Diagnosis: Calvary

An Israeli researcher believes that Jesus died not of blood loss, but of a blood clot:

"Professor Benjamin Brenner wrote in The Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis that Jesus’ death, traditionally believed to have occurred 3 to 6 hours after crucifixion began, was probably caused by a blood clot that reached his lungs.

"Such pulmonary embolisms, leading to sudden death, can stem from immobilization, multiple trauma and dehydration, said Brenner, a researcher at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.

"’This fits well with Jesus’ condition and actually was in all likelihood the major cause of death by crucifixion,’ he wrote in the article, based on religious and medical texts."

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Given that the Shroud of Turin is not mentioned in the article as the source of study, how can scientists make such a determination that the cause of death was more likely to be blood clot than blood loss when they do not have a body to examine? Unless the researcher was studying blood patterns on the Shroud, believed to be Jesus’ burial clothes, making such a statement as anything more than mere speculation seems rash.

9 thoughts on “Diagnosis: Calvary”

  2. I believe the symptom is major blood loss, but the actual cause of death is always a blod clot. The former causes the second. Evidently, with a lack of water in the system, it is very easy for a thrombus to form. I believe something similar happened to David Bloom, the NBC reporter who died in Iraq, from an embolism (thrombosis) which was probably linked to lack of fluids. Since I have heard of this before; it doesn’t seem rash to me.

  4. I guess it could be a blood clot.
    I have previously heard that death by crucifixion was usually by suffocation.
    To me, the point is moot. The issue is that Jesus DIED for you, and me and for the sins of the whole world. Alleluia!!!
    … and he ROSE again, truly ROSE again, on the third day!!!!
    Solo Deo Gloria!

  6. The article refers to “the popular belief that Jesus died of blood loss on the cross.” I didn’t know that popular belief said one thing or another about the precise cause of death, whether it was blood loss or (as Pierre Barbet would have it) asphyxiation from becoming too exhausted to pull himself up to breathe. In any event, it should be patently obviously that anyone who is flogged half to death, forced to carry a 50-to-110-pound crosspiece from Pilate’s place to Calvary, and who is stripped naked and nailed on a cross, is probably going to die of something or other. Hypothermia if nothing else.

  7. As Amnesty International could explain, in its better moments, being in the hands of the police all night would explain death even without being crucified.

  8. And here, all this time I thought that Jesus merely “gave up the ghost”, that his injuries did not cause him to die and that he laid down his life of his own will. Silly me! 🙂
    But isn’t that what the church says on this matter?

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