Killing Jesus: Could Christ have spoken from the cross?

n Sep­tem­ber 29, Bill O’Reil­ly was on “60 Min­utes” (tran­script here) to pro­mote his new book Killing Jesus, writ­ten under the inspi­ra­tion of the Holy Ghost. For when Jesus said that “he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13), Bill O’Reil­ly was the very man he had in mind.

The third person of the Trinity speaks to Mr. O’Reilly from afar, but the second person of the Trinity cannot speak to those at the foot of the Cross

By the way, it is inter­est­ing to me that, when Pope Bene­dict XVI pub­lished his series of books on Jesus (here, here, and here), he took care to point out that he was mere­ly writ­ing as a pri­vate the­olo­gian and not with infal­li­ble author­i­ty. For Mr. O’Reil­ly, how­ev­er, some­how the third per­son of the Trin­i­ty wakes him up in the mid­dle of the night and says to him, “Write, for these words are true and faith­ful.” That just strikes me as a con­trast worth point­ing out.

But digres­sions aside. Dur­ing the inter­view, Norah O’Don­nell asked Mr. O’Reil­ly why he did not record Christ’s “most famous” words from the Cross—“Father, for­give them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Here is the exchange that fol­lowed:

O’Reil­ly: We don’t put things in we don’t think hap­pened.

O’Don­nell:How do you know?

O’Reil­ly:  Because you could­n’t say some­thing like that, audi­bly that peo­ple would hear. He, you die on a cross from being suf­fo­cat­ed. That your lungs can’t take in any more air. You can hard­ly breathe. We believe Jesus said that, but we don’t believe he said it on the cross, ’cause nobody could’ve heard it.

O’Don­nell: But, Bill, you know what peo­ple are going to say. “The Bible says that Jesus said on the cross, ‘Father for­give them,’ but Bill O’Reil­ly says that’s not true, so I should believe Bill?”

O’Reil­ly: Well you believe what you want. If you want to take the Bible lit­er­al­ly, then that’s your right to do that.

[Ah, the con­de­scen­sion!  YOU can believe what you want, but WE have done research]

O’Don­nell: But you use as your sources for this book the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But you pick and choose.

[Indeed. Even Norah O’Don­nell can occa­sion­al­ly utter a true state­ment.]

O’Reil­ly: Right, but that’s not our only source. I mean, we use Mus­lim sources, we use Roman sources, we use Jew­ish sources.

O’Don­nell: So is this the Gospel accord­ing to Bill?

O’Reil­ly: This is best avail­able evi­dence accord­ing to Bill. …

Okay, we can stop there.  This exchange rep­re­sents enough con­fu­sion on the part of Mr. O’Reil­ly to han­dle in one blog arti­cle.

Now, sev­er­al things inter­est me about the claim that Jesus could not have spo­ken from the Cross, or that He could not have been heard, due to lack of suf­fi­cient air in His lungs.

Inconsistent Spin I: Christ cannot speak from the Cross, but Mr. O’Reilly can quote him

First, in his book, Mr. O’Reil­ly actu­al­ly quotes Jesus speak­ing from the cross. From Killing Jesus:

‘I thirst,’ Jesus final­ly says, giv­ing in to the dehy­dra­tion that has con­sumed him for more than twelve hours.  His voice is not more than a whis­per.  A solid­er soaks a sponge in sour wine and reach­es up to place it to the Nazarene’s lips, know­ing the liq­uid will sting.

Jesus sucks in the tart flu­id.  Short­ly after­ward, he gazes on Jerusalem one last time before the inevitable hap­pens.

