Christianity was born nearly two thousand years ago in ancient Palestine. It has shaped the course of human history. Yet historians still cannot say how it really began. How did a first-century Jew called Jesus manage to spark a new religion?
It is one of the biggest and most profound of all historical mysteries. This extraordinary book finally provides a convincing answer.
Traditionally, the birth of Christianity has been explained via the miracle of the Resurrection. After Jesus died he was raised from the dead by God and appeared to his disciples, telling them to spread the gospel. Once they saw the Risen Jesus, nothing could shake their belief. Within a few generations Christianity had spread throughout the Middle East and Europe; within a few centuries it had taken over much of the world.
But historians have been unable to account for Christianity’s remarkable success without the Resurrection to spark it. If no one really saw the Risen Jesus, how were his followers convinced that he was their immortal Messiah?
Art historian Thomas de Wesselow has spent the last seven years deducing the answer to this puzzle, and in doing so he has pieced together an entirely new picture of the birth of Christianity. Reassessing a familiar but misunderstood historical source and reinterpreting many biblical passages, de Wesselow shows that the solution has been staring us in the face for more than a century.
The Shroud of Turin, widely thought to be a fake, is in fact authentic. And it holds the key to the greatest mystery in human history.
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"Some people will dismiss [THE SIGN]. Some people will be intrigued by it. And some people may change their attitudes on one thing or another by it." -Harold Attridge, dean of Yale Divinity School, as told to CBS “Sunday Morning”
"Fascinating...startling." -Telegraph
"A fresh insight into the Easter story." --Financial Times
"Thorough, well-researched and fair-minded... Persuasive... much more than just an addition to the canon of Shroud literature." -Irish Times
About the Author
Thomas de Wesselow is an art historian experienced at tackling “unsolvable” problems. He studied art history at Edinburgh University and at the Courtauld in London, where he worked successfully on the Guidoriccio Problem, one of the great mysteries of Italian art. Later, he became a Scholar at the British School in Rome, researching an even more complex puzzle, the so-called Assisi Problem. In 2002, he was appointed a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at King’s College, Cambridge University. Since 2007 he has been researching the Shroud full-time. He lives in Cambridge.
Preordered and delivered to my Kindle Fire the day of its release (4/3), I couldn't put it down any free moment I have had this past week until I finished it today. It is an elegant, learned, fascinating read which succeeds, I think, in establishing that, from an art historian's point of view, the Shroud of Turin cannot be a medievally produced piece of art. His cataloguing of the shroud's unusual characteristics and review of the history of its evaluation by scientists and art historians is also engaging and convincing. His treatment of the carbon dating of the shroud is less thorough, in my estimation, but his evaluation of the technique itself as malleable and imprecise is valid, it seems.
He has obviously immersed himself in current New Testament scholarship, and points to and quite deftly handles many fascinating issues scholars raise and address, eg. the inconsistency of the Easter morning reports, the accounts' clearly illustrating the political debates in the early Church of who saw what first, and where, and when. His total failure, however, lies in his attempt to address NT scholar and English bishop N. T Wright's initially quoted challenge to explain the resurrection in a way that explains all its historical results (betrayers turning into defiant martyrs, the meteoric rise of Christianity around the Mediterranean basin in such a short time, and the continued existence of Christianity) without resorting to the two basic foundations of Christianity's twin claim on what its belief in Jesus' resurrection is based: discovery of an empty (corpseless) tomb and convincing appearances.
Here is where learned and engaging and convincing gives way to preposterous and untenable.... Quote as many Egyptian, Greek and hellenized Jewish sources and examples as he may; contend as much as he wishes that first century Galilean/Judaean Judaism was thoroughly hellenized (seriously debatable and, finally, also unsupportable)--no first century Jew, particularly of the social and educational strata from which the initial 12 and others seem to have come, would ever have believed in anything remotely similar to the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus of Nazareth based on any stains found on his shroud if the corpse continued to lay there. First century Jewish expectation of the resurrection was nowhere near that ethereal. Beginning with the untenability of the women's initial ability to see and appreciate the size and nature of the image on the ritually unclean shroud in any lamp-lit tomb, on through his contention that the shroud was immediately removed and shown about and its image alone was what was sufficient cause and inspiration of the claims to appearances of the Risen Christ to those who claimed to be witnesses of his "resurrection," and culminating in his fanciful, imaginative and untenable claim that all the references to the resurrection appearances in the Pauline corpus and the canonical and extracanonical Gospels can be explained as mythologized references to seeing the shroud, the argument fails to convince.
