It was a mistake for Pilate to have Jesus brought back before him after Herod had released him. He was not compelled by law to do so.

The prophecy of Isiah was about to be fulfilled. This time, the crowd was far more rowdy, and he began to get nervous. His fear was that another riot would start. Another one of those, and the Legate of Syria would pay him a visit or recall him to Caesaria. Worse, Tiberius himself might hear about it from a messenger of Caiaphas, who was in modern terms a “crybaby.”

While Rome was not usually tolerant of other religions than its own, and unrest of any kind was quickly put down, the Jews were an exception. But the end of that wasn’t far into the future.

Pilate had, earlier in his job here, had his infantry place their shields atop the Fortress Antonia, and this had caused a massive protest in Caesaria. The shields had images on them, and according to the laws of Moses, this was a forbidden act among the Jews, and they were not going to allow it from the Romans. On another occasion, possibly because he had been forced to remove the shields, he’d angered the people, whipping them into another riot. In the chaos, auxiliaries in plain clothing infiltrated the crowd, killing an unknown number of people with their daggers. Again, someone got to Rome with the accusations, and Pilate was warned to stop his stunts. The implications were twofold: first, he would be removed from his post. Second, he might face disciplinary action. That was enough for him to fear the treacherous Jews and hate them even more. It had less to do with antisemitism than his personal assessment of these people as filthy, rebellious, and steeped strongly in religious superstition. Only one god? Who were they to get away with slapping Rome in the face, and worse, have it deemed legal? There’s no evidence that he was a religious man, but he knew that this accommodation was nothing to be taken so lightly. It was dangerous to avoid putting any occupied country under the full extent of the law. It created the assumption that they could escape acts against any Roman law.

And, sure enough, they tried. They resisted paying taxes, and they insisted that Roman soldiers entering a home to search it “defiled” them. They demanded special treatment. If they didn’t get it, they rioted. This necessitated a full garrison of troops to always be present. Everywhere he looked, he saw trouble brewing. He had tried to bring order to this filthy city and was rewarded with warnings not to provoke the people. He felt hobbled and frustrated. How could he do his job if he couldn’t even apply and enforce the law? He couldn’t understand why it was so. 

He knew what the priests did to their own people. He saw how easily they would riot. He saw the betrayal and disloyalty they had for each other. This post was beneath any Roman, and legionaries weren’t even at his disposal; all he had were auxiliaries, who were barbarians, people from lands Rome had conquered. Whereas Roman legionaries were highly trained and disciplined soldiers, the same was not always true of the barbarian auxiliaries. Nevertheless, all of the empire’s soldiers, including cavalry, heavy infantry, and light infantry, were ruthless and unforgiving. They took prisoners to work as soldiers or to be sold as slaves, but in a conquered land, the rule of the empire usually occupied and ruled the people effectively.

There was always some resistance, but it was up to the Jews to become regarded as unruly and relentless in their show of hatred of Romans. Rome never hated Jews; early on in the occupation, Caesar Augustus had a curiosity about their religion and decided that he liked them. This was not shared by succeeding emperors. But in the time of Jesus, Tiberius did, in fact, follow the wishes of his predecessors.

The Empire

As emperor, Tiberius was anathema to men like Pilate. Politically, the man was a bumbling idiot who put his trust in men who were even bigger fools. The dispatches and letters or gossip that reached him were utterly baffling. He rewarded and favored the worst men that the empire had, basically punishing successful generals like Germanicus by keeping him in the east, unknowingly placing all of Rome in peril.

In the history of the early Roman Empire, Augustus was the hinge. On him swung centuries of horror that might follow. He forced Tiberius to drop his wife, whom he loved, and marry his daughter, Julia, who immediately took a mutual loathing toward her new husband. This one act would set in motion such intrigue and terrible events that nothing in the territories was solid, and once Tiberius took power, he seemed to miss or ignore how disliked he was by the Roman Senate. Tiberius seemed to make snap decisions from emotions alone.

