Flagellazione
The word "stauros" occurs 27 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures (the 'New Testament'). This word has been consistently translated in the New World Translation as "torture stake" and never as "cross". It is the implement on which Jesus Christ was affixed and executed. Also, another Greek word was used by the Bible writers "xylon", as the same implement of execution in regard to Jesus, which denotes, "wood, a piece of wood, anything made of wood..." At those places where "xylon" is used in connection with Jesus' execution the New World Translation has rendered it as "stake". Is there any justification for the New World Translation to do this with these Greek words? link
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Pontius Pilate or Vlad Dracul?
The Urantia Book has an amazing description of this.
It's description is so graphic and so painful and unsparing that it lodges permanently and becomes accepted as model for all other descriptions.
*searches, "urantia, crossbeam*
... It was the custom to compel the condemned man to carry the crossbeam to the site of the crucifixion. Such a condemned man did not carry the whole cross, only this shorter timber. The longer and upright pieces of timber for the three crosses had already been transported to Golgotha and, by the time of the arrival of the soldiers and their prisoners, had been firmly implanted in the ground.
Then the guy downtown comes to mind. The guy with the Home Depot cross with a wheel, walking the 16th St Mall back and forth condemning everybody for being insufficiently righteous while dressed in a hooded robe tied at the waist with a rope holding a bible and dragging a large cross with a wheel on the base.
The whole thing is too much for prisoner to carry. Any prisoner. Weakened by lack of sleep, lack of food and water, protracted scathing whipping and other debilitating abuses any healthy human hale person would be too weak to carry both upright and crossbeam pieces together.
Shortly after passing through the gate on the way out of the city, as Jesus staggered on bearing the crossbeam, his physical strength momentarily gave way, and he fell beneath the weight of his heavy burden. The soldiers shouted at him and kicked him, but he could not arise. When the captain saw this, knowing what Jesus had already endured, he commanded the soldiers to desist. Then he ordered a passerby, one Simon from Cyrene, to take the crossbeam from Jesus’ shoulders and compelled him to carry it the rest of the way to Golgotha.
I love this story so much. I get swept up in it every time. This is the climax to the whole thing. This is where all the oddities along the way are pulled together.
It's told in the omniscient voice. The voice states things as factual that cannot be checked. But they add so much color to the drama that even setting them aside they still affect the reader's acceptance of the rest of the story.
This man Simon had come all the way from Cyrene, in northern Africa, to attend the Passover. He was stopping with other Cyrenians just outside the city walls and was on his way to the temple services in the city when the Roman captain commanded him to carry Jesus’ crossbeam. Simon lingered all through the hours of the Master’s death on the cross, talking with many of his friends and with his enemies. After the resurrection and before leaving Jerusalem, he became a valiant believer in the gospel of the kingdom, and when he returned home, he led his family into the heavenly kingdom. His two sons, Alexander and Rufus, became very effective teachers of the new gospel in Africa. But Simon never knew that Jesus, whose burden he bore, and the Jewish tutor who once befriended his injured son, were the same person.
The last bit refers to an episode described earlier in the book before Jesus' final career as itinerant preacher.
I woke up this morning and realized it was good Friday and then I went slightly melancholy as I realized that my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ walked the harrowed steps on the Via Delorosa and what that possibly must have felt like after being tortured for the sake of Pontius Pilot keeping the Sanhedrin happy by getting rid of a rebellious problem to their elitist/establishment ways so that he and they can keep the status quo going and making christ the sacrificial lamb and also by giving them a murderer of Romans name Barabas back to them.
I saw a lot of commonalities from what happened back then to a lot of what's happening today in this country and with the administration. I know Christ was scared, I know he was also pretty pissed, which is probably what drove him to do that walk with the crucifix on his back and his body beaten and bleeding from prior torture on his way to Golgatha to meet his doom.
I was melancholy because I was trying to put myself in Christ's sandals so to speak. What was he thinking, what was he feeling beyond his clear physical pain. Was his mother actually watching him? Did he really see her. To the gratitude of that samaritan who took the load from you so you could walk the rest of the way without collapsing, only to be stripped naked, mounted and nailed onto the cross, and then hoisted for everyone to see you die from fluidic suffocation in your lungs. To know as you looking down at the people crying for you as you died, seeing them suffer as well from your pain and anguish. Watching the romans play dice for the remnants of the clothing you have, asking for a little bit of water only to get a shit soaked rag for teh last bits of refreshment you'll ever experience again. To be sided with a murderer and a thief asking for your forgiveness and to not be forgotten and you mustering the last bits of strength to remind them that as they die with you, that they too will join you in heaven for it.
Then to finally think of asking your father for a reprieve only to have Satan show up and when you are at your utter lowest remind you that you too are a god and you can call the angelic host to save you, but knowing what you were born to do, you tell him no and deny him his victory. What was that like to see it. To be there. Would any of us be compelled to do something or just let it happen, knowing what is in store for the future. To see Christ finally take his last breath and die, then to see Longinus thrust his spear into the side of his chest and have that fluid rain down into his eyes and mouth and cure him of his near blindness and ailments.
It was a hard thing to imagine, but I tried. It was the least I could do for someone who died for my sins. A divine being, an aspect of the totality of the one true God of the multiverse, in a man's body who saw fit that humanity was worth saving and not getting shit on like his father did the first time. I tried to imagine it and I came up seriously short. Jesus died for me. So that I can be redeemed in soul and spirit because that's all he cared about in the end. You can do all kinds of shit and repent, but the care and feeding of your soul so that you can believe in him was what mattered. The soul, an intangible concept of the totality of who we are as a divinely created life force. It never dilutes, it never fades, but that there are being in this universe that treat it as the divine creation it is. With holiness and reverence.
Christ thought as much. Maybe we can return the favor. Happy Good Friday and a Happy Easter to you all.
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