Sloyan, Gerard S., The Crucifixion of Jesus: History, Myth, Faith, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995.
Tombs, David, ‘Crucifixion, State Terror, and Sexual Abuse’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review 53:1–2 (1999), pp. 89–109.
–––, ‘Prisoner Abuse: From Abu Ghraib to The Passion of The Christ’, in Religion and the Politics of Peace and Conflict, eds Linda Hogan and Dylan Lee Lehrke, Princeton, NJ: Princeton Theological Monograph Series, 2009, pp. 179–205.
–––, ‘Silent No More: Sexual Violence in Conflict as a Challenge to the Worldwide Church’, Acta Theologica 34:2 (December 2014), pp. 142–60.
–––, ‘Crucificação e abuso sexual’, Estudos Teológicos 59:1 (July 2019), pp. 119–32.
Trexler, Richard, Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995.
United Nations Commission on Truth for El Salvador, From Madness to Hope: The Twelve Years War in El Salvador: Report of the Commission on Truth for El Salvador, 1992–93, New York: United Nations, 1993.
Notes
1 This chapter is an abridged version of David Tombs, ‘Crucifixion, State Terror, and Sexual Abuse’, Union Seminary Quarterly Review, 53:1–2 (Autumn 1999), pp. 89–109. The central argument was first presented as David Tombs, ‘Biblical Interpretation in Latin America: Crucifixion, State Terror, and Sexual Abuse’ in the Biblical Hermeneutics Section at the Society of Biblical Literature International Conference, 20 July 1998, Krakow, Poland. An abridgement was first published in Portuguese as David Tombs, ‘Crucificação e abuso sexual’, Estudos Teológicos 59:1 (July 2019), pp. 119–32, and republished as Crucifixion and Sexual Abuse (Dunedin: Centre for Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago, 2019), http://hdl.handle.net/10523/9834 (English); http://hdl.handle.net/10523/9843 (Spanish); http://hdl.handle.net/10523/9846 (French); http://hdl.handle.net/10523/9924 (German). This chapter version includes a few further minor amendments to the 2019 versions but the text is primarily intended to summarize the 1999 article rather than to reflect further developments since then. I hope to address further developments in David Tombs, The Crucifixion of Jesus: Torture, Sexual Abuse, and the Scandal of the Cross (London: Routledge, forthcoming).
2 See Fernando F. Segovia, ‘Jesus as Victim of State Terror: A Critical Reflection Twenty Years Later’, in David Tombs, Crucifixion, State Terror, and Sexual Abuse: Text and Context (Dunedin: Centre for Theology and Public Issues, University of Otago, 2018); http://hdl.handle.net/10523/8558.
3 For one of the most sophisticated and sustained developments of a contextual hermeneutic, see Clodovis Boff, Theology and Praxis: Epistemological Foundations (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987). Boff’s approach recognizes both the similarities and differences between the contemporary Latin American context and the biblical world.
4 David Tombs, ‘Silent No More: Sexual Violence in Conflict as a Challenge to the Worldwide Church’, Acta Theologica 34:2 (2014), pp. 142–60.
5 On state terror and sexual abuses in Latin American torture in the 1970s and 1980s, see further discussion in Tombs, Crucifixion, State Terror, and Sexual Abuse. On reading crucifixion in the light of the torture at Abu Ghraib, see David Tombs, ‘Prisoner Abuse: From Abu Ghraib to The Passion of The Christ’, in Religions and the Politics of Peace and Conflict, eds Linda Hogan and Dylan Lee Lehrke (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Theological Monograph Series, 2009), pp. 179–205.
6 These include: Archdiocese of Sao Paulo, Torture in Brazil: A Report by the Archdiocese of São Paulo (New York: Vintage Books, 1986); National Commission on Disappeared People, Nunca Más: A Report by Argentina’s National Commission on Disappeared People (Boston, MA, and London: Faber and Faber, 1986); National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (Notre Dame, IN: Centre for Civil and Human Rights, Notre Dame Law School, 1993); United Nations Commission on Truth for El Salvador, From Madness to Hope: The Twelve Years War in El Salvador: Report of the Commission on Truth for El Salvador, 1992–93 (New York: United Nations, 1993).
7 See the collection of essays that explore this from different disciplines in Juan E. Corradi, Patricia W. Fagen and Manuel A. Garretón, eds, Fear at the Edge: State Terror and Resistance in Latin America (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1992). On the use of torture to promote terror, see Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
8 For a brief history of crucifixion, see the classic work by Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Cross (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press; London: SCM Press, 1977).
9 Crucifixion was rarely used against Roman citizens and even these infrequent occasions were to punish lower classes rather than the aristocracy. On the use of crucifixion by the Romans, see the classic work by Hengel, Crucifixion. For recent treatments, see Raymond E. Brown, Death of the Messiah (New York: Doubleday, 1994), pp. 945–52, and the exhaustive bibliography, pp. 885–7; Stephen D. Moore, God’s Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible (New York: Routledge, 1996); and Gerard S. Sloyan, The Crucifixion of Jesus: History, Myth, Faith (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995).
10 The English translation, Josephus, The Jewish War, trans., G. A. Willon, revised edn (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970) is used here and for all other passages cited below.
11 Analysis of how crucifixion was used in the ancient world is complicated by the close relationship between crucifixion, impalement and the hanging of bodies (which might be carried out either before or after death). That the New Testament writers can move easily between crucifixion and hanging on a tree is shown in Galatians 3.13; Acts 5.30; 10.39.
12 During crucifixion it is likely that all control over many body functions would have failed. The following account of electric shock torture in Argentina by Nélson Eduardo Dean suggests how humiliating the consequences of this would be: ‘During the application of electricity, one would lose all control over one’s senses, such torture provoking permanent vomiting, almost constant defecation, etc.’ National Commission of Disappeared People, Nunca Más, p. 39.
13 Further examples are included in Tombs, Crucifixion, State Terror, and Sexual Abuse.
14 ‘[H]e was tortured naked, after taking a bath, while hanging on the parrot’s perch where he received electric shocks from a magneto [small electric generator] to his genital organs and over his whole body.’ Quoting José Milton Ferreira de Almeida in Archdiocese of Sao Paulo, Torture in Brazil, p. 17.