Free Republic

To believers it is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, miraculously marked with his image. But the Turin shroud was widely dismissed as a hoax in 1988 when scientific tests found it could not be more than 1,000 years old. Now one of the scientists who first studied 12 foot-long sheet has spoken - from beyond the grave - of how he came to believe that it could be genuine. A video made shortly before Raymond Rogers died in 2005 has been discovered, in which the U.S. chemist reveals his own tests show the relic to be much older -...

New evidence suggests the Turin Shroud could have been the cloth in which Jesus was buried, as experiments that concluded it was a medieval fake were flawed. Radio carbon dating carried out in 1988 was performed on an area of the relic that was repaired in the 16th century, according to Ray Rogers, who helped lead the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STRP). At the time he argued firmly that the shroud, which bears a Christlike image, was a clever forgery. snip "Sue and Joe were right. The worst possible sample for carbon dating was taken. "It consisted of different...

Medieval knights hid and secretly venerated The Holy Shroud of Turin for more than 100 years after the Crusades, the Vatican said today in an announcement that appeared to solve the mystery of the relic’s missing years. The Knights Templar, an order which was suppressed and disbanded for alleged heresy, took care of the linen cloth, which bears the image of a man with a beard, long hair and the wounds of crucifixion, according to Vatican researchers. The Shroud, which is kept in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral, has long been revered as the shroud in which Jesus was...

Benedict XVI’s announcement will allow millions of people to see the linen cloth that according to tradition was wrapped around the body of Jesus after his death, showing that “mysterious Face, which silently speaks to the hearts of men, inviting them to see in it the face of God.” Vatican City (AsiaNews) – For 40 days in the spring of 2010 it will be possible to see the Shroud of Turin which, according to tradition, is the cloth in which the body of Jesus was wrapped after his death and which shows the marks of the Passion and Crucifixion as...

As a child in Chicago in the early 1950s, I watched my first TV special about the Shroud of Turin---shown there on Easter Sunday. I was amazed by the mysterious linen cloth, when all we really knew was that it had the shocking image of a crucified man complete with what appeared to be blood stains and bruise marks, that the image seemed to be almost a photographic negative, and that the provenance of the Shroud was highly questionable. After all, a Bishop had written in 1389 that the Shroud was just a painting and that he knew the unnamed...

The Shroud of Turin is a controversial topic. There have been many documentaries aired on the shroud, but few if any have risen to the coherence and intellectual integrity of Unwrapping the Shroud:New Evidence which was aired on December 14, 2008 at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the Discovery Channel. It was re-aired on December 20th with some minor corrections. I've been personally interested in the shroud for many years, almost half a century, and in that time I've seen many shroud documentaries and have quite a few of them in the form of video cassettes and DVDs. Shroud...

The Shroud of Turin is one of the great enduring mysteries of all time, with its authenticity debated for years. Many believe it's the burial cloth of Jesus and the only physical link to Him, while others maintain that it is nothing more than an elaborate hoax. In fact, in 1988, a team of scientists radiocarbon dated the Shroud and concluded it was fake, dating back to the Middle Ages (1290-1360), long after Jesus was crucified. And that's where the story stood, unchallenged -- until now. Discovery Channel's one-hour original special UNWRAPPING THE SHROUD: NEW EVIDENCE attempts to unravel the...

INTRODUCTION: In 1978, a team of scientific researchers (STURP: Shroud of Turin Research Project) was allowed for the first time to carry out a scientific comprehensive study of the Turin Shroud. Visual examination, macro and microphotographies, X-Ray radiographies; IR, visible and UV reflectance spectroscopy and photographs and UV-Vis fluorescence studies were conducted in situ. 32 surface samples (5 cm2 each) were obtained from specific locations using inert, non-reactive pure hydrocarbon sticky tapes for later examination. The results of the studies were published in different peer-reviewed scientific journals in the following years. In 1981, STURP officially concluded that: «No pigments, paints,...

