Jesus’ Blood?
A 13th Century Crucifixion?
-
Reasoning in Antonacci’s books [2000; 2015] controverts various attempts to explain the blood and images on the Shroud naturalistically or as a counterfeit instigated in the Middle Ages.
-
Motivations for alternative explanations might be legitimate: Alternative explanations should be and have been investigated by STURP researchers—at least to highlight why alternatives fail and to eliminate them.
-
Many skeptics are motivated by a presupposed denial of any preternatural explanation or by a biased disdain for anything Christian.
Is the victim Jesus?
-
All the above facts do match the details in the Gospels’ accounts.
-
Who else in history could it be? Some other crucified victim? If so, the mysterious frontal and dorsal images and all the other unusual details still demand to be explained.
-
Which other crucifixion victim wore a cap of thorns?
Implication
-
The above details imply that the Shroud had to enshroud a victim of a real crucifixion. A hoaxer before 1350 would surely not have known many of the above physiological details. How could he accidentally get them all right?
-
Crucified people were criminals and rarely, if ever, be interred within a quality shroud. The rare exception would have been somebody, like Jesus, honored by a few dedicated friends with the permission and resources to do so.
While not a rigorous proof, the above evidence (along with all the rest in this compendium) so very strongly suggests that the Shroud indeed was Jesus’ burial cloth. Such a strong implication that a skeptic would need to present strong contrary factual evidence (not just his/her negative, naturalistic presuppositions and not some hypothetical scenario).