The linen has only been put on display five times in the last century
Posted on 05/31/2008 5:45:58 AM PDT by NYer
The Vatican keeps the 14ft by 4ft piece of linen, believed by some to be the death shroud of Jesus, in an aluminium case built by an Italian aerospace company to shut out all light, air and humidity.
The case is filled with Argon gas in order to prevent bacteria from eating the material.
However, the success of the exhibition of Padre Pio’s remains in Puglia has convinced the Vatican to bring forward the next public showing of the shroud from 2025 to the year after next.
The linen has only been put on display five times in the last century and the last time it was exhibited, in 2000, over half a million visitors arrived in Turin in two months.
The exhibition will coincide with a new set of scientific tests on the Shroud in order to verify its age. Professor Christopher Ramsey, the head of Oxford University’s Radiocarbon Accelerator unit, first dated the Shroud to between 1260 and 1390 in tests conducted 20 years ago.
However, he has agreed to refresh his analysis after academics suggested that the presence of carbon monoxide in the material could have given a misleading result.
Believers think the Shroud miraculously shows the face and body of Jesus after crucifixion. Tests by John Jackson, a professor at the University of Colorado proved the image on the Shroud had not been painted, dyed or stained.
An project to photograph the Shroud has also been recently completed. A 12.8 billion pixel image of the linen was made after the Vatican asked for a detailed reproduction to be made for scholars to scrutinise.
Mauro Gavinelli, who supervised the project, said 1,600 photographs had been stitched together, and said the result was like “looking at the Shroud through a microscope”.
Gotta thank The Telegraph for giving us advance notice :-)
What does the (open) mean? I have seen it on many posts and have yet to figure it out.
There’s a blatant fraud to the shroud. It can never be proved to be Jesus’.
look at how closely the image on the shroud lines up with this ancient icon of Jesus
http://www.shroudofturin4journalists.com/pantocrator.htm
The latest scientific evidence, according to the above, says that this is not the shroud of Jesus. There is a disclaimer after that testing by some who claim that the testing was not done in a controlled way.
However, they're asking the same guy to do the testing????
The bottom line is that skeptics are supported in their skepticism and proponents have a fallback argument due to the questioned methodology.
I couldn’t possibly be less impressed by a web site. Yes, certain features line up... as they do with ALL human beings.
For instance: Sure, the icon also has a long nose; most icons have long noses; many Jews have long noses. But the icons nose is much narrower, and lacks the bump in the middle, which is very characteristic of shroud. S o what do the two noses have in common? O my! They’re both in the middle of the face!
>> However, they’re asking the same guy to do the testing???? <<
Yes. If they asked someone different, people would suggest they simply found someone inclined to give a positive result. By having the same researcher conduct the experiment again, they ensure a well-respected outcome.
I suppose. However, I imagine there are many respected scientific labs out there.
obtained by Ramsey in 1988 is suspect. That admission comes from Ramsey himself and many others have disputed his testing and results.
Or maybe two or more that could carry out blind analysis with after the fact comparison for similarities?
Ping
Point it out to us.
If he ( Ramsey ) even questions his own results, then all of his testing is in doubt.
Read "Turin Shroud" by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince (1994) isbn 0-06-017224-X. They make the claim that the Shroud is actually the world's first photograph, possibly done by daVinci, the only one smart enough to figure out a way of creating it. I read the book because, while not a Believer, I thought the claim preposterous.
However, they bring out the fact that capturing an image on skin or cloth was well known as far back as Roman times, but that the image could never be fixed - it faded after a while. daVinci came up with a method (think of writing in lemon juice and then heating it to reveal the writing - same "scorching" effect).
They also brought out points I missed or were unaware of: If it was a burial shroud, why didn't the top of the head leave an impression? Instead the front and back are hinged. In the chapter "Getting the Measure of Shroudman" they claim that the head is a seperate image (a solid line of demarcation between it and the body that can't be explained by the cloth being folded under the chin) and is much brighter than the body, indicating a seperate application. The head is too small proportionally - the usual ratio of head to height ranging from 1.75 to 1.85 but the Shroud's proportion is 1.87 on the front and 1.92 on the back. Also, the front image measures 203cm (6'8") and the back 208cm (6'10"). A miracle indeed.
They were able to replicate the way the image was created by capturing an image on cloth treated with egg white and chemicals of the daVinci period, then "fixing" it by exposing it to heat.
I ended up thinking it made more sense than anything else I had read (a lot) about the subject. They also gave interesting insights on how the "Shroudies" (believers) sidetrack info that doesn't agree with their theories. Nothing new there, but it does cast suspicion on the "open-mindedness" of some who say the Shroud is real. Right now, I'm thinking it's a fantastic artifact - the world's first photograph, about 400 years before Daguerre.
At the end, the authors ask any college photographic department to try their method and see if their results can be replicated. Sounds like something neat students specializing in photography could do.
That’s a very good idea, D2.
I am no expert on the shroud. I do think that the evidence at this point appears to be at a standoff based on the test mentioned in the article.
Since another test is to be carried out, I suppose that we’ll eventually get more data.
I like Delta 21’s suggestion of having 2 independent labs conduct separate tests and then comparing results. That seems pretty fair.
I don’t suppose anyone’s faith is based on the authenticity or lack of authenticity of a cloth locked up in someone’s vault someplace.
How did it last from A.D. 33 to the Middle Ages?
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