Abstract The Sudarium of Oviedo has been studied intensively with a petrographic (polarizing) microscope. It is composed of pure flax fibers, and they show the same characteristics as the Shroud of Turin. The technology used to prepare the linen cloth appears to be identical to that described for Roman times by Pliny the Elder (Natural History XIX, 3, 16-18). Flax fibers are mostly crystalline cellulose, and the crystals have a fibrillar structure. The fibers are birefringent between crossed polarizers; however, the birefringence changes depending on the past history of the material. Perfect, new flax fibers show extinction (the segments between...

I became involved with the analytical aspect of the Shroud when Ray Rogers asked me for help in conducting certain Shroud image formation studies. He needed an alpha-particle source to complete investigation of possible image formation processes and some radiochemical calculations on the depth of penetration of an emitted alpha-particle into flax fibers. I provided him with both and he asked further for X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) measurements on a special sample he termed a “spliced thread” or R1 sample. The XPS measurements were made and he was quite excited at the results because they indicated the two ends of...

PRESS RELEASE: Los Alamos National Laboratory team of scientists prove carbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Turin wrong COLUMBUS, Ohio, August 15 — In his presentation today at The Ohio State University’s Blackwell Center, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) chemist, Robert Villarreal, disclosed startling new findings proving that the sample of material used in 1988 to Carbon-14 (C-14) date the Shroud of Turin, which categorized the cloth as a medieval fake, could not have been from the original linen cloth because it was cotton. According to Villarreal, who lead the LANL team working on the project, thread samples they...

Turin shroud controversy envelops pair The tie that binds John and Rebecca Jackson is about 4 feet by 14 feet, woven of herringbone twill linen. It once led to their romance; years later, it dominates their thoughts and fills their conversations. By DeeDee Correll Los Angeles Times COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The tie that binds John and Rebecca Jackson is about 4 feet by 14 feet, woven of herringbone twill linen. It once led to their romance; years later, it dominates their thoughts and fills their conversations. It brought Rebecca, an Orthodox Jew, to the Roman Catholic Church; it led...

There exist today multiple arguments of a historical/archaeological nature which conclude that the Shroud of Turin is older than the medieval date ascribed to it by radiocarbon dating in 1988. This has led to the proposal of various hypotheses to explain this apparent discrepancy. One hypothesis is that the linen sample used in the radiocarbon dating actually came from a medieval “re-weave”. While this hypothesis has been argued on the basis of indirect chemistry, it can be discounted on the basis of evident bandings in the 1978 radiographs and transmitted light images of STURP. These data photographs show clearly that...

As you may have noticed, the Shroud has been in the news a great deal in the past few months. Although it is typically in the news during the Lenten season each year, this recent publicity is due mainly to the premiere of a new BBC documentary about the Shroud titled: Shroud of Turin - Material Evidence. The program, produced and directed by David Rolfe, the director of the the award-winning 1978 Shroud documentary, The Silent Witness, aired in the U.K. on BBC2 on Easter Sunday, March 23, 2008. Since the film has not yet aired in North America, I...

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif. — The Shroud of Turin is undoubtedly the most famous relic in Christendom — and the best loved. During those rare times when it is displayed, millions of pilgrims travel from all over the world to see the purported burial cloth of Jesus Christ, a piece of linen 3 feet 7 inches-by-14 feet 3 inches that bears the detailed front and back images of a man who was crucified in a manner identical to that of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the Scriptures. In 1978, more than 3.5 million people stood in line for up to...

INTRODUCTION: The Jospice mattress cover is a sienna colored, rectangular, three dimensional nylon cover and bears a striking image of the palm of a left hand accompanied by an image of the lower torso from the buttocks to below the knees, an image of the left arm, a fainter image of the upper part of the right arm, an image of the shoulders and an indistinct image corresponding to the lower part of the left face, all portrayed in a deeper shade of the mattress color. Father Francis O’Leary contacted me in June of 1986 offering me the opportunity to...

