"The Passion" too violent? The "Shroud of Turin" shows it happened!

Shroud of Turin history presented in Upstate
Retired surgeon relays his nearly 40 years of research on the Shroud of Turin

GREENVILLE — Dr. William E. Rabil has no doubt that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. Rabil, a retired general surgeon from Winston-Salem, N.C., began studying the shroud in the late 1950s and has been lecturing about it for nearly 40 years. He made two slide presentations to parishioners at St. Mary Church on March 6.

Rabil began with a brief history of the shroud. After the crucifixion, the shroud was originally hidden in Jerusalem and was thought to have been moved to Edessa (Urfa, Turkey) after Jerusalem fell to the Romans in A.D. 70. In 944, the Byzantine Imperial Army invaded Edessa to recover the shroud and brought it to Constantinople (now Istanbul). Raiders from the Fourth Crusade invaded Istanbul in 1294 and took the shroud to Europe. It is believed to have been hidden by the Knights Templar until Geoffrey DeCharney exhibited it in Liren, France, in 1353. From that point forward, its history is fully documented. The shroud was moved to Turin, Italy, in 1578 and has remained there ever since. It is kept in a silver reliquary behind bullet-proof glass inside the Chapel of the Shroud.

The shroud was first photographed in 1898 by Italian photographer Secondo Pia. His first shot was a misfire, but his second shot caused him to fall to his knees. On the negative was the "positive image of Jesus Christ." The markings on the shroud are negative images, and it took the photographic reversal of light and dark to reveal the positive image of a man's body.

While the evidence cannot prove conclusively that the image on the shroud is Jesus, it is definitely the image of man between 5 feet 11 inches and 6 feet tall who weighed approximately 175 pounds. Forensic medical investigation confirms that the man died from crucifixion.

The body in the shroud was unclothed. All four books of the Gospel tell of Roman soldiers casting lots for Jesus' garments.

The shroud was not wrapped around the body, as one might expect. The body was placed on top of the shroud with the feet at one end. The other end of the shroud was brought over the head and spread on top of the body, ending at the feet.

Jesus' torture and crucifixion were much bloodier than most paintings have ever depicted. The back of the body in the shroud shows multiple scourge marks from the nape of the neck to the feet. The Romans used a flagrum for scourging. A flagrum was a whip with bone or metal-tipped leather thongs that was specifically designed to tear flesh. One-hundred twenty scourge marks were counted on the body.

Blood had not been washed from the body in the shroud. The Sabbath was fast approaching when Jesus was taken down from the cross, and he had to be buried before sundown. The doctor emphasized that Jesus' body would have gone into rigor mortis almost immediately after death because of the trauma of crucifixion, which would have made washing very difficult. Jewish burial practices also precluded washing blood that was flowing at the time of death.

The face shows bruising on the nose; Jesus was struck on the nose by a high priest. The body had a mustache and beard, and there is evidence that facial hair had been plucked.

There were no broken bones, but some bones were displaced. There is evidence of spike wounds to both wrists and the feet. Forensic investigators have proved that the spikes were not pounded into Jesus' palms because the weight of an adult would have torn completely through all tissues, and he would have fallen off the cross. The spikes were pounded into his wrists, and the bones separated. One foot was nailed over the other.

According to Dr. John Heller in his book, Report on the Shroud of Turin (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1983), "There is a swelling of both shoulders, with abrasions indicating something heavy and rough had been carried across the man's shoulders within hours of death."

There is no pigment on the linen cloth of the shroud. If paint had been used, the wound pattern would have become obliterated. The blood stains on the back of the skull demonstrate the unique cohesive properties of blood. No other substance behaves the same way. Scientific testing has confirmed that the stains are blood and body fluids.

The forensic examination shows that the crown of thorns was actually a cap over the entire scalp. A painting done from the shroud image shows a thorn above Jesus' right eye.

Some photos of the shroud show the image of coins placed over both eyes, a Jewish burial custom. The image exactly matches that of a coin minted during the reign of Pontius Pilate between A.D. 29 and 33.

Botanical experts have examined fragments of the shroud and found spores and seeds from 27 plants that are indigenous to Jerusalem. Geological analysis of particles showed limestone indigenous to caves surrounding Jerusalem and suggested that the shroud was placed in a damp tomb or cave.

Jesus died after about three hours on the cross, which was considered fast for a man of his age and physical condition. Medical experts theorize that he was severely weakened by the brutal scourging. Death by crucifixion is very painful. The muscles of the arms, chest, and legs quickly go into spasm, and the victim dies of asphyxiation.

The shroud has been studied and tested carefully by surgeons, forensic scientists, nuclear scientists, radiologists, Biblical scholars, botanists, and historians. Experts have disagreed with each other and challenged each other's theories and tests. Nobody will ever prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Shroud of Turin was the burial cloth of Jesus Christ — but nobody can prove it wasn't either.

How does the existence of a historical artifact (if true, and I believe it probably is, though I wouldn't base my apologetic on it), "muddy up the waters" about the crucifixion? I'm sorry, but I'm just not following your logic here.

The Bible is very clear that after the Resurrection, Jesus' burial cloth was left behind. It makes a certain historical sense that the apostles would have held onto it, and the Bible simply doesn't say either way.

The fact that I intellectually believe that the Shroud is probably genuine does not mean that I need to in order to believe in Jesus or put my faith in His redemptive act--indeed, I believed for over a decade before I ever heard of the Shroud. If the Shroud is later proven false by competent science (which it has not), then my faith in Jesus will not be so much as bruised, let alone be destroyed. If it's proven 100% true, then it becomes yet another reason that I can toss on the already hefty pile of personal, historical, philisophical, prophetic, and miraculous reasons why I believe that Jesus was the Messiah, that He died to make an atonement for my sins, and that He rose again.

