Joe Marino found this interview with Thomas de Wesselow on Listen to Nine to Noon online:
It has intrigued people for centuries. Some regard it as the burial cloth of Jesus – others have argued that the Shroud of Turin is a forgery and a hoax.
It is about 30 minutes and certainly worth listening to.
His comfort zone is of course with those who have little or no knowledge of the shroud or scriptures.And he of course cannot debate the findings of the scientist and researchers because he conveniently believes in them.They (being scientist) cannot take the luxury of claiming the burial cloth is authenticly that of Christ…whether they personally believe it is or not…because they are still intrigued and bound in trying to explain how this image came to be.
This art historian is a typical opportunist and is clearly exploiting these findings to serve his own best interest….money.
So they (the disciples) went into the tomb and discovered the barely noticible and faint image of Christ on the cloth.They were then so intrigued by it that they went against Jewish burial customs and law to disrespectfully kick or put the body of Christ to one side and use the shroud to found one of the greatest religions in the world.And all based solely on the “idea” of a “spiritual” resurection and not a “physical” one.
This guy missed his calling…he should have been a lawyer.
I heard the interview at the time as we regularly listen to NZ National Radio and I knew it was coming up. I hadn’t appreciated that it was also available on the web, otherwise I should have mentioned it sooner. Katherine Ryan is an experienced, good, reputable interviewer and knew enough of the subject to initiate intelligent questions, but not necessarily the hard ones. She might easily have skewered de Wesselow, as she has other subjects on occasion, but had the courtesy to refrain from doing so this time.
I felt that de Wesselow’s performance was only average when it came to any detailed knowledge about the Shroud, but was wide off the mark when it came to his theories about the Resurrection. He has a long way to go before he develops his historical understanding of early Christianity. E.g: I find his belief that early Jewish Christians were influenced by cultural animism verging on the preposterous; I feel that animism just did not feature in their highly developed belief systems. One would not live and die for merely a faint image on a burial cloth.
He referred to the evidence of Paul’s letters as being much earlier than the gospels. I suspect that Paul would not even know of the burial cloths or the image. He was convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead on the basis of a personal relgious experience, probably on the Road to Damascus as written in the Acts by Luke, a companion of Paul!