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."
The known provenance of the Shroud predates Leonardo by 104 years. It would be a REAL miracle for Da Vinci to have created the Shroud 104 years before his birth!
No, but Rigor Mortis does. However, under enhancement, the thumbs of the man on the Shroud ARE just barely visible and actually are in the natural position that thumbs fall into at rest. Hold your hand out and notice that the thumb is actually about 1-2 inches BELOW the back of the hand. The image on the shroud does not show anything of the body that was more than about 3 centimeters from the cloth... The closer to the cloth, the denser the image, and conversely, the farther away from the cloth the more diffuse the image.
One other item. The body was not washed.
How about THIS one: (English letters rather than Greek) verison of the Koinic Greek:
". . . kai to soudarion, ho ên epi tês kephalês autou, ou meta tôn othoniôn keimenon alla chôris entetuligmenon eis hena topon."
What gave you the idea that dorsal and frontal measurements of human bodies had to be identical? Mapping an actual human body (living) on a matching sized cloth, lying in the position indicated by the image on the Shroud resulted in EXACTLY the same measurements. This has been repeated and published in peer reviewed scientific publications. Ergo, the measurements are consistent with the Shroud images being made at the same time from the same body.
There is no "First Century" proof in the stitching..
I just attended a Shroud symposium where Dr. Alan D. Whanger presented some of the photomicrographs of the stitching in question. The significance of the stitching was the DIFFERENCE between the stitching done on the original shroud material and the stitching done in the 1550s by the Nuns of Poor Claire.
The surprising discovery is that the "side strip" long thought to be a separate piece of linen added centuries after the original weaving of the shroud to "center the image on the cloth" is actually not separate at all!!! In fact, there IS NO SIDE STRIP!!! The "Seam" that was thought to join the "side strip" to the shroud is actually a "PLEAT" with the shroud material folded over itself and then basted down to the shroud. The current theory is that the PLEAT was added in antiquity to strengthen the shroud for hanging for display, and for carrying in parades.
The author of this article is not very versed in the latest Shroud scholarship and has mis-reported the findings.
It is, slightly, distorted. The cloth actually lay much flatter than just draping over the body .... there was also a "hundred weight" of spices and herbs packed around the body, awaiting use in the ritual washing and proper burial that would be done after the Sabat passed.
If it's so easy professor, please, end the suspense and make one already. You say you know what the "right conditions" are, so for heaven's sake replicate it!
Actually, Campion, the scientific evidence proves it is NOT a scorch. The image areas are merely linen that is more oxidized than non-image areas. Scorches will flouresce, and the scorches on the shroud do flouresce; the image does not.
The man is impossibly tall, being 6ft 8in (2.03m).
That is not a fact. The man on the cloth was 5ft 10in tall. The image can be measured to that outlandish 2.03m by measuring from the tip of the extended toe to the top of the head... but if you adjust for the foot extension from rigor mortise, the height is not inexplicable.
Too many expert forensic specialists have examined this image to accept that such a glaring dichotomy would escape them... in fact, it didn't. Several experiments done with living and dead subjects placed in the same pose as the Shroud, resulted in identical image maps.
If so then this report means very little. And then one has to ask how could an editor at a big daily get it so wrong? I mean, the whole point of this report is to tell us about a stitching technique that was only used before 100 AD.
There is a natural space between he bones of the wrist (the metacarpals) called the Space of Destot... it is one of only two spaces where a sizeable nail can be driven through the wrist without breaking a bone. The theory says the nail strikes or severes the median nerve, causing the spasm of the thumb toward the palm.
How many times does it have to be said, RS: THERE ARE NO PIGMENTS ON THE SHROUD! This has been proven by examination down to the electron microscope level.
The only scientist to claim he found pigments was Walter C. McCrone, visible light microscopist who claimed to have found Albumin, Vermillion, and Red Ocher in his microscope slides... something NO OTHER SCIENTIST HAS FOUND. McCrone has been completely discredited.
It is neither.
The closest modern analogue to the Shroud is a radiagraph produced by injecting a subject with a radioactive tracer and counting the decay particles with a multi-million dollar collimated, computerized radiation detector used for heart and brain scans.
