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     After Roman soldiers flogged Jesus, tearing the back of his body into ribbons of bleeding flesh, they crucified Him.  Crucifixion was the common form of capital punishment in the ancient world.  It was also a cruel psychological method in war.  For example, at the height of the war in Judea in AD 70, the Romans crucified up to 500 Jews daily outside the walls of Jerusalem.  What a demoralizing sight!  Because crucifixion was so commonplace, most ancient accounts giving the details are rare and scanty.
     By contrast, the Bible’s record of Jesus’ six hours on the cross and subsequent death is the best documented case of a singular crucifixion.  Crucifixion began with nailing the victim to the cross.  The nails crushed the median nerve that runs through the wrists and feet, causing continuous and excruciating pain.  It was as if someone took a pair of vise-grips and crushed and twisted the nerves.  When the victim was nailed to the cross, his arms were stretched, so that as he struggled on the cross, his arms would tend to be dislocated from his shoulders.
     Once the person was nailed to the cross and the cross was erected into a vertical position, the actual death of crucifixion began.  It was a death of suffocation, where the victim struggled for every breath.  As the body hung in a relaxed position, the diaphragm could not push up to exhale the air.  Thus the victim pushed up on his feet to breathe, but also tearing the feet where the nails were driven and scraping his flogged back on the cross.  Each breath was a battle to overcome pain in order to live a few more seconds.  The victim repeated this cycle until he was so exhausted that he could no longer push up to breathe, thus he suffocated.
     As the victim’s breathing slowed down, respiratory acidosis developed.  Respiratory acidosis occurs when carbon dioxide dissolves in the blood as carbonic acid which increases the acid level in the blood causing the heart to beat erratically, eventually causing heart failure.
     Even before the respiratory acidosis set in, the hypovolemic shock (caused by the blood loss from flogging) caused the heart beat to increase dramatically, increasing the fluid in the membrane around the heart – pericardial effusion.  The fluid also accumulated around the lungs – pleural effusion.  Thus when the soldier thrust his spear into Jesus’ side, the blood and water flowed out (John 19:34).  Crucifixion was slow suffocation accompanied by constant and excruciating pain.  The testimony seems clear, but was Jesus in a coma, trance or did He die?  More substantial proof – Jesus’ burial.

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