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Surviving Crucifixion

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I also doubt they would bother with predrilled wood washers which the would have to be as if they were not would depicted would split in two driving a nail through it...

I agree, a piece of wood as thin as a shingle and a nail that big, it's pretty certain to split. Blunting the nail really does help, and I know we've talked about this, but that's with molding and finishing nails, not tapered iron spikes.

If the nails have a chisel-shaped point, turning it across the grain so that it cuts the fibers rather than spreading them might make it work. It does with railroad spikes, which are shaped that way for that reason.
 
Looking at the size of the nail head in the pictures and examples in museums of Roman nails, I just can't buy into the idea that a victim could ever pull the wound over that, especially considering the spacing of the bones.

My own theory, with no evidence whatever to back it up, is that, assuming that the Romans ever actually used pieced of wood between the nail head and the victim's wrist or foot, it was because the nails could bend under the victim's weight, pressing the lower edge of the head into the flesh. Her struggling would tend to make that edge cut deeper, perhaps leading to serious bleeding, particularly on the wrists, and an early exit. A piece of wood might protect the victim's flesh from being cut by the nail head. That is, if anyone ever actually used them.
The whole business of pieces of wood stems from the 1968 Jerusalem ossuary case, right? With all due respect for the researchers, the results of the studies have been contradictory. I think there have been four various crucifixion poses proposed so far; if the upside-down crucifixion theory is correct, the wood in question might have been used for his titulus.
 
The whole business of pieces of wood stems from the 1968 Jerusalem ossuary case, right? With all due respect for the researchers, the results of the studies have been contradictory. I think there have been four various crucifixion poses proposed so far; if the upside-down crucifixion theory is correct, the wood in question might have been used for his titulus.

Exactly! I mentioned this possibility a long time ago. Also, I actually had an email discussion with Joe Zias back in 2005 concerning how he was able to say that this nailed heel bone was from a crucified man and not from some other brutal treatment. His response was:

One of the things that one must remember in our case that this period was a period of tremendous turmoil, people were being crucified left and right, I wish that the other heel bone would have been better preserved however it wasn't...​

In my response to him, I posed the question again in a different way, obviously skeptical. People have accepted his theory about this nailed heel bone as the gospel, after all, and I just don't see it that way. Here's the exchange; my question is in the normal font and his response is in bold, just the way he wrote back:

However, the larger question in my mind is, given that there is only a heelbone with a nail through it, and given the wholesale brutality of those times, can we state with any certainty that this is even a crucifixion victim? Much of what we deal with in arch. is in the realm of inferences, the evidence suggests... absolute truth lasts but 20 yrs anyway.

So with all due respect, it's just a guess that this nailed heel bone might have something to do with a crucifixion and not something we can rely on as certain fact. The business about wooden pieces under the nail heads is just part of that.
 
Exactly! I mentioned this possibility a long time ago. Also, I actually had an email discussion with Joe Zias back in 2005 concerning how he was able to say that this nailed heel bone was from a crucified man and not from some other brutal treatment. His response was:

One of the things that one must remember in our case that this period was a period of tremendous turmoil, people were being crucified left and right, I wish that the other heel bone would have been better preserved however it wasn't...​

In my response to him, I posed the question again in a different way, obviously skeptical. People have accepted his theory about this nailed heel bone as the gospel, after all, and I just don't see it that way. Here's the exchange; my question is in the normal font and his response is in bold, just the way he wrote back:

However, the larger question in my mind is, given that there is only a heelbone with a nail through it, and given the wholesale brutality of those times, can we state with any certainty that this is even a crucifixion victim? Much of what we deal with in arch. is in the realm of inferences, the evidence suggests... absolute truth lasts but 20 yrs anyway.

So with all due respect, it's just a guess that this nailed heel bone might have something to do with a crucifixion and not something we can rely on as certain fact. The business about wooden pieces under the nail heads is just part of that.
True enough. Come to think about it, if Georges Cuvier was said to have been capable of reconstructing the entire skeleton of a prehistoric animal from a single bone, the team of Israeli archaeologists has done him one better in reconstructing the crucifixion from a single nail.
 
I've never liked the appearance of bits of wood at the wrists anyway, so let's say they they weren't used. But do you all still think 24-or-so hours of movement wouldn't enlarge the original holes?

And Jedakk's assertion ......especially considering the spacing of the bones......assumes the nails were always optimally placed. There are plenty of amusing pictures, including on this forum, of the absurdities produced by your average workman. We always like to depict the Roman military as an efficient, ruthless machine, but most of its history was written by the victors, so who knows for sure?

So I suggest a botched job was not unusual. Which I also suggest was in no way kinder to the condemned. Thus making any recovery from the wounds even less likely.
 
And Jedakk's assertion ......especially considering the spacing of the bones......assumes the nails were always optimally placed. There are plenty of amusing pictures, including on this forum, of the absurdities produced by your average workman. We always like to depict the Roman military as an efficient, ruthless machine, but most of its history was written by the victors, so who knows for sure?

