"The Passion" too violent? The "Shroud of Turin" shows it happened!

Shroud of Turin history presented in Upstate
Retired surgeon relays his nearly 40 years of research on the Shroud of Turin

GREENVILLE — Dr. William E. Rabil has no doubt that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. Rabil, a retired general surgeon from Winston-Salem, N.C., began studying the shroud in the late 1950s and has been lecturing about it for nearly 40 years. He made two slide presentations to parishioners at St. Mary Church on March 6.

Rabil began with a brief history of the shroud. After the crucifixion, the shroud was originally hidden in Jerusalem and was thought to have been moved to Edessa (Urfa, Turkey) after Jerusalem fell to the Romans in A.D. 70. In 944, the Byzantine Imperial Army invaded Edessa to recover the shroud and brought it to Constantinople (now Istanbul). Raiders from the Fourth Crusade invaded Istanbul in 1294 and took the shroud to Europe. It is believed to have been hidden by the Knights Templar until Geoffrey DeCharney exhibited it in Liren, France, in 1353. From that point forward, its history is fully documented. The shroud was moved to Turin, Italy, in 1578 and has remained there ever since. It is kept in a silver reliquary behind bullet-proof glass inside the Chapel of the Shroud.

The shroud was first photographed in 1898 by Italian photographer Secondo Pia. His first shot was a misfire, but his second shot caused him to fall to his knees. On the negative was the "positive image of Jesus Christ." The markings on the shroud are negative images, and it took the photographic reversal of light and dark to reveal the positive image of a man's body.

While the evidence cannot prove conclusively that the image on the shroud is Jesus, it is definitely the image of man between 5 feet 11 inches and 6 feet tall who weighed approximately 175 pounds. Forensic medical investigation confirms that the man died from crucifixion.

The body in the shroud was unclothed. All four books of the Gospel tell of Roman soldiers casting lots for Jesus' garments.

The shroud was not wrapped around the body, as one might expect. The body was placed on top of the shroud with the feet at one end. The other end of the shroud was brought over the head and spread on top of the body, ending at the feet.

Jesus' torture and crucifixion were much bloodier than most paintings have ever depicted. The back of the body in the shroud shows multiple scourge marks from the nape of the neck to the feet. The Romans used a flagrum for scourging. A flagrum was a whip with bone or metal-tipped leather thongs that was specifically designed to tear flesh. One-hundred twenty scourge marks were counted on the body.

Blood had not been washed from the body in the shroud. The Sabbath was fast approaching when Jesus was taken down from the cross, and he had to be buried before sundown. The doctor emphasized that Jesus' body would have gone into rigor mortis almost immediately after death because of the trauma of crucifixion, which would have made washing very difficult. Jewish burial practices also precluded washing blood that was flowing at the time of death.

The face shows bruising on the nose; Jesus was struck on the nose by a high priest. The body had a mustache and beard, and there is evidence that facial hair had been plucked.

There were no broken bones, but some bones were displaced. There is evidence of spike wounds to both wrists and the feet. Forensic investigators have proved that the spikes were not pounded into Jesus' palms because the weight of an adult would have torn completely through all tissues, and he would have fallen off the cross. The spikes were pounded into his wrists, and the bones separated. One foot was nailed over the other.

According to Dr. John Heller in his book, Report on the Shroud of Turin (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1983), "There is a swelling of both shoulders, with abrasions indicating something heavy and rough had been carried across the man's shoulders within hours of death."

There is no pigment on the linen cloth of the shroud. If paint had been used, the wound pattern would have become obliterated. The blood stains on the back of the skull demonstrate the unique cohesive properties of blood. No other substance behaves the same way. Scientific testing has confirmed that the stains are blood and body fluids.

The forensic examination shows that the crown of thorns was actually a cap over the entire scalp. A painting done from the shroud image shows a thorn above Jesus' right eye.

Some photos of the shroud show the image of coins placed over both eyes, a Jewish burial custom. The image exactly matches that of a coin minted during the reign of Pontius Pilate between A.D. 29 and 33.

Botanical experts have examined fragments of the shroud and found spores and seeds from 27 plants that are indigenous to Jerusalem. Geological analysis of particles showed limestone indigenous to caves surrounding Jerusalem and suggested that the shroud was placed in a damp tomb or cave.

