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Cambridge art historian Thomas de Wesselow came with a new theory about the Turin Shroud, being convinced that it is real and did touch Christ’s body.

Thomas de Wesselow insists that the image on the cloth fooled the Apostles into believing Christ had come back to life, and the Resurrection was in fact an optical illusion. However, his theory about the Turin Shroud claims that Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead.

His theory is that in the mind of a person 2,000 years ago, the image on the Shroud would have been astonishing – far beyond their normal experiences and truly unsettling.

“They saw the image on the cloth as the living double of Jesus,” Thomas de Wesselow said.

“Back then images had a psychological presence, they were seen as part of a separate plain of existence, as having a life of their own.”

“If you think yourself into the whole experience of the apostles. Going into the tomb three days after the crucifixion, in the half-light, and seeing that image emerging from the burial cloth,” the 40-year-old academic told The Daily Telegraph.

According to the Bible, Peter, James, Thomas, Mary Magdalene and a number of disciples saw Jesus in the flesh after his death.

This proved Jesus was the son of God and became the central tenet of Christian faith and theology.

In the New Testament, after the Romans crucified Jesus, He was buried in a tomb, but God raised Him from the dead and he appeared to many people over a span of forty days before his ascension to Heaven.

Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday, the third day after Good Friday, the day of his crucifixion. The resurrection story appears in more than five locations in the Bible.

The image on the Turin Shroud is commonly associated with Jesus Christ, his crucifixion and burial

The image on the Turin Shroud is commonly associated with Jesus Christ, his crucifixion and burial

But Thomas de Wesselow – a self-confessed “shroudie” who has been intrigued by the its mystery since childhood – has a radically different view.

He has spent eight years on The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection, due to be published next Monday.

It is the latest in a long list of works claiming to have solved the riddle of the Turin Shroud.

Many believe the linen cloth was the shroud in which Jesus Christ’s body was buried after it was cut from the crucifix on Calvary, and displays an image of his body.

But debate has raged for decades about its authenticity.

Since a 1988 radiocarbon dating test put its age at between 1260 and 1390, many have just assumed the Shroud, which is held in the Royal Chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, northern Italy, is a medieval forgery.

But conclusive proof has not yet been advanced.

De Wesselow’s new book claims to prove the botched sampling of the cloth and the last-minute abandonment of agreed procedures mean that the carbon dating test was seriously flawed.

Thomas de Wesselow, who is based in King’s College, Cambridge, believes the Shroud was looted as bounty by French knights and the Crusaders who sacked Constantinople in 1204.

He is convinced modern analysis proves the Shroud is genuine; that pollens lifted from cloth fibres indicate that it was once in Israel; a seam used in the weave of the linen is identical to one found only on a first-century cloth from Judea; the wound-marks are composed of real blood; and an alternative, peer-reviewed test of the age of the linen found that it was over 1300 years old.

He contends that the negative quality of the image also explains why, in the Gospels, the disciples are at first unable to recognize the Risen Jesus.

And he says his version of the Resurrection can be interpreted from passages in the Bible.

He points to Saint Paul’s 1 Corinthians 15-50 in which the Apostle says unequivocally that “resurrection is not about flesh and blood”.

 

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A new book, “The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find That Reveals the Birth of Christianity,” published this week, reveals that archeologists and authors have literally “unearthed” new information which may provide an unprecedented glimpse into Christianity’s earliest days.

In a “nearly intact” first-century tomb located below a modern condominium building in Jerusalem, a team of archeologists led by Simcha Jacobovici has found ossuaries bearing engravings that could be the earliest evidence of Christian iconography in Jerusalem.

The tomb has been dated to before A.D. 70, so if its engravings are indeed early Christian, they were most likely made by some of Jesus’ earliest followers, according to the excavators.

One of the limestone ossuaries bears an inscription in Greek that includes a reference to “Divine Jehovah raising someone up”, the earliest archeological evidence of “faith in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.”

A second ossuary has an image that appears to be a large fish with a stick figure in its mouth. The excavators believe the image represents the story of Jonah, the biblical prophet who was swallowed by a fish or whale and then released.

“If anyone had claimed to find either a statement about resurrection or a Jonah image in a Jewish tomb of this period I would have said impossible – until now,” James D. Tabor, professor and chairman of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and one of the excavators, said in a news release issued by the university.

In a “nearly intact” first-century tomb located below a modern condominium building in Jerusalem, the archeologists have found ossuaries bearing engravings that could be the earliest evidence of Christian iconography in Jerusalem

In a “nearly intact” first-century tomb located below a modern condominium building in Jerusalem, the archeologists have found ossuaries bearing engravings that could be the earliest evidence of Christian iconography in Jerusalem

The excavators acknowledge the discovery and their interpretation are likely to be controversial.

This tomb was originally uncovered in 1981, but the original excavators were forced to leave by Orthodox Jewish groups who oppose the excavation of Jewish tombs.

The tomb was then resealed and buried beneath the condominium complex in the neighborhood of East Talpiot.

Almost two decades later, James D. Tabor and colleagues got a license to go back into the tomb; however, because of the condos on top of it and the threat of protests from Orthodox Jewish groups, they took an unconventional route into the tomb.

They inserted a robotic arm, developed for this project, carrying high-definition cameras, through holes drilled in the basement floor of the building. The cameras photographed the ossuaries inside from all sides.

This tomb is located adjacent to another one, uncovered in 1980, that contained ossuaries with names some have associated with Jesus and his family. That tomb was thoroughly excavated at the time.

Later this spring, a documentary on the subject will air on the Discovery Channel.

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