Swoon Theory

The Swoon Theory proposes that Jesus was not dead but rather unconscious (swooning means fainting) when taken down from the cross, and (say) later revived in the cool of the tomb. His resurrection is thus a misunderstanding over his apparent death. This view, as advocated by Herrmann Reimarus, Karl Venturini and Heinrich Paulus in the early nineteenth century, is generally held to have been thoroughly refuted by Albert Schwietzer and David Strauss, amongst others, and the whole idea abandoned by the middle of that century. It isn't often argued nowadays, so please don't think I'm saying modern, educated skeptics really spend their time on this. Nonetheless, it still appears occassionally at the popular level (eg. in the view that Jesus later went to India, or on very amateur atheist websites), and so it ought to be addressed here.

This view is not to be confused with the Islamic view that Jesus was never crucified, though Allah made it appear that he was.

...they said (in boast), “We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah”; - but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them... for of a surety they killed him not: - Nay, Allah raised him up unto himself...

Refer to the Islamic gateway if this interests you.

Death by crucifixion is caused either by exhaustion asphyxiation or traumatic shock. Whether asphyxiation is the main cause of death has recently been debated afresh after having been the majority view for some time (see Resources, below).

In the early twentieth century, a french surgeon named Pierre Barbet popularized the idea that death during crucifixion is caused by asphyxiation. This view has enjoyed wide popularity, and formed the basis for an article on the crucifixion in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1987. It has recently been seriously questioned, particularly by the research of Frederick T. Zugibe, an associate professor of pathology at Columbia University, who (without actually crucifying anybody) suspended some volunteers in a hanging position in order to check whether or not they experienced difficulty in breathing. For intervals between 5 and 45 minutes (until they requested to be taken down), none reported such difficulty. In spite of the obvious ethical limitations on how realistic such research can be, asphyxiation is not presently considered the probable cause of death in crucifixion, though the view still shows up in apologetic works from time to time.

According to the Gospels, the following specifics hold in Jesus’ case.

1. Jesus was beaten in addition to being flogged, and spent the night awake, being held captive, and taken from one trial to another prior to the crucifixion. This would have left him in a weakened condition at the outset, as may be evidenced by his inability to carry his cross-beam out of the city to his crucifixion, and his earlier death than that of the other prisoners.
2. I say his 'cross-beam' since:
   1. In each gospel, something called a cross is being carried by a single person.
   2. It seems improbable that the vertical beam of a cross could be carried by a single person. Sufficient length and strength would be required to (1) hold it firmly upright in the ground, (2) hold a person clear of the ground (Jesus was offered a drink from a sponge affixed to a 'reed', perhaps indicating suspension more than an arm's length off from the ground), and (3) continue high enough to display a statement of their crime above their head.
   3. One possible solution might be a narrow stake (the word for cross, σταυρός, can also mean a stake for impalement), but several details of the crucifixion would be redundant or impossible in this scenario: (1) Using nails to hold a prisoner in position, (2) breaking their legs to hasten death and (3) fixing of a sign above their head.
   4. The regularity of crucifixions in Palestine suggests that permanent structures would have been expedient. This is consistent with the fact that a particular location had been set aside for them. I Peter 2:24 and Seneca (see practices) refer to 'trees' in the context of crucifixion, raising the thought that natural structures, if near enough to public roads (the whole point is deterrence) could certainly function as crosses. In the absence of such conveniences, standing poles seem more practical than packing full crosses into holes in the ground every day (then digging them up and carrying them back to town when finished). Roman military efficiency could be expected to favour the simplest solution for what were often daily tasks.
   5. Having a vertical structure you only need a crossbeam to produce a cross. As something smaller than, say, a railway sleeper, this could reasonably be expected to carried by one person (the point, again, is spectacle and humiliation, as part of deterrence). If this is so, a cross beam might extend the use of the permanent structure by taking nail damage itself.
   6. In John 20:25 Thomas is quoted saying Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails,... (note TON TUPON TWN HLWN, with nail in the plural). This understanding of crucifixion is more consistent with a cross (requiring a nail for each arm) than a stake (for which only one might suffice for the hands or wrists).
   7. As an aside, when Christians later came to symbolize or depict the crucifixion, 't' or 'T' shaped cross were used. This would be quite unusual if not a common practice at that time. And if at that time, then possibly earlier.
3. A ‘terminal event’ — an apparent point of death — was noted, suggesting that a heart attack, rather than asphyxiation, was the final cause of death. In the case of a heart attack brought on by acidosis — the buildup of carbonic acid in the blood — Jesus would have known from his increasingly irregular heartbeat when he was about to die; hence the last words in the gospels.
4. Several events occured in between Jesus’ apparent death, and his removal from the cross. Firstly, as sunset (the beginning of the following Sabbath day) approached, the prisoners being crucified beside him had their legs broken so that they would die more quickly. Jesus' legs were not broken, as they found that he was already dead) — instead he received a spear wound to the side. The Gospel of Mark records the Governor's skepticism over Jesus’ death when Joseph of Arimathea requested permission to bury him. Mark notes that he checked with the centurion who supervised the executions, before granting permission for the body's release. Only then was the body removed from the cross.
5. This indicates an interval of time sufficient for several trips of a kilometre or more back to the centre of Jerusalem: Joseph goes to Pilate, Pilate sends for the Centurion, and so on. That is a long time to be playing dead for; seeming not to breathe; having no visible heartbeat (and bleeding less); suffering trauma and shock yet making no involuntary movements; showing no reaction to a spear wound to the chest; not flinching when being removed from the cross -- it is to be doubted whether anyone, in any state of consciousness or unconsciousness, could have managed this.
6. The spear wound to the chest was described as resulting in a flow of blood and water from the wound. One suggestion (from the 1987 JAMA article, see links -- I'm not a doctor) is that a sustained and extreme heart rate from blood loss, preceding eventual heart failure through acidosis, would have caused effusions of clear fluid to collect around the heart and the lungs. A spear wound into the heart would have resulted in a flow of clear fluid followed by a large amount of blood, especially if it first passed through the right lung. Any such wound would probably have been lethal in its own right, which seems to have been the intent of it. In place of breaking the legs, it most likely served as a procedural assurance that a prisoner who seemed to have expired was in fact dead.

