The Holy Shroud
Posted on 03/28/2013 7:02:22 AM PDT by NYer
The Holy Shroud
Gian Maria Zaccone *
Rome
Discussing the Shroud without the risk of misinterpretations and dashed expectations is a complex affair. The relic (which is preserved in the Northern Italian city of Turin) has been the focus of deep devotion and huge interest but is also at the centre of a heated debate. This debate is innate to the Shroud itself: the reference to the figure of Christ and his incarnation which is linked to the signum contradictionis.
As is the case with the oldest recorded images which aimed to depict the face of Jesus, true God and true man, the so-called acheiropoieta – icons which are said to have come into existence miraculously and not created by a human painter – the Shroud has been the focus of debates and disagreements ever since its discovery. In a way it is a faithful portrayal of the outcomes and legacies of the thousand-year old question of Christian iconography, spanning eras in which the relationship between religion and society and reason and faith has been through some really rough patches. The Shroud’s religious essence and the form imprinted on the cloth which forms a link with the human sciences, make it exemplary.
The positions adopted in the modern and post modern world in relation to the Shroud, are certainly more complex and varied than in previous eras. Many consider it to be the most important relic marking Christ’s presence on Earth, it containing the real and unique effigy of the Saviour, made even more precious by his blood. Some go dangerously further than this, searching for physical traces of His glorious resurrection on the cloth.
Others underline the importance of an object which is undeniably linked to the Passion of Christ and therefore a unique object from a religious point of view; an object which has enormous pastoral and spiritual potential but is also able to attract the interest of scholars of all disciplines.
Others still, reject it as a more or less old fake which is of no interest whatsoever or, at best, could be worth displaying in a museum dedicated to history’s great tricks.
The positions adopted in relation to the Shroud have necessarily been broken down into categories here but in reality they are easily interwoven, compared and contrasted, proving that the one thing that is certain about the Shroud is that no one is indifferent to it.
In this sense, the scientific research into the Shroud, begun at the start of the century, has contributed to making today’s debate even more fascinating and more heated. This is because although most of this research has not led to any concrete conclusions about how the figure on the Shroud was formed, all studies seem to exclude the possibility of a man-made image, given that the Shroud has been dated back to the medieval period.
Until the end of the Nineteenth century, research into the Holy Shroud had focused above all on the historical and to some extent theological aspects of the relic, but the problem of its so-called “authenticity” – which has been the main focus of scientific research – was limited to scholarly debates which were not of much interest to the wider public.
Historically, it was the devotional aspect of the Shroud that emerged as most important, attracting the interest of ordinary people who travel for miles to attend solemn ostentations. It is not intellectual curiosity in the Shroud’s origins, or their search for material grace that attracts the masses but their drive to search for something – a face, a figure – and their anxiousness to find out something that forms part of the deepest, innermost feelings of the human soul. Mgr. Ghiberti rightly underlined the fact that man’s encounter with the Shroud (especially if he or she is a faithful) is pre-scientific. Surveys carried out on pilgrims who attended the ostensions which took place between 1978 and today reveal that very few of them were drawn to Turin because of the question of the Shroud’s “authenticity”. So this is not a core part of their relationship with the relic. Instead, many were interested in the Shroud as a “sign” that becomes a “mystery” and “speak of violence and injustice,” “an image of peace, a sign of suffering.” But a suffering that goes beyond mere suffering: for believers, meditating on Christ’s death cannot be separated from the joy of Easter and vice versa: the Shroud therefore becomes a “symbol of life and resurrection.”
This is why the Holy Father and the Church in Turin wanted to give all the people of the world the chance to come face to face with the painful image imprinted on the Shroud, leaving the scientific question aside for once; the chance to set their eyes on "the one they have pierced” (John, 19:37), on Holy Saturday, the day of great silence of which the Shroud is an icon. An icon which illustrates the deep reflections of Benedict XVI, who was among the pilgrims to visit the Shroud in 2010.
Like I said: Rub your face with paint or colored powder and wrap a towel around your head, as like a shroud.
Unroll the towel. Look. Does it look like you appear when looking at yourself in a mirror or photograph?
