Talk:Stauros

Bullinger quote

Bullinger is in two vols. The (Polish) google link is fine for vol. 1 (A-M) referring to the entry from "Cross". However the entry for "Tree" is in vol. 2. A link would be good if anyone can find one. Rich Farmbrough, 02:03, 26 January 2012 (UTC).

word also translates to "pale"

as in impale — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.218.93.150 (talk) 11:19, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Jehovah's Witnesses

This article should certainly mention the Jehovah's Witnesses, who seem to be the main group insisting that this word should be understood to mean that Jesus was crucified on a single upright post. Unfortunately I don't know enough about the theological and linguistic controversy to add this myself, but the article appears incomplete without it. Credulity (talk) 16:10, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Inwiktionary

In Wiktionary the word 'Stauros' and 'Stauron' are not recorded. Perhaps someone will be kind enough to enter them in Wiktionary. RCNesland (talk) 05:26, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Timing of semantic change

The article currently reads:

In the Homeric and classical periods, it denoted an upright pale, pole, or stake, but by the time that Christianity appeared, it came to include a crossbeam.

and later

In Koine Greek, the form of Greek used between about 300 BC and AD 300, the word σταυρός was used to denote a cross. In the writings of the Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC), Plutarch and Lucian, the word stauros is generally translated as "cross", although the passages quoted from the former two do not contain any specifics about the form of the device.

The first passage says that the cross-piece was included in this term before Christianity appeared. The second says that it was included in Koine Greek from 300BCE to 300CE. However, I do not believe there is any evidence before the Christian writers (i.e., some time after CE 100) that there was a cross-piece, certainly not in 300 BC. It's a little like saying that "In Modern English (1550-present), a 'bit' denotes a unit of information." The word 'bit' certainly existed in 1550, but it certainly didn't denote a unit of information until 1947.

I am not sure why translations of D.Siculus and Plutarch use the word 'cross' -- perhaps there is good reason to believe that that's what σταυρός meant in their time. (But at least one authority states that D.S. was referring to a stake.) If so, we should include that evidence. If not, we should be more precise in our language, something like:

In Ancient Greek, it denoted an upright pale, pole, or stake, but by 100 CE, it was being compared to the letter T. It is not clear when the meaning changed.

and later

By 100 CE, the word σταυρός was used to denote a cross. For some earlier texts (Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch), σταυρός is often translated as 'cross', but the form of the device in these texts is not clear.

Who knows? Perhaps it commonly meant a cross by 200 BCE, but I don't believe there is any surviving evidence of that. The article should stick to what is known, and not use the overly-broad term "Koine Greek" in this context. --Macrakis (talk) 14:25, 23 September 2014 (UTC

You may think the word did not mean "cross" in Diodorus Siculus. Liddell & Scott thinks it did. The latest source cited in Liddell & Scott for σταυρός as meaning exclusively "upright pole or stake" is Xenophon, who died in 354 BC. It seems that we can only say what the article says: that the use of σταυρός for a cross of the kind we are considering here came into use at some undefined point within the stage of the Greek language known as Koine Greek.

To echo you, who knows? Perhaps σταυρός was used to refer to a cross by 200 BCE, and I believe no surviving evidence contradicts that. The article should stick to what is known, and not use an overly-narrow date such as 100 CE on the basis of a very strained synthesis, citing no reliable source. Isn't it obvious that the year 100 didn't mark a revolution in language whereby the word σταυρός was suddenly given a meaning it never had before? Nor is there any reason to believe that the year 100 or thereabouts marked a sudden revolution in the way Romans crucified criminals. Every early writer who speaks of the specific σταυρός of Jesus takes it for granted that it must have had a horizontal as well as a vertical element. There is no indication whatever of a recent revolution either in the meaning of the word or in Roman crucifixion practice.

I wonder what word Xenophon would have used to speak of a cross for a Roman execution, complete with crossbeam, if he had seen one. The most likely word would be σταυρός. He might also use σανίς, at least if the wood were shaped and planed. But as I suppose crosses for Roman executions were generally left more or less rough, I think he'd be more likely to use σταυρός. Esoglou (talk) 17:02, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Personally, I have no opinion (or competence to have an opinion) on what σταυρός meant in D.S. Certainly the context doesn't help. It just says that Stabrobates threatened to nail Semiramis to a σταυρός. Anyway, D.S. only dates from 60-30 BCE.

I never suggested that the meaning changed suddenly in the year 100 CE. All I said was that the only evidence we have for the new meaning dates from around 100 CE. That is the way word history is done: you cite the earliest attestation of a meaning. It is of course possible that the cross-beam meaning existed earlier; for all we know, it may even have had that meaning (in addition to the 'post' meaning) as early as Xenophon, as you suggest.

LSJ is a valuable and reliable source, but not the only source. There is clearly very strong evidence for the cross shape by the 2nd century CE, but before that, the evidence is inconclusive. Samuelsson, Crucifixion in Antiquity, argues against the cross shape. J.G. Cook Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World argues for it (and criticizes Samuelsson), and gives lots of evidence, but as far as I can tell, none of his evidence is earlier than the 1st century CE at best.

I agree with you that the article should reflect the evidence, and not include WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. I tried to summarize the evidence in my proposed text above, and am happy to work with you to make sure it reflects the sources accurately. Here is a somewhat revised version which might be better:

In Ancient Greek, it denoted an upright pale, pole, or stake. By the second century CE, it is clearly described as a T or †-shaped execution device, and it may have had that meaning earlier. (footnote Samuelsson and Cook)

This reflects the debate in our reliable sources, without speculation or synthesis. Of course, if there are better sources, we should use them (whatever they say). --Macrakis (talk) 21:45, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Your comment is indeed helpful. There is in fact no evidence of a semantic change before Christianity. The word σταυρός, which was used in Homer etc. of a pole or stake, was also before Christianity used of what the Romans used for executing non-citizen criminals. That wasn't a semantic change: it was just the application of a word to an object that fitted into its already existing meaning. It was only later that people, Christians in particular, gave the word the meaning it has in modern Greek: "a design consisting of two lines crossing perpendicularly and producing four right angles". Xenophon would not have used the word σταυρός to describe what we call the Red Cross. Nor would, I'm sure, Diodorus Siculus. Nor would the four evangelists. (I imagine that for all of those a σταυρός was always a σταυρός, whether a transom was made part of it or not, whether it was decorated or not, painted in some colour or not ...) But it is likely that Justin Martyr would call the Red Cross a σταυρός, since he declares that the human body with arms outstretched "shows no other form than that of the σταυρός". At some time, maybe centuries after the coming of Christianity, but well before the present day, the word σταυρός lost its previous meaning and took on a meaning limited to a particular shape and thus no longer applicable to an upright stake with no transom. It was then that a semantic change, an alteration of meaning, occurred.

Accordingly, the section headed "Koine Greek" should begin:

"In Koine Greek, the form of Greek used between about 300 BC and AD 300, the word σταυρός was used of a structure on which ancient Romans executed non-citizen criminals".

What do you think of that? The 2nd-century or late 1st-century writings that show that the execution structure was thought of as normally cross-shaped or T-shaped do not have to be mentioned in the first sentence.

Were it not for the insistence by some people on including the statement that "in the literature of that time (i.e., the time of Homeric and classical Greek), σταυρός never means two pieces of timber placed across one another at any angle, but always one piece alone", we could do away with the division between Homeric and classical Greek and Koine Greek, and simply say that in ancient Greek the word αταυρός was used of stakes, palings, ... and a structure that ancient Romans used for executions. Is Diodorus Siculus the first writer to call that kind of structure a σταυρός? Esoglou (talk) 06:48, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree that we don't need to explicitly mention "Homeric", "classical", and "Koine". These arbitrary periodizations are sometimes useful, but in this case, they just obscure the issue.

I think one (or more) of us needs to actually go to the library and read Samuelsson, Cook, and whoever else deals with these issues. I wonder if we're discussing the word too much, as opposed to evidence for the device used for Jesus' execution (under any name). --Macrakis (talk) 17:28, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

You need some periodization for the sentence, "In the literature of that time (what time?), σταυρός never means two pieces of timber placed across one another at any angle, but always one piece alone"? How do you propose we deal with it? It is clear that σταυρός, at least by the 1st century BC, was applied to an execution structure. It is clear that at least sometimes the structure was not just one piece alone, that at least sometimes it had a patibulum. In the 2nd century there are quite explicit descriptions not only by Christians but also by non-Christians of the execution σταυρός as cross-shaped, and there is no description of it as of any other shape. The latest time limit that can be set for the "it never means" statement is the first extant record of the application of the word σταυρός to an execution structure: "In extant Greek writing earlier than the 1st century BC, when it is found applied to an execution structure that could be composite and that, at least later, normally was composite, σταυρός never means two pieces of timber placed across one another at any angle, but always one piece alone." Maybe, after all, you prefer the present text that gives a pre-Koine/Koine periodization.

