Posted on 04/10/2004 11:12:26 AM PDT by RaceBannon
Jesus' Shroud? Recent Findings Renew Authenticity Debate
Bijal P. Trivedi National Geographic Channel April 9, 2004
The Shroud of Turinbelieved by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus and one of the most venerated relics of the Christian churchwas declared a fake in 1988 by three independent scientific institutions. Yet interest in the cloth has remained intense, and new science suggests the shroud deserves another look.
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The Shroud of Turin, an approximately 14 by 3 foot cloth, is bloodstained and imprinted with a faint image of a tortured man's face, hands, and body. Many Christians believe the shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus.
Photograph copyright Barrie M. Schwortz
Raymond Rogers is a retired physical chemist and former leader of the explosives research and development group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He proposes that the samples used to date the shroud in 1988 were flawed and the experiment should be repeated. His conclusion is based on a recent chemical analysis of the shroud and previous observations made during a 1978 examination.
Rogers was one of two dozen American scientists who participated in the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP)an intense five-day scientific investigation of the shroud in Turin, Italy.
In 1988 the Vatican allowed postage stamp-size pieces to be snipped from one corner of the shroud and distributed to three laboratoriesat the University of Arizona in Tucson, Oxford University in England, and the Swiss Federal Institute in Zurichfor a sensitive form of carbon dating. The results, published in 1989 in the journal Nature, revealed that the fabric was produced between 1260 and 1390.
Dyed and Repaired
In December 2003 Rogers received a sample of the shroud from a physicist colleague who had collaborated on STURP. The sample was taken from the same strip of cloth distributed for carbon dating in 1988.
Using chemical and microscopic analysis, Rogers revealed that a madder dye and mordant and gum mixture had been wiped onto yarn used on that particular corner of the shroudindicating that the cloth had been repaired. (The mordant gum would have been used to bind the dye to the fibers. Madder dye is derived from the root of the madder plant.)
What's more, these ruby colored madder dye-mordant mixtures did not reach France or England until the 16th century.
"The cotton fibers look like they have been wiped with fuzzy cherry Jell-O, and the linen fibers a little less so," Rogers said. "The area is certainly dyed to match the sepia color of the old [original] cloth. There is ample chemical and microscopic proof of that."
Rogers also found evidence of a "splice site," suggesting that this patch of the cloth had not only been dyed but also repaired and rewoven. He suspects that the dye and repair job was probably done in the Near East during the Middle Ages, coinciding with the carbon dating results.
"The 1988 date was undoubtedly accurate for the sample supplied. However, there is no question that the radiocarbon sampling area has a completely different chemical composition than the main part of the shroud," Rogers said. "The published date for the sample was not the time at which the cloth was produced."
This reinforces the earlier finding of STURP scientists who, using ultraviolet fluorescence, also revealed that the sampled corner was unlike any other region of the shroud and had been excessively handled over the years.
Rogers's analysis of the 2003 sample has been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication.
Forging Religious Artifacts
Douglas Donahue, a retired physicist from the University of Arizona, traveled to Turin in 1988 to collect the shroud samples for testing. He was co-director of the National Science Foundation-University of Arizona Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratoryone of the three labs chosen to date the shroud.
"I'm satisfied with the way it was sampled. We had several textile experts present from a number of countries, and all unanimously agreed that the sample we received was representative of the whole cloth," Donahue said. "It wouldn't be unreasonable to sample other spots of the cloth, though you can understand that they wanted to preserve it and didn't want holes cut all over the place."
Even if carbon dating links the shroud to the first century, proving it belonged to Jesus will still be near impossiblethe closest scientists are likely to get is validating the time and place where the cloth and its haunting image were made. The shroud, an approximately 14-foot-by-3-foot (4-meter-by-1-meter) cloth, is bloodstained and imprinted with a faint image of a tortured man's face, hands, and body.
According to the Gospels, Jesus was removed from the cross and placed in a tomb, where he was wrapped in cloth in accordance with Jewish custom. But few, if any, records exist from that time to detail that shroud's whereabouts.
The Shroud of Turin entered public awareness in 1349, when a French knight named Geoffrey de Charny is said to have acquired it in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and brought it to the attention of Pope Clement VI. The shroud was held in a church in Lirey, France, and was first shown publicly in 1355.
More Evidence Contradicts Carbon Dating
Since that first exhibition many have questioned the shroud's authenticity, since forging religious artifacts was big business during medieval times.
The 1988 carbon dating results satisfied many skeptics that the Shroud of Turin was a clever hoax, and the findings stymied further research.
But some scientists have persisted. In 1999 Avinoam Danin, a botanist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, stated at the 16th International Botanical Congress that he found pollen grains on the shroud from plants that could only be found in and around Jerusalem, placing its origins in the Middle East.
Further comparison of the shroud with another ancient cloth, the Sudarium of Oviedo (thought to be the burial face cloth of Jesus), revealed it was embedded with pollen grains from the same species of plant as found on the Shroud of Turin.