‘It is fin­ished,’ he says.(O’Reilly 250)

Well, which is it?  Could he speak or could­n’t he? Per­haps Mr. O’Reil­ly only means that Jesus could not have spo­ken as long a sen­tence as “Father for­give them,” since it would have required more effort than Christ had left in him. After all, he does­n’t quote “My God, my God, why have you for­sak­en me?” either (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34). It might very well be the case that Mr. O’Reil­ly was mere­ly refer­ring to longish sen­tences, of more than a few words, but you will search in vain through Killing Jesus to find out.  All that he says on the sub­ject is this:

[D]eath on the cross is a slow jour­ney into suf­fo­ca­tion.  Each time a vic­tim takes a breath he must fight his own body weight and push his tor­so upward using his legs, thus allow­ing his lungs to expand.  In time, the vic­tim, exhaust­ed, can breathe nei­ther in nor out. (O’Reil­ly 250)

That’s all.

Now, it is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a mat­ter of con­cern that Mr. O’Reil­ly does not quote Jesus as say­ing, “Father, for­give them, for they know not what they do.” The Gospel writ­ers them­selves did not feel oblig­ed to record every last word Christ spoke, and these words are not found in any gospel but Luke’s. Mr. O’Reil­ly’s selec­tions are almost iden­ti­cal to St. John’s, with just this one dif­fer­ence:  John also records Jesus say­ing, “Woman behold thy son; [John,] behold thy moth­er” (John 19:26–27).

But it is a con­cern that Mr. O’Reil­ly denies that Christ said “Father for­give them” from the Cross. And so too is the rea­son he gives for his denial, name­ly, that cru­ci­fix­ion is “slow … suf­fo­ca­tion” and that Christ could not have got­ten up suf­fi­cient air in his lungs to be heard.  To see why, let us look at the rel­e­vant text from St. Luke:

And when they were come to the place, which is called Cal­vary, there they cru­ci­fied him, and the male­fac­tors, one on the right hand, and the oth­er on the left. Then said Jesus, Father, for­give them; for they know not what they do. And they part­ed his rai­ment, and cast lots. (Luke 23:33–34)

Did you catch what I did?  I hope so: Accord­ing to St. Luke, these were Christ’s very first words on the Cross, imme­di­ate­ly upon being cru­ci­fied. In oth­er words, He would have said them before He began to lose air into the lungs—precisely at the time when He had the most abil­i­ty to speak and the great­est abil­i­ty to be heard. Asphyx­i­a­tion, Mr. O’Reil­ly says, was “slow.” But in order to accept that Jesus could not have said these words, one would have to con­clude that, in His case, asphyx­i­a­tion was imme­di­ate. Mr. O’Reil­ly offers no the­o­ry that would explain why Christ alone, of all men ever cru­ci­fied, suf­fered imme­di­ate asphyx­i­a­tion; and no one else that I am aware of has pro­posed any such the­o­ry, either.

Inconsistent Spin II: Mr. O’Reilly’s only cited source, a medical doctor, disagrees with him

But that is just one of the dif­fi­cul­ties. Sec­ond, Mr. O’Reil­ly cites no source for his claim that cru­ci­fix­ion entails death by suf­fo­ca­tion. Not one. The only source he does cite, on the top­ic of the phys­i­ol­o­gy and foren­sics of cru­ci­fix­ion, is Dr. Fred­er­ick Zugibe’s recent book The Cru­ci­fix­ion of Jesus:  A Foren­sic Inquiry. And Dr. Zugibe has an entire chap­ter refut­ing the asphyx­i­a­tion the­o­ry. He says that the the­o­ry is ““based mere­ly on spec­u­la­tion, a pri­ori rea­son­ing, and rep­e­ti­tion. It has not been con­firmed by the sci­en­tif­ic method until the author inves­ti­gat­ed it. … [I]t is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly unten­able … when test­ed empir­i­cal­ly.” (Zugibe 101–102)