First, I would like to thank all of you who wrote or called me after seeing the program. I truly appreciate hearing your comments and your individual points of view. I am also sorry that it is simply impossible for me to respond to every e-mail I receive. When I was first asked to appear in a television documentary about the Shroud of Turin, sometime in 1996, I was very insecure about taking a public stand on the Shroud and wondered if I should do it at all. Somewhat ironically, since I am Jewish, I consulted with a Catholic priest...

RALEIGH, Nc., Sept. 13 - A new discovery reveals a "mystery" never before seen. Investigative researcher Philip E. Dayvault, of Raleigh, NC, found in 2003 that the famed Sistine Chapel Ceiling fresco, painted by Michelangelo in 1512 and located at the Vatican in Rome, Italy, is also painted in allegory. Although the central panels of the Ceiling, or "historicals", are illustrated for literal interpretation, they also contain unique symbolic expression. Once decoded, Dayvault discovered that this expression graphically depicts the Shroud of Turin, in full and complete order. The Shroud of Turin is the traditional burial cloth of Jesus Christ....

A. IntroductionThe Shroud of Turin is purported to be the literal burial shroud of Jesus Christ, and its authenticity has thus aroused intense debate and sometimes hostile rhetoric between those who believe that the Shroud is authentic (or at least believe that it is the actual burial shroud of a crucified man who may or may not have been Jesus), and those who do not. Many attempts have been made by skeptics to challenge its authenticity on various grounds, as well as to develop alternative theories to explain how the images on the Shroud could have been faked or generated...

First, I would like to thank all of you who wrote or called me after seeing the program. I truly appreciate hearing your comments and your individual points of view. I am also sorry that it is simply impossible for me to respond to every e-mail I receive. When I was first asked to appear in a television documentary about the Shroud of Turin, sometime in 1996, I was very insecure about taking a public stand on the Shroud and wondered if I should do it at all. Somewhat ironically, since I am Jewish, I consulted with a Catholic priest...

Welcome to the 11th Anniversary of the Shroud of Turin Website. I always wait and write the introduction to these updates last, since I am never quite sure just how much of my backlogged material I will actually be able to include. This update is certainly another example of that, as I have worked on it nonstop for the past two weeks, and it is now past 9:00 p.m. on the evening of January 20, 2007, as I write this. And once again, I have run out of time before running out of new materials to include. As many of...

Read the entire article at Possibly the Biggest Radiocarbon Dating Mistake Ever to see it formatted, with images, notes and cited works. I asked my teacher about it but was ridiculed for not being scientific.” -- High School Student from Alaska It may well go down as the biggest radiocarbon dating mistake in history; not because there is anything wrong with the measurement process (there may not have been); not because there is anything inherently wrong with carbon 14 dating (there is not); not because of shoddy sample taking (which indeed was shoddy); not because of red flags that should...

Author: Shroud of Turin wrongly condemnedBelieves dating scientifically flawed, linen could be burial cloth of Jesus A new book says the controversial Shroud of Turin – said to bear the image of the crucified Jesus Christ – has been wrongly condemned as a fraud and desecrated due to serious errors in its study and conservation. "The Rape of the Turin Shroud – how Christianity's most precious relic was wrongly condemned, and violated," by William Meacham, contends the shroud was dismissed as a medieval fake by the general public after poorly planned Carbon-14 dating in 1988. The linen also suffered major...

Shroud of Turin and the Resurrection of Jesus : Voice from the Past  The Hymn of the Pearl Deep within the Hymn of the Pearl, itself deep within the Acts of Thomas, some very interesting lines of poetry are found. These words are translated, and understood, many ways. This is but one interpretation, one reflection, one point of view interpolated from different translations and analyses:   TWO IMAGE - Within the Hymn of the Pearl - Suddenly, I saw my image on my [burial a] garment like in a mirror Myself and myself through myself [or myself facing outward...

Cloning may help terrible prophecies come true Researchers say they would like to clone Christ. But with this good intention they on the contrary may get an antichrist. Famous chemist Alan Adler who studied samples of the shroud of Turin, the legendary burial cloth into which Jesus Christ was wrapped after crucifixion, made a sensational statement not long ago. The researcher said there was blood on the shroud and it was shed by a man who died a violent death. The University of Texas Center for Advanced DNA Technologies, USA, analyzed the DNA of the bloodstains. Head of the Center...

