The Passion of Jesus - Me and My Dirty Mind ...

“I believe in Jesus Christ, [… who] suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.”
(The Apostles’ Creed)

“For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered, died, and was buried.”
(The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed)

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 571-573 & 595-630

The Paschal Mystery

The Last Supper of Jesus

With sundown, the sixth day of the Jewish week has begun. Jesus celebrates an anticipated Passover Seder meal with his close companions (Matthew 26:20f || Mark 14:17f || Luke 22:14f || John 13:1f).

The Mystical Supper

Jesus in Gethsemane

Jesus and his disciples leave the house where the Last Supper was held, strolling eastward toward Bethany along the line of the walls of Jerusalem into the Kedron Valley. Then they climb to a place on the Mount of Olives called Gethsemane, literally, “the place of the olive press” (Matthew 26:36f || Mark 14:32 || Luke 22:39f || John 18:1f). [According to Joan Taylor, the real Gethsemane included not only a garden but also a large cave.]
Jesus did not immediately settle down into the cave to rest for the night, but asked three followers to stay awake with him in the garden while he prayed. It was going to be a long and sleepless night filled with anxiety. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38 || Mark 14:34, TNIV). The Amplified Bible translates it as : “My soul is exceedingly sad (overwhelmed with grief) so that it almost kills Me!”; while the New Living Translation renders it as : “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death.”

Gethsemane by Liz Lemon Swindle

Christ in Gethsemane by Michael D. Obrien

If Jesus was truly human, sharing in humanity’s limited knowledge, then not knowing what exactly would happen next could generate greater insecurity. Human beings fear what they do not know. [As a student, I would be very anxious just before an important exam since I did not know yet what questions might be asked. But after seeing the items upon being given the test paper, I begin to relax, now knowing what I have to handle.]

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According to Luke 22:44, while Jesus was praying anxiously, “his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood”.
According to the veteran New York medical examiner Frederick Zugibe, Jesus was experiencing a typical “fight or flight” response. After an adrenaline rush, the blood vessels would first constrict and then dilate. This would mean an increased heart rate and a raised blood sugar level. To increase oxygen intake, he would have panted. Extreme physical exhaustion accompanied by perspiration would follow, resulting in a slower heart rate. As blood rushes back into the small blood vessels called capillaries close to the sweat glands, the capillaries would rupture, producing great drops of sweat mixed with blood. This situation is called hæmatodrosis.

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         Then Judas Iscariot arrives on the scene with an armed contingent which will arrest Jesus (Matthew 26:47f || Mark 14:43f || Luke 22:47f || John 18:2f).

         [While it is ultimately pointless to speculate on the motives of Judas for handing over Jesus, I am of the opinion that many may be uncharitable in imputing malicious motives to Judas. It may be possible that Judas may have been trying to force Jesus to act and to reveal himself as God’s Anointed One, supremely confident in the Master’s ability to call on “more than twelve legions of angels” (Matthew 26:53).]

            Imagine the feeling of Jesus as he is handed over to be arrested by someone he has associated with intimately. Imagine also, Jesus’ dismay as those who promised to remain by his side until the end began to run away into the night.

Jesus before the High Priest Caiaphas

        The captors of Jesus were insistent on fast-tracking his elimination, as quickly and as secretly as possible. Jesus was brought to the residence of the High Priest Caiaphas [Yehosef bar Qayafa] for immediate interrogation in a “kangaroo court” presided by the High Priest (Matthew 26:57f || Mark 14:53f || Luke 22:54f || John 18:13f). The only other individuals playing an [over]active role during Jesus’ interrogation were the High Priest’s bodyguards, who behaved violently toward Jesus, without the official interrogators calling for their restraint.
            Typical evidence of such brutality can be found on the victim on the Turin shroud, whose face is covered with multiple bruises and swellings. There is a swelling that almost closes the right eye and an abrasion coupled with the possible separation of the nasal cartilage – possibly from being struck in the face and from an unimpeded fall while carrying the crossbeam. Gaps in the victim’s beard seem to indicate that his beard was plucked out (cf. Isaiah 50:6).
            But while Caiaphas was convinced that Jesus must be eliminated immediately after his “admission” of being God’s Anointed One and therefore “King of the Jews”, he preferred that any blame for killing Jesus be shifted to someone else – like the hated Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate. After all, Jesus’ claim to kingship can be understood as rebellion against Roman rule.

