The following descriptions are very graphic; reader’s discretion is advised. 

First of all, given the nature of pre-crucifixion scourging, and of the crucifixion itself, it is extremely unlikely that a crucifixion victim could walk away alive. 

When a to-be-crucified person was scourged, they would be given 40 lashes. History tells us that the Roman 40 lashes were from a whip of braided leather thongs, with metal balls, broken pieces of sheep bone, broken glass, and basically anything sharp that would cut a person. These sharp pieces of sheep bone, metal, and broken glass were woven into the braided leather thongs. When the whip would strike the flesh, these would cause deep bruises and the flesh would be cut severely. You can easily imagine how shredded a person’s back would be after being cut in 40 different places with multiple blades! 

According to Dr. Alexander Methrell, the cuts and force of the beating could shred the back so much that the spine of the victim was sometimes exposed!7 The whipping would have gone all the way down the shoulders to the back, and the back of the legs. One physician who has studied Roman beatings said: “As the flogging continued the lacerations would tear into the underlying skeletal muscles and produce quivering ribbons of bleeding flesh.”8

Eusebius, a third-century historian, described scourging with the following words: “The sufferer’s veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure.”

The pre-crucifixion scourging was so horrific that the white of the spine was sometimes exposed (according to both Dr. Alexander Methrell and The Journal Of American Medical Association, March edition from 1986), and that the condemned victim’s veins, muscles, sinews, and bowels would become visible from the outside! This is the type of horrific beating that Jesus endured! 

The result of such a hellish beating would mean that Jesus would very likely go into Hypovolemic shock.9 Hypovolemic shock is caused by severe blood loss. It causes four symptoms to occur. First, the heart races in a desperate attempt to replace all the blood that was lost, second, the blood pressure plummets bringing about fainting or collapsing, third, urine production in the kidneys comes to an end to preserve what little liquid is left in the body, and fourth, the person has an overwhelming thirst come over them.

When you read the gospel accounts of Jesus’ execution, these symptoms are evident in Jesus. At one point, Jesus falls while carrying his cross, and Simon of Cyrene is forced to help Jesus carry his cross the rest of the way. Later, when Jesus was on the cross, He said “I thirst”, and then a Roman soldier dipped a sponge in vinegar and stuck it up to Jesus’ mouth for him to drink (see John 19:28-29). Jesus was in critical condition even before He was crucified!

Jesus then carried His cross to the site of the crucifixion, and the Romans nailed Him to it. 

Now, how does crucifixion kill its victims? Scientific experiments have been done on volunteers to test what the effects of hanging on a cross would have. These were controlled circumstances, so there was no real danger of these people being harmed. While these volunteers were hanging on the cross, they would mention having difficulty breathing. They would have to push up and down in order to breathe. Eventually, they’d get too exhausted to push up and down anymore, so the scientist would take the person down off the cross at the volunteer’s request.

What these experiments showed was that crucifixion victim die from suffocation. Once Jesus was hanging vertically, the weight of his body and the position of his arms put great stress on the diaphragm, and would put his chest in an inhaled position. So in order to exhale, Jesus would have had to push up on his feet and take a breath, but each time he did this he’d be pushing on the nail in his feet tearing the muscle until it locked against the tarsal bones in his feet (not to mention he’d be scraping his back against the coarse wood of the cross). Finally, with the pressure on his chest eased he’d be able to exhale. He would push up to exhale and then come back down to inhale. Then go up to exhale, and then come back down to inhale. Over, and over, and over. But eventually, exhaustion would take over and he could no longer push himself up to breathe. He would just sag there and die of asphyxiation. The Roman soldiers would have noticed when a person was dead once he stopped pushing up. And look, you can’t fake the inability to breathe for very long.

In fact, when the Romans wanted to speed up death, they’d break the legs of the people on the crosses with a massive club. Then they wouldn’t be able to push up to breathe, and death would come quickly. However, they didn’t do this to Jesus because they saw that He was already dead, but just to make sure, they drove a spear through him. It punctured both his heart and his lung. The gospel of John tells us that when he did that, blood and water gushed out (John 19:34). This single fact proves that not only was Jesus dead, but it also tells us what He died of; heart failure, due to shock and constriction of the heart detected by the presence of fluid in the pericardium. In this instance, the heart has ceased beating. This brought about an accumulation of fluid in Jesus’ heart, which is called “pericardial effusion”. In addition to this, it also brought about a collection of fluid in the lungs, which is called “pleural effusion”. These two fluids cannot be present if the person’s heart is still beating.

