Mark 15.20-32: Jesus’s crucifixion.

They led Jesus out to crucify him. They drafted a passerby coming from the fields, so he’d carry his crossbeam—a certain Simon the Cyrenian, father of Alexander and Rufus.

They carried Jesus to Galgaltá Place, which is translated Head Place, and gave him myrrh-spiked wine, which he didn’t accept.

They crucified Jesus, and divided up his robes, throwing dice for who’d get them. They crucified him at the third hour after sunrise. The epigraph—his crime—was written above him: “King of Judeans.” They crucified two bandits with him, one at his right, one at his left.

The passersby were slandering him, shaking their heads and saying, “Ha; the destroyer of the temple and three-day rebuilder. Save yourself by coming down from the cross.” The head priests likewise joked with one another and the scribes, saying, “He saved others; he can’t save himself. Messiah? King of Israel? Now come down from the cross. Then we can see and believe.” Those crucified with him also insulted him.

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In John, the crucifixion took place after “the sixth hour,” i.e. noon. In Mark it didn’t take so long: Jesus was brought to Pilate right after sunrise, and three hours later he was crucified.

Crucifixion.

People figure the Persians invented crucifixion, since it’s their records we first read of it. (In Esther, when Haman planned to kill Mordecai, he built a 50-cubit ech/“tree,” to hang him on —which tends to be translated “gallows,” or interpreted as an impalement stake, but was actually a cross.) But crucifixion likely predates the Persians too. Humans have always come up with nasty ways to kill one another, and crucifixion is one of the worst.

Basically, you nail a human to a pole through the heels. Could be a nearby tree, or a simple stake, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe the Romans used on Jesus. Could be a T-shape, like the rest of us Christians figure; or an X-shape, like the St. Andrew’s cross, which the apostle Andrew likely died on. The wrists would either be tied up, or nailed to the cross as well. In Jesus’s case, nailed, which is why Thomas wanted to see the nail-marks in his “hands,” for kheir/“hand” indicated anything below the elbow.

Ever bang your funny bone? That’s the ulnar nerve. The equivalent in the leg is the tibial nerve. Those are the nerves the nails went through. Imagine crushing those nerves with a hammer. The pain is so intense, Latin-speakers had to invent the word excruciare/“excruciating” to describe it.

Victims were nailed to the cross with their bodies in such a position, their lungs were squashed. They couldn’t inhale unless they pushed themselves up on their pierced heels, and pulled themselves up on their pierced wrists—thus punishing both their ulnar and tibial nerves further. There was no way to stop the constant pain; no way to keep from generating fresh pain without suffocating. Death actually came from slowly suffocating to death. But unless your legs were broken, one could survive on the cross for days. Which was the point.

Crucifixion is so nasty, Romans forbade it to be used on their own citizens. But foreigners were fair game. It was a way of terrorizing them, so as to keep them in line: “If you don’t want to suffer the worst sort of death possible, don’t antagonize the Romans.” But as usual, the threat of death—even a nasty death—doesn’t deter people from crime, for criminals always assume they’ll get away with it. All crucifixion did was make people hate Romans all the more: “What sort of monsters do such things to people?” It made martyrs.

Christian art tends to depict Jesus with nails in the palms of his hands, and one nail spiking right through the top of both feet, sometimes into a little platform. Which wouldn’t have worked in a real crucifixion: He could stand on the little platform, and therefore not suffocate. Plus the weight of his body would rip right through the nails—wrecking his hands and feet, but he’d fall off the cross. Hence some movies show Jesus both nailed and tied to his cross. (And sometimes the other guys were tied up instead of nailed, just so it looks like Jesus suffered worse than anyone.) But archaeology doesn’t match the art: Crucifixion victims got it through the wrists and heels. And y’know, the LORD’s prophecy to the serpent did say it’d bruise the human’s heel, so you’d think Christians would pay a little more attention to that.

The events of Jesus’s crucifixion.

In Mark, the soldiers straightaway forced a civilian to carry Jesus’s crossbeam—not a full cross, for the post was left in the ground, and the beam was attached to it—indicating Jesus was really weak. As one would be, after staying up all night, then flogged and tortured. Mark identifies the fellow as Simon of Cyrené, and mentions his sons, who according to tradition became leaders in the church.

