JW Insider

You beat me to it. I had to be out for most of today, but hoped to come back to @JOHN BUTLER to remind him that this is just my opinion based on the evidence. I lean one way because the evidence I've seen is slightly more convincing to me in that direction. But this does not mean that someone else (GB?) can't see the same evidence, and the majority of them lean the other way, per our own traditional stance on it since Rutherford's time.
To John, I would say that this Staurogram, and graffiti evidence too, cannot take us back much before 200 CE even if the evidence is exactly as old as some scholars still claim. As you point out from the words of Paul, even if evidence showed that this was as early as 50 CE, it still wouldn't be "proof." It could very well have been one of the ways in which "lawlessness" was already at work. After all, there is no doubt that the veneration of a cross symbol crosses the line into idolatry. And through syncretism with older traditions, the cross would have been a much more recognizable symbol with a richer history for veneration than a plain "I" symbol. And warnings about idolatry run from Paul's letters right up through (and througout) Revelation. 
You hit upon most (perhaps all) of the weaknesses of the Staurogram evidence, and these might have already been taken into consideration by those who have researched the current position as outlined in the WT publications.
The actual earliest evidence appears to be the argumentation in the Letter of Barnabas which scholars have not tried to date much later than 120 or 130. And there is no solid evidence to claim it was later than 75 or 80 either. "Barnabas" is big on gematria, of course, and this could even be one of the areas that letters to Titus and Timothy reference when they speak of things like being "obsessed with arguments and debates about words." (1 Tim 6:4). There's even a slim chance that it was this very book (and books like it) that were being challenged here and in Titus 3:9, etc.
Even so, it would not change the fact that a T shaped stauros is built into the argument as an aside, along with this early discussion of how T and then IH would create the number 318  (T=the stauros and the IH symbol which was already in use as a reference to IHSOUS -Jesus.)  Many years later in Christian copy of Genesis, the numer 318 comes up as the number of Abram's slaves:
(Genesis 14:14) 14 Thus Aʹbram heard that his relative had been taken captive. With that he mobilized his trained men, 318 servants born in his household, and went in pursuit up to Dan. The much later Genesis manuscript treats the number 318 here as a "nomina sacra" just as Barnabas had discussed upwards of 300 years earlier. BTW, I also wanted to mention that Hurtado deals with the fact that just because a scholar gave these terms the name "nomina sacra" it doesn't mean that they were all considered to be the equivalent of a Divine Name. Obviously, this is true of Stauros, which is nothing like a "divine name," but we also know that this was a development over many years, and there is no evidence that "Spirit" (pneuma) was added to the list until 400 or so. Also, there were many other names that only reminded them of Jesus or God, such as "Joshua the son of Nun" or even Moses, Abraham and David. So this wasn't intended as a complete discussion of "nomina sacra" by any means.
Although there are some weaknesses and flexibility as to the exact dates scholars try to pin on things, it doesn't (for me) change the balance of the evidence favoring one meaning over the other. And as we've already covered, there is no reason for anyone to claim proof or insist on any particular shape based on any of the evidence so far.

I'm trying to figure out the reason for the word "however" as if these points indicate some potentially different conclusions.
Going to a part of his blog where some of these statements are made https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/the-staurogram-correcting-errors/ I see that his first point is simple: Contrary to the idea 100 years ago when Tau-Rho was considered just another Christogram like Chi-Rho, we now have textual evidence that Tau-Rho is much older:
We have instances of the Christian use of the tau-rho considerably earlier than any instances of the chi-rho. These earliest uses of the tau-rho are in Christian manuscripts palaeographically dated ca. 200-250 CE. In fact, as you quoted: tau-rho served a very different purpose from chi-rho. They are not freestanding symbols that one would use to represent a symbol for Christ, but were clearly a way to depict and represent the word for CROSS and CRUCIFY within some of the earliest texts of the Christian Greek Scriptures. This is what is significant and different about the staurogram. You quoted point #3 that stated this again more directly.
It's possible you are concerned here, as you show yourself to be later, that a superimposed tau-rho was adapted from pre-Christian usage. Of course, the dual-beamed cross itself (as an instrument of torture/execution) is well-known from pre-Christian usage. Even the "nomina sacra" were adapted from the pre-Christian usage, where Jewish copyists sometimes wrote Theos in Greek with only the beginning Theta and the closing Sigma, skipping the vowels -- or perhaps even the Yod-Yod, to abbreviate a Hebrew Tetragrammaton.This is similar to the practice some Jewish writers still follow in English when they write G-d for God. That practice predated the practice in Christian texts of doing the same for Theos, and something similar for Lord, and Jesus and Christ. And the practice of using abbreviations was most well-known on coinage where space is at a premium. I'm not sure if this bit of knowledge means something to you, one way or another. You call it "disturbing" later. Why?
I'd like to know, too. Those who actually study the age of manuscripts based on their materials and style of lettering and clues from the contents (including vocabulary and abbreviations) will put most of these examples in the 200 to 250 CE range. Some of the arguments that would place at least one of them to a later century are often the same arguments that could place them even earlier. They are often just arguments for the lack of accuracy of paleographic methods.
But the exact date of the manuscripts is not so important to the overall evidence. The point is that the shape of the stauros associated with Jesus' execution is depicted and described very few times that we know of in the first 4 centuries. Basically, it's the Letter of Barnabas, Clement of Alexandria, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Eusebius, and these staurograms in texts that might date between 175 to 300 CE. In every case where the shape is discussed, the consensus is a Tau-shaped or t-shaped stauros for the execution of Jesus Christ. And this is not ALL the evidence, of course. The way that words are translated into other languages during the earliest translations of the CGS/NT can also provide good information. Archaeology can tell us a few things, including a probable cross found at Pompeii, and the graffiti depicted earlier. Even the lack of discussion or controversy about the shape can be revealing. And contemporary historical references about Roman execution practices can have a bearing, too.
Remember, too, that if it were somehow important to note that this date is closer to the fourth century than the first century, then what does this say about the earliest known discussions of a "I" shaped, or pole-shaped stauros with reference to Jesus' execution? For all I can tell, those discussions might first be known only from many centuries later than the fourth century. Therefore, whatever importance we give to the "lateness" of these depictions of a two-beamed cross only further hurts the argument for a one-beamed cross.
In addition, if the shape of the stauros were a double-beamed cross shape, then it seems very reasonable that idolatry-oriented associates of Christians would adapt it to the existing ankh symbol for life, and the existing tau-rho symbol. Related somewhat to the ankh symbol ("life" etc.) Hurtado, in the book I quoted, also believes that IH, the first two letters of Jesus in Greek formed an adaption of the Hebrew word for life which also could appear quite similar to IH, read in the opposite direction. And while Hurtado is not a promoter of gematria, he sees the possibility that it may have been intentional in some NT texts. He even mentions that Matthew's attempt to split the genealogical groups before and after David to conform to a mnemonic of 14 generations each, could very well be because "David" in Hebrew is 14.
But we  do know for sure that "Barnabas" was big on gematria, and he would have had a much easier time if the stauros could have been considered in the shape of an upright pole that would therefore represent "10". Too bad for him that he was stuck trying to fit the stauros in somewhere --anywhere!-- as a "300" instead of a "10." All he had available was an obscure reference to the number of Abram's slaves in Genesis, and he could do very little with it except make a note of it. There would have been dozens of interesting options available if the stauros were some other shape.
Beyond those points I agree with all your later points. Pushing for a specific answer one way or another is not useful as we still have no way of knowing for sure. There were already simple meanings of stauros and xylon which never got expanded upon much in the Bible text itself, and speculating in any way that insists on a specific conclusion will end up in nothing useful.
I have to admit that there is a certain iconoclastic satisfaction that I probably held inside for many years when I thought about how so many people had it wrong, and I just knew we had it right based on unquestioning acceptance of our own publications. Perhaps it would be somewhat satisfying to get that feeling back again, but it's probably for the wrong reasons. There's just a hint of pride and presumptuousness and judgmentalism, bordering on schadenfreude, in that idea that we are right about something and 99% of Christendom has been wrong about one of their major symbols. Besides, we would still know better than to make a big deal about the shape or the symbol even if we did accept that Jesus was executed on a stauros of the two-beamed variety.

