Refutation of Ibn Anwar's Abuse of John 20:25

 

I recently came across an article written by Islamic missionary and apologist Ibn Anwar on the Truth Behind the Veil blog titled "John 20:25 indicates that the author fabricated the crucifixion". It took me a while to track down all of the sources that were used, both primary and secondary sources (which is one of the things I appreciate about Ibn Anwar in particular, is that he deals with lots of sources, and I always enjoy doing the same thing). 

For starters, here is the verse in question:

"So the other disciples told him, 'We have seen the Lord.' But he said to them, 'Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.' " (John 20:25 ESV; emphasis added)

Basically, Ibn Anwar's main argument is this: if Jesus was nailed through the hands (to the exclusion of the wrist or any part of the arm), then this would not have been enough to support him, and he would have, to use Anwar's words, "fallen to the ground". 

Anwar is quite possibly committing the fallacy of a false dichotomy. He seems to ignore the fact that the nail could be driven through a spot in the hand where there could have been tissue where it would have been strong enough to support the weight of Jesus' body (more on this later).

Here are some notes from Gunnar Samuelsson, a scholar known casting doubt upon the traditional Christian conception of the crucifixion:

"In 1957 the book Jerusalem und Rom im Zeitalter Jesu Christi by ETHELBERT STAUFFER appeared. Stauffer devoted one chapter to crucifixion in ancient Palestine.  He offers a brief overview of the history and use of crucifixion in Palestine. Stauffer's book is often referred to in the literature on this subject. He makes a distinction between the old Israelite custom of suspending corpses of killed or executed persons and crucifixion. He opposes the theory that Alexander Janneus was the first to use the punishment in Palestine and finds the punishment, which already the Persians used, in several older accounts from the region. Stauffer stresses the variation regarding both the terminology and the use of the punishment form. Still, he acknowledges a series of features as elements of crucifixion. Beside the scourging, the carrying of the crossbeam and the nailing of hands and feet, Stauffer mentions the T-shape of the cross and the titulus." (Gunnar Samuelsson, Crucifixion in Antiquity: An Inquiry into the New Testament Terminology of Crucifixion, pg. 11)

The same scholar, Gunnar Samuelsson, also notes the following about the scholarly consensus concerning how crucifixions were performed:

"It is not an exaggeration to say that, in spite of minor variations, there is a rather consistent and clear-cut opinion about how a crucifixion was carried out in the ancient world. There is a consensus about several features in a crucifixion: ι. a preceding scourging, 2. attachment of the arms (mainly by nailing) to the cross-beam {patibulum), 3. that the cross-beam was then carried out to the execution spot where a fixed bare pole waited, 4. suspension and attachment of the victim together with the cross-beam to the standing pole, 5. that the cross was shaped as a Τ {crux commissa) or regular cross {crux immissa), 6. that the victim was suspended with the feet just above the ground, either nailed or tied to the pole or left dangling, 7. a wooden plug {sedile) on the middle of the pole and a footrest {suppenadeum) offered support for the victim, 8. a sign {titulus), which proclaimed the nature of the crime was attached to the cross.....Yet the authors quoted above do not present these as pragmatic theories, but as textual and historical facts.......The attaching of the bodies to the σταυρός occurred and it is also plausible that it was done by nailing, due to texts outside the passion narrative. " (ibid. pg. 294, 296)

To be fair, Samuelsson later (pg. 296) does indicate doubt as to whether or not Jesus' feet were in some way nailed or attached to the cross or the crux.

Overall, Samuelsson's main argument throughout his thesis (at least from what I have read) is that the terminology of crucifixion in the NT and other ancient literature (in particular the word σταυρός) is that this sort of terminology is too vague and ambiguous to assert anything certain the method of Jesus' execution, while he acknowledges that some sort of event took place. 

Samuelsson has said that "Christians should reject or doubt the biblical text. My suggestion is that we should read the text as it is, not as we think it is."

Taking the NT as a whole, we can conclude that Jesus was indeed nailed to the cross. 