Jesus before the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate

Jesus is then brought to Pontius Pilate at the Prætorium [possibly the Citadel of Jerusalem], the Roman governor’s residence in Jerusalem. The Roman prefect of Judea goes out to meet these Jews to discover the purpose of their visit and ends up interrogating their prisoner. Jesus and Pilate most likely spoke to each other in their common second language, koinē Greek.

       Ultimately, Pilate has Jesus taken away and scourged. Based on the descriptions of scourging by ancient Roman literature and contemporary forensic studies conducted on the Turin shroud by Frederick Zugibe and Robert Bucklin, this is what Jesus may have endured. First, the one to be flogged is stripped completely naked and then made to lean against a supporting pillar or post with the back exposed. The flogger(s) would use a Roman flagrum, a whip with thongs of leather or rope to whose ends were attached dumbbell-shaped pellets of metal or bone called plumbatæ.
       “Large black-and-blue and reddish purple bruises, lacerations (tears), scratches, welts, and swellings … all over the front and back of the victim’s body. … The victim’s breathing would be severely affected because the severe blows to the chest would cause excruciating rib pain and splinting every time he attempted to take a breath. The intercostal muscles, located between the ribs and the back and chest muscles, would be hemorrhagic and the lungs lacerated, badly bruised, and frequently collapsed, all of which would have contributed to the severe pain.”
       After such treatment, Jesus would have not had the strength to stand and simply crumple to the ground.

            All the canonical Passion narratives, except that of Luke, describe Jesus having been made to wear a crown of thorns as a form of mockery by his captors. Such a crowning with thorns did not usually come before a Roman crucifixion, but seems uniquely inflicted upon Jesus, allegedly the “king of the Jews”. Some young soldier likely thought of twisting some of the thorn branches used for firewood lying around their quarters into a mock crown and then performed a heavy-handed “coronation” upon this “king of the Jews”. To complete the caricature, he and his companions even throw over an old cloak over the prisoner’s bloody shoulders as a “royal robe”.
            If the Turin shroud image were to be used as basis, this crown of thorns would likely not be the neatly plaited circlet usually imagined by artists but more of a crudely fastened clump of thorns. On the image, one finds all around the top area of the head puncture wounds from which blood must have trickled. The plunging of spikes into the very dense and intricate network of blood vessels and nerve endings covering the human head, along with repeated blows to the face, would have likely triggered severe pains resembling electric shocks.
            According to Ian Wilson, the most likely thorny plant from first century Jerusalem suitable for such a crown would be the Syrian Christ Thorn (zizyphus spina christi), which has very strong uneven closely-spaced curved spikes.

Despite his power as a representative of the Roman imperial superpower, Pontius Pilate seemed unable to counter the blackmail and insistent pressure exerted by the Jewish mob outside his gates, which likely consisted merely of hired cronies of a clique of high-ranking Jerusalem priests who were acting underhandedly and illegally.
Having succumbed to the bloodthirsty mob by ordering the immediate execution of Jesus, Pilate now writes out the placard detailing his crime. It was common practice throughout the Roman empire to have a placard indicating the criminal’s name and the crime(s) committed accompany the criminal while he was marched through the streets before execution. The same placard would be affixed in a clearly visible place on a cross while the prisoner hung on it.

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In the Roman church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (“Holy Cross of Jerusalem”), there are several relics associated with the cross of Jesus found by the empress Helena, mother of Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, during her expedition to Jerusalem in 327 C.E. One of these relics is an ancient fragment of walnut wood originally painted white with three lines of red lettering but now faded with time. The first line is in Hebrew, the second in Greek, and the third in Latin (cf. John 19:20), all written from right to left (as in Hebrew). Recent research by the German scholar Carsten Peter Thiede has strengthened the possibility that this relic may have been the trilingual placard ordered by Pilate. According to him, the style of the Latin and Greek letters strongly matches those of the first century C.E. It is interesting that the Greek and Latin letters run from right to left, as Jewish writing has always been done. Perhaps it was a Jewish scribe who, after scrawling first in his own language, then wrote underneath it a literal translation in Greek and in Latin in the same direction that he was used to.

