Cross or torture stake.....

by snakeizz 45 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  Mary

  Anybody know why they chose to go with the stake idea? Just to be different?

  To the WTS, the cross was a "pagan symbol" so they just had to change it. Which was stupid, because from the Jewish point of view, the Romans in the 1st century CE were pagans and they worshipped false gods and had pagan practices. Jesus died under Rome, so naturally Rome would use whatever means of execution they were used to. Are we to believe that before executing Jesus, that the Romans said "hey, let's just impale him on a single beam of wood instead of cruxifying him on a cross, because that's not part of His beliefs"??

  To deny that Jesus was cruxified is like denying that the goddess Diana or Isis didn't exist because they were from "pagan origin". There's paranoia where there's no need to be paranoid, but then again, that seems to be the basis for the WTS.
• 

  Leolaia

  Triple A....Look again. 2 Kings 18:4 reads, in the original Hebrew, hw' hsyr 't-hbmwt wsbr 't-hmtsbt wkrt 't-h'srh wktt nchs hnchst 'sr-'sh msh ky 'd-hymym hhmh hyw bny-ysr'l mqtrym lw wyqr'-lw nchstn. Your translation has simply opted to render "the Asherah" as "pole," when in fact it is an Asherah pole. The Greek OT that would have been available to the author of John, however, did not render this expression literally so indeed the evangelist would not have known the connection. That the pole that bore the Nehushtan was an Asherah pole is also indicated by its function, as described in Numbers, as well as Asherah's ubiquitous relationship with serpents in Canaanite icongraphy and literature. The serpent-and-pole caduceus of Tannit (the Punic name for Asherah, which means "serpent/dragon lady"; cf. Phoenician Chawat = Hebrew Eve "serpent (lady)") was also a well-attested representation of the goddess' healing power. Archaeologists discovered a bronze serpent similar to that of the biblical Nehushtan in an Asherah/Hathor shrine in the Sinai peninsula. There is a fairly extensive discussion of the various lines of evidence in Walter Maier's book on Asherah (titled "Asherah: Extrabiblical Evidence").
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  Triple A

  Leolaia,

  Are you saying that God directed Moses to put the snake on the Asherah Pole in Numbers.

  I agree that 2 Kings 18:4 says the Asherah Pole. What I disagree with is that you say Moses put it there and at God's direction. The text here is talking about those that have corrupted worship, which would mean that they corrupted what Moses had done.

  The Septuagint published by Hendrickson Publishers, the pole is translated signal-staff in Numbers 21:8-9. I do not claim to be a Greek or Hebrew Scholar.

  Triple A
• 

  Greenpalmtreestillmine

  Triple A,

  Why couldn't God tell Moses to make an Asherah pole?

  Sabrina
• 

  mkr32208

  'cause their god is such an "ash pole"... get it? hahahaha ok I'm off to bed!
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  Greenpalmtreestillmine
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  Tigerman

  To me the concept of the torture stake used by the wts is just that . . .a concept. This idea falls in line with all of their other devices used to create and maintain an " us and them" mentality in their followers.
• 

  twolips

  In Mary's last post she mentioned the word "impale". I remember this word being used many years ago, not so much any more.

  Doesnt this word imply something completly different as a form of killing someone?
• 

  orangefatcat

  215

  Interesting that you stated you won't find Kingdom Halls listed under churches in the yellow pages.

  Check under Recreational Centers, thats what they called Kingdom Halls in Mexico for a long time.

  While the brothers in Malawi were killed, because they didn' carry a party card. I hate the WTBTS.

  They are pathetic Hypocrites...

  Your right they just want to be different. They do it and people swallow it.

  Wake up people and smell the hypocrisy its oozing out of their pores.

  Orangefatcat..
• 

  Narkissos

  Twolips,

  There was a thread on this months ago (I can't find it even with the Google search ) and there I learnt that the WT's use of "to impale" is indeed very peculiar. Interestingly it was never translated in French WT literature by "empaler" (as it should have been according to the dictionaries), because it would have suggested "pierced by the stake". The translators always used some periphrase such as "put to the stake". But apparently the common usage of the English word "to impale" doesn't allow that either.