NEW
2005 SHROUD OF TURIN BROUHAHA: SCIENCE vs PAPAL CUSTODIAN
Adapted from The Shroud of
Turin for Journalists at
Shroud of Turin Story Guide to the Facts
One
might think the Papal custodians of the Shroud of Turin would be pleased.
The primary skeptical argument, carbon 14 dating, had been removed from
serious consideration.
Mention of the Shroud of Turin in the media has
become quite commonplace. But as often as not, old information
or incorrect information is mentioned. What should journalists write?
Because the shroud is a religious object, believed by many to be the burial
cloth of Jesus, and because scientists and historians have yet to prove or
disprove its authenticity, it is controversial and interesting.
Until recently, skeptics had the upper hand in the
ongoing debate about its authenticity. Carbon 14 dating in 1988 seemed to
show that it was medieval. Researchers, who were not experts in radiocarbon
dating, but nonetheless convinced the shroud was authentic, tried to explain
why the scientific dating was incorrect. Often cited in the news media in an
attempt at balanced reporting, these explanations – one was that a fire in
1532 changed the age of the cloth, another was that a bioplastic-polymer
growing on the cloth contaminated the sample – lacked scientific
credibility. Scientists, who were experts in radiocarbon dating, pooh-poohed
these explanations.
|
 |
|
Photomicrograph of
fibers from warp segment of carbon 14 sample. It is chemically
unlike the rest of the shroud. That is a problem.
|
It was not until 2005 that things changed. An article
appeared in a peer-reviewed scientific journal Thermochimica Acta,
which proved that the carbon 14 dating was flawed because the sample was
invalid. Moreover, this article, by Raymond N. Rogers, a well-published
chemist, and a Fellow of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, explained why
the cloth was much older. It was at least twice as old as the radiocarbon
date, and possibly 2000 years old.
Peer-reviewed scientific journals are important. It is
the way scientists normally report scientific findings and theories.
Articles submitted to such journals are carefully reviewed for adherence to
scientific methods and the absence of speculation and polemics. Reviews are
often anonymous. Facts are checked and formulas are examined. The review
procedure sometimes takes months to complete, as it did for Rogers.
It was Nature, another prestigious
peer-reviewed journal, that in 1989, reported that carbon 14 dating ‘proved’
the shroud was a hoax. Rogers found no fault with the article in
Nature. Nor did he find fault with the quality of the carbon 14
dating. He defended it. What Rogers found was that the carbon 14 sample was
taken from a mended area of the cloth that contained significant amounts of
newer material. This was not the fault of the radiocarbon laboratories. But
it did show that the dating was invalid.
Immediately after the publication of Rogers’ paper,
Nature published a commentary by scientist-journalist Philip
Ball. “Attempts to date the Turin Shroud are a great game,” he wrote, “but
don't imagine that they will convince anyone . . . The scientific study of
the Turin shroud is like a microcosm of the scientific search for God: it
does more to inflame any debate than settle it.” Later in his commentary
Ball added, “And yet, the shroud is a remarkable artefact, one of the few
religious relics to have a justifiably mythical status. It is simply not
known how the ghostly image of a serene, bearded man was made.”
Ball, who understood the chemistry of the shroud’s
images, rejected a notion popularized by many news accounts that Leonardo da
Vinci created the image using primitive photography. He called the idea
flaky. He also debunked the sometimes reported speculation that the image
was “burned into the cloth by some kind of release of nuclear energy” from
Jesus’ body. This he said was wild.
Almost all serious shroud researchers agree with Ball
on these points. When flaky and wild ideas appear in newspaper articles or
on television, as they often do, scientists cringe. Rogers referred to those
who held such views as being part of the “lunatic fringe” of shroud
research. But Rogers was just as critical of those who, without the benefit
of solid science, declared the shroud a fake. They, too, were part of the
lunatic fringe.
|
 |
|
Yellow dye can be
seen from spliced thread. Newer material was dyed with alizarin from
madder root to match age-yellowed older thread. |
The idea that the shroud had been mended in the area
from which the carbon 14 samples had been taken had been floating around for
some time. But no one paid much attention. In 1998, Turin’s scientific
adviser, Piero Savarino, suggested, “extraneous substances found on the
samples and the presence of extraneous thread (left over from ‘invisible
mending’ routinely carried on in the past on parts of the cloth in poor
repair)” might have accounted for an error in the carbon 14 dating. Longtime
shroud researchers Sue Benford and Joe Marino independently developed the
same idea and explored it with several textile experts and Ronald Hatfield
of the radiocarbon dating firm Beta Analytic. The art of invisible
reweaving, Benford and Marino discovered, was commonly used in the Middle
Ages to repair tapestries. Why not the shroud, they thought? The believed
they saw evidence of it.
