Shabir Ally and the Roman Centurion
Muslims deny the death of Jesus on the cross. They do this despite the 1st century eyewitness testimony to Jesus’ death and despite the eyewitness testimony to Jesus’ teaching about His death.
The Muslim apologist, Shabir Ally, rejects one eyewitness to Jesus’ death saying:
We do not have the actual words of the centurion…Nor does the text say that the centurion or any Roman representative gave the body a post-mortem examination of even the most rudimentary sort.
http://www.shabirally.com/rejoinder_to_james2a.php; accessed 5/31/2010
It is true that we don’t have the actual words of the Roman centurion, but the fact that he and the other soldiers permitted Jesus to be taken from the cross is proof enough Jesus died. The consequences for the centurion being wrong about Jesus’ death would likely have been severe. Rome did not look favorably upon military men failing to do their duty (see Acts 12:19; 16:27; 27:42).
The renowned medical examiner Dr. Frederick Zugibe wrote that centurions were capable of determing when a person was dead or not:
It is important to understand that the exactor mortis [the centurion in charge of the crucifixion] and quaternion [soldiers who carried out the crucifixion] were experts at determining the presence of death from crucifixion, as they performed thousands of crucifixions. 1Zugibe, The Crucifixion of Jesus: A Forensic Inquiry, second edition (New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 2005), 148.
Furthermore, they also pierced Jesus’ side before He was taken down from the cross. After looking at crucifixion an article in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association concluded:
Clearly, the weight of historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted and supports the traditional view that the spear, thrust between his right rib, probably perforated not only the right lung but also the pericardium and heart and thereby ensured his death. Accordingly, interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with modern medical knowledge (William D. Edwards, MD; Wesley J. Gabel, M.Div.; Floyd E. Hosmer, MS, AMI; “On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ,” Journal of the American Medical Association 21 March 1986; Volume 255, 1463).
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