Posted on 07/21/2019 6:56:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
Important news about the Shroud of Turin, believed by millions to be the authentic burial cloth of Jesus Christ, has been flagrantly under-reported.
Nevertheless, the lack of mainstream media interest does not diminish landmark new research contesting the results of the controversial 1988 radiocarbon test that dated the Shroud between the years 1260 and 1390.
Immediately after those dates were cited three decades ago, and to this day, the Shroud has been tainted, maligned, disparaged and denigrated while wedded to the descriptions “not authentic,” a “forgery” or “medieval hoax.”
Meanwhile, the medieval date range is still continuously questioned and debunked by scientists and experts. The chief complaint is that the three small Shroud test samples were cut from the same outer edge on a piece of the cloth long thought to have been added later in the Middle Ages. This would have been part of a repair or reweave on a corner that had become worn and frayed due to frequent handling when the Shroud was held up for public exhibition. In fact, this theory was proven correct in 2005 by American chemist Raymond N. Rogers.
Thankfully now there is a new chapter in the 1988 dating debate. Raw data and documents from the original test that were “unavailable” (many scientists and researchers would say deliberately “hidden”) were obtained in 2017 by Tristan Casabianca, a French researcher.
In March, after two years of tests and analysis, Casabianca and his team of scientists published their results in the scholarly journal Archaeometry.
This month, in an interview with the French publication L'Homme Nouveau (Google translates into English), Casabianca discusses how he obtained the documents, his team’s methodology, and conclusion. Here is an excerpt:
“In 1989, the results of the shroud dating were published in the prestigious journal Nature: between 1260 and 1390 with 95% certainty. But for thirty years, researchers have asked the laboratories for raw data. These have always refused to provide them. In 2017, I submitted a legal request to the British Museum, which supervised the laboratories. Thus, I had access to hundreds of unpublished pages, which include these raw data. With my team, we conducted their analysis. Our statistical analysis shows that the 1988 carbon 14 dating was unreliable: the tested samples are obviously heterogeneous, [showing many different dates], and there is no guarantee that all these samples, taken from one end of the sheet, are representative of the whole fabric. It is therefore impossible to conclude that the shroud of Turin dates from the Middle Ages.”
Here is why Casabianca’s conclusions are important to someone like me.
Since the 1990s, I have been a proponent of the study of the Shroud of Turin — a 14.5- by-3.5-foot linen cloth, and indeed believe it is the authentic burial Shroud of Jesus Christ.
Meanwhile, the Shroud continues to be the most studied and analyzed artifact in the world, with its numerous unexplained properties continuing to baffle modern science. Chief among the mysteries is what “caused” a linear, front to back, anatomically correct, blood-stained image of a tortured, crucified man — with bodily markings that perfectly align with all the Biblical accounts of Christ’s suffering and death — to appear on the cloth.
The Shroud also possesses photographic-negative properties first discovered in 1898, that on the “positive image” clearly show every gruesome, agonizing, torment endured by the “man.”
Additionally, the Shroud displays three-dimensional “distance information” resembling a topographical map but within the cloth’s two-dimensional image of the man.
Furthermore, the image depth measures only two micro-fibers with no variation (such consistency is a feat impossible with human hands). And more unusual, the image does not penetrate the cloth but sits on top.
I could go into vast detail about many more fascinating facts, but the big takeaway is that the more you learn about the Shroud’s mysteries, the more you believe in its authenticity.
Shroud scientists and other experts who have never accepted the 1290 – 1360 date range are applauding Casabianca as his team who are calling for rigorous new testing to end the absurd notion that the Shroud is a medieval hoax.
Not only did those dates defy logic because of circumstantial evidence such as art, artifacts, and coins that mirror the Shroud face as early as AD 692, but the 1988 tests diminished the conclusions of the equally famous 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project known as STURP. As the first and last comprehensive research project authorized by the Vatican, STURP employed 40 esteemed scientists using 1970s-state-of-the-art equipment and given access to the Shroud for 120 hours. Here is the concluding paragraph from STURP's final October 1981 report:
“Thus, the answer to the question of how the image was produced or what produced the image remains, now, as it has in the past, a mystery. We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man. It is not the product of an artist. The bloodstains are composed of hemoglobin and also give a positive test for serum albumin. The image is an ongoing mystery and until further chemical studies are made, perhaps by this group of scientists, or perhaps by some scientists in the future, the problem remains unsolved.”
