Friday, April 6, 2012

What He endured for you and me




















This is a 5-foot, 11-inch male Caucasian weighing about 178
pounds. The lesions are as follows: beginning at the head, there are blood flows
from numerous puncture wounds on the top and back of the scalp and forehead. The
man has been beaten about the face, there is swelling over one cheek, and he
undoubtedly has a black eye. His nose tip is abraded, as would occur from a
fall, and it appears that the nasal cartilage may have separated from the bone.
There is a wound in the left wrist, the right one being covered by the left
hand. This is the typical lesion of crucifixion. The classical artistic and
legendary portrayal of a crucifixion with nails through the palms of the hands
is spurious [i.e., wrong]: the structures in the hand are too fragile to hold
the live weight of a man, particularly of this size. Had a man been crucified
with nails in the palms, they would have torn through the bones, muscles, and
ligaments, and the victim would have fallen off the cross.
There is a stream of blood down both arms. Here and there, there are blood drips at an angle from the main blood flow in response to gravity. These angles represent the only ones
that can occur from the only two positions which can be taken by a body during
crucifixion. [A momentary 'T' position to breathe, until the pain on the feet
becomes too great, and a "Y" position with bent knees, which quickly paralyzes
the chest muscles from strain and pain.]
On the back and on the front there are lesions which appear to be scourge marks. Historians have indicated that Romans used a whip called a flagrum. This whip had two or three thongs, and at their ends there were pieces of metal or bone which look like small dumbbells.
These were designed to gouge out flesh. The thongs and metal end-pieces from a
Roman flagrum fit precisely into the anterior and posterior scourge lesions on
the body. The victim was whipped from both sides by two men, one of whom was
taller than the other, as demonstrated by the angle of the thongs.
There is a swelling of both shoulders, with abrasions indicating something heavy and rough had been carried across the man's shoulders within hours of death. On the right flank, a long, narrow blade of some type entered in an upward direction,
pierced the diaphragm, penetrated into the thoracic cavity through the lung into
the heart. This was a post-mortem event, because separate components of blood
cells and clear serum drained from the lesion. Later, after the corpse was laid
out horizontally and face up on the cloth, blood dribbled out of the side wound
and puddled along the small of the back. There is no evidence of either leg
being fractured. There is an abrasion of one knee, commensurate with a fall (as
is the abraded nose tip); and, finally, a spike had been drive through both
feet, and blood had leaked from both wounds onto the cloth. The evidence of a
scourged man who was crucified and died from the cardiopulmonary failure typical of crucifixion is clear-cut. [Italics added]




































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