Posted on 10/08/2009 11:35:33 AM PDT by Nikas777
Teacher Has Theory on the Shroud of Turin
Thursday March 24, 2005 1:46 PM
By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
Associated Press Writer
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - Nathan Wilson is an English teacher with no scientific training, but he thinks he knows how Jesus' burial cloth was made and he thinks it's not a physical sign of the resurrection.
In other words, in Wilson's estimation, the Shroud of Turin is a fake - produced with some glass, paint and old cloth. And that theory, especially with Easter this weekend, has so-called ``Shroudies'' a buzz.
``A lot of religious people are upset,'' said Wilson, 26, who teaches at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho.
Wilson is himself an evangelical Christian but said his views on the shroud don't change his faith.
``I'm a Bible-believing Christian who believes in the resurrection completely without a doubt,'' he said.
The English instructor believes a medieval forger could have painted the image of a crucified man on a pane of glass, laid it on the linen, then left it outside in the sun to bleach the cloth for several days. As the linen lightened, the painted image of the man remained dark on the cloth, creating the equivalent of a photo negative.
Wilson wrote his theory in Books and Culture, a magazine for Christian intellectuals. It was picked up by several Web sites and is being debated in shroud circles. Wilson's Web site received more than 100,000 hits from 45 countries in the first week of his article's publication.
Shroud expert Dan Porter said that while Wilson's theory is ingenious, it does not produce images identical to those on the 14-foot-long, 3-inch-wide strip of linen.
``It is not adequate to produce something that looks like the shroud in two or three ways,'' said Porter, who lives in Bronxville, N.Y. ``One must produce an image that meets all of the criteria.''
Porter contends sun bleaching cannot have produced the image, which he and many others say is the result of chemical reactions on the cloth.
``A problem with Wilson's hypothesis is that sun bleaching merely accelerates bleaching that will occur naturally as the material is exposed to light,'' Porter wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. ``Eventually, Wilson's sun bleach shroud image will fade into the background as exposure equalizes the bleaching.''
The shroud has often been displayed, sometimes in bright sunlight for days at a time, and no such image fading has occurred, Porter said.
Porter and others also question whether panes of glass at least 6 feet long were produced in medieval times, as Wilson's theory would require.
Radiocarbon tests of the Shroud of Turin were done in 1988, and dated the cloth at A.D. 1260 to 1390. But Raymond Rogers of Los Alamos National Laboratory recently argued that the tested threads came from later patches and might have been contaminated. Rogers calculated that the shroud is 1,300 to 3,000 years old and could easily date from Jesus' era.
Wilson said he wants to write a novel about his theory. The forger or perhaps forgers, Wilson theorizes, probably robbed a grave and pulled the aged shroud off a body, then crucified someone to obtain the blood and study the wounds of Jesus.
``Most likely it involved some real wicked people,'' Wilson said.
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On the Web:
Wilson's Web site: http://www.shadowshroud.com
With that said I am not dismissing the possibility - only playing devils advocate for the most part. I find compelling evidence exists to prove the Shroud is genuine as well (wrists where nails went through vs palms). I think my position is in the middle - it was a REPRODUCTION using advanced techniques of the Greek artistic world from the original or it was the original and Byzantines enhanced the image to make it more visible. I like the idea that it would be a copy of the original - not produced as a fraud but as a genuine reproduction to allow others to view it as was common at that time to do.
If you go to the results of this teacher's experiments it is claimed they did produce a 3D negative image like on the Shroud. http://www.shadowshroud.com/images.htm
YES, I’m sure this is NOT a clock!
Virtually ALL of the tests performed by the skeptics (visible light microscopy claiming to find red ochre, radiocarbon dating, "reproductions" such as this recent one in Italy) have been investigated by other scientists and either falsified, or found (at best) non-reproducible by other parties. Furthermore, the skeptics have numerous examples of failing to supply their raw data or samples to others not already in their camp, for independent verification. And finally, there are examples of skeptics (McCrone comes to mind) who contradict their *own* findings from one presentation to the next.
All of these are indicative (at best) of piss-poor technique, not to say bias.
