I gave a presentation on this controversial topic for the Rosicrucian Oder (AMORC) several years ago and have decided to include it on the site because it's a fascinating subject.
The Shroud of Turin
One of Christianity's most sacred relics
One of Christianity's most sacred relics
1. What makes this alleged relic so special as to demand our attention?
What is special about the shroud is that it shows an unusual image of a crucified man wrapped in a cloth.
The most remarkable feature though, is that the forensic evidence clearly suggests that it is an image of a "living person."
2. Special features of the cloth.
The Turin Shroud is 4.36 meters in length and 1.1 meters wide and shows in incredible detail the impression of a male body on the back view and on the front part, the frontal view of a crucified person.
One can easily identify the head, face, arms and legs, hands and feet.
The image is mainly sepia in color with some gray areas visible. Also clearly visible, are traces of blood which bear a faint crimson tinge in the original image.
The Shroud was made in what was known as a 3:1 twill weave, resulting in a herringbone pattern and at the time of Jesus, this was an extremely rare kind of weave. It required a complicated technique and for this reason alone must have been very costly.
During the First century, this type of weave was only found in the Roman province of Syria, a neighboring province to Palestine and the twill weave has only been known to the West since the 14th century.
No color pigment can be found on the fabric which suggest that if paint had been used to paint the image on, it would have penetrated deep in to the fabric, which the image does not do. Such a surface work affecting only a few fibres of each thread could not have been achieved by even the finest of brushes available.
The attention is first drawn to two darkened stripes running the length of the fabric, which widen at some points to form larger trapezoid areas. These are actually burn marks which have been patched over by lighter colored pieces. The cloth, which was folded in 48 places, was lying in a silver shrine in the castle chapel of Chambery, France when in 1532 it was nearly lost to fire.
Fortunately it was saved, but only after one side of the container had begun to melt from the heat of the flames. The fire and molten silver had left the geometrically shaped burn marks, later repaired and patched.
3. Examination of the separate features of the Shroud.
Giuseppe Enric took the first photos of the shroud in the 1930's and these confirmed that there was nothing to indicate that the image had been produced by any kind of painting. All attempts by artists over the centuries to copy the shroud image have led to poor results.
The first notable feature is the unclothed state of the body. Under Roman law, criminals were beaten and executed while naked. It would have been unforgivable sacrilege to show the completely naked Jesus in an artistic representation.
The second thing that immediately strikes the eye is the severe wounding which clearly shows the man to be a victim of crucifixion. He wasn't bound to the cross with leather thongs, as was often the practice, but nailed by hands and feet to the cross beam and vertical post. This type of capital punishment was abolished under Emperor Constantine 1 (306-37 AD). Therefore one can be fairly certain that the image on the linen comes from a person who had lain in the linen before the year 330 AD.
Distinct details allow us to recognize the six stations of the cross reported in the Gospels.
Firstly, expert medical studies have discovered a severe swelling under the right eye and surface facial wounds.
Secondly, a large number of small dumbbell shaped markings are visible on the front and rear of the body, particularly on the shoulders and back areas. In total over 90 of these wounds can be counted and their shape allows one to reconstruct the the kind of instrument used to inflect them.
The wounds are clustered in groups of 3 at a certain fixed angle to the body, so it is safe to assume they were caused by some type of whip. The characteristic form of the individual wounds points to a Roman Flagram.
This whip was fitted at the ends with three leather thongs with small lead dumbbells attached to them, called plumbatae.
Thirdly, in the shoulder region the whip wounds appear smeared with blood, and observation that tallies with the custom of the condemned person carrying the cross beam to the place of execution himself.
Fourthly, the irregular course of the streams of blood on the forehead and the back of the head allow us to infer a crowning with thorns. The distribution of these wounds show that what the Man of the Shroud wore was not a ring of thorns, so familiar from Christian iconography, but rather a cap, covering the whole head.
Fifthly,the nail wounds are striking, particularly in the hands. The course of the larger streams of blood indicate the arms were stretched out on the cross at an angle of 55-65 degrees to the vertical and the wounds supply a surprising piece of information. In art, it is only the palms of the hands which are pierced, but the blood flows on the cloth clearly indicate the nails were actually driven through the wrists. Had the nails been driven through the hands, they would not have supported the weight of the body. Actually only a weight of 40kg would have the effect of pulling the nails through the hands.
The final station of the cross is visible via an oval wound on the right side about 4.5cm in length, situated between the 5th and 6th ribs. Quite a lot of blood has flowed from this wound, the dispersal is best seen on the rear of the linen.