But the skeptically minded Rogers did not agree. He had
already debunked every other argument so far offered to explain why the
carbon 14 dating might be wrong. According to Ball, “Rogers thought that he
would be able to ‘disprove [the] theory in five minutes’.” Instead he found
clear evidence of discreet mending. He also showed, with chemistry, that the
shroud was at least thirteen hundred years old. And he proved, beyond any
doubt, that the sample used in 1988 was chemically unlike the rest of the
shroud. The samples were invalid. The 1988 tests were thus meaningless.
In words that seem strange in a scientific journal that
once had bragging rights to claim that the shroud was not authentic, Ball
wrote: “And of course 'authenticity' is not really a scientific issue at all
here: even if there were compelling evidence that the shroud was made in
first-century Palestine, that would not even come close to establishing that
the cloth bears the imprint of Christ.”
One might think the Papal custodians of the Shroud of
Turin would be pleased. The head of the skeptical argument, the carbon 14
dating, had been severed. The shroud might be 2000 years old, after all.
But like Hydra, the Greek mythological beast, controversy grew a weird new
head. The 1988 carbon 14 dating was off the table. And Ball, who was
familiar with the evidence, had confirmed what all shroud researchers had
been saying for years: the images were not painted. Moreover, a 2003 article
in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Melanoidins by Rogers
and Anna Arnoldi, a chemistry professor at the University of Milan,
demonstrated that the images were in fact a chemical caramel-like darkening
of an otherwise clear starch and polysaccharide coating on some of the
shroud’s fibers. They suggested a natural phenomenon might be the cause. If
this could be proven, the images could be explained in non-miraculous,
scientific terms.
|
 |
|
Photomicrograph of
fibers from the center of the radiocarbon sample in water. Gum
material is swelling and detaching from fibers. Chemical tests show
that dye is yellow alizarin from madder root complexed with alum, a
common mordant. Several cotton fibers are also visible. Cotton,
alizarin and gum are only found in the C14 sample area of the
shroud. |
The Papal Custodians of the Shroud in Turin were not
pleased. They had been responsible for selecting the sample from a corner of
the cloth. They had ignored scientific protocols to which they had
previously agreed. These protocols called for multiple samples from multiple
locations. And in 2002, during a restoration of the shroud, they had
examined the area from which the samples were cut and had not found any
visual evidence of mending.
But then no one else had noticed it, either. It took
microscopy to see spliced threads where newer fibers were dyed to match
age-yellowed fibers. It took microchemical analysis to find alizarin dye
from madder root, alum and plant gum. This was the dyestuff used in medieval
times.
Researchers and thousands of people who follow shroud
research were dismayed when, within days of Rogers’ paper, Turin’s Monsignor
Giuseppe Ghiberti told an Italian newspaper, “I am astonished that an expert
like Rogers could fall into so many inaccuracies in his article. I can only
hope, indeed, also think that the C14 dating is rectifiable (the method, in
fact, has its own uncertainties), but not on the basis of the 'darn'
theory.”
The restoration, itself, was very controversial. Turin
officials had done the work in secret. They had scraped the shroud, vacuumed
it, wet it with fine mist, and stretched it with weights to remove wrinkles.
Forensic material, best studied in situ, such as pollen and dirt, was
removed and placed in bottles. Researchers wondered how much blood was
scraped away. And they wondered how much the fragile images were damaged or
loosened by the stretching and scraping since they are part of a fragile
coating that is very thin and easily removed. Many, if not most shroud
researchers felt the restoration was scientifically and preservation-wise
reckless. The newer evidence in scientific journals was drawing attention to
how Turin was caring for the cloth and how they were treating scientific
evidence.
This new controversy between researchers and the Papal
custodian of the shroud would erupt at a conference in September, 2005.
|
IN SUPPORT
OF ROGERS’ FINDINGS ON THE CARBON 14 DATING |
|
1)
John L. Brown, formerly Principal Research Scientist at the
Georgia Tech Research Institute's Energy and Materials Sciences
Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology, independently
confirmed many of Rogers’ findings.
2)
In early 2004, the Journal of Research of the National
Institute of Standards and Technology published an
important paper by Lloyd A. Currie. Currie, a highly regarded
specialist in the field of carbon 14 dating and an NIST Fellow
Emeritus, cited Rogers and Arnoldi (from another paper) and gave
their work credence. Currie’s NIST paper also set aside any
argument that radiocarbon labs had done anything wrong in dating
the Shroud of Turin. It debunked the heat-effect, contamination
and bioplastic polymer hypotheses. Significantly, it recognized
that discreet mending, soon to be demonstrated by Rogers in his
peer-reviewed article, was a viable explanation. And it raised
the issue of poor sampling by Turin. According to Currie, the
original sampling protocol requiring multiple samples from
different locations on the cloth was clearly violated by the
Papal Custodians of the Shroud. Had the protocol been followed
the discreet mending would have been noticed in 1988.
3)
Several textile experts, at the behest of Sue Benford and Joseph
Marino, examined documenting photographs of the samples and
found visual evidence of reweaving. Based on estimates from
these photographs, and an a historically-likely suggested date
for reweaving, Ronald Hatfield of the radiocarbon dating firm
Beta Analytic estimated that the cloth might be 2000 years old.