You don't have to go to the library for Cook. Google Books brings him to you. Esoglou (talk) 19:38, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, but not the full text. In particular, pp. 218-219, the beginning of the chapter "Crucifixion in Greek Texts" is unavailable.... --Macrakis (talk) 19:45, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. However, this article is about the word σταυρός, not about crucifixion in general, and most, though unfortunately not all, of what Cook has to say about σταυρός and cognate words is given on pp. 5-11. Esoglou (talk) 20:02, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

True. Though I'm beginning to wonder whether it makes sense to have a separate article on stauros at all. After all, WP is not a dictionary. The reason people are interested in the meaning-history of the word stauros is that they are trying to clarify the mode of execution of Jesus, a topic which of course has its own article, which discusses among other things the meaning of the word stauros. That article could use some work -- it started out as an article about a dispute over the mode of execution -- but in the end it makes many of the same arguments we have here. What would you think of merging the two and improving it? --Macrakis (talk) 22:06, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

This article is about the word σταυρός in all the senses in which it has been used from the earliest records to today. The other article is about the instrument used in one particular execution. For the other article the meaning that the word σταυρός had in the time of Homer or Thucydides and the meaning it has today – two completely different meanings – are irrelevant. What concerns that article is the meaning the word σταυρός had in the period of the earliest extant mentions of that execution that employ the word σταυρός. It is generally agreed that the period of those writers extends from soon after 50 AD (Paul) to the end of the first century AD (John). Those writers obviously used words as understood in the decades immediately before and after them, but not necessarily in the meanings those words had centuries before or centuries after them. Except when referring to Shakespeare, we don't normally give a Shakespearean meaning to the words we use; and Shakespeare would be puzzled by the meaning we now give to several of the words that he used. But we can surely take it that the meaning given to σταυρός in 50–100 AD was the meaning given to it in the period 50 BC to 200 AD. The other article is concerned with the meaning of σταυρός in that period alone. This article covers much more than that period. The two articles overlap, but are not about the same thing. Esoglou (talk) 07:31, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

I have made bold at this stage to make the change I proposed. You should surely be pleased at it, for it no longer says that in Koine Greek σταυρός was used to denote a cross, and says instead that it was used to denote a structure on which Romans executed criminals. Esoglou (talk) 18:58, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Removal of unsourced claim

I have removed the statement, "The word σταυρός is not mentioned",

a statement not found in the first of the cited sources and contradicted in the second, which states: "Σταυρός the vile engine is called." Bealtainemí (talk) 13:55, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: The word stauros does not appear in the Greek text. It is supplied by the translator; Lucian did not use it there, though it is implied. Please, check yourself. GPinkerton (talk) 20:51, 19 April 2020 (UTC) @Bealtainemí: here is the Greek text of Lucian. Please, point out stauros if you can. I'll wait. κλάουσιν ἄνθρωποι καὶ τὴν αὑτῶν τύχην ὀδύρονται καὶ Κάδμῳ καταρῶνται πολλάκις, ὅτι τὸ Ταῦ ἐς τὸ τῶν στοιχείων γένος παρήγαγε· τῷ γὰρ τούτου σώματί φασι τοὺς τυράννους ἀκολουθήσαντας καὶ μιμησαμένους αὐτοῦ τὸ πλάσμα ἔπειτα σχήματι τοιούτῳ ξύλα τεκτήναντας ἀνθρώπους ἀνασκολοπίζειν ἐπ᾿ αὐτά· ἀπὸ δὲ1 τούτου καὶ τῷ τεχνήματι τῷ πονηρῷ τὴν πονηρὰν ἐπωνυμίαν συνελθεῖν GPinkerton (talk) 21:13, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

What do you think is the πονηρά ἐπωνυμία that Lucian speaks of? Do you suppose it is anything other than σταυρός? I presume that this is the exact πονηρά ἐπωνυμία referred to in the footnote (1) of the text that you have copied. Bealtainemí (talk) 16:05, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Obviously it is the implement of torture, which Lucian does not name. It is obvious that from your inability to point out the word σταυρός in this section of Lucian that the word σταυρός does not appear in Lucian's passage, which is also apparent from the fact that it is not there. Thanks for agreeing that the words πονηρά ἐπωνυμία are not the same as the word σταυρός, a fact obvious to any with eyes. GPinkerton (talk) 03:11, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree that what Lucian is talking about is clearly and precisely the execution tool that the article is about, and, if you insist, that the term by which he calls it in this passage is not the exact term to which you refer. I agree. Bealtainemí (talk) 15:20, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Indeed. Lucian's wording suggests σκόλοψ is the implement he refers to. GPinkerton (talk) 17:30, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Sorry. Commentators are unanimous in indicating the term Lucian had in mind, even if he did not explicitly express the name (the ἐπωνυμία) by which that T-shaped object was commonly known. This further imaginative ànd extremely unlikely hypothesis of yours is just like your attempt to say that Samuelsson and Liddell and Scott are just ignoramuses. Bealtainemí (talk) 14:00, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Commentators are not unanimous in any such thing - you are making baseless claims again! It's more and more obvious that you have not read Samuelsson! What I have said here is what Samuelsson and the LSJ say (not to mention the New Pauly). If you deny this, or continue to add your unsourced claims to the article, it will simply be the more manifest that you have read neither the LSJ nor the work of Samuelsson and certainly not the New Pauly, which all flatly contradict your claims. Samuelsson says specifically: "The texts from Diodorus Siculus, Plutarch and Lucian do not specify the σταυρός beyond that it is some kind of pole. The last clause of the paragraph, [the LSJ's "pale for impaling a corpse, Plut. Art. 17"] however, comes close to a proper rendering of the usage of σταυρός. An elaborate form could be: σταυρός is a pole for suspending a corpse or for executing a person." There is only one ignoramus I can see here, and its the one unable to back their position with anything but opinion while I and mainstream scholars can furnish citation after citation that refute your baseless and unsourced claims. The Encylopaedia Britannica article you have added says nothing about your fringe and unsourced claims about a difference in the meaning of σταυρός between Koine and classical Greek. If your opinions were based on anything at all, you would be able to quote from reliable sources to support them. As it is, you have singularly failed to do so. As Samuelsson and the New Pauly point out, there is no difference in the meaning of σταυρός as used by Herodotus and Thucydides, and as used by Plutarch and Xenophon of Ephesus or by Artemiodorus and Lucian. Please desist from your claims to the contrary. GPinkerton (talk) 15:28, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

I have noted your mistaken (presumably good-faith) assertion that I have not read Samuelsson's study even once. It is irrelevant. The question was whether Lucian had σκόλοψ in mind instead of the normal term that commentators on the passage assume, seemingly in unanimity. Bealtainemí (talk) 19:21, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: That isn't the question. The question is why you keep removing well-sourced information and distorting the remainder with your peculiar POV. If it seems like unanimity to you, you simply haven't read the sources! (As if further evidence were needed that you can't supply any sources to support the bizarre opinions you're adding, unsourced, to the article.) GPinkerton (talk) 01:10, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Different Greeks

I see that an attempt was made not only to confuse earlier Greek with Koine Greek (while still keeping the present-day form separate, Byzantine Greek was added to the mix. The word σταυρός had quite different meanings in those periods. As English meanings have changed over the much shorter period in which English has been written. Bealtainemí (talk) 20:45, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Please present your source for this distinction and add it to the article. Such a claim appears nowhere in the LSJ. GPinkerton (talk) 20:47, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Edits reverted

@Bealtainemí: I have undone your reversion of my edits, since no such distinction between usage is noted in any of the sources cited and is moreover demonstrably false. GPinkerton (talk) 20:46, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

It would be a good idea to reflect on your original-research claim that there was no distinction between Homeric, Classical, Koine and Medieval Greek. There are abundant sources on the differences. You could perhaps start by just reading the Wikipedia articles on them. See you tomorrow. Bealtainemí (talk) 20:51, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Everything I have written in the article is sourced to tertiary or secondary sources. I am well aware of these periodizations but you have supplied no evidence that they have any bearing whatever on the meaning of stauros, a claim not made in the sources. GPinkerton (talk) 20:53, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

You will understand my delay in answering, when you learn I have been hospitalized for a stroke since I last wrote here.

Your notion that, until the modern era, words in Greek had the same meaning is unsourced to any tertiary or secondary source. Your notion that modern Greek is not Greek is unsourced to any tertiary of secondary source and moreover is highly insulting to us speakers of modern Greek. I presume you have such basic knowledge as that Homenic Greek had no definite article, that classical Greek had a definite article and no indefinite article, and that modern Greek has both a definite and an indefinite article. Then why have you removed the sourced information that in Homeric Greek σταυρός is not even once used to mean an instrument of execution or torture of any shape or form? That's what LSJ says about the oldest form of Greek (apart from Linear B). LSJ says the same about the Ionic form of Greek used by Herodotus. Never before the advent of the Koine form of Greek is there any trace of use of σταυρός to mean an instrument of execution or torture. That's what the cited sources LSJ and Samuelsson say. Why on earth are you falsely suggesting that LSJ and Samuelsson are contradicted by Polybius, who wrote nearly two centuries after the general adoption of the Koine form of Greek? In that form of Greek, Polybius's, σταυρός itself, and not only its derived form σταυρῶ, which you mention, meant "instrument of execution or torture". But Koine Greek, Polybius's, is not one of the forms of Greek from which LSJ and Samuelsson explicitly exclude the meaning "instrument of execution or torture". Is this a "sourcing to relevant tertiary or secondary sources"? Do you seriously choose to discard serious philogical studies by people like LSJ and Samuelsson and limit yourself to such personal views as those of E. W. Bullinger, which include the notions of a Flat Earth; that "there is no room for evolution without a flat denial of Divine revelation. One must be true, the other false"; that a group of five crosses (crucifixes, in fact) brought together in Brittany a few centuries ago from different locations is proof from tradition that Jesus was crucified together not with two but with four robbers ... I simply do not see why you accept such notions but reject LSJ and Samuelsson. Bealtainemí (talk) 16:02, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: I am perfectly aware (possibly better than you) that Greek has periodizations of this kind; I've not said otherwise, despite your claims. I have reverted your edits because you clearly have not read the source material and cannot have come to an informed judgement about their contents, on the basis of your arguments here. There is no source cited in the article that claims Homeric Greek did not use stauros in this way. Neither Samulsson nor the LSJ make any reference to such a claim. I have not added any ideas by this Bullinger character and have no opinion on him or his defunct ideas, neither do I know or care anything about your "five crosses in Brittany". I have based the clarifications only on the LSJ, Samulsson, and the newest edition of Brill's New Pauly. Neither Samulsson or the LSJ entry for stauros or any related word so much as mention Koine or your peculiar insistence that Herodotus did not use stauros in this way. Had you read Samulsson, you would see that he makes no such claim, and furthermore, makes no claims that support your notion that his ideas should be eliminated from this article. It is quite plain, and discussed at length by Samulsson, that Herodotus uses anastaurosis for the fate of Polycrates of Samos. The word Koine appears absolutely nowhere in Samulsson's very detailed examination of nearly all the instances of stauros in antique Greek, and neither does he mention anything about any absolute distinction between the Greek of Herodotus and the Greek of Polybius, Plutarch, Lucian and so on. As I say, the LSJ lists multiple examples of the contemporary uses of stauros to mean items both for crucifixion/impalement and other kinds of poles or stakes, including Herodotus, Polybius, and Diodorus, and later sources in the Roman imperial period. These citations are those given in the LSJ, which I encourage you to read, and which are themselves examined in Samulsson on page 278. Never before the advent of the Koine form of Greek is there any trace of use of σταυρός to mean an instrument of execution or torture. This claim, which you are making, is not supported by the New Pauly, by the LSJ, or by Samulsson. The New Pauly specifically cites Herodotus III.125 as describing impalement as ἀνασταύρωσις, and also cites Xenophon of Ephesus's use of the term in the 2nd c. AD. It says of ἀνασταύρωσις: ... in Hdt. 3,125 and probably also in Xenophon of Ephesos 4,2 means ‘impaling’. In the LSJ's entry on ἀνασταυρίζω you can plainly see that it cites Ctesias of Cnidus, a 5th century source, as an instance of the verb as meaning impalement, (the impalement of Inaros on three stakes) as the Wikipedia article now correctly states, and as Samulsson also argues on pages 61-63 of Crucifixion in Antiquity, 2011. As for Polybius, on pages 77-8 ibid., Samulsson says:

