Scholars: Crucifixion Portrayal Inaccurate

JERUSALEM (AP) - The dearth of information about Jesus' crucifixion makes it impossible to describe the event in accurate detail, as Mel Gibson attempts to do in his new film, "The Passion of Christ," Bible scholars and anthropologists say.

The crucifixion is the centerpiece of the movie, set to open in U.S. theaters Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday on the Roman Catholic calendar.

People who have seen the movie say it adopts standard Christian imagery in excruciating detail: Jesus being pinioned to a Latin cross - a T-shaped device with a short upper extension - with one nail driven through both feet and one through each palm.

In a December e-mail sent to The Associated Press, Gibson said he did "an immense amount of reading" to supplement the Bible's relatively unadorned account of the crucifixion in the four Gospels.

"I consulted a huge number of theologians, scholars, priests, spiritual writers," Gibson wrote. "The film is faithful to the Gospels but I had to fill in a lot of details - like the way Jesus would have carried His cross, or whether the nails went through the palms of His hands or his wrists ... Since the experts canceled each other out, I was thrown back on my own resources to weigh the different arguments and decide for myself."

Some scholars say even the most widely recognized features of the crucifixion, such as the shape of the cross and the use of nails, are open to debate.

James F. Strange, professor of religious studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa, said 1st century historian Josephus provided only general information, probably because crucifixion was so common that details seemed superfluous.

Crucifixion was first used in the 5th century B.C., and was a widely used form of execution in Asia, Europe and Africa for the ensuing eight centuries, said Israeli anthropologist Joe Zias. Depending on technique, death could be swift or take days.

"If you suspended people by their hands and left their feet free you would kill them within an hour," Zias said. "If you suspended them in a way they couldn't exhale they'd be dead within minutes."

Zias said the question of whether Jesus was nailed to the cross or simply tied to it remains a mystery. "There is no evidence whatsoever he was nailed," he said. "The Gospels say he was crucified and leave it at that."

Zias criticized "The Passion of Christ" for accepting the standard version of three nails being used. He said experiments on cadavers carried out by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages have shown that people hanging with nails through their hands will fall to the ground within a relatively short time, pulled by gravity.

"All this is Crucifixion 101," Zias said. "People who study these things understand them. But Gibson ignored them in his film."

John Dominic Crossan, emeritus professor of religious studies at DePaul University in Chicago, agrees with Zias that little is known about Jesus' execution.

"Early Christians believed that Jesus was nailed to the cross," he said. "But there is absolutely no proof of this. The only skeleton of a crucified person ever recovered indicated that the two arms were tied to a crossbar, and two nails were used in either shinbone. There was no standard procedure in any of this. The only common feature in the different types of crucifixion is intense sadism."

The type of cross in Jesus' execution is also in question, Crossan said. First century Romans are known to have used both a T-shaped device, without an upper extension, and the Latin cross that is standard in Christian iconography.

Each of the four Gospels says an inscription mocking Jesus as the "king of the Jews" was affixed to the cross. Crossan said this would have made sense "because the whole point of crucifixion was to warn people through alluding to a specific crime."

Two of the Gospels say the inscription was mounted above Jesus. This presumably would strengthen the argument for a Latin cross, which would have provided space for writing about the condemned man's head.

However, the other two Gospels don't give a locator. "It (the written warning) could just as easily have hung around his neck," Crossan said.

Crossan is also uncertain whether the cross on which Jesus was crucified was carried to the execution grounds - either by Simon of Cyrene, as three of the Gospels report, or by Jesus himself, according to John's account.

It is possible that the vertical part of the cross was kept at Golgotha, the place of Jesus' death, and that the condemned person carried the crossbar, Crossan said.

"The point is we simply don't know," he said, "not in general cases and not in the case of Jesus either."

"There is no evidence whatsoever he was nailed," he said. "The Gospels say he was crucified and leave it at that."

Thomas felt the scars of our Lord, and it is quite plainly described in the Gospel of John, as well as this the Gospels specifically state that Jesus showed his "hands and feet" to the disciples when He appears - documented in all the Gospels.

He said experiments on cadavers carried out by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages have shown that people hanging with nails through their hands will fall to the ground within a relatively short time, pulled by gravity.

Wrong. Driving a nail through the palmer surface of the hand between the Scaphoid and Lunate bones would give plenty of support (also misses any major arteries), plus the arms of the condemned could have also been easily tied to the cross.

About 26 years ago, soon after I read the Book of Isaiah (particularly the 53rd) I had a very strange, moving experience.

It was like an extremely vivid, detailed "dream"... but it kept on running in my consiousness after I woke up, and went on for about a week.
It was all I could do to focus on my work or daily activities; as soon as I let my mind come up to breathe, there it was, as if on a translucent screen suspended in front of my face... and it was so fascinating!

My Doctor said it was a "Hypnogognic Phenomenon"; My Pastor suggested that I had too much pepperonni on my pizza, and my Wife seriously considered having me committed to an insane asylum.

So I shut up about it.

Some years later, a Charismatic Christian considered this experience to have been my "Baptism of the Holy Spirit", but they still wondered about me because I didn't "Speak in Tounges" - at least not publicly.

So I kept shut up.

I'll spare you the weirdness, but it essentially involved a sort of "memory" that burst into my senses involving a younger Member of Y'shuah's Family before, I suppose, his public ministry. I think they called him "Yuda", or "Yude" for short. His elder Brother liked to nickname people, and we were his first recipients, I guess.

There were other insights as well - particularly of that incident involving "Doubting Thomas" several of you have already mentioned. To say that was "powerful" would be an absurd understatement.

I remember how smokey the room was, and how his eyes burned as he slumped over the table. The light was remarkable; the guttering of the clay lamps and firepot made a fluttering, surreal dance of shadows on the walls and faces of the berieved... Were his eyes burning from the smoke, or from a crushed and defeated heart... ashamed of having fallen for it all; for having failed Him in the end?

What would he tell his Family?

How could he have been such a fool?

And to think; how he had Loved Him - the very one who had so cleverly decieved him for those three whole years - so terribly much.

The light was blurred from the tears, and the heavy, acrid smoke; even the muffled hubbub of conversation and the soft clatter of utensils seemed somehow to meld into an auditory blur.

Then a hush suddenly cut through the dark and cloistered room like the cold thrust of a Soldier's gladius; The ruddy and tremblinging ambient light seemed to take on a strange, steady, calm, liquid, bluish cast...

He would have looked up, if he had cared any more....

I think I'd better shut up now.... again.

Suffice it to say, while I was watching a "preview" of Passion on FOX News a couple of evenings ago which showed some of the Via DeLaRosa and Crucifiction scenes, I kept (much to my Wife's annoyance) saying things like;

"Good night!; in the best of health he would have a hard time toting that thing! That cross has to weigh about 245 pounds all together, even if it was dry!
The crossbeam alone would have gone a good 75 or 80!
After that flogging he'd be doing well just to DRAG that!"

(Wife glares at the TV and pretends not to notice)

"Holy mackerel!; What ARE those Legionarries packing - those are bloomin' BROADSWORDS! The standard issue Gladius was a lot shorter than that!; They could never have whipped those things out of the scabbard under their right arm or brought it out in a flash of cold steel into a high cubit block like they used to do!"

(As the "hand" - alledgedly that of Mr. G. himself - places the nail in the center of the Actor's palm):

"They didn't drive the nail THERE!!! - it went between the distal heads of the radius and ulna, so that they'd bear the load! I saw the scars, for Godssakes..."

Oops..

Shutting up again.

You can put that butterfly net away now; I'll be OK.

Really.

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