Was Jesus' Death a Sham and His Ressurection a Hoax?

The following is a rather long but meaningful essay that deals with the death of Jesus Christ. His resurrection would be covered in a later posting. I used an interview that Lee Strobel, interviewed Alexander Metherell in the book The Case for Christ (Authored by Strobel).
Metherell has a medical degree from the University of Miami in Florida, doctorate in engineering from the University of Bristol in England. He is board certified in diagnosis by the American Board of Radiology and has been a consultant to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health of Bethesda, Maryland.

The swoon theory, that says Jesus' reappearance was not a miraculous resurrection but merely a fortuitous resuscitation, and his tomb was empty because he continued to live.

Maybe Pontius Pilate was bribed to allow Jesus to be taken down from the cross before he was dead. Maybe he survived the entire ordeal, or entered a trance-like fake death. Or perhaps he was drugged to appear dead, and then revived by the cool damp air of the tomb. Could the Roman guards have been incompetent in ensuring his death and took him down accidentally alive?

Before Jesus could be resurrected, he must be dead first, that's common sense. So what exactly happened when he was crucified and could he have survived some way or another, only to rise up from the grave and make everyone think he was resurrected?

Lee Strobel's(M.D.) interview with Alexander Metherell(M.D., PH.D.), as adapted from The Case for Christ.

Jesus went with his disciples after the Last Supper to the Mount of Olives, the Garden of Gethsemane. There, he prayed all night. Anticipating the coming events of the next day, he knew the amount of suffering he had to endure, and would naturally be experiencing a great deal of psychological stress. (As written in Luke 22:42-44, he prayed "'Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.' And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.")

There is a medical condition known as hematidrosis(Can be found in wikipedia). It is a very rare condition that is associated with a high degree of psychological stress. Severe anxiety causes the release of chemicals that break down the capillaries in the sweat glands. Thus, there's a small amount of bleeding into the glands, and the sweat comes out tinged with blood. We're not talking about a lot of blood; it's just a very, very small amount. What it also does is to cause the skin to be extremely fragile so that when Jesus was flogged by the Roman soldier the next day, his skin would be very, very sensitive.

Roman floggings were known to be terribly fatal. They usually consisted of thirty-nine lashes but frequently were a lot more than that, depending on the mood of the soldier applying the blows.

The soldier would use a whip of braided leather thongs with metal balls woven into them. When the whip 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 deep, deep cuts. The whipping would have gone all the way from the shoulders down to the back, the buttocks, and the back of the legs.

One physician who has studied Roman beatings said, "As the flogging continued, the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh." A third-century historian by the name of Eusebius described flogging by saying, "The sufferer's veins were laid bare, and the muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure."

The victim would experience tremendous pain and go into hypovolemic shock(Also in wikipedia). 'Hypo' means low, 'vol' refers to volume, and 'emic' means blood. This does four things. First, the heart races to try to pump blood that is not 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.

Jesus was in hypovolemic shock as he staggered up the rode 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. (Mark 15:21 "And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.") Later we read the Jesus said, 'I thirst', at which point a sip of vinegar was offered to him. (Mark 15:36)

Jesus survived the beating that day and went on to the cross-which is where the real issue lies.

He would have been laid down, and his hands would have been nailed in the outstretched position to the horizontal beam. This crossbar was called the patibulum, and at this stage it was separate from the vertical beam, which was permanently set in the ground.

The Romans used spikes that were five to seven inches long and tapered to a sharp point. They were driven through the wrists, an inch or so below his left palm.
(All the paintings show the nails pierced his palms, a standard symbol representing the Crucifixion, but it really was through the wrist, as Metherell goes on to explain)
Through the wrists. This was a solid position that would lock the hand; if the nails had been driven through the palms, his weight would have caused the skin to tear and he would have fallen off the cross. So the nails went through the wrists, although this was considered part of the hand in the language of the day.

It's important to understand that the nail would go through the place where the median nerve runs. (From wiki, Injury of median nerve at different levels cause different syndromes. Injury of this nerve at a level above elbow joint results in loss of pronation and a decrease in flexion of the hand at the wrist joint. In the hand, thenar muscles are paralysed and atrophy in time. Opposition and flexion movements of thumb are lost, and thumb and index finger are arrested in adduction and hyperextension position. This appearance of the hand is collectively referred as ape hand deformity. In addition, in palmar side of the hand sensation of lateral part of hand, first three fingers and lateral half of the fourth finger and in dorsal side sensation of distal ⅓ portions of first three fingers and lateral half of distal ⅓ portion of fourth finger is lost.)

The pain was absolutely unbearable. In fact, it was literally beyond words to describe; they had to invent a new word: 'excruciating'. Literally, 'excruciating' means 'out of the cross.' They needed to create a new word, because there was nothing in the language that could describe the intense anguish caused during the crucifixion.

At this point Jesus was hoisted as the crossbar was attached to the vertical stake, and then nails were driven through Jesus' feet. Again, the nerves in his feet would have been crushed, and there would have been a similar type of pain.

The effect that hanging from the cross would have had on Jesus; first of all, his arms would have immediately been stretched, probably about six 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(wikipedia again). 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 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 would have to push himself up to exhale, scraping his bloodied back against the coarse wood of the cross. This would go on and on until complete exhaustion would take over, and the person would not be able to push up and breathe anymore.

As the person slows down his breathing, he goes into what is called respiratory acidosis(wikipedia)-the carbon dioxide in the blood is dissolved as carbonic acid, causing the acidity of the blood to increase. This eventually leads to an irregular heartbeat. In fact, with his heart beating erratically, Jesus would have known that he was at the moment of death, which is when he was able to say, "Lord, into your hands I commit my spirit."(Luke 23:46) And then he died of cardiac arrest.

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 pleural effusion.

When the Roman soldier came around and, being fairly certain that Jesus was dead, confirmed it by thrusting a spear into his right side. It was probably his right side; that's not certain, but from the description it was probably the right side, between the ribs.

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. This would have been the appearance of a clear fluid, like water, followed by a large volume of blood, as the eyewitness John described in his gospel.

(True, John was untrained and could not identify the clear fluid that came out, and thus wrote it as water. However, in John 19:34, it is said that 'blood and water' came out; and John intentionally put the words in that order. But according to Metherell, the clear fluid would have come out first. A significant discrepancy here, explained in the following excerpt)

I'm not a Greek scholar, but according to people who are, the order if words in ancient Greek was determined not necessarily by sequence but by prominence. This means that since there was a lot more blood than water, it would have made sense for John to mention the blood first.

There was absolutely no doubt that Jesus was dead.

as aas (In the past, if the Roman guard somehow let any prisoner escape or allowed any convict sentenced to death to live due to carelessness or other reason, the sentence would be carried out on the Roman guard. That was quite a big incentive to ensure that the prisoner, or in this case, Jesus, was thoroughly dead. But as a final argument, Metherell depicts what would happen if somehow, Jesus survived the ordeal and lived to appear to the disciples. Here, he reasons that the wounds he suffered would not recover fully permanently, much less within a period of three days. Hypothesizing that Jesus would still be alive without means of resurrection, his body would be in a total mess.)

Listen, 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.

Do you see what I'm saying? 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.