Posted on 04/20/2017 10:51:49 AM PDT by NYer
It was sometime in the late 1970s—or was it the early 1980s? The priest in charge marched us to the school’s lecture theatre where we were soon plunged into darkness as a large screen lit up.
This was no Hollywood fare, however, but a film about the Turin Shroud. To this day, I can remember sitting there, mesmerized by what looked and sounded like any well-made television documentary but which seemed to suggest that the relic was more, much more, than merely an object of piety.
The film in question was The Silent Witness (1978). It was the work of David Rolfe who went on to produce three other films on the Shroud. All four have been collected into a box set and are now released by Ignatius Press.
It was interesting to watch The Silent Witness again, many decades after my first viewing. If anything, I enjoyed the film more. The filmmaking was dated, but in a refreshing way: it compares well with the all too-contrived documentary style that appears on television today. The Silent Witness is a period piece, but not just of television journalism.
That The Silent Witness was even made, let alone that it should have had the impact it did upon release, is curious to say the least. Interest in the Shroud in the English-speaking world grew rapidly on account of the film and Ian Wilson’s 1978 book, The Turin Shroud. The book was a best seller; the film smashed box office records and won a British Academy Award. This sparked even more media interest. By Easter of 1978 the front cover of The Sunday Times Magazine carried a picture of the negative facial image on the Shroud with the enigmatic headline: The Face on the Shroud. By the late 1970s, this ancient relic had ‘arrived’: an object of intense twentieth century media curiosity.
From that time, there were the first speculations about the possibility of carbon dating the Shroud. In 1981, an article in The Times reported that “ten tons of machinery” had been delivered to a research facility at Oxford University, observing that this delivery could “rewrite history”—the piece heralded the arrival of the most advanced carbon dating process then available; the article went on to speculate that one of the first artefacts upon which this process could throw light was the Turin Shroud. It was seven years later that this prediction came true. In July 1988, The Times reported how samples taken from the Shroud were handed over to the Oxford laboratory, and that similar samples were also being sent to other laboratories in Zurich and Arizona for testing. The results were to be known by September of that year. Anticipation mounted, as a much hoped for scientific and credible dating of the Shroud was promised. All eyes were now upon the scientists involved and what they would discover.
As we know, that September, sitting in front of a board with the dates “1260-1390” chalked upon it, the Oxford-based scientists transfixed the eyes of the media when they declared the Shroud a ‘fake’. It is worth looking at a picture of those in front of that board. Perhaps it is my imagination but there seems to be an air of satisfaction in those present. Their chalked dates seem to read as a curt dismissal of all that is not “scientific,” a rebuff to simple believers in the authenticity of this proposed relic of the Passion and all it symbolized. Following years of articles enthusiastically investigating the historical and theological possibilities of the mysterious cloth housed in Turin Cathedral, there was now an abrupt media volte-face as a silence descended upon the subject. Nevertheless, on October 13, 1988, a month or so after the test results went public, The Times did again mention the Shroud, this time, however, in a small paragraph with a large headline: Confirmation of a Fake—The announcement that the Holy Shroud of Turin is a medieval fake will be made officially today.
For many, that was where this story ended; the Shroud of Turin was now to be forgotten. A vague air of embarrassment hung over what had been the media’s decade-long interest. There was still, of course, the question of how the cloth had come to bear such a striking image that seemed to have photographic properties, but this, like so much else about the Shroud, was consigned to the explanations of science—or criminology—rather than theology. The image was the act of a clever forger, not the possible portrait of Truth incarnate.
Rolfe’s films on the Shroud are an interesting historical record of how interest in the relic has shifted. The Silent Witness, the first film, is an intriguing mix of history, archaeology, New Testament research, NASA 3-D imaging, alongside the then most up-to-date study of pollens found on the distinctive and intricate weave of the linen. It is a heady mix, wonderfully put together, that leaves the viewer wanting to know more. Throughout the film there is a dramatic voice-over by the actor, Kenneth More; it ends in a crescendo that asks, demands even, “…who is he?” Even now, many years later, that ending still sends a chill down the spine, and for believers, then as now, has a deeper resonance than merely the identity of the figure on the Shroud.
The next film in the Ignatius’ collection is a 2008 BBC production. Shroud of Turin was made for the 20th anniversary of the carbon dating. It is measured, even agnostic, in its approach to the relic. It raises questions not so much about the tests carried out twenty years earlier than about those still remaining mysteries around the Shroud. One of the American scientists, John P. Jackson, who had featured prominently in The Silent Witness, makes a welcome reappearance. He is head of the Shroud of Turin Research Project and an advocate for the Shroud as a genuine artefact from the first century. Try as it may, however, this documentary appears unable to answer the questions still posed by the Shroud and advocates such as Jackson. It is as if those dates on the chalkboard still hang in the background.
It is only in the most recent 2015 film, A Grave Injustice, that the matter of the carbon dating is finally tackled head on. Rolfe, it seems, is no longer able simply to report on the Shroud. Instead, he has now moved to the role of its defender. What he postulates is that the carbon dating tests carried out in 1988 were seriously flawed. In this film, he takes the audience through all the controls that were initially set in place for the tests to proceed in a rigorously scientific way. He then goes on to show how every one of them was disregarded. Furthermore, he demonstrates how knowledge of the Shroud and its fabric has grown significantly in the intervening 30 years. This is especially relevant when considering the samples taken for the tests and the real suspicion that the area they came from was an amended or patched part of the Shroud, and, therefore, almost certainly, dated from the medieval period when the relic was known to be exhibited.