I was referring to the "video" presentation that Kurt provided. Look at the point made at the 1 minute and 20 second mark in the video:  "Four main arguments used to prove Jesus died on a Cross" 1. Jehovah's Witnesses Believed in the Cross.

I thought a little about this stake or cross story today. And I came to the conclusion that Jesus has been put to death on a simple stake.
Here is my reasoning:
It seems that the Romans used to leave in the ground the stakes on which they used to hang the convicts. Indeed, why redo a hole each time? Not to mention the stony ground of Palestine and the fact that a stake planted and replanted many times would end up having trouble standing up after a while. So the theory that the stake was fixed is very plausible.
I read that generally the convict carried with him, not the entire cross, or the stake according to our beliefs, but only the crossbar, which was already weighing very heavy. Then the prisoner was nailed to this crossbar and hoisted on the stake. The crossbar was placed into a notch made on the pole. So we have, stake already in place plus crossbar = cross.
Now, if you are an inhabitant of the region and you are talking about the coming execution and you have before you the instrument where the convict will be hang, a simple piece of wood in the ground, would you speak of it as a cross or as a stake? If one shows the stake to a stranger who knows nothing about how prisoners are put to death and call it a cross, the other man would have difficulties to understand what he is talking about since he does not see any cross but a stake and can not imagine that the convict will come with the crossbar.
In my opinion, but I do not have the infused knowledge, since the crossbar was brought with the prisoner, I think it's likely that people were talking about hanging on a stake at the time, the crossbar being a simple support that was not part of the pole itself. The instrument of punishment was therefore the stake. Once the prisoner hoisted up, his hands tied to the crossbar, we had before our eyes a cross. But it is quite possible that they continued to talk about it as a stake, since that's how it was named the rest of the time.
That could reconcile the Jehovah's Witnesses with the rest of Christendom: for the first, Jesus died on a stake, since that's the name given to it and it was the instrument that was under the eyes of the inhabitants of Jerusalem night and day, for the others he died on a cross since Jesus came with the crossbar and once hoisted, we had before our eyes a cross.

At a circuit assembly the Bethel brother stated that a lot of elders had to learn to yield to each other as many were  irritating each other and even leaving congs to attend others....they had to learn to be wronged ..and act with graciousness......for the sake of peace I will yield.   ....even tho I’m the lowly older sister ..
 

Well tho I understand your reasoning I don’t agree with it...it would be better for you to stay and be discreet in aiding where you feel the need....just as Jesus said  there would always be poor amongst us...I would also like to apologise because I do see active witnesses constantly posting laughs after many people’s comments....that’s just immature and rude...we dont laugh at  people on the doors...so we shouldn’t here...
but you are going down a wrong track and I know you don’t beleive that...it’s sad..and so unnecessary....but I guess others have tried to help you see this so I’ll leave of now...
just imagine if you had been around when there were temple prostitutes....yet Jehovah still used that system and allowed that for a Time being ....

