[EDITOR'S COMMENT: The following document is a 48-page excerpt from this book. Breaking it into smaller sections was considered; however, I decided to leave it intact as one. I would suggest that you save this page in a browser "text" format for storage on your hard drive, or copy/paste the entire text into a word-processor document. Although there are places that I would have liked to edit, I did not and have transcribed this document in its original form, with the primary exception of replacing the italics of mainly non-English words with single quotation marks. There were only a handful of places that needed any editorial clarification. The text contains 52 footnotes which are not indicated or listed here, so if you question the source of certain material, email me below, and I'll check to see if the item is footnoted. Also, I have not inserted any personal commentary into the text, as I usually do, but would like to say that when you read "Jesus" here, keep in mind that this is actually referring to "Apollonius of Tyana". This historical "detective story" was first published in 1994 by Element Books. Robertino Solàrion.]

Two Burials In St. John's Gospel

Our investigation of the thrilling history of the extraordinary linen cloth has taken us on a long journey. We have told of its repeated concealment and rediscovery and of its passage through the Near East to Constantinople and finally France. We have described the scientific studies which have shown the cloth to be authentic. They have clearly confirmed the origin, age and historical route of the textile. Opposing this is merely the radiocarbon dating, which has been fully exploited by the media. And this has turned out to have been manipulated. It is not the cloth that is a fraud, but the age test by the C-14 technique.

In this section and the one following we will reveal the motives which have led to the manipulation, and show the nature of the deception and its execution. Until now none of the authors who are similarly convinced of the deception have been able to offer a plausible motive for the affair. This is due to the general misinterpretation of the significance of the image on the cloth. It is commonly considered by sindonologists to be the 'miraculous' sign of the Resurrection of the Lord made visible. But the behaviour of the Church authorities has shown that they themselves promoted the questionable dating experiment in a way which opened the door to fraudulent manipulation. The Vatican called off its own supervisory bodies, reduced the number of laboratories, and before the age test was out the curator of the relic, Cardinal Ballestrero, made it quite clear that he did not believe it was authentic. It would be against all logic for the Church to rob itself of this unique piece of evidence to support the doctrine of the Resurrection; the Resurrection which Paul set at the centre of the Christian Faith with the words, 'And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.' (1 Cor. 15:14). The solution to this puzzle lies concealed in the enigmatic image on the cloth itself. It emerges when one looks at the Crucifixion and burial of Jesus independent of Christian myth and Christian theology, bringing to light the true facts of the case.

Therefore let us go back to that dramatic hour on Good Friday, when Jesus was nailed to the cross and the same day hurriedly put in the tomb. The story of the Crucifixion has been passed down to us in the Synoptic Gospels, the Gospel of John and several apocryphal texts. If one makes the effort to read the Gospel texts in parallel, one notices a whole series of differences besides the points of agreement, which make it difficult to form a clear and consistent picture of the events. There are marked discrepancies even in the date of the Crucifixion: according to Matthew, Mark and Luke it took place on the day after the Passover; according to John on the day before it.

In general the Gospel of John shows the greatest independence with relation to the other three. This is why the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke are also termed the Synoptic Gospels -- synoptic means taken together. One can compare the many points of agreement of the texts placed side by side, a fact which suggests that they derive from the same single source. John does not fit into this comparison. Although the text of John was completed towards the end of the first century in Ephesus, and is the last of the Gospels, it is considered to be the most authentic of the four narratives. It includes episodes which do not occur in the other canonical texts, such as the wedding at Cana, the talk with Nicodemus and the resurrection of Lazarus. The detailed and historically correct knowledge of geographical features (especially those of Jerusalem before the uprising of 66), leads us to conclude that 'John' himself, or the informant behind this name, was present at these places at the time of Jesus. The striking mystical and Gnostic tone of the account and the immediate proximity to Jesus suggest that John is the best witness not only for the events, but also for the teaching of his master.

Thus when it comes to the Crucifixion and burial of Jesus we should look mainly at John's narration, which in this matter too is the most reliable. Reading the text, one immediately has the feeling that one is listening to an eyewitness account. While the Synoptics merely state that Jesus received a burial according to the Jewish custom, John tries to present it in the context of the discovery of the burial clothes on Easter morning, as witnessed by him or told to him at first hand. The Italian professor of literature Gino Zaninotto demonstrates this in an excellent piece of philological analysis, although he then draws the bold conclusion that John was a witness to the Ascension. Such a conclusion is obviously taking things too far.

The first precondition for an unencumbered study of these Bible passages is to approach them in a 'natural' way, avoiding as far as possible the theological interpretation. Let us then turn to the text of John as a record which describes a historical event. There is one story in the middle of the Gospel of John which can in a way be taken as the crux of the whole text. It is the account of the resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:1-45). The episode is not found in any of the other canonical Gospels. It appears that it was included in an original form of Mark's Gospel, but was later removed, evidently at the behest of Bishop Clement of Alexandria. The Lazarus story is of great interest for our study, because while telling it John provides a precise description of the burial customs of his time. Although the narrative is ambiguous on many points and has constantly given rise to different interpretations, it does assert that Lazarus was dead. He is described as being bound hand and foot in grave clothes, which would be wrapped round the whole body. Hence we should not take this passage to mean that Lazarus was only tied at the wrists and ankles, but rather that his whole body was wrapped in linen bands up to the hands and the feet. If his feet had been tightly tied, it would be hard to see how he could have come out from the grave by himself at Jesus' command (John 11:44). One can add that Nonnos, the important Greek epic poet of the late classical period, used the same expression in his paraphrase of the Gospel of John, to say that Lazarus has been 'wrapped in linen bands from head to foot'.

Interestingly, John uses quite a different term to describe the cloths in which Jesus was wrapped in the tomb, 'othonia'; and this without any relation to specific body parts. But 'othonia' are definitely not bands; the term simply refers to cloths. We will return to this point later.

Lazarus' head was 'bound about' ('peridedemenos') with a so-called 'sudarium'. This may suggest a chin band, which was actually used to bind the head of a corpse to prevent the lower jaw from falling down. John uses different words in describing the burial of Jesus. His head was not bound with a 'sudarium', but rather 'covered' ('entetyligmenon') by it. Indeed, he says quite clearly that the cloth was 'placed on or over the head' ('epi tes kephales'), probably to exclude other readings, especially binding. In the sindonological literature, for example that of Barbet, Bulst and Pfeiffer or Currer-Briggs, one constantly finds the idea that a chin band can be seen in the image on the Shroud. In fact no trace of any such band is to be seen. It would at least have pressed the hairs to the sides and the beard distinctly to the head. The 'chin band' is one of those odd phantoms which were introduced into the image because of some favoured hypothesis.

By using these quite distinct forms of expression, it seems that the author of the Gospel of John intended to distinguish between the burial of Lazarus and that of Jesus; he uses different words for events which only 'appeared' to be similar. In this way he probably wished to make it clear to the attentive reader that these were two fundamentally different events. The raising of Lazarus from the dead was described in a way which showed that it was an event taking place after the burial of a dead body. In the case of Jesus, however, everything suggests that it was not an ordinary burial.

In The Lord's Tomb

Let us then continue our study of these differences. Lazarus came forth, it is said, without any help ('exelthen'). He ascended from the grave and was then released from his linen wrappings, so that he could move freely. The typical Jewish tomb consisted of a chamber cut into the rock, in which oven-like cavities ('kôk', plural 'kôkim') about 50 cm wide, 80 cm high and 200 cm deep were cut. The bodies were inserted lengthwise into these. We have to infer from the narrative that the burial of Lazarus was in fact a final interment.

The burial of Jesus, however, is described to us in quite a different way. He was not pushed into a tomb cavity, but instead placed on a bench. On the morning of the 'Resurrection' Mary Magdalene sees the angels, as they are called, 'the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain'. (John 20:12). This proves that Jesus had certainly not been pushed into a 'kôk', because in that case no one could have sat at the head end.

At this point one might think that Jesus could have been buried in what is called an arcosol tomb. This form of tomb architecture is characterized by a vault cut into the side wall of the burial chamber above a rock bench or a sarcophagus-shaped trough. In this case it would be quite possible for the angels to sit at both ends of the tomb. However, the archaeological evidence does not support this idea. Arcosol tombs were only developed in the early Byzantine period, that is about 200 years after Jesus' burial. Prior to this there was a short period when late Roman shaft tombs were in use, but the most widespread and typical tomb structure of Jesus' time was the 'kôkim' tomb, and quite evidently the tomb in which Jesus was placed was also such a construction.

The 'kôkim' tomb was reached through an entrance below ground level, which was often closed with a rolling stone. It consisted of a large inner chamber, in the sides of which a number of 'kôkim' were usually cut, each to take one body. At the centre of the inner chamber there was a square hollow, which served as a drainage area. At the side of the pit, at the same level as the entrances to the tomb holes, the body was laid out for washing and oiling. Lamps were placed in niches. Jewish law did not allow burials at night, but in these cave-like structures illumination was also required during the day.

John tells us that the 'favourite disciple' ran to the grave (20:5) and 'stooping down, and looking in' saw the linen clothes. Mary Magdalene 'stooped down, and looked into the sepulche' (20:11), and saw the two 'angels' at the place where Jesus had lain. These statements allow us to draw two conclusions. One is that the reconstruction of Christ's grave by Brother Hughes Vincent which is often reproduced, is certainly incorrect. This suggests that Jesus lay in an arcosol tomb in a rear tomb chamber which is reached by passing through one in front. It would be impossible to see the place where Jesus lay by stooping in front of the entrance. The second point is that these statements support our assumption that the burial of Jesus had not been completed. If he had already been lying in a 'kôk', the place would again not be visible from the tomb entrance. The light passing through the very low doorway only reaches the middle of the tomb chamber. Only here could the body of Jesus have been lying. It would have been on the ledge around the central pit of the tomb chamber, certainly not inside one of the tomb holes.

Let us look more closely at the Greek text of John: 'Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound ['edesan'] it in linen clothes ['othoniois'] with the spices ['meta ton aromaton'], as the manner of the Jews is to bury ['entaphiazein'].' (John 19:40). The interpretation of this sentence has for various reasons caused many exegetes a lot of difficulties. The verb 'deo', which is found in the form 'edesan', means to bind. But normally one binds with a band of fabric ('spargana', 'keiriai'), with cords ('desmoi') or with thongs, but not with cloths. Savio avoids the problem by translating 'deo' as 'wrap up', following certain Greek manuscripts in which it is used with the preposition 'en'.

In Mark (15:46) we find instead the verb 'eneileo' to stress that Jesus was not only covered with a cloth but that the body was wrapped up quite closely, one could almost say packaged up. Nevertheless, it does not suggest a winding round as one wraps a mummy. The term 'kateilisso' would be more suitable for expressing that. This term is used for example by Herodotus to describe the wrapping of a Greek soldier's injury. But 'eneileo' is found in the literature in connection with a certain way of preparing food, first wrapping it in fig leaves. Evidently this word was preferred for describing the covering of Jesus' body, to describe the tight (damp?) packing due to the aromatic substances absorbed in the cloth.