Jesus died after about three hours on the cross, which was considered fast for a man of his age and physical condition. Medical experts theorize that he was severely weakened by the brutal scourging. Death by crucifixion is very painful. The muscles of the arms, chest, and legs quickly go into spasm, and the victim dies of asphyxiation.

The shroud has been studied and tested carefully by surgeons, forensic scientists, nuclear scientists, radiologists, Biblical scholars, botanists, and historians. Experts have disagreed with each other and challenged each other's theories and tests. Nobody will ever prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Shroud of Turin was the burial cloth of Jesus Christ — but nobody can prove it wasn't either.

Guess you forgot to read this part:

"Plausible as this contention appeared, a most serious historical difficulty had meanwhile been brought to light. Owing mainly to the researches of Canon Ulysse Chevalier a series of documents was discovered which clearly proved that in 1389 the Bishop of Troyes appealed to Clement VII, the Avignon Pope then recognized in France, to put a stop to the scandals connected to the Shroud preserved at Lirey. It was, the Bishop declared, the work of an artist who some years before had confessed to having painted it but it was then being exhibited by the Canons of Lirey in such a way that the populace believed that it was the authentic shroud of Jesus Christ. The pope, without absolutely prohibiting the exhibition of the Shroud, decided after full examination that in the future when it was shown to the people, the priest should declare in a loud voice that it was not the real shroud of Christ, but only a picture made to represent it. The authenticity of the documents connected with this appeal is not disputed. Moreover, the grave suspicion thus thrown upon the relic is immensely strengthened by the fact that no intelligible account, beyond wild conjecture, can be given of the previous history of the Shroud or its coming to Lirey. An animated controversy followed and it must be admitted that though the immense preponderance of opinion among learned Catholics (see the statement by P.M. Baumgarten in the "Historiches Jarbuch", 1903, pp. 319-43) was adverse to the authenticity of the relic, still the violence of many of its assailants prejudiced their own cause. In particular the suggestion made of blundering or bad faith on the part of those who photographed were quite without excuse. From the scientific point of view, however, the difficulty of the "negative" impression on the cloth is not so serious as it seems. This Shroud like the others was probably painted without fraudulent intent to aid the dramatic setting of the Easter sequence:

Die nobis Maria, quid vidisti in via Angelicos testes, sudarium et vestes.

As the word sudarium suggested, it was painted to represent the impression made by the sweat of Christ, i.e. probably in a yellowish tint upon unbrilliant red. This yellow stain would turn brown in the course of centuries, the darkening process being aided by the effects of fire and sun. Thus, the lights of the original picture would become the shadow of Paleotto's reproduction of the images on the shroud is printed in two colours, pale yellow and red. As for the good proportions and æsthetic effect, two things may be noted. First, that it is highly probable that the artist used a model to determine the length and position of the limbs, etc.; the representation no doubt was made exactly life size. Secondly, the impressions are only known to us in photographs so reduced, as compared with the original, that the crudenesses, aided by the softening effects of time, entirely disappear.

Lastly, the difficulty must be noticed that while the witnesses of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries speak of the image as being then so vivid that the blood seemed freshly shed, it is now darkened and hardly recognizable without minute attention. On the supposition that this is an authentic relic dating from the year A.D. 30, why should it have retained its brilliance through countless journeys and changes of climate for fifteen centuries, and then in four centuries more have become almost invisible? On the other hand if it be a fabrication of the fifteenth century this is exactly what we should expect."

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: The Shroud of Turin

Oh, where to start... well the first paragraph seems to be a good place. Let Swordmaker's deconstruction of CSICOP's biased and inaccurate pile of inaccuracies and outright lies begin:

It never fails to amaze me that so many of those who consider themselves "faithful" will cling to shoddy hoaxes or Jesus shaped rust stains on a grain silo to bolster their faith. Manufacturing religious relics was a thriving industry in the middle ages, and every wide spot in the road had pieces of the true cross, bones of assorted saints, and a variety of gruesome souvenirs supposedly of divine origin.

What you say is true... there was a lot of money to made from gullible tourists coming to see "relics" of the saints or Jesus. However, that fact actually lends itself to proving the Shroud is NOT a manufactured relic.

