In my intellectual travels I came across an interesting theory. A German team has put together a book called "The Jesus Conspiracy" which talks about the Shroud of Turin, the supposed burial shroud of Jesus. It makes a few interesting points and puts forth some very outrageous, yet seemingly well-supported hypotheses.
First let's take a brief look at the controversy surrounding the shroud. The New Testament includes references to Jesus being wrapped in linens but the first time history recorded the existence of this particular shroud (and all of it's unique markings) was in the 14th century. Skeptics immediately postulate that it's likely a forgery, for how could something of this value be forgotten and unknown for over a thousand years?
It doesn't help that a Bishop wrote to the Pope, not long after the shroud first came to Europe (from a Frenchman recently returned from the Crusades) that the artist responsible for the forgery had been captured and confessed, or that churches at the time were expected to maintain their own collection of "relics" once they were around for a fair amount of time.
Believers put the Bishop's letter off to political envy within the Catholic Church and point to many key details about the images on the shroud itself, not the least of which is apparent blood spatter that matches with current forensic knowledge — knowledge that was not apparent in any form during the middle ages, much less used in art or artistic forgeries.
But the Skeptics felt vindicated in the late 1980's when the shroud was carbon dated to around the year 1300, plus or minus a few decades. At first the believers were shocked, but then someone noticed that there was an obscure work of art reliably dated nearly 200 years earlier that clearly showed the shroud, along with several key details about it (including the uncommon weave form and an odd, L-shaped pattern of holes) — this clearly doesn't jive with the radio carbon dating.
So the believers insisted that the carbon dating must be wrong. Some claimed that the method itself was flawed, which is frankly laughable because it is such a well-tested and proven method of dating organic material. Others suggested that the sample cut from the shroud was actually additional material that was added to the original during the middle ages with a weave so fine that the point of integration was invisible. This too seemed a bit farfetched.
Some claimed that the samples sent to the labs were contaminated with more modern materials, ruining the dating. Unfortunately for them, this seems highly unlikely. The people who handled the samples are experts in their fields who know what they're about. We can presume, with high assurance, that the samples and the procedures were all handled properly — but the biggest problem with this is that three separate samples were sent to three separate labs and they all came back with identical results. It would be virtually impossible for three individual samples to be contaminated so specifically, and so indentically.
But science is about finding theories that fit all the facts, and while the believers couldn't discredit the carbon dating, the skeptics couldn't really explain how a forger could have created this finished product. But there is a theory that seems to fit all of the facts, and neither group seems to like it one bit.
The German team who wrote "The Jesus Conspiracy" note that the entire procedure of clipping the fragments from the shroud for scientific analysis was carefully videotaped, but for some reason when the samples were put in containers to be sent to the labs the cameras stopped rolling. The documentarians say this was to protect the integrity of the experiment so the labs couldn't tell the true shroud sample from the control sample, but the Germans weren't buying this because the shroud samples were never unraveled and had an unmistakable herringbone weave.
Because they found the gap in the video evidence suspicious they analyzed photographs of the lab samples and according to their experts the weave of the samples the labs analyzed do not match the shroud itself. They propose that someone switched the samples of the shroud with actual fabric from the middle-ages because the Church was afraid what it might mean if the shroud was proven authentic.
Now, I'm no expert on Linens N Things so I don't know whether their hypothesis holds any water — or at least any more water than believers talking about contamination or skeptics talking about medieval blood spatter photography — but what caught my attention was what the German team thinks the Church is hiding. Specifically, that Jesus of Nazareth wasn't resurrected so much as he just didn't die on the cross in the first place.
Their evidence for this is purely circumstantial bordering on speculation, but still it is very compelling. They begin with Joseph of Aramethea — what was a man from Aramathea doing with a brand new tomb so far from home? They speculate that he was hatching a plan to save the life of Jesus. A better question, though, is why did Jesus spend only a few hours on the cross when it's been historically documented that people who had been crucified could survive for several days at least?
Even Pontius Pilate seemed surprised that Jesus succumbed so quickly, but the Catholic Church attributes this to Jesus giving himself up to his fate and choosing to die. While this certainly makes for a dramatic storyline if we look at the crucifixion from a purely scientific and dispassionate viewpoint it is entirely plausible that when he was taken down from the cross only a few hours after being put up there he may have been unconscious and badly wounded/beaten, but not actually dead.
Furthermore, the marks on the shroud itself — while highly realistic — are inconsistent with a dead body. Rather, many experts say they would have had to have been made by a live person with those actual wounds. In the Bible it also says that Jesus' body was treated with Aloe and Myrrh. Interestingly, Myrrh is known in medicine to help stop bleeding and Aloe is still used today to help damaged skin heal faster.
Perhaps the most interesting claim made by the German group is that, while no one can seem to explain exactly how the image of the shroud may have formed (skeptics can reproduce some aspects using period technology, but nothing has been spot-on; believers attribute the image to the resurrection itself) they claim it's all very simple: Myrrh plus body heat from a feverish and unconscious (motionless) man can create such an image on linen with no master forgery artist or supernatural powers required.
And the Bible never explicitly claims Jesus resurrected. According to the New Testament his followers went to the tomb and found it empty, and later he appeared to several of his disciples. None of this really contradicts the hypothesis of the German team. Perhaps most interestingly, many Christians are unfamiliar with Jesus as recored in the religion of Islam. According the the Muslim tradition Jesus of Nazareth was a prophet who was crucified, but survived his crucifixion and lived out his years in lands to the east.
Now, I'm not trying to step on anyone's faith, so if you think this all a bunch of baloney that's perfectly all right. You might be right. Personally though, I withhold judgment because I'm unconvinced which (if any) of the current theories are historically accurate; and while pieces of it seem almost as farfetched as some of the other theories put forth, this new one ties things together in a way others don't and I find that positively fascinating.
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