Every year, at Easter, the networks toss out SOMETHING that claims to totally debunk the New Testament claims about Jesus, and specifically about His resurrection. A few years back it was THE DA VINCI CODE, which, despite being clearly labeled as a work of fiction, and being about as historically accurate as a typical Harlequin Bodice-Ripper Romance, was treated with great seriousness and caused millions of people who read it to either reject or doubt the Gospels. Then there was the TV special and attendant hooplah about the "Judas Gospel" - even its discoverers admit that it was written late in the Second Century AD (over 100 years after Jesus' time) and therefore could not have been by the Biblical Judas or by anyone who knew him - and once again it was hyped as overturning the traditional narrative of Judas betraying Jesus. Then, of course, James Cameron did his special on "The Jesus Family Tomb" - claiming to have found the burial place of Jesus, his wife, his brother, and his child. Even the archeologist who discovered the ossuaries at Talpiot said that he believed the burials there had no relation to the Biblical characters, and said the inscription on the ossuary said to have held the bones of Jesus was so worn that he could not say with any degree of certainty if the name on it was, in fact, "Jesus" or something else. Of Cameron, he only said: "He's just pimping off the Bible to make money!"
So I've come to watch for it every year, and was a bit surprised that it didn't show up sooner. But then, there it was, this morning: a new book about the Shroud of Turin is on the shelves, and the author was giving interviews. Initially, the story seemed positive towards faith: the researcher who wrote the book, a former agnostic, now believes that the Shroud is definitely the burial cloth that once held the body of Jesus (I have always been a bit skeptical of it, myself). But the kicker comes when he explains the Shroud's significance: He said that when the women came to the tomb that first Easter morning and lifted the shroud from Jesus' body, the ghostly imprint on it would have seemed like an "ethereal presence" in the tomb and given rise to the myth that Jesus rose from the dead. Later, when the Disciples of Jesus saw the Shroud, they too were convinced - as was the Apostle Paul, when the Shroud was shown to him.
REALLY???
OK, let me get this straight: You go to the tomb and lift the sheet from the body. The body is still there, but on the sheet is a bloody imprint of the form it was draped over. You immediately jump to the conclusion that this must be a miracle and the man in the tomb must have risen from the dead - EVEN THOUGH his body is still right there on the slab???? That the religious leaders who crucified Jesus would have let the Apostles get away with talking about the Resurrection when they still had access to the body of Jesus and could PROVE that the Galileans were lying? Or that Paul, who was a huge persecutor of the early church, would have become convinced that the Galilean heretic whose followers he sought to throw in jail was, in fact, the Son of God - because SOMEBODY SHOWED HIM A BLOODY CLOTH??? Not to mention that he would have had to completely fabricate the whole story of the risen Christ appearing to him on the Damascus road?
This has got to be the LAMEST attempt to explain away the Resurrection EVER. The idea that these men would spin a tall tale of this magnitude based on a piece of cloth with an imprint on it, and then be willing to suffer martyrdom for proclaiming a resurrection that never happened, is so far-fetched as to be ridiculous. The whole "Passover Plot" scenario made more sense than this steaming shovelful of academic you-know-what!!!!!
I know many people disbelieve the Biblical account of the Resurrection, and that is your right. But this so-called "explanation" almost insults the intelligence of skeptics, much less believers.
