Day 28
John 19: 28-30
28After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), "I thirst." 29A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. 30When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, "It is finished," and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Crucifixion (John 19: 28-30)
Crucifixion was the most terrible form of execution. It was originally devised by the Persians. They may have developed it because they regarded the earth as sacred and wanted to avoid defiling the ground with the body of a criminal. It was taken over by the Carthaginians of North Africa and finally commandeered by the Romans. The Romans used it only in the provinces and then largely for slaves; it was never used on mainland Italy and it was unthinkable that a Roman would ever be crucified.
After the victim had been flogged, which was done as much to weaken as to punish, he would carry the horizontal bar of the cross (patibulum) to the place of execution. The vertical beam of the gibbet would normally have been fixed in the ground already. The prisoner would then be made to lie on the ground so that his hands could be tied or nailed to the patibulum. This cross-bar was then hoisted on to the vertical beam and the victim's feet tied or nailed to the beam. Sometimes there was a 'seat' (seducula) which helped support the victim's body, but this actually increased the agony for the sufferer rather than easing it. A lot of our mental images of crucifixion have come down to us from great art, where, to balance the picture, the artist has often painted a tall cross. But wood was a costly commodity and the victims were rarely high in air. Providing their feet were off the ground the execution was effective and equally horrific.
Think: Is the death penalty ever appropriate? If so how
