Ages ago I started a piece on the subject of immortality and its relevance to Bible teaching. It started well, got bigger and bigger and then ground to a halt. Life and events intervened and it is now abandoned until I find the enthusiasm to resume. Nevertheless, in my research I found myself reading Strong in an attempt to prove that the Greek words psyke and pneuma, generally translated as 'soul' have no connection to immortality. I was to be disappointed...
5594 psyko to breathe, blow, cool by blowing
5590 psyke 1a. The breath of life; the vital force 1b. Life 2a. The seat of feelings, desires, affections, aversions 2b. The (human) soul in so far as it is so constituted that by the right use f the aids offered it by God it can attain its highest end and secure eternal blessedness, the soul regarded as a moral being designed for everlasting life 2c. The soul as an essence which differs from the body and is not dissolved by death
We were going well until that 2c was added! What about the other word?
4154 pneo to breathe, to blow
4150 pneuma 1. a movement of air; of the wind, nostrils 2. the spirit, the vital force by which the body is animated 3. a spirit generically; a human soul that has left the body; angel; the spiritual nature of Christ 4. God's power and agency 5. the disposition or influence that fills and governs the soul of any one, the source of power, affection, emotion, desire.
It is strange that a word that describes a physical process, i.e breathing, is used for something that is incorporeal, immaterial – organisms that have no need to supply oxygen to the cells of a fleshly body. That is the trouble with the concept of immortality. No human has ever experienced it and so there is no word for what it is. Even the apostle Paul could only describe it in terms of what it is not – incorruptible, imperishable, deathless. If it is something you are determined to believe as a universal truth the meaning of a candidate word has to be twisted and augmented to fit the desired theology.
For some reason, which escapes me now, I have been reading about the events leading up to 70 CE in Jerusalem. Whether one reads Josephus or Faulkner (kindly donated by Jules) or other, the word 'crucify' is used repeatedly, not just in reference to the death of our Lord but as a general practice of the Romans. Josephus notes that during the siege of Jerusalem, so many were being executed in this manner that 'room was wanting for the [crosses], and [crosses] wanting for the bodies'. When we use the word 'crucify' we naturally think of two pieces of timber formed into a cross shape. The words are similar too – crux, crucify, cross. And this reminds me of the elder in Thame congregation who repeatedly used the crucify word in a memorial talk. I was but a teenager yet it made me squirm! Anyway, slight digression aside, I wondered what word Josephus actually used in the original language, translated above as 'crosses'. Back to Jules and the answer is stauros. What, you may well ask, is a stauros? It is an upright pale or stake such as is used to construct a palisade. So why is a word that defines a single upright pole, that in a more modern application might support an electricity or telephone cable, translated as cross – two pieces of timber set at right angles? Once again the answer lies with misleading lexicons such as Strong and Thayer.
Thayer: 4716 stauros 1. an upright stake, esp a pointed one 2a. a cross 2b. the crucifixion Christ underwent 4717 stauros 1. to stake, drive down stakes 2. to fortify with driven stakes, to palisade 3. to crucify
Given that in the cross was adopted as the symbol of apostate Christianity in the fourth century CE and that prior to this it was a symbol of life and fertility and of the god Tammuz, it is clear that the gospel and epistle writers did not mean 'cross' when they used the word stauros. They wrote down what they and other eye-witnesses saw - a single length of wood. Thus entries such as 4716 (2) and 4717 (3) betray the doctrinal bias of the author.
It seemed that it would be fun to do some research into the subject. What is the origin of the cross? Did the Romans ever or occasionally use a two-piece device? And even if they did, why has the cross become the symbol of apostate Christianity? 'Because it is apostate' I hear you cry! But before I got started, another book arrived from the inexhaustible Jules 'The non-Christian Cross' by John Denham Parsons. Written in 1896, almost tedious in its thoroughness in places, it is a fascinating read. It is not an easy read. The author seems to confuse sentence with paragraph. There are many paragraphs that consist of a single sentence which contorts itself through every item of punctuation and every connective to deliberately avoid coming to an end. When I finally arrived I had forgotten why I had started! Inspiration perhaps for a certain game on the Radio 4 panel game 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue'! Even so I would thoroughly recommend it. And there seems little point in me writing further on a subject that has been so comprehensively covered already.
Then I got to wondering why NWT translates stauros as 'torture stake'? What is the stake for – an implement of execution or of torture? Is a torture stake any different in form to any other kind of stake? Is there a difference between execution and torture? Well, yes very much so. Torture involves keeping the victim alive as long as possible in order to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible. In Jesus's case the stake was simply an unpleasant and public means of execution. In fact he was offered wine and gall to reduce the pain and had he still been alive at the end of the day they would have broken his legs to hasten his death. As torturous as being nailed to a lump of wood must be, the primary purpose was not torture. I humbly submit therefore that the correct translation is just 'stake'.
