Shroud of Turin — Local scientist says the cloth covered Christ

Deseret Morning News ^ | November 5, 2005 | Carrie Moore

[NYer]

While periodic claims continue to surface purporting to debunk the Shroud of Turin as a hoax — including one made earlier this year by an Idaho academic — one local scientist has no doubt that the cloth covered the crucified Christ and has survived intact for nearly two millennia.

Deseret Morning News graphic

DNA testing of blood found on the fibers of the Shroud of Turin has been inconclusive.

      Eugenia Nitowski, an archaeologist and former nun, bases her conclusion as much on science as on faith: The shroud's existence has forced science to seriously debate the Resurrection of Jesus.
      In 1986, Nitowski conducted one of many experiments now referenced by shroud scholars in trying to determine whether the cloth — a linen containing the image of a man who had been brutally scourged, crowned with thorns, crucified with spikes through his wrists and feet, and speared in the side before death — was Christ's burial shroud. (See story below.)
      The fine-twined linen Shroud of Turin, approximately 14 feet, 3 inches long by 3 feet, 7 inches wide, has been one of the most closely scrutinized religious icons in history. Owned and conserved by the Roman Catholic Church, it is housed in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud inside the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Torino (or Turin), Italy — in the news most recently as the next host of the 2006 Winter Olympic Games.
      Just as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints became a focal point of news media coverage during the Winter Games here three years ago, the Catholic faith and Turino's famous artifact will no doubt be part of the story during the 2006 Games.
      Though a couple of strokes and failing eyesight have left her unable to actively research with the so-called "shroud crowd," Nitowski will likely be among Utahns watching from afar, curious about any new discussion of the cloth she believes covered Jesus Christ.
      Nitowski's efforts to re-create the conditions that would have existed inside an excavated Middle Eastern stone burial chamber have since been cited as another piece of evidence that places the shroud in first-century Jerusalem.
      "We rented a tomb there for two weeks," on the grounds of the French School of Architecture in Jerusalem, said Nitowski, who has a bachelor's degree in biblical languages and history, master's degrees in biblical archaeology and medieval history and a doctorate from Notre Dame in medieval history.
      As a Middle Eastern archaeologist, Nitowski told the Deseret Morning News, she had previously excavated 17 tombs and knew "pretty well what the environment was like," including the first one she'd ever worked on — a "rolling stone tomb dated to the time of Christ."
      While she was working inside, a fellow worker rolled the stone closed, encasing her in stony darkness and silence, she said. She found a bench that lined the walls of the tomb's central chamber and lay down on it, enjoying the cool stone wall's feel against her face. As she did so, she thought about the temperature inside and later began digging into literature on the Shroud of Turin and whether anyone had tried to determine the temperature inside Christ's tomb.

