Deliverance from the Cross — Page 59
in order to account for the speedy occurrence of the Saviour's death. Richter's explanation of them, as quoted in a note of the Pictorial Bible on John 19:18, is somewhat fanciful and overstrained; yet after all the author acknowledges that they were not calculated to occasion rapid death. . . . Concurring in this opinion, the Editor of the Pictorial Bible observes: "It may be added, that no act in the punishment of crucifixion was in itself mortal, the sufferer died rather from the continuance and increase of the unutterable anguish and exhaustion of his torturing position", and then subjoins the account, already cited from Josephus, of a person known to that historian, who had been crucified apparently for several hours, but having been taken down from the cross, and committed to medical care, survived and recovered. In their laborious attempts to prove that for some time before his death Christ was reduced to a state of extreme debility, the Gruners strongly insist on the accessory or subordinate sufferings of crucifixion, as materially concurring with the principal ones in producing this effect; but on an impartial examination of the matter, their insufficiency is obvious. The scourging, mockery, and labour of carrying the cross were not in themselves more distressing to Jesus than to the malefactors who accompanied him; his fasting and watching had not, at farthest, continued longer than from the preceding evening; his removal from place to place was not likely to be attended with much fatigue, since all the places 59