By Benjamin L Gladd, TGC.
Details matter—whether you’re working on your tax return, building a house, or counting electrons. The Gospel writers only include the most germane details in their accounts. Problems arise when we brush them aside or accuse the early church of embedding details within the narrative to give the Gospel accounts a more authentic feel.
Let’s look afresh at the evidence for nails at the crucifixion and flesh out their redemptive-historical significance.
Evidence for Nails
John’s Gospel is the only one that explicitly mentions Jesus’s hands bearing the marks of nails: “[Jesus] showed [the disciples] his hands and his side. . . . ‘Unless I [Thomas] see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails.’ . . . ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands’” (20:20, 25, 27).
Matthew and Mark are silent on the matter, but Luke includes a verse that probably implies the use of nails in the crucifixion: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see” (24:39; see also v. 40). In both narratives, Jesus uses the physical marks on his body as evidence for his physical resurrection. While ancient authors mention that individuals were sometimes tied to a cross (e.g., Pliny in Natural History), two of the four Gospels present a different picture: that nails pierced Jesus’s wrists and feet. One implies it, and the other explicitly mentions it. Note that the Hebrew and Greek words for “hand” can mean “wrist.”
If the Roman soldiers merely bound Jesus’s wrists and feet, what physical proof would Jesus show to the disciples? Keep in mind, too, that when Jesus utters these words, he’s in his glorified body. Remarkably, his glorified body preserves marks of his death. These nail marks are a symbolic and public reminder of the price Jesus paid to bear God’s wrath and right humanity’s wrongs. Some argue that the early church created these post-resurrection accounts, but that line of reasoning merely kicks the can down the road. Why would the church fabricate such a claim? To make the crucifixion even more horrific?