Posted on 12/09/2002 2:45:05 AM PST by Swordmaker
The link is to an open letter written by Shroud of Turin historian Daniel Porter to John Dominic Crossan, who is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. He is a fellow and a former co-chair of the Jesus Seminar. Professor Crossan has published works suggesting that Jesus Christ was not buried because peasants, which he maintains Jesus was, would not have been able to afford a tomb and that crucified peasants would have been allowed to rot on the cross or fed to the dogs.
The letter is an excellent thumbnail review of the scholarship and scientific research to date on the Shroud of Turin. It was written by Porter in response to the following comment by Professor Crossan:
"My best understanding is that the Shroud of Turin is a medieval relic-forgery. I wonder whether it was done from a crucified dead body or from a crucified living body. That is the rather horrible question once you accept it as a forgery."
Porter's letter includes some very recent research that is intriguing. There has been more research on the blind reweaving of the portion of the Shroud that was carbon dated in 1988. The tests done by three laboratories seemed to prove the Shroud was a medieval forgery. However, the results have been successfully challenged in peer reviewed articles that show the results are far from definitive! One example is the following exerpt from Porter's letter:
Enough newer thread has been identified by numerous textile experts to allow Beta Analytic, the world’s largest and probably most prestigious radiocarbon dating firm, to estimate that the true date of the cloth’s origin is much older – within a statistically acceptable margin of error to make the first century possible. Beta Analytic estimates that a mixture of 60% of material, from the 16th century, with 40% of material from the 1st century would yield the medieval date that was determined for the Shroud. Chemist Raymond Rogers has found a rubbery vegetable substance, probably gum arabic, on threads adjacent to where the carbon 14 samples were taken. It was common practice to use gum arabic to hold threads during weaving repairs. It is significant to note that Rogers found dyes extracted from the Madder root used with the gum arabic. According to Rogers, “They were colored for a purpose using technology that was not used in Italy before the 13th Century or in France before the 16th Century, about the time the time the Shroud was moved to Turin from France.” Rogers has also found a spliced thread, likely of old and new material, among sample threads.
This is an excellent work that everyone interested in the Shroud should read, regardless of their position on the authenticity of the Shroud.
The document is in PDF format and requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.
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Dear Dom:
Not long ago, on an Internet forum, someone asked you about the Shroud of Turin. When I read your answer, my first reaction was amazement. I might have thought that you answered carelessly were it not for two things: Your answer echoed, almost word for word, omething you said in a television documentary. And, your analyses and historical reconstructions are always meticulously researched, complex and organized. – even as disturbing as some of them may be, as when you posit that Jesus was not even buried and possibly eaten by dogs and crows. Thus, I really did wonder (in a non-pejorative sense) what were you thinking. You had written in Beliefnet:
Crossan: My best understanding is that the Shroud of Turin is a medieval relic/forgery. I wonder whether it was done from a crucified dead body or from a crucified living body. That is the rather horrible question once you accept it as a forgery.
Given the scarcity of articulate, fact-embracing perspectives that the Shroud is a medieval forgery and not the genuine burial Shroud of Jesus, your comment was intriguing. For you recognized both the prima facie case for the Shroud’s medieval provenance and the contradiction of the horrific and chilling realism; the forensically correct bloodstains and the medically accurate images of a naked, much wounded, crucified man in burial repose. It is a contradiction because it is hard to imagine how such realism was achieved in light of what was known about human pathology in the Middle Ages. Others, who are skeptical of the Shroud’s authenticity, usually focus only on the arguments that support medieval origin and shy from the mind-numbing realism and other evidence that seems to contradict that possibility. If I understand you correctly, your hypothesis is that a crafter of fake relics used a newly crucified man to achieve medically accurate realism. There is, however, much new information, some of it very recent, that makes me wonder if what you wonder is plausible.
The bloodstains, as forensic scientists and chemists now know, are from real human blood. Moreover, the stains are from real human bleeding from real wounds on a real human body that came into direct contact with the cloth. mmunological, fluorescence and spectrographic tests as well as Rh and ABO typing of blood antigens reveal that the stains are from Type-AB human blood. When the stains formed, the man was lying on his back with his feet near one end of the fourteen foot long, banner shaped piece of cloth. The cloth was drawn over the top of his head and loosely draped over his face and the full length of his body down to his feet. Many of the stains have the distinctive forensic signature of clotting with red corpuscles about the edge of the clot and a clear yellowish halo of serum. The forensic experts are also able to identify that some of the blood flow was venous and some was arterial. Most of the blood flowed while the man was alive and it remained on his body. There is some blood that clearly oozed from a dead body, as was the case for stains resulting from a wound in the man’s chest. Here, the blood, with a deeper color and more viscous consistency, as is the case for blood from a postmortem wound, ran from a chest wound, flowed around the side of the body and formed a puddle about the man’s lower back. Mingled with these large bloodstains are stains from a clear bodily fluid, perhaps pericardial fluid or fluid from the pleural sac or pleural cavity. This suggests that the man received a postmortem stabbing wound in the vicinity of the heart.
