Where Did Jesus Die? — Page 229
Appendix to Seventh Edition 229 The pollen dust of every plant can be identified. In 1973, he took 12 samples from the linen fibres 10–12 cms. long and stud- ied these at Zurich under a microscope. By studying and com- paring pollen from various geographical regions, he concluded that the Shroud was at some time exposed to the Palestinian and Turkish areas. It is not possible to date when this exposure took place. 2. Christian historians have doubted the authenticity of the Shroud because no mention is made of this cloth. However, Muslim historians like Al-Masudi and Ibn-ul-Athir link it to King Abgarus of Edessa before it arrived in Christian hands (see the Muslim Herald , Vol. 18, No. 1, January, 1978). 3. Dr. John P. Jackson and Dr. Eric Jumper of the U. S. Air Force Academy have studied the intensity of darkness of the stains and plotted a graph showing body to cloth distance on a micro- densometer and reinterpreting this on an image analyser. This technique is similar to the space research programme whereby three-dimensional reliefs are obtained. The clarity of these images indicate that the Shroud could not have been faked. The original Greek version of the Gospels merely use the words ‘the giving up of the ghost’. Death is not mentioned. At that time, the cessation of breathing was assumed to be ‘death’. Present day medicine, however, requires that efforts for revival should be con- tinued even if a person has stopped breathing and there are hun- dreds of patients who owe their ‘new’ lives to this fundamental recognition of death in the medical terminology.