Question
Gramps,
The piercing of the Savior by the Roman soldier allowed blood and water to come out. Somewhere I read that this proved he was 1/2 god and 1/2 man. Blood from his mother and celestial fluid or (water)blood from his father. Do you know where this statement is?
Ken
Answer
Dear Ken,
I am not aware of any LDS writer or authority attaching the type of significance to the event that you suggest.
However, in Jesus the Christ, Elder James E. Talmage observed the following:
If the soldier’s spear was thrust into the left side of the Lord’s body and actually penetrated the heart, the outrush of “blood and water” observed by John is further evidence of a cardiac rupture; for it is known that in the rare instances of death resulting from a breaking of any part of the wall of the heart, blood accumulates within the pericardium, and there undergoes a change by which the corpuscles separate as a partially clotted mass from the almost colorless, watery serum. . . .
The present writer [i.e., Elder Talmage] believes that the Lord Jesus died of a broken heart. The psalmist sang in dolorous measure according to his inspired prevision of the Lord’s passion: ‘Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.’ (Psalm 69:20, 21; see also 22:14.)
Gramps