Instrument of Jesus' crucifixion

The instrument of Jesus' crucifixion (known in Latin as crux, in Greek as stauros) is generally taken to have been composed of an upright wooden beam to which was added a transom, thus forming a "cruciform" or T-shaped structure.

In 2011 Gunnar Samuelsson concluded that there is not enough evidence in pre-Christian ancient texts or in the New Testament writings themselves to resolve the ambiguity of the terms referring to the instrument on which Jesus was executed.

[5] John Pearson, Bishop of Chester (c. 1660) wrote in his commentary on the Apostles' Creed that the Greek word stauros originally signified "a straight standing Stake, Pale, or Palisador", but that, "when other transverse or prominent parts were added in a perfect Cross, it retained still the Original Name", and he declared: "The Form then of the Cross on which our Saviour suffered was not a simple, but a compounded, Figure, according to the Custom of the Romans, by whose Procurator he was condemned to die.

[citation needed] In his 1871 study of the history of the cross, Episcopal preacher Henry Dana Ward accepted as the only form of the gibbet on which Jesus died "a pale, a strong stake, a wooden post".

Both the noun and the verb stauroo, 'to fasten to a stake or pale', are originally to be distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of a two beamed cross".

"[18] This association of the cross symbol with Tammuz had already been made by Abram Herbert Lewis in his 1892 book Paganism Surviving in Christianity.

[19] Andreas J. Köstenberger (2004) notes that traditional academic reconstruction of the cross has first Jesus, then Simon of Cyrene bear the stauros, i.e. only the horizontal crossbar, Latin patibulum.

[20] Schröter (1997) notes that the lack of references in ancient sources, aside from Plautus (The Charcoal Woman 2[21] and The Braggart Warrior 2.4.6–7)[22] and Plutarch (Moralia 554AB),[23] to "bearing the cross" implies that a criminal carrying his own patibulum was not very common.

[27][28] In applying the word stauros to the crossbeam, these writers indicate that the complete structure on which Jesus died was not a single upright post but formed what is normally called a cross.

Literary sensibilities in Roman antiquity did not promote graphic descriptions of the act of crucifixion, and even the Gospels report simply, "They crucified him", adding no further detail.

"[37] In his book Crucifixion in Antiquity, Gunnar Samuelsson declares that, while the New Testament terminology is in itself not conclusive one way or another for the meaning of the word, "[t]here is a good possibility that σταυρός, when used by the evangelists, already had been charged with a distinct denotation − from Calvary.

So the traditional understanding of the death of Jesus is correct, but we could acknowledge that it is more based on the eyewitness accounts than the actual passion narratives.

"[39] The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, dealing specifically with the crucifixion of Jesus, says it is most likely that the stauros had a transverse in the form of a crossbeam.

[50] In the 20th century, forensic pathologist Frederick Zugibe performed a number of crucifixion experiments by using ropes to hang human subjects at various angles and hand positions.

[56][57][58][59] In Greek texts the word xylon could be used for any object made of wood, including in varying contexts, gallows, stocks, pales and stakes.

Using the Greek word σταυρός in its verbal form, the Jewish historian Josephus too, writing of the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, recounted that the Jews caught outside the city walls "were first whipped, and then tormented with all sorts of tortures, before they died, and were then crucified before the wall of the city ... the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest.

"[62] Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who lived at the time of the birth of Jesus, described how those condemned to crucifixion were led to the place of execution: "A Roman citizen of no obscure station, having ordered one of his slaves to be put to death, delivered him to his fellow-slaves to be led away, and in order that his punishment might be witnessed by all, directed them to drag him through the Forum and every other conspicuous part of the city as they whipped him, and that he should go ahead of the procession which the Romans were at that time conducting in honour of the god.

The men ordered to lead the slave to his punishment, having stretched out both his arms and fastened them to a piece of wood which extended across his breast and shoulders as far as his wrists, followed him, tearing his naked body with whips.

The pseudepigraphic Epistle of Barnabas, which scholars suggest may have been before the end of the 1st century,[67] and certainly earlier than 135,[68] whether the writer was an orthodox Christian or not, described the shape people at the time attributed to the device on which Jesus died: the comparisons it draws with Old Testament figures would have had no validity for its readers if they pictured Jesus as dying on a simple stake.

[73] The final words of the Trials in the Court of Vowels,[74]Δίκη Φωνηέντων, 12.4–13 found among the works of Lucian, also identify the shape of the σταυρός with that of the letter Τ.

For it was not because Moses so prayed that the people were stronger, but because, while one who bore the name of Jesus (Joshua) was in the forefront of the battle, he himself made the sign of the cross (σταυρός).

"[77] In his First Apology, 55 Justin refers to various objects as shaped like the cross of Christ: "The sea is not traversed except that trophy which is called a sail abide safe in the ship ... And the human form differs from that of the irrational animals in nothing else than in its being erect and having the hands extended, and having on the face extending from the forehead what is called the nose, through which there is respiration for the living creature; and this shows no other form than that of the cross (σταυρός)."

The apocryphal Acts of Peter, of the second half of the 2nd century, attaches symbolic significance to the upright and the crossbeam of the cross of Jesus: "What else is Christ, but the word, the sound of God?

"[79] Irenaeus, who died around the end of the 2nd century, speaks of the cross as having "five extremities, two in length, two in breadth, and one in the middle, on which [last] the person rests who is fixed by the nails.

"[80] Hippolytus of Rome (170 – 235 AD), writing about the blessing Jacob obtained from his father Isaac (Genesis 27:1–29), said: "The skins which were put upon his arms are the sins of both peoples, which Christ, when His hands were stretched forth on the cross, fastened to it along with Himself.

[87] The anti-Christian arguments thus cited in the Octavius of Minucius Felix, chapters IX and XXIX, and Tertullian's Apology, 16 show that the cross symbol was already associated with Christians in the 2nd century.

[88] In his book De Corona, written in 204, Tertullian tells how it was already a tradition for Christians to trace repeatedly on their foreheads the sign of the cross.

Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus was executed on a simple upright stake,[91][92][93] asserting that the cross was promoted as a Christian symbol under the 4th-century emperor Constantine the Great.

The Alexamenos graffito, which was once thought to be the earliest surviving pictorial representation of a crucifixion and has been interpreted as mockery of a Christian, shows a cross as an instrument of execution.

What now appears to be the most ancient surviving image of a Roman crucifixion is a graffito found in a taberna (an inn for wayfarers) in Puteoli, dating from the time of Trajan (98–117) or Hadrian (117–138).