The Rest Is History - 175. Crucifixion

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

Crucifixions were a form of public execution so heinous that the Romans themselves were reluctant to document their gory details... In this Easter special, Tom and Dominic trace the origins and evolution of crucifixion - as well as the historical accuracy of Jesus' death. Warning: this pod is not for the faint of heart. Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. Producer: Vasco Andrade Exec Producers: Tony Pastor & Jack Davenport *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello, happy Easter. In the first half of the first century AD, there took place probably the single best-known event in all human history. There are four main accounts, all written decades afterwards, and this is one of them. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the praetorium,

and they gathered the whole battalion before him, and they stripped him and put a scarlet robe upon him, and plaiting a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And they spat upon him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they'd mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. As they went out, they came upon a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. This man they compelled to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha, the place of the skull, they offered him wine to drink mingled with gall. But when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots.

Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head, they put the charge against him, which read, This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. So Tom Holland, that's a story with which we and a large proportion, probably almost all of our listeners, are extremely familiar. And there are all kinds of conversations we could have about the historicity of this, about whether Jesus really existed, about whether this really happened. But what we wanted to focus on today was the act of crucifixion itself. Because obviously, when we think of the crucifixion, we think of Jesus. But presumably at the time, Tom, I mean, you'll know far more about this than me, crucifying somebody would not have been unusual, would it, in the Roman world?

No, crucifixion was a very common form of execution. And it was a form of execution that was, it was basically seen as the absolute worst that you could inflict. So as a governor of a province, if you were faced with rebellion, banditry, insurrection, you could inflict a range of punishments. So you could burn someone to death. You could put them to the beasts. So make them a public show in the arena and people would cheer as they watched them devoured by wild animals. Or you could crucify them. And crucifixion was seen as the worst of these fates because it was protracted and humiliating. Even more humiliating than being burnt to death or devoured by lions. And it was that idea of being made a public spectacle that I think reflects the way in which, for the Romans,

to be shamed was almost as terrible as to be tortured. And that's why, as well as being the paradigmatic fate that was visited on rebels, it was also the paradigmatic fate that was visited on slaves. So when Jesus, I mean, we'll come back to Jesus' crucifixion, but he's been crucified as a sign of humiliation, as a sign that he is no more than a slave. And that's why the King of the Jews stuff is so, it's bitterly ironic, I suppose.

Absolutely. So it was, crucifixion is called supplicium servile by a Roman writer called Valerius Maximus, the punishment of slaves. Josephus, the Jewish writer who records the war that destroys Jerusalem, he calls it the most wretched of deaths. Even a grammarian called Varro, he writes about the crux, the cross, and he says that the word of it is harsh on the ears. So everything about it is cruel, savage, bitter.

And that generates a kind of paradox, which is that, although, as you say, it's incredibly common, and it's something that serves the Roman world as an emblem of Rome's power. It's a statement about Rome's authority, about its right to inflict brutal torture on those who oppose them. It's also something that the Romans themselves seem to have been a bit embarrassed about. They didn't like to draw attention to it. Crucifixions don't happen in the center of town. So in the account you read, Golgotha, which is otherwise unattested, is a place presumably outside the city limits. And in Rome itself, crucifixions took place on a remote area of the Esquiline Hill that only very gradually, as Rome expands, gets kind of developed. But for a long time, it has this kind of taint. And that carrion taint, which hangs over crucifixion,

means that the Romans themselves are actually very reluctant to acknowledge that it's a Roman practice. So they say, yes, we do it, but this is a practice that has its origins among barbarians. So it's- Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So let's get back to the root of it. So when, Tom, do we get our first references to crucifixions? It predates the empire, presumably. It does. It's complicated, though, because we think of crucifixion as a kind of set practice, that there are set rules and so on. It's hard to know whether that's the case. The only accounts we have of an actual crucifixion by the Romans are the four gospel accounts, which in itself is

telling, I think. The Romans are reluctant to go into all the gory details. And if we go back before the Romans, there are various accounts, chiefly by Greek writers, of penalties that seem to involve suspending someone, hanging them, putting them up in a public place and suspending them from a tree or a piece of wood. And so this fate could be crucifixion as we understand it in the sense that Christians would understand it today, but it could also be impalement or something like that. So I have a question, Tom friend of the show alexander the great is said to have crucified large numbers of people after capturing the city of tyre yeah he was crossed they wouldn't let him in to worship a statue of heracles yeah uh so that now is that

project because of course the accounts of alexander that we have are written later so is that projecting is that putting back a sort of Roman practice and thinking that he must have done it? Or is it plausible that Alexander was crucifying people and that that was a common practice in the, what is that, the fourth century BC? I think it's likelier to be an actual reflection of what he did because Alexander is invading the Persian Empire and he is taking on the role of a Persian king. And crucifixion or at least suspending people, impaling people, hanging them in public so that they suffer and die in public

is seen as something that originates with the Persians. So Ali Ansari, who's been a guest on the show many times, and says everything began with the Persians, will be delighted to hear the crucifixion. Top tortures are among them. Well, the Persians are famous for the sophistication and subtlety of their torture. And much, much later, the Marquis

de Sade, who is a guy who really knows what he's talking about when it comes to torture, says that the Persians of all the peoples who have ever lived were the greatest at torturing people to death. And the idea that you punish rebels by exposing them to humiliation, the humiliating gaze, is something that certainly goes back to Darius the Great, who is ruling. So he's the king who sends the expedition that gets defeated at the Battle of Marathon,

