This was no ordinary crucifixion
Impalement of the wrists AND feet is not survivable for 3 days. Most of the time victims were tied to the cross beam and ankles or feet, alone were nailed. Nails through the wrist would have transfixed the median nerve and would have been a catastrophic injury to the hands rendering them permanently unusable. The thumbs would have pointed down for the rest of the person's life. Uninterrupted bursts of searing, breath-taking-pain assault the brain whenever a major nerve is touched, much less transfixed. I don't think Pilate realized that the high priest would have Christ impaled, not tied to the cross. This explains his surprise at the early death.
Ropes were not used for Christ. Firstly, he gave no resistance and secondly such would have made the torture easier to bear, if that is possible, since he would not be suspended by nails transfixing major nerves. Christ hung totally suspended by his wounds on shoulders torn from their sockets. Moreover, his shoulders and hips were deliberately dislocated by an enraged crucifiers prompted by Satan hoping to make him suffer at much as possible. Psalm 22 clearly describes joints being dislocated. This cruelty is unimaginable. So unimaginable that no one thought any man, much less a god, would submit to it. It is only by his will alone and desire to save us that he endured for 3 hours.
Crucifixion victims WERE NOT normally scourged as even the Romans considered it too brutal and it would reduce time on the cross. The gospels clearly imply that this befell Jesus as a last ditch effort by Pilate to punish the Savior to appease the savage crowd and perhaps avoid capital punishment. Jewish laws at the time forbade double punishments and whipping involved 40 strokes less one. Romans had no such controls on their scourgings but would have respected the ruling Jewish parties wishes.
A trained man called a lictor administered the punishment with a flagrum, a short rod with pieces of metal, bone and glass sewn into a number of leather thongs. This design took wounds down to the bone. In the Gospel of Luke Christ states to the apostles that he would be crucified AND scourged (Luke 18:33). It is repeated again in Mathew 20:19. He would not have separated these tortures if scourging was understood to be part of the punishment. A Roman scourging could cut short the life of anyone surviving it to be crucified due to blood loss. The wounds on the Shroud show not one, but two lictors administered this horrifying punishment. The stripes which covered Him from head to toe remind of the pattern on quickly baked unleavened bread.
The crown of thorns a was unique, unheard of cruelty. His sacred head was slammed against wood during the nailing, driving thorns deeper. On the cross he could not even put his head back to rest. Thorns are mentioned in the Bible the first time when God informs Adam that he will contend with them to earn his bread. The pride in the thorn is permanently defeated on the cross. Thorns represents the punishment due original sin that came into the world due to pride. The thorns are a emblematic of the sin of pride Adam and Eve brought into the world and do not appear until God cursed them. A curse which the Savior literally took upon himself in wearing His crown.
It was His will to empty himself completely for us that kept him alive for the crucifixion ritual after a vicious scourging and thorn-crowning ceremony that punctured the cranium. This was a valid coronation of a king which even came with a legal document hung above His sacred head announcing his station as King of the Jews, printed in four languages. Without it Christ would have left the world as pretender to the Throne of David, not a valid recognized, crowned Son of David. The angel said to Mary at the Annunciation, "The Lord will give Him the Throne of David, His Father, and of His kingdom there shall be no end". Without a legal coronation by the Romans before he died, his legal claim to the throne when he returns to displace a real pretender would be invalid.
From head to toe there was not one inch of his body that was not screaming in agony. Hanging on dislocated shoulder, enduring breath-taking shooting cramps in the lower back and leg muscles, but he continued for three hours. The blood loss surely dehydrated him, yet he refused anesthetic drink when it was offered. He only mentions his towering thirst just before death. The scourging and thorns would have killed most men. I do not see how he lasted 3 hours and even managed to speak with a swollen tongue to console the thief and his holy. I mother. I believe that speech of any sort was supernaturally aided since any normal man to survived the tortures to this point would have been too dehydrated, pain racked, and weak to talk. Yet, Christ cried out in a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" in His 4th recorded statement (of 7), from the cross. The dying Savior, who declared Himself, Light of the World, as along as he was in the world was being slowly extinguished and the world was required to take notice. Interestingly, as commentator J.R. Church pointed out, in a sequence of 7 statements from the cross possibly representing the menorah design, the fourth lamp is the "servant" lamp from which the others are lit. As His life sign ebbed, the fourth lamp was flickering and about to go out permanently. That same day In the Temple, the fourth lamp of the Menorah, went out and never burned again. All kinds of things were tried. The Levitical priesthood regarded this as a seriously negative omen which terrified them, which it was.