Polybius does not explicitly show what kind of suspension he refers to - or what the σταυρός actually was, beyond being some kind of suspension tool. However, the suspension appears to be an execution. Polybius stresses twice that Hannibal was still living while suspended. This feature, the emphasized fact that he was alive, could in addition be interpreted as an indication that the usual suspension objects were corpses. This text may thus reflect a deviation from a prevailing rule. It is noticeable that Polybius here drops the prefix of the verb. This is the only time Polybius uses the plain verb σταυροΰν, as well as the noun σταυρός. It is possible to trace two vague indications that, at least, make it as plausible to identify the suspensions as impalings as it is to identify them as crucifixions. First, Polybius uses a related verb, άποσταυροϋν, when he refers to palisades, i.e., fortifications made of standing and probably pointed poles. Is this an indication that Polybius had pointed poles in mind when he referred to σταυρός? Second, Polybius uses the verb άνατιθέναι, "to lay upon," unusual in connection with crucifixion. Once again, these indications do not prove that the described suspensions actually are examples of impaling. They show that it is just as plausible to interpret these texts as references to impaling. ¶ The result of the study of crucifixion in Polybius is in the end meager. Not one single text could with a sufficient degree of certainty be judged to contain a reference to crucifixion. All texts refer to unspecified suspensions. Two texts refer to post-mortem suspensions (5.54.6-7; 8.21.2-3); one appears to refer to an ante-mortem suspension (1.86.4-7). It is, as noted earlier, impossible to draw the conclusion that the texts containing άνασταυροϋν and άνασκολοπίζειν do not refer to crucifixions at all. The rejected texts may refer to crucifixions, but it cannot be determined to what extent they actually are relevant references, due to their lack of additional contextual evidence. Thus, it is unknown to what kind of suspension these texts refer, i.e., impaling, crucifixion or something similar.

I wish you a speedy recovery! GPinkerton (talk) 02:56, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't understand your claim: "There is no source cited in the article that claims Homeric Greek did not use stauros in this way" (i.e., to mean an instrument of execution). Isn't that just what LSJ and Samuelsson do say? To put it another way, can you cite any passage of either Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon that speaks of a σταυρός as an execution instrument? I know of none. Why do you suppose LSJ and Samuelsson are saying on the contrary that in the oldest forms of Greek the word σταυρός is encountered not only in the plural form in reference to a series of upright stakes or poles, but also in the singular to signify an individual means of putting someone to death?

You seem allergic to any mention of the successive forms of Greek, except for its present-day form. I have therefore removed from the article the terms "Homeric", "Classical" "Koiné" and indicated no more than the time in which the concerned writers lived. I hope this is helpful

You want to expand this article beyond consideration of the Greek term σταυρός. I have therefore provisionally left in the article your remarks on other terms such as ἀνασταυροῦν, ἀνασκpοπολίζειν, σταυροῦν, κρεμαννύναι, προσδιαπασσαλεύειν, ἀποτυμπανίζειν, ἀνασκινδυλευθῆναι. I think this is inappropriate, but I am leaving it in the text on your insistence. But please do not remove solidly sourced information on what Homer and the others of that period did mean when they used the word σταυρός.

Do you want to add the use by Polybius (cf. Samuelsson) of the term σταυρός to that by Plutarch (mentioned by Liddell and Scott) to mean the impaling a corpse post mortem? Bealtainemí (talk) 15:19, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: I have explained elsewhere that the word stauros does not really merit its own article here; the word is only notable in relation to crosses/stakes for impalement/crucifxion in antiquity. Since you objected, I thought the article should at least reflect the sources. I am quite happy to see the impalement/crucifixions for which stauroi were used clarified as being sometimes after death, although Samulsson points out that this only sometimes explicitly the case, and I am generally quite happy to use the words Homeric, classical, and Koine, but the way they were being used is not correct, and they implied an distinction in the use of stauros that is not evident in either Samulsson and the LSJ, nor in the primary sources. It is true that in Homer the word stauros chances not to be used in the plural form. This is not the same as saying the word did not exist in the singular in Homeric Greek. It just happens that there is always more than one pole mentioned at any one time in the Iliad or the Odyssey. It is certainly not true to claim a distinction between classical writers and Koine on this point either. Samulsson, the LSJ, and the New Pauly all cite Herodotus III.125 using stauros/anastaurosis for some kind of impalement or crucifixion. The LSJ and Samulsson cite Ctesias of Cnidus. Herodotus and Ctesias are classical writers, and Plato - cited in the LSJ - also refers to some kind of public execution as involving a stauros, and Plato also was a classical writer at the end of that period. Samulsson cites Thucydides: I.110.3. Ίνάρως δέ ό Λιβύων βασιλεύς, ος τα πάντα έπραξε περί της Αιγύπτου, προδοσία ληφθείς άνεσταυρώθη. This is the same story told by Ctesias: FGrH 3c, 688 F 14.39 και άνεσταύρισεν μέν έπι τρισι σταυροΐς, which Samulson also directly compares with Plutarch's treatment of impalement, which is itself cited by the LSJ. As I say, I have no objection to saying, with Samulsson, that stauros does not appear in singular number in the "oldest texts" [i.e. the two texts of Homer], but this has not significance either for the use of the word in Archaic Greek as a spoken language and certainly has no bearing on whether the fifth century Greeks used it this way. The claring omission in this article is of course the mention here that after the Christianization of the Roman Empire, stauros acquired the special semantic significance of the classic "cross-shaped" Christian cross, the staurogram, and so on. It also presently lacks discussion of the Biblical Geek texts that use stauros and its derivatives. GPinkerton (talk) 16:01, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: I would also ask that you revert your most recent changes; I don't think the article benefits from being broken up this way. GPinkerton (talk) 16:03, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I beg your pardon!

What reliable sources explicitly state is preferred in Wikipedia to personal lucubrations. You disagree with Samuelsson and Liddell and Scott. So what? They indicate that in the oldest texts the Greek word σταυρός is found only in the plural. You say they were mistaken. In Wikipedia it isn't your ideas that count. You speak of Herodotus III.125 as "using stauros/anastaurosis for some kind of impalement or crucifixion". He doesn't. The word σταυρός is not in the text: Herodotus says that Oroites killed Polycrates and ἀνεσταύρωσε, whatever Herodotus meant by that, which is unclear. Does that mean Samuelsson and Liddell and Scott were mistaken about the use of σταυρός in Herodotus? Liddell and Scott speak of ἀνασταυρίζω as meaning "impale" in Ctesias, as in the form άνασταυρόω in Herodotus and identical with ἀνασκολοπίζω ... ΙΙ. in Rom. times, affix to a cross, crucify Plb 1.110, al., Plu, Fab.6. al. 2. crucify afresh ... What has all that got to do with the fact stated by Samuelsson and Liddell and Scott? Just recognize what the reliable sources say about σταυρός, instead of denying it and introducing irrelevancies. The article is about σταυρός, not about other terms. You say: "the glaring omission in this article is of course the mention here that after the Christianization of the Roman Empire, stauros acquired the special semantic significance of the classic "cross-shaped" Christian cross, the staurogram, and so on. It also presently lacks discussion of the Biblical Geek texts that use stauros and its derivatives." There you go again, with your personal notion that people like Artemidorus must have been crypto-Christian for assuming that crucifixion crosses had cross-bars (see, for instance, Cook, p. 7).

Please stop adding your personal ideas about such unsourced notions. Bealtainemí (talk) 14:02, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: I have not added any ideas of my own. I have added points of facts identified by Samuelsson. Samuelson and the LSJ and the New Pauly all mention ἀνασκολοπίζω and ἀνασταυρίζω as intrinsically related to meaning of σταυρός. On no point do I disagree with any of them, which you would know if you were capable of reading them. If you had read Samuelsson, you would know that the article as I have edited presents the mainstream view as laid out by Samuelsson. As I say, neither Samuelsson nor the LSJ and certainly not the New Pauly support your fringe claims. Samuelsson says in his conclusion:

When it comes to the individual terms, some conclusions can be drawn. Α σταυρός is a pole in the broadest sense. It is not the equivalent of a "cross" (†). In some cases, it is a kind of suspension device, used for the suspension of corpses, torture or in a few cases executionary suspensions. Very little or nothing is said about what it was made of or how it looked. ¶ (άνα)σταυροΰν and άνασκολοπίζειν are used more or less interchangeably. There might have been a distinction between them occasionally- as Herodotus' usage shows - but that distinction is now in essence lost. The only clear difference is that the verbs are used in a way which contradicts their etymology, (άνα)σταυροΰν has a clearer tendency to be connected with pointed poles than άνασκολοπίζειν, which is peculiar in the light of the usage of σκόλοψ. ¶ crux and patibulum are not used in the sense "cross or standing bare pole" and "crossbeam." A crux is some kind of torture or execution device, and so is patibulum. The difference is that crux to a higher degree than patibulum refers to a standing pole, crux is more firmly connected with the suspension of humans than σταυρός. The ecclesiastically pregnant term crucifigere did not evolve until the final years before the Common Era, and its usage is hard to define beyond denoting "to attach in some way to a crux"

The label "cross" is commonly applied to many more texts which contain σταυρός than those which - with at least a decent amount of certainty - can be determined to contain a reference to the punishment tool used in a crucifixion in a traditional sense. In the same way, the label "crucifixion" is applied to a large number of texts where the only qualifier is the occurrence of, e.g., (άνα)σταυροΰν or άνασκολοπίζειν. In short, a lot of texts are identified as references to "crucifixion" on the basis of a simple conjecture.

how do the New Testament authors describe the death of Jesus on the philological level? The New Testament authors are strikingly silent about the punishment Jesus had to suffer on Calvary. The vivid pictures of the death of Jesus in the theology and art of the church - and among scholars - do not have their main source here. Perhaps crucifixion as it is known today did not even come into being on Calvary, but in the Christian interpretation of the event. Before the death of Jesus, it appears that there was no crucifixion proper. There was a whole spectrum of suspension punishments, which all shared terminology.