4. What other 'evidence' can be put forward that the Shroud could be genuine?
Other tests conducted to find the origin of the Shroud, were the testing of pollens found in the linen.
These indicated the travel history of the shroud in its long history; France, Italy, the eastern Mediterranean countries Istanbul, Edessa and Jerusalem. A total of 44 of these plant species are found in the immediate geographical area of Jerusalem, 14 of them, exclusively there.
5. Let's discuss the features of the "burial" of Jesus.
One glaring feature of the burial of Jesus was that it was not conducted in a manner concurrent with Jewish burial practices of the time.
It was common practice to wash and oil the body, cut and tidy the hair, the corpse was dressed and the face covered with a cloth. This was not the way Jesus was buried.
We know that Joseph of Arimathea ( who was a member of the Sanhedrin; the high council of the supreme Jewish authorities) and Nicodemus (a Jewish councilor) had taken a stand and overruled all the customs. It is known that Nicodemus procured large quantities of aloe and myrrh. These were not substances commonly used by the Jews for burials. Both substances were were commonly used for the treatment of large injured areas.
Clearly one has to see such mixtures as the most specific means for rapid healing of wounds,combined with the greatest possible efficacy against danger of infection.
There can therefore be no doubt that Nicodemus procured astonishing quantities (33kg in fact) of highly specific medicinal herbs with the sole purpose of treating the wounds on the body of Jesus.
These spices could have served no other purpose.
The disciple John states in his Gospel that "they took the body of Jesus and wound it in linen cloths with spices, as the manner of Jews is to bury."
Joseph and Nicodemus were occupied in activities which had simply nothing to do with Jewish burial rites. John says they buried Jesus in the way customary for the Jews and then goes on to describe a burial which openly contravenes the custom!
Why would he have done this? Did he not know the burial rites? Of course he knew them because he described a standard burial in the Lazarus story.
There gradually dawns the conviction that John's secret style of writing was intended to reveal a tremendous event to the attentive reader, while concealing it from the eyes of the ignorant; Jesus was not meant to be buried, because he had not died on the cross!
We know that Jesus was a member of the Essenes, a kind of monastic community who were very well versed in the healing arts and practices. John of the Gospels was also an Essene. What went on in the burial chamber is seen as an attempt by the Essene community to treat the seriously wounded Jesus with medicinal herbs. To treat him they evidently used a 'sweat promoting' packing formed with excessive amounts of herbs. the heat of the body, mixed with the sweat and herbs, caused the formation of the image on the Shroud.
6. Could it be possible that a person could survive Crucifixion?
Great care was taken that the crucifixion was completed before the Sabbath and the greatest haste was called for in the case of Jesus' crucifixion because it took place on the day before the Sabbath, not an easy thing to arrange because the particular feature of crucifixion was its protracted torture, done in a way which meant the agony usually extended over a period of days, until the person finally died.
It is written that Jesus was nailed to the cross at noon and died some 3 hours later. (some reports say 6 hours, others 9)
Many studies have been carried out by medical experts to try and explain the all too rapid "death".
Some blame his mistreatment before the crucifixion, that it had so severely undermined his condition that he succumbed to the torture of crucifixion after just a short 3 hours.
The facts show that Jesus was no frail ascetic, but a relatively tall, strong and robust man in his prime (according to the Shroud, about 6 feet tall and 79kg in weight).
The other two men crucified with Jesus still lived and had their legs broken to expedite their deaths.
One can wonder why this was not also done to Jesus, other than the Romans believed him to be dead, but it appears the Roman centurion Longinus, who carried out these tasks including the stab of the lance to the side (which was superficial and not a death thrust) was also a follower of Jesus and was said to have later become a Bishop.
The bitter vinegar offered to Jesus could conceivably have contained opium, which was well known to the Jews for its opiate effect and it is shortly after this that Jesus cries out and dies.
It is known that hanging on a cross eventually causes suffocation and if this were true in Jesus' case, he would have barely managed a whisper. It is also conceivable that Jesus then went into an opium induced coma, the opiate strongly lowering the heart rate, calming the breathing to an extraordinary degree, making the body completely limp.
Joseph and Nicodemus knew that they could not prevent the crucifixion, but if they could manage to take Jesus down from the cross early enough and everything was well planned, it would be possible to keep him alive.
The Sunday following, it is thought that he was led out of the tomb by the Essenes. It is possible that the resurrection tradition in the Bible comes from a source which knew about the efforts to heal Jesus.
It is interesting to note that for the terms "rise" and "coming back to life" which we find in the translations of the Bible originally derive, as philologist and theologist Father Gunther Schwartz shows, from an Aramaic verb which means "resuscitate".
