"Jesus did not die on the cross" (Gunnar Samuelsson)

by Titus 101 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Earnest

  Further to the previous post, I can confirm that Mohr Siebeck will be publishing Crucifixion in Antiquity as part of the WUNT Series (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament) and that it is due to be released in May 2011.

  I was able to get hold of the thesis through an inter-library loan and as it is the season of crucifixion it may be of interest to the forum what his answers to the basic questions of his investigation are. There are six basic questions which he discusses, namely :

  1. What is the ancient - pre-Christian - terminology of crucifixion.
  2. What can be said about the punishment that the terms describe.
  3. How do the New Testament authors depict the death of Jesus on the philological level.
  4. How is the punishment of crucifixion defined by scholars previous to Samuelsson.
  5. How do the insights from his study of the ancient texts cohere with the contributions of the major lexica and dictionaries.
  6. How has the punishment of crucifixion been depicted, and how should it be depicted in the light of his investigation.

  I agree with those who say that it doesn't matter whether Jesus died on an upright pole or a cross (as the term is commonly understood today). Whichever it was Paul's words to the Galations (3:13) would apply, "Christ by purchase released us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse instead of us, because it is written [at Deuteronomy 21:23]: 'Accursed is every man hanged upon a xylou [meaning something made of wood]'."

  That having been said I do think that the NWT translation served a good purpose in that it makes people think what did the original writers actually mean rather than simply accept the translation that was set in stone in the earliest English translations.

  The answers to these six questions all provide food for thought (and discussion if you wish) but rather than provide it all in one humoungous post I will create six different posts following this one and then the floor is yours.
• 

  Earnest

  1. What is the ancient - pre-Christian - terminology of crucifixion.

  The answer is that there was no such terminology. There was only a terminology of suspension – a group of words and idioms that were used more or less interchangeably when referring to various forms of suspension (both human and nonhuman suspensions in several cases). Within this group there is a group of suspension punishments, and within the latter is a group of executionary (ante-mortem) suspension punishments, and within the last is a group of punishments that were carried out by a limb suspension, in which sometimes nails were used, and which sometimes resulted in an outdrawn suffering on some kind of suspension tool. The problem is that no specific terminology is linked to this particular form of execution – before the execution of Jesus.

  When it comes to the individual terms, some conclusions can be drawn. A stauros [Gk.] is a pole in the broadest sense. It is not the equivalent of a “cross” [crux ordinaria]. In some cases, it is a kind of suspension device, used for the suspension of corpses, torture or in a few cases executionary suspensions. Very little or nothing is said about what it was made of or how it looked.

  (ana)stauroun [Gk.] and anaskolopizein [Gk.] are used more or less interchangeably. There might have been a distinction between them occasionally – as Herodotus’ usage shows – but that distinction is now in essence lost. The only clear difference is that the verbs are used in a way which contradicts their etymology. (ana)stauroun [Gk.] has a clearer tendency to be connected with pointed poles than anaskolopizein [Gk.], which is peculiar in the light of the usage of skolops [Gk.].

  crux [Lat.] and patibulum [Lat.] are not used in the sense “cross or standing bare pole” and “crossbeam.” A crux [Lat.] is some kind of torture or execution device, and so is patibulum [Lat.]. The difference is that crux [Lat.] to a higher degree than patibulum [Lat.] refers to a standing pole. crux [Lat.] is more firmly connected with the suspension of humans than stauros [Gk.]. The ecclesiastically pregnant term crucifigere [Lat.] did not evolve until the final years before the Common Era, and its usage is hard to define beyond denoting “to attach in some way to a crux [Lat.].”

  talah [Heb.] is mainly used in connection with human post-mortem suspensions, especially when combined with ‘ets [Heb.]. talah [Heb.] is translated with kremannunai [Gk.], which rather surprisingly is used only in that way. In the clear majority of texts, the Vulgate applies what, through the execution of Jesus, had become a crucifixion terminology. This is an indication that at least the translator(s) of the Vulgate had a tendency to let the way Jesus died reflect the reading of texts which did not depict that punishment.

  It has been noticed that the ancient languages (i.e., Greek, Latin, Hebrew/Aramaic) lacked a special term for crucifixion. [Samuelsson] cannot see anything that speaks against the assumption that this absence of specificity is what it is all about: antiquity had no special terminology for crucifixion because there was no particular punishment called “crucifixion”.
• 

  Earnest

  2. What can be said about the punishment that the terms describe.

  The punishment consists in fact of punishments. There is a large group of terms and idioms which refer to various acts of suspension, and this is almost all that can be said about “the punishment” – it comprises various acts of suspension. The disparate verbs refer mainly to acts of suspension upon, or attachment onto, various torture or execution devices, which are referred to with various nouns. The variation is the only firm theme. It appears that a punishment in which the studied terminology is used could be carried out in a way that was simply fitting for the moment. What happened to Jesus on Calvary might then be only a momentary expression of local caprice. Previous and subsequent executions might have been completely different. What has become the solid image in the centre of the Christian faith might be just a freak of fate, not an expression of a well-defined and long-used execution form.

