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Good Documentaries About Ancient Rome

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jacksjg89

jacksjg89

PROCRASTINATOR
Good Documentaries About Ancient Rome

Every time I watch a documentary about ancient rome, I am always inspired by a story in my head that is not being told in the video I'm watching. When I here about the Roman's wiping out the Dacian's, I see in my mind a hill with hundreds of crosses on it, and bloodied torn garments at it's base. You get the idea.
So I want to start out by sharing Monty Python's Terry Jones's, and hopefully you'll share your favorites.

 
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This ought to spark some conversation. I was watching the History Channel . Some biblical scholars were showing ankle bones with nails in them that came from a burriel site in Rome. The way the nails were placed raised the question " possibly crux was done on an X shaped cross as opposed to the traditional Christian crucifix. " Also the scholars believe the X cross was leaned against a stone wall or building . I am no authority on this and the very thought of it might upset Christians who accept the T shaped cross.
Any thoughts ?
 
cynthia the inocent said:
This ought to spark some conversation. I was watching the History Channel . Some biblical scholars were showing ankle bones with nails in them that came from a burriel site in Rome. The way the nails were placed raised the question " possibly crux was done on an X shaped cross as opposed to the traditional Christian crucifix. " Also the scholars believe the X cross was leaned against a stone wall or building . I am no authority on this and the very thought of it might upset Christians who accept the T shaped cross.
Any thoughts ?
Click to expand...
The gospels don't say much about this at all. In the "synoptics", Simon of Cyrene carries "the cross" (not just a patibulum--the Greek word for cross), and Mark adds that Simon's sons Rufus and Alexander are "with us". John disagrees (rather defiantly), saying Jesus carried the cross for himself. The only mention of nails is in the post-Resurrection appearance in John where Thomas is called out for doubting. So, everything else, all the art, all the descriptions, is legend (and the Gospels themselves clearly have legendary aspects as well--the "thieves" are nasty except for one of them in Luke, and only Luke has the weeping women of Jerusalem and the "Father, forgive them" quote, and only John has the leg-breaking and the piercing and the mother Mary and John at the foot of the cross where the others say the "women" who had followed him from Galilee watched from "afar off" while the apostles hunkered down). John and the synoptics can't even agree on the day and the hour. Mark says the crucifixion was at the third hour, and all the synoptics agree there was darkness from the sixth to the ninth hour. In John, Pilate is still dithering at the sixth hour, and it is the day leading up to the Passover feast, which in Mark had already happened as "the Last Supper". The synoptics say Joseph of Armithea provides the tomb, and the woman visit it on Sunday to anoint the body with spices but find no body. In John, Nicodemus and Joseph come with a "great quantity" of spices and handle the burial, and Mary Magdalene shows up on Sunday to "view the tomb" and finds it empty.
There is a body which was apparently crucified from Israel, with as you say a nail through the ankle (with a "washer" of olive wood--this only survives in a Jewish "bone box" because apparently the executioners couldn't get the nail out after it was over). I think what you saw on TV refers to a body found in northern Italy--another "ankle" case.
There are some crude graffiti (almost stick drawings) of crucifixions (one of a person with a feminine name), and they show a capital T shaped cross. I assume we can trust they were made by people who had witnessed crucifixions. Josephus claims that during the siege of Jerusalem Jews caught trying to sneak through Titus' siege lines for food were crucified. They ran out of wood, and had to nail many of them to Jerusalem's walls.
So the evidence is sparse. One book I read made a conjecture which makes sense to me. "The methods varied, according to the convenience and cruelty of the executioners". Tacitus and Suetonius and people like that imply that slave owners employed contractors to crucify their own slaves (with the consent of a magistrate). Tiberius once had to call out troops to ensure the slaves of an owner who was slain by one of them were ALL crucified according to the law, even though public opinion (and Seneca) was against it.
So, there isn't a lot of evidence to support all the art (where the "thieves" are often tied to crosses which are of a different shape and not as tall as the one Jesus is nailed to) and all the stories. And the Romans apparently didn't want to dwell on the details.
 
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Frank Petrexa said:
There are some crude graffiti (almost stick drawings) of crucifixions (one of a person with a feminine name), and they show a capital T shaped cross.
Click to expand...
Hey, it’s the “Alkimila Graffito”. I wrote a short story about it...

A Thief In The Macellum (crux Story By Montycrusto)

A Thief in the Macellum. (Crux story by Montycrusto) My name is Gaius Pica; welcome to Puteoli, sir! You must be just off the galley from Tyre, though I can see you’re not a Syrian. Nor a Roman, neither; no offence intended, keep your secrets if you like; I’m just interested in people...
www.cruxforums.com
Apart from my shameless plug, thanks for the interesting reply Frank; I once did a simultaneous reading of the four gospels’ crucifixion accounts, and found the same inconsistencies. And where they agreed, it was often suspiciously word-perfect. Interesting stuff!
 