Dr. Zugibe (who holds both an M.D. and a Ph.D.) goes on to say that the asphyx­i­a­tion the­o­ry was not sug­gest­ed by any­one until 1925, when A.A. LeBec pub­lished an essay in the Catholic Med­ical Guardian to pro­pose the the­o­ry.  R.W. Hynek reit­er­at­ed LeBec in 1936; and finally—most recent­ly, and notably—it was advanced by Dr. Pierre Bar­bet in 1963. If Mr. O’Reil­ly had want­ed to cite Dr. Bar­bet, he could have; the work is available—I found it at the library for the local sem­i­nary.  Here is the rel­e­vant pas­sage from the book, enti­tled A Doc­tor at Cal­vary:  The Pas­sion of Our Lord Jesus Christ as Described by a Sur­geon:

[T]he raised posi­tion of the arms, which were in the posi­tion for inspi­ra­tion, would entail a rel­a­tive immo­bil­i­ty of the sides, and would thus great­ly hin­der breath­ing out; the cru­ci­fied would have had the sen­sa­tion of pro­gres­sive suf­fo­ca­tion.

“Pro­gres­sive suf­fo­ca­tion”: Now, that might be what Mr. O’Reil­ly had in mind; except that he does not cite Dr. Bar­bet, and so one can not know. More­over, this is a dat­ed source; it was pub­lished in 1963. It is only that its con­clu­sions, as Dr. Zugibe not­ed, have found their way into the pop­u­lar media and have become accept­ed by force of rep­e­ti­tion alone, not nec­es­sar­i­ly med­ical evi­dence and sci­en­tif­ic method.

Accord­ing to Dr. Zugibe (whom Mr. O’Reil­ly does cite), the the­o­ry that a cru­ci­fied man will suf­fer asphyx­i­a­tion was first sug­gest­ed to Mr. LeBec’s mind through his obser­va­tion of pris­on­ers of war being hanged from their wrists dur­ing World War I. The pris­on­ers expe­ri­enced dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing, and had to con­stant­ly hunch them­selves up and then back down in order to get air into the lungs. But, says Dr. Zugibe, the body posi­tion of these pris­on­ers was dif­fer­ent than that of cru­ci­fix­ion vic­tims. Their arms were sus­pend­ed above their heads, rather than extend­ed out at the sides.  More­over, a vic­tim of cru­ci­fix­ion is affixed to the cross also by his feet; where­as, the feet of a hang­ing vic­tim are left to dan­gle.

On pages 108–122, Dr. Zugibe describes his own exper­i­ments, in which he sim­u­lat­ed cru­ci­fix­ion with sev­er­al vol­un­teers. What he found was that in no case did any of the vol­un­teers have dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing. They did suf­fer grad­u­al­ly increas­ing pain, but they could breathe nor­mal­ly.

Inconsistent Spin III: Who else besides Mr. O’Reilly makes any such claim?

There is still a third dif­fi­cul­ty with Mr. O’Reil­ly’s hypoth­e­sis. I have searched, and I can­not find any­one, who sup­ports the asphyx­i­a­tion the­o­ry, who says that Jesus would not have been able to speak sen­tences of more than a few words.  If Mr. O’Reil­ly knows of any such source, I would be grate­ful for the infor­ma­tion; for the ones I’ve found go only so far as to say that Jesus would not have been able to say more than three or four words before he had to get anoth­er breath. Pre­sum­ably he could speak longer sen­tences, albeit in spaced inter­vals. And even then, that would have been some time late in His time on the Cross; accord­ing to St. Luke, Jesus said “Father for­give them” the first moment he was up there.

Thus I am hav­ing some dif­fi­cul­ty fig­ur­ing out what the source of Mr. O’Reil­ly’s infor­ma­tion is, and why he accepts it despite the con­tra­dic­tion and evi­dence from Dr. Zugibe (the only source he actu­al­ly does cite).

