[B-Greek] Mk. 15:24

Julia Rossner julia_rossner at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 8 20:51:04 EST 2005


Hi everybody,

I have a question concerning Mk. 15:24:
KAI STAURWSANTES AUTON DIAMERIZONTAI TA IMATIA AUTOU,
BALLONTES KLHRON EP AUTA [...].
The KJV translates: "And when they had crucified him,
they parted his garments casting lots upon them,..."

Now, in his most amazing book 'Jesus was Caesar'
Francesco Carotta says that:
"If we have a closer look at this verb, it turns out
that staurô does not mean crucify, but to put up posts
or slats or a palisade, or more precisely to fence in.
Namely, the origin of the verb is stauros, which means
stake, post, slat, and especially in the plural:
palisade. First the Christians used the verb in the
sense of ‘to put up a post’, then the post was
interpreted as a stake and later on as a torture
stake—a cross. So, ‘put up stakes or posts’ became
‘lift to the cross’, whereby in the mind, due to the
iconography, the image of ‘nailed to the cross’
developed.[126]

Above we have utilized the ‘Christian’ translation of
Mark’s sentence:

      ‘And when they had crucified him, they parted
his garments, casting lots upon them…’

But a Greek of the first century would not have
understood the sentence in this way, either not at
all, or if so, rather in this sense:

      ‘…and when they were putting up stakes, posts or
slats or a palisade around him, they parted the
garments, and cast valuable pieces on it…’

—because the Greek word for lot—klêros—originally
means all that is received as an allotment, especially
an inheritance, an heirloom.
A strange sentence. It rather seems to describe the
erection of a funeral pyre and the ritual casting of
gifts for the dead on it than the erection of a
cross."

My Greek-German dictionary (Gemoll)  gives two
meanings for  STAUROW:
1.  to drive in a post, to put  up a palisade (as
above in Carotta)
2.  martyr stake sater; cross NT.
and derived words all meaning, putting up palisades,
barricades,...

My question is simply: Is Carotta right in that the
original meaning had nothing to do with crucifixion, a
cross, and is this interpretation just one that
developed later when the story was already 'known'?
There are many more issues concerning biblical Greek
in his book, has anybody of the experts (I'm only
beginning to learn Greek) read Carotta's work yet?

Julia


	
		
__________________________________ 
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday! 
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web 
http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/



More information about the B-Greek mailing list