Did Jesus really die?

Jesus was first tortured in various ways by beating etc. He was then forced to carry his cross to the execution pelleton, but is unable to carry it and another person carries it. Jesus is then nailed to the cross through the wrists and ancles in the Roman order. He bleads heavily from wounds in his head because of the crown of thorns. Jesus hangs in such a manner for three hours until he stops breathing. A centurion pierce Jesus' thorax or chest and from the wound comes blood and water poring out. Jesus is taken down from the cross and given to a wealthy and influential man who puts him in his rock tomb. Three days later he is alive and kicking having left the tomb.

Now was he dead or had he simply stopped breathing? Let's say that during the beating and torture he endured one of his longues were punctured. This could explain how he didn't say anything when Pilate judge him, how he didn't manage to carry the cross and finally how he only lasted three hours on the cross until he stopped breathing. Normally victims of crucifiction hung for days until they died from exhaustion and bloodloss.

Untreated, a punctured longue leads to respiratory failure and eventually death. However, if you pierce a hole into the thorax of the patient like the centurion did with Jesus, and drain it for water and blood and stabilise the air pressure inside the chest, respiratory functions will commence and the wound in the longue will grow in a couple of days.

I know this from experience. I fell down four meters from a tree on my back and punctured a longue. I could barely breathe, speak, move and the doctor treated me by piercing my chest and extract blood and water. I didn't break anything either in the fall, so Jesus could have fulfilled that part too.

But the question remains: What happened to him after this?

problem with this theory is that he would have to not be breathing for a loooonnnggg time. from the time the centurian pierced him, to the time he was taken from the cross AND prepared for burial had to be longer than 10 minutes.

i know after 4 minutes without oxygen your brain would suffer damage. so even if your theory was true, jesus i dont think would be normal.

there are however causes where people think other people are dead for days at a time, but thats in connection with blowfish from japan

Since you're basing your assumptions in part on what scripture states, it might interest you to know that the Gospel of John talks about what happened to Jesus after the tomb was found to be empty. You can start reading about it here.

As to the swoon theory, several have put that forward, but it doesn't hold up to any scrutiny if it's explored. There are very many sources that explain this. The best one I've read that makes is rather simple to understand but is extremely factual would be Lee Strobel's The Case For Christ.

Happy reading, and I'm glad you survived your punctured lung!

Maybe. Then again maybe not. The gospel doesn't say when he started breathing again. My guess is shortly after the soldier pierced him. You see when you have a hole in your longue the air pressure rises in the thorax, and you take shorter and shorter breaths until you can't breathe any more. You still have oxygen in your blood and inside your longues. Thus you can hold your breath by will for more than nine minutes (WR: 9m08s) without losing ones consciousness, probably even longer if you are straight out unable to breathe. Remember, his heart would still be beating. A general rule is that the brain can "live" for about six minutes after cardial arrest before it starts to take damage, but several stories tell about much longer time, without the patient suffering from brain damage. For instance, a friend of mine was in a car accident and ended up drowning inside the car under water. He was unconcious for almost 45 minutes lying under water all the time unable to breathe. They pulled him out of the wreck and started his heart. He was still unconcious for quite a while at the hospital, and the doctors said he would probably not survive, but if he did, we would be vegetative suffering from severe brain damage. But then he woke up and was allright. No brain damage at all.

Yes He died. Oh .. check out the Shroud of Turin. It's real. Some tried to say it was a fake but the carbon dating was screwed up due to a fire. Most evidence points to it being real.

You want to know about the death of Jesus. Mediate on the image of the Shroud. It speaks volumes. (have a box of tissues nearby .. it will break your heart).

If you do not believe thats upto you, but christians believe he did not. Whats wrong with us following jesus words and what happened to him, either way we do not know the truth.

Sorry i mean he died and was resurrected, before anyone does not undersatnd my words.

[edit on 4/2/2008 by andy1033]

A number of alternative scenarios have been suggested:

* The punishment wasn't as severe as told in the story, but was exaggerated as time went on.
* Medical knowledge being what it was at the time, his death was mistaken.
* The lance to the heart luckily punctured the pericardium, a sac around the heart that can fill with water as a result of blunt force trauma, allowing him to live long enough to be taken down for the Sabbath.
* Jesus, a wealthy Jewish aristocrat, essentially paid for the Apostle Simon to take the punishment in his place.
* One of Jesus's disciples, or Joseph of Arimathea, instructed in the techniques of sorcery and necromancy, used the power of demon Beelzebub to revive him.
* Time travelers, who appear as "angels" at the empty tomb, revived Jesus.
* The whole resurrection story is a fiction added at a later date to some but not every Gospel after the fact to mirror the Mithras or Egyptian Osiris myth.
* The whole thing is a fiction to convince people of Jesus's divinity, and in reality he just died and that was it.