The best that can be said is that “slow suf­fo­ca­tion” is a debat­ed and unset­tled ques­tion even among med­ical experts. So why is Mr. O’Reil­ly cer­tain enough on this point that he can deny Christ’s very words from the Cross?  Does he have this rev­e­la­tion from the Holy Ghost? And why would the Holy Ghost inspire Mr. O’Reil­ly to con­tra­dict St. Luke? Did the Holy Ghost mis­lead Luke? Did Luke mis­hear the Holy Ghost? Has the Church been mis­tak­en about the infal­li­bil­i­ty of Luke’s gospel for 2000 years? Should Mar­tin Luther have tak­en that book out of the canon too?  And why would the Holy Ghost wait so long to cor­rect all this, and why would he choose a talk show host from Fox News to speak through? Did the Holy Ghost say, “Well, Mr. O’Reil­ly has earned his rep­u­ta­tion for no spin, there­fore the folks trust him”? These seem to be ques­tions worth ask­ing.

Inconsistent Spin IV: Christ was suddenly unable to perform miracles?

But let us assume (always a dan­ger­ous assump­tion) that Mr. O’Reil­ly is right. Just this once. Just for the sake of argu­ment. Just for some fun. So:  A cru­ci­fix­ion vic­tim can­not speak from the cross. Let us fol­low this train of thought and see where it might lead us, based on what we know about Jesus.

Here is what we know:

• He turned water into wine (John 2:1–11).
• He raised the dead—not once, not twice, but three times (Mark 5:21–43; Luke 7:11–17; John 11:1–44).
• He cured the blind—not once, not twice, not three times, but four (Matt. 9:27–31; Matt. 29:30–34; Mark 10:46–52; Luke 18:35–43; John 9:1–12).
• He cured lep­ers (Matt. 8:1–4; Mark 1:40–45; Luke 5:12–16; Luke 17:11–19).
• He healed the lame (Matt. 9:1–8; Mark 2:1–12; Luke 5:17–26; Luke 13:10–17; John 5:1–18).
• He cured a bleed­ing woman (Matt. 9:18–26; Mark 5:21–43; Luke 8:40–56).
• He healed a man with drop­sy (Luke 14:1–6).
• He healed a deaf mute (Mark 7:31–37).
• He healed the Cen­tu­ri­on’s ser­vant (Matt. 8:5–13; Luke 7:1–10).
• He healed all who touched him in Genes­saret (Matt. 13:34–36; Mark 6:53–56).
• He per­formed exor­cisms (Matt. 8:28–34; Matt. 17:14–21 Mark 5:1–20; Mark 9:14–29; Mark 16:9 Luke 8:2, 26–39; Luke 9:37–49).
• He mul­ti­plied loaves and fish­es (Luke 5:1–11).
• He walked on water (Matt. 14–22-33; Mark 6:45–52; John 6:16–21)
• He calmed a storm at sea (Matt. 8:23–27; Luke 8:22–25).

But Bill O’Reil­ly is pos­i­tive He could not have said “Father for­give them” while He was on the Cross.  How is that con­sis­tent? Let us have no spin, Mr. O’Reil­ly: How is that con­sis­tent? Do you have a the­o­ry as to why Jesus lost his abil­i­ty to per­form mir­a­cles while nailed to a tree?

Inconsistent Spin V: The gospel writers did not understand crucifixion?

We know some­thing else too, which is that the writ­ers of the Gospels, and the audi­ence for whom they were writ­ten, were very famil­iar with the facts of crucifixion—much, much more so than we. They lived with it. They saw it all the time; cru­ci­fix­ion was a pub­lic exe­cu­tion. If it was not pos­si­ble to speak from the Cross, these peo­ple were in the best posi­tion to have known that. Cer­tain­ly St. Luke was; he was a doc­tor. None of the Gospel writ­ers could have made that mis­take, and if he had, the audi­ence would have caught it.

So let us assume that a man on a cross could not have spo­ken.  And let us give the Gospel writ­ers cred­it as peo­ple who knew what cru­ci­fix­ion was and did­n’t make dumb mis­takes.  And let us real­ize, final­ly, that they are our only eye­wit­ness accounts to Jesus’s life.