In order to justify the unusual form of this description, several interpreters have suggested that a kind of embalming was intended. They refer to the 100 lb of aromatic substances which Nicodemus procured: 'And there came also Nicodemus, which at first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.' (John 19:30). One has to have a clear idea of just how much this enormous quantity is. If the aloe and myrrh were in dried or powdered form, a whole row of sacks would probably be necessary to make up this weight, and Nicodemus must have had assistance to be able to transport the load. The transport would have been even more difficult if the substances were dissolved in wine, vinegar or oil. The theologian Paul Billerbeck makes the event appear as if an embalming was to take place with the aromatic substances added to oil. But the Rabbinical texts refer only to an oiling of the bodies of the departed. The addition of spices is nowhere mentioned, let alone in these quantities, and was never part of Jewish custom; nor was embalming. Moreover it would be pointless to perform the embalming in the way described. One would have had to remove the entrails to stop the decomposition gases from bursting the body; an incision which would be extremely repulsive to the Jews, and the substances applied would not have served this purpose on their own. Consequently many Bible experts find this passage in St. John's Gospel confusing and pointless. One of them, the exegete Haenchen, can only conclude, 'The writer of this verse did not know the Jewish burial rites, nor was he well informed concerning embalming.' But let us pause a moment to consider the matter. We have already seen that John intentionally drew a clear distinction between the burial of Lazarus and that of Jesus, and it is most likely that he chose his words after careful thought, to reveal to those who can read between the lines an event which is not apparent to a superficial understanding of the text. The differences between the Lazarus episode and the burial of Jesus had already made one thing clear to the attentive reader: there was one completed burial and one that was unfinished. But why would the loyal devotees have given their beloved master a half-finished burial, after being in such a hurry to get him into the nearby tomb? That makes no sense at all.

The interpreters have a lot of difficulty with this strange 'burial' of Jesus. They often try to avoid it by saying that Jesus' burial was unusual because the Sabbath was approaching as the sun went down on Good Friday, and no burials were allowed to be performed on the Sabbath. Therefore haste was needed. The burial of Jesus is then seen as an incomplete, hurried operation which just served to satisfy the customs. But this idea makes little sense for a number of reasons.

For one thing the view that no complete burial could be undertaken on the Sabbath is not correct. The Rabbinical texts do not state this unequivocally. One rule says that a complete burial is allowed on the Sabbath, and another is the corpse should first be covered with sand to preserve it until the Sabbath is over, when the burial can be completed. Moreover Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus had already taken a stand which overruled all the customs, so it is hardly likely that they would care much about keeping the Jewish customs when it came to actions of such extreme importance.

Although there did not have to be a shortened, hastily performed burial merely to comply with the customs, everything suggests that the followers did act very quickly, and at the same time most efficiently, after a long preparation. So what really happened in the tomb building? Let us read the crucial sentence again in the light of what we have said: 'Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.' The spices were aloe and myrrh, this much we know. Myrrh was used as an ingredient for embalming by the Egyptians, but not for the burial rites of the Jews. Instead the Jewish custom prescribed that the body of the departed be washed and oiled, the hair cut and tidied, the corpse dressed again and the face covered with a cloth. The washing of the body was of such crucial importance that it had to be carried out even if it was the Sabbath. Yet there is no mention of any of this, not even the oiling. Instead it is said that on Easter Sunday the women came to the tomb to oil the body. Joseph and Nicodemus wee occupied in activities which simply had nothing to do with the Jewish burial rites. John says that they buried Jesus in the way customary for the Jews, and then goes on to describe a burial which openly contravenes the custom!

Why would he do this? Did he really not know the burial rites? Of course he knew them, because he described a standard burial in the Lazarus story. Here too, as in the comparison with the raising of Lazarus, we have to see what John really wanted to say behind the apparent contradictions. So what happened in that rock-hewn tomb, if it was not a burial?

The Mysterious 'Aromatic Substances'

The most striking element in what happened in the tomb building was the procuring of the large quantity of herbs. What was the significance of these herbs, which had no role in a burial? Contrary to the view of some authors that the aloe mentioned by John is 'Aloe perryi', one has to assume that the species used was 'Aloe vera'. 'Aloe vera' is a plant native to south-western Arabia and on the island Socotra (for which reason it is occasionally called 'Aloe soccotrina'), where it appears together with over a dozen other types of aloe. In south-western Arabia it grew not far from the classical trade routes which led from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean. Being a fleshy, juicy plant it could quite easily survive the long caravan and sea trade routes without drying out. It is well known that a brisk trade in plants took place from south-western Arabia to Palestine and the adjoining areas. Aloe was used in medicine and for incense as far back as the second and third millennia BC. The sticky gel from the plant was used in antiquity, especially for healing wounds, inflammations of the skin and burns. The gel was obtained by scraping the thin cells of the leaf pulp from the harder outer layers. The yellow exudate which dripped from the cut ends dried off to leave a waxy mass; this finally reached the old medicinal herb markets as bitter aloe, a compound rich in phenols, especially aloin.

The second type of spice which Nicodemus applied was myrrh, a gum resin from shrubs of the genus 'Commiphora', which belongs to the Burseraceae. Its aromatic fragrance played an important part in old Indian and Oriental rituals. The sacred anointing oil of the Israelites also contained myrrh as a herbal perfume of the 'noblest kind' (Exod. 30:23). Old Egyptian records describe how myrrh came from the legendary land Punt, which was probably located on the coast of what is now Somalia. Hippocrates praised its disinfectant power. It was used for healing wounds from very early times. In the Middle Ages myrrh was considered to be one of the most important treatments against epidemics and infectious diseases.

Both substances, aloe and myrrh, were commonly used for the treatment of large injured areas, because they could easily be made into ointments and tinctures. Some researchers claim that the Jews often mixed myrrh with labdanum, the resin of the cistus rockrose. This was used especially for plasters and bandages. Clearly one has to see such mixtures as the most specific means for the rapid and effective healing of wounds, combined with the greatest possible efficacy against danger of infection, at the time of Jesus. There can therefore be no doubt that Nicodemus procured an astonishing quantity of highly specific medicinal herbs with the sole purpose of treating the wounds on the body of Jesus. These spices could have served no other purpose.

There gradually dawns the conviction that John's secret style of writing was intended to reveal a tremendous event to the attentive reader, while concealing it from the eyes of the ignorant: Jesus was not meant to be buried, because he had not died on the cross! The author of the text, or his informant, who was a witness at the 'tomb' of Jesus and well informed by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, wrote in a way which would show anyone who knew how to read between the lines what really happened during and immediately after the Crucifixion. Thus he makes it clear to us that the show of a burial according to Jewish custom was presented, while in reality they set about 'bringing Jesus back to life', in the privacy of the tomb building, under the direction of Joseph and Nicodemus. And they did not try to do this by imitating his miracles, but by applying the art of medical healing.

Jesus And The Essenes

In order to form a proper assessment of these events and the subsequent narrative, one must first point out that Jesus was close to the sect of the Essenes, indeed it is likely that he belonged to a branch of the sect. The Essenes formed a kind of monastic community of strict observance, but they also had members who lived 'in the world', like a third order. Their ideal was inner self-perfection. Essene communities existed in the Diaspora before the destruction of Jerusalem, and as late as the seventh century were still exerting an influence on the newly developing Islam through the Jewish-Christian Ebionites.

The roots of the Essenes go back to Zadok, the first high priest at the time of the foundation of the Temple by Solomon. The members of the priesthood were allowed to call themselves the 'sons of Zadok'. In the course of time a section of the sons of Zadok broke away because they considered the priesthood corrupt and compromising. The dissidents were called 'bene sadok'. In modern terminology they are called Zodokites or, as the Greeks called them, Essenes. This term derives from the Aramaic 'assaya', which means doctor or healer. Many of the monastic followers, who devoted themselves to their ascetic practices of prayer and penance with great zeal, developed astonishing abilities. These gifted monks, called therapeuts, seem to have attracted special attention with their public healings. The Essenes are not mentioned anywhere in the New Testament, although their numbers were at least as great as the Sadducees and Pharisees (Josephus estimates there were about 4000 of them). This would suggest an element of intentional secrecy regarding the influence of the sect on the teaching and work of Jesus.

The Essenes had various communities in Palestine, with the main centre at Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea. The sensational discovery of numerous scrolls in a cave at Qumran in 1947 made it possible to gain glimpses into a community which practised in a way a 'Christianity before Christ'. As is well known, the translation of the material was systematically boycotted, and only very recently almost all the Qumran texts have appeared in print. Similarities between the teachings of Jesus and those of the Essenes are obvious. This astonishing resemblance is shown in the same theological themes and the same religious institutions. As long ago as 1831 the Stuttgart town vicar and repetitor at the Tübingen Seminary, August Freidrich Gfrörer, although he did not yet know of the Qumran texts, wrote: 'The Christian Church developed from the Essene community, whose ideas it continued and without whose regulations its organization would be inexplicable.'

Qumran lies directly within the orbit of Jesus' early activity. His first public appearance occurred in this region. It is a striking fact that the place where Jesus received the ritual baptismal bath in the Jordan at the hands of John, was only 5 km from the monastic settlement of Qumran. There is of course a reason for this. John the Baptist was a 'schaliach', an apostle of the sect of Qumran. An independent tradition had developed in John's circle, a sort of third order of Qumran. John led a community of Essene moderates. After his baptism one should similarly count Jesus as a member of one of these communities, and refer to him as a Nazarene. This later led to the falsely translated and irrational description of him as 'Jesus of Nazareth', a place which was not even in existence at the time of Jesus. Later a sign was said to have been fixed to the Cross, giving the charge against him as membership of this sect: 'Jesus, Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum' -- 'Jesus, Nazarene, King of the Jews'.

Immersion in water, as a purifying baptismal bath, was a rite of special importance to the Essenes. Among the many preachers John was doubtless one of the most successful of his day, and his influence was felt out in the Diaspora. He probably had a much larger circle of followers than Jesus. In the meeting of Jesus with the Baptist, at the beginning of his public activity, his close connection to the Essenes can clearly be seen. John was in a sense his spiritual director, and Jesus a disciple. Other elements of the story -- that Jesus should really have been baptizing John, and that after the baptism of Jesus the divine voice sounded -- have to be relativized by John's questions in Herod's dungeon, when he was asked if Jesus was the awaited Messiah or if another was still to come. The question seems completely irrational in view of the events at the baptism, but perhaps part of the baptism story was appended later. But it is very likely that Jesus was taken as the Messianic pretender after the arrest of the Baptist. People even occasionally thought he might be the reincarnation of John. Jesus emancipated himself from John only after the latter's arrest, when he emerged from the shadow of his teacher and went his own way (Matt. 4:12; Mark 1:14; Luke 4:14f). A further point suggesting a dependence on the tradition of John and so of the Essene way is the fact that Jesus was at first loyal to the ideal of his 'master' and entered the desert alone, like John.