First of all, the "gullible" pilgrims would pay just as much to see a paint daubed sheet as to see the superb artifact or work of art of the Shroud. Why would any exhibitor of phony relics bother to create such a sublime forgery when a painted bedsheet would do? Why create an artwork that runs entirely counter to all artistic media and techniques when a regular painting would do? Why incorporate topographical data in the image when it will only be observable in 1974? Why use the appearance of a negative photographic positive when that could only be seen in 1898? Why do all of this in 1325AD??? Especially when the red-daubed bedsheet would bring in just as much money, if that were your motive.

Now add in the fact that Geoffrey de Charney, owner of the Shroud when it was first exhibited, DID NOT CHARGE ANY MONEY... nor did he accept donations. He funded the church he built to house it entirely from his own funds... and ordered his heirs to do the same at his death.

Geoffrey de Charney is also a person of interest. He was NOT a charlatan or conman. Nore was he just some guy with a stained bed sheet. Geoffrey was a Knight, and not just any knight. He was, in fact, the Standard Bearer for the King of France, charged with never leaving the King's side in battle and carrying his battle flag, an honor bestowed only on the best and most honorable. He was also the author of the French Code of Chivalry which required knights to be honest and truthful which was used to in 1350 as the base rules for Mallory's Le Morte de Artur and the Chivalric code of the Round Table. Geoffrey de Charney was not a person to perpetrate a fraud.

Historically, the Shroud of Turin is one of some forty reputed burial cloths of Jesus, although it is the only one to bear the apparent imprints and bloodstains of a crucified man. Religious critics have long noted that the Turin shroud is incompatible with the bible, which describes multiple burial wrappings, including a separate “napkin” that covered Jesus’ face (John 20:5–7).

This is factually wrong. There are more "shrouds" and many of them DO bear the image... because they are COPIES of the Shroud of Turin. Many of them are actually DOCUMENTED to be "TRUE COPIES" in church records, meaning they have been laid on the Shroud and imbued with its "essence" by transfer.

The "Biblical" argument is also wrong. Just because there may have been more cloths utilized in the burial does not invalidate the Shroud. The Bible tells us that Joseph of Arimathea purchased a fine cloth to use as a shroud. It is illogical to assume this fine cloth, representing many weeks of work, would be torn into strips to wrap the body. Early records show that other binding cloths would have been used to bind the jaws closed (passing under the chin and beard and over the top of the head), tie the wrists to keep the hands in repose, and also to keep the legs together. The "napkin" the Sudarium still exists and has been kept in the Cathedral in Oviedo Spain since the sixth century and has a provenance that goes further back. The wounds and blood stains on the sudarium correspond to the bloodstains and wounds on the Shroud.

The Turin cloth first appeared in north-central France in the mid-fourteenth century. At that time the local bishop uncovered an artist who confessed he had “cunningly painted” the image. Subsequently, in 1389, Pope Clement VII officially declared the shroud to be only a painted “representation.”

The Bishop of Troyes supposedly penned a letter claiming to have "found the artist who cunningly painted" the Shroud. There are several problems with this. First, only a rough draft of the letter has been found at Troyes... the vast records of the Vatican does not have a copy of a received letter claiming this. Secondly, any artist claiming to have "painted" the Shroud did so without any pigment... and had knowledge no one of his period possessed. Thirdly, the Bishop supposedly did his investigation 25-27 years AFTER the Shroud was first enshrined in the chapel in Lirey, and any artist who told the Bishop he was the creator of the Shroud would have been at that time either VERY OLD (life expectancy was 40 years) or been VERY YOUNG when he did it. Both unlikely. Finally, the Bishop also had an ulterior motive. A letter from him which DOES exist in the Vatican archives has him complaining about the loss of pilgrims to his Cathedral to this little church in Lirey... and he wanted it stopped. The Pope told him to SHUT UP... and placed him on a perpetual silence about this subject, never to speak of it again. In fact, in a rebuke to the Bishop of Troyes, the Pope actually wrote a letter PERMITTING the continued exhibition so long as it was touted as a "representation of the Shroud of our Lord." Please note, Contrary to CSICOPs article, the word "painted" was NOT included in that order.