the expedition to destroy Athens. And he comes to power amid a coup and all kinds of Persians, provinces, cities rebel against him. And among them is Babylon. And Darius takes 3,000 Babylonians and he crucifies them, which could, as I say, mean he impales them. But certainly this is remembered. This is a kind of kingly thing to do. This is what the great king does. So I imagine that you know that there is an echo of that behavior yeah so so a slightly pedantic question you said uh he crucifies them which may mean that he impales them so that implies to me that the word the original word that is being used is not the word

crucify right that it's some other translation or some other words that could mean crucifixion but could mean something else is that right there's some sort of vague into intermediate term well a stauros a stavros that's where the the greek name comes from the word stavros exactly uh is a is a a cross it's conventionally translated as a cross, but it could be a pole. It could be. It's hard because crucifixion becomes so famous and because the role it plays in Christianity is so key, it kind of, you know, we tend to back project

what happens there onto the early use of it by Greek writers. We can't know for sure. It could, you know, it could be a kind of range of things. But the key thing is that you are exposed to public obloquy. And that is absolutely the fundamental aspect of it. And it's what makes the crucifixion with a capital C so extraordinary and strange that this should be the foundational

image. Because obviously for Christians, the key to Easter is the resurrection. It's the rising from the dead. That's the whole essence of the story. But that in terms of antiquity is not so unusual. Lots of mortals are raised up to the heavens um you know in the lifetime of jesus augusta caesar has been raised up to the heavens augusta caesar's um adoptive father julius caesar has been raised to the heavens there are all kinds of gods who who die and then get raised from the dead yeah obviously ancient egyptian religion is full of this isn't it yes yeah is this what happens to osiris or horus or somebody yeah so osiris gets killed loses his penis which is

obviously something that doesn't happen to jesus um and yes and then and then he gets resurrected to rule as the king of the dead yeah yeah so this is so this is all very common um but it's the humiliation that is unusual that That is the strangeness. That is the weirdness. And until you properly understand its significance in the Roman imagination and in the Greek imagination and indeed in the Jewish imagination, you don't properly understand how strange the whole thing is. Okay, well, let's talk a little bit about the Romans and crucifixion.

So do we have any sense, Tom, of the kind of people and the kind of crimes for which you would be crucified? Yeah, so as I said, it's chiefly visited on rebels against Roman rule in the provinces and on slaves. And it comes to serve as, therefore, a kind of warning to anyone, be they a slave rebelling against the master or a provincial rebelling against the power of Caesar, of what your fate will be. And one of the weirdest expressions of this is in the writings of Pliny, the elder. You love a bit of Pliny.

I love a bit of Pliny. I love a bit of Pliny. I've been, for the new book I'm doing, I've been reading through all his natural history, which is this incredible kind of compendium of all kinds of, sometimes very, very accurate facts and sometimes not entirely accurate. And he covers, you know, natural phenomena and... It's like this podcast, Tom. Well, no, you're very against natural phenomena, aren't you? So he loves his birds, for instance, which you're very hostile to. We were already talking before recording this about whether we should do a podcast on the history of birds.

Well, we're doing one with pigeons, of course. I reacted with incredulity. But all the fans will be horrified to hear this. But among them, he talks about animals and he talks about the lion as the king of the lions. And he has this extraordinary story about how Polybius, who is a Greek who accompanied Scipio Aemilianus, who destroyed Carthage in 146 BC, that he was with Scipio in Africa. And he saw Scipio crucify lions

so that the other lions, Pliny writes, would be deterred from attacking the cities of Africa by fear of suffering the same fate. That seems absolutely horrible and bizarre. Isn't it? Isn't it? I mean, is it plausible that he did that? Well, it's in Pliny. And also, Tom, would it act as a deterrent to other lions? I think it's unlikely.

But obviously what it would do would act as a deterrent to people in Africa. I'm more shocked by that than I am by the crucifixion of thousands of people that we've talked about earlier in the podcast. Well, there's another crucifixion of animals story, which is the famous account of the Gauls who capture Rome, seize Rome. And they occupy the city. But the capital holds out and the Gauls are creeping up the side of the rock to try and storm the top. And the watchdogs don't bark.

But the sacred geese of Juno, the the queen of the gods hiss and alert the guards and so um every year that on the anniversary of that day um the geese are put in a a litter and carried in triumph through the city but the watchdogs are crucified i mean it's it's through those like subsequent generations of dogs I mean that makes Jeremy Thorpe look positively we haven't had dogs being killed for a while so we're as it were resurrecting the

tradition now the reason I asked about who was crucified and why was because when you answered that, both of the examples you gave were about rebels. So you're not crucified by and large for common or garden crime, even a murder.

It's rebellion against, it's a crime against the state, against the threat to the integrity of the state, is it, that is punishable by the order? And the natural order. Right. So you do, if you're a slave and you kill your master, then not only are you crucified, but everyone in the household is crucified.

