Freethought & Rationalism Archive

la70119 · 04-30-2012, 11:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by la70119

So as i have shown, anastaurow and anaskolopizw would still have that impalement aspect to it, even toward the end of the time Koine Greek was spoken (300 BCE - 300 CE).

You've shown that people or their heads could be attached to a stake and that either verb could be used for the act.

Yes, exactly. And both were more varied than just "crucifixion". Especially in the limited English sense. :devil1:

arnoldo · 05-01-2012, 05:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

. . . . He is also under the impression that the founder was a man who promised his followers they would not die if they cursed the Greek Gods and worshipped him instead.

Here is the quote where immortality and greek god are mentioned.

Quote:

The poor wretches have convinced themselves, first and foremost, that they are going to be immortal and live for all time, in consequence of which they despise death and even willingly give themselves into custody; most of them. Furthermore, their first lawgiver persuaded them that they are all brothers of one another after they have transgressed once, for all by denying the Greek gods and by worshipping that crucified sophist himself and living under his laws.

http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/lucian/peregrinus.htm

My reading of the text doesn't suggest that the "poor wretches" believed they weren't going to die, rather they despised any capital punishment that could be inflicted on them by denying, rather than cursing, the greek gods

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

Either Lucian knows very little about what we call Christianity or the Christianity of his day was nothing like the orthodox Christianity of later times.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Another conclusion is that Lucian's apparent ignorance of Christianity argues against any christian interpolations sneaking their way into Lucian's text.

mountainman · 05-01-2012, 06:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by la70119

Except here he's not referring to Christians as a tribe or nation, he's referring to Christians as a sect, superstition or cult (modern definition).

"The tribe of christians" is a Eusebian trope.
Lucian witnesses a christian cult.
The Nicaean christians had dominion over the scriptoria.
Many writers were forged and/or corrupted in the 4th century.
Lucian has many additional books forged under his name.

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There's no mention of popes, archbishops, or even bishops. Just a president of the local community. And the community itself is described as a synagogue, not an ekklesia. Furthermore, the christians in Asia (southwest Asia Minor) regarded them as fellow-Christians, not as heretics, as Bullneck's reinvented Catholic Church would.

Referential integrity was not sought.
Any reference to "Christians" would do the job.

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Does Eusebius' "Church History" agree with this? last time I checked, he had Bishops going back to before the time Lucian wrote, which along with Popes went back all the way to Peter!

The list of bishops is added to the list of kings.

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I would think that if this work of Lucian's were cranked out in one of Bullneck's scriptoria, it would at least agree with Eusebius on the structure of the Church.

Eusebius's "Church History" and the "Historia Augusta" are BOTH "mockumentaries" and have the same modus operandi of fabrication. Nothing is supposed to agree. Sources are fabrication. Hundreds of forged documents are used and cited. Further sources are then fabricated to disagree and argue against the original forged sources.

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Besides, look at the verb he uses to describe "crucified" in my posts #19 and #25 above. Christians hardly ever used that -- the only one I can think of who used that verb for 'crucify', and the noun from whence the verb was derived for 'cross', is Origen.

Lucian is not portrayed by the christians as a christian.
Marcus Aurelius was not portrayed as a christian either.
But the reference to Christians in "Meditations" is seen as an interpolation.

spin · 05-01-2012, 07:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by la70119

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by la70119

So as i have shown, anastaurow and anaskolopizw would still have that impalement aspect to it, even toward the end of the time Koine Greek was spoken (300 BCE - 300 CE).

You've shown that people or their heads could be attached to a stake and that either verb could be used for the act.

Yes, exactly. And both were more varied than just "crucifixion". Especially in the limited English sense. :devil1:

Putting it into the Roman context should help one understand the significance of the terms. One doesn't find references to heads, so it would seem that unless they were mentioned to give a more unusual twist there was a more generic significance, ie what the Romans called "crucify". Consider Josephus AJ 17.295 (17.10.10), 18.79 (18.3.4), 19.94 (19.1.13), 20.102 (20.5.2) and 20.129 (20.6.2). All are Roman contexts. If the head is not mentioned then it's the whole body attached to the pole and we know how that was done in Roman times. Example? Florus a procurator in Judea just before the war (BJ 2.306 = 2.14.9) crucified various people in Jerusalem. The outrage was that he had Jews of equestrian rank nailed to crosses (σταυρω προσηλωσαι)! (2.308) The mention of being crucified was "first scourged and then crucified", such that it was sufficient to use "crucified" (ανεσταυρωσεν) for one to understand the significance of the notion, no consideration of "impaled" or "heads" to be found. Perhaps one should also check out BJ 11.451 for some excess Roman zeal, talking about people being crucified:

The soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different postures; and so great was their number, that the space could not be found for the crosses (σταυροις) nor crosses for the bodies.