  3. How do the New Testament authors depict the death of Jesus on the philological level.

  The New Testament authors are strikingly silent about the punishment Jesus had to suffer on Calvary. The vivid pictures of the death of Jesus in the theology and art of the church – and among scholars – do not have their main source here. Crucifixion as it is known today did not even come into being on Calvary, but in the Christian interpretation of the event. Before the death of Jesus, it appears that there was no crucifixion proper. There was a whole spectrum of suspension punishments, which all shared terminology.
• 

  Earnest

  4. How is the punishment of crucifixion defined by previous scholars.

  The theme of definition occurs sparsely among the studied scholars. With one major exception (Kuhn), the opinion of what a crucifixion is has to be read more or less between the lines. The scholars may offer some words in the ongoing discussion that indicate what is on their minds. When nothing else is said, the conclusion that they use the designation “crucifixion” in the normal English sense must be drawn. Taken together, in view of the absent definition and the normal usage of the term, the absolute majority of scholars have held the opinion that the designation “crucifixion” is coherent with the punishment that struck Jesus according to the main Christian traditions. But it would be of great benefit for this often implied definition to be spelled out. The label “crucifixion” as it is commonly understood comes from the groundbreaking event on Calvary. Thus, the event on Calvary should be the beacon for which features the label “crucifixion” shall contain. This is level one of the definition. Level two is to label all other human suspensions as – “suspensions.” Human suspensions that lack one or more features (i.e., post-mortem suspension or impaling) must not be labelled “crucifixions”.
• 

  Earnest

  5. How do the insights from the present studies of the ancient texts cohere with the contributions of the major lexica and dictionaries.

  The outcome of the comparative study is that they are incoherent. At the heart of the discrepancy is the usage of the labels “cross” and “crucifixion” in the lexica and dictionaries. The label “cross” is commonly applied to many more texts which contain stauros [Gk.] than those which – with at least a decent amount of certainty – can be determined to contain a reference to the punishment tool used in a crucifixion in a traditional sense. In the same way, the label “crucifixion” is applied to a large number of texts where the only qualifier is the occurrence of, e.g., (ana)stauroun [Gk.] or anaskolopisthen [Gk.]. In short, a lot of texts are identified as references to “crucifixion” on the basis of a simple conjecture.
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  Earnest

  6. How has the punishment of crucifixion been depicted, and how should it be depicted in the light of the present investigation.

  It could without exaggeration be said that the punishment of crucifixion has been vividly depicted. It does not require a lengthy search to find a full-blown description of how a crucifixion was carried out in antiquity. It seems on the basis of these depictions that the ancient accounts of crucifixion are both frequent and clear-cut, but they are not. The ancient texts that with any likelihood depict crucifixions are both rare and vague. This observation includes the texts of the New Testament.

  The vague and diverse suspension accounts ought to affect the effort to depict a crucifixion, or rather the crucifixion. An illustration of crucifixion cannot be anything else than a retelling of what can be gleaned from the New Testament texts concerning the execution of Jesus. First, that it was an executionary suspension. Second, that after being scourged Jesus (and/or Simon) carried a stauros [Gk.], whatever that might be, to the execution place. Third, that Jesus was undressed and attached to a stauros, perhaps by being nailed. Fourth, that a sign probably indicated the nature of the crime. Features beyond these are not to be found in the New Testament or the older literature of the Greco-Roman world.

  Other punishments should not be characterised further than that they were some kind of suspension on some kind of suspension device of a whole human in some condition or a part of a human. A more detailed account cannot be given on a general level, but must be confined to a specific text. Such an account is, however, only a description of a single text, not a presentation of a customary form of punishment.

  My comment : Thank you for your forebearance while I put that together. I hope it is of interest.
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  pirata

  Would it be fair to summarize as "we don't know what it looked like"?
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  Earnest

  Yes, although we are pretty sure it was made of wood and it was rather unpleasant.
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  EdLouisiana

  Hi, New here. A don't have a dog in this hunt but I'd like to throw in something that I found about how the Romans crucified. Apparently the small peg (Hengel, Crucifixion, p. 25) that was installed on the cross was an impaling stake that the persons who were crucified "rode." There are two graffiti, one in Puteoli, the other in Pompeii, that show the cross constructed with an impaling stake outrigged on a stout support attached to the stipes. It was also shaped and pointed like a thorn. I believe it is this thorny peg that Seneca quotes Maceneas in reference to the acuta crux. (Seneca, Epistles 101:10-14)

  So without further ado I am posting a link to an image that shows both images: the one in Puteoli, called Puzzuoli Graffito, is clearly shown. The one from Pompeii, called Vivat Crux Graffito, shows up as a watermark.

  http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/6475/pozzuolihv3.jpg

  Warnings:

  1. The tagger who scatched out Puzzuoli Graffito could have been etching out his fantasy version of an actual crucifixion, or something else was going on, for the tagger drew the condemned with a smile on his/her face. :shrug:

  2. The peg in Vivat Crux Graffito, if the illustration was drawn to scale according to how cruces were constructed, the peg was not small, but rather, large enough to be excruciatingly painful when the condemned hung impaled on it, and by design he had no choice.
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  Nebeska Nada

  Titus' thread active again...