E CRUCIFIXION

A.D. 30[26]

FREDERIC WILLIAM FARRAR

The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ took place on Friday of the
Passover week of the Jews, in the year A.D. 30. This day is known
and now generally observed by Christians as Good Friday.
Crucifixion, as a means of inflicting death in the most cruel,
lingering, and shameful way, was used by many nations of antiquity.
The Jews never executed their criminals in this way, but the Greeks
and Romans made the cross the instrument of death to malefactors.
The cross was in the shape either of the letter T or the letter X,
or was in the form familiar in such paintings of the Crucifixion as
the well-known representation of Rubens. It was the usual custom to
compel the criminal to carry his own cross to the place of
execution. The cross was then set up and the criminal was usually
tied to it by the hands and feet and left to perish of hunger and
thirst. Sometimes he was given a narcotic drink to stupefy him. In
the case of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ the victim was fastened
to the cross by nails driven through his hands and feet.

As Dr. Judson Titsworth has plainly pointed out, the men who were
crucified with Jesus Christ were not thieves, but robbers (this is
the term also used below by Farrar), or perhaps Jewish patriots, to
the Romans political rebels and outlaws. They would then be classed
with Jesus under the accusation that they were not loyal to the
sovereignty of the Roman Emperor. During the procuratorship of
Pontius Pilate there was a widely prevailing spirit of sedition and
revolt among the Jews, and many rebels were sentenced to
crucifixion. Such a rebel was the robber Barabbas, whom Pilate
wished to substitute for Jesus as the victim of popular fury. The
"robber" episode of the Crucifixion is treated by Farrar with a
picturesque effect which heightens the vivid coloring in his
account of the supreme event that marks "the central point of the
world's history."

Utterly brutal and revolting as was the punishment of crucifixion, which
has now for fifteen hundred years been abolished by the common pity and
abhorrence of mankind, there was one custom in Judea, and one
occasionally practised by the Romans, which reveal some touch of
passing humanity. The latter consisted in giving to the sufferer a blow
under the arm