CRUCIFIXION – a quick history

Crucifixion, contrary to what many people think, was not original to the Romans. They just made it vastly more popular, or unpopular, might be a better way to put it.

Historians are not sure who invented crucifixion. It is perhaps derived from the ancient Assyrian practice of impalement where criminals or captured enemies were pierced through the body by upright rods and left to die.

Crucifixion is first mentioned among the Persians. About 519 BC "Darius I, king of Persia, crucified 3,000 political opponents in Babylon."   

 It was later employed by the Greeks, especially Alexander the Great. In 332 BC Alexander had 2,000 survivors from the siege of Tyre crucified  along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

The Romans picked up the practice and used it as a punishment for slaves and non-citizens, or sometimes for citizens, but only if they had committed treason.

During the times of Caligula, who was Roman emperor from AD 37-41, Jews were tortured and crucified in the amphitheater to entertain the inhabitants of Alexandria.

Crucifixion was unheard of among the Jews during Old Testament times--and the Jews themselves never practiced it, although in the Old Testament the corpses of blasphemers or idolaters punished by stoning might be hanged "on a tree" as further humiliation (Deut. 21:23). Crucifixion was not introduced into Palestine until Hellenistic times.

www.theshorterword.com   --website of author Laurie J. White

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