neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Mon Jun 07, 2021 11:37 pm
On the word "wood", from
https://archive.org/details/odespsalmso ... 6/mode/2up
(a) ... the word ... ‘wood’ refers frequently in Syriac literature to the Cross, and
(b) that this wood-cross is commonly compared with the wood-tree of Paradise, the one as being the source of death, and the other of life . . .
Regarding, " the word...‘wood’ refers frequently in Syriac literature to the Cross", one would need to know what Syriac literature, when it might have been written, and what [texts] it was or might have been referring to, to properly contextualise that statement.
Not the subsequent
'Expository Notes' -
.
Expository Notes
There can be no doubt that this Psalm is based upon the early Christian attitude in prayer, which was cruciform, and upon the habit of the early Christians of finding the Cross everywhere in the outward world; eg. in the handle of the labourer’s plough and in the mast and yards of the seaman’s ship.
The figurative language employed is characteristic of the second century and not unknown in the first. Justin Martyr, for instance, and Barnabas, see the Cross
in the outspread arms of Moses in the battle against Amalek; and it is possible that our Nitrian MS. had this in mind in reading
‘the extension of my hands is weary'
eta: Homer used the word stauros for an ordinary pole or stake, or a simple piece of timber.[
Iliad xxiv.453.
Odyssey xiv.11] This was the meaning and usage of the word throughout the Greek classics.[ eg. Thucydides iv.90.; Xenophon,
Anabasis v.2.21]
Speculations about
the Stauros are older than Christianity, as an entity to rival Horos, and a Platonic conception may have been at work here. In Valentinianism, the cross could stand for the wondrous Aeon on whom depends the ordering and life of the world ...
See this thread
viewtopic.php?p=117402#p117402
From 'The Crucifixion of the Paschal Lamb' by Joseph Tabory, in
The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 86, No. 3/4 (Jan–Apr, 1996), pp. 395-406; via JSTOR:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1454912
Justin's description [in Dial. 40] of the crucifixion of the paschal lamb by the Jews is intended to prove that the offering of the lamb was a perfect prefiguration of the crucifixion of Jesus.
And also note
(b) that this wood-cross is commonly compared with the wood-tree of Paradise ...