The details of the prefect’s calculated game can no longer be reconstructed, but we have good grounds for assuming that his efforts to release Jesus resulted, among other reasons, from the tactical calculation that he could thus avoid letting the rebellious Barabbas go, something that was much more dangerous to himself.
But then this very calculation proved to be a wrong estimate with serious consequences. Pilate apparently reckoned far too little with the fact that his opposite numbers in the deal could harden their support for Barabbas, and he had also probably underestimated by far the energy with which the Jewish officials were pursuing Jesus’ execution. But above all, when he suggested that Jesus be pardoned rather than Barabbas, he had, in fact, confirmed Jesus’ guilt to the public. His tactics had now really brought him into a situation in which pressure could be put on him.
Evidently this new situation was immediately perceived and seized upon by Jesus’ opponents. The prefect was very quickly faced with a massed outcry that settled into chants against Jesus: “Crucify him! Crucify him!” (Mark 15:13-14). Suddenly the situation was different. Pilate, through his apparently clever strategy, had allowed the judicial decision to be taken out of his hands. He had not decided the guilt or innocence of the accused simply as an impartial judge. By trying to make the innocent man into a subject for pardon he had combined the judicial and political levels.
So it is no surprise that in the end, under the increasing pressure, he made his decision purely on the political level—and now against Jesus. He abandoned his original goal of securing Barabbas’s execution by pardoning Jesus, and he condemned Jesus to death on a cross as a political rebel and traitor. Probably he uttered the usual formula: Ibis in crucem (You will go to the cross).
Execution
For Jesus, Pontius Pilate’s failed stratagem meant death, and death by one of the most gruesome methods of execution ever devised by human beings to torture others. For Romans, death on the cross was regarded as so dreadful and dishonorable that it could be imposed only on slaves and non-Romans. Cicero wrote, “The executioner, and the veiling of the head, and the mere name of the gibbet, should be far removed, not only from the persons of Roman citizens—from their thoughts, and eyes, and ears” (Pro Rabirio 16). But even in the case of slaves and provincials crucifixion was generally reserved for serious crimes such as murder, temple robbery, treason, and rebellion.
It was the Roman custom to precede every crucifixion with an additional feature: scourging. Mark and Matthew report it in this sense (Mark 15:15; Matt 27:26). For them the scourging of Jesus clearly functions as an added punishment prior to crucifixion and part of the whole process.15 Thus even before his actual execution Jesus received a punishment so horrible that it often resulted in death. Roman scourging was so dangerous because the number of strokes was not limited and the thongs of the whip often incorporated bits of bone or metal. That gives us a hint of what the brief statement “Pilate had Jesus scourged” means.
In addition, the Roman soldiers, after Jesus was handed over to them for execution, first played games with him. They dressed him as a king, imitated the solemn royal acclamation, and fell on their faces before him. They spat on him and cried, “Hail, king of the Jews!” while striking him brutally in the face (Mark 15:16-20). As a result of the scourging and the subsequent mistreatment, Jesus was no longer able to carry his own cross to the place of execution. Therefore the soldiers forced a certain Simon of Cyrene, who was just coming from the fields and accidentally crossed the path of the execution squad, to carry Jesus’ cross for him (Mark 15:21).
We should not, however, imagine this carrying of the cross as Christian art has portrayed it. For regular executions the condemned did not carry the whole cross, but only the crossbeam. The upright beams were posts that were firmly rammed into the earth, usually as semi-permanent fixtures. When the delinquent arrived at the place of execution he was laid on the ground and his outstretched arms were nailed to the crossbeam; then the beam bearing the condemned man was hoisted onto the fixed upright pole. The crossbeam was fastened to the top; only then were the feet nailed fast. So Jesus and Simon of Cyrene did not carry the whole cross but only the crossbeam. That Jesus could not carry even this single beam shows that he was already at the limits of his physical strength after the scourging.
On the way to the place of execution someone carried a placard (titulus) in front of the condemned person giving the reason for the execution. For Jesus the titulus read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (John 19:19; cf. Mark 15:26). That Pilate had the titulus read “the King of the Jews” and not “he pretended to be the King of the Jews” can only be understood as a malicious mockery directed at the Jewish people. Apparently, after having drawn the short straw in his confrontation with the Sanhedrin, Pilate wanted to revenge himself at least in this way. But at the same time the wording of the titulus represented a spiteful irony against Jesus: the Roman soldiers had played their rough games with him, and now the mockery continues.
It should be noted that the information that Jesus was crucified between two rebels is part of the consistently maintained symbolism of mockery. A king cannot appear on solemn public occasions without his council. The “council” carefully placed to Jesus’ “right” and “left” (Mark 15:27) is made up of two felons, with Jesus enthroned exactly in the middle. The two “thieves” were probably some of the terrorists or freedom fighters who had been imprisoned along with Barabbas. Although the gospels do not say so, we have to assume that Pilate had also condemned these two terrorists on that same Friday morning. Thus the prefect had not wasted much time on Jesus’ condemnation; he made the trial a short one.
The hill on which Jesus was executed bore the name “Golgotha,” simply translated “skull [hill]” (Mark 15:22), not because the skulls of people previously executed were lying around—something that would have been unthinkable in a place subject to Jewish laws of purity—but because the hill had the form of a skull. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands today on the place where Jesus died. As soundings in the area in 1961 have shown, there was in the time of Jesus an abandoned quarry from the royal period on the site, and to the west of this former quarry some private graves had been cut into the layers of stone. Eastward, in the direction of the city, a remaining part of the cliff arose; this was the “skull.” Between the two were gardens (cf. John 19:41; 20:15). This makes it clear that we have to imagine the cliffs of Golgotha and their surroundings as lying outside the city walls as they were at that time. Excavations beneath the Church of the Redeemer have clarified the course of the walls. There was only a small valley between the western wall of Jerusalem and the height of Golgotha. Jesus’ walk with the cross from the praetorium to the city wall, and from there to the place of execution, was not very long, assuming, of course, that the shortest way was chosen.