That, again, is ridiculously harsh. Well, so this happens, I think, I'm trying to remember, Tassadus writes about it, I think it's in the reign of Nero, that a senator is murdered by one of his slaves and there's something like kind of five he has 500 600 slaves something like that with women and children and actually even the romans are appalled at the prospect of you know all these slaves who are entirely innocent being killed and there is a kind of um there's a kind of brief campaign to say well do we really

need to do this but they decide yeah we do so the whole lot the whole lot get crucified wow that is that is i was about to say that's tough love but there's no love in it no there's no love in that at all it's just no it's just tough um what about um obviously the most famous uh crucified slave uh certainly in the western in the in the modern Western imagination, is Spartacus. Was Spartacus crucified? Well, he's supposed to have been killed in the final battle. Obviously, if you go along with the Kirk Douglas film, then he isn't because everyone turns out to be Spartacus. And so they all get crucified. But the point of that, of course, is that the who are seen by Greeks as well as by Romans to be fitted for servitude.

And therefore, Greeks and Romans tend not to worry about that particularly. But also among the people enslaved are Greeks who do not see themselves as a fit people to be enslaved. And so they are brought to Italy and to Sicily. And it's not like they are objecting to slavery as an institution. They're objecting to the fact that they are the slaves. That's the problem. And so through the second and first centuries BC, you have large numbers of slave insurrections.

And they get dealt with incredibly brutally because maybe a quarter, maybe a third of the population of Italy by this point are slaves. So the Romans are sitting on the edge of a volcano. So this is very analogous to the situation in 19th century American South. Yes. Where you've got a large slave population, people live in a constant state of they're either brutalized and terrorized on the one hand, or they're the owners who live in fear constant state of, they're either brutalized and terrorized on the

one hand, or they're the owners who live in fear of insurrection. Yes. And are therefore driven to extremes. Yes. And so therefore, it becomes incredibly important that every slave absolutely understand what will happen if they in any way, try and fight back. And so when Spartacus's rebellion is finished, famously, those who survive are crucified along the entire length of the Appian Way, which is across Italy to the heel of Italy. And these are serving as kind of billboards advertising Rome's power. That's what they're there for. And it's meant to be a kind of disgusting spectacle. Yeah, which it must have been. I mean, so let's talk a tiny bit about the mechanics of crucifixion.

Do we know much about that or our soul accounts? You said earlier on, if I heard you correctly, that our soul accounts really are the gospel accounts. So when historians write about crucifixion now, are they actually basing it on the Bible? It's very, very difficult to escape it. There is physical evidence for it so the earliest physical evidence was found uh in 1968 and it was in a tomb outside jerusalem wasn't jesus for anyone who wonders about that um it was someone a bit later um and what that shows is so it's the heel bone and there's a nail driven through it and it's still attached to the wood.

And what that shows is, so if you imagine, you know, how the crucifixion is portrayed in Christian art, the feet are crossed and a nail is kind of driven through the feet or maybe through the ankles. Through both your ankles at once yeah but but what this shows is that your your the side of the cross um the the feet are put on either side of the cross and then they're driven through the through the ankle again i mean and that of course would enhance the humiliation of the experience because you wouldn't be wearing a loincloth so your legs would be spread you'd be naked yeah you'd be naked and um and corroboration for that was actually found just before christmas in britain so yes you sent me the story the story in the story yeah you sent it from the guardian because i know you're a massive admirer of the guardian

and they found so tell us about what they found yes so. So a whole kind of cemetery was excavated and the bones were removed. And then it was only, I think, you know, last year that they washed the mud off and they discovered the same thing had happened, that there was a nail embedded through the ankle. And this was clearly this unfortunate had suffered crucifixion. However, I mean, again, there's no firm or fast rule on this because it's perfectly possible that people were suspended by ropes. account well he he says that part of the um the fun of it for the executioners is to kind of spice it up to to vary it so he says that um you know one victim may be suspended upside down with his head facing the ground um others you know in the classical sense you know the the image of jesus with the arms spread along a yoke. Others, he says, I mean, horribly. And so this is where the confusion between crucifixion and

impalement comes in, that people might drive a stake up through the genitals. So it's, and the variation of this seems to be important. So there's an account that Josephus writes about as the Romans are besieging Jerusalem, and they're trying to intimidate the defenders. And all the deserters, all the people who are kind of trying to slip out, who are armed, who are captured, they're crucified in front of the walls of the defenders to try and intimidate them. And Josephus describes how the soldiers, out of their hostility to the defending Jews, out of their hatred to them, that they kind of mix and match, that they will twist their victims into kind of strange positions, basically that it's a bit of a laugh. And so in the account from the gospel that you read, where they mock Jesus, that seems entirely

true to the evidence that we have for how the military, the security apparatus dealt with their victims. That in a sense, making the victim look ridiculous and grotesque and foolish was a crucial part of the punishment. The more amusing you could make it, the kind of more credit you get with your colleagues. Now, Tom, you haven't really answered my question about, in fact, you've utterly failed to answer the question. What was the question? The question was about how crucifixions worked in practice so what do we actually know are you are you yeah do you carry so let's in that biblical account a man carries a cross um there's a big crowd presumably there's all the stuff with later on with sponges there's a whole sort of yeah there's a whole load of goings on what do we

actually know about what a crucifixion an ordinary crucifixion was like uh well to reiterate there is no standard procedure but having said that um discounting the gospel accounts the evidence is that before the crucifix before you were crucified you were very likely to be whipped and the whip okay the whip would be probably one with so it'd be like kind of cat o' nine tails with chunks of metal on the tip so it would it would it would scourge you yeah it would gouge out chunks of your flesh so it would be unspeakably painful so that then and then you would you would be paraded through the streets you would have to carry absolutely you would carry your maybe not the the bulk of the cross but what was called the