If Pilate knew of this, and he very likely did, then indeed, one more infraction could well cost him his life. Pilate also had to have known that on the periphery of the military, the assassinations of generals whom Tiberius favored were happening regularly. He would also know that it was stupid because it was the generals whom the emperor kept away from Rome who, by conquests and popularity with the troops, were really the ones the Emperor should favor. Or fear. Succeeding emperors would learn this lesson the hard way, to be forgotten by the next.

If this dreadful post kept Pilate out of all that, then he had to see the irony in it: in a filthy and isolated territory full of fanatics he wasn’t even allowed to punish, at least there was comfort in knowing that few others would want his job. It offered safety, at least to some immediate extent.

Stories about the emperor were still coming in, each more disturbing than those they followed. He drank too much wine, had lavish feasts, or even worse. He often retreated to Capri, and it was there that he would set the title of emperor in cement as a character, such as one in a play, too ridiculous to be real. Indeed, his chosen heir was Caligula, and that was never going to end well. On Capri, Tiberius had Caligula tutored but spent increasing amounts of time with children. And while Rome did tolerate some juvenile-adult same-sex indulgences, Tiberius seemed to know no limits. A typical provincial governor could not possibly be unaware of such things. They had to wonder if their jobs were secure and their families were safe.

Pilate must have had a growing concern over the stories; never considered a stable man, Tiberius would very possibly scream and order his execution if crowded Jerusalem on a holy week revolted.

Pilate and Jesus

Pilate may very well have hated his post and hated the people he ruled, but it was mostly political. He hated the priests most of all. By putting Jesus back on trial, he hoped to release the man while quelling the fury of the manipulated crowd. If he played it right, it was bound to work.

He told them, “I find no guilt in him that deserves death! Therefore, I shall have him flogged and released!”

There’s a mistake that even scholars make about the flogging of Christ: they say prisoners bound for the cross were always flogged first. This could not be further from the truth.

That’s because a Roman flogging was such a severe punishment that it often killed the prisoner, while others were driven over the bounds of their sanity and never recovered. It was a punishment rendered with a flagellum, a carefully crafted and time-tested instrument too cruel to imagine. A wooden dowel served as a handle. The rest was all nightmare. Leather strands were affixed to it, and these were thin but tough, being tanned and finished. At the ends of each strand was a small, heavy, iron dumbbell-shaped object. There might also be sharp pieces of bone sewn in, and upon impact, the leather strands left a deep welt, while the ends continued by momentum to curl around the body, arms, and legs to dig in and leave deep bruising and cuts.

The Jews had a similar punishment carried out by wood rods. This is where we get the 39 “strokes” or “lashes.”

With a Roman flogging, there was no such limit to how many times the prisoner could be lashed. With too few, the scourged might reoffend. Too many, and he would die of shock.

It was extremely painful, cited by some scholars as having earned the name the “halfway death”. The barbarians in this garrison probably consisted of men from races who did hate the Jews. With every lash, Jesus fell slack against the stone pillar he was tied to. He would straighten up, take another lash, and again go limp and moan in agony.

The soldiers put their hearts into it, and the supervisor, a centurion of the legionaries, made sure that they didn’t kill the prisoner, who had been beaten before even arriving, both by temple guards and some of Herod’s men. He was dehydrating, yet even though he might have been in shock, he fought the lash. As if he wanted more. One of the few Roman centurions present in the city, there because barbarians could not rise to that rank, noted that this Nazarene was tough. While he may not have wanted this, he was remarkably resistant. Striped from chest and arms to his legs, with blood oozing from them, the wounds made by the iron bits were worse. Reddening, they would turn into angry bruises that would keep him incapacitated for weeks. Some of the metal had dug into the flesh, and he bled more from those. The soldiers enjoyed their work, and even those watching laughed. The centurion called for a stop, and he let the men have some fun with the prisoner, as was allowed. While those who had wielded the flagellum were out of breath and exhausted, others came up with ideas. This was hardly the first “messiah” they had heard of. But this man may have been a first, being called a “king”. One soldier fashioned a circular “crown” made of dried wood with thorns. He placed it on the head of Jesus, pressing it down. The blood from the long, tough thorns puncturing the scalp and sides of the head immediately trickled into the long hair and down the face of Jesus. The guards thought this very funny, and another said, “A king should have a scepter!” A long stick was given to Jesus, who by now was going into deep shock. They took the stick and beat him more, mocking him and spitting on him.

