Hermann Vogel’s Death of Spartacus, showing the Thracian gladiator’s capture, shortly before his crucifixion
Historical, mythical or legendary, the crucifixion of Christ represents the story of many. Whether or not the man called Jesus existed – and the modern scholarly view on this seems to range from ‘probably’ to ‘possibly’ – the gospel narrative reflects a wider human story, the story of thousands upon thousands of nameless and forgotten individuals who were crucified at the hands of the Roman state.
For anyone who assumes that crucifixion was an unusual or extraordinary event in Roman times, they should consider the case of the rebels led by Spartacus. This low-born Thracian gladiator-slave led a revolt so successful that it caused considerable embarrassment to the ruling Senate. When Crassus finally crushed the rebellion in 71 BCE, he ordered the crucifixion of an estimated 6,000 slave-rebels along the Appian Way, the main road leading out from the city of Rome; he also brought back the ruthless practice of decimation to punish and terrorise the cohort of soldiers that he deemed to have failed him the most in his earlier attempts to quash the rebellion.
Crucifixion was public and humiliating – deliberately so – and its use in the case of the slave-rebels illustrates several important points about this notorious and brutal method of execution. Its aim was to demean the victim and intimidate the observer – this was what happened to you when you challenged the Roman rule of law. Crucifixion was a servile supplicium – reserved for slaves and foreigners, non-Roman citizens, deserting soldiers, pirates and insurgents; wealthy Roman men were often removed from society due to political machinations or the whim of current authority, but never was crucifixion used to dispense with them.
In its broadest definition, crucifixion meant that the victim was impaled and/or tied to some form of frame, cross, stake or tree and left to hang for anything from several hours to several days. Causes of death included exhaustion and shock brought on by extreme pain and exsanguination (sometimes in part from a scourging prior to the crucifixion), heart failure and/or pulmonary collapse from the immense pressure put upon the victim’s heart and lungs; the victim’s demise could be hastened dramatically by increasing the intensity of this pressure, hence the common practice of breaking the legs to precipitate collapse. It was a sadistic and grotesque formula for murder, exploited in extremis by the Romans.
It is not clear whether the emperor Constantine outlawed crucifixion in the 4th Century CE, as is claimed by Christian triumphalist writers, but certainly it had been outlawed in the Roman empire by the mid 5th century. However, the Classical world is not the only context in which this abhorrent method of slaughter has been practised. Japanese haritsuke started with the execution of 26 Christians in Nagasaki in 1597 and recurred intermittently up until the last century. Islam has also subsumed the practice, with verse 5:33 of the Qur’an calling for the crucifixion of those who wage war against Allah or the Prophet. Crucifixion is still practised in some Islamic countries and there have been recently documented cases in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Yemen; it is most commonly used to make a degrading and threatening showpiece of the victim’s body rather than as a method of execution, but this is not exclusively the case.
‘The Easter story means nothing to a humanist from a spiritual perspective… Yet each year the human side of the Easter story can serve as a sober reminder of man’s inhumanity to man.’
The Easter story means nothing to a humanist from a spiritual perspective; we do not believe that Christ was the son of God, nor do we believe that he died for our sins and was resurrected. Yet each year the human side of the Easter story can serve as a sober reminder of man’s inhumanity to man. In a modern context, we can and should take action by giving support to the work of organisations such as Amnesty International, who campaign tirelessly and effectively against the use of torture and capital punishment right across the globe.
But as a Classicist, I cannot help but see the story of Christ as a legend within its ancient milieu and recall the incalculable number of wasted human lives that resonate through its narrative. In the name of Roman civilisation, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people were tortured and crucified, forgotten souls with no afforded legacy of reverence or pious gratitude to preserve them in the conscious minds of the living.
At this time of year, I choose to remember them.
Good and concise description of the historical context of crucifixion and bringing us right up to date.Jesus Christ may well have existed as an exceptional individual, but there is absolutely no empirical evidence that he (or indeed any other human being ) ever had supernatural powers to perform miracles and suspend the laws of nature.e.g raise corpses from the dead,ascend bodily into an unsubstantiated place/state called heaven,change bread and wine into flesh and blood.If anyone asserts that Jesus Christ,alone amongst all the human beings who have ever existed,could perform such biological and natural impossibilities,please furnish the supporting data.
I agree; a fine article. But why was Jesus crucified? Was it because he was a Zealot, as Reza Aslan argues? What threat did he pose to the Roman Empire? Did Pilate really seek to release him? It seems very unlikely.
Jesus was crucified for claiming, or being accused of claiming, to be King of the Jews. Apparently such a challenge to the authority of Rome would have been sufficient to condemn him. If the gospels are at all reliable on this point, Jesus precipitated his arrest by creating a disturbance in the Temple during the politically charged week of Passover. It’s certainly possible Jesus was more militant than the evangelists let on, but there’s not enough evidence to say one way or the other. Zealot’s a great read, though.
It’s highly doubtful Pilate argued on Jesus’s behalf. Pilate was contemptuous of the Jews and eventually recalled to Rome for his excessive brutality. In the age of Tiberius, that’s saying a lot.
Jez was prob From the future or from a more advanced species. Which is why the description of what people pf that time saw from jez, is literally the only way for them to interpret rationlise and explain what they saw.
Ie- so when he used quick bit of laser eye treatment on a blind guy, it would look like a miracle.
Appeared to cure , lepers and the lame quite easily too- advanced medical knowledge
he used replicator to change water to wine, bread etc
Maybe as he descended he glowed or had a halo of light around him, interpreted as an angel
As a christian, I have found myself going through profound doubts about my faith. Jesus himself said, “Know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” He went onto say whilst in front of Pilate before his crucifixion, “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” And I suppose that is the reason I have followed him all these years. However, Pilate retorted Jesus by questioning, “What is truth?”, to which Jesus gave no reply.
