MEDICAL EXAMINER AND CRUCIFIXION EXPERT DESCRIBES EXACT WAY HE SAYS
CHRIST DIED
The question is one for the ages. We know how Jesus died. He was
crucified. But from a medical standpoint, precisely what aspect of His
Crucifixion actually caused His death?
It's a question raised by the now-famous movie on Christ's Passion and
it is best put to researchers like Dr. Fred T. Zugibe -- former
medical examiner in Rockland County, New York, and a man who has
studied the Crucifixion for fifty years, considered by some as the
world's ranking expert.
Dr. Zugibe asserts that the chief reason Jesus died so soon after
being nailed to a cross was not asphyxiation, as commonly thought, but
due to the scourging, and the doctor has even come up with specific
medical diagnoses for what fatally afflicted Our Savior.
"When you develop the mechanism and cause of death, you start at
Gethsemane and you take each step of the way," he told Spirit Daily.
"Each of these aspects are contributory to his death. It's the way we
do it in forensic pathology: a reconstruction of cause of death. You
take all the factors and their effects on the body and then plug them
in and come to a cause of death."
Using that method, says the doctor (who has degrees in both anatomy
and cardiology, and who served as medical examiner for 33 years), one
comes to the cause of Jesus' death as "hypovolemic and traumatic
shock" -- meaning a loss of both blood and fluids to such an extent
that the individual goes into shock and dies.
"That was the cause of death," maintains Dr. Zugibe. "We've been able
to almost prove definitively that asphyxiation was not the cause. It
was not asphyxiation. There was no problem breathing on the cross. And
anyway, nobody could push up to breathe, like some said Jesus did."
The idea of Jesus pushing up from his feet to breathe on the cross
until He could no longer do so is a concept that was emphasized by a
French doctor named Pierre Barbet, who believed that Christ died when
He lost the struggle for oxygen. But after conducting more than 500
actual experiments involving a cross, including tests for the oxygen
content in the blood of volunteers strapped to the device, Dr. Zugibe
vigorously disputes those conclusions, choosing to emphasize the
scourging and other physical traumas as the reason for actual
expiration -- which fits with the emphasis on scourging and beatings
in the visions of German mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich, who
influenced the now-famous Mel Gibson movie.
While that movie is based principally on the Gospels, parts were
fleshed out by Gibson's reading of books like Emmerich's The Dolorous
Passion of Jesus Christ -- which presents emphasis on the pre-cross
trauma.
The shock, says Zugibe, can be traced back to Gethsemane, when Jesus
experienced the perspiration of blood, an actual medical phenomenon
technically known as "hematidrosis."
"I found over a hundred cases of hematidrosis, and believe it or not,
the common denominator was fear," he says. "There were actual cases:
fear on the way to the gallows, on the way to the guillotine, or a sea
captain who was in a violent storm and thought he was going to die.
There was also a girl during the blitz in England. Every time the
blitz came, she perspired blood! They tried everything to stop it and
couldn't. It went on until the war was over and the rockets stopped.
Fear was the common denominator."
Dr. Zugibe says the loss of blood from hematidrosis was then coupled
with the horror of scourging, which along with standard bloodshed
causes severe fluid accumulation around the outside of the lungs over
a period of two to three hours. "When there are any kind of beatings
around the chest area, there may be lung collapse, but the whole point
is that a major aspect of scourging is pleural effusion: fluid build
up, and fluid that you also count as lost."
The scourging could also have caused rib fracture and severe
hemorrhaging into the body wall, notes the medical examiner. How many
times was Jesus scourged? Zugibe notes that there are over a hundred
scourge marks on the Shroud of Turin, which he has personally studied.
"Since there are thought to have been three leather thongs with bits
of metal or bone on each flagrum [or whip], that means there were not
more than 39 actual lashes," says Zugibe. "In Deuteronomy the
prescription was 'forty less one' when it came to scourging. But
because each flagrum had three thongs, you take three times 39 and it
would be over a hundred marks."
"Then you take the crowning with thorns," adds the medical examiner.
"People think that was just a parody, a mockery, of His kingship, and
yes, that was part of it. But the effect of the crowning of thorns was
far beyond that. More than mockery, it was another infliction of
severe pain that added to the shock.
"What happens is that if you analyze a plant like the zizziphus spina
christii or 'Christ thorn' plant, which may have been used, that
would cause a condition called 'trigeminal neuralgia,'" says the
anatomical expert. "I've seen many cases of it, and it's a very severe
pain that goes across the face. If you take a little twig of the
trigeminal nerve that goes into the tooth and it becomes irritated,
you get a toothache. So you have an idea of the sensitivity.
"Now take the whole branch of the nerve -- which goes across the face
and head area, by the eyes -- and it's a triple branching that would
be irritated.
"The pain is so severe that some people have actually committed
suicide.
"It may stop, and then a whisp of wind will bring back the pain.
"It is very agonizing and all these things add to the traumatic
shock."
Then there was the falling down and getting up and the additional
beatings. Dr. Zugibe asserts that under such shock, "Jesus could not
have carried the entire cross, which weighed from 125 to 150 pounds.
This is also in accord with the fact that the uprights (stipes) were
already placed in the ground outside the walls of the city."
Still, the cross beam, he estimates, weighed fifty pounds. When Jesus
fell, that weight added to the shock. Factor in the beating sun on the
road to Calvary -- which was about three quarters of a mile -- and
lack of drink or nourishment (He had not eaten since the Last Supper),
and it all adds up to more than any human (and Christ was in human
form) could take.
Once on the cross, notes Dr. Zugibe, the nails would have affected the
median nerves in Jesus' Hands, causing yet another horrid pain called
"causalgia." The pains from that are so severe, says the doctor, that
when it has occurred in wartime, even morphine has not been able to
take it away. "It's one of the worst pains people have ever
experienced," he says. "They actually have to cut the nerve at the
spinal column, in order to stop the pain."
The shock was thus cumulative: one excruciation after another. So was
the crucial loss of fluids. On the Cross, Jesus experienced yet more
loss of blood and dehydration. "If I drew the death certificate
today," says Zugibe, "I would say that He died of that hypovolemic and
traumatic shock due to crucifixion. The scourging caused Him to die as
soon as He did because of the extent of the shock," he adds.
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