If you read nothing else about the Shroud, read this:
Catholic Ping - please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
Posted on 01/26/2005 10:37:01 PM PST by neverdem
The Shroud of Turin is much older than the medieval date that modern science has affixed to it and could be old enough to have been the burial wrapping of Jesus, a new analysis concludes.
Since 1988, most scientists have confidently concluded that it was the work of a medieval artist, because carbon dating had placed the production of the fabric between 1260 and 1390.
In an article this month in the journal Thermochimica Acta, Dr. Raymond N. Rogers, a chemist retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, said the carbon dating test was valid but that the piece tested was about the size of a postage stamp and came from a portion that had been patched.
"We're darned sure that part of the cloth was not original Shroud of Turin cloth," he said, adding that threads from the main part of the shroud were pure linen, which is spun from flax.
The threads in the patched portion contained cotton as well and had been dyed to match.
From other tests, he estimated that the shroud was between 1,300 and 3,000 years old.
bump for later reading
?......4 1/2 Billion years old?
ping.
Eternal....Alpha and Omega.
absolute crap. Rodgers is a shroud apologist going way back.
I am part of the Christian community that says, "Who cares?" What part does a piece of clothe play in my salvation?
Shroud of Turin in the New York Times PING!
Gee, I wonder if we should believe anything they print???
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If you read nothing else about the Shroud, read this:
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Shroud ping!
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This was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
Thermochimica Acta (Volume 425 Issue 1-2, pages 189-194, by Raymond N. Rogers, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California) - The article is available on Elsevier BV's ScienceDirect® online information site.
The science is sound. His conclusions have passed the review process.
The C14 test samples were flawed and that invalidates the test. While the test was accurate, it dated material that was added to the Shroud in about 1560 mixed with original shroud material. The resulting test reports ranged OUTSIDE the degree of confidence... and those aberant results are explicable when 16th Century linen is mixed with original linen in the OBSERVED ratio ONLY if the original is of 1st Century Provenance. The dates reported by the three C14 labs are an examples of unknown Garbage In, accurate Garbage out.
The lignin derivative vanillin tests are also sound... It is based on observed vanllin content in fabrics of known provenances and is quite accurate in dating linen and cotten fabrics up to 1300 years old. Medieval linen (c 600 years old) tests positive for vanillin as do all other plant based fabrics of similar age... but fabrics that are older than 1300 years do not. The ORIGINAL Shroud threads test negative for vanillin... ergo, they are older than 1300 years.
"absolute"
I guess we not talking about evolution then are we... Doesn't matter if the guy is pro or con on the Shroud. What matters is, if the science stinks and a fraud or even a hoax was committed.
Why was not two tests run on the two different materials. By the way whether the Shroud is the real thing or not does not change who Christ was, is and will be.
Your salvation is your concern. Good luck. It's the history and science that interests me and a few others.
IT'S been called the longest-running hoax in history - an 800-year-old religious riddle that's taken in popes, scientists and believers from all faiths.
The Turin Shroud has been either worshipped as divine proof that Christ was resurrected from the grave or dismissed as a fraud created by medieval forgers.
But new evidence suggests the shroud might be genuine after all.
As Mel Gibson's film The Passion Of The Christ rekindles interest in Jesus, stitching on the shroud which could have been created only during the messiah's lifetime has been uncovered.
At the same time, tests from 1988 that dated the shroud to between 1260 and 1390 have been thrown into doubt. Swedish textiles expert Dr Mechthild Flury-Lemberg, who discovered the seam at the back of the cloth during a restoration project, says: "There have been attempts to date the shroud from looking at the age of the material, but the style of sewing is the biggest clue.
"It belongs firmly to a style seen in the first century AD or before."
Her findings are being hailed as the most significant since 1988, when scientists controversially carbon-dated the 14ft-long cloth to medieval times, more than 1,000 years after Jesus died.
Yet experts now say the team unwittingly used cloth that had been added during a 16th-century restoration and it could have been contaminated from handling.
Mark Guscin, of the British Society for the Turin Shroud, says: "The discovery of the stitching along with doubt about the carbon-dating all add to the mountain of evidence suggesting this was probably the shroud Jesus was buried in. "Scientists have been happy to dismiss it as a fake, but they have never been able to answer the central question of how the image of that man got on to the cloth."
Barrie Schwortz, who in 1978 took part in the first scientific examination of the shroud, says: "I was a cynic before I saw it, but I am now convinced this is the cloth that wrapped Jesus of Nazareth after he was crucified." THE history of the cloth - which bears the ghostly image of a bearded man - is steeped in mystery.
The first documented reference was in 1357, when it was displayed in a church in Lirey, France. The cloth astonished Christians as it showed a man wearing a crown of thorns and bearing wounds on his front, back and right-hand side. He also had a wrist wound, which confused some pilgrims who thought Jesus was nailed to the cross through his hands. Scientists have since discovered the wrists were used as the hands could not support the body's weight.
