I thought Iād take the liberty to add a few things here. If youāre reading this thread with any interest, then perhaps some of what follows will likewise be of interest to you. Of course, also feel free to stop reading & move on at any time. Iāll make a couple references to the article referenced in the OP, but most of this will be my own additions.
First off, some of you guys know this from a couple posts Iāve made here in the past ā Iām an anesthesiologist. So as for all physicians, what that means is that one becomes something of an expert in a few particular things. I canāt say that I know too much about most chemotherapeutic drugs, and Iām likewise not the best person to look at that rash you have & tell you what it is. But what I know a great deal about is cardiac & respiratory physiology, and the mechanisms via which pain is perceived & processed in the human nervous system. Those two things alone constitute a big part of what I do every day.
Iāve done a talk two or three times on the crucifixion & physical death of Jesus. As part of my own research, I read a bit in one or two of the books discussed above. Thereās also an old JAMA article from 1986 that was interesting ā the lead author is a William G. Edwards, MD, if you want to search for it.
Crucifixion is essentially a variation on the older practice of impaling, whereby the body of the condemned was placed on an upright pole. The impaling could have been the principal cause of death, or the condemned may have been killed by some other means & his body impaled on the pole for display purposes. Impaling was known & practiced throughout the ancient near east, and is referenced in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, circa 18th century BC. Thereās also a mention of the practice in Genesis 40, in the story of Joseph & the pharaohās baker.
The methods of capital punishment described in the Mosaic law are stoning & burning, though there is a reference in Deuteronomy 21 to hanging the corpse on a pole or tree, and not allowing the body to remain there overnightā¦a Torah command that also factors into the death of Jesus (and presumably other Jews who were crucified by the Romans).
As someone referenced above there is apparently a historical hypothesis that the Romans picked up the practice of crucifixion from the Carthaginians ā the two powers fought three wars for control of the Mediterranean world, so itās very likely they knew plenty about each other. And when Rome subjugated the former kingdoms of Israel & Judah in the 1st century BC the practice of Roman crucifixion moved there as well. I often think of the Romans as a highly methodical bunch ā kind of the IBM of the ancient world. My old man was a career IBMāer, so trust meā¦I know the type. Thus, the Romans likely didnāt invent crucifixion, but they sure perfected itā¦and turned it into probably the most painful method of execution ever conceived by man, at least as applied on an institutional scale.
When our recovery room nurses are caring for a patient after surgery, one of the questions they will ask is for a āpain scoreā ā a simple numerical rating of how much pain the patient is having, ranging from 0 to 10. Itās subjective, of course, but thatās how pain is assessed. āZeroā is obviously no pain at all, and the word usually tethered to a pain score of ātenā is āexcruciatingā ā literally derived from Latin as āout of the cross.ā Thus the word we often apply to the worst pain we can feel is taken from the pain of the Roman practice of crucifixion.
You guys above were discussing the specifics of the process of nailing the hands & feet. The article referenced in the OP makes note that one could just tie the hands & arms of the condemned man to the crosspiece ā as Iāll explain momentarily, that likely makes little difference vs. nailing them. I would assume all of us here who are Christians hold that Jesusā hands were nailed to his own cross, since thatās what is stated in a few separate biblical passages. But just because somebody digs up a skeleton of a man who was crucified in Judaea in the 1st century, and thereās no evidence that that manās hands were nailed, realize it doesnāt really apply to Jesusā death.
Iām no Greek scholar, of course, but my own understanding when researching this was that the Greek word used for āhandā in those biblical passages also connotes the wrist, and perhaps even the distal forearm. Iām not gonna bet my 401(k) on it, mind you, but Iāve understood that in the past to be the case. The two likely locations where one would nail the hands/wrists to the crosspiece of the cross would not be right through the center of the palm, but (a) closer to the wrist, just beside the fleshier base of the thumb, or (b) just below the wrist (as @jpm mentioned), between the distal ends of the radius & ulna bones of the forearm. In the case of (a), the nail would go through a tough connective tissue layer called the flexor retinaculum, and then through the carpal bones. That would hold fairly strong, but I think the more likely scenario would be (b) aboveā¦thatās how Iād do it if I were in charge of crucifying someone. Not to be graphic, but itād be extremely difficult for anyone to pull through the nail in that location.