Chinese map collecter has found a copy of an ancient map he claims proves controversial theories that famed Chinese mariner Zheng He was the first person to discover America and circumnavigate the world. Liu Gang said the map supports the recent theories that Chinese discovered America before Christopher Columbus and charted parts of the world such as Antartica and northern Canada long before Western explorers. "The map shows us that Chinese discovered the world 70 years before Columbus," Liu said in a public unveiling of the chart. "The map tells us that Zheng He discovered the world." The map is...

The Shroud of Turin for Journalists PDF Version (Best for Printing & Page Reading) Where Have All the Skeptics Gone? By Daniel R. Porter   (Updated October 28, 2005)  One might think the Papal custodians of the Shroud of Turin would be pleased. The primary skeptical argument, carbon 14 dating, had been eliminated. The shroud might be 2000 years old, after all.  But like Hydra, the Greek mythological beast, controversy grew a weird new head. With the Winter Olympics coming to Turin in February, 2006, bringing a million spectators and thousands of journalists, articles that describe this magnificent Italian city...

While periodic claims continue to surface purporting to debunk the Shroud of Turin as a hoax — including one made earlier this year by an Idaho academic — one local scientist has no doubt that the cloth covered the crucified Christ and has survived intact for nearly two millennia. Deseret Morning News graphic DNA testing of blood found on the fibers of the Shroud of Turin has been inconclusive.       Eugenia Nitowski, an archaeologist and former nun, bases her conclusion as much on science as on faith: The shroud's existence has forced science to seriously debate the Resurrection...

p>World-renowned Los Angeles liturgical artist Isabel Piczek earned accolades for "opening new doors of research" at the Dallas International Shroud of Turin Conference held at the Adolphus Hotel Sept. 8-11. The landmark event drew 160 scientists, artists and physicians from around the world sharing the latest research on the shroud, believed by many to portray a full-length image of the crucified Christ. Using a statue she created as a visual aid measuring one-third the actual size of the man depicted on the shroud, Piczek presented her explanation of the image's "Concealed Bas-Relief Effect." She theorizes the image of the shroud...

NEW YORK, NY., Sept. 20, 2005 -- According to a report published today on the Shroud Story website (http://www.shroudstory.com), a recent conference on the Shroud of Turin erupted in controversy over how the Papal Custodians of the Shroud were dealing with scientific evidence. The report is entitled, "An Enchilada Comes to Mind." The conference, held from September 8 to 11, in the grand ballroom of the historic Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, Texas, was attended by about 100 archeologists, scientists and historians from around the world. According to Daniel Porter, author of the report, conference organizers had wanted a positive discussion...

Paris - A French magazine said on Tuesday it had carried out experiments that proved the Shroud of Turin, believed by some Christians to be their religion's holiest relic, was a fake. "A mediaeval technique helped us to make a Shroud," Science & Vie (Science and Life) said in its July issue. The Shroud is claimed by its defenders to be the cloth in which the body of Jesus Christ was wrapped after his crucifixion. It bears the faint image of a blood-covered man with holes in his hand and wounds in his body and head, the apparent result of...

A FRENCH magazine has said it had carried out experiments that proved the Shroud of Turin, believed by some Christians to be their religion's holiest relic, was a fraud. "A mediaeval technique helped us to make a Shroud," Science & Vie (Science and Life) said in its July issue. The Shroud is claimed by its defenders to be the cloth in which the body of Jesus Christ was wrapped after his crucifixion. It bears the faint image of a blood-covered man with holes in his hand and wounds in his body and head, the apparent result of being crucified, stabbed...

