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For edification and education...

Thanks for posting this DouglasKC. Food for thought, food for the soul.

I believe, thank you.

Did Jesus really die?

That Jesus died and was buried is one of the best-established facts about Jesus.
***Yes.

Did Jesus Really Die and Live Again?

Yes.

Couple of things from these experts worth reconsidering. First, the cross itself would weigh over 300 pounds. An ordinary human would have difficulty dragging it through the steep cobblestone streets, let alone someone who was floogged and who was in shock and pain and a state of exhaustion, and dehydration.

Second, His body was pierced from his right as this reconstruction illustrates . The spear would not even come close to His heart, which is under the sternum (breastbone and slightly to the right from our perspective).

The contention that he would not bleed after death is true, because there is no pulse to propell the blood, but the blood will seep out by gravity. His death was most likely from high output failure of His heart, and seepage of body fluids into the lungs. Thus a spear would open a gashing would, from which water and blood would pour out of His body by gravity even if he were dead, and would certainly push Him into terminal shock if he were not dead yet.

One error I see in the analysis is believing the Roman soldier killed our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with the sword thrust.

John provides wonderful testimony because he wasn't a skilled physician such as Luke. He reported exactly waht he saw and understood which allows experts in anatomy to better grasp the actual events without reading anything into them.

The translated blood and water which was seen leaving the body of our Lord and Savior on the cross after the soldier pierced his side, was testimony that the body was indeed dead.

Prior to this event, our Lord was judged by the Father while he was in the body as a soul with a spirit. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ had all the sins of mankind imputed upon him and was judged and then separated from the Father for those sins. This was a spiritual death, a state of existence involving separation.

When then know Jesus Christ still had his soul, his conscience and thinking person when He asked, Father, why hast thou forsaken me?

We also know he then committed his spirit to the Father. Immediately after this, he exhaled and his head hung down directly in front of him.

Anatomically and historically, those who were executed by crucifixion typically would be placed in a dilemma of either relaxing their legs and suffocating or elevating their body in order to breath. The body in severe trauma and exhaustion would endure this repeitive exercise until physical death.

The time of Christ's crucifixion was essentially a holiday weekend for the soldiers. Immediately after the execution of the crucifixions and the condemned had been executed accordingly, the soldiers would typically be given a long weekend off on leave. The method of execution was very orderly and it was the fulfillment of direct orders by their seniors with very high visibility (no pun intended). If a prisoner sentanced to execution by crucifixion was not dead upon removal from the cross, the soldiers and 'sergeant of the guard' (so to speak) would themselves be liable for aideing and abetting in the release of an enemy of the state and in turn become liable for similar execution.

The solution to the Roman "NCO's" predicament was simple,...near the end of the day, the Roman soldiers who had some intuition of human anatomy, in part from having to slaughter their enemy on the battlefield by phalanx and a short broad bladed sword, had discovered that by taking the butt of their weapons and up-stroking against the femur/thigh of the prisoners enduring the crucifixion, they would essentially shatter or break that bone, making it very difficult to impossible for the person to lift themselves up by their thigh muscles to allow themselves to breath. This in turn hastened their death, generally by suffocation.

When the body dies, with the head hung directly forward, first, the respiration ceases, the circulation ceases, the blood tends to settle in the abdomen, the body cools, and then the blood begins to coagulate, then separate into blood serum and platelets.

When John witnessed 'blood and water' loosed from the body of our Lord and Savior after the spear thrust, we know today that our Lord and Savior had already separated in the spirit, returning the spirit to the Father, and his soul had departed from the body having been judged and suffering the first death, the separation of body and soul, and the body remained on the cross for sufficient time for the separation of the heavier elements of the blood in the lower parts of the body, while the serum or clearish fluid was lighter and settled a bit higher. The spear thrust didn't generate only blood, but what appeared to an untrained layman as 'blood and water'.

John's testimony is one of the best evidences that our Lord did indeed die body, soul and spirit on the cross, as death being a state of existence involving separation.

Perhaps an even more remarkable transformation took place in the life of James, the half brother of Jesus (James was the natural son of Mary and Joseph while Jesus was the son of Mary and God the Father).

By no means is this a "fact."

We Catholics and Orthodox, who make up 70% or so of Christianity, do not agree.