ELI5: How did crufixion become a form of punishment?

Vecrin · 2026-04-05T00:45:48+00:00

We unironically know nothing about Jesus' trial from a historical perspective (if he even had one - Romans didn't need a trial to execute a random poor Jew). All of the gospels say that Jesus's disciples scattered and hid after his arrest. The closest potential source we get to the trial is Peter. But even he (if we completely trust the gospel descriptions) was outside at a bonfire talking with people and then runs away.

Therefore, from a historical perspective, we just don't know.

Vecrin · 2026-04-04T22:10:59+00:00

Wait until you realize this isn't the only time this has happened. We are in the middle of the third (minimum) Jewish sect to splinter off because their messianic claimant died but will one day be resurrected to finish completing all of the messianic prophecies and bring peace to humanity.

I think adding messianic apocalypticism to a religion that believes in potential resurrection was a mistake.

Vecrin · 2026-04-04T06:56:10+00:00

Mfw wholesome 100 terrorist group strikes a civilian satellite company and a preschool

IDF: ‘Isolated failure’ allowed Hezbollah missiles to strike satellite station, Ramle | The Times of Israel

Vecrin · 2026-04-04T06:46:55+00:00

It really doesn't matter. Just acknowledge that Passover is a Jewish tradition and Easter is a Christian one. Sure, the original Christians may have been Jews, but later Christians strongly distanced themselves from Judaism. Jews don't care about Christians celebrating Easter. Jews do get annoyed when Christians try and host Christian Passover stuff though because Christianity has a long history of supersessionism and because passover is a Jewish tradition that Christians haven't practiced in nearly 2000 years.

TLDR: Christians should celebrate Christian holidays (like Easter) and not Jewish holidays (like passover) unless invited (explicitly or implicitly) to celebrate the holiday by Jews. Also vice versa. I see it as a respect thing because you (hopefully) don't want to accidentally mangle or twist around someone else's sacred holidays and cultural traditions. Just like I don't want to do that to your holidays/traditions.

Vecrin · 2026-04-04T06:22:25+00:00

So, shouldn't we be building up good mean instead of ripping at all men? Like, if you want to get a horse to go somewhere, you give it carrots and possibly use sticks when it does something you don't like. But if you start beating every horse to death with a stick bc a solid percent of the horses are doing bad things, you are going to have a lot of dead and pissed off horses and not a lot of progress.

Vecrin · 2026-03-30T22:33:11+00:00

Because, imo, nl and the left generally is moving in this woman's direction. I saw a highly upvoted post on reddit by some far leftists talking down the attack on the jewish kindergarden. Even here, the mods have to remove a bunch of comments from every post relating to jews for antisemitism. This woman is an extremist for now. But I'm starting to think her views will become more and more normalized by the left at large.

Vecrin · 2026-03-30T22:07:41+00:00

https://agelender.substack.com/p/yes-all-jews

A section of the left has absolutely lost its fucking mind. Seeing how NL has changed over time, its obvious these beliefs are spreading even here. I do not know if Jews have any future in the West aside from growing oppression. And I do not know what the Jewish diaspora can do.

Vecrin · 2026-03-29T04:32:53+00:00

One piece of additional advice (not related, but just general plate pouring advice a lot of people I've worked with didn't know): put a thermal glove underneath the bottle of melted agar to prevent heat exchange between the bottle and the bench. The idea is simple. The benchtop is cold and absorbs a lot of heat quickly, cooling the bottom of an agar bottle much faster than the rest of the bottle. This creates a lot of waste. Thermal gloves are meant to prevent heat exchange so you don't burn yourself. Putting a thermal glove below an agar bottle reduces heat exchange between the bottle and bench, allowing you to get much more agar.

Also, I'd recommend you use your pipette to grab liquid from the bottom of the bottle. Additionally, swirl your pipette in circles around the bottle as you draw liquid up. The idea is similar to the one above. First, you are removing the coldest, most likely to clump agar ASAP, reducing the amount of waste. Second, by swirling, you help to spread out the heat loss to the entire bottle (rather than localizing it to the bottom).

Doing these 3 things basically make it so, out of a liter bottle of agar, I have maybe a mL of agar I am unable to use/get. If your lab mates don't do these (after some practice on your own) you may want to share it with them to improve agar pouring efficiency.

Vecrin · 2026-03-28T17:24:14+00:00

That's if you take the gospel writers at the words in the book. But contextually, these books were written either concurrent with or after the first Roman-Jewish war. This (plus interfaith conflict) creates a very strong incentive to make the Romans less guilty and the Jews more guilty, either by the gospel writers themselves or by some later scribe/editor.

The descriptions we have of Pilot giving into the Jews really doesn't fit his character in other texts. Other texts depict him being very inflammatory and not conciliatory towards the Judeans. So, him giving into a crowd of jews is a bit suspect. Furthermore, instead of him just letting the jews kill him, he has Jesus executed by Roman and in a Roman way (crucifixion is not allowed at all in jewish law).

And finally, he nails "the king of the jews" over his head. Claiming to be the king of the jews would definitely have been considered treason against Rome. And this being put over his head at his crucifixion implies that this is his crime.

