Jesus died on the cross; in the past every child knew this, today it is rapidly diminishing depending on where you are. In the Christian world. Is that interesting? Probably not. But what interests me is the cross itself. At some point, it supplemented the – now almost forgotten – simplified sign of the fish as the symbol of Christianity, precisely because Jesus was crucified.
The cross, a simple emblem, but suitable for the masses.
But why was Jesus crucified? Couldn’t the beadles of the procurator Pilate have simply beaten the rebel to death? Or beheaded him?
Thinking about this, dear readers, transports one to the Jerusalem of antiquity. Come on, it’s Sunday, eyes closed and through … let’s fly, let’s fly together, it will only take a few minutes.
Imagine the atmosphere, the places, the people. Dirt and dust are there to be seen and tasted, a powerful sun can be felt. Houses of baked tiles, stone and clay roofs alternate, thick-walled walls and staircases of marble and other local stones, paths paved with shells, Roman-style viaducts carrying water, temples towering, such as that of Herod, which Jesus, according to the Gospel, demanded be torn down and then rebuilt in three days. Oxen and donkeys pulling clumsy carts burn themselves into the eye of the beholder. I see Roman soldiers, helmeted, in leather sandals, the significant scar of the helmet belt spur on their chins; the men reek of sweat and sour wine fumes surround them. People dressed in simple linen cloths as coverings are clamouring everywhere. An Aramaic-ancient Greek-Latin babble of voices floating through the air. Evil smells and beguiling floral scents mingle in a sensually disturbing melange. And then I see the lost guy, the unlucky being; he is bound and beaten bloody to the bone. And I see an enraged crowd, it hisses and growls, and it wants the young man dead. But that is not enough for it, not nearly enough. It wants him to suffer; it wants him to die a thousand deaths. Because he has challenged the system. He denounced the system – we would probably say populist today – and demanded humility from the rulers, Herod and his lackeys. They felt threatened. Their very existence. And insulted to boot. That’s probably why Jesus had to die. But maybe he was just a failure, a poor wretch struggling with his fate, who rebelled and simply messed with the wrong people. The „Nawalny analogue“. Also an idealist and naïf; probably often a tragic combination.
But who really knows Jesus‘ fate exactly, since the Gospels were not written by contemporary witnesses, but were written decades later, probably invented.
But I still don’t know why crucifixion of all things was chosen as the way of death? Well, it offered all the unspeakable torments that the Jews wanted for Jesus. A martyrdom lasting days, a cruel death, so that he would know what he was being punished for, and addressed to everyone else: that he would be punished. And again, Nawalny comes to mind.
My gaze wanders from Jerusalem towards the west, towards the Levantine coast; I feel like an eagle and see everything flying by below me from a bird’s eye view. I also travel back in time a good three hundred years. You are still with me? Right? Good …
And suddenly I find myself in Carthage, on the North African Mediterranean coast, near present-day Tunis in Tunisia.
At this time, Carthage is by far the most cosmopolitan city in the world. In addition to the Punians, the Roman name for Carthaginian natives, all kinds of people from all over the world were living there. Phoenicians, Greeks, Nubians, Egyptians, Persians, Libyans, Iberians, Hittites, and of course Sicilians, because Sicily was a Carthaginian province. And most believed in the Carthaginian gods, from Baal, the sun god, to Melkart, the patron saint of shipping; Carthage established a supremacy in the Levant based on its war and merchant fleet.
Especially sacred to the Punic people was „Mother Earth“; they knew that one day they would return to her as soon as each one had crossed the threshold of death. But the thought that even a criminal would be allowed to return to the sacred earth was unbearable to Carthage’s people. They did not want this earth to be desecrated.
And so, for those delinquents who were to be punished particularly severely, they devised a form of death that took place between earth and heaven, namely at a height of a few metres, adapted to the human body structure, on the cross. Nailed there and condemned to die slowly. Thirst, blood stasis, broken bones.
The Romans later simply adopted this method of death, they and many other peoples. For practical reasons. Not for the sake of faith. Bad luck for Jesus. And the starting point for probably the most gigantic advertising icon in history.“
Im Mahlstrom 