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.
A Unicolor representative said that the company would sign an NDA to look at it, but unfortunately the Divorce/Custody Case From Hell decided to take front stage and center in my "life" at that moment, and... oh, well.
Maybe some day I'll find the old trash-80 floppy I've got the formula on, and if I do, maybe it'll still be readable, and if it is, maybe I can find my old Model 4 in all the junquepiles, and if I can, maybe it'll boot, and...
By the way, I can understand the Catholic reticence to identify the Shroud of Turin as actually having been among the graveclothes used on Jesus. In that tradition, there are several reported miracles of imprintation on an object by a saint who obviously wasn't physically pressed against the object. How do they know this isn't another case of the same thing?
Ouch! Reminds me of the stories about the radium watch dial painter ladies who used the same technique.
BTW I posted the mini-Cibachrome tutorial before I saw your freepmail. For some odd reason (fatigue?), I didn't see your first post until after I'd replied to the second. I wasn't trying to condescend.
Argh, can't believe I was that tired! Should have typed "atmospheric sulphur.
The day they figure out how to extract silver from the air is the day I set out massive sheets to collect it and retire. :)
I can probably guess at the reason for all of this outrage. When the scientists who have examined the Shroud for over 20 years wanted to obtain a small sample for carbon dating, they had hell to pay to get one tiny little bit of the cloth.........and they were ordered to take that tiny bit from the ONE spot on the cloth that they wanted to avoid for varios reasons (was on a patched area, etc. etc.). Now, we read that some local get access to it and apparently is able to obtain numerous samples. I'm hoping that this article is just wrong and that this woman hasn't lit into the Shroud with scissors or something inane like that....
No, we've had these discussions over the past few years, but for now (until I get more time) let me say that the Shroud is, in my opinion and in the opinion of those scientists who have spent decades studying it, the real deal.
Try reading this thread:
errr.... which verse was that again?
That's hilarious. I'm going to use that. LOL and thanks for that.
Matthew 27:59 "And Joseph taking the body, wrapped it up in a clean linen cloth."
Mark 15:46 "And Joseph buying fine linen, and taking him down, wrapped him up in the fine linen, and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewed out of a rock. And he rolled a stone to the door of the sepulchre."
Luke 23:53 "And taking him down, he wrapped him in fine linen, and laid him in a sepulchre that was hewed in stone, wherein never yet any man had been laid."
John 19:40 "They took therefore the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths, with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury."
The "shroud" is just another fill the pews hoax.
Nothing but speculation on your part.
More convincing was positive identification of plant spores that only exist in the Middle East and the fact that the "thickness" of the image is literally only a few molecules. There was some deposition of ochre, a pigment, but most of the image was apparently caused by some sort of effect that altered the color of a few milimeters of the surface of the fibers. It's logical to conclude that the ochre was added sometime in history by someone trying to "touch-up" the image.
All in all, the conclusion that the carbon 14 testing proved the shroud to be a forgery was shaky at best. When it came out, however, the press leaped on it as "conclusive" without any reference to a hundred other indications that it could in fact be the burial shroud of Christ.
One flaw in your theory.
If the bacteria are getting their sustenance from the material of the shroud, then their C-14 levels will be the same as the shroud, even if they grew and died last week.
So bacteria consuming a 2000 year old shroud will read as being 2000 years old.
So bacteria consuming a 650 year old shroud will read as being 650 years old.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.