The background: Most of us have heard that depictions of crucifixions with the nails being pounded into the hands are inaccurate, that that would not support a person’s weight, and that the nails would really have been thru the person’s wrist.
Here are the questions:
The Romans had a well-documented affinity for crucifixions. Is that the way they normally did it?
I heard a “Bible expert” say one time that the Biblical translation of “hand,” (the only references–actually, implications–of which, as it relates to The Crucifixion, I could find were in John 20:25, Luke 24:39, and Luke 24:40) was bad, that the original word (presumably Aramaic, translated into Greek) meant more than just hand, that it included the wrist. Accurate or not?
If the feet were also nailed to the cross (also documented in Luke 24), that would seem to relieve pressure on the hands, thus making an attachment thru the palms plausible. Were the feet typically nailed?
(This is not intended to become a thread on theism or Christianity, but on translations and specifics on executions.)
I’m not an expert, but this site is interesting, with pictures:
It’s hard to do a websearch on this topic and find info on crucifixion in general. I rememeber looking into this a while back when I read that stigmatics always bleed from places where wounds are depicted in artwork in their churchs rather than where actual wounds would have been produced. I never did discover if this is the case.
I get the impression that crucifiction was normally done by simply tying a person up – see the movie “Spartacus”, in which no one is nailed up.
The remains of a person who had been crucified were turned up several years ago. If memory serves, this person had been nailed, but not through the wrists.
Some doctor wrote a book called “A Doctor at Calvary” many years ago, in which he argued for a different placing of the nails, the argument being that , as you say, nails through the wriasts would b insufficient. People have suggested nailing through the forearm, or through a special place in the wrist that would allow it to support the weight.
You can find siome of this stuff in G.A. wells’ “The Historical Evidence for Jesus”. Bear in mind that Wells doesn’t even think Christ existed.
My own take: I can’t see Roman soldiers carefully searching the wrists for the Space of Destat (or whatever it was caled). Nails were expensive, too, back then. I suspect they’d simply lash the victim down, maybe hammering in a nail or two if they had it in for the guy. Gruesome, but effective.
I also vaguely remember from Anthony Burgess’ Man of Nazareth a large “peg” which the victim straddles that supports his actual body weight, while the nails just immobilize his arms. Burgess also mentions that it had some mocking phallic significance as well. If it’s true, it’s pretty easy to see why it’s not depicted in religious artwork.
“Nail 'em up, I say! Nail some sense into 'em”. - old man chained to a dungeon wall - ‘The life of Brian’
The problem is that there is not much physical evidence. My guess is that, after the crucified person died, the family was allowed (or required) to take the body away (1) to make more cross space available and (2) to prevent stinking up the area too badly. Maybe after a person had been rescued once or twice the Romans would pound in a few miniature railroad spikes to discourage that sort of thing.
As to where the nails, if any, were placed, Cecil has bestowed the answer upon us:
I knew it! I run to the bathroom for five lousy minutes, RACE back to the computer trailing a whole roll of TP and two people have beaten me to the answer! I hate it when that happens. I think if I knock out the shower I’ll have room to put a terminal right next to the toilet.
Okay, s Xena has someone nailed up – so does “The Sword and the Sorceror” – a truly wonderful bad film, and one that steals pretty heavily from Robert E. Howard’s “Conan” stories, which also feature a crucifiction by nailing (Conan and the hero of TSATS, being Tough Guys, survive. Conan even pulls out his own nails).
Hmmm… should I believe Xena/Conan/Sword or the heavily-researched Spartacus. Tough call.
This is getting a bit off topic, but Cecil’s answer didn’t cover one point about stigmata: The Bible says Jesus was pierced on his side, but doesn’t say which side. The belly-wound appears in different places on different stigmatics, related to what is depicted in artwork within the churches the stigmatics attend. Shouldn’t all belly-wounds in stigmatics appear on the same side, wheteher it matches the art or not?
I’m not sure if this is true, but it’s an interesting point.
Even further off-topic to Cal: Are you saying Xena: Warrior Princess isn’t an accurate portrayal of the real Xena’s life? <Big Dopey Grin> Actually Stanley Kubrick is my favorite filmmaker and Spartacus is a superb and generally authentic film but Kubrick himself has pointed out some innaccuracies in it. The movie was also edited to remove some objectionable scenes (censorship is such a harsh word). I understand this was mainly chopping off limbs and such, so I’m not sure if the script called for nailing during crucifixion it would have been filmed, and if it were filmed, whether it would have been shown. I’ve also heard that some of the homoeroticism between Crassus (Olivier) and Antoninus (Tony Curtis) was yanked (so to speak). I’m glad that 4 decades later the whims of a board of self-appointed protectors of public purity can’t arbitrarily decide what a director like Kubrick can show in his films. <rolls eyes in disgust>
From the July/August issue of Skeptical Inquirer magazine (www.csicop.org), in an article called ‘Stigmata: in Imitation of Christ.’ It refers to “…experiments with cadavers that supposedly show nailed hands could not support the weight of a body and would therefore tear away.” Jeez, some folks have really strange occupations. Crucifying cadavers? Who are these guys? And furthermore, “Skeletal remains have been discovered of only a single first-century crucifixion victim, a man known as Jehohanan. A scratch on the lower end of the right radius suggests a nail had penetrated between the radius and the ulna.” The article also describes how the foot bones show that a nail had been driven through the heels from the side. Stuff from the July/August issue wasn’t posted on CSICOP’s web site when I checked a couple of minutes ago, but this article might appear there eventually.