Before it arrived in France, it is thought the shroud was known as the Edessa burial sheet, given to King Abgar V by one of Jesus's disciples.
For the next 1,200 years it was kept hidden in the Iraqi city, brought out only for religious festivals. In 944 it is thought to have turned up in Constantinople, Turkey, before being stolen by the French knight Geoffrey de Charny during the Fourth Crusades.
It soon became Europe's most-revered religious artefact, although it was scorched in a fire in 1532. In 1578 it was moved to Turin in northern Italy and was frequently paraded through the streets to huge crowds.
Yet while the shroud attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims when it goes on display, it was not photographed until 1898. The photographer, Secondo Pia, was amazed at the incredible depth and detail revealed on the negative. There were even rumours that the shroud had healing qualities after the British philanthropist Leonard Cheshire took a disabled girl to see it in 1955. After being given permission to touch it, 10-year-old Josephine Woollam made a full recovery.
But it wasn't until 1978 that scientists were allowed to examine the shroud for the first time. The Shroud of Turin Research Project spent 120 hours examining the cloth in minute detail but was unable to explain how the image had got there. Barrie Schwortz, the project's photographer, says: "We did absolutely every test there was to try to find out how that image had got there. "We used X-rays, ultra-violet light, spectral imaging and photographed every inch of it in the most minute detail, but we still couldn't come up with any answers.
"We weren't a bunch of amateurs. We had scientists who had worked on the first atomic bomb and the space programme, yet we still couldn't say how the image got there. The only things we could say was what it isn't: that it isn't a photograph and it wasn't a painting.
"It's clear that there has been a direct contact between the shroud and a body, which explains certain features such as the blood, but science just doesn't have an answer of how the image of that body got on to it."
A SECOND study was carried out in 1988, when scientists cut a sliver from the edge of the shroud and subjected it to carbon-dating.
Carbon has a fixed rate of decay, which means that it is possible to accurately measure when the plant materials that formed the basis of the cloth were harvested.
The announcement that the shroud was a fake was made on October 13, 1988, at the British Museum. Scientists compared those who still thought the shroud was authentic to flat-earthers.
It led to the humiliating spectacle of the then Cardinal of Turin, Anastasio Alberto Ballestrero, admitting the garment was a hoax.
The Catholic Church also accepted the scientists' findings - an embarrassing admission given that Pope John Paul II had kissed the shroud eight years earlier.
But experts now say the carbon-dating results are wrong. Ian Wilson, co-author of The Turin Shroud: Unshrouding The Mystery, says they were flawed from the moment the sample was taken.
He says: "What I found quite incredible was that when they had all the scientists there and ready to go, an argument started about where the sample would come from.
"This went on for some considerable time before a very bad decision was made that the cutting would come from a corner that we know was used for holding up the shroud and which would have been more contaminated than anywhere else."
Marc Guscin, author of Burial Cloths Of Christ, believes the most compelling evidence for the shroud's authenticity comes from a small, blood-soaked cloth kept in a cathedral in Oviedo, northern Spain.
The Sudarium is believed to have been used to cover Jesus's head after he died and, unlike the shroud, its history has been traced back to the first century. It contains blood from the rare AB group found on the shroud.
Mark says: "Laboratory tests have shown that these two cloths were used on the same body.
"The fact that the Sudarium has been revered for so long suggests it must have held special significance for people. Everything points towards this cloth being used on the body of Jesus of Nazareth."
Yet despite the latest discoveries, there are still many sceptics.
Professor Stephen Mattingly, from the University of Texas, says the image could have been created by bacteria which flourish on the skin after death. "This is not a miracle," he says. "It's a physical object, so there has to be a scientific explanation. With the right conditions, it could happen to anyone. We could all make our own Turin Shroud." Another theory, put forward by South African professor Nicholas Allen, is that the image was an early form of photography.
However fierce the controversy, the shroud is still a crowd-puller. When it last went on display in 2000, more than three million people saw it. Many more visitors are expected when it next goes on show in 2025. Mark believes the argument will rage on. He says: "The debate will go on and on because nobody can prove one way or another if this was the shroud that covered the body of Jesus. There simply isn't a scientific test of 'Christness'. "But there are lots of pointers to suggest it was."
Also google "Mandyllion" - to find out about the well-documented history of the "Shroud of Turin", whihc was kept in Constantinople and displayed to worshippers at the Hagia Sophia periodically for centuries - before it disappeared (aka rescued from the oncoming Turks and taken to Italy).
Amazing how this obvious connection is missed by all those who say the Shroud "appeared" in the 15 century.
Wrong. The "Shroud" and the "Mandyllion" are one and the same.
The Sudarium corroborates its age and authenticity, as do pollen studies which prove that while the Sudarium made its way to Spain from the Holy Land via North Africa, the Mandyllion (Shroud of Turin) made its was from the Holy Land through Anatolia (to Constantinople) and then to Italy.
The evidence is there for all who would open their eyes and "connect the dots".
This is where it get's really good...
You care or you wouldn't have read it.
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