Shroud of Turin
Posted on 04/17/2003 10:15:06 PM PDT by green team 1999
Shroud of Turin
Tonight's guest Mark Antonacci will present evidence about the controversial Shroud.
Mark Antonacci , author of Resurrection of the Shroud, says new tests will prove that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.
He also claims that scientific tests can be performed on the Shroud, on blood, pollen, and cloth samples that refute the cloth’s controversial carbon dating.
turn your radios on,at coast to coast tonight 10pm to 2am some stations repeat show until 5am.
One could not. While there are disagreements and controversies over some small areas of text, the Bible, as a historical document, has exceptionally strong accuracy and context for a document which was reproduced by hand in both Greek and Hebrew over and over again before the printing press was invented. It is the most scrutinized text in the history of the world and has shown remarkable consistency in its many forms even though the original manuscripts are nowhere to be found. To have so many copies in so many forms turn up with almost the exact same wording during a historical period where almost all detail was relayed orally rather than by written text, is nothing short of miraculous.
Were there to be hundreds of Shrouds of Turin, it might share the same authenticity but, given it's claim is its uniqueness, that would actually invalidate its particular claim.
The Bible is central to a believer's faith for from what other source are we to understand God's revelation and wisdom? Every ministry I have ever seen which was not based on the premise that the Bible is God's revealed word is ultimately led astray into its own vain pursuits, much like so many denominations that produced good Christians and good works in our grandfathers' day now produces so much liberal pap ("Gay is okay", "God approves of abortion", etc.) as to be apostacy.
Without the Bible you have either a cult of personality or a congregation which makes up their own rules as they go along.
My point is that whether the Shroud is authentic or not, it is not relevant to knowing if the gospel is true. I suspect that if God had wanted us to have irrefutable scientific evidence of Christ's death and resurrection, He would have provided it and preserved it. But then His followers would not be choosing to live by faith, merely by fact. God, in His wisdom, forces us to believe by faith.
While history can support or rebut facts in their context, in can neither validate nor discredit the Christian faith. That's why the Bible is relevant because it is the owners manual for that faith.
I do too. It is an amazing piece of cloth. I'm no scientist so I'm not going to debate the science of it but I suspect that no amount of science is going to dissuade some folks of the Shroud's authenticity much as no amount of evidence would dissuade some people that there was a shooter on the Grassy Knoll. It's become an object of faith to some and I find that misguided in terms of Christian faith. God forces us to accept what we cannot see and cannot prove in order to believe in Him. Were it His intent to prove it, He could have left far more convincing scientific evidence.
I don't doubt, by the way, that just as some believe the Shroud as an article of faith, others with an anti-Christian agenda will seize any scientific evidence against the Shroud as proof that Christianity is a hoax. My point is that the Shroud does not prove either. It's not central to the argument.
One could say the same about the Bible.
(Rom 10:17 NKJV) So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
No, it hasn't. As a friend of the leader of the original STURP research team and as one who has posted a couple of lengthy threads here on his briefings, I think I'm qualified to talk about it a bit more.
Must've been a private showing. ;-)
Seriously, if the Shroud has been outside Turin ever in modern times, I'm not aware of it. I've lived in New Orleans all my life. The Vatican's exhibition at the 1984 fair was very nice, but when you consider even New York in 1964-65 only rated Michelangelo's Pietá, there's no way we'd ever get the Shroud, short of commissioning some Baghdad museum looters to snatch it for us.
This poster was wrong. The shroud is made open for public viewing every 50 years....we went to Milan in 2000 and had hope to travel to Turin but missed it by a month....
Exactly. Although I find the description of the burial linens in John 20:7 as disputing the shroud's authenticity. It seems that Jesus' face was covered in a different linen than his body. I wouldn't think we'd have both body and face on one linen.
That cloth exists, too. The blood on it matches the blood on the shroud.
Haven't heard this one. In fact, quite the opposite.......that it's proportionally "perfect".
" The fingers also seem elongated, and the way that the arms rest is not right for a corpse."
They appear elongated for a very simple reason.......and one that was spotted by a radiologist immediately. The shroud image is, in many ways, what we would call an "X ray image". The fingers look long because you're actually seeing the bones in the fingers. Additionally, once this is pointed out, you can also see the teeth and other internal bone structures. It's a fascinating analysis, actually.
" Also, the way that the back and front images are linked, gives no space for the top of the head. The way that the hair flows on the sides of the elongated face indicate a standing, not lying, figure."
That's not hair flowing on the sides of the face.......it's blood, actually.
"On the other side, I feel that the strongest argument in favor of its authenticity is that the wrists, not the hands, are pierced, and also that the body is naked, rather than covered with a lioncloth. These details are authentic to cruxifiction, but not seen in art works."
True.........but there are far more things, such as:
the image is only visible from 15' away.....pretty tough to paint with a 15' paint brush (and paint was ruled out immediately back in '78); there are coins over the eyes, a different type of coin over each eye; there are literally hundreds of flower petals, leaves, and pollen samples in the image that have been examined by botanical experts, many of which are not only unique to the Middle East.......but are, in fact, unique to an area outside of Jerusalem.....that the man in the image was beaten severely using Roman flagrums......two, not one.......and that one of the men whipping him was more vicious than the other; that every inch of his body except the palms of his hands, his face, and the soles of his feet were severely ravaged by this beating..............etc., etc., etc......
Dr. Tom D'Muhala, the leader of the original STURP team and a friend, gives detailed presentations on this every year at his church (I used to attend the same church, just a few miles up the road). He'll usually take two evenings, a couple of hours or so per evening, and even then......he makes it clear that we're just seeing the barest tip of the iceberg in that much time.
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