That is an EXTREMELY good example .... that fact rock solid hard evidence, not agenda based fluffery and fuzzy thinking!
I am as critical of all the crap going on as anybody here is ... and probably know as much or more than most well educated people about such things .... but I have learned through interactions with MANY kinds of "organizations", not to expect too much from people in groups.
The example I most often recall to mind is this:
If you understand the Mission of the United States Marines, and their necessity in the real world to defend what is honorable, true and righteous ( ... in a very limited absolute sense ...), then for some, that mission was what you were born to do .... be a "Sheepdog", with fangs and claws ... to be the "point of the spear", to protect your fellow sheep ... who are many times scared of you.
It entails willingness to die, or live the rest of your life mangled and broken.  That's what the job IS.
But as the "Peter Principle", a VERY famous business principle states (paraphrased) "Everyone rises in rank to their own level of incompetency".
You could be a very good Marine Sargent, and rise to be an incompetent Marine Lieutenant, etc., ad infinitum. 
A committee is a peculiar life form with at least six legs, and no brain.
This is ESPECIALLY true in fuzzy subjects such as Theology, where everyone is jousting for favor and position with God, and gets used to great piles of free money .... considering it their due.
The Governing Body is NOT the exception, and they have 16 legs.
This is ESPECIALLY true with anyone claiming to speak for God, whether it is kissing the Pope's ring, or admiring the Governing Body's Rolex watches and gold pinkie rings.
When you begin to live like Kings, that vow of poverty becomes irrelevant.
That  bears repeating, over and over ... as there is a VERY important core principle embedded in that innocuous  rock solid and true observation.
I personally fully understand that, and though I sigh and cry over all the unnecessary burdens and smelly crap we have to carry ... that I personally have been expected to carry over the years ... and silly irrelevant drivel we are expected to swallow, hook-line-and-sinker ... I still want to be a "Marine" .... just not an Officer.
The biggest problem we have ... is HAVING to recruit from deeply flawed but presumably well intentioned humans.
.... sigh.
... so does the United States Marines ... and THEY have rifles.

You beat me to it. I had to be out for most of today, but hoped to come back to @JOHN BUTLER to remind him that this is just my opinion based on the evidence. I lean one way because the evidence I've seen is slightly more convincing to me in that direction. But this does not mean that someone else (GB?) can't see the same evidence, and the majority of them lean the other way, per our own traditional stance on it since Rutherford's time.
To John, I would say that this Staurogram, and graffiti evidence too, cannot take us back much before 200 CE even if the evidence is exactly as old as some scholars still claim. As you point out from the words of Paul, even if evidence showed that this was as early as 50 CE, it still wouldn't be "proof." It could very well have been one of the ways in which "lawlessness" was already at work. After all, there is no doubt that the veneration of a cross symbol crosses the line into idolatry. And through syncretism with older traditions, the cross would have been a much more recognizable symbol with a richer history for veneration than a plain "I" symbol. And warnings about idolatry run from Paul's letters right up through (and througout) Revelation. 
You hit upon most (perhaps all) of the weaknesses of the Staurogram evidence, and these might have already been taken into consideration by those who have researched the current position as outlined in the WT publications.
The actual earliest evidence appears to be the argumentation in the Letter of Barnabas which scholars have not tried to date much later than 120 or 130. And there is no solid evidence to claim it was later than 75 or 80 either. "Barnabas" is big on gematria, of course, and this could even be one of the areas that letters to Titus and Timothy reference when they speak of things like being "obsessed with arguments and debates about words." (1 Tim 6:4). There's even a slim chance that it was this very book (and books like it) that were being challenged here and in Titus 3:9, etc.
Even so, it would not change the fact that a T shaped stauros is built into the argument as an aside, along with this early discussion of how T and then IH would create the number 318  (T=the stauros and the IH symbol which was already in use as a reference to IHSOUS -Jesus.)  Many years later in Christian copy of Genesis, the numer 318 comes up as the number of Abram's slaves:
(Genesis 14:14) 14 Thus Aʹbram heard that his relative had been taken captive. With that he mobilized his trained men, 318 servants born in his household, and went in pursuit up to Dan. The much later Genesis manuscript treats the number 318 here as a "nomina sacra" just as Barnabas had discussed upwards of 300 years earlier. BTW, I also wanted to mention that Hurtado deals with the fact that just because a scholar gave these terms the name "nomina sacra" it doesn't mean that they were all considered to be the equivalent of a Divine Name. Obviously, this is true of Stauros, which is nothing like a "divine name," but we also know that this was a development over many years, and there is no evidence that "Spirit" (pneuma) was added to the list until 400 or so. Also, there were many other names that only reminded them of Jesus or God, such as "Joshua the son of Nun" or even Moses, Abraham and David. So this wasn't intended as a complete discussion of "nomina sacra" by any means.
Although there are some weaknesses and flexibility as to the exact dates scholars try to pin on things, it doesn't (for me) change the balance of the evidence favoring one meaning over the other. And as we've already covered, there is no reason for anyone to claim proof or insist on any particular shape based on any of the evidence so far.

It was well-known that he would be threatened with dismissal if he grew a beard, even though his was very neatly trimmed and short. It had happened to others. Why in the world anyone would want to test this was a mystery to me. He didn't even claim it was a skin thing which might have got him a reprieve. He was not disfellowshipped, but he was dismissed from Bethel and remained an elder after shaving. There was no written rule about beards that I ever knew of. Rutherford was adamantly against them, and I think it was just a long tradition, and it fit in with the idea of trying to present ourselves at all times without giving anyone a cause for stumbling.
No, it was forbidden because housekeepers were on the lookout for Bible study material that was not approved and several brothers got in trouble for owning it in their rooms. The crackdown on Bible study in groups was done because someone (perhaps more than one person) thought there was a direct connection between this and the rumors of apostasy. It turned out that there were dozens of such Bible study groups uncovered that had been going on since the early 1970's if not before. I attended two per week, about two hours each, in the room of a member of the Writing Department, and I knew others who had attended others also often in the room of members of the Writing Department, former Gilead Students etc. The ones I attended were discussions of a chapter or two at a time of the Bible in context until the whole book was finished. After every paragraph a brother would ask questions to draw people out, and people would comment about what it seemed to mean in context.
One of these meetings, I think it was the one in the room of Mark Nevajans (who was not in Writing, and might not have even been a Bethel Elder), was turned in for allowing the discussion of alternative doctrines like "great crowd" "other sheep" "disagreement with 1914". I'm told that this sparked a kind of "witchhunt" where everyone had to "rat out" anyone else they knew who was participating in Bethel Bible studies. These studies turned into a big scandal which were actually forbidden. Then ownership of non-Witness commentaries was questioned, and the actual idea of a "commentary" was questioned -- which was the basic mistake made in the book "Commentary on the Letter of James" which made it considered to be "apostate." Bethelite access to the Bethel Library and Gilead Library was also restricted. Those libraries were full of commentaries of all kinds. Very soon, these libraries were both moved to another building away from Bethelite access, and away from buildings that were residences like 124 and 107 CH. They were now attached to the offices of Writing, Service, etc, and were much harder to get to.  Smaller libraries of only a few of the WTS books and a dictionary replaced them for the average Bethelite's use.

