Crucifixion

A Look at a Brutal Form of Roman Execution

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.

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.

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.

 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

People were sometimes crucified in different positions

[T]he 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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 12:256

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.

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.

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 victims were naked.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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)

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)

How do we know Jesus 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.

History Sheds Light on Select Passages in Bible

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 22:14-18; cf Mk 15:24

He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death
Isaiah 53:9

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. 2:6-8)

We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles

Paul (1 Cor. 1:23)

Hebrews 12:2
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.