The shroud of turin was widely dismissed as a medieval forgery after radiocarbon tests in 1988 dated it to the 13th or 14th century. Now a growing body of evidence is calling for reassessment of the shroud, which is kept in Turin, Italy. The latest item comes from the London-based Journal of Optics, published by the Institute of Physics. Two scientists from the University of Padua, Giulio Fanti and Roberto Maggiolo, report in the journal's April edition the discovery of a heretofore-undetected reverse image on the shroud. They say the smaller, fainter image on the back of the cloth depicts...

SPOKANE, Washington — Nathan Wilson is an English teacher with no scientific training, but he thinks he knows how Jesus' (search) burial cloth was made and he thinks it's not a physical sign of the resurrection. In other words, in Wilson's estimation, the Shroud of Turin (search) is a fake — produced with some glass, paint and old cloth. And that theory, especially with Easter this weekend, has so-called "Shroudies" a buzz. "A lot of religious people are upset," said Wilson, 26, who teaches at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho. Wilson is himself an evangelical Christian (search) but...

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- Nathan Wilson is an English teacher with no scientific training, but he thinks he knows how the piece of linen revered by many as Jesus' burial cloth was made. And he thinks it's not a physical sign of the Resurrection . . . Shroud expert Dan Porter said that while Wilson's theory is ingenious, it does not produce images identical to those on the shroud . . . "It is not adequate to produce something that looks like the shroud in two or three ways," said Porter, who lives in Bronxville, N.Y. "One must produce an...

New Analysis Confirms Second Face on Shroud of Turin and Raises Questions About Other Images NEW YORK, March 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Skeptics and people who believe the Shroud of Turin is the genuine burial shroud of Jesus have always shared one common perception: they thought they knew what the man on the shroud looked like. Now, new computerized image analysis suggests they may be wrong. Results of this analysis published at http://www.shroudstory.com suggest that many characteristics of the images on the shroud are optical illusions caused by random plaid patterns in the cloth. For instance, because of these patterns, the...

Surprising new study on Shroud of Turin Simple technique could have been used to produce image -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: February 26, 2005 1:19 p.m. Eastern By Aaron Rench © 2005 Assist News Service MOSCOW, Idaho – The Shroud of Turin has long baffled scientists and scholars, Christians and skeptics for over seven centuries. The cloth bears a photonegative image of a man crucified and is thought by many to be the miraculously preserved burial cloth of Christ. Over the years, skeptics have been unable to convincingly demonstrate how any medieval forger could have produced such an image. N.D. Wilson, a fellow...

The true skeptical inquirer knows no certainty: that is his misfortune; he is aware of it, and that is his gift. Imagine slicing a human hair lengthwise, from end to end, into 100 long thin slices, each slice one-tenth the width of a single red blood cell. The images on the Shroud, at their thickest, are this thin. The faint images, golden-brownish, formed by a caramel-like substance, are wholly part of a super-thin film of starch fractions and sugars. Where this film is not brown, it is clear.  Knowing the way certain ancient linen was made, the film covering just...

This is significant commentary as it was Nature that published the results of the 1988 carbon 14 dating of the Shroud of Turin.

Barrie Schwortz, Shroud Scholar and a Member of STURP that examined the Shroud in Turin in 1978, will appear on the O'Reilly Factor, Thursday, January 27, 2005 to discuss the Carbon 14 Dating. See foxnews.com for local schedule information. This is a developing story. A January 20, 2005 article in the scholarly, peer-reviewed scientific journal Thermochimica Acta (Volume 425, pages 189-194, by Raymond N. Rogers, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of California) makes it perfectly clear: the carbon 14 dating sample cut from the Shroud in 1988 was not valid. In fact, the Shroud is much older than the carbon...

Last Updated: Thursday, 27 January, 2005, 11:05 GMT Turin shroud 'older than thought' Tests in 1988 concluded the cloth was a medieval "hoax" The Shroud of Turin is much older than suggested by radiocarbon dating carried out in the 1980s, according to a new study in a peer-reviewed journal. A research paper published in Thermochimica Acta suggests the shroud is between 1,300 and 3,000 years old. The author dismisses 1988 carbon-14 dating tests which concluded that the linen sheet was a medieval fake. The shroud, which bears the faint image of a blood-covered man, is believed by some to be...

