Growing up a Catholic, the annual remembrance of Jesus’ crucifixion on the cross is something very familiar. However, it never felt really horrific except when I saw Passion of Christ with Jim Caviezel playing Christ. But even then, it felt like it was a staged drama rather than something real that happened.
While walking through the numerous exhibits in the Israeli museum, I chanced upon this plain ossuary that contained the remains of a person who was crucified back in the 1st Century, CE. Crucifixion was a Roman way of executing rebels, thieves , murderers. This made me realize that crucifixion did become a practice centuries ago. That there were actually people who died from this method.
Looking at the bone with the nail hammered through it, I flinched at how excruciating it must have been, to be hung on a cross, left to die. But the pain would have been more than the physical. It would have been humiliating enough for whoever was hung wanting a quick death instead of a slow and painful one.
It reminds us how people can be downright cruel and creative at the same time.
my take 