Deseret Morning News graphic

      A resulting article, "New Evidence May Explain Image on Shroud of Turin," published in Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 1986, was co-written with a researcher named Joseph Kohlbeck.
      Kohlbeck was listed as a resident scientist at Utah's Hercules Aerospace Center. It was reported that Kohlbeck, with assistance from Richard Levi-Setti of the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago, compared dirt from the shroud to travertine aragonite limestone found in ancient Jewish tombs in Israel.
      Kohlbeck's dust particles were taken from sticky tape samples that researcher Ray Rogers, from the 1978 shroud investigation team, had taken from the Shroud of Turin and compared with Nitowski's samples.
      According to several scholarly papers and a book by author Ian Wilson called "The Blood and the Shroud," the particles of dirt on the Shroud of Turin provided a close chemical match to the samples Nitowski took from the tombs. At the time, Kohlbeck acknowledged that his work was not proof that the shroud was in Jerusalem and that there might be other places in the world where aragonite has the identical chemical composition.
      Barrie Schwortz, a Jewish researcher and member of the original 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) team, said his knowledge of research on the shroud leads him to believe the image on the cloth "is not the product of a scorch," even a very mild one like Nitowski described.
      "There are many known scorches on the Shroud from the fire in 1532. Scorched linen will fluoresce, and as expected, the scorched images (on the shroud) do show fluorescence, but it's not a product of heated linen in the image the way a scorch would be. I believe there is ample scientific evidence to support that."
      Schwortz now owns and operates an active Web site on the shroud, www.shroud.com. He said he believes the shroud is most likely authentic, but moving from skeptical science to active advocacy of that position took him about 18 years of study.
      "I became an advocate based on direct involvement and personal examination of the cloth. I expected to see the brush strokes (that many have speculated were used to paint the image) and come home. But there is no paint. This is not a painting. Then it became a question of what is it."
      For him, science became advocacy "when the weight of all the science together leads in one direction. I believe that's the case with the exception of the radiocarbon dating."
      In 1988, three separate laboratories tested a small section of fiber from the shroud and dated it to medieval times, yet "all of the other evidence was pointing the other way," Schwortz said. At the time, many serious scholars dismissed the shroud as a fake, but earlier this year, Schwortz said a fellow shroud researcher who was part of the STURP team produced evidence that the sample used in radiocarbon dating experiments was actually taken from a part of the cloth that had been woven in to repair the shroud, meaning the sample was not a part of the original fabric.
      To date, no access has been granted by the shroud's conservators to do another radiocarbon sample.
      "I'm pretty convinced now the best explanation is that it is what we think it is," said Schwortz, who is Jewish and claims neither religious nor personal stake in the outcome. "I've spent years and years of studying this thing and doing everything in my power to find it's not some kind of medieval fake or forgery. Why is it so hard to accept that we could have an artifact of the historical Jesus? I would think that would be welcome."

[NYer]

Catholic Ping
Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list

[NYer]

Shroud ping!

[FairOpinion]

GGG ping?

[nosofar]

I've spent years and years of studying this thing and doing everything in my power to find it's not some kind of medieval fake or forgery.

I guess we'll just have to keep testing it until we get the 'right' answer.

[EternalHope]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

[mysterio]

I think the carbon dating test was thrown off by biofilm. I did research on biofilm in water pipes when I was getting my masters degree in biology. Basically what happens is that layers of bacteria form on the thread of the cloth, die, and are covered by another layer of bacteria. This layer is then covered by another layer, and so on. So the outermost layer of bacteria would be modern, the layer below would be a little older, etc. If a significant portion of the thread tested was biofilm, the carbon date would be much more modern than the actual thread. I think it's possible that the Shroud is real. A lot more research is needed before this can be decided one way or the other.

[madison10]

I guess we'll just have to keep testing it until we get the 'right' answer.

...or wait until He comes to claim it along with His Bride. Maybe He wouldn't want it back anyway.

[cryptical]

So if we were to clone Jesus from the blood, would that be the Second Coming, or a false Second Coming?

Just think of the advantages of having a Jesus clone around the house. Wine bills go down. If anyone suddenly dies he could do the Lazurus thing... Blind to see, deaf to hear, I'm guessing there is a market for those kind of things.

Grab up a couple of fish and some day-old bread, and you can feed the whole neighborhood at your barbeque...

[NYer]

If a significant portion of the thread tested was biofilm, the carbon date would be much more modern than the actual thread. I think it's possible that the Shroud is real. A lot more research is needed before this can be decided one way or the other.

If you go to the following web site, I believe you will find that "a lot more research" has been done. And the findings are truly extraordinary!

SHROUD STORY

[Grut]

Sigh. If, someday, someone discovers the words "Made in Japan" on the Shroud of Turin, someone else will immediately announce that Japan existed in the time of Christ and used English.

[Knitting A Conundrum]

Jesus is laid in the Sepulcher.



