The followers of various factions of Christianity are arguing about the life and death of Jesus, and some authors even question his existence as a historical figure. The topic also arouses the interest of historians. Information about the figure of Jesus Christ comes mainly from four, officially recognized by Christianity, Gospels. Other sources are few and uncertain. What do we know about the story of Jesus? What was the crucifixion like in ancient Rome? Here is an attempt to trace the information about Jesus' death on the cross in historical sources and studies.
For Christians, the Bible is a source of historical information, for skeptics not necessarily. The Gospels were written about half a century after Jesus' death. The oldest one was the Gospel of Mark, which dates back to AD 68-73. It is possible that some passages from the Gospel of Thomas, considered the Apocrypha, are even older. In addition, from Christian sources, it is necessary to mention the Letters of St. Paul (about 50 AD) and the Acts of the Apostles, as well as the works of the oldest, the so-called Desert Fathers. From these texts comes the story is known to Christians about the life and death of Jesus. This is not the place and time to discuss the historicity of the character itself. We will focus on the credibility of the court descriptions, the course of execution, and death. Was the death of Jesus thus described credible in those circumstances, places, and times?
The Gospels and texts included in the canon were written from the second half of the first century. Apart from John, none of the writers knew Jesus personally. Under such circumstances, the reader may have doubts about the description of death. So let's check what sources help to verify the biblical description.
The first group is texts that contain references to Jesus or Christians. We can find them in Tacitus (in the Annals) and Suetonius (in Claudius' biography he mentions "Chrestos", who was supposed to "incite Jews to rebellions"). Both authors, however, were born after 50 CE. The best-known source is the "Ancient History of Israel" by Josephus Flavius - a Romanized Jew who mentions in it James, Jesus' brother. His history of the nation of Israel also contains some important guidelines regarding the crucifixion procedure, which I will write about later.
Another set of sources allows us to determine to what extent the description of the events in the Gospel is reflected in the reality confirmed by the authors of that era. Here again, it is necessary to refer to Tacitus and Suetonius, who mentions the death penalty in their time. (cf. Pawłowska A., 2007) Many authors of historical studies also attempted to reconstruct the methods of executions in ancient Rome on the basis of written and archaeological sources. In addition, archaeological sources are an important point of reference.
There are many types of capital punishment under Roman law. Perhaps the most famous, for the stories of the martyrs, was damnatio ad bestias (thrown to wild animals). Initially, the punishment was administered to slaves by masters in the 1st century CE. this right was curtailed but began to be used as a state punishment. (cf. Kubiak P., 2010: p. 108) It should be remembered that the type of punishment depended on the crime and the social position of the convict.
Crucifixion, both the attachment to the stake (stauros) and the spanning on the crossbeams (crux) were used not only in Rome. The Persians, the Greeks, even the Scythians knew them. In Rome, the punishment was aimed at the lower social classes and was very humiliating. Suetonius gives, for example, the case of the crucifixion of pirates and copyists for rewriting a book unfavorable to Caesar. (see Pawłowska A .: p. 80) The main element of the execution could also be flogging.
In addition, the so-called punishment of a sack for people acting against their own family, the penalty of suicide (forcing them to kill themselves), walling up or burying themselves alive (especially in the case of Westalki), and even impaled. The Romans were also no strangers to the death penalty by being torn by horses or torn apart by dogs. On the other hand, the nobles were sentenced to beheaded or exile.
In Josephus, we also find a description of the submission of Jews fighting during the Roman attack on Jerusalem to scourging against torture and crucifixion. (Hengel M., 1978: p. 26) However, the Romans did not particularly boast about crucifixion in literature. They used this punishment but considered it barbaric.
One way or another, Roman sources and research confirm that a Jewish convict found to be a crime against the authorities could have been crucified and tortured earlier. Could it have happened as it is described in the famous Gospels?
Before I turn to the description of Jesus' death, I would like to make one reservation. In the following description of the crucifixion, I do not define Jesus as Christ. The use of this term in the historical text would require a separate explanation. Christ (Greek: chrestos - anointed) is the Greek word for the Hebrew Messiah. The word "Christiani" (Christians) is derived from "Christ", meaning those who believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Religious and theological considerations are not the subject of this article.
In the historical text, we can speak of a teacher, or rabbi (in Hebrew terminology). For the same reason, I minimize my gaze at the symbolic elements of Jesus' death and focus on the historical substantiation of this description.
The stages of Jesus' condemnation and death according to the Synoptic Gospels can be presented in the following points:
- Arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane (by order of the Sanhedrin)
- Judging Before Caiaphas (High Priest of the High Council)
- Delivery to Pilate (the Roman governor in Jerusalem)
- Judging by Pilate
- Appeal to the voice of the Council and the people
- Delivery of the judgment
- Whipping and torture
- Carrying the cross
- Crucifixion and death of Jesus on the cross.
(Based on: The Millennium Bible, Mt 27, MK 15)
In the Gospel according to St. In Luke, we still have a meeting between Jesus and Herod, after Pilate states that he cannot judge an inhabitant of Galilee (the province under Pilate's jurisdiction was Judea). (The Millennium Bible, Lk 23 8-12) From the same sources, we draw a rather detailed description of the judgment and the torment itself. After the sentence is passed, the condemned person is whipped and turned over to soldiers who make a laughingstock of him. First of all, they cause him suffering, among others. putting on a crown of thorns, mocking and beating the head with a club. Then they go out with the cross outside the city, forcing Simon from Cyrene, returning from the field, to carry him to the place where his sentence was carried out. On Golgotha, Jesus is crucified.