Here is a screenshot from Leon Morris' commentary on John 20:25. He notes some interesting information:

Leon Morris, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospel of John, pg. 852

The Google Books version of J.A. Bailey's book does not provide page 101 unfortunately. But I trust that Leon Morris is giving accurate information here. 

Jesus being nailed in his "hands" does not necessitate the tissue tearing, prompting Jesus to fall off of the cross. 

Ibn Anwar quotes a medical paper in order to support his argument, and that paper in turn quotes another sources (red box):

This is referring to Pierre Barbet's book A Doctor at Calvary: The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ As Described by a Surgeon (you can view the Google Books version here ). I found a pdf of the book and read the majority of chapter titled "The Wounds of the Hands". Here is what Barbet said (warning: this is really long) :

"There remains the skin which would probably tear as the result of the dragging of the body, as far as the commissure. I have indeed performed the following experiment. Having just amputated an arm two-thirds of the way up from a vigorous man, I drove a square nail of about ⅓ of an inch (the nail of the Passion) into the middle of the palm, in the third space. I gently suspended a weight of 88 pounds from the elbow (half the weight of the body of a man about 6 foot tall). After ten minutes, the wound had lengthened; the nail was at the level of the metacarpal heads. I then gave the whole a moderate shake and I saw the nail suddenly forcing its way through the space between the two metacarpal heads and making a large tear in the skin as far as the commissure. A second slight shake tore away what skin remained. Now, it was not a weight of 88 pounds but of nearly 209, which was dragging on each nail in the hands of the Crucified, for, as we know, the division of a weight between two oblique and symmetrical forces means that each one is bearing considerably more than half the weight. I have been able to find the most valuable testimony in an old Italian book which my good friend M. Porché, who is a member of the Committee of the Cultores Sanctӕ Sindonis, has been able to obtain. Mgr. Paleotti, {22} the Archbishop of Bologna, after he had seen the Santa Sindone in Turin in 1578, accompanied by St. Charles Borromeo, produced a detailed description of it, perhaps the first to appear (Bologna, 1598). Attached to it there is a very minute copy of the shroud showing the blood-stained images with their colours. It is the only valid copy that I know of. It is in places a work of the most marvellous intuition, for one has to remember that the author can have known very little about anatomy. For instance, he demonstrates at some length that the nail emerged “in the joint which anatomists call the carpus. ” Carpus is most exact, but he is unaware of the fact that this carpus is a bony group made up of eight ossicles, jointed among themselves, the integrant part of the hand, or that the joint of which he speaks, the radio-carpial joint, is above the carpus. He then builds up a complete theory, according to which the nail would have entered the upper part of the palm, but obliquely, pointing towards the arm, and would have emerged in the said “joint.” This is anatomically impossible, and I have tested it by experiment. But it was already the manus which was disturbing the exegetist. I have lately noticed that certain of my contemporaries seem to be haunted by this concern to reconcile the Scriptures with a false conception of anatomy. He adds—and I find this of great interest—that it is certain that the nail was not driven directly into the palm, “because the nail would not have supported the weight of the body but, owing to this weight, the hand would have been torn, as has been proved by the experiments carried out by talented sculptors on corpses with a view to making a picture. ” Don Scotti, a Salesian, who is a doctor of medicine and of science, and who collaborated with me in producing the Italian edition of the Five Wounds (Turin, 1940), has pointed out to me that these experiments belong, not to the Middle Ages but to the Renaissance—to that very XVI th century which saw the flowering of anatomical studies. This is worthy of note in view of the constantly revived hypothesis that the shroud is the work of some mediæval forger. I thus find myself supported by well-advised and anonymous predecessors, so that I feel confident as to the good sense of humanity in general, and of these artists in particular. It is certain, then, that the nails could not have been driven into the palms without rapidly causing a tear; we must look for another place. The objection will be made that the body of the Crucified was dragging entirely on the hands. I am not speaking here of the fixing of the feet, which could not appreciably relieve the dragging. The knees were bent and the nail in the feet only supported a negligible part of the weight; its main use was to prevent the feet from leaving the cross. But it has been objected that the arms could have been bound with ropes to the transverse beam of the cross, while the perineum might be resting on the sedile. Under these conditions the