And when a prisoner from Jotapata was crucified after lengthy torture (BJ 3.321 = 3.7.33) he smiled. I doubt if he were impaled he would have had the opportunity to smile.

You can only get the notion of "impaled" when the verb is suitably contextualized and heads attached to poles give another use of the verb. Otherwise without qualification it would seem to conjure up the notion of "crucified".

PhilosopherJay · 05-02-2012, 09:51 PM

Hi arnoldo,

Yes, it seems Lucian is suggesting not cursing the Greek Gods, but simply worshiping Jesus as a God instead of the Greek Gods. It is interesting that he does not connect Christianity with Judaism at all.

Good point that Lucian's lack of knowledge of any proto-orthodox Christianity suggests it is not a Christian interpolation.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Quote:

Originally Posted by arnoldo

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

. . . . He is also under the impression that the founder was a man who promised his followers they would not die if they cursed the Greek Gods and worshipped him instead.

Here is the quote where immortality and greek god are mentioned.

My reading of the text doesn't suggest that the "poor wretches" believed they weren't going to die, rather they despised any capital punishment that could be inflicted on them by denying, rather than cursing, the greek gods

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

Either Lucian knows very little about what we call Christianity or the Christianity of his day was nothing like the orthodox Christianity of later times.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Another conclusion is that Lucian's apparent ignorance of Christianity argues against any christian interpolations sneaking their way into Lucian's text.

la70119 · 05-05-2012, 09:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by la70119

Yes, exactly. And both were more varied than just "crucifixion". Especially in the limited English sense. :devil1:

Putting it into the Roman context should help one understand the significance of the terms. One doesn't find references to heads, so it would seem that unless they were mentioned to give a more unusual twist there was a more generic significance, ie what the Romans called "crucify". Consider Josephus AJ 17.295 (17.10.10), 18.79 (18.3.4), 19.94 (19.1.13), 20.102 (20.5.2) and 20.129 (20.6.2). All are Roman contexts. If the head is not mentioned then it's the whole body attached to the pole and we know how that was done in Roman times.

Except it wasn't just Romans who "crucfied" in Roman times (753 BCE - 476 CE). The post-Macedonian Greek Empires and the Barbarians round-about were also into it as the ancient writers duly recorded. But one can hardly expect non-Romans to follow Roman norms and standards, now can he? Seneca Younger certainly did not!

Seneca Younger, Dialogue 6 (De Consolatione) 20.3

Quote:

Video istic cruces non unius quidem generis sed aliter ab aliis fabricatas : capite quidam conversos in terram suspendere, alii per obscena stipitem egerunt, alii brachia patibulo explicuerunt

(Over yonder I see cruces: not just of one kind, but differenly made out of wood, by others. Some suspended with the head turned back towards the earth, others have driven a stake through the privates [or excrements], others have extended the arms out on the crossarm.)

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...%3Asection%3D3

More examples at: Reputable sources on Jesus contemporaries/precedents - Post 64

He even classifies crucfixion with just the arms extended out on the crossarm as an exception to the rule and apparently as something done "by others". Which means the Romans had something different. Something that included his list of three tortures and that included nails.

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Example? Florus a procurator in Judea just before the war (BJ 2.306 = 2.14.9) crucified various people in Jerusalem. The outrage was that he had Jews of equestrian rank nailed to crosses (σταυρω προσηλωσαι)! (2.308) The mention of being crucified was "first scourged and then crucified", such that it was sufficient to use "crucified" (ανεσταυρωσεν) for one to understand the significance of the notion, no consideration of "impaled" or "heads" to be found. Perhaps one should also check out BJ 11.451 for some excess Roman zeal, talking about people being crucified:

The soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different postures; and so great was their number, that the space could not be found for the crosses (σταυροις) nor crosses for the bodies.

And when a prisoner from Jotapata was crucified after lengthy torture (BJ 3.321 = 3.7.33) he smiled. I doubt if he were impaled he would have had the opportunity to smile.

I doubt he would smile if he were just simply nailed, either!

Quote:

You can only get the notion of "impaled" when the verb is suitably contextualized and heads attached to poles give another use of the verb. Otherwise without qualification it would seem to conjure up the notion of "crucified".