The Sudarium even carries the same AB blood type, with bloodstains in a similar pattern. Since the Sudarium has been stored in a cathedral in Spain since the eighth century, the evidence suggests that the Shroud of Turin is at least as old.
Regardless of whether the shroud belonged to Jesus Christ, it lures millions of visitors at each public display.
"Its allure is both scientific and spiritual," said Phillip Wiebe, a professor and chair of philosophy at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia. "It's a very mysterious object. How was the image formed and who was on it?"
Wiebe is presenting a lecture, "The Shroud of Turin: Authenticity and Significance for Theology," at the "Man of the Shroud Exhibit" this week at the Good Shepherd Church in Surrey, British Columbia.
Archaeological Triumph
If the image on the Shroud of Turin is a fake, then much mystery remains about how it was created. Some suggest it was painted. But STURP, using methods standard for art analysis, found no evidence of paints or pigments.
"This may well be an artifact of Jesus," said Barrie Schwortz, a photographic, video, and imaging specialist based in Los Angeles, California. Schwortz served as the official documenting photographer for STURP.
When Schwortz embarked on the study, he said, he was highly skeptical. "I fully expected to see brush strokesessentially a manufactured relicand walk out," Schwortz said. "But I've followed the science over 30 years. And when you have eliminated other possibilities, the one remainingno matter how unlikelymust be the truth."
What will carbon dating another sample prove?
"This artifact is very important. It deserves at least as much respect as Ghengis Khan's sword, the Gutenberg Bible, or something like the Rosetta stone," Rogers said. "For me, it is not going to prove the Resurrection or any theological point. But it might bring us a little closer to the truth. And determining the actual date will be a real archaeological triumph."
Well, it certainly was, and for the reasons I said:
(2 Ki 18:3 KJV) And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that David his father did.
(2 Ki 18:4 KJV) He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.
Once again, you erred because you dont know your Bible.
Note, you said God would have destroyed it before it became an idol. Then, by the same principle, God would have destroyed the serpent before anyone thought of worshiping it. Instead, it was destroyed by Hezekiah afterward.
I was hoping you'd be smart enough to realize the distinction yourself.
And you accuse me of not knowing Scripture. Hezekiah destroyed it. I don't who you say destroyed it, the Bible says Hezekiah did.
That is one reason the Shroud is not Genuine, it still exists, therefore, it is not genuine, God would have destroyed it.
I don't know if the SoT is genuine or not. (Although I would suggest that someone so eager to prove it isn't ought to try replicating it using only medieval technology.) My dog in this fight is that your argument against it is embarrassingly lame. I don't want people thinking that's the best we evangelicals can do, intellecually. I mean, seriously. Ever heard of Sola Scriptura? Did you get this idea of God destroying genuine relics that might become idols from the Bible? No; you pulled it out of an orifice.
No, it was not an idol. The answer is right there in the Gospel:
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
[John iii:13-14]
The serpent with its healing power was a prefiguration of Christ, through whom came the healing of all mankind.
Who cares? I've read it numerous times over the course of my personal reading, and you evidently haven't read it once, even as you posted it.
People were already worshiping it by the time it was destroyed.
If you don't see how that contradicts the bull of Pope RaceBannon, you're a chucklehead.
Saying that God destroyed it, and citing Scripture of a man who honored God by destroying it, are not contradictory statements.
If, say, Joshua, or Samuel, or David, had destroyed it after being told prophetically it would become an idol if not destroyed, your position would be defensible. That's not what happened, and your position isn't defensible. Good grief, be honest with yourself.
Instead of coming up with more lame arguments about how the Brazen Serpent proves your point even though it wasn't destroyed before people made an idol of it, why not come up with some Biblical justification for your statement? Or are you the idol?
All you are proving is that it is not a "contact print". The researchers of the Shroud have known that for almost a century.
There is no way for you to make this statement authoritavely unless God revealed this specifically to you. Even the scientists are claiming an honest agnosticism.
As for it being an idol, you would probably have a problem with the woman who was healed by touching the tassle on Jesus' cloak or the men who were hoping to be healed by the shadows of the apostles as they passed by them.
He knew everything and considered himself an authority.. heck I think he felt that he and his handful of privileged people were the equivalent of John the Baptist. LOL...Prophets
We who worship the Living God and have total devotion the the Lord Jesus... have every right to believe the shroud is a remnant of the greatest miracle of God in human history.
You can illustrate your Old Testament points all you want...you can even base your Christian Faith on the Mosaic Law if you choose... But I and many others accept the words of Jesus who came to bring us a NEWcovenant.
I intend to believe as a little Child..as Jesus said.
You, and "experts" like you haven't capacity to understand the mind of God... God bless you for your faith but your contentious attitude toward the pilgrim beliefs of other deeply faith filled Christians, because you feel your "scholarly" Biblical interpretations are absolute... seems quite judgemental.
I, and I suspect others that believe the shroud is genuine, have not been ignored by the Holy Spirit... When we read the Bible with a faithful heart are not going to be outsmarted by anything evil... so believe as you do, the Holy Spirit is within you as well, but my suggestion is...do not let the pride of your "special prophetic" annointing" become YOUR god.
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