Wikipedia shows a simple staurogram on an oil lamp from Caesarea, now at a museum in Israel, that could have come from the 300's CE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staurogram#/media/File:Nahsholim-Tel-Dor-3187.jpg
This was one of the pieces of evidence that made me think that some Christians, especially those with Jewish family backgrounds, might have found staurogram designs to be preferable to the type of graven imagery apparently forbidden in the Mosaic Law.
There is also early imagery like this:
The graffiti is dated to the late second century, likely within 100 years of the book of Revelation. It shows a man looking up to a donkey on a cross and says in Greek: “Alexamenos worships god.”
It's polemic, of course, depicting Jesus as a donkey. The book that @indagator recommended by Frank Shaw, discussed elsewhere, helps explain why Jesus was depicted as a donkey. The word for donkey seems to be a bit like onomatopoeia, like calling a donkey a "hee-haw" or "Eeyore". In Coptic the word for "donkey/ass" was EIO and the divine name known to have been used by Jews and evidently Christians and even pagans for the Jewish God was IAO [Ya'o/Yaho], the equivalent of "Yah" or "Yaho" [cf. Jah, Jaho, Jahowa].
Jewish and perhaps even Christian writers changed the names of pagan gods slightly so that they would sound insulting. (Compare Beelzebul, "Lord of the High Place," to Beelzebub, "Lord of the Flies."). The similarity between a word for "donkey" and the Jewish God's divine name made it a prime candidate for the same type of derision. And the Jewish name for Jesus contained both the divine name "Yaho" and the connected word for "Savior" or "Salvation." (Yaho-shuah/Joshua/Jesus means "Jehovah [Yaho] is Salvation.")
It was not because of the legend that "Your Savior will come riding on the back of a donkey" is the reason for the cross on the back of so many breeds of donkeys:

In the first century, the Christian congregation was largely Jewish, and all the Christian Bible writers were identified as Jewish. So the longstanding tradition was to follow the practice of no images of any kind. So we might not have even expected a symbol of a fish to spread around in the first century. Some of the Christian-associated writers and books that appear to have come from the second century were also identified as Jewish. (Letter of Barnabas, Didache, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Thomas, Egerton Gospel, the Christian redaction of Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, etc.) This could include as many as half of the 100 or so writings that many scholars think originated in the second century. See especially column 2 of the list here: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/
The Jewishness of the early Christians is indicated by the extended time period of Jewish-centered writings. And, rather than attacking Judaizers, there is a pro-Jewish perspective seen in the last book of the Bible, which is quite possibly from the year 100 CE, and which would place it in the second century, too:
(Revelation 2:9) . . .and the blasphemy by those who call themselves Jews and really are not, but they are a synagogue of Satan. (Revelation 3:9)  Look! I will make those from the synagogue of Satan who say they are Jews yet are not, but are lying—look! I will make them come and bow before your feet and make them know that I have loved you. This is meant mostly as an explanation of why we have so few images of anything from the first two centuries of Christianity. And, any solution that might overcome the lack of images, we might therefore expect to come from writing, descriptions, word pictures, or even pictographs made from written characters. If the writers had consistently gone out of their way to give special attention to the letter T, for example, this might have been evidence of a T shaped Stauros.
First of all, the Letter of Barnabas, dated 80 CE to 120 CE actually does give special attention to the letter T. And, yes, the "Letter of Barnabas" ties the letter T directly to the Stauros.
You might remember that I went so far as to contact someone at the British Museum to suggest resources on this same topic. I was told that I must read the books they had from a scholar named Larry W Hurtado, Professor Emeritus at University of Edinburgh, who studied at the the Ancient History Documentary Research Centre, at Macquarie University. I have 4 of his books including, "The Earliest Christian Artifacts -- Manuscripts and Christian Origins" (2006).
This book shows that the first symbol for the Stauros actually was drawn from characters for writing, a pictogram made up of alphabetic characters. This is what we would expect from a culture that allowed no images, per se.
The topic is fascinating. First of all, there were certain words that were given special treatment in the earliest known texts of Christianity, especially the "New Testament" Bible texts themselves. The "Divine Names" (nomina sacra) were treated with a special type of abbreviation and a kind of halo over them that connected the first and last letters of the word. The primary words that got this treatment were: God, Jesus, Lord, and Christ. In the Egerton Gospel (70 - 120 CE) we see these already in use, plus a a few more. By the 300's words like Son, Savior, Spirit, and Stauros were already treated as "Divine Names" (nomina sacra).
The oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of Thomas, Acts of Peter, Acts of John, contain them, as do all of our major Bible texts, including fragments from the second century. Even "Old Testament" texts that were copied through Christian hands were copied with consistent examples of the "nomina sacra."  The nomina sacra for "Jesus" was already discussed in both the Letter of Barnabas and by Clement of Alexandria, both from the second century, with a chance that Barnabas was written in the first century. [Epistle of Barnabas (9.7-8) and Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 6.278-80)]. So we know that the practice goes back possibly as early as the earliest Christian writings. As mentioned earlier, Barnabas discusses it with reference to T (tau) being the symbol for the "cross" or stauros, for no other reason than its shape.
But there is much more on this. Stauros got the most special kind of treatment beyond that of any other "nomina sacra."  (To be continued in another post).

