The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ

The execution of Jesus of Nazareth by Roman crucifixion outside the walls of Jerusalem, sometime in the early thirties of the first century. The historical event sits at the center of the religious tradition I was raised in, the philosophical arguments this corpus exercises, and a stack of disagreements I am not finished thinking through.

I keep the Crucifixion as an Event note because it is one. A specific person was killed, on a specific morning, by a specific procedure, under a specific governor. The dating is uncertain by a year or two and the procedural details vary across the four canonical accounts, but the historicity of the execution itself is about as well-attested as anything in its century. Whether anything else happened is the question that has divided witnesses ever since.

The note is sparse on participants because the corpus does not yet include people-notes for Jesus, Pilate, Caiaphas, or the figures the gospels name. They might come, in the user’s actual vault. They have not yet here.

Mostly I keep this note open because the philosophical arguments next door — the Argument from Divine Hiddenness, the Problem of Evil, the resurrection arguments I have not yet typed — are arguments about this event, even when they do not name it. Holding it as a typed node in the same vault as those arguments lets me see when the abstract problem and the concrete event are doing the same work.