Title:
Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World
Series: Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 327
Author: John Granger Cook
Bibliographic info: xxiv + 536 pp. = 560 pages in all.
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck, 2014.
Buy the book at your local bookseller.
Also available Abebooks, Barnes and Noble, the Publisher, or Amazon.com.
Also available Abebooks, Barnes and Noble, the Publisher, or Amazon.com.
Another cognitive failure relevant to religious belief [and to conventional wisdom] is the so-called confirmation bias, a psychological tendency to seek confirmations rather than disconfirmation of any hypothesis we’ve adopted however tentatively. People notice more readily and search more diligently for whatever confirms their beliefs, and they don’t notice or readily and certainly don’t look as hard for what disconfirms them.... Francis Bacon was aware of this bias in the seventeenth century when he wrote, “The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion…draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number of weight and instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises.”- John Allen Paulos, Irreligion. New York, Hill and Wang, 2008, pp. 108-9
John Granger Cook has written an immense volume on how the Romans suspended people, reviewed a little more than a year ago at various places, like here. The tome appears to be an exhaustive work on the Roman practice and Dr. Cook has done a great deal of research, and mind you, careful research, too. I've gone through the first one hundred pages of the text proper so far and for the most part it's very excellent.
This work by Professor Cook was preceded by two recent volumes on the same subject: David W. Chapman’s Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion, which is an exhaustive analysis of how the Jews around the time of the ancient Roman Empire viewed the Roman penalty; followed by Gunnar Samuelsson’s Crucifixion in Antiquity, an in-depth minimalist study of the Greek and Latin verbiage used for crucifixion (and to a lesser extent, the Hebrew and Aramaic) to determine the semantics of the words employed for suspension on wood. An earlier work, of which this one was originally meant to be a revamp thereof, at Martin Hengel’s request, was his – for better or for worse -- era-defining survey, titled Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross. But Cook’s book is no mere survey: it is an almost-encyclopaedic study of nearly all the writings, epigraphs and archaeological evidence documenting Roman crucifixion – which deviates in every way from the modern common understanding of the penalty, which is: nail to a cross, or tropaeum.
In the introduction, pp. 1-50, Prof. Cook sets out his assumptions and parameters (and perimeters) of the study with an analysis of most of the Greek and Latin terms for crucifixion and a survey of imperial murders under Gaius “Caligula” Caesar. He admits that the Greek terms can be ambiguous at times but he claims the Latin terms are more precise and that impalement, rare in explicit mention in the Latin texts, is to be excluded if the context of the suspension-upon-wood indicated a long death struggle, since impalement allegedly results in a quick death.
In Chapter One, pp. 51-158, Prof. Cook then runs through a long list, consisting of fifty-nine authors, of almost all the mentions of crucifixion in the Latin texts. These authors appear in chronological order without regard to the type of vocation each author had: whether historian, playwright, satirist, philosopher, rhaetor, etc. Each mention is looked at to determine if the executionary suspension is a crucifixion, an impalement, or a suspension of some other kind. Needless to say, he determines all the mentions except two to be describing crucifixions, whether actual or fictitious.
In Chapter Two, pp. 159-217, Prof. Cook deals with the occurrences of this sort of death from the time of the Second Punic War to the imperium of Maximinus Daia, who drowned and was defeated at the Milvan Bridge in 312 CE by the Emperor Constantine. Although this chapter has forty subdivisions, indicated by time periods, major events, geographical areas, topics such as armed criminality and the like, covering individual suspensions and suspensions en masse, the number of pages devoted to each are very few, usually one or two, indicating that the number of recorded occurrences is astonishing low. For example, there is not one example of suspension-on-wood in Transalpine Gaul (modern-day France) or Celtic Britain (the UK) in retaliation to known uprisings there, nor is there any mention of such in Palestine, outside of the works of Flavius Josephus.
In Chapter Three, pp. 218-310, Prof. Cook examines the ancient Greek writers’ recordings of the various forms of executionary suspension-on-wood and the verbiage therein. Although, as he admits, the Greek meanings of the terms are quite ambiguous, yet he had found in many instances clear and unambiguous depictions of the Roman method that was typical for the time. Now this chapter is much better organized than Chapter One. Cook has arranged this chapter into several sections: first Historians (plus others who wrote historical or current events’ accounts) during the Roman Republic, then the Historians, etc. during the Empire, followed by Romance Novelists, Rhetors, Philosophers, non-Jewish Critics of Christianity, Astrologers, Dream Interpreters and Physicians, capped off with the Byzantines’ understanding of (I presume) various forms of.
