THE TRUTH BEHIND SHROUD OF TURIN
The Shroud of Turin has intrigued
believers and non-believers alike for centuries. It was a miracle that
even the science doesn’t know how a man's image got imprinted on a linen cloth.
Many controversies and debates went on for centuries to find the truth behind
the Shroud of Turin and nobody was able to find the truth until now.
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| Turin Bishops |
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| positive and negative images of the shroud head part |
When you search Internet about
what is Shroud of Turin, the answer will be
The Shroud of Turin or Turin Shroud
is a linen cloth and the faint imprint on it, the image of a man who has been
tortured and crucified, really is Christ himself?
Well... Is it? or is there more? read on....
"In all of the approximately 1,000 tombs from the first century A.D.
which have been excavated around Jerusalem, not one fragment of a shroud had
been found" until now, said archaeologist Shimon Gibson, who excavated the
site for the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Found in a first-century cemetery filled with priestly and aristocratic
burials, the tomb was initially opened by looters, who left the shroud behind,
apparently thinking it has no market value. Experts were able to retrieve the
artifact before it began to disintegrate.
The so-called Tomb of the Shroud is a rarity among Jerusalem tombs from the
time of Jesus.
For starters, the Tomb of the Shroud appears to have been sealed shut with
plaster for 2,000 years, perhaps as a precaution against the spread of leprosy
or tuberculosis, which was also detected in DNA extracted from the man's bones.
The tight seal apparently allowed the shroud—radiocarbon-dated to between
A.D. 1 and 50—to survive the high humidity levels characteristic of
Jerusalem-area caves.
Jesus vs the Shroud
Housed since 1578 in a Turin, Italy, cathedral, the Shroud of Turin is
believed by many to have wrapped the body of Jesus Christ after his death in
Jerusalem—but the cloth has been decried as a hoax by many others. Several
studies have attempted to settle the debate.
Carbon-dating studies by three different laboratories in the late 1980s, for
example, suggested the shroud was made between A.D. 1260 and 1390, long after
the time of Jesus. In 2005 another study asserted that the 1980s test had been based on a patch added in the Middle Ages and that the shroud is actually 1,300 to 3,000 years old.
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 Mediterranean—something a
wealthy Jerusalem family from this period would likely have done.
In addition to adding to the Shroud of Turin debate, the newfound shroud
could help paint a clearer picture of the public health situation at the start
of the last millennium.
Experts don't know much about the origins of leprosy, and biblical
references may well have referred to various skin conditions. The disease is
believed to have originated in India and to have arrived in the Mediterranean
region sometime between the fourth and second centuries B.C. These most recent
findings in Jerusalem may be able to fill critical gaps in knowledge of the
disease.
The deceased's apparently high status, right up to the end, indicates
leprosy and tuberculosis crossed socio-economic lines at the time in
Jerusalem—and that perhaps not all lepers were ostracized, as historical
accounts often suggest, the study says.
The origins of leprosy remain hazy, but the researchers are hopeful that, as
with the new study, a combination of archaeology and molecular pathology will
help trace the evolution and distribution of this and other ancient diseases.
"The medical research has been quite extensive and has shed enormous light
on the inhabitants of Jerusalem," study leader Gibson said. "This is
the first time that DNA research has been done on the skeletal remains of human
beings from the period of Jesus around Jerusalem."
My Views
1.
Well the Shroud of Turin is not Jesus’s burial cloth. This
is because according to the old tradition, the dead bodies are washed before
the burial. Well how come the Shroud of Turin got blood stains all over it? Does
the dead body bleed??
2.
Scientist recreated the shroud effect by embalming the
cloth over a statue. The scientists said that the Shroud of Turin is made the
similar way and the blood markings were done externally to recreate the Jesus’s
crucification.
courtesy: National Geographic
