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Re: Crucifiction? was( RE: torture in England (was questions) (fwd)




Poster: clevin@ripco.com (Craig Levin)

Thyra:

> In a message dated 98-12-17 12:08:03 EST, beckymc@MICROSOFT.com writes:
> 
> << 
>  I guess I should be checking the religious books in my own parents'
>  library but all this talk about torture got me to thinking about
>  crucifiction.  Besides the obvious example of Jesus I know that
>  crucifiction was common for some time I believe in the Byzantine era. >>
> 
> I have a further question about this, unrelated to Middle ages, if you will be
> willing to humor me.  Was crucifiction truly a common form of putting people
> to death before the middle ages?  The reason I ask this is that I had once
> heard the reference to the Romans of Jesus' time not using it as an average
> form of punishment, but rather reserved  it for more serious crimes (including
> in their eyes treason), sort of to make a public example out of the specific
> person.

I don't know about the people of Mesopotamia or Egypt, but I do
know that the ancient Jews' preferred form of the death penalty
was stoning, also a very public and painful way to die, as all of
your friends (at least, they _were_ your friends, once) and
neighbors bounce softball-sized rocks off you in this form of
execution. The Romans did practice mass crucifixions-vide the
punishment for the slaves who participated in the Spartacist
uprising-but that, again, was for unusual crimes.

-- 
http://pages.ripco.com:8080/~clevin/index.html 
clevin@ripco.com
Craig Levin
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