Inside a chest in a cathedral in the city of Oviedo, Spain, lies something that has beyond despute lain there since 800 AD. It's history before that is pretty well documented. It came from around Isreal no later than a few hundred years AD. It is a cloth about the size of a bath towel, although a little longer, and it is ugly.
This towel bears no image or sign. It is corroded with blood and lymph fluid stains. In fact, it is mostly lymph fluid, that essential fluid in the body that comes from the lymph glands and is just as necessary for survival as blood.
This towel is purported to be a cloth that was wrapped around the head of Jesus as he hung dead on the cross, and remained around his head for a time before they took it off and applied the shroud before burial.
Some scientific studies have been done on this item in the last few years, and what they found is staggering (at least to me). Accoring to the stains, the cloth was first applied to a bleeding head that hung down and to the right. The arms were stretched overhead with the right arm being stretched straight, and the left bent at an almost 90% angle. The people who applied the cloth could not get it completely around the head, probably because it lay against the right shoulder, so they brought the folds back around the head twice and pinned the cloth near the nape of the neck. When the body was brought down, the arms remained stretched up (maybe pulling the horizontal beam down with the body?) and it lay for almost an hour on its back on the ground. Finally, someone lifted the feet. This caused the stagnant lymph fluid to pour from the mouth and nose. There are finger prints of someone trying to squeeze the nose shut to stop the fluid, then knuckle prints where the person tried another tactic by shoving his knuckles up the nostrils to stop the flow. The body was carried to the tomb where it was put down again before the cloth was taken off.
How science found all of this out, only the scientists know, but from the angles and concentrations of the stains, they concluded the above.
Now, it seems to have been common Jewish custom back then to cover the face of a disgraced and beaten man (just as we would today). John's Gospel talks about the "napkin" (sudarium) folded up beside the shroud in the tomb. Along with the scientific findings and the fact that there is NOTHING else on it that would be artificially put there for publicity, I find this a very interesting piece of cloth in that it may have been a real connection to Jesus. That is something that is hard for me to say, being the skeptic I am with relics, but, well, what do you think? And, just curious, did you ever hear of this before? Look it up on the net. Got a few good sites about it. You can join Unsolved Mysteries and post your own mysteries or
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Christmas is Right around the corner.. .
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