Bismika Alllahuma

In Mark 15: 32, we are told that Jesus was put on a “cross” to be crucified:

Let Christ the King of Israel descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe. And they that were crucified with him reviled him.

The word for “cross” here in Greek is “stauros”, which James Strong defined as:

(4716) from the base of 2476; a stake or post (as set upright), i.e. (specifically) a pole or cross (as an instrument of capital punishment); figuratively, exposure to death, i.e. self-denial; by implication, the atonement of Christ: — cross.¹

Yet in I Peter 2:24, we are told that Jesus was crucified on the “tree”:

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

The word for “tree” in Greek is “xulon”, and is defined by Strong as:

(3586)from another form of the base of 3582; timber (as fuel or material); by implication a stick, club or tree or other wooden article or substance: –staff, stocks, tree, wood.²

The error here is obvious. The Greek word stauros means definitively a “cross”. There is no double meaning employed to the word. Whereas the word xulon can be translated interchangeably as “wood”, “staff”, “tree”, etc. but in the case of I Peter 2:24, it is translated as “tree”. Now we need to ask why would the word xulon was used in the first place when there is a more definitive word for it, stauros, if the verse really intends to mean the “cross”?

It is therefore obvious that the word xulon is indeed used for “tree” in I Peter 2:24, and therefore there is a contradiction with Mark 15: 32.

1. James Strong, The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Thomas Nelson, 1996) [back]
2. James Strong, Op. Cit. [back]