The Nails of the Crucifixion: Part I
How do we know Jesus was nailed to a cross?
This is the first part of a deep dive (about 4,000 words) covering the nails of the crucifixion. Part I examines the Biblical, extra-Biblical, and artistic evidence for Jesus being nailed to the Cross. Part II will cover the relics.
Was Jesus Nailed to the Cross?
It seems like an easy question to answer, but the Gospels are silent on this moment of the crucifixion.
If you look at the four Gospel accounts of the crucifixion itself, nowhere do they specify that Jesus was nailed to his cross. We have such specific images in our minds of this scene that this may come as a shock to some, but let’s look at the passages.
Mark: “And they crucify him” (15:24)
Matthew: “And when they had crucified him” (27:35)
Luke: “And when they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him” (23:33)
John: “There they crucified him” (19:18)
There are some interesting things to note about the way the evangelists handled the actual crucifixion. First, there is Mark’s use of the present tense, which is usually translated incorrectly to smooth over his vigorous and sometimes rough style. Next, there is the lack of detail. Various evangelists give more attention to those crucified with him (Luke and John) or the place (John) or the division of clothes (Matthew) in the relevant lines than to the act of crucifixion.
There are also no words dedicated to reactions or pain, or specific recollections of scripture passages. Since each gospel details the particulars of the passion more than any other moment of the life of Christ, this laconic approach has the paradoxical effects of resounding like a gong through the community of the faithful. Anyone who has experienced a Palm Sunday or Good Friday mass knows that these few words are like a thunderclap.
How does the New Testament indicate that Jesus was nailed to the cross?
Helos
The Greek word for nail (“helos”) appears only once. In John 20:25, St. Thomas says: “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
In Luke 24:39 Jesus says “See my hands and my feet,” and its fair to assume that he’s drawing his attention to his wounds. Later in John, when he tells Thomas “Put your finger here, and see my hands,” (20:27), it’s also obvious that he’s telling Thomas to probe his wounds.
The other place we find a reference to the act of nailing (Greek: “proseloo”) is in Colossians 2:14, where St. Paul writes that Jesus set aside the demands of the law, “nailing it to the cross.”
The Old Testament also makes a point about piercing hands and feet. The Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament that would have been familiar to the early church) has the reading of Psalm 22:16 which is now used in most modern Christian translations. It includes the line “they have pierced my hands and feet.” This translation is controversial and the issue is too complex to engage here. In brief, the sentence has no verb in the Hebrew Masoretic text. The Greek verb in the Septuagint (“oryxan”) is vague and means something like “bored through.” Naturally, since the rest of the passage is heavily evocative of the passion narrative, it’s reasonable to read this Psalm as we do: “they have pierced my hands and feet.” This would obviously be a reference to nailing in crucifixion.
The Cross and the Nails
There’s something else to note about these passages. None of them mention the kind of cross that is used. The Greek historian Heroditus tells us that Policrates was killed and then crucified on a pole as a form of humiliation, while Artayctes was taken by people who “nailed him to boards and hanged him [suggesting a crosspiece]. As for his son, they stoned him to death before his father’s eyes.” Heroditus finds this unbearably barbaric, as did other ancient writers, including Seneca, Varro, Cicero, and Plautus, as well as Josephus.
And the practice was not confined to Rome. Josephus tells us that 800 Pharisees were crucified while their wives and children were slaughtered in front of them under Sadducean high priest Alexander Janneus (2nd century BC). This form of punishment was meant to evoke Deuteronomy 21:22–23 to prove that the executed were cursed by God. Thus, in the time of Jesus, crucifixion was as cruel and despicable as a punishment could be. No other means of killing Jesus would have sent quite the same message of brutality and damnation.
The cross itself varied throughout Rome. Sometimes it was just a vertical stake planted in the ground, but it was more common to affix the arms of the victim to a horizontal piece (patibulum). This was placed either at the top to create a capital “T” (crux commissa, now familiar as a Franciscan cross or Tau) or slightly lower down to create a lowercase “T” (crux immissa). The condemned carried either the entire cross or the just the horizontal piece. They were stripped naked, tied or nailed to the cross, and sometimes seated on a kind of peg (called a sedile) on the vertical post.
Feet and heels were tied or nailed to the upright. The victim may also have been tied by the arms, legs, or torso. Seneca the Younger describes variations, including crucifying people upside down and impaling the genitals. Josephus recalls the blood-maddened troops of Titus during the Siege of Jerusalem nailing Jews to crosses in myriad grotesque poses “by way of jest” until they could find no more places to nail them.
Thus we can see that nailing was not uncommon in crucifixion. Given how it was practiced at the Fall of Jerusalem (only four decades after the death of Jesus), we might fairly assume nailing was a norm at this time. Therefore, an evangelist wouldn’t need to specify the nails. The audience would already know.
The Witness of the Church
References to the crucifixion in the early Church Father sometimes indicate different types of cross and often refer to the nails. In describing the cross, the Epistle of Barnabas suggests a crux commissa (“T”), while St. Irenaeus depicts not only a crux immissa (“t”) but the sedile (middle peg) and the nails. In his Against Heresies, Irenaeus writes “The very form of the cross, too, has five extremities, two in length, two in breadth, and one in the middle, on which the person rests who is fixed by the nails.”
