Crucifixion is an excruciating, hideous and humiliating way to die, reserved in the Roman Empire for the lowest – certainly not for citizens.
Historian Tom Holland brutally describes at length this death by asphyxiation and exhaustion in unspeakable pain in his magnum opus Dominion.
A reenactment of the last days of Jesus Christ in Lima, Peru.Credit: AP
“To be hung naked, long in agony, swelling with ugly weals on shoulders and chest, helpless to beat
away the clamorous birds: such a fate, Roman intellectuals agreed, was the worst imaginable,” he
writes.
Familiarity with the cross as a Christian symbol has desensitised us to its horror. In the same way, it is hard today to imagine what shock and repulsion the Christian Gospel brought to its early hearers.
It is utterly counter-intuitive. How is it conceivable that the Lord God Almighty took human form as a messy, helpless infant, lived a life of hard-working poverty in a far-flung and unimportant part of the Roman Empire, then sacrificed himself to this agonising death – all that billions might live?
There are hints of this salvation to come all through the Old Testament, in particular the suffering servant of Isaiah chapter 53, written centuries before the event. It describes the man of pain and sorrow who is crushed for our wrongdoing, which he bears himself, and says by his wounds we are healed.
The rest, as they say, is history: Christianity triumphed. Holland says: “The faith is at once the most enduring legacy of classical antiquity, and the index of its utter transformation.”
Sociologist Rodney Stark wrote that the Roman Empire – that is, after the fall of the republic – gave the world only two important legacies: concrete and Christianity.
Today, nearly 2000 years after Jesus died on the cross (a fact nearly universally accepted by
historians) and rose on Easter Day (a matter of faith), more than three in 10 people on the planet
identify as Christian, and 84 per cent are religious – evidence that we bear a God-consciousness.
Girls dressed as angels smile during Easter Sunday rites in the Philippines in 2023.Credit: AP
Of course, many people do not accept the biblical claims. As an adult convert, I point to three facts
independent of the Bible that I found compelling.
First is the way the defeated and terrified band of disciples who gathered after Jesus’ death suddenly regained the confidence to defy the authorities and take the message to the world. All but one died as martyrs – yet few people die for what they know is a lie.
Second is the astounding spread of this counter-intuitive faith to become the world’s biggest religion.
Third, and most important, is its internal philosophical coherence.
The only real hurdle is the first one: belief in an eternal God who is involved with his creation. That
surmounted, the rest can follow quite naturally.
Barney Zwartz is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Public Christianity
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