So I suggest a botched job was not unusual. Which I also suggest was in no way kinder to the condemned. Thus making any recovery from the wounds even less likely.

When I talk about the spacing of the bones, I think about these X-rays:



I've superimposed the cross-section of a nail of the size that would be about what was needed to carry the weight of a crucifixion victim, along with the footprint of a nail head that is proportional to that size nail, based on the examples I've seen.

To begin with, there are so many bones in a foot and a wrist! You can't even fit the shank of a nail between them, and a big nail head is out of the question.

Now as far as the wounds tearing and enlarging, consider that for the flesh to tear, it has to bear at least part of the victim's weight against the shank of the nail. If an executioner was foolish enough to drive a nail down around the ball of a victim's foot, then when he tried to raise himself on it he'd soon rip his foot all the way up until the nail came to bear against solid bone. At that point, the flesh of the foot really wouldn't carry much stress, if any. It would all be carried by the bones up high on the foot. So if an executioner knew his business, he'd probably drive the nail at that point anyway.

The same thing is true with the wrist. In one of the pics above I've shown a nail driven between the radius and ulna of the forearm, but that's not a good choice in that it is above the wrist joint, so the victim wouldn't be able to use the muscles of his forearms to help him rise on the cross. There are all kinds of ways to botch up a crucifixion and no doubt they've all been done at one time or another.
 

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"Your guilt is absolved, child, and for you penance do twenty new pictures and post them on Crux Forums!"

I thought that was fair...

T
Just so you know, I don't do penance.
That's what crux-girls are for, if I find one to grab I'll send her your way. :D It doesn't matter one bit that it's me who's guilty and the cruxette has nothing to do with it. I'll just send her as a scapegoat. You can draw all the pictures you want on her, before nailing her up. Then we can all sit back, watch the show and chug a few beers.
 
Just so you know, I don't do penance.
That's what crux-girls are for, if I find one to grab I'll send her your way. :D It doesn't matter one bit that it's me who's guilty and the cruxette has nothing to do with it. I'll just send her as a scapegoat. You can draw all the pictures you want on her, before nailing her up. Then we can all sit back, watch the show and chug a few beers.

d30465a311b5ee1aa9bc8ebc4dca580d.jpg Guys! :rolleyes::confused::p:p
 
well it's reassuring for girls who panic if they're not clutching their smartphone
Heh.
Point blank hit on one of my hot buttons ;) - are you some kind of mind-reader?

Just for the record, it probably won't surprise you all too much that in real life, my reaction to girls isn't exactly, oh yeah, I'd like to nail her to a cross right here. That's fantasy.

On consideration, the possible exception is pretty-faced addle-brained smartphone junkies.
Crucifixion would be a wake up call. Public service, sort of.

'cause their perception of the world is so fucked up that maybe driving railroad spikes through their wrists is what it's gonna take to tell them that, yes, This. Is. The. World. and it matters more than whatever's on that screen.
That will get iPhone-girl's mind focused for... ten seconds?

Historians of the future, roasting rat kabobs over their campfires, to insert a random J.H. Kunstler quote, will probably marvel how a civilization frittered away its existence with these trinkets.

You could eat their brains, and they wouldn't even notice :D

And well, I'm really only half-joking. The way human interaction, and conversational behavior, has changed with these devices is tragic. I can only recommend going back more than a hundred years to E.M. Forster and "The Machine Stops".Nineteen-Oh-Nine, and he saw it. Realize then that almost everyone has Forster's "Machine" in their hands today. Google Glass failed, but the next generation attempt probably won't.
 
When Gertrude says to her son Hamlet,

'Alas, how is’t with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy
And with th' incorporal air do hold discourse?'

I think he must have had an early cellphone :D

Arrrrrgh!

Do you know what's really going to get you crucified one of these days?

Oh, I'm sure you look really sexy on a cross and you want it anyway. But that's not what's special about you. Crux-girls like that are a dime a dozen.

What's really going to unsettle a guy is when you throw out a scholarly quote like that on some random topic. Yeah sure, there's a fucking Shakespeare quote for everything, but really. Who digs them up that fast?

The only possible answer when you find yourself out-brained is violence :devil:
Is there a ruggedized smartphone that's also certifiedly adequate to pound in Inchtuthil-style Roman nails? I've got a job to do here!
 
Arrrrrgh!

Do you know what's really going to get you crucified one of these days?

Oh, I'm sure you look really sexy on a cross and you want it anyway. But that's not what's special about you. Crux-girls like that are a dime a dozen.

What's really going to unsettle a guy is when you throw out a scholarly quote like that on some random topic. Yeah sure, there's a fucking Shakespeare quote for everything, but really. Who digs them up that fast?

The only possible answer when you find yourself out-brained is violence :devil:
Is there a ruggedized smartphone that's also certifiedly adequate to pound in Inchtuthil-style Roman nails? I've got a job to do here!
Then please, by all means, do your job:devil:
 
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