However, to duplicate the image on the shroud, the radiation eminating from the body would have to STOP, completely, after the decay particles had travelled only 3-4 centimeters, otherwise the interior details (teeth, bones) that are visible on the shroud would have been completely washed out by an overabundance of particles from deeper in the body. Thus the time frame for the creation of the image is the time it would take alpha rays to travel that distance... about 12-16 picoseconds.
The Russian's theory of "bio-plastic contamination" is not the reason for the failure of the C14 tests... the non-proocol contaminated sample taken from the Shroud was the cause.
Microphotgraphs of the now destroyed (in testing) sample show that there is a diagonal demarcation running lengthwise through the sample which marks an intersection of OLD, original shroud material, with NEW 17th century material that was woven into the shroud to patch the corner using a French Technique called (in English) "invisible reweaving."
Proof of the Re-weaving
The original Shroud threads are spun in a 'Z' twist, consistent throughout the shroud. The added 16th century linen is spun in an "S" twist.
The material on the "patch" side incoorporates both wool and cotton fibers spun into the threads, no wool or cotton are seen in any threads on the "shroud" side. It was considered unkosher to spin or weave linen on a loom that was used with wool... and cotton was not used at all in the Jerusalem area.
The two sides of the sample show that a different "retting" process was used on each... the patch side flouresces, the shroud side does not.
The threads of the patch average smaller than the threads of the Shroud.
All of this is proof that the C14 sample was NOT pristine and not 100% original shroud material.
What can we learn from the flawed Carbon 14 tests?
The C14 tests were actually quite accurate but they tested a mixture of much older linen combined with newer linen. The diagonal division of patch to Shroud provides even more evidence.
The C14 tests were performed on FOUR pieces cut from the single sample, by THREE labs. Each of the labs came up with different creation dates ranging from as old as 1260AD to 1390AD with a degree of confidence of +/-50 years. The results from the four samples were averaged to give a date 1325AD +/-50 years.
Normally, experimental error in C14 tests of something 675 years old would result in a reported degree of confidence of +/-25 years (3.7%)... yet these labs decided to announce their findings with a confidence of +/-50 (7.4%)! Why???
They used +/-50 because their test results varied too greatly!
Notice that the oldest and youngest tested samples varied by 130 years. If you add the degrees of confidence to each sample age, the range of variance is 230 years! This should have raised red flags all over the place.
Note that even at their extreme degrees of confidence, the ages (1390-50=1350 and 1260+50=1310!) of these two pieces cut from the SAME SAMPLE do not OVERLAP! More red flags should have been raised. It was as if two different cloths were being tested. Add that the oldest and youngest dated results came from samples sent to the same lab in Arizona (considered the most accurate of the three labs), the only lab that got TWO samples to test.
On examining the photographs of the sample and the cutting procedure, the chain of evidence reports of exactly which lab got which piece, an explanation for the differing results becomes quite apparent.
Remember that the border between "patch" and "shroud" material ran diagonally lengthwise through the original sample. The cuts that created the smaller samples to be sent to the three labs cut transversally across the original sample AND the border, assuring that each small sample had some varying percentage of "patch" incuded with "shroud" material.
The amount of patch varied from approximately 40% to 60% of the total linen to be tested in each sample. The lab that got TWO samples got theirs from each end of the original piece, one with 40% patch and one with 60% patch while the other two got the other samples, one with about 54% patch and the other with about 48% patch.
The sample that had ~60% patch was the sample that dated at 1390AD +/-50 years and the sample that had ~40% patch was the sample that dated at 1260AD +/-50 years! The other lab's results were also proportional to the percentage of patch in their respective pieces. The variation in reported ages is directly correlated to the percentage of patch material in each sample.
How old does the C14 test actually prove the shroud to be when adjusted for the existance of the "newer" patch material in the observed percentages?
Assuming the patches had been woven into the shroud in 1652 (known as a year when patches were applied to the shroud), how old would the "shroud" material have to be to skew the C14 results from 1652 to 1325 (Avg.) given the estimated percentages of assumed ~350 year old patch material in each piece?
You guessed it... FIRST CENTURY! The degree of confidence is a much larger +/- 150 years because of the imprecise measurements of the percentages of patch.
THIS is the reason the c14 test was and is flawed. This has been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
This man, Dr. D'Mahala, is probably the world's foremost authority on the Shroud of Turin at the moment, so I would be much more likely to believe what he personally said through his own team's research than what some armchair skeptics on FR think.
