The Passion of the Christ

Not to hijack the thread, but since we're talking about crucifixion, I thought I would.

This may make me sound really dumb and gullible, but I read somewhere once that most of the time, people would be crucified upside-down, so as to keep their, um, natural processes from spilling all over the ground. Do any of you know if there was any truth to this at all? I guess it makes sense, but it's kind of an odd image, if you think about it. Again, feel free to trash me if this is not true at all, I can't remember where I read that.
 
Dan said:
Not to hijack the thread, but since we're talking about crucifixion, I thought I would.

This may make me sound really dumb and gullible, but I read somewhere once that most of the time, people would be crucified upside-down, so as to keep their, um, natural processes from spilling all over the ground. Do any of you know if there was any truth to this at all? I guess it makes sense, but it's kind of an odd image, if you think about it. Again, feel free to trash me if this is not true at all, I can't remember where I read that.

Yes, they were hung upside down. Furthermore, I believe crucifixion was taken from the Egyptians, but I am not sure.
 
dilloduck said:
I think the people who blame Jews for Jesus' death use the fact that the Jews were given an option by Pilate as to who to crucify (Barrabas or jesus).
The Jewish crowd chose to spare Barrabas.

Wouldnt this be correct?
 
Jackass said:
Wouldnt this be correct?

Doesn't really matter to me-----don't have a dog in this hunt---i guess you could take it all the way and say Christians should thank the Jews because he had to be dead before he could resurrect ?
 
Dan, from what I've read, the desired torture occurred best when the victim was right side up. The reason is that the arms being affixed above the shoulder level, the person would not be able to exhale very well, if at all. This lead to extreme CO2 buildup in the bloodstream, which eventually numbed the body's senses enough that the pain of the nails subsided. At this point, the victim could push up enough on his legs (also attached by a nail - no platform for the feet like you see in the movies) and pull a bit with his hands to take a breath or two. Of course, this depleted the CO2 in the bloodstream and caused the pain to come back, all the more because of the pressure exerted on the three nail wounds.
A healthy person could survive for a day or two carrying on like this. Frequently, the Romans would break the victim's legs to keep them from pushing up and breathing; this was called crucifracture. The victim then suffocated sooner.
as far as being crucified upside down, I didn't think that the Romans did it that way, though tradition has it that Peter was crucified upside down on request because he did not feel himself worthy to die in the same way that Christ did. Andrew, Peter's brother, asked to be crucified diagonally (thus St. Andrew's cross) for the same reason.
 
dilloduck said:
Doesn't really matter to me-----don't have a dog in this hunt---i guess you could take it all the way and say Christians should thank the Jews because he had to be dead before he could resurrect ?

Never quite thought of that.
 
gop_jeff said:
as far as being crucified upside down, I didn't think that the Romans did it that way, though tradition has it that Peter was crucified upside down on request because he did not feel himself worthy to die in the same way that Christ did. Andrew, Peter's brother, asked to be crucified diagonally (thus St. Andrew's cross) for the same reason.

Okay, that's probably what I heard then. Sorry for the silly sidetrack!
 
freeandfun1 said:
He was a MAN carried by faith, love and a MISSION.

I'm sure what you are trying to imply that I was implying. I NEVER said or implied he was "superhuman".

My point was that he was not just ANY man. He had to suffer and die for OUR sins as that was the deal GOD made with US. So, as I said, he was not just any ONE as in not just ANY man!

Get it?

There's no need to get terse or huffy here free, and you don't need to lecture me on who Jesus was either. I've read the Bible in it's entirety twice through.

What I had said in my post that you commented on was that "any human" would NOT have been able to take that kind of torture and not pass out or die. Jesus was a "human". Not just ANY man, granted, he was Jesus, but a MAN none the less, and that's what I was talking about.

Get that.
 
Purely from a reasonable stand point, I don't think ANYONE could have endured that without passing out, or outright dying. It was far fetched I think.

That is what you said. So I stand by my replies. You said it was far fetched, if you have read the Bible like you claim, it was portayed exactly as described.

