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Posted on 09/18/2007 10:48:13 AM PDT by Swordmaker
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 who was a close friend of mine and asked his opinion on my participating in the program. He urged me to participate and wisely pointed out that the program's producers would undoubtedly get someone to speak on camera if I didn't, and it might be someone far less knowledgeable than I was on the subject. That seemed like good advice, and I have appeared in many documentaries on the Shroud since. Some have been good ones, treating the subject with dignity and presenting both sides of the issues fairly, while others have chosen to create programs promoting a very specific (and not necessarily balanced) point of view. Sadly, the quality of all Shroud documentaries has dramatically declined in recent years, and I have become less and less satisfied with the results. Of course, when you appear in these programs, they tape each interview separately and edit everything together later. Thus, they can carefully pick and choose the statements that fit the direction they wish to take their program, even if those statements are out of context. As the one being interviewed, you are solely at the mercy of the producers and the editor.
Consequently, I did not have the highest expectations for the National Geographic Channel program, "Is It Real? Secrets of the Shroud," that premiered on July 23, 2007. As the program progressed through the first 35 or 40 minutes, there were some minor errors (the date of the most recent fire in Turin was 1997, not 1992), but I was somewhat encouraged, since it seemed that both sides of the issue were being dealt with in a fair and reasonable manner. However, when they came to the discussion of the potential error in the c14 dating due to reweaving (the ONLY theory supported by peer reviewed scientific data), they allowed one of the skeptics to simply dismiss the entire idea as "nonsense" with a wave of his hand and a smile on his face. They failed to even mention the work of the late Ray Rogers, whose paper (published in 2005 in the prestigious journal Thermochimica Acta), provided the hard scientific evidence that the sample used to date the Shroud in 1988 was anomalous and the subsequent c14 dating was in error. This critical omission came as a great surprise to me, since I spent more than an hour during the taping discussing the importance of Rogers and his work. I fully expected they would at least mention Rogers, but hoped for much more and even made footage of Ray himself available to the producers for inclusion in the program if they wanted to have him explain his work in his own words. To my great disappointment, they simply chose to ignore this critical evidence and dismiss it with a demeaning wave of the hand. It was at this point that the entire program made a hard turn in a very different direction.
For the remaining twenty minutes of the program, they stayed on a single theme, a theory often referred to as the "swoon theory," and one that has actually been around for centuries. That theory proposes that Jesus was not actually dead and was rescued from the tomb sometime between Friday night and Sunday morning. At the end of every statement from Holger Kersten, the person promoting this theory, I fully expected to see a response by Dr. Frederick Zugibe, the noted forensic pathologist who had appeared earlier in the program. And yet, that never happened. They just allowed Kersten to go on and on about how the Shroud proves the man was alive, not dead! Never mind that every qualified medical and forensic expert ever to study the Shroud has agreed that there is post-mortem blood on the cloth and signs of rigor mortis, all credible and convincing evidence that the man was dead. It was Dr. Zugibe himself who concluded from his study of the Shroud as a crime scene, that the man depicted was so badly beaten, scourged, crucified and speared that he died from multiple types of shock. Kersten defended his position by claiming that dead bodies cannot bleed, even though Zugibe (with over 20,000 autopsies in his career), has published time lapse photographs of a cadaver on his autopsy table continuing to ooze blood over a period of many hours. Sadly, the producers missed a perfect opportunity to remain fair and give the viewer a credible response to this weatherworn theory by having a noted expert like Dr. Zugibe, who was already appearing in the program, respond and rebut Kersten's claims. There certainly was ample time for a rebuttal. But no, that is not what was done. Instead, they dedicated a full third of their program to this one theory that has long ago been dispelled by the evidence on the Shroud itself! And no rebuttal was ever forthcoming. They simply ended the segment by having the narrator state that very few people accepted Kersten's theory. I doubt that many viewers even noticed.
So in the end, what started out as a reasonably fair and balanced debate about the Shroud of Turin, finished with a resounding thud in a final segment that seemed to be much less about the Shroud and much more about disputing the entire basis of Christianity! Too bad that they didn't save that debate for another program and finish on the same level that they started on. Unfortunately, the best rating I can give this program is a meager 55%, which in my experience is considered a failing grade. Let me repeat what I have said so many times in the past. If you are interested in accurate information about the Shroud of Turin, the best place to go is the actual science. Remember that the primary purpose of television, including documentaries, is entertainment, and standards of accuracy are neither imposed nor even required. In other words, they can say anything they want to, even if it is completely incorrect or biased. The same is true of commercial books, and sadly, even websites. If one is honestly interested in the truth, one must be careful to choose truly reliable sources. Sadly, I am more and more convinced that television won't be one of them.
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I used to enjoy National Geographic and also the Smithsonian Magazine. Both both are now filled with ideologues whom I find hard to take.
gee, what a surprise, solid scientific evidence pointing folks TOO CHRIST via this shroud...and it is ignored and obfuscated....
gee, what a surprise, solid scientific evidence pointing folks TOO CHRIST via this shroud...and it is ignored and obfuscated....
gee, what a surprise, solid scientific evidence pointing folks TOO CHRIST via this shroud...and it is ignored and obfuscated....
Funny......Mr Schwortz KNOWS the TRUTH, believes this is Jesus’s SHROUD and yet remains a Jew. How does one explain that?
Schwortz never states in this article that he believes it is the shroud of Jesus.
Thanks for the ping!
LOL!!! Because he doesn’t SAY the words??? geesh. You’re funny.
I should have said “the shroud of the Messiah” and that is why he remains a Jew.
Yes.....if he really believes that this is the SHROUD of the CRUCIFIED Jesus....how does he NOT believe that this IS the MESSIAH!! Who ELSE leaves his PERFECT PERSON IMPRINT???
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10124235
Still, it took about 18 years before Schwortz became convinced that this piece of cloth "could well be" a relic of Jesus.
"Now that's not a religious comment, but more an archaeological one, if you will, or just one of common sense.
"And yet, the irony of my life is how much time I spend, as a Jew, trying to educate Christians that this could well be a relic of Jesus."
aaaaannnnnnddddd...........
He does so at his own peril, but I predict that he WILL turn Catholic.
While he doesn't say it in the article, he has told me that he does believe it is Jesus' Shroud.
Next time you talk to him ask him when he intends to convert to Catholicism.
I will!!!
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