By contrast, the researchers whose work has indicated a non-medieval origin for the Shroud have done the best to discount their bias (Rogers for one was a skeptic of the re-weaving, but was convinced *by* the evidence), and have taken care to use control groups, utilize corroborating tests utilizing independent physical and chemical methods based on different properties of the materials tested, and to share their work.
This last guy from Italy, in the web page you link to, ducks a debate with Porter (who is on the "shroudstory" site), and waves his hands when confronted with the spectroscopic evidence of blood, rather than seeking head-on to look at the evidence.
This appears to be a "shoe on the other foot" compared to the stereotypical behaviour of believers vs. scientists, say, on some of the crevo threads. The atheists are so used to debunking things in vacuo that they don't know what to do when the physical evidence fails to back up their preconceived notions.
Cheers!
Thanks Nikas.
LOL! My point FRiend, is that ancient cultures were much more advanced than many might think. Is the Shroud the burial cloth of Christ.....I have no idea. Were they capable of producing a cloth that looked like the Shroud of Jesus......? Apparently they could make very sophisticated clockworks....I leave it as a mental exercise what else they were capable of.
Then again, for some reason, many people do care, to include atheists, wiccans, pagans, muslims, etc.. I wonder why?
5.56mm
No. It did not. It dated a patch on the shroud that was made in the middle ages.
“STURP found the image was not just a negative image, but a 3-D negative image. This method would not meet that criteria”
That’s what I recall as well. And the image is only on the surface of the fibers. Paint is absorbed by cloth and wouldn’t be simply a surface phenomenon.
“I am pretty sure it was more than radio carbon dating. It is not like they were close and the vote was 3 for and 4 against.”
I’m pretty sure you’re not all that familiar with the debate.
Also, no miracles are associated with the Shroud - the bones of St. Nicholas now in Bari, Italy still pour forth scented oils for example.
More like they assume it must have dated a patch and if not a patch then the fire screwed up the radio carbon testing.
OK?No problem-this is news to me.
The question is not whether modern investigators can figure out some way to produce a reasonable copy of the Shroud but, given the quality of forged Medieval artifacts in general, why they would have produced a forgery so good that modern researchers still puzzle over it and that’s so difficult to see without modern photographic equipment. We’re talking about people who painted Biblical scenes with all sorts of ahistorical details and were fairly careless with other forged artifacts (for example, the spear that supposedly ws the Spear of Longinus in Vienna dates to the 7th Century) producing a hard to see image in normal light that accurately reflects not only a real crucifixion but also contains details that conflict with what was commonly depicted during that period and accurate details of a Jewish burial.
My conclusion is that if the Shroud of Turin turns out to be a fake (and I don’t believe it is), that it’s either a copy of an authentic original or, far more unlikly in my opinion, it was produced by a Medieval artist with researched Judaism extensively and crucified (murdered) a person (or more than one person) to get the details correct.
“The scientific consensus is that”
The scientific consensus is that man-made CO2 is causing global warming.
The scientific consensus isn’t worth anything when it’s based on faulty data.
My opinion it is if this Shroud is not the Holy Mandylion looted by the Crusaders from Constantinople then it is a copy of the Greek church's Holy Mandylion from Constantinople. The making of high quality reproductions of relics was not seen as a forgery and copy of a relic was seen as worthy of veneration and highly sought after in the west.The west may have had primitive technology but Constantinople was far from primitive in artistic skills and technology.
Those making claims it is authentic also have incomplete data as well if you want to be accurate.
I consider those two options quite plausible, the first more plausible than the second. Like I said, my opinion is that it's either authentic or a copy of something that was authentic, leaning heavily toward authentic.
“The scientific consensus is”
Gosh, where have we heard that statement before?
Oh yeah, Al Gore and Man Made Global Warming.
Now here I thought Al Gore was the High Priest of The Scientific Consensus, and then you come along trying to take his crown away from him. It’s all so confusing.
Look, go peddle your “scientific consensus” to someone who knows as little as you do about the shroud controversy. The only evidence pointing to a middle ages provenance is the C-14 dating, and that is in dispute due to fire exposure, organic film, and new fibers used to repair the cloth. Until a more extensive C-14 test is conducted your “scientific consensus” is just you emitting gas and declaring the aroma to be perfume.
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