"a commonplace belief among historians of the early church that early Christianity did not emphasize Jesus’ crucifixion"

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Re: "a commonplace belief among historians of the early church that early Christianity did not emphasize Jesus’ crucifix

Post by mlinssen »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 8:33 pm
MrMacSon wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 7:16 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 6:46 pm Okay, and what is your own answer to this question?
  • It was a genuine, open question. I don't yet have an answer. Do you have any answers Ben?
I think the obvious. I think that both stauros and crux, from an early date in Classical history, could indicate a variety of punishments all characterized (A) by affixing the victim to a stake of some kind and (B) thus both killing and humiliating him/her. Jesus was, from an early date in Christian history, thought to have suffered this kind of punishment (Paul, the gospels, Hebrews, Ignatius, Barnabas, Polycarp, and so on), though it is unclear exactly how early the patibulum was firmly thought to have been a part of it. By some point in century II, however, punishment on a stauros or crux was stereotyped as involving the patibulum to the point where the letter tau (T) could be viewed, both by Christians and by others (Lucian, for example), as the standard representation of the punishment ("arms outstretched" and all of that); this stereotyping likely stemmed from the Romans employing the patibulum on a very regular basis by that point, if not sooner.

Also, to be clear as to your "genuine, open question," I believe you fully, and I know that you often undertake highly open-ended investigations on this forum.
I could be sarcastic and view "highly open-ended" as "leading nowhere" LOL

What you describe here, Ben, indeed is the obvious - although I've come to the preliminary conclusion (as of yet, that now is a working thesis) that
  • Jesus died on a stake, not a cross, given his state of consciousness and sudden death
  • it always is 'stauros' in the Greek texts, and that
  • it always is 'crux' in the Latin texts
  • the first Greek texts are (way) earlier than any Latin text
Naturally, it doesn't say crux in Greek, for example - this is not a linguistical issue
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Re: "a commonplace belief among historians of the early church that early Christianity did not emphasize Jesus’ crucifix

Post by mlinssen »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 6:34 pm I feel like I am missing an entire swath of context for the discussions about crucifixion on this forum of late. What exactly is at stake (pun intended) if Jesus was originally thought to have been suspended from, nailed to, or in any other way affixed upon a simple vertical pale, whereas by some point in century II his execution was thought to have involved the patibulum, or crossbar? The words did not change (σταυρός, crux), and the ancient authors ascribe a certain degree of variability to this form of execution, the main purposes of which (humiliation and death) remain the same whether or not the patibulum came into play.

Is this merely some form of "gotcha" against organized Christianity? If so, it has to rank as one of the worst "gotchas" available, since nothing crucial (pun again intended) seems to depend upon it. Or what is going on?
Emphasis mine

That's odd, Ben. You admit to miss context yet you don't hesitate to draw a (very far-fetched) conclusion.
For me, all this started with Re: Trees, crosses, and outstretched hands. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3149&p=115499&hilit=Hours#p115499
and my comment there
"And the duration of the crucifixion in the gospels is very short, only six hours in Mark, less than six hours in Matthew and Luke, and only around three hours in John"

That's from https://jesusorigins.com/wp-content/upl ... on-Gem.pdf, thanks again MrMacSon

Is that correct, these utterly short time frames?
Soon afterwards I drew the conclusion that Jesus died on a stake, which was likely put into his abdomen, chest or up the old cavity - no mention of anything there so I'm assuming the default, and that is the default

No nails, no hands or feet tied, just a stake right into his body upon he was suspended - that is the most logical and plausible form of execution of Jesus by far

So, if I spell it all out, here's exactly what is at stake, and it is the point of the most crucial icon of all of Christianity:

Jesus didn't die nicely and with relative dignity hanging from the cross. He died, suspended on one single stake penetrating his body: he was impaled
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Re: "a commonplace belief among historians of the early church that early Christianity did not emphasize Jesus’ crucifix

Post by mlinssen »

mlinssen wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 11:08 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 6:34 pm I feel like I am missing an entire swath of context for the discussions about crucifixion on this forum of late. What exactly is at stake (pun intended) if Jesus was originally thought to have been suspended from, nailed to, or in any other way affixed upon a simple vertical pale, whereas by some point in century II his execution was thought to have involved the patibulum, or crossbar? The words did not change (σταυρός, crux), and the ancient authors ascribe a certain degree of variability to this form of execution, the main purposes of which (humiliation and death) remain the same whether or not the patibulum came into play.

