A nice treat for us — some scholarly paleobabble!
Readers may have seen or heard the “news” that, according to scholar Gunnar Samuelsson, the gospels do not say Jesus died on a cross. This, my friends, is either a good example of sophistry or yet another reason to keep journalists as far away from biblical and ancient studies as possible.
Samuelsson is a scholar. His dissertation work was on crucifixion in the ancient world. One of the news articles has Samuelsson saying this:
In fact, he argues, in the original Greek, the ancient texts reveal only that Jesus carried “some kind of torture or execution device” to a hill where “he was suspended” and died.
“He was required to carry his ‘stauros’ to Calvary, and they ‘stauroun’ him. That is all. He carried some kind of torture or execution device to Calvary and he was suspended and he died.”
A second news article notes that Samuelsson:
“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.”
I must be missing something. The second quotation above has Jesus being “suspended” on a cross and then dying – which is exactly what the gospels say. Jesus was put on a cross after a horrific beating. He was alive on the cross for some time before he died (Matt. 27:27-31; 27:40; Mark 15:24-32). In crucifixion, as many experts have noted, the cause of death is asphyxiation. So far the only difference I see between what Samuelsson says in the second quotation and what the gospels say is apparently the nails – ? I’m guessing Samuelsson doesn’t think the gospels say that Jesus was nailed to the cross, but only suspended (?), but then I wonder how, in all the time devoted to his dissertation work, he missed John 20:25. Those weren’t rope burns; they were holes.
The facts are simple here, actually. Whether Samuelsson believes Jesus was nailed to the cross or merely “suspended,” he’s still saying (at least to my eyes) that Jesus died on a cross. And the cause of death would be the same: asphyxiation. So who cares? I’d like to give Samuelsson the benefit of the doubt here and say this is just another archaeo-nonsense-journalistic sideshow. I know what journalists can do to people with what they say (and it has to be malice on some occasions, since to be so endlessly inept at getting a quotation right would require some kind of clinically-treated stupidity). But I’m not entirely sure.
Doesn’t look like sophistry to me, even though journalist reports are often skewed and inaccurate, I think it was clear enough that what he is claiming is that after analyzing hundreds of ancient texts, the word thought to mean cross/crucifixion mostly means other suspension of some kind. He still holds to the view that Christ was crucified. We would need to ask him or read his dissertation for clarifications.
http://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/22126
I have not read the dissertation, but all the articles seem to suggest that its point is whether stauros denotes specifically a cross-shaped torture/execution device, or whether it denotes a category of stakes/trees/poles on which people might be hung, and not only cross-shaped ones.
All this fuss over the shape? That settles it – it’s the archaeo-journalist hype machine.
Josphus doesn’t mention exactly what crucifixion means, although it clearly involved wood (they run out in the aftermath of AD 70), suspension (mention is made of the general practice of taking down before sundown), and nails: “So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies.”
Seneca certainly describes some kind of hanging (and not by the neck): “Can anyone be found who would prefer wasting away in pain dying limb by limb, or letting out his life drop by drop, rather than expiring once for all? Can any man by found willing to be fastened to the accursed tree, long sickly, already deformed, swelling with ugly wounds on shoulders and chest, and drawing the breath of life amid long drawn-out agony? He would have many excuses for dying even before mounting the cross “, but he also mentions a variety in practice: “”I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet” (Dialogue 6:20.3).”
So I can see anything brilliantly new in Samuelsson’s thesis, except in his exclusion of John 20 as representing a reputable source. But where did the author of the 4th gospel get his ideas of nails if his readers weren’t familiar with them?
exactly (on your ending question). And isn’t it always convenient to eliminate a problem for one’s view by saying the source is suspect.
It’s over the terminology: http://gupea.ub.gu.se/bitstream/2077/22126/1/gupea_2077_22126_1.pdf
Oh well, still valuable for some researchers. Boring stuff for me.
I find it vry curious that That if a scholar, this Sammuelson doesn’t see all of the suporting evidence for the “torture device” being a wooden cross. There is even the physical evidence of a skeleton of a crucified man from a Jewish cemetary from the time of Jesus. Even if accounts of the time were ambigous as to how such executions were carried out, this is not like we are trying to uncover somthing lost to history 2000 years ago. In fact the early, ROMAN Christians depicted Jesus executed on a cross becasue this mode of execution was very well known.
(Sigh) It seems that people will do, or say anything for a little publicity.
I suppose that the Roman graffito of Jesus in a cross with the head of an ass has been proven a fake, or???