V. We adore thee O Christ and we bless thee,

R. Because by thy Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

JESUS, when He was nearest to His everlasting triumph, seemed to be farthest from triumphing. When He was nearest upon entering upon His kingdom, and exercising all power in heaven and earth, He was lying dead in a cave of the rock. He was wrapped round in burying-clothes, and confined within a sepulcher of stone, where He was soon to have a glorified spiritual body, which could penetrate all substances, go to and fro quicker than thought, and was about to ascend on high. Make us to trust in thee, O Jesus, that You wilt display in us a similar providence. Make us sure, O Lord, that the greater is our distress, the nearer we are to Thee. The more men scorn us, the more You did honor us. The more men insult over us, the higher You wilt exalt us. The more they forget us, the more You did keep us in mind. The more they abandon us, the closer You wilt bring us to Yourself.


LET US PRAY

God, who by the Precious Blood of Thy only-begotten Son did sanctify the standard of the Cross, grant, we beseech Thee, that we who rejoice in the glory of the same Holy Cross may at all times and places rejoice in Thy protection, through the same Christ, our Lord.

Amen.

Cardinal Newman

[Garden Mama]

I like the way your mind works........thanks for the laugh.

[txroadkill]

I sure hope you have got a surge protector on your computer, because I think you're about to get struck by lightning

[Uri’el-2012]

The dna blood of Cohen on the TS would disprove the TS.

Y'shua was not of the Levites but of the tribe of David.

b'shem Y'shua

[timer]

Jesus's corpse was slam-frozen to zero degrees Kelvin within a rectangular super-conducting ring. The HEAT in his body had to GO somewhere, by the First Law of Thermodynamics, thus the up/down(+Z/-Z vectors)coherent gamma ray radiation in a brief burst, thus the scorch-picture. Even though the atoms in this su-co/su-flo/su-mo state are 1/2 spin-flip up and 1/2 spin-flip down(+Z and -Z vectors)(review the literature on cryogenic cooling), there is residual gyroscopic precession; this is why the nose-tip and other body areas closest to the cloth are in focus and parts further away are less in focus. Then his body is repaired to the cat-scan picture taken years before on the mountain top, atom by atom. But that means his mind-memory is ALSO returned to years before, it then takes awhile for his spiritual memory of the intervening years to bring his physical brain-memory up to speed. Also, he's just been to 0 deg K and back, which is why he cautions Mary not to touch him. And too, the isotope test, that inferred a medieval origin, was taken of the PATCH which we know was sewn on after the fire in the 1500's, thus that's a satanic scam. Thus, as incredible as it seems, the Shroud of Turin is a true picture of our Lord, and his resurrection shows the way to the new world of higher technology that he will rule over; patience and faith, it's sooner than you think... W=P

[UCANSEE2]

It may truly be the cloth that covered Jesus of Nazareth.

Even if that could be proved, would the cloth then be 'holy'.


Some might think so, but I do not.

He told us not to worship false gods, idols, or images.

I think that would include burial clothing.

A sign? To those who need it, it is.

A treasured Christian artifact. That may well be true.

The image on the cloth? The human body is covered with microscopic bacteria and mites. In that era, desert dust was blowing through the atmosphere regularly, and baths were few and far between.

The body was wiped down with olive oil, IIRC.

The image was very likely to transfer if left on the body after death, for a relatively short time. Then to have the cloth kept preserved would help preserve the image and it soaking it's way into the cloth.

It's not a miracle the image is still there. The miracle was in what is believed to have occurred afterward.

[Mercat]

ping me pls

[Mercat]

Seems to me that if the DNA matches the house of Levi ... Jesus was not born to that house.

[UCANSEE2]

It may truly be the cloth that covered Jesus of Nazareth.

Even if that could be proved, would the cloth then be 'holy'.


Some might think so, but I do not.

He told us not to worship false gods, idols, or images.

I think that would include burial clothing.

A sign? To those who need it, it is.

A treasured Christian artifact. That may well be true.

The image on the cloth? The human body is covered with microscopic bacteria and mites. In that era, desert dust was blowing through the atmosphere regularly, and baths were few and far between.

The body was wiped down with olive oil, IIRC.

The image was very likely to transfer if left on the body after death, for a relatively short time. Then to have the cloth kept preserved would help preserve the image and it soaking it's way into the cloth.

It's not a miracle the image is still there. The miracle was in what is believed to have occurred afterward.