On Artemiodorus, Samuelsson says the text does not support the interpretation of a mast as cross-shaped or a σταυρός as cruciform. See page 277:

It is correct that the noun denotes "a pole to be placed in the ground and used for capital punishment," but that does not make it a "cross" (†). In Diodorus Siculus' text (2.18.1) the σταυρός is an object onto which Semiramis is threatened to be attached or nailed (προσηλοϋν). No further description is given there. Diodorus Siculus uses the noun also when he refers to things that can barely be labeled as "cross," e.g., a standing bare bronze pole (17.71.6). As has been seen in Chapter 2, Plutarch appears to use σταυρός mainly when referring to standing pointed poles. Epictetus also uses the noun in the same philosophical discussion that was mentioned in the previous section. Diogenes Laertius only mentions a young man who is throwing stones on a σταυρός, without further comments. The apocryphal texts, Apocalypse of Esdras and Ascension of Isaiah, appear to be Christian interpolations. They seem to refer simply to the σταυρός of Jesus, without adding further information. The text by Philo contains, among other cruel acts, an ante-mortem suspension of some kind. The reference to the shape of the σταυρός is unsupported in the same sense. The text which should support the image of a T-shaped cross or a regular cross (†) only says that a σταυρός resembles the mast of a ship, without further description. It is a good assumption that the mast of an ancient ship had some kind of yard to hold up and spread the sail. With the yard suspended without sail, the mast would have been fairly "crossshaped." But there is a significant leap from that assumption to stating that this was the universal form of mast, the one Artemidorus and his readers automatically envisioned when they said/heard κατάρτιος (mast). If there were an obvious similarity between a κατάρτιος and a σταυρός in the sense "cross" (†), why did other ancient authors not pay attention to that?

The mainstream view does not support your fringe POV. Please refrain from adding it to the article. GPinkerton (talk) 15:05, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: It should also be noted that Cook's p. 7 does not support your claims, despite your insistence. It discusses the interpretation of two post-1st century AD authors. It says nothing at all about Lucian there. Indeed, throughout the book there is not a single mention of your fringe claim the meaning of σταυρός changed between classical and Koine Greek, nor is the word Koine mentioned at all anywhere in Cook's book. Please, read the books you errantly claim support your POV to avoid yourself making errors like this. You disagree with Samuelsson and you would rather Cook's views were used, but then you attempt to cite Cook but the citation does not back your claims either! Cook, p. 217 supports the LSJ, New Pauly, Samuelsson, and my edits in saying, contrary to your unsupported claims, that Herodotus did use the word this way and that therefore your fringe claims about classical and Koine Greek differing on this point is both unsubstantiated and wrong. GPinkerton (talk) 16:36, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

I wonder if Macrakis would like to comment on this discussion? It seems a rehearsal of an older discussion wherein the conclusion were the same as how I have structured the article and that distinction between different periods Greek as far as σταυρός is concerned (other than pre- and post-Christian useage) is obfuscatory and not supported by reliable sources ... GPinkerton (talk) 18:42, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

There are different opinions on Samuelsson's view. You yourself reject his declaration (which has the support of the cited examples in Liddell and Scott) that in the oldest forms of Greek, the term σταυρός (which we are supposed to be considering, not the other terms that you are bringing in) was not used of single σταυροί. But the main limitation of Samuelsson's study is that it does not go beyond the first century. And it's in the second century that we have concrete descriptions of what an actual execution σταυρός looked like.

Nowhere does Samuelsson say, as far as I see, that the execution cross could not have a crossbar. Samuelsson's thesis is (with one exception) merely "not proven". He does not rule out the possibility that (some) execution crosses had a crossbar. Am I wrong? Please point me to any place where you think he does rule it out.

Samuelsson's one first-century exception is Calvary. Not only does he not rule the possibility out: he positively declares that it is a possibility – not a certainty but definitely a possibility. "There is a good possibility that σταυρός, when used by the evangelists, already had been charged with a distinct denotation from Calvary. When, e.g., Mark used the noun it could have meant "cross" in the sense in which the Church later perceived it. [...] In the period about 40 years after the death of Jesus, a contemporary reader/hearer of the Gospels probably knew what was going on when a σταυρός was mentioned, since people might have seen one or heard stories about it. But present-day readers do not have the same level of secondary information. They are left with what the texts themselves have to offer. Hence, the Gospel accounts probably show that σταυρός could signify "cross" in the mentioned sense, but they do not show that it always did so.

I disagree with Cook's objection to a phrase by Samuelsson. Samuelsson says: "Α σταυρός is a pole in the broadest sense. It is not the equivalent of a 'cross' (†)." It would not be a pole in the broadest sense if it excluded being (among other broad senses of "pole") a cross-shaped pole. Just as someone need not be the equivalent of a Texan to be an American in the broadest sense. Bealtainemí (talk) 14:00, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: No-one is saying the cross-shaped crucifixion never happened. The article does not suggest this. I don't know where you're getting this idea that I "reject Samuelsson's declaration" from. The article says the word does not occur in Homer in the singular. That is what Samuelsson says. You, based on nothing whatever, are claiming he is wrong and that stauros is not used for executions before the Koine Greek period. This is false, and can be proved to be so by reference to Samuelsson, Cook, the New Pauly, and to Herodotus and Thucydides, whom Cook and Samuelsson both cite, and I don't know why you keep insisting on adding this disinformation to Wikipedia. I have not mentioned a crossbar and have not added information to the article that suggests that a stauros could not have one. I do not know why you are suggesting otherwise. As Samuelsson, and now you, have acknowledged, there is no evidence of crucifixion or any other kind of execution on a stauros with a cross-beam until the ambiguous references in the first century AD and after, (i.e. from the Roman imperial period) but that there is ample evidence for executions using a stauros long before that - from the fifth century BC. GPinkerton (talk) 01:28, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Intervention by Macrakis

I hope Macrakis will permit to begin here a new section, reducing all of his ":::::::::::"s. Bealtainemí (talk) 09:35, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: thanks for asking me to (re)join the discussion. @Bealtainemí:, I really don't have the patience to dissect these overly long discussions, let alone to look at the large edit diffs nor to check the cited sources to see what they're actually saying. And your edits are clearly not converging.

The biggest problem with this article is that it isn't clear why it exists. Most of the content (in either version) overlaps heavily with the content in instrument of Jesus' crucifixion, and the crux (as it were) of both articles is "what was the shape of the cross on which Jesus was killed". Why do we need two articles? I suppose that in principle, this article could be the "main" article for the section instrument of Jesus' crucifixion#Presence or absence of crossbar; but it is in fact shorter than that section. So what is the rationale for this article?

There are other problematic things about this article. Why on earth does it bother with the Indo-European root and the Modern Greek meaning? This is not a dictionary article. Unless those things give us some insight on the 1st century CE meaning (and they don't), they are irrelevant.

Why does it mention the fact that the word only appears in the plural in Homer in the lead?

The first sentence in both versions is terrible:

• Stauros (σταυρός) is a Greek word which has been used in different senses. (This tells the reader nothing at all.)
• Stauros (σταυρός) is a Greek word which is found in the plural number in reference to upright stakes or poles in works by Homer. (This tells the reader a detail with no context and whose significance is completely obscure.)

A more informative and more honest first sentence would be something like:

• In the Greek text of the New Testament, Jesus is killed on a stauros, almost always translated as a "cross" in English. But it is unclear what exactly a stauros is, and in particular whether it had a cross-piece or was a simple stake. The New Testament says nothing about this, so many scholars have studied the meaning of the word in earlier and later Greek texts.

Can we agree that that is the central topic of this article? If it isn't, what is? Is it Roman torture/execution practice, for which the word is a side issue?

Again, we really need to figure out why this article exists. --Macrakis (talk) 03:43, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree fully that what the article is about is: "In the Greek text of the New Testament, Jesus is killed on a stauros, almost always translated as a "cross" in English. But it is unclear what exactly a stauros is was, and in particular whether it had a cross-piece or was a simple stake. The New Testament says nothing about this, so many scholars have studied the meaning of the word in earlier and later Greek texts." (You will notice that I think it would grammatically adjust the tense of "that exactly a stauros is", but that is of no real importance").

The question would attract very little attention but for the insistent publicity by a certain religious organization that the stauros on which Jesus was executed had no crosspiece, a teaching for which it claims support in isolated authoritative-sounding statements from the 19th-century (plus one from as recent as 1940). This is a quite specific question, unlike the far more wide-ranging question of "Roman torture/execution practice".

To consider the question objectively, attention should be given to present-day scholarly opinion, which recognises the ambiguity of the terminology in use before the second century A.D. (from which stage, but not before, there are clear uncontradicted accounts of what the execution stauros actually looked like) but which does not rule out the use of stauroi with crosspieces. Nor does it suppose, as in some of the religious organization's publicity, that the term stauros can only have meant what it applied to in accounts by Homer and the like of palisades and lake-dwellings on piles.

