The Crucifixion

The story of the Crucifixion of Jesus is probably one of the most powerful tales in the Bible. In fact, it could be said that the Crucifixion is the most important story in all of Christianity. It gave them a Hero, one who gave his life so they may have salvation in another life. That’s pretty much standard dogma right there.

Jesus was flogged by Roman soldiers, nailed to the cross, and upon his death was buried in a tomb. That’s the gist of it anyways, but something about this story doesn’t make sense. It’s not that it couldn’t have happened, quite the contrary. Almost all cultures crucified people in some way, and it definitely predates the Roman Empire. They did it in Japan up until the 17th century for Christ’s sake (Haha)! To really delve into this topic, we need to learn more about this form of capital punishment itself.

The victims of crucifixion usually fell into three categories: slaves, pirates, and enemies of the state. It was a shameful and disgraceful way to die, and like many other forms of capital punishment (like burning at the stake) it was a way to send a message to a large number of people at once. Its goal was to mutilate and dishonor the body of the criminal, as well as to showcase the criminal’s low social status. Usually Roman nobles were exempt from crucifixion, for that very reason.

Most often, the criminals were beaten (flogged) before they were put up onto the cross. In fact, the process was so common that it’s no wonder Jesus was beaten on the way to his death. The fact that this is often brought up as a selling point for the concept of Jesus’ sacrifice is ludicrous, as it was done to all criminals. One of the most important things we have to remember here is that what happened to Jesus was not out of the ordinary.

The flogging was mostly just for shock value, being public, but it also had a physiological effect. It was used to bring the convict close to shock, so that he may die faster. After the person was beaten, he was forced to carry the crossbeam to the site of his crucifixion. Criminals were not made to carry the whole cross. Generally speaking, the tall beam was already in place, and only required that the crossbeam be added. The purpose of the carrying was to humiliate the beaten criminal.

Once the crossbeam was in place, the criminal was hung to the structure. Nails are often written about, but there is little archeological evidence to support this. This is due to the fact, I believe, to the symbolic importance of being nailed as opposed to being tied. Nevertheless, whether he was tied to the cross or nailed, the criminal was made to stay there until his death. He would always be nude, despite most depictions of victims having a loin cloth. A painful repercussion of this was that if the person had to use the restroom that was too bad, he had to do it in public.

Death usually came about by suffocation, depriving the body of the necessary oxygen that it needed. The lack of blood usually came from wounds that didn’t heal.

As soon as the person was dead, his body was left to hang for all to see. Vultures would eventually eat it, leaving very little behind. The Romans forbade burial, and so would leave the body up until it was gone. By the way, when I say forbade, I mean it.

So, that’s how crucifixion went down. Quite the process just to get rid of a lowly criminal, but it served its purpose. So, how does any of this involve Mr. Jesus?

The myths concerning his crucifixion do not line up perfectly with Roman practice. First off, it was very common for criminals to be beaten on the way. This is not something that the Romans did to Jesus because they really feared him; it was just how it went down. Secondly, there is little evidence to support the notion that people were nailed to crosses. It is most likely that Jesus would have been tied to the cross with rope and left to die. Lastly, the Romans did not bury crucifixion victims; they left them to rot on the beams. They would not, and I repeat, would not have allowed Jesus to have been buried in a tomb, or allowed anyone to take him to a tomb. The Romans would have treated him like any other criminal and left him there.

Some of the stories about the crucifixion from outside sources (other than the bible) come from the Jewish writer Titus Flavius Josephus (Yosef Ben Matiyahu in Hebrew). He mentioned nails, but once again there is very little evidence in the archaeological record to support this. Josephus is also used by apologists to prove the existence of the Christ, but I have not seen a secular scholar confirm the historicity of anything Josephus said. That fact ties in to my nail problem.

So you see, the story of Jesus’ crucifixion do not line up with what was common Roman practice in the Empire. This, to me, is just another one of the ways that the story behind Jesus himself is just that, a story.