um the cross beam and you would carry what was called a titulus which was the um the description of your crime around your neck so that people could read why it was that you were being crucified tom it's very christian of you to be it's interesting how you imagine yourself to be the uh the crucified i was thinking you would tell it from the crucifier's perspective yes I know I'm portraying 2000 years of Christian weathering there you are yeah I think well I I think it the experience crucifixion is obviously more vivid for the crucified than the for the crucifier I think the crucifier is just another working day day. Well, and it is another working day. So that's another kind of fascinating aspect of it

is that we have an account of... They're kind of like an agency. They're like a kind of torture agency that if you're a city council or something and you've got to do your crucifixion... Oh, God, they outsource it. They outsource it. And there's a kind of advert from, you know,

saying all your crucifixion needs we will you know we'll talk we'll do the torturing you know we'll burn them if you want we'll gouge out the eyes if you like that's fine selection selection packages exactly exactly um so uh so we have that and so that's how we know that there is a kind, as you say, there are kind of various packages that you can have. So you could have them whipped. You can have them maybe blinded.

You can have them maimed beforehand. These are all options. Now, if you don't blind, if you don't blind the victim before he goes up on the cross, then the likelihood is that fairly soon birds will come and peck out the eyes. Oh, come on.

Because there's nothing you can do to stop them and probably your genitals as well. They'll cluster around your genitals and your eyes and attack them. And we actually have documentary evidence for this from the Talmud, which in a commentary on the book of genesis and and this is um uh the the account of uh that fans of um joseph and the technicolor dream cape will remember i think it's is it the butler no it's the baker it's the baker ends up crucified he dreams that he's on a tree he's hanging from a tree and this is interpreted as presaging his crucifixion and in this the commentary on it um in in the talmud it says that birds will eat the flesh from your head which is presumably the eyes because that's the

kind of the softest material so i mean it's a horrible horrible detail and josephus also describes how birds flock around. Just before you get on with your torture porn, Tom, you said he, for the person being put on the cross. Are they always men? I think almost invariably. So the slaves in the house that I mentioned in the reign of Nero, the women would have been executed as well.

But it does seem to have been a distinctively um right suffered by men you so you you you how long are you up on the cross um that entirely depends you know you could be there for days uh and in a way so I'm not a I'm not a doctor so I I'm not entirely sure of the mechanics of it, but it is said that part of the torture is that you constantly have to lift yourself up because otherwise you're in a constant kind of seesawing motion. You know, you've got the birds pecking at your eyes. Your body is kind of gouged out with this awful whip. People are gawping at you. Your genitals are on display and you're heaving yourself up and down. So, I mean, it's a repellent, horrible, horrible fate.

And so that's why often people will break the leg as an act of mercy, because then you will suffocate and die and your agony will be over. And then when your agony is over, you'll be taken down from the cross. And the likelihood is that you will not be buried in a tomb. So the the guy who was found in outside Jerusalem was unusual. Jesus is unusual in this sense. The likelihood is that you will be carted away and chucked into a common tomb. And that is part of the punishment. So in Italy, if you have the deluxe torture package, you will have people who are dressed up in red, carrying bells, who will drag the bodies to the carrying tip, ringing bells as they go.

And does anybody survive? Well, that's a good question so josephus again who is um by this point he although he's a jew he's um kind of a pal with titus who is the roman general who is commanding um the the war against the jews he asks titus for a favor if some of his friends can be taken down from the crosses and titus says fine and they get taken down and they they still die and they've only they haven't been up for very long so from the evidence of that the likelihood is is that you know even even a few hours are going to be so excruciating and agonizing that you're going to die of it. Yeah. So just to reiterate, this is the most horrible of deaths

and it's the most humiliating of deaths. That's its significance in the Christian story. I think, you know, culturally, it's far more significant than the fact that Jesus rises, that his believers believe he rises from the dead, is the fact that he has first suffered this horrific death. And that's what Malcolm Hatt is unique at that point in the kind of the pantheon of Near Eastern Mediterranean gods.

I think not just then, I think now. I mean, I think it is absolutely exceptional and it explains so much that has made Christianity so culturally distinctive. Okay. Well, Tom, we'll take a break to allow the listeners to have a stiff drink which they'll probably need after all that because after all that um that gore and gruesomeness we're going to get stuck into the greatest story ever told um the crucifixion of jesus specifically and then what happened to the practice of crucifixion after that and of course arguably the most resonant symbol in all human history

the cross so we'll see you for all that after the break i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes Welcome back to The Rest Is History. In the run-up to Easter, we're talking about crucifixion, and we've talked about the practice of crucifixion and the emphasis on humiliation and the sheer horror of the experience of being crucified.

And Tom, I started this podcast with a count from the Gospel of, according to St Matthew, almost certainly according to biblical scholars, I think, not written by St Matthew, the crucifixion of Jesus. So there are a lot of elements that are in all four Gospels. It's an extraordinary thing that we have this event from the first century AD, a sort of fly-bitten part of the Roman Empire, four different sources.

