Posted on 04/05/2004 7:13:37 AM PDT by NYer
IT'S been called the longest-running hoax in history - an 800-year-old religious riddle that's taken in popes, scientists and believers from all faiths.
The Turin Shroud has been either worshipped as divine proof that Christ was resurrected from the grave or dismissed as a fraud created by medieval forgers.
But new evidence suggests the shroud might be genuine after all.
HAUNTING: The face on the shroud
As Mel Gibson's film The Passion Of The Christ rekindles interest in Jesus, stitching on the shroud which could have been created only during the messiah's lifetime has been uncovered.
At the same time, tests from 1988 that dated the shroud to between 1260 and 1390 have been thrown into doubt.
Swedish textiles expert Dr Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, who discovered the seam at the back of the cloth during a restoration project, says: "There have been attempts to date the shroud from looking at the age of the material, but the style of sewing is the biggest clue.
"It belongs firmly to a style seen in the first century AD or before."
Her findings are being hailed as the most significant since 1988, when scientists controversially carbon-dated the 14ft-long cloth to medieval times, more than 1,000 years after Jesus died.
Yet experts now say the team unwittingly used cloth that had been added during a 16th-century restoration and it could have been contaminated from handling.
Mark Guscin, of the British Society for the Turin Shroud, says: "The discovery of the stitching along with doubt about the carbon-dating all add to the mountain of evidence suggesting this was probably the shroud Jesus was buried in.
"Scientists have been happy to dismiss it as a fake, but they have never been able to answer the central question of how the image of that man got on to the cloth."
Barrie Schwortz, who in 1978 took part in the first scientific examination of the shroud, says: "I was a cynic before I saw it, but I am now convinced this is the cloth that wrapped Jesus of Nazareth after he was crucified."
THE history of the cloth - which bears the ghostly image of a bearded man - is steeped in mystery.
The first documented reference was in 1357, when it was displayed in a church in Lirey, France. The cloth astonished Christians as it showed a man wearing a crown of thorns and bearing wounds on his front, back and right-hand side.
He also had a wrist wound, which confused some pilgrims who thought Jesus was nailed to the cross through his hands. Scientists have since discovered the wrists were used as the hands could not support the body's weight.
Before it arrived in France, it is thought the shroud was known as the Edessa burial sheet, given to King Abgar V by one of Jesus's disciples.
For the next 1,200 years it was kept hidden in the Iraqi city, brought out only for religious festivals. In 944 it is thought to have turned up in Constantinople, Turkey, before being stolen by the French knight Geoffrey de Charny during the Fourth Crusades.
It soon became Europe's most-revered religious artefact, although it was scorched in a fire in 1532. In 1578 it was moved to Turin in northern Italy and was frequently paraded through the streets to huge crowds.
Yet while the shroud attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims when it goes on display, it was not photographed until 1898. The photographer, Secondo Pia, was amazed at the incredible depth and detail revealed on the negative.
There were even rumours that the shroud had healing qualities after the British philanthropist Leonard Cheshire took a disabled girl to see it in 1955. After being given permission to touch it, 10-year-old Josephine Woollam made a full recovery.
But it wasn't until 1978 that scientists were allowed to examine the shroud for the first time.
The Shroud of Turin Research Project spent 120 hours examining the cloth in minute detail but was unable to explain how the image had got there. Barrie Schwortz, the project's photographer, says: "We did absolutely every test there was to try to find out how that image had got there.
"We used X-rays, ultra-violet light, spectral imaging and photographed every inch of it in the most minute detail, but we still couldn't come up with any answers.
"We weren't a bunch of amateurs. We had scientists who had worked on the first atomic bomb and the space programme, yet we still couldn't say how the image got there. The only things we could say was what it isn't: that it isn't a photograph and it wasn't a painting.
"It's clear that there has been a direct contact between the shroud and a body, which explains certain features such as the blood, but science just doesn't have an answer of how the image of that body got on to it."
A SECOND study was carried out in 1988, when scientists cut a sliver from the edge of the shroud and subjected it to carbon-dating.
Carbon has a fixed rate of decay, which means that it is possible to accurately measure when the plant materials that formed the basis of the cloth were harvested.
The announcement that the shroud was a fake was made on October 13, 1988, at the British Museum. Scientists compared those who still thought the shroud was authentic to flat-earthers.
It led to the humiliating spectacle of the then Cardinal of Turin, Anastasio Alberto Ballestrero, admitting the garment was a hoax.
The Catholic Church also accepted the scientists' findings - an embarrassing admission given that Pope John Paul II had kissed the shroud eight years earlier.
But experts now say the carbon-dating results are wrong. Ian Wilson, co-author of The Turin Shroud: Unshrouding The Mystery, says they were flawed from the moment the sample was taken.