He explains; "The lexical evidence is conclusive: not 'resurrection' but 'resuscitation' is the only meaning possible for these Aramaic words, one of which Jesus would have used. He refers to the synonymous words "achajuta" and "techijuta". both nouns are derived from the verb "chaja"; "life" and consequently mean resuscitation and nothing else".
Inquiries made by the British author Hoare with the experts of the East Midlands Forensic Laboratory, were part of a long line of discussions about whether the image shows a corpse or a living person.
The decisive point which made the scientists decide in favor of a living person was the even distribution of the markings. However it was produced, the image indicates a functioning circulatory system.
The scientists concluded that taking in account all the facts, by the criteria of the 20th century, the body which lay in the linen, was still alive.
The traces of blood on the shroud are of great interest. Two types of bleeding can clearly be distinguished. Firstly there is dried blood visible from the whipping, the crown of thorns, the side wound and from the nails fixing the body to the cross.
Secondly, there is fresh blood which flowed when Jesus was already lying horizontally on the cloth, namely from the wrists and feet and from the side wound which had started bleeding again from the movement of preparing the body. The findings were made by rigorously testing the patterns of the flow, the position the body would have to have been in for this bleeding to occur and strict measurements of the directions of the flow as shown on the material.
Corpses simply do not bleed!
The fabric quickly becomes saturated with the resinous aloe and became thoroughly impregnated with it. This meant that most of the blood was not absorbed into the cloth, but spread out over the surface.
This explains the fact observed by modern researchers that most of the blood marks cannot be seen on the reverse side, even though the material is quite thin.
7. The controversial "Carbon Dating".
Parties for and against the authenticity of the Shroud have confronted each other. Only a definite chronological placing of the time of the origination ofthe Shroud could finally clear the matter up.
In 1988 at the order of the Vatican, 3 groups of experts dated the Shroud to the 14th Century using radiocarbon dating. It was only towards the end of the 1980's that radiocarbon dating had advanced sufficiently to allow only a piece of the Shroud the size of a postage stamp to be removed and studied. So it was that 150mg of shroud material had been handed over to 3 scientific institutions in Great Britain, Switzerland and the USA.
What look initially like a well planned and supervised experiment, actually depended entirely on the honest of just one individual; Dr. Michael Tite of the British museum. It is believed that Dr. Tite, on the orders of the Vatican, was to see to it that the relic was dated to the 14th century.
Apparently, of the 3 samples studied, one came from a cloak found in a French church, dated to the 14th century. The sizes of the samples differed continuously during the reporting of the testing, indicating foul play. The Vatican had stated that there would be solid documentary evidence of the whole sampling procedure.
On the film, one would openly be able to see which piece was removed from the Shroud for sampling.
The removal is clearly seen in the documentary, but during the most crucial phase, when Dr. Tite disappeared into the sacristy with Cardinal Ballestrero and Signor Luigi Gonella, Italy's leading expert on the Turin Shroud, to distribute the pieces of cloth into foil and then into the containers to be given to the 3 laboratories, the cameras were turned off. Everything suggests that this part was intentionally omitted to make manipulation possible.
During this half hour, it was possible to take a carefully selected similar piece, such as a thread from the cape which had the desired date and make it look the same as the original cloth by trimming and weighing.
One of the samples was from an Egyptian mummy said to have died during Hadrian's rule (117-38AD)
That piece did not belong to the mummy at all but to the shroud and was dated precisely at 9BC-78AD.
It was the piece from St. Louis D'Anjou's cape that was used to arrive at the date of the Shroud being from the 14th century, which of course it was!
Questions of the three senior people involved, by the researches, offer only defective observations compounded by false statements. The Vatican it seems had a great deal to lose if the truth of the Turin shroud should be discovered. Their revered and closely guarded shrine had suddenly changed in their eyes. Some day the time bomb would go off and threaten the foundations of Christianity.
Of course the one question which arises is; if Jesus did not die on the cross what happened to him?
Many theories have been put forward to date. Some have him leaving for Southern France with Mary Magdalene to be later buried at Mount Cardou. Other legends have him traveling to India etc..
That leaves us with one further subject; The Ascension.
If we are to believe the evidence suggested here, then we must assume there was no ascension.
To conclude:
Restoration work was carried out in 2002. It was noted by one expert that the workers doing the sewing (replacement panels were put in to cover the burnt panels) did not even wear gloves, masks or dust covers over their clothes, thereby the possibility of contamination with skin oils and epithelial cells is obvious. The lack of care taken with so called restoration work could have damaged the shroud irreparably and could prevent future testing. What did the Vatican hope to achieve with this "restoration" work?