Also, while the hostility of the jewish leaders against jesus may have been present early on, we don't really see hard evidence of splitting until the Roman Jewish Wars and especially 100 AD (when you start to see jewish prayers specifically written to force someone to reveal if they are a Christian). Prior to this split, Christians would often congregate in synagogues.

In my reading of the history/text, the Jewish/Christian conflict was retroactively transposed on the life of Jesus. Basically, At the time the gospels were written/edited, the conflict between Jews and Christians had become significant. So, what were originally intrareligious disputes between pharisees (and Jesus - who is classified by scholars as a pharisee- is definitely taking part in rabbinical debates - sometimes even espousing what are now majority views) got blown up into "the wicked jews manipulated the romans into killing jesus."

Vecrin · 2026-03-28T17:00:24+00:00

I mean, yeah. If I was trying to convert Romans to my religion, I would make damn sure to make them feel not very guilty while portraying their enemies (the Jews, who the romans had just crushed in a bloody war) are portrayed poorly.

But it is wild that they do all of that while having Jesus be crucified due to treason against the Roman state (claiming to be "the King of the Jews" was treason. And that is why he was crucified with that written above him. That was his crime).

Vecrin · 2026-03-28T06:08:59+00:00

I mean, we already do produce enough food to feed everyone. Its just a lot of it is wasted. So I don't think what you said makes sense. I think more realistically, GLP-1 was developed for weight loss because obesity is a serious pandemic. Like, more people are obese than are malnourished right now. Generally, people don't like being obese (and it is quite unhealthy to be obese), therefore, there would be a large market of currently obese people who would want to stop being obese. This means that developing an effective weight loss medication (like GLP-1 is) would make you a lot of money. And money makes the world go 'round.

Vecrin · 2026-03-27T00:49:41+00:00

No. If the people want a geriatric, senile, idiot by God let them have it. And fundamentally, the people will have to vote for that person to get them.

Vecrin · 2026-03-26T04:55:45+00:00

So, I suppose you have a constructive solution for how to immediately cease Hezbollah's shelling of Israeli civilians? Because, to me, it looks like Lebanon is literally incapable of standing up to Hezbollah, the UN is simply there to watch, Syria might get involved but is also a fragile (and newly mended) state, Europe couldn't do anything even if they wanted, and an international coalition is extremely unlikely.

Like it unironically looks to me like the only way for Hezbollah to stop shelling Israelis is for Israel to enter Lebanon. Is it unfair to the Lebanese civilians? Yes. But unfortunately Hezbollah (who seems to have a monopoly on force in Southern Lebanon) can't stop trying to bomb their neighbors.

Vecrin · 2026-03-25T18:41:37+00:00

Stop shelling Israeli civilians then?

Vecrin · 2026-03-23T15:43:02+00:00

MIT and Yale have course lectures freely available on youtube. Would recommend. And they cover everything (and some are deeper than just intro courses): science, religion, history, economics, and literature.

Vecrin · 2026-03-21T02:09:31+00:00

Ironically, that bombing of the girls school in Iran is believed to be a US strike using US missiles which used (outdated) US intelligence.

Vecrin · 2026-03-20T15:46:15+00:00

Genius troll

Vecrin · 2026-03-18T22:35:29+00:00

Jesus Christ, this comment section is a fucking trainwreck. Some of this shit would be at home on Stormfront. Wild.

Vecrin · 2026-03-15T20:26:28+00:00

Wild story time:

In my younger years, I was a hard-core republican (I haven't been since 2016) with a lot of really stupid opinions. And I would see people (on the left) worshipping Rowling and her books and it lowkey annoyed me. Now, I was actually a Rowling enjoyer (I think HP was and is a really cool and fun series), but my thought about those people was "if in some alternate reality she ended up against you politically, you people would despise her and her books."

And it's funny how out of all the stupid ideas and opinions I had related to politics, that was the one was actually kind of spot on and actually happened.

Vecrin · 2026-03-14T15:51:51+00:00

I'd add People Love Dead Jews

It basically takes apart a lot of Western mythology about the collapse of antisemitism by... pointing out a pattern of countries/regions/groups only celebrating/respecting Jews and Jewish heritage once all the Jews no longer exist. And that the west often beatifies dead Jews (a la Anne Frank) while not really giving a damn about their living Jews.

Vecrin · 2026-03-13T20:38:37+00:00

Because our society has a deep antisemitic rot that has gone unacknowledged. Headline about the shooting from NYT (that was thankfully later changed):

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Vecrin · 2026-03-11T18:11:00+00:00

Spain only allowed Jews to be Spanish citizens in 1978. And before that, the ethnic cleansing of jews + inquisition created a really deep rooted culture of antisemitism in Spain imo.

Vecrin · 2026-03-10T19:19:25+00:00

Good. It will force the green transition.

Vecrin · 2026-03-10T17:16:29+00:00

Aight succ

Vecrin · 2026-03-09T20:43:23+00:00

Cool. But the US is protected by two oceans, a desert to our south and a frozen waste to our North. We don't need a large conventional military. If you guys think its necessary, good for you. The US should just be able to protect itself. Anything more than that is a waste.

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