Posted on 08/21/2002 7:41:41 PM PDT by mjp
Shroud of Turin tests miff scientists, religious scholars
ROME (August 21, 2002 5:23 p.m. EDT) - Experts on the Shroud of Turin said Wednesday they felt frustrated and betrayed to learn a Swiss textile expert had obtained Vatican approval to test the sacred cloth without involvement from the international scientific community. The shroud is a strip of linen believers say was used to wrap the body of Jesus. Kept in the Cathedral of Turin, it is rarely displayed to the public.
Earlier this month, the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero said a well-known Swiss textile expert, Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, had begun tests on the cloth and, as part of the research, cut out 30 patches woven into it in the 16th century.
Flury-Lemberg confirmed then that she had received Vatican approval to perform the tests. But she has refused to say exactly what her work has entailed.
Some experts worry that in the absence of any oversight, she may have damaged the cloth. In the past, tests on the cloth have involved a large committee of international scientists.
"This one was limited strictly to certain favorites in Turin, and Flury-Lemberg was one," said the Rev. Albert Dreisbach, an Episcopalian minister who has been studying the shroud since 1977.
Flury-Lemberg said Wednesday she would release photographs of her research next month.
"There are so many wrong things in the press," she said by telephone from Bern, Switzerland. "Everyone's speculating. I don't want to give any news."
Cardinal Severino Poletto, the archbishop of Turin and the shroud's custodian, said in an interview with the Italian Catholic newspaper L'Avvenire that the Vatican approved the tests.
He would not discuss Flury-Lemberg's procedures except to say her work was carried out in accordance with two Vatican conditions: that there be unanimous consent of the members of the Conservation Commission for the Shroud, a small group of experts overseeing the cloth, and that the cultural authorities of the Italian government be informed.
Members of the commission could not be reached Wednesday.
Ilona Farkas, who has been following shroud research since 1976 but is not a commission member, said scientists are upset.
"It's scandalous," Farkas said from Rome. "There will be tons of protests arriving at the Vatican from scientists."
Paul Maloney, general projects director for the Association of Scientists and Scholars International for the Shroud of Turin, located in Pennsylvania, said the lack of information has "many of us around the world very frustrated, because we don't know how to assess what they have done."
Maloney, who is also not a member of the smaller commission, said experts fear "historically important information may be gone forever."
The cardinal said the research involved removing impurities and residue from the cloth, which is 13 feet long and three feet wide.
"The interventions have been carried out reservedly not out of a great desire for secrecy, but to guarantee the necessary calm for those who had to work, beside obvious reasons for safety," Poletto told L'Avennire.
You use your head. The Shroud was "dated" by a bunch of atheists at 1130-1290. Ok. Fine. Please explain how a bunch of medieval bufoons produced a photonegative image on a piece of cloth, an image that they couldn't even see let alone verify for its accuracy, seven centuries before the invention of the camera.
It was dated by scientific methodology. You don't know the scientists
were atheists, either. I know you would have preferred the Pope just
declare the shroud that of Jesus and be done with it. Frankly, I don't
see why he didn't do it, either. Maybe you can tell me.
Ok. Fine. Please explain how a bunch of
medieval bufoons produced a photonegative image on
a piece of cloth, an image that they couldn't even see let alone verify for
its accuracy, seven centuries before the invention of the camera.
[I]mage formation techniques employing technology readily
available to medieval cultures as far back as the eleventh
century strongly suggests that the negative image as found
on the Shroud of Turin was the product of a form of
primitive photography employing either silver
nitrate or silver sulphate as a light sensitive agent.
Wrong. Pickett and Pierce attempted to replicate this method and it failed to reproduce the three-dimensional quality of the Shroud. It's been tested over and over. Failure every time.
The image is of Leonardo da Vinci. He dabbled in photography and created the shroud using a camera of his own design. Whether he intended to deceive us in the 21st century is unlikely.
This phenomenon quite clearly conforms very closely to the
characteristics of the image as found in the Shroud of Turin
and if this hypothetical account is in any way accurate, it strongly
implies that the Shroud of Turin may be the only extant example
of a lost photographic technology which is normally assumed to
have been first discovered in the early nineteenth century by
such people as Thomas Wedgwood and Sir Humphry Davy.
I read a science report a while back that concedes that point.
Ha! A lost photographic technology! Of course, it's the only example! Yeah, that's the ticket! What's next? It came from Atlantis?
You know what your statement says to me? This: "I really, really want to be an atheist". That's it. Anyway, enough throwing pearls before swine. if you don't want to see it, you'll never see it.
Ah, we've come full circle. Now I'll ask you. What do you
think was the Vatican's motivation for secretly contracting
with a hand-picked lab to test more of the cloth?
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