Jack Markwardt | 12-Oct-2014 | 8:30-9:30 am
MODERN SCHOLARSHIP AND THE HISTORY OF THE TURIN SHROUD
. . . A suggestion that the Turin Shroud is to be identified with the famous sixth-century Image of Edessa has, rightly or wrongly, been rejected by several leading experts in Byzantine history and Syriac studies on the grounds that the Edessa icon was merely a painted object and that the single textual reference to it having been an acheiropoietos (not made by human hands) image was the invention of agenda-driven, eighth-century iconophiles. Nevertheless, . . . In this paper, the author, drawing substantially upon the work of modern scholarship, recounts the movements of the imaged cloth which would ultimately become the Shroud of Constantinople, accounts for the extended periods of its historical obscurity, and documents the fact of its existence many centuries prior to the earliest radiocarbon birth date ascribed to it in 1988.
Click on the title to read the full abstract. Click here for the conference home page.
I know of three papers by Jack Markwardt, all of which I have found a fascinating read, and all annotated with footnotes and citations.
In the first of these, “Antioch and the Shroud”, presented at the Dallas conference of 1998, he expounds his theory that the Shroud was taken to Antioch in apostolic times, with supporting argument.
His second paper “ANCIENT EDESSA AND THE SHROUD: HISTORY CONCEALED BY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SECRET” presented at Ohio in 2008, he develops this theory further but with more detail. He believes it had a role in the conversion of the court and household of Abgar VIII the Great, involving Bishop Marcellus Avercius of Hieropolis, during the reign of the emperor Commodus and pontificate of Pope Eleutherius; that the event was recorded as a coded allegory in what came to be known as the Doctrine of Addai, later the Acts of Thaddeus; and is reflected in the Bardesanic “Hymn of the Pearl”; that the Shroud was returned to Antioch, was hidden in the wall there to be later rediscovered, the basis of the legend that it was found in a wall at Edessa; that with the impending destruction of Antioch, by earthquake and Persian invasion, that it was then taken to Edessa about 540AD.
The third paper written in 2001 is on a different topic altogether, “THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE SHROUD” and closely examines the Chevalier & Thurston’s attempt to misrepresent the D’Arcis memorandum.
URLs for the three papers are respectively:
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/markward.pdf
http://ohioshroudconference.com/papers/p02.pdf
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n55part3.pdf
I shall be intrigued to discover what Jack has to say about the Shroud’s history in his latest paper for the St Louis conference.
There is more by Markwardt:
Was The Shroud In Languedoc During The Missing Years?
http://www.shroud.com/markward.htm
The Fire and the Portrait
http://www.shroud.com/markwar2.htm
THE CATHAR CRUCIFIX: NEW EVIDENCE OF THE
SHROUD’S MISSING HISTORY
http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/markwar3.pdf
Will the presentations be available for the public to view if one is not able to attend the conference, maybe via Youtube or a set of CD’s?
The papers will eventually be on a separate site from the conference site. Also, the audios/videos are going to be presented on Russ Breault’s http://www.shrouduniversity site.
Thanks for the info, Joe.