Crucifixion

In the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross

Martin Hengel, John Bowden, John Bowden

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 1977
• Print ISBN:
  9780800612689
• eBook ISBN:
  9781451414196
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

In a comprehensive and detailed survey on its remarkably widespread employment in the Roman empire, Dr. Hengel examines the way in which "the most vile death of the cross" was regarded in the Greek-speaking world and particularly in Roman-occupied Palestine.

His conclusions bring out more starkly than ever the offensiveness of the Christian message: Jesus not only died an unspeakably cruel death, he underwent the most contemptible abasement that could be imagined. So repugnant was the gruesome reality, that a natural tendency prevails to blunt, remove, or deomesticate its scandalous impact. Yet any discussion of a "theology of the cross" must be preceded by adequate comprehension of both the nature and extent of this scandal.

1

The ‘Folly’ of the Crucified Son of God

In I Corinthians 1.18 Paul says that in the eyes of ‘those who are perishing’, the ‘word of the cross’ is ‘folly’. He goes on to emphasize the point further in v.23 by saying that the crucified Christ is a ‘stumbling-block’ for the Jews and ‘folly’ for the Gentiles. The Greek word μωρία which he uses here does not denote either a purely intellectual defect nor a lack of transcendental wisdom. Something more is involved. Justin puts us on the right track when he describes the offence caused by the Christian message to the ancient world as madness (μανία), and sees the basis for this objection in Christian belief in the divine status of the crucified Jesus and his significance for salvation:

They say that our madness consists in the fact that we put a crucified man in second place after the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of the world (Apology 1 ,13.4).

Justin later concedes that demons have caused stories to be told about miraculous powers of the ‘sons of Zeus’ and of their ascensions to heaven, ‘but in no case . . . is there any imitation of the crucifixion’ (55.1).¹ It is the crucifixion that distinguishes the new message from the mythologies of all other peoples.

The ‘folly’ and ‘madness’ of the crucifixion can be illustrated from the earliest pagan judgment on Christians. The younger Pliny, who calls the new sect a form of amentia (Epistulae 10.96.4–8), had heard from apostate Christians that Christians sang hymns to their Lord ‘as to a god’ (quasi deo), and went on to examine two slave girls under torture. Of course the result was disappointing:

I discovered nothing but a perverse and extravagant superstition.

(nihil aliud invent quam superstitionem pravam immodicam.)

It must have been particularly offensive for a Roman governor that the one who was honoured ‘as a god’ (quasi deo carmen dicere) had been nailed to the cross by the Roman authorities as a state criminal.² His friend Tacitus speaks no less harshly of a ‘pernicious superstition’ (exitiabilis superstitio) and knows of the shameful fate of the founder:

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of the procurator Pontius Pilate.

(auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat.)

The ‘evil’ (malum) which he instigated spread all too quickly to Rome, ‘where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world meet and become popular’ (quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque, Annals 15.44.3). Tacitus’ precise knowledge of Christians and his contempt for them are probably to be derived from the trials of Christians which he carried out when he was governor in the province of Asia.³

In his dialogue Octavius, Minucius Felix begins by putting on the lips of his pagan interlocutor Caecilius a pointed piece of anti-Christian polemic, part of which goes back to a work by the famous orator Cornelius Fronto, who lived at the time of Marcus Aurelius. According to Caecilius, Christians put forward ‘sick delusions’ (figmenta male sanae opinionis, 11.9), a ‘senseless and crazy superstition’ (vana et demens superstitio, 9.2) which leads to an ‘old-womanly superstition’ (anilis superstitio) or to the destruction of all true religion (omnis religio destruatur, 13.5). Not least among the monstrosities of their faith is the fact that they worship one who has been crucified:

To say that their ceremonies centre on a man put to death for his crime and on the fatal wood of the cross (hominem summo supplicio pro facinore punitum et crucis ligna feralia) is to assign to these abandoned wretches sanctuaries which are appropriate to them (congruentia perditis sceleratisque tribuit altaria) and the kind of worship they deserve (9.4).

The Christian Octavius does not find it easy to shake off this last charge. His answer makes it clear that the death of Jesus on the cross was inevitably folly and scandal even for the early Christians. Their pagan opponents quite unjustly assert that Christians worship ‘a criminal and his cross’ (hominem noxium et crucem eius, 29.2). No criminal, indeed no earthly being whatsoever deserves to be regarded as a god. On the other hand, Octavius does not go any further into the person of Jesus and his fate; instead he deals at some length with the charge of worshipping the cross.

Moreover, we do not reverence the cross, nor do we worship it. But you, who hold your wooden gods (ligneos deos) to be holy, also worship wooden crosses, as parts of your divine images. For what are the military emblems, the banners and standards in your camps, if not gilded and decorated crosses? Not only is the form of your signs of victory like the structure of the cross; it even recalls a man fastened to it (29.6f.).

Indeed, are they not aware that such a ‘wooden god’ might perhaps have been part of a funeral pile or a gallows-tree (i.e. a cross: rogi . . . vel infelicis stipitis portio, 24.6)? Octavius cannot deny the shamefulness of the cross and therefore he is deliberately silent about the death of Jesus. He seeks to ward off any attack by going over to the counter-attack – making use of the argument that divine effigies are contemptible, an argument which was already well tried in Jewish apologetic: you are the ones who worship crosses and divine effigies, which in some circumstances have a shameful origin. He avoids the real problem, namely that the Son of God died a criminal’s death on the tree of shame. This was not appropriate for a form of argument which was concerned to prove that the one God of the Christians was identical with the God of the philosophers. Octavius’ evasion of the point indicates the dilemma which all too easily led educated Christians into docetism.

Augustine has preserved for us an oracle of Apollo recorded by Porphyry, given in answer to a man’s question what he can do to dissuade his wife from Christian belief. The god holds out little hope:

Let her continue as she pleases, persisting in her vain delusions, and lamenting in song a god who died in delusions, who was condemned by ...

Table of contents

• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Mors turpissima crucis
• 1. The ‘folly’ of the crucified Son of God
• 2. Prometheus and Dionysus: the ‘crucified’ and the ‘crucifying’ God
• 3. Docetism as a way of removing the ‘folly’ of the cross
• 4. Crucifixion as a ‘barbaric’ form of execution of the utmost cruelty
• 5. Crucifixion as the supreme Roman penalty
• 6. Crucifixion and Roman citizens
• 7. Crucifixion as a penalty for rebellious foreigners, violent criminals and robbers
• 8. The ‘slaves’ punishment’
• 9. The crucified national martyr and metaphorical and philosophical terminology
• 10. Crucifixion in the Greek-speaking world
• 11. Crucifixion among the Jews
• 12. Summary
• Bibliography