The recluses of Qumran refer in their writings to the area where they live as 'the desert'. This was where John lived, possibly in the Qumran caves; here Jesus withdrew for forty days and experienced the temptations by the devil (Luke 4:1-13). In Mark's Gospel it is said that Jesus 'was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him'. (Mark 1:13). The 'angels' or messengers of God were probably Essene monks, who supervised the 'novitiate' of Jesus in a cave outside Qumran.

From the writings of Flavius Josephus we learn the following about the monastically organized part of the sect:

"They rejected riches, and what is admirable about them is the communality of possessions, so that one finds none among them who owns more than any other. For there is the rule that anyone entering the sect has to sacrifice his possessions for the whole, and so one never observes extreme poverty or superfluous wealth, but they all like brothers make use of the total assets of the pooled goods of the individual members of the Order. They view oil as dirt, and if one of them has ointment applied against his will, he washes off his body. For they consider having a rough skin as honourable as their habit of constantly going around in white robes."

This form of living with communal possessions was also taught by Jesus. And he too asked his followers to leave house and family and join the wandering monks without property. The life of the Essenes was described by Pliny the Elder in his 'Natural History' as follows: 'A solitary and most remarkable people in the whole world, without any women, who have renounced human love and live by the palm trees without money'. Young Jewish men were duty-bound to marry. The single state was frowned upon. But Jesus personally renounced family ties on his own spiritual path (Luke 14:26; Matt. 10:37). He even spoke radically and in a revolutionary way against the traditional family cohesion (Matt. 10:35-6). This alien attitude can be explained if one remembers that Jesus was rooted in the spiritual tradition widespread in the East, of perfect renunciation of all earthly fetters and the dissolution of the earthly desires. 'The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.' (Matt. 8:20). And to the man who wished to follow him but first wanted to bid farewell to his family, Jesus countered: 'No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.' (Luke 9:62). Jesus set an example for his followers of the life of the wandering preacher free of possessions. In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas the call is potently put: 'Jesus said: be ye wanderers.' (log 42.)

We cannot present all the correspondences between the teaching of the Essenes and those of Jesus here. They are so clear on many points that it was this which probably led to the persistent obstruction of the translation of the Qumran scrolls. The Essenes wished to form the 'New Covenant' with God, which Martin Luther later translated as 'New Testament'. They called themselves the 'New Covenant'. Jesus was described as the founder of it only much later. This 'New Covenant' was said to last from the day of the taking of the One Teacher until the Messiah of Aaron and Israel arose. At the end of one Qumran scroll the strict regulation of the seating arrangement at the festive eschatological meal is described; later the apostles argued about this at the Last Supper (Luke 22:24). In the hymns of thanks it is said that the Essenes announced to the poor the joyous message ('evangelium') out of the fullness of God's compassion, and that they wished to be the messengers of good news.

Despite the plentiful parallels between Jesus and the Essenes, it is the differences one has to make especially clear. The emergence and teaching of Jesus is to be understood as a revival movement on the basis of Essenism. He worked to clear away hardened and encrusted customs and habits. His attitude stands out from that of others because of his tremendous tolerance. Above all he shows how a freer relation to the Torah and the law is possible. According to Jewish law the violator of the Sabbath who fails to heed the warnings must die. The Damascus text of Qumran forbids the killing of the Sabbath violator, and Jesus expands this view: 'For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day.' (Matt. 12:8).

This difference is particularly marked in relation to the love of one's enemies. The Essenes hated their enemies. The people of Qumran were proud of their separation from the world. They fostered an elitist attitude. Jesus on the other hand, by reaching out and contacting the sinners, tried to bring light to those who seemed lost, and stressed that he was specially 'sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel'. He explicitly opposed religious intolerance and claims to membership of an institution with exclusive rights to bless.

Another decisive point is that Jesus reinforced his mission by his miraculous cures rather than wise utterances alone. Here he does not stand in the line of tradition of the prophets, but in that of the Essene therapeuts, who were of course not only healers but also teachers, scholars and sometimes prophets. Jesus distanced himself from the Order by his innovations, but certainly continued to have a very close relationship with other Essenes.

Flavius Josephus' comment that the Essenes were recognizable because of their white clothes seems to be an important point. As early as the eighteenth century, philosophers of the Enlightenment considered the Crucifixion and Resurrection to be just a clever drama put on by Essene monks. The youth who spoke to the women at the empty tomb is shown by his white clothes to be a member of the Essenes. Following the same line of thought over a century ago the idea arose that Jesus may have been the son of an Essene, whom Mary had approached in an ecstatic state. The child was then given to the Order, something which Josephus reports was a usual practice for Essenes.

On Dying On The Cross

Reading the passages in the text in this unbiased way, the events which took place in the rock tomb, not far from the site of execution, are seen as an attempt by members of an Essene community to treat the seriously wounded Jesus with medicinal herbs. The meaning of the verb 'eneileo' used by Mark now becomes clear. We have seen that it was used in connection with the cooking of foodstuffs wrapped in leaves. To treat Jesus the therapeuts evidently used a sweat-promoting packing formed with the help of an excessive quantity of herbs, similar in a way to the cooking method. One has to see John's 'edesan othoniois' ('and wound it in linen clothes') against this background, to get to the true meaning. What was meant was not binding round in the sense of wrapping up, but the way a heavy plaster covered or went round the whole body. Dioscorides, the Cilician doctor of the first century, also used both the verbs 'deo' and 'eneileo' to denote wrapping in linen clothes.

There was evidently no intention to bury Jesus. Instead he was to be brought to a safe place where he could be healed in peace. What better place for this man than the tomb of a person believed dead. Naturally we also hear nothing of the washing of the corpse which was so important in Jewish burials. Joseph did not wash Jesus, because he was not dead. Medically speaking, such a washing was definitely not to be recommended. The act of washing would only have caused the many wounds covered in clotted blood to start bleeding again. Joseph and Nicodemus would have applied the curative herbal solution to the body with the utmost care, to make sure that this did not happen.

When such bold conclusions as these are offered, the question presents itself whether a person can survive a crucifixion at all. The death on the cross was thought by the Romans to be the most demeaning and frightful form of execution. Cicero called it the 'most horrible and repulsive capital punishment'. Only in exceptional cases, were Roman citizens ever sentenced to this punishment, and only those from the lowest social strata. But in the lands occupied by the Romans crucifixion was a favoured deterrent, to keep the rebellious peoples obedient. Palestine had long been notorious as a place of nationalist unrest. From the time of the Maccabees in 167 BC until Bar Kochba in 134 AD, there were some sixty-two rebellions, wars and uprisings against the pagan yoke, first that of the Greeks and then that of the Romans. Sixty-one of these disturbances started from Galilee, the home area of Jesus. It is therefore hardly surprising that crucifixions were almost a routine affair there.

Crucifixion was alien to the Jews. Their methods of capital punishment were stoning, burning, decapitation and strangling. According to the Mosaic Law it was, however, permissible to hang up a criminal who had already been executed 'on wood', as an additional punishment and humiliation: 'for he that is hanged is accursed of God' (Deut. 21:23). And hence a crucified person was under no circumstances to defile the Sabbath, which starts in the evening of the preceding day, the day of preparation.

The Romans made sure that they did not willfully offend the religious sentiments of the Jews, to avoid even greater unrest. If the official Roman death sentence 'ibis in crucem' -- 'you shall ascend the cross' -- was passed, care was taken to see that the execution was completed before the Sabbath. The greatest haste was therefore called for in the case of Jesus' Crucifixion, because it took place on the day of preparation. It had to be over before the onset of evening. But that was not easy to arrange, because the special feature of crucifixion was its protracted, agonizing torture. It was done in a way which meant the agony usually extended over a period of days, until the person finally expired.

There could be considerable variety in the form of the cross and the way the victim was fixed to it. If the body weight hung solely from the wrists, death would ensue within five or six hours, as a result of gradual suffocation rather than as a result of something such as a loss of blood. In this extreme posture the breathing is so severely hindered that the body can no longer be supplied with enough oxygen. After a relatively short time unconsciousness would result and then the forward-drooping head would further reduce the breath intake. To prevent such a 'quick' death, a small wooden cross-piece called the 'suppedaneum' was often fixed to the vertical post of the cross, for the delinquent to prop himself up as long as his strength allowed. This cross-piece should not be imagined as an oblique board, as it is shown in Byzantine Crucifixion scenes. The 'suppedaneum' was a smaller, horizontal cross-beam, which the victim could actually stand on. It is not without reason that the oldest depictions, such as on the so-called mock crucifix of Palatin, show the crucified person standing.

Crucifixions were carried out either by binding with thongs or by nailing the hands and feet. The victim could then delay his death by his own effort, by supporting himself on the point of attachment, the nail or foot beam, and pushing the body upwards. Occasionally a piece of wood to sit on ('sedile') was also fixed behind the abdomen, which presumably alleviated the pain somewhat, but prolonged the agony even more. As Nero's personal philosopher Seneca wrote in a letter, 'The life of the person thus sentenced trickled away drop by drop.'

The Gospels report that Jesus was nailed on the cross at the sixth hour (noon) and gave up his spirit at the ninth hour (about 3 pm). Towards evening he was taken for dead and was removed from the cross. This unexpectedly rapid death puzzled Pilate himself, who was obviously extremely surprised and asked the leading centurion if everything was in order (Mark 15:44). As far as this astonishment is concerned, little has changed to this day. Many studies, especially by medical people, have been carried out to try and explain the phenomenon of the all too rapid 'death' of Jesus, and the authors have their difficulties. The course which is usually adopted is to blame the mistreatment of Jesus before the crucifixion; it had so severely undermined his general condition that he succumbed to the torture of crucifixion after just a short time. But this explanation is fairly weak.

For one thing, unlike the strict group of monastic Essenes, Jesus was no frail ascetic, but a relatively tall, strong and robust man in his prime (according to the cloth about 1.82 m [6 ft] tall, and 79 kg [12.5 stone, 175 lbs] in weight). After the night of torment he talked to the court in a very clever way, obviously in full possession of his mental powers, and this would not have been possible in a state of exhaustion. Then, he was relieved of the burden of carrying the cross-beam of the Cross ('patibulum'), by Simon of Cyrene, for a good part of the stretch of about 550 to 650 metres from Pilate's 'praetorium' to the site of execution. Many interpreters have taken this as proof that Jesus was extremely weakened and no longer able to bear the weight of the beam. This too has to be queried.

As far as the whiplashes are concerned, Jesus was not treated any differently from others. Everyone who was sentenced to death on the cross had first to endure such abuses. By Hebraic law thirty-nine lashes could be given; a third of these on the chest or front side, the remainder on the back. The priest carried out this punishment in the synagogue with a three-thronged whip of calfskin. Of course we are not told whether they kept to the correct number in the case of Jesus.

