Posted on 03/30/2012 1:16:09 AM PDT by Swordmaker
The Turin Shroud has baffled scholars through the ages but in his new book, The Sign, Thomas de Wesselow reveals a new theory linking the cloth to the Resurrection.
For centuries the Turin Shroud, regarded by some as the burial cloth of Jesus, by others as the most elaborate hoax in history, has inspired extraordinary and conflicting passions. Popes, princes and paupers have for 700 years been making pilgrimages the length of Europe to stand in its presence while scientists have dedicated their whole working lives to trying to explain rationally how the ghostly image on the cloth, even more striking when seen as a photographic negative, and matching in every last detail the crucifixion narrative, could have been created. And still a final, commonly agreed answer remains elusive, despite carbon-dating in 1988 having pronounced it a forgery.
“That’s what first attracted me,” says Thomas de Wesselow, an engagingly serious 40-year-old Cambridge academic. “I’ve always loved a mystery ever since I was a boy.” And so he became the latest in a long line to abandon everything to try to solve the riddle of the Shroud. Eight years ago, de Wesselow was a successful art historian, based at King’s College, making a name for himself in scholarly circles by taking a fresh look at centuries-old disputes over the attribution of masterpieces of Renaissance painting. Today, he still lives in the university city – we are sitting in its Fitzwilliam Museum café – but de Wesselow has thrown up his conventional career and any hopes of a professorial chair to join the ranks of what he laughingly calls “shrouds”.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
There is a very precise and repeated commandment against blending wool and linen in the Torah - I find it highly unlikely that any believing Hebrew would use such a thing, even for a burial shroud -- That it was found among elite tombs would point to the occupant being an Idumean - An Edomite, like Herod the Great, who were installed by the Romans as a ruling class over Jerusalem and Israel. And whom, as Edomites, observed a bastardized form of the Torah, and may well have disregarded the commandment against mixing of textiles.
Of course, that is a speculation on my part...
Furthermore, Joseph of Aramathea, in whose tomb the Christ was laid, was a very wealthy man - It is no stretch of the imagination that he might well have obtained the very high value twill cloth for the burial... And wrt it's uniqueness as a burial cloth, remember that Jesus' burial was a rushed affair, with mere hours to get him into the ground before the beginning of Passover - So rushed indeed, that the women went after the fact to obtain proper embalming supplies - It is not unlikely that something out-of-the-norm might be used in such an instance. No doubt all the shops were already closed, as He died at the hour of the sacrificing of the lambs - at that time, every family would either be involved in the sacrifice, or would already be home preparing the lamb for the Passover feast...
My point being that one cannot necessarily point to a generic burial cloth (c. 1AD) and claim the shroud a fake because it does not match... Especially so wrt a burial cloth made of mixed textiles, which would have been forbidden by the Law.
‘But blessed are they who have not seen yet believe.’
[21twelve:] From what I have read, it was not common in Cannan, but was in use in Europe at the time.
An herringbone twill is a very old pattern, going waaaay back among the Celts, and present in Italy and Egypt earlier than Christ. It is hardly imaginable that it wasn't available in the middle-east, which was the trade center between east and west, not to mention it's popularity due to it's durable nature. I read somewhere that the 3/1 twill weave of the cloth was probably Italian by origin... Roman products were no doubt available on the local market.
Are you willfully ignorant or just lazily so?
What has been proven fake is the false claims and false testings. and the information is all documented for anyone to see/read/watch.
But, if you are simply honestly uninformed, Here's just ONE of many sources that might help you.
The History Channel will be re-showing their documentary next Friday, April 6th.
http://www.history.com/shows/the-real-face-of-jesus
Perhaps you could watch it and get back to us?
For anyone who didn't catch this documentary a couple-three years ago - it's one one of the best yet on The Shroud.
Live link next post
The face image does look a bit like stylized art rather than a shadowgram of a human of typical Jewish lineage (the bible says He wasn’t handsome in a worldly sense, but neither does it peg Him as looking like an oddball). The face is vertically elongated and has almost straight sides. But again when you’re talking about a one of a kind person like Jesus Christ who can perform metaphysical works at will, all bets are off anyhow. If He wanted to leave an art print instead of a literal likeness, He could.