By the way, for those who want to doubt John’s description of the blood and water, I have this to say to you: we have excellent reason to believe that John is telling the truth here. For one thing, John was an uneducated fisherman. Do you think he would know about “pericardial effusion” and “pleural effusion”? Of course not! While anyone would expect to see a pierced body gush blood, not many even today would expect clear fluid to come out. Yet, that’s exactly what occurs in the case of heart failure due to shock and constriction of the heart. I didn’t even know about this phenomenon until I read about it in Lee Strobel’s The Case For Christ. Moreover, this isn’t something John is likely to make up either. Given his lack of medical knowledge, having water come out of Jesus’ side would make as much sense to him as having Skittles pour out. So, despite being mentioned in only one source, we still have reason to believe this description is true.

This theory fails because:

It was impossible for Jesus to survive this whole ordeal. 

1: Jesus was in hypovolemic shock from the pre-crucifixion scourging alone! Jesus was in critical condition even on his way to the cross (hypovolemic shock) so he would have bled out quickly. 

2: But if bleeding out didn’t kill him, He would have eventually died of suffocation. 

3: If neither of those two things got him, we can be sure Jesus’ was dead because (A) you can’t survive a spear jab to the heart and (B) that spear jab revealed Jesus’ heart and lungs collected pericardial effusion and pleural effusion, which isn’t possible if the heart is still beating. 

There’s another theory that states that on that first Easter morning, the women went down to the wrong tomb and concluded based on that that Jesus had risen from the dead. The whole thing was really a simple misunderstanding! Jesus’ tomb wasn’t empty! They just went to the wrong tomb. This tomb never had a body in it at all. 

There are a quite a few problems with this view. First off, I think the burial story in the gospels is historically reliable. Number 1: It’s multiply attested in all four gospel sources plus the 1 Corinthians 15 creed. And number 2: It’s unlikely to be a Christian invention. The gospel authors were unlikely to make up a member of the very group who had Jesus killed and then portray him as the one to give Jesus an honorable burial while all of the disciples (except John) abandon Jesus in his final hours in order to cower in their homes for fear of the Jews. So by the principle of embarrassment, I conclude that the burial story is reliable, but in this case, that means that the tomb of Jesus was known to both Christian and non-Christian alike. As a result, it’s very unlikely that anybody would have accidentally gone to an unused tomb, thinking it was Jesus’ tomb. 

The Wrong Tomb Theory expects us to believe that everyone who would have been interested in the tomb totally forgot where it was! Not only did the women go to the wrong tomb, but later John and Peter went to the wrong tomb, and then the Pharisees also went to the wrong tomb, followed by the Romans who also went to the wrong tomb, and of course Joseph of Arimathea went to the wrong tomb. He must have forgotten where the tomb that he himself owned was located.

This is beyond implausible. But even more devastating to the theory is that it doesn’t explain the beliefs of the disciples, James, or Paul that they had seen the risen Jesus. We’ve already seen in parts 5 and 6 that there’s good evidence that the disciples, James, and Paul believed that they saw the risen Jesus appear to them!

This theory fails because; 

1: Tomb’s location was well known. Extremely unlikely everyone interested in the tomb forgot where it was.

2: The disciples didn’t believe because the tomb was empty, but because they believed Jesus appeared to them.

3: Paul was convinced on the basis of an appearance.

4: James was convinced on the basis of an appearance. 

Could the resurrection have been a legend? No. Why? Because, as we saw in part 5 of this blog post series, we can trace the claims of the resurrection to the lips of the original disciples! In Paul’s letters, he says he had access to the original disciples and had fellowshipped with them. I’m sure Peter told Paul whether or not he had seen Jesus when he visited them in Galatians 1 and 2. And of course, the creedal tradition dates to within five years after the death of Jesus (as argued in part 5 of this series, it’s likely he got the creed from Peter and James when he visited them three years after his conversion), this is well within the lifetimes of the twelve disciples who could have corrected this oral tradition if He really hadn’t appeared to them. Moreover, the early church fathers Tertullian and Irenaeus attest that the church fathers Polycarp and Clement were students of the apostle John and that they knew several other apostles as well. This is significant because Polycarp and Clement say that the original disciples were claiming that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them. Since they knew and fellowshipped with Jesus’ twelve disciples, they would certainly be in the position to know what the disciples believed. 

The above comprise nine ancient sources that attest to the original disciples’ claims to have seen Jesus. And with the seven independent sources that attest to their martyrdom, we can conclude that they didn’t just merely claim that Jesus appeared to them, they really believed it.

We saw earlier in this series that the 1 Corinthians 15 creed dates to within five years after the crucifixion! A.N Sherwin White of Oxford University did a study of the rates at which legend develops in the ancient world, and he discovered that two generations weren’t even enough time for legend to build up and eliminate a core of historical truth.10 But we don’t have two generations of time here; we don’t even have an entire decade! We only have five years!

This theory is plagued with problems. Not the least of which is that it only addresses Paul’s conversion and nothing else. It doesn’t explain the empty tomb, the appearance to the disciples, or the appearance to James. The resurrection hypothesis explains all of these.

