review of John Granger Cook on Roman Crucifixion

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ficino
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Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:15 pm

review of John Granger Cook on Roman Crucifixion

Post by ficino »

In October 2015 I posted a note that John Granger Cook has a book out on crucifixion in the Roman world. Here is a review of that book in Bryn Mawr Classical Review. The reviewer is James H. Dee, Classics prof. emeritus of Loyola Univ., Chicago:

http://www.bmcreview.org/2017/01/20170119.html

The review says that Cook's massive tome (522 numbered pages) is an updating of Martin Hengel's 1977 monograph on crucifixion. From the review I get the impression that Cook collects or refers to pretty much all known information about Roman crucifixion. Cook also has a chapter on Hebrew and Syriac writings, some of which retroject Roman methods of execution into interpretations of earlier biblical texts (e.g. Isaiah).

It is not clear from the review whether Cook goes into discrepancies among the gospel accounts of Jesus' crucifixion. Cook is a prof. of Religion and does throw in theological language. Dee in his review says that the book, however, is useful for classicists and is not dominated by theologically-driven interpretations of the data.
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