Years later, this finding was conveniently forgotten by the granddaughter of the original owner. She sold it to the House of Savoy, which later became the Italian monarchy. Eventually the cloth was transferred to Turin. In 1983 Italy’s exiled king died, bequeathing the shroud to the Vatican.

The snide commentary of CSICOP to the contrary, Geoffrey's granddaughter only sold the Shroud after the family wealth was depleted by supporting the church at Lirey. The rest of that paragraph is fairly accurate.

The shroud’s modern history has confirmed the assessment of the skeptical bishop and Pope Clement. Forensic tests of the “blood” — which has remained suspiciously bright red — were consistently negative, and in 1980 renowned micro-analyst Walter C. McCrone determined that the image was composed of red ocher and vermilion tempera paint.

Wrong in its entirety. The claim that "tests for blood... were consistently negative" would surprise World renowned BLOOD expert Dr. John Heller and Dr. Richard Adler. Their forensic tests have not only found the bloodstains are blood, they have proven beyond any doubt that they are HUMAN blood of type AB Negative. These tests have been done repeatedly with the same results! This is a lie by CSICOP.

Walter C. McCrone, a visible light microscopist, claims that in his 100-200x magnification of thread of the Shroud he sees vermillion tempera paint, red ocher and iron oxide particles and then announced to the world in a non-peer reviewed press conference the "shroud is a forgery." Strange that other, much more qualified scientists, using much more sophisticated equipment such as ELECTRON microscopes, Pyrolysis and Mass Spectrometers, X-ray photomicrographs, and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance - published in peer reviewed publications - have found NO SUCH PIGMENTS! These same tests have found human blood components and shown that the image on the Shroud is not a painting of any kind. This proves that McCrone and CSICOP are liars on this subject.

incidentally, did you know that McCrone claimed to be a member of STURP (The 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project) when he wasn't? That kind of impeaches him as well.

Finally in 1988 the cloth was radiocarbon dated by three independent labs using accelerator mass spectrometry. The resulting age span of circa 1260–1390 was given added credibility by correct dates obtained from a variety of control swatches, including Cleopatra’s mummy wrapping.

For C14 dating of a 650 year old piece of cloth, the expected degree of confidence would be plus of minus 25 years... yet these results were reported with a degree of confidence of plus or minus 50 years... and even then the range of ages from the four samples taken from ONE clipping from a corner of the Shroud that was known to have been repaired (A violation of protocol that invalidated the results from the time it was taken!) have reported dates of 1260-1390. This statement alone is misleading... because CSICOP would have you believe the tested date reported is halfway between those numbers... which would give us 1325AD - which, strangely enough has a degree of confidence of plus or minus 65 years!. However, each of those dates is the reported age for a specific sample, in fact they are samples that were tested at the SAME LAB. Applying the liberal +/-50 years, the scientists reported then the oldest sample should have been reported as 1260AD +/-50 years and the age for the youngest sample should have been reported as 1390 +/-50 years! Note that these degrees of confidence DO NOT OVERLAP! This means that samples supposedly identical have C14 dates that DO NOT AGREE! This should have raised lots of red flags.

It has now been proven that the sample taken from the Shroud included TWO distinctly different threads of linen. The original thread has a "Z" twist, the other an "S" twist. The thread from the body of the Shroud averages slightly larger than the variant thread found on the corner where the sample was taken. The Variant thread has COTTON and WOOL intermixed in it... a type of Cotton grown only in Europe. The body threads have neither. The retting process of the variant used chemical agents that fluoresce while the rest of the shroud does not.

Enlargements of the photographs of the sample destroyed in the C14 testing shows that these variant threads exist on one side of the sample while threads that match the balance of the Shroud exist on the other side. The boundary between these two types of linen runs diagonally across the sample such that when cut the four test samples had differing ratios of variant to standard threads. These ratios correspond to the varying dates the three C14 labs reported for their samples. Using an assumed ratio of the observed threads types, assuming the variants were added in the 16th century, only a mix with 1st century thread would result in the dates reported by the labs!

These findings are mutually supportive. The tempera paint indicates the image is the work of an artist, which in turn is supported by the bishop’s claim that an artist confessed, as well as by the prior lack of historical record. The radiocarbon date is consistent with the time of the reported artist’s confession. And so on.

