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 Thus, I had access to hundreds of unpublished pages, which include these raw data.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.
Jesus is the son of God. Maybe he took after his father, who looks like a 6'2" Nordic white guy?
1st century jews probably didn’t have paste white skin, big noses and shifty eyes like modern Brooklyn jews. Makes one wonder....
Well the face on the Shroud looks very Jewish to me. Not a white guy?
He was a Jew what would expect him to be? All the Jews I know look very white to me. Now of course the Shroud image does not appear as one with pale skin, blue eyes and blond hair and neither do all whiteys have blond hair, blue eyes and fair complexion.
How do you get “Nordic-looking” out of the Shroud image? There’s no information there about eye or hair color.
Romanesq: "...they still cant replicate or explain The Shroud notwithstanding the latest scientific evidence brought forth.."
Poison Pill: That thing gets replicated all the time
Poison Pill, with all due respect, re-read what romanesq wrote. It was not that artists' renditions, photos and prints have not been made --- there have been probably tens of thousands of copies, I have one on my fridge --- but the point is that the Shroud (itself) has not been replicated: a length of linen cloth with the Shroud's distinctive physical and chemical characteristics.
There is no sizing in the cloth, there are no underdrawings, no brush-strokes, and the image itself has more the characteristics of a scorch, not penetrating the cloth past 2 microfibers depth.
Here's where the Isaac Asimov axiom comes in. The really significant scientific discoveries are not ones that were anticipated or expected. "Hmm. That's funny..."
The image itself is almost invisible to the naked eye (strange that money-grubbing "marketers" and "forgers" wouldn't do better and use some primitive permanent magic marker on the main points, eh?) and only becomes quite visible with a photographic negative.
Further, the picture only really jumps out at you when you analyze the depth-perception aspects, whereby the distance from the burial sheet to the corpse varies slightly based on the concavities and convexities, the "topography" of the body.
The rational mind itself tells you that there's something here you didn't foresee, and something behind it that you cannot see. That's all. It leads you to an honest agnosticism.
Then you go from "What?" to "Why?" and finally to "Who?"
And the honest empirical inquirer is drawn from "Eureka" to "That's funny" to...consider this as a hypothesis ... "OMG".
The analysis says nothing about fraud, only that carbon 14 dating procedures were less reliable in 1988.
Why do you think Myrah felt the need to misrepresent the findings?
...to those that believe on proof is necessary, to those that dont believe, no proof is possible...
“Poison Pill: That thing gets replicated all the time.”
No one today can replicate The Shroud, point in fact.
So, people can replicate many aspects just not the actual shroud itself.
The Shroud is not and has not been duplicated. This is science, not wishful thinking, hate or any number of doubters who would like to explain it away.
Neither can you.
When you identify and compensate for the distortions inherent in the transferred image He not only looks Jewish but He resembles Orthodox whom I know.
If you want on or off the Shroud of Turin Ping List, Freepmail me.
Give me a reference to a 21st century experiment that started by scourging and crucifying a man...
Hokus pokus...... domi nokus
Amen
Uh, no, it is not 62 . . . The image on the Shroud, is well within the normal height range of 1st Century Jewish men as surveyed by a census of a 1st Century Jerusalem cemetery, at 510 tall. That 62 figure was based on a skeptics measurement of the distance measured on the cloth from the tip of a downward facing toe to the top of the crown of the head, not a distance calculated from the heel (which does not change much when the foot flexes) to the crown, to the top of the head. The average height of the male skeletons found in the 1st Century Jewish cemetery was 5 feet 8 ¼ . . . The average height of an American Male is 5 8 ⅜, just ⅛ taller, yet there are many American males who are more than 5 10 or more in height.
Nor is the image Nordic. The genotype is, according to experts in the area, what is termed today, a high noble Arab or Sephardic Jew, of which about 30% of the population of Judea were composed. The face on the Shroud appears narrower than it actually is, as there are two bands of darker linen running parallel to the body on either side of the center line. This has the effect of making the face appear thinner, or gaunter, than the person would have appeared in real life. Your assumption of a Nordic appearance is a construct of your mind due to the negative appearance of the black and white images the display takes on when shown of the positive the image has in reality. The reversed color of the B&W images give the mistaken impression of light colored hair, which prejudices the mind toward blond colored hair. There actually is no color data at all on the Shroud about the man it covered, except for the blood.
The image, after normalizing the media (the linen) for color aberration, using a computer to reconstruct the person the image was made from, using the 3D data encoded in the Shroud, along with the stochastic data, and the genotype studies, result in the following obviously non-Nordic result:
Good on you for accurately parodying a ranting bigot. I could not have done it nearly so well.
Its already been written. . . Ive got it in my Apple Books library waiting to be read. Cant remember the name.
In reality, the DNA is too badly damaged with age to clone. Its fragmentary. Blood Type is AB, rare in most of the world, but more common in the Middle East. It matches the blood type on the Sudarium of Oviedo, as does the fragmentary DNA, which has a known, provable, documented provenance going back to the 6th Century with an oral tradition going back further.
This wasn't a paid advertisement for Glamour Shots.
I heard the makeup regimen in this case fell short of its usual standards too.
Uh huh. Which is why you traveled all the way over to a dedicated thread just to piss on it.
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