Another source of interest is the reproduction of a drawing by Justus Lipsius in an appendix of the Kingdom Interlinear. It depicts a gentleman nailed to a pole called a crux simplex. The point is to prove that a 'simple cross' is just an upright pale and nothing more. What we are not told is that this illustration is one of a series that depict all kinds of execution upon one and two pieces of wood and that the term crux simplex was coined by Lipsius himself. It shows that crosses were indeed used to bear the execution victim. They are found in his book 'De Cruce Libri Tres'. In the case of Jesus's execution, there is absolutely nothing in the Bible to suggest that his death was on anything other than a single upright pole. Yet we see that crosses were used for executions at various times. These images also graphically show why NWT has changed the chant of the crowds from 'impale him' to the less concise 'to the stake with him'. Impaling on a crux simplex ad infixionem is very different to hanging on a crux simplex ad affixionem. The former looks particularly uncomfortable! I have had little success in determining the etymology of the Latin word crux. It would appear that crux refers to a single pole just as stauros does. If so, it follows that to crucify is to execute by hanging on a stake. 'Even among the Romans the crux appears to have been originally an upright pole, and this always remained the prominent part' (Patrick Farbairn – The Imperial Bible-Dictionary 1866). Studies have also been carried out to determine the actual cause of death of one so suspended. Without going into the gruesome details it seems that death could be precipitated or delayed, from minutes to days, by various arrangements. The quickest method was to suspend the victim by his arms directly above his head. Without additional support he would suffocate within ten minutes. With support at the ankles this could extend the suffering to a few hours and by stretching the arms along a cross member, to days. (Crucifixion in Antiquity by Joe Zias) The arms above the head method is without doubt how Jesus was executed. He was nailed in some unspecified way and died within six hours. However with two pieces of wood all sorts of additional arrangements could be fashioned. It was possible to keep the victim alive for days, reportedly over a week if the transgression was deemed so execrable – and that is torture. The choice came down to practicalities. For mass executions, something that the Romans frequently indulged in, the single upright pole was favoured. It was less work. Why use two pieces of wood when one would do? The translation of Josephus, above, is most probably wrong for this very reason. Titus had had the country stripped of trees for miles around to enclose the entire city of Jerusalem. Providing a superfluous cross member would have been a needless burden on his armed forces, whose task was to defeat Jerusalem as quickly as possible. There are accounts of the Appian Way being lined with thousands of hanging bodies. Yet in small scale executions they may well have used two pieces of timber, especially if the prisoner had been particularly bothersome and required special treatment. This provided many permutations of affixing, and by keeping him alive they could maximise his pain and humiliation. When viewed like this, Pilate's treatment of Jesus was quite merciful, so to speak. This is the point of Lipsius's drawings.
How did the symbol of the cross come to represent Christianity? The Romans again! Constantine was looking for a way to unify his wayward empire, when a symbol accepted by the heathen and the pagan somehow miraculously appeared in the sky as the sign of the Lord, the crucifixion on a cross. He accepted it with enthusiasm. It would pacify his already cross-worshipping subjects and the Christians would be grateful that they were no longer being persecuted. So, and with doubtful linguistic support from Messrs Strong, Thayer et al, the cross has become the all pervasive symbol of the Christ and to even hint at anything else is deemed heretical. Mr Denham Parsons puts it so much better. A devout Christian, he is quite forthright in denouncing the erroneous ways of his own church.
Ultimately, I suppose that it matters not whether Jesus was executed on a stake or a cross. At the time of his death Christianity had not been invented. The Romans were thus not Christian and wouldn't have been if it had been so. The cross was already an ancient symbol of life and fertility and they didn't really care who they upset. What is utterly inexcusable and offensive is the adoption by so-called Christians of this symbol of paganism. As Mr Farbairn explains 'From being in itself the most vile and repulsive of objects, the cross has become in the minds of believers the symbol of all that is holy and precious'. Why? Why would anyone want to venerate an object that was used to inflict pain, suffering, humiliation and death to the one they love so dearly? Finally, how did the apostle John conclude his first letter? 'Little children, guard yourselves from idols'. Right from the second commandment found in Exodus through to the, almost, last words written in the Bible, idolatry has been anathema to our God. True Christians should avoid like the plague veneration of any object or symbol. That is the really important lesson.
A final wry observation – those of a nervous and weak disposition might find such a subject upsetting. In the JW Broadcasting monthly offering for December 20 it was acknowledged that some scenes in recent feature films might have been upsetting too. So let's look at them again!
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