The Shroud - d. Davis

 Brief History of the Shroud 

The Shroud was said to be in the possession of Apostle Thomas to Antioch, from there to Odessa, where it was reported it healed a King. 

It stayed in Odessa until sometime in the 6th Century when a Muslim invasion let it to be taken and given to Constantinople. It eventually goes to France and is shuffled from family to family until it winds up in Italy for centuries. 

In 1532 there was a fire where the Shroud was kept. While it was rescued, the edges of it were damaged. Repair was done by some nuns. Testing of this area 1980’s led to it being called a forgery until it was discovered the sample was taken from this repaired area. 

The Shroud continued to be in private hands shuffled from family to family. It would be taken out and displayed for special ceremonial occasions like weddings, inaugurations of Kings etc until it was given to the Vatican for custodial care in 1985. The actually ownership of the shroud is still in private hands. 

If interested in a more detailed account of its history, check out Barry Schwortz, a Jewish Rabbi’s book, that list of names of families who had possession of the Shroud through the years. 

As a Jew and an atheist, Barry Schwortz was convinced he could prove the shroud was a fake, but after 20 years of research, he stated that he absolutely believed it was the burial cloth of Jesus and that He endured physically all that was written. Unfortunately no one knows for sure if Barry came to believe Jesus was his Messiah. Barry died last year. I like to think, we will see him in heaven. 

The evidence I am prepared to share is the result of 500,000 interdisciplinary hours by 63 different academic experts. 

Biblical, Historical Scientific and AI Proven Facts

 

• The Shroud is first mentioned in John Chapter 20 when Joseph of Arimathea (a very wealthy man) asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. He, along with Nicodemus, buried him with strip of linen along with aloes and myrrh, in a tomb Joseph had prepared for himself. In Jewish tradition, the body would have remained in the tomb for a year. Then they would have scooped up the bones in the linen and placed them in a large stone box. Generations of families could be in one box. On Mount Olives there are many large white burial boxes called ossuaries that are still used in this way. 

• The Shroud linen has a herring bone weave. This was an expensive piece of linen that would have only been in possession of a rich man like Joseph. Very few ancient linens have this weave. Linen is unusual fabric in that it has the ability to last thousands of years. Israel has hundreds of ancient linens very much in tack, some going back to the Kumran Caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered. One specific linen specimen is the Tarkin D

  ress, which is a beautiful blouse that is dated to be 3,000 years older than the Shroud. Think about it…if that piece of linen is intact after 5,000 years, the shroud can easily still be intact after 2,000 years. 

• The image of a man on the Shroud was first discovered by a photo taken by Secondo Pia in 1898. The negative showed a clear and positive image of a man when it was developed. This ability to see the image came from photography that didn’t exist for centuries. The appearance on the cloth was a stark, detailed, three dimensional portrait of a man. 

• The man in the shroud is 5 foot 11 inches tall weighing about 170-180 pounds. He was physically fit. Jesus was estimated to have walked somewhere around 15-20,000 miles in his lifetime if you included his ministry trips. This is the image of a strong man, a man’s man. 

• The shroud has an image of a bearded man. Jesus would have taken a Nazarite vow when He started His ministry so he would have had a beard. 

• Max Frey, a criminologist spent five years studying the pollen spores found on the shroud. His conclusion was that they all originate from Jerusalem and would only bloom in the early spring. Passover is the first of Israel’s feasts and is usually in late March to Mid- April. Ancient History records the death of Jesus by Roman crucifixion on Passover April 3rd, 33 AD. 

• The number one substance on the shroud is human blood. There is evidence of pints and pints of blood. There are 30-50 abrasions on the head from the crown of thorns. Here is a crown of these actual thorns from Israel. We can see this crown of thorns prophesied in the account of Abraham on Mount Moriah ready to sacrifice his only son Issac, when God stops him and provides a substitutional ram caught by its head in the bramble…thorn bush. This the same bush as the crown of thorns on Jesus’ head. 

• There are also blood spots around His beard correlating with His beard being plucked. 

• To receive stripes was not typically used before being crucifies. Receiving stripes was used more as a form of discipline after which the offender was released to either heal or die from his wounds. Jesus was an exception to the rule. There are 372 lacerations from the Roman whips on the man in the Shroud. It is believed there were two men inflicting the lashes until the number was fulfilled. This number does not include the lacerations that were most likely on His side because the Shroud didn’t touch that part of the body. It is estimated He suffered over 700 lacerations from the whips. Each whip handle was quite short at about 1 ½ feet long with 3 leather straps about a foot to a foot and half in length. Each strap had lead balls and thick bone shards on them. The beating Jesus took was particularly demonic and heinous. Every strike of the whip was executed up close and personal. 