Screening

It is not recommended where I live either as an organised activity. Where I live many know each other and funerals are a big well attended affair. ain fact locally raised brothers will not call on someone who has been recently bereaved as it is seen to be highly distasteful and insensitive.
Meeting someone informally is different however, and striking up a one to one when visiting a cemetery would not be objectionable. I recently conducted a funeral for a brother whose very large family are mostly not witnesses. About 75 in attendance had no Bibles so the scriptural part of the talk I put on the screens in the kingdom hall. They were very appreciative, I could see everyone focussed on the scriptures and got excellent feedback after. One said they are not used to going home from a funeral feeling happier. They usually feel worse than when thay went in.
So there we are. The scriptures do their work. It is up to us to ensure the apples of gold are set attractively. Pro. 25:11.
 

You beat me to it. I had to be out for most of today, but hoped to come back to @JOHN BUTLER to remind him that this is just my opinion based on the evidence. I lean one way because the evidence I've seen is slightly more convincing to me in that direction. But this does not mean that someone else (GB?) can't see the same evidence, and the majority of them lean the other way, per our own traditional stance on it since Rutherford's time.
To John, I would say that this Staurogram, and graffiti evidence too, cannot take us back much before 200 CE even if the evidence is exactly as old as some scholars still claim. As you point out from the words of Paul, even if evidence showed that this was as early as 50 CE, it still wouldn't be "proof." It could very well have been one of the ways in which "lawlessness" was already at work. After all, there is no doubt that the veneration of a cross symbol crosses the line into idolatry. And through syncretism with older traditions, the cross would have been a much more recognizable symbol with a richer history for veneration than a plain "I" symbol. And warnings about idolatry run from Paul's letters right up through (and througout) Revelation. 
You hit upon most (perhaps all) of the weaknesses of the Staurogram evidence, and these might have already been taken into consideration by those who have researched the current position as outlined in the WT publications.
The actual earliest evidence appears to be the argumentation in the Letter of Barnabas which scholars have not tried to date much later than 120 or 130. And there is no solid evidence to claim it was later than 75 or 80 either. "Barnabas" is big on gematria, of course, and this could even be one of the areas that letters to Titus and Timothy reference when they speak of things like being "obsessed with arguments and debates about words." (1 Tim 6:4). There's even a slim chance that it was this very book (and books like it) that were being challenged here and in Titus 3:9, etc.
Even so, it would not change the fact that a T shaped stauros is built into the argument as an aside, along with this early discussion of how T and then IH would create the number 318  (T=the stauros and the IH symbol which was already in use as a reference to IHSOUS -Jesus.)  Many years later in Christian copy of Genesis, the numer 318 comes up as the number of Abram's slaves:
(Genesis 14:14) 14 Thus Aʹbram heard that his relative had been taken captive. With that he mobilized his trained men, 318 servants born in his household, and went in pursuit up to Dan. The much later Genesis manuscript treats the number 318 here as a "nomina sacra" just as Barnabas had discussed upwards of 300 years earlier. BTW, I also wanted to mention that Hurtado deals with the fact that just because a scholar gave these terms the name "nomina sacra" it doesn't mean that they were all considered to be the equivalent of a Divine Name. Obviously, this is true of Stauros, which is nothing like a "divine name," but we also know that this was a development over many years, and there is no evidence that "Spirit" (pneuma) was added to the list until 400 or so. Also, there were many other names that only reminded them of Jesus or God, such as "Joshua the son of Nun" or even Moses, Abraham and David. So this wasn't intended as a complete discussion of "nomina sacra" by any means.
Although there are some weaknesses and flexibility as to the exact dates scholars try to pin on things, it doesn't (for me) change the balance of the evidence favoring one meaning over the other. And as we've already covered, there is no reason for anyone to claim proof or insist on any particular shape based on any of the evidence so far.

Maybe there were shades of dictatorship, maybe someone was frightened of something. But the reason I share all of this is because we need to know that people will have the same problems now as they had for thousands of years.
Think about what you might have done if you lived in the reign of King Manasseh or had knowledge of David's immorality before it was put in CONTEXT by the rest of the Bible. Of what about being stumbled by the way men from James, and also John and Peter were acting with respect to the Judaizers mentioned in Galatians 1 and 2. Or if you knew that the "Governing Body" had given a decree including not eating meat sacrificed to idols and then you heard the apostle Paul preach that it was OK to eat meat sacrificed to idols? Or what if you had heard Jesus say you have to eat his body and drink his blood? Or what about all those superfine apostles that attracted followers of men in first-century congregations? What if you heard that Peter had killed 2 contributors to the early congregation for holding back some of their claimed contribution.
These might have seemed causes for stumbling, and we could easily conceive of many brothers backing away from their congregations in doubt or even defiance of false understandings. But what was the correct response? If some might have known better, or saw that something was not really handled Biblically, would merely running from it have been the loving thing to do?
I think some have too high an opinion of what the GB represent, even higher than what the GB are claiming themselves. For those persons, it's good to review the record. For others, too, it's good not to place too high of expectations on humans, but appreciate the truths themselves. The message outweighs the messenger.

