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Crucifixion Most Hideous Way To Die - Ted Byfield

Now that Canada's liberally-minded movie critics have actually seen Mel Gibson's The Passion, they have come up with a new criticism.

No longer do they consider it merely offensive to Jews. They've now decided it's offensive to everybody. It's too gory, too vicious, unnecessarily brutal, they say, not something you'd put in a child's Easter basket.

That's no doubt true, and exactly what Gibson promised. But the pertinent question remains: Is it historically accurate? Was Roman crucifixion really this awful?

The answer is no -- it was much worse. The Roman senator Cicero called it the most hideous form of death ever devised.

Its use went back long before Christ to the early Persians and Egyptians. The Phoenicians tried other forms of execution -- spearing, boiling in oil, strangulation, stoning, drowning, burning -- but all these were too quick. Men on the cross could take days to die.

The Romans had three forms of execution. Decapitation by the sword was the least severe, then burning, finally crucifixion, worst of all.

They used it widely. In the Spartacus rebellion of 73 B.C., 6,000 slaves were crucified on a single day.

With the Romans, a beating always came first, just as it does in the Gibson film and the Bible.

The Romans called this "half death" because the victim was expected to be reduced by it to such a state. But he must be constantly checked. Death from a Roman flogging was altogether possible, and the lictor who administered it could be executed himself if that happened.

Sometimes the crosses were shaped like a "T," sometimes like an "X." If the victim were distinguished in any way, the upright of the "T" extended a foot above the cross arms to make room for a superscription of the charge against him.

Crucifixions were always conducted near busy roads to achieve the maximum terror in the populace. The victim was first laid on the cross and a five-inch spike driven through the tender gap in the bones in the middle of the wrist, then his feet placed one above the other and a single spike driven through both.

Once the cross was raised, one eye-witness recounts, the worst aspect was the screaming. The victim stayed alive by alternatively taking the weight off his pierced feet by hoisting himself upward.

But this interfered with his breathing, so that to catch his breath he would have to lower his weight back onto his agonized feet.

Sometimes, out of sympathy, for the victim, the soldiers would break his legs, so that he could not take the weight on his feet and would suffocate.

Such are the facts, and they are not pretty. It is no accident that while Christians adopted the symbol of the Cross from the beginning, the "naturalistic" crucifix, with the figure of Christ nailed to it, appears nowhere in Christian history until at least 200 years after the emperor Constantine abolished crucifixion.

Christians who knew what it was didn't want to be reminded of it.

The great Christian novelist and essayist Dorothy L. Sayers, whose radio plays on the life of Christ aimed at the same brutal realism would, I think, have heartily approved of Gibson's movie.

The real horror of the event, she once wrote, is concealed from us "by the stately and ancient language of the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible."

In the Bible those directly involved in the Crucifixion become "sacred personages, living in a far-off land and time, using dignified rhythms of speech, making from time to time restrained gestures symbolic of brutality. They mocked and railed on him and smote him, scourged and crucified him. Well, no doubt it was all done in the noblest and most beautiful manner."

It was no such thing, says Sayers. "In a nation famous for its religious genius, and under a government renowned for its efficiency, he was executed by a corrupt church, a timid politician and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators. His executioners made vulgar jokes about him, taunted him, smacked him in the face, flogged him with the lash, and hanged him on the common gallows -- a bloody, dusty, sweaty and sordid business."

That is the discernible record of what occurred. And that is what Gibson shows us.

________________________

quidnunc,

GOOD ARTICLE -- posted in full for all posterity....

"Thou Shalt Not Unnecessarily Excerpt" - 11th FReeper Commandment.

FReegards,

- ConservativeStLouisGuy