In the Gospel of Peter it says, when Jesus is being nailed on the cross: 'But he kept silent, as if he felt no pain.' It is probable that during his training Jesus had become practised in the art of mastering pain by meditation, in a similar way to the Indian yogis. Exercises which lead to this result are known from numerous religious sects throughout the East; they have been scientifically investigated and well documented.

In most cases the arms of the sentenced person were first fixed to the 'patibulum', which he then had to carry on his shoulders to the place of execution. The weight of this beam varied between about 18 and 30 kg. Hence considerable strength was needed to be able to transport this heavy load. From the Gospel accounts it is seen that Jesus was only nailed to the cross at the site of execution. He was laid naked on the ground, where his wrists were nailed to the 'patibulum'. Then he was raised together with the cross-beam on to the upright post ('stipes') of the Cross.

Is it not odd that the death throes of others lasted so much longer than those of Jesus, considering his well-trained and strong constitution? In the autobiography of Flavius Josephus, through whose writing we learn much about the customs and events in Palestine at the time of Jesus, we even find an informative passage which tells of a crucified man who recovered after being taken from the cross:

'I was sent by Titus Caesar with Ceralius and a thousand riders to a certain town by the name of Thecoa, to find out whether a camp could be set up at this place. On my return I saw many prisoners who had been crucified, and recognized three of them as my former companions. I was inwardly very sad about this and went with tears in my eyes to Titus and told him about them. He at once gave the order that they should be taken down and given the best treatment so they could get better. However two of them died while being attended to by the doctor; the third recovered.'

It is difficult to understand why Jesus departed the body so early and that 'with a loud cry', an exit that is quite mysterious and puzzling to all the doctors. A closer study, however, shows that this too is an important indication that Jesus was taken unconscious from the cross.

The way the two people crucified next to him died is graphically described in St. John's Gospel:

'The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day (for that sabbath day was an high day), besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. Then came the soldier, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him.' (John 19:31-2).

So the two criminals crucified with Jesus, who had certainly been as much abused beforehand as he was, were still alive. Their legs were broken so that they could not straighten themselves up on their own any more, and so they painfully suffocated within a few hours.

'But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs' (John 19:33). This is very strange and inexplicable behaviour on the part of the Roman soldiers. Why did these hardened men not break Jesus' legs too, to ensure death? The theological interpretation, that the word of the prophet in Exod. 12:46 had to be fulfilled (' ... neither shall ye break a bone thereof'), is not very helpful. One should instead ask what the soldiers were thinking to make them exempt Jesus from this terrible treatment. It is beyond question that they had their doubts about his being dead, and viewed his unconsciousness with scepticism. Otherwise they could also have spared him the lance thrust in the side. Would one not have expected them to break the legs of all the crucified men, to be sure that they were all dead? Up to this point we hear how Jesus was treated with even more than the usual contempt, with blows to the face, the mock sceptre and the crown of thorns on his head. Why this sudden change of mood, this 'privileged' and rather merciful treatment?

The Gospels do not provide us with any consistent answer. The only point they agree on is that Jesus died at the ninth hour with a loud cry, while those crucified next to him obviously continued their agony. According to John (19:33-5) one of the soldiers drove his lance into Jesus' thorax, and some blood and water flowed out. Luke and Matthew are no help to us on this point, because neither of them mentions this event. Mark, however (15:44-5), gives us an interesting clue. Pilate, surprised that Jesus was already dead, summoned the centurion, who confirmed the death, and Pilate then released the body of Jesus. The centurion is the same one who, moved by the events during the crucifixion, praised Jesus as the true Son of God (Mark 15:39; Mark 27:54; Luke 23:47). Who was this centurion?

In the apocryphal 'Acta Pilata' he is called Longinus and presented as the captain who supervised the Crucifixion. According to a tradition testified to by Gregory of Nyssa, Longinus was said to have later become a bishop in his Cappadocian homeland. This change of heart may mean that he had some connection with Jesus and his followers before the Crucifixion, or was even a secret follower of Jesus. This would make many of the problems about the events during the Crucifixion understandable. Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus and the centurion Longinus were among the secret followers of Jesus. Since they held influential positions, they were informed well enough in advance about what the revolutionary exposure of Jesus was leading to. Joseph was highly respected as a member of the Sanhedrin. Since the second century BC this had been the high council of the supreme Jewish authorities for all affairs of state, judicature and religion. In consisted of seventy members under the chairmanship of the high priest. Nicodemus, who was initiated by Jesus under cover of night (John 3:1-22), was also a Jewish councillor. Thanks to their positions Joseph and Nicodemus had surely been kept well informed about the time and place of the execution and were thus able to plan the rescue of their master. We hear an echo of the advance information given to Nicodemus in a highly revered hagiographical legend of the Middle Ages. It tells how Nicodemus, in a letter sent to Mary Magdalene, warned Jesus about the attack by the Jews, when he was in Ephraim (John 11:53f).

Joseph and Nicodemus knew that the Crucifixion itself could not be avoided. But if they could manage to take Jesus down from the cross early enough, and everything was well planned, it would be possible to keep him alive, and he would probably be able to continue his mission unobserved. It was crucially important to the whole operation that the apostles were not involved. They had gone into hiding for fear of persecution. Nothing would be done against the respected councillors Joseph and Nicodemus or the Roman centurion. So for a limited period there was a chance that the daring operation could be carried out successfully.

The Side Wound And The Miracle Drink

Let us return to the stabbing with the lance. A detailed analysis shows that the term used in the Greek original for the thrust of the soldier, 'nyssein', means a light scratch, puncture or stab to the skin, not a thrust with full force, let alone a deep penetration. In the Vulgate (the generally recognized Latin translation of the Bible) one already finds the incorrect translation 'aperire', which means 'to open'. But actually this is not the meaning at all. The procedure served as a kind of 'official confirmation' of death: if the body did not show any reaction to a light stabbing, it could be assumed that the person was dead. Probably the centurion mentioned in the Gospels had performed this test himself. It was not meant to be a death thrust at all; Jesus was considered to be dead already and for this reason he had already been spared having his legs broken. One might add that an experienced soldier would hardly have made a fatal thrust to the side; it would have been frontally into the heart.

The exegetes find it difficult to explain the emergence of the blood and water. Some can only see this occurrence as a miracle, since the circulation stops at death; for others it is the symbolic interpretation of the elements blood and water which comes to the fore. Scientific explanations have also been attempted, where the water is seen as blood serum which forms when blood decomposes. But such decomposition starts at the earliest six hours after death takes place.

We should not, however, set aside this passage in the Gospel of John as of no significance, because we have to assume that the eyewitness (the source of the text) wanted to place special emphasis on the blood and water. For the sentence following this observation in the text runs: 'And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.' (19:35) This is crucial and fits nicely into the picture we have drawn of John's style of writing: a depiction as it were on two levels, with a superficial way of reading for the masses and with the refined references, which we keep discovering strewn throughout the text, for those who know how to read between the lines. The special emphasis so clearly given to the testimony about the blood and water which flowed from the side of Jesus, was really meant to show that Jesus was still alive.

Even if many centuries were to pass before the discovery of the circulation system, it was a known fact at the time of Jesus that corpses do not bleed, and blood serum is not seen on the wounds of a body which has just died. Even Origen (185-254), who did actually believe Jesus was dead at the time when the blood and water came out from the wounds, pointed out that corpses do not bleed. Before the middle of the last century little thought was given to the causes of Jesus' death. In 1847 W. Stroud published for the first time a theory about his passing. But even he, the first scientist to dare to deal with the problem, came up against great difficulties. At first he suggested total exhaustion as the cause of death, but he had to discard this hypothesis because of its improbability, and went on to postulate that he died of a broken heart (from a sort of despair). Forty years after Stroud, Sir James Risdon Bennett concluded that Jesus may have died 'from a heart broken by mental agony', compounded by the lance stab. Later authors expressed the far-fetched notion that Jesus may have succumbed to an acute expansion of the stomach due to shock. Others were even prepared to explain the light fluid which came out with the blood after the lance wound was inflicted, by simply shifting the stabbing forwards and down into the abdomen, so that urine came out when the bladder was damaged. But the text of John leaves no doubt that the minor perforation was done in the side of the thorax.

Recently three Californian authors claim to have reconstructed the precise medical train of events for Jesus' Passion and death -- the pathologist William P. Edwards, the anatomist Floyd E. Hosmer and the Methodist pastor J. Gabel Wesley. The problem of how to explain Jesus' cry just before his death is side-stepped by making it out to be a kind of harbinger of some disastrous event having lethal consequences. The death was, they said, traceable to a number of factors, such as severe exhaustion, so-called hypovolemic shock, acute cardiac insufficiency and, as the immediate cause of death, a thrombosis or fibrillation. Capping it all, an illustration for the article shows in addition to all this the hypothetical lance thrust through the chest -- 'an event which almost certainly did not take place'. The scenario depicted, beginning with the results of the whipping, is a terrible one. Just reading the article is almost enough to make one's heart stop in horror. But what they present in such sober and impressive medical language is nothing but a string of suppositions, which are neither true to the Biblical accounts, nor able to stand up to the fact that all the other crucifixion victims treated in the same way as Jesus continued to hang for days on their instruments of torture until they finally suffocated.

It appears that the expression 'blood and water' is a traditional idiom from the ornate Arabian language, intended to emphasize a certain happening. Today we can say someone 'sweats blood' -- the German equivalent is 'to sweat blood and water', 'Blut und Wasser schwitzen' -- if he works hard or is very anxious, without meaning that blood actually comes from the pores. The same expression, applied when observing a wound, could simply mean that a lot of blood is visible. The eyewitness was doubtless surprised to see so much blood pouring out from a supposedly dead body through a minor scratch wound, and aptly expressed his surprise. Evidently Jesus was only apparently dead. The way the copious emission of blood is emphasized by confirming that it was a true observation, was meant to point to this very fact.

Everything had been carefully prepared by Joseph and his helpers up until the lance thrust. But the man from Arimathea had begun making the necessary preparations much earlier than this. The first thing he had done was to purchase a garden in the immediate vicinity of the Crucifixion site. With wise foresight he decided to have a new tomb cut from the rock on the estate, somewhere the supposedly dead body could be quickly brought for safety. It was essential to have an unused tomb ready: to place Jesus in a tomb in which others were already buried would have given rise to legal objections, because people who had been executed would normally be thought to dishonour the bodies of the faithful which had already been placed in the tomb. There would be no objection to a 'burial' in an empty tomb, particularly since, as Josephus reports, political criminals who were executed by the Romans -- and Jesus was such a person -- could be allowed an honourable burial which would be denied to an ordinary criminal. Naturally Joseph of Arimathea could not say that he was busy preparing a tomb for Jesus. Therefore we read in the Gospels that Joseph brought the body of Jesus to his own new family grave. Let us consider this a moment. Why on earth should Joseph, who came from Arimathea near the Samarian border, build his family tomb in Jerusalem of all places? He certainly had no intention of moving and settling there. We read in the Pilate texts that after the burial the Jews came to visit him in his home town of Arimathea, to which he had returned. In compliance with the tradition Joseph would certainly have had his family tomb in his home town. The official line in the text saying that it was Joseph's own tomb building, was meant for the uninitiated, who would not think twice about it. Actually the new tomb construction in the garden hear Golgotha was not meant for the dead, neither Joseph and his family nor anyone else. It was intended solely to serve as an alibi, to avoid having to move the seriously wounded Jesus very far, should they succeed in getting him off the Cross soon enough. The persecutors of Jesus would then be satisfied, thinking him dead in the grave.

