Did Jesus Really Die On the Cross?

When I was teaching Sunday school, I did a series of classes using Lee Strobel's works. The following is from The Case for Christ, chapter 11. While there may be the stray original item from me, I deserve no credit for what is written in this particular article. It is properly attributed to Lee Strobel in its entirety.

The idea that Jesus never really died on the cross can be found in the Koran, which was written in the seventh century - in fact, Ahmadiya Muslims contend that Jesus actually fled to India. To this day there’s a shrine that supposedly marks his real burial place in Srinagar, Kashmir.[1]

Early in the 19th century, Karl Bahrdt, Karl Venturini, and others tried to explain away the Resurrection by saying Jesus only fainted from exhaustion on the cross, or he had been given a drug that made him appear to die, and that the cool, damp air of the tomb revived him.[2] Conspiracy theorists bolstered this hypothesis by pointing out that Jesus had been given some liquid on a sponge while on the cross (Mark 15:36) and that Pilate seemed surprised by how quickly Jesus had succumbed (Mark 15:44). Consequently, they said Jesus’ reappearance wasn’t a miraculous resurrection but merely a fortuitous resuscitation, and his tomb was empty because he continued to live.

While reputable scholars have repudiated the so-called swoon theory, it still rears it ugly head periodically.

After the Last Supper, Jesus went to the Garden of Gethsemane with His disciples and prayed all night. He was anticipating the next day’s events. Knowing the amount of suffering He was going to have to endure, He was quite naturally experiencing a tremendous amount of psychological stress.

The gospels say He began to sweat blood at this point. He sweat blood? We’re seriously supposed to believe that? This is a known medical condition called hematidrosis. It’s not very common, but it is associated with a high degree of psychological stress. Severe anxiety causes the release of chemicals that break down the capillaries in sweat glands - as a result, there’s a small amount of bleeding into these glands, and the sweat comes out tinged with blood. It also set up the skin to be extremely fragile so that when Jesus was flogged the next day, his skin would be very, very sensitive.

Roman floggings were known to be terribly brutal. They usually consisted of 39 lashes but frequently were a lot more than that, depending on the mood of the soldier administering the blows. The soldier would use a whip of braided leather thongs with metal balls woven into them. When it would strike the flesh, these balls would cause deep bruises or contusions, which would break open with further blows. And the whip had pieces of sharp bone as well, which would cut the flesh severely. The back would be so shredded that part of the spine was sometimes exposed by the very deep cuts. One physician who studied Roman beatings said, “As the flogging continued, the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh.” Third century historian Eusebius described a flogging by saying, “The sufferer’s veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure.”

We know many people would die from this kind of beating even before they could be crucified. At the very least, the victim would experience tremendous pain and hypovolemic shock (the effects of losing a large amount of blood). This does four things:

First, the heart races to pump blood that isn’t there. Second, the blood pressure drops, causing fainting or collapse. Third, the kidneys stop producing urine to maintain what volume is left. Fourth, the person becomes very thirsty as the body craves fluids to replace the lost blood volume.

Do we see any evidence of this in the gospel accounts? Yes, most definitely. Jesus was in hypovolemic shock as he staggered up the road to the execution site at Calvary, carrying the horizontal beam of the cross. Finally, Jesus collapsed, and the Roman soldier ordered Simon to carry the cross for him. Later we read that Jesus said, “I thirst,” at which point a sip of vinegar was offered to him. So there’s no question Jesus was already in serious to critical condition even before the nails were driven into his hands and feet.

Jesus would have been laid down, and His hands nailed in the outstretched position to the horizontal beam. At this stage it was separate from the vertical beam, which was permanently set in the ground.

The Romans used spikes that were 5 to 7 inches long and tapered to a sharp point. They were driven through the wrist about an inch below the palm. This was a solid position that would lock the hand. If nails would have been driven into the palm, it would tear and He would have fallen off the cross. And this was considered part of the hand in the language of the day; there is no conflict here as some would suggest.

The nail would go through the place where the median nerve runs. This is the largest nerve going out to the hand, and it would be crushed by the nail being driven in. Imagine the kind of pain you feel when you bang your elbow and hit your funny bone - now picture taking a pair of pliers and squeezing and crushing that nerve. The pain was unbearable and literally beyond words to describe - they had to make up a new one, "excruciating." Literally, excruciating means “out of the cross.” Think about that - they had to create a new word, because there was nothing that could describe the intense anguish of crucifixion. And there would have been a similar type of pain when the nails were driven through Jesus’ feet.

