Posted on 06/12/2003 6:16:08 AM PDT by Int
Shroud of germs
Stephen Mattingly believes the Turin shroud was 'painted' by bacteria from a dying man's body. Laura Spinney meets the Catholic microbiologist challenging the medieval hoax theory
Laura Spinney
Thursday June 12, 2003
The Guardian
The image of a tall, bearded man bearing the marks of crucifixion that adorn the Turin shroud has never been adequately explained. Those who have attempted to answer the vexed question of the shroud's origins have often found themselves accused of poor science, even vested interests. So it is a brave man who enters the fray with a new and ultimately unprovable theory. But a respected American microbiologist has done just that, and is so convinced he is right, he has lathered himself in germs and put his professional reputation on the line to persuade the rest of us.
Stephen Mattingly of the University of Texas Health Science Centre in San Antonio believes the image on the Turin shroud was created not by human hands or any mystical power, as has been suggested, but by bacteria. The humble microbes, he says, multiplied in the wounds of a person who died very slowly, and whose corpse was then washed and wrapped in a linen sheet in readiness for burial. Washing the body made the wounds sticky, so the cloth stuck fast and became impregnated with bacteria. Finally, says Mattingly, the bacteria died, shedding proteins that gradually oxidised, causing a stain in the cloth that turned yel low and darkened, like a slow developing photograph.
The theory may be simple, but persuading people he is right will not be easy. In 1989, three separate scientific teams published a study of the shroud in the journal Nature. Using radiocarbon dating, they claimed the shroud must have come into being some time between 1260 and 1390 -suggesting that it was a medieval hoax rather than the genuine article. Their paper spawned much speculation as to who might have created the image, including one theory that it was the handiwork of Leonardo da Vinci. Mattingly thinks the three teams got it wrong. Modern bacteria on the linen could have messed up the dating technique, producing a date that was far too recent. He doesn't claim that the individual wrapped in the linen shroud was necessarily Jesus, but he does think microbes, not Leonardo, were the real artists behind the image.
If he is right, his theory could clear up some long-standing mysteries about the image: its striking three-dimensional quality, which he accounts for by varying densities of bacteria accumulating in the nooks and crannies of the dying man's body; the fact that it only appears on one side of the cloth; and, perhaps most damning of all for the artist hypothesis, the complete absence of brushstrokes. "Bacteria do not need a paintbrush," he says.
Mattingly is a Catholic and believes the biblical account of Jesus' death. But he insists the Turin shroud is not the basis for his belief. His experiments are nevertheless based on a set of assumptions gleaned from the Bible and what is known historically about crucifixion. It was the preferred means of dispatching criminals in the first century AD and took as long as 72 hours to kill a man.
Mattingly realised that during those three days, the unfortunate would bleed and lose other body fluids, all of which would encourage bacteria to multiply to unusually high levels.
One of the most common types of bacteria found on the human skin is Staphylococcus epidermidis, usually present in harmless concentrations of around 10m clumps, known as "colony forming units", per square centimetre. Estimating that during crucifixion, this number might increase by up to a hundredfold, Mattingly took swabs of Staphylococcus epidermidis from his skin and grew them, forming a "biofilm", a sugary matrix of microbes which can absorb water, becoming extremely sticky. He then killed the bacteria with heat to avoid infection, and smeared the biofilm back on to his hands and face. Sure enough, Mattingly found that his skin became very sticky where he had smeared on the mixture.
Having lathered on the bacteria, Mattingly applied a damp linen cloth to his hands and face, allowed it to dry, and peeled it off - with no little difficulty. He found the linen bore a straw-yellow imprint of the matching body part that became bolder over subsequent weeks. The bacterial imprint revealed fingernails, a ring and facial features, very similar in quality to the image on the Turin shroud.
Mattingly's findings have yet to be published in a scientific journal, but have already sparked controversy - including a difference of opinion with his collaborator, Barrie Schwortz. Schwortz was the official documenting photographer for the Shroud of Turin Research Project (Sturp), set up by a group of US scientists in the late 1970s.
Schwortz cautions that there seem to be discrepancies between Mattingly's image and the shroud. For instance, the image of Mattingly's face is distorted by the wrap-around effect of the cloth, but the image on the shroud is not. Mattingly is defiant though: "I am convinced that bacteria painted the image," he says. "They would have to have, based on the conditions thatexisted during the crucifixion."
Having examined the shroud, Sturp concluded in 1981 that it contained no pigments, paints, dyes or stains, and that the image was probably created by oxidation and dehydration of the cellulose fibres of the linen itself. That is still the prevailing view, but according to Mattingly, there was not a single microbiologist on the Sturp team, and they only failed to find bacterial pigments because they did not look for them.