Is this merely some form of "gotcha" against organized Christianity? If so, it has to rank as one of the worst "gotchas" available, since nothing crucial (pun again intended) seems to depend upon it. Or what is going on?
Emphasis mine

That's odd, Ben. You admit to miss context yet you don't hesitate to draw a (very far-fetched) conclusion.
For me, all this started with Re: Trees, crosses, and outstretched hands. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3149&p=115499&hilit=Hours#p115499
and my comment there
"And the duration of the crucifixion in the gospels is very short, only six hours in Mark, less than six hours in Matthew and Luke, and only around three hours in John"

That's from https://jesusorigins.com/wp-content/upl ... on-Gem.pdf, thanks again MrMacSon

Is that correct, these utterly short time frames?
Soon afterwards I drew the conclusion that Jesus died on a stake, which was likely put into his abdomen, chest or up the old cavity - no mention of anything there so I'm assuming the default, and that is the default

No nails, no hands or feet tied, just a stake right into his body upon he was suspended - that is the most logical and plausible form of execution of Jesus by far

So, if I spell it all out, here's exactly what is at stake, and it is the point of the most crucial icon of all of Christianity:

Jesus didn't die nicely and with relative dignity hanging from the cross. He died, suspended on one single stake penetrating his body: he was impaled
Linking that back to this OP viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7681&sid=69c855b25e ... 63#p118516 I assume the rationale behind the underlying question there to be: if there wasn't much talk about crucixion in early Christianity, perhaps that was so because there wasn't any crucifixion (but impaling instead)?
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Re: crucifixion

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From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion

.
Terminology

Ancient Greek has two verbs for crucify: (i) ana-stauro (ἀνασταυρόω), from stauros (which in today's Greek only means "cross" but which in antiquity was used of any kind of wooden pole, pointed or blunt, bare or with attachments), and (ii) apo-tumpanizo (ἀποτυμπανίζω) "crucify on a plank",[5] together with anaskolopizo (ἀνασκολοπίζω "impale").

In earlier pre-Roman Greek texts anastauro usually means "impale".[6][7][8]
  • 5. LSJ apotumpanizo ἀποτυμπα^ν-ίζω (later ἀποτύμπα^ν-τυπ- UPZ119 (2nd century BC), POxy.1798.1.7), A. crucify on a plank, D.8.61,9.61: – Pass., Lys.13.56, D.19.137, Arist. Rh. 1383a5, Beros. ap. J.Ap.1.20. 2. generally, destroy, Plu.2.1049d.

    6. LSJ anastauro ἀνασταυρ-όω, = foreg., Hdt.3.125, 6.30, al.; identical with ἀνασκολοπίζω, 9.78: – Pass., Th. 1.110, Pl.Grg.473c. II. in Rom. times, affix to a cross, crucify, Plb. 1.11.5, al., Plu.Fab.6, al. 2. crucify afresh, Ep.Hebr.6.6.

    7. Plutarch Fabius Maximus 6.3 "Hannibal now perceived the mistake in his position, and its peril, and crucified the native guides who were responsible for it."

    8. Polybius 1.11.5 [5] Historiae. Polybius. Theodorus Büttner-Wobst after L. Dindorf. Leipzig. Teubner. 1893.
New Testament Greek uses four verbs, three of them based upon stauros (σταυρός), usually translated "cross". The most common term is stauroo (σταυρόω), [usually translated as] "to crucify", occurring 46 times; sustauroo (συσταυρόω), "to crucify with" or "alongside" occurs five times, while anastauroo (ἀνασταυρόω), "to crucify again" occurs only once at the Epistle to the Hebrews 6:6. Prospegnumi (προσπήγνυμι), "to fix or fasten to, impale, crucify" occurs only once [in] Acts of the Apostles 2:23.