And, of course, there are others. There are other kind of apocryphal gospels and stuff on there. So we have this. How true do you think these accounts are? Or can we not talk about that in any meaningful way, about the veracity or accuracy of these accounts of Jesus' crucifixion? Well, so there is a kind of... There is a movement in biblical criticism called mythicism which implies that the whole jesus never existed the whole thing is just a kind of riff on you know vegetation gods gods live die

come back to life all that kind of stuff jesus is osiris or whatever yes or adonis or that kind of thing i think that that is is mad i think that that is the kind of atheist equivalent of creationism. It's putting the cart of what you want to believe in front of the horse of the evidence. And the evidence, I think, for the fact that Jesus was crucified is pretty strong. And I will cite a scholar, Geza Vermes, who is generally quite skeptical about the Gospels as historical evidence. But he says that the death of Jesus of Nazareth on the cross is an established fact, arguably the only established fact about him. So that's the measure of how skeptical he is. And as he points out, it's attested in the four Gospels, very detailed accounts. It's attested

in the Acts of the Apostles. It's attested in the letters of Paul. It's attested outside the New Testament, almost certainly by Josephus, although we won't get into, we'll save that for the historical Jesus episode, whether Josephus does actually write about Jesus. I think he does, but it's a kind of complicated issue. Tacitus mentions it. It's alluded to in the Talmud. So I think it is is very very well attested and i think more importantly than that it's just not the kind of thing that anyone would have had any interest in making up because it's not recommendation for your god is it if you're

going to invent a god it's absolutely not uh and i think the evidence for the you know the so we've talked about the gospelsels, the four Gospels. But actually, the really key evidence, if you want to, if we're looking for, you know, what about the crucifixion narratives might be historical, is actually the earliest texts written by a Christian, which are the letters of Paul. Yeah. And when you read Paul's letters, what becomes immediately vivid is that for Paul, the fact that Jesus suffered death on a cross is an enormous embarrassment. And that the embarrassment for Paul is entirely the point that he's obviously kind of wrestled with with the strangeness of it and the weirdness of it. And in a sense, has kind of made it the basis for his entire explanation for who Jesus was and what happened. So I think that that is absolutely fun. You know, if you want biblical criticism, it's the same as with all history.

You look for the closest source. And in that sense, Paul's letters are are really really important because they're written within a what a couple of decades of the yes yes but also interestingly people you know people say well he doesn't really talk about the passion wouldn't he do you know wouldn't he talk about it well no because he's writing to people whom it's evident already know the story yeah so this is it it's clear that this is quite a, this is a story that people know about, that Christians know about.

And I suspect that non-Christians know about as well, because clearly there was considerable public interest in Jesus's fate. For someone who claims to be King of the Jews, to be crucified by the Romans outside Jerusalem, you know, in what's a very prominent place in Jewish life, for someone who claims to be king of the Jews to be crucified by the Romans outside Jerusalem, you know, in what's a very prominent place in Jewish life, it would have been noticed. It's not the kind of thing. So, and if you look at Paul's letters and you try and kind of extrapolate from that, what can we work out from Paul's letters about the passion? I think that you can see that he was crucified, that he was condemned by the Romans, that he had nails driven through his body, that he was buried.

And those, I think, kind of sustain the basic historicity of the gospel accounts. Now, the more I've looked at it, the more I've thought about it, the more I've reflected on it, the more I've come to think that in its essentials, the gospel accounts are accurate. And one of the ways to sift that is that you look at the narratives and if there are elements within it that seem to be the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. So in other words, to echo prophecies that have been made in what Christians call the Old Testament, Jews call the Tanakh, doesn't mean that they're necessarily wrong, because obviously you can cast things in biblical terms, absolutely historical things that have happened in biblical terms. It doesn't mean that they're ahistorical, but it perhaps means that they're less likely. So a kind of classic example of that is the account in the Gospels that at noon, the sky goes dark. That's first of all, meteorologically improbable.

Right. And secondly, it seems to echo a verse in the book of Amos. On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. And also, Tom, doesn't it seem like the kind of element that you put into, I don't want to sound like a kind of Hollywood filmmaker, but a sort of semi-apocalyptic moment, you make the sky go dark

because that's kind of what the audience expects and it's the kind of grand statement of divine significance. Yes, exactly, exactly. And that, of course, is the moment when friend of the show, John Wayne, as the Roman centurion in The Great Story Ever Told, the great story. Are. The great story. Are you going to treat us like truly this man was the son of God. And Cecil B. DeMille, the director, says to him, could you put in a bit more or John into your pronunciation of that?

And so he says, or truly this man was the son of God. Great story. Anyway. I didn't think we'd be getting John Wayne in this podcast, but it's always a pleasure. Always a pleasure. So on that basis, one way perhaps of sifting the stories is to look at stuff that doesn't have you know biblical foreshadowing uh of which i think that there are

certain obvious aspects so one we've already mentioned which is the the torture uh and the mockery before the crucifixion that absolutely seems to go with the grain of roman practice and it should be added that when I say that the Roman soldiers are doing it, these aren't actually probably Romans. They're probably not legionaries. They're probably recruited from Samaria, meaning that these soldiers are Samaritans. And people will know from the parable of the Good Samaritan, the whole point of that story is that Jews and Samaritans kind of hate each other. And so that's a kind of a shading to the story that often isn't drawn out. Tom, can I just interject before you get back into the list

of elements? For those people who don't know, what has Jesus been crucified for? Okay, so this is another thing that I think is probably true. So that, the titulus, and that has the thing that Jesus is the King of the jews written in three languages so hebrew and uh greek and latin um that seat again corresponds with what we know about roman crucifixion practice and the likelihood is that that is what why he was being crucified he's been crucified yes he's he the romans think that he's a royal pretender and that's exactly the kind of thing that romans crucify people for because he's a royal pretender. And that's exactly the kind of thing that Romans crucify people for. Because to be a royal pretender, of course, is to dispute the authority of Caesar. But then one other question on this, Tom, on the motive for the Romans crucifying him.