Bible Science: Astronomy

Okay, by now we should all know that the Bible is full of crap. Despite what it is purported to be, it's full of inaccuracies, contradictions, and sometimes flat out bullshit. So, to continue deciphering what the Bible calls science, I would like to bring our attention to the field of Astronomy: the study of celestial objects (stars, planets, comets, etc.).

Genesis, Chapter 1, Verses 3-5:

"Then God said, 'Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness He called night."

Okay, so what's the point of bringing this passage up? This is what God did on the first day of Creation: he created light. Not only did he create light, but he separated it into night and day. That's an important first step.

So, let's go on a few more verses. This next passage comes from Genesis, Chapter 1, Verses 14-18.

"Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth'; and it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. And God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good."

That's a long one, but it essentially describes the creation of the Sun, the Moon, and the stars.

As a quick side note, I want to point out that God specifies that the "lights" in the sky are to be used for signs. Yes, there is astrology in the Bible. Of course, we know now that astrology is complete bullshit, but that's for another time.

You see, the problem with the Genesis account is simple: God created light before he created the Sun and the rest of the stars. He also calls the Moon a light, which of course it isn't.

Now, modern science (and in retrospect, which is always 20/20, common sense) has told us that the "light" and the stars are not separate: one is a byproduct of the other. Modern science/common sense also tells us that the Moon is not a light by itself, but rather it reflects the Sun's light, giving it that appearance. What kind of world is it where light exists independent of a chemical process to create it in the first place.

I know what kind of world it is: it's a mythological one, just like the one that is described in the Bible.

Science 3, Bible 0.

Bible Science: Paleontology

The opening verses of Genesis detail the creation of the universe, the earth, life, and man. Most importantly, the bible gives us some specifics as to the creatures that God created.

Hmmm, let's see. We have some lions, sheep, wolves, bears, cattle, dogs, insects, rodents, and even a few reptiles. Something seems missing . . .

How about the god damn dinosaurs! If they were all created at the same time, then why is there no mention of them at all in the Bible? Oh wait, here's why: there's no way that the Hebrews who wrote the book in the first place could have known about the dinosaurs, seeing as they lived millions of years before the first ape-like creatures had even contemplated existence.

But, surely the apologists have answers for me. Surely there must be some word that "could" have been interpreted as meaning "dinosaur". Well, it just so happens that they gave me a couple.

First off is the behemoth. The behemoth is first described in the Book of Job as being a huge, lumbering creature that "moves his tail like a cedar". It is also described as "first among the works of God" and impossible to capture, a possible reference to its size.

Most creationists believe that the behemoth was a sauropod, something like the Brachiosaurus. The fact that the tail moves like a cedar tree is believed to be a reference to a large tail, which negates the possibility that it was something like a hippopotamus, rhinoceros, or elephant.

In reality, the phrase "moves his tail like a cedar" most likely means one of two things:

1) A guy named Michael Bright, who is a senior producer with the BBC's natural history Unit and author of the book Beasts of the Field: The Revealing Natural History of Animals in the Bible, postulated that the writers of the Bible are not referring to the tail itself, but rather the hair on the tails of creatures like the hippo, rhino, or elephant. Like the leaves on a cedar tree, the hair on these animals is coarse and prickly.

2) The cedar tree simile may have actually been a euphemism for the animals penis. The phrase, with the euphemism substituted, may have read something like "his penis stiffens like a cedar". The cedar tree simile may have just been used to refer to the virility of something like a bull.

The behemoth is also described in Job 40 as having a naval. That would have made it a mammal, not a reptile.

The other is the leviathan, which is described as a water dwelling creature with characteristics similar to that of the "sea serpent" or the "dragon". The Hebrew word tanniyn is also used many times instead of leviathan, and they are assumed to be close to the same creature. Many creationists say that word tanniyn refers to the dinosaurs, as when it is translated into English it becomes "dragon", "serpent", or "sea monster". The Old Testament mentions the tanniyn about thirty times, and it says they lived on both land and sea.