When the final credits on the last film end, one is left in little doubt that something is not quite right. The weight of so much evidence—Biblical, historical, archaeological and, yes, even scientific—appears to have been set aside in the face of a series of tests that took place decades ago and that seem now in terms of methodology, and even in the opinion of some from within the scientific community itself, open to question.
Will we ever know the truth about this strange relic? Maybe, we are not meant to. The Shroud is claimed to be many things—from the burial shroud of Our Lord to a cunning fake made for monetary gain. Whatever it is, it is most certainly mysterious and, I suspect, will remain so.
Nevertheless, that question posed in the final frame of The Silent Witness still resonates as, ultimately, it is about more, much more, than that which is kept in a bomb-proof casket in Turin Cathedral: Who is He?
These things have always fascinated me, too. It’s been a while since I read about this and don’t recall everything, but I never saw any convincing explanation of how this would have been created by human hands - it just seems unreasonable, too far outside of the likely.
“That seems almost perverse, that the dating scientists even picked the wrong place to get a piece. Someone who understood the shroud’s history ought to have guided them, and still even could.”
If you had a patched blanket, the patch was visible, and you were told not to collect your sample from the patch, I have every confidence that you could manage.
How is it possible that they could not? I don’t know what to think other than they deliberately collected their sample from the patch.
Having always been fascinated by the shroud, I have read and watched everything I could about it.
There is NO DOUBT, that it is REAL! The image still can’t be duplicated TODAY!
Is it the image of Jesus? Who else would it be????
ALL attempts at denying it’s authenticity have FAILED!
The cloth, the weave, the coating, the herbs, the flowers, the spores, the blood, the location of stains corresponding to his hands and feet (spikes) and side (Holy Lance) and head (crown of thorns), the negative image infused in the shroud by God’s Glory, It’s preservation over centuries, it’s mention in the bible along with The Sudarium of Oviedo, the similarities of the two “shrouds”, the same blood type AB, spores from Palestine, the Shroud and the Sudarium covered the same Jewish face.
“Dr. Alan Whanger applied the Polarized Image Overlay Technique to the sudarium, comparing it to the image and bloodstains on the Shroud. The frontal stains on the sudarium show seventy points of coincidence with the Shroud, and the rear side shows fifty. The only possible conclusion is that the Oviedo sudarium covered the same face as the Turin Shroud.”
https://www.shroud.com/guscin.htm
IS THIS NOT PROOF ENOUGH????????????????????
1 Peter 3:15 (NIV)
But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,
1 Peter 3:15 (KJV)
But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:
Because Jesus rose from the dead, just like He said He would.
Without the resurrection, there is no hope.
That’s why it matters.
Thanks for the good point at post 9. I agree.
Just as it seems we have been feed a steady diet of Fake News since (at least my, born in 1963) childhood it seems that Fake Science has also been on the menu.
Egads... feed = fed
OK, thanks.
I thought the second part of the quote was “To one without faith, no explanation is possible,” but I was not 100% sure.
Also, I remember someone once said that spores were found on the shroud which were from plants that only existed in that part of Israel where Jesus lived and was crucified; I thought that was an interesting observation.
*Also, I remember someone once said that spores were found on the shroud which were from plants that only existed in that part of Israel where Jesus lived and was crucified; I thought that was an interesting observation.*
Yes, and those spores were ONLY known to grow in Jerusalem, ONLY budding in the time of Passover/Easter!
I believe it’s real.
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Well reasoned post.
I always marvel that people DON’T think it’s real!
Once those doing the sampling of the Shroud for the C-14 tests threw out the agreed on sampling protocols and opted to take the sample from the one area of the Shroud all the scientists agreed should NOT be an area sampled due to it being obviously physically and chemically different from the main body of the Shroud, all science was thrown out the window. . . and politics and extreme bias entered the process. Then when the reporting labs, especially the lab in Arizona AVERAGED their results, we knew it was not about science but proving an already decided conclusion they wanted to get.
Uh, no, but it was a repaired area that incorporated both new and old material that had the new skillfully re-woven into the old using a technique called French Invisible Reweaving developed in the 16th Century to repair expensive tapestries. The mixture distorted the C-14 dating test.
The sampling protocols were in place and deliberately AVOIDED that site. . . but those protocols were tossed out at literally the last minute and the single sample was taken from the worst possible spot, the one the scientists who had examined the Shroud for 78 hours all unanimously agreed should NOT be a candidate for C-14 testing because It had physical and chemical differences from the rest of the Shroud. This was deliberate.
Even knowing that the patch work is there, it takes close looking with a photomicrograph to actually see the differences in the threads of the sampled area. The newer threads are dyed cotton to match the older original undyed linen flax threads. The newer threads have an "S" twist while the original Linen has a "Z" twist and are slightly larger than the newer threads. It is even more obvious comparing the threads under an electron microscope. The threads were not just interwoven, but the ends were twisted together in the "French Invisible Reweaving" technique with the idea the repair would be invisible to the naked eye. It was and is invisible.
Also, at least one of the found pollens come from plant that grew around Jerusalem until it became extinct around 700-800AD. There is no way a 12-13th century forger could have exposed the Shroud to pollen fromJerusalem from a plant that died out 400-500 years earlier. . . or, even know he would need to anticipate the science of palynology 700 years before it was created to include pollens on the cloth for palynologists to find.
May I ask the source of your information?
I’ve studied the Shroud for 45 years. Right now, I am writing from memory. You can find most of the scholarship and scientific articles on the Shroud a the site maintained by Barrie Schwortzt:
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