A lot of people who are familiar with the story will know that Pontius Pilate famously doesn't really want to do it. Washes his hands. And then washes his hands of it and says, hence the phrase, and says, OK, fine, you want him dead, get on with it. It's nothing to do with me. I mean, to then say, to have that attitude and then to prescribe the ultimate punishment, the most hideous form of suffering. There seems to be a slight disjuncture between those two things so Pontius Pilate doesn't really think Jesus is that bad a man but says okay submit him to the worst torture imaginable that's quite a big leap yeah and people

have said I think correctly that this is an attempt to spin it for a Roman audience oh right so in other words the gospels are being written to try and convert romans and if the romans are out and out baddies it won't work so pontius pilate has to be shown to be well yeah yeah because the gospels are probably being written in the wake of the the judean revolt the jewish revolt, maybe a bit before, a bit after, much debated, but around that time. And so Jews in rebellion against Caesar, it's not a good look. So this is something that has to be kind of spun quite carefully. Although having said that, the evidence of Pilate's term of office is that he does work hand in glove with the the authorities in jerusalem who would as

effectively other priests so that that idea of a kind of liaison between the priests and pilot is not impossible but the idea of pilot uh who seems to have been very robust in his approach to uh to rebels you know washing his hands and all that kind of stuff uh that that really does seem to be uh i think a kind of slight whitewashing um but again having so so other things i think that are likely to be true because it you know why wouldn't they be um simon of cyrene who you mentioned um helping jesus with the cross that seems to be true not least because in mark, he says that Simon of Cyrene's sons are well known to the Christian community. So he's unlikely to be saying that, you know, if the whole story is just completely made up. Right. So why would they get... Are we to believe that Simon of Cyrene is an adherent of Jesus?

That seems to be the implication. Right. that seems to be the implication right that seems to be the implication yeah and all the stuff with the robes the scarlet robe the crown of thorns all of that is is part of the humiliation process yeah so that seems entirely possible yeah the fact that he gets crucified at a place called golgotha which as i said you know it's the only reference to it that we have that seems a very specific kind of the execution ground outside the city. Yeah, the place of the skull, supposedly. Women at the feet of the cross, perhaps. I mean, again, it's the kind of detail that, you know, why would someone make it up? That would be plausibly a bit like the sort of getting the front seats

at a hanging at Tyburn or the trickateurs at the guillotine. Well, no, because they're not there to enjoy it. You know, this is Mary and Mary Magdalene and they're mourning it. But it's plausible, isn't it, that there must have been people there who were there to enjoy it? Absolutely. I mean, that's the whole point of it.

You would imagine that public executions drew crowds. Yes, absolutely. And that there would be real kind of, and not quite, groupies is not the right word, but there were real enthusiasts of public suffering. Crucifixion fans well and the gospel the gospel says much you know they they say that people stand there and and jeer and mock him and say well you know if you're the son of god come down from the cross yes that mockery is is a part of the narrative um i think the uh the story of joseph arimathea again you know where where does this

come from if not from... So he's the guy who takes him down. Yeah, so it's his tomb that Jesus' body is laid in. Yeah, and he's another adherent, presumably. Yes. The key aspect of this that does seem to be authentic is... And aside from the brute fact of the crucifixion, the fact that he was crucified on the order of the Romans, I think this is the third kind of key factor which massively influences the subsequent way that it's understood. He seems to have gone willingly to death. He does not fight against it. He seems to have surrendered to his fate in a way that impressed his followers

and demanded to be understood and explained. And it's that kind of passive acceptance, the fact that he goes to his death like a lamb going to the sacrifice, that again, massively, massively influences the subsequent evolution of Christian history and theology. Yeah, of course but you think that adds to the veracity because you think if you made up the story you'd have them fighting back or something i don't think it adds to the veracity but i think it's likely to be a true detail because every uh paul mentions it uh the gospels mention it it seems to have been fundamental to how christians understood jesus and his fate right

from the very beginning and then tom okay so i i mean i i completely um accept your argument that it really happened uh i don't know i'm not enormously well informed about this but um it seems implausible to me that you've got four different accounts that have completely invented i mean there's no there's actually no real example i can think of no um in in history from this period of sources being completely wildly advanced i mean i know we've had tolling snakes previously in the podcast but yeah that was one detail in an otherwise true story yeah and i think i think that um because this is in the bible and because for some people it's holy writ, infallible, and for other people it's evidence of kind of mumbo jumbo and superstition and therefore has to be disproved. These are passages that are far more contested than any other parallel pieces of writing from ancient history.

But essentially, there's no difference yeah as you as you as you know you can read you know you can read a passage that describes someone you know existed you know a god appearing to him you know we did the rubicon caesar standing on the banks of the rubicon we know that this is attested by people who saw it and yet you get in the accounts, you know, accounts of kind of mysterious figures playing the pipes and all that kind of stuff. So it's no different with this. The fact that there are supernatural elements within it doesn't discount the fact that other elements of the accounts maybe, you know, are likely to be true. Agreed. Because of course, if we were to cast out all sources with supernatural elements, there'd be nothing left from, you know, before the 17th century or something. Absolutely.

