Truth About The Crucifixion — Page 99
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 91