Amaleq13

What is your source for this?

Roger Pearse

The Alexamenos graffito gives a clue: it was a shameful way to die. Minucius Felix, in the Octavius, likewise has to skip quickly over the fact that the founder of the Christian religion was a condemned criminal who died a slave's death.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Aquila Pacis

It's part of Roman criminal law (commentaries e.g. in Mommsen: StR). "Crucifixion" was not uniform, and there were regional (cultural) differences in the way it was carried through, because the Romans only decided on the sentence. "Death on the cross" is nothing else than "death by the cross": an impalement. Death through crucifixion on the other hand (i.e. "death on the cross" in a literal sense) was not standard practice. (Of course that doesn't mean that people weren't nailed to the cross at all...for instance some of the Spartacus rebels were surely crucified alive...but don't forget footrest and arm slings!) The condemned - in most cases rebel slaves (cf. Tacitus' Histories) - were usually killed beforehand, e.g. by strangulation, suffocation etc. or were already dead, killed during battle, insurrection and so on. The cross was - as Roger Pearse pointed out - a way of bringing shame and humiliation to the victim and his followers and to function as a warning, even to Roman citizens who by law could be crucified too. But crucifixion was not a primary means of execution...more of a pillory for dead people.

Concerning the link provided by Roger Pearse: Of course I'm not a professional when it comes to crucifixion, but there are extremely few illustrations of Jesus on the cross during the first 1000 years of Christianity. So one should be very skeptical. I always fear that interpretations of artifacts as "early Christian" are created by over-zealous Christians working on a fake myth. A lot of that stuff is simply lies and contradictions. The earlier Christian illustrations show Jesus not as suffering but in triumph, which is of course much more suitable for mockery. But in early Christian times the crucifixion doesn't play a prominent role, even the first creed of Nicea didn't mention it. So I don't see how a then still unimportant crucifixion of the Christ should have been a suitable point of attack.

Moreover, the cross on the Alexamenos graffito is T-shaped, which clearly points to a Roman tropaeum. In addition, the person on the T-shaped cross has a footrest, which is a prop that entered the crucified-Jesus-aesthetics very late. (A footrest this early would be a small sensation.) This means that the primary elements of the Alexamenos-cross are NON-Christian, so chances are high that the "god" that Alexamenos worshipped was not Jesus, but someone else, his crucified master, maybe a slave leader, a defeated enemy of war etc. (the enemy's armor was presented on a tropaeum during the triumph procession...Alexamenos could have been a former soldier who had been fighting in his master's army and who turned slave in the imperial palace after the defeat.)

It is also important to note that the word "theos" was very often NOT used for truly divine honors, but in most cases to increase the prestige of a prominent person. "Theos" is primarily known from honors decreed in the provincial polity and has no liability in Roman sacral law. To generally connect the Alexamenos-theos to Jesus, the Christ, son of God (not God!) is more than far-fetched. Moreover there is no proof that any of the Apostles have been preaching in Rome. (Lanciani seems to be one of these myth-builders.)

Notsri

I would respectfully disagree, Aquila, with much of the above, though neither am I any sort of expert on crucifixion. I personally don't find anything from the gospels' account of Jesus' crucifixion that necessarily conflicts with other available data. For example, for the torture administered to Jesus prior to crucifixion, according to the gospels--the beating and such--we might cf. statements from Josephus (War 2.14.9) and Philo (Flaccus 84); for the carrying of the cross (or more likely the crossbeam) to the place of crucifixion by the condemned, we might cf. e.g. Artemidorus, Oneirocritica 2.56--"For the cross is like death and the man who is to be nailed to it carries it beforehand"; with regard to the nailing of the hands (and feet), cf. e.g. Plautus, The Haunted House 359-60; for the breaking of the legs (administered, of course, according to the gospels, only to those adjacent to Jesus), cf. e.g. Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus 41; and even for the occasional burial of a crucified victim (a Jew, at any rate) we might cf. Josephus (War 4.5.2) and Philo (Flaccus 83).

But the crucifixion does play a central role, doesn't it? --witness the numerous passages from the NT, the Ignatian letters, the Epistle of Barnabas and so on; the Nicean creed included: "...crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate."

I'm not sure I follow: are you suggesting that a typical Roman cross (and accordingly any depiction of a cross from late antiquity) would not have the T shape, with the transverse crossbeam?

