Matthew27chapter 27

The Jewish council could try a case but not carry out an execution. Rome reserved capital punishment to the governor, which is why the morning ends with the prisoner sent to Pilate on a political charge — claiming to be a king — rather than a religious one.

Pilate is a documented figure with a documented temperament. Josephus and the Jewish writer Philo both record his provocations: bringing military standards bearing the emperor's image into Jerusalem at night, and spending temple funds on an aqueduct and beating the protesters. A limestone block found at Caesarea in 1961 carries his name and title.

Scourging came before crucifixion as a matter of course. The Roman flagrum was a short whip of several thongs weighted with bone or metal that tore the skin open; prisoners sometimes died under it. Then the condemned man carried the crossbeam through the streets to the site, wearing a board that stated his crime — which is what the sign over Jesus' head was.

The nails went through the wrists or forearms, which will bear a body's weight; the feet were fixed to the upright. In 1968 a burial box was found near Jerusalem containing the heel bone of a crucified man from this period with an iron nail still driven through it — the first physical evidence of the practice ever recovered. Death came slowly, often over days, by exhaustion and suffocation, and Roman law let the execution squad divide the victim's clothing among themselves.

The burial detail fits the archaeology closely. Wealthy Jerusalem families owned rock-cut tombs outside the walls, with a low entrance closed by a heavy stone, and bodies were laid on a shelf inside. Several such tombs survive around the city. Joseph of Arimathea was a council member with the standing to ask a governor for a body — and the standing to lose everything for asking.