Outline of items updating what is known concerning the

                              SHROUD OF TURIN

 

1960. Request made to study shroud.  Rejected.

1970  Request again made…asking changed.  Rejected

1978  Request accepted. Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP)  formed. 33 Scientists selected – 72 crates of interments,  (35 tons) taken to study shroud.  120 hours given for study. (5 days). Those who study the Shroud are called “sindonogolists.”

Led by John Jackson, PhD in Physics.  Wife is an orthodox Jew. She converted to the Christian faith after the study.

History.   Positively traced to 1337 A.D.

                  First known showing  in Lirey France in the house of

                  Geofrey de Charny.  He was ordered to stop showing the Shroud.   

                   1449 A.D. His granddaughter displayed it.  

                  Shroud declared  a  fraud by local Bishop  Again forbidden for it to be shown.

SHROUD  measures 3 ½ feet by 14 feet. It was under and over the body. Body was crucified and unwashed.  Body was 5’10 and about 175 lbs.  Ethnologists identified the body as a Semite, features of a Jew. Body unclothed, suffered a violent death.

   Shroud is linen. Surprise was that microscopic bits of cotton found in the linen. Cotton was unknown  in Europe in the middle ages. Conclusion –Shroud woven on loom on which cotton cloth had been woven before shroud was loomed.  Cotton was common in Palestine in first century.

  A Roman Flagrum (whip) was used to beat body.  120 wounds identified on the body.

  (Concluded – two men, one standing on either side, one taller than the other, and one swung harder than the other.  Wounds found from head to ankles.)

  Multiple puncture wounds on head.  Facial hair had been pulled out.

  Left eye swollen shut. Contusions found on chin and face. Abrasions on right shoulder, cuts on both knees. Left septum violently torn from face, nose broken. (Conclusion – a fall taken without protection self by hands.)

   Spikes in wrist of body, not in the palm of hands per artists have shown then and now, rather spikes through wrists.

  (Dr. Pierre Barbet in 1915 experimented with corpses. He crucified dead bodies, and found that the spikes in palms ripped out of the hands because they could not hold weight of a body.)

 Body in Shroud had been crucified with the spikes through the wrists which would hold the weight of the body.

  Right side of torso a wound – 3/4” long 7/16” wide – the measurements of a Roman Lancea –which had a leaf shaped blade of these same dimensions. No blood pumped out of wound of heart, body already dead.

  Legs not broken.

CARBON DATING Tests done in 1988.  Seven samples asked for from various specified spots in the Shroud.  Three samples authorized, all from same part of the cloth. Three different labs did the testing. Result all said Shroud was from the middle ages.

Time magazine:  “It is obviously within the realm of possibility that the radiocarbon test on the Shroud were faulty….questions regarding the typicality of the sample swatch cannot be summarily dismissed.”

David Van Biema, “Science and the Shroud,”  Time Magazine              April 20, 1988 Page 61

 

  Noted that individual linen threads are dehydrated, which produces the yellow tint which is two or three fibrils deep. (each thread is 200 fibrils deep or .005 inches thick) 

  Traces of pigment found on Shroud. (Some conclude this was from paintings put up against the Shroud in order to receive a blessing.)  No image on back side.

  3D image produced.  No duplicates effect of this by any other painting to date.

Dr. Alan Whanger, Prof at Duke Medical Center: “It takes 14 points of congruence to prove the identity of fingerprints in a court of law. The shroud contain more than 250 points of congruence”  P 172  James Kennedy. Christ’s Passion.

  1898 Secundo Pia, photographer, first time by using a state of the art at that time, using a glass negative, saw a positive picture on Shroud.

  No indication on the Shroud of brush work…color is completely directionless.

  No capillary flow.  First report, it was not blood on the Shroud, but it has been confirmed since as human blood.

  Shroud most often had been folded so only the face shown.

   Rigor mortis had already set in. 

The Roman Catholic Church took position and ownership of the Shroud in 1983

To be noted:

  Dye used to hide repaired portions of Shroud after the fire (1532) was Madder root dye which matched the brown of adjacent area.   It was noted that the Matter root die was not found anywhere else on the Shroud.

 ( A sealed tomb was opened in Jerusalem, 12/17/2009 which had never been undisturbed or contaminated. Opening was by National Geographic.  Of the thousands of first century tombs opened, this is the only one in which a body has been found that was covered with a shroud. Carbon 14 tests confirmed it was from the 1^st Century. The body was so well preserved as the tomb was sealed that hair tested DNA indicated the person had leprosy.  (Conclusion, no one volunteered to wash and prepare the body for burial beyond covering with a shroud.)

  Dr. Mare Antonacci highlighted his problems with C 14 tests by sending recently living items for tests, with a number of dates given in response as being ancient or in the future.

  William Meacham warned before the C 14 dating of 1988 to not take the tests too seriously.  “There seems to be an unhealthy consensus approaching the level of dogma among both scientists and lay commentators that C 14 dating will settle the issue once and for all time.”  He points out that archaeologists and geologists view contamination as a very serious problem with any item tested.

  Most artifacts to be dated have been buried in one spot for thousands of years and when recovered, they are then taken directly to the laboratory. But the Shroud of Turin has been in contact with oils, wax, soaps, paints, ointments, open wounds, saliva, sweat, pollens, flowers and organic carbon compounds including microscopic fungi, bacteria and insect debris.

  Seeds on the Shroud were of great interest.  Those who study seeds and spores, are called Polynologist.  An Israeli, Uri Bareech in 1998 published his study of seeds found on the Shroud. Twenty eight or so found only in France, 264 unique to Turkey, and  2600 small marks identified as Pistacia Atlantica, referred to in the Bible as Terebinth a common flower. 

  Closing quote, which may or may not have anything to do with the Shroud of Turin, but is a personal point of faith which is the real issue in the Christian faith. 

  Chuck Colson in his book “Dangerous Grace” begins with these words.

   “The essence of Christianity is summed up in one mind boggling sentence: Jesus Christ is God (John 10:30).  Not just part of God…or sent by God…or related to God He is God.

“The more I grappled with these words, the more they exploded a lot of comfortable old notions I had floated through life with.  C. S. Lewis put it bluntly: “For Christ to have talked as He talked, lived as He lived, died as He died, He was either God or a raving lunatic.”   P.1