Why The Crucifixion Of Jesus Was Worse Than You Thought

Even a cursory reading of the gospels makes it clear that Jesus met a pretty tough end here on Earth. After rising to prominence as a preacher and just maybe the longed-for messiah, he entered Jerusalem to much acclaim from the locals. After drawing the ire of both Jewish religious leaders and Roman officials, Jesus was arrested, put on trial, beaten, and executed via crucifixion. The biblical accounts maintain that this was a bloody, drawn-out way to die. It was a method of execution meant to act as a terrible example for anyone who thought of rebelling against religious or political authority.

Dig a little deeper, however, and you'll soon learn that the experience was far worse than you thought. By the time of the Roman Empire, crucifixion was established as a method of killing that had been terrifying people for centuries. The horror of witnessing it was chilling enough alone — that was part of the point, after all, given how it was used as a bloody method of intimidation by the state. Actually experiencing it, however, was worse. Victims were subject to a cascade of suffering that ended only after a lingering death due to a variety of painful and humiliating conditions. Here's just how bad Jesus' crucifixion really was.

While there's no denying the crucifixion was an awful way to die, anticipation surely made the situation far worse. By the time of Jesus, crucifixion was well-known and surely widely-dreaded. It's not clear exactly when the history of crucifixion began, but various forms of impalement on upright stakes had been around since ancient Egypt. By the time of Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C., victims were sometimes strung up on poles. 

However, both the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible aren't always clear on what crucifixion is — namely, whether or not impalement was involved, or if someone was otherwise affixed to an upright pole to die a still-agonizing death. By Roman times, however, crucifixion (typically reserved for the lower classes and opponents of the state) typically used the non-impalement option. Even so, the long history of the practice and the public deaths of those subjected to it certainly would have led to major anxiety that only increased the suffering.

Within the Gospels, Jesus clearly knows what's coming and is having a hard time dealing with the prospect of his imminent punishment. In Matthew 26:36-46, he enters into the garden of Gethsemane to pray shortly before his arrest, telling his disciples that "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." He also pleads with God to pass on the torture, saying in Mark 14:36, "Take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt."

According to the gospels, Jesus hadn't just upset the Roman colonizers — that would have been bad enough. He had also set off the Jewish high council known as the sanhedrin. By Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, and John 12, Jewish religious authorities are depicted as obviously unsettled by the increasing attention and acclaim given to Jesus.

Roman officials also weren't feeling exactly happy about a potential leader emerging amongst rebellious locals, especially during a holiday. Traditionally, Jesus entered Jerusalem during Passover and entered the Jewish Temple, where he caused a scene by upsetting the tables of moneylenders stationed there (though the details vary from gospel to gospel). Soon after, he was arrested, though it's not clear if Temple guards or Roman officials did the arresting. In fact, some scholars are skeptical that Jewish religious leaders had any real authority at all, at least when it came to the nitty-gritty legal power that ultimately led to Jesus' execution.

This complex interplay of local religious, cultural power, and the domain of Rome continued on in the trial, which was spearheaded by the Sanhedrin, headed by high priest Caiaphas. Next, Jesus was sent to local Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who passed the buck on to local Judean king Herod, who bounced Jesus back to Pilate. Ultimately, Pilate is said to have thought the charges were trumped up but, afraid of mob violence, sentenced Jesus to death anyway.

The crucifixion of Jesus was not a short affair. Instead, it was made all the worse by a lengthy period of torture. By the Roman period, it was typical for crucifixion to be preceded by a round of scourging, in which a victim was stripped and beaten. In the intervening centuries, it became a somewhat popular subject for religious paintings, where it was widely termed "the flagellation of Christ." One of the most well-known examples is the 15th-century painting "The Flagellation of Christ" by Piero della Francesca, in which Jesus is depicted tied to a large column wearing only a loincloth, the whip of a nearby soldier poised to fall.

The gospel accounts don't offer quite the same information, but they do claim that Jesus was scourged by Roman soldiers. In Mark 15:15-20, soldiers take him into a hall and "smote him on the head with a reed." John 19:1-3 more vaguely says that Pontius Pilate ordered Jesus to be scourged. This was unlikely to be a gentle affair, as Roman-era victims were sometimes at risk of dying on the way to the crucifixion site, weakened by physical trauma and blood loss. Nearby citizens were sometimes forced to step in and carry the cross beam borne by the victim. In the gospels, Simon of Cyrene was the person who did this for Jesus (as mentioned in Matthew 27:32, Mark 15:21, and Luke 23:26).