The English term cross derives from the Latin word crux,[9] which classically referred to a tree or any construction of wood used to hang criminals as a form of execution. The term later came to refer specifically to a cross.[10]

The English term crucifix derives from the Latin cruci fixus or crucifixus, past participle passive of cruci figere or crucifigere, meaning "to crucify" or "to fasten to a cross".[11][12][13][14]


Details

The Greek and Latin words corresponding to "crucifixion" applied to many different forms of painful execution, including being impaled on a stake, or affixed to a tree, upright pole (a crux simplex), or (most famous now) to a combination of an upright (in Latin, stipes) and a crossbeam (in Latin, patibulum). Seneca the Younger wrote: "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".[15]
In some cases, the condemned was forced to carry the crossbeam to the place of execution.[16] A whole cross would weigh well over 135 kg (300 lb), but the crossbeam would not be as burdensome, weighing around 45 kg (100 lb).[17] ...

The person executed may have been attached to the cross by rope, though nails and other sharp materials are mentioned in a passage by the Judean historian Josephus, where he states that at the Siege of Jerusalem (70), "the soldiers out of rage and hatred, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest" [War V,11] ...

... Writings by Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC – AD 65) state some victims [also] suffered a stick forced upwards through their groin ...


History and religious texts

Pre-Roman states

Crucifixion (or impalement), in one form or another, was used by Persians, Carthaginians, and Macedonians.

The Greeks were generally opposed to performing crucifixions.[66] However, in his Histories, ix.120–122, the Greek writer Herodotus describes the execution of a Persian general at the hands of Athenians in about 479 BC: "They nailed him to a plank and hung him up ... this Artayctes who suffered death by crucifixion."[67] The Commentary on Herodotus by How and Wells remarks: "They crucified him with hands and feet stretched out and nailed to cross-pieces; cf. vii.33. This barbarity, unusual on the part of Greeks, may be explained by the enormity of the outrage or by Athenian deference to local feeling."[68]

Some Christian theologians, beginning with Paul of Tarsus writing in Galatians 3:13, have interpreted an allusion to crucifixion in Deuteronomy 21:22–23. This reference is to being hanged from a tree, and may be associated with lynching or traditional hanging. However, Rabbinic law limited capital punishment to just 4 methods of execution: stoning, burning, strangulation, and decapitation, while the passage in Deuteronomy was interpreted as an obligation to hang the corpse on a tree as a form of deterrence.[69] ...
  • 69. See Mishnah, Sanhedrin 7:1, translated in Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: A New Translation, 591, (1988), supra note 8, at 595–596 (indicating that court ordered execution by stoning, burning, decapitation, or strangulation only

Ancient Rome

History

... Tertullian mentions a 1st-century AD case in which trees were used for crucifixion [79; Apol IX,1] but Seneca the Younger earlier used the phrase infelix lignum (unfortunate wood) for the transom ("patibulum") or the whole cross.[80] Plautus and Plutarch are the two main sources for accounts of criminals carrying their own 'patibula' to the upright stipes.[81]
.


.
Details

Cross shape

Second-century writers who speak of the execution cross describe the crucified person's arms as outstretched, not attached to a single stake: Lucian speaks of Prometheus as crucified "above the ravine with his hands outstretched". He also says that the shape of the letter T (the Greek letter tau) was that of the wooden instrument used for crucifying.[31] Artemidorus, another writer of the same period, says that a cross is made of posts (plural) and nails and that the arms of the crucified are outstretched.[32] Speaking of the generic execution cross, not specifically of that on which Jesus died, Irenaeus (c. 130–202), a Christian writer, describes it as composed of an upright and a transverse beam, sometimes with a small projection in the upright.[33]
  • 31. "It was his body that tyrants took for a model, his shape that they imitated, when they set up the erections on which men are crucified" (Lucian, Trial in the Court of Vowels, p. 30

