'Shroud of Turin' Author, Tradition Wrong About Image of Christ

The Shroud of Turin, the alleged burial cloth of Jesus Christ and bearing his image, has been generating debate for decades. Thomas de Wesselow, formerly of Cambridge University, is the latest to throw his scholarly oar in, says LiveScience. De Wesselow says, in his book "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection," that while the image isn't a medieval forgery as scholars in the late 1980s suggested, it's not miraculous either. I disagree.

I'm a Catholic convert who believes in miracles and the mysteries of faith. I have seen wonders and healings that cannot be explained away. But I don't believe, as de Wesselow (and tradition) claims, that the Shroud of Turin was used to wrap the body of Our Lord. Legend and de Wesselow disagree on how the image came to appear on the cloth and I disagree with both of them.

When shroud stories began to circulate in the Middle Ages the theory was that the image of Jesus was somehow burned on the cloth by divine light at the moment of His resurrection. De Wesselow says that the image appeared naturally by chemical processes. Neither of these makes sense to me.

I don't accept that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus. The image it is clearly a man. However, it looks like a figure used in Gothic stone effigies carved on later medieval tombs. The shroud image is stylized and idealized as artists depicted Christ on crucifixes of the time. The image looks nothing like a man in Bible times would look or how one who had been beaten would appear. The hair and beard would have not been neatly arranged. The injuries would not be uniform. Even if Christ's image was transformed at resurrection, the shroud, we are told, was his burial cloth. It's supposed to show his features in death.

I also don't accept that the Shroud of Turin is an artist's forgery. There are too many details in the image that artists weren't using yet. I think that makes it miraculous. I don't know what the Shroud is and I don't think anyone ever will know for sure.

This article originally appeared in : 'Shroud of Turin' Author, Tradition Wrong About Image of Christ - By Marilisa Kinney Sachteleben | Yahoo! Contributor Network – Mon, Apr 9, 2012