Well, if you are just thinking of a "throughput" impalement or some other kind of simple direct impalement on a stout pole with either a sharp or blunted point, of course. On the other hand the sort of 'impalement' I am talking about in the context of crucifixion is the kind described by Seneca in response to a poem of Macenea's. Seneca makes it clear that it was carried out with the nailing to the stipes and the patibulum!

Seneca Younger Moral Epistle 101.12

Full discourse at Reputable sources on Jesus contemporaries/precedents - Post 65 and two further examples at Post 66.

Quote:

Quod miserrimum erat, si incidisset, optatur et tamquam vita petitur supplici mora. Contemptissimum putarem, si vivere vellet usque ad crucem::' Tu vero " inquit, " me debilites licet, dum spiritus in corpore fracto et inutili maneat. Depraves licet, dum monstroso et distorto temporis aliquid accedat. Suffigas licet et acutam sessuro crucem subdas." Est tanti vulnus suum premere et patibulo pendere districtum, dum differat id, quod est in malis optimum, supplicii finem ? Est tanti habere animam, ut agam?

There he is, praying for that which, if it had befallen him, would be the most pitiable thing in the world! And seeking a postponement of suffering, as if he were asking for life! I should deem him most despicable had he wished to live up to the very point of crucifixion: "nay," he cries, "you may weaken my body, if you will, only leave the breath of life in my battered and debilitated carcass! maim me if you will, but allow me, misshapen and deformed as I may be, just a little more time in the world! You may nail me up and set for my seat a pointed stake." Is it so great to weigh down upon one's own wound, and hang nailed out on a patibulum? That one may postpone something which is the balm of troubles, the end of punishment? Is it worth all this to possess the breath of life only to give it up?

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...3Asection%3D12

A common 19th Century or early 20th Century translation of the lines in color are: "You may nail me up and set my seat upon the piercing cross!" Is it worth while to weigh down upon one's own wound, and hang impaled on a patibulum? Well that last bit can't be more obvious, although the actual job of impaling belonged to the acutam crucem which served as a most cruel and shameful kind of "seat". And it isn't as though scholars aren't ignorant of it, either. Those such as Hermann Fulda, Martin Hengel and Chris Cargounis have described the typical Roman crucifixion as a process in which "the victim often carried the beam to the place of execution, where he was nailed to it with outstretched arms, raised up and seated on a small wooden peg." (Martin Hengel, Crucifixion, p. 25.; Cf. Hermann Fulda, Das Kreuz und der Kreuzigung pp. 151, 161; Chris Cargounis, Was Jesus Crucified?) It has been and is thought by many scholars that the peg was horizontal and turned slightly upwards, but epigraphy such as the Pozzuoli and Vivat Crux graffiti have shown that it was vertical and turning slightly forwards instead. What do you suppose it would do to the crucified when he has to sit on this appurtenance of the cross?

Professor Bill Thayer of uchicago.edu has a good idea what it would do:

Pliny Elder, Natural History 23.27.55, Adnotatio Thayeri

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bill Thayer

in spongea adiecto: This passage is usually overlooked in modern explications of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but at least one early 19c editor (Simon Wilkin, editing the works of Sir Thomas Browne) was not so prudish.

With the customary reminder that punctuation is an artifact of modern editions not found in the manuscripts, let me start by repunctuating it according to W. H. S. Jones, the editor and translator of the Loeb edition (the differences from the above are marked in colored text):

. . . item contra multipedae morsum. calidum in spongea adiecto aut sulphuris sextante sextariis III aut hysopi fasciculo medetur et sedis vitiis; in sanguinis fluctione post excisos calculos et omni alia foris in spongea inpositum, intus potum cyathis binis quam acerrimum
.

with the resulting translation, still from the Loeb edition:

Applied warm on a sponge, with either two ounces of sulphur or a bunch of hyssop added to three sextarii of vinegar, it is also a remedy for troubles of the anus. For haemorrhage after excision of stone, or any other, it is applied externally on a sponge, and doses of two cyathi of the strongest vinegar are taken internally.

Many generations of believers have thought that the drink of vinegar was some kind of mockery and further torture of a condemned man: giving him not water to drink, but vinegar.

