Why Was Jesus Crucified? Why Does It Matter Today? (Essay)

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Content Warning Description of death, torture, and execution

The Crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is the central truth claim of orthodox Christianity. Without this, the rest of the Christian claims fall apart. But when we hear the story of the crucifixion, or we read it for ourselves, we see it through our modern eyes, separated from the reality of the first Christians.

The radical and dangerous truth of the Gospel which seemed to be sheet insanity to gentiles and the greatest offence got the Jews has been forgotten.

To fully appreciate what the crucifixion is teaching us about God, and about Christianity, it is essential to try and put ourselves back into the reality of people living in the 1st century AD.

We will start by looking at what crucifixion actually was, where it came from, and how it was done. Then we can see what that means for the crucifixion of Jesus.

Persian Origins of Crucifixion

The earliest recorded evidence for crucifixion comes from Persia.

Whilst written by Greek historians like Herodotus with his own cultural bias, the suggestion was that this kind of death would only be done by ‘barbarians.’ By people who weren’t Greek.

The inherent orientalism at work needs to be accounted for, but it teaches us something profound. Herodotus, and others, thought Crucifixion so horrible that while they were happy to use it, they didn’t want the credit for inventing it.

There is some crossover with the various kinds of executions which included being attached to a tree or a post. The Persians were particularly famous for impalings. But they also practiced tieing or nailing people to posts or trees or crosses of various kinds.

It was designed to inflict maximum pain and public humiliation over as long a time as possible. It is perhaps unsurprising that the Romans adopted it as a method of execution.

Roman Heritage and use of Crucifixion

The thing to remember is that Rome doesn’t really like crucifixion.

They are a bit embarrassed about using such a barbarian method of killing. It’s one of the reasons why there are so few sources for the Roman methods of crucifixion. They just didn’t like talking about it.

To understand how the Romans viewed crucifixion it’s important to remember the underlying principles of the Roman Republic and the Empire it would become. The people of the Republic had to balance ambition for personal glory and responsibility to the Republic.

This balance was exemplified in the concept of dignitas.

The impact of Roman Dignitas on their use of Crucifixion

Dignitas does not simply mean dignity. It was about honour, public glory, recognition of ability, and personal morality. A politician or general (the same thing normally) had to be careful to protect their dignitas from anyone who would knock it down. The quickest way to defeat a political rival was to demonstrate they lacked dignitas.

More than death or defeat, Romans feared dishonour and especially public shaming.

That was the true horror of crucifixion. It’s a shaming and humiliating thing. It’s not only a horrifically painful way to die, it’s considered the ultimate shame. The person is robbed of an honourable death and is robbed of their dignitas.

This is why crucifixion was reserved for slaves and for rebels. It wasn’t used on citizens.

The use of Crucifixion to punish and scare slaves in the Roman Empire

When a slave killed their master, not only that slave but the slaves of the entire household, dozens to hundreds of slaves, would be crucified. It was a harsh reminder of who held the power. That’s ultimately what crucifixion was. A demonstration of the true political power of Rome, which drew it’s authority from it’s violent control.

The Crucifixion of Roman citizens led to the prosecution of Verres, the governor of Sicily by the famous orator Cicero. The sheer wrongness of crucifixion, an alien and horrific practice, being used on Roman Citizens, was enough to secure the conviction.

A Roman governor or General with the powers of imperium (military authority) had three options available for them when faced with slaves who have turned against their masters or those who rose in rebellion against Rome. They could throw the person to the wild beasts in the arena, they could burn them alive, or they could crucify them.

Crucifixion was always the most terrifying choice.

The use of crucifixion was undertaken by the Roman state. It was the Republic, later the Empire, which crucified you, not just the individual governor. It was a statement of power and authority, very publically demonstrating that no one can resist Rome and that Rome’s enemies would be defeated and utterly destroyed.

Unlike most other executions (at least of commoners, Senators were generally executed in private if they were ever actually executed) which were done in the centre of a city, crucifixions were always done outside the city to avoid impurity and corruption.

