The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (35 page)

At the time of writing these questions remain unresolved. The sceptical school has returned to the old assertion, first made by Fr. Ulysse Chevalier, that the shroud is a forgery whose peculiar properties – when subjected to photography and image-enhancement – are due somehow to the “decay” of the original pigment. This belief seems as absurd now as it seemed at the turn of the twentieth century. Carbon 14 dating could perhaps resolve the question once and for all, if it proved that the linen of the shroud dates from long after the Crucifixion. This had still not been carried out when this book was written, partly because carbon dating techniques would still involve the destruction of a small amount of the cloth of the shroud, but permission for this has apparently now been granted.

But if, as seems likely on the basis of Max Frei’s pollen results, the shroud proves to be of the right date, we are still faced with the mystery of
how
the image was “imprinted” on it. American investigators have pointed out the similarity of the markings to “radiation burns” produced by atomic explosions, and suggested that the image may have been impressed on the shroud by a very brief and intense burst of radiation – perhaps when the body of Jesus was brought back to life in the tomb. The sceptics counter this by asking why a “miracle” should involve atomic radiation. Their question seems unanswerable. But then, so does the evidence of the extraordinary amount of “information” encoded in the shroud. If the shroud proves to be a fourteenth-century forgery, the miracle will be almost as great as if it is proved genuine.

Postscript to “The Holy Shroud”

The developments in the Turin Shroud case since this article was written are extremely interesting.

In 1977, an American organization called the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) was formed. The Catholic Church continued to reject all proposals to have the shroud subjected to carbon dating, but finally gave way, and agreed to a test on 21 April 1988. Three labouratories were involved: from Arizona, Oxford and Zurich. The
results were published on 13 October 1988, and showed with ninety-nine per cent certainty that the material of the shroud dated from between
AD
1260 and 1390.

So it seemed that the shroud was a fake. Then who faked it, and why?

In 1994, Lynn Picknett and her fellow researcher Clive Prince came up with a rather interesting answer to this question. Their book,
The Turin Shroud – In Whose Image
? was subtitled “The Shocking Truth Unveiled”.

According to Picknett and Prince, the “fake” was the work of Leonardo da Vinci, and he was probably commissioned to do it by the pope.

But how about the fact that Leonardo was born in 1452, 99 years after the shroud had first been put on display? Their theory is that Leonardo was commissioned by the pope to make a copy of the shroud that would be exhibited to draw the tourists – because, we presume, the other was becoming worn.

This story, apparently, was told by a Neapolitan named Giovanni Battista della Porta, who is usually credited with the invention of photography, since he described the process in 1552, 33 years after Leonardo’s death. Then Leonardo’s notebooks were translated, (he had written them in a kind of code) and they showed that Leonardo had invented what he called “the artificial eye” (
oculus artificalis
). Leonardo explained that if the façade of a building is illuminated by the sun, and a small hole is made in the face of the building facing it, the light passing through this hole will throw an upside-down image of the façade on a wall. It would be about another 150 years, in the 1640s, until the Jesuit scientist Athanasius Kircher used the principle in the first “magic lantern”.

What Picknett and Prince then have to prove is that silver nitrate or chloride, the chemicals that “photograph” the image, were known at the time of Leonardo. They are able to show that these had been known since the beginning of that century.

The theory is original, but most people will feel, rightly, that it is simply too speculative, without solid evidential proof. For example, if carbon dating has shown that the linen of the shroud was woven between 1200 and 1390, then Leonardo’s lifetime is simply a century too late. Of course, the linen he used may have been lying around for a century – but it seems unlikely.

This objection does not apply to another recent theory about the nature of the shroud, explained in
The Second Messiah
(1997) by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas. These researchers argue that
the image on the shroud is that of Jacques de Molay, Grand Master of the Knights Templar.

The Templars (who are also discussed in the article on Rennes-le-Chateau) were a group of knights who were formed in the Holy Land after the fall of Jerusalem and the success of the First Crusade in
AD
1099. Their purpose was to make the roads of the Holy Land safe for pilgrims, but the original band of nine knights clearly seems inadequate for this purpose, suggesting that it was a “blind”.

