Not even fair man! I don't think he really did anything to warrant that type of punishment. His friends couldn't even recognize him after the fact...I mean if it really happened. It just seems totally unfair. What were they thinking? Geesh!
Move to Ameristan then! They don't believe it happened. In Neal Stephenson's recent book Fall, there is a part of America called Ameristan where infidels are still crucified for things like wearing cotton/polyester blends or being gay. They still rely on the reality based parts of the country for things like antibiotics and surgery, but maintain that they are the real US; they claim that the rest of the country has abandoned the Second Amendment so they're not really part of the US any more. They stockpile guns and ammunition and build burning crosses. (Crosses, that they insist, are NOT like the KKK.) In this excerpt, a bunch of recent college graduates comes across a massive steel cross that the Leviticans will soon light on fire. They ask a priest of this new Christianity what's going on. (Edited to reduce length) =============== “Now, let me take the bull by the horns as far as the KKK Libel." Ted had returned from inspecting the lambs. "Obviously you are not a white person, at least not one hundred percent, and I don't know about him." He cast a glance over at Julian, who was down on one knee feeding a handful of grass through the chicken wire to a lamb. Julian was part Chinese. "There's been all kinds of confusion about us Leviticans. Some kind of imagined link to the Ku Klux Klan." "Maybe it's because of the burning crosses," Phil suggested, deadpan, gazing across a few yards of gravel to the massive concrete foundation from which the cross's steel verticals erupted. "Supposedly the KKK burned crosses," Ted said with a roll of the eyes. “There's no 'supposedly' about it," Anne-Solenne started in. "What are you even—that's like saying supposedly Muhammad Ali was a boxer. Supposedly Ford makes cars. It's—" But Sophia silenced her with a hand on the arm. There was no point. "If that is even true, it has no connection to our burning crosses, which have a completely different significance. So-called Christianity, as it existed up until recently, is based on a big lie - the most successful conspiracy of all time. And it was all summed up in the symbolism of the cross. Every cross you see on a mainstream church, or worn as jewelry, or on a rosary or what have you, is another repetition of that lie." "And what is that lie exactly?" Phil asked. "That Jesus was crucified. That the Son of God, the most powerful incarnate being in the history of the universe, allowed Himself to be scourged and humiliated and taken out in the most disgraceful way you can imagine." "Taken out' means 'murdered'?" Anne-Solenne asked. It was a rhetorical question that Ted answered with the tiniest hint of a nod. "The church that was built on the lie of the Crucifixion had two basic tenets. One was the lovey-dovey Jesus who went around being nice to people—basically, just the kind of behavior you would expect from the kind of beta who would allow himself to be spat on, to be nailed to a piece of wood. The second was this notion that the Old Testament no longer counted for anything, that the laws laid down in Leviticus were part of an old covenant that could simply be ignored after, and because, he was nailed up on that cross. We have exposed all that as garbage. Nonsense. A conspiracy by the elites to keep people meek and passive. The only crosses you'll see in our church are on fire, and the symbolism of that has nothing to do with the KKK. It means we reject the false church that was built upon the myth of the Crucifixion." "So, to be clear, all Christianity for the last two thousand years—Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, evangelical—is just flat-out wrong," Phil said. "That is correct. That's the first thing the church did, was enshrine all those gospels. Telling the story they wanted to tell. About the meek liberal Jesus who gave food away to poor people and healed the sick and so on." "And was crucified and ... resurrected?" Anne-Solenne asked. "They needed some way to explain the fact that He was still alive, so they invented all that resurrection stuff." "So where'd Jesus go after that? What did He do?" "Fought the Romans. Went back and forth between this world and heaven. He has the power to do that." "Where is He now?" "We don't know! Maybe here. He has been in eclipse for two thousand years. The conspiracy of the church was powerful. They staged a fake Reformation to get people to believe that reform was possible. All a show. Orchestrated from the Vatican." "So, Martin Luther was running a false-flag operation for the Pope," Phil said. "In that case—" But he broke off as he felt Sophia stepping on his toe, under the table. He looked down at her. Having caught his eye, she panned her gaze across the entire scene, asking him to take it all in. Reminding him that this wasn't Princeton. This was Ameristan. Facebooked to the molecular level. =======================
Ameristan ... Things I never knew. Interesting way of looking at it. In all honesty, It couldn't have been just. The crucifixion I mean, unless it alludes to a caution for the rest of us, who unlike Jesus, who was said to be innocent by Pontius Pilate, are guilty of many things. Apparently wrath is nothing new to "God". Noah and family are prime example. The only ones declared worthy of longevity at the time. Crazy stuff for sure ... So, I gather the Leviticans are benevolent and against penal systems there in Ameristan?
