There is no reason why one of the dinosaurs should not have evolved intelligence during the last five million years or so of the Cretaceous Period.

Who Lies Sleeping?

The Crucifixion 1

Crucifixions
Golgotha
The Finish

Abstract

The most important event of the career of the historical Jesus was his manner of death. Jesus was crucified. The Christian explanation is that a travelling holy man, the only begotten son of God himself, impoverished, docile and peace loving, who scarcely ever lost his temper, was thought such a threat to the rulers of Judaea that they sentenced him to hang on a cross, a death reserved for slaves and traitors. Christians say that Jesus was neither. He was not a criminal at all. But somehow this divine teller of parables had given the authorities the impression he wanted to be a Jewish king—to rival Caesar in one of his dominions—when all he really wanted to do was to save mankind from its sins. The Roman governor of Judaea even ordered the hanging man to be labeled with a sign saying “The King of the Jews”.

Crucifixions

Herodotus, writing about 450 BC, mentions crucifixion three times in his histories, including the death by crucifixion after torture, of the tyrant of Samos, Polycrates, around 522 BC at the hands of Oroetes, the Persian satrap of Lydia. Curtius Rufus says Alexander the Great had 2,000 survivors from the siege of Tyre crucified on the shores of the Mediterranean, Sanhedrin 6.5 says Simeon B Shetah had 70 or 80 witches hung in the city of Ashkelon, and Josephus mentions it several times in his different works. He introduces it when telling how Antiochus, around 165 BC, robbed the temple of its treasure supplied in the previous century by the Ptolemies. He had wanted to try to conquer Egypt but had been warned off by the Romans, and, piqued, decided to take it out on the temple the Egyptians had favoured. He imposed stringent conditions on the Jewish population and many refused to obey them. His punishment was crucifixion.

Many Jews there were who complied with the king’s commands, either voluntarily, or out of fear of the penalty that was denounced. But the best men, and those of the noblest souls, did not regard him, but did pay a greater respect to the customs of their country than concern as to the punishment which he threatened to the disobedient; on which account they every day underwent great miseries and bitter torments; for they 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.
Josephus (Whiston), Antiquities 12:5:4

Then he relates how Alexander Jannaeaus crucified 800 Pharisees.

As he was feasting with his concubines, in the sight of all the city, he ordered about eight hundred of them to be crucified; and while they were living, he ordered the throats of their children and wives to be cut before their eyes.
Antiquities 13:14:2

He describes how Varus, the Roman legate of Syria, after the revolution following the death of Herod in 4 AD, took two of the three Syrian legions to pacify the country.

Varus sent a part of his army into the country, to seek out those that had been the authors of the revolt; and when they were discovered, he punished some of them that were most guilty, and some he dismissed: now the number of those that were crucified on this account were two thousand.
Antiquities 17:10:10

The crucifixion of Jesus is mentioned in a disputed passage in Antiquities 18:3:3. He uses the expression “condemned him to the cross” whereas elsewhere he simply says “crucified.” In the next section he describes the priests of Isis crucified in Rome for raping a virtuous woman.

Tiberius inquired into the matter thoroughly by examining the priests about it, and ordered them to be crucified.
Antiquities 18:3:4

The sons of Judas the Galilean, who had led a revolt in 6 AD over the Roman taxation census, were crucified by the Roman procurator Tiberius Alexander (46-48 AD), the nephew of Philo of Alexandria. These might have been literally his sons or more probably simply his followers in a brotherhood, but either way the party of Judas was still active 40 years after he founded it. These were the Galilaeans that Jesus was a member of. Jesus was therefore a “son” of Judas. Notice that the names were those of brothers of Jesus mentioned in the gospels.

