Crucifixion

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Crucifixion

• A Look at a Brutal Form
• of Roman Execution

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A Few Introductory Comments

• Some of the content youre about to hear may be
  disturbing.
• Cicero (1st cent BC) wrote that Roman citizens
  should never have to fear being crucified. He
  should never even as much as hear the word
  cross much less have to witness a crucifixion.
• Were going to get an idea of what a crucifixion
  actually looked like.

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Origin of Crucifixion

• Uncertain. Herodotus mentions the Persians
  crucifying others in 500 BC.
• In 4th cent BC, Alexander the Great performed
  2,000 crucifixions at one time.
• After the final defeat of Spartacus in 72 BC,
  Crassus nailed 6,000 prisoners along the Appian
  Way.

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Pre-execution Treatment of Victim

• Socrates, Plato, Herodotus, and Josephus speak of
  burning the person with fire or hot irons and/or
  mutilation prior to crucifying victim.
• The Romans normally carried out flogging before
  crucifying a victim. From the late 1st century
  BC through the end of the first century AD,
  Dionysius, Livy, Philo, and Josephus report of
  people being tormented with whips, fire, and all
  sorts of tortures before they were crucified.

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• Lucian reports of a man who was whipped, his eyes
  put out, and his tongue cut off before being
  crucified.
• In the middle of the 2nd-century, The Martyrdom
  of Polycarp reports of people whose flesh were
  so torn by whips that their veins and
  arteries became visible.
• Josephus writes of a 32-yr old man who, 24 years
  after Jesus, was whipped until his bones were
  exposed.

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What would this kind of torture do to an
individual?
Forensic examiner Dr. Fred Zugibe (Columbia
Univ.) says scourging itself would reduce a
victim to an exhausted, wretched condition with
shivering, severe sweating, frequent displays of
seizure, and a craving for water. He adds that
given the complex distribution of nerves in the
head, the crown of thorns would have produced the
kind of pain felt when nerves are touched by a
dentists drill.
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What did a cross look like?

• Three writers of the first and second centuries
  wrote that the cross was shaped like a T.
  (Barnabas, Lucian, Artemidorus)
• Archaeologists have discovered early gemstones
  dated to the 2nd 3rd centuries with engravings
  of Jesus that depict a crossbeam.

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What did a cross look like?

• Graffiti dated to the first half of the 3rd
  century show a crossbeam.
• It is doubtful that there was a seat on the cross
  as many medieval paintings portray. There is
  only one possible reference to a seat. But its
  unclear. Moreover, if victims were supported by a
  seat, the breaking of legs would have little
  meaning for expediting death as well see in a
  moment.

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During the crucifixion itself, the sadism of the
executioners was given full rein.
The Romans usually chose to nail the victims
hands and feet to the cross, rather than binding
them to it. Only in one Egyptian account is
binding mentioned. Otherwise, nailing the victim
was the norm. In 1968 the skeletal remains of a
crucified victim were discovered in Jerusalem,
with a nail still embedded in one of his ankle
bones.
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People were sometimes crucified in different
positions
I see crosses there, not just of one kind but
made in many different ways some have their
victims with head down to the ground some impale
their genitals. Seneca (1st cent AD)
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People were sometimes crucified in different
positions
The soldiers, out of rage and hatred they bore
the prisoners, nailed those they caught, in
different postures, to the crosses, by way of
jest, and their number was so great about 500 a
day that there was not enough room for the
crosses and not enough room for the
bodies. Josephus (1st cent AD)
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Crucifixion an unspeakably painful process.

• Medieval paintings depict the nails going through
  the palms.
• However, we know today that this could not have
  been the case. Studies have shown that the palms
  would tear under a persons weight.

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Doesnt the NT report Jesus hands were nailed?
Yes (Luke John). However, the Greek word they
use can mean the entire arm. Nailing a victim
through the wrist would not only support the
persons weight on the cross, it would have
caused extreme pain. We know today that the
nails in the wrists would damage the sensorimotor
median nerve. This would result in one of the
most horrible pains experienced, like crushing
your funny bone with a pair of pliers.
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More Problems on the Cross

• Because the arms are stretched out on the cross,
  the shoulders become dislocated.
• Severe muscle cramps occur and annoying insects
  feed off the victims deep wounds.
• In the 1st century, Seneca described crucified
  victims as having battered and ineffective
  carcasses, maimed, misshapen, deformed,
  nailed, and drawing the breath of life amid
  long drawn out agony.