    32. John Granger Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World (Mohr Siebeck 2018), p. 289; cf. pp. 7−8.

    33. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses II, xxiv, 4, "The very form of the cross, too, has five extremities, two in length, two in breadth, and one in the middle, on which [last] the person rests who is fixed by the nails"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion
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Re: "a commonplace belief among historians of the early church that early Christianity did not emphasize Jesus’ crucifix

Post by MrMacSon »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 8:33 pm Jesus was, from an early date in Christian history, thought to have suffered this kind of punishment (Paul, the gospels, Hebrews, Ignatius, Barnabas, Polycarp, and so on), though it is unclear exactly how early the patibulum was firmly thought to have been a part of it. By some point in century II,1 however, punishment on a stauros or crux was stereotyped as involving the patibulum to the point where the letter tau (T) could be viewed, both by Christians and by others (Lucian, for example), as the standard representation of the punishment ("arms outstretched" and all of that); this stereotyping likely stemmed from the Romans employing the patibulum on a very regular basis by that point, if not sooner.
1 When do you think that point might have been ?

What might have made influenced the change?
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Carrying a patibulum: A Reassessment of Non-Christian Latin Sources

Post by MrMacSon »

Ruben van Wingerden, 'Carrying a patibulum: A Reassessment of Non-Christian Latin Sources' New Testament Studies 66(3), July 2020, pp.433-53

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688519000481

.
Abstract

That Jesus carried the horizontal bar of the cross, also named patibulum, is often assumed, and argued by John Granger Cook. Gunnar Samuelsson disagrees, however, and argued that we grope in the dark about the exact nature of the σταυρός that Jesus carried. Both major crucifixion scholars refer in their argumentation to Latin sources in which a patibulum is carried. But these sources have not been thoroughly assessed on their own. In this article the eight Latin sources mentioned in support of the ancient practice are analysed. It is argued that only four of these sources should be counted as referring to ‘traditional’ cross-bearing practices.

1. Introduction

... Carrying a patibulum is often equated with carrying a σταυρός, without proper discussion.5 Samuelsson, however, has met opposition in John Granger Cook, who has also written a study of crucifixion in the ancient Mediterranean world. The latter critiques the former on a number of issues, and the main point is that it is not altogether unclear what crucifixion was. Cook also discusses what a patibulum was, and its relation to carrying a σταυρός.6 Most of the preface to his revised edition is dedicated to the critique of Samuelsson.7

In this article I will focus on the Latin texts on cross-bearing (or, the carrying of the patibulum) that Samuelsson, Cook and others use in the discussions about crucifixion terminology. Supposed Greek texts on cross-bearing will be treated separately in another article (for reasons of space), yet the following applies to the Latin as well as the Greek texts: a systematic and critical analysis of cross-bearing in antiquity is missing in current scholarship, with Samuelsson and Cook – and to a lesser extent Bøe – having discussed most texts somewhat (although not as a main object of study).8 The present study is occasionally aided by resorting to the semantic and interpretational theory of Umberto Eco (1932–2016),9 which I will use to show that interpreting involves more than isolating a text. Often Samuelsson's views on the cross-bearing sources contrast with those of Cook, and therefore I mainly interact with these two scholars, but other (recent) works on crucifixion are treated as well.

While this goes too far to go deep into the discussion here, it suffices to say that prior to the Christian usage of both terms,10 a crux was never carried, and a patibulum could be the object that was carried in an ancient Roman penal context. However, the term patibulum was also used sometimes to designate the whole of the execution device. Cook has sufficiently demonstrated that while the crux was sometimes the upright post of suspension, the patibulum was never only an upright post, but always either a horizontal beam fastened to an upright pole, or a separate horizontal beam (the object to be carried).11 And here our interest lies with those texts that contain the term patibulum in combination with verbs of the semantic domain ‘carry’, ‘bear’, as the ‘traditional’ view is that the Latin equivalent for σταυρός (in the case of carrying a torture object) is patibulum.

