No Death for Jesus E-Book

Helmut Felzmann

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: New Light on Jesus
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 128

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Death or Life What does the Turin Shroud testify to? Find out: The many indications that speak for the authenticity of the cloth. Why the crucified man could only have been Jesus of Nazareth. Why the results of the radiocarbon dating are scientifically unsustainable. How the Catholic Church, as the owner, behaves towards the most important relic of Christendom. The cloth witnessed the events in the tomb. Does the image show Jesus Christ at the moment of his resurrection as many believe or does the resurrection of Christ have to be reinterpreted? The Shroud's answer is surprising and highly controversial. The text is richly illustrated, the controversies precisely presented. Everything is ready - you can make up your own mind.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Preface

The Turin Shroud – A Controversial Object

History of the Shroud and the Portrayal of Jesus

Portrayals of Jesus in ancient Rome

The equalization of the depiction of Jesus in the 6th Century

Remaining after the sack of Constantinople

Under the Shroud Laid a Real Crucified Man

The Shroud Cannot Be a Forgery

A Living Man among the Dead

The Formation of the Image

Was the Man under the Shroud Jesus?

Evidence of the First Type (Possible Evidence)

Evidence of a Second Type (Probable Evidence)

Evidence of a Third Type (Certain Evidence)

The C14-dating fiasco

Taking the samples

The blind samples

Statistical evaluation of the results

Thesis 1: Measurement error due to contamination

Thesis 2: The cloth was repaired in the Middle Ages

Thesis 3: The samples were not from the shroud

The attitude of the Catholic Church

What Happened during and after the Crucifixion?

Christian Religion versus Religion of Jesus

Literature

Other books in the series

Photo credits

Preface

The Christian creed from the year 325 is rarely spoken today. Hardly anyone who has no problems with it: “Jesus Christ, God's only-begotten Son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of Virgin Mary, ...on the third day risen from the dead, ascended to heaven, he sits at the right hand of God.”

Can that really have happened historically? Or are these just pious stories, out of date today. The fact is: someone who is really dead can no longer become alive. Either he wasn't really dead or he wasn't really alive after the crucifixion. Some theologians tend towards the second possibility: It would not be that important whether the grave was empty or full. The only important thing would be to believe in the Easter message, which gives hope and strength. Some voices become clearer: “Jesus died on the cross and his body was rotten in the grave as a result. That the rulers of this world and there power to bring death do not have the last word, that is the good news of faith.

”Wouldn't this message be the result of a denial of reality, desperate perseverance? In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter proclaimed to the religious leaders: “You crucified Jesus, but God raised him. We can testify to this!” Was he untruthful - or later the evangelist Luke? First Corinthians was written only 20 years after the crucifixion. Paul wrote that after Jesus was crucified, 500 brothers saw Jesus at the same time, some were still alive. Is it conceivable that the Jesus Movement could emerge if the core of the message was fake news?

What if God had worked a miracle and intervened in the physical process of things? It is one of the basic assumptions of science that everything in the universe happens according to fundamental rules. All processes are the effect of previous causes. The universe is not haunted! There are no spirits that act on matter from outside and set autonomous causes - apart perhaps from processes in the brain.

Science makes the world seem sober today. But it has also brought great progress to mankind. Shall we live in two worlds: scientifically for everyday life, and believing in miracles for religion? I don't think Jesus himself had a magical image of God. His Heavenly Father makes it rain on the just and the unjust. He acts through people and does not intervene directly in what is happening according to his taste - from the outside, so to speak.

There remains only one variant for solving the “Easter dilemma”: He was not really dead. It can be assumed that the disciples thought their master was dead after the crucifixion and that everything was a miracle for them. Is it possible to survive a crucifixion? Mustn't the thrust of the lance have led to death? Jesus would have been the superhero par excellence, if he had visited his disciples afterwards as if nothing had happened. It seems that there is only a choice between the improbable (survival) and the impossible (resurrection).

In any case, something very special must have happened back then. Will the truth ever be found out? We weren't there. The eyewitnesses vehemently claimed that they had met Jesus in person after the crucifixion.

