If the arms were stretched up , the sign is above his hands, and ALSO above his HEAD. If the arms are side by side stretched up, the sign can also be above the head.
Jesus was impaled with NAILS. Because NAILS are used not only in his hands but also in his feet. The people who impaled Jesus can use more than one nail in his hands even his hands are stretched upward.
Numbers 21:8-9 states
"8 Then Jehovah said to Moses: “Make for yourself a fiery snake and place it upon a signal POLE. And it must occur that when anyone has been bitten, he then has to look at it and so must keep alive.” 9 Moses at once made a serpent of copper and placed it upon the signal POLE; and it did occur that if a serpent had bitten a man and he gazed at the copper serpent, he then kept alive."
Pole in Latin palus stake according to m-w.com. a long slender usually cylindrical object.
Please notice the parallel done in John 3:13-15.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of man must be lifted up, that everyone believing in him may have everlasting life
Like the copper serpent that Moses placed on a pole in the wilderness, the Son of God was impaled or fastened on a stake, thus appearing to many as an evildoer and a sinner, like a snake, being in the position of one cursed
The serpent that Moses placed was not in a cross, not with two beams but just a single pole, so is Christ was impaled on a stake.
Just some comments about the “cross”. Thanks.
The Greek word “Stauros” according to the Strongs Dictionary is
a stake or post (as set upright), that is, (specifically) a pole or cross (as an instrument of capital punishment);
Notice stauros means either an 1. upright stake/pole/post or 2. cross.
According to the Imperial Bible Dictionary, stauros is “properly signified a stake, an upright pole, or piece of paling, on which anything might be hung, or which might be used in impaling a piece of ground”.
It also defines stauros as “cross” which was a MODIFICATION and introduced as the dominion and usages of Rome extended themselves into Greek-speaking countries.
So stauros which was ORIGINALLY an upright pole has a NEW ADDITIONAL MEANING which is the word cross.
The question now is, Is the STAUROS in which Jesus died the ORIGINAL meaning (upright pole) OR the new ADDED meaning which is CROSS?
Which meaning is supported by the Bible?
The STAUROS that Jesus CARRIED, and the STAUROS in WHICH Jesus was Impaled was either translated CONSISTENTLY as
A. CROSS
WHAT Jesus Carried:
Luke 23:26 - KJ
And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus.
WHERE JESUS was IMPALED
John 19:19 KJ
And Pilate wrote a title, and put it on the cross.
B. STAKE
WHAT Jesus Carried:
Luke 23:26 NWT
26 Now as they led him away, they laid hold of Simon, a certain native of Cy•re´ne, coming from the country, and they placed the torture stake upon him to bear it behind Jesus.
WHERE JESUS was IMPALED
John 19:19 NWT
Pilate wrote a title also and put it on the torture stake.
A BIG STAUROS is needed so that TWO persons (Jesus and Simon) have to carry it. Notice Simon carried the stauros behind Jesus. What Jesus carried and where he was impaled is the same, the stauros. So it cannot just be the crossbeam that Jesus carried.
One of the these prophecies which was fulfilled in Jesus in order for us to be released from the curse of the Law, was in :
Gal 3:13
13 Christ by purchase released us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse instead of us, because it is written: “Accursed is every man hanged upon a stake/tree.” Which is taken from Deut 21:23. (his dead body should not stay all night on the stake/tree; but you should by all means bury him on that day, because something accursed of God is the one hung up)
The Greek word used there is XULON/XYLON (timber, tree, wood) which is a similar word as the STAUROS.
Even if the “cross” was used in Jesus’ time, I believe that in order for the prophecy/law to be fulfilled in Deut 21:23, Jesus MUST have died on the original meaning of the stauros which stake and not the modified meaning, which is the cross.
Acts 5:30 states “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.”
The book The Non-Christian Cross, by J. D. Parsons (London, 1896), says: “There is not a single sentence in any of the numerous writings forming the New Testament, which, in the original Greek, bears even indirect evidence to the effect that the stauros used in the case of Jesus was other than an ordinary stauros; much less to the effect that it consisted, not of one piece of timber, but of two pieces nailed together in the form of a cross. . . . It is not a little misleading upon the part of our teachers to translate the word stauros as ‘cross’ when rendering the Greek documents of the Church into our native tongue, and to support that action by putting ‘cross’ in our lexicons as the meaning of stauros without carefully explaining that that was at any rate not the primary meaning of the word in the days of the Apostles, did not become its primary signification till long afterwards, and became so then, if at all, only because, despite the absence of corroborative evidence, it was for some reason or other assumed that the particular stauros upon which Jesus was executed had that particular shape.”—Pp. 23, 24; see also The Companion Bible (London, 1885), Appendix No. 162.
Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words provides telling insight into the "cross." It declares:
"stauros 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 third century A.D. 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 church 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" ("cross," page 138).
Bullinger points out that the symbol of crosses "were used as symbols of the Babylonian sun-god," and a cross with four equal arms, vertical and horizontal, was "especially venerated as the ‘Solar Wheel.’" He goes on:
"The Catacombs in Rome bear the same testimony: ‘Christ’ is never represented there as ‘hanging on a cross,’ and the cross itself is only portrayed in a veiled and hesitating manner. In the Egyptian churches the cross was a PAGAN SYMBOL OF LIFE, borrowed by the “Christians”, and interpreted in the pagan manner. In his Letters from Rome Dean Burgon says: ‘I question whether a cross occurs on any Christian monument of the first four centuries.’
Regarding the “nails” reasoning, anti-JWs say that it has to be a cross because the Bible says “Nails”. Their problem is that Jesus can be impaled on the stake and NAILS can be used also to impale him, not only thru the hands but also in the feet.
Try to put your two hands above your head, even try side by side. Notice that there's a space above your head in which a sign can be put. The people who impaled Jesus didn't care that he has a crown of thorns and putting his hands above his head which will cause more pain to Jesus is something that they don't care about also.
In LXX we find xy´lon in Ezr 6:11 (1 Esdras 6:31), and there it is spoken of as a beam on which the violator of law was to be hanged, the same as in Ac 5:30; 10:39.
In the writings of Livy, a Roman historian of the first century B.C.E., crux means a mere stake. “Cross” is only a later meaning of crux
The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible states, with reference to stau•ros´: “Literally an upright stake, pale, or pole . . . As an instrument of execution, the cross was a stake sunk vertically in the ground. Often, but by no means always, a horizontal piece was attached to the vertical portion.” Another reference work says: “The Greek word for cross, stau•ros´, properly signified a stake, an upright pole, or piece of paling, on which anything might be hung, or which might be used in impaling [fencing in] a piece of ground. . . . Even amongst the Romans the crux (from which our cross is derived) appears to have been originally an upright pole, and this always remained the more prominent part.”—The Imperial Bible Dictionary.
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1979) states under the heading “Cross”: “Originally Gk. staurós designated a pointed, vertical wooden stake firmly fixed in the ground.
The Companion Bible, published by the Oxford University Press. On page 186 in the “Appendixes” it says: “Homer uses the word stauros of an ordinary pole or stake, or a single piece of timber. And this is the meaning and usage of the word throughout the Greek classics. It never means two pieces of timber placed across one another at any angle, but always of one piece alone.