And also in the context of antiquity, to have sources that reference this event within 20 years of it happening, so Paul's letters, and detailed narrative accounts, so the Gospels, that's, let's say, 40 to 60 years after the events, you know, by the standards of ancient history,

these are really good. You know, we talked about this in the context of alexander the great or muhammad you know these if you cut you know i came to these i came to the the gospel accounts from studying the sources for the life of muhammad and i couldn't believe how close in time they were yeah so tom um let's let's just start to move we we've we don't want to exhaust our listeners' patience completely. So let's move through the subsequent history. At what point would you say does the act of crucifixion become indelibly associated with Jesus? So in other words, in AD 100, when people think about crucifixion in the Roman world, they probably don't think of Jesus.

No, no. So at what point does that change? Well, so even in the second century, Christian apologists are saying, you know, yeah, this is really embarrassing. They find it awkward. And I think it's very telling that although Christians do write about it, they don't seem to have illustrated it. And the people who do illustrate it are either mocking them. So there's a famous piece of graffiti from Rome, which it shows a donkey, a man with a donkey's head being crucified. And the wording is Alex Aminos worships his God, which is obviously a kind of a mockery of Christians.

And magicians start to use it in their spells. They start to illustrate crosses, trying to invoke the christian god um by the fourth century of course the cross absolutely comes to be associated with the figure of jesus not least because god appears constantine because it appears to constant yeah yeah so is that the point at which the cross stopped so with constantine and then i suppose i don't know theodosius the great or something is that the point at which the cross becomes because it starts to connote something very different doesn't it it must there's a point at which the cross becomes a symbol of power and a symbol of the state rather than a symbol of being a loser it's always been a symbol of power and of the state that's what it is for

the romans oh yeah good point the the yeah the the paradox of the cross is that it effectively completely reverses that narrative because it's saying you know jesus has triumphed over those who've killed him the slave has triumphed over the master the torture person has triumphed over the torturers that's the kind of paradox of it and although you're right that of course when you know with this sign conquer that's what constantine sees in his dream and the cross becomes an emblem of power for for the roman empire emperor the fact that it was an emblem of torture that's not something that they can get rid of and they still you know they're still struggling with it right the way through into the fifth century so uh in the

british museum there's an ivory that shows jesus on the cross and this is the first time that the crucifixion has been portrayed by a christian artist so far as we know wow amazing um and jesus on that cross is shown basically you know he might like a kind of competitor from Love Island. He's buff and honed. Well, essentially, he's an athlete who has won. He's won, you know, in the Olympics. That's what he is. And his face is absolutely serene.

And that's the tradition that then passes into Byzantine art and orthodoxy. The idea that Christ on the cross is serene in victory. He's a victor. But in the West, that tradition becomes different. And by the turn of the millennium, you're starting to get sculptures of Jesus being shown dead on the cross. And then over the course of the Middle Ages, increasingly, he's shown as suffering the degree of torture and agony that he would have done. And that becomes fundamental to the way that Latin Christians understand Jesus and his suffering and the passion. So his suffering becomes kind of fundamental to medieval Christian religious practice.

But in the East, it's the image of Christ triumphant, isn't it? Christ, the sort of image, they don't seem to revel in the idea of Christ, the underdog, to the same degree. I suppose partly, is that not because Christ and Christianity is so closely identified with the autocracy in, let's say, Constantinople and then, I suppose, in Moscow? You know, the idea of there's say constantinople and then i suppose in moscow you know the the idea of there's no separation of church and state so to just you wouldn't show the emperor a suffering i i yes perhaps but i think i think it's more

theological it's more the the weight that you put on christ's human suffering which in the in latin christendom becomes fundamental to religious practice and to theology so uh saint anselm who becomes archbishop of canterbury um under william the conqueror he he writes about um seeing christ on the cross and feeling this incredible agony and asking, you know, why was I not there? Why did I not feel a sword stabbed through my heart as Christ's side was pierced by the spear? Why did I not feel the nails driven through my hands and feet and this becomes something that expresses itself through artwork through theology through meditation and that you know that that becomes kind of very very important to the specifically Latin and then Western practice of Christianity but I think ironically one of the long-term consequences of that is that ultimately people in the west become

desensitized to the horror of it because in a sense the cross is so key to christian practice that people start just to see it as a symbol without reflecting on the full horror of what it represents i think that's absolutely true. The cross is ubiquitous. Because it's ubiquitous, we don't see it as an instrument. We don't see it as a kind of form, like a much worse rack or something. Yeah, I mean, it's horrible. It's a torture instrument, but we don't see it as that anymore.

