March 8, 2005
Fake or Real?
Stromata Blog has a great post about the Shroud of Turin (hat tip Cronaca). Nathan Wilson, described as a conservative Protestant, has developed an extremely easy way to make a 3-D negative image on cloth -- just like the Shroud. Put a positive image (on glass or other transparent material) above a cloth in sunshine, wait days, and viola, a 3-D negative image appears as the portion under the clear portion is bleached lighter.
Tom Veal and David Nishimura struggle with the two possible scenarios:
The shroud could have been created by someone, say a crusader, taking an ancient burial cloth (and therefore having the correct age, pollen, and weaving) to a painter who then created an image on a very large piece of transparent material that depicted crucifixion images at variance with the accepted iconography of how Christ was crucified, leaving them out in the sun for days, then deciding that that wasn't good enough, turning the shroud and the transparent image over, lining up the image on the underside of the cloth with the flipped image and repeating the process.
On the other hand, the shroud was real yet somehow escaped notice by Christians until 1354 when the de Charnay family could no longer contain themselves, or it was discovered by a Crusader in the Jerusalem area who took it home to France and only then was it discovered to be a relic.
As Tom Veal says: "It seems to me that all theories about the Shroud are quite improbable." Which is pretty much what a friend who was a Shroud lore fan told me years ago -- it confounds believer and unbeliever alike. And yet it exists, which I suppose is its own miracle.
Posted by Kevin Murphy at March 8, 2005 11:53 AM | FaithOne ancient problem with the Shroud of Turin is that it does not appear to match the Biblical account. In John 20 we read that there was a separate head cloth used in the burial:
3So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. 8Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) (NIV)
I will, of course, defer to my esteemed colleague Kevin with regard to the physics of the Resurrection. But it seems to me that the Shroud should have an imprint/image of the body, minus the head. Only the head cloth should have the head imprint. Or the Shroud image should be fainter on the head part of the image, with a clear dividing line between them. Or something like that.
Assuming that the shroud is real, I don't know what it would show as I don't know how it was made. But I don't think it would be headless, because for the shroud to be real then it was an outer, complete wrap, unmentioned in the Bible, in addition to the strips of linen and the face cloth used as described in all four Gospels.
Posted by: Kevin Murphy at March 11, 2005 1:40 PMI enjoyed reading the Fr. Brown mysteries in high school and like his tribute to Chesterton's style in much of his exposition. I thought he had a very good insight on faith at the end of section four.
Faith, generally speaking, seems to be at the root of both sides. For the secularist, it is foundational to all that he holds to be true that the Shroud be false. And, unfortunately, while whether or not the Shroud is a fraud is completely irrelevant to Christendom, many Christian proponents use it to bolster their own faith and create faith in others. A faux-faith is easy when a photograph of Christ's resurrection can be stuck on the cover of Time.Posted by: Sean Murphy at March 12, 2005 6:34 PM
Seems Nathan Wilson’s experiment is caught in the ‘popular news item vortex’. Articles showing up not only in the local press, but some national attention also. Unfortunately, as his work becomes big news it also shows signs of unraveling once any hard questions are asked, or even semi-hard ones. And those questions are starting to be asked and the unraveling has begun. A couple of the problems: First, Nate's work supposed the image on the shroud was composed of a dye, most likely red ochre. The problem is red ochre is stable in sunlight, it does NOT fade. The pigment in brick is basically red ochre. A brick does not fade because red ochre does not fade. The image on the shroud is not a dye of ANY kind. That hypothesis was considered, tested, and discarded decades ago. Secondly,the state of forteenth century glass making is another obvious problem(see website).
http://www.shroudstory.com/shadowshroud.htm
And it doesn’t stop there. Seems Nate’s research prior to his experiment was less than adequate.
Nate’s claim is looking similar to the man who declares he knows how Michelangelo created his David, since he’s just created a replica with his chainsaw and a log. However, we know David is not made of wood, and Michelangelo predates the invention of chainsaws. Well, the shroud is not made of a dye of any kind, and glass the size needed didn’t exist for another 300 years, at least.
Mark K
Ahoy - follow this discussion where it actually is happening:
http://rmfo-blogs.com/rumorsage/archives/2005/02/19/shroud-of-turin-behind-the-scenes/
Thanks,
Mark B.
