Crucifixion of Jesus

• 1. Introduction

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  The crucifixion of Jesus reached the pages of the Roman historian Tacitus around the year 116, in The Annals. Describing Nero's persecution of Christians, Tacitus paused to explain where their name came from. He wrote that "Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius". The execution happened, he added, "at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus." A historian writing outside the Christian tradition had set the event down in a single sentence. Scholars nearly universally accept that the crucifixion happened. Many rank it, alongside his baptism, as one of the two most certain facts about the historical Jesus. Yet agreement on the fact stops short of the details. What did the earliest writers say took place, almost hour by hour? Who else mentioned it, and what did they make of it? When and where did it happen, and what does a Roman cross do to a body? And why do whole traditions insist that Jesus never hung on one?

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• 2. Gospel Accounts

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  Paul's letters are the earliest surviving writings to document the crucifixion, and scholars use his chronology as evidence for its date. The earliest detailed accounts, however, are the four canonical gospels. In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus predicts his death in three separate places. Every gospel then slows down. The stretch from arrest to resurrection receives more detail than any other part of the book, giving readers an almost hour-by-hour account. It runs through an arrest, a hearing before the Sanhedrin, and a final trial at Pilate's court, where Jesus is flogged and condemned.

  On the road out, the Synoptic Gospels say Jesus first carried his cross, then collapsed. Roman soldiers pressed a man called Simon of Cyrene into carrying it. John says only that Jesus bore it himself.

  At Golgotha, Jesus was offered wine mixed with myrrh or gall, likely a sour drink called posca. Mark and Matthew both say he refused it. He was hung between two convicts, whom some translations of the Greek call bandits or Jewish rebels. According to Mark, the ordeal lasted from the third hour, about 9 a.m., until the ninth hour, about 3 p.m.

  Above his head the soldiers fixed a sign reading "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews". John says it appeared in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. The soldiers divided his garments and cast lots for his seamless robe, again according to John. John alone adds that the soldiers left Jesus' legs unbroken, unlike those of the two other men, because he was already dead. Breaking the legs hastened death. One soldier, named Longinus in extra-biblical tradition, instead pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water gushed out.

  Mary Magdalene is named among the women at the cross by Mark, Matthew and John. John also places the mother of Jesus there, with Mary of Clopas and "the disciple whom Jesus loved". Luke mentions a group of women but names none of them. Matthew alone has Roman soldiers assigned to guard the tomb.

  Joseph of Arimathea requests the body in all four gospels and buries it in a rock-cut tomb. Matthew alone suggests the tomb was his own. Only John brings in Nicodemus to help with the burial. Luke adds that the women prepared spices and ointments before resting on the Sabbath. Luke also records one criminal rebuking the other, and crowds leaving while "beating their breasts". His Jesus faces the cross with striking calm.

  The First Epistle to the Corinthians says Jesus was raised "on the third day", counting the day of crucifixion as the first. Acts of the Apostles says he stayed with the apostles for 40 days, while the Gospel of Luke draws no clear line between Easter Sunday and the Ascension.

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• 3. Outside Witnesses

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  A letter from Mara bar Serapion to his son, written after the year 73 but before the 3rd century, contains an early non-Christian echo. The letter has no Christian themes, and its author is presumed to be neither Jewish nor Christian. He lists the retributions that followed the unjust treatment of three wise men: Socrates, Pythagoras, and "the wise king" of the Jews. Some scholars see little doubt that this means Jesus. Others give the letter less weight because the reference is ambiguous.

  About the year 93, the Jewish historian Josephus wrote in his Antiquities of the Jews that Pilate, "at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross". The passage, called the Testimonium Flavianum, contains later additions. Most modern scholars still believe it rests on an authentic core about Jesus' execution by Pilate. James Dunn speaks of a "broad consensus" on that point.

  Eddy and Boyd go further about Tacitus, saying it is now "firmly established" that his passage is non-Christian confirmation of the crucifixion. Scholars generally judge it genuine and of real historical value.

  The 2nd-century satirist Lucian mocked Christians in his letter Passing of Peregrinus. He wrote that they "worship a man to this day", one who "was crucified on that account." His grasp of Christian traditions had significant gaps and errors. That makes it unlikely that Christians shaped his words, so he may offer an independent statement.

  The Greek philosopher Celsus, an opponent of early Christianity, wrote The True Word. It survives only in quotations inside Contra Celsum, which Origen of Alexandria wrote in 248 to refute him. Origen quotes Celsus complaining that "those who crucified your God when present among men, suffered nothing for it".