I understand and applaud a healthy skepticism, but your statements that "The Shroud of Turin is real ONLY if Jesus is NOT the Christ" and that God would have to be incompetant to allow such an artifact to exist make no sense, theological or otherwise.

There is an independent proof to authenticate the Shroud of Turin. The Sudarium of Oviedo, a smaller cloth napkin, was placed over the face and about the head of the same man whose blood stains are on the Shroud.

In the 1st Century, it was customary among Jews to cover the head or face of the dead out of respect while burial preparations were underway, particularly if there was damage or injury. In 1955, the Most Reverend Monsignor Guilio Ricci discovered similarities in the blood stain patterns on the Sudarium and the blood stains on the Shroud. This suggested that both cloths had been used at some time to cover the same injured head at closely the same times. Recent forensic pathology, blood chemistry analysis, and additional studies of congruent patterns in the stains support this supposition.

The Sudarium has a very different history than the Shroud. The Sudarium has been kept in the Cathedral at Oviedo, Spain since the middle of the eighth century. Historical documents in the late Roman period and the early middle ages are often sketchy and prone to chronological mistakes and those pertaining to the Sudarium are no exception. But from a multiplicity of sources we can extract core elements of historical certainty. We are reasonably sure that the Sudarium came to Oviedo from Jerusalem and that the Sudarium probably dates to the first century. Its journey to its present location began in 644 AD when Persians, under Chosroes II, invaded Jerusalem and the Sudarium was moved out of the city to safety.

We are uncertain of its route to Spain. It may have first been taken to Alexandria along with numerous other relics (real or otherwise) and from there, in succeeding years, along the coast of North Africa ahead of advancing armies. Or it may have been taken by a more direct sea route to Spain. We know that for about 75 years after it arrived in Spain it was kept in Toledo. Then in 718, to protect it from Moslem Arab armies, which had invaded Spain only seven years earlier, it was moved northward with fleeing Christians. Oviedo became the capital of a northern enclave of the Spanish peninsula -- what remained of Christian Spain -- in about 761 AD. It was in Oviedo, that the Sudarium was stored for safe keeping. It has been there since.

A 1999 report, "Recent Historical Investigations on the Sudarium of Oveido," published by Mark Guscin, a member of the multi-disciplined Investigation Team of the Centro Español de Sindonología and the British Society for the Turin Shroud, summarized the forensic findings to date. Here are some highlights of that report:

*"It seems to be a funeral cloth that was probably placed over the head of the corpse of an adult male of normal constitution. The man whose face the Sudarium covered had a beard, moustache and long hair, tied up at the nape of his neck into a ponytail."

*"The man was dead. The mechanism that formed the stains is incompatible with any kind of breathing movement."

*"the man was wounded before death with something that made his scalp bleed and produced wounds on his neck, shoulders and upper part of the back."

*"The man suffered a pulmonary oedema as a consequence of the terminal process. The main stains are one part blood and six parts fluid from the pulmonary oedema."

*"the only position compatible with the formation of the stains on the Oviedo cloth is both arms outstretched above the head and the feet in such a position as to make breathing very difficult, i.e. a position totally compatible with crucifixion. We can say that the man was wounded first (blood on the head, shoulders and back) and then 'crucified.'"

*"on reaching the destination, the body was placed face up and for unknown reasons, the cloth was taken off the head."

Dr. Alan Whanger, of Duke University, confirmed the similarities in the blood stain patterns between the Sudarium and the Shroud using the Polarized Image Overlay Technique. Dr. Whanger found over seventy congruent blood stain patterns on the face and over fifty on the back of the head and neck. This was independently confirmed by Thomas Vuke using computerized methods for assessing congruence of the blood stains.

Significantly, Swiss criminologist Dr. Max Frei, who identified 58 pollens on the Shroud, also found pollens on the Sudarium that matched pollens on the Shroud thus linking both cloths to the Jerusalem environs.

In the summer of 1999, Israeli scientist Dr. Avinoam Danin, Professor of Botany at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, told the International Botanical Congress in St Louis, Missouri, that:

There is no way that similar patterns of blood stains, probably of the identical blood type, with the same type of pollen grains, could not be synchronic - covering the same body...The pollen association and the similarities in the blood stains in the two cloths provide clear evidence that the shroud originated before the 8th Century.

Dr Danin has confirmed much of the work by Dr. Max Frei. He feels that certain pollens grains could only have come from an area in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

Other tests support the proposition that the Sudarium and the Shroud were both covering the same body at nearly the same time. Dr. Franca Pastore Trossello a forensic scientist at the University of Turin found that the fabric of the Shroud and the Sudarium are of a similar weave and texture suggesting a common origin. Nello Balossino, also from the University of Turin found that the traces of blood on both cloths match perfectly.

In summarizing the evidence, Guscin wrote:

There are many points of coincidence between all these points and the Shroud of Turin - the blood group, the way the corpse was tortured and died, and the macroscopic overlay of the stains on each cloth. This is especially notable in that the blood on the Sudarium shed in life, as opposed to post mortem, corresponds exactly in blood group, blood type and surface area to those stains on the Shroud on the nape of the neck. If it is clear that the two cloths must have covered the same corpse, and this conclusion is inevitable from all the studies carried out up to date, and if the history of the Sudarium can be trustworthily extended back beyond the fourteenth century, which is often referred to as the Shroud's first documented historical appearance, then this would take the Shroud back to at least the earliest dates of the Sudarium's known history. The ark of relics and the Sudarium have without any doubt at all been in Spain since the beginning of the seventh century, and the history recorded in various manuscripts from various times and geographical areas take it all the way back to Jerusalem in the first century. The importance of this for Shroud history cannot be overstressed.

Source: http://www.shroudstory.com/sudarium.htm

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