Surviving the crucifiction

[Wertbag]

I read an interesting article about Jesus being able to survive the crucifixion as it is portrayed in the bible.  The theory was that it was only the breaking of the legs of the condemned that resulted in death by suffocation.  If your legs were not broken then death would come from other slow processes like dehydration.  The story goes that Jesus never had his legs broken, so when the Roman soldier wanted to test if he was still alive he jabbed him with a spear and he bled.  Now the soldier was solely looking for a reaction to the pain so concluded Jesus was dead, but for blood to flow the heart must still be beating.  With no further delay his followers were allowed to take him down and rush him away.  Based on the timeline this is possible that a person could survive.

If someone did survive then they surely wouldn't want the Romans to catch on that they had been unsuccessful or they would correct their error.  The follow on story of him rising from the dead then becomes the excuse to tell others who may have seen him up and walking why that would be.  They keep it secret and smuggle Jesus out of the area to safety, leaving an empty tomb and story of visitation behind.

This naturalistic view of the event seems fair from my non-scholarly viewpoint.  What do you think?  Possible or does it miss other evidence?  Of course this is assuming that the Jesus character existed at all, which seems widely debated. 

[♦ Fuego ♦]

Given the poor medicine of the time, if any of this happened, he probably wouldn't live long or be able to convince anyone he rose from the dead, or was then able to ascend into the clouds, etc.

Even one of the gospels says that people doubted that it was him afterward. Kind of a weird thing for a cult to do (switching out someone), but not impossible given the other weird shit that cults do.

 

[sdelsolray]

2 hours ago, Wertbag said:

I read an interesting article about Jesus being able to survive the crucifixion as it is portrayed in the bible.  The theory was that it was only the breaking of the legs of the condemned that resulted in death by suffocation.  If your legs were not broken then death would come from other slow processes like dehydration.  The story goes that Jesus never had his legs broken, so when the Roman soldier wanted to test if he was still alive he jabbed him with a spear and he bled.  Now the soldier was solely looking for a reaction to the pain so concluded Jesus was dead, but for blood to flow the heart must still be beating.  With no further delay his followers were allowed to take him down and rush him away.  Based on the timeline this is possible that a person could survive.

If someone did survive then they surely wouldn't want the Romans to catch on that they had been unsuccessful or they would correct their error.  The follow on story of him rising from the dead then becomes the excuse to tell others who may have seen him up and walking why that would be.  They keep it secret and smuggle Jesus out of the area to safety, leaving an empty tomb and story of visitation behind.

This naturalistic view of the event seems fair from my non-scholarly viewpoint.  What do you think?  Possible or does it miss other evidence?  Of course this is assuming that the Jesus character existed at all, which seems widely debated. 

 

I think you are wasting time playing with fiction.

[L.B.]

I read a really old book once (from the 1960's) - and Spider-Man totally kicked the shit out of the bad guys!

 

See, the thing about antiquity is that it's not only damned-near impossible for anyone in the 21st century to validate or invalidate claims made back then - it was also nearly impossible for people to do the same in the 1st century - I submit it was even harder.

 

Want to hide a dead body? All they had to do was go out under cover of night in any one of a hundred directions from whatever village they were in - guess what was RIGHT OUTSIDE the gates? WILDERNESS. WILD ANIMALS and shit. You could go hide someone or something ANYWHERE back in those days, and it would be impossible for anyone to discover what you had done unless they caught you in the act.

 

In one of my first posts here nearly ten years ago, I told a stupid fundy 'evangelist' that no, we can't find the bones of Jesus, but we also can't find the bones of my great-great-grandmother's horse back in Poland, either. It must, then, stand to reason that the horse resurrected and flew away into the sky.

 

You'll never find the bones of MILLIONS, no, BILLIONS of people who have ever lived - and, conveniently enough, that's totally in favor of the Christ cult. Now, if they had to defend his actual existence, that's different - there are still (some) competing opinions along a spectrum - so they'd have to come up with some evidence, and apparently there is some.

