As for the method of death, we simply don’t know. The Mishna records much of relevance in relation to execution (although the same ambiguity sometimes exists in relation to hanging/impaling/crucifying), but the Mishna was composed almost a thousand years after Deuteronomy. For the record, so were many of the commentaries that I listed above, making the most reliable ones the translations into Greek and Aramaic. Were people hanged alive? Was hanging a method of post-mortem display?

There is a text from the Dead Sea Scrolls (a prophetic adaptation of the book of Nahum, known as 1QpNah) that is of relevance to this issue, but much of it is in lacuna. It reads (I:7-8): “… die amongst the ‘seekers after smooth things’, he who hanged living people … in Israel before, for he who is hanged alive upon [the] tree is [decl]ared…”. Unfortunately, we simply don’t know whether the author meant to say “such as has never been done in Israel before” or “as was done in Israel before”. It remains a bit of a mystery.

I wonder does the cotext at least suggest that the ambiguity about the hanging etc. can be resolved, v.21 suggests that stoning has already been carried out…