Crucifixion argument....

[Dancefortwo]

Yeah, silly me.  I'm arguing with a Christian (online) over the lack of evidence that the Romans allowed crucified bodies to be buried according to Jewish custom.   My contention is that if this was allowed there would certainly be many examples of crucified victims in the ongoing excavations of tombs in and around Jerusalem and throughout what was the Roman Empire.  Thus far there has only been one person found in a Jewish tomb from the 1st century who was  known to have been crucified.  Just one.  The Romans crucified upwards of at least 20,000 people and that's a very low estimate.  It's probably over 40,000 people.  So where are all those crucified people buried?

His argument is that forensic archaeologists when examining the bones from ancient family tombs and burial sites can't tell if a person has been crucified because the nails were removed so the evidence is gone.  Only one persons  body was found which shows signs of being crucified.  It still had the nail intact because the nail was bent and couldn't be removed so the Romans chopped off the lower part of his foot to remove the body from the cross.   The photo on the left is a modern take on how the nail went through the heal bone.  The one of the right is the actual foot with the nail in it.   

  

My contention is that forensic analysis could easily determine whether a nail had pearced the foot of a crucified person.  Roman nails were not small.  They would do a lot of damage, especially to the foot and it's 26 bones.  



If anyone nailed that sucker in my foot it would do a lot of damage to the bones.  I can see that a large nail might - might-  miss the ulna bone in the arm however even that is pretty sketchy especially since they often hammered nail closer to the wrist where the bones are closer together.  The Romans somethimes tied the victim onto the cross beam with ropes so the arms weren't nailed.  But the foot. The foot would certainly receive a lot of damage and I would think that forensic archaeologists and other experts in this field would be able to spot this. 

His other argument is that Jewish burials were allowed during times of peace where as during times of war the crucified enemies were burned or thrown in a pit.  Yeah, sure.  I tried to find a time in history when Jerusalem was at peace.  I came up short. 

Of course we all know what this revolves around, don't we?       Snark.  Was Jesus allowed a burial after crucifixion?  

It's kinda find it fun to argue with Christians about stuff like this especially around easter. I get to do a lot of research and learn new things about the ancient world.  It keeps my mind sharp.  Crazy but true.

[Vera]

I'm just always stunned and sickened by our inventiveness in imagining and creating so many different ways in which to inflict pain, mutilate and murder each other.

For a supposedly empathic species we sure seem to derive quite a bit of pleasure from the pain of others.

[Minimalist]

His argument is that forensic archaeologists when examining the bones from ancient family tombs and burial sites can't tell if a person has been crucified because the nails were removed so the evidence is gone

Forensic archaeologists are much smarter than your average xhristard moron.  Yes, generally speaking the nail would be gone.... but the hole would remain and as correctly noted, that thing would leave one hell of a hole.  In the case of the one bone that was found the tip of the nail had been bent and could not be removed.



In fact the whole point of crucifixion was degradation of the victim.  Proper burial would be been antithetical to the point they were trying to make.  Bodies were not taken down.  They were left up there until they rotted away as a message to other slaves or rebels.  That message was, "don't fuck with us or you will end up here."  The Romans reserved crucifixion for slaves and rebels because they they had far simpler/cost effective methods for dealing with common criminals.  Most of whom were killed in the arena as part of the "games."

For the record - and historical bullshit like Ben Hur aside - the Roman navy did not use slaves to row their war galleys.

[Dancefortwo]

His argument is that forensic archaeologists when examining the bones from ancient family tombs and burial sites can't tell if a person has been crucified because the nails were removed so the evidence is gone

Forensic archaeologists are much smarter than your average xhristard moron.  Yes, generally speaking the nail would be gone.... but the hole would remain and as correctly noted, that thing would leave one hell of a hole.  In the case of the one bone that was found the tip of the nail had been bent and could not be removed.



In fact the whole point of crucifixion was degradation of the victim.  Proper burial would be been antithetical to the point they were trying to make.  Bodies were not taken down.  They were left up there until they rotted away as a message to other slaves or rebels.  That message was, "don't fuck with us or you will end up here."  The Romans reserved crucifixion for slaves and rebels because they they had far simpler/cost effective methods for dealing with common criminals.  Most of whom were killed in the arena as part of the "games."

For the record - and historical bullshit like Ben Hur aside - the Roman navy did not use slaves to row their war galleys.