If the Turin shroud were genuine, it would have witnessed what went on in the grave. In addition to the old writings, there would then be an old cloth that could be questioned. It is almost as if Jesus himself were standing before us.

So let's go on an exciting journey to find out the truth about the resurrection.

The Turin Shroud – A Controversial Object

(1) Picture credits see appendix

Scarcely any historical object has been so intensively examined in so many disciplines as the Shroud of Turin. And scarcely any historical object has been so passionately debated.

The Shroud of Turin is a linen cloth measuring 436 centimeters in length by 110 centimeters in width on which the clear image of a crucified man can be seen, a man who was approximately thirty to forty years old and who stood approximately five feet ten inches tall (1.8 meters). The Shroud also bears various burn spots, as well as a series of bloodstains.

In 1978 the cloth was allowed to be examined by a team of scientists for 5 days (STURP project). The main question was how the image could have come about. The result was: We don't know. In no case can it be the work of an artist. If it was a natural process, energy must have leaked out of the body. From a corpse?

So, after all, a flash of energy during the resurrection that burned the image into the cloth? Did the picture come about in some inexplicable, supernatural way? Or was body heat the energy we are looking for? Then the man under the cloth couldn't have been dead. Whether the cloth is real and if so, which of the two options can be correct, is the real explosiveness of this cloth.

History of the Shroud and the Portrayal of Jesus

The indisputable history of the Shroud of Turin began in the year 13571. In that year the widow of a French knight, Geoffroy de Charny, then in possession of the Shroud, decided out of financial desperation to display the Shroud publicly in the church of Lirey. The Shroud immediately attracted large groups of pilgrims and became so popular that the further history of the Shroud is recognized as being without gaps or doubts. How it had come into the possession of the de Charny family is, however, not known. Geoffrey’s son later declared that his father had received the Shroud as a heartfelt gift. One hundred years later in 1452, a descendant of the de Charny family, for lack of an heir, bestowed the Shroud upon Louis of Savoy, head of the dynasty from which the kings of Italy later arose. In 1532 fire nearly destroyed the Shroud. The palace chapel of Chambery, in which the Shroud was kept at that time, burned to the ground. The Shroud itself lay folded together in a silver box, which melted from the heat on one corner so that the Shroud suffered serious damage. Very luckily, no portion of the Shroud was burned that had any significant part of the human image on it.

The Shroud remained in the possession of the House of Savoy until the year 1983, when the former king of Italy, Umberto, bequeathed it to the Vatican shortly before his death. Since 1578, however, it has remained in Turin.

On 15th of August 944 the "Image of Edessa" was transferred to the imperial capital of Constantinople after it was first rescued from the city of Edessa (now Sanliurfa in southeastern Anatolia) from the hands of the Arabs. In the festive calendar of the Orthodox Church this event is still commemorated each year on the 16th of August.

With the arrival of the image in Constantinople Gregory Referendarius, the Archdeacon of Sophia Haiga held a festive sermon, which remained completely preserved in a manuscript, and was only discovered in the Vatican archives as late as 1986.2

In the manuscript of his sermon, Gregory first tells the story of King Abgar of Edessa, then a small kingdom outside the Roman Empire. Abgar was terminally ill when he heard of the miracle healer Jesus in Judea. He sent a messenger with a letter to Jesus asking him to come to Edessa to cure him. But Jesus wrote him back that he must fulfill his mission and ascend to Him who has sent him. But that he would send him a disciple, who will heal him and bring life to him and to his family.

Here he quotes the Church-Father Eusebius, who has passed on the texts in the 4th Century ("Church History" 1.13). Eusebius says that he even traveled to Edessa, has "taken the original manuscripts from the archives [in Edessa] and has literally translated them from the Syriac language".

Gregory continues that he has also traveled with companions to Edessa searching for manuscripts, which would report additional acts of Abgar. And indeed they have found a greater number of manuscripts in the Syriac language, which he has copied in parts and translated into the Greek language. He quotes: King Abgar said to Thaddaios, "tell me how the image on the linen that cured me was made, since I can see it was not produced with ordinary paint, and explain its special strength, since when I saw it unfolded on your face I was cured of my illness and got up from my bed, and I felt the strength that I had in my body when I was in my prime”.

