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 1st 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
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