When the time came to take him back to the Prefect, Pilate took one look and gasped. Even by Roman standards, the punishment had been sadistic and harsh. With one eye already swollen shut, Jesus, covered by the red cloak of a soldier, was almost too much to stand; Pilate was himself a tough man, having witnessed massacres, executions and more, yet the sight of Jesus made him recoil. He thought that, seeing his condition, the people calling for his death were sure to have pity. In front of the crowd, seated in his curule seat, had Jesus brought to him. He yelled, “Behold the man!”

And was instantly shocked at the loud response: “Crucify him!”

This was another, more fatal mistake by Pilate. Having ruled that Jesus would be released following his flogging, he again put Jesus on trial. He had one last thing to try. He said, “It is the pleasure of the divine Caesar that once a year, in respect for your holiday, one prisoner will be released back to you. We have Barabbas, a murderer, and your king, Jesus. Which one shall Rome release?”

Caiaphas and the priests had anticipated this and already worked the crowd with threats to shout for the release of Barabbas. They did. And the crowd got worse.  Pilate’s mistakes were made from his hatred and anger and caused him to underestimate the high priest. He had no moves left. Checkmate.

At first, Caiaphas had merely accused Jesus of heresy, which was not a crime against Rome. Finally, he had resorted to the accusation that Jesus had proclaimed himself the “King of the Jews,” which was treason. Pilate thought Jesus to be weak in the head, but still didn’t believe Caiaphas. But it was too late. This chess match was one with the stakes of power between two men. And Pilate had defeated himself. The matter was more political than anything else, never racial. It was over too quickly for it to turn racial.

He called for a bowl of water and a towel. He dipped his hands in and shouted, “The death of this man who I have found not worthy of death is not on my hands. I wash them free of his blood!” This was a Jewish custom. His verdict was followed by his mockery of their own rituals thrown in their faces.

He’d tried so hard to save this puzzling man from the cross, but Jesus seemed to have no interest in being saved. After being brought back from the flogging, he asked Jesus, “Why have you nothing to say in your own defense? Do you not know that I have the power to release you or crucify you?”

In his weakened and dehydrated state, Jesus said, “You have no power but what is given you from above.”

Pilate probably never forgot those words.

Crucified

More misconceptions are here than are fully appreciated by men with letters behind their names. First, prisoners bound for the cross were not flogged beforehand.

The reason is right in the gospels: he went forth from Pilate, bearing his own cross. No man who had been flogged could carry anything.

Prisoners were taken from holding cells, had their own cross beams placed over their shoulders, and were led to Golgatha. In front of the condemned was a soldier bearing a sign painted with the criminal’s name and crime. Every prisoner had one. It was not unique to the execution of Jesus.

Whether he was tried at Antonia or Herod’s palace is irrelevant. He would be saddled with his cross at Fortress Antonia and then carry it to the place of execution.

He didn’t have far to go, but in his state, Jesus fell several times. The narrow streets were lined with onlookers, a mixed crowd. But after one fall, women, weeping for him, stooped to mop the sweat and blood from his face and eyes. To them, he gave his last prophecy.

“Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but for yourselves and your children. The days are coming when they will say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’! And they will envy those women who had never suckled and were barren. For if these things are done when the wood is green, imagine what will happen when it is dry?”

These words were strange, and they would have never known what they meant. It meant that if a thing like this were happening while he was still alive, then worse would surely follow his death.