Crucifixions were often done on a hill so as many people as possible could see them. Or they were done by the roadside. When Spartacus’s rebellion was crushed Crassus ordered the prisoners crucified along the Appian way, one person crucified every 40 feet for over 100 miles. Thousands crucified along the main road to Rome.

After Rome burned, Nero crucified Christians in the same way, along a hundred miles of road. Then when night came, he ordered them covered them in pitch and set them on fire to make thousands of crucified human torches.

For the Romans, crucifixion was a display of power and control. It reminded people who was in charge, demonstrated their absolute authority over life and death, and did so in such a way that everything they most valued, honour and dignitas was taken away from the victim.

Crucifixion Methodology

There are very few accounts of the methods of crucifixion because the Romans really didn’t like talking about it. The Gospel accounts are some of the most detailed reports of a crucifixion. They do fit with the archaeology and other documentary evidence.

The basics of crucifixion

The basic process of crucifixion was a kind of ritual humiliation and torture, followed by being suspended in some way from a tree or a post. This might be by ropes, chains, or by nails through the body.

The person would die over the next few days, sometimes taking up to five days but most lasting about two. There is some dispute about how crucifixion actually killed. The general belief is that the suspension put pressure on the chest and lungs which eventually led to the person suffocating.

In order to breath, the person had to push themselves up using the nail in their ankle bones, or they had to pull themselves up by their arms. There is some evidence for a kind of sloping step which they could perch on if they did so. When the person ran out of energy or couldn’t take the pain anymore they would collapse and suffocate.

Others argue that it was a mixture of pain, shock, and blood loss which killed the person. There is some evidence for this from the Jewish writer Josephus, writing in the 1st century AD.

When some of his friends were crucified during the siege of Jerusalem, he asked the Roman general Vespasian to release them. They were taken down after only a couple of hours on the cross but they still died.

Torture before the crucifixion

Before the person was crucified they were scourged. This was a punishment normally reserved for people who were not Roman Citizens. It was used to punish some of the worst crimes, or simply used as a method of torture. Documentary and archeological evidence have shown what scourging was.

A scourge was similar to a cat o nine tails; a tightly bound handle with several long whips of leather with knots tied in the cords along their length. Then small pieces of metal, hooks or tiny points, were tied into those knots.

The scourge did not just work like a normal whip. It would cut deep into the person’s body but even worse, it would tear chunks of flesh away with it’s hooks and barbs.

This was often done prior to crucifixion and is a good reason for why many must have died from blood loss. Alongside the scourging was often a period of ritual humiliation, especially if the victim had been accused of trying to rebel against Rome.

Slaves were just tortured and killed because they weren’t really human anyway. Rebels and insurrectionists had to be taught that they were subordinate to Rome, even their dreams of freedom were foolish.

The actual method of crucifixion varied. There were specialist soldiers in each legion who were tasked with torturing and crucifying because it took knowledge and experience (and a strong streak of sadism) to be able to do it properly.

The torture teams were encouraged to compete with each other to see who could be the most inventive in their cruelty.

Seneca wrote that the executioners would compete to see who could be the most inventive in the way they could contort the person in crucifixion, or how much damage they could do but keep the person alive, or how long they could keep the person alive on the cross. They would experiment with crucifying the person upside down, or cutting parts off first.

Josephus wrote about how during the siege of Jerusalem the executioners competed to see who could come up with the most inventive form of crucifixion, including trying to spell out words with the broken bodies.

A standard crucifixion

There were some standard ways of crucifying people. On a pole with the hands tied directly above the head. With a crossbeam attached to a pole or a tree with the hands straight out to the sides, or with an ‘X’ shaped cross with arms and legs spread out.

People were attached with ropes, chains, with nails. Archeological evidence has shown nails driven directly through the ankle bones of people who were crucified. Probably a combination was used to secure a person in place.

A key element that is often glossed over, and is definitely not shown on crucifixes or in paintings of the passion, is that the victim was crucified naked. No tastefully placed loincloths or robes were allowed.

The maximum humiliation had to be created. Humiliation because when males were crucified (and the vast majority of people who were crucified were male, women tended to be given to the wild beasts) the way in which they were hung caused the blood to pool towards the bottom part of the body.