Blood that flowed along once-outstretched arms emanate from the victim’s wrists and course their way downward along the forearm, past the elbow and onto the back of the upper arm. Near the man’s armpit the blood pooled and likely dripped to the ground. So much blood flowed along his outstretched arms that several rivulets of blood, pulled by gravity, ran straight down. It seems likely that blood dripped all along the man’s arms like rain drips from a tree branch in a storm. From the angles of the flows and rivulets, forensic experts have determined that this blood flowed while the man was upright with his arms at angles like the hands of a clock at ten minutes before two. They can also see from changes in bloodstream angles that the man must have pulled himself up repeatedly, perhaps raising himself up to relieve the weight on his nailed feet, perhaps to relieve the pressure on his chest that he might breathe.
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For more please read the letter
When you raise a man of means from the dead, is it any surprise he would honor you?
Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy man.
In Jewish society, there was not a "peasant" class, per se, like that of Medieval European society. Generally, the Priests (Kohanim) and Levites are considered an elite (this was especially the case during the Roman occupation) and also there was a certain status for people who can trace their lineage to King David (as is still the case today). The "scholar"'s comments have no merit, based on these facts, and also the comment in John about the tomb being a loan from Joseph of Aramathea.
However, my understanding is that the Shroud has been proven a fake, not only based on Carbon-14 testing, but also because the proportions do not match. That is, the front of the body is not the same size as the back of the body, and the face is disproportionally larger than either the front or the back. I heard a fascinating theory that the forgery was a crude form of photography done by none other than Leonardo Da Vinci himself. (Da Vinci wrote extensively in his personal journals about optics and also light-sensitive chemicals that had been used in alchemy experiments in Arabic countries.)
In three more days we'll be celebrating the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the gift she left us, the miraculous image of herself on the tilma of St. Juan Diego.
Ave Maria Virgo Fidelis!
John 20
1 The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.
2 Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the LORD out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.
3 Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre.
4 So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre.
5 And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in.
6 Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie,
7 And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.
8 Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.
There was a shroud for the body and a separate cloth for the head as was the custom (see also John 11:44.)
In other words, he spends all his time trying to destroy the faith of Christians.
Anything he says about the Lord can be assumed to be a lie designed to undermine Christian faith in the Lord's virgin birth, His miracles, His mission, His Resurrection and His glorious return.
Additionally, Christ was not a peasant. His father was a skilled laborer, as we know, and most probably owned his own business. We know that several of the Apostles came from the educated classes (Matthew) or the small business-owning class (James and John, Peter). In other words, Jesus was not a member of what the communist Crossan would like to think of as the Galilaean "proletariat" - he was more likely a member of the 1st century analogue of the despised class known as the "petit bourgeoisie". And Crossan conveniently forgets Joseph of Arimathea's role in the Gospels, as others have mentioned.
Of course, Crossan is a "liberation theologian" and believes that Christ came not to give eternal life, but to advocate a sort of proto-Marxism.
Crossan is a pseudo-scholar, a pseudo-intellectual and an anti-Christian activist.
"Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." John 20:29
One is reminded of the old joke about the museum exhibit showing the skull of Christoper Columbus as it was when he died, and also Columbus' skull as a young man.
(1) Carbon 14 dating is notoriously inaccurate because the carbonization that occurs with combustion queers the results. The Shroud was famously damaged in a fire in 1532.
(2) The Shroud was moved from Lirey to Turin in 1360, almost a century before da Vinci was born. Your claims about da Vinci making the shroud are a little strange. Further, your "photography" theory is inconsistent with what we know of da Vinci's accomplishments. His notebooks record his experiments with the camera obscura and they do not describe phenomena as detailed or complex as the Shroud.
(3) The proportions of the Shroud are consistent with being wrapped around a body - there is a difference between 2-dimensional mapped onto 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional mapped onto 2-dimensional.
I'm a believer. From everything I've read the evidence is unique and compelling. You simply don't find many pigment-free, negative images of a human body on ancient cloth also containing embedded 3D topographical information.
The only evidence that seems to contradict the authenticity of the Shroud is the carbon 14 dating which could have been skewed by the fire damage to the cloth.
And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth
The singular form occurs in the original Greek as well.
There was a preliminary wrapping of Christ's body in a single piece of cloth before his interment.
All we know, according to Scripture, is that Christ was initially wrapped in a single sheet of linen and that when He rose, there was more than one piece of cloth. What happened in between is purely a matter of conjecture.
As far as what exactly was "the custom" at the time, no one knows. The Mishnaic burial laws, which were set down not too long after Christ's Resurrection, don't specify. Jews were not in the habit of mummifying their dead, so not a lot of physical evidence remains.
The blood type of the Shroud matches the blood type of the Miracle of Lanciano.
Thanks for the information. Sudarium info here.
Becuase this hoax was uncovered by the Counter Reformation in the CXXTH Century's Sindonologist Brother Bruno, this information hasn't been widely publicised.
I will provide a link to this site so one can read for themselves<>
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