Nails or Knots—How Was Jesus Crucified?

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Although crucifixion was a common form of punishment in the Roman world, archaeology has provided few clues as to how the brutal practice was performed. And although the Gospel accounts use vague terminology when describing Jesus’s execution, a longstanding Christian tradition assumes bodies were nailed to the cross. Close inspection of the historical evidence, however, indicates that nailing was probably introduced only after Jesus’s time.

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Footnotes

1. Vassilios Tzaferis, “Crucifixion—The Archaeological Evidence,” BAR, January/February 1985.

2. Ben Witherington III, “Images of Crucifixion: Fresh Evidence,” BAR, March/April 2013.

3. See Strata, “Roman Crucifixion in Britain,” BAR, Fall 2022.

Endnotes

1. See Gunnar Samuelsson, Crucifixion in Antiquity: An Inquiry into the Background and Significance of the New Testament Terminology of Crucifixion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), p. 294; and John Granger Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), p. 110. First Peter 2:24, Galatians 6:17, and Revelation 1:7 are either alluding to the Hebrew Bible or referring generally to “wounds.”

2. Yigael Yadin, “Epigraphy and Crucifixion,” Israel Exploration Journal 23.1 (1973), pp. 19–22.

3. Yoel Elitzur, “The Abba Cave: Unpublished Findings and a New Proposal Regarding Abba’s Identity,” Israel Exploration Journal 63 (2013), pp. 83–102; see also James Tabor, “The Abba Cave, Crucifixion Nails, and the Last Hasmonean King,” Taborblog (online), April 3, 2016.

4. Patricia Smith, “The Human Skeletal Remains from the Abba Cave,” Israel Exploration Journal 27.2/3 (1977), pp. 123–124.

5. See Emanuela Gualdi-Russo et al., “A Multidisciplinary Study of the Calcaneal Trauma in Roman Italy: A Possible Case for Crucifixion?” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, April 2018, doi.org/10.1007/s12520-018-0631-9.