But moreover, Paul is unlikely to have experienced conversion disorder anyway. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV,  women are more likely to have conversion disorder than men by as much as a 5-1 ratio. Adolescents, military combatants, and those with a low IQ are also more likely to experience the disorder. Paul doesn’t fall into any of these categories. Paul is not a woman, teenager, warrior, or dummy. This doesn’t mean he couldn’t have experienced the disorder. It just means it’s unlikely. However, when you look at the other problems associated with The Pauline Conversion Disorder theory, it makes it even more unlikely. 

Not only must we employ conversion disorder to explain Paul’s experience, but we must also say that Paul experienced an auditory hallucination, as well as a Messiah Complex. Why? Because Paul not only saw a bright light and went blind, but he also heard a voice that told Him to spread the gospel message. Now, it is possible to find people who have experienced conversion disorder, people who have had auditory hallucinations, as well as people who have a messiah complex, but it’s extremely rare to find people who have simultaneously experienced all 3.

1: We have absolutely no evidence that aliens even exist. 

Astronomers have not yet located a planet that can sustain life other than our own. Even if we did discover life forms on other planets, it’s still unlikely that they would have the exact same abilities that Jesus has in The Bible.

2: The amount of time spent by the Jesus alien convincing people that he was their Messiah is absurd. 

What alien would spend three years just to pull a prank on some unsuspecting Earthlings? Three years? This is like the longest episode of Punk’d ever! Do you honestly expect me to believe that this Jesus Alien would waste three years of his life fooling these Earthlings into thinking that He was their promised Messiah? Why not just put some whoopee cushions under peoples’ seats, or put some fake snakes in peoples’ cabinets? Why such a long-lasting prank? I know of no prankster who is that dedicated to his hoaxes.

3: There is no motivation for the Jesus alien to endure the suffering of being scourged and crucified.

Forget the fact that there’s absolutely no evidence to support this theory at all, what I’m wondering is why this alien would go through all the trouble in convincing a bunch of Earthlings that he was the messiah of their Jewish religion and then end up being tortured horribly for such a scam. Jesus is either the intelligent designer or a stupid alien. He had many chances to escape his horrible fate, such as when Caiaphas asked him point blank “Are you the messiah? Son of the living God?” By then he should have known he was in deep doo-doo. He should have said “Me? Messiah? No no no no no.” and then he would take off running, be beamed up to his spaceship and got the heck outta dodge. But no, instead, he dug his grave even further by saying “I am and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Father and coming with the clouds of Heaven”. Again, liars make bad martyrs…even if that liar is an alien.   

Part of me can’t help but wonder if this theory was posed as a joke. I only addressed it because I wanted to cover all the bases. 

In his book “Justifying Historical Descriptions”, CB McCullagh12  puts forth several criteria which historians use for assessing historical theories. These criteria are (1) explanatory scope, (2) explanatory power, (3) plausibility, (4) not being ad hoc/contrived, (5) being in agreement with established beliefs, and (6) outstripping its’ rival theories. The “He Is Risen” hypothesis passes every single one of these tests with flying colors. The same cannot be said about the various naturalistic theories we looked at.

Explanatory Scope: It explains why the body of Jesus was not in His tomb, why hundreds of people on different occasions believed they saw Jesus alive after His crucifixion, and it also explains the conversion of the church persecutor Saul Of Tarsus (i.e Paul). It also explains the conversion of the skeptic James. It explains every single piece of data that requires an explanation. The best of the naturalistic theories explain only one minimal fact at most. But the majority don’t even explain that many.

Explanatory Power: It explains why the tomb of Jesus was vacant, why folks kept seeing Jesus alive on numerous occasions, in spite of the fact that He was killed days before on a Roman cross.

Plausibility: Given the background of Jesus’ life and claims, the resurrection is an authentication of those claims.

Ad Hoc: You know a theory is ad hoc if it requires the making of quite a few other theories to save itself from being proven to be erroneous. The resurrection hypothesis is not that kind of explanation. It only requires the subsequent declaration to be true: it is possible that God exists.

In accord with accepted beliefs: I can hear the voice of the skeptic now screaming “People who die stay dead, stupid! Science has proven that dead people don’t come back to life!” This is not a valid objection. The hypothesis isn’t that Jesus rose from the dead by natural causes, but that God raised Jesus from the dead via a miracle. This does not conflict with the conventional belief that people cannot and do not rise from the dead, naturally.

Outstripping Rival Theories: We’ve seen that none of the naturalistic theories can adequately explain all of the data. Only the resurrection hypothesis succeeds in criteria 1-4 above, and should, therefore, be preferred. 

The best explanation of the five minimal facts is that “He Is Risen”!