The Sign

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THE SIGN - The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection

By Thomas de Wesselow - Published by Viking in hardback on 26th March 2012 at £20.00

STRICTLY EMBARGOED UNTIL SUNDAY 25TH MARCH 2012

The birth of Christianity, nearly 2000 years ago, shaped the course of human history, yet historians still cannot explain how it all really began. What made Jesus’s followers claim to have seen him alive again, three days after his crucifixion? How did Christianity take off so quickly and so convincingly after Jesus’s death?

Written by Cambridge art historian Thomas de Wesselow, The Sign now dramatically reveals that the key to this mystery - one of the greatest historical mysteries of all time – is an enigmatic relic long assumed to be a Medieval fake: the Shroud of Turin. This major new work of history, published globally for the first time this week, is the result of seven years of meticulous research, with the author’s revolutionary findings being kept a tight secret until today.

Traditionally, the birth of Christianity has been explained via the ‘miracle’ of the Resurrection, the idea that after Jesus died on the cross, he was raised from the dead by God and then appeared to his disciples, telling them to spread the gospel. Nowadays this explanation seems increasingly incredible, and even many Christians find it hard to believe in a ‘literal’ Resurrection. But, if no one really saw the Risen Jesus, how did they become convinced that he was their immortal Messiah? Thomas de Wesselow has spent the last seven years putting the pieces of this puzzle together. Employing historical detective work and cutting-edge scientific research, he uses his skills as an art historian to come up with a radical and convincing answer.

So what was it that Mary Magdalene and the disciples saw that first Easter? What was it that was so impressive that it went on to have such enormous repercussions? The answer, says Thomas de Wesselow, is that they saw something real but out of the ordinary, something so extraordinary, in fact, that it seemed like a miracle. What they saw was the Shroud, the burial cloth of Jesus, which he can prove is not a fake. It was this ancient marvel that kick-started the Christian religion.

Using all his experience as an art historian, the author explains that two thousand years ago people instinctively saw images as quasi-living beings (an instinct known as ‘animism’). So when Mary Magdalene and the disciplines saw the Shroud, with its famous image of a tortured, crucified man, they would have seen it as a living double of Jesus appearing after his death – in other words, as Jesus resurrected. They would have heralded it as a ‘sign’ from heaven, revealing Jesus to have been raised from the dead and exalted to heaven.

In The Sign Thomas de Wesselow provides conclusive evidence that the Shroud of Turin is authentic and shows that the image on the cloth could have been formed naturally, when chemicals from the decomposing body reacted with starch deposits on the linen fabric to produce a unique stain. Known as a Maillard reaction, this was a reaction between carbohydrates and amino acids, familiar in food chemistry as the process that turns bread crusts golden brown.

The Sign also exposes myriad flaws in the 1988 carbon-dating test, which claimed the Shroud was from the Medieval period. These flaws included the botched sampling of the cloth and the last-minute abandonment of agreed procedures. De Wesselow brings to bear his skills as an art historian to prove that the image on the Shroud cannot possibly be a medieval fake. He carefully explains why it does not match the style, technique or concepts of medieval imagery; and why it cannot be a painting or a rubbing. Most importantly, he explains that it is an astonishingly realistic negative image, much like a photographic negative, a fact which was only became apparent when it was first photographed in 1898. Since this discovery, there has never been a realistic chance that the Shroud could be a deliberate forgery of the Middle Ages.

The Sign details the scientific tests that help prove the Shroud is in fact genuine: pollens lifted from the cloth fibres indicate that it was once in Israel; a seam used in the weave of the linen is identical to one found only on a first-century cloth from Judea; the wound-marks are composed of real blood; and an independent, peer-reviewed test of the age of the linen found that it was over 1300 years old. De Wesselow also discusses new discoveries from art and literature, including a depiction of the Shroud in the twelfth-century Pray Codex, which proves the cloth was in existence long before the date indicated by the carbon-dating.

Having proven the authenticity of the Shroud, the author then shows how, viewed as an animistic image, it can explain all the early reports of the appearances of the Risen Christ. For instance, it explains the earliest testimony to the Resurrection, the testimony of Paul, who says the Risen Jesus appeared in a glorious ‘spiritual body’ to many different people, including a crowd of over 500 people. The negative quality of the image also explains why, in the Gospels, the disciples are at first unable to recognize the Risen Jesus. Eventually, smuggled out of Jerusalem, the Shroud effectively went ‘on tour’ for many months before being whisked away to safety – and obscurity – in the Mesopotamian city of Edessa. These ‘sightings’ by eyewitnesses were crucial, adding fuel to the belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and encouraging more people to follow the strange new cult of a crucified Messiah.

Sometimes discoveries come in the form of ideas, not scientific results or historical documents. The realization that The Shroud could have been seen ‘animistically’ in the first century is as transformational as any scientific breakthrough. This analysis could not have been conducted by a scientist or even a general historian. It depends on the skills of an art historian

“This book unlocks two thousand years of history by giving the first comprehensive, tangible, secular cause for early Christian belief in the Resurrection,” says Joel Rickett, Editorial Director of Viking. “Only a brilliant art historian with an insatiably curious mind could have made this astonishing breakthrough.”

The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection is published on Monday 26th March by Viking in the UK, and then on 2nd April by Dutton in the US, as well as in Holland (Uniebook Spectrum) and Brazil (Companhia das Letras). Other countries including Germany (Berteslemann) will follow later this year.

Thomas de Wesselow is an art historian experienced at tackling ‘unsolvable’ problems. He earned his MA and PhD at London’s Courtauld Institute, researching the controversial Guidoriccio fresco in Siena, before becoming a Scholar at the British School in Rome where he worked on another of the great mysteries of Italian art history, the Assisi Problem. After a year in the curatorial department at the National Gallery in London, he was appointed a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at King’s College, Cambridge, where he was later awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. He has written on a number of famous Renaissance pictures whose meanings have hitherto defied analysis, including Botticelli’s Primavera and Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love. He has also developed new ideas about medieval world-maps, in particular the Hereford Mappamundi. Since 2007 he has been researching this book full-time. He is 40 years old and he lives in Cambridge.

Thomas De Wesselow is available for interview. For further information, please contact
Alex Hippisley-Cox on 020 8488 3764/07921 127077 or email her ahipcoxpr@btconnect.com

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