The Crucifixion of Jesus: What Happened (9 of 12)

The Gospels describe the execution itself in remarkably few words.

Crucified. That is often the whole of it. No dwelling on the mechanics, which every reader in the first century already knew and did not need explained.

What Was Roman Crucifixion?

A public method of execution designed for maximum deterrence and maximum humiliation.

It was reserved largely for slaves, rebels, and non-citizens. Roman citizens were not normally crucified, which is why Paul’s tradition has a sword and Peter’s has a cross.

The condemned carried the crossbeam to the site, usually along a public road outside the city walls where traffic passed. Death came slowly, over hours or days, and the mechanism combined blood loss, exhaustion, and progressive difficulty breathing.

Cicero called it the most cruel and disgusting penalty and said the very word should be far from the thoughts of Roman citizens. That is the context in which the earliest Christians began using a cross as their symbol.

Where Was Golgotha?

Outside the city wall, at a place called the skull.

All four Gospels name it, giving both the Aramaic and its meaning. Whether the name came from the shape of the outcrop or from its use as an execution site is not stated.

Outside the wall is the detail with theological weight. Heb 13:12 picks it up: Jesus suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood, drawing on the sin offering burned outside the camp.

Who Was Crucified With Jesus?

Two criminals, one on each side, and Luke records what passed between them.

Matthew and Mark say both initially insulted him. Luke 23:39-43 then gives the exchange in which one changes: he rebukes the other, admits they are getting what their deeds deserve, says this man has done nothing wrong, and asks to be remembered when Jesus comes into his kingdom.

The answer is the last promise Jesus makes before dying: today you will be with me in paradise.

A condemned criminal, hours from death, with nothing to offer and no time to do anything. It is the clearest statement in the Gospels about what the terms actually are.

What Did Jesus Say From the Cross?

Seven sayings, gathered from all four Gospels, no one of which has all of them.

Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. Today you will be with me in paradise. Woman, here is your son, and to the disciple, here is your mother. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me. I thirst. It is finished. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

The cry of dereliction is a quotation of Ps 22:1, and that psalm goes on to describe pierced hands and feet, mockery, and divided clothing before turning to vindication. Quoting a first line in that culture invoked the whole psalm.

The word rendered it is finished is a single Greek word, tetelestai, used commercially for a debt paid in full.

The mockery has a shape worth noticing too. If he really is God’s son, they say, let him come down. Wright’s answer is that Matthew expects the reader to have the argument the other way round. It is because he is God’s son that he stays on it.

What Was the Darkness and the Torn Veil?

Two signs the Gospels report at the death, and both carry prophetic weight.

Darkness over the land from about noon until three. The Gospels do not explain it. Amos 8:9 speaks of the sun going down at noon and the earth darkening in broad daylight on the day of the Lord.

Then the curtain of the temple torn in two from top to bottom. That curtain separated the most holy place, which one man entered once a year with blood.

The direction of the tear is the detail Matthew and Mark both preserve. From top to bottom. Not opened from the human side.

Wright reads the whole cluster of signs as one statement. The end of Jesus is the end of the world in miniature, and specifically the end of the temple in miniature. Judgment has been hanging over that building for several chapters in Matthew, the priests have just finished rejecting him at the foot of the cross, and now their power base is symbolically destroyed. He also notes the immediate consequence Matthew draws: the nations will no longer come to the hill in the city. They will come to a hill outside the walls where the king of the Jews was executed.

Did Jesus Actually Die?

Yes, and the Gospels include the details that establish it.

John 19:31-34 records that the soldiers broke the legs of the two criminals to hasten death, and when they came to Jesus they found him already dead and did not break his legs. Instead a soldier pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water came out.

Soldiers conducting executions were professionally competent at determining death, and the penalty for allowing a condemned man to escape was severe.

The centurion’s line at the end is doing structural work in Matthew. He is not the first Gentile in that Gospel to see what the insiders miss. The magi came from the east, a centurion’s faith was praised above anything in Israel, and a Canaanite woman out-argued him. The last of them stands at the foot of the cross and says this really was God’s son.

Mark adds that Pilate was surprised at how quickly he had died and summoned the centurion to confirm it before releasing the body.

The unbroken legs pick up the Passover lamb regulation about breaking no bones, which is why John flags it.

Who Buried Jesus?

Two members of the council that had condemned him.

Joseph of Arimathea, described as a rich man, a member of the council, and a disciple who had kept it quiet, went to Pilate and asked for the body. Asking for the body of an executed insurrectionist was not a low-risk request.

Nicodemus came with him, bringing a large quantity of myrrh and aloes. This is the same man who came to Jesus at night in John 3. His last appearance is in daylight, carrying burial spices in public.

They wrapped the body in linen with the spices and placed it in a new tomb cut in rock, in a garden near the site, and rolled a stone across the entrance. The women who had followed from Galilee saw where it was laid.

Why Does the Burial Matter?

Because it is the detail that makes the following claim checkable.

The burial is named, located, and witnessed. A named council member with a known tomb, in a known garden, with specific women recorded as having watched.

Matt 27:62-66 adds the guard and the sealed stone, requested by the chief priests because they recalled the prediction about three days.

Whatever one concludes about what happened next, the Gospels have gone out of their way to establish a fixed, identifiable, publicly known location. That is not the behaviour of writers hoping the question will not be asked.

Part of a series following the Life of Jesus timeline.

Footnotes2

1. Quoting the opening line of a psalm functioned as a reference to the whole in that culture, which changes how the cry of dereliction reads. Psalm 22 begins in abandonment and ends with the declaration that the Lord has not despised the suffering of the afflicted and that future generations will be told of his righteousness.
2. That two members of the condemning council performed the burial is the sort of detail an invented account would avoid. It complicates the picture of a unified opposition and it hands the most important logistical fact of the narrative to people on the other side.

Sources

The biblical texts cited: Matt 27:32-66, Mark 15:21-47, Luke 23:26-56, John 19:16-42, Ps 22, Amos 8:9, and Heb 13:12.

Cicero, Against Verres. The Roman assessment of crucifixion as a penalty, cited as context for what the symbol meant to a first-century audience.

N. T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part Two: Chapters 16-28 (SPCK, 2002). Supports the reading of the torn curtain and the accompanying signs as the end of the temple in miniature, the inversion of the mockery about coming down from the cross, and the pattern of Gentile recognition running from the magi to the centurion. Supplied in full.

Where the sourcing stops: the passion is dated to Nisan of either AD 30 or AD 33 and both are held by serious scholarship. The cause of the darkness is not explained in the text and proposed natural explanations are not adopted here.