fixing of the hands would not need to be so solidly done; a part of the weight of the body would be supported by these contrivances. I have not waited to be contradicted, as Père Braun with fairness admits, before putting forward these objections and answering them. When we come to reason the matter out we shall find that we end by eliminating both these possibilities. As we saw in Chapter II (B, 6°), nailing was the method most frequently used, even for slaves. Binding with ropes was more rare except, perhaps, in certain countries, such as Egypt. There is no text which suggests that nailing and binding with ropes were combined; and, as it was unnecessary, I think one may confidently assume that it was not done. As for the sedile, the existence of which is implied by certain texts, and affirmed by St. Justin, its name is only to be found once, in Tertullian. We have already studied it in Chapter II (B, 4°), and we came to the conclusion that it was far from being regularly used. It was only added to the stipes when they intended to prolong the torture to the maximum; it would have just this effect. The crucified could, on account of it, put up a longer resistance to the asphyxiating tetany, as the dragging of the body would not bear entirely on the two hands. We may then presume, when we take into account that the agony of Jesus was relatively short, that His cross was without this support. Had He been bound with ropes as well, were this not foreign to the history of crucifixion, the agony would have been prolonged. But it is for another reason that we definitely do not admit that either of these methods was employed, and that is the sagging of the body on the cross. From now on we can work out the details of the crucifixion exactly as it was carried out. The patibulum was carried to the place of execution by the Condemned and, having been dropped on the ground, He would stretch out His arms on it. The arms, as held out by the executioners, would naturally be outstretched parallel with the patibulum, making an angle of 90° with the body. The executioners take the measurements and, with some sort of auger, make two holes in the beam. They know that the hands will be easy to pierce but the nails enter less easily into the wood. They then nail one of the hands, hold out the other and nail it as well. The body of Christ already reproduces the T of the cross, with the arms and the patibulum at an angle of 90° to the body. He is then placed once more on His feet, by lifting up the two ends of the patibulum. This they lift up and fix on the top of the stipes, thus making the cross into a Tau. At that moment the body sags, stretching out the arms, which go from an angle of 90 ° to 65°. All that remains to be done is to nail the feet, one above the other, as we shall see, with one single nail, bending the knees, which at once take up their sagging position. The angle behind these is of about 120° while the angle in front of the two ends of the legs is of about 150°. When, in order to escape from asphyxia, the body is straightened out, using the nail in the feet as a support, the arms are raised up towards the horizontal but, according to the shroud, do not go beyond an angle of 70°. The angles of the knees and the ends of the legs open out at the same time. I calculated all these angles of the sagging position without making any experiment but relied on the body dropping 10 inches, which would correspond with a passage of the arms from 90° to 65° (assuming a length of 1 foot 10 inches from the shoulder to the wrist). Afterwards I made the experiment on a dead body and the measurements corresponded exactly to this. The important thing in all this is the sagging of the body, which drops by 10 inches; it is clear that this sagging can only take place if it is not held up by any sedile or bound by any ropes. The sagging has taken place; there must, then, have been no ropes or sedile; the body was supported only by the nails in the hands, while the nail in the foot, in the sagging position, would be supporting nothing whatever. We, therefore, need to find a place in the hand where the nails would be able to hold firmly and to uphold this weight of nearly 209 pounds per nail. An executioner who knew his trade would know that the palm of a hand which was fixed by a nail would become torn away. We must, then, find out where the nail really went. Certainly, according to the shroud, it was not into the metacarpus. It is worth noting as we go along that a forger would certainly have placed it there. In this case, as in that of so many strange images which contradict the ways of iconography, he would have had to conform to the normal customs, since this false shroud was destined for the contemplation of the faithful. It would seem that this forger appears to be more and more clumsy. When one works one’s way upwards to the top of the palm, what does one find? A transversal projection consisting of the junction in their upper end of the thenar and hypothenar eminences, the short muscles of the thumb and the little finger. Behind this ridge, there is a small bundle of thick fibrous muscles, as high as the width of a finger, firmly inserted within on to the hamate and the pisiform bones, and outside on to