Across the centuries, the shroud has been venerated as that very piece of fabric. And if you can, there’s a $1m donation for your funds.”Īccording to the gospel accounts, it was when they discovered Christ’s burial cloth on the floor of his tomb that his followers first believed he had risen from the dead. “They said it was knocked up by a medieval conman, and I say: well, if he could do it, you must be able to do it as well. “Because from all the evidence I’ve seen, if this is a forgery it’s the most ingenious forgery in history – and of course it dates back almost 2,000 years, to a time of far less sophisticated forgery techniques. “If … they believe the shroud is a medieval forgery, I call on them to repeat the exercise, and create something similar today,” he says. So convinced is Rolfe that he’s issuing a challenge worth $1m to the British Museum. This week sees the release of a new film, Who Can He Be?, in which Rolfe argues that, far from the shroud being a definite dud, new discoveries in the past few years have again opened the question of its authenticity. And now he claims he has the evidence to prove it. He was convinced the carbon dating, carried out in 1988 under the direction of the British Museum and Oxford University, had been flawed. So when cutting-edge carbon-14 tests found that the Shroud of Turin was a forgery, it seemed like the final chapter for a relic that had been revered for centuries as the cloth in which Christ’s body had been wrapped when he supposedly rose from the dead at the first Easter almost 2,000 years ago.īut one man – David Rolfe, a film-maker whose documentary The Silent Witness had brought the shroud into the public eye in modern times, and who had converted to Christianity as a result of his research – wasn’t prepared to give up on it. Furthermore, again typologically, the Shroud was identified with His royal-priestly robe, having been consecrated by His sacrificial blood! The earthly Shroud was a “type and shadow” of the heavenly robe! With its miraculous image, the Shroud was viewed as being a link between the earthly and heavenly realities.It was one of the most eagerly awaited scientific announcements of all time, and it pitted the world of faith against the world of rational thought, under the glare of the media. In this paper he will seek to demonstrate that the early Christians also identified Jesus’ Shroud, typologically, with being a “tabernacle.” The “sacred tent” (σκηνή) of the Shroud enabled Jesus to make the transition from His earthy existence into the Holy of Holies of the heavenly Sanctuary to present the sacrificial offering of His own blood. Why then wasn’t the Shroud viewed as “unclean,” discarded and buried? Why did the early Church treasure this piece of linen and seek to safeguard it from opponents and enemies of the Faith? How did they come to perceive this cloth? What beliefs became attached to it? In a former paper the author attempted to show that the early Christians likely perceived the Shroud as being the miraculous “sign of Jonah” that Jesus promised. The cloth was stained with blood and had been defiled by its contact with a corpse. However, when they found the funeral linens, something about their appearance caused the disciple to “believe” (John 20.8). Peter and “the disciple whom Jesus loved” found the tomb empty of a corpse on Resurrection Day. Based on an abundance of scientific and historical evidence that has surfaced in recent years, the author believes the Shroud of Turin is the genuine burial cloth that Joseph of Arimathea purchased and used to wrap the body of Jesus.
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