Antiquarian, you’re not exactly citing a valid historical source, there.
Antiquarian, if we accept that account of Jesus’ mistreatment at the hands of the Romans as accurate, it still does not tell us if this treatment was harsher than usual or exceptional in any way. Can you give us some information about a more typical (for want of a better word) contemporary crucifixion?
Hi, Svt4Him -
I was talking about John 19:14-16 -
vs. Mark 15:25 -
Both texts are using the Jewish method of telling time, where the day is assumed to have twelve hours and starts at around six AM.
Matthew mentions the darkness over the region starting at about the sixth hour, but seems to imply that Jesus had been crucified before that time.
But Mark says explicitly that Jesus was crucified at around nine AM, whereas John says that Jesus was not handed over to the soldiers for crucifixion until sometime around noon.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, if we assume the Gospels are accurate on these matters. (and I will point out that only the last three have anything to do with Roman treatment of Jesus), scourging and whipping was a pretty common punishment under Roman administration, and the whole “Who hit you” and robe and crown thing is, like I said, just the soldiers having some fun with him.
It is difficult to look at the gospels as any sort of ‘factual reporting’, most scholars look at them as guides to understanding the genre of the times.
As someone who spends copious amounts of time in Libraries around world I’ll tell you that viable data on a more typical/contemporary crucifixion is not scarce. This link is particularly informative (and graphic be warned), though I only agree with several of the facts in view. But it does a fairly good job of juxtaposing Jesus’ crucifiction and others. They did have a vast array of similarities, but taken as a whole, I do not believe Jesus was treated as just another jewish slave being crucified.
Oh, those nutty Romans! Remind me not to invite them to my next crucifiction…
Speaking of the Romans, did they keep any records to collaborate the gospel version? Sorry, not too up to date with the particulars of “The” crucifiction, just what I got from sunday school long ago. I see discussion of the evidence based only (mostly, sorry antiquarian) on the gospel here and wasn’t that written by a couple of biased men. (Do I hear a zippo behind me?)
I’m not purporting that they’re wrong, but these guys probably had some (ok, lots of) investment in the whole thing, right? Their story would reflect this, by no fault but being human. So I wonder if any Roman documents are left, that interpretation would be helpful, or is that what this thread is all about and I missed it.
Otherwise everyone is simply discussing what they think the Bible says about the crucifiction.
Darn, too slow.
mine should read: “What Antique said”.
Darn, too slow.
Mine should now read: “what Antique said”.
Standard crucifixion procedure’s can’t juxtaposed with that of Jesus because we have no reliable description of the crucifixion of Jesus. The gospels were written decades after the fact, none of them are eyewitness accounts. and all of them are compromised by obviously mythicized agendas.
dinoboy,
there are no extra-Biblical accounts or documents of the crucifixion. There is no contemporary documentation that Jesus even existed.
Josephus and Tacitus (writing some years later) both make passing references to Christians and both mention that the leader of their movement was crucified but they provide no details about it. Those two references are the sum total of extra-Biblical evidence for Jesus.
RE the gang-rape theory. Messianic Rabbi Les Gosling bases it on the Psalm 22 verse about being assailed by dogs- with dogs being used in Deuteronomy 23 as slang for male temple prostitutes; and on the idea that if Christ suffered representatively for humanity, why do we assume He did not endure sexual abuse?
It’s pretty sketchy, but emotionally riveting.
Diogenes- the Talmud also mentions Jesus being hanged for sorcery.
I must say much of what Diogenes the Cynic (I like your name BTW) said is true. There is not much credible evidence to purport Jesus even existed. However, with a following like he has, the probability that there was a man named Jesus who went through some of the things discussed in the gospels is pretty good. I saw a distribution of the physical data from digs around Jerusalem that suggest many of the things discussed are at least close to valid. With more than 70 percent credibility, in archaeological terms thats not that bad. This was a while ago and I’m not too sure on the numbers.
I mainly started this thread as a spin off to the mel gibson thread. I may see it to brush up on my latin, but otherwise there are too many innacuracies to make it really fun to see for me… IMHO.
Valid corroborated accounts don’t exist, true, but semi-valid accounts from many different people taken as a whole point in a general direction correct? I’m not talking about what supposedly happened after the crucifixion, but of leading up to it. My link regarding the Ecumenical Statement on the Literary Genre, “Gospel” details alot if you have time to read it.
If they did, none have survived. The only nearly contemporary history I ever heard of that mentions Jesus was Flavius Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews and he doesn’t go into any detail about the crucifixion itself.
They probably would not have bothered keeping track of so mundane an event as the execution of a few Jewish trouble makers - a couple of bandits and another of those religious eccentrics they seemed to have so many of. :dubious:
Which is the other thing about the accounts of the crucifixion that sets my teeth on edge - the off-hand brutality of almost everybody involved.
Check out what Pilate says in Luke 23:13-16 - that he has found that Jesus has not done anything wrong, so “I will have him punished and then release him”. In other words, Jesus is innocent, but Pilate will have him flogged simply for coming to the attention of Roman authority.
