Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 97
task of making new analyses of the linen using every modern method, he had noted the existence of a minute layer of a special dust of unknown origin. He succeeded in obtaining permission to make an analysis on a sample, the results of which were as follows: It was found that they were minute grains of fossilized pollen of plants which existed only in Palestine twenty centuries ago. There was no doubt in his mind: the Shroud of Turin was genuine. This was affirmed not by some unknown person, but by a criminologist of world-wide reputation, who is the director of the Zurich Police Scientific Laboratory, has a degree in Biology and Natural Sciences and speaks several languages; he stated that the pollen was analysed first under the microscope and then by a method called palynology, based on the structure of the pollen and its geographical and paleobotanical distribution in the form of microfossils, comparatively, and he discovered that the plant came from the Palestine area. Then there were typical signs of plants from the area of Constantinople, where the shroud was exhibited from the year 438 onwards. After that, Mediterranean dusts of the 14th and 15th centuries; to be precise there is pollen from six plants from Palestine, one from Constantinople and up to eight from the Mediterranean area. Summarizing the results of the investigations begun in 1969 at the request of the Church, a communique was issued at the beginning of 1976, the text of which is as follows: After seven years of investigations on the shroud in which his body was wrapped, various scientists have reached the conclusion that Jesus Christ was buried alive. The experts confirm that the body of a crucified man lay in the Holy Shroud which is preserved at Turin, and that this man suffered exactly the same passion as did Christ, but that he did not die on the 89