New book Crucifixion’s a Doddle by Julian Doyle, uses
ancient texts, religious artworks and the Bible itself to refute some of the
most common-held beliefs about the death of Jesus.
Doyle's research questions the popular image of the
immense wooden cross when there were so few trees in Judea. He points out that
the Romans executed criminals by impaling them, while Jewish law preferred
stoning them. And why were there no images of the cross for almost four
centuries after Jesus' death?
After the attempt to crucify the Monty Python team for
their film Life of Brian it became clear to Doyle, the film’s editor, that
something was seriously wrong with everything we think we know and he began to
investigate.
The image of Jesus on the cross has
been invented by commissioned artists.
After realising something was wrong I checked back to
see the earliest images of Jesus being crucified but there are none. Okay, we
have seen millions of such paintings but there are none for hundreds of years
after his death. It is not until the fourth century that scenes of the
Crucifixion of Jesus began to appear. And this is the first one.
Yes, this is it, the very first image of the
Crucifixion of Christ, which appears on a small panel on a wooden side-door of
the Church of Santa Sabina in Rome, which was consecrated in AD 440, almost
exactly 400 years after the event.
In this first attempt the crucified figures do not
appear to be attached to crosses, although there are nails in the hands. But no
church before this date even had a crucifixion image. So around AD 430 the
image we know was invented. Invented because not only is there no image of
Jesus on the cross but there is no image of anyone on a cross.
You cannot carry the size of tree
Jesus is shown crucified on.
You can see we made small crosses for the actors to
carry as only an Olympic athlete could carry the trees usually depicted. But
the actors still struggled with these.
The Post is set in the ground as a
permanent fixture.
See in the picture the executioner is up a ladder,
which is leaning on the cross. The cross has to be set deep in the ground to
stay up. What happens to the cross after Jesus is taken down? Is it
thrown away so the next victim can use his own cross? Or dug up and taken back
for the next victim to carry back up? No: as in the picture, it is a permanent.
The primary purpose of crucifixion is
not to kill a criminal.
See in the picture where the executioner is removing
nails from a previous victim to make the cross available for the next. When I
asked Terry Gilliam why he did something so subversive, he just said it was
probably his morbid senses. But clearly it was also just so logical.
Why does this totally undermine the story in the
Bible? Because, surely the purpose of Crucifixion is to put the body on show,
as a deterrent, as long as possible. Upright like a banner, struggling with
pain, degraded and dehumanized, till it rotted.
Now just consider Joseph of Arimathea’s visit to
Pilate when he is told he can retrieve the body as long as he is already dead.
Are they joking? They make a cross for a man, he
carries it to Golgotha, they nail him up, and after a few hours he drops dead
and Pilate says: "Okay, you can take him down now."
What an absurd amount of effort and time, not to
mention a ridiculous use of a valuable tree, to kill a man.
Jesus could not have died in just 4
hours.
In the film, Eric Idle’s statement as Mr. Cheeky, the
guy crucified next to Brian is revealing. Eric is suggesting that death does
not come that quickly? In the Bible Jesus is raised on the cross at either 9 or
12 o’clock and is dead by 3pm.
ERIC: "Not so bad once you’re up. You being
rescued then?"
BRIAN: "It’s a bit late for that now, isn’t
it?"
ERIC: "Oh, no. We’ve got a couple of days up
here. Plenty of time. Lots of people get rescued. Yeah. My brother usually
rescues me, if he can keep off the tail for more than twenty minutes. Randy
little bugger. Up and down like the Assyrian Empire."
Every Easter in the Philippines, they perform a
Passion play culminating with the actual nailing up of at least three penitents
on to crosses. Ruben Enage, age fifty-three, has been crucified twenty-seven
times. He began his yearly rite after surviving a fall from a three-story
building. The wounds can take two weeks to heal.
So the likelihood of someone dying in such a short
period of time seems impossible. To cover this criticism one Gospel, John,
tries to suggest Jesus was speared in the side to prove he was dead. Problem is
it says: ‘and immediately blood and water came out.’
Which means the heart is pumping so he is evidently
not dead.
Crucifixion was not the method of
capital punishment used by the Romans.
Look at this from the Jewish historian Josephus,
writing at the time: "Varus sent his army into the country, to seek out
the authors of the revolt; he punished those that were most guilty: the number
who were crucified on this account were two thousand."
How can these numbers possibly be? Where are all these
trees coming from, not to mention the tons of nails (6,000)? The answer
strangely is just a matter of translation. The word we always translate as
crucifix, stauros does not actually mean crucifix at all.
