Entering Gethsemane-Night of Terror

After the “Last Supper” observing the Passover in the upper room, Jesus felt heavy and led his Apostles to the Garden of Gethsemane over the bridge across the Kidron Valley to the east where He could be alone and pray.  The Passover is always celebrated at the full moon at the end of March and beginning of April, and the night was cold (see John 18:18).  Ancient manuscripts and stone foundations discovered at the bottom of several exploratory shafts dug in the mid nineteenth century offer evidence of a high narrow stone bridge crossing the Kidron Valley at the time of Christ.  At that time to even walk near a grave site was to be defiled and required ritual cleansing by the Priest.  Graves, both marked and unmarked, littered the bottom of the Valley.  The history of Jerusalem is a violent succession of conquerors for thousands of years.  Even when it stood as an independent state there was constant fighting and bloodshed.  The bottom of the Valley seemed to accumulate layers of the dead almost in proportion to the layers of broken stones and debris used by attacking armies to lay siege to the walls of Jerusalem. It would have been unthinkable to subject the olive oil and wine to be used in the Temple to such pollution!  So, according to the texts, a high, narrow stone bridge was built by the priests to provide a way to preserve the purity of the essential oils and wines as they were transported to the Temple.  This is the last of many of my own paintings featuring that bridge, and even this painting has been “updated” seven or eight times to more accurately depict discoveries my friends and I have made in the last few months. Special thanks to Dr. Vern Swanson of the Springville Museum of Art for his many contributions. I expect that there remain errors to be corrected in a subsequent work as more and more is learned about the time of the Atonement. 

Spirit's Release

 So many crucifixes show Jesus hanging gracefully from a cross, but the cross was the cruelest of tortures barbaric minds could conceive.  Many artists represent the Savior nailed to the cross while the two thieves are fastened with ropes.  In reality the rope was there not only to hold the victim onto the cross, but it compressed the chest forcing out all air whenever the burning pain in the thigh muscles became so great that the poor victim had to let himself down.  The legs were bent in a cramped position so that the only way to draw a breath was to strain upward upon the nail driven either through both feet one over the other, or through both heels with the legs turned viciously to the side.  The nails through the hands were bad enough, but it was feared the weight of a grown man might tear through the tendons and ligaments there so the torturers drove another nail through the wrists to support the weight. 

It just so happened that the great nerve that carries the sensations from the fingers passes through the wrist and so any pressure coming to bear upon that cruel spike caused a sensation similar to striking one’s “crazy bone” in the elbow only more pronounced and sustained.  The whole time the person “hung” upon the nails through his arms and hands he would be racked by the shocks to the nerves mentioned.  Writhing in agony induced by the pressure of the nails on his nerves, the poor victim would be struggling to breathe as the rope across his chest would have pushed all the air from his lungs.  His only hope of drawing a breath would be to push down, resting his entire weight upon the nails through his feet or heels, and strain upward with exhausted leg muscles screaming because of the cramped way they were positioned beneath him.

When they broke the legs of the two thieves so they wouldn’t hang on the crosses through the Sabbath, it wasn’t so much the shock of the broken bones they were counting on to kill the thieves, it was that they could no longer  raise themselves up to draw a breath, so they suffocated.

Usually victims of the cross hung there for four days before they died; ninety six hours of excruciating pain exacerbated by an ever growing thirst brought on by the loss of blood, continuously writhing up and down; torn between the searing pain in the legs, and the need to breathe.  Rest was impossible!

Short hours into the ordeal, birds would come to peck out the victim’s eyes, if family wasn’t there to drive them away.  Then came the flies laying eggs in the moist eye sockets, and nose, leaving the victims blind, barely able to breathe past a thirst swollen tongue, wracked with pain in every muscle and joint, to await the inevitable hours of madness that came on when the maggots burrowed into the brain from the eyes and nose just before the release of death.

That was the death they condemned our beloved Savior to suffer, and even that paled when compared to the agony he suffered in the Garden.    D&C 19:18 Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—

Dawn of Hope