Posted on 04/10/2010 12:37:32 PM PDT by NYer
Archbishop of Turin, Cardinal Severino Poletto, stands in front of the Holy Shroud on Saturday.
The Shroud of Turin, believed by many Christians to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, went on public display Saturday for the first time in a decade.
Over the next six weeks, about two million people are expected to view the linen bearing the faded image of a bearded man.
The faded image of a bearded man appears on the shroud, a 4.3-metre-long linen revered by some as the burial cloth of Jesus.
>Each visitor will be allowed five minutes to stand before the bulletproof, climate-controlled case containing the cloth inside northern Italy's Turin Cathedral, where it has been kept for 500 years. In that time, the public has been allowed to view it on only five different occasions. The last time was in November, 1998.
The shroud was discovered in the French city of Troyes in the mid-14th century. It underwent a major cleaning and restoration in 2002.
Restorers removed 30 patches sewn on by nuns in 1534, two years after the cloth was damaged in a fire.
Bruno Barberis, head of the international centre on the shroud, said no one has yet been able to explain how the image on the cloth was formed.
"We are practically sure that it is the image left by a human corpse, not a painting or an image obtained in some other human way," he said.
Carbon dating in 1988 claimed the image of the man could not be that of Jesus because the shroud was medieval. But many have rejected that result and want further scientific tests to be carried out.
Pope Benedict XVI will visit Turin on May 2 to pray before the 4.3-metre-long, one-metre-wide shroud.
Thanks for the ping. I wonder if they are going to take any samples this time.
Thanks for the ping!
I haven't heard that any scientific examination is scheduled
I was able recently to catch a part of the History Channel's "Face of Jesus" show.
It was very impressive, and I especially noted how they addressed the major concern I've expressed here -- in my eyes, the Shroud Image does not "look Jewish" enough.
Well, their "real face of Jesus" certainly DID look "Jewish enough" to me.
And they explained in great detail how they, so to speak, reverse engineered from the image that we SEE to the face which produced it.
So, point is, the face we see on the Shroud is not itself the "face of Jesus," but rather was produced by another face which looks very much like I would have expected.
They were also careful to point out that the Shroud can never be "proved" authentic scientifically, and that the Church does NOT require belief in the Shroud as an article of faith.
The most science can do is suggest stronger or weaker probabilities.
The Church merely points to the evidence which exists and says, "you decide."
If the cloth is definitively dated 1st Century, well, that would make the probabilities much stronger, imho.
Thanks. I wish they would take samples, from the original cloth.
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