Indeed, if the holy city could witness the execution of the Messiah, then it was doomed, and decades later, a rebellion was smashed by the Romans, fulfilling this odd prophecy made by Jesus. The Romans tore the temple to the ground. The sadistic battle was waged by legionaries engaged in a massacre, and only the outer courtyard wall of the temple was left partly intact. It ended with the last diaspora of the Israelites. They would not return to power until 1946 CE.

There were many ways by which Rome put prisoners to death. A citizen of Rome was rarely crucified, and then only in extreme cases. Usually, they had a choice: death by spear or arrows or beheading. They were dishonorable deaths but far less so than crucifixion. They had other ways, often devised to extract excruciating pain and suffering. One was skinning a prisoner alive. Because so many nerve endings were torn and exposed, the condemned screamed until they lost consciousness. The problem with it was that even Roman spectators walked quickly away. It ruined the whole reason for public execution: to scare and sicken others and to keep them in line.

For Jesus and the two thieves, the method was crucifixion. This was the death slaves and thieves and political radicals suffered, a grotesque and pitiful sight, but one that effectively deterred crime.

It was obviously painful, but the key to its success came from the time it took for a crucified man to die. In other territories, it was sometimes the better part of a day, and watching the final stages was unforgettable. The nudity, the cold, the sun, the biting insects…

Because the cause of death was seldom from blood loss. It was worse than that.

In Judea, and especially Jerusalem, it is a matter of debate as to whether the crucified were nude or not, but it is doubtful. Loin wrappings or some kind of concealing cloth was allowed. Nudity was very taboo. But when Jesus reached the site of Golgatha, trailing behind Simon of Kyrenia, who had been forced to carry the crossbeam once Jesus could not go any further, the soldier with the sign dropped it. One of the thieves was already on his cross, the other being nailed to his crossbeam, or the patibulum. At least four upright beams already stood in the Rocky ground, right outside the northwest gate, at the crossroads to Joppa. Simon had the patibulum yanked away. It was thrown on the ground, and he was pushed away into the onlookers. Jesus, exhausted, rested his hands on his thighs. It was almost finished.

He had been true to his words at the Last Supper. The Apostles had scattered, in fear for their lives, and Simon Peter had denied three times to accusers that he even knew Jesus.

Now, it was time for reckoning. Judas, having been left behind by Satan, was alone, sobbing and full of remorse. He heard of the death sentence. Whatever he thought before, he now had innocent blood on his hands. The memory of their talks, of the gentleness of Jesus, haunted him. He ran outside of the city as if he were being chased by a beast and ran until he couldn’t go any further. On the rim overlooking the Hinnom Valley, he saw a few stunted trees. He used the sash or belt from his cloak and hanged himself. He did not know about weight or drop distance, and he died in agony. After a few minutes, his knot failed. He fell down the slope and landed on a large rock, his gut splitting open. The priests would use the money they had paid him to set aside a potter’s field, where the poor could be placed in ossuaries. They came to call it “the field of blood.”

“It is finished”

The Romans had adopted crucifixion from the Phoenicians, but its origin remains unclear. It is thought to have originated in Babylon or Assyria, but it’s not really known. Even scholars who find evidence of Alexander the Great passing it on to Phoenicia still believe that scourging was a compulsory part of crucifixion, but not in Roman use. The purpose, besides deterring crime, was to make a condemned man suffer in public. Death could occur in hours or days, but in or near a populous area, it served no purpose to prolong the death. They worked the cross into a perfect method of execution by watching the crowds. After a few hours, the spectacle wore thin. They left to go home. Usually, the dead were left on their crosses to rot, eaten by birds, dogs, and insects. Not in Judea; the Jews wouldn’t stand for that. The method changed. And it was genius.

