Conspiracy on the Shroud
It was certain that those women who came to the temporary tomb of Christ Jesus on the third day of His burial after the crucifixion saw something very extraordinary.
Those women were pious. They believed that Christ Jesus was God. So, they would accept a fact that Christ Jesus resurrected and heavenly angels were with Him at the tomb if they should have met such a situation. And indeed, when they came to the tomb, they found that a big stone which had covered the entrance to the tomb or the cave was rolled aside and the dead body of Christ Jesus disappeared while an angel putting on white garments met them. Then those female followers of Christ Jesus should not have been afraid or frightened. But strangely they were.
Mar 16:1 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.What were they afraid of? What did they see except the stone rolled away, a young man sitting and clothed in a long white garment? Yes, this angel told the women to watch the place where they had laid him. And after watching it, they got so frightened. What was there?
Mar 16:2 And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.
Mar 16:3 And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?
Mar 16:4 And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great.
Mar 16:5 And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.
Mar 16:6 And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.
Mar 16:7 But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you.
Mar 16:8 And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.
The burial shroud purports to show the imprint of the face and body of a bearded man. The image also purportedly shows nail wounds at the man's wrist and pinpricks around his brow, consistent with the "crown of thorns" mockingly pressed onto Christ at the time of his crucifixion.
Many experts have stood by a 1988 carbon-14 dating of scraps of the cloth carried out by labs in Oxford, Zurich and Arizona that dated it from 1260 to 1390, which, of course, would rule out its used during the time of Christ.
The new test, by scientists at the University of Padua in northern Italy, used the same fibers from the 1988 tests but disputes the findings. The new examination dates the shroud to between 300 BC and 400 AD, which would put it in the era of Christ.
It determined that the earlier results may have been skewed by contamination from fibers used to repair the cloth when it was damaged by fire in the Middle Ages, the British newspaper reported. The cloth has been kept at the cathedral since 1578.
He also said his tests also supported earlier results claiming to have found traces of dust and pollen on that shroud that could only have come from the Holy Land.
The latest findings are contained in a new Italian-language book — Il Mistero Della Sindone or The Mystery of the Shroud, by Giulio Fanti, a professor of mechanical and thermal measurement at Padua University, and Saverio Gaeta, a journalist.
Fanti, a Catholic, used infra-red light and spectroscopy – the measurement of radiation intensity through wavelengths -- in his test. He said the results are the outcome of 15 years of research.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/03/30/shroud-turin-display/2038295/
The Vatican has tiptoed around just what the cloth is, calling it a powerful symbol of Christ's suffering while making no claim to its authenticity.
The 14-foot-long, 3.5-foot-wide (4.3-meter-long, 1 meter-wide) cloth is kept in a bulletproof, climate-controlled case in Turin's cathedral, but is only rarely open to the public. The last time was in 2010 when more than 2 million people lined up to pray before it and then-Pope Benedict XVI visited.
The latest display coincided with Holy Saturday, when Catholics mark the period between Christ's crucifixion on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. A few hundred people, many in wheelchairs, were invited inside the cathedral for the service, which was presided over by Turin's archbishop. It was only the second time the shroud has gone on display specifically for a TV audience; the first was in 1973 at the request of Pope Paul VI, the Vatican said.
The display also coincided with the release of a book based on new scientific tests on the shroud that researchers say date the cloth to the 1st century.
The research in "The Mystery of the Shroud," by Giulio Fanti of the University of Padua and journalist Saverio Gaeta, is based on chemical and mechanical tests on fibers of material extracted for the carbon-dating research. An article with the findings is expected to be submitted for peer-review, news reports say.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20130330/eu-vatican-shroud-of-turin/
Tests conducted on the Shroud of Turin by researchers at Italy's University of Padua indicate that the linen sheet believed by some to be Christ's burial cloth dates back to Jesus' lifetime.
The 14-foot-long cloth bearing the image of a man with wounds similar to those suffered by Christ was analyzed by university scientists using infrared light, according to The Daily Telegraph.
The research linking the shroud to between 280 B.C. and A.D. 220 was published in book by Giulio Fanti, a professor at Padua University, and journalist Saverio Gaeta.
Fanti, a Catholic, told the Telegraph that the results were based on 15 years of research on fibers taken from the cloth, which were subjected to radiation intensity tests.
Fanti told the paper he rejects the conclusion of carbon dating tests conducted in 1988 that bolstered the theory the shroud was made in the 13th or 14th century in a medieval forgery.
Those results, Fanti said, were "false" because of laboratory contamination, the Telegraph reported.Those women were shocked to see what they had expected to happen came true. So, it was not disappearance of Christ Jesus from the tomb that made them so frightened. Neither an angel was a big surprise as they were pious. But the image of Christ Jesus left on the shroud was against their faith in Judaism and Christ's teaching. It was something beyond their imagination. But where did the shroud later go? Who took it out of the tomb?