So, from the accounts in the gospels, Jesus was suffering from five untreated puncture wounds to his body when taken from the cross, including a spear wound to his chest. He would have had dislocated arms and shoulders from hanging, as well as open wounds and heavy blood loss, with associated dehydration (I thirst...), from a scourging. He had endured (probably) about six hours of extreme traumatic shock, in addition to the events of the preceding night, and may have suffered a heart attack during the crucifixion itself. Afterward, he had hung on the cross for a significant length of time, and been removed from it, without showing even involuntary signs of life.

It is exceptionally unlikely then, on these accounts, that Jesus would have survived crucifixion as a freak accident.

As elsewhere noted, Romans didn't often speak of crucifixion, except as a rhetorical example of ultimate suffering. It wasn't something that you talked about in polite society; something for foreigners and slaves and civil order. The most detailed accounts of crucifixion in the ancient world are those in the New Testament. There is simply no way to establish what was normal, let alone whether (and with what certainty) it was employed in Jesus’ case.

This includes discussions of whether nails or ropes were used (either or both may have been used), what shape the cross may have been, and what the soldiers’ standards and procedures were (Romans generally used a 'T' shape, with a removable crossbeam, but a crossbeam attached to a tree, an x-shaped gibbet, or just an upright pole or stake might have been used; even walls sufficed in some cases). A similar difficulty attends projections of how long it took a prisoner to die from crucifixion. With urgent medical attention, a friend of Flavius Josephus’ survived a crucifixion:

And when I was sent by Titus Caesar with Cerealins, and a thousand horsemen, to a certain village called Thecoa, in order to know whether it were a place fit for a camp, as I came back, I saw many captives crucified, and remembered three of them as my former acquaintance. I was very sorry at this in my mind, and went with tears in my eyes to Titus, and told him of them; so he immediately commanded them to be taken down, and to have the greatest care taken of them, in order to their recovery; yet two of them died under the physician's hands, while the third recovered.

Since we do not know how long Josephus’ friends had been crucified for, or in what circumstances and because even the direct intervention of a Roman general (Titus) and his doctors — hardly a common occurence — could still not stop two of them from dying, it is difficult to draw much of general application from this case.

As an interesting aside, the most extreme account of survival is of Samian war prisoners supposedly kept alive for ten days during their crucifixion by Pericles the Greek (b. 475 BCE), but Plutarch (c.45-c.125 CE), who preserves the record of it, is highly skeptical:

But he [Duris the Samian] appears not to speak the truth when he says, forsooth, that Pericles had the Samian trierarchs and marines brought into the market-place of Miletus and crucified there, and that then, when they had already suffered grievously for ten days, he gave orders to break their heads in with clubs and make an end of them, and then cast their bodies forth without burial rites. At all events, since it is not the wont of Duris, even in cases where he has no private and personal interest, to hold his narrative down to the fundamental truth, it is all the more likely that here, in this instance, he has given a dreadful portrayal of the calamities of his country, that he might calumniate the Athenians.

Tacitus? -- three hours to three days normal?

To state what should be evident, the whole point of crucifixion is that the victim does not die at their own pace. The executioners will make the execution swift or lingering, whichever their orders or inclination may warrant. There will be other factors, but they will be secondary to this: The prior health and constitution of the victim, the severity of any flaggelation or beating that may have gone before, the associated wounds and shock and loss of blood, the extent to which they were supported in position or hung free, whether they were nailed or bound to the cross (and the damage this caused), whether their arms were fixed above their head or to the side (affecting lung cramping), environmental factors (heat and cold, birds and dogs), and most importantly whether means were taken either to prolong life (offering them water), or to shorten it (breaking their legs) -- which brings us back again to the intention of the executioners.