Here is the full dictionary definition: "The word
stauros comes from the Ancient Greek histemi: ‘straighten up’, the same root
from which come the German Stern, or the English ‘stand’. In classical Greek,
until the early 4th century BC, stauros meant an upright stake, pole, or which
might be used in impaling. In the literature of that time it never means two
pieces of timber placed across one another at any angle, but always one piece
alone."
So there is no reason to believe Jesus was on a cross
at all, nor that the 2000 in the revolt were. In fact, it would almost be
impossible. They were tied or nailed to a stake or even impaled, a la Vlad the
Impaler, and it would all be translated by us centuries later as ‘Crucifixion’.
Jesus was not crucified.
The most subversive scene in Life of Brian is the
first one we actually shot, which in context totally undermines the Bible
story.
HIGH PRIEST JOHN: You have been found guilty by the
elders of uttering the name of our Lord and so as a blasphemer you are to be
stoned to death.
MATTHIAS: Look, I’d had a lovely supper and all I said
to my wife was, ‘That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah’.
HIGH PRIEST JOHN: Blasphemy! He’s said it again.
The scene is based on Jewish Law as expressed in the
Bible: "Then the Lord spoke to Moses, “The one who blasphemes the name of
the Lord shall be taken outside the camp, and let all who heard him lay their
hands on his head; then let all the congregation stone him." (Leviticus
24:14)
To help you understand the significance let me quote
you another event in the Bible.
Acts of the Apostles has this story:
"Stephen, was performing great wonders and signs... The elders
dragged him away and brought him before the Council." When Stephen makes a
long speech: "They cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears and
rushed at him. When they had driven him out of the city, they began stoning
him." (Acts 7)
Now look at Jesus' trial before the same Sanhedrin:
"Jesus said, “You shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of
Power.” Tearing his clothes, the high priest said, “What further witnesses do
we need? You have heard the blasphemy?” And they all condemned him to be
deserving of death." (Mark 14:61)
Jesus' crime is also clearly blasphemy, so why do the
Sanhedrin take Jesus to Pilate? Blasphemy has nothing to do with the Romans.
The crime is punishable, as shown in Life of Brian by stoning, which is clearly
decided by the Jews themselves. Crucifixion/staking is the Roman punishment for
rebellion.
And let me quote from Jewish law about stoning:
"If a man guilty of a capital offence is put to death and his body hung on
a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him
that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse"’
(Deuteronomy 21:22)
So after stoning the body is hung on a tree and then
taken down and buried before
sunset.
Pilate could not have crucified
Jesus because the Roman governor left Judea years before Jesus' death.
Jesus’ two year mission begins after the death of John
the Baptist. But look how Josephus describes John’s life and death. Firstly he
describes the death of King Philip in AD 34. Then he tells us that to marry
Philip’s wife, Herod divorced his first wife, who was the daughter of King
Aretas of Petra.
But King Aretas’ daughter went home crying to her
father, who raised an army and attacked Israel. Herod sent his army into battle
but they were completely wiped out.
‘Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of
Herod's army came from God as a just punishment of what Herod had done against
John, who was called the Baptist. For Herod had killed this good man…’(Joseph
‘Antiq’)
If John had been killed eight years before the
destruction of Herod’s army, surely nobody would link the two events? The
destruction of the army in AD 36 must have been no more than six months to a
year after the Baptist’s death, for them to be linked, which places his death
in AD 35. If Jesus’ two year mission began then he would still be alive in AD
38. Pilate left Judea in AD 36.
Gol Goatha is not ‘the place of the
skull’ as translated in all the Gospels.
The Aramaic name Gol Goatha, means ‘mount of
execution’, The 'place of the skull’ is Gulgalta. Why insist on a
mistranslation? The site is probably Goatha mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah
(31:39) where he describes it towards the east, outside the city wall.
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is claimed by
Constantine’s mother to be on the crucifixion site, but this is clearly a
mistake and the mistranslation is to conceal this.
Where did the trees come from in the
first place?
While making the film, we imported trees because they
are scarce in Tunisia, as they are in Jerusalem. And look what the Bible says
when King Solomon wrote to King Hiram:
"I intend to build a temple for the Name of the
Lord. So give orders that cedars of Lebanon be cut for me and I will pay you
for your men whatever wages you set. You know that we have no one so skilled in
felling timber as the Sidonians." (1 Kings 5–6)
Solomon obviously doesn’t trust Israeli
carpenters.
Hiram sent word back:
“My men will haul cedar and juniper logs down from
Lebanon to the Mediterranean, and float them as rafts..., and Solomon gave
Hiram twenty thousand cors of wheat, and twenty thousand baths of pressed olive
oil. Solomon continued to do this for Hiram year after year.’ (1 Kings
5).
Trees are, clearly, a scarce and valuable commodity,
so why use them just to kill criminals?
