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 Thus, I had access to hundreds of unpublished pages, which include these raw data.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.
Nothing about fraud...
Uh huh. And Mueller never admitted his investigation was a witch hunt either.
p
In that light, I cannot be surprised that the Shroud has been so aggressively attacked by science and sceptics. I suspect it is a 'sign' of the age we live in. I have this nagging feeling that Noah's Ark will be found and will signal the portal to the Great Tribulation... Why? Because the threat of Biblical proof will motivate a great divide between believers and non-believers, motivated of course by the spirit of the age.
I see the same dynamic, sort of an introductory experience in this Shroud controversy. The Shroud is centrally important of course, but nothing in the Bible has such universal recognition as the Great Flood and the story of the chosen survivors. Stories of Ark discoveries were becoming prominent world wide a century and a half ago; suddenly something occurred to completely distract from those discoveries, discoveries made possible by weather and circumstance: Charles Darwin!
By some unnatural magic all interest in the Ark evaporated at that pivotal time. As I say, the modern Shroud controversy may serve as an introduction to the events that will precipitate the entry into the Great Tribulation.
I think the shroud is unique. It seems to confound every theory that we can test. It’s also uniquely ‘loaded’ in terms of its potential influence - which could be a motive for fraud or attempts at suppression in its study.
Well put. There is much emotional religious belief invested in "proving" that it is real (wisely side-stepped by the Church), and a cottage industry of publishing for the hoax believers. My personal belief is that it was made by arcane science which was either forgotten or, as you say, suppressed.
Light-sensitive mediums (coated with some type of silver solution) were known since Roman times, but the image soon faded. The "camera obscura" effect** was known and played with in Medieval times. The "scorching" found on the Shroud reminds me of "invisibly" writing in lemon juice and reading the message by holding the paper/fabric up to heat. Probably something similar was found to fix the image. Combine the two and we have a possible solution to the mystery.
Wish some photography students would either prove or disprove that method. Attempts have been made by TV studios that "proved" it was impossible, but I'd like to see some no-axe-to-grind" outfit try it.
**Years ago, a buddy of mine into photography showed me a beautiful sepia-toned profile of his wife he took with a home-made pinhole camera but with modern chemicals.
Shroud ping!
Never doubted!
Please, you are starting to sound like those Climate Enablers, where ANY question doubting the "truth" is assailed and contradicted by questionable "proofs" of your own, created by people with an agenda who are posing as non-partisan.
Some day, hopefully within my lifetime, there will be a "Well, I'll be!" moment, and the Shroud will be found to be of human, not god-like origin.
As for the Damascus steel mystery, check THIS out.
Perhaps not to the likes of you and me.
Perhaps I would be less inclined to be an agnostic if it were proven real.
I'm inclined to think that proving it a fake, or of just another poor soul crucified by the Romans, would not shake the faith of a true believer. Maybe it would?
You really don’t get it. I am presenting to you the facts gleaned from numerous scientific peer-reviewed articles on research published in real scientific journals, research done by real scientists working within in their fields of expertise, in areas in which they know what they are talking and writing about. These are NOT "questionable proofs" but peer-reviewed, published, checked, and re-checked, reproducible results scientific FACTS.
The partisans are the skeptics who generally are writers and/or some scientists working outside their fields of expertise, such as James (The Amazing) Randi, a failed stage magician, leading Atheist, and President of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), whose degree is in English Literature, and Joe Nickell, CSI’s Chief Research Fellow, is also a failed stage magician with a PhD in English, another Atheist, and claims he has worked professionally as a stage magician, carnival pitchman, private detective, blackjack dealer, riverboat manager, university instructor, author, and paranormal investigator, listing over 1000 personae on his website. He’s finally found something where he can make money long term.
Their most illustrious scientist on their side was the late Walter C. McCrone, a chemical microscopist, another Atheist, who was convinced he could see tempera pigments, egg albumin, and red ocher (in 10% solution — every scientist in the world should scratch their heads on that claim as without the fluid in which it was dissolved, no one can claim to be able to determine the original solution percentage just by looking at the residual particles left behind 700 years after they’d dried as McCrone claimed! McCrone, in various speeches on his findings had variously described he’d identified the actual source of the red ocher as being from differing sources, including in one speech to it have been jewelers’ rouge, which was an impossibility, as that had not been invented until 1818.) on the Shroud with his optical light microscope at a 300X magnification, and declared the Shroud a painting. McCrone declared the blood stains to be painted as well, using Vermilion (Mercury Sulfide and egg albumin) pigment, because "I’m skilled at recognizing it when I sees it." Very scientific, that. No tests, just his eyes.
No other scientists working using the same samples as McCrone found anything resembling pigment, even when they subjected the samples to examination under scanning electron microscopy, x-ray micro-spectroscopy, or Raman spectroscopic examination. No Mercury Sulfide. No Iron Oxide in Image areas. Iron oxide in blood stain areas was biological, bound up in old human hemoglobins and hemoglobin derivatives. McCrone refused to submit his work for publication in any peer-reviewed scientific journal except for his own self-edited journal "The Microscopist," published by McCrone Associates.
Then there’s Steven D. Schafersman, another Atheist, an actual living scientist affiliated with CSI, who holds a PhD in geology. He regularly challenges people who hold double doctorates in biology and medicine, double PhDs in nuclear physics and chemistry, world class status in their fields in pyrology chemistry, well, because he’s a geologist.
