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."
It is correct that the Bible emphasizes lineage through the father not the mother, a simple reading of Genesis clears this up. Somehow this was later changed because, and I'm guessing at this point, the best way to determine lineage was through the mother since that was a given.
In any case the point that Jesus' lineage though Mary can be ignored is not a good one, it is through Mary that Jesus had the Levitical priest line, while Joseph was the Kingship line.
Matthew 26
12 For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial.
Mark 14
8 She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.
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.
Was this an anointing or was it something else?
250 aloe {al-o-ay'}
1) aloe, aloes
++++ The name of an aromatic tree which grows in eastern India and Cochin China, and whose soft and bitter wood the Orientals used in fumigation and in embalming the dead. The tree grows to a height of 120 feet (40 m) and a girth of 12 feet (4 m).
This is interesting because embalming is not a Jewish custom. Embalming is an Egyptian custom.
Embalming was never practised in Israel: the two examples known, those of Jacob and Joseph, are explicitly ascribed to Egyptian custom ( Gn 50: 2-3).[source:
ANCIENT ISRAEL Its Life and Institutions
by ROLAND de VAUX, O.P.
Translated by JOHN MCHUGH
MCGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK TORONTO LONDON - 1961)
page 56
Genesis 50
2 And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel.
3 And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days.
Interesting point. But I imagine it another way.
If it were "proven" it would then become an "event of physics" not a "miracle" at all you see.
And government grants would be let to try to develop the "resurrection treatment" as a medical tool.
If you're a true Freeper, you'll keep an open mind.
As a scientist, these are the following reasons to be compelled and excited by the Shroud of Turin:
I dare you to contemplate them with an open mind.
A forger would have a nearly impossible task!
1. The Shroud is a photographic NEGATIVE image.
A millennium or two before photography was invented, this image lay in wait for mankind to discover. Secondo Pio, commissioned to photograph the Shroud, fell on his knees in the darkroom when he looked at a detailed face of a man for the first time in history around 1900.
2. The image has 3D qualities.
That's right, it's a 3D image, a millennium before such a concept was understood let alone reproducible.
Our forger is becoming quite the unique fellow!
3. The Shroud has an image that appears as partly a projection, and partly a contact transfer.
Strange indeed. It has orthogonal image qualities as if an image were projecting perpindicular through the cloth, but with an intensity proportional to the distance from the cloth of the hypothetical body. That is, the image is stronger where a body would have been closer, and faded where it would have been further away. Also, there are direct transfer elements where a body may have made contact including human blood.
4. No one to this day can explain what scientific phenomenon could make such an image on cloth.
Our forger is becoming more and more unique.
5. The image contains anatomical elements of the crucifixion process only recently discovered, and that were completely unknown at the time of its discovery and emergence in modern history.
The forger would require knowledge of crucifixion unknown in his era.
6. Iconographic evidence indicates other images of Christ centuries earlier than the forgery date have elements derived from the Shroud.
This one is quite intriguing. One example is a square on the forehead that appears in other representations of Christ centuries earlier. You see, the Shroud has an element in the cloth structure that looks like a square. This was not consciously forged, it is exists in the Shroud because it is a defect in the cloth itself. Other representations of Christ with a square on the forehead are more likely imitative of the original Shroud than the other way around.
7. The state of the art of drawing and painting at the time of its purported forgery was far inferior than the quality of the image on the Shroud.
Our forger is having quite a time of it, isn't he?
If you as a scientist believe it is a forgery, congratulations!
You must therefore conclude that your forger created an image by a process which to-date is unknown, as a photographic negative image so that it would be unappreciated by his peers, in a drawing style and quality that was centuries more advanced than his best contemporaries, with anatomical knowledge of crucifixion unknown in his era, with unprecedented access to worldwide representations of Christ so that he would embed defects and other qualities in the materials and image.
I present to you an alternative answer.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, The Lord Jesus Christ.
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