Besides the already painful scourging that took place before the actual crucifixion, there was the matter of public mocking. While it may not have been as physically painful as being arrested and beaten, there's no denying that the psychological element of crucifixion — especially for someone framed as a political dissident — was a major element of the suffering. Matthew 27:27-31 says that the soldiers who were tasked with beating Jesus first draped him in a scarlet robe, then crowned him with a circlet of thorns and gave him a reed to hold (presumably in imitation of a royal scepter). Then they bowed and sarcastically hailed him as "King of the Jews."

The sarcasm apparently continued into the crucifixion itself, where the gospels (namely John 19:19, which claims Pilate wrote the sign, and Matthew 27:37) maintain that a plaque bearing the initials "INRI" was affixed to the top of Jesus' cross. It stood for the Latin phrase, "Iesus Nazareno Rex Iudaeorum," which translates to "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." John 19:20 goes on to say that the sign was written in three languages — Hebrew, Greek, and Latin — to ensure that the mocking epithet was understood by any literate person.

As the humiliation aspect likely makes all too clear, a major component of Jesus' crucifixion and crucifixion in general wasn't just to inflict pain and suffering but also for others to witness it. By the time of the Roman Empire, crucifixion was used as a gory and very public punishment meant to discourage others from causing trouble for the state or upper echelons of society. A slave rebellion led by Spartacus from 73-71 B.C. was suppressed, and 6,000 of the rebels were reportedly crucified on the major Naples-Rome road known as the Appian Way. Perhaps most tellingly, it was more common for upper-class traitors to meet their end via relatively swift decapitation, while sorts like slaves, pirates, and certain lower-class dissidents were more likely to be crucified.

In the Roman practice, crucifixion victims were also typically led on a grim procession in which they carried the cross-beam that would attach to a permanent upright pole at a dedicated execution site (for Jerusalem, this was a place known as Golgotha, or "place of the skull"). The gospels discuss just that, lending the edge of gruesome public spectacle to the suffering. But it may have also contributed to some peoples' faith, as in the legend St. Veronica. Somewhere along this procession route through Jerusalem, she is said to have stepped forward from the crowd to wipe Jesus' sweating brow with her kerchief. Later, unfolding the cloth, she saw the imprint of his face.

Though art of the crucifixion often shows Jesus nailed to the cross, there isn't much mention of this specific technique in the Bible. Direct accounts of the crucifixion only really say that Jesus was crucified without getting into the details. he disciple Thomas in John 20:25 does say that he'll only believe in the resurrection if he can personally view the nail wounds in Christ's palms (which is precisely what happens a few verses later). Plus, in Colossians 2:14, the writer references charges against humanity and says being nailed to the cross is a metaphor for their cancellation via Jesus' sacrifice.

If Jesus really was nailed to the cross (instead of tied to it as some other victims were in other accounts of crucifixion), then it was yet another element of suffering piled on top of the brutal torture. There is certainly physical evidence that some people were nailed to crosses, such as the Roman nail embedded in the heel bone of a first century Jerusalem man named Jehohanan (going by the inscription on the ossuary containing his bones). Scholars have since spent plenty of time debating what the evidence says about crucifixion positions, but it's all too clear that nails were used to affix people to crosses. Other victims found nails embedded in their heel bones include a third or fourth-century man executed in Roman Britain and another in Roman-era northern Italy.

Once a person was on the cross, one might at least hope for a quick end to their suffering, but such miniscule mercies were not always granted. Matthew 27:45 states that Jesus was on the cross for about three hours before finally dying. Most interpret this as from noon until 3:00 p.m., as the first hour was typically counted as 6:00 a.m. And while many interpret Jesus' final exclamation in the text as one of triumph, having completed the key part of his mission, the three hours proceeding were certainly full of monstrous pain and fear.

Difficult as it may be to believe, three hours on the cross may have been much better than Jesus or witnesses to the crucifixion expected. That's because some victims were known to have suffered for not just hours but days, with evidence suggesting that the lengthiest time may have stretched to an agony of four days. The timeline could vary due to a number of factors, from the health of the victim, to how they were affixed to the cross, weather conditions, and the patience or impatience of the soldiers tasked with overseeing the execution.

