[Written on Good Friday 2020]
I’ve been reading Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian wars, which occurred a few centuries before Jesus’ life. In reading his work, it struck me how after every single battle, the victorious army would set up a “trophy” made up of the armor, shields, and weapons of the defeated soldiers. These “trophies,” which were also usually dedicated to a god, would be erected on the battlefield as makeshift monuments displaying the power of the victors over their enemies. The Romans would continue the Greek tradition of setting up trophies in commemoration of major battles they won.
Anyway, I decided to Google “what did ancient trophies looks like”, and…well…they looked a LOT like what happens in a crucifixion! Do you see the resemblance?
In other words, Jesus’ death on the cross looked very similar to a trophy, the ancient militaristic symbol for a victory. This blew my mind, so I did some more research and it turns out early Christians (who actually lived under the Romans) made this connection as well. Tertullian, writing in the 2nd Century CE, said “The Cross is a trophy, a sign of…victory over death.”
Isn’t that fascinating! On Good Friday, Jesus inverts the intended cultural message of the Roman Empire’s practice of crucifixion. While the Romans wanted every crucifixion to be a public “trophy” that displayed the unlimited power and victory of their Empire against any mortal that dared resist it, through the cross Jesus actually is the one who conquers! As Paul says in Colossians 2:15, “Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he (Jesus) made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” And as Christians believe, at the cross Jesus isn’t just conquering the Roman empire, but every power of hell, sin, and death. The irony is that in dying on Calvary, the site of Jesus’ greatest “defeat” is simultaneously the site of his greatest victory.
To put it another way, theologian Brigette Kahl writes, “Crosses and trophies are twin images in the Roman visual world of the first century CE, omnipresent as signposts of imperial power over the bodies and minds of the conquered. While crosses expose armor-less human bodies to torturous dying, … trophies are the body-less armor of an already dead enemy. Both are images of triumph and merciless retaliation against the non-compliant… Seen through the lens of the trophy, Paul’s theology of cross and justification by faith emerges as a resistant messianic counter-visualization, as the body of the crucified empowers a rebellious re-embodiment of the dis-embodied.”
There’s probably a lot more symbolism here, and if anyone is a student of ancient history or of Christianity, I welcome your input. All this to say: this yet another reason why studying history is important. Without it, we are lacking the crucial pieces of cultural context that can inform and enrich our deepest beliefs.
May everyone have a very blessed Good Friday.