The fact that the Crucifixion took place on the day of preparation was advantageous in a way, because it meant that they could greatly speed up the 'burial' without arousing suspicion. Of course they had to make sure that Jesus really did appear to have died. This too they could not just leave to chance.

In the Gospels a certain event is reported as happening just before the alleged death of Jesus. 'Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a sponge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop [a plant used for ritual sprinkling], and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.' (John 19:29-30).

How did it happen that Jesus seemed to die immediately after he had taken the bitter drink? Was it really vinegar which he was given? It was fully in line with Jewish custom to offer a person sentenced to death wine spiced with myrrh or incense, to alleviate the pain by the slight narcotic effect. In the Talmud there is a passage which says: 'The one departing to be put to death was given a piece of incense in a cup of wine, to help him fall asleep.' (Sanh. 43a). But there is no mention of a spiced wine. All the evangelists agree that it was a brew with a very bitter taste. In Latin vinegar is called 'acetum', from 'acidus', 'bitter'. The Roman soldiers did not merely tolerate the drink, one of them even helped Jesus to take it (Matt. 27:48; Mark 15:36; Luke 23:36; John 19:29).

Let us look more deeply at this statement. The sponge was offered to Jesus on a hyssop stem. Hyssop is a plant with a weak stem and hardly suitable for holding up a wet sponge. Even a bundle of hyssop would not have the rigidity required to make it possible, although one does not have to assume the Cross was very high -- there were crosses on which the sentenced person was fixed with the feet just above the ground. In such a case the sponge would not have to be lifted up very high to be offered. But perhaps the instrument used to offer Jesus the 'vinegar' was confused by a simple error: 'hyssos' ('short spear') was taken as 'hyssopos' ('hyssop'). It is a soldier who offers Jesus the sponge, as the Synoptic authors relate. Hence it is likely that this confusion did actually occur. Therefore it is not unreasonable to suppose that the centurion Longinus raised the sponge to the lips of Jesus on his spear.

One notices how the vinegar drink was introduced into John's narrative as if it had been brought to the Crucifixion for this very purpose. It was a part of the preparations which Joseph, Nicodemus and the centurion had made in order to carry out their plan. One can only speculate as to what the bitter fluid consisted of. In those days there was a wide assortment of pain relieving and intoxicating substances, and the healing arts of the period were excellent at making mixtures which had unusual effects. Perhaps the drink was made of a bitter wine to which a measured portion of opium had been added. The exceptional anaesthetic and narcotic effect of opium was well known to the Jews even in pre-Christian times. Opium is the milky juice of the scratched, unripe seed-heads of a certain poppy plant ('Papaver somniferum'). This type of poppy was widespread in Palestine. Hence one may surmise that Jesus was given opium dissolved in some fluid while on the cross.

The narcotic effect of opium is so strong that it can lead to a state of stupor in which the person is completely without external sensation. The main active ingredient is morphine, which has a sedative, narcotic and breath-inhibiting effect. The alkaloid papaverine has a pronounced cramp-relaxing effect. Combined with the many other effective components, and by the admixture of various additional substances, opium solutions can be well adjusted for a particular purpose. Hence the effect of this drug was in many ways ideal for Joseph and his friends: not only was Jesus given the best of pain-killers, the dose was designed to make him lose consciousness in a short time and so be able to hang on the cross 'as if dead'. The appearance of a sudden death was enhanced by the fact that opium strongly lowers the heart rate, calms the breathing to an extraordinary degree, and makes the body completely limp. And yet, administered in the correct dosage, as was known to the experienced Essene therapeuts, it involved no danger to the heart; on the contrary it strengthened it.

If Jesus was actually close to suffocation -- which almost all the medical opinions assume was the cause of death -- the loud cry before he 'died', which the three Synoptic evangelists expressly mention, would be quite impossible. A suffocating person could hardly manage a whisper. But Jesus cried out. And in John we read, 'When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.' (19:30). Jesus was able to say these words after he had taken the drink and felt the narcotic effect increasing. He was able to say them because he was not close to death but to a deep, induced state of rest.

The Open Rock Tomb

The moment Jesus was seen to hang unconscious from the cross, Joseph made haste to secure the release of the body as soon as possible. He exerted his full influence on Pilate to achieve the fastest possible release. One exegete even suggests that the wealthy Joseph paid a high sum in bribery, to speed things up. That is quite conceivable. Joseph was pressed for time, and any means would have seemed justified to him when it came to shortening the slow bureaucratic process. The other crucified men had their legs broken, but in Jesus' case the centurion just checked with his 'lance stab' that he was dead. Pilate released the 'corpse', and at once Joseph and Nicodemus took Jesus from the Cross and brought him to the nearby rock tomb.

In the seclusion of the tomb chamber, preparations for the healing of Jesus were underway on the middle bench. The opium drink helped him to sleep deeply beyond pain, and the medical packing using the enormous amount of herbs was intended to make the wounds heal faster. Joseph and Nicodemus knew they could not leave Jesus in the tomb for long. The Jews were extremely suspicious and feared that his followers might steal the body to pretend there had been a miraculous resurrection. According to Matthew (27:62-6), they asked Pilate for someone to watch at the sepulchre themselves. It was gradually growing more difficult to get Jesus out unobserved. One can no longer say whether a Roman watch really was assigned to the tomb -- only Matthew reports it. It does seem, however, as if it was introduced into the text to add dramatic effect to the angelic apparition. The Jews' desire to set a guard on a corpse must have seemed most peculiar to the Romans, and it is very unlikely that they would have complied with such a request.

During the Sabbath, then, the helpers had time to take care of Jesus, but as soon as he came round they had to move him quickly elsewhere, to avoid further problems from the Jewish authorities.

When the women came to the tomb with the oils for anointing on the first day of the week, they found the stone rolled aside and the tomb empty. Let us hear what the Gospel accounts say. Luke (24:1-5) writes:

'Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?'

Mark (16:4-6) relates:

'And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away, for it was very great. And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen: he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.'

After the so-called Resurrection Jesus was said to be constantly entering through locked doors and surprising his followers (John 20:19-26). Why then, one has to ask, was the massive stone rolled aside from the tomb, from the very place where this miraculous 'Resurrection' was said to have happened? It would surely have been a more astonishing miracle if it had been necessary to push the stone aside to let in the ladies with the oils for anointing, and only then find that Jesus had vanished from the sealed chamber. The open tomb shows us that someone had had to act quickly and move Jesus out. Evidently friends were still at the tomb -- the men with the shining garments of Luke, the young man with the white garment of Mark. The shining white robe suggests that they were Essenes. Probably Jesus had been led out just a short while before. Since the feast day of the Passover always coincided with the full moon, it was easy to travel in the bright night. Perhaps the Essenes who stayed behind were going to collect certain items and seal the tomb. The shocked ladies received clear replies to their questions by the Essenes: Jesus had risen again and therefore was no longer here. He had indeed risen, that is from his deep coma. The Luke text is even clearer: 'Why seek ye the living among the dead?' Does that not compel us to assume that Jesus was alive, that it had been possible to save him? Is this not the clear message we get from these Gospel passages?

John, who does not report the episode with the women at the sepulchre, relates in detail an event which it seems must have taken place before the women arrived (John 20:1-18): Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning, when it was still dark, and saw the stone rolled away. Shocked, she ran to Peter and John and lamented that someone had taken the Lord out of the sepulchre. When the pair arrived at the tomb and peered in, they saw only the linen clothes, with no trace of Jesus anywhere. Mary Magdalene, who stood weeping before the tomb, asked the gardener if he had carried the body away. When he addressed her by name, she realized it was Jesus.

It is remarkable that Mary Magdalene took Jesus for the gardener. Is this the gloriously resurrected one, a figure unrecognized by his closest companion? Probably they had just led Jesus out of the tomb when Mary Magdalene appeared. So as not to attract attention, they had dressed him in simple garments such as a gardener might wear. The weakened Jesus might even have been given a garden implement as a makeshift walking stick to lean on, which led to the confusion. Moreover, a gardener's skin would be burned to a darker brown by a constant work out of doors. Jesus' face would have been swollen by his injuries, and the aloe-myrrh solution would leave a characteristic brown colouration. This was why Mary Magdalene could not recognize her master in the early twilight, not because he showed himself in a 'transfigured' body as one 'resurrected'.

Mary Magdalene then evidently fell to her knees before Jesus and wanted to touch his feet, like the ladies in Matthew's account (28:9). But Jesus stopped her with the words, 'Touch me not!' (John 20:17). This could be a clear indication that his still wounded and painful body needed to be treated with care and could not bear much touching.

We have an interesting confirmation of this thesis in the apocryphal Gospel of Peter. This says that the guard at the tomb saw three men emerge 'and two of them supported the other one'! Does some gloriously resurrected person need support at all? Certainly not, but an injured person, who needs to be brought to safety, and who has just come round from a coma, does.

After these events the scanty remaining passages about Jesus in the Gospels become less reliable, because they are mingled with the myth of the 'Resurrection' and the theological interpretation which takes the man Jesus as the resurrected Christ. Many of the passages are accordingly ambiguous. One thing can however be safely said: Jesus met his disciples again for a while, perhaps in Jerusalem itself, but mainly in Galilee.

The period in which the events after the disappearance from the tomb take place is described in such a muddled manner that no precise conclusions can be drawn. The three days which were said to have passed between Crucifixion and reappearance, denote a mystical number which played a role in the older Resurrection myths. Jesus may well have been looked after for a longer period, until he gradually came to show himself to his followers. In any case the meetings seem always to have been of short duration and secret. It is obvious that he could not show himself publicly, otherwise he would have been arrested again at once. It seems that at first his appearance was affected by his injuries, and his face was probably swollen for a while, so that even his colleagues had difficulty in recognizing him immediately.

When assessing the apparitions of Jesus, we have always to bear in mind that they were only recorded in compliance with the theology of Resurrection which was developed. The entire twenty-first chapter of the Gospel of John, which contains the appearance of Jesus by the Sea of Tiberias, has been added by a different author. This text seems to derive from the presbyter John, who is identified with the favourite disciple on account of their similar names.

