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Science

Scholars debate death on the cross

‘Passion’ takes traditional view — but is it
accurate?

Philippe Antonello / AP

Jim Caviezel, portraying
Jesus, is shown nailed to the cross on the set of "The Passion of the
Christ" in this publicity photo. The movie reportedly shows Jesus
being nailed to the cross, and this photo indicates that the hands were
also bound to the crossbar with rope.

By Peter Enav

The Associated Press

Updated: 7:11 p.m. ET Feb. 19, 2004

JERUSALEM - The dearth of information about Jesus’
Crucifixion makes it impossible to describe the event in accurate detail, as Mel
Gibson attempts to do in his new film, “The Passion of the Christ,” biblical
scholars and anthropologists say.

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The Crucifixion is the centerpiece of the
movie, set to open in U.S. theaters on Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday on the Roman
Catholic calendar.

People who have seen the movie say it adopts standard
Christian imagery in excruciating detail: Jesus being pinioned to a Latin cross
— a T-shaped device with a short upper extension — with one nail driven through
both feet and one through each palm.

In a December e-mail sent to The Associated Press, Gibson
said he did “an immense amount of reading” to supplement the Bible’s relatively
unadorned account of the Crucifixion in the four Gospels.

“I consulted a huge number of theologians, scholars,
priests, spiritual writers,” Gibson wrote. “The film is faithful to the Gospels
but I had to fill in a lot of details — like the way Jesus would have carried
His cross, or whether the nails went through the palms of His hands or his
wrists ... Since the experts canceled each other out, I was thrown back on my
own resources to weigh the different arguments and decide for myself.”

Details open to debate
Some
scholars say even the most widely recognized features of the crucifixion, such
as the shape of the cross and the use of nails, are open to debate.

More on ‘The Passion of the
Christ’

•
‘The Passion’ is
poised for success

•
Playing Christ a
challenge for Caviezel

•
Newsweek: Gibson's
‘Passion’

•
Gibson defends ‘The
Passion of the
Christ’

James
F. Strange, professor of religious studies at the University of South Florida in
Tampa, said 1st-century historian Josephus provided only general information,
probably because crucifixion was so common that details seemed superfluous.

Crucifixion was first used in the 5th century B.C., and
was a widely used form of execution in Asia, Europe and Africa for the ensuing
eight centuries, said Israeli anthropologist Joe Zias. Depending on technique,
death could be swift or take days.

“If you suspended people by their hands and left their
feet free you would kill them within an hour,” Zias said. “If you suspended them
in a way they couldn’t exhale they’d be dead within minutes.”

Zias said the question of whether Jesus was nailed to the
cross or simply tied to it remains a mystery. “There is no evidence whatsoever
he was nailed,” he said. “The Gospels say he was crucified and leave it at
that.”

'Crucifixion 101'
Zias
criticized “The Passion of The Christ” for accepting the standard version of
three nails being used. He said experiments on cadavers carried out by the
Catholic Church in the Middle Ages have shown that people hanging with nails
through their hands will fall to the ground within a relatively short time,
pulled by gravity.

The Gospels suggest it took Jesus three to six hours
to die.

“All this is Crucifixion 101,” Zias said. “People who
study these things understand them. But Gibson ignored them in his film.”

Photos and film clips released in advance of the movie
indicate that Gibson's version of the Crucifixion has Jesus nailed as well as
tied to the cross.

John Dominic Crossan, emeritus professor of religious
studies at DePaul University in Chicago, agrees with Zias that little is known
about Jesus’ execution.

“Early Christians believed that Jesus was nailed to the
cross,” he said. “But there is absolutely no proof of this. The only skeleton of
a crucified person ever recovered indicated that the two arms were tied to a
crossbar, and two nails were used in either shinbone. There was no standard
procedure in any of this. The only common feature in the different types of
crucifixion is intense sadism.”

Shape of the cross
The type of
cross in Jesus’ execution is also in question, Crossan said. First-century
Romans are known to have used both a T-shaped device, without an upper
extension, and the Latin cross that is standard in Christian iconography.

Each of the four Gospels says an inscription mocking
Jesus as the “king of the Jews” was affixed to the cross. Crossan said this
would have made sense “because the whole point of crucifixion was to warn people
through alluding to a specific crime.”

Two of the Gospels say the inscription was mounted above
Jesus. This presumably would strengthen the argument for a Latin cross, which
would have provided space for writing about the condemned man’s head.

However, the other two Gospels don’t give a locator. “It
(the written warning) could just as easily have hung around his neck,” Crossan
said.

What did Jesus carry?
Crossan
is also uncertain whether the complete cross on which Jesus was crucified was
carried to the execution grounds — either by Simon of Cyrene, as three of the
Gospels report, or by Jesus himself, according to John’s account.

It is possible that the vertical part of the cross was
kept at Golgotha, the place of Jesus’ death, and that the condemned person
carried the crossbar, Crossan said.

“The point is we simply don’t know,” he said, “not in
general cases and not in the case of Jesus either.”

© 2004 The Associated Press.
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.

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