The sons of Judas of Galilee were now slain; I mean of that Judas who caused the people to revolt, when Cyrenius came to take an account of the estates of the Jews, as we have showed in a foregoing book. The names of those sons were James and Simon, whom Alexander commanded to be crucified.
Antiquities 20:5:2

The Torah commandment is to forbid Jews to allow a corpse to stay on a tree overnight:

And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.
Dt 21:22-23

Since it presumes the punishment of crucifixion, and crucifixion was introduced by the Persians, this passage is best explained as having been written after the Persian conquest, not by Moses or even in the time of Josiah. But the Jews took it seriously, fearful of yet more of God’s curses, and Josephus confirms it:

They proceeded to that degree of impiety, as to cast away their dead bodies without burial, although the Jews used to take so much care of the burial of men, that they took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun.
War 4:5:2

In the seige of Jerusalem, Titus took to crucifying people publicly before the walls to terrorize the defenders:

A certain Jew was taken alive, who, by Titus’s order, was crucified before the wall, to see whether the rest of them would be afrighted, and abate of their obstinacy.
War 5:6:5

They were first whipped, and then tormented with all sorts of tortures, before they died, and were then crucified before the wall of the city. This miserable procedure made Titus greatly to pity them, while they caught every day five hundred Jews; nay, some days they caught more: yet it did not appear to be safe for him to let those that were taken by force go their way, and to set a guard over so many he saw would be to make such as great deal them useless to him. The main reason why he did not forbid that cruelty was this, that he hoped the Jews might perhaps yield at that sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterwards be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies.
War 5:11:1

The Crucifixion as seen by Charles Pickard

Finally, Josephus pleaded with Titus for the reprieving of three of his friends he saw being crucified after he had been captured and changed sides.

I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered.
Life 75

Although crucifixions were routine, not one contemporary picture has come down to show how they took place. Christian artistic convention grew up two centuries after crucifixion had been abolished and, for anatomical reaaons, must be incorrect. The illustration here by Charles Pickard was tested by the artist, who put himself into this position—the pain lasted for days afterwards.

Heelbone of crucified man: Givat ha Mivtar

Zias and Seketes in 1985 examined the heelbone of a crucified man found in the Jerusalem suburb of Givat ha Mivtar in 1968. The nail was less than 5 inches (11.5 cm) long and could not have penetrated both feet. Plainly the nail had entered sideways not front on as conventional Christian iconography depicts. Death would have been quick—possibly minutes when the arms were tied almost verticle, and otherwise not more than hours if the body were unsupported. Giving support to the feet by nailing them, would have added to the agony as well as the time needed to die. Providing the small seat or sedile also helped to prolong life but without adding to the agony the pain and pressure on the broken heel. Both would not have been used as shown here simply for illustration. Crucifixions occurred on busy roads and popular places so that they could be seen and inspire fear. Quintillian in the first century AD says they were meant to be an exemplary punishment. The victim was usually left on the cross to be picked by birds and wild animals.

First the victim was beaten with cudgels. Then he was tied with ropes or nailed, or both, to a wooden spar. The most secure method of fixing him was by twisting his arms behind the spar. Finally, the spar was attached to an upright post already planted in the ground. The shape was either the familiar + or T the latter being more convenient and so more likely to have been used. When the feet were not nailed the peg was knocked in to give support between the legs, prolonging the agony.

The position was intended to be agonising, every breath requiring intense effort. Even so, some victims took as long as three days to die. Jesus, according to the gospels, lasted the unusually short period of three hours. With his feet nailed, he should have lived longer even despite the excrutiating pain. Was he a man of weak physique? Or had the beating been too severe? To hang up a man in public and leave him to die was the most contemptuous form of execution it is possible to devise.

How was the trial that sent Jesus to the Cross conducted? Here is the view of A N Sherwin-White, a Roman historian who was Reader in Ancient History at Oxford and a fellow of St John’s College. He made a special study of the trial of Jesus in the light of the latest research into Roman administrative and legal procedures.

Although Pilate would not have been bound by the strict forms of Roman law in trying a non-Roman, it is to be expected that as a matter of custom he would keep close to normal procedures. Custom required that trials should be open to the public (not in the open, note), with the governor sitting on his bench, or “tribunal”, that charges should be made formally by interested parties, who acted as private prosecutors (since there were no public prosecution in the Roman world), and that accused persons should have the opportunity to defend themselves. There were no juries, but a governor normally took the advice of a committee of assessors (consilium). He gave his verdict, if he found the charge proved, in the form of a sentence to a particular punishment.