At first the disciples had withdrawn and gone back to their earlier callings. Simon Peter, Thomas, Nathaniel of Cana and the Zebedee sons went back to fishing (John 21:2). Only when Jesus told them he would meet them himself in Galilee, were they fired with fresh enthusiasm (Matt. 28:10). His encounters with his old companions are presented as 'apparitions', because Jesus is said to have entered into their midst through locked doors, and yet his corporeality is clearly emphasized. The disciples were baffled, because most of them were probably not told about the rescue operation by Joseph and Nicodemus, who did not belong to their circle. The last thing the Gospels report about Jesus, shortly before his departure from Palestine, is his continued attempt to make it clear to the disciples that he had survived the Crucifixion and had recovered. But at first they considered him to be a spirit:

'And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat? And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of a honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them.' (Luke 24:38-43)

Jesus was keen to demonstrate to his followers that his body was quite earthly in nature, just as it was before. He stressed his bodily presence by allowing them to touch him, and by eating food, and clearly told them he was not just a spirit. To prove that his body had also not been transformed, he showed the marks of his wounds and even asked the doubting Thomas to touch his side wound with his hand. Later he revealed himself to the eleven, as they were sitting at the table, and criticized their disbelief and the hardness of their hearts because they did not believe those who had seen him after his rising again (Mark 16:14). This presence of Jesus did not depend on a confusion, a deception or hallucinations, his body was not transfigured, it was no ghostly astral body -- this is the message of his instructions to his disciples.

The Linen Clothes In The Sepulchre

We have now thrown some light on the true events of the Crucifixion and burial, purely by looking at the written testimonies as they are, without viewing them from a theological standpoint. Everything joins to form a harmonious picture. There is the compelling inference that the alleged burial of Jesus was not one at all, because he did not die on the Cross. We have seen how his suffering was counteracted by the narcotic drink, how he was taken down after a short time and moved to the protection of a tomb building where he was given treatment, and how he was later led out of the hiding place in the morning twilight, supported by his friends, and taken to safety elsewhere. We should now turn again to the details of the Gospel reports, to see if they can tell us anything about the cloth used to cover Jesus in the tomb hiding place.

In the text we encounter two terms used to refer to the cloth: 'sindon' and 'othonion'. Besides these we also find the noun 'soudarion' used in the same general context.

The Synoptic Gospels use the word 'sindon'. This noun is used to render the Hebrew term 'sadîn', which we find in the Old Testament, bearing the meaning 'robe' in Judg. 14:12-13 and in 1 Macc. 10:64, and 'dress' or 'cloth' in Prov. 31:24. In the Talmud it is also used to denote a simple 'burial robe' (J. Ketubôt 12:3, J. Terumôt 8:10). In Mark's Gospel (14:51) 'sindon' is used for a cloth wrapped around ('peribeblemenos') the body. One can assume that the original Hebrew text of the Gospel of Mark had the term 'sadîn' and so carried the connotations of both robe and cloth. In Greek texts 'sindon' signifies a precious cloth, used to make robes and sheets of linen. In Latin the term 'sindon' can mean either a large cloth or a large cloak.

So we see that 'sindon' can be used for cloths of quite different sizes, which can be used for many different purposes. It is impossible to decide the form of the object referred to on the basis of this term alone. It can only be settled by looking at the use the cloth was put to. In any case we can rule out a long linen band, such as that used to wrap a mummy. We have seen from the comparison with the burial of Lazarus that only the term 'keiriai' would be used for such a band. On closer analysis, one has to conclude that 'sindon' refers to linen in its most general form. It is the generic term for the finished strip of linen cloth, from which various cloths, cloaks, sheets or towels could be manufactured.

In John we find the term 'othonia' in the sense of 'cloths'. Luke (24:12) had Peter see 'linen clothes' when he looked into the empty tomb, by using the term 'othonia' in the plural. Shortly before this he described the deposition from the Cross with the help of a 'linen', using the term 'sindon' in the singular (Luke 23:53). The term 'othonia' is suggested by this passage to mean 'cloths made from sindon'. The use of this term shows us one thing quite clearly: the evangelists specified that this cloth, in which Jesus was to be wrapped, was not a long linen band. The general term 'cloths' or 'linen' suggests rather that one or more larger cloths were brought to the tomb hiding place.

On our search for more exact clues about the nature of the cloths, we turn again to the Gospel of John. The discovery of the cloths on the first day of the week (Sunday) by Peter and John, was intentionally described in a way which brings out the eyewitness viewpoint: 'So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie. And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.' (John 20:4-7). The author uses the historic present tense for the observations of John and Peter, to relive the eyewitness account authentically. Zaninotto even goes so far as to translate the Greek 'blepei keimena ta othonia' ('he sees the cloths lying') in his interpretation as, 'he sees the cloths spread themselves out'. He does this to show that John looked in the inner chamber of the tomb just at the moment when the cloths were sinking down because the resurrected one had somehow 'vanished' from within them. This was he says, a sign of John's belief in the Resurrection. This is a highly speculative line of reasoning and quite obviously more of an unfounded act of interpretation than an accurate translation.

The 'sudarium' is without doubt the most important of the cloths left behind in the tomb. The unexpected mention of it in John is most interesting. Normally 'sudarium' is translated as 'towel' or 'napkin'. Some exegetes have thought it might be a chin band. But why should a chin band be emphasized in this way? Such an article would have to be considered quite secondary in the overall sequence of the burial procedure. But in John's text the 'sudarium' is pointed out in such a striking manner that one has to assume the author wished to make some special point. The sentence which directly follows the mention of the 'sudarium' provides the answer: 'Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.' (John 20:8).

The 'sudarium' lay to one side, and the sight of it gave faith to the favourite disciple. But why do John and Peter describe it as set apart and folded up? One might think it was a piece of cloth which was not used for the work in the tomb at all, and was therefore left lying quite clean and untouched, away from the other cloths that were spread out there. One has to interpret the passage as meaning 'the sudarium which was meant to be placed over his head'. But it had not come to this, because no burial took place. The linen cloth whose only function was for the burial, was left unused; it was left where it lay, still untouched, folded up, still there the next day -- is this what John was trying to tell us? Opposing this is the statement that it was the 'sudarium' which had been 'about his head'. Naturally one has to ask how the author of the Gospel of John could be certain that the cloth had been on Jesus' head. It is not said exactly how Jesus had been laid out for resting, and probably the author of the Gospel did not know much about it either. After all this task was carried out not by apostles but by the outsiders Joseph and Nicodemus. Perhaps the evangelist simply assumed that it must have lain 'about his head'.

All these proposals are made difficult to believe by the marked emphasis on the 'sudarium', and the fact that the favourite disciple suddenly 'believed' on seeing it. Considering all we have learned so far about the secret purpose of the text of John, there can be no doubt that the attentive reader was meant to notice something about the 'sudarium' immediately. If the 'sudarium' really had been on Jesus' head, the state it was found in when the empty tomb was discovered would suggest that there had not been any grave-robbing, nor a resurrection -- in both cases the effort taken to carefully fold up this one cloth on its own would be quite incomprehensible. Who could have done this and above all, why?

Regarding the faith the favourite disciple gained from seeing the 'sudarium', the usual explanation is that he gained faith in the Resurrection of the Lord when he saw the cloths left in the tomb. This is also suggested later on in the Gospel text. But in the narrative context there is another aspect which seems more decisive. We recall how Mary Magdalene had run, shocked, to the disciples after she had seen the open tomb. She feared that someone had taken the body of Jesus. Peter and John anxiously ran off to see what was going on. They found the tomb chamber open. Inside they could only see the cloths and, placed apart from them, tidily folded up, the 'sudarium'. Were they just relieved because this was a clear sign that the body had not been stolen? Robbers would have hardly taken the trouble to unwrap the body from its clothes when they took it. Therefore the sight of the empty tomb with the cloths could be a clear sign that Jesus had not been 'snatched'. Was this then what the favourite disciple believed when he saw the various cloths in the dim light of the tomb -- simply that Jesus had not been 'stolen'?

To answer this question, we have to see the 'sudarium', which was introduced so unexpectedly, in the context of what we have learned so far. According to Zaninotto an 'othonion', that is a cloth, which is placed on the head, is called a 'soudarion'. It gains this meaning, he says, in the same way as a cloth placed around the shoulders is called a shawl, around the head a veil, around the hips a dress, and over a table a tablecloth. The 'soudarion' has nothing to do with the function of a chin band. The word was merely introduced to make clear that it was a cloth which lay over the head. This meaning can be seen even when we look at the origins of the term. It probably derives from 'soudara', an Old Testament term (Ruth 3:15) which denotes neither a towel nor a chin band but a linen cloth which was placed over the head, and which might occasionally cover the whole body down to the feet. According to Ghiberti, 'soudarion' could derive from the Aramaic 'sôdara', which has various meanings and refers to piece of fabric small or large. Lavergne supposes that in the time of Jesus the term had assumed the meaning which it also had in Latin, namely a cloth used to wipe away perspiration. Of course these various uses of the word do not allow us to reconstruct the object it referred to. But its use in the period does suggest that it always had some link with perspiration. One example of this would be the cloths which Paul held over the sick for healing (Acts 19:12).

The Latins themselves had never used the term 'sudarium' in the context of burial rites. For some, this fact makes the analysis of John's text more difficult. Zaninotto, who pulls out all the stops in his philological analysis to show that 'sudarium' was used to mean a large cloth in which Jesus was covered, comes up against the connotation of 'towel for perspiration'. He remarks that such a cloth would have no sense in a burial, since there would be no perspiration to dry off. Also it is unlikely that the evangelist had borrowed the term from the Latin, because he always used the Latin expressions purely in their technical sense, such as 'praetorium', 'flagellum' ('whip') or 'linteum' ('linen cloth').

One person's hurdle can be another's springboard. We have come to know the author of John's text as the unknown person who wanted to communicate the mysterious events of the Crucifixion and burial of Jesus in a hidden way. Hence John intentionally played on the special meaning of the cloth as a perspiration towel, which comes through in the Latin; he had indeed used the term in its technical sense as usual. The length of linen which was placed around the body of Jesus was a towel of a special kind. Not only did it absorb his perspiration but it was with its herbs itself part of a therapeutic packing which was most probably sweat-inducing. Then what function did the other cloths in the tomb serve? It was important for Joseph and Nicodemus to give the wounded Jesus a comfortable place to lie on. They could have strewn some hay, but that might have attracted suspicion -- what was straw doing in a grave? So they decided to procure a large quantity of inexpensive cloths which were suitable for a burial. Using these they formed a soft layer to lay Jesus on in the long healing cloth coated with the herbal mixture. When Jesus was taken out of the tomb early in the morning, the first thing to do was to remove the healing cloth. It was folded and laid to one side, while the other cloths, which had served as a kind of mattress, were left crumpled up where they lay. Therefore the statement about 'the sudarium which had lain on his head' is correct, and it was only natural that they wanted to take care of the long strip of cloth. Fine linen was extremely expensive. Good linen fabrics were comparable in value to gold, silver and silk, being used for sacred functions in the temple, and prescribed for the robes of the priests. Since it could not be obtained in the usual marketplace, one has to assume that Joseph had specially commissioned the linen cloth with the costly herringbone weave. Of course they did not want to leave this very expensive fabric in the tomb chamber with the plain underlay fabrics.