Frank Petrexa said:
The gospels don't say much about this at all. In the "synoptics", Simon of Cyrene carries "the cross" (not just a patibulum--the Greek word for cross), and Mark adds that Simon's sons Rufus and Alexander are "with us". John disagrees (rather defiantly), saying Jesus carried the cross for himself. The only mention of nails is in the post-Resurrection appearance in John where Thomas is called out for doubting. So, everything else, all the art, all the descriptions, is legend (and the Gospels themselves clearly have legendary aspects as well--the "thieves" are nasty except for one of them in Luke, and only Luke has the weeping women of Jerusalem and the "Father, forgive them" quote, and only John has the leg-breaking and the piercing and the mother Mary and John at the foot of the cross where the others say the "women" who had followed him from Galilee watched from "afar off" while the apostles hunkered down). John and the synoptics can't even agree on the day and the hour. Mark says the crucifixion was at the third hour, and all the synoptics agree there was darkness from the sixth to the ninth hour. In John, Pilate is still dithering at the sixth hour, and it is the day leading up to the Passover feast, which in Mark had already happened as "the Last Supper". The synoptics say Joseph of Armithea provides the tomb, and the woman visit it on Sunday to anoint the body with spices but find no body. In John, Nicodemus and Joseph come with a "great quantity" of spices and handle the burial, and Mary Magdalene shows up on Sunday to "view the tomb" and finds it empty.
There is a body which was apparently crucified from Israel, with as you say a nail through the ankle (with a "washer" of olive wood--this only survives in a Jewish "bone box" because apparently the executioners couldn't get the nail out after it was over). I think what you saw on TV refers to a body found in northern Italy--another "ankle" case.
There are some crude graffiti (almost stick drawings) of crucifixions (one of a person with a feminine name), and they show a capital T shaped cross. I assume we can trust they were made by people who had witnessed crucifixions. Josephus claims that during the siege of Jerusalem Jews caught trying to sneak through Titus' siege lines for food were crucified. They ran out of wood, and had to nail many of them to Jerusalem's walls.
So the evidence is sparse. One book I read made a conjecture which makes sense to me. "The methods varied, according to the convenience and cruelty of the executioners". Tacitus and Suetonius and people like that imply that slave owners employed contractors to crucify their own slaves (with the consent of a magistrate). Tiberius once had to call out troops to ensure the slaves of an owner who was slain by one of them were ALL crucified according to the law, even though public opinion (and Seneca) was against it.
So, there isn't a lot of evidence to support all the art (where the "thieves" are often tied to crosses which are of a different shape and not as tall as the one Jesus is nailed to) and all the stories. And the Romans apparently didn't want to dwell on the details.
Click to expand...
montycrusto said:
Hey, it’s the “Alkimila Graffito”. I wrote a short story about it...

A Thief In The Macellum (crux Story By Montycrusto)

A Thief in the Macellum. (Crux story by Montycrusto) My name is Gaius Pica; welcome to Puteoli, sir! You must be just off the galley from Tyre, though I can see you’re not a Syrian. Nor a Roman, neither; no offence intended, keep your secrets if you like; I’m just interested in people...
www.cruxforums.com
Apart from my shameless plug, thanks for the interesting reply Frank; I once did a simultaneous reading of the four gospels’ crucifixion accounts, and found the same inconsistencies. And where they agreed, it was often suspiciously word-perfect. Interesting stuff!
Click to expand...

Yes, very interesting. Thanks to both of you for posting!
 
montycrusto said:
Hey, it’s the “Alkimila Graffito”. I wrote a short story about it...

A Thief In The Macellum (crux Story By Montycrusto)

A Thief in the Macellum. (Crux story by Montycrusto) My name is Gaius Pica; welcome to Puteoli, sir! You must be just off the galley from Tyre, though I can see you’re not a Syrian. Nor a Roman, neither; no offence intended, keep your secrets if you like; I’m just interested in people...
www.cruxforums.com
Apart from my shameless plug, thanks for the interesting reply Frank; I once did a simultaneous reading of the four gospels’ crucifixion accounts, and found the same inconsistencies. And where they agreed, it was often suspiciously word-perfect. Interesting stuff!
Click to expand...
There is another graffito I was thinking of as well, mocking a Christian. A man with the head of an ass is on the cross, with a worshiper below. Again, this is a T cross. If I remember, both crucified are wearing something.
 
cynthia the inocent said:
The way the nails were placed raised the question " possibly crux was done on an X shaped cross
Click to expand...
.. or possibly the biblical scholars were simply incapable of imagining some of the ways of crucifixion we see routinely depicted here on cruxforums! Perhaps if they had visited the “Obscene Display” thread, the evidence might have made more sense... I’m sure x-crosses we’re used sometimes, but I can’t help thinking they would be harder to make than standard T-crosses, especially by carpenters who normally made beams, lintels and other structures for building. But of course I don’t know..
 
