Posted on 04/13/2004 9:50:22 PM PDT by RaceBannon
New face found on Turin shroud Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 13/04/2004)
The haunting image of a tall, bearded man bearing the marks of crucifixion that adorns the Turin shroud has been called one of the greatest religious hoaxes - one that has intrigued scientists and believers for decades.
Yesterday, the respected Institute of Physics in London renewed speculation about the revered object by announcing that a "ghostly image" had been discovered on the back.
The cloth has been hailed by some as the burial shroud of Christ but, in a milestone study 15 years ago, three teams concluded after carbon dating that it originated from between 1260 and 1390.
It led to the widespread conclusion that the shroud was a pious hoax created for the pilgrimage business.
This is an excerpt to the original article. Click on the link above
(Excerpt) Read more at news.telegraph.co.uk ...
The presence of a face on both sides of the shroud would seem an obvious feature: one idea, put forward by Prof Stephen Mattingly of the University of Texas Health Science Centre in San Antonio is that the image was created by bacteria that caused a stain in the cloth, so presumably it stained both sides to some extent.
But this is not the case for the shroud, said Prof Fanti. "On both sides, the face image is superficial, involving only the outermost linen fibres. There is nothing in the middle. It is extremely difficult to make a fake with this feature."
Difficult, but not impossible.
Nice ex-cathedra pronouncement, Race... now, MAKE ONE! Duplicate the shroud, prove it can be done, "difficultly, but not impossibly."
The image our Lord has chosen is from the shroud. Notice the swelling under the eyes.
Novena in Honor of the Most Holy Face of Jesus
The promises of our Lord Jesus Christ to those devoted to His face.
1. I will grant them contrition so perfect that their very sins shall be changed in My sight into jewels of precious gold.
2. None of these persons shall ever be separated from Me.
3. In offering My Face to My Father, they will appease His anger and they will purchase as with celestial coin, pardon for poor sinners.
4. I will open My mouth to plead with My Father to grant all the petitions that they will present to Me.
5. I will illuminate them with My light, I will consume them with My love and I will render them fruitful of good works.
6. They will, as the pious Veronica, wipe My adorable Face outraged by sin, and I will imprint My divine Features in their souls.
7. At their death, I will renew in them the image of God effaced by sin.
8. By resemblance to My Face, they will shine more than many others in eternal life and the brilliancy of My Face will fill them with joy.
Sorry, Race, once again, you are wrong!
If it's really the shroud of Jesus, it's one more miracle that it's still around, regardless how the image came to be on it.
(Thanks for the ping, Swordmaker---and your remarkable patience with the skeptics around here.)
Why? This is mere assumption on your part.
Once the body was placed on the Shroud that would soon cover the face and the entire body, the only reason the sudarium would have been kept with the burial is that it contained blood that according to Jewish custom and belief had to be buried with the body... but it did not have to be kept on the face because the Shroud would now cover the face.
The Bible describes the post resurection state of that piece of cloth as being rolled up apart from the other grave clothes.
"And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself." John 20:7, The Holy Bible, King James Version
I propose that the "napkin" was used "about (around) the head (face)" as a rolled up bandage-like binding to keep the jaw closed in death, after it was used as a temporary shroud of the face while the body was being taken down off the cross.
People often make quick temporary bandages by taking a rectangular cloth, holding it by opposite corners and flipping the dangling triangles up and over multiple times to make a roll, longer than the cloth would be if rolled horizontally from one side to the other. This could then be placed under the beard and chin, around the head by the ears and the ends tied together in a knot on top of the head.
After the resurrection, still under the Shroud, Jesus works his hands free from the binding strip keeping them folded in front over his groin, pulls the Shroud off his body, sits up, then reaches down and unties the binding cloth strip keeping his legs together. Freed, he stands up, moves a short distance away, reaches up and pulls the jaw binding off his head and drops it, still rolled up, away from the other grave cloths and leaves the tomb.