the trapesium and the scaphoid bones. This crossed over the flexor tendons, which it holds firmly in place, closing the carpal canal and giving insertion to the muscles of the two eminences: that is, the transverse carpal ligament of the wrist. Above this ridge, a hollow appears, which corresponds to the chief bending fold of the wrist; then we have the anterior surface of the forearm. It would therefore seem natural to drive the nail, not into the projection which forms the heel of the hand, but into the hollow lying above it. It is then in the chief bending fold of the wrist that the point is actually placed. This fold is opposite a hole which is marked on the shroud at the back of the wrist, a little more than 3 inches from the head of the third metacarpal. Now, one can verify that this fold is exactly in front of the upper edge of the transverse carpal ligament, which already forms an extremely resistant transverse frenum; the surgery of the phlegmons of the sheaths teaches us to have a certain respect for it. On the other hand, this upper edge is projected on the wrist, barring the head of the capitate bone. The whole semi-lunar and a little of the triquetral go beyond and above it. If one examines a frontal cutting of the wrist, and better still a radiograph taken from in front, one finds that in the middle of the bones of the wrists there is a free space, bounded by the capitate, the semi-lunar, the triquetral and the hamate bones. We know this space so well that we know, in accordance with Destot’s work, that its disappearance means a dislocation of the wrist, the first stage of the major carpal traumatisms. Well, this space is situated just behind the upper edge of the transverse carpal ligament and below the bending fold of the wrist. I did not appreciate the importance of all this till I had made the following experiment: having amputated an arm two-thirds of the way up, I took, immediately after the operation, a square nail with sides of ⅓ of an inch (like those of the Passion), the length of which I had reduced to 2 inches for convenience of radiography. The hand was laid flat with its back on a plank, and I placed the point of the nail in the middle of the bending fold of the wrist, the nail being vertical. Then, with a large hammer, I hit the nail, as an executioner would do who knew how to hit hard. I repeated the same experiment with several men’s hands (the first had belonged to a woman). Each time I observed exactly the same thing. Once it had passed through the soft parts, and the nail had entered fully into the wrist, I could feel it, in spite of my left hand which was holding it firmly, moving a little obliquely, so that the base was leaning towards the fingers, the point towards the elbow; it then emerged through the skin of the back of the wrist at about a centimetre above the point of entry, which I observed after removing the nail from the plank. Radiographs were taken at once. I had thought, a priori, that the nail would dig deep into the wrist, and would probably pass through the semilunar bone, crushing it on its way. The movements of the nail while it was sinking had, however, made me suspect that it had found a more anatomical path. In fact, in the radiograph taken in profile, the nail, which is a little bit oblique, in a backwards and upwards direction, passes between the projections of the semi-lunar and of the capitate, which remain intact. (Figs. Ill and IV.) The radiograph taken from the front is even more interesting: the shadow of the square nail appears to be rectangular, on account of its obliquity. The nail has entered into Destot’s space; it has moved aside the four bones which surround it, without breaking one of them, merely widening the space. (Figs. Ill and IV.) The dissection of the hand confirmed my radiographic results. The point of entry, being a little outside and medial to Destot’s space, the point of the nail reached the head of the great bone, slid along its mesial slope, went down into the space and crossed it. The four bones were pushed aside, but were intact and by reason of thus being pushed were closely pressed against the nail. Elsewhere the latter was resting on the upper end of the transverse carpal ligament. Should one not, as St. John did when telling how Jesus was spared the breaking of the legs, remember the words of the prophet: “Os non comminuetis ex eo —You shall not break a bone of him”? The point of emergence is thus a little above and a little within the point of entry. If I had driven in the nail a little on the inner side of the bending fold I should have fallen straight into Destot’s space, which is a little on the inner side of the axis of the wrist in the axis of the third intermetacarpal space. The obliquity of the nail pointing backwards and upwards is solely caused by the arrangement of the bony surfaces around Destot’s space, for this happened every time during my experiments and in spite of my resistance. I have, in fact, repeated this experiment a dozen times since then on the hand of an arm which had just been amputated, moving the point of entry all round the middle of the bending fold. In each case the point took up its own direction and seemed to be slipping along the walls of a funnel and then