The Shroud of Turin Wasn’t Faked, Italian Experts Say

[American Patriot]

Dec 21, 2011 6:56pm
The Shroud of Turin Wasn’t Faked, Italian Experts Say

Antonio Calanni/AP Photo



Has the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin finally been proven?
A new study by Italian scientists may not be definitive on its origins, but it does refute the popular notion that it was faked during the Middle Ages.


Experts at Italy’s National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Development have concluded in a report that the famed purported burial cloth of Jesus Christ could not have been faked.


According to the Vatican Insider, a project by La Stampa newspaper that closely follows the Catholic church, the experts’ report says, “The double image (front and back) of a scourged and crucified man, barely visible on the linen cloth of the Shroud of Turin has many physical and chemical characteristics that are so particular that the staining which is identical in all its facets, would be impossible to obtain today in a laboratory … This inability to repeat (and therefore falsify) the image on the Shroud makes it impossible to formulate a reliable hypothesis on how the impression was made.”


The centuries-old shroud contains a faint impression of the front and back of a human body, along with blood, dirt and water stains from age.


Many have long questioned the shroud’s authenticity, and others have suggested that it was faked during medieval times.


The Italian researchers, who conducted dozens of hours of tests with X-rays and ultraviolet lights, said that no laser existed to date that could replicate the singular nature of markings on the shroud. They also said that the kind of markings on the cloth could not have come from direct contact of the body with the linen.


Previous investigation has determined the markings could not have come from pigments or dyes.


The Italian scientists said the marks could only have been made by “a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation.”


Such technology did not exist in the time the skeptics claim the shroud could have been forged.


The scientists haven’t offered an explanation for how they believe the marks were made, but believers have long thought the shroud was miraculously marked when Jesus rose from the dead following his crucifixion.


The mystery of the shroud has long been a subject of debate and serious research.


Just last year, the History Channel aired a special in which it revealed a 3D image of the face of Jesus, constructed from the markings left in the cloth. Artists and scientists studied the Shroud of Turin, and used cutting-edge technology to create a computer-generated image of the face surrounded by the shroud.


The revelation caused mixed reactions around the globe. While some people said the image was “realistic” and what they imagined Christ looked like, others were not as certain.


The shroud is owned by the Vatican, although the Catholic church has never taken an official position on the cloth’s authenticity.

[American Patriot]

No scientific explanation for Shroud of Turin, scientists conclude
December 14, 2011

From Our Store: Essays in Apologetics, Volume II (eBook)

A new study on the Shroud of Turin has concluded that there is no scientific explanation for the image that appears on the cloth.
After 5 years of experiments, using different methods of coloring linen, Italy’s National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development said that the image is not the result of any process known to the modern world. The study indicated that the image may have been created by an intense source of light, but no man-made light would produce the required strength.

[American Patriot]

Turin Shroud 'was created by flash of supernatural light': It couldn't be a medieval forgery, say scientists


By David Wilkes

Last updated at 7:21 PM on 21st December 2011

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The image on the Turin Shroud could not be the work of medieval forgers but was instead caused by a supernatural ‘flash of light’, according to scientists.
Italian researchers have found evidence that casts doubt on claims that the relic – said to be the burial cloth of Jesus – is a fake and they suggest that it could, after all, be authentic.
Sceptics have long argued that the shroud, a rectangular sheet measuring about 14ft by 3ft, is a forgery dating to medieval times.


Scientists in Italy believe the kind of technology needed to create the Shroud of Turin simply wasn't around at the time that it was created

Scientists from Italy’s National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development spent years trying to replicate the shroud’s markings.

They have concluded only something akin to ultraviolet lasers – far beyond the capability of medieval forgers – could have created them.



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This has led to fresh suggestions that the imprint was indeed created by a huge burst of energy accompanying the Resurrection of Christ.

‘The results show a short and intense burst of UV directional radiation can colour a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin,’ the scientists said.
WHAT IS THE TURIN SHROUD?


The Vatican owns the Turin shroud, and hails the relic as an exploration of the ‘darkest mystery of faith’.

But the church has shied away from any definitive statement over whether the shroud - which is supposed to have formed Christ's burial robe - is real.

The Shroud is thought to have travelled widely before it was brought to France in the 14th century by a Crusader.

