Jesus After Crucifixion

Jesus’ betrayal by the hands of Judas Iscariot and the reluctant crucifixion commissioned by Pontius Pilate under the pressure of Jewish authorities and officials is a well-known chapter of our history. The harrowing passage from John 19 vividly captures the sheer brutality: ‘The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.’ He was met with a barrage of excruciating insults, spit, and blows from the jeering crowd as he carried the overwhelming burden of the cross to Golgotha or the ‘Place of the Skull’ followed by Simon of Cyrene.

Ominous darkness descended upon the land, engulfing it for several hours as Jesus remained nailed to the cross. Nature itself seemed to convulse in grief as the land erupted, rocks shattered into pieces, and the curtain of the Temple was torn into two parts from top to bottom as Jesus ‘gave up his spirit’ on the cross beside the other two robbers who were given the same penalty of crucifixion after drinking from a sponge soaked in wine vinegar attached on the stalk of the hyssop plant. The centurion present, petrified and overwhelmed by the horrifying events unfolding right before him, proclaimed, “Surely, he was the Son of God!”.

Mark 15 recounts the aftermath - ‘ It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). So as evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died.’ In order to accelerate the death of the crucified, their legs were commonly broken so their thighs could not be used as a means of support. However, the sympathetic centurion found Jesus to be dead already. The reaffirmation of this was executed by piercing Jesus’ side with a spear ‘bringing a sudden flow of blood and water’ but Jesus did not move - what the Centurion presumably thought was a testament to his undeniable death. The centurion conveyed this message immediately to Pontius Pilate and Joseph of Arimathea took the body of Jesus Christ with the permission of the Roman Governor in order to bury him although the Roman law forbade crucified men from being buried.

Joseph of Arimathea had become a secret follower of Jesus and sought to bury Jesus along with Nicodemus who had visited Jesus earlier at night and also been clearly captivated by Jesus’ teachings. Joseph was a considerably wealthy person and a prominent member of the Jewish Sanhedrin which was a council concerned with Jewish affairs during the Roman rule and Nicodemus was also a member of the Sanhedrin and a Pharisee who was a highly respected religious leader and scholar of his time. Unfortunately, their high social statuses did not allow them to follow Jesus openly.

Their influential personalities helped in organising the exorbitant burial of Jesus in a new tomb in a garden, his body wrapped in strips of fine linen and 100 Roman pounds of myrrh and aloe vera a radical departure from the usual 20 Roman pounds of myrrh used commonly in burials while the use of aloe vera was completely unheard of.

Christian authorities have found it hard to fathom the mention of ‘a sudden flow of blood and water’ which perhaps suggests instead that Jesus was alive and just in a state of samadhi. If we assume that Jesus was dead for some time then the circulation would stop and therefore fluids would have started to clot and move, in a process called livor mortis, to dependent areas of the body and start to pool there. Thus, piercing the body from the side should most definitely not bring such an unexpected gush from a ‘dead’ body. Some scientists say that the water mentioned may be a result of the blood coagulating and separating to form blood serum but this is not a possibility as decomposition of the blood in the manner described typically occurs no sooner than six hours after death which is undoubtedly not the case here.

Some interpret this incident as merely symbolic but we cannot just call a story symbolic if it goes against what we may believe. Instead, we must assume that the real and true eyewitness not only intended to highlight this detail but also that this is exactly what he observed. John reiterates this exact point in John 19:35: ‘The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe.’

Another key detail which supports Jesus’ endurance is when Pontius Pilate expresses his shock when he hears that Jesus has already died. Crucifixions were designed to be long, ruthless punishments where the crucified would be pinned for several days before finally succumbing to death by asphyxiation altogether whereas Jesus mysteriously ‘dies’ within a matter of a few hours.

Thirdly, the Shroud of Turin and the Oviedo Cloth also provide significant insight into this theory. Many believe the Shroud of Turin to be the linen cloth wrapped around Jesus’ crucified body. In contrast, the relatively unacknowledged Oviedo Cloth or Oviedo Sudarium is presumed to be the ‘Sudarium’ or facecloth applied to Jesus after the crucifixion and when carrying him to his tomb.

Although the Shroud was brandished as a counterfeit as a result of radiocarbon dating in 1988, exciting new evidence suggests otherwise. Instead, research by Raymond N Rogers proves that the samples taken from the Shroud for testing were parts of the reconstructed areas of the Shroud after analysis demonstrating significantly different chemical characteristics which has been confirmed with several recent studies. The carbon 14 dating of 1988 has been rescinded, erasing the barrier preventing the scientific community from conducting further studies on the topic. Roger estimates the Shroud to be between 1300 and 3000 years old when assessing the proportion of vanillin absent from the lignin of the Shroud which matches the date of Jesus’ crucifixion. The frontal stains on the Oviedo Cloth match with 70 features on the Shroud and align with 150 points with the Shroud when taking the back stains into account according to Dr Alan Wanger who established this via image overlay techniques (the blood stains have been confirmed to be real blood that contain human DNA and not paint). The Shroud also retains the details confirmed by the Bible such as residues of aloe and myrrh, and the wound retained by the lance which Kurt Bena mentions in his writings - ‘Letter C refers to the wound in the side of the body. It is on the right breast in line with the armpits between the fifth and sixth rib, a little below and somewhat to the side of the right nipple. The size of the wound is about two inches by half an inch. Letter D refers to a small wound which, in 1948, was diagnosed as having been caused almost certainly by the point of a lance extruding after it had transfixed the body’. The Shroud also contains what has been confirmed to be remnants of aloe and myrrh. Although we have validated that the Shroud is real and belonged to Jesus Christ, what secrets does it have to reveal that may suggest that the man it belonged to was verily alive?

