Posted on 02/20/2004 8:22:13 AM PST by Salvation
SPOILER (minor spoiler) SPACE
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The way Mel Gibson depicts it in the film, Cassius (Christian name Longinus) shoves the spear from Christ's right side diagonally up through His Sacred Heart to confirm that He is dead without breaking His legs.
When Cassius withdraws the spear, a stream of the Precious Blood pours down directly upon his head. His body is bathed with Christ's Blood (you cannot see the Water of His Pericardium, but you know It's there). We see his facial expression change and he drops to his knees at the foot of the Cross. This happens just before Abenadar (on his horse) removes his helmet in awe. (Emmerich says that Abenadar is the centurion quoted in the Gospels as saying "Truly this Man was the Son of God!" but in the film he is silent.) This is just before the earthquake begins.
In the few scenes cutting back to the general area on Calvary, Longinus is still kneeling before the Cross.
No.
What does tradition say in regards to the Garden of Eden? .... What do you think?
Never really thought much about it. I knew Golgotha is Adam's burial place mostly from medieval art.
Another interesting factoid about Jerusalem is the ancient Jewish tradition (written down in one of the intertestamental pseudepigraphical Books of Enoch) that Mount Zion was the site of the Temple because it is the first piece of matter created. It is the rock that divided the waters above from the waters below. Hence the sacrifice performed there was simultaneously performed in Heaven.
This is the Rock that Christ identified with Peter and the popes. This is the Rock upon which His Catholic Church is founded -- i.e. has as a bedrock.
The Muslims are all worried that the Jews will retake the Dome of the Rock. It troubles me that the Catholic Church is not trying to acquire the Dome of the Rock. Medieval Crusaders believed that time could not be wound up (almost everyone thought the world would end around 1280) without Christians possessing Zion and Holy Mass being said on the Rock. Christ is expected to descend on a cloud onto Mount Zion.
Martin Buber has a book on the Jewish traditions concerning Mount Zion.
According to Dr. Frederick Zugibe, Dr. Barbet ("A Doctor at Calvary") is wrong on just about everything. (I like Zugibe on the Shroud and crucifixion, which are his areas of expertise, but dislike him on Fatima, which is not his specialty.)
Dr. Zugibe is a medical examiner by profession, and does autopsies for a living (for Rockland County, NY; he has also taught at Columbia Univ.).
He has said that the reason the Shroud shows the nails as being through Christ's wrists is that on the Shroud we see only the backs of Christ's hands.
He says that the path of least resistance for a Roman soldier would be to insert the nail in the center of the palm, around the lifeline and the thumb muscles. The nail would go down diagonally and come out in back at the wrist, and from there into the wood of the cross. The hands would not lie flat against the wood. The upper hand would be off, away from the wood.
But the artists (and stigmatists) would be correct in the palm being the point of entry.
Dr. Zugibe also disagrees with Dr. Barbet as to the cause of Christ's death. Barbet said Christ died of suffocation, arguing that it is difficult for a crucified person to bring air into their lungs. But Barbet studied only crucified cadavers.
Zugibe, using college students and volunteers who hang on a cross for hours (hooked up to all sorts of monitors), has found that they do not have trouble breathing.
Zugibe holds that Christ died from shock, after all the trauma and blood loss suffered that day.
Sorry, but no. I can't think of any one place that has a lot of these altogether. It's usually just a page here and a footnote there and a sermon over yonder.
Investigated her years ago -- came to the conclusion that I didn't trust her.
[N.B. The Vatican disputes Austria's claim, and holds that it possesses the true relics of the Spear at St. Peter's Basilica. There are a few other claimants as well.]
See The Spear of Destiny by Trevor Ravenscroft.
That's why they break the legs!
But Christ's body had been subjected to too much (beginning with the strong emotions that caused him to sweat blood -- I wish that had somehow been made clear in the Gethsemane scene in the film) and He went into shock after only three hours.
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