Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 71
sculptor Professor Lorenzo Ferri of Rome estimates that the stature of the body wrapped in the shroud was 1. 87 metres. . In 1957 the book Jesus nicht am Kreuz gestorben (Jesus did not die on the cross), by Kurt Berna, appeared. Kurt Berna is a Catholic author and secretary of the German institute of investigations on the Holy Shroud at Stuttgart. This institute, under the direction of Berna, conducted some important studies on the subject of the shroud after the photographs of Enrie were published. The conclusions from these investigations were published by Kurt Berna in two books, one called Das Linen (The. Linen Cloth), and the other Jesus nicht am Kreuz gestorben, already mentioned. The revelations in these books, especially the second, in which it was shown that Jesus did not die on the cross, caused a sensation which was only to be expected at the time, and they became the object of polemics and criticisms, some of them favourable and the others absolutely opposed to this theory. . On the 26th of February 1959 Kurt Berna sent a letter to. Pope John XXIII, calling for his permission to allow a committee of medical and scientific experts to investigate the whole matter of the shroud of Turin, so that the various controversies aroused by it could be settled once and for all. The reply from the. Vatican was in the negative. But ten years later, in 1969, the. Vatican gave permission for such a committee to be set up, and as we have already seen they came precisely to the conclusion that Jesus did not die on the cross. . I will now mention some of the conclusions arrived at by. Kurt Berna in the book in question. . Kurt Berna states that the analysis of the linen cloth shows that the head and hands of Jesus were resting at a higher level than the rest of the body, and he concludes that if the body concerned were dead, fresh blood could not have flowed from these organs and left their imprints on the cloth. . Furthermore, he declares, the cloth shows signs of blood which flowed from the wounds in the head of Jesus caused by the thorns of the crown put on him by the Romans as a jest in mockery of his title King of the Jews. Kurt Berna concludes that when the body of Jesus was taken down from the cross and the crown of thorns removed from his head, the wounds caused by the thorns began to bleed. If Jesus had already been dead for some time, all the blood would have flowed down to the lower regions of the body and coagulated there. It is a law of nature 73