It's a horrible, horrible thing. And this episode, I mean, it's the subject is a fairly revolting and upsetting one and i think properly to properly understand the impact that um the idea of a crucified savior had in the early centuries of christianity you have to you have to grasp that you have to get that you have to feel it. And ironically, of all the people who've written about Christianity and the figure of Christ over, say, the past 200 years, I think the thinker who most profoundly understood how kind of wrenching and weird the centrality of the cross is to Christianity, was probably the West's most notorious atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche, who saw in the valorization of the victim on the cross, something that he came to see as revolting,

because it served to kind of sap as he saw it and destroy the strength and power that he identified classical civilization as embodying. Yeah, he saw the cross as a symbol of civility and suffering and kind of wallowing in, I mean, what would he say now if he had had his own I can imagine Nietzsche as this sort of incredibly intemperate permanently cancelled podcaster talking about wallowing in victimhood but then that's what the cross does absolutely so it's a slave morality he famously says yeah you know that this the valorization of slaves and victims are you know and he would absolutely you know he would look at 21st the western world in 2022 and absolutely identify it as being completely Christian in its concern.

He would make Jordan Peterson look like the most wishy-washy. slaves and see that as a public good that that is to recognize that saying you know assuming that the execution of slaves is somehow inherently fundamentally totally wrong is culturally literate historically literate it hasn't been seen as that for for across vast swathes of the world vast periods of time and that is what Nietzsche kind of focuses on so he he and it's specifically this idea the paradox he calls it the formula god on the cross that hitherto he writes there had never and nowhere been such boldness in inversion nor anything at once so dreadful questioning and questionable as this formula. It promised a transvaluation of all ancient values. And he sees it as ushering in a sick, victim-obsessed world that he was revolted by. But I think that it's precisely the scale of

Nietzsche's contempt for Christianity that draws attention to how Christian we in the West remain to this day. And we remain, you know, the cross is fundamental to that, the idea of the crucifixion. For people who find that argument interesting and have not maybe heard it before, presumably have never listened to one of our podcasts before, Tom, is there any reading material you can recommend that they might enjoy on this subject?

There is, there is. It is my own recently published book, Dominion, which is on this very subject. It was mean of me to get you to do that. I should have done it myself. Tom's book, Dominion, is all about Christianity's impact on human history. So it's not a Christian book as in Tom is a Christian

who's trying to convert you. It's explaining how Christianity has seeped into all kinds of things without us even noticing it and what a revolution that was. So one last point, Tom. I mean, this is absolutely a fascinating subject. When and why did crucifixion die out? Was it sort of, once the Roman Empire became Christian, was it impossible to keep crucifying people because it was obviously reminiscent of Jesus's fate yeah so it gets banned by Constantine who's converted to Christianity you know he says yeah we're not going we're not going to have that um but it it never it never fades completely from

the Near East so the Persian emperors continue to do it um and it is mandated in the quran as a punishment for uh those who who are rebels against god and his prophet um and so with the uh the the establishment of the caliphate crucifixion returns as a punishment to um to the lands of the caliphate and that's why the islamic state for instance you know uh the past decade with when they established their inverted commas caliphate um they reintroduced crucifixion as a man as a quranically mandated punishment so it's uh it's not completely gone that's terrifying isn't it um when you think that it's a it's a punishment deliberately designed to cause as much suffering as possible and to humiliate and so on. We have maybe traveled less far than we thought. I know I've talked about this and it makes me out to be incredibly brave. The great thing is it shows you not just,

as I said to you when you threatened before the podcast that you would bring this up, I said it's brilliant because it doesn't just make you look very brave. It makes you look very kind and compassionate. It does, Dominic. Yes, it does. I win every way. In stark contrast to the cynicism and callousness in Chipping Norton. I know Nietzsche would spin in his grave this.

I mention it simply because this was a documentary I made about what Islamic State did to Christians and to Yazidis, who are a religious minority in northern Iraq. And I went out there assuming that I wasn't going to have to go anywhere near the Islamic State. And due to a complicated concurrence of factors, I ended up in a taxi going to the front with the Islamic State to a town called Sinjar where the Yazidis had, that had just been taken back by the Kurds. And because I was out there making this documentary, I had no choice but to go. So it wasn't my courage that took me there. In fact, the brave thing would have been to say, I'm too scared, I'm not going.

I just kind of got swept along. It was your cowardice in the face of the production coordinator. Yes, we've all been there so we so so we ended up in this town where it you know there are stories that yazidi men were crucified there and we were a mile or so away from the islamic state the people who'd done this and i felt this kind of existential terror because suddenly i was within kind of mortar range of people for whom the cross did not serve as a symbol of what it served for me of the triumph of the weak over the strong but of the opposite of the right of the strong to torture to death the weak and it took me back to a roman world it took me back to a Roman world. It took me back to a world in which Roman imperial authorities kind of exercise that sense of authority and power. And so I was writing Dominion at the time when I did made that film. I came back and I rewrote the opening to focus on the crucifixion and what crucifixion had meant to the Romans and the revolution in understanding that the history of Christianity embodies because I you know to reiterate I do think it is profoundly profoundly influential

on the whole course of western civilization and how we are influenced by it to this day brilliant all right thank you Tom you've persuaded me and I imagine you're persuaded I'm glad you weren't crucified. Thanks. That's the sweetest thing you've ever said. Yeah, otherwise I'd be doing this podcast with, who knows? Who knows? Who knows? Yeah, write in.

No, that was absolutely fascinating. And I think we never do dwell on the horrible suffering that the crucifixion involved. And next year we can do the same with Easter eggs. The other horror of Easter. So on that bombshell, thank you very much for listening. I hope you get the Easter Bunny brings you all you desire. And we will see you after Easter with some more historical delights. Goodbye.

Happy Easter. Goodbye. Happy Easter. Goodbye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde.

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