The crucifix is the defining symbol of Christianity, a constant reminder to the faithful of the sacrifice and suffering endured by Jesus Christ for humanity. But an extensive study of ancient texts by a Swedish pastor and academic has revealed that Jesus may not have died on a cross, but instead been put to death on another gruesome execution device.
Gunnar Samuelsson — a theologian at the University of Gothenburg and author of a 400-page thesis on crucifixion in antiquity — doesn’t doubt that Jesus died on Calvary hill. But he argues that the New Testament is in fact far more ambiguous about the exact method of the Messiah’s execution than many Christians are aware.
“When the Gospels refer to the death of Jesus, they just say that he was forced to carry a “stauros” out to Calvary,” he told AOL News. Many scholars have interpreted that ancient Greek noun as meaning “cross,” and the verb derived from it, “anastauroun,” as implying crucifixion. But during his three-and-a-half-year study of texts from around 800 BC to the end of the first century AD, Samuelsson realized the words had more than one defined meaning.
“‘Stauros’ is actually used to describe a lot of different poles and execution devices,” he says. “So the device described in the Gospels could have been a cross, but it could also have been a spiked pole, or a tree trunk, or something entirely different.”
Okay, so let me get this straight. We have many verses that say he was executed on some kind pole or tree trunk. Then we have a few verses that further clarify this pole or tree trunk execution to be crucifixion as we know it today. Makes perfect sense to me.
That's like me describing a party I attended by saying we all ate chips, reiterating several times just how good those chips were but only mentioning that they were Doritos a couple times, only to have someone who wasn't there say that there was little evidence that we had consumed Doritos because the word "chips" can also refer to other kinds of chips as well, and "Doritos" was only mentioned a couple of times.
Language can be a funny thing. But cross, pole or tree, the point is the same isnt it? His hands and feet were nailed to it and he died in our place thus propitiating God's wrath and providing salvation from our sins, past present & future, for all who would believe.
He was nailed to a tree. It doesn't really matter what it looked like.
I listened to a biblical historian speak about the New Testament last night. He pointed out that the very first Gospel was written 30 to 40 years after Jesus died, which would be similar to writing a history of the President Lyndon Johnson administration in 2005 based exclusively on second-hand oral tradition passed down over 40 years. A lot can get lost and changed after 40 years of passing stories down before they are first committed to writing. Still, the crucifiction is central to the story of Christ and I have to belief they got the manner of his death correct. I have also read from several respected biblical historians that the Romans crucified prisoners by the thousands and did it as routinely as modern-day police make traffic stops. It's not hard to believe that if Jesus created a disturbance during the Passover, the Romans would quickly use the standard method of punishment to quash any chance of rebellion: crucifiction.