Some scholar somewhere (tracking this down should be a monumental task) then came up with an idea that has filtered into general consciousness until it has become something an educated person "knows": that Roman soldiers drank a dilute solution of vinegar while on the march (true, posca) and that the kind soldier of the Gospel is offering Jesus some of his own supply of this drink, which is, in fact, known to be cooling.º It is sometimes added that the shock of this cool drink may have been the actual proximate cause of Jesus's death: most unlikely, in view of the tiny amount that a very weak man might get out of a sponge.

Another part of this now common explanation is not satisfying. It has long been realized by the more careful scholars that the plant referred to as "hyssop" in the King James Version of the Bible — at any rate, the same plant mentioned in its prescriptions for temple ritual — is (to the dubious extent that plants in the Bible are susceptible of identification, and as Moldenke points out in his Plants of the Bible, s.v. Sorghum vulgare, "Of all the words in the Bible referring to plants 'hyssop' is undoubtedly the most controversial") a small bush with many very fine branches. For this precise reason it is used as an aspergillum, for ritually sprinkling blood or water. For the same reason it is quite incapable of supporting a sponge or of adding much reach to a man's arm, and it is most unlikely that it would have been used as described: indeed an awareness of these physical impossibilities has led some to emend Jn. 19.29 replacing ὑσσώπῳ = hyssop by ὑσσῷ = pike. (See also in this connection a similar and embarassed awareness of these difficulties in the Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. Hyssop.)

This text of Pliny, however, provides evidence of something very different: hyssoped vinegar was apparently considered a very strong topical anaesthetic specific for rectal pain.

In more intelligible detail, here is the connection with the Crucifixion:

Death in crucifixion (see this excellent page) is ultimately caused by asphyxiation. The crucified man hangs from his wrists, and his chest is distended inwards and down. If a foot-rest is provided, this prolongs the torture, since the victim will be able to push himself up and get some air; but this induces cramps and eventually tetany of the arm and leg muscles, which become so painful that he eventually slumps down again — and the cycle continues to exhaustion and final asphyxiation in the down position.
To this torture, the Romans commonly added a refinement: a sharp spike (called a sedile, a "seat") was fixed on the upright beam in such a place that when the exhausted victim slips back down, it pierces the anus.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/...23*.html#noteA

spin · 05-05-2012, 03:49 PM

Well, beside some interesting quotes and an attempt to stretch the meaning of impalement to cover variations in crucifixion, I don't think you've got any further.

Consider this example of crucifixion, again from Josephus:

Vita 420-421 (=75)
420 When I was sent by Titus Caesar... to a certain village... I saw many prisoners who had been crucified, and I recognized three who had been my close associates. My soul was grieved and with tears I went to Titus and said so. 421 He immediately directed that they be taken down and receive treatment with the greatest care. Alas, two of them died during treatment, but the third lived.

There's no coming back from impalement. (Think Vlad III Tepes.)

la70119 · 05-06-2012, 03:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Well, beside some interesting quotes and an attempt to stretch the meaning of impalement to cover variations in crucifixion, I don't think you've got any further.

Consider this example of crucifixion, again from Josephus:

Vita 420-421 (=75)
420 When I was sent by Titus Caesar... to a certain village... I saw many prisoners who had been crucified, and I recognized three who had been my close associates. My soul was grieved and with tears I went to Titus and said so. 421 He immediately directed that they be taken down and receive treatment with the greatest care. Alas, two of them died during treatment, but the third lived.

There's no coming back from impalement. (Think Vlad III Tepes.)

I concede!!! :wave:

And by the limited English definition, you're absolutely correct. The English definition of impalement is strictly what Vlad did, unless you start talking to Jehovah's Witnesses or some other kinds of Christians, and you'll find out they think impalement means nailing to a post or cross with nails and nothing more. :Cheeky:

And the English definition of crucifixion is just as limited. It merely means, "to nail to the cross." Period.

In fact, we moderns tend to pigeonhole punishments that the ancients understood as points on a continuum or variations on a theme. That's why translated classics can be so damn annoying to me. They translate in one sense only and leave behind the rest that may be equally or more valid. Take for example, in crucem agere. That could just as easily be read in an infamous sense to mean "to impale on a stake," or "to impel one onto the acuta crux (seat of the cross)," as well as the famous sense, "to lead or compel to the cross."

In a typical Roman crucifixion the spike was short, not excessively thick and probably blunted, like a thorn-shaped or rhinocerous-horn-shaped wooden dildo. Hence the Greek verbs ἀνασταυρόω, ἀνασκολοπίζω, ἀναπήγνυμι and ἀναπείρω which previously referred to impalement / fixing on a pole came to apply to crucifixion because the crucified was commonly seen penetrated by the spike. And if you know anything about human anatomy, if one is crucified with out the spike, one won't hang on the cross with the backside against the post for long, but will hang out from it, exhausted.

spin · 05-10-2012, 09:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by la70119

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Well, beside some interesting quotes and an attempt to stretch the meaning of impalement to cover variations in crucifixion, I don't think you've got any further.

