Note 131 — Chapter III · RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, CONDEMNATION AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS.

As regards the mode of the crucifixion there is now scarcely any debated point, if we except the question, whether the feet as well as the hands were nailed to the cross. As it lay in the interest of the orthodox view to prove the affirmative: so it was equally important to the rationalistic system to maintain the negative. From Justin Martyr131 down to Hengstenberg132 and Olshausen, the orthodox find in the nailing of the feet of Jesus to the cross a fulfilment of the prophecy Ps. xxii. 17, which the LXX. translates: ὤρυξαν χεῖράς μου καὶ πόδας, but it is doubtful whether the original text really speaks of piercing, and in no case does it allude to crucifixion: moreover the passage is nowhere applied to Christ in the New Testament. To the rationalists, on the contrary, it is at once more easy to explain the death of Jesus as a merely apparent death, and only possible to conceive how he could walk immediately after the resurrection, when it is supposed that his feet were left unwounded; but the case should rather be stated thus: if the historical evidence go to prove that the feet also of Jesus were nailed, it must be concluded that the resuscitation and the power of walking shortly after, either happened supernaturally or not at all. Of late there have stood opposed to each other two learned and profound investigations of this point, the one by Paulus against, the other by Bähr, in favour of—the nailing of the feet.133 From the evangelical narrative, the former opinion can principally allege in its support, that neither is the above passage in the Psalms anywhere used by the Evangelists, though on the presupposition of a nailing of the feet it was so entirely suited to their mode of accounting for facts, nor in the history of the resurrection is there any mention of wounds in the feet, together with the wounds in the hands and side (John xx. 20, 25, 27). The other opinion appeals not without reason to Luke xxiv. 39, where Jesus invites the disciples to behold his hands and his feet (ἴδετε τὰς χεῖράς μου καὶ τοὺς πόδας μου): it is certainly not here said that the feet were pierced, but it is difficult to understand how Jesus should have pointed out his feet merely to produce a conviction of the reality of his body. The fact that among the fathers of the church, those who, living before Constantine, might be acquainted with the mode of crucifixion from personal observation, as Justin and Tertullian, suppose the feet of Jesus to have been nailed, is of weight. It might indeed be concluded from the remark of the latter: Qui (Christus) solus a populo tam insigniter crucifixus est,134 that for the sake of the passage in the Psalms these fathers supposed that in the crucifixion of Christ his feet also were pierced by way of exception; but, as Tertullian had before called the piercing of the hands and feet the propria atrocia crucis, it is plain that the above words imply, not a special manner of crucifixion, but the special manner of death by crucifixion, which does not occur in the Old Testament, and by which therefore Jesus was distinguished from all the characters therein celebrated. Among the passages in profane writers, the most important is that of Plautus, in which, to mark a crucifixion as extraordinarily severe, it is said: offigantur bis pedes, bis brachia.135 Here the question is: does the extraordinary feature lie in the bis, so that the nailing of the feet as well as of the hands only once is presupposed as the ordinary usage; or was the bis offigere of the hands, i.e. the nailing of both the hands, the usual practice, and the nailing of the feet an extraordinary aggravation of the punishment? Every one will pronounce the former alternative to be the most accordant with the words. Hence it appears to me at present, that the balance of historical evidence is on the side of those who maintain that the feet as well as the hands of Jesus were nailed to the cross.