While we’re on the subject, I recall reading about 100 years ago (and you wondered why I called myself OldMan?) that death by crucifixion is actually due to suffocation brought on by exhaustion. After a couple of days in that unnatural position, the chest muscles collapse and the hapless victim can no longer breathe.
OldMan, from what I understand that was the typical method of death (the puncture wounds from the nails were still full of nail and didn’t bleed much). I don’t remember the specifics, but it went something like this: You hang on your arms for a while, forced to pull yourself up enough so your chest can expand. Your arms get tired and you sag, the new weight and position on your chest cavity makes it near impossible to breathe. You come close to passing out and the extra CO2 in the blood loosens the arm muscles enough to let you pull yourself up and breathe a few more times before the whole thing repeats. Death was generally from dehydration (however, Jesus was given water to drink from a wet rag poked at him via a hyssop stem if I recall) or in the most probably case of Jesus, the lungs eventually fill with fluid and you die that way. Note that when Jesus was pierced, both blood and water came out of the wound which lends to the idea that his lungs filled.
As for if they were nailed or not, and where, I’ve heard the whole “The Hebrew word for hand includes the entire forearm” line before and it may well be true (since I’m not up on my ancient Hebrew). In any event, there’s no question that they nailed them in my mind, as I’ve read several accounts of finding buried or entombed crucifixion victims who had bits of wood mixed among the bones at the feet and wrist/hand area. I wish I could cite them for you all, but they were books from my old university library’s stacks and I don’t even recall the titles, much less a decent quote.
For the record: Yes, the Hebrew word Yad refers to both hand and arm. Considering the massive similarites between the two languages, I’ll assume the same goes for Aramaic; I could look it up if you like.
Jophiel, we must have read some of the same things. Your mention of CO2 and the lungs filling with fluid sounded familiar, but I can’t recall the references either. It would appear that death by crucifixion involves exhaustion, deyhdration, suffocation, and congestive heart failure. A pretty gruesome way to go, and for a healthy young man in the prime of life–Jesus was 33, wasn’t he?–it could take a loooong time. Or was 33 old in pre-Christian Palestine? Makes the electric chair and the rope look positively genteel. And people say the world isn’t getting better…
As to where the nails went in…I don’t see that it matters much. We don’t really need to know that unless crucifixion becomes popular again as a method of execution, and some quick and easy experiments will soon settle that. I don’t know who those oddballs were who tested cadavers, but I found the reference: a book called A Doctor at Calvary, by Pierre Barbet, published in English translation (the original was French) by Image Books in NY in 1963. It’s not in the catalog at my local library, but a really big library might have it.
I figured there would be some “Shroudies” (people who believe the Shroud of Turin is the real thing) in the forum, but I guess I’ll have to take this one…
Early in the 80’s (if I remember correctly), the Catholic Church brought the Shroud out for a public viewing (I’m not sure of the particulars, but if anyone could help…). There was a documentary film made at the time called “Silent Witness”.
In the film, there were quite a few forensic pathologists, etc, who got into the act and did an “autopsy” on large photos of the Shroud. The conclusion seemed to be that even though the image on the Shroud may or may not have been the image of Christ - the guy did not die from his wounds…he suffocated.
If you nail the hands at the wrist (between the bones of the forearm) so the weight of the person hangs on the actual wrist bones - a person could actually hang there and not fall off the “cross”. Problem was that there was an issue of the person dying too soon of suffocation (try hanging from a jungle-gym by the hands with your arms spread apart and you’ll find out what I mean); you’d ruin all the fun of a brutal, lingering death.
To solve the problem, you could nail the person’s feet on a pedestal that angles down slightly. It won’t feel great; their feet are nailed there, the process would take longer, and they’d eventually die from their own weight overcoming the slant on the pedestal. It could take a couple of days for people to die this way - nice, long, brutal, and SLOW. If there was a need to clean up the execution site before the person died - the Romans would just break the condemned legs (Xena style)- they wouldn’t be able to support their weight anymore and would suffocate in a matter of minutes.
Just to keep in mind how much of a precision operation the figure on the Shroud of Turin is: the doctors concluded that they probably had to nail and re-nail the wrists until they got it perfect, otherwise the poor guy would have fallen off the cross all together
The Shroud of Turin has been scientifically proven by radiocarbon dating to be a fraud. It’s not old enough to be Christ’s burial shroud. Lately, though, the story’s been going around that it’s actually the burial shroud of Jacques de Molay. It’s about the right age. And for those of you who don’t know who Jaques de Molay was, check out the history of the crusader knights, particularly the Templars. There’s a lot of stuff around about them having custody of the Holy Grail and various other artifacts, and stories about the risen Christ visiting western Europe and the Americas. I don’t have the background to know if there’s any historical validity to that or if it’s all mystic nonsense. Can anyone enlighten us? Or confuse us more?
33 was not “old” in those times. Don’t confuse a shorter average life expectancy with a more rapid aging process. The shorter life expectancy in those days was due to deaths at young ages from disease or other mishap, especially infant deaths. But a person who was age 33 two millenia ago would be the same in terms of aging process as a person age 33 today, generally speaking.
(Exceptions might be that things like lack of dental or vision care, and other treatment of non-fatal disease might have been more ravaging then. So the person of age 33 then might have had fewer or less healthy teeth, etc.)
