Say Israel was occupied by a different empire that didn't practice crucifixion (Persians maybe? But that's another discussion entirely). Jesus still gets born regardless and the pharisees still want him dead. How would Christian iconography change if Jesus was sawed instead; and could this change anything else about the faith?
WI Jesus was Executed by Sawing
- Thread starter Kaiser Tito
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I could see Christians wearing red sashes around the waist to symbolize Jesus' execution if OTL medieval standards on iconography are still popularized.
I can definitely see this.
The saw would have two reasons to be a Christian symbol instead of just one.
Crucifixion was used by the Macedonians, Persians and Carthaginians.
Crucifixion - Wikipedia
Yeah, I can't think of any culture that sawed criminals.
This is just weird.
This is just weird.
Me neither. I keep reading the title as "executed by swing" too
Often from what i've seen while quickly skimming google right now, the method was mostly used by the more bloodthirsty, sadistic tyrants on special occasions. I guess sawing a man in half through his buttocks was just too messy and gruesome to gain widespread acceptance compared to the lengthy yet cheap and still psychologically effective method of nailing the prisoner to a cross or wall and waiting for them to starve?
That is not to say that Jesus couldn't have been sentenced to a much more bloody death on the personal orders of a cruel ruler, however.
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Knowing that Christ is not supposed to have broken bones, sawing seems to compromise the Scriptures.
Didn't Roman records at the time of Jesus' death treat him like a local nuisance like several other contemporaneous Jewish preachers? If he was an active threat instead of merely a potential one, perhaps the Roman authorities could have used a less icon-worthy method for his execution?
Wasn't the Rabbinical punishment for blasphemy (which IIRC what Jesus would have been charged of) death by stoning?
Yeah, but if I remember right the Jewish high priesthood couldn’t actually sentence people to death anymore. Thats why they had to get Pilate’s write-off, and I don’t think stoning was on the Roman books. Or blasphemy, for that matter, which is why they then pitched it more treasonous than blasphemous to him.
I wouldn’t exactly call crucifiction ‘icon worthy’. The practice was basically the most humiliating, painful and revolting way of executing criminals the Romans could imagine. The cross wasn’t an electric chair analog, it’s basically the equivalent of drowning someone in a used toilet bowl.
The idea of using a crucified man as a religious symbol was incomprehensible to the Romans for centuries afterwards, to the point of people scratching mocking graffiti, depicting a crucified man with a donkeys head, with the inscription ‘this is the god of Lucius’ or similar.
To us it looks like a convenient, artistic symbol, but the Romans themselves could never have anticipated its use: it would be completely incomprehensible to them.
Crucifixion was used by the Macedonians, Persians and Carthaginians.
Crucifixion - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
How would the Greeks, Egyptians, Scythians, and an independent Israel kill him in a way that still fulfills prophecy? (hands, feet, and side pierced, no broken bones)
I figured he would've been sawed almost perfectly after being nailed down to something with the men examining the remains afterwords being confused that the bones are still completely intact.
There are no records of Jesus at the time of him supposedly being alive.
AaMof: the whole ‘census, return to your birthplace’ has no record (though reportedly done ‘throughout the known world’) and never would have been done, anyway.
Banishment for troublemakers at the time of Jesus was a thing, though.
Take said troublemaker away from their home, their base, put them out into the frontier.
Read a ‘Jesus banished to the Germanies’ story once where we he was four score years old, wife, kids, grandkids, etc.