Jehohanan

Jehohanan (Hebrew: יהוחנן, romanized: Yəhōḥānān) was a man put to death by crucifixion in the 1st century CE. His ossuary was found in 1968 when building contractors working in Giv'at ha-Mivtar, a Jewish neighborhood in northern East Jerusalem, accidentally uncovered a Jewish tomb.^[1] The Jewish stone ossuary had the Hebrew inscription "Jehohanan the son of Hagkol" (Hebrew: יהוחנן בן הגקול, romanized: Yehoḥanan ben Hagqol; the meaning of hgqwl is uncertain,^[2] hence his name sometimes being given as Johanan ben Ha-galgula).

In his initial anthropological observations in 1970 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Nicu Haas concluded that Jehohanan was crucified with his arms stretched out and his forearms nailed, possibly on a two-beamed Christian cross.^[3] However, a 1985 reappraisal by Joseph Zias and Eliezer Sekeles of the Hebrew University found multiple errors in these observations.^[4][5] Zias and Sekeles proposed that a horizontal beam was affixed to vertical stakes, with Jehohanan's arms tied and death occurring from asphyxiation.^[6]