With few exceptions, crux immissa (“t”) has been the favored shape of the cross because the titulus is described as being placed above the head of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, and there is no “above” in a crux commissa.
Nails appear in other early sources. The non-canonical Gospel of Peter (c. 150 AD) says “And then they plucked the nails from the hands of the Lord” (6:21). In a reference to Jesus, the Letter of Barnabus (possibly as early as 70AD) misquotes a passage from Isaiah as “Nail my flesh, for the congregations of evil-doers have risen against me.” In Dialogue With Trypho (c. 150AD), St. Justin Martyr writes “For when they crucified Him, driving in the nails, they pierced His hands and feet.”
St. Ignatius says in his Letter to the Smyrnaeans (written prior to 108AD) that he was “truly nailed to a tree in the flesh for our sakes under Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch.” In his Letter to the Romans, Ignatius writes “desire within me has been nailed to the cross,” but the word translated as “desire” (eros) may mean “my beloved,” Jesus.
These are just a few examples that show the consistent belief that Jesus was nailed to the cross. Although gospel passages concerning the crucifixion are silent, the Church herself sings out the fact that He was pierced for our transgressions, and by those wounds we are healed.
How Many Nails?
Another issue to be settled is how many nails were used in the crucifixion. St. Ambrose, in the earliest written mention of the relics of the crucifixion, only accounts for two:
“[St. Helen] sought the nails with which the Lord was crucified, and found them. From one nail she ordered a bridle to be made, from the other she wove a diadem. [Emphasis added] She turned the one to an ornamental, the other to a devotional, use. Mary was visited to liberate Eve; Helena was visited that emperors might be redeemed. So she sent to her son Constantine a diadem adorned with jewels which were interwoven with the iron of the Cross and enclosed the more precious jewel of divine redemption. She sent the bridle, also. Constantine used both, and transmitted his faith to later kings. And so the beginning of the faith of the emperors is the holy relic which is upon the bridle. From that came the faith whereby persecution ended and devotion to God took its place.” (Funeral Oration on The Death of Theodosius, 47)
Some have taken this to mean there was an early belief that only two nails pierced The Lord, with the feet attached without being nailed. As you can see, the text doesn’t support this. Ambrose only accounts for the recovery and use of nails in creating two things, but that doesn’t mean there were only two nails. The belief may have been widespread, however, since two of the earliest depictions in art seem to show only the hands nailed.
When Rufinus wrote his continuation of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, he writes “The nails too, with which the Lord’s body had been fastened, she brought to her son. He made of some of them a bridle to use in battle, and with others he is said to have equipped himself with a helmet no less useful in battle.” This is a confusing passage, since it reads like the nails are multiplying. Rufinus was probably just expanding upon Ambrose, badly.
The earliest surviving depiction of the crucifixion is on a panel from c. 420 currently located in the British Museum. It shows the cross as well as Judas hanging from a tree with a money bag at his feet, Mary and John, and Longinus. It was originally part of a casket, with four ivory panels, one for each side. The others show Christ carrying the cross, the empty tomb, and St. Thomas the Apostle. Jesus's feet are not nailed.
The door panels of the Santa Sabina (5th century) in Rome show only the hands nailed, but the image is highly stylized, with Christ in a kind of orans position, so this isn’t a useful data point.
Of course, there is the third, and technically earliest, depiction of a crucifixion to be considered, but as it’s of lesser use to us. The Palentine, or Alexamenos, graffito was discovered in the 19th century scratched on the wall of a building unearthed on the Palatine Hill. The structure had once belonged to the Emperor Caligula, and then became a school for pageboys. The graffiti only survived because it was sealed behind another wall erected for support. Dating is very difficult, but it may have been made any time between the 1st and 3rd centuries.
It’s a typically crude example of mockery, showing someone worshipping a donkey-headed man on a cross. A caption in very rough Greek says something like, “Alexamenos worships his god.” Clearly, one person was being mocked by being compared to a Christian, or for actually being one. The Alexamenos graffito appears to show Christ standing with only his hands nailed, but since it was made by a non-Christian as an act of mockery, it can tell us little about the early thoughts of the pious about the number of nails used.
In artwork from the early middle ages, Jesus is nailed with four nails, but in the later middle ages we start seeing him nailed with only three. One foot is placed over the other and a single nail pierces them both. The tradition of three nails dates at least to the fourth century, where we find it in the writing of Nonnus of Panopolis and St. Gregory Nazianzus.
Tomorrow: Where Are the Nails Now?
Note
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I was wondering if you were going to include the Colossians reference. I don’t know if I ever quite glommed to the one in Luke 24. Well done!
This was a fascinating read! It called to mind some of the encyclopaedic notes that I've come across in Anglo-Latin computus manuscripts detailing the specific types of wood used in the construction of the Cross and its length. I learned a lot from your article - thank you!