Beck translation trivia---stauros- single upright pole also?

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Dec 23 06:52:45 EST 1999


At 11:43 PM -0600 12/22/99, Grant wrote:
>B-Greek:
>
>Very interesting indeed!  As a matter of fact, I went to the
>Liddell-Scott-Jones on-line lexicon (if there's a better one, then please
>let me know!!) at the address of
><http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/lexica.html>http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/lexic
>a.html  I find this extremely interesting about the word "stauros."  Look
>at what I found:
>
>stauros, ho, upright pale or stake
>staur-oô, (stauros) fence with pales
>staur-ikos, ê, on, of or by a cross,
>
>So I see two possible meanings here.
>Did it mean two different things or did one meaning possibly "evolve"
>after another?
>
>Do translators translate it "cross" every time or is there a case where it
>is rendered "stake?"

For our purposes the important point is that it is the Greek word used for
a post with a crossbar at the top used for executions, particularly by the
Romans, and equivalent in meaning to the Latin word CRUX, whence comes our
English word "cross."

>I've also notice that "xylon" (xi; x is not "ch"; I didn't know how to
>transliterate Xi since X and Z are used) is used at Acts 5:30 (and other
>places) or at least the form XYLOU is.  Does XYLOU have a relation to
>stauros as far as meaning is concerned?

XULOS is the ordinary Greek word for wood; it can be used by metonymy for
something made out of wood, and that's the way it comes to be used for
"cross." Its essential meaning is NOT "cross."

We don't insist upon any single authoritative transliteration scheme on
B-Greek, but in the one most commonly used, what I'd call our "standard"
scheme, we use "X" for Xi and "C" for "Chi." Yet we're often reading
transliterations here that evidently do intend for an "X" to be read as a
Chi. Transliteration gets to be pretty arbitrary in those letters that
don't have an exact Roman-letter equivalent. My own experience is probably
not very different from others: it was a matter of adjustment from what
seemed more natural to me, namely the keyboard equivalents that I use for
typing in a Greek font for academic purposes. But there are now several
different Greek fonts and there are at least three--but I think even
more--different keyboard layouts used for them. Whatever one chooses to
use, one has to make an adjustment which requires some time for getting
used to it.

The standard B-Greek transliteration tables may be read at the home page
for B-Greek at the URL indicated at the end of every message distributed by
the list: <http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek> -- actually "sunsite" has been
changed to "metalab", but the URL with "sunsite" in it will still take you
to the site.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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