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Last week, we began to look at what Jesus endured before being nailed to the cross; yes, nailed. We pick up the story by noting that evidence of nailing the feet on either side of the stipes comes from a fortuitous 1968 archeological excavation of a burial cave in Giv’at ha-Mivtar.
The discovery yielded the remains of an individual crucified by the Romans, including the right calcaneum (heel bone) through which the crucifixion nail was driven, complete with the nail (still present piercing the bone) through and through. It is important to note that these were no small nails.
The dimensions of the nail that penetrated the heel bone measured 11.5 cm (4.53”) long with a square diameter of 1 cm (3/8”). Dr. Willam Edwards and colleagues said the likely “damage to the peroneal nerve and its branches of the medial and lateral plantar would have been substantial by the nails.” Likewise, nails driven through the wrist “would crush or sever the sensorimotor median nerve in the wrist, resulting in paralysis of the hand.” Once hanging upon the cross, the victim would immediately be faced with the inability to exhale air from the lungs due to the natural slumping weight of the body pulling down on the arms, placing the respiratory muscles in the abdomen in a fixed inhalation state.