Altogether inappropriate is the novel introduction by GPinkerton of (original research?) talk about a series of other terms. Among his many other (irrelevant?) affirmations in this field is the attribution to Herodotus Book III, chapter 127 of the word ἀνασταύρωσις. I fail to find it. Perhaps he should have spoken of the different word ἀνεσταύρωσε in chapter 125. Do we really have to decipher such abstrusities when considering the widespread claim by that religious organization that the stauros on which Jesus died was precisely of the shape on which they insist? Bealtainemí (talk) 09:35, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: What religious organization are you speaking about? No-one is attempting to rule out that stauroi had crosspieces, unless this is your opinion; your wilder statements are very confused. Read the New Pauly entry to which the statement is cited before you deny its validity. It, and the article here, do not suggest that Herodotus used the word in that inflection. I will quote, and not for the first time, the relevant passage: Latin crux or damnatio in crucem (‘sentencing to crucifixion’), Greek during the Hellenistic period ἀνασταύρωσις/anastaúrōsis (which, however, in Hdt. 3,125 and probably also in Xenophon of Ephesos 4,2 means ‘impaling’) was only one of several ways of exacting the death penalty (II) in the Roman empire. You claimed stauros was not used in the singular in classical Greek, and you were wrong. You claimed there was no instance of a stauros as a torture or execution device before the advent of Koine, and you were wrong. Your bizarre statements about crypto-Christaians and religious organizations are very strange, and your weird attempts to misquote the various authors cited in the article as though they fitted your POV is not helping your actions appear rational. Again, if you would simply read the references cited instead of arbitrarily deleting them, you would be able to see that nothing I have added is original research, a fact that would be obvious to your if you had read Samuelsson or Cook or the other works cited! GPinkerton (talk) 00:02, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Macrakis: I don't think it should exist! I did try to merge all the mass of spurious duplicate articles on crucifixion/impalement in the ancient world here, on this Talk page, but other editors were having none of it, not least Bealtainemí. Bealtainemí continues to add strange fictions to this article for reasons unknown and insists that stauros somehow had nothing to do with executions until after Alexander ... GPinkerton (talk) 00:02, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Macrakis: There has been no consensus for any of GPinkerton's radical alterations of the article. You yourself have disapproved of its change from an article on stauros to one on a number of novel and only indirectly related ideas, such as damnatio ad crucem, with ever diverging edits. There has been no consent whatever for GPinkerton's transformation of the article from one no longer on stauros to one mainly (why?) on the distinct notion of impalement. Wikipedia articles are supposed to be built on consensus. This article has to be rolled back to its last stable situation on 26 March. Discussion on the Talk page should then (hopefully) lead to an agreed text. What is unacceptable, you will surely declare, is that an editor, while reverting the contributions of others, insistently inserts and reinserts his personal ideas in the article itself in spite of protests by anyone else.

@GPinkerton: Have you never even heard mention of the Jehovah's Witnesses? 1, 2? They too, unlike you, do not speak of stauros as if it meant impalement. Bealtainemí (talk) 08:45, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Your last sentence is incoherent. The LSJ, Cook, Chapman, and Samuelsson all say stauroi were used for impalement. You apparently deny this, but your opinion is not what the article needs to reflect, as well as being flat-out wrong. I have, unsurprisingly, heard of Jehovah's Witnesses, but I know nothing at all about your doctrines and I really don't think your should be using Wikipedia to promote your cult. Wikipedia is based on reliable sources, not your faith statements. The notion of impalement is not distinct from the notion of stauros, and your claims to the contrary prove you have either not read, or do not accept any of the relevant literature. You attempts to add fictitious nonsense about the difference in use between classical and koine Greek have been rejected as unsourced POV ungrounded in fact or reliable sources. You unsourced POV that stauros never meant an implement for impalement or crucifixion before koine has been removed because it does not meet Wikipedia's standards, being unreferenced and contradicted by all reliable sources. You need to accept that this false information you enjoy adding does not belong in the article, and the sourced information referenced to reliable sources that I have added to the article does. As I have now many times repeated, if you had any basis for your fringe opinions, you would be able to find them in reliable sources. As it is, you have consistently failed to do so but you have edited the article regardless; these baseless edits and misleading I have reverted as you have no consensus to make them, since there will never be consensus on Wikipedia that your peculiar and unsupported fringe POV overrides Wikipedia's need for objectivity and reliable sources. You disagree with the LSJ and the New Pauly, with Cook and with Samuelsson, as well as centuries of scholarly literature, that a stauros was an implement of impalement. That is your problem, but your fringe opinions do not belong on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is based on mainstream reliable academic sources, not the cult literature you appear to favour. If you have specific changes you think should be made to the article, you can feel free to find reliable sources that support your claims and propose the changes here, in an attempt to gain consensus that your minority beliefs should be represented. GPinkerton (talk) 16:08, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

I await a comment from Macrakis on this overturning of Liddell and Scott's A Greek-English Lexicon, which we are now told is mistaken in giving only as the most uncommon meaning of σταυρός: "pale for impaling a corpse", as used by Plutarch (unlike Herodotus, who we are told used a cognate term, not σταυρός, and nobody seems to envisage the particular Roman execution that is the centre of attention as employing a σταυρός to impale the victim's dead body).

I. upright pole or stake, σταυροὺς ἐκτὸς ἔλασσε διάμπερες ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα πυκνοὺς καὶ θαμέας Od. 14.11, cf. Il, 24.453. Th.4.90, X.An.5.2.21; of piles driven in to serve as a foundation. Hdt.5,16. Th.7.25.

II. a. cross as the instrument of crucifixion, D.S.2.18, Ev.Matt.24.40, Plut.2.554a; ἐπὶ τὸν σ. ἀπάγεσθαι Luc. Peregr.34; σ. λαμβάνειν, ἆραι, βαστάζειν. metaph. of voluntary suffering, Ev. Matt. 10.18, Ev.Luc. 9.23, 14.27: it form was represented by the Greek letter Τ, Luc.Jud.Voc.12.

b. pale for impaling a corpse. Plut.Art.17.

We are now told that the σταυρός that the fuss is about was a matter of impalement, which nobody else seems to envisage even remotely in the case under discussion.

I make no comment on the repeated false attributions of bad-faith motives to me. Bealtainemí (talk) 20:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

By the way, I agree with LSJ, New Pauly, Cook, Samuelsson. What made you think I don't? Bealtainemí (talk) 20:34, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Most of what you have written is incoherent, and the cited authorities are not. You seem to be labouring under the illusion that the LSJ lists meanings by frequency of use. This is false. You appear to disagree with the New Pauly that Herodotus II.125 describes impalement, and you appear to deny that the LSJ lists impalement as one of the uses of a stauros (a fact refuted by your own quotation thence above). You also appear to deny that Thucydies and Ctesias describe impalement on a stauros in the 5th century, a fact cited by Samuelsson and the LSJ (and therefore cited in the article), as I have now many times explained to you. Are you now denying denying this? I have no idea what "fuss" you are describing or why you imagine Roman execution should be the focus of this long-standing Greek word. Among the cases cited you keep removing are the cases of Inaros and Polycrates. The LSJ, which is cited in the article in the relevant place and which you claim to have read and with which you say you agree, also cites exactly these cases:

ἀνασταυρ-ίζω , impale, Ctes.Fr.29.59 (Pass.).

-όω = foregoing, Hdt.3.125, 6.30, alibi; identical with άνασκολοπίζω, 9.78 -Pass., Th. 1.110, Pl.Grg.473c.

II. in Rom. times, affix to a cross, crucify, Plb. 1.11.5, alibi, Plu.Fab.6, albi

2. crucify afresh, Ep.Hebr.6.6.

-ωσις, εως, ή, crucifixion, X.Eph.4.2

Samuelsson cites exactly this LSJ entry, thus:

The statement that άνασταυροον is basically used in the the sense "impale" is basically correct, but it would be too categorical to say that it was always used in this sense in pre-Roman times. In several texts it is not possible to infer anything about the suspension form.The suggestion about Ctesias' usage of the rare άνασταυρίζειν is correct. Ctesias appears to refer to impaling exclusively.

Elsewhere, Samuelsson, whom you purport to have read and with whom you claim to agree, corrects the various decades-old lexica with his view:

σταυρός - "a pole or wooden frame on which corpses were suspended or victims exposed to die."

άνασταυροϋν - "to suspend someone (dead or alive) or something on a pole (or similar structure)," in the older Greek literature often on a pointed pole - "to impale."

σταυροΰν - "to erect a pole (or similar structure)," in the older Greek literature often a pointed pole; to suspend someone (dead or alive) or something on a pole (or the like)," in the older Greek literature often on a pointed pole - "to impale."

@Bealtainemí: Please outline your objections to this reliable, sourced, mainstream information and its inclusion in the article, which you so vociferously reject and deny. GPinkerton (talk) 22:06, 2 May 2020 (UTC) (edit conflict)

Questions by Macrakis

I propose we start with small steps. I'll be interested to see which of these things we agree on and which we need to explore further. --Macrakis (talk) 21:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC).

Do we agree that the central topic of this article is the meaning of stauros in the New Testament? If so, do we agree that something like this is a better lead paragraph:

In the Greek text of the New Testament, Jesus is killed on a stauros, translated as a "cross" in English. But the text of the New Testament does not make it clear what exactly a stauros, and in particular whether it had a cross-piece or was a simple stake.

@Macrakis: No, the meaning of stauros in the NT is the subject of a (mystifyingly separate) article Instrument of Jesus' crucifixion. This article (since its existence is insisted on) needs to deal with the other aspects of the word(s). GPinkerton (talk) 22:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Macrakis: Yes, of course. That's what the title of the article says. It would be more correct to say: "usually translated as a 'cross' in English", since some reject the usual translation. At any rate the article is not about the Greek words σταυρόω, ἀνασταυρίζω, ἀνασκολοπίζω, ἀνασταυρόω, which in the latest version have ousted the title word. Bealtainemí (talk) 10:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: There is ample reason to cover the verb forms of the noun, and any look at any of the relevant literature proves this. GPinkerton (talk) 13:42, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton, we disagree. I think, but you don't, that the move to words that suggest impalement is an important change of emphasis. Bealtainemí (talk) 15:43, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: We disagree, yes, but that's because the reliable sources suggest the direction of movement was entirely the opposite of what you suggest: the stauros was with increasing frequency a Christian cross and with declining frequency an impaling stake in Roman imperial times. GPinkerton (talk) 20:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

By the time of Jesus' crucifixion, which was well into "Roman imperial times", it was, you say, no longer common to use "an impaling stake" rather than a cross in executions. Bealtainemí (talk) 08:38, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Jesus's crucifixion is supposed to have taken place in the reign of the second emperor of more than two hundred. Sixty years is hardly "well into" the fourteen hundred year span of the imperial period. I have not said it was not common for stauroi to be used for impaling, as Roman sources Plutarch, Hesychius and the Suda all prove. Perhaps it would be easier for you if I expressed it another way. There is no evidence of cross-shaped crucifixion until after Jesus had been dead for many decades or even more than a century. GPinkerton (talk) 13:15, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I take note of how you interpret "well into Roman imperial times" regarding crucifixion. Is there evidence of absence of cross-shaped crucifixion in any part of that period? Bealtainemí (talk) 14:43, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Is there evidence of absence of cross-shaped flying-saucers in any part of that period? This isn't how history works. GPinkerton (talk) 16:25, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Next, do we agree that the Indo-European cognates and the modern meaning are irrelevant?

