Posted on 04/05/2004 7:13:37 AM PDT by NYer
He says absolute truth...all you must do is convert your dead body to pure energy in instant and thus resurrect self...nothing to it.
Joe Nickell: Well, its name is the Shroud of Turin; but, of course it's not a shroud (it's never held a body).
Let's see, On Joe's side we have Joe Nickell, BA Degrees in Art and English, who states ex cathedra that it never held a body.
On the other we have several dozen PhDs in various scientific specialties including medical doctors and at least a dozen Forensic Pathologists who state that the Shroud did indeed once contain a human corpse.
In this contest, Joe loses... big time!
Joe Nickell: Needless to say, I suppose, the Jews did not bury their dead in that manner . . . the Shroud of Turin is not compatible with the description that John's gospel gives. . . .
Sorry, Joe, wrong again. Joe assumes it is "needless to say" because he buys into the wrong notion that Hebrews adopted Egyptian burial practices and swaddled their dead like mummies. Archaeology and Jewish written tradition tell us this is not true. I suggest you and Joe read Shroudie's excellent reply on the subject for a good overview of First Century Jewish burial practices. As for whether the Shroud is "compatible" with the Gospels, the problems arise from misinterpretations of Aramaic words into Koinic Greek and Koinic Greek into Latin or English. Once you find the correct translations, the problems go away.
Joe Nickell: . . . until the middle of the 14th century, at which time it shows up in a chapel in Lirey, France in the possession of a soldier of fortune who cannot or will not say how he acquired the most holy relic in all of Christendom.
My, my, my, how Joe LIES and slurs the excellent reputation of Geoffrey de Charny. Note the snide implication that Geoffrey has something to hide... when, in fact, HE WAS NEVER ASKED WHERE THE SHROUD CAME FROM. Little Joey Nickell calls Geoffrey a "soldier of fortune" when he is about as far from a mercenary as General George Patton was. Geoffrey de Charny, a Knight is service and Fealty to the King of France, was no "soldier of fortune." Geoffrey was not only a knight, he was the STANDARD BEARER for the King. This meant that he carried the King's banner in battle and was entrusted to never leave the King's side. He was, Joe, THE most trusted knight in France!
Geoffrey de Charny is also an author. It is HE who established the Code of Chivalry for Knights... you know, Joe, the one that was adopted by Sir Thomas Mallory in his Le Morte de Arthur that recounted the tale of King Arthur, Excalibur, the Round Table, Lancelot and Guinevere... and the Code of Chivalry!
Now we can add SLANDER and LIBEL to Joe Nickell's resume.
Incidentally, Nickell shows his ignorance of history by implying that Geoffrey de Charny had taken part in the Crusades. The fourth and last Crusade that resulted in the sacking of Constantinople, was in 1204... but Geoffrey de Charny first displayed the Shroud in 1355... 151 years later! Could Joe be a little deficient in his history?
Joe Nickell: Eventually, the granddaughter of Geoffrey de Charny makes off with the Shroud during a religious war on the pretext of safekeeping, then later refuses to give it back - she's excommunicated for this.
Joe now extends his calumny to de Charny's granddaughter, Margaret. How can you "make off" with something that belongs to you? Who is she supposed to "give it back to?" The story is a little convoluted here. Geoffrey built a wooden chapel on his property to hold the Shroud, funded it from his family coffers, and retained ownership. Catholic priests were allowed to operate the chapel and they assumed a degree of "ownership" in their own minds. When Geoffrey's granddaughter removed HER property, the head priest demanded its return, excommunicated her (later rescinded by the Pope), and generally made an ass of himself. Joe then implies it was somehow unethical for her to sell her possession to the House of Savoy. It wasn't.
Joe Nickell: The Bishop tried to put an end to it; people wouldn't listen to him. He appeals to Pope Clement; Pope Clement hears the matter and adjudicates it; he determines the Shroud is just a representation and not the True Shroud. The fact of the matter is that the Bishop's predecessor had actually found the artist and he had confessed.
Nickell does not tell the WHOLE story. First of all, the letter cannot be found in the files of the Vatican... which is notorious for the completeness of its files. The extant letters in France are "Rough drafts" and no final letter has ever been found. The Pope did intervene in the rivalry between the Bishop of Troyes and the de Charnys giving the de Charnys Papal permission to exhibit a "representation of the Shroud of our Lord" AND punishing the Bishop, placing him under a command of eternal silence on the subject! In other words, the Pope told the Bishop to "Shut up!" The De Charnys won... and Joe Nickell loses another round.
Joe Nickell: It was not really a commission; it was not sanctioned or organized by the Turin people.
This is pure GARBAGE. If it wasn't "sanctioned" how did the scientists in STURP get their hands on the Shroud for an unprecedented 5 days? Nickell lies to decrease the validity of the scientists examining the Shroud.
Joe Nickell: And we've heard much about how they were made up of scientists, but the truth is that most of them had no background in testing the questions of the Shroud. Many of them were outside their particular areas of scientific expertise, or lacked the specific expertise that they really needed.
Exaclty what "background" does one need in "testing the questions of the Shroud?" Apparently, Nickell believes that only those who are seeking to learn how it was faked need apply. But even there, he is wrong. Many of the scientists who came, thought they would look at the Shroud, find clear evidence of paint and artifice, make a report and go home. Nickell fails to understand that these scientists came to APPLY their specific fields of expertise to the Shroud to see what information that expertise could provide.
