I'm skeptical.
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Posted on 11/20/2009 11:19:02 AM PST by marshmallow
ROME – A Vatican researcher claims a nearly invisible text on the Shroud of Turin proves the authenticity of the artifact revered as Jesus' burial cloth.
The claim made in a new book by historian Barbara Frale drew immediate skepticism from some scientists, who maintain the shroud is a medieval forgery.
Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, said Friday that she used computers to enhance images of faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the shroud.
She asserts the words include the name "Jesus Nazarene" in Greek, proving the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have labeled Jesus a Nazarene without referring to his divinity.
The shroud bears the figure of a crucified man, complete with blood seeping out of nailed hands and feet, and believers say Christ's image was recorded on the linen fibers at the time of his resurrection.
The fragile artifact, owned by the Vatican, is kept locked in a special protective chamber in Turin's cathedral and is rarely shown.
Skeptics point out that radiocarbon dating conducted in 1988 determined it was made in the 13th or 14th century.
While faint letters scattered around the face on the shroud were seen decades ago, serious researchers dismissed them due to the test's results, Frale told The Associated Press.
But when she cut out the words from photos of the shroud and showed them to experts they concurred the writing style was typical of the Middle East in the first century — Jesus' time.
She believes the text was written on a document by a clerk and glued to the shroud over the face so the body could be identified by relatives and buried properly. Metals in the ink used at the time ............
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
bookmarked for further research
I wonder if she has an explanation for the Latin inscription, because that’s actually pretty odd considering the suspected circumstances.
that kind of hurts its credibility for me actually.
Shroud marked for later
FILE - In this Aug. 12, 2000 file photo, The Holy Shroud, a 14 foot-long linen revered by some as the burial cloth of Jesus, is shown at the Cathedral of Turin, Italy. A Vatican researcher claims a nearly invisible text on the Shroud of Turin proves the authenticity of the artifact revered as Jesus' burial cloth. The claim made in a new book by historian Barbara Frale drew immediate skepticism from some scientists, who maintain the shroud is a medieval forgery. Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, said Friday that she used computers to enhance images of faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the shroud.
The only credibility I see to challenge here is the author of the claim... I see no credible evidence. The resolution of the image leaves little to be found. Also the STURP team has analyzed the image, especially the facial image, using microxrayspectrometry and did not find the "metals" of the inks she theorizes have been "transferred" to a crossword like pattern of aramaic letters across the face of the image. I simply find this hard to believe that you can even see such characters. I have not heard of them before this in any of the literature.
Dr Frale said that many of the letters were missing, with Jesus for example referred to as "(I)esou(s) Nnazarennos" and only the "iber" of "Tiberiou" surviving. Her reconstruction, however, suggested that the certificate read: "In the year 16 of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius Jesus the Nazarene, taken down in the early evening after having been condemned to death by a Roman judge because he was found guilty by a Hebrew authority, is hereby sent for burial with the obligation of being consigned to his family only after one full year". It ends "signed by" but the signature has not survived.Dr Frale said that the use of three languages was consistent with the polyglot nature of a community of Greek-speaking Jews in a Roman colony. Best known for her studies of the Knights Templar, who she claims at one stage preserved the shroud, she said what she had deciphered was "the death sentence on a man called Jesus the Nazarene. If that man was also Christ the Son of God it is beyond my job to establish. I did not set out to demonstrate the truth of faith. I am a Catholic, but all my teachers have been atheists or agnostics, and the only believer among them was a Jew. I forced myself to work on this as I would have done on any other archaeological find."
Death certificate is imprinted on the Shroud of Turin, says Vatican scholar
so you believe in the Shroud’s authenticity?
I have my doubts too. Although in looking intensely at this photo, I seem to see in the upper left hand corner, three or four Aramaic letters. Faint, and could be optical illusion.
I have the utmost respect for the Vatican’s experts/scholars.
I know this might be seen as subversive. But the whole basis of Christianity is based upon FAITH. “By faith alone,,”. The whole medieval-style search for relics,,is basically at odds with the very concept of faith. Faith doesn’t need such temporal relics. Holy Grails, Splinters of the cross, Shrouds,, all prove nothing.