The Shroud of Turin is much older than the medieval date that modern science has affixed to it and could be old enough to have been the burial wrapping of Jesus, a new analysis concludes. Since 1988, most scientists have confidently concluded that it was the work of a medieval artist, because carbon dating had placed the production of the fabric between 1260 and 1390. In an article this month in the journal Thermochimica Acta, Dr. Raymond N. Rogers, a chemist retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, said the carbon dating test was valid but that the piece tested was...

The Shroud of Turin is much older than suggested by radiocarbon dating carried out in the 1980s, according to a new study in a peer-reviewed journal. A research paper published in Thermochimica Acta suggests the shroud is between 1,300 and 3,000 years old. The author dismisses 1988 carbon dating tests which concluded that the linen sheet was a medieval fake.

DALLAS, Jan. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Shroud of Turin Association for Research (AMSTAR), a scientific organization dedicated to research on the enigmatic Shroud of Turin, thought by many to be the burial cloth of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, announced today that the 1988 Carbon-14 test was not done on the original burial cloth, but rather on a rewoven shroud patch creating an erroneous date for the actual age of the Shroud. The Shroud of Turin is a large piece of linen cloth that shows the faint full-body image of a blood-covered man on its surface. Because many believe...

New Chemical Testing Points to Ancient Origin for Burial Shroud of Jesus; Los Alamos Scientist Proves 1988 Carbon-14 Dating of the Shroud of Turin Used Invalid Rewoven Sample Wednesday January 19, 8:32 am ET DALLAS, Jan. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Shroud of Turin Association for Research (AMSTAR), a scientific organization dedicated to research on the enigmatic Shroud of Turin, thought by many to be the burial cloth of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, announced today that the 1988 Carbon-14 test was not done on the original burial cloth, but rather on a rewoven shroud patch creating an erroneous date...

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Computer-generated sketch of boy Jesus based on Shroud of Turin (courtesy Retequattro-Mediaset What did Jesus Christ of Nazareth look like as a boy? While no one knows for certain, forensic experts are now using computer images from the Shroud of Turin along with historical data and other ancient images to make an educated guess. In a documentary called "Jesus' Childhood" airing Sunday night on the Italian TV station Retequattro of the Mediaset Group, police artists use the same "aging" technology employed when searching for missing persons and criminals. "In this case the experts went backwards. Now we have a...

Tom Sullivan, a sports writer, writes in the San Diego Union-Tribune: "The Red Badge of Courage is a soiled sock. It's the blood-stained stocking that covers Curt Schilling's right ankle. It's one of those garments that should be spared detergent, like the Shroud of Turin or Monica Lewinsky's blue cocktail dress." Is it just me or does anyone else find this distasteful? Whatever you may believe or not believe about the Shroud of Turin, millions of Christians of many traditions and denominations believe it is the real burial shroud of Christ. Many find it sacred. The comparison to Monica Lewinsky's...

Discussion about FreeRepublic.com, Dan Rather and amusingly a light reference to the Shroud of Turin: "For the right-leaning bloggers, this was dynamite. They might as well have discovered that the Turin Shroud was created in Photoshop and laser-printed on to Lycra." I've been working on a new page Pictures of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin that clearly shows that it wasn't Photoshop or some faked things.

His name was Joseph Caiaphas. At the time of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion he had been the high priest of the Temple in Jerusalem and, as the Gospels tell us, was instrumental in Jesus’ arrest. Later, he persecuted some in the early Jerusalem Church before he was dismissed from his post as the high priest by Lucius Vitellius, the consul and governor of Syria under Tiberius. When he died, though he was no longer the high priest, Caiaphas was still a man of privilege. He had married into the powerful high-priestly family of Annas and he was undoubtedly a man...

<p>Abstract from CNN Space and Science: MILAN, Italy (Reuters) -- Italian scientists have found a matching image of a man's face and possibly his hands on the back of the Turin shroud, believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, one of the researchers said on Thursday.</p>