The Turin Shroud - Conclusive Proof

Finally, after all the other books, the conspiracy theories, the 2,000 year old pollen grains and the mediaeval fraud, the long wait is over.

Art historian Thomas de Wesselow has sat around eating biscuits and reading books and come up with his conclusion. The Turin Shroud is authentic, and the disciples were convinced of the Resurrection by a sheet.

I'm not going to read the book. I don't know why - call it intuition that after the last 999 books on the subject, this one is wrong too. And besides - how does he know he's talking about the right Turin Shroud? I've got three in the Relics Shed. I was hoping to get a fourth, to match up to the number of heads of John the Baptist, but the Pope won't sell. He says that he's just got the one, and if I had all four I'd only jack the price up. Which, to be fair, is true.

But back to the theory. I mean, just call me suspicious. But can you imagine Paul chatting to Priscilla on quiet nights in Ephesus or wherever?

"No, I didn't see Jesus physically resurrected. Though I did see him in a vision. And in Jerusalem I met with Simon who is called Peter. And he told me that, very early on that Sunday morning, Mary Magdalen very clearly saw a sheet. Yes, a sheet. And that same sheet went on to walk through doors, break bread, give advice on where to catch fish, and build barbecues. Yes, I thought it was a little odd myself. But Peter seemed very convinced."

After the Shroud hoaxes, da Vinci Code, the Rosicrucians, the idea that it was Thomas, or Simon of Cyrene, or someone else on the Cross, the "Jesus took a special drug so he just looked dead" theory, the claim that there is a mystical order of Clangers who possess the One True Cross, the idea that Jesus was spiritually gadding around the place while the physical Jesus was dying for good and all on the cross - after claims of hallucination, epic wishful thinking, of the disciples having the profound sense that Jesus was alive in a very real sense - and now after the claim that what God actually raised from the dead was a mediaeval sheet (I exaggerate slightly here, for comic effect) - do you know what I think happened? I think Jesus was taken, dead, off the Cross and two days later he was alive again and God did it. And then all the martyr's deaths that followed make sense - because the apostles had seen the risen Christ.

They didn't go to their own crosses claiming they'd met an excitingly-marked sheet, nor somebody who might have looked a bit like Jesus. They couldn't go out and say "Jesus was crucified and is risen" while Our Lady was in the corner, muttering, "you know, the person on the cross - wasn't that Judas all along?"  How was Stephen going to be stoned for merely claiming his friends had seen some interesting bedding?

I know. I'm being all controversial here, and expounding some mad doctrines - possibly well beyond those of the modern mainstream denominations. But the simplest explanation for why the apostles said what they said, for the way they behaved, for the way they died, and for the way the Church exploded into the Roman World, is this. Jesus died. And then God made him alive.