The Christian claim about the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth rests on two uncompromisable foundations: discovery of an empty tomb by women: the corpse GONE, grave clothes left behind (which would alone explain why the shroud, if authentic, was ever kept and treasured as an icon of whatever the inexplicable and unwitnessed moment of resurrection was), and repeated appearances of the crucified to hundreds of witnesses. If he wants to discount the activity of whoever/whatever he conceives to be God in this event and successfully explain it rationally and naturalistically, he has failed, like countless others in the so-called quest for the historical Jesus.
(Arranging to meet friends yesterday in a local bookstore, I saw and leafed through the hardbound edition: the plates are even more impressive in that format).Read more ›
Having already read far too many religious-relic, "truth revealed" books, I approached this one with caution. In the end though, I was pleasantly surprised. This one is well written, comprehensive, logical, and thought provoking. Does it prove without doubt that the shroud is authentic? Not really. I'm not sure this will ever be possible. But what it does do is a good job of discrediting the debunkers, as well as making an equally credible albeit largely circumstantial case for that there are too many coincidences for the shroud to be fake. Perhaps what I enjoyed the most though was de Wesselow's non-judgmentally scientific professional attitude. Indeed, this book is worth reading even if all you're interested in is an overview of the kind of infighting, bad science, and biased claims these investigations provoke. Steven Paglierani
My full (now i have finished reading it) review first: the positives. A well written, imaginative, well-argued book from a fresh perspective tackling a "hobby" interest of mine: the turin shroud. A very entertaining book - not as wow! wierd! sensationalist as some of the papers suggest. I'm a history channel addict, what can i say! Thomas de-wesslow's rumination - that what sparked christianity was the resurrection as seen in a cloth - is an oddball claim, BUT he pieces together evidence from an artist's point of view. I wanted to not believe it - it sounds plainly daft. But reader, he makes a cogent, convincing argument and having now researched "animism" in Graham Harvey's excellent book on the topic, i'm impelled to believe him. It isnt one of "those" fantastical books on the turin shroud...although his belief that it was the cloth of Jesus and not a fake is still bothering me. And this perhaps is the book's biggest problem - his positivistic arguments sway me but do not convince me. this is after all an unprovable claim - unless more tests are allowed.
As a side note, can i say how disappointed i am to see the author charles freeman leaving his "review" of the book on this site as well as the uk site? i say review - it does read like a plug for his books/soapbox for his own theory! What i find very odd is that he is leaving comments all over the place on different sites, and has even taken to task anyone who leaves a vaguely positive review (i am of course expecting it..). Write a negative review of course, but do not bully others please who disagree with you. This is a book review site not a place for internet trolls. It ill-behoves an author like you. I wonder if he has a personal dislike of the author?... Having said that - and if indeed it is the real charles freeman - i will take mr freeman's comments on the book on board. They do not however change my mind on this book: if you have an open mind, i highly recommend this bookRead more ›
Thomas de Wesselow's THE SIGN is an absolutely beautifully produced book with an elegant and sublimely simple jacket design by Judith Lagerman. It is also a most interesting book for its seemingly brave defense of the Shroud of Turin as the authentic burial shroud of Jesus and its use of the shroud as the cornerstone of the main thesis elaborated upon within its many pages. The thesis is simply this: it wasn't the physical reality of a resurrected Jesus that gave birth to Christianity. Jesus, according to our author, lie dead in the tomb come Easter morning. Ergo, it was the shroud and the imprints on it that emblazoned themselves on the minds of the men and women of the day and led to the pandemic belief in the Risen Christ and the start of Christianity.