Holger Kersten and Kurt Bena reach this exact conclusion in their books. As we have already discussed, there is no blood pressure after death so blood should not flow out of the wounds. Kurt Bena relies on this exact fact to imply in this text the survival of Jesus - “But what happens [at the removal of the crown of thorns] if here is blood pressure--that is, if the heart is still beating? The little wounds fill with blood; the blood flows from the head into the hair; and because it keeps flowing, it trickles through the hair onto the Shroud - as we can see on the Shroud of Jesus. That is why it cannot have been a corpse that was in the Shroud - the body was not dead. We can all see the evidence on the Shroud, as revealed by a camera nineteen hundred years later and the camera does not lie…It is so obvious and easy to understand that I am certain you have followed my reasoning.” Finally, the blood streaks that can be found on the Shroud could have only been formed if the heart was still pumping blood and there was a certain level of pressure, or else the blood present on the skin would have dried up and not marred the Shroud. Therefore, we can quite assertively conclude that the heart must have been active and this inevitably means that Jesus was alive.

We have now corroborated that Jesus was able to keep body and soul together but most counter-intuitively, how was Jesus able to withstand this agonising affliction?

Jesus of Arimathea and Nicodemus very sagaciously and painstakingly organised a plan to keep Jesus away from his brush with death. The 100 pounds of aloe and myrrh are often not introspected enough by people who simply whisk it off as something with symbolic representation or something that does not make a difference whether it was present or not. However, what people do not know is the therapeutic properties of aloe and myrrh which are often used to help people recover from significant blood loss or damage to vital organs. A study by the Pittsburgh University shows how the aloe vera ‘can help preserve organ function after massive blood loss’, and help ‘counteract the deadly effects of blood loss’ because it ‘is rich in sugar compounds called polysaccharides that affect the qualities of the fluid.’ Additionally, ‘“it may provide better diffusion of oxygen molecules from red blood cells to tissues because of its ability to better mix in the plasma surrounding red blood cells.’” In the study, the first experiment saw rats suffering blood loss and injecting them with a saline fluid or aloe vera which culminated in the survival of just half of the ten rats injected with the saline fluid while eight out of the ten rats injected with aloe vera survived8.

Myrrh has been long known by the ancients for its wide medicinal properties and healing properties used by Ancient Egyptians for hay fever and herpes, Ancient Greeks for the treatment of battle wounds9 and by the Ancient Indians in the form of Aryuvedic Hirabol that strengthened the immune system, tone mucous tissue, fight cancerous effects, heal wounds, stop bleeding and to fight off other diseases10.

Knowing the information mentioned above, it is quite simple to understand the purpose of the 100 pounds of aloe and myrrh: Nicodemus intentionally brought them for Jesus to reheal in the tomb.

Some speculate that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus also arranged the jar of ‘wine vinegar’ that was beside him which he asked for when he was thirsty and instantly died right after he drank it in Matthew 28-30 - ‘Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.’ It was common for the crucified to be given frankincense in a cup of wine to bewilder the punished as mentioned in Sanhedrin 43a:1011. Holger Kersten theorises that the ‘wine vinegar’ mentioned may have not been wine vinegar but instead a different substance altogether. The use of herbs or specific to lapse into a death-like stupor is not completely unheard of and has been implemented in many real-life examples and stories, most famously in Romeo and Juliet and celebrities like Elvis Presley who fell unconscious several times due to extensive drug use and his imminent death was exacerbated by overuse of drugs. He explains how spiced wine is not actually mentioned in the Bible but instead a bitter substance. He elucidates further on this argument by pointing out that the stem of vinegar in Latin is similar to ‘ac-’ meaning sharp and ‘acid’ in English.

He reasons that the hyssop could not have been used as it is a plant that has a fragile stem that would not be able to support a sponge, ‘even a bundle of hyssop stems might not have sufficient rigidity to make it’ to the mouth of Jesus very high off the ground. Rather, the instrument used to put the soaked sponge on was a ‘hyssos’ meaning a short spear in Latin.

Just as the simple linguistic mistake was made for the ‘hyssos’, the same could have taken place for the ‘wine vinegar’. He suggests that it could have been opium as it is plentiful in the surrounding area and often has a narcotic effect and leads to one passing out or perhaps the sacred Sanatani drink common amongst the worshippers of Shiva: the Soma or Haoma in the Persian region produced by pressing the stalks of the Asclepias acida plant. The advanced yogis of India have widely used the Soma to enter an alleviated state of consciousness or ‘samadhi’ as mentioned in the Nathnamavali such as the state that Jesus was found to be in when his ‘spirit’ left his body.

Beyond the Canonical Gospels, the Quran, Chapter 4, Verses 157-158 says: ‘That they said (in boast), ‘We killed Jesus Christ the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah,’ but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them.

And those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not. Nay, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise.’

Other Islamic texts also state ‘During his last illness, the Holy Prophet (saw) said to his daughter Hazrat Fatima (ra), “Once in every year, Gabriel recited the Quran to me. This year he recited twice. He also told me that every succeeding prophet has lived to half the age of his predecessor. He told me that Jesus, son of Mary, lived to 120 years. Therefore, I think, I may live to about 60 years.”’ (Mawahib-ud-Duniya by Qastalani, Vol. I, p. 42); (Kanzul Ummal, Vol. VI, p. 120, 160 from Hazrat Fatima (ra)); (Hujjaj al-Kiramah, p. 428); (Hakam) and such evidence cannot be simply dismissed have three credible sources.

Perhaps, the evidence shows that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus meticulously arranged a method to save Jesus, a devoted shepherd who was ready to willingly lay down his life to spread the message of boundless, universal love, guiding humanity with unwavering compassion and offering himself as the ultimate symbol of selfless sacrifice.