It was well-known that he would be threatened with dismissal if he grew a beard, even though his was very neatly trimmed and short. It had happened to others. Why in the world anyone would want to test this was a mystery to me. He didn't even claim it was a skin thing which might have got him a reprieve. He was not disfellowshipped, but he was dismissed from Bethel and remained an elder after shaving. There was no written rule about beards that I ever knew of. Rutherford was adamantly against them, and I think it was just a long tradition, and it fit in with the idea of trying to present ourselves at all times without giving anyone a cause for stumbling.
No, it was forbidden because housekeepers were on the lookout for Bible study material that was not approved and several brothers got in trouble for owning it in their rooms. The crackdown on Bible study in groups was done because someone (perhaps more than one person) thought there was a direct connection between this and the rumors of apostasy. It turned out that there were dozens of such Bible study groups uncovered that had been going on since the early 1970's if not before. I attended two per week, about two hours each, in the room of a member of the Writing Department, and I knew others who had attended others also often in the room of members of the Writing Department, former Gilead Students etc. The ones I attended were discussions of a chapter or two at a time of the Bible in context until the whole book was finished. After every paragraph a brother would ask questions to draw people out, and people would comment about what it seemed to mean in context.
One of these meetings, I think it was the one in the room of Mark Nevajans (who was not in Writing, and might not have even been a Bethel Elder), was turned in for allowing the discussion of alternative doctrines like "great crowd" "other sheep" "disagreement with 1914". I'm told that this sparked a kind of "witchhunt" where everyone had to "rat out" anyone else they knew who was participating in Bethel Bible studies. These studies turned into a big scandal which were actually forbidden. Then ownership of non-Witness commentaries was questioned, and the actual idea of a "commentary" was questioned -- which was the basic mistake made in the book "Commentary on the Letter of James" which made it considered to be "apostate." Bethelite access to the Bethel Library and Gilead Library was also restricted. Those libraries were full of commentaries of all kinds. Very soon, these libraries were both moved to another building away from Bethelite access, and away from buildings that were residences like 124 and 107 CH. They were now attached to the offices of Writing, Service, etc, and were much harder to get to.  Smaller libraries of only a few of the WTS books and a dictionary replaced them for the average Bethelite's use.

I agree, and there was considerable overlap between education in scripture and education in literacy, anyway. I don't see a conflict at all, just an interesting point of discussion when it comes to variations in possible translations of the same Greek word(s).
And although you implied that we should compare all the versions of the NWT instead of just 1984 to 2013, I don't see anything of any importance in such a project. From what I shared above, you can probably see that the types of changes were usually of very minor consequence. Of course, there have also been changes that were deliberate because they were considered very important, such as changing "worship" to "obeisance" especially when the previous reference had been to "worship" offered to Jesus Christ. But these were well explained along the way in the Watchtower, the Appendixes, and the footnotes.
I like the chart. Where would you place the 1984 NWT and the 2013 Revised NWT on such a chart?
I don't see any reason to criticize the Watchtower for revising the translation. I think it was an excellent idea.
By the way, I forgot to mention that the use of "prove to be" (proving to be, proves to be, proved to be) was a common complaint from readers of the 1950 to 1984 version. More than 95% of those instances are gone, but not all of them.

According to the record from the Watchtower Society itself, this is about right, if you don't count some interim corrections to typos, page headings, and grammar inconsistencies. (These are minor, but there have been at least 16 additional versions if you count these minor printing updates.) For example the original NWT of Psalms in the 1963 and 1964 "Fat Boy" NWT had a big bold typo (Psalm 17 was marked as Psalm 71). The large print (bi8) printed in 1971 had some typos, such as switching the font of the verse number itself from regular to bold and back to regular --most noticeable in Hebrews 9:27 where the 2 is bold and the 7 is regular, and even a couple of subject-verb agreement errors that were fixed up until 1984, well before the 2013 Revised came out. When the 2013 came out a heading on a page 267 was wrong, Psalm 51:4 was changed, and there were still some inconsistencies with capitalization and usage. 
Here's one example with the capitalization of "Ark" [of the Testimony]. Exodus 25:22 still has one remaining inconsistency:
(Exodus 25:16-22) 16 You will place in the Ark the Testimony that I will give you. 17 “You will make a cover of pure gold, two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. 18 You are to make two cherubs of gold; you will make them of hammered work on the two ends of the cover. 19 Make the cherubs on the two ends, one cherub on each end of the cover. 20 The cherubs are to spread out their two wings upward, overshadowing the cover with their wings, and they will face each other. The faces of the cherubs will be turned toward the cover. 21 You will put the cover on the Ark, and in the Ark you will place the Testimony that I will give you. 22 I will present myself to you there and speak with you from above the cover. From between the two cherubs that are on the ark of the Testimony, I will make known to you all that I will command you for the Israelites. (2013 NWT) Exodus 25:22 (1972 bi8) . . . the two cherubs that are upon the ark of the testimony . . . (1972-1984) Exodus 25:16 And you must place in the Ark the testimony that I shall give you. (1984) Note that in 2013 every instance of "the Ark" is capitalized except this one in verse 22. Also verse 10 does NOT capitalize it in 2013, but did capitalize it in 1984. And you can see above, in verse 16, that Ark was capitalized in 1984, but in no places was testimony ever capitalized. 
As far back as the 1953-1961 versions of the NWT, "Testimony" was capitalized, but "ark of the testimony" was not always, even in the same context, or sometimes just Ark and not testimony:
(Numbers 7:89) he would hear the voice conversing with him from above the cover which was upon the Ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubs [upon the cover].” (1953) (Exodus 16:33,34) Moses said to Aaron: ‘Take a jar and put in it an omerful of manna and deposit it before Jehovah as something to be kept throughout your generations.’ Just as Jehovah had commanded Moses, Aaron proceeded to deposit it before the Testimony as something to be kept. (1953) (Num. 17:10) Subsequently Jehovah said to Moses: "Put Aaron’s rod back before the Testimony as something to be kept for a sign to the sons of rebelliousness, that their murmurings may cease from against me, that they may not die." (1953) Also note that in Deuteronomy, the term "ark of the testimony" is never used; it's always "ark of the covenant," (a different Hebrew word) but this doesn't ever get capitalized in any NWT of any date. (There are exceptions in quotes from the Watchtower in the 1950's, 1960, and 1976, but not in the NWT itself. ["ark of the covenant" "Ark of the covenant" or "Ark of the Covenant".] Of the hundred or so references, there has been no capitalization since the 1970's.)
(Deuteronomy 31:26) “Take this book of the Law and place it at the side of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God. . . (2013) (Deuteronomy 31:26) “Taking this book of the Law, YOU must place it at the side of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God. (1960-1984)
In fact, between 1961 and 1964, there were literally hundreds of pages that needed re-pagination along with the page headings, dozens of footnotes with the wrong J-references, cross-references, footnote letters skipped, wrong hyphenation breaks, a couple of misspellings, mismatched single/double quote marks, and at least a couple of grammar changes. There is some evidence of these changes in one of my "Fat Boy" Bibles where you can see that certain pages were updated, and these resulted in a brighter light-green edging on the updated pages (which includes Psalm 17, of course). See the pictures below:
 
