros is not a witness one and indeed condemns them using 'Torture Stake' saying it is incorrect you would not get that on a witness site". But this is not the case. The page is explicitly "A Defense of the New World Translation," and if you look at the "Home" page, the authors of the webpage say: "This site is both owned and managed by those who are Jehovah's Witnesses themselves." What you quote is only partly a source that they quote, all the rest is their own (uninformed) comment:
The Classic Greek Dictionary, Greek-English and English-Greek, With an Appendix of Proper and Geographical Names prepared by George Ricker Berry reads under "stauros": "..an upright pale, stake or pole; in plu. a palisade. II. the Cross. (p. 648). Although this lexicon seems to give "the Cross" as a meaning for "stauros" it seems rather as a reference than a meaning ("the Cross" rather than "a cross") and to that of Jesus Christ. Hence definition II is somewhat 'suspect' and may only reflect the lexicons belief that the stauros in the NT was cross-shaped or it may be giving it as a reference, that is, that when we read in the English Bibles "cross" this is from the Greek stauros and no indication it was actually cross-shaped. In its definition 1 though there is no doubt the meaning of stauros and anything other than that stauros meant more than one piece of wood, whether it was a "pale, stake or pole" is not mentioned and certainly none of which were 'cross-shaped.' This is its meaning in all the Greek classics such as Homer. There is no evidence that the from or shape of the stauros in Jesus Christ's case was any different.
They just quote a snippit from the lexicon and the rest is their comment. I don't have this particular lexicon, but the Liddell & Scott dictionary similarly says: "stauros, ho, an upright pale or stake, ... Od. 14.11, cf. Il.24.453, Thuc. 4.90, Xen. An. 5.2, 21; of piles driven in to serve as a foundation, Hdt. 5.16, Thuc. 7.25, cf. stauroma. II. the Cross, as the Roman instrument of Crucifixion, Diod. 2.18, cf. Plut. 2.554A; epi ton st. apagesthai Luc. Peregr. 34; st. lambanein, airein, bastazein, metaph. of voluntary suffering, Ev. Matth. 10.38, Luc. 9.23., 14.27; its form was represented by the Greek letter T, Luc. Jud. Voc. 12" (p. 1422). As you can see, this dictionary is not guessing in referring to the (common) form of the instrument, it gives a citation (the same one I gave in my last post). The really funny thing here is that the web authors in your quote say that the meaning of stauros is "stake" in "all the Greek classics", which presumably would include Lucian, whom they cite later on the same page as supporting the NWT's claim that stauros could not refer to a stake with a crosspiece -- when Lucian himself explicitly described the stauros as T-shaped (!). Mentioning Homer is also quite beside the point since the Homeric epics constitute the oldest Greek literature, written long before crucifixion came into vogue in the Mediterranean.
The real difference in meaning is this: I "an upright pale, stake or pole". This is the older meaning, and this simply refers to an upright pole -- it has nothing to do with execution. Then came along II: "the Cross". This is the newer, more specialized meaning. The difference is that now it refers to an instrument used in a ghastly form of execution involving the affixing of a victim to a post -- commonly with nails (i.e. "cross" as the device used in "crucifixion," not necessarily of a particular type). That meaning came along by the fourth or third century BC, first in reference to Persian crucifixion and then later in reference to Roman crucifixion. Sometimes the device had a patibulum, sometimes it did not, sometimes it had a sedile (a thorn-shaped piece of wood on which the victim sits), sometimes it did not, sometimes it had a titilus (a piece of wood attached to the instrument stating the crime the person is executed for), sometimes it did not. The key thing is that the word started out just referring to an upright timber, then a later sense came along that pertained to a particular use of the timber -- as an instrument of execution. The same thing happened with xulon in Greek, which acquired all sorts of specialized meanings having to do with punishment -- pillories, stocks, clubs, etc. I suppose if I referred to an execution of someone on "the chair", I think you would understand that specialized meaning as well.
Of course, this discussion is separate from a discussion of whether the stauros of Jesus was believed by early Christians to have had a crosspiece. I do believe there is evidence of this, such as the reference to Jesus carrying his stauros to the execution site which corresponds to the Roman patibulum-bearing practice, but that is a separate issue. The point here is that the Society's claim that stauros could not have referred to a stake with a crosspiece is unfounded. To bring this back to the first question you posed -- if stauros referred only to simple execution stakes and not those that had crosspieces, then what word did? If no such word existed, then what reason is there to assume that stauros could not refer to them?
BTW, the website has many other quotes and claims that are not well-founded, along with some valid observations (such as the fact that the archaeological remains of crucifixion from Giv'at ha-Mitvar are ambiguous as to whether a crosspiece was used), I would say to be quite cautious about accepting what such sources as Vine, Bullinger, Parsons say at face value, as they are quite erroneous (see my thread for some discussion).
