音频游览 5 Marsyas (room 348)

Look at the supplicant on the left. Could the traditional cross also be a single stake? This possibility is illustrated by The Torment of Marsyas (MR 267, Ma 542).

The silenius Marsyas dared to challenge the god Apollo to a musical contest. Defeated, he was condemned to be skinned alive. Suspended from the trunk of a pine, he awaits his terrible punishment.

This statue illustrates the possible and perhaps the most correct translation of the terms used regarding the execution of Jesus. “If you are a son of God, come down off the torture stake.” (Matthew 27:40, or ‘cross’, NASB, NLT).

In Latin, a simple stake to which criminals were attached was called a crux simplex. In the writings of Livy, a Roman historian of the first century, crux referred to a straight pole.The learned Catholic Justus Lipsius (1547-1606) represents this instrument of torture as such in his book De Cruce Libri Tres. This Crucifixion, painted by Antonello of Messina in 1475, is a Renaissance masterpiece. It is kept in the Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. It is also the work of a precursor, as it is one of the first oil paintings by an Italian (see the attached images and the website: www.LouvreBible.org).

The Greek word stauros that we translate by ‘cross’ had the initial meaning of ‘pile’ (forming part of a palisade), ‘stake’ (already used by the Assyrians and Persians), or even ‘post’ from which the victim was suspended.   

There is nothing to confirm that the original terms designated the traditional cross, all the more so as this religious symbol was used by non-Christians long before Christ. A strange but indisputable fact is that in the centuries that preceded the birth of Christ, and since in countries that have not been touched by the teachings of the Church, the cross is used a sacred symbol.

That said, the death of Jesus as a ‘ransom in exchange for many’ is a fundamental teaching of the Scriptures. - John 3:16; Matthew 20:28.

Last commentary, borrowed from the speech of the apostle Peter quoted in Acts 4 verses 9 to 12. This work evokes ‘Jesus Christ the Nazarene, nailed to the stake, but whom God raised to life’. It also reminds us of a fundamental biblical theme, namely that ‘there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved’.

It is also the central theme of the Bible and its thread that, like a holy secret (1 Tim 3:16), helps us to understand it better. It is also an original and relevant guide for deciphering parts of ancient history.