Yeah. It is an image. But it ain't no wrapped-around-anybody's-head shroud.
The Shroud has been dated to at least the first century, and pollen indicates a location near Jerusalem. The image, which is in 3d and no traces of ink, strongly indicates something supernatural caused it. The image contains blood stains in a pattern exactly as would be expected of someone who had been, first severely whipped, and then crucified.
If it isn't the image of Jesus, then who? Some other person who was crucified and then bodily resurrected? Now THAT really would blow the top off of Christianity!
It can never be definitively identified as Jesus. There is a lot of evidence that suggests the two are linked.
Really? Try to do this with any other "painting".
>> A two dimensional painting
> Really? Try to do this with any other “painting”.
Several software vendors offer products that turn a 2D flat image into a 3D computer model or 3D printing.
In any event, the original image on the Turin shroud or on a canvas or on a photographic print was not made by pressing the shroud/canvas/paper against the head/face, but from the perspective of an artist/photographer from a distance.
With regard to puncture wounds in wrists, rather than palms:
(1) The hand couldn't support the weight of the body via a single nail, and
(2) as it turns out, IIRC in Koine Greek, the definition of "hand" included the immediate wrist area with it, rather than associating the wrist with the arm (like we do in our culture).
Thus, the Shroud appears to be logically consistent with what would be expected.
Sauron
I understand that they’ve done it with paintings and, somehow, it does not come out just like the shroud. As for the “pressing” the shroud, the evidence seems to suggest that it was kind of loose, maybe waiting for proper anointing of the body? The best explanation is that the shroud was just laid over the body, no pressing, no wrapping like we read Lazarus was wrapped...
Which is why my faith in Jesus Christ would not be shaken one iota if the Shroud is proven to be a fake nor would it increase my faith if it appears geniune.
Science will never be able to prove that the Shroud is the burial garment of Jesus Christ but it could disprove it.
He did exactly that with the shroud wrapped around him at burial. And even stepped out of the tomb without rolling the stone away, stepping into some ‘other’ where/when that we are not yet privy to. There is ome possibility that he also stepped from Mary’s womb into our air world, but that is grist for another mill.
There are only three options, its a fake, its the image of Christ, or its the image of someone other than Christ. The first can be true and it does not at all affect Christianity. The second affirms Christianity. The third....well...yikes!
We can’t possibly know what science may be able to prove in the future. Do you think Galileo believed man would ever walk on the moon?
Because the skeptics will have to answer the question on WHO is on that shroud.
“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
John 20:25
While it is true that, scientifically, to make a dna link, one feature that stands out is the crown of thorns. However, the blood stains match those of the Sudarium of Oviedo, the head covering placed over the victim's head, like the following image.
Okay, I'll grant you the first point. I should have added "in the foreseeable future" to my statement that science can't prove that the Shroud was Christ's burial garment.
It wouldn't shock me if Galileo believed, given enough time and enough technological innovation, man would walk on the moon one day, despite the seemingly impossible challenges.
I’m sure Galileo imagined all sorts of things, as did others who were so far ahead of their time. My point is mere humans have made discoveries that their ancestors would never have believed could happen. When my grandmother was born, there was no such thing as airplanes, much less the internet. So you just never know.
In fact, the reason it is now universally accepted that Jesus would have been nailed to a cross comes from forensic analysis of the Shroud in the last 30 years, which corrected the historical record.
It was not really until an examination of the shroud showed the punctures through the wrists that historians investigated this.
They found that first off, nailing people to the cross was very rare, They usually were tied to the cross because this method prolonged the length of the suffering, often for several days, which the Romans felt was more effective form of punishment and more effective lesson and deterrent to the people who witnessed the Cruicfiction .
They also found that piercing the wrists was the procedure actually used, not through the hands as has been universally depicted in paintings and sculpture.
The significance of this is that if some medieval forger were to have faked the shroud, the person almost certainly would have painted the piercings as being located in the palms of the hands as was pretty much universally assumed for hundreds of years.
The Shroud’s authenticity or fraudulence has nothing to do with the Truth of Jesus. The best science has been able to do so far is say what the Shroud isn’t. As you said, they’ll never be able to prove it was once wrapped around our Savior...
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