RebelSnake wrote:[http://www.forerunner.com/mandate/X0040_A_Physician_Analyzes.html[/url]
Apparently, to make doubly sure of death, the legionnaire drove his lance between the ribs, upward through the pericardium and into the heart. John 19:34 states, "And immediately there came out blood and water." Thus there was an escape of watery fluid from the sac surrounding the heart and the blood of the interior of the heart. This is rather conclusive post-mortem evidence that Jesus died, not the usual crucifixion death by suffocation, but of heart failure due to shock and constriction of the heart by fluid in the pericardium.
This explains rather conclusively why his legs weren't broken, and why water and blood were seen flowing from the wound. And one last point for those that may question the veracity of the website to keep in mind. This is not an atheist website, but rather a christian website.
I too think Jesus died on the cross and rose on the third day. But just as a medical exercise, I'm willing to discuss that spear.
Dr. Davis could be right that Jesus died faster than most on the cross because of the extreme trauma He suffered prior to the crucifixion. And in fact, if he died quickly enough that crucifracture was unnecessary, the ordinary mode of death (suffocation) might not have happened. But there are problems with Dr. Davis' report. He is assuming that the spear went deeply into the chest and through the pericardium. The bible does not give that level of detail. The amount of fluid in the pericardial sack isn't that much, even in cardiac tamponade (explained below). And whether it would drain out through the spear hole without getting very blood tinged (and thus looking just like thin red blood) isn't very likely.
What Dr. Davis is referring to when he talks about that clear fluid is cardiac tamponade. Tamponade means is that the membrane around the heart, the pericardium, becomes over-filled with fluid (either blood or clear serum) so that it compresses the heart. When that happens, the heart cannot beat effectively, and if untreated, the person dies. Tamponade is caused by an infection of the pericardium, a dissecting aortic aneurism, or by a heart attack. Possibly Jesus had a heart attack, but tamponade following a heart attack takes a bit of time to evolve. There are a few other things that can cause it but those aren't relevant in this situation either. I disagree with Dr. Davis that tamponade caused the death.
But let's say He did die of tamponade. Even when there is enough fluid in the pericardial sac to cause tamponade, that isn't a large volume of fluid usually. Certainly not enough to cause clear fluid to run out of a dead body through a distant a chest wound.
On the other hand, that scourging would cause massive tissue swelling, and like any injury that removes significant areas of skin, fluid rushes to the area. Such an injury acts like a burn. Burn patients ooze copious amounts of clear fluid! In fact, keeping them hydrated can be a challenge because of the amount of fluid they lose through the surface of the burn. And that dehydrates the body horribly.
If Jesus received the kind of scourging that Dr. Davis describes, then there would be large pockets of serum (clear fluid) all over His back and even extending to the areas around the wounds, including possibly in His side. And that fluid would be very close to the surface, and much more likely to run clear from the wound than something as deep inside the body as the pericardial fluid. So a spear inserted anywhere in the side of the chest might well cause leakage of clear serum.
One thing that actually does argue against Jesus being dead when the spear wound happened is that the wound bled. Blood doesn't run out of a dead body with any enthusiasm at all. In fact, as soon as the heart stops beating, blood begins to settle to the lowest part of the body. In this case, the legs. Post mortem wounds just don't bleed much if at all.
Back to the scourging: it brings up another problem. Even had Jesus survived the crucifixion, I have trouble imagining that He would be up and walking around very well after only 3 days. In fact, given the lack of antibiotics and intravenous fluids, I would guess that almost nobody would long survive a scourging that left large areas of the back denuded of skin and subcutaneous tissue. Such a tissue damage scenario as Dr. Davis describes would lead to death within 48 hours (other than a miraculous cure). What Dr. Davis is describing is equivalent to a very deep 3rd degree burn over the entire back. And without immediate and modern medical care, surviving such an injury is almost unheard of.
In agreement with Dr. Davis, I must say that the amount of trauma inflicted on Jesus could have put just about anybody into heart failure from shock and pain. And it is quite amazing that He survived even 3 hours on the cross if the scourging was really as extreme as that described by Dr. Davis. (I'm not sure they would have scourged Him to that extreme extent because the chance of somebody going into shock and dying from the scourging would be too great. And they planned on crucifying Jesus so they wouldn't want Him to die from the scourging).
In any case, heart failure doesn't cause tamponade. It typically causes the heart to beat so weakly that it can't process all the blood it receives from the vena cava. It pumps blood into the lungs but can't effectively push it from the lungs back to the left side of the heart. So what happens is that the lungs fill with fluid (from blood pooling in the lungs), and causes the victim to drown in his own fluids. To me, that sounds more likely to be the cause of death than cardiac tamponade.