Good points, but I think, clearly even the Jews buried their dead, so the problem of handling blood on a dead person was resolved somehow. In fact, we know how it was resolved: the one who washed, embalmed and dressed the body went through a set ritual of purification. The same women, -- we know who they were, -- given the significance of the empty tomb and the preserved burial cloth -- would save the cloth.
But the aversion to blood might explain how it disappeared from view for centuries. The disciples knew it was sacred, but held back from handling or showing it without a direct need.
Right back at ya, silly, intellectually lazy, closed-minded dope:
http://www.sillybeliefs.com/shroud.html
and
Then - to try to figure out how the information from the body got onto the shroud they imagined various things. And they figured it might have been a narrow band of energy that scanned the body - just like a photocopier.
So they put a “photocopier” of sorts over the 3D model they had made, scanned it, printed it out, and came back up with a flat representation that looked just like the shroud. It's a pretty interesting show.
There was a gal physicist that is pretty highly regarded as I recall. She talks I think about how the Resurrection was something of a black hole event where time and space all come together or something. Pretty weird to me, but she talked about how much energy would be released in those types of events, etc.
“But the aversion to blood might explain how it disappeared from view for centuries. The disciples knew it was sacred, but held back from handling or showing it without a direct need.”
Makes sense, but I’m still sticking with my theory of why it went missing for so many years as laid out in post 21. ;)
If you can’t be bothered to check the source of my link, then name-calling and childish innuendo doesn’t make you look less intellectually lazy, nor does implied rhetorical cleverness make you look less parochial of thought.
Space and time are God’s creations and servants. Holy Xerox? Who knows. The Shroud might be genuine. I simply fear too much will be read into artifacts and too little into God’s revealed word.
“I simply fear too much will be read into artifacts and too little into God’s revealed word.”
True enough. Of course that only takes an image on a tortilla.
But let's not forget that Joseph of Arimathea was Jesus's uncle - a wealthy man indeed.p>Also, in Jewish law at that time, ONLY a relative could petition and get permission for the body of a criminal.
In addition, It has been credibly postulated that 'Joseph the "carpenter" was more probably a builder or mason, the word for it interchangeable - and it's quite possible that Joseph and the young Jesus walked the hour's distance to the 'shining city on the hill' being rebuilt about 4 miles from Nazareth -and made a better living than would only a carpenter - a splendid cosmopolitan city of white marble...Zippori, called Sepphoris in Greek, a crossroads of trade and where Latin, Greek and Aramaic were freely spoken.
The culture that Jesus grew up in was not as backwater as some would have us think.
As well, after Joseph, the 'carpenter/mason" died, by custom, the next male kin would have assumed guardianship over the family - Joseph of Arimathea again.
Dumb de dumb dumb, dumb dumb!
It quotes the Nature article as gospel, despite later discoveries that the statistical analysis on the measurements of the samples were incorrect ; in particular the Arizona results were inconsistent with the other labs.
Later work showed that there existed a relationship between the C-14 measured age of each sample and its distance from the edge of the Shroud; the first clue that the samples taken were not representative of the Shroud as a whole.
As it turns out, the Shroud had been patched in the 1530s to repair burns; and the sampling of the Shroud for testing picked up samples of the patch. (This was piss-poor protocol by the people who did the testing, as well as the custodians of the Shroud, who wanted to limit the damage to the Shroud: if they had followed proper procedure by making tests on independent samples from all over the Shroud, not only would one have guaranteed that the sample was "indicative of the Shroud as a whole" but any anomolous results from near the patch would have stuck out like a sore thumb).
One summary of developments since the C-14 paper was published is here.
Joe Nickell is a geologist and has not published his drivel in peer-reviewed scientific literature, unlike the reputable research on the Shroud.
My god, you are an unsuccessful troll.
Your theory is good too, except it does not explain the hiatus of several centuries. Helium balloons don’t last that long.
Gee, you must be new here. Either that or you don’t quite get the whole “argumentation” thing...
You post links here to substantiate your own argument, not make the argument for you. Citing a respected source while making a crap argument is still a crap argument: and yours typifies the genus.
And I won’t bother to give name to what expecting others to do for you what you should have done for yourself.
Oh, and thank you for the “implied” compliment! You just don’t know the warm feeling I get when I find I’ve frustrated anyone so petty they have to taint the manifestly obvious with a petulant qualification ;o)
You lost a long time ago.
Forgive me, but I just can't get the vision of PeeWee Herman delivering that line, out of my head.
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