The shroud was found near the Old City of Jerusalem
By Bethany Bell: BBC News, Jerusalem
A team of archaeologists and scientists says it has, for the first time, found pieces of a burial shroud from the time of Jesus in a tomb in Jerusalem.
The researchers, from Hebrew University and institutions in Canada and the US, said the shroud was very different from the controversial Turin Shroud.
Some people believe the Turin Shroud to have been Christ’s burial cloth, but others believe it is a fake.
The newly found cloth has a simpler weave than Turin’s, the scientists say.
The body of a man wrapped in fragments of the shroud was found in a tomb dating from the time of Jesus near the Old City of Jerusalem.
The tomb is part of a cemetery called the Field of Blood, where Judas Iscariot is said to have killed himself.
The researchers believe the man was a Jewish high priest or member of the aristocracy who died of leprosy, the earliest proven case.
They say he was wrapped in a cloth made of a simple two-way weave, very different to the complex weave of the Turin Shroud.
The researchers believe that the fragments are typical of the burial cloths used at the time of Jesus.
As a result, they conclude that the Turin Shroud did not originate from 1st Century Jerusalem.
The Turin Shroud has been the subject of much controversy.
Tests 20 years ago dated the fabric to the Middle Ages, but believers say the cloth bears the imprint of a man’s face that is an authentic image of Christ.
(BBC)
This “evidence” sounds meager at best. It would seem probable to me that there were different types of weaving done at the time of Jesus.
True, though I would think the burial cloth for an executed person would be rather simple. I have always found Turin a bit suspicious.
No one is claiming it’s his shroud, or even that of Judas. Just one from the era.
We’ve been discussing and observing the Turin Shroud for a long time and it is a classic case of believers in the Shroud doing anything and finding anyway to confirm it, and non-believers in the Shroud anything to debunk. I also find our tendency to do this a bit “shoe of Brian”-ish. Sometimes we will do anything to enshrine and worship bones of… cup of… and rituals like repeating what he said exactly like he supposedly said it, rather than discussing and thinking about what he said, or may have said.
The image itself is interesting, though one would think if Christ was all some claim him to be/have been, he would have mentioned this possible miracle in advance to help solidify the evidence.
Perhaps it is all a test. If so, I think we are failing. The focus is wrong. Why should we care about a cup or a shroud? Now the teachings… that should be the focus.
Remember that Jesus was buried by friends in a wealthy man’s tomb so the possibilty of him being wrapped in fine cloth is quite high. Not that I am defending the shroud of Turin as authentic, and yes the teachings are the important part.
Yes, he was, though being a wealthy man’s tomb would not necessarily mean he had a wealthy person’s shroud. Of course the story doesn’t claim the shroud was his in any sense, just more likely the type he might of had. Maybe. Maybe not. However I find it a little more substantial than those who insist a specific shroud had to be his, and that that is his image, and that there was no funny business between the and now that could have produced that image. All that is a far wider gap to leap, at least it seems so to me, than “this is the type of shroud they used back then.” And then there is the following…
Having had leprosy he may have been given a simpler shroud, but then being a high priest (?) and a member of the aristocracy; maybe not.
Do they, or did they, use the word “priest” in Judaism? I didn’t think so, but not exactly my heritage.