• The legs of the man on the Shroud are in a bent position because Jesus body was in a form of rigor mortis. Rigor mortis last 40 hours after which fluids begin to leach from the body that leads to decay. It is estimated he was in the tomb for 39 hours before he was resurrected. 

• His arms seem elongated because His shoulders are out of joint. This is from falling while carrying the cross. There was blood on the shroud around the shoulder that’s consistent with Jesus carrying a cross. Now, he would not have been carrying the whole cross like in the movies. It would have weighed over 300 pounds. He was carrying the shorter piece that went cross. 

• The man in the Shroud has nail marks in His wrists. The word wrist and palm of the hand are interchangeable in the Greek. The spike was 9 inches long. This spike is the right shape, squared, but an inch shorter than the nails they used on Jesus. I found this on a walk one day with my dog. I had been contemplating Jesus sacrifice for a couple days. On this particular day as I was thinking about it, I looked down and here was this spike laying on the road next the sidewalk. Isn’t God just amazing? 

• Blood turns brown over time, but the blood on the shroud is still red. The amount of blood on the cloth testifies that that Jesus died in an excruciating way. There are 70-150 fibers in a single linen thread. The blood soaks through all the fibers of the shroud, so they know the blood came first. However the image of the man is superficial, only 2-3 fibers of a single thread. 

• The blood on the shroud is by AB. Only 1-3% of the world’s population has this blood type. It is typically Semitic blood. This blood type is the only blood type that can give or receive from other blood types. Think about that, Jesus can receive/forgive anything we have done and then through His blood makes us new creations in Christ. I like think of it as a divine exchange. 

• Not a bone in this body was broken. A roman lance was the common weapon Roman soldiers used to break the shins or bones of the legs to quicken the death process, but when they came to break Jesus bones, He was already dead, so they tested him with a lance to confirm His death. The lance penetrated right between the 5th and sixth ribs going 3 and ½ inches into His heart. Postmortem blood tested differently. The blood on his side with the lanced wound tested postmortem. He was already dead when this blood and water flowed. 

• According to five year study of light at Anal Laboratories in Spain, Jesus was resurrected in 140th of a billionth of a second using 34,000 trillion watts of energy (The equivalent to 6.4 gigawatts). That would be all the energy in the world at one time focused on this one spot in less than the blink of the eye, (a second would be too long,) to create the image on the cloth of our resurrected Savior. It couldn’t be any longer than that or it would have incinerated the linen. Nuclear Science determined body mass was suddenly changed to energy and literally passed through the cloth. If you believe the evidence, it is recorded this event occurred early Sunday morning, April 5th, 33 AD. A mathematician estimated the resurrection time to be 5:43 AM. 

• There were multiple attemps to analyze the DNA on the Shroud. And every time the results came close to being released, the narrative was edited, revised and adjusted. Why? Because the data didn’t agree with human biology; it agreed with theology. Thy found partial human DVA, but not enough to build a full profile. According to DNA studies of the blood on the shroud, it was determined the X chromosome was human; however the Y Chromosome could not be identified as human. It did not exist in any global genetic database/ It wasn’t extinct or rare, it was non-classifiable. It was a Y chromosome, no one has ever seen. This piece of information was hidden for a few years because of what it implied. Jesus Father was not human. As one researcher said, it isn’t from any evolutionary tree known to man, it looked divinely engineered. Another said, either we have discovered a completely unknown branch of humanity or something that’s not completely human in origin. This discovery has broken scientific evolutionary theory and has in fact validated Christian theology. Jesus IS the Son of God. 

• The cornerstone of our Christian faith is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. I would like to say it is very possible the information we have acquired on the Shroud is the receipt of God to both a believing and unbelieving world as proof of our purchase through His Son’s death and resurrection. 

  
  

• Based on the information we have about Jesus and the Shroud, a mathematician calculated there is only a one in a two hundred billion chance the man in the Shroud isn’t Jesus. 

• They have also discovered the Sudarium of Oviedo in Spain. This is the face cloth that covered Jesus face. It was found in the tomb the day Jesus was resurrection neatly folded up where His head would have laid. After His death, His face is covered with a face cloth as a matter of respect. It is not removed until He is wrapped in linen for burial. This cloth is placed inside the burial site. This cloth placed on the shroud perfectly matches the face construction and blood marks on the head. Looking at the research, I believe it is genuine. There is an intriguing ancient Jewish custom regarding the napkin. At dinner, if the host or head of the house gets up, crumbles his napkin and places it on the table, it means dinner is officially over. However, if the host neatly folds his napkin and places it on the table as he leaves, it means He is coming back. 

To which we can only say, Maranatha Lord Jesus, come back quickly! Amen