mlinssen wrote: ↑Tue Dec 01, 2020 3:01 am
It would be fun if we could put some hard evidence to this obvious issue, as a result of which the Church would have to replace all crucifiction images by ones with Jesus being impaled on a stake
In terms of iconography based on the evidence at hand, it depends on what point-in-time in the evolution of the story of a salvific Jesus Christ one wishes to depict.
When one considers the text of GMark --- which was dependent on an earlier Paul --- the author chose to set his story during the governorship of Pilate as the time for Paul’s Jesus Christ to have come in-the-likeness-of-man. Hence the death at the hands of Roman authorities in that tale provides a reasonable argument that the wooden instrument might be seen as cross-shaped because the Romans of the times were known to have sometimes attached a cross-bar to an upright stake for human suspensions. The same argument can apply to most subsequent stories and legends about a Jesus Christ following GMark.
But no such argument exists for Paul, the earliest texts about a Jesus Christ. Nowhere in Paul’s letters is the death of his Jesus Christ attributed to the Romans. Paul characterizes the death of his Jesus Christ strictly in terms of scriptural references. And in those scriptural references, nowhere does Paul clearly characterize the death of Jesus Christ as an event predicted to take place in the future.
Arguments have been made that the death of Jesus Christ in Paul’s letters occurred in recent times in relation to Paul. In that case, a recent execution would likely have been conducted by Roman authorities, hence could have been on a cross-shaped instrument. But the extended and complex arguments for a recent death in Paul’s letters hang by a gossamer thread from two or three verses in my opinion --- verses for which different interpretations provide a much better fit within the wider context of Paul’s letters. No Jesus Christ figure that recently died is clearly to be found in Paul’s letters --- at best (and somewhat generously) there are a handful of verses in which the shadow of such a figure might be glimpsed if one presupposes the existence of such a figure in the first place. My point here is that any justification for assuming that Paul intended the σταυρός (stake) and the ξύλον (wood) in his letters as having the shape of a cross hangs on extended, complex arguments. Regardless of one’s opinion on a recent Jesus in relation to Paul, such considerations belong squarely in the realm of interpretation, not translation.
The translation is not that difficult --- at least it shouldn’t be. In Paul, the only defensible choice for σταυρός is “stake”. When translated as “stake”, the default is a simple wooden upright stake, but the term does not explicitly exclude a T-shape, cross-shape, X-shape, A-shape, etc. However, when σταυρός in Paul’s letters is translated as “cross”, the vast majority of modern readers automatically picture a crucifixion at the hands of Roman authorities.
And certainly specialists continue to muck things up in this regard, as Samuelsson wrote in the summary of his extensive review of human suspensions in the (non-Christian) Greek literature from Homer through the first century CE ---
When σταυρός is used in connection with human bodily suspensions, it seems to be only a simple wooden pole used in an unspecified suspension. This at least is all that can be read out of the texts. (p. 146)
... none of the nouns means "cross." In the light of this it is odd to see that so many scholars use this very method - the terms per se - to sift out their crucifixion references. (Samuelsson, p. 147, see my post above for citation)
For scholars and other specialists to cling to the convention of translating σταυρός as “cross” in Paul borders on intellectual dishonesty, intellectual laziness at the very least. Of course herd mentality and translation “convention” provide plenty of cover. And certainly apologetics plays a significant role. I’ve been guilty of occasional use of the conventional translation.
It’s not just an intellectual exercise. The issue goes to the heart of interpreting Paul and how the earliest believers in a Jesus Christ understood the salvific death ---- the very origins of Christian thought.
Did the Romans do it --- did Paul write about a Jesus Christ that suffered and died on a cross at the hands of Roman authorities? Or did Paul write about a Jesus Christ that suffered and died on some sort of wooden stake in a general manner as found in the broad body of extant pre-Pauline Greek and Jewish literature?
