The gospels say that a miracle healing man called Jesus Christ lived. They say he died by crucifixion and three days later he rose again. The tomb he was placed in was found wide open with the stone that had been across the entrance moved back and the tomb was mysteriously empty. His body was gone. Certain witnesses claimed that Jesus appeared to them as a resurrected being.
EVIDENCE FOR A LEGEND
The Gospels claim that the cross was forecast in the Old Testament centuries before Jesus was fastened to it. If this forecast is down to misinterpretation or lies then that is evidence and a strong indication that Jesus was never nailed.
There is no evidence that Jesus had feet with nail holes. There is a passage in Psalm 22 dubiously translated as saying that some mysterious they have thrust through my hands and feet and I can number all my bones. The Psalmist never says he means Jesus. He meant himself.
In fact it says like the lion my hands and my feet. That is poetry.
Another example.
Is Psalm 22:21 which reads in the King James as “Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou has heard me from the horns of the unicorns” a good reading? It is poetry so you cannot pay too much attention to the wording being strange. The subject is in danger from wild animals and so is not Jesus Christ. Unicorns may mean oxen not the mythical creature. If it does mean the latter, then the psalm has no credibility as a prophecy for it cannot get the present right so why trust it with the future?
The Bible uses bits of the Psalms as alleged prophecies and discards unsuitable bits even when they refer to the same person. The New Testament itself affirms that some lines from a Psalm were taken to be about Jesus that does does not mean that the whole lot was. That is just a rationale for cherry-picking and forcing old texts to fit the Jesus story.
Zechariah has a text that could have been used to bolster up the nail wounds or piercing legend. Translators do not agree on if Zechariah 13:6 means wounds on the chest or hands. Or just the body. So why do Christians and gospellers ignore that text and why was it not used instead of the Psalm or alongside it? The wounds are obtained in the house of his friends. That might help if Jesus had been attacked in the Temple or murdered by his own disciples there. That is what put the Christians off the text. It did not fit the desired narrative.
THE NAILING OF JESUS
There is no eyewitness support for the nails going in. Yet Jesus himself said that the law is right to demand that there be three witnesses before something can be considered for belief.
Luke says the risen Jesus showed his friends his hands and his feet but here could have been rope marks or anything on them. The ropes would cut into the flesh with the endless pushing up and down on the cross to relieve the lungs and the muscles. Had Jesus had nail marks in the feet? Then why did the disciples on the way to Emmaus not notice them?
Luke never says that the Lord was nailed which is a strange omission for a gospel that endeavours to prove that Jesus rose. Luke is probably inferring that he was not nailed. And many were often just tied to the cross. The apostles had nothing to do with any gospel that fails to prove that Jesus was dead for that was their job to prove that and to verify the resurrection.
John has Thomas saying that he will not believe Jesus rose unless he medically examines the hand wounds or the side. Jesus appears. We are not told if Thomas touches him. Also how could Thomas put a finger in wrist wounds? Jesus couldn't have the wounds in his hands as we will see! One interpretation is that Thomas could not have literally intended to finger those wounds for they would not be wide enough. So Jesus appeared in a way to suit Thomas meaning his body is no guide to what was actually done to him. Plus if Jesus walked through the wall into the room how could Thomas be satisfied that he touched a real man with real wounds? There is no mention of foot wounds in John. Mary Magdalene touching Jesus's feet would militate against the notion that the risen Jesus was nailed in them.
The Thomas episode backfires. Instead of making us confident that Jesus is alive it does the opposite. It is hiding something for it will not say if Thomas did the examination or not. Also, the hand error and the ghostly behaviour of Jesus wreck it entirely.
Only John mentions the alleged piercing of Jesus' side after he had died on the cross. We have no idea if this was a test to see if he was still bleeding - alive - or a proper thrust through. Strange.
THE SKELETON OF GIVA'AT HA-MITVAR, JERUSALEM
Charles Foster writes Jehohanan the name of the crucified man who has left remains was nailed in the ankles and had not been nailed at all in the forearms. "Presumably Jehohanan's arms had been tied in place. Tying is known to have been common" (page 49, 68 The Jesus Inquest).
No remains of a crucifixion victim were ever found until this man's were. This alone shows that despite the countless victims of that method of death the chance of a shroud for Jesus turning up are slim. The bones were in a burial box. He was about 5 foot five inches tall. He was in his twenties. He had broken shins which seems to remind us of John's gospel saying that the soldiers broke the legs of men who were taking too long to die on the cross. The nail was found in the ankle and was bent like it had hit a knot in the wood of his cross. We do not know how he came to be taken from his cross or buried. We don't know how his arms were fastened to the cross. He could have been tied.