It was kept in a French convent for years - by nuns who patched it, and where it was damaged by fire.

The Shroud was given to the Turin Archbishop in 1578 by the Duke of Savoy and has been kept in the Cathedral ever since.

Carbon dating tests in 1988 dated it from between 1260 and 1390 - implying it was a fake.

Scientists have since claimed that contamination over the ages from patches, water damage and fire, was not taken sufficiently into account In 1999, two Israeli scientists said plant pollen found on the Shroud supported the view that it comes from the Holy Land.

There have been numerous calls for further testing but the Vatican has always refused.



The image of the bearded man on the shroud must therefore have been created by ‘some form of electromagnetic energy (such as a flash of light at short wavelength)’, their report concludes. But it stops short of offering a non-scientific explanation.

Professor Paolo Di Lazzaro, who led the study, said: ‘When one talks about a flash of light being able to colour a piece of linen in the same way as the shroud, discussion inevitably touches on things such as miracles.

‘But as scientists, we were concerned only with verifiable scientific processes. We hope our results can open up a philosophical and theological debate.’
For centuries, people have argued about the authenticity of the shroud, which is kept in a climate-controlled case in Turin cathedral.

One of the most controversial relics in the Christian world, it bears the faint image of a man whose body appears to have nail wounds to the wrists and feet.

Some believe it to be a physical link to Jesus of Nazareth. For others, however, it is nothing more than an elaborate forgery.

In 1988, radiocarbon tests on samples of the shroud at the University of Oxford, the University of

Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology dated the cloth to the Middle Ages, between 1260 and 1390.

Those tests have been disputed on the basis that they were contaminated by fibres from cloth used to repair the shroud when it was damaged by fire in the Middle Ages.

More recently, further doubt was cast on its authenticity when Israeli archaeologists uncovered the first known burial shroud in Jerusalem from the time of the Crucifixion.

Its weave and design are completely different from the Turin Shroud, they said.

The Jerusalem shroud has a simple two-way weave – but the twill weave used on the Turin Shroud was introduced more than 1,000 years after Christ lived.




That research was disputed, however, because there was a possibility of contamination from patches of cloth that had been sewn on following a fire in Chambery, France, in 1532
The Resurrection of Christ, 1463-65, fresco by Piero della Francesca: The Vatican - which owns the Turin shroud - shies away from statements over whether it is real or fake, but says it helps to explore the 'darkest mysteries of faith'



Carbon dating tests carried out in 1988 in Oxford, Zurich and Arizona suggested that the shroud was created some time between 1260 and 1390

[Toad]

I've always been pretty skeptical on the shroud. And it still looks like the jury is out.

[American Patriot]

For once, I don't believe this is a hoax or fake.

[Malsua]

I think it may be a real shroud, not a hoax, but not what it is purported to be....i.e. the wrappings of Jesus Christ.

[Backstop]

I'd like to believe it's real.

The Shroud was on public display in 95 or so in Trier Germany.

We all went and got in line about 0800: wife and her parents.

The line to see it was as far as I could see.

I waited an hour, then told them to call me when they were ready to be picked up.

I called the wife at 1600, and they still hadn't even gotten close.

Bummer, because I really wanted to see it.

[American Patriot]

Did Shroud of Turin inspire spread of Christianity?

Written By Stephanie Pappas

Published April 06, 2012

LiveScience

A hoax or a miracle? The Shroud of Turin has inspired this question for centuries. Now, an art historian says this piece of cloth, said to bear the imprint of the crucified body of Jesus Christ, may be something in between.

According to Thomas de Wesselow, formerly of Cambridge University, the controversial shroud is no medieval forgery, as a 1989 attempt at radiocarbon dating suggests. Nor is the strange outline of the body on the fabric a miracle, de Wesselow writes in his new book, "The Sign: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection" (Dutton Adult, 2012). Instead, de Wesselow suggests, the shroud was created by natural chemical processes — and then interpreted by Jesus' followers as a sign of his resurrection.

"People in the past did not view images as just the mundane things that we see them as today. They were potentially alive. They were seen as sources of power," de Wesselow told LiveScience. The image of Jesus found on the shroud would have been seen as a "living double," he said. "It seemed like they had a living double after his death and therefore it was seen as Jesus resurrected."