Personally, I'm not sure...the evidence is compelling and knowing the Vatican's history for cloak and dagger tactics, I'm not that surprised.
Let's face it, if the Turin shroud is genuine, and it could be proven that Jesus did not die on the cross,
I can understand the Vatican being worried....it undermines everything they stand for. And they would never allow that!
CDV
My sources for the basis of this presentation is from the book "The Jesus Conspiracy" by Kersten and Gruber. Hollger Kersten studied Theology and pedagogics at Freiburg University. Elmar Gruber studied psychology and philosophy in Vienna and both have studied the Shroud for over 10 years.
What is special about the shroud is that it shows an unusual image of a crucified man wrapped in a cloth.
The most remarkable feature though, is that the forensic evidence clearly suggests that it is an image of a "living person."
2. Special features of the cloth.
The Turin Shroud is 4.36 meters in length and 1.1 meters wide and shows in incredible detail the impression of a male body on the back view and on the front part, the frontal view of a crucified person.
One can easily identify the head, face, arms and legs, hands and feet.
The image is mainly sepia in color with some gray areas visible. Also clearly visible, are traces of blood which bear a faint crimson tinge in the original image.
The Shroud was made in what was known as a 3:1 twill weave, resulting in a herringbone pattern and at the time of Jesus, this was an extremely rare kind of weave. It required a complicated technique and for this reason alone must have been very costly.
During the First century, this type of weave was only found in the Roman province of Syria, a neighboring province to Palestine and the twill weave has only been known to the West since the 14th century.
No color pigment can be found on the fabric which suggest that if paint had been used to paint the image on, it would have penetrated deep in to the fabric, which the image does not do. Such a surface work affecting only a few fibres of each thread could not have been achieved by even the finest of brushes available.
The attention is first drawn to two darkened stripes running the length of the fabric, which widen at some points to form larger trapezoid areas. These are actually burn marks which have been patched over by lighter colored pieces. The cloth, which was folded in 48 places, was lying in a silver shrine in the castle chapel of Chambery, France when in 1532 it was nearly lost to fire.
Fortunately it was saved, but only after one side of the container had begun to melt from the heat of the flames. The fire and molten silver had left the geometrically shaped burn marks, later repaired and patched.
3. Examination of the separate features of the Shroud.
Giuseppe Enric took the first photos of the shroud in the 1930's and these confirmed that there was nothing to indicate that the image had been produced by any kind of painting. All attempts by artists over the centuries to copy the shroud image have led to poor results.
The first notable feature is the unclothed state of the body. Under Roman law, criminals were beaten and executed while naked. It would have been unforgivable sacrilege to show the completely naked Jesus in an artistic representation.
The second thing that immediately strikes the eye is the severe wounding which clearly shows the man to be a victim of crucifixion. He wasn't bound to the cross with leather thongs, as was often the practice, but nailed by hands and feet to the cross beam and vertical post. This type of capital punishment was abolished under Emperor Constantine 1 (306-37 AD). Therefore one can be fairly certain that the image on the linen comes from a person who had lain in the linen before the year 330 AD.
Distinct details allow us to recognize the six stations of the cross reported in the Gospels.
Firstly, expert medical studies have discovered a severe swelling under the right eye and surface facial wounds.
Secondly, a large number of small dumbbell shaped markings are visible on the front and rear of the body, particularly on the shoulders and back areas. In total over 90 of these wounds can be counted and their shape allows one to reconstruct the the kind of instrument used to inflect them.
The wounds are clustered in groups of 3 at a certain fixed angle to the body, so it is safe to assume they were caused by some type of whip. The characteristic form of the individual wounds points to a Roman Flagram.
This whip was fitted at the ends with three leather thongs with small lead dumbbells attached to them, called plumbatae.
Thirdly, in the shoulder region the whip wounds appear smeared with blood, and observation that tallies with the custom of the condemned person carrying the cross beam to the place of execution himself.
Fourthly, the irregular course of the streams of blood on the forehead and the back of the head allow us to infer a crowning with thorns. The distribution of these wounds show that what the Man of the Shroud wore was not a ring of thorns, so familiar from Christian iconography, but rather a cap, covering the whole head.
Fifthly,the nail wounds are striking, particularly in the hands. The course of the larger streams of blood indicate the arms were stretched out on the cross at an angle of 55-65 degrees to the vertical and the wounds supply a surprising piece of information. In art, it is only the palms of the hands which are pierced, but the blood flows on the cloth clearly indicate the nails were actually driven through the wrists. Had the nails been driven through the hands, they would not have supported the weight of the body. Actually only a weight of 40kg would have the effect of pulling the nails through the hands.