Jesus was thrown to the slightly elevated hill, which was in a garden outside of the city’s gate in the second wall. He was brought down by a soldier holding each shoulder. The crown of thorns punctured his scalp, and he moaned. The worst was yet to come. The one man designated as executioner took a hammer and two iron nails and moved to one hand. He made sure that the arm was at an angle, the shoulder below the beam. He placed one nail against the lower wrist (in Greek, part of the hand) and drove the nail into a spot between bones. Jesus moaned with every breath. To the other hand, the executioner moved and repeated the hammering. If he executioner missed the mark and opened an artery, the prisoner would possibly bleed out. Rome tolerated few mistakes. All of the details were taken on with a strict plan, but executioners were different in small ways.

Jesus held on. He couldn’t give up. There was more yet to endure. With the hands secured to the patibulum, the guards lifted the beam up to the top of the upright beam, the stipes crucis. At the top, there was a notch cut to accommodate the crossbeam. The upright was barely six feet tall. A bit of muscle let the crossbeam set into the notch. The sign listing his crimes was placed above his head and fixed in place with a smaller nail. Most of the time, the condemned would not block the sign, which in three languages read, “This is Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews.” Latin, Greek, and Aramaic.

Now, the executioner knelt at the feet. A longer nail may have pierced both feet, or the two were nailed side-by-side. There was no need for rope. All crucified prisoners were crucified in the same way. Ropes were never necessary when the condemned was nailed in place. Their crosses resembled an uppercase “T”, and were not tall. This was quick and efficient and saved wood, which, in a dry desert climate, was a precious commodity.

And that was it. The final hours of the Earthly ministry of Jesus were here. Having been beaten, scourged, dehydrated, and now in shock, he would not last long.

The two thieves beside him on either side had not been scourged. They would last longer.

Jesus had one thing to immediately see to: he asked God to forgive them all because the soldiers had no way of knowing what they were doing. Neither did the priests, now waiting to watch him die.

Jesus then discovered that while hanging by the nails in his wrists, he could inhale but was powerless to exhale. This position and the points of support froze the muscles used for breathing and made it necessary to pull himself up, pushing down on the nails in his feet, to exhale and take a couple of quick breaths before the pain and cramping made him hang down again. The pain was too much to bear, but his mission was not over yet. There was worse to come.

As the gospels describe it, Jesus may have hung on the cross for 6 hours. Yet it is doubtful that he was alive for that long. For short periods, each of the crucified men would fall unconscious. To onlookers, they seemed dead. But the lack of air woke them, forcing them to full awareness and pain and the necessity to push down on their feet and rise to breathe again.

Although the condemned weren’t beaten and flogged beforehand, a crucified man in an arid climate, going into shock, they weren’t superhuman, and this process exhausted the strongest among them. It left them dehydrated, in shock, and finally unconscious, which they would not recover from, causing asphyxiation. Of all the cruel ways of killing that humans have devised, crucifixion is one of the more beastly.

He had not been on the cross for long when he saw, almost at his own eye level, the Apostle John standing with Mary, his mother, and Mary of Magdala, whom Jesus had delivered of demons.

To his mother, he said, “Woman, here is your son.” To John he said, “Here is your mother.” It meant that John was to take her in, to take care of her.

It was horrible. In the Gethsemane garden, he had prayed, asking to be spared the cup that was prepared for him. Now, we can see why. It wasn’t just the flogging. It wasn’t the mocking crowd that followed him to Pilate’s courtyard and even now stood before him, laughing at the fate of the “Messiah”.

It wasn’t even for the cross he now hung from. His shoulders were strained or perhaps even partly dislocated, and his breathing ever more labored. Then something happened that makes the ordeal understandable as a sacrifice.

God thrust upon his son something no human can possibly imagine.

Jesus was truly paying for the sins of humanity: he was actually seeing and feeling every vile act of sin ever committed, even every vile thought. It was being lifted from every guilty person even up to you and me. In those endless moments, he, as divine and without sin, couldn’t bear the ugliness and evil of it all, yet he had to because if he refused, all would perish to the depths of hell. Without this act, his whole life would have meant nothing, and we would not be able to repent. Every person. Every evil deed. Every evil word or thought. We would carry all of it to the grave and beyond. But God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, and whoever believes in him and repents will never die.

