Posted on 12/24/2009 10:28:07 AM PST by Salman
From a long-sealed cave tomb, archaeologists have excavated the only known Jesus-era burial shroud in Jerusalem, a new study says.
The discovery adds to evidence that the controversial Shroud of Turin did not wrap the body of Christ, researchers say.
[ snip ]
The weave of the Tomb of the Shroud fabric, the new study says, casts further doubt on the Shroud of Turin as Jesus' burial cloth.
The newfound shroud was something of a patchwork of simply woven linen and wool textiles, the study found. The Shroud of Turin, by contrast, is made of a single textile woven in a complex twill pattern, a type of cloth not known to have been available in the region until medieval times, Gibson said.
Both the tomb's location and the textile offer evidence for the apparently elite status of the corpse, he added. The way the wool in the shroud was spun indicates it had been imported from elsewhere in the Mediterraneansomething a wealthy Jerusalem family from this period would likely have done.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
Such a large piece of linen was very costly. The pictures I've seen show repairs, and repairing was like an art during the Medieval times and before. For such a piece of cloth to last even several hundred years makes it remarkable.
If the fabric is not 2000 years old, it is not the Shroud, whatever the image shows. They just need to competently test the fabric from an area that has not been repaired. It is very strange that they have not done this.
If the fabric tests out to be from the time of Christ, that would make the cloth a fascinating relic even without the image, since preserving cloth for so long a period of time. It would also add a lot of credit to whether the image is authentic and supernaturally produced.
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Thanks a fool in paradise. I got here a little late; I was basically offline from FR for a few days, and your ping got buried. |
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Neat post.
Some straw on the “less likely to be real” side of the scale, in that:
(1) it survived (common argument being the mere survival of the SOT is a miracle) and
(2) it is consistent with the argument that the fabric of the SOT was not in use at the time in question.
But, just some weight and not conclusive.
I agree — in matters of religion (in particular, denominational arguments among Christians), there is increasingly little room for logic on any side.
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