The shroud just has no value, not a whit,, except as medieval art and religious art. The problem is that its been presented as some sort of proof of divinity. Like a radioactive aura of Christ maybe made the image.
A Christian should just appreciate it fully, enjoy it, and not be upset if science proves it is clearly a fraud. The person who made it meant it to honor Christ, maybe thats enough.
bookmark
Thanks for the ping!
The evidence is that it is far older than the 14th century attribution of the 1988 Carbon Dating... which has been proved to have been invalidated in peer reviewed and duplicated science. Although the C14 test was shown to have been an accurate dating of what was tested, the test was invalid because the sampling protocols were invalid. The Shroud is Linen made of Flax; there is no cotton in it. The sample that was tested in 1988 has a major component of cotton. Ergo, the sample that was tested was not same material as the shroud itself. What was tested has been proved to have been a 16th century patch incorporating both 16th Century cotton patch (~40-60%) material interwoven with original Linen Shroud (60-40%) material which when combined resulted in a 13-14th century date proportional to the mixture in the of new to original material in the part of the sample was dated.
There are depictions of the Shroud prior to the earliest possible date from the Carbon test. One from the 11th Century, 100 years before the earliest C14 date. A written description of the Shroud from the 10th Century, the sermon of Gregorius Refendarius, delivered on August 14, 944, survives that describes the cloth depicting the body of Christ with its blood stained wounds. The Sudarium of Oviedo, the sweat cloth that covered the head of Jesus, with a provenance from at least the sixth Century, with 78 points of congruence in matching blood stains of a similar blood typle. A 2nd Century poem describing a double image called the Hymn of the Pearl from the Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas describes the burial garment of Jesus... all attest to the authenticity of something with an image on it associated with Jesus' death and burial surviving from the 1st Century.
In my opinion, this is beyond the purview of science which has very little jurisdiction here.
Jesus' burial shroud, wherever it is, was witness to an event unprecedented in human history; the resurrection of a dead body. What happens when someone (in this case the Son of God) rises from the dead? Is radiation given out in the form of light??..........heat??.......any other form of radiation?? We just don't know.
Science depends and is based on the laws of nature which operate under normal circumstances but when those laws are suspended, as they are when a dead body comes to life, science is really out of its depth. There is no precedent for such a thing and without scientific precedent, science can really give nothing more than an opinion.
ignoring the Biblical account that Jesus was NOT left on the cross - and that Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man and High Priest with considerable influence and quite probably Jesus' uncle, petitioned Pilate for the body for burial.
Supposedly,only kin could so be granted such a request - and with Joseph having buried Jesus in his own tomb points to kinship as well.
In addition, if it says "Jesus the Nazarene" - not Jesus of Nazareth - to me, that makes more sense as Jesus was from the Nazarene Sect, a Sect of the Essenes - a sect whose priests wore their hair in a long braid down the back, as in the Shroud...
As to languages, within 3 miles of Nazareth, was the spectacular Roman city of Sepphoris, which had been destroyed but rebuilt in Jesus' lifetime. On a hill, easily seen from Nazareth, the gleaming white marbled city shone in the sun - "shining city on a hill."
Sepphoris was at a crossroads, a hub of travel routes from many countries...cosmopolitan, with the inhabitants speaking more Greek than Arabic, as well as Latin. (Mosaic floors still existing give a hint at the richly cultural city - the most famous of the mosaics is "The Mona Lisa of Galilee
It has been posited that Jesus, with His father, Joseph - who was more than a mere carpenter, but a builder - may well have found plenty of work in the years of the rebuilding of the city. As well, such a city and such a location where the people of many countries passed through, would suppose a much more sophisticated area that Jesus grew up in than the traditional little backwater of poor, uneducated peasants.
Maybe this is why Sepphoris is ignored, as if it never existed, by most religions? Inconvenient?
I rather imagine that Jesus, Himself, spoke Greek and well as Arabic...and Latin? He was not an ignorant, unschooled peasant.
Faith is enough, however, we have been created in the image of our maker, so we are naturally curious about our maker.
I have always felt that when mankind advances so far that we can scientifically prove the existence of God, that it will be the moment we join him.
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