Regards,
Notsri

Aquila Pacis

No-no, I'm actually saying the opposite. The Roman cross was mostly T-shaped ("crux commissa", "crux composita", "tropaeum" / "tropaion" or simply tau-cross), and a lot of depictions on coins etc. prove that. But early illustrations of Jesus on the cross - apart from being pretty scarce at first - were very unusual. There was no footrest, no arm slings, and the cross in Christian iconography was in most cases a "capitata", at least an "immissa". (The tau-cross entered Christian iconography much later.) What I was actually saying before is that this Alexamenos-cross, being a commissa, without nails and including a footrest, is very likely to be non-Christian, because it is so similar to the standard Roman depictions of crucified people. Of course, if someone - Jesus for example - were crucified by Romans, he would very likely have been nailed to a commissa - in real life! But I was aiming at the iconography of early Christians, who went straight for the Latin cross. The Alexamenos graffito simply doesn't match.

My primary approach was the one toward iconography, because it can often give direct proof on how early Christians saw the Christ. The canon, the creeds and everything else - as we know it today - came later, edited, rewritten, copied, mistranslated, changed, zeitgeist, whatever. The Nicene Creed is a good example: the original form of the Nicene Creed ("symbolum nicaenum"), as adopted at Nicaea in 325 AD, mentions neither Pilate nor the crucifixion. The "oriental" and "occidental" received texts (formae receptae) from 381 AD, otherwise known as the "Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed", added Pilate and the crucifixion (cf. Philip Schaffer: "Creeds of Christendom", Vol. II, 1889). And a quick glance at scripture shows for example that Mark doesn't say anything about the way Jesus was crucified. (Jesus doesn't even carry his cross; Simona Kyrenaion did.) The only direct reference to the act of his crucifixion is in Mark 15.24-25, but only as something peripheral: the subordinate clause has the word stayrhoysin (15.24), plus estayrhosan (15.25), where the observation of the third hour seems to be as important. "stayrhos" means "stake", cp. "anestayrhosen", meaning to "impale" or "pierce"; as far as I know the later interpretation and translation of the NT itself created the precedent "stayrhos" = "cross". The main foreground action at that point is "parting garments" and "casting lots", not the crucifixion which seems secondary and almost negligible. This is just to show that we have to be very careful when it comes to Jesus' crucifixion in scripture. It's just this one word in two consecutive sentences. The crucifixion could very well have been different, maybe an impalement using a crux acuta, maybe a public execution using a spear ("pierce"; cp. apocryphal legend of Longinus), or maybe - if Marcion and the Qu'ran are right - there was never a crucifixion. Scholars and clerics have always tried to find ways to explain the evident triviality of something that would become so important a few hundred years later. Rev. Chadwick (1896) for example writes: "The truth is that the subject was too great, too fresh and vivid in their minds, to be adorned or enlarged upon. What comment of St. Mark, what mortal comment, could add to the weight of the words 'they crucify Him'? Men use no figures of speech when telling how their own beloved one died. But it was differently that the next age wrote about the crucifixion; and perhaps the lofty self-restraint of the Evangelists has never been attained again." This is speculation without proof, although Chadwicks first sentence has some truth to it. Fact is that the oldest Gospel is very often stripped, rudimentary, basic. In those days people interpreted a lot of words and sentences (even genera verbi) from context, because they either knew what the author was writing about, or they had additional texts at hand (or a good sermon every now and then). So the fact that Mark is leaving out so many things (compared to Matthew and Luke) could be because his readers knew the context and didn't need any background information. (But this is not restricted to the crucifixion scene alone.) In my view this explanation is more likely than an irrational "self-restraint". The fact that Jesus on the cross was at first (and for a few hundred years) portrayed as triumphant and victorious doesn't really fit this early Christian depression-theory.

Concerning your first paragraph, I don't see any need to argue against the multitude of sources that you have come up with. I can only think of one question: will the forms of crucifixion, as mentioned in those sources, pass as "norm", or were they notable exceptions? Linking incidents from singular sources to the NT won't prove or validate the contents of the Gospels, even if the original source is true. (Especially since scripture itself is extremely curt; see above.) For instance - as I said earlier, referring to Mommsen (StR) - Romans only decided on the sentence. Regional gusto, often from a non-Roman culture, decided on how the sentence - in our case: the crucifixion - was carried out. If the responsible people believed a torture to be necessary...well, why not? Especially when the person to be crucified didn't need to be alive when being nailed to the cross. In the case of Jesus, the scourging may have been carried out to actually kill him. But flagellation - as a Roman sentence - was a form of mockery. The victim needed to stay alive in order to live with the shame and the stigma...and the scars. (But then Jesus' crucifixion would have been "counterproductive". So there really is something odd here.) To come back to the "real life" that I mentioned earlier: if Jesus really had been crucified (alive) according to Roman customs, he would surely have carried...well, Simona? ...no, Jesus would surely have carried the crossbeam - again: scripture seems odd here, because a crux commissa in this case would have been a compositum, a cross that is being put together in situ. It helps if the condemned is already fastened to the crossbeam. So why did Simona carry the cross? Because Jesus was too weak from the flagellation? Or because he was already dead and was to be crucified anyway? ("they bring him" from "pherhoysin", literally meaning "they carry him"!) ...questions...that's all we get when turning to scripture.