4)
In 1997, Remi Van Haelst, a Belgium chemist, conducted a series
of statistical analyses that strongly challenged the veracity of
the conclusions of the C14 dating. Significantly, he found
serious disparities in measurements between the three
laboratories and between the sub-samples (various tests and
observations performed by the labs). Bryan Walsh, a
statistician, examined Van Haelst’s work and further studied the
measurements. The essential conclusions were that the samples,
and indeed the divided samples used in multiple tests, contained
different levels of the C14 isotope. The differences were
sufficient to conclude that the sample were non-homogeneous and
thus of questionable validity. Walsh found a significant
relationship between various sub-samples and their distance from
the edge of the cloth.
5)
Ultraviolet and x-ray photographs, taken in 1978 before the
carbon 14 dating samples were taken, show that there are
chemical differences between the sample area and surrounding
areas of the cloth.
6)
In 1988, Edward Hall, then the director of Oxford University's
Radiocarbon Laboratory, had seen cotton fibers that might be
from mending. That same year, in Textile Horizons in an article
entitled "Rogue Fibers Found in Shroud," P. H. Smith suggested
that those cotton fibers were suspicious and might have been
part of repairs.
Moreover, Rogers
found:
When the linen
wrapping from the Dead Sea Scroll were tested for vanillin, none
was found. Vanillin (vanilla) is produced by the thermal
decomposition of lignin, a complex polymer non-carbohydrate
constituent of plant material including flax. Found in medieval
linen but not in much older material, it diminishes and
disappears with time. There is no vanillin in the flax fibers of
the shroud except in the corner from which the carbon 14 samples
were taken.
While this is not an accurate method for determining the
age of linen because it depends on the average storage
temperature over many centuries, it is useful as a gauge or
sniff test for checking carbon 14 dating. Assuming that the
shroud has been stored at an average temperature 77° Fahrenheit,
which is quite warm given that for at least the last seven
hundred years it had been stored in northern European
cathedrals, it is at least 1300 years old. It could be older but
there is no way to know that. On the other hand, linen
manufactured in 1260, the oldest date for the shroud determined
by carbon 14 testing, should have retained about 37% of its
vanillin. Not only does this verify that the carbon 14 sample
is chemically different from the rest of shroud, it proves that
the carbon 14 sample contains much newer material. |
Shroud of Turin Controversy Explodes
Every two or three years shroud researchers from around
the world gather to share new information and discuss the many enigmatic
questions that surround this artifact. The most recent such gathering took
place in the grand ballroom of the elegant Adolphus Hotel in downtown
Dallas, Texas in September of 2005. About 100 scientists, archeologists and
historians representing a broad spectrum of Catholics, Anglicans
(Episcopalians), Protestants, Evangelical Christians and non-Christians
attended the conference. Most are academics. Many are retired and have time
to devote to many hours to the study of the shroud. Almost all believe at
some level that the shroud is genuine, even if they cannot prove it. Many
share Ball’s view expressed in Nature that if it could be
shown to be first century, it would nonetheless be impossible to prove, at
least scientifically, that it was Jesus’ burial shroud.
The 2005 Dallas Conference on the Shroud of Turin was
unlike previous conferences. It would redefine controversy about this cloth
as not so much between skeptics and believers but between researchers and
the Papal Custodians on matters of science and preservation.
|
 |
|
Photomicrograph
showing where two fibers were pulled from an adhesive sampling tape
leaving their colored coating behind. The coating is too thin to
measure accurately with a standard microscope; however, it appears
to be 180-600 nanometers, thinner than most bacteria. |
The conferees were upbeat. Most, for many years, had
believed that the 1988 carbon 14 dating was flawed. But they could only
suspect why before Rogers completed his peer-reviewed studies. And there had
been other recent exciting developments. In April 2004, the peer-reviewed
scientific Journal of Optics, published by the Institute of
Physics in London, carried a paper by two scientists, Giulio Fanti and
Roberto Maggiolo, from the University of Padua in Italy. Using modern image
enhancement techniques, the team had discovered a faint image of a face on
the backside of the cloth. The press dubbed it the “second face.” It wasn’t
clear what it meant, but it was new information for consideration. And there
was new analysis of the burn marks and water stains on the cloth. Some of
the stains suggested that the cloth had been folded and stored in a jar
similar to jars found at Qumran in which some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were
stored.
A key document had been prepared over the course of two
years. It was a list of about one hundred and fifty scientific facts and
confirmed observation, including very recent findings, compiled from over a
hundred scientific papers, many of them published in secular peer-reviewed
journals. Twenty-eight researchers were listed as authors. The list was
entitled “Evidence for Testing Hypotheses about the Body Image Formation of
the Turin Shroud.” But most researchers simply called it “The List.” It was
to be presented at the conference.