The description of the 'shroud' of Jesus as an unworked strip of fabric matches the Turin cloth exactly. Interestingly the size of the Turin cloth matches precisely the unit of measurement which was used in Palestine at the time of Jesus, the philetaric cubit. This means the cloth which Joseph ordered was of a standard size. The philetaric cubit was about 53 cm. If one starts with the assumption that the cloth has stretched a little in the course of the centuries, the size is exactly 2 cubits wide by 8 cubits long.

Resurrected Or Arisen?

The philological analysis of John's text, taken in relation to the Synoptic Gospels, allows us to propose the following reconstruction of events. On the ledge by the central pit in the tomb chamber, a number of 'othonia' (cloths) made of an undyed ('kathara') piece of linen ('sindon'), were laid out. Over these cloths another strip of linen ('soudarion') was spread out. A solution of the healing herbs aloe and myrrh was applied to the naked body of the unconscious Jesus, and the body was placed on the length of linen. The cloth was lifted and folded over to cover the body. In this way the whole body was covered ('entylisso') and the function of a 'sudarium' achieved. The quantity of the aromatic substances in the cloth (some 33 kg) made the gigantic wound plaster so heavy that it had a real pressure-packing ('eneileo') effect on the body.

If we now read again the whole passage in John's Gospel describing the events at the discovery of the empty tomb (John 20:1-18), keeping in mind the reconstruction we have managed to make so far, the full meaning becomes clear. First Mary Magdalene ran to Simon Peter and the favourite disciple and excitedly told them that someone had taken the body of Jesus away from the tomb. She definitely did not say that the body was stolen in any way. Her statement was neutral regarding the manner in which Jesus had disappeared from the tomb. We are not even told why Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early in the morning when it was still dark. It is not said that she wanted to anoint the corpse, as was the case with the women of the Synoptic Gospels. When talking to Peter and John, she simply said, 'They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre ...' It is as if the people she was talking to knew who 'they' referred to.

Even from this first sentence we can form a picture of events. In the night, after the curative packing had been seen to, Joseph and Nicodemus visited some of the followers of Jesus. They approached Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter and John, who could be regarded as intimate companions. They briefly explained to the three what role they themselves were playing, and the fact that they were trying to save Jesus from death with the aid of Essene friends. Jesus would have to be taken as soon as possible from the unsafe hiding place, and brought to safety, away from the alert eyes of the Jerusalem priesthood. They did not want to say any more for fear of putting their plan in jeopardy. After all it was possible that one of the disciples would be arrested and, if tortured, betray their plans.

Mary Magdalene, totally stunned by what she was hearing, was unable to contain herself any longer. She made off for the tomb, to see for herself the truth of Joseph's words. There she found the stone rolled away from the entrance, ran immediately to the two others and told them that it had happened. As Joseph had said, 'they' -- his helpers -- had removed Jesus from the tomb. And she was quick to add, 'and we know not where they have laid him'. If she had been talking about a grave robbery, this additional remark would have made no sense at all. When a robbery happens one obviously does not expect to know where the stolen goods have been taken. She was evidently referring to the Essenes who, after waiting as long as they could while still under cover of night, had taken the first steps to get Jesus away.

Now it was the turn of the two disciples to be utterly amazed, and they broke into a run. The youthful John was faster and reached the entrance first, from where he cautiously peered inside. But Peter went right on into the tomb chamber and looked around. He noticed a crumpled heap of cloths and, separate from them, neatly folded, the healing cloth which Joseph had mentioned. Only now did John also dare to enter the building, and, as the report says, 'he saw, and believed'.

As we have seen, this most interesting passage is usually taken as the starting point for the creed of the Resurrection. This seeing and believing, which assume an important place in Johannine theology, is commonly interpreted as an action which somehow makes the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus directly apparent to the eye. Of course it is said that only the favourite disciple 'saw and believed', while Peter just 'saw'. The next verse provides the solution: 'For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.'

One can argue that at the time when the Gospel of John was composed, the creed of the Resurrection, as formulated by Paul (especially in the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians), was generally accepted by the early Christians. Thus it was natural that the author of the Gospel, who obtained his facts from an eyewitness, was concerned about presenting the events in a theologically correct way. Therefore he went on to forgive Peter for not believing after seeing what he did, because after all he did not yet know the Bible passage where the Resurrection was foretold. But we have to remember that in John we always find a two-tiered approach, so he is not really talking about the death and Resurrection, but about the rescue of Jesus. So let us briefly have a look at the scriptural passage that the disciples did not know about.

It is not easy to identify. Most exegetes agree that according to Acts 2:25-8, it has to be Psalm 16:8-11. In this passage we find:

'I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.'

Is this the promised Resurrection, as exegesis shows us? Try as one will, one cannot find any mention of it here. Quite the contrary: the precondition for resurrection, as Paul stresses, is death. One can only say that a person is resurrected if he has died. It is on this basis that the Christian says in the Creed, Jesus died and then 'rose from the dead'. But the Psalm speaks rather of saving from death. Peter misinterprets it when he refers to it in explaining the secret of the Pentecost as the promise of resurrection (Acts 2:25-8). Perhaps this has something to do with his not believing when he saw the linen cloths in the tomb, because he remained loyal to the mythical tradition of the Resurrection. For, taking the facts as they are, the 'seeing and believing' of the favourite disciple can only be understood as his believing what Joseph of Arimathea had told them. The favourite disciple saw that no one was buried in the grave, and the various cloths confirmed for him the statement that Jesus must still be alive. He therefore believed not in the Resurrection but in the rescue of Jesus. That is the key to this Bible passage.

It is possible that the Resurrection tradition in the Bible comes from a source which knew about the efforts to heal Jesus. During my studies in this area I did not think that finding support for this idea would be easy, but the interesting works of the philologist and theologist Father Günther Schwarz, which I came across more or less by accident, have opened up an exciting new view of the matter. For the terms 'rise' and 'coming back to life' which we find in the translations of the Bible, originally derive, as Dr. Schwarz shows, from an Aramaic verb which means 'resuscitate'! He explains:

'The lexical evidence is conclusive: not resurrection but resuscitation is the only meaning possible for both these Aramaic words, one of which Jesus would have used. I am referring to the synonymous words achajuta and technijuta. Both nouns are derived from the verb chaja, life, and consequently mean -- I repeat -- resuscitation and nothing else.'

This discovery is quite sensational and at once gives a meaning to the texts which is in perfect agreement with our analysis so far. Even the Greek does not suggest the translations of the Aramaic original concept which are given in the Christian usage: 'anhistemi' means to 'awaken' (transitive), and to 'get up', 'come forth', 'present oneself' (intransitive); 'anastasis' means 'rising up'. Only by the later Christian interpretation is 'anhistemi' made to mean 'raise from the dead' (transitive) and 'resurrect' (intransitive), and 'anastasis' 'resurrection'.

Let us again consider the passages in Mark and Luke, where the women at the tomb were told about the disappearance of Jesus by the men clad in white, in the light of what we have learned. Mark (16:6) wrote, 'and he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen, he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.' This is comparable to Matthew 28:6, although there the actual events are given a fairytale setting with theatrical angel magic, an earthquake and petrified tomb guards. The terse remark of the white-robed men in Luke (24:5) asking why they seek a living person among the dead, is as clear as can be. Jesus lived, he was rescued, he had no business in a tomb any more, the living belong among the living. He had gone ahead to Galilee, where his followers could see him. We have already shown how Jesus had great difficulty in convincing the disciples of his presence in the flesh. The reason for this is twofold. First, the majority of the disciples had not been told about the resuscitation attempt, and so were convinced that they were looking at a dead person or a spirit. And secondly the first Christian theologians started to take over at the supposed death by crucifixion of Jesus: according to the official dogma the story of the human individual Jesus ended there, and in its place came the story of Christ -- the mythically glorified Reality.

Transmission Of The Secret Knowledge

We are now in a position to see quite easily why the cloth was removed from the sepulchre. Ordinary burial clothes were very simple, inexpensive fabrics. The Turin cloth was no ordinary shroud, it was certainly very dear and so was probably meant to be cleaned for reuse. When the spices, which stuck loosely to the fabric, were washed off, the 'miraculous' image, which could not be washed out, came to light.

Because it was a healing cloth, for the initiates it was always a proof of the secret that Jesus had survived the Crucifixion. What has recently become an obvious fact for many well-known bestseller authors, was preserved in this manner down through the centuries by initiates, who wished to preserve the one piece of evidence, and protect it from the clutches of the enthusiasts who wanted to impose on Jesus an institutional role as the Christ.

The questions which we have been dealing with in this historical section are now answered. It was not difficult for the Essenes to remove the sweat cloth from the tomb because for them it was not a ritually impure object. The same holds for the messenger Thaddaeus and the artisan Aggai. Both these early keepers of the cloth knew of Jesus' rescue. Seen in this way the actions of Thaddaeus and Aggai are understandable. With them the line of tradition of those who knew the facts came to an end, or at least that was how it looked outwardly.

Thus the cloth which Thaddaeus brought to Edessa was no burial shroud, although the image on it made it look like one. And probably only a few of Jesus' followers knew that their master had not died. The knowledge of the successful healing was secretly handed down by the Essenes. This tradition survived under the protection of certain sects in the Middle East and it must also have reached the sect of the Cathars, which spread in the Balkans and the Near East before becoming established in France in medieval times.

Who were these Cathars, and are they really comparable to the Templars, as is often assumed? Does the Templar Order perhaps represent a continuation of Cathar ideas? The sect's ancestry can be traced back to the third and fourth centuries. Cathar communities arose in Italy, France, the Iberian peninsula and even in the East, a development which took place against the background of the terrible persecution of Christians in 249 and 250 under Decius. After the death of the Emperor in 251, a dispute ensued among the Roman congregations. One strict group refused to accept those who had denied their faith during the persecution, and made the Presbyter Novatian counter-Pope against Cornelius, who was supported by Cyprian. They argued that the Church did not have a 'power of attorney' to forgive sins. They called themselves Cathars, the pure ones, and developed theological ideas which represented an extraordinary danger for the orthodoxy: they contested the power and authority of priests to forgive sins, which gave them a hold over the people. One has to realize what this meant for a Church in the formative stages: the Cathars threatened its foundations, rejected intermediaries of Jesus on Earth and relied totally on the power of the Holy Spirit, which works from the inmost being of each individual.