He says: "What I found quite incredible was that when they had all the scientists there and ready to go, an argument started about where the sample would come from.
"This went on for some considerable time before a very bad decision was made that the cutting would come from a corner that we know was used for holding up the shroud and which would have been more contaminated than anywhere else."
Marc Guscin, author of Burial Cloths Of Christ, believes the most compelling evidence for the shroud's authenticity comes from a small, blood-soaked cloth kept in a cathedral in Oviedo, northern Spain.
The Sudarium is believed to have been used to cover Jesus's head after he died and, unlike the shroud, its history has been traced back to the first century. It contains blood from the rare AB group found on the shroud.
Mark says: "Laboratory tests have shown that these two cloths were used on the same body.
"The fact that the Sudarium has been revered for so long suggests it must have held special significance for people. Everything points towards this cloth being used on the body of Jesus of Nazareth."
Yet despite the latest discoveries, there are still many sceptics.
Professor Stephen Mattingly, from the University of Texas, says the image could have been created by bacteria which flourish on the skin after death. "This is not a miracle," he says. "It's a physical object, so there has to be a scientific explanation. With the right conditions, it could happen to anyone. We could all make our own Turin Shroud."
Another theory, put forward by South African professor Nicholas Allen, is that the image was an early form of photography.
However fierce the controversy, the shroud is still a crowd-puller. When it last went on display in 2000, more than three million people saw it. Many more visitors are expected when it next goes on show in 2025.
Mark believes the argument will rage on. He says: "The debate will go on and on because nobody can prove one way or another if this was the shroud that covered the body of Jesus. There simply isn't a scientific test of 'Christness'.
"But there are lots of pointers to suggest it was."
Or a thirteenth century "performance artist" who let his accomplices paint him up with a blood-like substance to mimic Christ's wounds. There was big money to be made in selling Holy Relics even back then.
The Russian "scientist" who called the 1988 testing flawed just got ruthlessly exposed as a fraud in the latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer.
The blood on the shroud and the head wrapping in Aviedo both are typed AB, not a "blood-like" substance.
Hmmm... Rare blood type. According to my Google results, 4% of the population is AB+, and 1% is AB-. Does anyone know if DNA tests are planned?
Sure, it could be duplicated in theory, but this does not mean that any test could possibly be done to validate it. If you sit a monkey at a typewriter and let him type away from dawn 'til dusk every day, and then check every night to see what he's typed only to find that he hasn't typed the Declaration of Independence, then there are only two conclusions you can reach:
1. He is incapable of typing the Declaration of Independence; or
2. He is capable of typing the Declaration of Independence, but simply hasn't done it yet.
The validity of Point #2 cannot be tested using any scientific means -- i.e., you will never reach a point in time where #2 could be "proven" to be demonstrably false, even if you have ten million monkeys typing simultaneously and none of them ever types the Declaration of Independence. Because it is beyond any kind of scrutiny, this theory cannot be considered "scientific" in any way and therefore must be relegated to the annals of "unfounded speculation."
I'm not disagreeing with you at all. It would throw the whole celebacy thing out the window and cause too many to question the Catholic Church and it's teachings. Not that I think it should be such an earth shattering revelation as it would bring Him more in line with family and the every day man, but many would would totally freak. The Bible had many more books before Constantine got his panties in a wad so who knows what information has been locked away or lost forever. Of course the NT was written from a man's view and even more so from men with ideas and traditions that excluded women. The story is that Mary and Mary M. fled so it would be plausible that to keep any supposed decendants safe that the writings would not mention it. I dunno, I wasn't there, but that story has been around as long as the Shroud and I suspect no one really wants to prove or potentially disprove either.
Obviously not proven, or there would no longer be any questions raised about it's authenticity.
I had heard right after the Carbon 14 testing that there were problems with the sample taken. There were folks on that study commission on both sides of the fence; some wanted to prove it was the burial cloth of Jesus, some wanted to prove it was a fake. The ones leaning to the fake side got their 'results' from the Carbon 14 testing, and don't want to possibly be proven wrong, but science CAN answer some of the questions remaining. Maybe further testing can't prove that the Shroud wrapped Jesus, but might prove that it COULD have.
No it wouldn't. We all have the free will to choose to believe in any or no religion at all and proving the Shroud was of Jesus or not will not change that.
Brief series of events and question:
Mark 15
46 And he bought fine linen, and took him down, and wrapped him in the linen, and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulchre.Mark 16:1
And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.John 19
39 And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.
40 Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.
I was wondering. Would they use the same dirty cloth that he was originally wrapped in after preparing the body? It looks like Nicodemus does his thing that evening, but that the women do theirs after the sabbath. Wouldn't a clean cloth have been used after the body had been prepared?
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