The better understanding of image chemistry was leading
to new ideas on how the images formed on the cloth. One hypothesis, getting
serious consideration, is a Maillard reaction. Rogers and Arnoldi had
proposed it in their paper published in Melanoidins. The
hypothesis suggests that volatile body vapors, such as cadaverine and
putrescine, reacted with the starch and saccharides film that coats the
outermost fibers of the cloth. The images are chemically consistent with
this type of reaction. And it is well understood that such vapors from a
corpse, given the right conditions, will cause browning on a cloth that has
the right sort of residues on its fibers. But if this is how the images
formed, it is only hypothetical. There are unresolved problems. And there
are possibly other ways to create this caramel-like condition. “Hypothesis,”
researchers say, is the right word to use, for no proposal yet meets the
scientific criteria needed to be called a theory.
|
 |
|
Phase-contrast
photomicrograph of a fiber and its image bearing coating. The
coating is composed of starch fractions and saccharides |
But despite the positive feelings about progress, most
attendees were frustrated and angry with the Papal Custodians of the Shroud
of Turin. They were angry about the restoration. They were dismayed that
Turin officials were ignoring scientific evidence. Many felt that the
shroud’s custodians were ignoring advice by the late Pope John Paul II when
in 1998 he said, “the Church does not have specific competence to pronounce
on these questions. It entrusts to scientists the task of continuing to
investigate to find suitable answers to questions regarding the Shroud.”
Ghiberti and textile conservator Mechthild
Flury-Lemberg, who had managed the restoration work, were in Dallas to
defend the restoration and to reiterate their claim that they had not seen
evidence of discreet mending. Scientists and archeologists wanted to ask
them questions and express their own views. But conference organizers
decided to prohibit questions and comments from the floor. And at the last
minute they cancelled a PowerPoint presentation of “The List” which did
contain scientific facts that disagreed what Turin officials were saying.
When Fanti, who had served as the primary editor of the document, asked why,
he was told that the document was “too political.”
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State,
perhaps having sensed what was to happen in Dallas, had written a letter to
the conferees saying, “His Holiness [Pope Benedict XVI] trusts that
the Dallas Conference will advance cooperation and dialogue among various
groups engaged in scientific research on the Shroud . . .”
But cooperation did not happen. The conferees were
undaunted. In a presentation that had been billed as a tribute to the late
Raymond Rogers, researcher Barrie Schwortz instead showed an interview with
Rogers videotaped shortly before his death on March 8, 2005. In the
interview, Rogers explained the discreet mending and why that invalidated
the 1988 carbon 14 dating. And he offered a blistering criticism of the
secretive restoration. He explained why the cloth and the still-unexplained
images of a crucified man may have been damaged during the restoration.
While the conferees applauded the interview Ghiberti
walked out of the room, a gesture that perhaps signaled future
non-cooperation. It was peculiar because it would be fair to say that
probably every researcher in the grand ballroom of the hotel thought the
shroud might be the real thing even if they could not prove it.
Controversy between skeptics and believers seemed to be
a thing of the past. While skepticism is valid and indeed welcomed, the
reasons propounded in the past now seemed moot to the conferees. The
argument that the shroud’s images were painted, advanced by microscopist
Walter McCrone in 1989, had been refuted. There is no paint. And the
medieval carbon 14 dating was now well understood to be meaningless.
Controversy was now between the scientists and the
Papal Custodians. The conferees do not want it and they offered suggestions.
Why not, for instance, test carbonized fabric dust scraped from the shroud
during the restoration, as Rogers proposed in his Thermochimica Acta
article? Why not allow high resolution, spectrally sensitive scans of both
the front and the backside?
Kim Dreisbach, an Episcopal priest who presented a
paper at the conference, had an interesting suggestion: get advice and
oversight from the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Involved, as
they are, in world health, global warning and cosmology studies, they have
access to some of the best scientific minds who could provide advice to
Turin on future studies and preservation of the shroud.
|
THE OLD “IT
WAS PAINTED” CONTROVERSY |
|
It is often reported that microscopist Walter McCrone
proved that the images were painted. This is incorrect. McCrone, who
examined 32 slides containing fibers from the cloth, found traces of
iron oxide which he determined was “jewelers rouge.” He concluded
that the images were painted with this. McCrone also claimed to have
found a concentration of mercury that he says was used to make
vermilion paint used to paint the bloodstains.
But chemical investigation shows that small quantities of
iron oxide particles are evenly distributed in both image and
non-image areas and that the quantities are too small to form a
visible image. The bloodstains are from real blood. Different
scientists, working independently, conducted immunological,
fluorescence and spectrographic tests, as well as Rh and ABO
typing of blood antigens that clearly show this. And several
experts in forensic medicine and blood chemistry conclude that
the stains were formed by real human bleeding from real wounds
to a real human body that came into direct contact with the
cloth. See the peer reviewed Canadian Society of Forensic
Science Journal, Volume 14 (1981), pp.81-103.
