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was shown in Argentina. The preferred instrument for administering electric shocks in Argentina, la picana (a small electrified prod), is itself highly suggestive of the sexual element in this torture.15 Its use in the rape and sexual abuse of women has been well documented and at least two Argentinean male victims also witness to how this abuse eventually led to anal rape.16

      For a reading of crucifixion, two elements of these torture practices deserve particular attention. First, sexual assault and humiliation were standard practices in state torture practices; sexual abuse was standard rather than unusual or exceptional. Second, the awareness among a wider public of a victim’s sexual humiliation was often an important part of this humiliation.

      Against this background, the crucifixion of Jesus may be viewed with a disturbing question in mind: to what extent did the torture and crucifixion of Jesus involve some form of sexual abuse? The testimonies from twentieth-century Latin America create hermeneutical suspicions that merit careful examination of the Gospels to see whether there is any evidence that this was the case.

      To explore this question further, it is helpful to distinguish between sexual abuse that involves only sexual humiliation (such as enforced nudity, sexual mockery and sexual insults) and sexual abuse that extends to sexual assault (which involves forced sexual contact, and ranges from molestation to penetration, injury or mutilation). The Gospels clearly indicate that sexual humiliation was a prominent trait in the mistreatment of Jesus and that sexual humiliation was an important aspect of crucifixion. If this is the case, the possibility of sexual assaults against Jesus will also need to be considered. In the absence of clear evidence to decide this one way or another, I will suggest that what has proved so common in recent torture practices cannot be entirely ruled out in the treatment of Jesus.

Crucifixion in the ancient world appears to have carried a strongly sexual element and should be understood as a form of sexual abuse that involved sexual humiliation and sometimes sexual assault. Crucifixion was intended to be more than the ending of life; prior to actual death it sought to reduce the victim to something less than human in the eyes of society. Victims were crucified naked in what amounted to a ritualized form of public sexual humiliation. In a patriarchal society, where men competed against each other to display virility in terms of sexual power over others, the public display of the naked victim by the ‘victors’ in front of onlookers and passers-by carried the message of sexual domination. The cross held up the victim for display as someone who had been – at least metaphorically – emasculated.17 Depending on the position in which the victim was crucified, the display of the genitals could be specially emphasized. Both Josephus and the Roman historian Seneca the Younger attest to the Romans’ enthusiasm for experimentation with different positions of crucifixion.18 Furthermore, Seneca’s description suggests that the sexual violence against the victim was sometimes taken to the most brutal extreme with crosses that impaled the genitals of the victim. This practice might never have been the case in Palestine – and there is no evidence that suggests it happened to Jesus – but at the very least it suggests the highly sexualized context of violence in which Roman crucifixions sometimes took place.

The sexual element in Roman practices was part of their message of terror. Anyone who opposed the Romans would not only lose their life but also be stripped of all personal honour and human dignity. It is therefore not surprising that the Gospels themselves indicate that there was a high level of sexual humiliation in the way that Jesus was flogged, insulted and then crucified. From evidence of the ancient world it seems that flogging the victim in public while naked was routine. Mark, Matthew and John all imply that this was also the case with the flogging of Jesus.19 Likewise, as noted above, crucifixion usually took place while the victim was naked and there is little reason to think that Jesus or other Jews would have been an exception to this.20 If the purpose was to humiliate the victim, full nakedness would have been particularly shameful in the Jewish context.21 Furthermore, prior to crucifixion, Jesus was handed over to a cohort of Roman soldiers to be further humiliated (Mark 15.16–20; Matt. 27.27–31; John 19.1–5).22 All the Gospels apart from Luke report that the Roman soldiers mocked Jesus by placing a crown of thorns on his head (Mark 15.17; Matt. 27.29; John 19.2) and clothing him in a purple (Mark 15.17; John 19.2) or scarlet garment (Matt. 27.28).23 The texts also mention that the soldiers spat at Jesus (Mark 15.19; Matt. 27.30), struck him with a reed (Mark 15.19; Matt. 27.30), and mocked him with verbal taunts (calling him king: Mark 15.18; Matt. 27.29; John 19.3) and symbolic homage (kneeling before him, Mark 15.19; Matt. 27.29).24

Based on what the Gospel texts themselves indicate, the sexual element in the abuse is unavoidable. An adult man was stripped naked for flogging, then dressed in an insulting way to be mocked, struck and spat at by a multitude of soldiers before being stripped again (at least in Mark 15.20 and Matt. 27.31) and reclothed for his journey through the city – already too weak to carry his own cross – only to be stripped again (a third time) and displayed to a mocking crowd to die while naked. When the textual presentation is stated like this, the sexual element of the abuse becomes clear: the assertion is controversial only in so far as it seems startling in view of usual presentations.25 The sexual element to the torture is downplayed in artistic representations of the crucifixion that show Jesus wearing a loincloth. These images distance us from the biblical text, perhaps because the sexual element has been too disturbing to confront.

Although it is vital to acknowledge the sexual humiliation that is revealed in the text, what the texts might conceal may also be significant. There may have been a level of sexual abuse in the praetorium that none of the Gospels immediately discloses. This suspicion is prompted by the testimonies from Latin America presented earlier. While the testimonies from Latin America do nothing to directly establish the historical facts of crucifixion in Palestine, they are highly suggestive for what may have happened within the closed walls of the praetorium.26

Both Matthew and Mark describe Jesus as being handed over weakened and naked – already a condemned man without any recourse to justice – to soldiers who took him inside the praetorium and assembled the other troops.27 Both Gospels explicitly state that it was the whole cohort (holēn speira) of Roman soldiers – about 500 men – that was assembled together to witness and participate in the ‘mockery’. This probably included a significant number of Syrian auxiliaries who might have viewed their Jewish neighbours with particular hostility.28 In view of the testimonies to gang rape that are given by victims detained by security forces in the clandestine torture centres of Latin America, this detail of overwhelming and hostile military power sounds a particularly disturbing note.

      Many in the Roman cohort would have experienced the fears and frustrations of military life in an occupied country, which could have generated an awkward inner tension of omnipotence and powerlessness. As representatives of imperial Rome, the soldiers collectively exercised almost unlimited power. On the other hand, each individual soldier was at the bottom of a long chain of Roman hierarchical command and would also have felt their individual powerlessness on a daily basis. The instinctive response to such powerlessness is often to impose one’s own power forcefully on those who are even less powerful. Individual soldiers had very little freedom or personal choice to act on this, however, and often their interactions with local people would reinforce their feelings of powerlessness and frustration. The common soldier would

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