Interpreting Interpreter: The Death of Christ

This post is a summary of the article “The Pathophysiology of the Death of Jesus the Christ” by C. Thomas Black in Volume 62 of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship. All of the Interpreting Interpreter articles may be seen at https://interpreterfoundation.org/category/summaries/. An introduction to the Interpreting Interpreter series is available at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreting-interpreter-on-abstracting-thought/.

The Takeaway

Black views the death of Christ from a medical perspective, summarizing previous studies and proposing additional inferences. He concludes that the injuries sustained by Jesus should have killed him long before the moment stated in the text, implying that Christ instead made a conscious choice to lay down his own life.

The Summary

In this article, C. Thomas Black outlines the pains and injuries likely endured by Jesus Christ in the final days of his mortal life, including his suffering at Gethsemane, his abuse at the hands of Pilate’s soldiers, and his hours of agony on the cross. Black does so from a medical perspective, consistent with his training and medical experience, methodically examining the causes and mechanisms of Christ’s death, providing in-depth anatomical and diagnostic details as he assessed the potentially lethal effects of these injuries. Black also discusses what they imply for Christ’s choice to ultimately lay down his life, in fulfillment of prophecy and in culmination of his salvific role.

His analysis is organized as follows:

- Gethsemane. Arguing that Christ’s suffering in the garden was physical as well as emotional (with the support of modern revelation, and in contrast with much of the Christian world), Black describes the condition of Hematidrosis, a disorder of eccrine sweat glands where individuals under severe stress begin sweating blood. Noting that this stress was acute rather than chronic, he suggests that the extreme exertion necessary to produce this condition could easily have been lethal, due to caloric depletion and/or heart failure. There is no hint of the aftereffects of this exertion after the Gethsemane narrative, suggesting to Black that Jesus underwent a miraculous physical renewal in advance of being arrested by the mob.

- Between Gethsemane and Golgotha. Following Gethsemane, Christ is led through a series of trials that themselves involved life-threatening injuries. After discussing the timing of these events (supporting proposals that the crucifixion started on the Thursday rather than Friday, with the apostles celebrating the Passover on Tuesday evening, and the period from his arrest to his death lasting a symbolically-important 40 hours), Black notes facial trauma (and potential concussion) from being struck by Roman soldiers, as well as blood loss and other trauma from several potential rounds of gruesome scourging; being pierced by a crown of thorns; having had a woolen robe placed on his wounded back and removed, causing further tissue damage, and further exhaustion from carrying the patibulum (crossbar) of his cross along the half-mile path to Golgotha. Christ’s apparent lack of food and drink during that period would have increased the lethality of these circumstances.

- At Golgotha – The Crucifixion. Having arrived at a manner of execution as prophetically cruel as crucifixion, Black discusses the practice of hands and wrists being nailed to a cross, citing several past cadaver-based experiments and calculations. He concludes that, while nails in the palms was apparently sufficient for most victims, given that they could use their feet to support themselves, in Christ’s case they may have accidentally placed the nails in the unsupported space between metacarpal bones, prompting them to place additional nails in the wrists. Jesus’ background as a carpenter may have strengthened his bones such that the muscles and ligaments of the hand began to tear prior to those metacarpal bones breaking. The arms and associated tissues, vessels, and nerves would have stretched considerably over the course of the crucifixion, and the mechanics of Christ’s breathing would have been altered. Combined with the return of the agony of Gethsemane, along with a potential return of hematidrosis, blood may have covered the thoroughly injured Christ from head to toe.

Having outlined this series of injuries, Black evaluates the various mechanisms of Christ’s death that have been proposed, whether it be cardiac rupture as favored by James E. Talmage and others, a more prosaic cardiac arrhythmia, suffocation from being unable to lift himself to breathe, loss of blood and/or blood pressure or blood clotting from his many injuries and constrained posture, exposure and hypothermia from the cold springtime Jerusalem night and lack of clothing, exhaustion that could have exceeded mortal limits, or other theories (e.g., the swoon hypothesis, that Christ merely fainted rather than died). For Black, though there were many mechanisms that would have been sufficient to cause death, none of that agony could itself pay the price of sin. That required Christ’s sacrificial death and ultimate resurrection, in addition to the divine suffering of Gethsemane. When offering his series of conclusions, Black suggests that no mortal could have survived to the point described by our accounts of the crucifixion, and that he was instead divinely sustained until such time as Christ voluntarily chose to lay down his life. As Black describes:

“Christ’s was and will be the only death of its kind in the history of the world because he alone had the power to lay down his life… Although tens of thousands of people have died by cruel crucifixion, the Savior’s death was voluntary as opposed to the deaths of all others, who were powerless to save themselves… The realization that Christ was capable of avoiding the ordeal he knew he was about to endure but he proceeded nonetheless, willingly and voluntarily, is overwhelming to the natural mind… Most assuredly do we stand all amazed.”

The Reflection

Black’s analysis adds fascinating texture to the already harrowing narrative of Christ’s suffering, torture, and crucifixion. In my view, it provides a thorough perspective on what might be considered a “worst case scenario” for the raw amount of trauma that Jesus could have suffered in advance of his death. It’s the scenario suggested by various aspects of prophecy and revelation, as Black documents. But I think I’d still enjoy seeing an assessment of something akin to a “best case scenario,” to get a sense of the range of available interpretive options. Knowing how survivable a more generic sequence of Roman-led punishment and crucifixion might be (if indeed there could ever be such a thing) would be helpful as well—it would, if nothing else, allow us greater appreciation for Christ’s exceptional circumstances. Regardless, Black’s emphasis on the spiritual implications of Christ’s death and suffering is well taken. That he would take on such unimaginable suffering for my sake, as well as yours—it engenders a unique humility and gratitude, one that can motivate me to make that suffering as worthwhile as possible.

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