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Israeli doctor: clot may have killed Jesus
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-06-09 14:15
Jesus may have died from a blood clot that reached his lungs, an Israeli
physician said Wednesday, challenging the popular conception that he died of
asphyxiation and blood loss during his crucifixion.
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| A stone burial box with
the inscription, "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," could
well be the earliest artifact ever found relating to the existence
of Jesus.[AP] | | Dr.
Benjamin Brenner, a researcher at the Rambam Medical Center in the Israeli port
city of Haifa, said he was publicizing his theory to raise awareness pulmonary
embolism, a potentially fatal disorder often associated with long-distance air
travel.
However, the author of an earlier in-depth medical report into the cause of
Jesus' death dismissed the theory, and Bible scholars said that while
establishing the physical cause of Jesus' death was interesting, it ignored the
spiritual dimension.
"It is known that the common cause of death in the setting of multiple
trauma, immobilization and dehydration is pulmonary embolism," wrote Brenner in
Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis. "This fits well with Jesus' condition and
actually was in all likelihood the major cause of death of crucified victims."
A pulmonary embolism is caused when a blood clot travels to the lungs,
usually from the leg, causing an acute shortness of breath and chest pains. It
is frequently fatal.
Brenner based his understanding of Jesus' condition at the time of his death
on a 1986 work based on the New Testament and contemporary religious sources
that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
That paper found that before his crucifixion, Jesus went 12 hours without
food or water, was under emotional stress, was beaten and forced to walk to the
crucifixion site carrying the heavy cross beam of the cross on which he was
crucified. He also was scourged before being nailed to the cross, leading to
some blood loss.
Brenner said the authors may have missed the blood clot possibility because
it was not fully understood then.
"The field of blood coagulation has gone through significant changes in the
past 20 years," he wrote.
But Dr. William D. Edwards, who co-authored the original paper, dismissed
Brenner's theory, saying he was well aware of the effects of pulmonary embolisms
at the time.
"We didn't list it in our article because we didn't consider it a likely
cause," Edwards said, replying to questions by e-mail from the Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minn.
"Jesus was on the cross for only six hours. It seems unlikely that a large
deep leg vein thrombus could develop and cause fatal pulmonary embolization in
that short time," he said in a letter published in the journal. He said he
wanted to raise awareness of the condition.
"People are not aware of it, both in the public and in medical practice,"
Brenner told The Associated Press, adding that even today some 80 percent of
pulmonary embolisms are diagnosed only in autopsies.
But Bible scholars said that focusing on Jesus' physical suffering as the
cause of death missed the point.
"What they are doing is the autopsy of the physical body, which is always
interesting from an academic standpoint," said Stephen Pfann, a Bible scholar in
Jerusalem. "But if people concentrate on that part of the event alone they are
missing the most important part, which is the spiritual suffering."
"The major trauma for the son of God is the spiritual trauma, the loneliness
feeling the rejection of God and the shame of the world that came upon him at
that point," he said.
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