Good Friday falls on March 25 this year. It's the day on which Christians remember the death of Jesus on the cross. Many churches have services that are sober and penitential, with the story of the death of Christ at their heart.
The four Gospels all tell the story of the crucifixion of Jesus in slightly different ways, adding small but significant details to the overall picture. Matthew and Mark tell of the veil of the Temple, which marked off the Holy of Holies, being torn in two. Mark and John tell of a man putting a sponge with vinegar on a stick to ease Jesus' thirst. Luke tells of the words of the two thieves crucified with him. Matthew and Mark record Jesus' cry of dereliction, "Eloi, eloi, lama sabacthani" – "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Crucifixion was a very common Roman punishment, used for a variety of offences. It was a particularly cruel death in which the hands and feet were nailed to a cross and the victim left to die from suffocation as the pain and stress of the position made it impossible to breathe. If nails were driven through the hands they would not take the weight of the body, so it is thought the arms may first have been lashed to the crossbeam or the nails may have been driven through the wrist.
