Golgatha – When, Where, and How, Part 4   04.2008

Part 4

"Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. Paul, as was his custom, went in to them, and for three Sabbath days reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Messiah had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, 'This Yeshua , whom I proclaim to you, is the Messiah .'" (Apg 17:1-3)

"Apollos, an Alexandrian by race, an eloquent man, came to Ephesus . He was mighty in the Scriptures . …he powerfully refuted the Jews, publicly showing by the Scriptures that Yeshua was the Messiah." (Acts 18:24,28)

We have already stated that the foundation of the gospel is that the Messiah died for our sins "according to the Scriptures." So far we have seen that Christian tradition has left the Scriptural pattern, and confused both when and where Yeshua died for our sins. Holy Week, Good Friday, Resurrection Sunday, The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Via Dolorosa, are all human traditions and inventions, changing the Scriptures and the faith once for all delivered to the saints. As we have seen both from the Scriptures and from the early history of the believers in the Messiah, the apostles neither taught nor practiced any of these Christian traditions. They were very careful to not depart from the Scriptures.

Our Calling to Pray For Restoration

Our calling in the Elijah Prayer Army is to pray for the salvation of Israel . We are called to prepare the way for the Messiah in the power and spirit of Elijah, so that the Lamb of God can be revealed to Israel . The Christian traditions unfortunately obscure the Father's true testimony of the Son found in the Scriptures so that the Jewish people cannot recognize him. We must pray for the truth about the Messiah to be restored from the Scriptures, in order for the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world to be revealed to Israel . The Bible commands us,

"Go through, go through the gates! Prepare the way of the people! Cast up, cast up the highway! Gather out the stones ! Lift up a banner for the peoples. Behold, the LORD has proclaimed to the end of the earth, ' Say to the daughter of Zion , 'Behold, your salvation comes .'" (Isa 62:10-11)

This last sentence can also be translated: "Say to the Daughter of Zion, 'See, your Savior comes!'" (NIV) It is important that the true savior is revealed and presented to Israel . Paul explained to the Jews in Thessalonica from their own Scriptures , the Hebrew Bible, that the Messiah had to suffer and rise again from the dead and said to them, " This Yeshua , whom I proclaim to you, is the Messiah." We read in Luke 3:2-6,

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'Make ready the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight. Every valley will be filled. Every mountain and hill will be brought low. The crooked will become straight, and the rough ways smooth. All flesh will see God's salvation .'"

The Hebrew name Yeshua, which in English is transliterated via Greek and Latin to Jesus, means "God's salvation." The purpose for John the Baptist's ministry as well as for the promised restoration of the truth in the end times is that the true Savior, Yeshua, "God's salvation," will be revealed to all mankind, and primarily to Israel . "For I am not ashamed of the Good News of Messiah, for it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes; for the Jew first , and also for the Greek." (Rom 1:16) In order to do this we need to remove the stones of human traditions that have obscured God's salvation Yeshua.

In 2000 we wrote our first Haggadah (Order of the Pesach Meal). One evening past midnight when Lars had just finished the final editing and was ready to go to bed, he heard a voice behind him saying: "Thank you for helping me restore my true identity!" It touched him deeply.

Time Magazine recently published a very interesting article called "Future Revolutions 10 Ideas That Are Changing The World." Number ten on this list of ideas that is revolutionizing the world today is called "Re-Judaizing Jesus." According to Time Magazine, seminary professors, theologians and pastors today agree that, " if you get the [Jewish] context wrong, you will certainly get Jesus wrong ."

One theologian states in the Time Magazine article that he understands the idea is revolutionary, but he "finds this particular genie so logically powerful that he has no wish to rebottle it. Once in, he says, 'you're in deep. You're hooked. Cause you can't ever read it [the Bible] the same way again.'"