Some of those tests are listed below:
October 8, 1978: At around 10:45 p.m., and slightly ahead of schedule, the Shroud is removed from public display and taken through the Guarini Chapel into the Hall of Visiting Princes within Turin's Royal Palace. Thus begins a five-day period of examination, photography and sample taking by STURP, John Jackson's group of scientists from the U.S.A. Dr. Max Frei, Giovanni Riggi, Professor Pierluigi Baima-Bollone and others carry out independent research programs alongside. During this time the Shroud is lengthily submitted to photographic floodlighting, to low-power X-rays and to narrow band ultraviolet light. Dozens of pieces of sticky tape are pressed onto its surface and removed. A side edge is unstitched and an apparatus inserted between the Shroud and its backing cloth to examine the underside, which has not been seen in over 400 years. The bottom edge (at the foot of the frontal image) is also unstitched and examined. On the night of 9 October Baima Bollone obtains sample of Shroud bloodstain by mechanically disentangling warp and weft threads in the area of the 'small of the back' bloodstain on the Shroud's dorsal image. STURP continues its around-the-clock examination of the Shroud, performing dozens of tests, taking thousands of photographs, photomicrographs, x-rays and spectra. A total of 120 continuous hours of testing is done, with team members working on different parts of the Shroud simultaneously. This is the most in-depth series of tests ever performed on the Shroud of Turin.
Joe Nickell does not suggest any tests that the STURP members failed to do, he just throws baseless allegations at them.
Joe Nickell: Dr. McCrone. And he divided them into groups which either showed no appreciable contamination or, in fact, a pigment called red ochre (which he identified). He also found the pigment vermilion. These are pigments which were common in the Middle Ages. And he found that the blood stains were, in fact, tempera paint, and he first thought that the entire body image was probably just a pigment powder rubbed on, but he later concluded that that also was a very, very dilute tempera paint.
McCrone has been totally discredited. The chemistry of the image is well understood... and it does NOT include in Tempera Paint, Red Ocher, or Vermilion. The Blood is NOT red Tempera Paint as claimed by McCrone. By using a discredited source, Joe Nickell discredits himself. McCrone shows his pettyness in his attempts to derail other researchers investigations:
"Despite Rogers’s directive that Heller be sent slides with material that might be blood, McCrone’s Blood slide (that was sent by McCrone to Heller - Swordmaker) was no such slide; to reiterate from above, the circled ‘blood’ speck was so small that by its appearance under a light microscope, “it could have been blood, dirt, a fragment of a linen fiber--anything.” I infer that McCrone attempted to see to it that Heller could not do any testing for blood. McCrone’s attempt is hardly surprising considering that he long delayed sending Shroud slides for electron microscope examination to people in his own company: writes McCrone,By January 1980 [i.e., by about 1 year after receiving Shroud slides], I had prepared two technical papers for publication.... Only then, did I allow the electron optics group at McCrone Associates to examine the “Shroud” fibers and tapes. I prevented them from doing this earlier because I (selfishly) wished to see polarized light microscopy solve the “Shroud” problem without assistance.70His explanation of this self-described selfishness toward his own coworkers is that he “was hurt by” the fact that “an instrument I still found very useful... became the dinosaur of the research and development world,” and thus, “wanted to show ‘them’ [i.e., the world at large] the light microscope is still important.”71
Why don't you read the history of this research your self in Floristic Indicators for the Origin of the Shroud of Turin,
Joe Nickell: And clearly the situation now is, in my opinion, that science won the battle and science proved the truth. Science didn't want to prove that the Shroud was not real; science just wanted to prove the truth. It seems to me that, the pro-Shroud people, having lost the scientific battle, are nevertheless inclined to win the propaganda battle.
And who is it that we see IGNORING the science? Non-scientist Joe Nickell... and he is dancing and jiving as fast as he can.
The making of linen cloth involves a staggering amount of labor. Growing the flax, pulling it up by hand (makes for longer and more valuable fiber), soaking off the outer useless fibers ("retting"), pounding the fiber, combing the fibers fine and ready to spin ("scutching"), then finally spinning the longest fibers (as long as ten inches) into a thread, then weaving the thread into cloth...fine flax makes fine cloth, the coarser tow (where we get "tow-haired") makes for coarse cloth. It would not surprise me that a good piece of linen, of Bible age, could last this long. Of course, that doesn't mean it's authentic--only that it is quite possible. Linen is a stronger fiber than all the others.
If it could be authentic, it could be the outer shroud, not directly touching the body. Blood would still bleed through many layers. Was Jesus' body anointed by the women before this first burial--it is also written that they came to anoint the body, only to find it gone. Would we find precious balms on a shroud, or not?
I am inclined to believe that God does not allow us relics, period, because they interfere with worship by becoming objects of worship themselves. So I don't believe it is authentic.
But the Shroud is interesting.
I agree with you.
Around Leonardo's time,
some alchemists knew
of light sensitive
chemicals. (For sure around
1720.)
Image making with
lenses and mirrors also
seems to have gone on.
I believe some skilled
alchemist stumbled upon
a fixing method
and just as artists
used canvas, he used a cloth
to make his image.
This is just my guess.
But it's kind of romantic,
thinking of some guy
(or gal!) alchemist
making such a piece of art
that still grabs our eyes...
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