Stake or Cross Debate

Reminds me of the text msg with Baski or Baskaran Nair before I left in 2014.     Below is taken from a discussion forum.

” Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Christ was crucified on an upright stake which they refer to as a torture stake. Whenever their New World Translation mentions the cross it is rendered torture stake. The Witnesses insist that all the individuals within their organization agree that the instrument upon which Jesus died was an upright stake resembling a square telephone pole. If that particular configuration is not confessed by an active Jehovah’s Witness, he or she could be disfellowshipped from the organization, and that punishment could include being shunned by the individual’s family and forbidden to see his or her grandchildren.
One question that this issue generates is, “What difference does it make?” The configuration of the cross is irrelevant to the redemption Christians have in Christ. It isn’t the appearance of the cross that saved us, but what happened on it that is eternally significant. The Roman government was known to use different shapes of cross to crucify individuals, which included the traditional looking Christian cross that is displayed on church signs and necklaces. It also used “T” type of crosses as well as the “X” variety. Does the Scripture give us any clues as to the appearance of the Lord’s cross? In all the literature produced by the Watchtower Society, it always depicts Jesus with both arms extended above his head with a single nail through both hands. Above his hands is the plaque where his alleged crimes were inscribed. What is interesting about this Watchtower artwork is the fact that it doesn’t conform to the Bible’s description. The Scripture tells us that more than one nail was used in his hands (John 20:25). It also says that the plaque was placed “above his head” (Matthew 27:37). In the Watchtower’s drawings of the scene, there is one nail through both hands and the plaque is above his hands.
The Watchtower makes the argument that the New Testament Greek word rendered cross means stake, which it does. The word is used in secular writings to depict fence posts and staves. But the etymology of a word often has nothing to do with its use. For example, the English word nice comes from an Old English root meaning ignorant. We still refer to people “standing trial,” although they are always sitting. That comes from colonial days when defendants literally stood during their trial.
There are also some tantalizing clues in secular history. The Roman playwright Seneca the Younger used the phrase infelix lignum (unfortunate wood) to describe the crossbeam of the cross (letter #101 p12-14). Plautus (254-184 BC) described a condemned criminal carrying the transom (variously referred to as the patibulum or antenna) of his cross to the place of execution. Plutarch (46-120 AD) described a similar picture (Titus Maccius Plautus, Arthur Mack 1997 p109). The historian Josephus, who was a contemporary of New Testament times, said that the crossbeam was routinely carried by the prisoner that probably weighed about a 150 pounds. No one carried the 300 pound cross by himself.
Perhaps the most startling evidence of the Lord’s cross comes from an anonymous artist in the Italian city of Pompeii. The city was buried under the ash of the volcano Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. This eruption took place well over 25-hundred miles from the scene of the crucifixion, in a time of very primitive transportation and communication, and only within 55 years of the events of Calvary. It would have taken months, if not several years, for the news of the Lord’s crucifixion to have reached Pompeii. The city lay hidden for well over 16-hundred years until it was excavated by the Frenchman de Alcbierre in 1748. He found a very sophisticated city with all kinds of modern amenities and in one of the bedrooms there was unearthed Christian graffiti on the wall, and accompanying this scribbling was a drawing of the tradition Christian cross with a crossbeam.” Think about that!