@Macrakis: Yes.GPinkerton (talk) 22:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Macrakis: I would personally be happy with removal of the mention of etymological cognates, but would those who inserted them as suggesting that σταυρός means no more than a bare upright stake? The normal meaning for a millennium and a half is useful only as stressing that the meanings of words do change. Was it Suidas who felt it necessary too explain to his readers that σταυρός doesn't have to mean "cross" and, as in Homer, can mean "any upright stick"? Bealtainemí (talk) 10:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: "Suidas" is not a person; the Suda is the oldest Greek lexicon. Its entry is: Σταυροί: τὰ ὀρθὰ πεπηγότα ξύλα. ὅτι ἐπὶ Θεοδοσίου τοῦ μεγάλου βασιλέως καθαιρομένων τῶν Ἑλληνικῶν ἱερῶν, εὑρέθησαν ἐν τῷ τοῦ Σαράπιδος νεῷ ἱερογλυφικὰ γράμματα, σταυρῶν ἔχοντα τύπους, ἅπερ θεασάμενοι οἱ ἐξ Ἑλλήνων χριστιανίσαντες, ἔφασαν, σημαίνειν τὸν σταυρὸν παρὰ τοῖς ἱερογλυφικὰ γινώσκουσι γράμματα ζωὴν ἐπερχομένην. Judge for yourself! GPinkerton (talk) 13:32, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton, thank you for the citation that I remembered only vaguely. As I said, if Macrakis thinks it OK for you and me to remove the JW argument, I won't object to the removal. Bealtainemí (talk) 15:43, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: The only reference I can find to a "JW argument" is In the older Greek literature, σταυρός refers to "pole" in general and occurs only in the plural. to which a footnote adds Zealously and apparently correctly stressed by Jehovah's Witnesses. See Samuelsson, p. 241 and p. 38 where it is explicit: Homer uses only σταυρός, always in the plural, in the sense "poles" in a wide sense You appear to be misapplying "the JW argument" yourself! GPinkerton (talk) 20:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

You recognize that the JWs agree with the scientific view on the use of σταυρός in the older Greek literature. I don't suppose you endorse their claim about later Greek texts in spite of the space you devote to the few they quote: "The σταυρός (stauros) was simply an upright pale or stake to which Romans nailed ... It never means two pieces of wood joining at any angle."; "Stauros means 'an upright pale'; [...] no more, no less. ... Zulon [sic] and stauros are alike the single stick, the pale, or the stake, neither more nor less, on which Jesus was impaled, or crucified. ... Neither stauros nor zulon ever mean two sticks joining each other at an angle, either in the New Testament or in any other book"; and similarly for Parsons and Vine. Bealtainemí (talk) 08:38, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Samuelsson recognizes it. I know nothing of the claims of Jehovah's Witnesses and I don't know why you care so much. As I say, and as Samuelsson and Cook have pointed out, nothing in the gospels suggests a cross-shaped stauros, and there is no evidence for such a construction preceding the gospels' composition. GPinkerton (talk) 13:15, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Don't they explicitly state that it is possible that the σταυρός that, e.g. Mark, speaks of was cross-barred? Bealtainemí (talk) 14:43, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Samuelsson says:

The people, or at least a part of them, together with the high priest and some officers, shout σταυρού σταυρού αυτόν and add nothing to that. Second, the result of the cry according to the gospels. Jesus is handed over ϊνα σταυρωθη and nothing is added to that. Third, the description of the carrying of the execution tool. Jesus is aided (the synoptics) or himself carries (John) his σταυρός, without any further explanation of what he actually is carrying (e.g., whether it was a part of the tool or the whole tool), or for what purpose it was done. Fourth, the all too brief descriptions of the execution itself. Nothing is added beyond the use of σταυροϋν. Fifth, the descriptions of Jesus suspended on the σταυρός. Jesus is alive and talking while suspended. This indicates that the suspension method is described as endurable, at least for a while. This makes impaling less probable and hanging impossible as the suspension of the texts. Beyond that, Jesus is derided on the σταυρός. He is challenged to come down from the σταυρός, which suggests both that he is attached in such a way that he could not release himself and that the σταυρός is high to some extent. Sixth, the description of the events surrounding the resurrection, which to some extent refer back to the execution. But these texts do not add anything but the notion that Jesus is τόν έσταυρωμένον. It is in the events after the resurrection that John, and perhaps Luke, mention the nails indirectly

and then:

However, when the Gospels were written, that process was already a reality. There is a good possibility that σταυρός, when used by the evangelists, already had been charged with a distinct denotation - from Calvary. When, e.g., Mark used the noun it could have meant "cross" in the sense in which the Church later perceived it. That could be seen as an explanation for the scarcity of additional information about the nature of the punishment. In the period about 40 years after the death of Jesus, a contemporary reader/hearer of the Gospels probably knew what was going on when a σταυρός was mentioned, since people might have seen one or heard stories about it. ... Hence, the Gospel accounts probably show that σταυρός could signify "cross" in the mentioned sense, but they do not show that it always did so.

Cook says there is no evidence of anyone carrying a stauros that had a crossbeam. Cook interprets the stauros carried as a cross-beam in the gospels, but says explicitly that there is no prior (to the gospels) evidence of this, Cook also says that it is impossible that the stauros carried was cross-shaped and there is no evidence in Latin literature (before the Vulgate) that anyone ever carried a cross-shaped crux. Cook supposes Jesus' execution was cross-shaped, but has to rely on much later evidence to imply this, since he admits there is no evidence beforehand. So there is no evidence that it had a cross-bar, just as there is no evidence any stauros had a cross-bar in preceding centuries. Whether or not it actually did at the time and place of the purported events described in the gospels (or at the time of their composition) is basically irrelevant; the fact is that the evidence in the text does not support the claim that it had a cross-bar. GPinkerton (talk) 16:25, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Do we agree that classifying meanings by period is not precise enough? "Classical Greek" is a pretty broad descriptor, and word meanings evolve within that period.

@Macrakis: Yes, I object to division by period at all (unless before/after beginning of Roman imperial period) GPinkerton (talk) 22:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Macrakis: Yes, I agree. Bealtainemí (talk) 10:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Do we agree that the singular/plural business is irrelevant to this article (no matter how interesting it may be in itself)?

@Macrakis: Yes, I have no idea why Bealtainemí wants it so much. GPinkerton (talk) 22:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Macrakis: More or less irrelevant, unless used as argument, unlikely in the case of GPinkerton, that σταυρός always meant individual things and never, as in all the oldest recorded instances, of sets of objects that made sense only as part of a whole, as the construction of a palisade or stockade, or of a foundation laid for a lake dwelling. Bealtainemí (talk) 10:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: I think this ludicrous argument is unlikely to be a problem. GPinkerton (talk) 13:32, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton, then I presume that it wasn't to hide the fact that the sets of σταυροί in the pair of images (palisade and lake dwelling) had a significance and purpose that single σταυροί would not have that you split them up. I disagree with your action, but if Macrakis grants it his approval (for whatever was your purpose), I won't stand in his way. Bealtainemí (talk) 15:43, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: This is incoherent again. Are you suggesting again that "stauros" simply didn't exist as a singular word at some point? There is no evidence of this and you appear to be committing yourself to a logical fallacy of argumentum ex silentio. Just because a word only appears in plural in the Homeric corpus (two poems) does not mean the word only applied to plural nouns - that would be absurd! GPinkerton (talk) 17:52, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Of course not. What I said is that there were sets of σταυροί that had a collective purpose, such as the pictured groups forming a palisade or a foundation for a lake dwelling, and described by Homer, Thucydides, Herodotus and Xenophon. I presume that you agree that a palisade is not just random pales, any more than a pack of playing cards are random bits of cardboard. Bealtainemí (talk) 19:20, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: I presume you will agree that both palisades and impalements are done with pales, as described by Herodotus, Thucydides, Ctesias, Plutarch, Xenophon of Ephesus, the Suda, Hesychius, and the rest. GPinkerton (talk) 20:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

... as also the composite pales used and described in "Roman imperial times". Bealtainemí (talk) 08:38, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: A construction for which there is no evidence preceding the 1st or 2nd centuries or later, yes. GPinkerton (talk) 13:15, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I have reluctantly decided to comment, in spite of my earlier decision: "Argumentum ex silentio; or worse with 'Or later'; or even just with '2nd century'." Bealtainemí (talk) 14:59, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, or at least some evidence. Extraordinary claims like: "8th century Greeks were mutely unable to articulate the concept of a pointed stick unless there were two or more sticks together" and "completely unattested speculation on the usages of the word stauros before it is attested in any kind of evidence belongs in a Wikipedia article". As I say, there is no reason to suppose stauros ever meant a cross-shaped thing before possibly being used this way in some instances in the NT in the late 1st century (at earliest), and no reason for the Wikipedia article to claim otherwise. GPinkerton (talk) 16:25, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Do we agree that no one asserts that Jesus was impaled?

