This chapter shows some photographs that can shed some light on some questions that were asked during presentations of the Shroud during the last couple of years.
IMAGES OF FLOWERS ON THE SHROUD
Alan and Mary Whanger did research on the images of flowers on and around the body of the image of the Man on the Shroud and visited Avinoam Danin in Jerusalem. Danin was the leading expert on the flora of Israel and the Sinai. He continued their work and found more images of flowers and plants from Israel and the region of Jerusalem on the Shroud in the Vernon Miller UV photographs. (See the chapters of Avinoam Danin).
In different cultures it is customary to adorn the body of the deceased person with flowers. Many times, they have a special meaning, spiritual or other. The photograph shows the body of Mahatma GHANDI after his assassination and before his cremation.
So, it could be possible that it was also customary in the 1st century in Judaea to adorn the deceased with flowers.
The next photograph was made by the Whanger’s with a volunteer and shows how they thought, based on their research, how the body of Christ was adorned with flowers.
CARRYING OF A DEAD BODY.
The body of a deceased person is not easy to carry. When Jesus was taken from the cross and carried to the tomb at a distance of about 50 meters (measured in the Church of the Sepulcre) and buried according to the Jewish custom, (so tell us the Gospels), the question after presentations was: who did this ? We know that the Gospels tell us that the men that were present were the Apostle John, Nicodemus and Josef of Arimatea. It was on the eve of the Pascua, a very important Jewish festivity, and it was inconceivable that these Jewish men present would have touched the dead body of Jesus themselves, because they would have been impure and could then not participate in the Pascual celebrations. Both Nicodemus and Josef of Arimatea were members of the Sanhedrin, important citizens of Jerusalem and must have had many servants. So, the most probable scenario was that they instructed their servants what to do.
To give an example of how many people you need to carry a dead body we show the next two photographs, so the three men present could not have done this job.
JEWISH BURIAL CUSTOMS TODAY.
The next two photographs show burials in the last couple of years of two well-known rabbis in Israel.
You can see that the bodies are enshrouded, and it gives an idea of the kind of Shroud that is being used these days in Israel to bury a person, according to the Jewish burial custom.
Another photograph shows dead and enshrouded bodies in the Middle East before burial according to Muslim tradition.
Photo 1. Body Ghandi covered with flowers |
Photo 2. Body Shroud with flowers according to Whangers |
Photo 3. Four people carrying dead body |
Photo 4. Six people carrying dead body |
Photo 5. Shrouded bodies Middle East |
Photo 6. Deceased Rabbi´s enshrouded body, Israel |
Photo 7. Deceased Rabbi´s enshrouded body, Israel