One of the great Christian re-inventions and horrific re-writes was making Pontius Pilate into a sort of conflicted nice guy who allowed Jesus a pleasant burial. They softened the Pilate character like the Dr. Seuss's Grinch image "whose heart, they say grew three sizes that day" . This has unfortunately made Jews into Jesus killers for the last 2000 years.  The Eastern Christian churches went so far as to elevate Pontius and his wife to sainthood!  Nevermind that the man was a monster, the story doesn't work if Pilate left Jesus up to be eaten by buzzards and wild dogs.  

It is possible that the bodies were burned though. I have no evidence of this but given the Roman proclivity for cleanliness perhaps the bodies were burned to completely obliterate any record of their life.

[mordant]

His argument is that forensic archaeologists when examining the bones from ancient family tombs and burial sites can't tell if a person has been crucified because the nails were removed so the evidence is gone

Forensic archaeologists are much smarter than your average xhristard moron.  Yes, generally speaking the nail would be gone.... but the hole would remain and as correctly noted, that thing would leave one hell of a hole.  In the case of the one bone that was found the tip of the nail had been bent and could not be removed.



In fact the whole point of crucifixion was degradation of the victim.  Proper burial would be been antithetical to the point they were trying to make.  Bodies were not taken down.  They were left up there until they rotted away as a message to other slaves or rebels.  That message was, "don't fuck with us or you will end up here."  The Romans reserved crucifixion for slaves and rebels because they they had far simpler/cost effective methods for dealing with common criminals.  Most of whom were killed in the arena as part of the "games."

For the record - and historical bullshit like Ben Hur aside - the Roman navy did not use slaves to row their war galleys.

One of the great Christian re-inventions and horrific re-writes was making Pontius Pilate into a sort of conflicted nice guy who allowed Jesus a pleasant burial. They softened the Pilate character like the Dr. Seuss's Grinch image "whose heart, they say grew three sizes that day" . This has unfortunately made Jews into Jesus killers for the last 2000 years.  The Eastern Christian churches went so far as to elevate Pontius and his wife to sainthood!  Nevermind that the man was a monster, the story doesn't work if Pilate left Jesus up to be eaten by buzzards and wild dogs.  

It is possible that the bodies were burned though. I have no evidence of this but given the Roman proclivity for cleanliness perhaps the bodies were burned to completely obliterate any record of their life.

You're forgetting the Roman proclivity for terror and torture as a means of control. Min is right, a crucifixion that doesn't leave the victim to rot and be savaged by scavengers would have been a wasted example.

That said, I don't really have a problem with the notion that a wealthy patron could bribe his way to a proper burial for a particular victim. Clearly something like that happened at least once, per the archeological evidence cited above. That's actually one of the more plausible deus ex machinas in the gospel accounts. There are plenty of other problems with those yarns.

[Minimalist]

Not necessarily. Mord.  Far more likely that friends/family of the deceased retrieved the bones one night when no one was looking.  The Romans did not waste their time guarding dead bodies.  They had enough informants to prevent that from happening too often.

I do recall one situation where Josephus recounted that during the siege of Jerusalem he recognized three acquaintances who had been nailed up and prevailed upon Titus to release them. Titus did but IIRC only one of them survived.  I'll have to see if I can find that passage.

[Minimalist]

And D42, yeah....later xtians tried to get the whole Roman state off the hook by suggesting in their silly gospels that it was all the fault of the jews and Pilate was just some liberal/pinko/commie do-gooder who wanted to free the godboy.  Sadly for them, Philo of Alexandria and Josephus were not in on that scam and both wrote fairly lengthy discussions about what a scumbag Pilate was.

[Minimalist]

The brain is not completely gone, Mord.

From Josephus'  Life - at best a self-serving source - but he writes:

https://lexundria.com/j_vit/407-430/wst

420and when I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealius, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp, as I came back, I saw many captives crucified; and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; 421so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered.

[Dancefortwo]

Not necessarily. Mord.  Far more likely that friends/family of the deceased retrieved the bones one night when no one was looking.  The Romans did not waste their time guarding dead bodies.  They had enough informants to prevent that from happening too often.

I do recall one situation where Josephus recounted that during the siege of Jerusalem he recognized three acquaintances who had been nailed up and prevailed upon Titus to release them. Titus did but IIRC only one of them survived.  I'll have to see if I can find that passage.

One also has to wonder why the Romans had no misgivings about crucifying a Jew on one of the most holy weeks and days of the Jewish calendar year yet according to the Christians gave in to a nice traditional Jewish burial custom.  The story is inconsistant.