In a moment, God the Father and God the Son were separated. God could not look while his son suffered so, just as he cannot stand sin and is separated from the sinner until repentance is made.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, why are you so far from me? My enemies circle me and mock me…

At the height of the crescendo, Jesus called out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But God the Father and God the Son had known for eons that this act had to take place. Separation was necessary, but it hurt. And I am in awe of what a sacrifice that must have been. No greater love has anyone had than to make this sacrifice.

He would cry out that he thirsted. A soldier stuck a sponge on the tip of his javelin, dunked it into a bucket of wine, vinegar, and gall, the latter serving as a drug even though it didn’t work. Jesus turned from it and said, “Abba, into your hands, I commit my spirit. It is finished.”

There had been a strange darkness most of the day, and other sources outside of Judea recorded such an event.

It lasted far too long to be a solar eclipse. There is no record of a storm of any kind, even though screenwriters love putting thunder and lightning in their scripts.

There’s no known cause. But more amazing than that is what followed the final cry of an exhausted but triumphant Yeshua of Nazareth. Matthew wrote that the veil in the temple was torn in half, graves were split open, and that on the rocky earth within or near a garden, where Golgatha stood, the ground cracked. There’s no record of it, but one wonders how frightened the priests in attendance had to be.

Seeing that sunset wasn’t far off, word was sent to Pilate that the bodies had to be taken down, for sundown began the sabbath. Pilate was fed up and roughly ordered this to placate these frustrating men. Already, they had sent emissaries to complain about the wording on the sign. But he had held his ground. He said, “What’s been written is what I ordered.” Now he had to send a message to Golgatha and his centurion there to dispatch the crucified. This was done by using a sturdy iron bar, swung in a lateral arc, to break the legs of the two thieves. Now, they could no longer raise themselves to breathe. In minutes, they were dead. But when the detail got to Jesus, they saw that he was dead already. They didn’t break his legs. Instead, a soldier used a spear, aimed at the heart through the ribs. The puncture caused a mix of blood and fluid to spill. This is consistent with, basically, an exploded heart, among other, similar things. A broken heart?

Joseph of Arimathea offered his own tomb to Mary for Jesus’s burial. A centurion, who had been been troubled by the death of Jesus, and who now believed he was the son of God, gave the order to remove the bodies and for Joseph to take custody of the body.

The priests again asked to be seen. This was pushing it, and few Romans would have taken any more. This time, it was to ask for a guard detail to guard the tomb from robbers. They worried that the followers of Jesus would steal his body and claim his resurrection, as he had foretold.

The detail was ordered and took up its place, but nothing could stop what happened next. No man, no guard detail, not mighty Rome, and not the devil himself could stop it.

Jesus had indeed risen. Alive, body still pierced, but alive.

He told his apostles to go like lambs among wolves, preaching the good news to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And he promised to be with them, to be with us, always.

Even until the end of the world.

Note-

Growing up as a Christian, I was fascinated by the Crucifixion. As an event that changed human history, I just didn’t get why.

I understood what sacrifice meant. But I didn’t get how killing an animal could cancel one’s sins. And sacrificing his only son, God wouldn’t really do that, would he? I accepted, though, that I had a lot to learn. But studying crucifixion and the Gospels didn’t help. I’m still not a scholar, expert, or anything, nothing at all but a sinner. Somehow, at some point, it came to me that Isiah had known centuries earlier exactly what would happen and why it had to be so.

Chapter 53 verse 6:

⁶ All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

It had to be the most pain ever suffered. But Jesus did it for us. And when it was over, he allowed himself to die. But he returned, conquering the world, defeating Satan. Showing us all that, for us to conquer death, all we need to do is believe, repent, and change our lives.

He once told his Apostles, “In this world, you will have tribulations, but be of good cheer, for I have conquered the world.”