Then, after Pilate’s rather inept attempts to foist the problem off onto Herod, or work out a “compromise” that involves flogging an innocent man to see if that will satisfy the blood lust of the mob, Pilate realizes that this is a set up. The chief priests, feeling that the income generated by the Temple sacrifices has been threatened by Jesus’ calls for reform (remember Jesus kicking all the money changers out of the Temple? That would cost the priests and Levites a fat cut of the profits), have incited the mob to pressure Pilate into solving their problem by having Jesus killed.
Pilate sees all this. But simply because the crowds are making so much noise, he shrugs his shoulders, (literally) washes his hands of the situation, and says, in essence, "Anything for a quiet life. Isn’t there a batch of people scheduled for crucifixion today? - throw this one in, too. Maybe that will shut these people up and get them out of my hair. "
Simply condemning an innocent man to a hideous death for the sake of his own peace and quiet.
And, as others have posted, the notion of letting the soldiers “play” with Him for a bit before the crucifixion. After all, He is going to die anyway - what’s the harm in a bit of fun beforehand? And so yet another beating, and the crown of thorns, and the Roman soldiers’ sinister idea of what constitutes “fun”.
And then the crowning detail of that afternoon of horrors. Most of the physical labor of the execution has been accomplished. Jesus and the two thieves are nailed up, and the crosses put in place. The guard has to remain on the scene for crowd control, to keep the friends of the condemned from staging a rescue, but apart from that, it has become a boring afternoon of guard duty. So they break out the game pieces and start gambling for the best of the spoils of the execution - while three men are groaning away their lives a few feet away.
And the flies buzz, and the time passes. Once in a while, one of the dying men says something, but as the afternoon goes on, they become less and less coherent.
"What was that middle one was saying? "
“No idea - I can’t understand him anymore.”
“Wet his mouth a little - I want to know what he said”.
(Puts a rag on a stick, dips in the jar of the standard issue cheap wine, and lets Jesus have a sip. Trudges back to the group.)
“What was it?”
“Don’t know. He was calling to someone named Eli. Anyway - your roll.”
Regards,
Shodan
The Talmud mentions somebody named Yeshu being hanged for sorcery(and that Yeshu had five disciples and worshiped a brick), but he’s probably not the same person as Jesus, because the Talmudic Yeshu was a contemporary of R. Joshua ben Perachiah (who was the inadvertant cause of Yeshu worshiping the brick), and ben Periachiah and Yeshu lived in the second century BCE.
Well, and it was Roman attitudes like the ones you listed that helped lead to Judea erupting into bloody revolt 30 years later.
That Talmudic reference is from the fifth century, so it’s not exactly contempory. It’s also not certain that it refers to the Jesus of the NT. It refers to a “Yeshu” (a very common name) who was hanged on passover for sorcery. Not all scholars agree that it’s necessarily talking about Jesus.
Even if we allow it as a semi-confirmation that Jesus existed and was crucified (two points which I do not contest) they still don’t tell us anything about the details of the execution or how they compared to other crucifixions.
We have no first hand accounts for any part of the life of Jesus, and no part of the passion narratives can be taken as historically reliable. Matthew and Luke take their narratives from Mark so they cannot be said to truly represent independent accounts. John conflicts with the synoptics in several ways (including not just the time but the day of the crucifixion. The synoptic passion narratives also contain a number of factual and procedural errors concerning both the trial before the Sanhedrin and the alleged actions of Pilate.
The Gospels are simply of no use in learning anything for certain about Jesus. It’s like using the Iliad as a source for info on the Trojan War.
Here’s a question I’ve always had about the Crucifiction – one that I’ve never seen asked before.
According to one of the Gospels, Christ didn’t carry the cross all the way to Golgotha himself. He was helped by Simon of Cyrene. I remember this keenly, because, growing up Catholic, I heard about the event every time we went to the Stations of the Cross.
The mention of Simon of Cyrene seems particularly definite – the Gospel doesn’t say that “Someone was designated to carry the Cross”, but names him, and his town. It’s as if we should know who he was. Yet there is no other mention of him in canonical writings.
Even more interesting, there aren’t any writings of him in non-canonical works, either. It seems to me that in the case of such a dap, popular myth or legend tends to fill it in. Yet there are, to my knowledge, no Apocryphal stories of Simon of Cyrene, no obscure Gospel of Simon of Cyrene, no saintly legend of St. Cyrene of the Cross.
I suspect that there once was a body of literature on this very distinctly named individual, but that it has died out, or possibly been suppressed. He may have been a figure in his own right (as was John the Baptist, apparently) with his own following, for all I know.
Simon of Cyrene is mentioned in all three Synoptic Gospels, and Mark lists him as the father of Alexander and Rufus.
Rufus is a name also mentioned in Romans 16:13 as a particular friend of Paul. Alexander is mentioned in Acts 19:33 (at the riot of the silversmiths, in Ephesus). I have heard speculation that Simon is specifically mentioned in the Gospels because his two sons were prominent in the early church.
There is no way to be sure, and Alexander is also a name mentioned in both letters to Timothy, and not in a positive light, so the name Alexander seems to have been a common one.
Regards,
Shodan
Not to throw any more fuel onto the fire, but this Jesus fellow (I use that only because the fact that that was his true name is rather dubious) was pointed out to the Roman authorities after a meeting of the Sanhedrin, supposedly on Friday night. Emergency meeting or not, how is it possible for the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Jewish teachers (rabbis), to meet DURING the Sabbath?