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The one thing history guarantees us, especially secular history regarding the historical Jesus, is that he really was crucified, but let’s unpack that. Some people pronounced dead are seen to be alive a few hours later, could Jesus be the same? Did the soldiers mistake Jesus for being dead and took him off when instead he was in a coma? Could the soldiers have been bribed? At least then you would see the nail-pierced hands… This is the swoon theory.

1. JAMA

1a. Whipping

The nature of crucifixion means no survivors

On March 21st, 1986, the Journal of the American Medical Association, a team, including a pathologist from Mayo Clinic studied the procedures of scourging and crucifixion and their effects on the body.

The usual instrument was a short whip…With several single or braided leather thongs of variable length, in which small iron balls or sharp pieces of sheep bones were tied at intervals…the man was stripped of his clothing, and his hands were tied to an upright post…The back, buttocks, and legs were flogged…The scourging…was intended to weaken the victim to a state just short of collapse or death…As the Roman soldiers repeatedly struck the victim’s back with full force, the iron balls would cause deep contusions, and the leather thongs and sheep bones would cut into the skin and subcutaneous tissues. Then, as the flogging continued, the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles. 

Mayo Clinic, March 21st, 1986, the Journal of the American Medical Association

This is just the preparation for crucifixion.

The driven nail would crush or sever the rather large sensorimotor median nerve. The stimulated nerve would produce excruciating bolts of fiery pain in both arms.

Mayo Clinic, March 21st, 1986, the Journal of the American Medical Association

The pain is comparable to using pliers to crush the nerve that causes intense pain when you hit your funny bone.

1b. Breathing seems to be the main issue the medical association discovered

The victim would want to take the pressure of their feet, they would have to allow his body to be held up by his nail pierced hands. In this position, hanging downwards, certain muscles would be in the inhalation position, making it incredibly difficult to exhale. The victim as a result, needs to push up to exhale andr to exhale, you would need to push up from your nail-pierced feet. The first few times you do this it would cause the nail to tear through the feet. Muscle cramps and spasms would develop as you rinse and repeat this process. It would make it increasingly difficult to maintain.

1c. Crurifragium

Long crucifixions were not uncommon, it could last days. When Romans wanted to speed this process up, they would break the legs, halting the breathing process called Crurifragium using a heavy club or mallet. Cause of death: Lack of breath. Shattered legs was seen as merciful in this instance as it speed up the process. The Romans crucified so many, it was routine to know when someone on the cross was dead.

The medical journal concluded “

Accordingly, interpretations based on the assumption. That Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with modern medical knowledge”

Mayo Clinic, March 21st, 1986, the Journal of the American Medical Association

1d. Pericardium

The spear wound described in John 19:34-35 was inflicted on Jesus, blood and water came out. This is due to the rupturing of the sac that surrounded the heart, the pericardium. If also, the right side of the heart was pierced, blood, as well as water would flow, as attested by medical sources stated above. Roman author Quintilian (35-85AD) reports of This proceeded being performed on crucifixion victims. It’s clear Romans leave none alive.

2. D.F. Strauss critique

D.F. Stauss, a liberal scholar who clinged to the hallucination theory, dismantles the swoon theory as an option. He wrote that it’s not plausible that, having being scourged and crucified, Jesus pushed the heavy stone away from the tomb with pierced hands and walked miles on pierced and wounded feet. Even if such a ridiculous scenario were possible, when he appeared to the disciples in his pathetic and mutilated state, would this convince them that he was the risen prince of life? Alive? Barely? Risen? No. So even if Jesus got off the cross while he was alive, the disciples would not have been convinced that he had risen from the dead, since the sights would indicate a hurting man. You might say, if you were Peter “We need to get him to a doctor!”

In The Case for Christ book, Lee Strobel quotes from his interview with Dr. Alex Metherell:

After suffering that horrible abuse, with all the catastrophic blood loss and trauma, he would have looked so pitiful that the disciples would never have hailed him as a victorious conqueror of death; they would have felt sorry for him and tried to nurse him back to health. So it’s preposterous to think that if he had appeared to them in that awful state, his followers would have been prompted to start a worldwide movement based on the hope that someday they too would have a resurrection body like his.

