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.
That wasn't my statement. I included the
url links for my posts, which is more than
you did to back up yours. If you wish
to refute the points the authors made,
I'm sure they will appreciate being corrected.
And if you want to see it no amount of carbon dating or plausable ways it could have developed will convince you otherwise.
It certainly was'nt a photographic technique. Cloths laying on bodys (in any era) can be stained by molds etc where there is contact. Also a statue heated then overlayed with a cloth produces images very like those on the shroud. Almost certainly a midevil fraud, just like the 'saint blood' that is supposed to reliquify on call (which has been reproduced using period chemicals and methods, does'nt change anything or anybodys beliefs).
The most cynical thing I've ever read is 'Life is like a long meeting, nothing gets resolved and nobodies opinions get changed'
A relic in a monestary in Spain is supposed to be the veil of Veronica, the woman who wiped Jesus' face as he marched to Golgotha. The veil maintined the print of his face. Photographic/computer analysis confirms the thorn puncture wounds on his face are in the same place on both cloths. The scientist that did this analysis stated that he felt that these divine icons formed the basis for all artistic representation of Jesus and not vice versa.
I choose to believe!
The shroud could be as old as they say, but the images aren't. They are two separate images. The body probably isn't Leonardo, but the head is separate and is Leonardo. He got great mileage out of his camera obscura, used it all the time.
John 19:40 Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.
The "shroud" is just another fill the pews hoax.
I doubt the Church is "hand-picking" to get certain results. They would have to know that would undermine all their credibility concerning The Shroud.
Me? I'm a believer.
In order for the results to be widely accepted, the tests
will have to be replicated elsewhere. So you wonder
why the secrecy, unless the Vatican wants to have a
peg to hang a pronouncement on. I am always
suspicious of secrecy in science. It usually accompanies
fraud.
Ah, religion. Centuries of progress, knowledge, and observation, all mangled and busted like expensive dental braces on a five cent piece of peanut brittle. Evolution must be real, because we still have one foot in the slime, while our heads are in the stars.
I looked at that site. The author's knowledge of the photographic processes and optics is seriously flawed. He made a valliant effort though, and even though his understanding of what would have been required to form an develop a crude early form of what's known as a "print out" image is not very accurate, he certainly did not disprove any possibility of it being a silver based photographic image.
Apart from his "sins of commission" (regarding things like optical formulae, the nature of glass Vs. quartz optics, and so forth) was one "sin of omission -- any silver image, when exposed to the atmosphere for a significant period of time (often as little as a half-century or less) will "sulfide". That means that the image -- made of metallic (i.e., "reduced") silver -- will gradually be converted to silver sulfide via the gradual exposure to atmospheric silver.
When you see an old black and white print where the image has been (either totally or in "splotches") been changed from various densities of gray and black to a series of yellow/sepia tones, you are looking at an image that has been sulfided.
You can accomplish the same effect in minutes using a technique called "sepia toning". First, the image is bleached. The photograph is soaked in a solution of potassium ferricyanide and potassium bromide. This converts the image from silver to silver bromide -- first, from silver to silver ferricyanide, then from silver ferricyanide to silver bromide (likely the same silver salt it was when it was fresh unexposed film or paper, although it could also have started out as a different silver salt).
A toned image is very stable, unlike a "raw" silver image. One archival process, used to prevent long term deterioration, is to apply a light selenium toner treatment. This will protect the silver grains from sulfiding, without causing an undue change to the image color.
Does this (sulfiding of silver images) suggest that the shroud image started out as a silver image? No, but it doen't mitigate against it either.
My mind is not made up on the question of whether or not the shroud is as-billed. However, it doesn't really matter to me. My faith is not dependant on a question of whether or not an ancient piece of cloth (which is of genuine historic interest regardless of its actual lineage) is or is not the burial shroud of Christ.
As to my photographic bona fides, I studied photography at one of the premier photographic schools in New York City. I owned several studios and camera repair shops. I did custom darkroom work (black and white, color, color reversal, and cibachrome) for several years, and I created a photographic developer formula (black and white paper and cibachrome) that was very well received by those who worked with it.
I was involved in making a print from an 8x10 neg
of the shroud using, IIRC, a track mounted Durst.
Seeing it as a positive image blown up nearly
life size gave me the chills. But as to its being
two thousand years old, too much evidence
points the other way, IMO.
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