Chapter Four, pp. 311-357, is a look at the subject matter from the viewpoint of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic texts. Prof. Cook includes with his analysis of twenty-seven or so Jewish texts a discussion of ancient Near East impalements, Muslim crucifixions and other penal suspensions. Although the Tanakh contains not one reference to any Roman crucifixions but the Septuagint might – most likely in the later-translated books, such as Esther. Later Hebrew and Aramaic texts certainly do contain references thereto and various Rabbinical texts, like a few from the Mishnah and the Talmud, deal with the issues surrounding the Roman penalty.
In Chapter Five, pp. 358-416, Prof. Cook looks crucifixion in the at the perspective of the legal codes and their historical development. This is the part of the book where one would expect to see a discussion of when the penalty was adopted and how it evolved. New Testament scholars, Christian apologists and others often claim that Rome adopted it from Carthage in the latter quarter of the III C. BCE and developed the stake or frame into a brutal killing machine whereupon the suspended person literally tortured himself to death, involuntarily. Prof. Cook notes that the last such suspension-on-wood occurred in 335 CE, two years before Constantine did away with the penalty as a sort of going-away present to the Imperial Christian Church (established in 325 CE at the Council of Nicaea by the self-same emperor), which for its own purposes probably already had mutated the crux (T-pole, torture-stake) into a CROSS, or tropaeum.
In Chapter Six, pp. 417-449, Prof. Cook looks at the New Testament writers dealt with Roman crucifixion, and makes his own determinations on how it was practiced and why it was such a vile, shameful death. (Hint: the suspended person “sat” on a “peg.”) He then discusses the possible medical causes of death by this sort of suspension, only to conclude in the end that the suspended persons “died from ‘different physiological causes’” (p. 435), depending on how each person was suspended. He finishes off the chapter by developing a theologia crucis for the gospel of Mark. He also makes an astonishing claim that Jesus’ dereliction cry does not invoke the whole of the 22nd Psalm, stating that “Attempts to insert the entire psalm into Mark 15:34 fundamentally ignores the brutality of Roman crucifixion” (p. 445). This would be news to the early “Church Fathers” who literally mined the psalm for “prophecies” of Jesus’ execution. Unfortunately for us who do not share the Christian faith, this whole chapter is so much ado about nothing, and would have been best developed as its own separate book.
Prof. Cook wraps up the work with a brief, two-page conclusion, presenting his findings or confirmations, including such that the Greek verbs σταυρόω and ἀνασταυρόω probably do not refer to impalement of a live person or a corpse, but to crucifixion instead; that the Persians invented crucifixion; that the Greeks performed a similar suspension or exposure on wood, and that the Romans developed a brutal form of crucifixion starting with the Second Punic War and kept it until Constantine replaced it with the furca (fork) in 337 CE.
The volume is made complete by eleven pages of images, a nineteen page bibliography, divided into sections for ancient sources, present-day databases/CD-Roms/websites, and modern works of scholarship; a twenty-seven page sources index, divided by type; an index of images; and indices of ancient writers and other persons, modern authors, and subject matters.
At $210 a copy for the hardcover and $80 for the paperback, this book is not meant for the general public, but rather for the serious scholar, whether credentialed or of the armchair variety (with means, of course). It gets very, very technical, given the subject matter involved and the objective of the writer. Each page is literally stuffed with footnotes, themselves frequently stuffed with references, with the notes often taking up more than half the page.
New Testament scholars will probably lap this book up; but on the other hand, Classicists and scholars of Ancient History should pursue it more critically, keeping a keen eye on the meanings of the original Latin, Greek, Hebrew, etc., and keep at their side a copy of David W. Chapman’s volume and Gunnar Samuelsson’s work for cross-checking – for despite his caution that Roman crucifixion probably did not conform to the modern common concept of crucifixion (p. 448), he often, and apparently carelessly and uncritically, translate a suspension account in the original language as “crucifixion.” A lay reader or unknowledgeable scholar reading this book would certainly be justified in assuming that the Romans, the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Jews in their own private kingdom, and the Persians crucified people by nailing them to a cross, or tropaeum. And certainly by that crabbed modern definition held by probably most of the laity and even perhaps most of the clergy, Prof. Cook unwittingly acknowledges that in all likelihood, the Romans never crucified.
