Jesus Slept!
Did Jesus dies in a narcotic trance?
By Gloria Moss, June 2001
The idea that Jesus might not have died on the Cross, but was buried alive in some kind of narcotic trance, would have been a fatal heresy in the 12th century. But Gloria Moss has found some literary and herbal hints of this ‘secret’ among mediæval writers of classical romances.
Mysteries turn up in the strangest places. Buried in a story by the 12th-century writer Chrétien de Troyes is the tale of a beautiful woman who decides to escape an arranged marriage and elope with a young, handsome knight. Her motives are understandable enough, but the way she sets about it is strange indeed. Instead of simply eloping – an act that would tarnish her reputation – she decides to feign death and then run off in secret with her lover. To simulate her own death, she takes a narcotic potion and, three days after burial in a new tomb, is resurrected.
Parts of Chrétien’s story are strikingly familiar. There are elements not only of Romeo and Juliet – the potion, the tomb and the awakening – but also of the crucifixion story. Consider the parallels. The woman, like Jesus and Juliet, dies after taking a drink; she, like Jesus, is buried in a new tomb and restored to life three days later; even the heroine’s name, Fénice – the French for phœnix – serves as a reminder of Jesus, since the phœnix was used as a symbol of Christ and his resurrection in mediæval times. These and other allusions to the New Testament crucifixion story suggested that Chrétien was making a point. He was getting as near as he could to questioning a fundamental tenet of Christianity – Jesus’ resurrection. ...
Many questions suggest themselves. If Chrétien had reason to believe, for example, that Jesus took a narcotic potion on the cross, what could it have been? And are there any other traces in his work of a belief that Jesus survived the crucifixion?
Various people have suggested in the past that Jesus may have survived the crucifixion, citing as proof the fact that blood flowed from the lance wound after he was declared dead. (It is medical opinion that blood cannot flow from a corpse.) Two of the more recent books – The Jesus Conspiracy and The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail – suggest that he owed his survival to a potion containing opium and vinegar. The inclusion of vinegar should come as no surprise, since all the Gospel accounts, except Luke’s, refer to the fact that Jesus’ death followed his being offered a sponge soaked with vinegar.
The idea that the sponge contained opium might appear superficially attractive – even the first-century master of herbalism, Dioscorides (above, c. AD 60–75), refers to the sleep-inducing qualities of opium – but there are several arguments against it. First, the largest component in the opium, morphine, produces rapid breathing, a very different effect from the “giving up of the breath” reported of Jesus. Then, morphine is absorbed only slowly by the body, arguing against the sudden reaction reported after Jesus took the vinegar. Last but not least is the fact that vinegar, according to Dioscorides, counteracts every poison "and in particular opium." This would not be disputed today, since the effect of combining acetic acid (vinegar) with morphine sulphate (the narcotic component of opium) is to produce a substance – morphine acetate – which is less effective as a narcotic than the original morphine sulphate.
The idea that a vinegar-based potion contained opium can therefore be scotched. Ninth- and 12th-century sources point to another possibility. According to the Antidotarium of Nicolai of Salerno, a soporific sponge could be applied to patients’ nostrils to create a state of anæsthesia. He suggests that one of the substances in the sponge was mandrake.
According to Dioscorides, touching or eating the apple-like fruit of the plant could bring on tiredness, and the root and bark were even more potent. Cooked in vinegar, the root could leave a person unconscious for up to three or four hours, leading Dioscorides to recommend its use for “people about to be cut or cauterised (who) wish to become insensible to the pain.” The bark could produce a "dead sleep", and a whiff of it was enough to produce a death-like stupor.
In the 1890s, a doctor, Benjamin Ward Richardson, carried out experiments with mandrake. He administered a mixture of alcohol and mandrake root to pigeons and rabbits, and found that not only did it act as a "general anæsthetic of the most potent quality," but the "animals’ hearts continued to beat after their respiration had ceased." Interestingly, New Testament accounts describe Jesus as having "given up the breath." We now know that mandrake contains a mydriatic alkaloid, mandragorine (C17 H27 O3 N), which interferes with the transmission of nerve impulses across pathways. You only need to block a few pathways to produce a devastating effect and stop all sensation or control of movement.
There are references to mandrake in the Old Testament, showing that it grew in biblical lands (Genesis 30:14; Song of Songs 7:11–13). There also appear to be references to mandrake in the work of the first-century historian Josephus. Josephus refers to a plant ba’ar (a word meaning to burn) as having characteristics which are associated only with mandrake. He also says that it shines brightly at night – a feature of mandrake described elsewhere. Further, the root of mandrake came to be valued as a talisman, believed to confer on people their every wish. ...