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Is the Cross a Murder Weapon?
Or a tool of freedom?
Read for free @ Is the Cross a Murder Weapon? — by James M. Dakis.
Why the Cross?
Crucifixion, or executing the vilest of criminals by hanging them on a wooden cross, was probably first done in Babylon or Persia about four hundred years before the birth of Jesus. It would continue for another 400 years after His death before the Roman Empire would abolish it. Ironically, it was the Romans who would “perfect” this evil punishment to the hideous torture that it was, allowing a man to suffer upwards of four days before succumbing to death.
Ironically, death by hanging a man on a tree or other wooden structure was nothing new to the Jews anyway. As far back as the writings of Moses, they had been instructed to use this as a manner of capital punishment for the most heinous of crimes.
“And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.” (Deuteronomy 21:22,23 KJV)
While this is not an article about the justification of Jesus’s trial or sentencing…
