DECODING THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST

By Fr. Casmir Odundo

Believe it or not, for most people today including many Christians, The word "crucifixion" means little today other than to turn our thoughts to Jesus.  

This is perhaps because we Christians have grown too familiar with the cross of Jesus, with the crucifix that we've sanitized it, tamed it, domesticated it,  probably because we have become overly familiar with it as we wear it on our bodies round our necks, on our clothes as jewellery, have it as an ornament, part of the furniture in our homes. Perhaps we've blunted and dulled the force of the crucifix.

This Friday, being a Good Friday, when we venerate the cross in all our Churches, we have an opportunity to meditate and reflect deeply on it. We need to look at it again to grasp all its sordid horror and butchery. See it for what it really was. A disgrace and shame it was. it is only then, that we can appreciate what it is and it means for our Christian lives.

Etymology

The English term “cross” is derived from the Latin word Crux which classically referred to a tree or any construction of wood used to hang criminals as a form of execution. The term later came to refer specifically to a cross. One the other hand, the term “crucifix” is derived from the Latin Verb crucifixus or cruci fixus, meaning "to crucify" or "to fasten to a cross".

Roman Usage

Crucifixion was originally literally a "barbaric" form of execution of utmost cruelty often employed within the Roman Empire most common in the first and second  centuries.   The Roman Empire had three severe forms of Punishment:

1. Crux,
2. Crematio,  (burning)
3. Decollation or de-capitulation

Of these three, crucifixion was considered a horrific, savage and most disgusting business. The Roman Statesman and Orator, Cicero, described it as "a most cruel and disgusting punishment."

Generally, no Roman citizen was ever sentenced to death by crucifixion. This explains why tradition has it that Paul because of his Roman Citizenship unlike Peter (who was crucified upside down,) was de-capitulated.  (Caput is the Latin word for Head)

It was the form of death penalty reserved for the lowest classes: slaves, fierce criminals, armed robbers and rebellious foreigners, with the upper class deserving more humane punishment. 

It was especially used for rebellion, insurrection and insubordination. It was a crude and messy affair in which the victim, after being flogged, carried the heavy cross-beam of wood to the place of execution. According to Dan Ball, a scholar who studied the crucifixion, the entire cross would weigh at least 135 Kgs while the cross beam would be around 50 Kgs.

Although many artists have traditionally depicted the figure on a cross with a loin cloth or a covering of the genitals, the person being crucified was usually stripped naked. This is so because the motive of the crucifixion was not just execution but also humiliation. Actually, crucifixion was usually intended to provide a death that was particularly slow, painful, gruesome, humiliating, and public.  The naked victim was either nailed or tied with outstretched arms to a stake or tree.

As the person weakened and was unable to support himself, the weight of his body pulled him down and death eventually came by suffocation. It was a slow excruciating torture that could last for days and gave plenty of room to satisfy the sadistic cruelty of the executioner. In Case, the executioner wanted to accelerate the death of a victim, then sometimes the legs of the person executed were broken or shattered with an iron club, an act called crurifragium which was also frequently applied without crucifixion to slaves.

Though in the case of Jesus this was different. Crucifixion was aggravated further by the fact that quite often its victims were never buried. The crucified victim served as food for birds of prey (vultures) and grim pickings for scavenger dogs and other wild beasts, attracted by the smell of sweat and blood, urine and excrement. Objects used in the crucifixion of criminals, such as nails, were sought as amulets.

Purpose

The chief reason for the use of this savage and brutal means of torture and capital punishment was its allegedly absolute efficacy as a deterrent. “But more than a deterrent”, comments Fr. Matthew Charlesworth, S.J: “…it was a form of terrorisation. Roman crucifixion was state terrorism, a form of state-sponsored terrorism!”

