Stauros

Stauros () is the Greek word, literally meaning "upright stake" and usually translated as cross, which in the New Testament names the device on which Jesus was executed.

The word stauros comes from the verb ἵστημι (histēmi: "straighten up", "stand"), which in turn comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *stā-,*stha,stao, "stem", "shoot" (the same root from which come the German Stern, or Stamm, the English "stand", the Spanish word estaca, the Portuguese word estaca, the Polish stać, the Italian stare, of similar meanings).

In Homeric and classical Greek, until the early 4th century BC, stauros meant an upright stake, pole, or piece of paling, "on which anything might be hung, or which might be used in impaling [fencing in] a piece of ground."

In the literature of that time, it never means two pieces of timber placed across one another at any angle, but always one piece alone.

In Koine Greek, the form of Greek used between about 300 BC and AD 300, the word σταυρός was used to denote a structure on which Romans executed criminals. In the writings of the Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC), Plutarch and Lucian – non-Christian writers, of whom only Lucian makes clear the shape of the device – the word stauros is generally translated as "cross". This form of capital punishment involved binding the victim with outstretched arms to a crossbeam, or nailing him firmly to it through the wrists; the crossbeam was then raised against an upright shaft and made fast to it about 3 metres from the ground, and the feet were tightly bound or nailed to the upright shaft. Speaking specifically about the σταυρός of Jesus, early Christian writers unanimously suppose it to have had a crossbeam. Thus Justin Martyr said it was prefigured in the Jewish paschal lamb: "That lamb which was commanded to be wholly roasted was a symbol of the suffering of the cross (σταυρός) which Christ would undergo. For the lamb, which is roasted, is roasted and dressed up in the form of the cross (σταυρός). For one spit is transfixed right through from the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the legs of the lamb."

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