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The Holy Shroud of Turin,
by Colin Wilson.
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"The shroud had been in Turin cathedral since 1578 – it was now the property of the Duke of Savoy – and on 25 May 1898 it was again put on public display. A Turin photographer, Secondo Pia, was commissioned to photograph it. And it was in his apartment, towards midnight, that the photographer removed the first of two large plates from the developing fluid. What he saw almost made him drop the plate. Instead of the dim, blurred image he was looking at a real face, quite plainly recognizable. Yet he was looking at a photographic negative, not the final product. This could only mean one thing: that the image on the shroud was itself a photographic negative, so by “reversing” it Pia had turned it into a positive – a real photograph. If the relic was genuine, Pia was looking at a photograph of Christ."
Wilson gives various existing theories of the history thereof, before coming to recent and well known part.
"In 1955 Group Captain Leonard Cheshire took a crippled Scottish girl to Turin, and she was allowed to hold the shroud in her lap; however, no cure took place. Possibly this failure decided Cardinal Pellegrino of Turin to make a determined attempt to establish the shroud’s authenticity or otherwise by scientific means. ... In fact tests showed that there was no blood on the shroud."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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”."
"Lomas and Knight quote Pope Leo X as saying: “It has served us well, this myth of Christ”."
Hereon Wilson gives history close to what's given in Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and other works by Lomas and Knight, towards their theory about the shroud being, in fact, that of Jacques Dr Molay.
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November 17, 2020 - November 18, 2020 -
December 24, 2020 .
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