Barrie Schwortz, a world-renowned Shroud expert who was a STURP photographer and later founded Shroud.com, the most visited Shroud site, told me what happened in 1988:
“As soon as the dating results were leaked to the press, the world of the Shroud came to a complete and sudden halt. Many researchers took this as the final word and disengaged completely. The years of hard work by the STURP team and the many papers they published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature was immediately disregarded and ultimately, forgotten. These were indeed the bleak years of Shroud research.”
But now the Shroud is experiencing a renaissance.
Besides Casabianca’s breakthrough research, there are two new Shroud museums, a site for Shroud evangelization, a famous collection of Shroud photography now available online, much Shroud activity, and generally a renewed interest in the cloth.
I am proud to be a part of this movement by helping lead a team of Shroud experts to raise the $2.5 million needed to showcase the cloth’s mysteries in a unique exhibition at the popular and prestigious Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
Of course, the Shroud will not be present at the museum because it does not travel. Since 1578, it has been housed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy — except during the Second World War when it was hidden from Hitler — but the Shroud will be there in spirit!
After the funds are raised, our team will assist the museum in producing the world’s most high-tech, creative exhibit, utilizing state-of-the-art display technology. The Shroud’s unexplained properties will be brought to life, leaving visitors spellbound.
Targeted for early January 2021, the exhibition will be open in time for the presidential inauguration at the U.S. Capitol, only three blocks from the museum.
The Museum of the Bible’s planned exhibit is part of a great Shroud awakening. Why do I believe that this is happening? The answer is the same as I have.
Again, hard to tell. This is an example of study of the Shroud of Turin driving studies in other areas of science. The Shroud is the single most studied object in history, and it spins off more questions than are answered as scientists seek answers. That Rh factor question arose because of studies on ancient blood spurred by the ancient blood on the Shroud. Prior to that there really was little interest in finding old blood stains. Now there is.
Here’s an alternative hypothesis other that the hypothesis of dissipating Rh positive proteins over time. Suppose instead that the Rh positive protein comes from a new virus that has only appeared in the last one thousand to two thousand years infecting certain humans who may be genetically vulnerable. After all, not everyone tests Rh positive. Perhaps no one was Rh positive 2000 years ago and it just started becoming present in more and more of that genetically predisposed portion of the population who were more likely to be infected? Which is more likely to be true? I don’t know. How do we falsify either hypothesis?
There are no details about many things in the Bible or the Gospels. The author’s did not give a step-by-step procedural that was used in either putting Him on the cross nor did they give one about how they got Him off the cross. It was a very unusual thing for Pontius Pilate to even allow the corpse to be removed. Crucifixion victims were left up, often for weeks as an object lesson to the populace. As it was it likely took sometime for official permission to be granted. Recall that Mary, Jesus’ mother was there, and those waiting for that permission were likely to cover His head with a modesty cloth to shield her from seeing His dead face. Such a thing was done with normal Jewish deaths. A sweat cloth from one of the men could have been impressed into service and draped over His head. The patterns of stains on the Sudarium of Oviedo suggest that’s exactly what was done. It was kept there during the removal and transportation process.
First position: while on the cross.
Second position: while being carried to the tomb Third position: In the tomb, only more tightly rolled, used as a jaw binding, with the knot at the crown of the head. Worn sort of like a toothache wrapping like this:
Except it would have been under the beard and behind Jesus’ hair, which accounts for the forelocks on the side being pushed so prominently forward.