Thaddaios replied, the image would have been created in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus has made it miraculously out of his sweat and his blood. Jesus would have given it to Thomas first, who handed it over to Thaddaios, who then has brought it to Edessa. All this did he, Gregory, find in the manuscripts.

Gregory then explains why the image can not be a work of art:“A Painting establishes a complete form with various beautiful colours, representing the cheeks with a blooming red, the encircling of the lips with red, it paints the beard with flowery gold, the eyebrow with shining black, the whole eye in beautiful colours, the ears and nose in a different way… This reflection, however – let everyone be inspired with the explanation – has been imprinted only by the sweat from the face of the originator of life … Both are highly instructive – blood and water there, here sweat and image … The source of living water can be seen and it gives us water, showing us that the origin of the image made by sweat is in fact of the same nature as the origin of that which makes the liquid flow from the side.”

(2) Arrival of the Mandylion in Constantinople on August 15, 944 (miniature, 11th century)

(3) The messenger hands over to King Abgar the cloth with the image (icon, 10th century)

In another text from Constantinople, ascribed to the emperor Constantine VII and also from 9443, it is reported about this great event, too, the image from Edessa coming to Constantinople. It repeats the story of Abgar but then reports that not much later (still in the first century) Abgar’s grandson (Manu VI) reverted to paganism and the cloth was in great danger. The bishop of the city therefore brought the cloth together with an oil lamp to a safe place: a niche near a gate in the city wall. In front of the cloth, a ceramic plate was placed which carried an identical copy of the miraculous image. The bishop "then sealed the surface with gypsum and baked bricks finishing the wall off on the same level." 4

The history of the Abgar image continued like this: During a flood parts of the city walls of Edessa were destroyed. More destruction came during the siege of the city by the Turks. The city wall had to be repaired. In the year 525 during the reconstruction-work the cloth was rediscovered.5 By at least 544 the image was worshiped as the icon of the Redeemer not made by hands (Acheiropoieton). The image was first mentioned by the historian Evagrius Scholasticus, who wrote in his Ecclesiastical History of 594 in connection with the siege by the Persians in 544: "When they were completely at a loss, they brought the image created by God, not made by human hands, which Christ, our God, has sent to Abgar, after he wanted to see him."

In the "Acts of Thaddaios " (6th century) is reported: “During the siege the bishop of the city had a vision in which the place in the city wall was shown to him, where the cloth resided. In the morning the bishop went to the place, praying and relying on the clear vision, examined it and found the divine image untouched and intact, together with the lamp, which did not extinguish during so many years. On a brick, which has been put before the lamp for protection there was another image of the likeness, which is kept in Edessa until today."6

In Edessa the cloth was folded in a way that only the face was visible. Therefore the fact that it was a complete shroud gradually was forgotten. Only when it was first examined in Constantinople in 944, it was discovered that the cloth was a burial shroud on which the entire body is visible.

When former FBI agent Philip Dayvault 2002 in search of ancient oil lamps, carried out an investigation in the Museum of Sanliurfa (formerly Edessa), a brick slab was shown to him with a mosaic of Jesus. The Muslim museum director told him that it would be the most valuable piece of the museum and would show Isa (the word for Jesus in Islam). Dayvault therefore called it "ISA-Tile".7 The director told him that it had come into the possession of the museum 1972, from someone who had carved it out of a wall. Nothing more was known.

The mosaic was still part of a stone. Dayvault photographed the stone from different perspectives and started to investigate in the ruins of the ancient city walls. And indeed he succeeded at the western city gate: he was able to clearly identify a complementary spot in the wall.

The story with photo can be found on the Internet at www.keramion502.com The mosaic is almost identical to one of the first portraits of Christ in Rome (Santa Costanza, middle of the 4th century). The similarity is indeed striking: the face, the strands of hair, even the blood stains on the nose and lips match with the ISA-Tile.

There is an excellent slide presentation on the Internet on the subject of how the Turin shroud shaped the portrayal of Jesus in history8.

Portrayals of Jesus in ancient Rome

In the catacombs in Rome many portrayals of Jesus from the first centuries have survived. Until the third century there were only symbolic representations, like the beardless shepherd, which have little in common with portrayals of Jesus as we know them today.