Personally, I see it as one of the greatest forms of dehumanization. By the publicly display and exposure of a naked victim at a prominent place - at a cross-roads, in the amphi-theatre, on high ground - crucifixion also represented the victim's uttermost humiliation: a naked spectacle for all to behold and stare at. In effect, this brutal mode of execution proclaimed to all spectators that the person strung up was subhuman (precisely the status of a slave). The crucified therefore died the death of someone considered to be less than human. In fact, the victim died like an animal. “Crucifixion was the final mockery of anyone who aspired to be free, to be a "somebody" in the face of Roman domination.” Fr. Charlesworth, S.J continues.

Death on the cross therefore meant a desecration of the human, a dismantling, taking apart and breaking down, destruction of a human being. A desecration and an attempted annihilation of a human person. 

Jewish Perspective

It is even worse if you look at the Cross in the eyes of the Jews since they believed that "Anyone hanged (on a tree) is accursed by God” (Deut 21:23). And Jesus of Nazareth was executed in this terrifying and disgusting way.

The Sufferings of Jesus

In the case of Jesus this was marginality in its utmost form, not only a common criminal, but a cursed one, dying outside the city walls, on a garbage-rubbish-dump or disused quarry as archaeology has shown Golgotha, the place of the skull, to be. The “rubbishing” of a human being in an age where human life was viewed as cheap and disposable.

The Gospel according to St. Mark's account of the instant of Jesus' death is raw and stunning; Jesus is on the cross for 9 hours, 6 of them alive, dangling between life and death.

St. Thomas Aquinas in his plain way of writing, gives a description of Our Lord’s Sufferings: “Jesus suffered at the hands of all kinds of people: He suffered insults from Gentiles and Jews; from men and from women…from the rulers, from their servants and from the mob. The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord and against His Christ." He suffered from friends and acquaintances, like Judas who betrayed him and Peter who denied Him. He also suffered from friends abandoning Him; His reputation also suffered from the blasphemies hurled at Him, from the mockeries and the insults heaped upon Him; He suffered externally  for He was despoiled of His garments; He suffered in His soul, from sadness, weariness, and fear; He also suffered in His body, from wounds and scourgings…And this suffering extended to all his senses: touch: by being scourged and nailed;  taste: by being given vinegar and gall to drink;  smell: by being crucified in a place stinking with the stench of corpses, "called Calvary"; hearing: by being tormented with the cries of blasphemers and scorners;  sight: by beholding the tears of His Mother and of the disciple whom He loved.

In the end, under a shelter of darkness and totally alone, Jesus died with a question and a scream: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? ....and Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last." (Mark 15:34, 37).

The Cross as a Scandal

We can now therefore understand why, in the first century, the cross evoked an acute sense of shame - a terrible scandal that the Christians' "Christ" and "Lord" had been publicly sentenced to a shameful death reserved for the lowest of the low. . (Cf. 1 Cor 1:18).   This was what the early Christians were offering as the Messiah - a condemned criminal! It was ridiculous really. Needless to say, it made them the laughing stock of both the Jewish and Gentile worlds.

Perhaps we need to recapture that sense of scandal this Good Friday!

SOURCES 

"Online Etymology Dictionary, "cross"". Etymonline.com. Retrieved 10th April 2020.

Aquinas, St. Thomas , Summa Theologicae, III, q. 46. a. 5c.

Bauer, Walter , Frederick William Danker , W.F. Arndt and F.W. Gingrich (BDAG) 2000 A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd edn; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press .

Brown, Raymond E. 1994 The Death of the Messiah. From Gethsemane to the Grave: Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels, II. New York: Geoffrey Chapman

Charlesworth, Matthew , Christology Notes: Hekima University College, Nairobi 2013.

Crossan, John 1988 The Cross that Spoke: The Origins of the Passion Narrative. New York: Harper & Row .

Fallow, Thomas Macall (1911). "Cross and Crucifixion" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 506.

Licona, Michael (2010). The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. InterVarsity Press. p. 304.

The author is a Parochial Vicar: Mary Mother of God Parish, Kabarnet: Diocese of Nakuru.