Quote Originally Posted by Thorne View Post
All quite true, and gruesome. An item I saw on TV the other day talked about the only known relic of a crucifixion, the heel bone of a first century criminal (NOT Jesus) with a nail through the heel. It was placed in an area which missed all major blood vessels, but struck a major nerve cluster. Excruciatingly painful in and of itself, you also have to remember that the victim would have had his legs bent, as described above, forcing him to push up against that nail in order to lift himself and allow himself to breath. Usually, the only reason for spearing them was to make sure they were, indeed, dead, not to ease their suffering. And breaking the legs only insured that they could NOT push up any longer, and thus suffer slow, painful, terrifying suffocation. Try hanging from your arms, outstretched as in a crucifixion, to see how difficult it is to get a breath. And as the muscles in the diaphragm become over worked, each breath becomes painful as well. It was truly a horrific way to die, and designed to last for days. Yet Jesus supposedly died within short hours. Something doesn't scan there.

He was scourged and beaten prior to the the event...subsequent blood loss from a scourging left completely untreated is probably what killed him so soon comparatively.


Yes, they may have allowed them to remove the body, after he was dead, but it's doubtful they would have done anything to hasten his death.

In some texts they were about to break his legs along with the others and didn't because one of the guards said he was already dead and decided to prove his point by piercing his side with his spear.

And there is no archeological, historical or astronomical evidence for an eclipse or earthquake at that time.

All the bible currently claims is it was unnaturally dark (even mentioning thunder) despite it being mid day which could have simply been a dark storm front passing through.

As for the earthquake....I haven't seen any evidence what so ever that there wasn't a small quake on that day in the region.

And if you try to claim "miracle" you would have to account for the fact that no other records of an earthquake have ever been found, and that a solar eclipse which was NOT predicted by the astronomers (who were very good at that by this time) would have achieved widespread notoriety, not only in Judea. Like so many other things in the Bible, these "auguries" seem to have been completely imaginary. Though the death of their leader might have caused the Apostles to feel as if their world had been rocked and that the light had gone out of their lives, it just never happened in reality.
The only people who will ever know for sure are all gone now anyways...the rest of us will have to believe or not based solely on our faith in their account of events.

All of which is beside the point. The op isn't asking us if Jesus lived or not; only what Easter is about.