The interesting thing about the gospel accounts is that, whereas the description of the Sanhedrin procedures may be difficult to understand, the account of the trial before Pilate is credible. The basic elements of a Roman provincial trial are all present. It takes place in public before Pilate sitting on his tribunal. There are the necessary private accusers, the Jewish clergy, who duly conduct the case against Christ. There is apparently within the building an interested crowd, shouting advice, which was not unusual. The charges are specific—Christ claims to be a “king”—and it is left to the Roman judge to take what view he will.

A peculiarlty of this particular trial was that the accused made no attempt to defend himself. This was rare in Roman courts but in cases where it did arise there was a usage by which, to prevent miscarriage of justice, the direct question was put three times to the defendant before he was condemned by default. Hence it is a correct technicality in Mark, Matthew, and John, when Pilate repeats his question to the silent Christ.

In Matthew and Mark the sentence is given in technical language. Pilate had Christ scourged and handed him over to be crucified. The severe beating, or flagellatio, was regularly given before an execution. Luke adds another and credible point when Pilate says:

I have found no fault in this man… I will therefore chastise him and set him free.

This refers to the custom that Roman governors had, when faced by tiresome delinquents whom they did not take seriously, of dismissing them with a light beating, not the ferocious scouring with cudgels, but the less fearful caning with rods.

The three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, contain the elements of the correct procedure in a Roman provincial trial The writers have not written with the set intention of painting a great court scene in all its professional detail. But they have retained the basic elements of some first hand account, doubtless the least the authors could attempt to do to persuade contemporary Romans.

Golgotha

Churchmen always know what sort of images they like

It was a capital offence to act against the Empire or Caesar
It was a capital offence to assume the actions of an official without authority
It was a capital offence to join an armed body in capturing a public place—indeed simply to carry arms.

The gospels are clear that Jesus was guilty of each of these offences. Pilate had no discretion in the matter of sentencing. Under the laws of Rome Jesus was guilty of treason. Simply being acclaimed a king without an insurrection was sufficient for the Roman authorities to find him guilty. There is no argument about this! The punishment for these crimes could only be crucifixion. Jesus is crucified at the third hour—about 9 o’clock in the morning—a curious detail to find in Mark when the other synoptists omit it, suggesting it is an addition, but not an unreasonable one.

Mark’s connecting paragraph is peculiar (Mk 15:21):

And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross.

Why is this man Simon, a Cyrenian, introduced? Why indeed would the Romans compel a man to carry the cross for Jesus, making him miss part of his punishment? Simon’s Christian purpose seems to be to act as a witness, and his sons are mentioned to prove it, implying that they were known in Christian circles, though the other gospels omit them. But does Cyrenian really mean of Cyrene, a place in Libya? There must surely be an Aramaic word behind it, which Mark has not explained, and it has been rendered as something the Romans could understand.

Some say it means a man who works with lime, or in the cornfields, or is a fowler, or comes from the city. Perhaps the reference is not to words meaning lime or grain but to the root qara yielding a word meaning a planned encounter, deliberate and arranged for a purpose. It is used of an intentional meeting with God. The Cyrenian was a man who had to make a prearranged rendezvous with Jesus as he carried the cross—but if the encounter with this Simon was planned, what was its purpose and who planned it? It begins to look as though Jesus was indeed substituted before his crucifixion—by the Essenes?

Mark does translate an Aramaic word. Golgotha is interpreted as “the place of the skull”—the word, properly golgoltha, simply means skull or head. Christians have always believed it meant a rock or hillock shaped like a skull as Gordon of Khartoum did but golgoltha is used of counting heads, as in a census or poll-tax. There would have been a census in 20-21 AD—when the Acta Pilati say that Jesus died—if the Augustan cycle of censuses was followed. Perhaps all those pious pilgrims who imagined it to refer to a feature of the landscape were quite wrong—it was a place near the tax office.

