Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 100
were dead, fresh blood could not have flowed from these organs and left their imprints on the cloth. Furthermore, he declares, the cloth shows signs of blood which flowed from the wounds in the head of Jesus caused by the thorns of the crown put on him by the Romans as a jest in mockery of his title King of the Jews. Kurt Berna concludes that when the body of Jesus was taken down from the cross and the crown of thorns removed from his head, the wounds caused by the thorns began to bleed. If Jesus had already been dead for some time, all the blood would have flowed down to the lower regions of the body and coagulated there. It is a law of nature that the circulation of the blood takes place in completely airless conditions, and this circulation is always caused by the pumping action of the heart. In a recently dead body, after the heart has stopped beating, not only does the blood cease to flow from wounds after a certain time, but the blood itself begins to shrink within the veins. The blood drains out of the capillaries below the surface of the skin, producing the pallid appearance of death in the corpse. Therefore no fresh blood could flow from the wounds made by the thorns unless the heart was pumping, even slowly. From the medical point of view, Jesus was not dead at that moment. It is true that under certain conditions a pallid appearance similar to that of death may appear, and the person in question may appear to be actually dead when respiration has apparently ceased, but in such cases the heart need not necessarily have stopped beating. Respiration may cease after asphyxia caused by gas or by being temporarily buried in sand; but if proper medical attention is given to the individual in question immediately after the accident, and if the heart has not yet stopped beating, his life may well be saved. Furthermore, the blood-stains on the cloth show a trickle of 92