These findings are all wrong... and CSICOP has not bothered to add the latest peer reviewed evidence or findings that show them to be wrong. There IS no tempera paint to indicate the image is the work of an artist, so a claim by an artist that "he painted it" has been impeached, and the Bishop was discredited in his own era by his boss, and CSICOP just did not go looking for a prior historical record. Had they done so they would have found a medallion that has the image of the Shroud with a KNOWN provenance dating from the 11th Century, far earlier than even the oldest C14 date! Thus bring the C14 dates even more into question.

And so CSICOPS' house of cards of Shroud 'debunking' has itself been debunked.

http://www.csicop.org/articles/shroud/index2.html

It looks as if this is the only paragraph in the post that is completely true... yes, indeed, that IS the link to where CSICOPS Shroud of Turin webpage is located.

Might I suggest an alternative? Scientific Papers and Articles - at shroud.com where you will find PEER reviewed papers, research done by real scientists and scholars, and a true open mind with both sides presented. Shroud.com is operated by Barrie Schwortz who was the official visible light photographer for STURP and who just happens to be Jewish.

And all those inconvenient facts and that crazy science stuff you ignore are just Satan's way of testing your faith, and I guess the Catholic Church is lying about it being fake, too. Ok, you've convinced me. I think I'll buy that Holy Grail with the matching juice glasses and steak knives from Ernie at St. Alfonzo's Pawn Shop. I'd better stock up on those Darwin pistol targets and delete all my registry files with 666 in them.

Can you get any more insulting, Happydog?

It is I who have presented the facts, not you. I have provided you with a link to the PEER REVIEWED scientific research and you base your opinion on outdated information. I am not ignoring "those inconvenient facts and crazy science stuff", YOU ARE. Many of these scientists who are doing this research are Christian... but many are Jewish and also Agnostic and Atheist. They, as do I, follow the SCIENCE, not some website with an agenda that ignores evidence that does not support its position.

As for your waving the Catholic Encyclopedia. Did you bother to check it relavence to TODAY???? From your link:

Hardly up-tp-date, isn't it? Perhaps there has been a bit more scholarship and scientific research done on the Shroud of Turin in the intervening 92 years??? That article was written by Fr. Herbert Thurston, who was born in 1862. Do you think that he would STILL hold the same position if he had access to MODERN research? The Catholic Church has this to say about Thurston's article in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

In the early part of the 20th century, the Catholic Encyclopedia carried a poorly researched article on the Holy Shroud that was prepared by Rev. Herbert Thurston, SJ. It left the reader with the idea that the Holy Shroud was not authentic. It was Rev. Adam Otterbein, C.SsR. of the Holy Shroud Guild from Esopus, NY, who corrected the facts,and wrote (a new) article to update the Catholic Encyclopedia

However, even THIS entry is dated to 1968, a full ten years before the first scientists got a chance to examine the Shroud at first hand. The facts are quite a bit different from those presented by Thurston's "poorly researched article." It is an improvement, but it, too, is completely outdated.

You cite CISCOP who loves to cite Dr. Walter McCrone (1916-2002) who declared the Shroud "a fraud" based on his finding of NON-EXISTENT PIGMENTS on the Shroud with his microscope. Every other microscopist, both light and electron, have not been able to find what McCrone claimed he found... and in fact found just the opposite. McCrone claimed to be a member of STURP (Shroud of Turin Research Project - 1978) but was NOT. All of his work was done with sticky tapes collected by Swiss Criminalist Max Frei in 1973. McCrone has been documented (again in a peer reviewed paper) as having attempted to prevent others from seeing his samples. His own company has removed EVERY citation to his very public pronouncements on the Shroud from their website. Exactly what or WHO is the "fraud" here?

I can show you scientific papers relating to Radiography and its application to the image on the Shroud, Mass Spectrometry and the chemicals found on the Shroud, Blood serology studies on the blood stains on the Shroud, on the fact that there are no images UNDER the blood meaning that the blood pre-dated the formation of the image... and hundreds of other PEER REVIEWED and PUBLISHED articles by well qualified scientists.

And what do you offer? Articles from 1912, a web site that promote Joe Nickel who wants to sell his book, and a single now discredited scientist. You have slurred the name of a man honored by his King above all other members of his class of peerage in his age... without a single SHRED of evidence. TWICE.

I suggest you read a little of the research before you make such claims.

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