That's what you get when you get a story without a lot of detail and nothing archeologically left to investigate. A lot of theories.

Originally posted by Neo Christian Mystic
The gospel doesn't say when he started breathing again.

No, but (and this goes to Nohup, too) what we do know is what it meant to be a Roman soldier. These were guys who knew death; death was a way of life in the Roman empire. In conjunction with that, to fail at your duties meant death to you. So the Roman soldier who pierced Christ's side knew both how to kill a man and how to tell if he was dead.

Though medical knowledge may have been lacking, they knew how to tell if a man was dead. In addition to that, the Jewish leadership knew the prophesies and would have made sure that first Jesus was dead, and (as is stated in the Gospels) post guards around the tomb. The implication is that they were there through the embalming process as well. Again, a soldier whose life depended on Jesus being dead is not going to keep his mouth shut if he were to see the "corpse" start breathing.

I give you a 100% for effort on this one. But there are a few flaws in your logic I would like to point out.

Normally victims of crucifixion hung for days until they died from exhaustion and bloodloss.

For starters normal victims of crucifixion were not beaten and abused as severely as Jesus was. Keep in mind the 40 -1 lashes he received with the scourge was a separate punishment in and of its self. It was one or the other but not usually both. So we have an extraordinary amount of blood loss and trauma pre-crucifixion. Jesus was not even close to the same health conditions as normal. That is not taking into consideration the other abuses he suffered.

Also the actual cause of death in a crucifixion is not blood loss or exhaustion. It is asphyxiation. The victim literally suffocates. Because of the angle of the knees and the way the body is hung, normal breathing is hampered. That is why the "executioners" would break the knees or other areas of the leg. Unable to put pressure on their legs, the victims breathing would be even further hampered.

This could explain how he didn't say anything when Pilate judge him, how he didn't manage to carry the cross

The biggest problem with this is: he did not speak when Pilate judged him but he did speak 7 times on the cross. As far as not being able to carry it, he already had the tar beat out of him. Depending on who you listen to, the cross would have weighed anywhere between 150 to 300lbs. Even guys from the strong man competitions would have a hard time lugging one around after receiving the kind of abuse Jesus went through.

Untreated, a punctured longue leads to respiratory failure and eventually death. However, if you pierce a hole into the thorax of the patient like the centurion did with Jesus, and drain it for water and blood and stabilise the air pressure inside the chest, respiratory functions will commence and the wound in the longue will grow in a couple of days.

With a scalpel or small knife, yes it is possible to relieve the symptoms of a puncture lounge. I have never had one punctured but I did have one collapse, so I feel ya there. But a spear head would do more damage than it could possibly relieve.


I hope this has helped.

Originally posted by junglejake
So the Roman soldier who pierced Christ's side knew both how to kill a man and how to tell if he was dead.

It was also common practice, as I understand it, to break the legs of a crucified person to kill them, rather than stab them with a spear. Why wasn't that done? Also, it seems that the Roman soldiers in charge were pretty incompetent (or bribed, or secret Christians, themselves) to have let the corpse disappear from the tomb.

Just from the evidence presented in the account alone, I don't know if the theoretical expertise or word of these Roman soldiers can be relied upon.

I agree that Jesus died on the cross. However, I feel that it was probably shock due to the trauma He suffered from the beatings. His heart most likely gave out. Just my 2c.

You are forgetting the Roman soldier in charge was an expert on death by crucifixtion plus a mistake as you describe would lead to his death..

Jesus did not die. One must have lived in the first place in order to die. Provide some incontrovertible evidence of his existence and we can continue the discussion.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Yes He died. Oh .. check out the Shroud of Turin. It's real.

The shroud of Turin is a proven hoax. Anyone with some anatomical knowledge knows that the proportions of the face and body is well, not right. When children paint a face, they automatically place the eyes at about 2/3rds up the face, and the mouth at about 1/3rd. This however is wrong. The eyes are cituated in the exact middle of the head. "The Turin Monster" has his eyes in his forehead, which looks quite bizarre. Besides it is painted with henna, nothing magic. The only carbon dating performed on the shroud places it somewhere in between the 13th and 14th centuries.

Besides the Bible clearly states that there was more than one cloth. (From Wikipedia: ) "According to the Gospel of John (John 20:5-7), the Apostle Peter and the "beloved disciple" entered the sepulchre of Jesus, shortly after his resurrection — of which they were still unaware—and found the "linen clothes" that had wrapped his body and "the napkin, that was about his head."" Note how there was a separate head piece.

I like the demon resurrection angle. It's not like Jesus was the first person to come back from the dead. There's Lazarus, after all, who set the precedent for being dead three days and coming back.