'It seemed like they had a living double after his death.'

- Thomas de Wesselow, book author

Believing the shroud

As de Wesselow is quick to admit, this idea is only a hypothesis. No one has tested whether a decomposing body could leave an imprint on shroud-style cloth like the one seen on the shroud. A 2003 paper published in the journal Melanoidins in Food and Health, however, posited that chemicals from the body could react with carbohydrates on the cloth, resulting in a browning reaction similar to the one seen on baked bread. (De Wesselow said he knows of no plans to conduct an experiment to discover if this idea really works.)

Perhaps more problematic is the authenticity of the shroud itself. Radiocarbon dating conducted in 1988 estimated the shroud to medieval times, between approximately A.D. 1260 and 1390. This is also the same time period when records of the shroud begin to appear, suggesting a forgery.

Critics have charged that the researchers who dated the shroud accidentally chose a sample of fabric added to the shroud during repairs in the medieval era, skewing the results. That controversy still rages, but de Wesselow is convinced of the shroud's authenticity from an art history approach.

"It's nothing like any other medieval work of art," de Wesselow said. "There's just nothing like it." [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]

Among the anachronisms, de Wesselow said, is the realistic nature of the body outline. No one was painting that realistically in the 14th century, he said. Similarly, the body image is in negative (light areas are dark and vice versa), a style not seen until the advent of photography centuries later, he said.

"From an art historian's point of view, it's completely inexplicable as a work of art of this period," de Wesselow said.

Resurrection: spiritual or physical?

If de Wesselow's belief in the shroud's legitimacy is likely to rub skeptics the wrong way, his mundane explanation of how the image of Jesus came to be is likely to ruffle religious feathers. According to de Wesselow, there's no need to invoke a miracle when simple chemistry could explain the imprint. It's likely, he says, that Jesus' female followers returned to his tomb to finish anointing his body for burial three days after his death. When they lifted the shroud to complete their work, they would have seen the outline of the body and interpreted it as a sign of Jesus' spiritual revival.

From there, de Wesselow suspects, the shroud went on tour around the Holy Land, providing physical proof of the resurrection to Jesus' followers. When the Bible talks about people meeting Jesus post-resurrection, de Wesselow said, what it really means is that they saw the shroud. He cites the early writings of Saint Paul, which focus on a spiritual resurrection, over the gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, which were written later and invoke physical resurrection.

"The original conception of the resurrection was that Jesus was resurrected in a spiritual body, not in his physical body," de Wesselow said.

These ideas are already receiving pushback, though de Wesselow says he's yet to get responses from people who have read his entire book. Noted skeptic Joe Nickell told MSNBC's Alan Boyle that de Wesselow's ideas were "breathtakingly astonishing," and not in a good way; Nickell has argued on multiple occasions that the shroud's spotty historical record and too-perfect image strongly suggest a counterfeit.

On the other end of the religious spectrum, former high-school teacher and Catholic religious speaker David Roemer believes in Jesus' resurrection, but not the shroud's authenticity. The image is too clear and the markings said to be blood aren't smeared as they would be if the cloth had covered a corpse, Roemer told LiveScience.

"When you get an image this detailed, it means it was done by some kind of a human being," Roemer said.

Unlike many "shroudies," as believers are deprecatingly called, Roemer suspects the shroud was deliberately created by Gnostic sects in the first or second century. A common religious explanation for the markings is that a flash of energy or radiation accompanied Christ's resurrection, "burning" his image onto the cloth. [Top 10 Unexplained Phenomena]

If anything is certain about de Wesselow's hypothesis, it's that it is not likely to settle the shroud controversy. Scientific examinations of the delicate cloth are few and far between — and so are disinterested parties. Roemer, for example, recently arrived at a scheduled talk at a Catholic church in New York only to find the talk had been canceled when the priest learned of Roemer's shroud skepticism. (The Catholic Church has no official position on the shroud's authenticity.)

Meanwhile, de Wesselow said, people who aren't driven by faith to accept the cloth as real generally don't care about the shroud at all.

"The intellectual establishment, if you like, is not interested in shroud science," he said. "It regards it as fringe and it's not interested."

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/...#ixzz1rHr3LAoD