What would you con­clude?

We know, for exam­ple, that when Jesus was on the Cross, He was taunt­ed:  If you real­ly are the Mes­si­ah, come down, and we will believe you (Matt. 27:41–42).

Well, maybe he did­n’t come down.  But maybe he spoke.  And maybe that was a sig­nal to the chief priests and the scribes and the elders: You have cru­ci­fied the Mes­si­ah.  You have cru­ci­fied God.

And maybe all those vers­es in the Gospels, record­ing Christ’s words on the Cross, were also a sign that oth­ers might believe:  Christ is the Mes­si­ah.  They would not have need­ed to be told that it was a mir­a­cle.  They would have known.  They knew what cru­ci­fix­ion was.

Inconsistent Spin VI: Contemporary eyewitness accounts are less reliable than selective acceptance two millennia later?
—

But the notion that Jesus did not say “Father for­give them” actu­al­ly orig­i­nat­ed with the Jesus Sem­i­nar, a group of cranks mas­querad­ing as schol­ars who get togeth­er and vote with col­ored beads what Jesus “real­ly” said and what he did­n’t say.  Their method­ol­o­gy is a tad lack­ing, to put it gen­tly.  It is not my pur­pose here to go into ana­lyt­i­cal detail about the Jesus Seminar—that can be saved for anoth­er time. But I do think it is worth point­ing out that Mr. O’Reil­ly has allowed him­self to be swayed by the—ahem—spin of a group that has more tal­ent for get­ting pop­u­lar atten­tion than it does for schol­ar­ship.

There is a pop­u­lar myth—popular since the nine­teenth century—that it is impor­tant to search for the “his­tor­i­cal Jesus,” who is some­how to be dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed from the Jesus of the Gospels.  And while I do not want to min­i­mize the impor­tance of his­tor­i­cal or sci­en­tif­ic research (far from it), it must be point­ed out that this effort is as fraught with per­il as the effort to divorce the laws of sci­ence from the One who cre­at­ed them in the first place.

Jesus was not just an his­tor­i­cal fig­ure; He was God.  The only eye­wit­ness accounts we have of His life were writ­ten by believ­ers with the pur­pose of turn­ing oth­er men into believ­ers.  You can­not sep­a­rate Christ from faith; as C.S. Lewis right­ly point­ed out, He did not leave that option open to us.

When you attempt to sep­a­rate the “his­tor­i­cal” Jesus from who He was and the pur­pose for which He came, you end up—inevitably—denying large amounts of what He said and what He did. You end up pick­ing and choosing—as Norah O’Don­nell point­ed out—what you want to accept and what you do not.

What you pre­tend to be your rea­son ends up killing what there may have been of your faith.

In the case of Mr. O’Reil­ly, how­ev­er, even his “rea­son” and his “his­to­ry” end up falling short of stan­dards of log­ic, con­sis­ten­cy, and med­ical evi­dence.

 

WORKS CITED

Bar­bet, Pierre, M.D. A Doc­tor at Cal­vary: The Pas­sion of Our Lord Jesus Christ as Described by a Sur­geon. New York: Image, 1963.

Hynek, R.W. Gol­go­tha Wis­senschast und Mystik-eine-medizinisch—apologetische. Studie uber das heilige Grablin­nen von Turin. Karl­sruhe, Ger­many: Bade­nia Ver­lag, 1936.

Le Bec, A.A. “The Death of the Cross: A Phys­i­o­log­i­cal Study of the Pas­sion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” Catholic Med­ical Guardian 3 (1925):126–132.

O’Reil­ly, Bill, and Mar­tin Dugard. Killing Jesus: A His­to­ry. New York: Holt, 2013.

Zugibe, Fred­er­ick T., M.D., Ph.D. The Cru­ci­fix­ion of Jesus: A Foren­sic Inquiry. New York: Evans, 2005.