RE: the Blood tests:
Some excerpts:
John Heller and ALan Adler (hereafter H&A) concluded that it was actual blood material on the basis of physics-based and chemistry based testing, most tests of which will be discussed, specifically the following: detection of higher-than elsewhere levels of iron in ‘blood’ areas via X-ray fluorescence, indicative spectra obtained by microspectrophotometry, generation with chemicals and ultraviolet light of characteristic porphyrin fluorescence, positive tests for hemochromagen using hydrazine, positive tests for cyanmethemoglobin using a neutralized cyanide solution, positive tests for the bile pigment bilirubin, positive tests for protein, and use of proteolytic enzymes on ‘blood’ material, leaving no residues. The tests and data not discussed 3 are the reflection spectra indicative of bilirubin’s32 and blood’s presence,33 chemical detection of the specific protein albumin,34 the presence of serum halos around various ‘blood’ marks when viewed under ultraviolet light,35 the immunological determination that the ‘blood’ is of primate origin,36 and the forensic judgement that the various blood and wound marks appear extremely realistic.37Besides determining that blood was present, H&A also concluded that the 1532 fire burned blood to result in iron oxide residing at the Shroud’s burned-‘blood’ areas. Contrary to McCrone’s allegation that iron oxide cannot under any circumstances arise from hemoglobin, it was discovered in 1747 that burned-blood contains iron oxide.38 H&A also discovered that “retting” (i.e. soaking in water) of the flax plants used in manufacturing the Shroud linen resulted in the uptake of iron, iron that in 1532 was 1) liberated by water splashed on the Shroud to douse the flames and 2) traveled to the watermargin areas, where it became iron oxide.39
More about Heller and Adler:
Suggested Heller, “Let’s check with at least two other top hemoglobin hotshots and see if they are as sure as we are. Pick anyone you want.” Adler’s choice gave the answer of old acid methemoglobin. They then spoke via speakerphone to Bruce Cameron, “whose double -doctorate is dedicated to hemoglobin in all its many forms,” and upon receiving and plotting the numbers, Cameron said, “You both should know what it is. It’s old acid methemoglobin. I don’t know why you wanted to bother me with something you know as well as I do... Hey, wait a minute. Are you two idiots working on the Shroud of Turin?” At this point, Heller and Adler shook hands after smiling at each other.108
It was taken with a heavily-filtered ultraviolet lighting (black light) that did not emit any visible light at all. All of the light you see in the photograph was produced by the fluorescence of chemical compounds on the Shroud. Any variations in color and brightness are a direct result of the chemical composition.
The dark brown region across the bottom of the picture is the mended area. The place from which the carbon 14 samples were cut is in the dark brown area just above the tiny triangular white spot located on the bottom edge. (The tiny white triangle is where a small sample was trimmed from the Shroud in 1973 by Gilbert Raes).
The chemical differences are significant. This table summarizes the differences:
| Chemical Differences | Carbon 14 Sample Area | Main Part of the Shroud of Turin |
| aluminum as hydrated oxide, common in textile dyeing | Significant (10 to 20 times as much as found on main part of Shroud) | Virtually none |
| Madder-root dye (alizarin and purpurin) |
Found | Not found |
| a gum medium (probably Gum Arabic) vehicle for dye and mordant | Found | Not present |
| Lignin at fiber growth nodes | Very little | Significant |
| vanillin in lignin | Found | Not found |
| ultraviolet fluorescence |
significant | less |
| cotton fiber in thread | Found | Not found |
| spliced fibers | Found | Not found |
Quantitative counts of lignin residues show large differences between the carbon 14 sampling areas and the rest of the Shroud. Where there is lignin in the sample area it tests positive for vanillin. Other medieval cloths, where lignin is found, test positive. The main body of the Shroud, with significant lignin at the fiber growth nodes, does not have vanillin. The Shroud's lignin is very old compared with the radiocarbon sampling area.
Vanillin is produced by the thermal decomposition of lignin, a complex polymer constituent of plant material including flax. Found in medieval materials but not in much older cloths, it diminishes and disappears with time. For instance, the wrappings of the Dead Sea scrolls do not test positive for vanillin.
Shroudie
Although interesting, speaking for myself the Turin Shroud matters not in my faith and beliefs concerning Jesus Christ.
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