<p>15:44 <i>And Pilate wondered if he were already dead, and called the centurion. He asked him whether he was already dead</i>- Josephus records that victims usually lingered for two days or so before death. The Lord died so quickly. And the legs were broken so that the victims would die quickly (not, as has sometimes been supposed, to stop them running away). These things are harmonized by realizing that there was a support on which the victim could seek temporal relief in order to keep himself alive. Werner Keller (<i>The Bible As History</i> p. 356) explains: &quot;There was often a small support attached called a &quot;sedile&quot; (seat). if the victim hanging there eased his misery from time to time by supporting himself on this, the blood returned to the upper half of his body... when the torture of the crucified man was finally to be brought to an end, the &quot;crucifragrum&quot; was proceeded with: his legs were broken. That meant that he could no longer ease his weight in the footrests and heart failure quickly followed&quot;. It seems to me that in keeping with His refusal of the pain killer, His not requesting a drink until the very end, His willing giving of His life... that the Lord didn't press down on the seat, so that effectively He tortured Himself to death. If the victim did not press down on the sedile, the dead weight of the body would cause the intercostal muscles that facilitate inhaling to become too weakened to function. The lungs, unable to empty, would become full of carbon dioxide and death would result from asphyxia. The fact the Lord was making the effort to talk to people and yet, it seems, not pressing down on the sedile&hellip; is simply an essay in His self control, in His love, to bother to talk to others&hellip; which should inspire us to rise out of our introspection and make the effort likewise to connect with others. Seneca (<i>Dialogue 3</i>) writes: &ldquo;Is it worth to weigh down on one&rsquo;s own wound and hand impaled on a gibbet to postpone something which is... the end of punishment i.e. death?&quot;. In practice, the victim was only prolonging his own agony by pressing down on the rest. If the Lord didn't do this, He must have been extremely faint. Keller also comments: &quot;In the case of a person suspended by his two hands the blood sinks very quickly into the lower half of the body. After six to twelve minutes blood pressure has dropped by 50% and the pulse rate has doubled&quot;. The Lord must have felt His every heartbeat, and therefore been able to sense when He was approaching death. Yet amidst the faintness, the knowledge that His heart was about to give out, the Lord remained, I am convinced, completely intellectually consciousness. Deep within Him, that perfect mind was centred on the Father and His word. Several Psalms take on a literal reference to the Lord's final agony: &quot;My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me... my flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever&quot; (Ps. 38:10; 73:26).</p>