  The Babylonian Talmud says: "On the eve of the Passover Yeshu was hanged." Many historians believe this 3rd-4th century passage concerns Jesus. Peter Schäfer says there can be no doubt, and Robert Van Voorst finds support in the surrounding context. A problem remains. The passage says a royal government of Judaea condemned Yeshu, but that line of rulers lost its authority when Herod the Great took the throne in 37 BC. That would place the execution nearly 40 years before Jesus was born.

  Historians also test the gospel accounts with criteria. The criterion of embarrassment argues that Christians would not have invented the painful death of their own leader. Multiple attestation counts independent sources, including non-Christian ones. Coherence asks whether the event fits other known history. Gerd Lüdemann draws three conclusions from the mode of death: Romans put Jesus to death, Roman legal proceedings came first, and the charge was a political crime.

  Agreement ends when scholars ask why. E. P. Sanders and Paula Fredriksen think Jesus did not foretell his own death, and call those predictions a church creation. Michael Patrick Barber argues he did predict a violent end. Bart Ehrman sees an enemy of the state who presented himself as leader of a coming Kingdom.

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• 4. Date and Place

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  Rainer Riesner calls the 7th of April in AD 30 "far and away the most likely date of the crucifixion of Jesus". Another favored date is Friday, the 3rd of April in AD 33. Scholars estimate the year from the gospels, from the chronology of Paul's life, and from astronomical models. Their range is AD 30-33. They generally agree it fell on a Friday on or near Passover, the 14th of Nisan, while Pontius Pilate governed from AD 26-36.

  A Thursday or Wednesday crucifixion has also been proposed. Some scholars point to a "double sabbath", an extra Passover sabbath falling on Thursday evening, ahead of the usual weekly one. Others cite "three days and three nights" to argue for Wednesday. Critics answer that in Jewish idiom a "day and night" can mean any part of a 24-hour period, so three literal nights are not required.

  Mark's timetable collides with John's. In John 19:14, Jesus is still standing before Pilate at the sixth hour. Some scholars suggest John used Roman timekeeping, which counted from midnight, making that hour 6 a.m. Others reject the reconciliation. Several argue that modern clock precision should not be read back into texts written when no standard timepieces existed and time was usually rounded to the nearest three-hour block.

  The precise location remains a matter of conjecture. The biblical accounts place it outside the walls of Jerusalem, near enough for passers-by to see and for onlookers to watch from a distance. Eusebius gave only a bearing, north of Mount Zion. The English word Calvary comes from the Latin calvaria, meaning skull. That Latin translates the Aramaic Gûlgaltâ, rendered in Greek as Golgotha, "place of a skull".

  The text never says why the place had that name. One theory is that skulls of abandoned victims lay about, which would offend Jewish burial customs but not Roman ones. Another is that a nearby cemetery gave the name. A third is that the shape of the land suggested a skull. Despite the phrase "Mount Calvary", it was more likely a small hill or rocky knoll.

  Two sites compete. The traditional one lies inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, and has been attested since the 4th century. Gordon's Calvary, near the Garden Tomb north of the Old City, has been promoted since the 19th century.

  The traditional route is the Via Dolorosa, Latin for "Way of Grief", a street in the Old City. Nine of the fourteen Stations of the Cross stand along it, and the last five are inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In Luke, Jesus turns to mourning women called "daughters of Jerusalem" and warns: "if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?" Luke distinguishes them from the Galilean women who followed him. A woman named Veronica, who gave him her veil to wipe his forehead, appears in sources such as Acta Sanctorum but nowhere in the Gospels.

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• 5. Method and Medicine

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  The Koine Greek words stauros and xylon appear in the New Testament for the instrument of Jesus' death. Stauros once meant an upright stake, but in Koine Greek it could also mean a cross, and xylon simply means wood. Most Christians picture a two-beamed cross. Jehovah's Witnesses hold that a single upright stake was used. Early Christian writers who describe the shape always mention a cross-beam.

  The Epistle of Barnabas, certainly earlier than 135, likened the cross to the Greek letter tau, which had the numeric value of 300. Justin Martyr, who lived from 100-165, compared it to a roasted lamb, pierced lengthwise by one spit with another across the back. Irenaeus, who died near the end of the 2nd century, described "five extremities, two in length, two in breadth, and one in the middle".

  The number of nails is uncertain. Theories range from three to four, and at times as many as 14. In Western art before the Renaissance, four nails were usual, with the feet side by side. Afterward most artists used three, one foot resting on the other. The Jesuits place three nails under the IHS monogram. Romans sometimes tied victims instead of nailing them.

  The nails' placement in the hands or wrists is also debated. Some say the Greek word cheir includes the wrist, and that Romans were trained to drive nails through Destot's space, between the capitate and lunate bones, without fracturing any bone. Another view holds that the word includes the forearm, with nails near the radius and ulna. Ropes may also have helped.