Lomas and Knight argue that the Templars had another purpose when they moved in to the remains of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by the Romans when they crushed the Jewish revolt of
AD
70. The Templars, they suggest, were actually searching for old scrolls or documents.

The most famous scrolls of the Holy Land are, of course, the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in a cave by an Arab shepherd in 1947. He took them home with him, and fortunately decided against using them as fire-lighters.

Lomas and Knight believe that the scrolls in the Temple came from the same source as the Dead Sea Scrolls, but were of far greater significance. There is evidence that the Templar who took some of the scrolls back to France was Geoffrey de St Omer, the second in command after Hugh de Payen. The scrolls were taken to an old priest called Lambert of St Omer, who is mainly known to historians because of a copy of a drawing that depicts the Heavenly Jerusalem. It was made about
AD
1120, and – Lomas and Knight point out – shows the basic symbols of Freemasonry five centuries before Freemasonry is said to have been founded. Lomas and Knight argue convincingly that the drawing originated in Solomon’s Temple.

But what were these scrolls?

The Dead Sea Scrolls were the property of a Jewish sect called the Essenes, also known as the Nazoreans. These were what we might describe as Jewish Puritans, strict vegetarians who rejected animal sacrifice, and therefore refused to recognize the divine inspiration of Moses.

The Essenes were founded because of a fundamental split among the Jews. When the Jews were dragged off into their Babylonian exile by the armies of King Nebuchadnezzar in 587
BC
, they dreamed of a Messiah who would lead them to freedom. And when they returned to Jerusalem fifty years later, and a priest named Zerubbabel rebuilt the Temple, Zerubbabel was regarded by many as the Messiah – although he himself preferred to avoid that responsibility.

Two centuries later, Alexander the Great conquered Palestine, and it was his generals, known as Seleucids, who then ruled. But when the Greek conquerors were rash enough to place a statue of Zeus on the altar of the Temple, the Jews under Judas Maccabeus, began a highly successful guerrilla campaign, and finally rededicated the Temple to Jehovah in 164
BC
. The Maccabees became kings, as well as high priests, of Jerusalem.

This caused outrage among the descendants of Zerubbabel, who regarded the Maccabees as upstarts, and around 187
BC
, many withdrew to the wilderness near the Dead Sea, and became the Qumran community. They lived in tents, and used the caves as store houses. They were also known as the Essenes, and were led by a man who was referred to simply as the Teacher of Righteousness. Lomas and Knight argue that the rituals of the Essenes bore many resemblances to those of the Freemasons.

In the Jewish revolt of
AD
66, the Essenes hid their scrolls and manuscripts in the Dead Sea caves, and – Lomas and Knight believe – in Solomon’s Temple, which was reserved for the most valuable.

These, Lomas and Knight argue, is what the Templars were actually seeking. This was the “treasure” that they found. They went on during the course of the next two centuries, to achieve an enormous amount of wealth and influence. The documents they had found in the Temple were, according to Lomas and Knight, the title deeds that authorized them to become the founders of a new religious order.

The most controversial part of the argument of Lomas and Knight is that the leader of the Essenes in the first century
AD
were Jesus, who became known as Jesus Christ, and his brother James. Jesus, they claim, was actually known as Jesus the Nazorean, not the Nazarene. Nazareth, they say, did not even exist in Jesus’ time.

According to Lomas and Knight, it was Jesus’ younger brother James, also known as Ya’cov, who was the leader of the Essenes and the “Teacher of Righteousness”.

The Roman Catholic Church has denied that Jesus had brothers or sisters, although this is actually contradicted by the Gospel of Matthew (13: 55): “Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary, and his brothers James, Simon and Jude? And his sisters, are they not all with us”?

Lomas and Knight argue that Jesus was not simply a preacher of universal love; he wanted to get rid of the Romans, and was prepared to lead a revolt to do it. A large number of the Essenes preferred Jesus’ less radical brother James.