Before being leading Jesus to the crucifixion site, the soldiers must have taken off the mocking “royal robe” from his shoulders, causing wounds stuck to the fabric to reopen and bleed, and then replaced it with his own clothes. Then Jesus was made to carry on his shoulders the crossbeam or patibulum before being led out into the streets to walk the short distance to the execution site “near the city” (John 19:20). On the Turin shroud, the victim had abrasions in the shoulder region, as if from carrying a wooden beam across the shoulders.

Did Jesus carry a full-size cross on the way to Golgotha, as in popular imagination? Probably not. Roman historians describe the victim as carrying only the patibulum or the horizontal beam of the cross, which weighed around 23-27 kilograms [about half a cavan of rice]. The upright or stipes, which is usually a beheaded tree-trunk still rooted to the ground (cf. Acts 10:39), remained in a permanent position. For each execution, the patibulum will simply be lifted up and dropped on to the summit of the stipes – resulting in a tau cross. Besides, the Romans were a pragmatic people. It would be highly impractical to erect and secure a full-size cross weighing 80-90 kilograms [about 1.5 cavans of rice] that can support a suspended adult male for every crucifixion, esp. if there were two thousand men to be crucified in one day.

According to the traditional Stations of the Cross, Jesus fell several times while carrying his cross on the way to Golgotha. The Marcan and Lucan passion narratives both mention that the soldiers even conscripted a bystander named Simon of Cyrene to carry Jesus’ cross. The victim on the Turin shroud also bears hazy marks of severe damage to the knees. These are highly probable, considering that Jesus would likely have been seriously debilitated from physical and psychological pain, from blood loss, from breathing difficulties due to blows to the chest, and from sleep deprivation.

Where was Golgotha? In Hebrew, the word golgothe means “skull”, which in Latin is translated as calvaria. According to Ian Wilson, this hillock may be that now occupied by the present Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is most likely that this place may have been chosen by the Romans for its nearness to first century Jerusalem’s walls and its visibility from a well-frequented thoroughfare – so that, in the words of the Roman author Quintilian, the greatest number of people can “watch and experience the horror” of crucifixion.

A form of the death penalty, crucifixion was described by the Roman politician Cicero as “the most cruel and terrible of punishments” – reserved for slaves, thieves and rebels.

The victim is first stripped fully naked to inflict full humiliation. Tearing off a small bandage is painful. Imagine the pain of being brusquely stripped of clothes that have been caked with congealed blood and sweat. The Romans also intended to insult Jewish sensibilities, since the Hebrew Bible forbade public nudity.

The victim is then attached to the cross, using rope and/or nails. The victim on the Turin shroud was nailed to his cross. Strong heavy iron nails at least six inches long would be needed to keep an adult male body suspended on a cross. There is supposedly a relic in the Roman church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme of the nails from Jesus’ crucifixion.

Nails used for crucifixion from the 1st century C.E.

Popular imagination supported by the implications of John 20:25 imagines Jesus having been nailed to the cross through the palms of his hands. But some modern medical experiments have shown that the flesh of the hand – without the strength of bone – is not strong enough to avoid being torn through by the weight of a suspended body. Moreover, the remains of the only known victim of the Roman crucifixion, a Jew in his late twenties named Yehohanan, whose bone box was found by Israeli archeologists in 1968 at Giv’at ha-Mivtar, show scratches to the bones at the wrist end of his forearms. The victim on the Turin shroud also appears to have been nailed through his wrists.

But driving a nail through the wrist without shattering the bones is possible only in one place, a tiny spot between three bones called the “space of Destot”. While this opening was not described by anatomists until the 19th century, it was known by ancient executioners. A nail driven through the space of Destot will enlarge this opening without shattering the surrounding bones, but will damage or sever the median nerve, which flexes the thumbs – causing the thumb to draw tightly to the hand.