I have always felt, that slow but massive blood loss was Christ's cause of death as this is consistent with the death of sacrificial lambs who (painlessly) died upon the altars of Jerusalem every day as required by eternal God, Himself. New Testament verbiage that "he emptied himself out for us", and "he shed his blood once for all mankind" clearly implies this. Now, experts are switching to the view that massive blood loss the was the immediate cause of death rather than asphyxiation. Link
As violent as "Passion of The Christ Was", and that was enough to earn a "R" rating and cause undiscerning Catholic Bishops around the world to condemn the movie, even this movie's barbarity pales compared to what actually too place. I don't see how the Blessed Mother survived the trauma, shock and grief and PTSD. In fact, it is only because the angels were with her. It is a comfort to her when Christians meditate on the Savior's passion.
May all of humanity see His sign in the sky and come to understand the nature of a loving, merciful God who altered the course of humanity on this special day, and may that time come quickly --Judy Gassett
4/17/14
Updated 4/14/19
How God arranged for the central event of creation on the right day, Nisan 14th
Finally, yes, Christ acted as our chief priest at his own crucifixion to usher in the New Covenant. However, God still required the supreme Pascal sacrifice to also be mediated by the Levitical priesthood to close out the Old Covenant. Although they cleverly arranged for Pilate's agency, they were the biggest and most responsible malefactors and clearly the ones most responsible to the crucifixion on the exact day specified by God before the foundation of the world. Christ even tells Pilate that those who handed Him over bear the biggest sin.
"Your lamb shall be without blemish, a yearling male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. You shall keep watch over it until the fourteenth day of this month; and all the assembled congregation of the Israelites shall slaughter it at twilight" (Exodus 12:3-6) . Nisan 14 was the date Isaac was offered on the same spot as Christ, and the anniversary of the day the Angel of Death passed over the homes of the Israelites. Originally the the Passover celebration was to take place on Nisan 14 as decreed by Moses, but down through the millennia God allowed the date to celebrate the Passover to become Nisan 15, called the "Feast of Unleavened Bread", and the 14th became the "Day of Preparation"...all for His incomparable purpose
On Nisan 14 Levitical priests left their families and sequestered themselves in preparation to officiate the Passover celebration on Nisan 15. They could never come into direct contact with a condemned man, be directly responsible for a death, or touch death in anyway, so they used the gentile, Pilate to accomplish their evil completely satisfied with their shrewdness. Priestly malice cloaked in blindness tripped them up and they ended up fulfilling the most important of messianic prophecies to the letter
As a high holy day, Nisan 15th was also a "Sabbath" a generic designation which meant strict work requirements, and certain personal behaviors must be observed. It WAS NOT the weekly Sabbath, from which the notion that Christ died on Friday comes..Thus, on weeks with a high holy day, there could be 2 Sabbaths. Because the holy day date was changed the ultimate sacrifice for the life of the world occurred on Nisan 14 as God decreed to complete His plans for redemption. There would certainly have been no executions in Israel on the day of the Passover celebration, Nisan 15, but the 14th did not have the status of a holy day and it was O.K. to murder Jesus.
St. Dismas, the ‘Good Thief’
Is likely a a prophetic picture of the nearing "Illumination" to come over all mankind.Jesus was last to be crucified. Both thieves saw His horrifying torture laid out before them which they did not receive. Neither was scourged. There were many ways to affix someone to the cross, left up only to the imaginations of the crucifiers. As hardened as they both were, one thief, Dismas, was so moved to pity to say, "He has done nothing to deserve this" to the other while recognizing that the brutality and enormity of the injustice was so beyond human endurance only God could endure it.
We will be in the same position as St. Dismas on the Day of the Warning/ Illumination. But like the other thief, many will still ignore their God and depreciate what Christ did.
The ingrate Israelites after fleeing the Egyptian Army, and overcoming other hardships were fed sweet bread in the desert by the hand of God. Of this they complained and despised these gifts. God sent poisonous snakes among them. Those who were bitten died but those who looked upon a Moses' staff with cross beam and a snake on it were saved. At Illumination of Consciences we will be saved if we look
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