Henry on Golgotha

Matthew 27:33&35
"And when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, Place of a Skull...they crucified Him..."

In commentary of this verse, Matthew Henry writes (and I love his concluding statement!):

They came to a place called Golgotha, near adjoining to Jerusalem, probably the common place of execution... Some think that it was called the place of a skull, because it was the common charnel-house, where the bones and skulls of dead men were laid together out of the way, lest people should touch them, and be defiled thereby.

Here lay the trophies of death’s victory over multitudes of the children of men; and when by dying Christ would destroy death, he added this circumstance of honour to his victory, that he triumphed over death upon his own dunghill.

A Swooning Saviour? - Part 2

Once Jesus arrived at the cross He was laid down and His outstretched hands nailed to the horizontal beam, which was at this stage separate from the vertical beam. Without going into detail of the nailing of Jesus’ wrists, it is suffice to say that the pain was intolerable. So uniquely intense was the pain that a new word was invented to describe the agony: excruciating, literally meaning ‘out of the cross’.

However, what was it that actually caused the death of a crucifixion victim?

“Once a person is hanging in the vertical position…crucifixion is essentially an agonizingly slow death by asphyxiation.

“The reason is that the stresses on the muscles and diaphragm put the chest into the inhaled position; basically, 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…eventually complete exhaustion would take over, and the person wouldn’t be able to push up and breathe anymore.”

As breathing slows, the crucifixion victim goes into respiratory acidosis. Carbon dioxide in the blood dissolves as carbonic acid. This increases the acidity of the blood, eventually leading to an irregular heartbeat. He would then die of cardiac arrest.

Before Jesus died, His heart rate would have been rapid due to the hypovolemic shock. This results in the collection of fluid in the membrane around the heart, known as a pericardial effusion. This accounts for the blood and water which flowed from Jesus’ side after He was pierced by the Roman soldier (see John 19:34).

At this point, there is absolutely no doubt that Jesus would have been dead.

But what if Jesus wasn’t dead, but merely unconscious as the ‘swoon theory’ suggests?

This is not probable. Firstly, the Roman soldiers were employed to kill and knew how to do their job. Secondly, they would not have found it difficult to determine if a person was dead; the soldiers themselves thrust the spear into Jesus’ side. Thirdly, should a prisoner happen to escape, the soldiers responsible would be put to death. There was a huge incentive to ensure that each victim was definitely dead when removed from the cross.

Suppose however that Jesus did actually survive the Crucifixion; is this plausible?

Strobel quotes Dr. Alexander Metherell:

“… a person in that kind of pathetic condition would never have inspired his disciples to go out and proclaim the he’s the Lord of life who had triumphed over the grave…

“After suffering that horrible abuse, with all the catastrophic blood loss and trauma, 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.”

A swooning Saviour? An unlikely theory. Instead, evidence and logic point to Jesus’ definite death, which raises the next question: How can we know that Jesus was resurrected?

'The Swooning Saviour" posts are a summary of Lee Strobel’s "The Case for Easter".

A Swooning Saviour? - Part 1

From 2004 to 2006 ‘The Davinci Code’ phenomenon swept the western world. In case you had forgotten, the Christian faith was apparently under siege. In his fictional novel, Dan Brown purports that Jesus of Nazareth did not die and was therefore never resurrected.

The resurrection of Jesus is at the very core of the Christian faith. The Apostle Paul himself wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:17: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” It is Jesus' resurrection that is the ultimate evidence of His divine identity and inspired teaching.

However, suppose that Jesus did not actually die on the cross. The resurrection story is instantly discarded as pure legend. If Jesus did not die, the accounts of his reappearance are hardly remarkable and the empty tomb is to be expected.

Over centuries, many theories have been popularised suggesting that Jesus did not in fact die. Some have suggested that Jesus merely fainted on the cross due to his exhaustion or as the result of a drug. He then later revived from the damp, cool air in the tomb. This and other similar theories have been called ‘the swoon theories’.

The questions that demand answers are these: What really happened at the Crucifixion? Did Jesus actually die? Is there any way that Jesus could have survived the ordeal?

Firstly, what really happened at the Crucifixion?

Before His crucifixion, Jesus was flogged with a whip of braided leather, with metal balls and pieces of bone woven into them. The metal balls caused deep bruising while the bones would tear the flesh.

In his book "The Case for Easter", Lee Strobel quotes:

“As the flogging continued, the lacerations would tear into underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh…The sufferer’s veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews and bowels of the victim were open to exposure.”

“…many people would die from this kind of beating even before they could be crucified. At the least, the victim would experience tremendous pain and go into hypovolemic shock.”

“Hypo means ‘low’, vol refers to volume, and emic means ‘blood’, so hypovolemic shock means the person is suffering the effects of losing a large amount of blood… This does four things. First, the heart races to try 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; and fourth, the person becomes very thirsty as the body craves fluids to replace the lost blood volume.”

Evidence of these symptoms can be seen in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ flogging.