A few hours earlier Jesus had said to doubting Thomas, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father (God), but through me.”
It is the profound teaching of the New Testament that has held me captive to being a follower of the Christ all these years.
Prayer, would indeed appear to work, whether this be miraculous, or coincidence, or just the nature of things.
I would also appear to have experienced healing, and many I have met testify to the same, but I have to confess, that I have never experienced a spectacular healing, or miracle as recorded in Scripture.
I think what continues to hold me as a believer, is that I have to worship and thank somebody for the good we receive, and enjoy on a daily basis. I could dwell on all the negatives, if I chose, but that would just make me into a bitter, and miserable person!
So God, or no god, let me adopt a healthy attitude.
Prayer is a strange thing. Firstly you are trying to communicate telepathically and so are millions, to change the creator of the universe’s mind on a very minor topic (for him).
This also means that He has a plan and you are trying to get Him to change it. Otherwise if He has no plan, then it is also a waste of time.
You will find that prayer does not work any better than chance. It only seems to work because you remember the times it worked more, but research has shown it makes NO difference – mainly because there is no supernatural being controlling us.
You say you have to worship, and you don’t want to be negative.
There is no reason to worship, but there is good reason to feel lucky that we have this opportunity to live for a short while on this earth. So I am positive that I had an unlikely chance of being alive and happy that there is no threat of a Hell and I don’t have to live for eternity worshiping a god.
In the words of William Blake ‘Do as you will, this world is a fiction, made up of contradiction’. Your attitude does sound healthy, and happy, and does not seem to affect anyone but yourself, so continue as you are.
The Jesus crucifiction story leaves me perpetually bemused. His alleged father sent him down to the middle east (not a city or seat of civilisation) and had him perform a few startling unnatural acts to tiny audiences and in a way that could not be substantiated with any lasting reliability. Then he had one of his sons trusted collection of persuaded followers (or was it his son did that to himself? I forget) tell the authorities where he was and then let them nail him up. Later he ressurected him, again in a way that left the event open to doubt. By doing this, killing a son who he knew and who himself knew, was immortal he somehow saved us all from the sin which he put into us in the first place. Sorry but I really don’t get it.
Well stated summation.
The earliest Christians appear to have believed Jesus was the Messiah, not God, and that God exalted Jesus to divine status after raising him from the dead. (“Son of God” could apply to any man thought to be favored of God.) Of course, Christians soon elevated Jesus to eternal, incarnate Son of God and agent of all creation, perhaps in part as a result of competition among deities and deified men throughout the Roman empire.
According to St. Paul, Jesus’s redemptive death was understood to be a fulfillment of prophecy in the Hebrew scriptures.
Jesus Christ Superstar is maybe the best expression of the bemusement you experience. “Why’d you pick such a backward time in such a strange land?”
The idea that a man called Jesus as per the gospe was “probably” crucified has no historical basis. Apart from the story of Mark which was the basis of the other stories, and Paul who doesn’t mention the life of Jesus apart from a dying and rising god (like other gods), there was no mention in contemporary historical records of his life and death.
The story “became ” “historical ” generations later.
There is absolutely no evidence that any single one of us is pre-determined by any deity.As a species and as individuals,we are,in part,products of chance.The human species could easily have been wiped out by catastrophic natural events,just as the dinosaurs were,and no singular human being would have come into existence had a particular sperm not fertilised a particular egg.To this extent,we are all essentially unique,although we share much in common not just with our fellow beings but also with other forms of organic life.In the grand scheme of things,we are nothing special and the odds against any of us having been born as the individuals we are, are infinitesimal.So,as the lucky ones to have been born,let’s get on with the real,existential business of caring for each other,other forms of life and the planet we inhabit, before we enter oblivion and without any recourse to an unproven supernatural entity.
somebody remarked once that if jesus had lived and died in the modern age,christians would be walking around with pendants of an electric chair swinging from their necks.
(or maybe a gourney).
Sounds macabre,but the religeous generally don’t see their crosses in the same light.
It seems that very many of the comments here come from people who are not following the aims of Humanism very closely, but we forgive them.
The point of the Easter story is not about the terrible business of Crucifixion, as we know that it has been suffered by countless others besides Jesus, but the fundamental importance of Easter is the Resurrection. Christianity is based on the history and the results of the Resurrection, but if Biblical history, so often proved to be correctly reported, is not believed, then obviously there can be no true faith in the results.
Why will people so easily believe all they hear about quantum mechanics, reported by three or four scientists, and not believe unusual happenings witnessed and reported by many whose words are supported by hundreds of eye-witnesses ?
I am sorry, but quantum mechanics is not ‘on the say so of just 3 or 4 scientists’ it is on the basis of a rigorous scientific method where methods, data and results are open to everyone, free for anyone to repeat the experiment and confirm or challenge the result. The more times you get a positive result the more support for your theory. One negative result… back to the drawing board.
Hundreds of eye witnesses can easily be wrong. That is why we have the scientific method, double blind studies in medicine – to remove human fallibility and bias (as far as possible).
The Jewish/Christian bible provides an unreliable description of what may or may not have have happened at or around 2000 years ago and way before. According to the bible Methuselah (the grandfather of Noah) lived to 969 years, so if we believe the bible we have to go back some millennia. The story of Noah refers to a flood of unknown date which may have been anything from 4.8k to 20k plus years ago, and we don’t even know where it occurred (Mesopotamia, Black Sea, elsewhere?).
So since we now know that the bible is a very unreliable source let’s ignore its particular historic fiction and get on with what we know from scientific evidence.