Customer Reviews

In Search of the Shroud of Turin: New Light on Its History and Origins

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This book was written prior the carbon-dating of 1988 which (supposedly) proves the Turin Shroud to be no older than ~1350 AD. Ignoring that for a moment...

Ian Wilson (a journalist and not a true historian) first published a book attempting to reconstruct a history for the Shroud prior to 1350. If it was "authentic" (a dangerous word, but for our purposes here let's say originated in 1st century), then where was it for all those years? Wilson connected the dots between eastern legends about a real cloth and the Turin Shroud.

Drews, who IS a real historian, came along and did a much more critical appraisal. Surprisingly, there is many good reasons why Wilson's reconstruction is actually reasonable, although the further back he goes, the more lost he gets, because, like most 20th century Christians, the nuances of early church history (which is to say, of the MULTIPLE early churches) is lost on him, the "church" in his mind being a monolithic institution emanating directly from Jesus Christ (never mind that during his life Jesus, or rather Yeshua, never thought of himself as anything but a very upright Jew).

Whoever possesed the Shroud during its very early years, it certainly was not Orthodox Christians.

Highly recommended if you have a secular historial interest in this matter; really one of the few books on the Shroud that makes any rational sense at all. And it may just have you questioning the results of the carbon-dating.