One result of this maltreatment was that Jesus was so weak that,

when he was taken out to be crucified, he could not carry his

crossbeam. The Romans, auxiliary legionaries probably raised in
Caesarea and Samaria, therefore impressed into service Simon of
Cyrene, described by Mark as ‘the father of Alexander and Rufus’
(Mk 15.21). This part of the story was therefore presumably based
on the account of an eyewitness whose children were known to
Mark. Moreover, an ossuary naming Simon and Alexander of
Cyrene, dated in the first century ce, has been found in Jerusalem,60
so this looks like three members of the Jerusalem church. And they
took him to the Golgotha place, which is in translation, place of
‘Skull’. (Mk 15.22) Who took him there? There has been no change
of subject in Mark’s narrative since the mockery by a whole cohort.
This may well mean that the whole cohort attended the crucifixion of
three men regarded by Pilate as dangerous leaders who might be
rescued by armed followers. This puts the impressing of Simon of
Cyrene into its context as a piece of gross Roman imperialism,
regardless of the precise ethnicity of the soldiers. With some 500
tough Roman soldiers available,the crossbeam must be carried by an
ordinary provincial! At another moment when the story is certainly
correct, there is also another Aramaic word, albeit oddly
transliterated: an Aramaic word of the approximate form gōlgōlthā
meant ‘skull’. Christian tradition has interpreted this of a
skullshaped hill, but some aspects of Christian tradition are late
pilgrim inventions, and this aspect of the tradition may not contain
any truth at all. The rocky protuberance known as the ‘Rock of
Calvary’, now in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, could not have
had three people crucified on top of it, and the notion that Jesus was
crucified on a hill is not supported by the New Testament accounts.
It remains possible that Jesus was crucified near the traditional site,
perhaps some 200 metres to the south.61 This was outside the city at
that time, outside the Gennath Gate, near the main road which went
west, and not far from a road going north, so it was possible for him
to be mocked by people passing by (Mk 15.29). The truth about ‘the

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Golgotha place’ is probably quite gruesome. The Romans generally
left the bodies of crucifed people on the cross when they died, to be
food for dogs and vultures. This is reflected in a Jewish context in
tractate Great Mourning (Ēbhel Rabbāthī, known euphemistically as
Semāḥōth, Rejoicings). This says that the family of someone
executed by the state (mlkūth), so the Romans, not Jewish
authorities, should begin to count the days of mourning ‘from when
they give up hope of asking’ successfully for the body of the
executed person (b. Sem II, 9). More specifically, the wife, husband
or child of a crucified person is instructed not to carry on living in
the same city ‘until the flesh has gone and the figure is not
recognizable in the bones’ (b. Sem. II, 11). This gives a graphic
picture of families being unable to obtain the bodies of
crucified people when they died, and the bodies being left on crosses
until they were unrecognizable. When the flesh rotted or was torn
from the bones, the bones themselves would fall to the ground. Dogs
love arm- bones and leg-bones, and are not averse to picking rib-
cages, but they are not generally known to run off with skulls. So the
tribune, his cohort, the three victims, and Simon of Cyrene probably
arrived at a place strewn with skulls, and hence known as ‘The Skull
Place’. The crucifixions took place at about 9 a.m. (Mk 15.25). The
Romans considered Jesus so important that they fixed to his cross a
description which is approximately a charge, ‘The King of the Jews’
(Mk 15.26). They let Jesus’ opponents near enough to mock him in
his agony. Chief priests and scribes are recorded mocking him in
terms which suggest an Aramaic original best translated ‘The
Anointed King of Israel’ (cf. Mk 15.32). This is again culturally too
precise to be inaccurate, the Jewish equivalent of ‘the King of the
Jews’, but a distinctively Jewish version. At about 3 p.m., Jesus
cried out the opening verse of a psalm especially appropriate for a
faithful Jew in such gross distress. Mark gives this in transliterated
Aramaic as well as in Greek, not the Hebrew of the original psalm:
Elōhi, Elōhi, lemā shebhaqthānī My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? (Ps. 22.1, at Mk 15.34) Once again, we should believe

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Mark’s report. This is the first of the ‘psalms of the righteous
sufferer’. It reflects Jesus’ belief that he was experiencing God’s
rejection of Israel, as he died an excruciatingly painful but atoning
death which would enable God to redeem Israel despite her sins. It
should therefore be taken seriously as a profound cry, but not
interpreted overliterally or in isolation from the rest of Jesus’
relationship with God. Jesus will have known these psalms by
heart. The latter part of this psalm includes a prayer for help, and the
next psalm is Psalm 23, which many Jews and Christians have
recited when they believed they were at the point of death, as Jesus
knew he was. Shortly afterwards, Mark records that Jesus died (Mk
15.37). With such good reasons to believe parts of this narrative, it is
likely that some of it goes back to an eyewitness who was not yet a
disciple of Jesus. The obvious candidate for the source is Simon of
Cyrene. At this point, however, Mark provides more creative
writing, with his report that the curtain of the Temple was split in
two from top to bottom (Mk 15.38). The outer curtain of the Temple
was some 82 feet wide and 23 feet from top to bottom. It was made
of Babylonian tapestry, with embroidery of blue, fine linen, scarlet
and purple, and Josephus describes it as an image of the universe,
portraying a panorama of the heavens (War V, 212–13). If it had
suddenly split in two, Jewish sources could not have failed to
mention this dramatic portent; it would have deeply affected both the
chief priests and the mass of pilgrims in Jerusalem at the time;
Jewish people who could not have failed to mention it include
Gamaliel pleading for moderation in dealing with the movement
after Jesus’ death (Acts 5.34- 39); and Christian sources which could
not have uniformly omitted it include the whole narrative of Acts.
There are however many stories of prodigies occurring to mark the
deaths of important people. For example, it was said that when
R.Samuel son of R. Isaac died, fi re came down from heaven and
there was thunder and lightning for three hours (y. AZ 3, 1/4(42c)).
These stories were intended to be taken symbolically, and the nature
of this one has been sorted out by Roger Aus: it presents God

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mourning for his son, when normal human mourning was not
possible.62 One mourning custom was to put out the lights. God’s
greater light was the sun, so he put it out for three hours, making
darkness over the whole land from midday till 3 p.m. (Mk 15.33).
The original author will have had in mind Amos 8.9- 10:
And it shall come to pass on that day – oracle of the Lord YHWH – I
will bring in the sun at noon and I will darken the land/earth on a
clear day. And I will turn your feasts to mourning . . . I will make it
like mourning for an only son . . . Another mourning custom was to
tear one’s garment, from the top to a little way down. The Temple
curtain was God’s visible garment. In tearing it from top to bottom,
God displayed extreme grief at the death of his son.
Now when the centurion who stood opposite it saw that he
expired in this way, he said ‘Truly this man was a son of God’.
(Mk 15.39) The original author of this verse envisaged the
crucifixion taking place somewhere such as the Mount of Olives,
from where this centurion could see the outer curtain of the Temple
torn in two. He is portrayed as drawing the correct conclusion from
three hours’ darkness and the tearing of God’s garment: the dead
man must be a son of God.