[B-Greek] Re:Mk 15:24
jmtait
jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk
Wed Mar 9 21:23:36 EST 2005
>Julia wrote:
>
>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
>stakea 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
>Marks 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 lotklêrosoriginally
>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
I'm not an expert, but I don't think you need to be an expert to criticise
Carotta's statements here, because it seems to me that his argument rests
on misconceptions about language in general rather than about Greek in
particular.
The main fallacy in his argument seems to be the statement
"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."
It's a misconception that if a word means something in one context, then it
therefore cannot mean something different in another context. The word
'knit' in English can mean to fabricate a garment out of wool using two (or
more, in some cases) long needles. If, therefore, we read that someone's
bones 'knitted' do we have to assume that they were mended with wool using
two needles? Or even more bizarrely, as the verb 'knit' is in the active
mood (ie, the bones 'knitted' rather than 'were knitted') that the bones
themselves acted as knitting needles and created a garment out of wool?
These statements are ridiculous, but they are the same sort of linguistic
argument as the idea that, because a certain verb can mean to drive in a
post in one context, it cannot also refer to a means of execution in
another. The meanings of 'knit' in English are obviously related; and the
meanings of STAUROW are also obviously related, in that they are connected
with wooden structures driven into the ground. But it is completely
erroneous to say that because the verb STAUROW can mean 'to put up posts or
slats or a palisade' in some contexts, it therefore 'does not mean crucify'
in another context. To a native speaker of KOINH Greek, this idea would
seem just as ridiculous as my earlier statements about 'knit'. There may be
arguments about whether the STAUROS was actually cross-shaped - and
consequently whether the word 'crucify' is an accurate translation - but it
was certainly an instrument of execution which criminals were hung on. (I
don't use the form 'hanged' because - in British English at any rate - that
implies hanged by the neck.)
If you look at a dictionary of the Bible you will find that the practice of
crucifixion is attested in sources outside the New Testament, so it's not
as if the early Christians could have invented the idea - if that's what
Carotta is saying. Also, all three synoptic gospels say that Simon the
Cyrenian was commandeered to carry Jesus' STAURON (acc. of STAUROS) -
singular. Matthew and Mark represent the bypassers telling Jesus to come
down APO TOU STAUROU - gen. singular. And Luke (23:39) describes a criminal
who was executed at the same time 'hanging' (KREMASQENTWN). It would seem
that all the writers, and/or their sources, have a common conception of
execution involving hanging from a single structure. (Of course, if I were
writing a book arguing otherwise, I would simply say that all texts that
seemed not to support my theory must have been added at a later date.)
It doesn't matter either (for purposes of understanding, at any rate) which
meaning of a word is 'original.' The word 'gay' meant something very
different not so very long ago from what it does now. 'Intercourse' used to
refer to social interaction in general, but now almost always refers to
sex. A character in Jane Austen can say that a certain other character
'made love' to him and his family - obviously not implying what it would
mean nowadays. And if I were to tell an American that I carry a 'purse',
many would imagine me with what I would call a 'handbag'. It's not the
original meaning of a word, but what it means at a certain time and place
and in a certain context, that is relevant.
I'm a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who, of course, stakes
vampires. But you can also stake out a claim, or you can stake out a
building under surveillance. We know which of these meanings is meant by
their context. However, in a hypothetical future, when English is no longer
a spoken language and few understand its nuances, someone may write a book
claiming that the TV presentation of Buffy thrusting a wooden stick through
vampires' hearts is a misinterpretation of the original tradition, and that
what she is really doing in the original scripts is keeping them under
surveillance. To an English speaker familiar with the entire Vampire
legend, including Bram Stoker's Dracula, or even just the totality of the
Buffy stories themselves, this would seem absurd. To say that the word
'stake' could mean surveillance isn't relevant - it obviously doesn't in
this context, and to maintain that it does would be doing violence to both
the immediate context of the word in the Buffy stories and its wider
context in the vampire tradition. It seems to me that Carotta is doing
something not dissimilar with Greek and the story of the death of Jesus. I
wonder how much of his thesis hangs (no pun intended!) on similar arguments.
John M. Tait.
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