Again, one could just bind the hands & arms of the condemned man to the crosspiece, and it wouldnāt affect the process very much. But much more important would be securing the feet, and I have to think this was almost always done with a nail, or two. The OP article describes the possibility that the feet of the condemned were placed on either side of the upright of the cross ā ie, with the insides of both ankles against the wood ā and one very long nail driven through one ankle, through the upright, out the other side of the wood and through the other ankle. In my mind this could work as long as the nail is anywhere below the end of the tibia bone of the leg. What my own research uncovered was likely a slanted footrest called a āsedileā incorporated into the upright. In this case, the condemnedās feet are placed with one plantar surface over the top of the other, and one long nail driven through both feet ā likely between the 2nd & 3rd metatarsal bones of each foot ā and into the wood of the sedile. Most artistic representations of Jesusā crucifixion with which Iām familiar seem to favor something more like this latter approach.
Crucifixion itself was likely not as bloody a procedure as one might think. The nail through the wrists would usually go in between the radial & ulnar arteries (the former is that pulse you can feel below the base of your thumb; the latter is on the pinky finger side of your wrist ā itās deeper down & harder to feel). The exception could be the nail through the top surfaces of both feet. You should be able to feel a pulse on the top surface of your own foot ā thatās the dorsalis pedis artery, and a nail driven through it would obviously cause some bleeding.
The nail through the wrists ā in either of the locations I mentioned ā would likely be extremely painful, though. It would likely go through the median nerve in either location; thatās the nerve thatās impinged in carpal tunnel syndrome. Driving a nail through it would be incredibly painful, radiating all the way up the arm. Again, nailing the hands & wrists to the crosspiece isnāt really necessary per se, and my own hypothesis is that one reason the Romans would have done this to some crucifixion victims is just for the pure sadism of it.
Ultimately, one dies from crucifixion due to asphyxiation. Under normal conditions, inhalation is an active process, ie, it requires muscle activityā¦primarily contraction of the diaphragm muscle, which separates the thoracic & abdominal cavities. To a lesser extent, contraction of the intercostal muscles between the ribs also contributes. The net effect is an expansion of the thoracic cage, and the creation of a subatmospheric pressure within that cage. Air rushes into the lungs ādownā that pressure gradient.
Under conditions of greater need, the muscles connecting the skull & cervical spine to the clavicle & shoulder girdle also contribute. This pulls the clavicle up, expanding the thoracic cage this way. The reason you lean over & put your hands above your knees to catch your breath after exerting yourself is because bracing your hands like that & locking your elbows confers a mechanical advantage to those neck & sternocleidomastoid muscles. @Randy & @jpm know that if you see a patient with an acute asthma attack & you can see the muscles in his neck contracting with each breath, you do not leave that patient aloneā¦heās in trouble, and heās at risk of tiring out soon.
By contrast, exhalation is usually a passive process ā after actively contracting those muscles to inhale, you just ālet go.ā The diaphragm & other muscles relax, the thoracic cage recoils down to its resting volume, and air flows out of the lungs to the outside. The exception to this is when one is doing something like blowing out a candle or singing ā here, thereās a degree of active muscle activity during exhalation. Usually, exhalation takes twice as long as inhalation ā ie, 1.5 to 2 seconds to inhale & 3 to 4 seconds to exhale each breath. And nowā¦youāre all thinking about your breathing. 
Crucifixion inverts this natural mode of breathing. Recall that in many artistic representations of Jesusā crucifixion his arms are extended out from his body with an angle between his torso & humerus bones that exceeds 90 degrees. This mechanically enlarges the thoracic cage and thus creates a state of fixed inhalation. And again, one could accomplish this by binding the hands & arms to the crosspiece just about as well as nailing them. To exhale, then, the condemned man must push his body skyward to reduce that shoulder joint angle to less than 90 degrees in order to facilitate air exiting his lungs. His breathing mechanics are thus inverted, and every exhaled breath requires the very painful act of pushing up on the nail(s) driven through his feet.
Johnās account tells us that the Roman soldiers at Jesusā crucifixion broke the legs of the two thieves crucified with him in order to hasten their deaths, and that they contemplated doing so to Jesus, but did not when they realized he was already dead. Breaking the tibia bones of the condemned makes it almost impossible for him to push up on the nail in his feet, and thereby contributes to his asphyxiation & a hastier demise.
Yikesā¦that kinda kept going, didnāt it? Sorry to monopolize half the bandwidth of the message board server, guys. I hope some of you found something interesting here, though.
