Crucifixion: A Medical View

It’s happening more times than we’ll ever know. An innocent person jailed or executed for a crime that he didn’t commit, only to have the guilty person apprehended later. Like the man who spent years in prison for assaulting a woman before the real rapist was caught and confessed. But there has never been a clearer case of innocence paying a price than that of Jesus being crucified. No one was more innocent than He—yet He was spat upon, brutalized and nailed to a cross.

When Christianity become the accepted religion of the Roman Empire, the Jews were accused and assaulted as His murderers. And over the next 1,700 years, Jewish people have been branded Christ-killers and guilty of deicide—the murder of God. Thousands, even millions of Jews, counting the Holocaust, have been put to death on a false charge which has served as the main foundation of hate for people who want to hurt and destroy Jews. Looking for any excuse, haters have twisted the Bible and have twisted history to suit their evil aims.

But what are the real facts? Do Jews deserve to be branded as Christ-killers? Do the Romans? Does any group? Or was there an individual behind it all—a single person who was to blame for the death of the Son of God? If so, who was the person?

Some immediately answer, “Satan.” That answer is not entirely correct—though the prince of evil has always been the master-mind of evil. There was somebody else to blame—and it’s time the Christians lead the way in telling the facts—as I am about to do.

What was it like for Jesus to be humiliated, beaten and put to death? Who really crucified Jesus Christ? First of all, where did crucifixion originate? The definition of the word is simply the torture and execution of a person by fixation to a cross. You can trace this all the way back to the Persians. It was later used by the Greeks. The Romans picked up this technique from others and refined it with typical Roman skill and cruelty.

Dr. C. Truman Davis put out a tremendous article called “The Crucifixion: A Medical View.” He stated that the common cross form used in Jesus’ day was the T-shaped cross. It really wasn’t a cross like the one popularized in Christianity with the top sticking up over the horizontal piece. It was more a capital “T” letter. There’s archeological evidence that it was on this type of a cross, that Jesus was crucified. This, of course, would mean that a condemned man would only carry the horizontal part of what would become the cross—with that part still weighing more than 100 pounds.

But let’s go back a little further. When I read this story of Jesus while I headed for an island called Okinawa many years ago, I wept as I saw Him in the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke 22:44 says He was in such an agony that as He prayed His sweat became as drops of blood trickling down upon the ground. Bible critics used to laugh at that and try to explain the phenomenon away as something that couldn’t happen. Dr. Davis, though, in his article on the crucifixion said, “Though very rare, the phenomenon of hematidrosis or ‘bloody sweat’ is well documented. Under great emotional stress, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands can break, thus mixing blood with sweat. This process alone could have produced marked weakness and possible shock.”

Now I was in the Garden of Gethsemane with Him, almost lifted, as it were, out of the body, this experience was so real. I could hear Him pray: “If it’s possible, Father, let this cup pass from me.” It was the Son of God talking to His Father in the Spirit. This side of heaven, theirs’ will always remain a mysterious conversation. To me, Jesus was saying. “Is there any other way, Father? Any other way that I don’t have to go through this?” Yet, how I loved the resignation that brought Him peace. “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.”

That will be important to remember. God’s will that Christ die? God’s will that He be nailed to a cross? God’s will that He died in such horrible agony?

"Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ" (I Corinthians 11:1)
The ST. PAUL SCHOOL, with Frank Eiklor, Eileen Young and Cecilia Contreras