to find its way spontaneously into the space which was awaiting it. If one tries to drive the nail in further down, into the transverse carpal ligament of the wrist, the latter is not perforated, but one slips underneath and the nail takes an oblique position, whether upwards towards Destot’s space or downwards towards the palm, where it disappears and where it cannot receive the weight of a body without tearing the hand. The last time that I performed on a freshly severed hand I took a bistoury (a kind of thin scalpel) with a blade ⅓ of an inch long. I pricked it into the bending fold of the wrist, and as I pushed I came through the wrist without effort, emerging at the back of the hand always at the same spot. This spot on the hand of a normal man is always about 3⅕ inches from the head of the third metacarpal. This is the same distance that I have measured on the shroud. There must, then, be an anatomical passage already formed, a natural road along which the nail passes along easily and where it is held solidly in position by the bones of the wrist, the latter being held firmly by their distended ligaments and by the transverse carpal ligament, on the upper edge of which it rests. The effusion of blood would be moderate and almost entirely venous; the nail meets with no important artery, such as the palmar arches, which would have spread out a broad patch of blood on the whole back of the hand laid against the cross and might have brought on a serious hӕmorrhage. Is it possible that trained executioners would not have known by experience of this ideal spot for crucifying the hands, combining every advantage and so easy to find? The answer is obvious. And this spot is precisely where the shroud shows us the mark of the nail, a spot of which no forger would have had any idea or the boldness to represent it. But these experiments had yet another surprise in store for me. I have stressed the point that I was operating on hands which still had life in them immediately after the amputation of the arm. Now, I observed on the first occasion, and regularly from then onwards, that at the moment when the nail went through the soft anterior parts, the palm being upwards, the thumb would bend sharply and would be exactly facing the palm by the contraction of the thenar muscles, while the four fingers bent very slightly; this was probably caused by the reflex mechanical stimulation of the long flexor tendons. Now, dissections have revealed to me that the trunk of the median nerve is always seriously injured by the nail; it is divided into sections, being broken sometimes halfway and sometimes two-thirds of the way across, according to the case. And the motor nerves of the oponens muscles and of the short flexor muscle of the thumb branches at this level off the median nerve. The contraction of these thenar muscles, which were still living like their motor nerve, could be easily explained by the mechanical stimulation of the median nerve. Christ must then have agonised and died and have become fixed in the cadaverous rigidity, with the thumbs bent inwards into His palms. And that is why, on the shroud, the two hands when seen from behind only show four fingers, and why the two thumbs are hidden in the palms. Could a forger have imagined this? Would he have dared to portray it? Indeed, so true is this that many ancient copyists of the shroud have added the thumbs; in the same way they have separated the feet and shown their forward faces with two nail holes; but none of this is to be seen on the shroud. But, alas, the median nerves are not merely the motor nerves, they are also the great sensory nerves. When they were injured and stretched out on the nails, in those extended arms, like the strings of a violin on their bridge, they must have caused the most horrible pain. Those who have seen, during the war, something of the wounds of the nervous trunks, know that it is one of the worst tortures imaginable; so bad is it that its prolongation would not be compatible with life, without some sort of suspension of the normal functions; this most frequently takes the form of a fainting fit. Now, Our Saviour, the God-Man, who was able to extend His resistance to the extreme limit, went on living and speaking until the consummatum est, for about three hours! And Mary, His Mother and our Mother, was there, at the foot of the cross! Let us, then, conclude with this thought, by which every Christian who is able to feel compassion must needs be overcome (but which is, nevertheless, no more than the result of strictly objective observation): the nails in the hands were driven into a natural space, generally known as Destot’s space, which is situated between the two rows of the bones of the wrist. Now, anatomists of every age and land regard the wrist as an integral part of the hand, which consists of the wrist, the metacarpus, and the fingers. We may then, in accordance with our experimental knowledge, with the shroud and with the Holy Scriptures, repeat after Our Lord, in the strictly anatomical sense, the words: “Vide manus ” and after David: “Foderunt manus meas' " (https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Doctor_at_Calvary/HTxODwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1)