There are problems with this brazen reinterpretation of the origins of Christianity. For Mr. De Wesselow's off-beat theory to have any chance, he must first prove the authenticity of the Shroud. The inception of the book was therefore its bold conclusion. In the first parts of this book he valiantly attempts to lay the necessary groundwork to support his hopefully electrifying edifice - and for the most part he succeeds. Mr. De Wesselow is first and foremost an art historian with a special emphasis on Medieval art. He should know what sort of art stylistically fit with the time frame to which 1988's carbon 14 tests tried to relegate the Shroud, once and for all. However, those tests results are open to question, as our author clearly points out. The images on the shroud are not painted on. And the blood stains were, according to Mr. De Wesselow's research, the first stains to be left on the shroud. The image imprints are not below the blood stains.... And this is vitally important - for apart from ruling out a painted image, it also seemingly rules out the possibility of any scorch marks derived from a heated Medieval hoaxster's potential bas-relief. The theory proposed in this book as to how the image stains of the body of a crucified man got on the linen cloth is the one demonstrated by Ray Rogers in 2003. Vapors leaving a dead body and interacting with the carbohydrates on the cloth might result in a Maillard reaction and thusly leave faint brown image-stains from the decaying corpse on the cloth, or in this case the Shroud. In this case, the crucified man who was wrapped in the shroud would have to have been dead and emitting the proper emino acids to effect the chemical reaction. Again, this image formation theory was advanced about ten years ago by the now late Ray Rogers - and our author openly admits that the small test done over a decade again would need be done on an actual corpse or assorted body parts in order to be verified. Only if actual bodily images could be transferred onto linen by the Maillard reaction could one say that a complete explanation of how the image was transferred onto the Shroud had been achieved.
Well, if Nicholas Allen could produce a full-scale body image on a treated cloth using a camera obscura and a proto-photographic technique and if so many other researchers have advanced one notion after another as to how the image of a man got onto the shroud by way of their own full-scale experimentation, why - in near ten years - has no one furthered Ray Rogers small piece of linen test and applied it to a full body or even a part of a full body? To really shake the ground of sindonology all an intrepid researcher would have to do would replicate large-scale the small-scale test detailed and shown in this book of Ray Roger's promising theory involving a dead body and chemical compounds on certain types of linens. Perhaps because the test would have to involve a corpse - yes, that might be the reason for reluctance. An entire school of thought feels that the Shroud image are scorch marks, possibly involving some unknown radioactive, nuclear process that might have been attendant to the resurrection process. And granted, if a dead body could replicate in exact quality and manner the marks on the shroud the psychological effects on a great many people might be enormous. Either way, the fact that the Maillard reaction theory has not been fully tested in near ten years is reprehensible. Mr. De Wesselow would have been better served if he did, in fact, see to a complete test of this premise before writing his book. A successful experiment would have helped his case inordinately. Unless, of course, that theory is not as potentially convincing as Mr. De Wesselow would have us readers believe.
The point is that Thomas de Wesselow needs a dead Jesus to complete and advance his premise. And he needs the Shroud of Turin to be authentic. One thing about the Shroud, however, is this: if it is the real image (however formed) of a real man (either dead, alive or resurrecting) then...why does it look fake? Why does the head look disproportionate to the body? If rigor mortis had indeed begun to set in, as our author contends, why then does the face show naught of fixed, pained expression from one who had been so tortured and crucified? If the rigor mortis in the shoulders had to be broken so that the stiffened arms could be folded precisely so that no trace of genitalia are visible in what is purported to be the image of a real man, then why again is the face so artistically serene? Faces are amongst the first parts of a dead body to experience rigor mortis. Why does the face of the man in the shroud then look so like a work of art? But getting back to the main point: for our author's revolutionary theory on the origins of Christianity to work he needs the Shroud to be authentically that of Jesus and he needs Jesus to have been dead.
