Replies

everyone knows you die on a cross by SUFFOCATION because you cannot raise your body up off the cross to breathe.

Jesus died because He commended His Spirit into The Father's hands:

"When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost" (Jn. 19:30 AV).

"And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost" (Lk. 23:46 AV).

"The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross
on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken,
and that they might be taken away.
Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him.
But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs:
But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.
And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true,
that ye might believe.
For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.
And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced" (Jn. 19:31-37 AV).

=====

About Verse 34:

It is without a doubt that the purpose of the piercing was to thrust through the side laterally from the right, entering under the ribs to avoid entanglement with bone, thence up and into the heart to absolutely still and drain it, lest the victim be only passed out and in a coma, the unwanted result being later after dismounting to come out of the coma and revive. This was undertaken that the procurator could release the body without risking his own livelihood for an early release due to incomplete execution. Also doubtless is that the soldiers, to whom after long experience with hundreds of such crucifixions, were entirely practiced as to making sure the victim was completely dead, though he might only have passed out from dehydration and congestive heart failure from the stress and suffocation.

Robertson's Word Pictures:
Pierced his side (autou tēn pleuran enuxen). First aorist active indicative of nussō, old word to pierce, here only in N.T., and pleuran (side), another old word, occurs in N.T. only here and Jn.20:20, 25, 27. Blood and water (haima kai hudōr). Dr. W. Stroud (Physical Cause of the Death of Christ) argues that this fact proves that the spear pierced the left side of Jesus near the heart and that Jesus had died literally of a broken heart since blood was mixed with water.

Marvin Vincent's "Word Studies:
With a spear (λόγχῃ) -- Only here in the New Testament. Properly, the head of a spear. So Herodotus, of the Arabians: "They also had spears (αἰχμὰς) tipped with an antelope's horn sharpened like a spear-point (λόγχης)" (vii., 96). Used also, as here, for the spear itself.
Pierced (ἔνυξεν) -- Only here in the New Testament. The question has been raised whether the Evangelist means to describe a gash or a prick. Another verb is rendered pierced in Jn. 19:37, the quotation from Zec. 12:10, ἐξεκέντησαν, which occurs also at Rev. 1:7, with reference to Christ's crucifixion, and is used in classical Greek of putting out the eyes, or stabbing, and in the Septuagint of Saul's request to his armor-bearer: "Draw thy sword and thrust me through therewith" (1 Chr. 10:4). The verb used here, however, νύσσω, is also used to describe severe and deadly wounds, as in Homer:

As he sprang Into his car,
Idomeneus, expert To wield the ponderous javelin,
thrust (νύξ) its blade Through his right shoulder.
From the car he fell, And the dark night of death came over him."
“Iliad,” v. 45-47.

It has been suggested that the body was merely pricked with the spear to ascertain if it were yet alive. There seems, on the whole, no reason for departing from the ordinary understanding of the narrative, that the soldier inflicted a deep thrust on the side of Jesus (compare Jn.20:25,27); nor is it quite apparent why, as Mr. Field urges, a distinction should be kept up between the two verbs in Jn. 19:34 and Jn. 19:37.
Blood and water -- It has been argued very plausibly that this was a natural phenomenon, the result of a rupture of the heart which, it is assumed, was the immediate cause of death, and which was followed by an effusion of blood into the pericardium. This blood, separated into its thicker and more liquid parts, flowed forth when the pericardium was pierced by the spear. I think, however, with Meyer, that John evidently intends to describe the incident as something entirely unexpected and marvelous, and that this explanation better suits the solemn asseveration of Jn. 19:35. That the fact had a symbolic meaning to the Evangelist is evident from 1 Jn.5:6:

This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ;
not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit
that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.

=======

I personally know what it is like to be so dehydrated (=loss of blood volume) as to be almost dead, and that without any additional copious loss from deep lacerations and from exacerbated spike puncture wounds as Jesus suffered, or internal blood loss to the pericardium through stress-related congestive heart failure,

I was very sick, and trying to crawl to the telephone I passed out, I don't know how long, but finally was barely just able to dial 911 and ask for help. When the ambulance came, I had become very nauseous from the dehydration, and was unable to move. The technician's electronic sphygnomanometer could detect no blood pressure whatever, so they immediately hooked me up to a one-liter saline solution bag, got me onto a gurney and into the ambulance. Halfway to the hospital, that first liter was emptied into me, so they connected another. Just before we got to the hospital they had to start a third liter, then got me into an emergency cubicle. The rate of uptake had by then slowed down, so that one lasted until about three hours later, when they replaced that with the fourth, when my blood pressure had become normal and steady, with my body no longer demanding much solution,

So I do have an appreciation of how low Jesus' blood volume must have been way down when He gave up the ghost and passed out, no longer moving. You can say that he died from "suffocation" but I know that's only part of a greater combination of failure of all systems.

Though the soldiers saw Him motionless, and in their opinion dead, they still absolutely made sure their lives were not endangered with a failed execution, so under orders, they finished the process.

But for sure, the loss of blood through the piercing to the heart and the spurt of blood and edema must have almost totally exhausted His blood volume.

Got any of your own experiences or special medical knowledge to confute that,? Eh? I don't think you know. What I know is that Jesus died when He "gave up the ghost"--His Spirit being separated from His Body and gone to Heaven, with His soul departed for Paradise as he had promised the converted malefactor, and His Body a biological mechanism without that force which gives it life.

You are a deceiver. . . . May the Lord rebuke you.

It will be a long time before the Lord, my Savior, rebukes me for what I've written, IMHO. I hope you get a little wiser than you are right now in your spiritual walk, my FRiend.

It's going to be a lot longer before you get the authority to rebuke (religiously curse) anybody for anything on this forum, buddy!