At one point in most retellings of the crucifixion of Jesus, he is offered what sounds like an excessively odd refreshment. Matthew 27:34 and Mark 15:23 both note that, while on the cross, a flagging Jesus is offered a vinegar-based drink via a sponge on the end of a long stick. The writer of Matthew claims that the liquid is mixed with gall, while the writer of Mark says it's myrrh. Both accounts state that Jesus refused to drink the mixture. In John 19:28-30, it's vinegar mixed with hyssop, but this time Jesus does consume it. Vinegar is, of course, not widely known as a refreshing beverage, while gall is a term generally used to refer to a bitter substance (which can include myrrh and hyssop). In short, it was hardly a refreshing glass of lemonade on a hot summer day.

But why does this frankly awful-sounding beverage get put into use? It could have been a way to revive crucifixion victims and continue the torture for just a while longer. It may also have been meant as a small mercy to dull the agony, perhaps because the vinegar was actually soured wine to take the edge off the pain. Jesus' rejection of it has therefore been interpreted as a sign of his divinity and willingness to suffer that much more to offer redemption to the rest of humanity.

What actually killed Jesus? What actually happens to your body during crucifixion can be so complex that, some two millennia later, it's not entirely clear what killed him. Simply put, the physical trauma inflicted on a crucifixion victim was so intense that any number of causes of death could be responsible.

The process of flogging, marching, and exposure could have led to pulmonary embolism or fatal damage to the heart. The extended posture of hanging on a cross could have also contributed to major stress on the abdomen that would have inhibited breathing and slowly suffocated the individual. Shock induced by blood loss may have also been the cause. Biblical accounts also note that Roman soldiers pierced his side with a spear, with a wound producing what appeared to be water and blood, which may well have been the final coup de gras. 

Perhaps most controversial, however, are the theories that say Jesus may have been perilously close to death ... but never actually died. This is, of course, anathema to anyone who believes in the resurrection of a dead Jesus and the spiritual promise of resurrection for other believers. However, given how long ago the crucifixion took place (and the fact that the gospels were apparently written decades after Jesus' life and by unknown authors), it's not out of the realm of possibility for a near-dead Jesus to have been removed from the cross and subsequently revived.

At least in the Roman Empire, there were soldiers tending to the crucifixion all throughout the process. They were also obliged to stick around until the condemned was confirmed dead. If a person took longer than expected to die, Roman soldiers reportedly sometimes grew impatient and hastened the death of a crucifixion victim. While this may seem to be a twisted form of kindness, their methods weren't pretty, and they were perhaps rooted more in just wanting to finish their shift than relieving a fellow human being's suffering.

One technique, known as crurifragium, entailed breaking a victim's legs with a metal bar. With shattered lower limbs, a person would not be able to support their own weight as well and could asphyxiate or succumb to shock more quickly. In John 19:32, that's what the soldiers did to the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus, though they refrained from doing the same to Jesus because he appears already dead. Still, they want to make sure he's expired, so one takes a large spear and pierces his side (and inadvertently kicks off a whole legend of the holy lance). When they see that the wound produces blood and water, that's enough evidence for them. Other accounts of crucifixion also say that stabbing was used to hasten death, as were beatings to the chest and smoky fires built near the foot of the cross to finish them off via suffocation.

According to the gospels, part of what really happened after Jesus died included the step of placing his remains in a tomb supplied by follower Joseph of Arimathea. This is pretty key, as the tomb is where a group of faithful women find that Jesus' body is missing even though it's guarded by soldiers. An angel appears and informs them of the resurrection, followed by Jesus himself. In the narrative, this is where the agony of his death comes to fruition, and even the most doubtful witnesses are convinced of God's power and the possibility of their own resurrection.

However, not all crucifixion victims' remains were given a proper burial. In fact, it was more common during the Roman era for bodies to stay up on the cross to decompose. What was left was subject to scavenging animals and might finally be discarded in a ditch. In Rome, some remains were reportedly tossed into the Tiber river. If you are of a skeptical bent, like religious scholar Bart Ehrman, it is possible that Jesus' remains were treated similarly as one final indignity. It's also possible that Roman officials were open to bribery, and one who was sufficiently paid off might look the other way if Jesus' body was given a dignified burial. Some confirmed crucifixion victims were treated as such or else we wouldn't know they had been crucified, including the first-century Jehohanan, whose bones were found collected in an ossuary.