The remains seem to show us that a seat or sedile was used for the victim to sit on. This took the form of a board to sit on or it could have been a bar jutting out that the groin rested on. If Jesus had had a seat, if his feet were fastened to the cross by being crossed with a board with a nail in it which did not touch the feet or which did them no serious damage he could have survived the crucifixion easily. The board crossing the feet would have ground down his flesh leaving a slash perhaps down to the bone on the top of the feet. Jesus’ marks in the feet might have been minor which would satisfy the prophecy in Psalm 22 where someone seems to say the subject will have his hands and feet wounded. Psalm 22 pictures its subject as walking and praying with the people later without any hint of a resurrection so his feet were relatively fine. It was not a nailing then it had in mind.
DID PASSION KILL JESUS?
If Jesus died on the cross that would have been a miracle for unless he was poisoned there was nothing done to him that need have killed him.
Jesus said that he was sorrowful even unto death in the garden prior to his arrest (Matthew 28:38). He meant that the sorrow could kill him. But he does not say it would kill him. If cancer could kill you and you do something about it, it could and couldn’t kill you at the same time. The agony in the garden gives us no reason to suppose that it led to Jesus’ premature death on the cross. The scholars who suppose that Jesus had had a heart attack in the Garden under the pressure are merely assuming. Jesus recovered well enough to endure his scourging and the mocking and to carry the cross a bit, his health was fine.
The scourging at the pillar need not have made Jesus die faster on the cross for it was part of the standard procedure and many lasted for several days on a cross after it. Pilate probably would have made the men go easy on Jesus if the gospels are right to say that Pilate wished him no harm. Some say that the scourging could have been worse than that that was usually meted out for Pilate hoped to make the Jews pity Jesus and relent. The gospels would tell us if it was for they liked to present the Jews as monsters and anyway it was not hard to make a scourging look worse than it did especially when the people would have seen Jesus on a balcony at a distance. Jesus was scourged and Pilate sought to release him after it. Pilate who knew that the Jews who believed in stoning people to death would not have been that easily manipulated. They had made up their minds that they wanted Jesus to die a cruel death.
If Simon of Cyrene really helped carry Jesus’ cross for him then that would have made Jesus strong enough to survive the crucifixion.
We have no evidence that Jesus took a heart attack or was poisoned or nailed or seriously injured and that that was why he died. These possibilities have to be ignored for they are only speculation. We have to work on the records.
Jesus yelled before he apparently died. He should have died of suffocation if he should have died at all. Crucifixion killed its victims by the pressure it put on the chest and they kept having to rise up and down on the cross to relieve the pressure and eventually they got too exhausted to do that and asphyxiated. But back to Jesus, then he could not have yelled. This suggests that the death was merely a faint. It certainly suggests that he wasn’t nailed and or that he had a sedile to rest on for he would have died of suffocation then and been unable to shout.
The gospels never say the Romans who crucified him wanted him dead and it is admitted that Jesus had at least one ally among them who would certainly have wanted him to make it.
Resurrection is anastasis which means standing up. It describes what happens when you have been raised and the word for that is egeiro. So raising and resurrecting are not the same thing. Please read Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment. Other scholars notice a difference too. The word translated resurrection or resurrected is anhistemi which means to wake up (page 201, Jesus Lived in India). You do not need to be dead to wake up so there was no inevitable death. The word anastasis for physical body coming back to life was not used at all in the New Testament which does not fare well for Christian theology (Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? from the www)
John records that Jesus crucified handed over his spirit to God praying, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” But the living do that too. It was a quote from the Psalms and this Psalm was written for a man offering his life to God WITHOUT any notion of dying. Is this a clue that Jesus never died? Jesus said he would lay down his life to take it up again (John 10:17) which could just mean he would do it on the last day.
John has Jesus telling the apostles that he will go away to prepare a place for them and come back for them. The Church interprets this as referring to preparing a place in Heaven for them after he goes away from the world by dying on the cross. But Jesus has no need to take time to prepare a place for God who empowers can make a place just with a snap of his fingers. Moreover, Heaven should be prepared already like a B&B that is ready for anybody who is suitable to avail of it. What Jesus is saying is that he will survive the cross and where he goes to hide after the apostles will follow. He will go to live far away and they will join him.
St Sebastian was tied to a post and shot with countless arrows by the experts and left for dead. Irene found he was in fact alive and rescued him and nursed him back to health. He was met by his enemies when he was out for a walk and was battered to death and dumped in a sewer. If Sebastian could survive worse than Jesus then Jesus could have survived the cross.
Conclusion: There is no evidence that Jesus really died on the Cross. It is possible that he was taken from the cross alive or was never in fact crucified. Or he may have been crucified but not nailed. Legend says Andrew the Apostle survived on the cross two days and we know Pilate reacted with shock at Jesus dying so quick. No wonder he was able to show up again soon after! But it could be that Jesus did not die on the cross and was taken away while some or all of the appearances of him were just religious delusions. We can assume any one of these without saying that there are errors in the Bible but just saying that its interpretation of what happened was right.
APPENDIX
People on a diet like Jesus’ could surprise you with what they can do despite serious wounds (The Turin Shroud is Genuine, page 139).