Book review: The Shroud by Ian Wilson
Is it? Is the long linen cloth held at Turin Cathedral the actual burial shroud that his grieving followers wrapped Jesus’s body with after his crucifixion?
That’s what this book sets out to answer and, basically, its answer is, “Yes, it is.”
For myself, I think the case is both weaker and stronger than the one Ian Wilson presents. It’s weaker historically: it’s very hard to get from the Shroud’s first verifiable appearance in the historical record, in 1355 in the unlikely setting of Lirey, a village in France, to the original shroud via its presumed preservation after the Resurrection, through centuries of Roman persecution, then to Constantinople as a holy relic and then a long hiatus after the Sack of Constantinople in 1203 before its eventual reappearance in France.
However, the case is stronger for the image itself. None of the proposed techniques for producing an image like the Shroud come close to the image itself. There were no artists at the time capable of producing an image of this nature. And no contemporary forger would have put the nails through the wrists, for all crucifixion scenes of the time assumed that Jesus had been nailed through the hands, not the wrists.
So the Shroud remains a mystery. If it is a forgery, then it’s forgery would be almost as miraculous as if the Shroud were, indeed, the burial cloth of Jesus. If it’s genuine, then… Everything changes.
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Wilson’s book is excellent reading for understandiing this astonishing object.
The Shroud image is approx. 200
nanometres deep ( = eight millionths of an inch ). No human being in the 14th century could have worked on such an incredibly shallow level ( and in negative ! ).
The image was not made by bodily contact, which would become distorted in 2D. This shows the 1988
radiocarbon dating is incorrect, as It cannot be a medieval forgery.The cloth itself is only 0.34 millimetres thick, about the same as an average t-shirt. All the wounds inflcted on Jesus are correctly in evidence on the Shroud. It is beyond our scientific understanding. Thank God.
Indeed! I too think the dating incorrect.