Which meant that when a man was crucified they were likely to have an erection because of the pooling blood and the stresses placed on the body. As they were naked, this ensured further humiliation. This has been likened to a kind of sexual assault or abuse.

Common practice was to have a sign, a placard, or a billboard with the crimes of the victim placed near or on the cross used to kill the person. Passers by and the crowds gathered to watch the death needed to know why they were being killed. So the crimes would be written in multiple languages.

A further torture, and a key element of the execution, occured because of the time it took for the person to die. Scavengers, birds and rats, would come for a free meal. Birds during the day would come and attack the eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, and genitals.

Then during the night rats would climb the pole to eat the toes, feet, legs, and whatever else they could reach. There is evidence for this happening in the Talmud and in parts of Seneca.

Then, once the person was dead, the body would be taken down. Sometimes, if the guards could be bribed, then the body could be retrieved. Normally, it would be taken away and thrown either into a mass grave or more normally onto the rubbish tip or cesspile for the city.

Dogs and scavengers would eat the body and it would be allowed to rot and decay with all the corpses of animals and piles of human waste that a city could produce. A final humiliation and the final destruction of the victim’s dignitas.

The process was designed to inflict maximum pain, maximum humiliation, maximum shame, and to demonstrate the absolute, unquestionable power of Rome. Someone who was crucified was less than a slave.

Impact for Christianity

That there was a 1st century Jewish rabbi called Jesus who was crucified is absolute historic fact.

The Evidence for the Historical Jesus

There are sources outside the Bible which attest to this fact. The Jewish historian Josephus talks about the event, the Talmud tangentially refers to it. The Roman history Tacitus writes about it.

There are pieces of graphiti from the 1st and early 2nd century which show Christians worshipping a crucified person. There are multiple sources from the ancient world which say that a Jewish rabbi called Jesus was crucified.

There are the four Gospels which were written within living memory of the event with the earliest being written probably thirty to forty years after the crucifixion took place. The letters of Paul write about the crucifixion and were written less than twenty years after the crucifixion took place.

The amount of historical documents which attest to the crucifixion is huge compared to lots of other people from antiquity. For example, there are only four separate written sources for the existence of Alexander the Great.

The earliest sources about Alexander are not written for three hundreds after his death. There is no evidence at all for the existence of a person called Homer who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The sheer number of sources from a variety of backgrounds, most with nothing to gain from it, is very unusual in the ancient world. The fact that the sources are written within decades rather than centuries after the event is practically unheard of.

If it wasn’t for the fact that these sources are used for a religious purpose, there would be no question as to the historic fact of the crucifixion.

The evidence that Jesus was crucified

The idea that Jesus was replaced by someone else, that he pretended to be dead, that he was in coma, is absolutely nonsense. There is just no way this could happen. Everyone knew what Jesus looked like, he was a very public figure.

The Romans who did the execution were not amateurs. They knew what they were doing. They knew how to kill people, and how to make sure they were dead. They did not take people down before they were dead.

So the vast weight of evidence is that Jesus was crucified. But what did that mean for the early Christians? We really need to try and understand the sheer insanity of this. Think back to everything you read to get this far.

What did it mean for a god to die?

There are plenty of examples of gods who die and are resurrected. Osiris is just one obvious example. There are examples of gods who sacrifice themselves. Odin hangs himself from a tree as a sacrifice to himself in order to gain knowledge and wisdom.

But crucially, none of them were crucified. Crucifixion was a shameful death. It was horrific and humiliating. It was the punishment for slaves and rebels. It meant that you had lost, been beaten, destroyed by Roman power. Someone who was crucified had failed.

The idea of a God who could be crucified is just absolute insanity within the Greco-Roman world. I cannot stress enough now alien and crazy that idea would have been.

Imagine a kind of alternative world where someone in America is executed by electric chair because they’ve been found guilty of insurrection. Then afterwards his followers say that actually he is God and that his death is actually how he defeated evil. We would think they were mad. Categorically so. A crucified God was a category mistake. It was just impossible.