Dr. Alex Metherell, PhD

3. Paul’s conversion 

It also cannot account for Paul’s dramatic reversal; of worldviews. Paul claimed to have experienced and seen the Risen Jesus. A swooned Jesus, even if healed, would not be appearing gloriously to Paul. According to Raymond Brown, “Except for the romantic few who think that Jesus did not die on the cross but woke up in the tomb and ran off to India with Mary Magdalene, most scholars accept the uniform testimony of the Gospels that Jesus died”. 

The swoon theory is dead with no hopes of a resurrection.

4. Nail in the foot

We additionally have archeological evidence of a crucifixion victim in the 1st century by the name of Yehohanan. The victim’s heel still has a nail embedded through the heel bone. There’s pictures of it online. There’s even remains of wood left on the nail as it pierced flesh, bone, and wood all in one go. Now think about this for a moment. Does it seem at all plausible that Jesus could have done much of anything on his own after sustaining wounds this terrible? Even if he were able to remove the nail from his heel, would he have been able to walk, let alone convince the disciples he had conquered death? Strauss is certainly correct here.

Structured response

1. Journal of the American Medical Association’s study came to 2 clear conclusions which if anyone disagrees with is at odds with modern medical knowledge.
   1. Asphyxiation was the main problem, it would be incredibly difficult to keep breathing with all the nails, nevermind the extensive prior whipping which could kill some people.
   2. The spear wound of water and blood coming out medically aligns with the piercing of the pericardium by the heart.
   3. Crurifragium would’ve killed Jesus anyway even if he survived
   4. The prior whipping to almost death guaranteed death upon a cross with less time.
2. D.F. Strauss’ critique of the swoon theory is brutal and condemns the common sense reality of it actually happening and how it would not affect the actions to follow it that we know from history (disciples bravery, Paul’s conversion, James, the 500 etc.).
3. Paul experienced the glorious Christ, a killer of Christians would suspect a trick so it must’ve been quite something.
4. We have archaeological evidence of a crucified victims foot, with or without the nail, your feet look pretty useless afterward. 

Sources for ‘Swoon’

• The apparent death theory early on — Ignatius speaks of an apparent 
•  theory that was circulating in about 110 (Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 1: 1). He probably was referring to some form of Gnostic teaching.
• On the torture process — William D. Edwards, Wesley J. Gabel, and Floyd E. Hosmer, “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 255.11, (21 March 1986): 1457, 1460
• Funny bone pain — Alex Metherell, in an interview with Lee Strobel in The Case for Christ (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 197. Dr. Metherell is an engineer and medical researcher who specializes in bio-muscular physics, the study of what happens to muscles when they are under stress.
• Breathing — Edwards, Gabel, and Hosmer, “On the Physical Death,” 1461.
• Medical knowledge — Edwards, Gabel, and Hosmer, “On the Physical Death,” 1463.
• Medical knowledge — Also of interest is Josephus’ autobiography, The Life of Flavius Josephus, in which he reports of seeing three friends on crosses during the siege of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. He went to Titus who had them removed from the crosses and provided with the best medical care. Of the three, two died and one survived: And when I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealius, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp, as I came back, I saw many captives crucified; and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician’s hands, while the third recovered. (Josephus, The Life of Flavius Josephus, in The New Complete Works of Flavius Josephus, William Whiston, trans. [Grand Rapids: Kregel, 19991, 420–21) The fact that one of Josephus’s friends survived crucifixion does not negate the modern medical opinion just stated. Taken from the cross, the victims could breathe normally. Further, the Gospels report that Jesus was brutally beaten and scourged prior to his crucifixion, whereas the Roman soldiers could not give such individual attention to the “many captives” crucified simultaneously as reported by Josephus. Even under the best of medical care of the day, two of the three still succumbed to their wounds. If historical, the spear thrust also confirms the death of Jesus. The medical implications of the spear wound are described in Edwards, Gabel, and Hosmer, “On the Physical Death,” 1462–63.
• Quintilian, Declarationes maiores 6: 9.
• Strauss’ critique — David Strauss, A New Life of Jesus, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1879), 1: 412.
• Case for Christ— (Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998], 202)
• Paul’s conversion — Acts 9. Paul reflects on the implications of a physical resurrection in Philippians 3: 21, a text that would be meaningless if Paul did not believe Jesus had been raised to a physical “glorious” body.
• Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 2 vols. [New York: Doubleday, 1994], 2: 1373