It’s not even a scorch mark. We actually know what the image is composed of. . . it’s made of a microscopically thin coating, less than a couple of ångstroms thick, far thinner than the walls of a soap bubble, on the linen fibers that came from the retting (washing with soap wart) used in preparing the hanks of threads prior to weaving the cloth. Those linen fibers with bits of image on them are no different from the non-image linen fibers near by which also have the same thin coating, except for one critical difference: the coating surfaces of those image bearing fibers, to distance thinner than the wall of that soap bubble, are apparently aged more than those without an image element in some kind of melanin reaction, the same reaction that causes newsprint to turn yellow-brown as it ages.
As the other non-image fibers get older, they too, will slowly take on the hue of the image surface fibers and the Shroud’s image will slowly fade into obscurity as the background color darkens to match.
This aging of the non-image linen fibers accounts for the reports that the Shroud’s image was easier to see in earlier years. The reason was then the background linen was much whiter and the contrast with the image elements would have made them stand out better. The Shroud’s background linen has undergone 700 more years of exposure to air, pollution, and light. Only recently has it been started to be being stored in an inert atmosphere.
We still have no clue how these fibers were altered in a way that was collimated only vertically in both up and down without any horizontal variation by so much as a degree from the vertical, and linearly proportionate in intensity to the distance of the body the cloth covered, thus creating in two dimensions an accurate three-dimensional terrain map of that body of up to a distance of approximately 13 cm distance from the cloth. No known light phenomenon attenuates so rapidly in such a short distance and radiation attenuates at the cube of the square of the distance in a globular fashion, not linearly, nor collimated. Gaseous emission will diffuse into chaotic clouds and are temperature dependent to either rise or fall, not both simultaneously, and certainly not collimated. Electrical phenomenon may account for it, but generally, electron charge flow finds the easiest path to ground, i.e. the highest point and would ignore the lower lying details. Plasma glow discharge may be the only possibility left except, Da Vinci’s time machine. . . That’s a joke, people. . .
On the TV show about the shroud from a few years ago there was some woman nuclear physicist that is tops in her field. I'm probably not doing her justice, but iirc she likened what happened in the tomb to be a mini big-bang - a “singularity” where gravity was suspended and the normal laws of physics were disrupted. IIRC the image of the back of the person is similar to the front - meaning the cloth was not pressed down upon by the weight of a body. (Assuming the deceased was laid on their back). So the body suspended in air as well as the cloth.
A mini big bang sounds like a creation event to me. And Jesus himself said something like “I create all things new.”
I was a bit disappointed after a sermon our pastor gave once. He said that we will work and learn and eat in heaven. But it will be good and enjoyable.
I was disappointed as I always had said the first thing I was going to ask was how gravity works (in layman's terms) and later - how was the shroud created. But my pastor thinks all the secrets of the universe won't just be realized, but we'll have to learn them. Well - I guess I'll have to do something to fill the time up with.
They’ve been looking for anything that could qualify. Except for some flower and plant imprints left on the pages of old books where they were left to be pressed and dried, with the imprints leaving quasi-negative image’s of the plants and flowers on the paper pages, all they’ve found for their efforts is the sound of crickets in the night.
There are no contemporary efforts by any artists in the period to create a reverse color or reverse contrast image of anything in nature. The concept of reverse light was not even considered. For those who believe the fantasies of Picknett and Price that Leonardo Da Vinci created the Shroud, there is nothing in his copious written notes, even in his encrypted documents, that such a thing ever crossed his mind. . . even when he was working with light and a camera obscura with its inverted images.
Even those artists making copies of the Shroud did not figure on making exact reverse real world correct color images, although our modern impression of the appearance of Jesus was most likely developed over the ages from iconography based on the Shroud in its various disguises throughout history as the Image of Edessa, the Mandylion, or even the Veronica. Much of early church Jesus iconography bears strong points of congruence with the Shroud image, including using the blood stain on the forehead as an errant lock of hair, owlish eyes, forked beard, a U Shape between the eye brows, and even a prominent line across the neck where there is a permanent crease in the Shroud. These icons started appearing in the early 500s, when the Image of Edessa was revealed after being walled up behind the city gates to prevent its destruction by iconoclastic invaders.
You make a lot of claims that I’m willing to accept at face value but you haven’t shown me anything in the Casibianca analysis that leads to a conclusion of fraud.
