Mav23 said:
Maybe they thought the hands were more poetic or something. I'm not sure which would hurt more....
Well, I dunno about poetic, but having it that way conforms it to the inaccurate portrayals of the crucifixion in art/cinema all throughout history. Only a few of the more recent efforts ("Jesus of Nazareth", The Last Temptation of Christ", I think) have attempted to correct this inaccuracy.
That's the thing that gets me, though: Why go to all that effort to make sure everything's dead-on accurate, and then miss something that obvious?..
As far as hurting more, it's like this:
1) If the nails went into the palms, then your sheer body weight would cause the spikes to tear thru the palms soon after the cross went vertical. That would ouch you, but also it would mean they'd hafta take it down and renail you to the cross in another anatomic location, etc.. That's why it couldn't have been in the palms.
2) IRC that the wrists would hurt even more, because placing the spike between your radius & ulna (the two forearm bones that meet at the wrist) would virtually ensure that your radial nerve would get pinched and stretched, esp. after you went vertical. Anyone who's ever suffered from a nerve compression syndrome (think sciatica, for example) knows how excruciating of a pain that can cause. YOWZA!
And LeHah? Martin Scorcese's flick was not the same movie. He told more of the back story of Christ (not just the day of his crucifixion), and besides, that movie was fictional. Based on a 1960s novel of the same name by Dino Kazantzakis, the premise of it was, what would it have been like to be in Jesus' head, and be faced with the temptation to chuck it all and not go thru with the crucifixion? That is, what is Jesus had fallen prey to the "temptation" to abandon His mission and just live a normal earthly life (wife, kids, retirement, etc.)?...
THAT was precisely what caused the controversy; the idea that any movie would portray Jesus as NOT fulfilling His mission, or even
contemplating not doing so. The response was entirely unnecessary, as there's nothing sacriligious about such a thought. Scripture teaches that Jesus was "a man like us in all things but sin". And, temptation is not a sin; giving IN to it is what leads us into sin.
