P.S. I really like your format. The page of text with the links loads very easily.
The facts on crucifixion, stauros, and the "torture stake"
by Leolaia 175 Replies latest watchtower bible
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AllAlongTheWatchtower
Leolaia,excellent job of debunking.
One thing I am curious about though. As a non-JW, I don't really have a way of knowing this, and if I try to discuss it with my wife, she gets that thousand-yard-JW stare because I'm casting doubt on the WTS. If the witnesses believe that christ was physically impaled on a torture stake, how do they [attempt] to back that up? Meaning, that when I think of someone being impaled on a stake, I think of Vlad the Impaler, who literally had those who ticked him off hoisted up and shoved down on sharpened stakes. I imagine that anyone who had this done to them would die awful quickly, not linger on for hours as the story in the bible goes. Or does the WTS say that the story is exactly the same, just with a stake vs a cross? IE, nailed to it?
Being an atheist myself, I don't put much stock in the bible, but I thought the bible says something to the effect of 'no bone in his body will be broken', and the only reference I know of to christ being literally impaled is the story of the soldier who ran a spear into his side. Depending on the size of the stake (documentary shows I have watched on Vlad the Impaler pictured a 3-4 inch thick pole, sharpened to a point), I would think being impaled bodily in such a fashion would have to at least break a rib or two.
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Leolaia
jgnat....It seems that pseudo-scholar is content to disparage this research on other threads, but not address any specific points I raised here.
AllAlongtheWatchtower....The Society does not claim that Jesus was "impaled" by having the stake pass through his body. This is what most people think of as "impalement" and so the Society uses this word in its own idiosyncratic way which has apparently given rise to your impression that they construe Jesus' death as in this matter. Watchtower literature depicts Jesus as nailed to an upright post, one nail through his hands and one nail through his feet.
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TheListener
Does anyone have a scan of the 1963 Awake! article referenced in Leolaia's write-up? The CD doesn't go that far back and I don't have Awake! magazines from that long ago. You know you can only have so many articles on birds and butterflies in the house!
Also, Leolaia, I was able to find the references to Tacitus in the Revelation Grand Climax book it's on page 101. I couldn't find the page reference in your write-up. Perhaps it was there and I missed it; if it was sorry. If it's not you might think of adding it.
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Leolaia
Here it is:
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TheListener
Thank you. Also, quite by accident, I found this 1951 WT article that you've all probably seen by I hadn't. I post it for those interested. It's not a scan but a cut/paste for the cd rom. I can't scan.
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w51 3/15 p. 190 Prometheus Represented as Tied to a Stake ***Prometheus
Represented as Tied to a StakeThe Watchtower Society, publishers of the "New World Translation", received a letter questioning a statement in the appendix that the Greek hero Prometheus was represented as tied to a stake. The Society’s answer is here published.
December 1, 1950
Dear Sir:
Answering yours of November 14 which poses a challenge that the popular Greek hero Prometheus "was represented as tied to a stake or ‘stauros’".
Just as you have heard, the Americana Encyclopedia in its article on "Prometheus Bound", the tragedy by the Greek poet Aeschylus, also represents Prometheus clamped to a rock in the Caucasus by forging. However, we should like to refer you to the book The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, by Dr. Paul Carus, and published in Chicago by The Open Court Publishing Co. in 1900. On page 210 it gives the illustration of a man tied to a stake, under which illustration it says: "Prometheus tied by Zeus to the stake (or cross) and exposed to the Eagle: Rescue by Hercules (A vase found at Chiusi, now in Berlin. Baumeister, D.d.cl.A., p. 1410)." On this page Dr. Carus says: "In spite of the strong admixture of foreign mythology, Hercules has become the national hero of Greece, and the Greek idea of salvation has found in him the most typical expression, which has been most beautifully worked out by Aeschylus in a grand tragedy which represents Prometheus (the forethinker) as struggling and suffering mankind, tied to the pole of misery by Zeus as a punishment for the sin of having brought the bliss of light and fire down to the earth. But at last the divine saviour, Hercules, arrives, and, killing the eagle that lacerates the liver of the bold hero, sets him free. Prometheus and Hercules are combined into one person in the Christian Saviour, Jesus Christ. The similarity of the story of Golgotha with the myth of Prometheus is not purely accidental. For observe that in some of the older pictures, as, for instance, in the vase of [page 211] Chiusi (see illustration on page 210), Prometheus is not chained to a rock but tied to a pole, that is, to a sta?? ? ? or cross, and Greek authors frequently use expressions such as the verb a ?as????p ? ?es?a? (Aeschylus) and a ?asta??? ? s?a? (Lucian) which mean ‘to be crucified.’"
On pages 217, 218 Dr. Carus says: "Plato, who, perhaps under the impression of Aeschylus’s conception of the tragic fate of Prometheus, says of the perfect man who would rather be than appear just: ‘They will tell you that the just man who is thought unjust will be scourged, racked, bound; will have his eyes burnt out; and, at last, after suffering every kind of evil, he will be hung up at the pale.’ The strangest thing about this passage is that the word
a ?as???d??e?? ? seta?, which means ‘he will be hung up at the stake’, or ‘fixed on a pale’, is an older synonym of the New Testament term sta?? ? e??, commonly translated ‘to crucify.’"The above agrees with the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures in its Appendix, page 769, in saying that the instrument upon which Jesus was nailed was a stake without a crossbeam, and not the religiously represented "cross"; and that the Greek word used for that instrument in ancient time meant a "stake" and not the conventional religious cross.
Sincerely yours,
WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY
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Nate Merit
I'm impressed, and I don't impress easily. I stored this post on my computer. Now, if I can only find a JW with enough gray matter to read it and understand it...
Nah.
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peacefulpete
Very late but, Yes, Dionysus/Bacchus was depicted as crucified. Here's a page, follow the links: Bacchus Crucified
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Think
The problems with BELIEFS is, that, if ingrained in the mind, works as a blinder to the TRUTH.
A person holding certain beliefs, will look for things to EMPOWER theirs beliefs, and reject the ABSOLUTE TRUTH.
Believer can't see clearly, because he is looking thru the glases of his faith. (Holy cow believer example ).
The TRUTH have to be FIRST, before faith.
The LOVE of the TRUTH is more important that believing in False Leaders and Teachers, and following them in dead hope, than somehow they will find the "way", that God will guide them back on the right track.
Well, people who follow believers just because they are believers ( ahh ! Hitler was also believer that he is the Messiah, and TOOOOO many of his followers believed in his Lunacy also ),
they are in NEVER LAND !
They Follow the shadow of a blind person .
Forewer... or ... till they die.
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