In 1389, Pierre d’Arcis, the Bishop of Troyes, France,
drafted a memorandum to Pope Clement VII of Avignon stating that
the shroud was a painted forgery. However, there is no
historical evidence that draft memorandum was ever finalized or
sent. The account of a confession by a painter is second hand.
Pierre claimed that his predecessor, Bishop Henri de Poitiers,
conducted an inquest in which a painter had confessed to
painting the shroud. The inquest is not in the historical
records. The painter is not identified. Several other documents
of the period challenge the veracity of the d'Arcis Memorandum.
The historical conspectus suggests that the memorandum was part
of a squabble about revenues from pilgrims visiting the nearby
town of Lirey, where the shroud was kept, rather than Troyes.
It is all moot. Visible and ultraviolet spectrometry,
infrared spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry,
pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry, laser-microprobe Raman analyses,
and microchemical testing show no evidence of such material in
sufficient quantity to form any visible image. Moreover, it is
well understood now, that the images are formed by a
caramel-like substance within the otherwise clear coating of
starch and polysaccharides on outer fibers.
McCrone continued to defend his position that the shroud
was painted until his death in 2002. The McCrone Institute
continues to carry material written by him on the organization’s
website, but it out of date. The McCrone Institute in Chicago
can be contacted at 312-842-7100 |
Historical Support for the Shroud of Turin
The problem of the shroud’s authenticity is usually
thought of in scientific terms. And indeed that is where much of the
research is focused. But there is much, as well, that can be learned from
history. Historians and biblical scholars are constantly probing for new
material. Even, today, libraries of ancient documents are being translated
that shed new light on the possible provenance of the cloth.
It is often reported that there is no historical record
of the shroud before 1356 CE. That is incorrect. However, it is correct to
say that there are no known records about the shroud in western
medieval Europe before that time.
Several historians believe that the shroud was taken by
French knights of the Fourth Crusade during the sacking of Constantinople in
1204. In 1205, Theodore Ducas Anglelos, writing about the looted treasures
in a letter to Pope Innocent III wrote, “The Venetians partitioned the
treasure of gold, silver and ivory, while the French did the same with the
relics of saints and the most sacred of all, the linen in which our Lord
Jesus Christ was wrapped after His death and before the resurrection.”
Moreover, there is certain knowledge that on August 15,
944 CE, an image bearing cloth known as the Cloth of Edessa, was forcibly
transferred from Edessa to Constantinople. It had been in Edessa since at
least the middle of the 6th century when it was found concealed behind some
stones above one of the city gates. It was, when found, to the people of
Edessa, the lost cloth of a great legend. According to legend the cloth,
with a miraculous picture of Jesus, was brought to Abgar V Ouchama, the King
of Edessa from 13 –50 CE, by a disciples known as Thaddeus Jude. According
to the legend he was sent by the apostle Thomas.
Whether or not the legend is true is immaterial. In the
late 6th century, Evagrius Scholasticus’ Ecclesiastical History
mentions that Edessa was protected by a “divinely wrought portrait,” an
acheiropoietos sent by Jesus to Abgar. In 730 CE, St. John Damascene
describes the cloth as a himation, which is translated as an oblong
cloth or grave cloth. Thus, if the Edessa Cloth is the Shroud of Turin, the
written record goes back to the sixth century.
By the sixth century, a traditional understanding that
Jesus’ image was left on his burial shroud had developed. In Visigothic
Spain, there was a formula for worship known as the Mozarabic Rite.
One element of the rite was the illatio (Præfatio). There were
numerous illationes (proper prefaces) for special days. One used at
Eastertide read, “Peter ran with John to the tomb and saw the recent
imprints of the dead and risen man on the linens.” The word imprints is
a translation of vestigia which can also mean traces or marks. It can
also mean footsteps or footprints, but these do not make contextual sense.
|
 |
|
Christ Pantocrator,
an icon at St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai (550 C.E.) |
In the eighth century Pope Stephen III (reigned 752 to
757 CE) stated that Christ had “spread out his entire body on a linen
cloth that was white as snow. On this cloth, marvelous as it is to see . . .
the glorious image of the Lord's face, and the length of his entire and most
noble body, has been divinely transferred.”
In the sixth century a new common appearance for Jesus
emerged in icons, paintings, mosaics and Byzantine coins. And they had an
uncanny resemblance to the face of the man of the shroud. Indeed, some
scholars think that the shroud was the source for new ideas of what Jesus
looked like.
Prior to this time, pictures of Jesus were mostly of a
young, beardless man, often with short hair, and often in story-like
settings in which he was depicted as a shepherd. Suddenly, Jesus had a
forked beard. He looked out at us, in full frontal images, from large owlish
eyes. His face was gaunt and his nose was long and thin. Numerous other
characteristics appeared in these pictures, and some of them were seemingly
strange and of no particular artistic merit.