There are explanations for heterogenous samples that don’t include bad faith on the part of the researchers.
In fact, as far as I know Casabianca doesn’t even say the 1988 analysis was wrong, only that there’s no guarantee of it’s conclusions.
Adams probably thought she wouldn’t get as many clicks if her headline was New Test Concludes 1988 “Medieval Hoax” Dating May Not Be Conclusive” so she fabricates the claim that Casabianca proved fraud.
Deliberately hiding smoking gun evidence for almost three decades that shows they had to have KNOWN their raw data could not pass the basic Chi Squared test for homogeneity, a test which any competent C14 test must demonstrate before the test can be considered valid, a step which these test administrators just “skipped,” and especially after multiple peer-reviewed statistical papers challenges finding the that the four reported averaged ages reported for the sub-samples from the accurate tests done by the three C14 labs had not only failed the Chi Squared test but failed it abysmally—papers to which the C14 test administrators RESPONDED claiming they stood behind the results without explaining the obvious statistical data Chi Squared failure(!). In other words, these administrators, instead of admitting error, doubled down, obfuscating to scientific record by refusing qualified researchers from double checking their work, something that is ALWAYS done in science, and the obvious inference is they had to have known what would be found when they were exposed: fudged data, sloppy work, or at worst deliberately distortion for a political agenda to produce a desired result.
When you add in the deliberate breaking of agreed on protocols, guaranteeing the sample is taken from the worst possible area, one which the entire group of scientists from the 1978 STURP, the only group who had had actual hands on time with the Shroud, and done actual physical, chemical and photographic tests of every area had advised to avoid for any C14 testing because it was physically, chemically, and photographically DIFFERENT than the main body of the Shroud (i.e., they knew that area of the Shroud was NOT representative of the main body of Shroud material BEFORE they even began the C14 tests), then you are talking deliberate sabotage of the entire process.
The sampling protocols were DESIGNED to assure the entire Shroud was tested. . . but someone in charge made every effort to assure the tests were scientifically suspect or invalid. All of that constitutes scientific fraud.
The mysterious composition of Greek Fire comes to mind. Close but no cigar. Damascus steel was another mystery - couldn't be recreated. Then by accident, the researchers found that they had to use impure iron. Same might be with DaVinci's technique proposed by the authors. They posited that creating an image would be a good class project for some photography class.
Mebbe, mebbe not, but I've found that most "mysteries", religious or otherwise, have a facepalm explanation.
Double check that couple of angstroms thick part...that’s on the scale of individual atoms; by definition, since molecules are composed of multiple atoms, molecules are thicker than that.
Can you read? I said the Casabianca analysis didn't even allege, let alone prove fraud which was Adam's claim.
I also said I haven't done the research to know whether your claims of fraud are valid but at least you provide some reasoning so you're way ahead of her.
I've been clear that my issue is with her misrepresentation of Casabianca yet despite many, many words you haven't addressed it.
Quit grasping at straws. People from Oxford know enough to avoid a freshman chemistry lab mistake.
Quit grasping at straws. People from Oxford know enough to avoid a freshman chemistry lab mistake.
Quit grasping at straws. People from Oxford know enough to avoid a freshman chemistry lab mistake.
This has nothing to do with Casabianca proving fraud.
Try to focus.
I included *your* sentence I was responding to.
You’re moving the goalposts, therefore lying through your teeth.
Your assumptions about motives aren’t evidence of fraud.
Except in dishonest click bait articles...
I've never heard of that before. Interesting.
“We still have no clue how these fibers were altered...”
You could have left it there. 21st century and they can’t explain nor recreate the image.
It’s a supernatural exposition that man can not answer.
It’s not an assumption, but a conclusion, based on the actual treatment of the samples.
Posted for the lurkers;it’s obvious you have no intention at honesty or becoming informed at all and are only trying to troll and disrupt the thread.
"Our statistical results do not imply that the medieval hypothesis of the age of the tested sample should be ruled out"
Of course, if you’re gifting for clicks that looks like a smoking gun.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.