And contrary to the universally imagined nailing from the palm side, Dr. Victor Webster, who studied the Turin shroud bloodstains, points out that the blood coming from the wound on the back side of the victim’s wrists shows no sign of rubbing or abrading. This brings out three possibilities. First, Jesus could have been attached facing the cross [as in an early crucifixion graffito in Pozzuoli, Italy]. Second, Jesus could have had his back to the cross, but his arms were fastened by a nail driven through the back of his wrists into the back of the patibulum [as Ian Wilson suggests]. Or, [in my opinion] Jesus could have been attached with his back to the cross, but with his palms facing down [thumbs down] on the front of the patibulum.

However it was done, the victim was likely made to lie flat on the ground against the patibulum. One arm would be stretched and then nailed through the wrist, causing causalgia. The nail hitting the median nerve in the arm would cause intense pain, “unbearable, burning, and incessant, like a lightning bolt traversing the arm” – which could plunge the person experiencing it into profound physical shock. This would be experienced again as the executioners pull the other arm into position, perhaps even dislocating it, and with several pounding strokes drive the other nail into the wrist.

After the victim is fastened to the patibulum, the executioners lift the beam up and drop it securely into position on the stipes, with the victim suspended from it. Now, the victim’s legs have to be secured. Israeli archaeologist Joseph Zias and medical examiner Eliezer Sekeles have suggested that the victim’s feet were first allowed to dangle on either side of the stipes and then fastened to the sides by nails hammered through each ankle. Any nail driven through the ankles would be just as devastating on the nerves just as those on the wrists.

The Ups and Downs of Crucifixion

            What happens when the victim is suspended on the cross? His chest begins to expand and his abdomen will swell. Finding it difficult to breathe, the victim begins to breathe from the diaphragm. Within six to eight minutes, he will begin to perspire copiously – which ultimately result in dehydration. The ends of fingers and toes will also turn white and then blue. The victim’s genitals will also shrink.

            With the hands of the victim affixed to the patibulum and his feet to the stipes by nails, this position forces the weight down on one place but permits the legs to support the suspended body. In this position, the suspended body can assume two positions on the cross. In the “down” position, the weight is on the arms as the body slumps. This “down” position forces the chest muscles to compress the lungs and makes breathing extremely difficult. In order to breathe, the victim assumes the other possible position, where the legs raise “up” the body in order to release pressure on the chest cavity. The blood flows found on the image on the Turin shroud seems to support the occurrences of these “up” and “down” positions of the crucified. Therefore, contrary to popular imagination, the victim of a crucifixion does not and cannot remain static, but must constantly shift between the “up” and “down” positions in order to continue breathing.

             In order to speak, any human being, including a crucified victim, needs to breathe. As such, if Jesus had to speak while hanging on the cross, this meant that he had to raise up his body to inhale and then to speak. But this also meant that Jesus would not be able to speak too long since he would have difficulty remaining in the “up” position.

            Death by crucifixion is essentially a slow death by asphyxiation. Because crucified victims could survive even for days, especially if they were in good physical condition, executioners could hasten death by administering the crucifragium – a blow with a heavy mallet designed to break the shin bones (cf. John 19:31-35). Without the ability to support and raise up their bodies using their knees and legs, death by asphyxiation was hastened.

tetelestai = Greek 'it is accomplished' (John 19:30)

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Roman lancea

John 19:34 mentions a Roman soldier piercing the dead Jesus’ side with a lance, likely a Roman lancia. The “water” is pericardial fluid which accumulated around the heart from the blows to the chest. The repeated concussive blows from the initial scourging may have also caused internal bleeding, filling the chest cavity with bloody fluid, causing or hastening death by asphyxiation.

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POINTS FOR REFLECTION

While reading the description of how Jesus of Nazareth suffered and died, what did you feel? What are you feeling right now?
What new things did you learn about what Jesus of Nazareth endured?
Why do you think Jesus freely chose to suffer and die in this manner?
Did you arrive at a better understanding of what the suffering and death of Jesus means in your life?

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

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Stevenson, Kenneth E. and Habermas, Gary R. Verdict on the Shroud. Wayne, Pennsylvania : Banbury Books, Inc., 1981.

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Wilson, Ian. Murder at Golgotha : Revisiting the Most Famous Crime Scene in History. New York : Saint Martin’s Press, 2006.

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