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/03/29/shroud-turin-dates-back-to-jesus-era-study-says/
First century Edessa, today known as Urfa in southeast Turkey, was the seat of a small buffer kingdom between the Parthians to the east and Romans in the west. It had a mixed population of Syriac, Greek, Armenian, and Arabic speaking peoples including a strong Jewish representation. By the 6th century it and the adjacent Assyrian region was home to a large, thriving Christian population. Most historians agree that Christianity was a growing force in Edessa late in the 2nd century under the famous ruler Abgar VIII (“The Great”), with a church sanctuary dated there in 201 (Segal 1970: 24). But when the Edessan Christians wrote their history in the 3rd century, they remembered that the Gospel originally came to them in the 1st century from a Jerusalem disciple named Addai and to a King Abgar V, a known historical figure contemporary with Christ. Eusebius included in his Ecclesiastical History a brief late 3rd century version, reporting a famous letter from Jesus still kept in the Edessan archives (Eusebius 1991: 43-47). But later in the 4th century (or possibly early in the 5th) a Syriac writer penned a much expanded text. Known as The Teaching of Addai (hereafter TA) one small passage has Abgar, who is corresponding with Jesus by way of a messenger Hanan, instructing him to make a picture of Jesus:
When Hanan the archivist saw that Jesus had spoken thus to him, he took and painted the portrait of Jesus with choice pigments, since he was the king’s artist, and brought it with him to his lord King Abgar. When King Abgar saw the portrait he received it with great joy and placed it with great honor in one of the buildings of his palaces (Howard 1981: 9 - 10).
Most modern scholars usually reject The TA as reliable history for a variety of reasons, but sometimes admit “a substratum of fact” (Segal 1970: 179–181). Wilson recognizes numerous “anachronisms and interpolations” more characteristic of Abgar VIII’s time than Abgar V’s but also concludes that many “elements of the story have an authentic period ring” (Wilson 1998: 165). As for the picture, this is the only certain place in antiquity that mentions the Edessa Image, and by itself would lead no one to dream that it was actually the NT sindon or Turin Shroud. Writers like the Edessan Church Father Ephrem in the 4th century show no knowledge of the picture, leading some scholars to believe there never was such an object in ancient Edessa (Drijvers 1998: 17). Others believe it was there, just not very famous (Drews 1984: 75). Historian Daniel Scavone opines that the story is “made up after the fact, when the real history was forgotten, to explain the presence of the Christ-picture in Edessa” (Scavone 1991: 180). What the TA may also suggest is that there was a distant memory in 4th century Edessa of a Christ picture coming to their city in an early evangelization, and if a lengthy history (like The TA) were to be written, contemporary readers might expect it to be included. However, because of persecution, it had to be hidden away and perhaps even lost, with only confused memories surviving by the 4th century (Wilson 1979: 129 – 130).
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This is of paramount importance in understanding the Holy Image of Edessa’s history, and why its identification with the Shroud of Turin is so apparently difficult; the cloth was almost always kept folded and hidden away from prying eyes, just as much as the Shroud during later centuries in Turin.
This concludes Part 1. In Part 2 we will trace the Image of Edessa to the great capital of Eastern Christendom, Constantinople, and find more reasons to connect it with our present Shroud of Turin.So, maybe a follower of Christ called Addai might bring the shroud those women had found in the tomb to Edessa. In addition, Addai might have been the young man sitting in the tomb when the women entered it. Anyway, a long story started up to Turin, today,
https://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2013/03/14/The-Shroud-of-Turins-Earlier-History-Part-One-To-Edessa.aspx#Article
But then why did the 1988 carbon dating test result in the false finding that the shroud was made in the Middle Ages?
Who is behind this conspiracy?
Presently a committee working for the Catholic Church has finished a five-year review of various proposals for more Shroud testing. Recommendations will go to the Vatican and, at some unspecified date, new tests (not necessarily C-14) will be conducted. Benford and Marino also have learned recently that Professor Piero Savarino, Cardinal Polleto’s current scientific adviser, had co-authored a booklet in 1998 declaring that “invisible mending” had been used on the Shroud in the past. The booklet admitted that if the C-14 sample came from such a mended area, the 1988 results would be invalid (Benford and Marino, 2005:2-3). The force of the patch theory appears strong and continues to attract support.
“Test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thes. 5:21).Indeed, if it is scientifically proven that the shroud is true showing the image of Christ Jesus in the tomb, the Vatican would be blamed for its long negligence of the glory of their Lord, God.
http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2006/04/19/Latest-Developments-on-the-Shroud-of-Turin-Part-II.aspx#.UrxIK_RdUuc
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Joh 12:26 If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honour.