The Shroud skepticism is really in his field of expertise. Not. He claims those scientist who are doing testing on the Shroud are blinded by their "Catholic" faith, ignoring the inconvenient fact that three of the double science doctorates he was claiming were blinded by Catholicism were Jews. So too, incidentally, is Barrie Schwartz, an original member of STURP who maintains the Shroud.com web site, the online repository for all scholarly and scientific papers on the Shroud. . . was and is a practicing Jew.
These skeptics are the agenda driven people who are not following the science and prefer to keep citing outdated, un-peer-reviewed claims such as McCrone which have been falsified numerous times over 40 years since he made them.
You will gleefully pounce on any article on this topic that confirms YOUR bias, whether it has any basis in reality, ignoring the actual science involved, so long as the main stream media publishes it.
I know that many sceptics have become believers as well. A quick search found a Mr. Barrie Schwortz, and expert with X-Ray imaging. And it sounds like one of the first to determine the 3-D aspect of the image.
Excerpt:
When it comes to testifying to this meeting point between faith and science, Schwortz is in a unique position: he has never converted to Christianity, but remains a practicing Jew. And this, he says, makes his witness as a scientist all the more credible.
“I think I serve God better this way, in my involvement in the Shroud, by being the last person in the world people would expect to be lecturing on what is, effectively, the ultimate Christian relic.”
“I think God in his infinite wisdom knew better than I did, and he put me there for a reason.”
My note: Schwortz also makes it clear that this is an image of a dead man. Believing it is the image of Jesus must be taken on faith.
ROTFLMAO! Did you check any of those articles? You’re really arguing swords with someone whose handle is Swordmaker? Really?
These articles have the "secret" of Damascus steel being rediscovered at multiple times. Gunsmiths were laughing at these guys. These acedemics didn’t bother going out and talking to a blacksmith, did they? They watched Hollywood movies and heard the myth about the fabulous blades from Damascus. This was when Hollywood was making movies about Sinbad, and post Errol Flynn swashbuckling where they talked about the wonderful Damascus swords. There were also Toledo steel Blades from Spain, also Hollywood hype! The art was never "lost" as its not in cooling the raw ingot or any thing like that; the art is in the folding and forging the steel. And then acid etching the steel afterward to bring out the differing steel and carbon content alloys that were folded together and hammer welded under heat. SHEESH!
I own several knives (including a Damascus Steel pocket knife my dad got in the 1920s) and swords in Damascus steel. . . And some old shotguns with Damascus steel barrels. Nobody lost it.
Damascus Steel sword production was essentially stopped due to economic reasons in the 1820s because modern rolled steel swords were being produced in mass quantities that had superior qualities to the Damascus Steel product.
One dirty secret about the Damascus steel swords is that because the steel mix was not homogenous, they didn’t take and keep an edge long. . , some parts of the edge could be brittle and could be chipped and cracked on fine honed edges when they struck other blades. They were constantly in need of honing, or even re grinding. Newer rolled steel resulted in higher, more consistent quality stronger, sharper weapons that required far less hand labor to produce.
Like today, the only reason then to continue producing Damascus steel products was vanity, the preferred looks of the final product. That’s why only high end shotguns got Damascus barrels, or high end knives get Damascus blades. . . They’re hand made.
You don’t listen do you?
What part of "there are no pigments, no "silver," nor residues of any other light sensitive chemicals on the Shroud found down to the electron microscopic level, nor were any discernible with X-ray micro-spectroscopy or Raman spectroscopy, both tests which were so sensitive they could tell the make of the inert vinyl baggies the samples were placed in,” do you just fail to grasp?
This rises to the point of willful ignorance.
If there is nothing there to hold the image, no chemical to fix, no pigment, no photographic substrate, it was never there to begin with. . . it would have to be there with the fixed image. It would leave a trace It simply IS NOT THERE!
But I do thank Swordmaker for posting for the lurkers.
Light is a very strange ‘thing’.
I’m not sure I buy that the Voynich has been ‘translated’. Even the article you point to doesn’t claim that. And I don’t believe it’s been ‘cracked’; nor that it’s a ‘health guide’ for women.
(Why would the University of Bristol retract or disclaim the original announcement?)
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2019/may/voynich-manuscript.html
A “true believer” doesn’t have their faith built around that cloth (unless you mean they’re a true believer in the cloth... in which case, of course).
The better question is, what happens if *man* “proves” it’s real? False prophets, false idols, like I said at the beginning, and very dangerous for the people in this thread who’ve proven they fall into this category.
Hebrews 11:1 - Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
1 Corinthians 2:5 - That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
John 20:29 - Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
I actually talked to him on the air. He strikes me as a good and decent man, smart too...
Eh? The cakes of raw iron the original Damascus smiths used came from a single mine in India. The unique feature of that source was a high vanadium content.
The techniques that blended layers of steel with different content was never lost, and that plus the etching gave a tough blade with the beautiful esthetic of the Damascene pattern, but the vanadium provided the hardness to keep an edge and the extra toughness to keep the blade from snapping in the stresses of battle.
At least that was my understanding.
You have no idea how much I envy someone capable of feeling faith.
I have long since accepted Pascal’s wager. I attempt to live my life in a manner that is consistent with a man of faith.
I’m often confused with a Christian, and have been since high school.
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.