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Sometimes brutal treatment was dished out on
victims while on the cross

• Tacitus reports that Nero crucified Christians
  and at night lit them on fire to serve as lamps.
• Sometimes actors would play the part of a
  criminal in the theatre. In the first century,
  Martial describes a performance in graphic detail
  during which a real criminal was crucified in the
  theatre and then a bear was loosed on him which
  tore him to pieces while still alive on the
  cross.

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Josephus reports a particularly brutal act
men were whipped with rods, and their bodies
were torn to pieces, and were crucified, while
they were still alive, and breathed they also
strangled those women and their sons whom they
had circumcised, as the king had appointed,
hanging their sons about their necks as they were
upon the crosses. And if there were any sacred
books of the Law found, it was destroyed, and
those with whom they were found miserably
perished also. Josephus. Antiquities 12256
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The bodies of crucified victims usually became
food for vultures, crows, and dogs.

• Pseudo-Manetho (3rd century) Punished with
  limbs outstretched, they see the stake as their
  fate they are fastened (and) nailed to it in the
  most bitter torment, evil food for birds of prey
  and grim pickings for dogs.
• Juvenal (early 2nd cent) The vulture hurries
  from dead cattle and dogs and crosses to bring
  flesh to her offspring.

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Victims did not rest on the cross

• The victim would push up on feet in order to
  excel CO2
• According to Cicero, Gospel of John, and Gospel
  of Peter, a heavy club or mallet could be used to
  break the legs of the crucified victim, which
  always hastened death, since could no longer push
  up.

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Dishonor

• One of the motivations behind crucifixion was to
  subject the victim to the utmost humiliation.
  Lifting the person higher on the cross would
  bring additional disgrace. Thats why in Esther,
  Haman built a gallows for Mordecai that was 75
  feet tall.
• Melito reports that crucified victimswere naked.

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Dishonor

• Moreover, it was common for people to mock the
  victim on the cross in their presence. In the
  first century BC, the Jewish king Janaeus
  crucified a man and then held a banquet in front
  of him. While flute players played, he danced in
  front of the man suffering on the cross.

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Dishonor

• The crucified were usually denied proper burial.
• Dishonor
• Pagan view of afterlife

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Dishonor

• Thus, a person was put through horrible tortures,
  then the most painful of deaths in full public
  display, in nudity, was mocked while in intense
  pain, his posterity sometimes eliminated before
  his eyes, he was refused proper burial and his
  body left for birds, dogs, and insects. It was
  the utmost disgrace.
• Moreover, Rabbinic interpretations of Deut 21.23
  that the crucified victim is cursed by God added
  to the disgrace for Jews.

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Dishonor
We can understand why in the 1st century BC,
Cicero referred to crucifixion as that most
cruel and disgusting penalty, the worst
extremes of tortures and the terror of the
cross.
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Who was Crucified?
Crucifixion by the Romans was usually reserved
for slaves, the hardest criminals, and
insurrectionists. Except for a few instances,
Roman citizens were exempt from it.
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Slaves were not protected from unjust crucifixion

• A woman had an innocent slave crucified and had
  his tongue cut out, so that he could not defend
  himself. (Cicero)
• A slave abandoned his master who had plotted to
  kill the Emperor Augustus. However, Augustus
  permitted the father of the conspirator to
  crucify the slave publicly for abandoning him.
  (Dio Cassius)

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Slaves were not protected from unjust crucifixion

• A slave informed his master that the masters
  sons were planning to betray his country to an
  enemy. After confirming the report, the master
  killed his own sons, freed his slave as a savior
  of his country, then crucified him as an
  informer. (Juvenal)

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How do we knowJesus was crucified died?

• Reported in all 4 Gospels
• Reported by several non-Christian writers
  Josephus, Tacitus, Lucian
• Only 1 account of a person surviving crucifixion
• The rigors of scourging crucifixion render the
  Apparent Death Theory highly unlikely. In
  addition, in 1879 the German critic D. F. Strauss
  wrote his famous critique.

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History Sheds Light on Select Passages in Bible
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NT writers understood Jesus crucifixion as a
fulfillment of prophecy
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are
out of joint. . . . My strength is dried up like
a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of
my mouth you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs
have surrounded me a band of evil men has
encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my
feet. I can count all my bones people stare and
gloat over me. Ps 2214-18 cf Mk 1524
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He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and
with the rich in his deathIsaiah 539
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although Jesus existed in the form of God, did
not regard equality with God a thing to be
grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of
a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of
men. Being found in appearance as a man, He
humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point
of death, even death on a cross. Paul (Phil.
26-8)
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We preach Christ crucified a stumbling block to
Jews and foolishness to Gentiles Paul (1 Cor.
123)
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Hebrews 122
Jesus for the joy set before him endured the
cross, scorning or caring little for its shame,
and sat down at the right hand of the throne of
God.