 

 
 

Interesting stuff, especially the difference between Chi Rho and Tau Rho.
Howeve,r he states:
"2)............the earliest uses of the tau-rho are not as such free-standing symbols, but form part of a special way of writing the Greek words for “cross” (stauros) and “crucify” (stauro-o), in NT texts which refer to the crucifixion of Jesus.
3) The tau-rho is not an allusion to the word “christos“.  Indeed, the letters have no relation to any terms in early Christian vocabulary.  Instead, the device (adapted from pre-Christian usage) seems to have served originally as a kind of pictographic representation of the crucified Jesus, the loop of the rho superimposed on the tau serving to depict the head of a figure on a cross.
4) So, contra the common assumption taught in art history courses, the earliest visual reference to the crucified Jesus isn’t 5th century intaglia, but this scribal device employed by ca. 200 CE. 
There's no denying that this scribal device is employed in some early Greek Scripture manuscripts. How early? With occurences, for example,  at Luke 9:23; 14:27,  P75 of the Bodmer Papyrii (imaged earlier) was originally dated as 175-200CE,. This early assignment has been recently challenged, where some favour a later date closer to the 4th Century. Other evidences, such as Chester Beatty's P45 manuscript is dated about 250CE, and contains this device at Matt.26:2 and also Luke 14:27. A further papyrus in the Bodmer colllection, P66, contains the staurogram in at least ten places in the papyrus (corresponding to chapter 19 of John's Gospel. Like P75, this papyrus is subject to similar discussion on it's antiquity, being more recently proposed as originating "in the early or middle part of the fourth century."
So, basically, we have a scribal insertion of a contemporary "Christian " symbol some 135-300 years after the establishing of the Christian congregation at Pentecost 33CE .
However, a disturbing comment is made regarding the staurogram on the Bible History Today page cited in the earlier post by @JWInsider at
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/crucifixion/the-staurogram/:
"The tau-rho staurogram, like other christograms, was originally a pre-Christian symbol. A Herodian coin featuring the Staurogram predates the crucifixion. Soon after, Christian adoption of staurogram symbols served as the first visual images of Jesus on the cross."
Larry Hurtado confirms this when discussing the Tau-Rho among other "Christian" symbols as he states: "these are all pre-Christian devices and were appropriated by early Christians." He also says "P45, P66 and P75 offer us evidence of a Christian appropriation of the tau-rho device that (whatever and whenever its origin) was already becoming familiar in Christian circles at the time that these copyists worked."  (Quotes from The Staurogram in Early Christian Manuscripts: The Earliest Visual Reference to the Crucified Jesus?)
Reference is made to Herodian coins issued about 37 BCE where the Tau Rho appears (apparently as some sort of date code?)
,
Jack Finegan, (The Archaeology of the New Testament. 1969) is referenced by Hurtado. In his book section The Cross. Abbreviations and Monograms, among other things, he cited Egyptian influences on the development and use of the Staurogram, likening it to the Egyptian ankh, a symbol of life. He presents an memorial inscription from a 4th Century tomb at Armant near Luxor on the NIle. Here the staurogram symbol is presented on the bottom 3rd right in line with the ankh and the Chi Rho symbol, (another "christogram). 

An additional aspect is the proposed influence of the use of isosephy in formulating the staurogram. This practice,  known also as gematria, seeks to find numeric relationships in words and concepts by assigning numeric values to letters and thus to words, then looking for parrallel meanings. An attempt is made to equate this to the reckoning of the wild beast's number of 666 in Rev.13:18. "Christian" Isosephists equate this number to the value determined for the name "Nero", their interpretation then misinterpreting the scripture. The staurogram is thus said by some to have a mystical significance in this regard. The whole practice has a ring of divination about it. Although Hurtado does not promote this view, it is not rejected as a contributory factor.
Whilst interesting and formidably detailed, these speculations on the early uses of staurogram symbols are not very convincing as to their relevance to genuine Christianity. It just cannot be that difficult to find the truth, if it is actually there. 
It seems that an early date for the use of these symbols as some propose is not clear at all, as the relevant papyrii whilst significantly old, are of disputed antiquity. There appears to be a pagan and superstitious influence at work in the appropriation of these symbols, for obscure reasons. It is clear from scripture that definite attempts to distort and corrupt the true Christian faith were well under way from earliest times, prior to the adoption of the "staurogram". Paul warns that "the mystery of this lawlessness is already at work", Peter warns that "the ignorant and unstable are twisting the...Scriptures", and John warns that "even now, many antichrists have appeared".  (Before we even get to Rev. Ch.2-3). The scriptures have no word for cross as such. Both stauros and xylon are simple words to understand, as is the background for the necessity of the use of this method for Christ's execution. There is no definitive way to conclude the exact nature of the instrument of Christ's death. The existence of the dispute complicates and obscures the very reason for Christ's sacrifice, a paucity of understanding on this matter being a prominent feature of many two-beamed cross promoters. On that basis, I remain satisfied  with the scriptural description as far as it goes, and the conclusion we draw on the likelihood of a single stake being the instrument of Christ's death. I will not be adding an extra beam to the account at this stage. ?

