The Crucifixion of Jesus is one of the most recognizable images of Christianity and Good Friday. And the approach to next week makes this event significant. But was there a crucifixion, and why was Jesus killed in this way?
Meredith Warren, a lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies at the University of Sheffield, argues that the existing reports are very contradictory - whether Jesus was actually nailed or only tied to his cross. According to the expert, the stories about Jesus can be dictated by tradition. Some of the early Gospels, such as the Gospel of Thomas, do not include the story of Jesus' crucifixion, preferring years of teaching.
But Jesus' death on the cross is one of those things that all four canonical gospels accept. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all include the fact of the crucifixion, each interpreting it somewhat differently. None of the gospels in the New Testament mentions whether Jesus was nailed or tied to a cross. However, the Gospel of John reports the existence of wounds on the hands of the resurrected Jesus.
It is this passage that may have led to the very tradition of interpretation, when Jesus' hands and feet were nailed to the cross, not tied to it. The Gospel of Peter, a non-canonical Gospel from the 1st-2nd century AD, specifically describes in verse 21 how, after Jesus' death, the nails were removed from his hands. The Gospel of Peter also skillfully introduces the cross as the active character of the Passionate narrative.
In verses 41-42, the cross says, speaking with its own voice to God: “And they heard a voice from heaven saying: 'Have you called to the sleeping ones? And bending down the cross said: "Yes."
Tradition is clearly of paramount importance to this text. Over the past few years, some people have claimed to have found the very nails that crucified Jesus. And each time, biblical scholars and archaeologists have rightly marked the assumptions and misinterpretations of the evidence as unjustified. Curiously, the fact of piercing with nails persists, despite the fact that the earliest Gospels do not mention Jesus nailed to the cross.
Not surprisingly, it took Christians some time to embrace the image of Christ on the cross, given that crucifixion was a humiliating way of dying. What is surprising is that there is an earlier depiction of the crucifixion. The righteous icons with which we are familiar and that glorify the death of Jesus were considered the earliest images. But, as it turned out later, they appeared later than the mocking graffiti of Christians dating back to the 2nd century.
They are called the Graffito of Alexamenos, - the image shows a figure with the head of a donkey on a cross with the words: "Alexamenos worships his God." This was, apparently, a common fault of the ancients, as Minucius Felix (Octavia 9.3; 28.7) and Tertullian (Apology 16.12) confirm this. Since the graffito was clearly not a Christian, this image suggests that non-Christians were familiar with some of the basic elements of the Christian faith in the early 2nd century.
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Gems, some of which were used for magical purposes, also accompanied some of our early images of the crucified Jesus.
A piece of carved jasper from the 2nd-3rd century depicts a man on a cross surrounded by magic words. Another very early example of a crucifixion is found carved into the surface of a carnelian, a gem set in a ring setting. Scientists believe that the gem of Constanta is known to date from the 4th century AD. In the image, Jesus' hands do not appear to be nailed to the cross, as they naturally fall off as if they were tied around the wrists.
Since the evidence of antiquity does not give a clear answer to the question of whether Jesus was nailed or tied to a cross, the tradition of depicting Christ is dictated by a common image. Those who have seen the film The Passion of the Christ will remember how much time director Mel Gibson will devote only to the act of nailed Jesus on the cross - as much as 5 minutes. Given the relative silence regarding the crucifixion in the Gospel, this finds its way out as a graphic representation.
One of the few films that does not show the fact of the crucifixion of Christ is Life of Monty Python, which shows several victims of the crucifixion, other than Jesus himself, tied to crosses. In the end, Emperor Constantine ended the crucifixion as a punishment, not for ethical reasons, but out of respect for Jesus.