There is an amazing power in the truth. Even if it has been buried for 1800 years, it still has the power to resurface. Time Magazine basically confirms the prophecy that Yeshua spoke two thousand years ago, "Elijah indeed comes first, and will restore all things." (Mt 17:11) The coming of the Messiah is at the door and we must continue to pray for this restoration of the faith.

When we see the Savior revealed in the prophetic Scriptures in the Tenach (OT) our hearts begin to burn inside of us, just like we read about the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

"He said to them, 'Foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken ! Didn't the Messiah have to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?' Beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he explained to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself . …They said one to another, ' Weren't our hearts burning within us, while he spoke to us along the way, and while he opened the Scriptures to us?'" (Lk 24:25-27,32)

How Did Yeshua Die?

Let's now look at the final question in our series, namely how Yeshua died for the sins of the world. We know of course that Yeshua died by being crucified. But the question is: how was he crucified?

Traditionally Christians have pictured Yeshua dying on a two beamed cross and this cross has become the number one symbol of the Christian faith. But is this really what the Scriptures teach about the instrument that Jesus died on? Let us look at Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, which is probably the most respected dictionary of its kind in English, what they say about the word cross.

CROSS, CRUCIFY stauros NT:4716 denotes, primarily, "an upright pale or stake." On such malefactors were nailed for execution. Both the noun and the verb stauroo, "to fasten to a stake or pale," are originally to be distinguished from the ecclesiastical form of a two beamed "cross." The shape of the latter had its origin in ancient Chaldea, and was used as the symbol of the god Tammuz (being in the shape of the mystic Tau , the initial of his name ) in that country and in adjacent lands, including Egypt . By the middle of the 3 rd cent. A.D. the churches had either departed from, or had travestied, certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols. Hence the Tau or T, in its most frequent form, with the cross-piece lowered, was adopted to stand for the "cross" of Christ. 1

The traditional Christian cross is in other words not a Christian symbol from the beginning. It was borrowed from paganism. The Greek word “stauros” denotes primarily, but not exclusively, "the upright pale or stake" upon which the criminals were hanged. It can also refer to just the crossbeam, in Latin called the “patibulum”, that the arms or hands were nailed to and which the criminals usually were forced to carry to the execution. And, it can also refer to the entire execution devise consisting of both the crossbeam and the upright pale.

Here is, however, a very important thing to note. The device that the crossbeam, the patibulum, was fastened to, did not have to be a dead pale or stake. It was in fact very common for criminals in the Roman Empire to be crucified by being hanged in regular trees. The Church Father Tertullian wrote in his book Apology about the Roman proconsul of Africa who punished the priests of Saturn because they had sacrificed children to Saturn in their temple. He wrote that the Proconsul "exposed to public gaze the priests suspended on the sacred trees overshadowing their temple--so many crosses on which the punishment which justice craved overtook their crimes." 2 Note that he called the living trees where the priests were hanged "crosses."

We know from John 19:41 that Yeshua was crucified in a garden, which means that there were trees available in which he could be hanged. We also know that his crucifixion was very rushed. Pilate tried to let him go free until the very last minute and the Passover celebration was quickly approaching. When the final sentence to death came there was not much time to dig foundations for three heavy crosses. A suitable tree was the most convenient choice.

The Apostles Spoke Repeatedly About the Cross as a Tree

There are many indications, both from the Scriptures as well as early Christian writings and traditions, that Yeshua was crucified in a regular tree. First of all, we see in several places in the Apostolic Writings (NT) that the cross is also called a tree.

