Fact Check
- The Shroud of Turin was carbon dated in 1988. The conclusion of those tests was that the cloth originated between 1260 and 1390. True. However, tests recently conducted at the Los Alamos National Laboratory by a team of nine scientists under the direction of Robert Villarreal confirm what chemist Raymond Rogers found and published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, Thermochimica Acta (Jan. 2005): The tested sample was not representative of the shroud’s cloth. Rogers’ findings had also been confirmed by Georgia Tech’s materials forensic chemist John L. Brown.
- Paint was found on the Shroud of Turin. The correct statement should be that Walter McCrone visually identified, through microscopy, paint particles on some fibers removed from the surface of the shroud. However, Mark Anderson, who worked for McCrone, examined the fibers using laser microprobe Raman spectrometry and found that what McCrone thought was (inorganic) paint was in fact an organic substance. Previously, the shroud (and not just fibers) had been observed with visible and ultraviolet spectrometry, infrared spectrometry, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, and thermography. No paint was found. Later, pyrolysis-mass-spectrometry tests conducted at the Mass Spectrometry Center of Excellence at the University of Nebraska, on fibers examined by McCrone, were unable to detect any paint particles or painting medium.
- Scientist have failed to identify blood on the Shroud of Turin. This is one of those statements that has been repeated over and over by skeptics, so much so that many people believe it. However, immunological, fluorescence and spectrographic tests, as well as Rh and ABO typing of blood antigens, reveal that the stains are human blood. Many of the bloodstains have the distinctive forensic signature of clotting with red corpuscles about the edge of a clot with a clear yellowish halo of serum. The heme was converted into its parent porphyrin, and the spectra examined. The bloodstains are blood. Microchemical tests for proteins were positive in blood areas. Much of this work is published in peer reviewed scientific journals including Archeological Chemistry: Organic, Inorganic, and Biochemical Analysis (American Chemical Society), Applied Optics and the Canadian Society of Forensic Sciences Journal.
- There is no record of the Shroud of Turin before 1349. Meaningless! Many artifacts from antiquity lack records that go back to their original provenance. Moreover, as is often the case with written records, there are gaps in the records. However, it is part of the work of historians and archeologists to find other evidence and bridge gaps in documentation. There is a drawing of a shroud from 1192 (nearly a century earlier than the earliest carbon 14 date) that is clearly identifiable from particular features as the current Shroud of Turin. It is well known that a cloth with a purported image of Jesus existed in Edessa as documented by Eusebius of Caesarea in the early 4th century. According to Eusebius (and this must be considered legend) the cloth was brought to Edessa by the apostle Thomas or the disciple Thadeus (of the 70). In 544 a cloth with an image thought to be of Jesus was found concealed above a gate in the city walls of Edessa. That cloth was transferred to Constantinople on August 14, 944. It was, at that time, described as a full-length burial cloth with an image of Jesus and bloodstains. Following the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, it became the property of Othon de la Roche, French Duke of Athens and Thebes. He sent it to his castle home in the town of Besançon, France in 1207. At Eastertide, it was removed from castle and displayed in the Besançon Cathedral until the cathedral was destroyed by fire in March of 1349. Any records that might have existed may have been burned in that fire as all church records were destroyed. In that same year, Geoffroy de Charny, a French knight married Jeanne de Vergy, a grand-niece of Othon de la Roche, and delivered the shroud to the canons of Lirey, thereby creating the earliest extant record in Western Europe.
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August 23, 2008 at 5:45 pm
The Blessed Mother was proficient at embroidery & weaving. The shroud was a physical gift to the Blessed Mother to comfort her & ease her pain.
E Garino
July 5, 2009 at 4:59 pm
The shroud is a fake – obviously – the image is flat (like a photograph). It is likely an early form of photography. That explains it more than any other explanation. People made money out of it that is why it is in the public domain. No thinking person would believe it is a religious artifact, not from what we know now or what you would read in the bible – period. It is so obvious that most human beings do not use their (God given – if you like) brain – apparently, surprisingly and unfortunately.
Ian
August 31, 2009 at 9:44 am