[Minimalist]

That's because the story is horseshit.

The gospels can't even agree on which day it happened!

[airportkid]

... I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealius, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp ...

A thousand men, to scout a camp?  That needs a lot more qualification to be believable for a short little mission like that.

... he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered ...

That's much more believable, and had the physicians not interceded, perhaps all three would have recovered.  The third probably survived because the physicians didn't disturb him.

[Minimalist]

Actually, that sounds like a lot of men for what amounts to a mounted engineering survey but then Josephus was a horrible exaggerator! 

Greek and Roman doctors were not the assholes that medieval and later "xhristard" doctors were.  They still didn't know about infections but they were normally fairly skilled at treating battle wounds.  Practice makes perfect.

[Brian Shanahan]

Yeah, silly me.  I'm arguing with a Christian (online) over the lack of evidence that the Romans allowed crucified bodies to be buried according to Jewish custom.   My contention is that if this was allowed there would certainly be many examples of crucified victims in the ongoing excavations of tombs in and around Jerusalem and throughout what was the Roman Empire.  Thus far there has only been one person found in a Jewish tomb from the 1st century who was  known to have been crucified.  Just one.  The Romans crucified upwards of at least 20,000 people and that's a very low estimate.  It's probably over 40,000 people.  So where are all those crucified people buried?

His argument is that forensic archaeologists when examining the bones from ancient family tombs and burial sites can't tell if a person has been crucified because the nails were removed so the evidence is gone.  Only one persons  body was found which shows signs of being crucified.  It still had the nail intact because the nail was bent and couldn't be removed so the Romans chopped off the lower part of his foot to remove the body from the cross.   The photo on the left is a modern take on how the nail went through the heal bone.  The one of the right is the actual foot with the nail in it.   

  

My contention is that forensic analysis could easily determine whether a nail had pearced the foot of a crucified person.  Roman nails were not small.  They would do a lot of damage, especially to the foot and it's 26 bones.  



If anyone nailed that sucker in my foot it would do a lot of damage to the bones.  I can see that a large nail might - might-  miss the ulna bone in the arm however even that is pretty sketchy especially since they often hammered nail closer to the wrist where the bones are closer together.  The Romans somethimes tied the victim onto the cross beam with ropes so the arms weren't nailed.  But the foot. The foot would certainly receive a lot of damage and I would think that forensic archaeologists and other experts in this field would be able to spot this. 

His other argument is that Jewish burials were allowed during times of peace where as during times of war the crucified enemies were burned or thrown in a pit.  Yeah, sure.  I tried to find a time in history when Jerusalem was at peace.  I came up short. 

Of course we all know what this revolves around, don't we?       Snark.  Was Jesus allowed a burial after crucifixion?  

It's kinda find it fun to argue with Christians about stuff like this especially around easter. I get to do a lot of research and learn new things about the ancient world.  It keeps my mind sharp.  Crazy but true.

A much better argument is that (conceding for a moment that the Jesus in the bible was a real person), there's no way Jesus would have been crucified given what he was convicted of (religious sedition under jewish temple law) and the body which convicted him (the sanhedrin).  The Romans wouldn't have intervened in the matter, never mind inflicted the punishment they reserved for people they considered a significant threat to their rule or to the state itself.

If the Jesus story in the bible were any way accurate he'd have been put to death by stoning.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

For the record - and historical bullshit like Ben Hur aside - the Roman navy did not use slaves to row their war galleys.

Yep. Those seats were taken up by soldiers, non-naval personnel. Kept them in shape and didn't waste rations on someone who had low motivation to fight. And the rigging was handled by sailors, highly trained experts in their craft as they advanced.

[Minimalist]

Precisely. The ships generally moved under sail and the sea is an unforgiving mistress if sailors made mistakes.  Better to have an experienced sailor than an unwilling slave and it wasn't as if sailors were in short supply in the Med.