The following eight Latin sources [are] discussed:
  • Plautus, Bacch. 361–2; Carb. fr. 2; Mil. glor. 358–60; Most. 55–7
  • Clodius Licinus, Rer. Rom. 21
  • Lex Puteolana ii.8–10
  • Firmicus Maternus, Math. 6.31.58
  • Macrobius, Sat. 1.11.3–5

6. Macrobius, Sat. 1.11.3–5

... for Macrobius, the Greek σταυρός is the equivalent of patibulum ...[although] Cook acknowledges that ‘[m]ost other authors who tell the story call the object carried by the slave a furca112 as well as that the subsequent execution of the slave is unmentioned (yet other classical authors do mention it). Indeed, this event in Roman history has often been described, and Macrobius’ version with a patibulum is in the minority: Arnobius is the only other source to mention a patibulum in this context.113
  • 113. From a chronological perspective, the patibulum enters the story at a relative late date: Livy 2.36.1 (sub furca caesum medio egerat circo, LCL 114.336–7); Cicero, Div. 1.55 (per circum cum virgis caederetur, furcam ferens ductus est, LCL 154.284–5), whose source is Fl. Coelius Antipater F48 (see Cornell, Fragments, i.263–4, ii.412); Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. 7.69 (οἱ δ’ ἄγοντες τὸν θεράποντα ἐπὶ τὴν τιμωρίαν τὰς χεῖρας ἀποτείναντες ἀμφοτέρας καὶ ξύλῳ προσδήσαντες παρὰ τὰ στέρνα τε καὶ τοὺς ὤμους καὶ μέχρι τῶν καρπῶν διήκοντι παρηκολούθουν ξαίνοντες μάστιξι γυμνὸν ὄντα, LCL 364.354); Valerius Maximus 1.7.4 (servum suum verberibus mulcatum sub furca ad supplicium egisset, LCL 492.84–5); Plutarch, Cor. 24 (ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ φούρκιφερ· ὃ γὰρ οἱ Ἕλληνες ὑποστάτην καὶ στήριγμα, τοῦτο Ῥωμαῖοι φοῦρκαν ὀνομάζουσιν, LCL 80.178); Lactantius, Inst. 2.7.20–1 (uerberatum seruum sub furca medio circo ad supplicium duxerat, L. Caelius Firmanus Lactantius, Divinarvm institutionum libri septem, Fasc. 1: Libri i et ii (ed. E. Heck and A. Wlosok; Leipzig: Saur, 2005) 146); Arnobius 7.39.2 (servum pessime meritum per circi aream mediam transduxisse caesum virgis et ex more mulctasse post patibuli poena, Arnobius, Contre le Gentils, vol, vi: Livres vi–vii. Texte établi, traduit et commenté par B. Fragu (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010) 61). There are other instances of this incident, although these other sources do not mention the slave carrying: Augustine, Civ. 4.26 and Iulius Paris, Epit. 1.7.4, who interprets Valerius.

7. Cross-Bearing Sources Reassessed

The interpretation of (ancient) texts is an arduous task. Often different options are available, especially if large parts of context are missing such as in ancient fragments or descriptions from a time not close to our own and from a culture with customs and ritual strange to us. The two great crucifixion scholars John Granger Cook and Gunnar Samuelsson disagree on many issues surrounding crucifixion, as well on ancient sources that supposedly speak of cross-bearing. I have shown that sometimes the Latin evidence for a ‘classical’ view on cross-bearing is exaggerated, and sometimes it is undervalued. In some cases there was no definitive answer as to whether a source referred to cross-bearing or not. In this I hope to have presented a balanced view.

To sum up, of the eight Latin sources put forward as evidence, I would argue that cross-bearing in the ‘classical’ sense of carrying a patibulum is found in Plautus, Carb. fr. 2, possibly Mil. glor. 358–60, Clodius Licinus, Rer. Rom. 21,117 as well as the Lex Puteolana ii.8–10. These four sources stretch from the third century bce to the start of the first century ce, and the authors and inscription are situated/found in/around Rome. We must be hesitant to draw a general picture of crucifixion from these sources, but at least some of them testify to individuals carrying the patibulum towards the place of crucifixion. We may carefully assume a common knowledge in/around Rome, but how cross-bearing was rooted in practice in other parts of the Republic and early Empire is less certain.