Many portraits had two wisps of hair that dropped at an
angle from a central parting of the hair. Paul Vignon, a French scholar who
first categorized these facial attributes in 1930, also described a square
cornered U shape between the eyebrows, a downward pointing triangle on the
bridge of the nose, a raised right eyebrow, accents on both cheeks with the
accent on the right cheek being somewhat lower, an enlarged left nostril, an
accent line below the nose, a gap in the beard below the lower lip, and hair
on one side of the head that was shorter than on the other side.
The most famous and the earliest of these full frontal
pictures of Jesus is Christ Pantocrator, an icon at St.
Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai. This icon has been reliably dated to the
middle of the sixth century, at just about the time that the Edessa Cloth
was found behinds stones above the city’s gate. When one image is overlaid
on the other, facial feature locations and shapes are almost perfectly
aligned.

|
 |
|
Hungarian Pray Codex ca. 1192-1195 showing details that are consistent
with the shroud. |
Hungarian Pray
Codex
In the Budapest National Library there is an ancient
codex, known commonly as the Hungarian Pray Manuscript or
Pray Codex, named for György Pray (1723-1801), a Jesuit scholar
who made the first detailed study of it. Written between 1192 and 1195, the
codex contains an illustration, one of five in the manuscript, showing Jesus
being placed on his burial shroud. The shroud is drawn with the same
herringbone weave and identical patterns of small burn holes found on the
shroud. (These are not the large burns caused by the fire of 1532. The
artist included a number of other graphic characteristics consistent with
the shroud. Jesus is shown naked with his arms modestly folded at the
wrists. The fingers are unusually long in appearance as they are on the
shroud. There are no visible thumbs just as there are no thumbs visible in
the images of the man of the shroud. In the drawing, there is also a clear
mark on Jesus' forehead where a prominent 3-shaped bloodstain is found on
the forehead of the man of the shroud.
|
THE STRANGE
SHADOW SHROUD IN THE NEWS |
|
Researchers cringed when the late Peter Jennings, on
ABC World News Tonight (Mar 22, 2005), in a segment
entitled, “Shrouded in Mystery No More,” stated: “The Shroud of
Turin has mystified scientists for years. Now a literature professor
from Idaho says he can prove it's a fake.”
Nathan Wilson, who teaches literature at New St. Andrews
College in Moscow, Idaho, ingeniously created an image that to the
untrained eye looked something like the shroud. He wrote an article
for Christianity Today.
Wilson did not claim that he “can prove it's a fake.” What he said, as reported by the
Discovery Channel, which also carried the story, was that it
“could have been easily forged by painting an image on glass.” The
glass was then used as a negative to selectively sun bleach a piece
of unbleached linen, creating an image by making some areas lighter
rather than darkening other areas.
The Discovery Channel went on to report: “Venerated by many
Catholics as the proof that Christ was resurrected from the grave
and dismissed by some scientists as a brilliant medieval fake, the
shroud features the image of a man that is both three-dimensional
and a photonegative.” This gives a completely false picture of the
controversy as being between Catholics and scientists. Who are these
scientists? What about the scientists who think it might genuine?
What about the Anglicans, the Protestants and the Evangelical
Christians?
The Discovery Channel did report on the Thermochimica
Acta article by Rogers that “argued that the 1988 carbon-14
dating actually used a sample cut from a rewoven portion of the
shroud and not the original.” This prompted an interesting conspiracy theory by Wilson
that the new dating did not rule out his hypothesis of a forgery.
According to Wilson. “It is extraordinarily unlikely that a forger
would use a cloth fresh off the loom. If I was some villainous
Crusader, hoping to fake the burial shroud of Christ, the first
thing I would do is obtain a burial cloth. And the best place to get
one, as well as the cheapest, is from a tomb.” Wilson never mentions
how it might be that a shroud would not have decomposed in a tomb
after several centuries. Nor did Wilson explain where a medieval
forger would have obtained the 7 foot long panes of glass his forger
needed. Such pieces of glass did not exist before the nineteenth
century.
The Discovery Channel also reported that, “Wilson's
experiment is also consistent with a 1970s analysis by the late
Walter McCrone, a Chicago chemical microscopist, who maintained he
had identified the pigment red ochre, and tempera, as the shroud's
paint medium, placing it as a medieval painting created around
1355.” But it is not consistent. McCrone argued that the images were
painted. Wilson argued that they were not.