[Bucky Ball]

There was a standing order in the Roman provinces during the Pax Romana (27 B.C.E. to 180 C.E. in the Roman Empire), according to which provincial "trouble-makers" were simply executed (and no trial afforded) and tossed into a mass grave, after having been left to their "disgraceful" (uncovered) time (multiple days) on their crosses. What is described in the gospels was an "event" of some sort in the temple, in which Jesus caused a ruckus in the temple which related to the economic stability and life-blood of the city, either Jesus or the *character* they invented. The entire economy of the City of Jerusalem related to the *festivals* (during which many visitors came into the city) was based on money exchange .. the priests could not be paid with (unclean) Roman currency, nor the animals for sacrifice, thus the "money changers were ritually important. It is not possible to overestimate the importance of the ritual temple-visits (not unlike the Hajj today), and the need for thousands and thousands of ritual animals which had to be bought and presented to the priests for sacrifice. It was THE year-round and most important business Jerusalem engaged in. The Sanhedrin never once in all of history was in session, or came into session during Passover Weekend, or the Day of Preparation. The know-nothings who created this myth, had no knowledge of the actual cultural "facts" and background when they invented this myth, many many decades later. If any of this myth has a kernel of truth to it, it's about the Roman governor's main job ... to keep the peace and a nobody peasant who created a riot in the temple precincts which was seen as a threat to the economic stability of Jerusalem.

Throughout the gospels one can see statements and events placed (a literary device) in the present tense in the texts, which clearly reflect FAR FAR later, highly developed
theological understanding of the "event" being described. There are a lot of these, for example where Jesus is made to say "The Son of Man this", or something that. But what he's saying is in fact historically, a line of thought that the followers came to accept as orthodoxy (at least in certain locations as orthodox), many decades if not centuries later. These are everywhere in the gospels and other texts.

[Dānu]

You can often tell the true intent and purpose of an author by the departures from reason, by what they get wrong. It's clear the bible has politics heavily in mind.

[Dancefortwo]

I wonder why people in the Bible who come back from death, for instance the group of "saints" that crawled out of their graves and walked the streets of Jerusalem or Lazarus...why don't THEY write about their experience?  Now THAT would be an interesting story. 

"I was lying in my grave as dead as a doornail when suddenly...."

What happened to these people?  Well, we all know it was a fantasy and only useful as a plot point but if you're going to write such nonsense you might as well include some testimony from the recent undead in the story.     

There were 10 people in the bible who came back from the dead plus all the "saints" (maybe about 40?  The bible doesn't really say)  So lets call it 50 people that were resurrected which makes Jesus' re-animation not such a big deal.   Yawn.

[Minimalist]

I wonder more why other people at the time didn't mention that amazing sight of dead motherfuckers walking around.  In 'Murrica in 2021 that would be a smash-hit TV show.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I will repeat an old analysis of this BS.

Friday, Sundown. JC removed from Cross.
Saturday, all day, JC in tomb.
Before Sunday starts (at sun up.) JC gone from tomb.

So, sundown Friday to dawn Sunday, ~36 hours. Not three days. This entombment inflation must stop!

[Bucky Ball]

I wonder more why other people at the time didn't mention that amazing sight of dead motherfuckers walking around.  In 'Murrica in 2021 that would be a smash-hit TV show.

The answer to what did these people do with their tombs while the zombie invasion of Jerusalem was going on ?
They rented them, of course.

[Dancefortwo]

I will repeat an old analysis of this BS.

Friday, Sundown. JC removed from Cross.
Saturday, all day, JC in tomb.
Before Sunday starts (at sun up.) JC gone from tomb.

So, sundown Friday to dawn Sunday, ~36 hours. Not three days. This entombment inflation must stop!

Generally the legs were broken to hasten along the deaths.  Sometimes there were so many people being crucified, Josephus describes the most in one day was 600 Jews, that I would imagine they wanted to speed things along for a faster turnover rate so ...broken leg it is! 

"Lets move it along men!  We've got three hundred more schmucks to crucify today.  Let's not dilly-dally!!  Next!!!"  

The nails were removed and reused again.  Partly it was because the Romans believed nails had a special sort of magic.  Many cultures did.  Ore was taken out of the ground and turned into metal.  It was stupifying to ancient people that out of the dirt of the Earth came axels for wheels and beautiful useful swords and nails that held things together.  Metal was their version of the computer but with a thousand and one uses.   

Anyway,  Jesus hobbling along with two broken legs after re-animation doesn't quite fit the narrative.

[Minimalist]

They rented them, of course.

Dead B&B?

[Chas]

I will repeat an old analysis of this BS.

Friday, Sundown. JC removed from Cross.
Saturday, all day, JC in tomb.
Before Sunday starts (at sun up.) JC gone from tomb.

So, sundown Friday to dawn Sunday, ~36 hours. Not three days. This entombment inflation must stop!

It's not a math error, per se, it's a sloppy reading of "on the third day...".

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Yeah, fundies aren't good with math.