We still know very little about the patibulum, the range of its dimensions, or how it was fastened to either the condemned or the upright post. This shows how limited textual study is: people might have known exactly what crucifixion involved; how it was done might have ‘been in the air’ so to speak, but we are left with fragments and incomplete knowledge. It is vital to look further, not only to the non-Christian Greek sources which speak of carrying a σταυρός – which I intend to do elsewhere – but also to the reception of cross-bearing terminology of the Gospels in Early Christianity, which too may shed light on the cross-bearing sayings.
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Re: "a commonplace belief among historians of the early church that early Christianity did not emphasize Jesus’ crucifix

Post by MrMacSon »

mlinssen wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:31 am Linking that back to this OP viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7681&sid=69c855b25e ... 63#p118516 I assume the rationale behind the underlying question there to be: if there wasn't much talk about crucixion in early Christianity, perhaps that was so because there wasn't any crucifixion (but impaling instead)?
Hi, not so much impaling v 'non-paling crucifixion' (Seneca wrote some got both), but *the relative lack of mention of crucifixion of Jesus by the ante-Nicene Church Fathers.*

(Justin seems to be repeatedly arguing why the σταυρός should be seen as shaped. Dunno what that means)
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Re: "a commonplace belief among historians of the early church that early Christianity did not emphasize Jesus’ crucifix

Post by Ben C. Smith »

mlinssen wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 11:08 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 6:34 pm I feel like I am missing an entire swath of context for the discussions about crucifixion on this forum of late. What exactly is at stake (pun intended) if Jesus was originally thought to have been suspended from, nailed to, or in any other way affixed upon a simple vertical pale, whereas by some point in century II his execution was thought to have involved the patibulum, or crossbar? The words did not change (σταυρός, crux), and the ancient authors ascribe a certain degree of variability to this form of execution, the main purposes of which (humiliation and death) remain the same whether or not the patibulum came into play.

Is this merely some form of "gotcha" against organized Christianity? If so, it has to rank as one of the worst "gotchas" available, since nothing crucial (pun again intended) seems to depend upon it. Or what is going on?
Emphasis mine

That's odd, Ben. You admit to miss context yet you don't hesitate to draw a (very far-fetched) conclusion.
What conclusion are you referring to?
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Re: crucifixion

Post by mlinssen »

MrMacSon wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 12:58 am From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion

.
Terminology

Ancient Greek has two verbs for crucify: (i) ana-stauro (ἀνασταυρόω), from stauros (which in today's Greek only means "cross" but which in antiquity was used of any kind of wooden pole, pointed or blunt, bare or with attachments), and (ii) apo-tumpanizo (ἀποτυμπανίζω) "crucify on a plank",[5] together with anaskolopizo (ἀνασκολοπίζω "impale").

In earlier pre-Roman Greek texts anastauro usually means "impale".[6][7][8]
  • 5. LSJ apotumpanizo ἀποτυμπα^ν-ίζω (later ἀποτύμπα^ν-τυπ- UPZ119 (2nd century BC), POxy.1798.1.7), A. crucify on a plank, D.8.61,9.61: – Pass., Lys.13.56, D.19.137, Arist. Rh. 1383a5, Beros. ap. J.Ap.1.20. 2. generally, destroy, Plu.2.1049d.

    6. LSJ anastauro ἀνασταυρ-όω, = foreg., Hdt.3.125, 6.30, al.; identical with ἀνασκολοπίζω, 9.78: – Pass., Th. 1.110, Pl.Grg.473c. II. in Rom. times, affix to a cross, crucify, Plb. 1.11.5, al., Plu.Fab.6, al. 2. crucify afresh, Ep.Hebr.6.6.

    7. Plutarch Fabius Maximus 6.3

    "Hannibal now perceived the mistake in his position, and its peril, and crucified the native guides who were responsible for it."