Because one thing the ancient world was known for was fairness in its treatment of individuals preaching dissent from authority...
The Roman Empire - the outskirts of which Jesus would have grown up in. Have you not read the story of Jesus? You should.
The torture was foreordained, as far as the literary "reality" of the canon goes. Just as Judas was predestined to betray Christ, the floggers and mockers had no choice about their roles (or were divinely selected in advance because such deeds were amenable to their nature). Although much of it was standard procedure prior to a crucifixion, the "King of the Jews" arguably received some special, auxiliary torment in the narrative. Alexander Metherell (supposed expert): "As the flogging continued, the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh. [...] The back would be so shredded that part of the spine was sometimes exposed by the deep, deep cuts. The whipping would have gone all the way from the shoulders down to the back, the buttocks, and the back of the legs. It was just terrible. ... We know that many people would die from this kind of beating even before they could be crucified." _
The Roman empire was known for fairness in ancient times? I was under the impression they were known for the typical of that age ... Eye for eye tooth for tooth. Am I wrong? It seems to me fairness is better suited in understanding and learning discipline by it. We've come a long way since that age as a people.
That type of treatment was common place if I'm not mistaken. That was the preferred method of punishment. Correct?
Supposedly the process prior to routine crucifixion. The non-Biblical sources for it may actually be scarce. The history and pathology of crucifixion (F P Retief, L Cilliers) http://www.samj.org.za/index.php/samj/article/view/2462/1710 Preliminary procedures. In Roman law a person condemned to death (including crucifixion) had to be scourged beforehand, with the exception of women, Roman senators or soldiers (but not in cases of desertion). Scourging was a particularly brutal procedure, performed with wooden staves or a short whip (flagellum, flagrum) with several leather thongs into which small balls or sharp sheep bone fragments were tied. The person was stripped naked, tied to an upright post and then flogged across the back, buttocks and legs by one or two soldiers (lictores). Primrose suggests scourging was applied to the front of the body as well. that scourging was applied to the front of the body as well. In Roman law there was no limit to the extent of flogging, but in Jewish law it was limited to 40 blows. The extent of the scourging therefore depended largely on the inclination of the lictores, was intended to weaken the victim significantly, and invariably resulted in deep wounding, severe pain and bleeding. Frequently the victim fainted during the procedure and sudden death was not uncommon. The victim was then usually taunted, then forced to carry the patibulum tied across his shoulders to the place of execution. In addition to scourging the condemned could also be maimed, e.g. by exision of the tongue or other bodily parts or blinding of the eyes. Josephus reports a particularly cruel procedure used by Antiochus IV whereby the victim’s strangled child was hung around his neck. A set of Roman guards commanded by a centurion accompanied the condemned to the place of execution and stayed on duty until the victim had died. A herald walked ahead with the titulus, and on the way bystanders derided and taunted the condemned. The Josephus account, however, refers to punishments dispensed during/after an invasion of Palestine, that occured long before the crucifixion of JC. Jospehus obviously wasn't a witness, but merely relating an historical narrative passed down. (Josephus) Antiquities 12 - Chapter 5: "But the best men, and those of the noblest souls, did not regard him, but did pay a greater respect to the customs of their country than concern as to the punishment which he threatened to the disobedient; on which account they every day underwent great miseries and bitter torments; for they were whipped with rods, and their bodies were torn to pieces, and were crucified, while they were still alive, and breathed."_
Then they were apparently counted among the dead, placed in catacombs, and left in those "graves". Jesus came out of his and apparently some guy named Lazarus. Both were counted among the dead, Let the dead bury the dead comment Jesus made may allude to this concept. The extent of that comment uncertain by me, but it's safe to suggest both Lazarus and Jesus were counted among the dead and both came out from their graves. Seems worse to be buried alive unable to escape the slow process of dying without hope. Crucifixion was an extremely harsh punishment.