Best wishes, AP

Notsri

Sorry for the misunderstanding. It was tropaeum that threw me off: I wasn't familiar with the term, did a quick search on Google, and was able to find only that tropaeum refers (sometimes, anyway) to a "victory monument."

Aquila, the website makes explicit that the graffito comes from a non-Christian--hence the depiction of Jesus as an ass; the iconographer, if the term is appropriate, was mocking Christians.


Thanks for this. And once again, my apologies; this time, though, for the indelicate handling of the creed issue.

Looking over the comparative table of the different creeds from Schaff's work, it should perhaps be mentioned that the crucifixion is mentioned in ante-Nicene creedal formulae: e.g. from Tertullian, ca. 200 CE: (It should also be admitted as well, though, that a number of the other writers, whose creeds Schaff includes, do not mention the crucifixion explicitly; though perhaps it's implied in the "suffered for us" or some similar such clause that does often appear in the creeds.

Though it's not mentioned in Schaff's work, Justin Martyr was (IIUC) probably familiar with early creed material mentioning the crucifixion: e.g. in 1 Apology 21 he writes (assuming this derives from some early creed): (For a brief discussion only touching on Justin and the early creeds, cf. J. Gresham Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ, ch. 1.)

With regard to the word stauros, I suppose I would take issue with the limitation of the term's meaning to "stake."

Here are a couple excerpts (from non-Christians) which, I think, show favorably for the translation "cross":

- from Lucian of Samosata's Trial in the Court of Vowels 12, ca. 160 CE

- from Artemidorus Daldianus' Oneirocritica 2.53, mid/late 2nd c. CE

Not surprisingly, incidentally, the imagery used in both writers is paralled in Christian authors as well: e.g. regarding the letter Tau, cf. the Epistle of Barnabas 9:8: For the ship's mast, cf. the anonymous 7th c. commentary on Mark, 15.21: And it goes on: (trans. by Michael Cahill, The First Commentary on Mark, p. 118).


IMO, for what it's worth, the Qur'anic/Islamic tradition undoubtedly derives from early gnostic tradition (a tradition itself, IIUC, probably arising from a reaction against the seeming absurdity of the (proto-)Orthodox contention that the savior himself had truly and physically suffered, and suffered a shameful death at that). In any event, the Qur'an 4:157 says: This last part refers, apparently, to the notion that another individual was made to appear like Jesus, Jesus' own image being transformed, the former suffering crucifixion in Jesus' place. This is the view (not surprisingly) taken up in the Gospel of Barnabas (216-17) that you mentioned: Cf. this now with the gnostic Apocalypse of Peter 81.6-24; 82.20-83.10 (ca. 3rd c. CE): From perusing the article on crucifixion in the Catholic Encyclopedia, I would feel compelled to say yes, the sources mentioned by me do fairly represent the norm.

I thought I'd just end the post with an excerpt from Seneca (Epistle 101.14)--a passage containing imagery only somewhat reminiscent of Jesus' crucifixion as portrayed in the gospels, but especially as imagined (as a Christian would be inclined to do) in the light of Psalms 22: Regards,
Notsri

Chunk

Which apocryhal texts are widely accepted as being written before or around the time of the gospels? Basically before the 3rd centuary?

In addition, which are accepted before the the gospels? Before 100ad?

Thanks for any help.

Aquila Pacis

Peter Kirby has a great overview here including the proposed times of origin:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/

A really useful book is the one by Schneemelcher (2 volumes; also available in German):

Vol 1: Vol 1

Vol 2: Vol II

Schneemelcher only has translations of the Gospel texts. Some texts are pretty hard to find if you want the original languages.

Chunk

Peter Kirby doesnt seem to include all of the texts though. I found this site, that lists a large number more:

http://www.comparative-religion.com/...ent-apocrypha/

Peter Kirby

There are about five or six texts on that website that are not on Early Christian Writings, all because they do not fit my "Early" criterion: potentially first or second century. The website would be twice as large if it included everything up to Nicaea, and it would be impossible to manage (alone anyway) if it included anything after Nicaea.

If people do want to help me with expanding or improving the website, send your suggestions or work offer to peterkirby at gmail.com

regards,
Peter Kirby