Italics mine

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... g=original

[8] And only when the guide had answered that he should lodge that night in Casilinum, did he perceive at last how the man had blundered, and that Casinum lay far off in another direction. [9] Whereupon he scourged the guide, and, to terrify the others, crucified him, and going into camp behind entrenchments, dispatched Maharbal with the cavalry to ravage the Falernian countryside.

https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/livy/liv.22.shtml

[8] cum is Casilini eo die mansurum eum dixisset, tum demum cognitus est error et Casinum longe inde alia regione esse; [9] uirgisque caeso duce et ad reliquorum terrorem in crucem sublato, castris communitis Maharbalem cum equitibus in agrum Falernum praedatum dimisit.

Inserted [8] and [9] myself into the Latin

sublato: from subligo, to tie / bind etc
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... %3Dsubligo

I would simply take this for the very efficient and economic, mild punishment of cross-tying someone's hand and feet: make the subject sit on his knees, hands behind his back, right hand goes to left foot and left hand goes to right foot; he won't go anywhere and it's pretty uncomfortable.
The much less mild version is what's perhaps best know from the native Americans: put four small poles into the ground and tie someone in between them, arms and legs outstretched

It says 'in crucem' and I would expect 'ad crucem' for tying someone 'to' a cross. If, in fact, crux means cross here - but 'in' here seems to mean 'into', and this isn't a clear-cut case of "crucifying someone as we know it"

8. Polybius 1.11.5 [5] Historiae. Polybius. Theodorus Büttner-Wobst after L. Dindorf. Leipzig. Teubner. 1893.[/list]

New Testament Greek uses four verbs, three of them based upon stauros (σταυρός), usually translated "cross". The most common term is stauroo (σταυρόω), [usually translated as] "to crucify", occurring 46 times; sustauroo (συσταυρόω), "to crucify with" or "alongside" occurs five times, while anastauroo (ἀνασταυρόω), "to crucify again" occurs only once at the Epistle to the Hebrews 6:6. Prospegnumi (προσπήγνυμι), "to fix or fasten to, impale, crucify" occurs only once [in] Acts of the Apostles 2:23.

The English term cross derives from the Latin word crux,[9] which classically referred to a tree or any construction of wood used to hang criminals as a form of execution. The term later came to refer specifically to a cross.[10]

The English term crucifix derives from the Latin cruci fixus or crucifixus, past participle passive of cruci figere or crucifigere, meaning "to crucify" or "to fasten to a cross".[11][12][13][14]


Details

The Greek and Latin words corresponding to "crucifixion" applied to many different forms of painful execution, including being impaled on a stake, or affixed to a tree, upright pole (a crux simplex), or (most famous now) to a combination of an upright (in Latin, stipes) and a crossbeam (in Latin, patibulum). Seneca the Younger wrote:

"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".[15]
Italics and highlighting mine

3. Video istic cruces ne unius quidem generis sed aliter ab aliis fabricatas: capite quidam conuersos in terram suspendere, alii per obscena stipitem egerunt, alii brachia patibulo explicuerunt; (((uideo fidiculas, uideo uerbera, et ~membris singulis articulis~ singula ~docuerunt~ machinamenta: sed uideo et mortem. Sunt istic hostes cruenti, ciues superbi: sed uideo istic et mortem. Non est molestum seruire ubi, si dominii pertaesum est, licet uno gradu ad libertatem transire. Caram te, uita, beneficio mortis habeo.)))

Non-English part between ((( ))). Highlighting is lazy and one-on-one
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mlinssen
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Re: "a commonplace belief among historians of the early church that early Christianity did not emphasize Jesus’ crucifix

Post by mlinssen »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Mon Feb 22, 2021 4:37 am
mlinssen wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 11:08 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 6:34 pm Is this merely some form of "gotcha" against organized Christianity? If so, it has to rank as one of the worst "gotchas" available, since nothing crucial (pun again intended) seems to depend upon it.
Emphasis mine

That's odd, Ben. You admit to miss context yet you don't hesitate to draw a (very far-fetched) conclusion.
What conclusion are you referring to?
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