More probably the heads counted would have been those of the dead in the recent counter attack. The Romans might have used decapitated heads to count dead Jews giving us the precise meaning of golgoltha, and perhaps they left the pile of them as a warning. Christians usually discount this argument—after 2000 years the evangelists’ aim of whitewashing the Romans still carries clout—because the considerate Romans could not possibly have done such an offensive thing to the Jews. Hacked up corpses lying about for days on end was against Jewish law so the kindly Romans tidied them up. It is true that the Romans normally did bend over backwards to defer to Jewish demands—but not when faced with rebellion! Even the gospel accounts declare there had been an insurrection, so the arguments that golgoltha cannot have had anything to do with actual skulls is nonsense. The place of the skull was where a pile of skulls had been made when the insurrection was put down. As an admonition it would have been near the site of the recent battle between the Nazarenes and the Jerusalem garrison described in the story of the Gadarene swine—overlooking the Kidron valley to the southeast of the city.

The rest of the crucifixion tradition is buttressed with scriptural fulfilments. The drink offered in Mark 15:23 fulfils Proverbs 31:6; parting his garments in Mark 15:24 was inserted to fulfil Psalms 22:18; Mark 15:27, as Mark 15:28 explains, fulfils Isaiah 53:12; the beginning of Mark 15:29 fulfils Psalms 22:7. Mark composes these prophecies for the informed reader to note, but in Mark 15:28 he expressly points out the scriptural reference:

And he was numbered with the transgressors,

namely the crucified rebels alongside him. He does so because it was the only one of these “prophecies” that had really been fulfilled. But some copyists thought it said too honestly that Jesus was a transgressor, effectively labelling him as the rebel he was, and omitted it. Hence it is missing in some early manuscripts.

The Crucifixion showing the Two Transgressors

The great festivals at Easter in honour of Attis and other gods were popular and had to be given a Christian raison d’etre. The church was quite open about this as a letter of Pope Gregory in 601 AD shows. Note that the crucified men have crossed legs, but the transgressor to the left has his left leg crossed over his right, while Jesus has his right leg crossed over left. The crossed legs symbolize the equinoxes, as the symbolic torchbearers, Cautes and Cautopatres, of Mithras’s icons show. Equinoctial torchbearers in Mithraic symbolism

Equinoctial torchbearers in Mithraic symbolism

Mithras was associated with festivals at the equinoxes, when the sun's path crossed the heavenly equator, whence the figures of the torchbearers with their crossed legs. The uplifted torch with right leg over left is the rising bright summer sun, therefore representing the vernal equinox, while the downturned torch with left over right is the dark winter sun, representing the autumnal equinox. In this crucifixion picture, Jesus is made to represent the vernal equinox, while the transgressor to his right is the autumnal equinox. what of the other man? His right leg passes behind his left leg then his foot passes in front of it again. He stands for the full solar year. He is therefore God, Yehouah or Iao being the God of the full year. The proper symmetry would have the father in the center with his two sons on either side, but Jesus, the good son has to be central in Christian imagery, and, of course, there is only one crucifixion myth remaining. Jesus is identified with the sun behind him. The painting also plainly equates the cross with the trees that the transgressors are hung on. At one time the imagery would have been common knowledge, but the Christians lost it.

The transgressors, two thieves—the Greek word is again lestai meaning insurrectionists—defenders of the city against the Romans, were crucified with Jesus, one on either side and they reviled him. It is quite unlike Essenes to break under torture, as we know from Josephus, so we can be sure that these men are not lifelong Essenes but either Jesus’s converts, accepted into the movement on the basis of repentance and baptism, or bystanders who undertook to help the Nazarenes against the legionaries. Luke 23:39-43 gives us their conversation in detail. One man demands that Jesus save them to prove his claims but “the other” tells him off, saying:

Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds. But this man hath done nothing amiss.

“The other” who answers is Jesus himself not the other anonymous man—it was Jesus who was addressed, and he it should be who answers. The implication is that the third of the trio, “this man”, was an onlooker arrested and condemned in error. Luke’s ambiguity suggests it is Jesus but allows that it was the third man.