Consider this example of crucifixion, again from Josephus:

Vita 420-421 (=75)
420 When I was sent by Titus Caesar... to a certain village... I saw many prisoners who had been crucified, and I recognized three who had been my close associates. My soul was grieved and with tears I went to Titus and said so. 421 He immediately directed that they be taken down and receive treatment with the greatest care. Alas, two of them died during treatment, but the third lived.

There's no coming back from impalement. (Think Vlad III Tepes.)

I concede!!! :wave:

It's about time. I was afraid you were going to go through it all once again....

Quote:

Originally Posted by la70119

And by the limited English definition, you're absolutely correct. The English definition of impalement is strictly what Vlad did, unless you start talking to Jehovah's Witnesses or some other kinds of Christians, and you'll find out they think impalement means nailing to a post or cross with nails and nothing more. :Cheeky:

You can try that, but nails at least for the arms aren't a necessary part of the process and neither is the cross-beam.

Quote:

Originally Posted by la70119

And the English definition of crucifixion is just as limited. It merely means, "to nail to the cross." Period.

So you say, but yet you know that crucifixion essentially works from suffocation through the weight of the victim's own body when hung. We use a word based on a Latin source, which has influenced later thought on the matter, but that doesn't change the underlying point of the method as separate from impalement, which works on haemorrhage from the injury of having a sharp wooden stake stuck through you (in quite a number of cases rectally).

la70119 · 05-11-2012, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by la70119

I concede!!! :wave:

It's about time. I was afraid you were going to go through it all once again....

Errrrrmmm... nope. :redface:

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by la70119

And by the limited English definition, you're absolutely correct. The English definition of impalement is strictly what Vlad did, unless you start talking to Jehovah's Witnesses or some other kinds of Christians, and you'll find out they think impalement means nailing to a post or cross with nails and nothing more.

You can try that, but nails at least for the arms aren't a necessary part of the process and neither is the cross-beam.

You don't need ropes, either for impalement. But if you want to impale someone on an already erected stake of an insane height; then ropes, a lifting cross-beam and some kind of lifting apparatus are in order.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by la70119

And the English definition of crucifixion is just as limited. It merely means, "to nail to the cross." Period.

So you say, but yet you know that crucifixion essentially works from suffocation through the weight of the victim's own body when hung.

That is true, but only when the person is suspended with the wrists no more than 40" apart over his head. Otherwise, they died from a variety of causes of which ten possibilities are listed here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

We use a word based on a Latin source, which has influenced later thought on the matter, but that doesn't change the underlying point of the method as separate from impalement, which works on haemorrhage from the injury of having a sharp wooden stake stuck through you (in quite a number of cases rectally).

Actually the Latin verbiage prior to the abolition of the usual crucifixion penalty in 337 CE covered a variety of executions by immobilization, suspension and torture on inanimate objects (or live trees), but there probably was in Roman times a typical method to which there were perhaps a variety of exceptions, including the method Xtians claim was used on Jesus Christ.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seneca Minor, De Consolatione 20.3

I see cruces there, sertainly not just of one kind, but made in many different ways by others. Some suspend with the head turned toward the Earth; others drive a wooden stake through the privates; others stretch the arms out on the cross-beam.

The usual method, apparently included all three tortures listed by Seneca: the person was tied or nailed to the cross-beam, lifted up, his feet secured to the post and a spike was provided for the person to rest on, at total loss to his dignity. As shown in this epigraph shown below as a photo and here as a sketch.

05-05-2012, 03:49 PM	#37
spin Contributor Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: nowhere Posts: 15,747	Well, beside some interesting quotes and an attempt to stretch the meaning of impalement to cover variations in crucifixion, I don't think you've got any further. Consider this example of crucifixion, again from Josephus: Vita 420-421 (=75) 420 When I was sent by Titus Caesar... to a certain village... I saw many prisoners who had been crucified, and I recognized three who had been my close associates. My soul was grieved and with tears I went to Titus and said so. 421 He immediately directed that they be taken down and receive treatment with the greatest care. Alas, two of them died during treatment, but the third lived. There's no coming back from impalement. (Think Vlad III Tepes.)

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