Here's the problem with this one. The leviathan appears in the Ugaritic texts, which are very important for Old Testament scholars and their studies. The Ugaritic texts describe the leviathan as a twisting serpent with . . . seven heads. It's clearly not a dinosaur. It is meant to personify the waters of primeval chaos. Waters, if you've read Genesis, are very important symbols in the story of the creation. The earth was made by the separation of the waters; one went above the heavens, while the other stayed on the ground and became the oceans. You see, it's a metaphor. The rousing of the leviathan in Job 3:8 (remember the leviathan personifies the waters of primeval chaos) is meant to imply an undoing of the creation day.

Fantastic creatures like these, especially the leviathan and the behemoth, exist in the MYTHOLOGIES of most cultures not only in the mediterranean, but in the entire world. Unicorns, satyrs, dragons, cyclopes, harpies, centaurs, and a million other kinds of mythological animals exist in the stories of every other ancient culture. Why wouldn't the Hebrews have done the same?

The simple answer is that they would have. Of course the Hebrews meant it to be myth, seeing as there isn't any extra-biblical evidence for the existence of these creatures. What about the fact that dinosaurs specifically do not appear in any other mythology? It's such an odd thing to overlook, no matter how primitive you are.

We know now, thanks to advanced dating and fossil identification methods, that dinosaurs could not have lived during our short human existence. There is no way the Hebrews could have known about them.

Science 2, Bible 0.

Bible Science: The Sky

"The Bible has always been way ahead of scientists."

I swear to god I actually heard that on a creationist "documentary". The Bible, supposedly written sometime between 3,440 years ago and 1,860 years ago, somehow comes out ahead of modern science when compared. Let's take a look at some of that science. What observation does the Bible make about, oh, let's say . . . the sky!

Here's our first piece of Bible science. It comes from Genesis 1:6-8 :

"Then God said, 'Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters'. And God made the expanse, and separated the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so. And God called the expanse heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day."

Let's keep going. This time, from II Peter 3:3-7 :

"Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, 'Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation'. For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water."

Last one. From Psalms 148:4

"Praise Him, highest heavens, and the waters that are above the heavens!"

You see what is being discussed here? Waters in the sky? It seems as if the Bible is claiming that the sky is a separate body of water from those on the ground, and that the earth is simply the space between them. I bet this was also a good explanation for why the sky is blue. That color would make sense if sky was composed of water, at least to someone living 3,000 years ago it would have. I know a lot of modern Christians have abandoned the literal interpretation of Genesis, and I'm sure the other claims that occur later in the book get lumped into that, but what about those pesky creationists? I've heard this claim many times before, that pre-flood the earth was surrounded by water. I've also seen a lot of creationists cite those very passages when defending the literal interpretation. Most notably the infamous Kent Hovind, who takes that claim a step further. He asserts that it was ice that covered the earth. Great, another genius. He's also got that weird thing where there was a -300°C comet that created the ice caps, along with the rings around Saturn and Neptune. This gigantic comet did not destroy the earth for some reason though. The massive amount of energy that would have been released from such an impact would surely have decimated life on this planet.

Of course, actual science has given us a pretty good answer for why the sky is blue. It's a principle called Rayleigh Scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, the longer wavelengths - your reds, oranges, and yellows - pass straight through the gas molecules but bounce off of other particles. On the other hand blue (which is a shorter wavelength), gets absorbed by the gas molecules; this is where the scattering comes in. The blue wavelength is then radiated in all different directions by those gas molecules. The sky appears blue because your eyes pick up that scattered blue wavelength. As you look closer to the horizon though, the sky appears to be a little whiter. This is due to the mixing of the radiated blue wavelengths with the longer wavelengths that just bounced off of the bigger particles in the atmosphere. You get white light again.

The Bible is by no means ahead of modern science. It literally just claimed that the sky is water, and that it is blue because of the water. Thanks to modern science, we no longer have to live with that kind of delusion.

Science 1, Bible 0.