FWIW, I believe Jesus was much more likely nailed to a two-piece stauros. If so, it would have looked like a "T" or a "t" or a "+".  Since it's more likely, it's therefore my personal preference to think it was a "cross" in the typical sense. But its physical appearance is not important to the overall understanding of the Bible. It's even less important to the understanding of what the symbolic meaning of the "cross" should be to Christians.
The fact is that it could have been an upright pole. That's a piece of information very few people know about, and it might be good to point that out to people just so such facts might "jar" them into realizing that not everything we grew up believing is necessarily so. (This is true of those who grew up on Watchtower doctrines, too, as several surprising changes to those doctrines should have recently made clear.) We should keep in mind that there are always new facts to learn and some of them will be more important than others.
I think Anna is right that the WTS chose the idea of an upright stake to differentiate itself from Christendom, or perhaps almost as likely, to differentiate itself from Bible Students who followed Russell.
The scripture in John 20:25 could be an important piece of evidence. The Watchtower has used exactly such types of scriptural evidence to adjust other doctrines in the past, even the very recent past. It might also be important to note that the WT publications rarely imply that we know for sure. It's usually not very dogmatic on the point. But I have to admit that in these discussions of whether it was a one-piece or two-piece stauros, the John 20:25 scripture is rarely mentioned, which implies that the WTS realizes this evidence is damaging to the theory.
But we also have to give the WTS position a fair shot before dismissing it as impossible. For example, what if it was thought for years that stauros had been a single upright pole, and Christendom had always pictured it this way. Let's say that a new organization called the Watch-Tau-er came along and said it was in the shape of the letter "Tau" (T). There was a ton of archaeological evidence against them but they pointed out that this verse in John 20:25 says nails and appears to refer only to the hands. The established church and many fundamentalists would come along and say that the Watch-Tau-er was misinterpreting this and the reference was to the nails, plural, but that one of these nails was stuck in the hands and one was stuck in the feet. Or that multiple nails could have been used and still they were stuck in the hands on an upright stauros. Taking any stand against the norm results in a lot of defensiveness for the position that might seem obvious, but is really based on a preconception or bias from the majority, and from having seen 1,000 pictures that showed the same thing.
However, where some Witnesses make a mistake is to say that there is no evidence that the cross ever was associated with early Christians until 300 years, or even 400 years after the first century CE. In fact, there is probable evidence that it was already associated with Christians as early as the very next century after Jesus Christ. There is excellent and, to my mind, unimpeachable evidence that the two-piece cross was in use as early as 200 years after the first century. If something of that time period is discovered in multiple places 200 years after the first century, we don't automatically assume we have discovered the first instance that evidence, but assume that it's evidence of a developing usage, and that there were very likely some earlier instances of it yet undiscovered.

Thank you. 

Wikipedia shows a simple staurogram on an oil lamp from Caesarea, now at a museum in Israel, that could have come from the 300's CE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staurogram#/media/File:Nahsholim-Tel-Dor-3187.jpg
This was one of the pieces of evidence that made me think that some Christians, especially those with Jewish family backgrounds, might have found staurogram designs to be preferable to the type of graven imagery apparently forbidden in the Mosaic Law.
There is also early imagery like this:
The graffiti is dated to the late second century, likely within 100 years of the book of Revelation. It shows a man looking up to a donkey on a cross and says in Greek: “Alexamenos worships god.”
It's polemic, of course, depicting Jesus as a donkey. The book that @indagator recommended by Frank Shaw, discussed elsewhere, helps explain why Jesus was depicted as a donkey. The word for donkey seems to be a bit like onomatopoeia, like calling a donkey a "hee-haw" or "Eeyore". In Coptic the word for "donkey/ass" was EIO and the divine name known to have been used by Jews and evidently Christians and even pagans for the Jewish God was IAO [Ya'o/Yaho], the equivalent of "Yah" or "Yaho" [cf. Jah, Jaho, Jahowa].
Jewish and perhaps even Christian writers changed the names of pagan gods slightly so that they would sound insulting. (Compare Beelzebul, "Lord of the High Place," to Beelzebub, "Lord of the Flies."). The similarity between a word for "donkey" and the Jewish God's divine name made it a prime candidate for the same type of derision. And the Jewish name for Jesus contained both the divine name "Yaho" and the connected word for "Savior" or "Salvation." (Yaho-shuah/Joshua/Jesus means "Jehovah [Yaho] is Salvation.")
It was not because of the legend that "Your Savior will come riding on the back of a donkey" is the reason for the cross on the back of so many breeds of donkeys:

Wikipedia shows a simple staurogram on an oil lamp from Caesarea, now at a museum in Israel, that could have come from the 300's CE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staurogram#/media/File:Nahsholim-Tel-Dor-3187.jpg
This was one of the pieces of evidence that made me think that some Christians, especially those with Jewish family backgrounds, might have found staurogram designs to be preferable to the type of graven imagery apparently forbidden in the Mosaic Law.
There is also early imagery like this:
The graffiti is dated to the late second century, likely within 100 years of the book of Revelation. It shows a man looking up to a donkey on a cross and says in Greek: “Alexamenos worships god.”
It's polemic, of course, depicting Jesus as a donkey. The book that @indagator recommended by Frank Shaw, discussed elsewhere, helps explain why Jesus was depicted as a donkey. The word for donkey seems to be a bit like onomatopoeia, like calling a donkey a "hee-haw" or "Eeyore". In Coptic the word for "donkey/ass" was EIO and the divine name known to have been used by Jews and evidently Christians and even pagans for the Jewish God was IAO [Ya'o/Yaho], the equivalent of "Yah" or "Yaho" [cf. Jah, Jaho, Jahowa].
Jewish and perhaps even Christian writers changed the names of pagan gods slightly so that they would sound insulting. (Compare Beelzebul, "Lord of the High Place," to Beelzebub, "Lord of the Flies."). The similarity between a word for "donkey" and the Jewish God's divine name made it a prime candidate for the same type of derision. And the Jewish name for Jesus contained both the divine name "Yaho" and the connected word for "Savior" or "Salvation." (Yaho-shuah/Joshua/Jesus means "Jehovah [Yaho] is Salvation.")
It was not because of the legend that "Your Savior will come riding on the back of a donkey" is the reason for the cross on the back of so many breeds of donkeys:

... that's what I used to fill in my never used swimming pool.

Yes. This is what I was trying to explain to @JOHN BUTLER