This work by Professor Cook was preceded by two recent volumes on the same subject: David W. Chapman’s Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion, which is an exhaustive analysis of how the Jews around the time of the ancient Roman Empire viewed the Roman penalty; followed by Gunnar Samuelsson’s Crucifixion in Antiquity, an in-depth minimalist study of the Greek and Latin verbiage used for crucifixion (and to a lesser extent, the Hebrew and Aramaic) to determine the semantics of the words employed for suspension on wood. An earlier work, of which this one was originally meant to be a revamp thereof, at Martin Hengel’s request, was his – for better or for worse -- era-defining survey, titled Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross. But Cook’s book is no mere survey: it is an almost-encyclopaedic study of nearly all the writings, epigraphs and archaeological evidence documenting Roman crucifixion – which deviates in every way from the modern common understanding of the penalty, which is: nail to a cross, or tropaeum.
In the introduction, pp. 1-50, Prof. Cook sets out his assumptions and parameters (and perimeters) of the study with an analysis of most of the Greek and Latin terms for crucifixion and a survey of imperial murders under Gaius “Caligula” Caesar. He admits that the Greek terms can be ambiguous at times but he claims the Latin terms are more precise and that impalement, rare in explicit mention in the Latin texts, is to be excluded if the context of the suspension-upon-wood indicated a long death struggle, since impalement allegedly results in a quick death.
In Chapter One, pp. 51-158, Prof. Cook then runs through a long list, consisting of fifty-nine authors, of almost all the mentions of crucifixion in the Latin texts. These authors appear in chronological order without regard to the type of vocation each author had: whether historian, playwright, satirist, philosopher, rhaetor, etc. Each mention is looked at to determine if the executionary suspension is a crucifixion, an impalement, or a suspension of some other kind. Needless to say, he determines all the mentions except two to be describing crucifixions, whether actual or fictitious.
In Chapter Two, pp. 159-217, Prof. Cook deals with the occurrences of this sort of death from the time of the Second Punic War to the imperium of Maximinus Daia, who drowned and was defeated at the Milvan Bridge in 312 CE by the Emperor Constantine. Although this chapter has forty subdivisions, indicated by time periods, major events, geographical areas, topics such as armed criminality and the like, covering individual suspensions and suspensions en masse, the number of pages devoted to each are very few, usually one or two, indicating that the number of recorded occurrences is astonishing low. For example, there is not one example of suspension-on-wood in Transalpine Gaul (modern-day France) or Celtic Britain (the UK) in retaliation to known uprisings there, nor is there any mention of such in Palestine, outside of the works of Flavius Josephus.
In Chapter Three, pp. 218-310, Prof. Cook examines the ancient Greek writers’ recordings of the various forms of executionary suspension-on-wood and the verbiage therein. Although, as he admits, the Greek meanings of the terms are quite ambiguous, yet he had found in many instances clear and unambiguous depictions of the Roman method that was typical for the time. Now this chapter is much better organized than Chapter One. Cook has arranged this chapter into several sections: first Historians (plus others who wrote historical or current events’ accounts) during the Roman Republic, then the Historians, etc. during the Empire, followed by Romance Novelists, Rhetors, Philosophers, non-Jewish Critics of Christianity, Astrologers, Dream Interpreters and Physicians, capped off with the Byzantines’ understanding of (I presume) various forms of.
Chapter Four, pp. 311-357, is a look at the subject matter from the viewpoint of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic texts. Prof. Cook includes with his analysis of twenty-seven or so Jewish texts a discussion of ancient Near East impalements, Muslim crucifixions and other penal suspensions. Although the Tanakh contains not one reference to any Roman crucifixions but the Septuagint might – most likely in the later-translated books, such as Esther. Later Hebrew and Aramaic texts certainly do contain references thereto and various Rabbinical texts, like a few from the Mishnah and the Talmud, deal with the issues surrounding the Roman penalty.
In Chapter Five, pp. 358-416, Prof. Cook looks crucifixion in the at the perspective of the legal codes and their historical development. This is the part of the book where one would expect to see a discussion of when the penalty was adopted and how it evolved. New Testament scholars, Christian apologists and others often claim that Rome adopted it from Carthage in the latter quarter of the III C. BCE and developed the stake or frame into a brutal killing machine whereupon the suspended person literally tortured himself to death, involuntarily. Prof. Cook notes that the last such suspension-on-wood occurred in 335 CE, two years before Constantine did away with the penalty as a sort of going-away present to the Imperial Christian Church (established in 325 CE at the Council of Nicaea by the self-same emperor), which for its own purposes probably already had mutated the crux (T-pole, torture-stake) into a CROSS, or tropaeum.