 

Logic and reason, however, dictate that if there is no otherwise unbelievable answer to a question, the first believable one will suffice unless proof to the contrary is presented.

 

See how that works? You'll never find the bones of Jesus - for the exact same reason that you'll never find the bones of LOTS of other people who are not the 'son of god'.

 

In other words, quit wasting time and energy trying to figure out how someone in a probably-fictional story did something that was already nearly impossible at the time.

 

The chances of anyone surviving a crucifixion would have been slim to none - the Romans were not in the business of discipline for show - if you were sentenced to death, it was dead you would be.

[★ Citsonga ★]

20 hours ago, L.B. said:

I told a stupid fundy 'evangelist' that no, we can't find the bones of Jesus, but we also can't find the bones of my great-great-grandmother's horse back in Poland, either. It must, then, stand to reason that the horse resurrected and flew away into the sky.

 

That's golden!

 

[☆ DarkBishop ☆]

@Wertbag,

      I like LB'S post above on this. I watched a documentary one time where they were searching for his bones. And gave a good explanation of why it was a "borrowed" tomb. Apparently, according to the documentary, during that time the body would be allowed to rot for a year in the tomb. After that the bones would have been collected and placed in a clay pot. Then they would be deposited into a permanent resting place. 

 

     They went in places where these pots were placed with miniature cameras etc trying to see evidence of where Jesus' bones. But didn't really find anything convincing. But like LB said. There is almost no way for anyone to "prove" or "disprove" that Jesus died or even be able to find his physical bones. Just as we can't find his families bones either.

     

     However, concerning your original post on whether or not it would be possible to survive the crucifixion. I am going to throw out a lot of if's here. If he even existed, if he was crucified, if the soldiers speer didn't Pierce to deep, and if jesus' followers saw that he was in fact still alive when they took him down then I would say, it's a long shot, but it would be possible. The human body can take some severe trauma and live. If he existed that would explain a lot of the claims but it would also mean there was no resurrection and that he wasn't dead for three days which equals (Jesus wasn't the son of god). So either way he still isn't worth being worshipped.

 

      I watched another documentary one time on Jesus' crucifixion, and in it the pointed out that when the soldier pierced his side blood and water flowed. Which lead them to believe he had pierced his long which would have been filling up with water. And in this scenario with such a deep wound (which supports the biblical account) then it would have been doubtful for anyone to be able to survive that much trauma during that time. It's not like a tube could have been inserted to blow his lung back up, surgery could have been done to repair the internal trauma of the stab wound, a blood transfusion to replace the blood lost during the crucifixion, or a defibrillator used to start his heart back as he went in and out during these procedures. In short if he existed at all (which is heavily debated here) and if he was still alive when they took him down, the resulting infection would surely have done him in. 

 

     This is really all hypothetical at best but Christians will cling to anything that proves he existed and rose again that third day. We have all been there before, we know how it is. To question Jesus resurrection would be blasphemy I'm sure.

 

DB

 

Oh PS.!! I almost forgot to add this. Had to edit it in. If he did survive then he completely skipped out afterward. Apparently he said F--k this, once is enough dad F--k you and F--k all these people I'm not coming back here! Because not once does he ever come back like they expected him too. He probably took all the money and ran as far away from the Roman empire as he could.

[Storm]

I believe I heard a podcast in which (I believe it was) Richard Carrier explained the if Jesus was actually crucified and did in fact rise again from the dead, the Romans would have likely begun a massive manhunt to find him, because the Romans wouldn't take too kindly to executing someone as a "threat" to the kingdom, only to find out he was still alive. They would've hunted him down and made sure he was dead. To me, this puts a hole in the resurrection story. 

