Thanks Phlebas. That second one is perhaps what I was thinking of, it is a still from one of my self-crux videos, all lost now so what you have is all that remains. I remember changing an image like that to put a sky in & some spears looming up in the front. I liked the vulnerability between bare flesh & sharp steel.
Good Friday today, the day we are encouraged by the Church to contemplate the suffering & death of Jesus. Well I needed no such encouragement ever! I wonder how many really do consider the horrible realities of that event if it ever existed or such punishment meted out on many many people back then.
But in my contemplation of the actual Bible accounts, which are pretty well the only accounts of crucifixion, I still wonder about the timing of the narrative.
For one thing I argued with friends that the sun near the horizon in a painting of the arrest of Christ was in my opinion a sunset whereas they thought it a dawn. My point being that there wouldn't have been enough time between a dawn & all the events following the arrest.
So much so that I take quite seriously a theory by some historical scholar that the Last Supper was actually on the Wednesday evening, this would give plenty of time for the events. I could never imagine Pilate being got up before dawn to question & try a common Nazarene. I doubt he would have attended to such things earlier than mid morning being the governor.
With Roman timing I believe the hours were counted from dawn onwards, so if dawn was at 6.00am the third hour when Jesus was actually nailed to the cross would have been nine o'clock in the morning. This doesn't give a lot of time for all the events even with a dusk of the previous day's arrest.
So with an arrest on the Wednesday evening there would have been a whole day of all the to-ing & fro-ing between the priests & scribes, Herod, & Pilate as well as time for beatings up & mockery in between. And of course a whole night between the Thursday and the Friday once the sentence was given for incredible ill treatment we can hardly imagine.
I saw a lot of articles and theories on this timeline out there also. Wednesday night arrest is quite common, some even says 72 hours between Jesus arrest and his crucifixion too (parallel-ing nicely with 3 days between time of death and Easter too, which when you says 3 days also incorrect lol).
My theory is that the religious leaders want to give themselves enough time to capture Jesus and arrange his execution so his death is not so close to Passover. It is very unlikely they planned it just 1 day before. But few circumstances got in the way of their original plan. Firstly, everyone wanted to get a piece of this popular rabbi (even they themselves could not help beating up this particular prisoner even they are done sentencing him). Then to Herod. The 'interrogation' should not be so short since the claim is quite serious, and the payback to the prisoner who gave him cold shoulder treatment wont be short either. Herod and his company would make sure the self-proclaimed got what he deserved and to turn people against him by mocking and humiliating him.
Lastly, the Roman soldiers themselves must have liked some time to play with this particular prisoner. Pilate must have understood this very well. Not only he got to annoy the religious leaders by delaying their demand as long as possible, but he gave extra time for his soldiers to entertain themselves. This prisoner is 3-fold special, he is Jewish, he is a religious leader (zealots to them) and political upriser (not really but in their eyes he is). He is incredibly popular too, not to mention young and fit enough to undergo all sorts of 'ill treatments' as you say, be it physical or mental. I am guessing he wanted to make sure his soldiers got 'their money worth' for all the inconvenience this is all causing them. So many scenarios that we imagine happen to Jesus during those dark hours...