Both Jesus and his cousin John the Baptist were regarded as “messiahs”.

After the death of John the Baptist, Jesus took up his ministry (which only lasted one year) gathering followers and preaching in remote places. Then he made what, historically speaking, was his great mistake – he rode into Jerusalem on an ass, to fulfill the prediction of the prophet Zachariah that the king would arrive on a donkey. Then he caused a riot in the temple and attacked the money changers.

The Romans issued a wanted poster for Jesus which still survives, describing him as short, (about 4ft 6ins), bald-headed and humpbacked. His brother James was arrested first, then Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane.

It seems highly probable that Jesus was hoping that his act of rebellion would cause an uprising that would bring people flocking to his banner. He had announced that the end of the world would occur within the lifetime of people who were then listening to him. He was mistaken on both counts. Instead, he was arrested, tried and sentenced to death. Lomas and Knight argue that Barrabas, the “thief” who was acquitted was Jesus’ brother James – Barrabas is a title meaning “son of the Father”. An early manuscript of Matthew gives Barrabas’ surname as Jesus.

So Jesus was crucified, while James returned to being the leader of the Qumran community. Thirty years later he would be murdered by priests, who threw him from the top of the temple then stoned him to death.

Jesus’ body disappeared from the rock tomb, and so began rumours that he had not died on the cross, but had been seen alive.

It was St Paul–Saul – who plays the central part in the early story of Christianity.

When Saul became a Roman citizen, he changed his name to Paul and was given the job of stamping out the remains of the Jewish freedom movement. This was ten years after the death of Jesus, in
AD
43. And it was seventeen years later that Paul had his experience on the road to Damascus, and was suddenly converted to Christianity. Lomas and Knight state that this would not have been the Damascus in Syria, where he would have had no authority, but probably Kumran, which was also referred to as Damascus. And it was probably on the way to Kumran to persecute the Essenes that Paul received his revelation. He became temporarily blind, and when he recovered, became romantically enthralled by the doctrine that would be later labeled Christianity. This doctrine, of Paul’s own invention, declared that Jesus had died on the
cross to redeem humankind from the sin of Adam, and that all who believed in Jesus would become free of Original Sin.

James and the other Nazoreans must have been astonished and delighted to discover that their persecutor had suddenly become Jesus’ chief admirer. But when, in due course, they learned the details of the Christianity that had been invented by Paul, they were enraged, and habitually referred to him as “the spouter of lies”.

Now in fact, these two versions of Christianity – the militant version of James, and the “gentle Redeemer” version of Paul – might well have continued to be rivals for centuries to come. But the Jewish revolt put an end to that, James was murdered, and most of the rebels were slaughtered or driven into exile.

Paul, who was abroad preaching to the Gentiles, survived, and so did his version of Christianity.

The immense popularity of Christianity was due to the fact that it preached the end of the world within a decade or so – say, by the end of the first century – and by the time that that came and went without any sign of Armageddon St Paul’s version of Christianity was so well established that no one noticed.

For the next two centuries, the fortunes of the Christians varied, but more often than not they were persecuted. Then, they suddenly achieved power. This happened in the year
AD
312, when the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of his empire. It is usually assumed that Constantine was converted when he saw the sign of a cross in the sky, before the battle of the Milvian Bridge, and the words “In this sign shall ye conquer”. But the truth is that Constantine never became a Christian – he remained a follower of the sun god Sol Invictus. There can be little doubt that his “conversion” was entirely political. It was basically an attempt to prevent the shaky Roman Empire from falling apart. What the Empire needed, he suddenly recognized, was not a vast army, but a new religion. His mother Helena, a British princess, had been converted to Christianity. And although the Christians were a long way from being a majority, there were probably a few of them in every town and village in his empire. If he handed them power, then he had a supporter in every town and village. If the Roman Empire could be compared to a British public school, then the headmaster had decided to hand over part of his authority to the prefects, who now had good reason to want to keep order.