And that is the big problem with this book. On the back flap of the book, beneath a photo of the author, is written: "Thomas de Wesselow is an art historian experienced at tackling 'unsolvable' problems." That one sentence speaks volumes. He had to solve the problem of the Shroud and the real reason for the start of Christianity in order to live up to his reputation as a problem tackler and justify his writing of this book! The parts of this book recapping all we know about Shroud research and the case for its authenticity is brilliantly presented. Mr. De Wesslow is an excellent and persuasive writer. He would make a superb lawyer. But then, at midpoint, we are told of how one sunny day in 2004 our author - after having become convinced of the authenticity of the Shroud from reading other books - is faced with a "suffocating thought." If the Shroud is real then so might be the Resurrection of he whom it once covered. Yet our author cannot accept this notion, no, so he fights it. To him the idea of an anomalous event, a miracle is threatening, stifling. He writes that he found himself "battling with a fierce metaphysical adversary, like Jacob wrestling with the angel." He cleverly invokes one "supposed miracle" - Jacob's battle with "something uncanny" - to describe his own battle with a belief that might suffocate him. He then spends the rest of the book trying to shove a square block into a round hole.
Mr. De Wesslow, therefore, did not come to his belief - that the Shroud was what everyone really saw when they later said they saw the Risen Christ - after a careful examination of the historical evidence. No. He came to his conclusion first and then tried to interpret all of the historical evidence under the grandiose light of his "stunning thought." It is admittedly a novel notion - and he does answer many questions. But he raises so many more. For example, how did the first visitors to the tomb of Jesus manage to see in what must have been a very dark and small area the faint images on the shroud? And if Jesus' body was still wrapped in the Shroud, how did those first folks see both sides of the Shroud and come to believe the dual image of Jesus' body were instead the two angels described in the Gospels? Why would the posterior view of a naked man be taken to be one of two angels? And are we really to believe that so many, so swiftly were able to accept a blood-stained shroud with faint images of a dead man upon it as visible proof of that man's resurrection? Our own author says it well: "The idea that resurrection involved returning to life 'in the flesh' was deeply entrenched." Deeply entrenched in the religious philosophy of the times, that is. At best, the displaying of a bloody shroud with hard-to discern images of man to 500 people would have resulted most likely in divided opinion - and somewhere that divided opinion would have most likely made itself known in writing. Why are there no written accounts anywhere of the early Christians promoting their nascent religion by waving high the banner of the holy shroud? And everything that is in the New Testament that doesn't fit into De Wesselow's neat and tidy take on things is summarily dismissed by him as being the fictional, embellished part of the account. The Resurrected Jesus eating fish? Fiction! The Risen Christ talking? Embellishment! And so forth. Ad infinitum, ad nauseum. THE SIGN's premise is interesting and provocative - but because of De Wesselow's inexplicable and utter need to explain EVERYTHING under the sun and moon in a materialistic, pragmatic, mechanistic fashion his argument ultimately fails.
It is true that many people are unpredictable and easily swayed. Many, maybe most minds seem made to be swayed. Nowadays legions flock to see Christ in a tortilla chip! Why not then, at the start of it all? Why couldn't a 14 foot linen convince the multitudes that Christ had risen? It is possible! People would suffer horrendous deaths and have their lives completely altered and create an entirely new religion all because of a shroud with some faint images on it - and nowhere in the written record would it ever slip out that ALL of the to-do was over a burial shroud and NOT a living and visible presence! It is possible! Yes, when no one really knows...anything goes! But other things are possible as well. If you have never seen a ghost, then you don't know what you are missing. And one shouldn't dismiss so recklessly those who have seen ghosts, spirits, miracles. The material - even if it is in the form of a tangible shroud - is not all of it. We are material now - flesh and bone - in this instance. But where is a minute ago? Where is last week? Where is the time when Jesus walked the earth? And if that time once was and is no more to be seen then what else...what else was and is...yet cannot be seen with the eyes in this moment, in this restricted and provincial Now? There are more things in heaven and earth, Mr. De Wesselow, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.Read more ›