Even more contentious, however, is Mattingly's claim that microbes skewed the shroud's radiocarbon date - the claim on which his theory depends. The fragments of the shroud he has seen, he says, are "completely coated" with bacteria, just like any piece of dirty old linen might be. If the radiocarbon dating could be repeated on purified fragments, it might prove to have come from the first century AD, he says.
Robert Hedges at the University of Oxford's research laboratory for archaeology, who was part of the British effort to date the shroud, dismisses that as highly unlikely. "If the shroud was originally 2,000 years old, but is contaminated by modern material to give a date of AD1250, the labs must have measured material contaminated by 60% modern, 20th-century biofilm," he says. "I find this incredible. It would be more biofilm than cellulose."
New tests on purified linen would help to ascertain the truth, says Mattingly, but no further tests are planned. For now, the controversy is set to rage on. "Is this the burial linen of Jesus of Nazareth?" asks Mattingly. "We will never know for certain."
They also share a variety of features, including basic head shape, nose, and I disagree with you about the cheeks. (He was struck about the face -- are you seeing cheeks or swelling?)
Further, I do not buy your claim to expertise in identifying ethnic background from an old image on a cloth. It is your opinion, nothing more.
Another unique characteristic is the "crown of thorns" that was supposedly placed on the head of Jesus after he was scourged. Every photo, statue, etc. shows a ring-like arrangement of thorn branches on His head, concistent with Biblical passages describing a "crown." And yet the image on the shroud shown head wounds that are more consistent with a jumble of thorn branches that was pressed down on top of the head in a haphazard manner, leaving puncture wounds on top of the head as well as on the sides.
The difference here is that the Shroud of Turin is a remarkable subject manner even in a secular sense.
It is very important to consider the more recent history of the shroud when trying to determine its authenticity. For centuries, the shroud was very similar to a lot of those other "relics" that you described -- it generated a lot of interest among religious people, but not much more than that.
This all changed late in the 19th century when an Italian photographer named Pia Secondo was given permission to photograph it during one of its infrequent public displays. When he was developing the film, he made a startling discovery: the faint reddish-brown image on the light-colored shroud contained an incredible amount of detail when seen on the photographic negative. Secondo recognized the implication of this discovery immediately -- The image he was looking at on the negative bore all the markings of a photograph, and the shroud was actually the photographic negative.
The Shroud of Turin immediately began to attract a lot of attention in the scientific community, because nobody truly believed that someone could have created something like this 500 years before photography was even invented. And yet that is precisely what would have had to happen if someone had fabricated the shroud as a hoax.
It is apparently quite rare to unearth the body of somebody who was crucified. Of those who were buried, they were probably commoners whose bodies were tossed into a hole, probably sans shroud. Even if shrouded, however, the conditions wouldn't be right for the preservation of cloth.
Few victims of crucifixion would have been buried in the nice, clean, dry cave of a rich man -- though if they had, they probably would have had shrouds.
Even fewer would have had their shroud removed before their body rotted away from within, most likely rotting the shroud along with it. (In Jerusalem, bodies lay in the tomb for a year or so, and then the bones were removed and placed in an ossuary.)
I'm making no claims for the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin. I am, however, not at all convinced for your arguments against it.
This is not necessarily a case of "Jesus leaving a mark" in a sense that He intended to leave a mark that would stand the test of time simply to serve as a relic.
The real story of the shroud is this: The image that you see on there may very well be the result of a "natural" process that occurs when a person rises from the dead (similar to the "shadows" of people that were burned onto the sides of buildings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki). I realize the implication here is quite startling, but there is no reason to assume that there is no "natural" cause that led to the image.
There is no indication of any kind of pigmentation on the shroud, and no sign of carbon residue indicating that the image was burned onto the shroud. The image resembles an X-ray more than anything else.
So sorry -- for some reason I though I was replying to ZD, who does doubt the authenticity. My apologies.
Yet they have determined the blood type to be AB...
Somewhere other than Post #33, that is. LOL!
That has not been determined! AND without DNA?
All living things have DNA, even if it was only Mary's Genes, there would be DNA! It is infact Paint!
First, as a long time coach of Special Olympic athletes, I have to tell you that not everyone shares your sense of humor.
Second, the face that you see in the "picture" you posted is a truer representation of Christ than any Shroud could depict. It is pure, without guile, innocent and loving. You should really consider dropping this picture from your FRepetoire.
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