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I have rarely had access to cable TV in my life. I'm staying somewhere with Dish Network right now. One of the channels had Biblical Conspiracies playing. I saw the tail end of one episode while exercising. It looked stupid, but the ad for the next episode was interesting so I watched it.Basically, the show decribed scientists examining what they believed were the bones of Antigonus or Matthew, also known as Antigonus II Mattathias. He reigned in Judea for three years before the Roman Mark Anthony had him executed. Josephus said that he was crucified. Other sources said that he was beheaded.An inscription at the ossuary where the bones were found was from Abba, a descendant of Aaron the Great, a priest, who had laid the bones of Matthew there.

This program also tried to associate the man who buried Antigonus with Barabbas. Somehow it tired to tie him to the Babbas family who had supported Antigonus. It theorized that the priest Abba who left the inscription that he had buried Antigonus may have been the father of Barabbas (son of Abbas). The would have made Barabbas from a 'revolutionary' priestly family. The chief priests convince the people to call for Barabbas' freedom rather than Jesus. It could also have made Barabbas popular. Jesus had just made the triumphal entry, so you think He'd have been popular with the people asked to call for their favorite's freedom. It was an interesting theory, but certainly not conclusive

Simply because there had to be a space above Christ's head to hang the sign denoting him as king of the Jew

The best information I've read is by Alfred Edersheim in his book: The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah.

The Persians introduced the Cross as an execution form, the Romans perfected it, executing hundreds of thousands of Jews by the time of the Temple's destruction in 70 AD.The Cross used to execute Jesus was probably the T shaped He bore the upper part of the cross and upon his arrival to the execution point, nailed to the cross piece and fixed to the pole.Unlike depiction in movies and TV, the Cross was not raised high off the ground but was low enough for people to come by to defame and spit upon the body. It was low enough for wild dogs to come by and pick at the dying or dead corpse.It was death by asphyxiation. The mental and emotional agony of suffocation added to the cruelty of the cross.Jesus bore His cross and then expects us as His disciples to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him. It is no wonder this is never included in altar calls The HammerMi kamocah ba'elim AdonaiWho is like you, Adonai, among the mighty? (Exodus 15:11

After the Romans took Jerusalem in 70 AD, thousands of Jews were crucified, so many in fact, they didn't take time to make crosses, they simply delimited trees and nailed the Jews to the tree to execute them The HammerMi kamocah ba'elim AdonaiWho is like you, Adonai, among the mighty? (Exodus 15:11

The way they showed their theorized cross in this documentary is that they had an X leaning against a pole. They could have nailed a sign on a pole.One unspoken assumption they seemed to make is that the Romans had one way of crucifying people. They could have had several ways. The problem with the t-shape is that it would cause one to lean forward eventually and the hands would pull off the nails break free, if in the traditional position assumed in paintings. They tried variations where the hands were behind the cross nailed there (since the hand bones they had indicated the nail coming in from the back of the hand not the palm.) The problem with some of these positions is that death would be rather quick and the Romans were using crucifixion to ensure a slow, painful death, not a quick one. They broke victims legs if they wanted them to die faster. I believe the hand behind a t-cross was rejected because it was extremely difficult to get the angle that the sample bones they had indicated. Romans would have wanted a quick method, especially when they were killing lots of them.The thing I found compelling about the X leaning against a pole in the ground was the fact that it resembles the Chi-Rho symbol, an early symbol of Christianity prior to the t-cross symbol. blog.kaufersonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/chi rho.jpgI found the documentary interesting, but not conclusive. There are some problems with it. Would the pole the sign was nailed to be considered a part of his cross? The heal bone of a crucified man in the 1960's showed the bone going through the heal. But the Bible lets us know that none of Jesus' bones were broken. I don't believe the Romans crucified everyone exactly the same way. They probably had a set of methods that they had tested that worked to keep the people up there. Sometimes they'd crucify a lot of people together. They'd need a method that worked quickly where they could pin the people down and stick them on there if they weren't cooperative and where the victims couldn't just pull themselves free or fall off from their own body weight and hobble away. I suspect they didn't take the time to beat everyone as badly as our Lord was beaten for some of these executions