Why an Atheist Thinks the Shroud of Turin is the Real Deal

Edessa of the Fertile Crescent

Edessa was a city in the Fertile Crescent of upper Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. It was long an important  city on the Silk Road between China and India and Europe. I was also a very early Christian community. If you traveled from Jerusalem to Antioch as St. Paul the evangelist did, you were two-thirds of the way to Edessa. At Antioch you could turn left and travel along the Roman roads to Tarsus, Paul’s home town. Or you could turn right and by travelling about the same distance along the Silk Road to arrive at Edessa.

Today, the city is called Şanlıurfa or simply Urfa. It is situated in south-eastern Turkey near the border with Iraq. As is the case with northern Iraq, most of the population is Kurdish, though there are many Arabs and Turks in the city as well. The predominant religion is Muslim but there are Christian and Jewish minorities, some who claim lineage back to the 3^rd century and 1^st centuries respectively, and perhaps earlier.