  In 1968, an archeological discovery just northeast of Jerusalem uncovered the body of a crucified man from the 1st century. He was identified as Yehohanan ben Hagkol and probably died about AD 70, near the time of the Jewish revolt against Rome. Analysis at the Hadassah Medical School estimated he died in his late 20s. A heel bone pierced by a spike, found in a Jerusalem grave and now held by the Israel Antiquities Authority, is another 1st-century find. These discoveries show that Roman crucifixions roughly matched the gospel descriptions.

  The 17th-century scholar Rasmus Bartholin examined whether a hypopodium, a standing platform for the feet, was used, since hands might not bear the weight. In the 20th century, forensic pathologist Frederick Zugibe hung human volunteers by ropes at various angles and hand positions. His results favor angled suspension, a two-beamed cross, and perhaps foot support. Hanging from a straight stake, as the Nazis did at the Dachau concentration camp during World War II, brings death quickly.

  In 2006, Matthew W. Maslen and Piers D. Mitchell reviewed over 40 publications on how Jesus died, with theories from cardiac rupture to pulmonary embolism. William Stroud proposed the ruptured heart in 1847, drawing on the blood and water in John. A prevalent modern view is cardiovascular collapse from shock after scourging, beatings and nailing left Jesus dehydrated and critically weak.

  In 1986, William Edwards and colleagues wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association, backing a mix of hypovolemic shock and exhaustion asphyxia. They read the water from the wound as pericardial fluid. The French surgeon Pierre Barbet thought Jesus relaxed his muscles to draw enough air to speak, though Zugibe disputes some of his claims, such as the location of the nails. Orthopedic surgeon Keith Maxwell also weighed the strain of carrying the cross along the Via Dolorosa. In 2003, F. P. Retief and L. Cilliers concluded that death often came from a combination of factors, and that Roman guards could not leave until the victim had died.

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• 6. Last Words and Signs

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  Seven statements are credited to Jesus from the cross, though no single gospel records all of them. In Mark and Matthew he speaks only once, in Aramaic: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" It means "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" and quotes Psalm 22. The linguist Steve Caruso says Jesus most likely spoke Galilean Aramaic, which would sound like əlahí əlahí ləmáh šəvaqtáni.

  Geza Vermes noted that the verse is cited in Aramaic rather than the usual Hebrew, and that it had become a proverbial saying. Next to the "theologically correct and reassuring" sayings in the other gospels, he found this one "unexpected, disquieting and in consequence more probable". James Dunn argued the early church would not have invented such an embarrassment. Allison and Davies read it as a cry of pain, not a loss of faith.

  Luke omits that cry and gives three other sayings. "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." To the repentant criminal: "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." Finally: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."

  John also records three. To his mother and the beloved disciple: "Woman, here is your son... Here is your mother." Then: "I am thirsty." And last: "It is finished." Michael Licona suggests John reworked the authentic statements preserved by the other three. These words have inspired sermons and books devoted entirely to them.

  The Synoptic Gospels report that from the sixth to the ninth hour, noon to mid-afternoon, darkness covered the land. John mentions no darkness, and in his account the crucifixion does not begin until after noon. Mark and Luke also tell of the Temple veil tearing from top to bottom. Matthew adds earthquakes, splitting rocks, and opened graves, from which resurrected saints walked into the holy city. The centurion declares in Mark and Matthew, "Truly this man was the Son of God!" In Luke he says, "Certainly this man was innocent!"

  Some ancient Christians wondered if pagan writers mistook the darkness for an eclipse. Sextus Julius Africanus and Origen cite the historian Phlegon, who wrote of an eclipse under Tiberius and great earthquakes. Africanus also cites Thallus, who called it an eclipse of the sun. Africanus objected that Passover falls at full moon, when a solar eclipse cannot occur. Tertullian believed the event was recorded in Roman archives.

  Colin Humphreys and Graeme Waddington of Oxford University proposed a lunar eclipse, visible in Jerusalem on the 3rd of April AD 33, peaking at 5:15 p.m. and showing for half an hour after sundown. They noted that some of the oldest manuscripts of Luke say "the sun was eclipsed". David Henige called the idea "indefensible". Astronomer Bradley Schaefer found the eclipse would not have been visible at moonrise. Frank Close, on the BBC Radio 4 program In Our Time, said calculations confirm an eclipse that night.

  Modern biblical scholarship largely treats the darkness as a literary creation by the author of Mark, meant to stress a theologically significant death. Ancient readers knew the motif from writers such as Philo, Dio Cassius, Virgil, Plutarch and Josephus, who used it for the deaths of kings and major figures. Vermes says those hunting a datable eclipse are "barking up the wrong tree".