I am not surprised at the differences in the bible. I used to be an Insurance adjuster and take statements from witnesses to the same accidents.
Sometimes you would swear that they had been at entirely different accidents!:aaaaa::nusenuse:
 
Gibbs505 said:
I am not surprised at the differences in the bible. I used to be an Insurance adjuster and take statements from witnesses to the same accidents.
Sometimes you would swear that they had been at entirely different accidents!:aaaaa::nusenuse:
Click to expand...
Yes, and then there are the theological issues. Luke is always interested in hyping Jesus as a miraculous, appealing person and God's chosen Messiah. He likes to craft stories that emphasize this (his birth narrative, his blood relationship to John the Baptist and the prominent role of Mary "keeping things in her heart", the miraculous reconciliation between Herod king of Galilee and Pilate after Jesus is condemned) . For John, he's almost godlike (although John is ambivalent about going that far). John has no "agony in the garden"--the people sent to arrest Jesus "fall down before him". Luke has an anguished prayer repeated several times while the apostles sleep (and so there was no one to write it down). In Mark (which most claim is the earliest Gospel) Jesus is no-nonsense and focused on his mission, and comes off as pretty brusque. On the cross, he only speaks once when he is near death, whereas in Luke and John he has lots to say. One guy points out that in Mark, the apostles are pretty clueless and just don't get it.
If anyone is interested, there is a two-volume, 1500+ page work called "The Death of the Messiah" by the late Raymond Brown, a Catholic priest and firm believer that the Bible is inspired by the "Holy Spirit". He is honest, though, and in particular highly skeptical of the Luke's dedication to history. If you can wade through it, it is a good summary of how "Biblical Scholarship" works: lots of controversy, lots of theories, damn little real evidence. In his attempt to date the crucifixion, he cites a paper in the journal Nature from 1983, where some astronomers date passover. But he is careful to point out that this evidence relies on the questionable thesis that the Gospels get the day and the hour right.
For me, it seems the crucifixion is historical, even if the Gospel accounts aren't so much. There is no way people wanting to start a religion would say their founder died by crucifixion if it didn't happen. Paul was an adult when Jesus died. His "conversion" (in a vision) happened soon afterward. His career went on long after that, but he shows absolutely no knowledge of the Gospels in his letters. But he doesn't doubt the crucifixion, which indicates to me that it did indeed happen (he doesn't doubt the Resurrection either, but he is prone to giving great weight to dreams and visions--but it is hard to see why he would have a vision of a crucified founder if it didn't happen).
 
Frank Petrexa said:
Yes, and then there are the theological issues. Luke is always interested in hyping Jesus as a miraculous, appealing person and God's chosen Messiah. He likes to craft stories that emphasize this (his birth narrative, his blood relationship to John the Baptist and the prominent role of Mary "keeping things in her heart", the miraculous reconciliation between Herod king of Galilee and Pilate after Jesus is condemned) . For John, he's almost godlike (although John is ambivalent about going that far). John has no "agony in the garden"--the people sent to arrest Jesus "fall down before him". Luke has an anguished prayer repeated several times while the apostles sleep (and so there was no one to write it down). In Mark (which most claim is the earliest Gospel) Jesus is no-nonsense and focused on his mission, and comes off as pretty brusque. On the cross, he only speaks once when he is near death, whereas in Luke and John he has lots to say. One guy points out that in Mark, the apostles are pretty clueless and just don't get it.
If anyone is interested, there is a two-volume, 1500+ page work called "The Death of the Messiah" by the late Raymond Brown, a Catholic priest and firm believer that the Bible is inspired by the "Holy Spirit". He is honest, though, and in particular highly skeptical of the Luke's dedication to history. If you can wade through it, it is a good summary of how "Biblical Scholarship" works: lots of controversy, lots of theories, damn little real evidence. In his attempt to date the crucifixion, he cites a paper in the journal Nature from 1983, where some astronomers date passover. But he is careful to point out that this evidence relies on the questionable thesis that the Gospels get the day and the hour right.
For me, it seems the crucifixion is historical, even if the Gospel accounts aren't so much. There is no way people wanting to start a religion would say their founder died by crucifixion if it didn't happen. Paul was an adult when Jesus died. His "conversion" (in a vision) happened soon afterward. His career went on long after that, but he shows absolutely no knowledge of the Gospels in his letters. But he doesn't doubt the crucifixion, which indicates to me that it did indeed happen (he doesn't doubt the Resurrection either, but he is prone to giving great weight to dreams and visions--but it is hard to see why he would have a vision of a crucified founder if it didn't happen).
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Love this discussion. CF can be so educational. Thanks for posting!
 