The offence of the cross

It was even more bizarre and frankly offensive for the Jews.

How could the God spoken of in Torah and the prophets take on humanity and, even worse, die? The claim that Jesus was King of the Jews, written on the plaque above Jesus’s head during the crucifixion was not only mocking Jesus but was a reminder to the Jews by the Romans about what the Romans thought of the Jews.

Just as crucifixion held a horrible stigma and awful shame for the Roman world, crucifixion was seen as a curse by the Jews. Deuteronomy 21:21-22 says that anyone who is hung from a tree is under a curse. So not only is the crucified person shamed, defeated, humiliated, but also cursed.

This is just not the kind of thing anyone would make up if they were inventing a religion. It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s offensive and insane.

The Cross as the Destruction of Death

Yet the early Christian’s, Paul most of all, took this insane claim and made it the very heart of good news for all humanity. For Paul, the Gospel writers, and the early Christians, the cross spoke loudly and clearly about who God was and what God was doing.

The power and control of Rome, and by extension all forms of systemic evil including sin itself, is broken against the self-sacrifical loving death of Jesus. Jesus, standing in for humanity, accepts everything that can be poured out, breaks it’s power, and transforms it into something different.

The great paradox of the cross is that it is the weak overcoming the strong, the slave defeating the master, love defeating death.

The cross is a symbol of broken Roman power transformed into the strange power of a God who accepts crucifixion in order to set everyone else free from the slavery that comes from the kind of evil that crucified people.

This is what we need to remember when we look at the cross of think about the crucifixion. The strange, insane, offensive, horrific power of the cross is utterly defeated and subverted into the way that God undoes the corrupting power of sin and sets humanity free from its slavery.

We cannot quite grasp the full meaning of the cross unless we can actually hold onto the original offense.

Different Christian Understanding of the Cross

We can see examples of the way that Christians have at times wrestled with the shame and offence of the cross. In Eastern Orthodoxy, the cross is emphasised as a battleground where Jesus is triumphant.

Images of Jesus on the cross show him an unbroken, as muscled and triumphant and unhurt. There is hesitancy to accept the full weight of the cross, a remaining tendency to reject the idea that God can suffer.

But in the west by AD 1000 the emphasis is on the suffering and death of Jesus. Crucifixes show his agony, his dead and broken body. A whole element of mystical devotion to Christ focus on sharing in Christ’s sufferings.

People are comforted to know that when they suffer, Christ suffers with them. Those who suffered were considered to be closest to Christ.

Martin Luther distinguished between a theology of glory and a theology of the cross. He criticised any belief which did not begin in the crucified Christ and understanding the cross of Christ.

Great writers like Jürgen Möltmann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Stott, and James Cone, held up the crucified Christ as the only way of knowing Jesus and therefore of knowing God.

The Crucifixion Today

The religious ubiquity of the cross takes us away from it’s true impact on people from antiquity. People where it as jewelry, tattoo it on their flesh, put it on their clothes or stationary. It provides comfort for millions and fashion for many.

But with Luther, perhaps we need to remember not to fall into a theology of glory. How often when you look at a cross do you think about what actually happened on it? About the suffering and shame and brokenness?

How would you feel if you saw someone walking around with an electric chair or a gallows hanging around their neck or stuck on their shirt?

Because we know that the cross was the way that we are saved, we frequently forget the uncomfortable reality of the cross because we just don’t want to have to think about it.

If we start to think about the crucifixion in the same was as the first Christians did then it should effect the way we view coersive and destructive power structures. Systems that rely on violence to force people to obey, to rule and control, are confronted by the cross. Their power is revealed to be empty.

Bullies of all kinds, whether far-right rioters, fascistic wannabe dictators, governments who privilege the rich over the poor, or the child in the classroom who picks on the different child. All of them are held up to judgement by the God who submits to suffering and humiliation on the cross.

The church and Christians cannot claim to follow Christ while also participating in oppressive and violent systems. To follow in the way of the cross means to stand with the poor and the oppressed, the suffering and the unloved.

Perhaps we need to return to the offense and insanity of the cross to rediscover it’s meaning and subversive power today.

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