If the purpose of the dialogue is to distinguish Jesus from the rebels, Luke fails miserably when he tells us the rebuked bandit and Jesus were in the same condemnation. He is evidently not raising the question of whether Jesus was in the same condemnation or not, but simply whether it was just or not—for one of them, “this man”, it was unjust. If this were not genuine tradition, it would never have been included. Jesus was named as an insurrectionist like the others. The denouement is that one of the two men, again it is not clear whether it is the rebuked man suitably chastened or the defended one suitably grateful, asks to be remembered in the kingdom and Jesus responds favourably. Since Jesus no longer expected the kingdom to be coming, these last verses are added, implying as they do that the kingdom would follow the suffering of the servant—a later idea.

Jesus’s attendants on the cross had their legs broken to shorten their lives (Jn 19:31-32) but Jesus was already dead. The object of crucifixion was to provide a slow death. Once the legs were broken, the strain on the heart and lungs would soon lead to death. Since Jesus was already dead without any broken bones and, according to John, on the eve of the Passover, he became the perfect sacrifice. The paschal lamb had to be perfect—it could have none of its bones broken! It also had to be sacrificed on 14 Nisan and this became the early Christian tradition of the actual date of the crucifixion.

The Finish

After six hours on the cross Jesus cries:

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Mark records it in Aramaic and translates it for his gentile audience. That this is the first line of Psalms 22 leads one to think it is a false but pious conclusion to Jesus’s life. Psalms 22 is really two psalms, one a cry of despair and one a messianic response. Commentators say that the cry of despair invites the response, and perhaps that is so, but a cry of despair is a strange choice for the gospel writer given that Psalms 22 was unfamiliar to gentiles without access to the Septuagint. The other gospel writers omit it as inappropriate for a God.

Yet a hundred years ago, it was pointed out that the earliest Christians would never have accepted a cry of despair from their God, even if it was a quotation from scripture, unless it was unequivocally vouchsafed by history. That must be true, and a clue that it is genuine is the next line in which some of the observers think he is saying “Elias” when he is saying “Eloi”. This is almost like a sick joke and it is difficult to believe it is other than genuine. Verse 36 is a fulfilment of prophecy and completion of the joke.

Jesus was steeped in interpretations of the scriptures and his final appeal to God in his agony might well have been couched in a scriptural quotation. He did not have to rack his brain to come up with it—it was simply the way he thought. Many pious Jews, perhaps most, would have been similarly conditioned but none more so than the Essenes. He was in agony and despair. Inadvertently his cry to God is Psalms 22. Now once this is accepted it becomes clear why so much more of the psalm is then added to the account of Jesus’s suffering. Much of the detail of the passion is taken directly from Psalms 22 because it provided Jesus’s last words and so seemed particularly holy.

After only a short time on the cross Jesus is offered a sponge of vinegar whereupon he cries out and dies. A Roman soldier, not a Jew, first recognizes Jesus as the Son of God. Mark is sucking up to the Romans again—a gentile first recognizes Jesus as the messiah. Mark concludes this section by pointing out that many women followers look on from afar, a sop to the early membership of the gentile church—women. Gentile women were much more ready to become Jewish proselytes than men because they did not have to undergo the painful and dangerous operation for adults of circumcision. Christianity found a ready basis for recruiting in the Roman Empire in the women who had already adopted Judaism. The relationships given in verse 40 are not clear.

When Jesus died, John gives no miracles. Mark and Luke mention the darkness of the sky for three hours and the tearing of the veil in the temple. The grosser effects—the earthquake, the bursting open of graves and the dead (described as “saints” meaning Essenes) walking—are the product of the fervid imagination of Matthew. If any one of these spectacular events really happened, on an occasion as memorable anyway as the death of a god, surely they would have been widely remembered and would have appeared in the other accounts. Besides their inconsistent use in the gospels, Seneca and Pliny who compiled records of such events had never heard of them.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.