No Death on Golgatha

The sober account of the crucifixion given by the apostle John indicates that Jesus suffered a lung injury during his torture and fell into a death-like state of carbon dioxide narcosis. Only an accurate puncture can save the victim, and the Roman soldier’s thrust of the lance achieved just that. Jesus was taken down from the cross and laid in his grave unusually quickly, and soon after, he was seen alive. Fried describes how, while the theology of the resurrected son of God spreads throughout the Roman empire, in Eastern Syria Jesus was venerated as a human messenger of God. This doctrine was denounced and is only extant in fragments, and yet it is just here that we find possible traces of Jesus’s further work, outside the reach of the Roman state authorities, and into the early history of Islam.