One of the greatest of all the conspiracy theories is whether Henry VIII was called Henry VIII because of the eight wives he had. But today I’m going to talk about the Crucifixion of Christ. Christians believe Jesus Christ sacrificed His life on the cross in order to save mankind, but the question that has been fiercely debated for millions of years is: Was He actually crucified?Did you see it happen? Probably not. Did Mark see it? Matthew? Was Luke in the country at the time? Was John about? These guys claim to have seen it happen but how do we know they’re not just a bunch of jokers?
How about this to whet your appetite…
Research carried out by students at Cambridge (Polytechnic) suggests that the act of crucifying had not been invented at this time. One student, Thomas Benetton, maintained, “The actual act of crucifying had not been invented at this time.” In fact the first time the term ‘Crucifixion’ is used is in Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, Macbeth, when Romeo is expressing the pain he is in after getting shot... “Thy suffering is like the man whom gave up His life in the holiest Crucifixione”. However Shakespeare spells Crucifixion with an ‘e’ on the end so he was probably talking about something else.
It is evident from the immense number of works of Art produced over the centuries that the majority of people consider Jesus to have "died on the cross". There are others however who strongly believe He got trapped in some brambles after running away from a boar and eventually died. This is unlikely however as boars do not hunt man, and never have. A great number of paintings were produced that showed this event but they were destroyed by the Spartans during the Counter Reformation. These Barbarians swept through Europe (some time after Christ was born and a bit before the Renaissance) and destroyed every single one of these images. The reason we know that these existed is because a painting of a lost painting was produced before the original was lost. Unfortunately this is now lost, but a photograph was taken in 1943 but the photographer used too much flash so it’s pretty much illegible.
So, how did Jesus die then? If the students of Cambridge (Polytechnic) are right then we have been outrageously misinformed. Did Matthew, Max, Luke and John pull the event out of thin air? Did Jesus actually die in his sleep one day but this wasn’t interesting enough? These writers were probably young. They certainly sound young (you will be hard pushed to find any Lukes or Matthews above the age of 35), and like any budding journalist they “beefed up” the event to make it sound more dramatic. The punchy alliteration of the headline: “Christ Is Crucified!” would have had much more impact than “Jesus Found Dead in a Bed”.I may have no answers but I have certainly played my part, and the debate must continue from the steps I have laid out in front of me (but for you to tread obviously. Not you in particular if you don’t want to but it’s there anyway so just bear it in mind…. N.B. I am not excluding wheelchair users so don’t write in please.)