Frank Petrexa said:
it is hard to see why he would have a vision of a crucified founder if it didn't happen).
Click to expand...
Frank Petrexa said:
There is no way people wanting to start a religion would say their founder died by crucifixion if it didn't happen.
Click to expand...
I don’t quite follow the logic here. People make up stuff all the time, especially if they’re trying to persuade you to do something. But I agree with most of what you said, I am persuaded that there was some real person or persons upon which the stories are based. For me it’s the sheer effort of bending the stories to fit certain facts of history that indicates a likely kernel of truth to them; if you were just going to make it all up from scratch there would be little need for such narrative contortions :confused:
 
Well, crucifixion is supposed to be a humiliating punishment for slaves. So you constantly have to explain it to the people who post things like the Alexamenos graffito. You also have to explain why the Romans would do it (in fact the Gospels go out of their way to blame the Jews and absolve the Romans). If the founder has to die, have him die in some nobler way--you can cook up a far better story than this if all you are doing is cooking up a story with no basis in fact.
 
Frank Petrexa said:
Well, crucifixion is supposed to be a humiliating punishment for slaves. So you constantly have to explain it to the people who post things like the Alexamenos graffito. You also have to explain why the Romans would do it (in fact the Gospels go out of their way to blame the Jews and absolve the Romans). If the founder has to die, have him die in some nobler way--you can cook up a far better story than this if all you are doing is cooking up a story with no basis in fact.
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Agreed.. unless... (and I know I’m playing devils advocate :)) one was concocting a narrative in which the uttermost form of suffering and humiliation was the whole point.. in which case perhaps one would indeed choose crucifixion. I think that’s a possibility that can’t quite be ruled out. However I think you’re almost certainly correct, and there was a real act of crucifixion that took place and fed into the legends. I strongly doubt that it involved an X cross though :devil:
 
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A substantial and growing academic literature on the “historical” Jesus exists, I believe. I find the separation of fact and lore to be a fascinating thing, as well as how hard the Church has worked over the Ages to make sense of events in ways that fulfill prophecy and doctrinal needs.
 
One thing to remember is that our "New Testament" (and the "Old Testament") are all distillations of a much wider literature. The "apochryphal" gospels which came to light with the ancient texts discovered in jars in Egypt in 1947 are all over the map. For over 300 years people debated the divinity of Christ, and there was violence among various sects who called each other "heretics". There's a rather brilliant guy name Origen (184-253 AD) who was a biblical scholar, theologian, and eventually a priest and martyr (his father was a martyr too). According to what I've read (I haven't actually read his stuff, although I have some of it, and probably should have paid at least a little attention to it instead of concentrating on the "Federal Cavalry in the Civil War") he thought Christ was the one loyal soul God could turn to after the fall of man. He didn't think Christ was divine. So, he's a heretic and--most importantly--his works were therefore not copied and preserved as extensively as those of others. There was massive controversy about the divinity of Christ and his relationship to the "Father" before one side won around 450 AD or so. The "canon" of gospels and other books was set only in the 4th century (300's). A good source for all this is a guy named Jenkins who teaches at Baylor (which is a Baptist university in America). So, it should not be a surprise that in an age with no printing press in a polyglot empire which was by and large tolerant of various religions as long as the Emporer got his due a "sect" which arose from a Judaism which itself had factions might have trouble fixing on a coherent message. You can see that in Paul. First he's a red hot zealous Jew out to destroy the Church. Then he has a vision, and he's Christ's servant to the Gentiles. He fights with people--he falls out with Barnabas over taking John Mark on a missionary journey, his II Corinthians is a bitter rejoinder to critics in the church he founded at Corinth who feel Christians should also be Jews, he falls out with Peter when the latter refuses to eat with Gentile converts after his Jewish colleagues criticize him for doing so. Paul is dedicated and full of love and what not, but you didn't mess with him. He felt (and says as much) that what he taught about Jesus (whom he never quotes) was revealed to him by God himself and he was going to stick to it. Luke is his partisan. The Church had to grow in both confidence and power before (with state backing) it was able to enforce a coherent orthodoxy. If you look at "Christianity" even today it is split into many competing factions, and there were heresies throughout Church history (and governments which wanted to use the Church to enhance power). So, it shouldn't be surprising that you find discrepancies in the Gospels based on the views of those who wrote them (and some of them may have been edited by later authors). Jesus himself is buried in all this, and it is really hard to come up with what he believed (it seems initially he was a follower of John the Baptist)--he may in fact have changed things as he went along--and what he actually said and did.
 
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