@Macrakis: No, this is a significant minority opinion. GPinkerton (talk) 22:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Macrakis: I presume GPinkerton knows of some such significant recorded minority opinion. I don't, and I'd be interested in learning more about what to me is a novelty. Bealtainemí (talk) 10:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: See the quotations already in the article, the literature on Lucian, David Tombs review of Cook's first edition and Cook's response in the second, among much else. GPinkerton (talk) 13:32, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton, The possible anal mistreatment with a sedile (as also possibly penile mistreatment in flogging) isn't what I understand as being put to death by impaling. Bealtainemí (talk) 15:43, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: What you understand as being put to death by impaling is irrelevant. The fact is that Tombs's suggestion for crucifixion on a stauros involves impalement. John Denham Parsons read Lucian as inferring impalement of Jesus specifically, as you can see in the article. Justin Martyr can also be read this way. When glossing the same vocabulary used by Lucian, Hesychius has: τό γαρ παλαιό ν τούς κακούργου ντας άνεσκολόπιζον, όξύνοντες ξύλον δια τής ραχέως και τού νώτου, καθάπερ τούς όπτωμένους ιχθύς έπι οβελίσκων. This is in Samuelsson (didn't you read it?). GPinkerton (talk) 17:52, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Instead of quarrelling to no purpose about whether the supposed aggravation of the suffering of Jesus by torture of the anus was death by impalement and actually took place, I leave it to Macrakis to judge whether either of us is solely right and will unquestionally accept his verdict (if he wishes to give any). Bealtainemí (talk) 19:20, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Do we agree that 19th century sources, though an interesting piece of historiography, don't necessarily reflect current scholarly consensus?

@Macrakis: Naturally, but the history of the interpretation is why this article exists. GPinkerton (talk) 22:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Macrakis: I'm glad to see that, hopefully, GPinkerton recognizes that they don't reflect scholarly consensus, or at least that they "don't necessarily reflect current scholarly consensus". They were statements by a few odd writers (take "odd" in whatever sense you prefer) that did not reflect the general view even then. So why then are they presented at such length and in such detail and, practically speaking, as the interpretation? I'm glad to see that Fairbairn's comment has to an extent been corrected and in the article no longer appears as presented by selective quotation in the JW sources drawn on in the article. Is it then true that the reason "why this acticle exists" is to give publicity to the teachings of the JWs? Bealtainemí (talk) 10:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: What "JW sources" are these? I can't find reference to any Jehovah's Witnesses anywhere, nor can I see any evidence of selective quotation (an issue I came to edit this article to fix). GPinkerton (talk) 13:32, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton, where do you think the contributors to the Wikipedia article got the abundant ninetenth-century material that they have inserted (and to which you give prominence)? Bealtainemí (talk) 15:43, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: From out-of-copyright digitized archives presumably. Not one of them is Jehovah's Witness author. Bullinger got his doctorate from the Archbishop of Canterbury in person. Fairbairn was Free Church. Vine was Plymouth Brethren. If you think their ideas were not mainstream, or are not mainstream now, you have only to consult the 2010 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of the Bible, which reads, under Cross:

The instrument of torture and execution used by the Romans, and previously by the Persians, was an upright stake to which the condemned man's body was tied or nailed. The Romans usually left the stakes in place for repeated executions, and the convict carried a crossbar which was added to the top of the stake and on which the offence incurring the penalty might be inscribed, or a notice proclaiming it might be hung round his neck. Crucifixions have been reported in modern tribal conflicts.

GPinkerton (talk) 17:52, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Of course. It was several decades after the death of Flat-Earther Bullinger that the JWs formulated their teaching and propagated it on the basis of proof texts by such as his view. Bealtainemí (talk) 19:20, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Trying to discredit nineteenth century Christians' ideas because other ideas they have are strange is like blaming a fish for having scales. As I say, the arguments used by him and others are the same as those used in reliable sources today, with nearly the same conclusion - i.e. absence of any evidence of cross-shaped crucifixion before the Roman empire. GPinkerton (talk) 20:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

The alleged absence of evidence of cross-shaped crucifixion "before the Roman empire" seems inapplicable to the situation under the first centuries B.C. and A.D. Bealtainemí (talk) 08:38, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Incoherent again ... there is no evidence of cross-shaped crucifixion before the 1st century and none at all in the gospels. Nothing is "inapplicable", and evidence from the late first century cannot be used to prove cross-shaped crucifixion existed or was normal decades or centuries earlier ... this is the view expresses in reliable sources and the one Wikipedia needs to reflect. GPinkerton (talk) 13:15, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I must have expressed myself very badly in relation to the claims by Bullinger and the like that there was (certainly) no crossbar in crucifixions. I apologize. You yourself seem to have (earlier) accepted the use of the crossbar in crucifixions, since you quoted with approval the Oxford Dictionary of the Bible. Apart from turning this article into one on Greek evidence for the practice of impaling, what do we essentially disagree on? I have already asked: "Can I hope that we agree that there is no certainty that, even before the second-century descriptions, there is no certainty that any particular shape of the execution σταυρός was 'a relative rarity'?" Perhaps I have been too optimistic. Bealtainemí (talk) 14:43, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: I disagree with your practice of reverting all the changes I made to the article, which appears now to have abated. Common sense requires that evidence vs lack of evidence is inherently an appreciable difference in degree of rarity, and that it is unreasonable to assume an expensive and unprofitable structure was commonly constructed of valuable material for a common and widespread practice of execution, for which much simpler and cheaper alternatives were available ready-made, without leaving any trace soever in either archaeological or literary records. We do not assume Augustus minted coins before his coins are attested, we do not assume Europeans reached the Americas before there is evidence attested that they had done so, and we do not assume cross-shaped crucifixion as a standard (for standard it would have to be if not to be a comparative rarity) before cross-shaped crucifixion is attested, just as the reliable sources relate. Why don't you propose in a new section any changes to the article you'd like to see? GPinkerton (talk) 16:25, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Do we agree that long quotations of sources are unnecessary?

@Macrakis: No, since (if editors would read them) they might quell objections (if you mean the quotes attached to the footnotes). GPinkerton (talk) 22:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Macrakis: I presume that the "long quotations of sources" are the truly lengthy ones presented as "Interpretation". They are quite out of proportion in relation to their importance. Bealtainemí (talk) 10:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Might it be useful to separate the historiography from the substantive arguments? See, for example, Historicity of King Arthur.

@Macrakis: Yes. The 19th & 20th century sources substantially agree with the modern consensus that a traditional Christian †-shaped stauros for a "suspension punishment" was a relative rarity - certainly until the start of the Roman imperial period - and that the vocabulary of suspension punishments overlapped, encompassing both impalement and crucifixion in various positions. GPinkerton (talk) 22:23, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

@Macrakis:. I have cancelled the comments I began to write about a supposed modern consensus (according to whom?) that the Roman use of use of a T-shaped or cross-shaped σταυρός was a "relative rarity" at least "until the start of the Roman imperial period", whatever that means: did Roman practice suddenly alter with the accession of Octavian Augustus, or did Roman domination over the Greek east begin already before the change of the Roman Republic to the Principate or Empire? Just keep to what is really said about the execution by σταυρός used for Jesus. Leave ἀποτυμπανισμός and all the other terms for (hopefully well-sourced) future articles about them. Macrakis has enough to do to without venturing at first so far afield. Bealtainemí (talk) 10:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: According to Cook, Samuelsson, and Chapman. The answer to your question is that the sources are not clear how or when or how often a T-shaped cross was used or how this came about. Chapman says "by the time of the first Roman military campaigns in Anatolia" (without specifying when, although obviously before Augustus, or where) a cross-piece may have been introduced, Samuelsson and Cook say there is no evidence before the first or second century AD although Cook appears to believe the practice was older without being able to prove it. Anyway we already know for certain from Seneca that in the 1st century AD the Romans' practice encompassed cruces of various designs for both crucifixion and impaling, but this is a Latin issue. In any case, the article is only tangentially relevant to the Roman imperial practice; the stauros punishments (of various kinds) were in use for far longer centuries beforehand without reference to Roman executions. I don't know why you want to include Jesus in this article, the fate of whom is voluminously discussed elsewhere and whose textual accounts add very little to our knowledge of the stauros, other than in one gospel it appears that nails are involved in the punishment in that case and some or all of what the author called a stauros could be carried in that instance. GPinkerton (talk) 13:32, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton, can I hope that we agree that there is no certainty that, even before the second-century descriptions, there is no certainty that any particular shape of the execution σταυρός was "a relative rarity"? Bealtainemí (talk) 15:43, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: It is certain that the objects described as stauroi included both ordinary poles and poles used for execution by impalement or suspension, and often by the same authors (Thucydides, Herodotus, Polybius, Plutarch). This certainly implies that a single piece of wood was used, comparable to a stauros used for utilitarian purposes (as common sense demands and as the early lexicographers make explicit), but it does not explain more. It is certain that there is no evidence for a stauros of any complex shape before the imperial period. GPinkerton (talk) 17:52, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

GPinkerton, I am disappointed that you now seem to reject what Macrakis gave as the basic supposition behind the concrete questions that he then put to us: "Do we agree that the central topic of this article is the meaning of stauros in the New Testament? Bealtainemí (talk) 15:43, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: I have never expressed any interest in the New Testament and I disagree wholly that the meaning of stauros in the NT specifically has much, if any, bearing on the topic at hand. We learn that in one late 1st century (at earliest) account nails were apparently involved and some or all of the stauros in that case was portable. As I say there are many centuries of the stauros before that late, provincial, example, and as I have long said, there is an over-abundance of Jesus-related material already. The certain use of stauros to mean a traditional T, X, or †-shaped cross in the imperial period is notable, but it is not the focus of this article. The wider use for some seven or eight centuries is the widespread use of timbers for executions, whether impalement or "crucifixion" (broadly, and anachronistically, defined). GPinkerton (talk) 17:52, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

I can only repeat that I am sorry about your rejection. Bealtainemí (talk) 19:20, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: OK. GPinkerton (talk) 20:23, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

---

From your answers to my question, I see that you have some basic disagreements. I have started by making a few small edits on the few things you agree on.