Galgaltá (Greek, Golgathá) is Aramaic for “round rock,” and kraníon means “[top of the] head,” which is why I translated it that instead of the traditional “skull.” The idea it was called “skull” comes from the Vulgate’s quod est interpretatum Calvariæ locus/“which is interpreted Skull Place,” whence we get the name “Calvary,” meaning skull. Plus there’s a site, located by a bus station in Jerusalem, called “Gordon’s Calvary,” which looks sorta skull-like when you look at it from a certain angle. Many Evangelicals think this might be where Jesus was crucified. British Gen. Charles George Gordon, who saw it in 1883, figured it was Calvary because it looks like a skull. But what it looks like is irrelevant: The hill inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (which might look like a skull, but we can’t tell ’cause it has a giant church on it) has a far stronger historical claim, which carries all the way down from the local Christians who showed the site to St. Helena. They would’ve known where their Lord died. Gordon, and others, are only guessing at alternatives because the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is “too Catholic” for their taste. (To be honest, I likewise would prefer to see Golgotha and Jesus’s tomb in their natural environment, rather than decorated with gaudy baubles. But that’s not what happened, and wishing an alternative site into existence isn’t far different from trying to pass off Orlando’s Holy Land Experience as the real thing. But I digress.)

The Romans offered Jesus some myrrh-spiked wine, meant to help kill some of the pain. Jesus didn’t want any. Either because he didn’t want it to fog his mind, or because he said he wouldn’t drink wine again till the Kingdom. Either way, no wine.

The art usually has Jesus in a loincloth for modesty’s sake, but victims were crucified naked. Not to humiliate them; the Romans didn’t consider nudity humiliating. It was for practical reasons: Clothes would’ve been soiled quickly. Crucifixion hurts so much, you don’t care about any other bodily functions. And even if you did, you weren’t coming down when nature called.

The soldiers apparently shredded Jesus’s clothes—for rope, bandages, padding, kindling, or whatever other reasons you’d need strips of cloth. According to John, his tunic was another deal; it was seamless, so it was worth something, and that’s why they threw dice for it.

Above him was an epigrafí/“epigraph,” his crime written for all to see; John says it was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. On either side of him were two bandits—highway robbers, who’d waylay people on the roads outside town, and rob, rape, and kill them. In Luke, one of them got repentant, but the other gospels left out this story. Here they’re just as skeptical, as scoffing, as the other observers.

Touching bodily fluids, or touching anything dead, would render you ritually unclean: You couldn’t go to temple or synagogue, especially not on Sabbath or Passover. But the priests and scribes who put Jesus on the cross, wanted to be there to see their handiwork for themselves, and dismiss him as a fake Messiah to his face. I don’t believe they were sincere at all in what they said: Had Jesus actually come down from the cross, they’d have been surprised, but they’d have said he did it in Beelzebul’s power, and had him nailed back up again. (Provided they could convince the superstitious Romans to do it. Pagan as they were, they knew a miracle when they saw one.) The priests and scribes didn’t want Jesus to be Messiah, and miraculous proof wouldn’t make any difference.

Why crucifixion?

Since God has ultimate control of history, including the place, time, and death of the Son, you gotta wonder why he was willing to involve crucifixion. Of all the ways to go, it’s the worst we humans have ever invented. Why was Jesus willing to die that way?

Most Christians figure God picked crucifixion because, outside of disease, it’s the very worst way to die. Since Jesus was dying for our sins, it’d make a big statement about how offensive sin is, and how deserving sin was of the worst way to die.

More: It was a statement of how much grace God offers the world. When we killed him, we picked the very worst way to kill him. And yet he forgave us. If God’s grace can overcome an unjust death by crucifixion, surely it can overcome anything else. What could be worse?

More: Because he died by crucifixion, it spurred us humans to finally stop crucifying one another. We finally stopped and saw how horrific it was, by virtue of our Lord and his apostles dying that way. We realized we mustn’t do that to one another, no matter how much a person might deserve death. I’ll leave the death penalty debate for another time, but when Christians do permit the death penalty in our countries, we try to make their deaths as humane and painless as possible—regardless of all the vengeance-minded folks who’d love to watch criminals suffer, and who wouldn’t mind at all if we did bring back crucifixion.

And as a slow death, Jesus also demonstrated how to die. Not cursing and damning his killers and persecutors, much as they deserved it, but with grace and forgiveness. Not passively—he actively refused the myrrh-wine, and in the other gospels actively spoke to various people from the cross to grant forgiveness and comfort. Not with wrath, but with as much peace as he could muster in his torment. His was a noble death, and if we must ever suffer martyrdom—’cause you never know what might happen—may we be Christlike in it.