From the description, we can conclude how many hours he suffered. Three evangelists report that it was dark from six to nine, and then Jesus died. Before that, the installation of crosses (two criminals beside Jesus) and comments from observers must have continued for some time. In total, it goes out at least 4 hours. He had suffered much longer, of course, given the judgment and then the scourging.
There is also a spear in the description of death. We find her at St. John. One of the soldiers, seeing that Jesus is already dead, pierces his side with a spear. (The Millennium Bible, Jn 19 33-34) Many cultural threads come from this single description - from relics, through iconography, to mystical symbolism. We remember, for example, a copy of the spear given by Otto III to Bolesław the Brave. The crown of thorns is also symbolic for Christians. In the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, a relic is kept, which Catholics recognize as the crown of thorns of Christ.
One of the controversies difficult to settle in the very instrument of Jesus' death, i.e. the cross. The death of Jesus on the cross is the source of the most crucial symbol of Christianity. For centuries it was accepted as an undeniable fact in the circle of Christian culture, but not in Islam and some Gnostic factions (Jesus is not crucified in the Koran, but this is a topic for a separate discussion).
In the 19th century, however, doubts arose. In the Greek version of the Gospels, the word "stauros" is used, which in the first sense translates as "stake, beam". In the Vulgate, a late 4th century Latin translation of the Bible the word "crux" is used, the basic meaning of which is "cross". (cf. Vulgate, Lk 23 26-27) Could it be that Jesus died on a stake, not on a cross? This version of events is recognized, for example, by Jehovah's Witnesses. However, the cross seems to be the likely solution. This is evidenced not only by written sources but also by archaeological discoveries. We know that only a century later the Romans used crucifixion en masse against Jews in Judea. The oldest images of the cross associated with Christianity come from the 2nd century CE, so 200 years before the Vulgate, Christians accepted the version with the crucified. Even the mocking drawing carved on one of the Roman buildings, found in 1857, shows a figure on a cross with a crossbeam. (for more on this see: McLean B.H., 2005: p. 208) It is known from descriptions other than the Gospels that there was a certain procedure of inflicting suffering. The routine in this procedure was whipping, carrying a crossbeam, hanging on the cross, and breaking the shins of inmates to inflict pain and hasten death when it lasted too long. On the basis of the available sources, there is no reason to interpret the Greek word "stauros" as "pal." At least not with regard to the punishment inflicted in the first century C.E. by the Romans in Judea.
In popular iconography and in tradition, an important part of Jesus' suffering are the nails pierced through his hands and feet. In the famous scene with Thomas, it is precisely the touching of the wounds on the hands and in the side that confirms Jesus' identity. (The Millennium Bible, Jn 20 24-29) We cannot, however, draw an unequivocal conclusion from the sparse archaeological evidence. The skeleton of a crucified man (cf. Roddy N., 2019), found in 1968, had no traces of nails on his hands. Instead, his heel was pierced with a nail. Probably to inflict more pain and immobilize the victim on the cross. Although it is difficult to find a consensus, it is believed today that the convict was not nailed to the cross, but rather tied. It is known, however, that nails were used. It is possible that sometimes the condemned man's hands were pierced so that he could suffer more. We know from other sources that the punishment was carried out in various ways, e.g. Christians accused of setting fire to Rome were dressed in skins and set on fire, already hung on the crosses. (Pawłowska A .: p. 81) Often the punishment element is related in some way to the committed crime (at least to the crime with which the convict was accused).
I would like to add a few more remarks on the perception of hours in antiquity. The clock, according to which our day is divided, was created in the late Middle Ages. Precise and widely available watches date back to the 19th century. The times of the day were the ancient measure of time. One o'clock simply meant dawn, the beginning of the working day. Today it is widely translated and assumed that Jesus died at 3:00 p.m. (3:00 p.m.) by the modern measure. However, an exact calculation is not possible because the hours of an ancient Roman, Greek, or Jew did not last 60 minutes. (A very interesting article on measuring time in ancient Rome was published in 2007 on the website of the Znak monthly - cf. Bardel M., 2007)
It must be assumed that the six and nine o'clock described in the Gospels simply mean from noon to late afternoon. The time when the sun is high and is usually brightest during the day.
We have few facts about Jesus' death apart from the Gospels. However, based on archaeological research and various sources, we can conclude that most of the description is reliable.
Bibliography:
- Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. The Millennium Bible, Platinum 1980
- Wulgata, Novum Testamentum (https://vulgate.org/nt/gospel, accessed March 20, 2021)
- Michał Bardel, Do not believe the clock of Mesala, or the Roman count of time in: Znak nr 623, April 2007 (https://www.miesiecznik.znak.com.pl/6232007michal-bardelnie-wierz-zegarowi-mesali-czyli-o- Rzymskiej-rachubie-czas /, accessed March 22, 2021)
- Martin Hengel, Crucifixion In the Ancient World and the Foll of the Message of the Cross, Fortress Press 1977
- Paweł Kubiak, Sketches on Roman criminal law - damnatio ad bestias, in Legal and Economic Studies, vol. LXXXII, 2010, pp. 107-124
- Bradley H. McLean, An introduction to Greek epigraphy of the Hellenistic and Roman periods from Alexander the Great down to the reign of Constantine (323 B.C.-A.D. 337), University of Michigan Press 2002
- Anna Pawłowska, Methods of executing the death penalty in the accounts of Tacit and Suetoniusz, in Studia Prawnorganrojowe No. 7, 2007, pp. 77-90
No comments:
Post a Comment