As in the other thread, sorcery and necromancy where Jesus and his disciple's stock and trade.

Originally posted by zombiemann
For starters normal victims of crucifixion were not beaten and abused as severely as Jesus was. Keep in mind the 40 -1 lashes he received with the scourge was a separate punishment in and of its self.

Jesus didn't receive 40 -1 lashes, atleast it is not written anywhere. Church dogma however is a well of details about the circumstances around his torture and death.

Also the actual cause of death in a crucifixion is not blood loss or exhaustion. It is asphyxiation.

Or any of the above...

The biggest problem with this is: he did not speak when Pilate judged him but he did speak 7 times on the cross.

Wow he spoke seven times in three hours...

As far as not being able to carry it, he already had the tar beat out of him. Depending on who you listen to, the cross would have weighed anywhere between 150 to 300lbs.

The crossbeam would weigh only 75-125 pounds (35-60 kilograms) and this would be the part carried by the convicts. The main log was fixed in place at the execution pelleton.

With a scalpel or small knife, yes it is possible to relieve the symptoms of a puncture lounge. ... But a spear head would do more damage than it could possibly relieve.

Maybe not. A sharp spear put in the right place could certainly do the trick. It takes quite a bit of force to push the dren pipe or for that matter a spear in between the ribs.

Here is an interesting direction to research before debating whether he did or did not die:

Does any religious faith have any gain for suggesting that he did not die?

A common atheistic point of view is that he never existed. A common agnostic point of view is that he was not resurrected. I'll give both viewpoints as a kind of 'common sense' assumptions. So why then insist that he did not die? This should strike the investigator as odd. Answer these two questions and you'll find a very interesting trail.

[edit on 2-4-2008 by saint4God]

Originally posted by junglejake
...what we do know is what it meant to be a Roman soldier. These were guys who knew death; death was a way of life in the Roman empire. In conjunction with that, to fail at your duties meant death to you. So the Roman soldier who pierced Christ's side knew both how to kill a man and how to tell if he was dead.

The problem with the circumstances around Jesus' supposed death is that it all happened in a hurry. The centurions had to clear the area before the sun went down and the Jewish Passover started (In Judaism the whole week of Passover is Sabbath) to avoid a Jewish uprise. It was pitch dark according to the text and Joseph from Arimathea wrapped him in linen right away and brought him with him to the tomb. Noone took his pulse readings, noone listened to his heart or his breath, the text clearly says that he was announced dead as blood mixed with water was observed flowing from a wound in his chest. I'm not a doctor, but when did ever water mix into the bloodstream at the time of death? All I see is an indication for punctured longue.

At the time of death the longues of Jesus were like a balloon inside a bottle. No matter how hard you blow the balloon will not fill up. Jesus stopped breathing. Now compare piercing Jesus chest would be like breaking the bottle or drilling a hole into it. Suddenly the balloon can be filled or it was atleast possible for Jesus to breathe again if he did suffer a punctured longue, something the bloody water indicates.

The idea is that perhaps the centurion infact saved the life of Jesus instead of killing him. Whether or not the Roman soldier was aware of this is something that could only end up in speculations, but interesting ones indeed. But based on scripture alone and further contextual knowledge about customs and tradition and other circumstances I sincerely doubt that Jesus died at all. I believe he cheated death and was later lifted up into a spaceship to the people who had staged him walking on water for instance

He died and his wife moved his body where it was later burned, during which time they partook of the wild weed and saw visions of angels coming down to carry away Jesus's spirit to the Father.

Originally posted by saint4God
Does any religious faith have any gain for suggesting that he did not die?

Well, it might suggest that he outsmarted his captors or something with sleight of hand, or that his "life force" or whatever was too strong for even the worst punishment of the time to beat.

But claiming a resurrection could be used as evidence by a faith to "prove" (if it wasn't just hearsay) that Jesus had supernatural qualities, and imply divinity. That would carry a lot of weight with people who are used to stories of how mighty and wonderful their various gods are, and might have had a hard time worshipping a plain old human being, no matter what his message was.

Simple people of the time (and even these days, I suppose) are impressed and fascinated by the apparently supernatural, as well as the Christian promise of a peaceful afterlife forever if they join the faith. So the faith gets people, people give money, money gets power, power allows you to force your will on more people -- like the Incas.

The catch, of course, is after you've got Jesus up and walking around, apparently conquering death, you have to explain why he isn't still around to be seen. Why would he leave? Why not stick around forever? That would be pretty powerful proof to all doubters. But that catch is solved with the Ascension, which conveniently already has a number of Biblical precedents to explain why seemingly immortal people are no longer wandering about.

Anyway, resurrection and reincarnation have always been good selling points.

[edit on 2-4-2008 by Nohup]