It is moot. The chemistry of the shroud images is well
understood. The image on the shroud, while it can be cleared with a
reducing agent, it resists bleaching. By definition, Wilson’s images
could be bleached away. What Wilson created was chemically unlike
the images on the shroud. Frank Chin, a chemistry professor at the
University of Idaho, said of Wilson’s so-called Shadow Shroud, “You
can make a glass of nerve toxin look like lemonade. That doesn't
make it lemonade.” |
Description of the Shroud of Turin
The Shroud of Turin is a single piece of linen, about 14½ feet long by 3½
feet wide (4.4 x 1.1 meters). The weave is very fine 3-over 1-herringbone
twill, approximately 350 micrometers thick, about half the thickness of
common newsprint paper.
|
 |
|
The Shroud of Turin
is a single piece of linen about 14½ feet long by 3½ feet wide |
Faint, brownish, full-length frontal and backside images of a man are
visible on the cloth’s surface. Discernable wounds within the images suggest
that the man was scourged and crucified with spikes driven through his
wrists and feet. What appear to be red bloodstains conform to the locations
of visible wounds. The fact that the bloodstains appear red has prompted
much debate in past years because blood normally turns black with age. But
chemical analysis shows that the stains are from human blood. And chemistry
also explains why the blood color remains red.

|
 |
|
Burn holes and
scorch marks on the shroud |
The cloth is severely burn damaged. There are several small burn holes of
unknown origin as well as large charred areas and holes from a damaging fire
in 1532. Close examination also reveals numerous water stains, some clearly
the result of dousing the fire in 1532. Other water stains suggest that the
cloth was folded and stored in an earthen jar similar to the urns that held
the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The yarn (thread) consists of approximately 70 to 120 flax fibers hand
spun together in a Z-twist (clockwise). The numerous lengths (hanks) of yarn
used in weaving are not spliced together on the loom but overlapped
side-by-side during the weaving. Variegated patterns of whiteness in both
the warp and weft yarn indicate that the yarn was bleached before weaving
rather than after the cloth was taken from the loom.
The thickness of the flax fibers varies significantly but the average is
about 13 micrometers or roughly one-eighth the thickness of typical human
hair.
The residue coating of starch fractions and saccharides on the outermost
fibers is consistent with an evaporation concentration. This is the sort of
residue that forms when trace amounts of these substances in rinse water are
moved to the surface as water wicks to the outside of a cloth as it dries.
The saccharides in the coating are like those found in Soapwort (saponaria
officinalis). These include glucose, fucose, galactose, arabinose, xylose,
rhamnose, and glucuronic acid). This coating is about 1 percent to 4
percent of the thickness of the fibers. Where there is image color, the
color is completely within, and the result of a caramel-like chemical change
to, the otherwise clear evaporation concentration layer.
The residue coating is expected from first century methods of linen
manufacturing described by the historian Pliny the Elder. The warp threads
on the loom were coated with starch as a lubricant. The cloth was then
rinsed with soapwort to remove the starch and laid out to dry. The bleaching
of hanks of yarn before weaving is also consistent with first century
methods but not consistent with medieval European field bleaching of
finished cloth.
|
 |
|
Shroud of Turin
Container |
Today, the shroud is stored flat in a
sealed, fireproof, rare-atmosphere container with bullet proof glass in St.
John the Baptist Cathedral (Duomo di San Giovanni) in Turin, Italy. The
container is covered with a cloth so that the shroud may not be viewed
except during public exhibitions.
Throughout history, the shroud has been stored rolled up or folded in
various reliquaries. And as mentioned earlier, there is evidence that it was
once stored in an earthen jar.
The last exhibition was in 2000. At that time, the Papal Custodian,
Cardinal Saverino Poletto, announced that the next exhibition would be in
2025.
Shroud of Turin Resources
.
Photograph Permissions:Most contemporary photographs of the Shroud of Turin,
portions of the shroud and scientific images pertaining to the shroud are
copyrighted by Barrie Schwortz of Los Angeles, California. Please contact
Barrie Schwortz by phone at 323-665-7722, by fax at 323-665-7122 or by email
at
bschwortz@shroud.com for permission to use any photographs that appear
on this website or most websites. Most of the images on this website and at
the Shroud of Turin Story website are copyrighted and used with permission
of the copyright owner.
Contacting Experts:
Barrie Schwortz is one of the best sources for locating
experts. Schwortz also has a significant collection of broadcast quality
video material. You may also contact me for information by writing to
porter@innoval.com.
Scientific References:
The best sources for scientific material are
peer-reviewed scientific journal articles. A list of some of the most
significant articles are included starting on the next page. Links to online
articles are included where available. Additionally,
shroud.com, the largest and most comprehensive website about the shroud,
maintains a large collection of scientific and historical papers (or links
to papers).
FAIR USE NOTICE.
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which may not always been
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material
available in our efforts to advance understanding of the Shroud of Turin,
research of the shroud, authenticity issues, etc.. The owner of this website
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who, by virtue of selecting a web page on the site, have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for
research and educational purposes.
If you wish to use
copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own you should
obtain permission from the copyright owner.
a. Scientific Journals pertaining to the Shroud
Thermochimica Acta
- Raymond N. Rogers, Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of
California (Volume 425 200 article is
available on Elsevier BV's ScienceDirect® online information site.