The Cathars disappeared as an organized sect in Europe quite suddenly in the first half of the fifth century. But in the East the Novatian Cathars continued, supported by the apocalyptic sect of the Montanists. In those turbulent times, when Augustine could count twenty-eight heresies, and Gnosticism and Manichaeism were fully developed as churches, the Cathars went underground. Five hundred years later they re-emerged in the half-pagan Bulgaria and Bosnia, where they called themselves Bogumiles. Some scholars contest that these medieval Cathars had anything in common with the Cathars of Novatian except their name. 'But names and ideas, forms of belief and doctrines which have once been symbols are not simply taken up unless there are deeper spiritual links, and the old sources nourish the new life.' In the eleventh century Cathar teaching penetrated to Italy, and in around 1150 to southern France, where the most important centre developed in the town of Albi. The Cathars were also called Albigensians after the name of the town. Streams of people poured in to swell their ranks, because the Cathar preachers -- the 'bonhommes' -- lived what they preached were the spiritual ideals of their Church, whereas the orthodox medieval Church was mainly interested in extending its power and influence.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the great patron of the Templars, laid the foundation stone for a development which was to characterize a dark age in European history. For this strangely contradictory mystic, the renewal of the inner Church allowed only one choice for those of other beliefs: convert or be destroyed. With this motto he introduced the age of the Crusades led in the name of the Almighty, and the destructive war against the Cathars which was to do down in the annals of history as the Crusade against the Albigensians.

The Cathars opposed the secular power of the Church just as the Novatians in the time of Constantine I had done. Their bishops lived solely for the faith, without possessions, without pomp, without sinecures and lands. The Cathars preached self-salvation after the example of Jesus, and dispensed with sacraments and saint cults just as they rejected the idea of the crucified Jesus. Following the Gnostic line of thought they rejected matter as evil; also the Old Testament, the book of the creator of matter, and so of evil. They said that the opposition of good and evil went back to the deepest roots of life, to the Deity itself. They rejected war as anti-Christian, and lived according to the view of the faithful set down in the first letter of John, where it is said, 'Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.' (1 John 2:15).

Interestingly, the Cathars believed in 'resuscitation' in the form of reincarnation. They taught metempsychosis emphatically, among other highly non-orthodox Christian doctrines, even extending it to include animals. Souls could only find release from this wandering transmigration if they came to dwell in the body of a Catharically 'perfect one' or 'good Christian'. It appears that this teaching influenced the oldest cabbalistic convention in the south of France in the twelfth century, from where it penetrated into the esoteric currents of later times. The soul has to wander until the mystically illumined one (Cabbala) or pure one (Cathar) has fulfilled the true destiny of human life. This corresponds in a way to the Buddhist idea of rebirth with liberation of the soul in the body of a Buddha or Bodhisattva, and clearly shows its oriental origins. Even the teacher of Jesus, John the Baptist, understood the resurrection of the dead in the context of rebirth.

The rejection of sacraments and all mediated actions and functions, and the negative attitude to the Cross, all show quite clearly the influence of Gnostic oriental sects. It seems that this discounting of the Cross was a sort of declaration of war against the false 'Christianity', which had stylized the Crucifixion death as its central symbol. In these sects they tried to propagate a teaching of Jesus following the word of the Lord, when he reminded the people of Psalm 82:6. '... Is it not written in your law, I said, ye are gods?' (John 10:34). If the Spirit is present within, no intermediaries are necessary. The person thus awakened to the Spirit can say with Jesus, 'I and my Father are one.' (John 10:30). Jesus himself was not considered to be an intermediary for them, he was a human being who had been granted extraordinarily deep intuitions -- an awakened one. The Cross had neither killed him nor led to his Resurrection. It was therefore abhorrent as a symbol of the false belief of mythical vicarious atonement.

At the eleventh ecumenical council in the Lateran in 1179, Pope Alexander III pronounced the anathema on the Cathars and everyone who followed their teachings and defended them. All the faithful were called upon zealously to oppose this 'pest', and even take up arms against them. Whoever killed a Cathar was given an indulgence worth two years' penance and the protection of the Church as a Crusader.

Twenty years later, in the final year before the opening of the thirteenth century, at the time when the idea of the ominous Fourth Crusade was being born in Champagne, Pope Innocent III issued his terrible heresy decree. But the warnings of the Church leaders against the heretics did not have the desired effect. Wherever the Cathar preachers made their appearance, they were found to be superior to the puffed-up churchmen. The afflicted people, who were repelled by the pomp and power of the hated Church which was oppressing them, ran to the Cathars in their droves. Finally the Pope let loose his loyal 'Christians' against the Cathars. In July 1209 an army of knights and ruffians stormed the town of Bézier under the command of the Cistercian Abbot Arnauld-Alméric. The inhabitants were brutally and indiscriminately cut down, regardless of whether they were men or women, children or the elderly, Albigensian or Catholic. The Cathars refused to use weapons, even in the face of certain destruction, allowing themselves to be struck down without fighting. The Abbot proudly informed the Pope of their success with 'about 20,000' people slaughtered, for whom he said the 'Te Deum'. Maybe the last 'pure ones', as they voluntarily gave themselves up to the besiegers outside their fortress of Monségur on 12 March 1244 and walked to their death at the stake on the Champ des Crémats, the 'field of the burned', found consolation in the words of their favourite letter of St. John: 'Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.' (1 John 3:13).

The courageous 'pure ones', on their eternal search for supernatural solace, have in the course of the centuries gathered a patina of mystery, rather as the Templars have. They were said to be initiates of knowledge, guardians of the Holy Grail, just like the Templars. This esteem is not without cause. The Holy Grail, so the tradition goes, was the vessel in which Joseph of Arimathea collected the blood of Jesus. It was probably part of the legend that Joseph stood under the Cross and caught the precious blood in a cup. In fact he had more important things to do, hurrying to sort out the release of the crucified man. And yet Joseph had indeed collected and preserved the blood of Jesus -- IN THE HEALING CLOTH!

It would take us too far afield to discuss the Grail story in depth here -- it would fill another book. This much one can say: the idea of the Grail as a bowl, cup or dish is by no means the only theme. The origin of the word remains wreathed in obscurity, despite all the etymological studies. Perhaps the derivation from the Provençal 'Sangraal' ('San Gral', Holy Grail) is the correct one. Originally this meant 'sang real', 'the true blood'. Hence it means the true blood of Jesus. In what could be the true blood of Jesus have been caught, if not the Turin cloth? If the Cathars and later the Templars are seen as the guardians of the Holy Grail, it seems that this reflects the fact, of which only a fragmentary knowledge had filtered through to the public, that they were the keepers of the secret tradition of the rescue of Jesus.

The Templars, unlike the contemplative Cathars, were men of action, and were not satisfied with being just the preservers of a secret tradition. They wanted to possess the 'holy blood' themselves, to ensure that the priceless cloth would not be left in the hands of the ignorant.

During the ritual of admission to the Order, reference was made to the immortality of God and so to the intactness of the Son of God. John of Cassanhas, Templar Preceptor of Noggarda, tells how the leader of an admission ritual declares, 'Believe thou in God, who has not died and will never die.' Then Psalm 133 was read, 'Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum.' The Psalm is a pilgrimage eulogy of David:

'Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments; as the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.'

It contains a reference to the mission of the Temple Knights in Palestine; there awaited them there the blessing and eternal life, the heavenly anointing. Perhaps the Templars felt they were the new, true disciples in the Holy Land, and they therefore always travelled in pairs, just as Jesus had once sent the seventy ahead in groups of two. They were champions of the Holy Sepulchre, spiritual guards, who watched and honoured the site of their Saviour's rescue. In Templar mysticism the ideas of the rescue of Jesus from death by crucifixion were mingled with the ideas of eternal life. It is only natural that the warlike Templars wanted to gain possession of the cloth, that most important relic from that tomb which had never held a corpse. It may be that in their contemplation the Templars drew courage and strength from the idols of the cloth and its copies to risk their own transient bodies in battle, well knowing that their being was indestructible. The Templars, who trod the Cross underfoot, broke with the wrong symbolism. Like the Cathars they revered the man Jesus, whose special insight into the nature of the world was for them an example worth following. The continuity of this tradition was connected with the cloth. As heralds of this knowledge they saw themselves as legitimate keepers of the cloth.

The Templars were therefore not able to admit to the papal commission that they simply revered the Jesus of the Shroud in their chapters. For their image of Jesus was heretical and wicked. The death by crucifixion had no place in it. In reality the death by crucifixion, raised to the level of a dogma, had falsified the teaching of Jesus. The early Church was forced to introduce a completely different turn, because it was simply unthinkable that the Son of God could die. Therefore Paul put the idea of the intact Resurrection at the centre of the Faith. The Faith would be pointless if Christ had not been resurrected (1 Cor. 15:14). Hence Durwell can describe the Resurrection as the 'mystery of salvation' par excellence, because for Paul and the whole early catechesis it was the basic object of the faith. Without the Resurrection, Paul made quite clear, there could be no release from sins. Paul was only able to conceive of the death of the Son of God as an important act of the most far-reaching consequences. Otherwise it would have been irrational, inconceivable. 'Christ died for our sins,' he says unequivocally in the first letter to the Corinthians, the official form of the Easter message. In this way he makes this, HIS OWN PERSONAL IDEA, into the actual foundation of the Christian Faith, on which everything is built up.

It is interesting that Paul nowhere presents the empty grave as proof of the Resurrection. The exegetes claim that he could have made good use of the account of the empty grave, but 'he knew nothing about it or did not consider it to be attested to reliably. For him the apparitions were not connected with it.' Hence Bultmann supposes that it was a legend that arose only later, which Paul still did not know of. That is most unlikely, because the tradition of the apparition stories is clearly older than that of the Resurrection and grave stories. The reports of the empty grave, however, are also found in uncanonised early writings. Such information was moreover unusable for Paul since the empty grave was open. He would have had to reply to those who rightly viewed this circumstance as suspicious. An open grave suggests that someone pushed aside the stone and took Jesus from the grave. Such arguments are difficult to refute. The open grave is simply unusable for the Resurrection teaching. Therefore Paul confined himself to the apparitions of Jesus in his reasoning in support of the Resurrection. He listed them all, up to the final apparition which was granted to himself, the 'miscarriage' as he calls himself.

Since the rescue operation was not allowed to become generally known, the Crucifixion and 'death' of Jesus had to be interpreted differently. For this, very old pagan ideas were dug up: the death was made into the death of atonement -- God offered his beloved Son for the sinful humanity. However an immortal God has to rise again. The old rebirth ideas, which are found everywhere in the New Testament, were well known, but they were not suitable for a Christ. They were too generally widespread -- every prophet could be a reincarnation. As the Son of God Jesus was exceptional, unique. He could not re-embody himself in another person. Therefore he had to be physically resurrected. To guarantee his uniqueness was the key to the Resurrection theology. Of course by making Christ a kind of deputy in this way, they made possible the 'great hope' of the Christians, which forms the attraction of Christianity to this day: through his vicarious offering Christ allowed the people (or to be more precise, only Christians) to share in his bodily immortality on the day of judgement, and this without any personal effort at all.