BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

How Was Jesus Crucified?

Romans likely used ropes rather than nails

How was Jesus crucified? This question sounds so trivial it is almost confusing. Christian tradition has always portrayed Jesus hanging from the cross with his palms and feet painfully pierced with nails. Nail wounds feature prominently in the graphic representations of the crucified Jesus. We may then be surprised to learn that the otherwise detailed gospel accounts of Jesus’s execution never actually specify how Jesus was secured to the cross. Although Roman execution methods did include crucifixion with nails, contemporary sources paint a more complex picture.

Writing for the Spring 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Jeffrey P. Arroyo García revisits all the evidence we have for the crucifixion of Jesus. In his article titled “Nails or Knots—How Was Jesus Crucified?” García focuses on how exactly Jesus was secured to the cross—whether nails were used or not.

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Professor of biblical studies at Gordon College who specializes in the Gospels and Greco-Roman Jewish literature, García first examines contemporary written sources—both Jewish and Greco-Roman. “Our historical and textual sources from the late Second Temple period are quite vague on how crucifixion was carried out,” summarizes García in his review of historical writings. Apparently, the Gospels use ambiguous Greek words meaning “to hang up” or “to hang on a stake” when describing the crucifixion of Jesus, and the Dead Sea Scrolls use the similarly ambiguous Hebrew word talah “to hang” when reporting on crucifixions of criminals.

Intriguingly, archaeologists found a pierced heel bone (see photo above) at the Jewish burial site of Givat HaMivtar in Jerusalem in 1968. It was mixed with other human remains at the bottom of an ossuary dating from the period between the first century BCE and the First Jewish Revolt (66–74 CE). The ossuary (ancient bone box) was one of eight discovered in the Givat HaMivtar tombs. Although otherwise undecorated, this box featured an incised inscription Yehohanan ben hagaqol, where the first word is clearly a personal name. The term hagaqol, however, may describe the method of crucifixion with “knees apart,” as proposed by pioneering Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin.

While there are no pictorial representations of crucifixion dating from the time of Jesus, García suggests that the crucifixion method from the Yehohanan’s ossuary inscription has parallels in later ancient depictions. The famous Alexamenos graffito (see drawing below), for instance, shows a deity with the head of a donkey, fixed to what looks like a cross. Dating from early-third-century Rome, the accompanying inscription identifies the bystander as one Alexamenos, who allegedly is worshiping the crucified figure as his god. Notably, the donkey-headed deity has knees apart.

But let us return to the initial question: How was Jesus crucified? Although some have suggested the gruesome find from Givat HaMivtar may date from the time of Jesus, it cannot be taken as a proof that Jesus was crucified using nails or that such a method was common in Judea. In fact, it is not until the Great Jewish Revolt, which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, that we have written reports about this specific Roman execution method. In his Jewish War, which he wrote in the late 70s, the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus describes the “nailing” of some of Judah’s elites to the cross (War 2.308) and then specifies that Roman soldiers similarly executed some of Jerusalem’s defenders (War 2.451). It would then seem that in Judea the Roman method of crucifixion with nails does not predate the First Jewish Revolt, while there is evidence that it continued well into the second century.

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“Crucifixion was a common form of punishment in the Roman world. Yet when ancient texts and archaeological evidence are examined together, it appears that nailing a victim to a cross may not have been as common as most people think. And it might have been introduced in Judea only after the time of Jesus,” concludes García.

To further explore the evidence for Jesus’s crucifixion, read Jeffrey P. Arroyo García’s article “Nails or Knots—How Was Jesus Crucified?” published in the Spring 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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Subscribers: Read the full article “Nails or Knots—How Was Jesus Crucified?” by Jeffrey P. Arroyo García in the Spring 2025 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review.

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