Crucifixion

Jesus the God-man taught the foolish, fed the hungry, healed the sick, encouraged the brokenhearted, counseled the wayward, and loved the sinner. Yet, Jesus was emphatic that the primary purpose of his coming to earth was to suffer and die. In John 12:27–28, which chronicles the week leading up to Jesus’ death, he says, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose, I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” At that moment, Jesus was setting his gaze on the cross. Crucifixion was invented by the Persians around 500 b.c., perfected by the Romans in the days of Jesus, and not outlawed until the time of Emperor Constantine, who ruled Rome in the fourth century a.d. In the days of Jesus, crucifixion was reserved for the most horrendous criminals. Even the worst Romans were beheaded rather than crucified. The Jews also considered crucifixion the most horrific mode of death, as Deuteronomy 21:22–23 says: “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God.” The ancient Jewish historian Josephus called crucifixion “the most wretched of deaths.”1 The ancient Roman philosopher Cicero asked that decent Roman citizens not even speak of the cross because it was too disgraceful a subject for the ears of decent people.2 Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, German soldiers crucified Jews at Dachau by running bayonets and knives through their legs, shoulders, throats, and testicles. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge performed crucifixions in Cambodia. Today, crucifixion continues in Sudan and online with the multiplayer video game Roma Victor. On television, the hit show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation had an episode called “Double-Cross.” In that episode, the star of the show, Gil Grissom, investigated the death of a woman who had died by crucifixion on a cross in a Catholic Church. Curiously, Grissom said, “Jesus died for our sins,” before seeking to uncover why the woman died. The episode had some very accurate medical discussions about the nature of death by crucifixion. The characters correctly concluded that Jesus died on the cross from asphyxiation. The pain of crucifixion is so horrendous that a word was invented to explain it: excruciating literally means “from the cross.” A crucified person could hang on the cross for days, passing in and out of consciousness as their lungs struggled to breathe while laboring under the weight of their body. It was not uncommon for those being crucified to slump on the cross in an effort to empty their lungs of air and thereby hasten their death. To ensure maximum suffering, scourging preceded crucifixion. Scourging itself was such a painful event that many people died from it without even making it to their cross. Jesus’ hands would have been chained above his head to expose his back and legs to an executioner’s whip called a cat-o’-nine tails. The whip was a series of long leather straps. At the end of some straps were heavy balls of metal intended to tenderize the body of a victim, like a chef tenderizes a steak by beating it. Some straps had hooks made of either metal or bone that would have sunk deeply into the shoulders, back, buttocks,and legs of the victim. Once the hooks had sunk deeply into the tenderized flesh, the executioner would rip the skin, muscle, tendons, and even bones off the victim as he shouted agonizing, shook violently, and bled heavily. Hundreds of years prior, the prophet Isaiah predicted the results of Jesus’ scourging: “many were astonished at you—his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.”3 Jesus then had a crown of lengthy thorns pressed into his head as onlookers mocked him as the “King of the Jews.”4 With that, blood began to flow down Jesus’ face, causing his hair and beard to be a bloodied and matted mess, and his eyes to burn as he strained to see through his own sweat and blood. Jesus’ robe was then used as the pot in a gambling dice game. Jesus was then forced to carry his roughly hewn wooden crossbar of perhaps one hundred pounds on his bare, traumatized, bloodied back and shoulders to the place of his crucifixion. The cross was likely already covered with the blood of other men. Timber was so expensive the crosses were recycled, so Jesus’ blood mixed with the layers of blood from countless other men who had walked that same path before him. Despite his young age and good health, Jesus was so physically devastated from his sleepless night, miles of walking, severe beating, and scourging that he collapsed under the weight of the cross, unable to carry it alone. A man named Simon of Cyrene was appointed to carry Jesus’ cross. Upon arriving at his place of crucifixion, they pulled Jesus’ beard out–an act of ultimate disrespect in ancient cultures—spat on him, and mocked him in front of his family and friends. Jesus the carpenter, who had driven many nails into wood with his own hands, then had five-to-seven-inch, rough, metal spikes driven into the most sensitive nerve centers on the human body in his hands and feet. Jesus was nailed to his wooden cross. At this point Jesus was in unbearable agony. Nonetheless, Hindus are prone to deny that Jesus suffered at all. Jesus was then lifted, and his cross dropped into a prepared hole, causing his body to shake violently on the spikes. In further mockery, a sign was posted above Jesus that said, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”5 A painting later discovered from a second-century Roman graffito further shows the disrespect of Jesus at his crucifixion. The painting depicts the head of a jackass being crucified, with a man standing alongside of it with his arms raised. The caption reads, “Alexandros worships his god.” At this point during a crucifixion, the victims labored to breathe as their body went into shock. Naked and embarrassed, the victims would often use their remaining strength to seek revenge on the crowd of mockers who had gathered to jeer at them. They would curse at their tormentors while urinating on them and spitting on them. Some victims would become so overwhelmed with pain that they would become incontinent and a pool of sweat, blood, urine, and feces would gather at the base of their cross. Jesus’ crucifixion must have been a grotesque scene. Hundreds of years in advance, the prophet Isaiah saw it this way: “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”6 None of this was done in dignified privacy, but rather in open public places. It would be like nailing a bloodied, naked man above the front entrance to a grocery store. Not only was crucifixion excruciatingly painful and publicly shameful, it was also commonly practiced. Tens of thousands of people were crucified in the ancient world. For example, when Spartacus died in battle, six thousand of his followers were crucified in one day. They were lined up along a road that stretched for one hundred and twenty miles, not unlike the shoulder of a modern freeway. As a general rule, it was men who were crucified. Occasionally a man was crucified at eye level so that bored high school kids could look him directly in the eye and cuss him out, spit on him, and make fun of him for crying and messing his pants. In the rare event of a woman’s crucifixion, she was made to face the cross. Not even such a barbarous culture was willing to watch the face of a woman in such excruciating agony.