the same conditions existed in the feet of the crucified: in order to keep him from pulling his feet off of the nails, the nail or nails had to be driven through a space between the upper foot bones. Therefore, the crucified became literally a prisoner of the cross. The only way to get him off of the cross was to pull the nails.

The crucified was nailed to the cross in such a way that, with his knees bent somewhat, he could hang by his arms and rest his legs. After a while his diaphragm would enter the early stages of paralysis, and he would feel suffocation oncoming. Then he would straighten his legs, standing on his nailed feet, providing relief for his arms from bearing the stress of holding up his body, thereby relieving the stress on his diaphragm leading to paralysis and suffocation. Consequently, he endured a running continuum of up and down, up and down, up and down for hours and hours.

Those responsible for performing the crucifixion had a way of stopping this endurance test. They simply broke the legs of the crucified so that he couldn’t stand on them anymore. He was forced to hang by his arms without surcease; he soon fell into full paralysis of his diaphragm and died of suffocation.

It is known that Jesus suffered “scourging” for some time before his walk to crucifixion with Simon of Cyrene, who was compelled by soldiers to carry

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his cross. “Scourging” meant torture with whips with barbs in the ends of the lashes of each whip; those barbs ate deeply through Jesus’ skin and into his flesh. It had to be excruciatingly painful. While on his walk to Golgotha, Jesus was still sufficiently conscious to have made the walk successfully; he had not yet entered a state of deep shock.

There were three men crucified at the same time on Golgotha. Jesus, of course, was in the middle. The other two had not been tortured before their crucifixion.

After they were on their crosses, Jesus entered into deep shock. In that condition it was impossible for him to feel any pain. While in that condition, he lost consciousness; and while entering that state, he said loudly (as quoted by Matthew):”Eli, Eli, la-ma-sa-bach-tha-ni?”.

It has been popularly assumed that pain drove Jesus to say those words. Impossible. He was feeling no pain. He was in deep shock, on the verge of passing out. It is most logical that he was saying “I am fainting, I am fainting, darkness is overcoming me!” It is most illogical that Jesus would be complaining in a loud voice that God had forsaken him. As I said before, he knew absolutely that only humans would do that.

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