Imagine with me for a moment:
You stand at your trial, and are sentenced to death for crimes that you did not commit. You knew this was going to happen long beforehand, but at the time it is still almost impossible to grasp. How can someone cope with hearing his or her own death sentence pronounced?
After the trial, you are taken to the governor so that the death sentence may be approved. The matter is briefly debated because the deciding official sees no just cause for the sentence, but he is then pressured into approving the decision by your accusers and the crowd that has gathered. The people even call to have a convicted killer and insurrectionist released, leaving you to die. It is a sad example of how stupid and cruel humans can really be to those who truly love them.
Following the approval of your death you are taken outside by the soldiers where you are stripped of your clothes, struck repeatedly with closed fists and a staff, spat upon, and mocked. You are then scourged many times, over and over, with a modified weapon similar to a cat-o-nine-tails but with only two or three leather straps, which have marble-sized, barbell-shaped metal or bone pellets attached to their tips. As you are whipped with this device, your flesh is shredded by the leather lashes, pulverized with amazing force by the ball-bearing like pellets swung at the ends of the straps, and stripped from your body all at the same time. Most likely your ribs have been laid bare through the flesh of your back, which has been greatly torn away by the force of the multiple-strapped leather weapon. Some of your skin and flesh still hangs from your body in bloody strips when the scourging is finally finished.
After this ordeal, you can hardly stand. Almost all of your strength has been sapped away by the beating, you are losing an unknown amount of blood, and the pain is so great you are almost paralyzed. As you kneel, hunched over on the ground and holding yourself barely erect with your arms which have been temporarily released, a brutal circlet of thorny vine is forced down around the crown of your skull to the level of your forehead. The thorns are very sharp and long, stiff and amazingly tough, and reminiscent of small, strong twigs of English oak which have been whittled to a very sharp point. These thorns tear into your scalp with astounding tenacity. Some pierce completely through the skin on your head to scrape the bone as they are forced down harshly, again stripping some flesh, but this time from your skull and in smaller portions as compared to your bleeding back. These wounds set blood running down your face, some finding its way into your eyes after mixing with your sweat. This salty gore burns your eyes, greatly impairing your vision, and the thorns that caused this flow most likely contain small amounts of very irritating, burning poison used to aid in the vines’ natural defense against foraging animals.
After this torture, you are forced to carry at LEAST the crossbar of the crucifix that you are to die upon a sizable distance across town to a hill called "the Place of the Skull." Even if you only bear this relatively small portion of the instrument of your death, it is almost impossible for you to take it far on your own. This piece alone weighs a great deal, being at least six feet long and thick enough in depth and width to support your 180-plus pound weight for a matter of many hours, and your strength is already greatly depleted due to the pain and blood-loss. You must carry it against your back and dragging on the ground behind you, and the pain this causes is simply unbelievable because of the wood grating against your exposed ribs and backbone.
As you stumble along, barely able to think or see clearly, your blood is falling on the ground, leaving a vivid record of where you have come from and what you have already endured. After a distance, you finally collapse under the weight of the beam, falling onto your hands and knees as the crossbar then crashes down upon your flesh-bare back, most likely knocking you completely down to the ground. The soldiers see that you cannot carry your burden any farther, so they force a man from the surrounding crowd to bear it the rest of the way. You had almost forgotten the spectators and taunts in your pain, hadn’t you? For a brief moment you realize your surroundings, and the turnout of witnesses for your death. Then you are picked up and shoved back on your way.
You finally stumble up the hill to the site of your death…and you see three holes, each with one slanted side, already dug. Into these holes the crucifixes of you and your fellow "criminals" will be heaved, after the crossbars have been attached to the greater beams with you nailed to them. And now the real ordeal begins.
The clothes you wore earlier (a single, seamless tunic) you see being gambled for by some of the soldiers as others are attaching the crossbar to the beam: and there you see your death’s device as a whole. After it has been firmly mounted, your weak body is laid out upon it by the soldiers, who then proceed to drive a thick, stout steel stud between the two bones of your forearm close to where they meet in the wrist. This point is strong enough to support the weight of your body, whereas the bones and flesh of your hands are not. It seems the Romans have this pretty well thought out…
After each arm has been nailed down to the wood, your feet are crossed so that one is directly in front of the other. Your toes are pointed down away from your body, and a single, longer metal stud is driven directly through both your feet and into the beam. You are now stapled to the cross.
Next, your crucifix is heaved up and guided into the hole, sliding at first easily into the slant, then jostled around as the base of the beam makes contact with the sides of the hole and grates down into position. Finally it is erect.
The pain is now horrendous, exactly as the Romans intended when coming up with this particular means of execution. Crucifixion is used precisely for this reason: the amazing amounts of agony it produces. You must support the entire weight of your body either with your legs or by hanging from the wrists. Remember that your legs have only the single metal rod driven through your feet to push the body mass back up against gravity. When they finally give out due to lack of strength and the sheer pain of supporting this weight by a single nail through both feet together, you must then hang by your wrists, and the nails piercing them.
However, you can only hang from the wrists so long before having to use your legs again, because under the weight of the body with no lower support, you cannot breathe. The weight of your own body is suffocating you, and you are now fighting a losing battle. You will die of asphyxiation due to lack of oxygen if your legs cannot hold you up. And keep in mind, throughout this whole ordeal of hanging and pushing yourself back up the cross, your back is fully exposed and already stripped of flesh. The rough wooden crucifix grates agonizingly against your ribs and whatever flesh there is left is further mashed and mangled by the constant friction and wooden splinters.
It IS possible, and indeed highly probable (given the duration of the Gospel accounts), that your cross has been fixed with a sedile on it, this being a small projection on the main upright of the cross…in effect a seat (you may notice the similarity to the word
