Though I was not present to witness the deaths of Ananias (“Yahweh is gracious”) or Sapphira (“Beautiful”) and neither did I perform an autopsy on their bodies following, I have been asked by members of the community to address as a doctor and member of the Royal College of Surgeons the peculiarities of their sudden demise and to, if possible, describe the cause (other than the supernatural obvious). The community wants to retain a record of these events, as discreditable as it may be, so that Ananias and Sapphira and their legacy will not be forgotten.
Ananias: 42-year-old, male with no previous history of heart disease or cardiovascular difficulties and his wife, Sapphira: 30-year-old female with sparkling blue eyes and a clean health history were both suddenly and inexplicably struck dead on the same day, within a few hours of each other.
The couple had voluntarily sold a piece of property and brought the cash to the apostles as part of the voluntary communalism being put into practice by the Followers of the Way. Ananias reportedly told Peter that the amount he brought in was the full amount of the sale. But when challenged on this, Ananias began to sweat profusely. The apostle Peter described this as a lie not to men, but a lie to the Holy Spirit and asked him, “Wasn’t the property yours to use as you wished? And once sold, wasn’t the money yours to give as you desired? What put this scheme into your head? Your philargyry will not save you. Keep your money. Keep your mammon. Keep your mummery.”
And with that Ananias fell down dead; he ‘breathed out his soul,’ as one witness described it. A group of young men wrapped the body in a sheet and took it out for burial.
A few hours later Sapphira came too and was challenged in the same way by Peter. “Listen! You can hear the footsteps of the men who just finished burying your husband returning. They’ll carry you out next.” Immediately she fell down dead like her husband. The group of young men who had just buried her husband, wrapped her in a sheet and buried her body next to that of her husband.
There are a variety of physical conditions that could have resulted in this sort of sudden death. The sudden onset of excessive sweating could be indicative of a Heart Attack. This “cold sweat” would probably have been accompanied by other symptoms including chest pains and a racing or skipping heartbeat. If their deaths were caused by a Stroke they would have felt a numbness or a prickling sensation in various parts of their body, along with a headache and blurred vision. This is not an uncommon occurrence; deaths caused by strokes are fairly common. Emperor Valentinian died as the result of a stroke precipitated by yelling angrily at a group of foreign envoys. I might have suspected a Pulmonary Embolism but there is no indication that either of them were coughing or that they experienced a bloody or frothy mucus with the coughing. Shigellosis (a bacterial intestinal infection) might be considered except there was not an accompanying diarrhea, fever, abdominal pain, or bloody stool. Neither does an Aortic Rupture seem likely as this would have been accompanied by a sudden loss of blood pressure and a blue tinge to the skin. It may have been a case of Exhaustion as the result of diseased blood vessels in the lungs – but this seems unlikely. There was no trace of either Strychnine, or Prussic Acid, or Opium.
More exotic diagnoses have been suggested including: Being Struck by Lightning – I read an article in one of the Latin medical journals about an entire football team from The Democratic Republic of the Congo was simultaneously killed by a bolt of lightning. The old adage, “Lightning never strikes the same place twice” is veritably untrue. It is possible that the couple in question were both killed in the same place by separate lightning strikes. This is strange, but not outside of the realm of fortean possibilities. Or they could have been killed by other articles falling from the sky. A villager in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq was killed by a falling Meteorite, and the Greek playwright Aeschylus was killed by Tortoise dropped by an eagle flying overhead which mistook the author’s bald head for a stone on which to drop and break the tortoise’s shell. It’s true that none of the witnesses mention lightening, meteorites, or tortoises, but these possibilities cannot be completely discounted.
My sometimes traveling companion, Paul, has often suggested that members of the church who violate the standards and expectations of the community should be Turned Over to Satan for the “destruction of the flesh.” I am not sure what he means by that but it sounds like death to me.
Psychosomatic or Psychogenic Death (sometimes referred to as “Voodoo Death,” is a parasympathetic backlash of the mind against the strong emotions of fear and terror that is powerful enough to shut down the body. It is possible that the couple were, quite literally, scared to death.
A skillful physician could, from the color and cast of the skin, make an inferential diagnosis of an illness, but it is impossible at this far removal in both space and time to make any authoritative diagnosis, but it would seem that something incredible and fearful happened here. More than that I would not hazard to say.
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