[Wertbag]

 

if Jesus was actually crucified and did in fact rise again from the dead, the Romans would have likely begun a massive manhunt to find him

 

From what I've heard the Romans didn't think Jesus was special, so even if He was reported as alive I don't know that they would care enough to start a manhunt.  Trying to find a nondescript person before communications, travelling somewhere within the empire would have been nigh on impossible.

[Storm]

 

 

From what I've heard the Romans didn't think Jesus was special, so even if He was reported as alive I don't know that they would care enough to start a manhunt.  Trying to find a nondescript person before communications, travelling somewhere within the empire would have been nigh on impossible.

While I do generally agree with your statement (regarding Jesus being of insignificance and the difficulty of finding him), I do find it plausible that, if the Romans found out he wasn't dead after crucifying him, that they would take offense to the fact that they tried to kill him as a "threat to Caesar" and he didn't die, they would most certainly have taken notice and made an effort to find him and make sure he was dead. The Romans were a proud lot and I doubt they would have been thrilled to see someone walking around they made efforts to kill, essentially "mocking" Caesar.

[mwc]

     The reason the bodies were taken down was for the sabbath (in this case Passover), so as not to offend the Jews, not because they appeared to be dead.  Leaving the bodies up was sort of the point after all.  If we accept what we're told in the story it was Joseph of Arimathea who petitioned for the specific body.

 

     In any case the Romans couldn't leave until everyone was dead.  That was their job.  So we're told they broke the legs of the thieves to hurry them along.  Then we have jesus.  They needed him dead too.  Before sunset otherwise he'd be hanging around on the sabbath.  We're told his legs weren't broken.  So he could have died naturally (from all the torture to that point that is).  Or he could have died from the stab wound.  Most think this went to his heart.  But it would seem strange that a Roman would simply guess and not be certain that he was quite dead.  They could have hit his chest, causing a heart attack, but we're told about the spear instead.  The point here being they didn't take chances.  They made sure people were dead.  Cases where they might not be able to is in a mass crucifixion situation where there are simply too many people to monitor.

 

     Now, Josephus does tell us about crucifixion survivors so we know it can happen.  But Josephus himself is the one that petitioned for their release and is how they got care.  They weren't mistaken for dead and whisked away to parts unknown to be cared for by a group of dirt poor fugitive illiterate fisherman.  Is it possible for such a thing to happen?  Maybe.  I can't say it's entirely impossible but it seems improbable.  I would be worried about infection considering all the large wounds we're told he had (not just the crucifixion wounds but the torture beforehand that would have wrecked his back).  We can just look back at more recent times, such as Civil War times, where lesser wounds would easily kill a person in short order and Civil War medicine was far more advanced than what first century Judea had to offer.

 

     If jesus was in such shock that he didn't react to a spear entering his torso I would imagine that he'd be nearly impossible to for any of those involved to provide any medicinal help to especially if the gospel stories are true and this group truly believed in what amounted to faith healing.  Simply praying over a person in this condition would more than likely finish what the Romans started.

 

          mwc

 

[Geezer]

The crucifixion never happened. It was just one of many fictional events written in the Gospel. David Fitzgerald, among other Bible scholars, shows in his his books Nailed, 10 Christian Myths that prove Jesus never existed & also in another book Jesus, Mything In Action explains why Jesus trial & crucifixion could never have happened the way the gospel tells it. 

 

Jesus was not actually guilty of any capital offense, and if he did comment blasphemy, which he didn't according to Jewish law, the punishment required stoning to death not crucifixion. Just more evidence that shows the Gospel is a fictional story with fictional characters & whoever made it up clearly didn't know anything about Judaism. 

[Wertbag]

 

Jesus was not actually guilty of any capital offense

 

From what I've read crimes such as insurrection/rebellion could be punished with crucifixion, at least that appears to be the crime that some claim was the reason. It does appear crucifixion was common for crimes which we wouldn't normally think of as capital offenses like theft and slave owners could pay to have their slaves executed if they wished.

[Bedouin]

People in the Philippines survive crucifixion every Easter.