Open
Journal of Research of the National
Institute of Standards and Technology
– Lloyd Currie, NIST, Washington D. C. (Volume 109, Number 2, March-April
2004 pp 185-217)
Open
Journal of Optics A: Pure and
Applied Optics - Fanti, Giulio
and Maggiolo, Roberto. “The double superficiality of the frontal image of
the Turin Shroud.” (2004: pp 491-503)
Abstract
Melanoidin -
Rogers, Raymond N and Arnoldi, Anna. “The
Shroud of Turin: an Amino-Carbonyl Reaction (Maillard Reaction) May Explain
the Image Formation.” s vol.4, Ames J.M. ed., Office for
Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg, 2003,
pp.106-113;
Open
Journal of Imaging Science and
Technology - Fanti, G. and
Moroni, M. “Comparison of Luminance Between Face of Turin Shroud Man and
Experimental Results.” 46: 142-154 (2002);
Archaeological Chemistry: Organic,
Inorganic and Biochemical Analyses -
Adler, Alan D. Updating Recent Studies on the Shroud of Turin. ACS
Symposium Series No. 625. Mary Virginia Orna, editor. 1996 by
American Chemical Society, pp.223-228;
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews -
Mills, Allan. Image Formation
on the Shroud of Turin. , December 1995, 20(4):319-327;
Archaeological Chemistry IV;
Advances in Chemistry -
Dinegar, Robert H. and Schwalbe, Larry A. "Isotope Measurements and
Provenance Studies of the Shroud of Turin." Series 220, 1989; Ralph O.
Allen, ed.; Washington: American Chemical Society, pp. 409-417;
Nature
- P. E. Damon, et al (Vol. 337, No. 6208, pp. 611-615, 16th February, 1989)
Open
Canadian Society of Forensic Science
Journal - Heller, JH and AD Adler,
"A Chemical Investigation of the Shroud of Turin." Volume 14 (1981),
pp.81-103.
Applied Optics -
Jackson, J., Jumper, E., and Ercoline W.
"Correlation of Image Intensity of the Turin Shroud with the 3-D Structure
of a Human Body Shape." , 15 July 1984,23:2244-2270; Jumper, Eric J.;
Archaeological Chemistry III;
Advances in Chemistry - Adler,
Alan D.; Jackson, John P.; Pellicori, Samuel F.; Heller, John H.; and Druzik,
James R. "A Comprehensive Examination of the Various Stains and Images on
the Shroud of Turin." Series, #205; Joseph B. Lambert, ed; Washington:
American Chemical Society, pp. 447-476.
b. Quick Facts about the Shroud of Turin
Provenance and Age:
Unknown. Vanillin tests show that the cloth is at least 1300 years old.
Previous carbon 14 tests are now deemed inconclusive.
Where:
Stored flat in a sealed, fireproof, rare-atmosphere container in St. John
the Baptist Cathedral in Turin, Italy. The last public exhibition was in
2000. The next announced viewing is to be in 2025.
Fabric:
A single piece of linen, about 14½ feet long by 3½ feet wide (14.4 x 1.1
meters). Weave is 3-over 1-herringbone twill, approximately 350 micrometers
thick.
Bleaching:
Yarn was bleached before weaving. This results in variegated patterns of
whiteness in both the warp and weft yarn.
Images:
Faint, brownish, full-length frontal and backside images of a man. Images
are negative and photographic negatives are positive images.
Image Chemistry:
A complex carbohydrate substance fully contained within an otherwise clear
layer of starch fractions and saccharides. Layer is 180 to 600 nanometers
thick.
Image Distortions:
Vertical variegations (see bleaching) along both sides of the face and both
sides of the nose create an optical illusion making the face appear gaunt.
Horizontal variegations make eye sockets appear deep.
Discernable Wounds:
Puncture wounds to wrists and feet as well as to the chest. Apparent scourge
marks on torso and legs.
Bloodstains:
Blood is from real blood identified by immunological, fluorescence and
spectrographic tests, as well as Rh and ABO typing of blood antigens. The
forensic signature of clotting with red corpuscles about the edge of the
clot and a clear yellowish halo of serum are visible.
Burns:
Several small burn holes in the cloth of unknown origin as well as large
charred areas and burn holes from a damaging fire in 1532.
Water Stains:
Two distinct sets of water stains. One set is from dousing the fire in
1532. Other water stains are of unknown origin.
___________________________________
A particularly useful
document for appraising facts is:
“Evidence for Testing Hypotheses about the Body Image Formation of the Turin
Shroud,” co-authored by nearly eighty researchers, Twenty-eight researchers
were listed as authors. The list includes a bibliography of over 150
documents including peer-reviewed scientific journals. The list covers
topics such as pollen grains, blood chemistry, image chemistry and optical
characteristics. Facts are categorized into three sections: unquestionable
facts such as the image layer, confirmed observations such as the forensic
pathology findings from the images and observations that are not universally
accepted such as coin and floral images.
Open
The Skeptical Inquirer
magazine has fooled itself by not being an inquirer and not being
truly skeptical; for skepticism fueled by selective use of
information is not skepticism at all.
Shroud of Turin Story Breaking News
|