420
PRISON
PRISOXEK
28^, cf. 1 Co P^). ' The prints of the nails are not only signs of recognition, but also signs of victorj'. . . . He jioints to His wounded hands and feet as proving that He bears even within the veil the tokens of I'edeeming love. The conception is one on which Art has always loved to dwell. We must all have seen, again and again, figures of the Lord in glory raising His wounded hands to bless, or pleading even on the throne of judgment with those who have rejected Him by the marks of His death, so showing that by these He is still known ; that by these He still proclaims the unchanging Gospel, "Redemption through sacritice'" (West- cott. The Revdatiun of the Risen Lord, p. 69 f.). ' He gave them confidence in His unfailing sym- pathy, by shewing that He bore even to the throne of lieaven the marks of His dying love' (ib. p. 79).
The marks («-T.3-/^«Ta) which St. Paul bore in his body (Gal 6i') have by some been connected with these prints of our Lord's passion, as if they were reproduced in the Apostle's body, com- paring 2 Co 410, Ro 65- 6 etc. , and referring to the well-known stigmata of Francis of Assisi. But an entirely different ex- planation of the passage is now generally accepted, according to which the allusion is to marks of ownership branded on the bodies of temple sla\-es and others (see RV, Lightfoot's note in loco, and art. ' Mark ' in Hastings* DB iii. 245). See Stigmata.
See also artt. CRUCIFIXION, Body.
W. H. DUNDAS.
PRISON.— The fact that no fewer than eight dif- ferent Heb. roots are used to express ' prison' (.see Hastings' DB i. 525) in the OT, testifies to the number of prisoners in ancient times, and the variety of treatment which they experienced. Not only ordinary prison-houses, but also fortresses, barracks, palaces, and temples had commonly ac- commodation— more or less extensive — for prison- ers, just as our rural police stations have cells attached to them for temporary confinement.
The Latin and Greek terms translated 'prison ' are expressive and significant. Career (cf. Gr. 'ipxe;) emphasizes restraint. ErgaHtulmn (lit. workhouse) corresponds to our 'penitentiary.' Malefactors and slaves laboured therein, as in the building where Samson had languished. The TuUiamiin at Rome was a condemned cell. Perhaps the mildest form of imprisonment recorded in the NT was that of St. Paul (Ac 28-^0), when he dwelt for two whole years in his own hired house (u^'o-ttau.x, — see illustration in Rome and its Story by Tina Duff Gordon and St. Clair Baddeley, p. 114), guarded by, and probably chained to, a soldier, oixyiolx., in polite Attic usage used for a prison, is found once (Ac 12"). ry,f^,in;, ' the place of keeping' (Ac 4-* 51**), tr. ' hold ' (RV ' ward ') and ' prison ' (probably that attached to the Temple or the high priest's palace, Hastings' DB iv. 103), also suggests the mildest form of restraint. The fuXaxr, or place of guarding, in which John the Baptist was confined (Mt 14^), is believed to have been in the ro\al palace of Macheerus (.Jos. A nt. XVIII. V. 2). Custody in a (fukxxyf might mean anjthing, from the comparative comfort of a guard-room to the misery of a dungeon. Another word translated 'prison' is hecru-uTy.piov, the 'place of bonds.' It is used interchangeably with ipuXaxY, in speaking of John the Baptist's prison (Mt 112), and became painfully familiar to the first preachers of the Cross in the course of their mission- ary journeyings. See also following article.
If tho.se mutilations and other horrid cruelties, familiar to the older pagan world, were less com- mon, still vindictiveness rather than reformation was a note of imprisonment at the dawn of the Christian era. The LXX translates the place of Zedekiah's imprisonment at Babylon oUla fxvXixivos, ' the millhouse ' (Jer 52"). Grinding corn in a mill- house is a somewhat more humane punishment than hard labour on the treadmill, and some of the tasks allotted to inmates of an ergnstuliDii may have been no more disagreeable than picking oakum. But much more severe treatment was often the unhappy prisoner's lot. In our Lord's parable of the Unforgiving Servant, that ungrate- ful wretch fell into the hands of torturers (rots BaaavLCToli, Mt 18^^) — a staff' of officials whose very name is sinister. One means of torture was an instrument (^vkov, Lat. nervus) in Avhich the bodies of victims were confined. It is described as ' a wooden block or frame in which the feet and some- times the hands and neck of prisoners were con- fined ' (Robinson, Gr. Lex. of NT). In such durance
wei'e Paul and Silas placed at Philippi (Ac 16'-^). The condemned cell of a Roman prison resembled that dungeon in the court of the prison into which Jeremiah was let down with cords, and where he sank in the mire (Jer 38''). ' They were pestilential cells, damp and cold, from which the light was excluded, and where the chains rusted on the limbs of the prisoners' (Conybeare-Howson, Life and Epistles of St. Paid, i. 358). The Career Mamer- tinus on the slope of the Capitoline of Rome, and the traditional scene of St. Paul's last imprison- ment, is typical of Roman prisons all over the world during Rome's supremacy. It consists of two chambers, one above the other — the upper one an 'irregular quadrilateral.' The lower, 'originally accessible only through a hole in the ceiling, is 19 ft. long, 10 ft. wide, and 6^ ft. high. The vaulting is formed by the gradual projection of the side walls until they meet.' This jirison is supposed to have been built over a well named Tnllianum, and hence traditionally attributed to Servius TuUius (see Varro, v. 151). An inscription records that it was restored in B.C. 22 (Baedeker, Italy, ii. p. 226). See also art. Hell (Descent into).