In Chapter Six, pp. 417-449, Prof. Cook looks at the New Testament writers dealt with Roman crucifixion, and makes his own determinations on how it was practiced and why it was such a vile, shameful death. (Hint: the suspended person “sat” on a “peg.”) He then discusses the possible medical causes of death by this sort of suspension, only to conclude in the end that the suspended persons “died from ‘different physiological causes’” (p. 435), depending on how each person was suspended. He finishes off the chapter by developing a theologia crucis for the gospel of Mark. He also makes an astonishing claim that Jesus’ dereliction cry does not invoke the whole of the 22nd Psalm, stating that “Attempts to insert the entire psalm into Mark 15:34 fundamentally ignores the brutality of Roman crucifixion” (p. 445). This would be news to the early “Church Fathers” who literally mined the psalm for “prophecies” of Jesus’ execution. Unfortunately for us who do not share the Christian faith, this whole chapter is so much ado about nothing, and would have been best developed as its own separate book.
Prof. Cook wraps up the work with a brief, two-page conclusion, presenting his findings or confirmations, including such that the Greek verbs σταυρόω and ἀνασταυρόω probably do not refer to impalement of a live person or a corpse, but to crucifixion instead; that the Persians invented crucifixion; that the Greeks performed a similar suspension or exposure on wood, and that the Romans developed a brutal form of crucifixion starting with the Second Punic War and kept it until Constantine replaced it with the furca (fork) in 337 CE.
The volume is made complete by eleven pages of images, a nineteen page bibliography, divided into sections for ancient sources, present-day databases/CD-Roms/websites, and modern works of scholarship; a twenty-seven page sources index, divided by type; an index of images; and indices of ancient writers and other persons, modern authors, and subject matters.
At $210 a copy for the hardcover and $80 for the paperback, this book is not meant for the general public, but rather for the serious scholar, whether credentialed or of the armchair variety (with means, of course). It gets very, very technical, given the subject matter involved and the objective of the writer. Each page is literally stuffed with footnotes, themselves frequently stuffed with references, with the notes often taking up more than half the page.
New Testament scholars will probably lap this book up; but on the other hand, Classicists and scholars of Ancient History should pursue it more critically, keeping a keen eye on the meanings of the original Latin, Greek, Hebrew, etc., and keep at their side a copy of David W. Chapman’s volume and Gunnar Samuelsson’s work for cross-checking – for despite his caution that Roman crucifixion probably did not conform to the modern common concept of crucifixion (p. 448), he often, and apparently carelessly and uncritically, translate a suspension account in the original language as “crucifixion.” A lay reader or unknowledgeable scholar reading this book would certainly be justified in assuming that the Romans, the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Jews in their own private kingdom, and the Persians crucified people by nailing them to a cross, or tropaeum. And certainly by that crabbed modern definition held by probably most of the laity and even perhaps most of the clergy, Prof. Cook unwittingly acknowledges that in all likelihood, the Romans never crucified.
Yet I already have a few beefs with it. First, the Latin crux and the Greek σταυρός certainly do mean, which Dr. Cook disputes, "a pole in the broadest sense" -- Gunnar Samuelsson's words, not mine. My previous post, Crux Utilitatis, demonstrates that they do mean exactly that. Second, the Romans probably never or hardly ever used crosses (two timber beams inlaid into each other); more likely they usually pushed up or hoisted people onto poles using lifting-beams (i.e., patibula) instead, and other times they nailed the lifting-beam with the person on it onto the pole and tilted the macabre assembly up. Third, that the Romans never impaled people when they "crucified" them -- two graffiti and some of the ancient writings give lie to that!
Well this is my first installment of my review, I'll be updating this post with a description of the book and then follow up with my musings on it as time progresses.
A call-out of appreciation goes out to Messrs. Jim West of the Quartz Hill Theological Seminary, Charles L. Quarles of the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and “Diglot” of Diglotting.com, without whose reviews I would have found it very impossible to complete this post. Also my thanks go out to Mohr Siebeck and GoogleBooks for their preview copy of this book,
Well this is the revised and updated first installment of my review, I am going to go into a more in-depth review of the separate chapters in separate posts to follow as time and money permit; for at the prices above-noted, this book is extremely expensive and for me, downright unaffordable.
Well this is the revised and updated first installment of my review, I am going to go into a more in-depth review of the separate chapters in separate posts to follow as time and money permit; for at the prices above-noted, this book is extremely expensive and for me, downright unaffordable.
- Edward Miessner
