Jesus and Christ - стр. 70

Rangit took pause again, shaking his head meaningfully, he said:

– Believe me, there were reasons for that.

This caused a smile with a touch of sarcasm, because he claimed it as if he himself was a real witness of the events described. However, the audience liked his character and nodded in response.

– So, the guards kept a close watch on the condemned and his attendants, sometimes many not only relatives but also idle gawkers gathered. The guards were present until they were fully convinced that the condemned had died.

Rangit paced the room again, head bowed slightly, looking thoughtful. He glanced once more at Ruthra, as if he had received tacit approval, and continued:

– A little about the cross itself. The Romans used different kinds of crosses for crucifixion. T-shaped, X-shaped, and the traditional Catholic crucifix. Or rather, the shape of the cross, which was taken as a basis for Catholicism. This type of cross is most accurate as the version on which Jesus was crucified according to the tradition of Matthew. He writes the following: "And they put an inscription over His head, signifying His guilt, 'This is Jesus, King of the Jews'" (Matthew 27:37). Here the evangelist speaks of the tablet on which the Savior's accusation was written. But it is quite obvious that in order to place such a plaque over the head of Christ, it is necessary that the main vertical column should have a continuation above, above the cross bar, i.e. it is necessary that the cross should be four-pointed, and not three-pointed tied (in the form of the letter T), and also not knocked down (in the form of the letter X). After arriving at the place of crucifixion, the condemned man was stripped naked and his clothes were given to the soldiers guarding the cross. In Judea, however, going along with the religious conviction of the Jews (Gen. 9:22-23; Lev. 18:6-19; 20:17; Hos. 2:3), the Romans left the condemned with a loincloth (Mishnah. Sanhedrin. 6:3; Tosefta. Sanhedrin. 9:6). The condemned person was then placed on the cross. The fixation of the body of the crucified person could be done in different ways. The legs of the crucified person were bent at the knees and nailed to the statikulum or fixed with ropes. The condemned could also be crucified on crosses already dug into the ground. The soldiers used ropes to lift the body of the condemned, and those who remained below helped them. When the crucified man was raised to the proper height, he was tied by his hands to the patibulum with ropes, and then two iron nails were placed on his wrists, which were driven into the wood with a hammer. The soldiers standing below at this time tied or nailed the feet of the condemned man to the statikulum. For this purpose they either folded them in such a way that one foot covered the other, and then one nail was driven through both feet at once, or each foot was nailed separately. Whether the feet of Jesus Christ were nailed with one or two nails is not known. Some Fathers of the Christian Church (St. Gregory Nazianzin, Egyptian Bishop Nonnus) pointed to one nail, while others (St. Gregory of Tours, Cyprian) speak of four nails – two for the hands and two for the feet. The iconography of the Orthodox Church adopted the second tradition, while the Roman Catholic Church adopted the first. Different devices were used to keep the crucified person on the cross. Sometimes a small ledge–or scoot–was used, which was placed between the condemned man's legs. To increase the suffering of the executed person, the ledge was sometimes made pointed. Traditional Christian iconography and painting depict the crucified man with his hands pierced with nails in the middle of his palms. However, research done in the first half of the twentieth century by Pierre Barbet, the chief surgeon at St. Joseph's Hospital in Paris, showed that Christian painters were quite mistaken. Conducting a number of experiments with amputated hands, as well as with corpses, P. Barbet discovered unexpected at the time facts. It turned out that when nailed to the cross at the level of the middle of the palms of the hands came off the nails at a load of about 39 kg. Experimental data confirmed mathematical calculations, which showed that at the position on the cross, during which the hands of the crucified person move away from the torso to the patibulum at an angle of about 68º, the body of the condemned would definitely fall off the cross. Looking for an anatomical place that could, on the one hand, correspond as much as possible to the Gospel text and historical chronicles, and on the other hand, reliably hold the weight of the crucified on the nails, P. Barbet came to the conclusion that for this purpose the space available on the wrist of Desto is the most suitable. When nails pierce the palm of the hand through this space, the large blood vessels are not damaged. The divergence of the data revealed in the works of P. Barbet data with traditional iconography can be explained by the simple fact that since the IV century AD, after the edict of Constantine the Great, in the Christian world execution by crucifixion was forbidden and much knowledge about this procedure was eventually forgotten. One more important fact: in the first quarter of the twentieth century French doctor A. LeBec made an assumption that death by crucifixion came as a result of suffocation. This assumption is now accepted as the main cause of death in crucifixion. As muscle fatigue increased, the crucified man sagged more and more, with inhalation still more or less possible, but exhalation became more and more difficult. As a result, inevitable muscle cramps made it possible to breathe only by means of diaphragm contraction, and this, in its turn, led to the development of suffocation, from which the crucified man died. Together with the heaviness of breathing at each attempt to change the position on the cross, the bones of the wrist and feet turned around the nails driven in, and the soft tissues of the back, damaged during scourging, were scraped on the staticulum, which caused the crucified person the most severe pain, and to speak – a person must get enough air in the lungs, so to pronounce each word the crucified person had to rise on the cross. For this purpose, each time the executed person had to lean on his nail-pierced legs and at the same time pull himself up on his hands nailed to the cross. Imagine how much pain every word spoken on the cross brought to the crucified man. If, of course, this was even possible. Especially since Jesus died three hours after the crucifixion. This fact gives the whole story even more mysticism, it seems to be simple, but it speaks of many things: from the conspiracy theory and staged performance to the paucity of imagination, miserable fantasy of the authors of the Gospels; from the original fascism, manifested by the Roman legionaries in the gambling beating of the religious-political leader of the Jews, to the femininity of Jesus' nature, sickness and poor health. And there is one more formula, explaining very logically this fact of quick death, taking into account that Jesus was not broken knees, unlike the rest executed near him (and those, if you know, did not die by the moment of declaring Jesus dead), but about it, perhaps, I will keep silent – first I will check in mission, then I will sound.