Furthermore, you keep trying to lump Jesus into just being a "man" like all of us. He was a man, but he was different. My point about his mission, is that many times, men or women have taken extreme punishment to their bodies and still lived because of the love of their children, wife, whatever the case may be. Jesus survived as long as he did because of his love for mankind and that was the deal that he and God made with man. Jesus would suffer an exhorbinant amount of suffering so that we won't have to. Believe it or not as that is your choice. But don't you think that if he had just been taken out back and beheaded, that there would have been no suffering and therefore, he would not have truly suffered for us? Isn't his suffering for us the main point of the story of his life and crucifiction?

Furthermore, Jesus was NOT just a man and his resurrection proves that in a manner, he is/was "superhuman".
 
freeandfun1 said:
That is what you said. So I stand by my replies. You said it was far fetched, if you have read the Bible like you claim, it was portayed exactly as described.

Furthermore, you keep trying to lump Jesus into just being a "man" like all of us. He was a man, but he was different. My point about his mission, is that many times, men or women have taken extreme punishment to their bodies and still lived because of the love of their children, wife, whatever the case may be. Jesus survived as long as he did because of his love for mankind and that was the deal that he and God made with man. Jesus would suffer an exhorbinant amount of suffering so that we won't have to. Believe it or not as that is your choice. But don't you think that if he had just been taken out back and beheaded, that there would have been no suffering and therefore, he would not have truly suffered for us? Isn't his suffering for us the main point of the story of his life and crucifiction?

Furthermore, Jesus was NOT just a man and his resurrection proves that in a manner, he is/was "superhuman".

Well, I don't recall reading in the Bible about Jesus being tortured to the degree the movie portrayed. But I guess I'll agree that someone could survive torture a little longer because of their faith. And yes, his suffering and dying for the sins of man was the point.

But I still disagree that he was "superhuman". Jesus was a man just like you and I. It was the power of "GOD" that ressurected Jesus, not Jesus himself.
 
I gotta side with Pale Rider on this one (and after i just got done arguing with him in the gay thread! Irony!).

I think Pale Rider was making a judgement more on the movie's depiction than on what actually happened. The Bible has very little on the details of Jesus' suffering, and Gibson himself has said he took most of the film from the writings of a nun who, I guess, researched it a lot or something (and was later committed to an institution, but nevermind that).

I agree with Pale Rider that the movie went overboard with the torture, and there's no way any man could take all that pain. Like it or not, the point of the movie is to make the viewer feel as sorry for Jesus as possible, and it does that by showing him get tortured for 2 1/2 hours. Do I think that's how it really happened? Definitely not, which is one of my issues with the movie. It's preaching through guilt.

And isn't saying Jesus was "superhuman" kind of negating his entire purpose of existence? If he is superhuman, then how does his death save us, when we're just regular humans? Sure, God worked through him in ways that he probably never will with anyone else, but at the end of the day, he was just a human, and like most humans, he probably wouldn't have been able to march for miles after his internal organs had been exposed.
 
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Pale Rider said:
Well, I don't recall reading in the Bible about Jesus being tortured to the degree the movie portrayed. But I guess I'll agree that someone could survive torture a little longer because of their faith. And yes, his suffering and dying for the sins of man was the point.

But I still disagree that he was "superhuman". Jesus was a man just like you and I. It was the power of "GOD" that ressurected Jesus, not Jesus himself.

Jesus was not superhuman, but he was divine, and the point of his horrific suffering was to pay penance for all sins past present and future thus the punishment had to fit. I know it's hard for many people to come to grips with this because it goes against the nature of compassion of most people. Jesus, The father, and the Holy Spirit are one entity making up the holy trinity, this is something that most biblical scholars have had trouble making christians understand because ti doesn't make a whole lot of sense to us. Jesus could have called legions of angels to stop the whole thing, and yes the human side of him wanted to do that at the last minute, but he knew it was the way it had to be. The other part of him that was devine had the strength to endure suffering that no other man or woman on this earth could have endured. If you ever want to read a book that explains the whole thing there is a book written by Catherine Anne Emerich called the Passion who lived and died with the stigmata, she saw the whole thing in visions and gives details to someone (an atheist) who spent years with her writing it down. She is being considered by the church for sainthood. I don't know how far your interest goes with this subject, but it can be found easily enough if you are. It is one of the books Gibson based his accounting on in addition to the Bible.

I will never understand the anger that comes from both non believers and believers alike at the brutality portrayed in the movie? It is hard to watch but the point is to make his suffering more real to people so that their faith would have more meaning..........It certainly is not faith by guilt.
 

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