Until we resolve the central question of the main topic of the article, all the rest seems irrelevant. If the article is about various things which over time have been called stauros in Greek, then it is about a word, not a concept, and doesn't belong on Wikipedia, but rather on Wiktionary (cf. WP:NOTDICT). If it is about a concept, which concept? is it about the device used to execute Jesus? GPinkerton says no ("I disagree wholly that the meaning of stauros in the NT specifically has much, if any, bearing on the topic at hand."), so what is it? If it is about the specific concept of the Instrument of Jesus' crucifixion, the obvious question is what its relation is to that article.

At this point, it seems to me that you two have reached an impasse, and that we need to involve the editors working on Instrument of Jesus' crucifixion, and probably the larger community, in an RFC on the question, "Is it useful to have a separate article on stauros, or should its content be included in Instrument of Jesus' crucifixion?". --Macrakis (talk) 21:08, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

• @Macrakis: I completely agree, I proposed this merger in February - Talk:Instrument_of_Jesus'_crucifixion#Merger_proposal - but consensus was declared against in late March. Having already tried this approach, I feel it would be opposed yet again. In answer to your question, since discussion of Jesus is abundant elsewhere, the subject of this article ought to be all the other stauroi on which people were put to death in various ways in the ancient world. GPinkerton (talk) 21:43, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@GPinkerton: Ah, sorry I hadn't noticed that. Given that it was closed only a year ago, I agree that there's no point in re-opening it.

The only productive thing to do at this point, then, is to clarify what exactly this article is about in its lead, and stick to that. As I said above, I don't think "things called stauroi other than the instrument of Jesus' killing" is a coherent topic for a Wikipedia article, unless it is simply a disambiguation article listing the different meanings, and pointing to relevant articles, e.g., palisade, impalement, crucifixion, crucifixion of Jesus, Christian cross, crucifix, etc.

So I won't be contributing to the article or this Talk page any further. --Macrakis (talk) 22:14, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Macrakis, for your contribution. Bealtainemí (talk) 09:11, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Break

GPinkerton, I will try to respond in one place to what you seem to have repeated several times, at least as I understand you to say it. Correct me if I am wrong. You say, I don't know why, that references to σταυροί with crossbars, before I'm unsure what date, are as unbelievable as to flying saucers; and you say that, for instance, Samuelsson declares there were no σταυροί with crossbars. Where does he say that? As far as I can see, he says in his book that there is no proof that there were any σταυροί with crossbars. He does not say there is proof that there were no σταυροί with crossbars. Not the same thing. His study, he says, is of the philology of words such as σταυρός, not about a historical event. The non-detailed accounts of the Gospels, he says, do not contradict the traditional understanding, which he believes is correct. You know what he wrote on the topic: [1]. I presume that you really mean that, before the actual explicit descriptions of the execution σταυροί as with crossbars, there is no evidence of such σταυροί, not that there is evidence that there were none. Bealtainemí (talk) 19:52, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: I will correct you again. I have not said references to σταυροί with crossbars, before I'm unsure what date, are as unbelievable as to flying saucers. I said there is no evidence of σταυροί with crossbars before the first century AD, just as there is no evidence of flying saucers before the first century AD (or at all). I have not said Samuelsson declares there were no σταυροί with crossbars. Where have I said that? Samuelsson says there is no evidence of σταυροί with crossbars before the first century AD. (Rather as I have said there is no evidence of flying saucers.) This article, as you will agree, is about the philology of words such as σταυρός and the historical objects to which they referred. I have not said there is evidence that there were none, as you claim, not least because that would be trying to prove a negative. Rather like proving there were no flying saucers before the first century AD ...

Like flying saucers, there is no evidence of σταυροί with crossbars before the late first century AD. Unlike flying saucers, there is evidence, which is not explicit, of σταυροί with crossbars in the later first and second centuries, and this was certainly a common meaning of σταυρός in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries (and thereafter), concurrently with other shapes of σταυροί and alongside other, older meanings, for which there is abundant evidence. GPinkerton (talk) 20:57, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, GPinkerton for your reassurance that you are not claiming that the absence of incontrovertible evidence of a horizontal element in execution σταυροί (or whatever you want to call them) before the second century means they had no horizontal element (as the JWs claim). I was wrongly afraid that this was your purpose in insisting, for instance, "Cook says there is no evidence of anyone carrying a stauros that had a crossbeam. [...] that it is impossible that the stauros carried was cross-shaped [...]" Thank you. You have revived my hope "that we agree that there is no certainty that, even before the second-century descriptions, any particular shape of the execution σταυρός was 'a relative rarity'?" For my part, I do believe that in the palisade constructed by Eumaeus the vertical posts were strengthened by horizontal supports (as in the palisade image), that the lake dwellings described by Herodotus and Xenophon had horizontal floorings as well as vertical piles (as in that other image), that ἀναστουροῦν ἐπὶ τρισὶ σταυροῖς involved a horizontal aspect much more certainly than a vertical aspect, and so on, but I agree that only by the second century is there quite incontrovertible evidence of the horizontal element in executions, as in Lucian (Prometheus on the Caucasus, and the T-shaped object condemned in the Trial by the Vowels), Artemidorus, and several others. I see no reason whatever for presenting as "(the) interpretation" of the evidence the ideas publicized by the JWs and thus given prominence also in your version of this Wikipedia article.

I do not accept the claim that you advance: that whatever you choose to insert in the article (removing what was there before) can be reverted by nobody else.

I agree with Macrakis that "things called stauroi other than the instrument of Jesus' killing" is not a coherent topic for a Wikipedia article. What Makrakis indicates has been and should return to being the topic of this article, not τυμπανίζειν, ἀνασταυροῦν etc. On this matter you are in a minority of just one. Is it really impossible to reach an agreement not imposed by just a single editor? Bealtainemí (talk) 09:11, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: I will correct you again. You are in the minority of one in persisting that this article should even exist. Macrakis and I have agreed that there is no justification for this article - you disagree. The single editor to whom your refer can only be yourself. Mackrakis removed what he thought was irrelevant - the cognates and modern Greek - but not the derivatives, which all the reliable sources treat of. I have not, as you allege, claimed that whatever you choose to insert in the article (removing what was there before) can be reverted by nobody else. You are the one that hopes to remove the quotations from the lexica that have been part of this article for many years because they disagree with your fringe POV, which flies in the face of the established consensus, which you call "publicized by the JWs". This is merely your opinion, and it is not supported by reliable sources. Neither Artemidorus nor Lucian's references to Prometheus "incontrovertibly" refer to any but a vertical element, as my quotations from Samuelsson and elsewhere prove, and neither lends any certainty that if there was another element that element was †-shaped and not some other shape. Again, your baseless speculation that stauroi could have unattested meanings and semantic usage (like "flooring"!) outside what is established by scholarship does not belong in Wikipedia. Your claims furthermore that the impalement on three stakes somehow allows your imagination to conjure a cross-shaped stauros are utterly refuted and show nothing other than your refusal to comprehend the literature. Samuelsson says unambiguously that neither Ctesias, FGrH 3c, 688 F 14.39, nor Plutarch Artaxerxes 17.5 should be read this way. He says: a eunuch named Masabates is impaled slantwise on three stakes while the skin was nailed separately and The dead or dying eunuch appears to be described as impaled - or rather pierced - on three stakes. The usage of the verb άναπηγνύναι seems not to cover crucifixion and This text shows that Ctesias uses the verb άνασταυρίζειν in connection with what appears to be some kind of impaling. It is difficult to see that the text should describe Inarus as crucified on three crucifixion tools simultaneously. There is no room for your unsourced postulate ἀναστουροῦν ἐπὶ τρισὶ σταυροῖς involved a horizontal aspect much more certainly than a vertical aspect and your unspecified and so on or any conclusions derived from them. It is special pleading at best, as is your strange desire to tar the entire tradition of scholarship with your wild allegations of collusion with Jehovah's Witnesses simply because you would like to believe there were cross-shaped stauroi long before there is any evidence of them, against all scholarly consensus. There is not one Roman depiction of Prometheus crucified in the cross-shaped sense, still less in a †-shape, and there is nothing in Lucian's description of Prometheus's punishment that implies a †-shape or any kind of horizontal anything. At all. Cook says "the image is cruciform", but this is not in Lucian's text and in the same breath Cook says the image accords with (pseudo-)Lucian's T-shaped (not-cruciform) cross referenced in the (possibly much later than 2nd century) Iudicium Vocalium, which is not universally accepted to have been written by Lucian at all. So a †-shaped stauros cannot be "incontrovertible", if even Cook (a true believer) can deduce two different shapes from the same text. GPinkerton (talk) 14:58, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry for annoying you by saying that the article has been radically altered since 26 March and questioning whether that radical altering is sacrosanct and untouchable. Also for recalling that Prometheus is represented as suspended horizontally from crag to crag, that an execution instrument is described as tau-shaped, that Artemidorus speaks of an execution σταυρός as made ἐκ ξύλων καὶ ἥλων, etc. Also for daring to mention horizontal aspects of some interest though not for inclusion in a Wikipedia article. Bealtainemí (talk) 16:53, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bealtainemí: Prometheus is represented in no such way. He is attached in "from crag to crag" with arms "stretched out". There is no indication at all of horizontal arrangement of the arms, just as there is no hint of it in Roman art, still less of an equilateral shoulder-height † you appear to give credence to. Neither does Artemidorus' reference to wood and nails imply anything other than the nails by which a person might be attached to the wooden execution σταυρός, a fact attested on occasions throughout the long history of execution by stauros, not least in John. Your speculation otherwise is just wishful thinking. GPinkerton (talk) 17:07, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Stauros in Bible translations

@Kunio Saitou: this article is explicitly about "the use of the word for other contexts" than Biblical. In any case, a raw list of the word used to translate stauros in Bible translations is original research based on primary sources. If there is some reliable source about the translations of the word (and I'm sure there is), that might be worth mentioning somewhere in WP, though not here. --Macrakis (talk) 20:49, 30 September 2021 (UTC)

Jesus death on “Stauros”

The Greek word Stauros is translated upright stand, not a pole with. Cross beam or cross. Ancient Roman’s hung people on stakes not crosses, which was their custom. So why would they have hung Jesus Christ on a cross. To say Christ died on a cross is a mid translation. 2600:8803:3C07:F00:D93C:E932:F545:DED4 (talk) 19:43, 21 March 2022 (UTC)