  The earthquake has a physical record. A widespread quake of at least magnitude 5.5 struck the region between AD 26 and 36. Researchers dated it by counting annual sediment layers called varves in a core from En Gedi, measured against an earlier quake in 31 BC. They concluded that Matthew either reported it more or less accurately, or "borrowed" it, or inserted an "allegorical fiction".

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• 7. Meaning and Blame

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  The Nicene Creed's line "for our sake he was crucified" shows a belief formalized in the 4th century, but one that predates Paul's letters and reaches to the Church of Jerusalem. Christians believe the death, with the resurrection, restores humankind's relationship with God. In John, the theme starts with John the Baptist calling Jesus "The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world". Acts says the death happened "with the foreknowledge of God, according to a definite plan".

  For Paul, the crucifixion was not an isolated event but a cosmic one, inseparable from the resurrection. He taught that on the cross Jesus defeated the spiritual forces called Kosmokrator, "the rulers of this world". John Calvin argued that Jesus could have proved his innocence before Pilate but chose obedience. Sergei Bulgakov wrote that the Father determined the crucifixion "pre-eternally", before creation. Karl Rahner compared the blood and water from the wound to baptismal water.

  Christians disagree about how the death saves. Substitutionary atonement, which evangelical Protestants usually hold in the form of penal substitution, treats the death as a willing sacrifice of obedience. The moral influence theory, favored by liberal Protestants, sees a martyrdom that reinforces Jesus' teaching. Both views are popular among Roman Catholics. Eastern Orthodox Christians often favor Christus Victor, in which Jesus defeats Satan and death. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches a "redeeming ransom" that covers the fall of Adam and personal sins.

  Pope Pius XI's encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor defined Acts of Reparation as compensation for the injury done to Jesus. Pope John Paul II described them as an "unceasing effort to stand beside the endless crosses on which the Son of God continues to be crucified."

  The question of blame has a darker history. The Catholic Church denounces the idea of Jewish deicide, holding that all sinners are authors and ministers of the crucifixion. Through most of its history, though, the mainstream Christian intellectual tradition blamed the Jews of the time and for all time. That blame is incorrect as established historical fact. Lüdemann says the claim "can still be heard and is not sufficiently contradicted."

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• 8. Denials and Art

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  Most Islamic traditions deny that Jesus physically died, on a cross or otherwise. The Quran says of those who claimed to have killed the Messiah: "they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but rather, it was made to appear to them so." God, it continues, raised him to Himself. Tradition holds that God made another person look exactly like him. Candidates named include Judas Iscariot and Simon of Cyrene.

  Early Gnostic sects, believing Jesus had no physical substance, also denied the crucifixion. Docetism taught that his bodily existence was mere semblance. Ignatius of Antioch answered that Jesus was truly born and truly crucified, and that those who said he only seemed to suffer only seemed to be Christians. Irenaeus reported that the 2nd-century Alexandrian Gnostic Basilides taught a similar denial, which Irenaeus refuted as heresy.

  The Nag Hammadi library's First Revelation of James has the risen master say: "Never did I suffer at all, and I was not distressed." In the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Yaldabaoth and his Archons crucify only their own man, the body, while Jesus ascends. Manichaeism held that someone else was crucified. Bogomilism taught that Lucifer failed to destroy an immaterial Jesus whose suffering was an illusion. Yazidism regards Jesus as a "figure of light" who could not be crucified.

  In northern Japan, some Christian sects tell a stranger story. Jesus' younger brother Isukiri took his place on the cross, while Jesus fled across Siberia to Mutsu Province. There he became a rice farmer near what is now Shingō, raised three daughters, and died at the age of 106. A museum in Japan claims to hold evidence for this account.

  The cross has been central to Christian symbolism since earliest times. Justin Martyr, who died in 165, describes it in a way that already implies symbolic use, although the crucifix appeared later. Devotions grew from the process of crucifixion. The Stations of the Cross follow its stages, and the Rosary of the Holy Wounds is used to meditate on the wounds of Jesus.

  Giotto, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Raphael, Botticelli, van Dyck, Titian, Caravaggio, El Greco, Zurbarán, Velázquez, Rubens and Rembrandt all painted the scene. The presence of the Virgin Mary beneath the cross, mentioned in John, became a subject of its own, seen in Raphael's Mond Crucifixion and Caravaggio's The Entombment of Christ. Pope John Paul II's coat of arms bears a Marian Cross. At the end of the 19th century, Tissot's The Crucifixion, seen from the Cross offered a novel view, painting the scene from the perspective of Jesus himself.

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