John 20:1-9Re-read this carefully noting the highlighted sections.Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!” So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)
First, remember that Jesus' disciples at this time were not expecting Jesus to rise from the dead.
Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb and, seeing that the tomb is empty, reasonably concludes that "They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him!"
Next, Peter and John run to the tomb. John stops at the entrance and notices the "strips of linen" at the entrance to the tomb: "He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in." No reaction of John's is noted.
Next, Peter goes into the tomb and notices another cloth: "Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen."
We see that only the burial cloth was in the tomb.
Finally, John enters the tomb. "Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed."
He saw and believed. What did he see? And why did it cause him to believe? The only thing in the tomb, according to Scripture, was the burial cloth. Would the existence of the burial cloth cause John "to believe"? If so, why didn't John "believe" before entering the cave, when he saw the strips of linen? Perhaps there was something distinctive and miraculous about the burial cloth that was in the tomb.
The burial cloth was most likely a size comparable to the Shroud. Jesus was a Jew, and the Jewish burial custom of the time was to lay the corpse onto a piece of cloth which was then folded over the body.
Now, consider this passage again:
"the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen."
Why would the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' body be described as "the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head"? The clue is in the following line. "The cloth was folded up by itself." Perhaps only Jesus' facial image was visible on the folded burial cloth.
Here is a story today from the Los Alamos Monitor:
A Los Alamos scientist has refuted modern scientific claims that date the Shroud of Turin to medieval times.
Raymond N. Rogers, a retired chemist from Los Alamos National Laboratory, said a 1988 radiocarbon study of the purported burial shroud of Jesus was flawed.
While the early conclusions from laboratories in Arizona, Cambridge and Zurich narrowed the time period for the shroud from 1260-1390 AD, well after the time of the historical Jesus, Rogers' review of sample threads from the
shroud has widened the window to a period at least 1,300 years ago and going back as far as 3,000 years.
The problem with the earlier story, which was meant to end decades of controversy marked by a great deal of junk science, said Rogers in an interview Thursday, was that the sample that had been analyzed using carbon 14 dating techniques had a peculiar coating that set it apart from the main piece of cloth.
In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Thermochimica Acta, Jan. 20, Rogers concluded that a new radiocarbon analysis would be needed for a more accurate determination of the age of the shroud.
Rogers' interest in the dispute is only one aspect of his broader interest in using chemical analysis for archaelogical purposes. He assisted in dating a skull found at Murray Springs in Midland to the Folsom period and has published many papers on the shroud.
In 1978 Rogers led a major scientific delegation to Turin that included a number of LANL scientists. The project, called the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) involved a 30-member team, carrying some 22,000 pounds of
equipment, Rogers said.
The investigators were granted 24 hours of access to the shroud, but ended up having a week to study the object.
Rogers had a special kind of tape made by the 3M Corp. to take samples from all parts of the shroud, including the image areas, blood spots and scorched places, subjecting them later to an array of tests, including x-ray fluorescence, transmission spectroscopy and spectrometry and thermal emission.
The results were published in peer-reviewed journals between 1979 and 1982, Rogers said. His wife, Jean Rogers, also a chemist, has worked closely with him on these projects.
"People in Turin made me sign a legal document agreeing that none of the samples, or anything of substance, would be used for dating the cloth," he said.
"I would have bet 10 to one," he said, based on those results, "that that piece of cloth was from Roman times," using a technique described by the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder who was born in 23 AD.
But the radiocarbon dating that came along a few years later seemed to settle the matter differently.
Then, a few years ago, another group came along and said the medieval origin was all wrong because the sample came from a patch, recalled Rogers.
They also made a number of other claims that Rogers considered typical of "the lunatic fringe," - that an intense beam of particles had created the image at the time the body dematerialized.
"This one was the last straw," Rogers said, who was confident he could disprove their claim.
So he got his archived thread samples out and began looking at them again, only to conclude that the idea of the patch that threw the carbon dating off might be correct.
"By god, these people might be right," he said about the moment of realization. "That's very hard for a scientist to agree with the lunatic fringe."
He decided to do an in-depth study, which led to the recent paper and many new insights on the nature of the shroud.
"I don't believe there's anything magic about it," he said. "I'm just trying to find out as much as possible about the technology that was used and what can be said about this object."
Dan