Update July 2 8:04 a.m. Gunnar Samuelsson stresses that his research focuses specifically on the narratives of Jesus's execution in the four Gospels, not on the entire New Testament.
Few claims have been more surprising than one advanced by an obscure Swedish scholar this spring. The Gospels do not say Jesus was crucified, Gunnar Samuelsson says.
In fact, he argues, in the original Greek, the ancient texts reveal only that Jesus carried "some kind of torture or execution device" to a hill where "he was suspended" and died, says Samuelsson. Samuelsson is an evangelical pastor as well as a New Testament scholar.
"When we say crucifixion, we think about Mel Gibson's 'Passion.' We think about a church, nails, the crown of thorns," he says, referring to Gibson's 2004 film, "The Passion of the Christ."
"We are loaded with pictures of this well-defined punishment called crucifixion - and that is the problem," he says.
Samuelsson bases his claim on studying 900 years' worth of ancient texts in the original languages - Hebrew, Latin and Greek, which is the language of the New Testament.
He spent three years reading for 12 hours a day, he says, and he noticed that the critical word normally translated as "crucify" doesn't necessarily mean that.
"He was handed over to be 'stauroun,'" Samuelsson says of Jesus, lapsing into Biblical Greek to make his point.
At the time the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were writing their Gospels, that word simply meant "suspended," the theologian argues.
source: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/01/bible-doesnt-say-jesus-was-crucified-scholar-claims/?hpt=Sbin
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