This essay states the comparisons of the death and crucifixion of Jesus Christ Socrates. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is an event that occurred during the 1st century AD. Jesus, whom Christians believe to be the Son of God as well as the Messiah, was arrested, tried, and sentenced by Pontius Pilate to be scourged, and finally crucified Collectively referred to as the Passion, Jesus’ redemptive suffering and death by crucifixion represent the central aspects of Christian theology, including the doctrines of salvation and atonement. Jesus Christ was born under the Star of Bethlehem. Jesus’ crucifixion is described in all four Canonical gospels, attested to by other ancient sources, and is firmly established as an historical event confirmed by non-Christian sources. Christians believe Jesus’ suffering was foretold in the Hebrew Bible, such as in Psalm 22, and Isaiah’s songs of the suffering servant. According to a Gospel Harmony, Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane following the Last Supper with the Twelve Apostles, and forced to stand trial before the Sanhedrin, Pontius Pilate, and Herod Antipas, before being handed over for crucifixion. After being flogged, Jesus was mocked by Roman soldiers as the “King of the Jews”, clothed in a purple robe, crowned with thorns, beaten and spat on.
Jesus then had to make his way to the place of his crucifixion. Once at Golgotha, Jesus was offered wine mixed with gall to drink Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels record that he refused this. He was then crucified and hung between two convicted thieves. According to Mark’s Gospel, he endured the torment of crucifixion for some six hours from the third hour, at approximately 9 am until his death at the ninth hour, corresponding to about The soldiers affixed a sign above his head stating “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” in three languages, divided his garments and cast lots for his seamless robe. The Roman soldiers did not break Jesus’ legs, as they did to the other two men crucified (breaking the legs hastened the crucifixion process), as Jesus was dead already. Each gospel has its own account of Jesus’ last words, seven statements altogether. In the Synoptic Gospels, various supernatural events accompany the crucifixion, including darkness, an earthquake, and (in Matthew) the resurrection of saints. Following Jesus’ death, his body was removed from the cross by Joseph of Arimathea and buried in a rock-hewn tomb, with Nicodemus assisting. According to the Gospels, Jesus then rose from the dead two days later (“the third day”). In the New Testament all four Gospels conclude with an extended narrative of Jesus’ arrest, trial, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. In each Gospel these five events in the life of Jesus are treated with more intense detail than any other portion of that Gospel’s narrative. Scholars note that the reader receives an almost hour-by-hour account of what is happening Christians have traditionally understood Jesus’ death on the cross to be a knowing and willing sacrifice (given that he did not mount a defense in his trials) which was undertaken as an “agent of God” to atone for humanity’s sin and make salvation possible.
Most Christians proclaim this sacrifice through the bread and wine of the Eucharist, as a remembrance of the Last Supper, and many also commemorate the event on Good Friday each year. Socrates was a famous philosopher in ancient Greece. We know more about him from what other people said and wrote than from what he himself recorded. It was not the custom in those days to write much of anything, and Socrates himself didn’t write down much at all. He didn’t talk about himself much, either. Socrates was born in 469 B.C. extremely little is known about his early life. As an adult, he was a stone-cutter. He was married and also had three children which were sons. His wife was named Xanthippe; his sons were named Lamprocles, Sophroniscus, and Menexenus. Socrates was a hoplite in the Athenian army. These soldiers were made to buy their own armor, so Socrates must have had some form of income, although he certainly wasn’t rich. He also fought in several major battles in the Peloponnesian War, in one case saving the life of Alcibiades, who would later be one of the leaders of the Athens military machine. As he grew older, he came to hate money and what it did to people. He seemed to have spent most of his time in the agora, or marketplace, discussing all sorts of things. This could partly explain why he was poor: He wasn’t earning a living. The thing he liked to do most was to ask people (those he knew and those he didn’t) fundamental questions, like “What is justice?” or “What is truth?” To the answers the people gave, Socrates would add more questions, until a logical case could be made that the people knew far less than they thought they did about things.