"One of the relics held by the cathedral in the town of Oviedo, in the north of Spain, is a piece of cloth measuring approximately 84 x 53 cm. There is no image on this cloth. Only stains are visible to the naked eye, although more is visible under the microscope. The remarkable thing about this cloth is that both tradition and scientific studies claim that the cloth was used to cover and clean the face of Jesus after the crucifixion." - The Sudarium of Oviedo: its History and Relationship to the Shroud Of Turin, Mark Guscin, B.A. M.Phil., Copyright 1997.
The Sudarium of Oviedo (pictured above), is a cloth that bears blood stains of the same blood type (AB) as the blood stains on the Shroud of Turin. Computerized comparisons and Polarized Image Overlay studies (A. Whanger, et al) have shown this cloth to have over 120 points of coincidence (matching) with the blood stains on the Shroud.
"Jewish tradition demands that if the face of a dead person was in any way disfigured, it should be covered with a cloth to avoid people seeing this unpleasant sight. This would certainly have been the case with Jesus, whose face was covered in blood from the injuries produced by the crown of thorns and swollen from falling and being struck." ibid, Guscin
A simple calculation tells us the Sudarium of Oviedo, if rolled as I described above, would make a binding bandage 99 cm long. The circumference around the head from under the chin, over the top and back averages approximately 60 cm. If the Sudarium had been rolled in this manner, it would have made a binding strip more than long enough to circle the face in this manner and leave enough extra to make a knot on top of the head, or under the chin.
This fairly broad roll of cloth would be the cause of the hair on the shroud being pushed somewhat foreward of where one would expect gravity to pull it on a supine figure. Forensic tests using such jaw bindings on persons with long hair have found that hair stiffened with dried blood and sweat is pushed forward in just this way, exactly as shown on the Shroud of Turin.
This usage of the Sudarium of Oviedo as one of the bindings necessary for burial, completely logical to the needs of the moment in the tomb, meets the scriptural "napkin, that was about his head" without obscuring the face and hair from the Cause, chemical, physical or metaphysical, that created the image on the shroud. It is economical in that a blood stained cloth that must be kept with the body in burial according to Jewish law, is reused for a burial purpose, instead of using a clean, newly purchased cloth. It explains why the "napkin" or "face cloth", "sweat cloth", "face shroud", Kercheif", or any of the other words various Biblical translations render the Koinic Greek word "soudarion" which is actually a Greek adoption of an old Aramaic word, was found apart from the other cloths.
I see no "(More evidence it is FAKE)" any where in the original title. Therefore it is NOT the original title and does not characterize the thrust of the article. It is an editorial addition to the title of the article. Such editorializing is dishonest in a title...
However, it does seem to require an act of faith to see the face in an image reproduced in the paper by Giulio Fanti, professor of mechanical and thermic measurements at Padua University.
Apparently, the image has to be enhanced and tweaked a lot, in order to be "seen." Hummmm. People have seen other things in the shroud as well, there were claims that one could see a cup, a spear, all sorts of things (except my homepage, which got left off.)
One thing everyone is forgetting is that a contemporary bishop condemned this as a pious forgery. (I've heard the argument that, well, the bishop was jealous -- but, aside from the pure speculation that entails, the bish could have done what thousands of other bishops have done over the centuries and co-opted it for his cathedral. In those days, bishops had real, political, temporal power.) And the Church HAS condemned thousands of fragments of the True Cross, bits of cloth, bones, and other miscellaneous items as frauds.
As a historian rather than a scientist, I trust contemporary evidence a great deal more than speculation and inconclusive tests 800 years after the fact.
"When I saw the pictures, I was caught by the perception of a faint image on the back surface of the shroud. I thought that perhaps there was more that wasn't visible to the naked eye," said Prof Fanti.
"Though the image is very faint, features such as nose, eyes, hair, beard and moustache are visible."
However, the enhancing procedure did not uncover the full body image as it appears on the front side.
If anything, this report only seems to provide more evidence as to the Shroud's authenticity.
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