Read Online The Shroud Codex by Jerome R. Corsi - Free Book Online

wrists, not in the palms of the hands. It was the same with the Shroud. The nail wounds were through the wrists, not the hands, and they looked remarkably like the stigmata wounds Bartholomew had suffered in his wrists. Anatomically, that made sense to Castle. The wounds in the arms could not have gone through the palm of the hand. The nails had to be driven through thewrist. Otherwise, the weight of the body would have ripped the nails loose.
    Castle’s medical mind envisioned how a nail driven through the junction of bones in the wrist would hold an adult male’s weight. “A nail through the palm of the hand above the wrist would tear free over time,” he suggested. “The nail would have to be placed just right in the wrist. If the nail hit the major arteries in the hand, the person being crucified might die before they were ever lifted to the cross. Nailing a person to a cross must have been an expert operation that required experienced executioners.”
    “Right,” Morelli confirmed. “The Romans crucified hundreds of thousands of people. They were very good at crucifixion. Crucifixion was designed to be a brutal and humiliating form of death, typically reserved for hardened criminals or traitors foolish enough to foment insurrection against Rome.”
    “How long was Christ on the cross?” Castle asked.
    “Christ hung on the cross for at least three hours,” Morelli answered. “He was not dead when the sun was going down. The problem was that Christ was crucified on Friday and he had to be buried before the Jewish Sabbath began, at sundown on Friday. According to Jewish law, Christ’s body had to be taken from the cross and buried before the start of the Sabbath, which means the followers of Jesus did not have much time. Before the Roman soldiers allowed his followers to take the body off the cross, they wanted to make sure he was dead. So a Roman centurion took his lance and pierced it through Christ’s side, puncturing his heart. Only then did the Roman soldiers give Christ’s followers permission to remove his body from the cross.”
    Looking closely, Castle marveled at how correct anatomically the Shroud image appeared to be. The exit wound on the back of the hand on top—really the left hand in a Shroud image that needed to be reversed right to left like most negatives—lookedlike an exit wound. It appeared the nail had been driven through where several small carpal bones meet in the wrist, below the metacarpal bones that branch to the fingers, on the thumb side of the hand. The thumbs in both hands appeared to have been pulled back toward the palms of the hands such that they were not visible when the hands were viewed from above. “Driving the nails through the wrists in this area probably damaged the median nerve, with the result that the thumb would have been pulled under the palm in an action not unlike an automatic muscle reflex. So, you’re probably also asking me how any artist at the time of Christ—or even during the Middle Ages—would have been sufficiently skilled in medicine as to have captured this anatomically important detail. Is that right?”
    “Yes,” Morelli answered without hesitation. “How the Shroud of Turin was created is hard to explain. The Shroud provides a remarkably detailed view of the crucifixion of Jesus as described in the Gospels and the practice itself as described in contemporary Roman accounts. Moreover, the Shroud is anatomically correct, even by our current medical standards, in documenting the effects of crucifixion on the human body.”
    “Where is the Shroud now?” Castle asked.
    “The Catholic Church owns the Shroud of Turin,” Morelli explained. “It is kept in the Chapel of the Shroud in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. Typically, the Shroud is kept locked away in a controlled-atmosphere vault that the scientists have designed to maximize preservation of the cloth.”
    “Does the Catholic Church have an official position