This emphasis on questions as means of making an argument is now called the Socratic Method. The Oracle at Delphi is supposed to have answered the question “Who is the wisest man in Athens?” with the answer “Socrates.”) Socrates himself was sure only that he didn’t know things. To him, this was proof that he had the courage to examine himself and his thoughts. He was often on a quest for truth, and he was only too happy to admit that he was wrong, when he was. The trouble for many people who encountered him was that he was very seldom wrong (especially since he constructed his arguments to favor his opinions).The Sophists, also, distrusted Socrates, especially because he was willing to teach young men without charging a fee, as they Sophists did. In a sense, they saw this as his taking business away from them.
Another source of tension between Socrates and many people in Athens was his abhorrence of wealth. He went out of his way to speak out against great wealth, he had none of his own, and he taught his students that wealth was a bad thing, that it corrupted those who had it. Athens at that time was full of wealthy people, and they didn’t trust someone who didn’t believe as they did, that money was something to be gotten and kept. Socrates also taught that wisdom and the search for truth were the most important things of all, certainly more important than looking good or being physically fit or strong and athletic. For many, many years, Athens had been full of big, strong, athletic men who fought wars and participated in the Olympic Games and considered themselves fine human specimens. These people, too, didn’t like Socrates saying that their strengths, their physicality, were nowhere near as important as their mental strength, which couldn’t readily be seen. In a sense, Socrates liked to argue that strength in a person came from within, not from without: It wasn’t how powerful your body looked on the outside but how powerful your mind worked on the inside that mattered to him.
The one thing that put Socrates over the top into the black hole of public opinion was the charge from The Clouds that he believed in gods of his own invention. This was entirely false, but by the time that the play was immensely popular, people no longer made (or cared to make) a distinction between the truth and what they saw on stage. In the minds of many people in Athens, Socrates was a source of irritation. Whether he believed in gods of his own invention was important to some people but not to others. The ones who were incensed by this charge thought that he had gone too far, putting himself above the Greek gods, who, the Greek people believed, were very much a part of the people’s daily lives. In the midst of the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian public was looking for someone to blame. They saw their chance to punish Socrates.He was charged with “corrupting the youth” and denying the existence and power of the state gods. These were serious charges but were necessarily punishable by death. Socrates appeared before the Assembly, who heard the case for and against him. His accusers were Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon, all of whom were prominent members of Athenian political society.
Socrates defended himself. Before a panel of 501 jurors, the prosecutors argued their charges and Socrates refused to defend himself; rather, he challenged the very idea of the trial in the first place. Much of what we know about Socrates’ trial and death come from Plato’s Dialogues, which many historians believe were embellished. But from this source, especially the Apology, we learn that Socrates was found guilty of the crimes against him, by a vote that was apparently very close. Once he was found guilty, Socrates and his prosecutors then had a chance to argue over the punishment that he would receive. Socrates offered to pay a very small fine; the prosecutors argued that he should die for his crimes. The Assembly agreed with the prosecution, and Socrates was sentenced to death. In what many consider being a powerful argument, Socrates convinced his followers that the good of the state was more powerful than the fate of one man and that, therefore, he should be punished for his crimes. Socrates participated in his own execution, drinking a poison called hemlock. He died in 399, a hero to some and a villain to others. His beliefs and philosophy lived on after him and continue to inspire and fascinate people today.
Socrates death was witnessed by his family which made the death of this man bittersweet in a way the death was painful and at the same time peaceful. Being able to say goodbye is something most people today don’t have the option to do. if the chance was giving to no so much take part in the death but to be there for last moment weather in silence of just to repeat I love you would give such a sense of closure to one’s family. In my comparison Jesus Christ life was token and the worst manner possible he was murder for his beliefs and his teaching which was truly cruel. Socrates death had a sense of compassion in a way he was sent to the afterlife peacefully after sharing his last moment with the
people who meant the most in the world to him but never giving up his beliefs.