Once hung, His arms would have immediately been stretched, probably about 6 inches in length, and both shoulders would have become dislocated. This fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy in Psalm 22, which foretold the Crucifixion hundreds of years before it took place and says, “My bones are out of joint.”

Once a person is hanging in the vertical position, crucifixion is essentially an agonizingly slow death by asphyxiation. The stresses on the muscles and diaphragm put the chest into the inhaled position. In order to exhale, the individual must push up on his feet so the tension on the muscles would be eased for a moment. In doing so, the nail would tear through the foot, eventually locking up against the tarsal bones. After managing to exhale, the person would then be able to relax down and take another breath in.

Again, he’d have to push himself back up to exhale, scraping his already raw back against the coarse wood of the cross. This would go on and on until complete exhaustion, and the person would no longer be able to push up and breathe. As the person slows down his breathing, he goes into what is called respiratory acidosis - the carbon dioxide in the blood is dissolved as carbonic acid, causing an increase in the acidity of the blood. This eventually leads to an irregular heartbeat. With an erratic heartbeat, Jesus would have known He was at the moment of death, which is when He was able to say, “Lord, into your hands I commit my spirit,” before dying of cardiac arrest.

Even before He died, the hypovolemic shock would have caused a sustained rapid heart rate that would have contributed to heart failure, resulting in the collection of fluid in the membrane around the heart, called a pericardial effusion, as well as around the lungs, which is called a pleural effusion. When the Roman soldier thrust the spear into Jesus’ side, the spear apparently went through the right lung and into the heart, so when the spear was pulled out, some fluid - the pericardial effusion and the pleural effusion - came out. That would have the appearance of a clear fluid, like water, followed by a large volume of blood, as the eyewitness John described in his gospel.

But when you carefully read John, he said, “Blood and water;” he intentionally put the words in that order. But clear fluid would have come out first, so there’s a significant discrepancy here. The order of words in ancient Greek was determined not necessarily by sequence but by prominence. This means since there was a lot more blood than water, it would have made sense for John to mention the blood first.

It just isn't conceivable that Jesus merely fainted upon the cross. He was most certainly dead.

The gospels say the soldiers broke the legs of the two criminals being crucified with Jesus. Why would they do that? To speed up death; this would prevent the victim from being able to push up so he could breathe. With the Sabbath and Passover coming, the Jewish leaders certainly wanted to get this over before sundown. Of course the New Testament tells us Jesus’ legs were not broken (because He was already dead), thus fulfilling another Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah.

An article on the Harvard Theological Review concluded many years ago that there was “astonishing little evidence that the feet of a crucified person were ever pierced by nails.” Instead, the article said, ropes tied the victim’s hands and feet.[3]

Archaeology has established that the use of nails was historical, although we must concede that that ropes were indeed sometimes used. In 1968 archaeologists found the remains of about three dozen Jews who had died during the uprising against Rome around 70 AD. In one victim, they found a seven inch nail still driven into his feet, with small pieces of olive wood from the cross still attached.

Some critics contend that these people were very primitive in their understanding of medicine and anatomy and so forth. How do we know they weren’t just mistaken when they declared Jesus dead? These soldiers were experts in killing people - that was their job and they did it very well. Besides, if a prisoner somehow escaped, the responsible soldiers would be put to death themselves, so they had a huge incentive to make absolutely sure that each and every victim was dead when he was removed from the cross.

But let’s assume somehow the impossible happened. Somehow He managed to survive the crucifixion, escape from His linen wrappings, roll the huge rock away from the mouth of the tomb, and get past the Roman soldiers there. How could He walk around after nails had been driven through His feet? How could He have appeared on the road to Emmaus just a short time later, strolling for long distances? How could He have used His arms after they had been stretched and pulled from their joints? Remember, He also had massive wounds on His back and a spear wound to his chest.

A person in that kind of pathetic condition would never have inspired his disciples to go out and proclaim that He’s the Lord of life who had triumphed over the grave. He would have looked so pitiful that the disciples would never have hailed Him as a victorious conqueror of death; they would have felt sorry for Him and tried to nurse Him back to health. So it’s preposterous to think that if He had appeared to them in that awful state, His followers would have been prompted to start a worldwide movement based on the hope that someday they too would have a resurrection body like his. There’s just no way.

[1] Wilson, Jesus: The Evidence, 140.

[2] Craig, Reasonable Faith, 234.

[3] J.W. Hewitt, “The Use of Nails in the Crucifixion,” Harvard Theological Review 25 (1932), 29-45, cited in Josh McDowell, The Resurrection Factor (San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life, 1981), 45.