"The God of our fathers raised up Yeshua, whom you killed, hanging him on a tree ." (Acts 5:30)

"We are witnesses of everything he did both in the countryside of Judea, and in Jerusalem ; whom they also killed, hanging him on a tree ." (Acts 10:39)

"When they had fulfilled all things that were written about him, they took him down from the tree , and laid him in a tomb." (Acts 13:29)

"who his own self bore our sins in his body on the tree , that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness." (1 Pet 2:24)

We also have the clear prophecy from the Torah quoted by Paul in Galatians 3:13, "Messiah redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.'" This prophecy in the Book of Deuteronomy says nothing about a cross. It talks about a tree and uses the basic normal word for a living tree just as in Gen 1:11, "Then God said, 'Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.' And it was so." (NIV)

The Greek word used in all the quoted verses above for "tree" is xulon, which is used in the Septuagint Bible to translate eets , the most common word in Hebrew for a living tree. Xulon is also used about the tree of life in Rev 2:7; 22:2,14. This is what the famous Kittel Theological Dictionary writes,

"Early Christian art indicates a close relationship between the tree of life and the cross. …In the tomb paintings of the 2nd century it is thus depicted for the first time as the symbol of victory over death. It then recurs again and again. The idea that the living trunk of the cross bears twigs and leaves is a common motif in Christian antiquity." 3

Just as Vine's Greek Dictionary says, the traditional Christian cross did not become a Christian symbol until in the middle of the 3 rd century. It was primarily after Constantine that the symbol of the cross became popular among Christians. Before Constantine the cross of Yeshua figured frequently in Christian art as a living tree with branches and fruit. Christ Church , located just inside the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem , is the oldest Protestant church in the Middle East . It was originally founded to serve as an outreach to the Jewish people. There is no cross in the building. On the communion table, the cross is substituted with a picture of the tree of life.

Melito of Sardis wrote, "Just as from a tree came sin, so also from a tree came salvation" 4 and Ignatius of Antioch wrote about believers as "branches of the cross" bearing fruit. 5 Both Melito and Ignatius pictured the cross as a regular living tree.

Yeshua and the Robbers Hung on the Same Cross

We finally want to look at the passage in John 19:31-33, which proves beyond any shadow of doubt that Yeshua must have been crucified in a regular tree. Verse 31 is translated in the NIV Bible,

"Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down."

This is a very "logical" translation. But there is just one problem. The Greek text does not say "crosses" in this verse but "cross" in singular. It literally says, " the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the Sabbath." This means that the three bodies were hanging on one cross! This is basically only possible if the cross was a regular tree. A traditional Christian two beamed cross is definitely excluded! Possibly two criminals could be hanged "back to back" on the same pole, but not three.

But if the cross was a regular tree it explains what is written in the two following verses.

"Therefore the soldiers came, and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who was crucified with him; but when they came to Yeshua, and saw that he was already dead, they didn't break his legs."

We know from all the gospels that Yeshua was crucified in the middle with one robber one on his left side and one on his right side. But notice what it says here. Even though Yeshua was crucified in the middle, the soldiers came to him last. This seems a little strange according to the traditional picture of the crucifixion with three Roman crosses next to each other, but if they were all crucified in the same tree it makes perfect sense.

The cross that Yeshua carried to Golgotha was the patibulum, the crossbeam. The entire devise of both the crossbeam and a suitable pale of timber would weighed at least 200 pounds. This was impossible for any victim that had been flogged to carry. The crossbeam was heavy enough.

When Yeshua came to Golgotha on the Mount of Olives , they hung him on the crossbeam in one of the trees there by the altar where the sin offerings were burnt to ashes. There he died for the sins of the world on the evening of the Jewish Passover right when the Passover lambs were slaughtered in the Temple . He died for our sins exactly according to the Scriptures.

"For indeed Messiah, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place. Therefore let us keep the feast." (1 Cor 5:7-8)

"He is 'the stone which was regarded as worthless by you, the builders, which has become the head of the corner.' There is salvation in none other, for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, by which we must be saved!" (Acts 4:11-12)

 

"Prepare the Way for the LORD"

 

---

1 Vine's Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words, Copyright © 1985, Thomas Nelson Publishers.
2 Tertullian, Apology , Ch 9:2, Translated by Rev. S. Thelwall
3 Kittel, Theological Dictionary , Vol V, pp. 40,41
4 Melito of Sardis , New Fragment , III.4
5 Ignatius, Trallians 11