The final station of the cross is visible via an oval wound on the right side about 4.5cm in length, situated between the 5th and 6th ribs. Quite a lot of blood has flowed from this wound, the dispersal is best seen on the rear of the linen.
4. What other 'evidence' can be put forward that the Shroud could be genuine?
Other tests conducted to find the origin of the Shroud, were the testing of pollens found in the linen.
These indicated the travel history of the shroud in its long history; France, Italy, the eastern Mediterranean countries Istanbul, Edessa and Jerusalem. A total of 44 of these plant species are found in the immediate geographical area of Jerusalem, 14 of them, exclusively there.
5. Let's discuss the features of the "burial" of Jesus.
One glaring feature of the burial of Jesus was that it was not conducted in a manner concurrent with Jewish burial practices of the time.
It was common practice to wash and oil the body, cut and tidy the hair, the corpse was dressed and the face covered with a cloth. This was not the way Jesus was buried.
We know that Joseph of Arimathea ( who was a member of the Sanhedrin; the high council of the supreme Jewish authorities) and Nicodemus (a Jewish councilor) had taken a stand and overruled all the customs. It is known that Nicodemus procured large quantities of aloe and myrrh. These were not substances commonly used by the Jews for burials. Both substances were were commonly used for the treatment of large injured areas.
Clearly one has to see such mixtures as the most specific means for rapid healing of wounds,combined with the greatest possible efficacy against danger of infection.
There can therefore be no doubt that Nicodemus procured astonishing quantities (33kg in fact) of highly specific medicinal herbs with the sole purpose of treating the wounds on the body of Jesus.
These spices could have served no other purpose.
The disciple John states in his Gospel that "they took the body of Jesus and wound it in linen cloths with spices, as the manner of Jews is to bury."
Joseph and Nicodemus were occupied in activities which had simply nothing to do with Jewish burial rites. John says they buried Jesus in the way customary for the Jews and then goes on to describe a burial which openly contravenes the custom!
Why would he have done this? Did he not know the burial rites? Of course he knew them because he described a standard burial in the Lazarus story.
There gradually dawns the conviction that John's secret style of writing was intended to reveal a tremendous event to the attentive reader, while concealing it from the eyes of the ignorant; Jesus was not meant to be buried, because he had not died on the cross!
We know that Jesus was a member of the Essenes, a kind of monastic community who were very well versed in the healing arts and practices. John of the Gospels was also an Essene. What went on in the burial chamber is seen as an attempt by the Essene community to treat the seriously wounded Jesus with medicinal herbs. To treat him they evidently used a 'sweat promoting' packing formed with excessive amounts of herbs. the heat of the body, mixed with the sweat and herbs, caused the formation of the image on the Shroud.
6. Could it be possible that a person could survive Crucifixion?
Great care was taken that the crucifixion was completed before the Sabbath and the greatest haste was called for in the case of Jesus' crucifixion because it took place on the day before the Sabbath, not an easy thing to arrange because the particular feature of crucifixion was its protracted torture, done in a way which meant the agony usually extended over a period of days, until the person finally died.
It is written that Jesus was nailed to the cross at noon and died some 3 hours later. (some reports say 6 hours, others 9)
Many studies have been carried out by medical experts to try and explain the all too rapid "death".
Some blame his mistreatment before the crucifixion, that it had so severely undermined his condition that he succumbed to the torture of crucifixion after just a short 3 hours.
The facts show that Jesus was no frail ascetic, but a relatively tall, strong and robust man in his prime (according to the Shroud, about 6 feet tall and 79kg in weight).
The other two men crucified with Jesus still lived and had their legs broken to expedite their deaths.
One can wonder why this was not also done to Jesus, other than the Romans believed him to be dead, but it appears the Roman centurion Longinus, who carried out these tasks including the stab of the lance to the side (which was superficial and not a death thrust) was also a follower of Jesus and was said to have later become a Bishop.
The bitter vinegar offered to Jesus could conceivably have contained opium, which was well known to the Jews for its opiate effect and it is shortly after this that Jesus cries out and dies.
It is known that hanging on a cross eventually causes suffocation and if this were true in Jesus' case, he would have barely managed a whisper. It is also conceivable that Jesus then went into an opium induced coma, the opiate strongly lowering the heart rate, calming the breathing to an extraordinary degree, making the body completely limp.
Joseph and Nicodemus knew that they could not prevent the crucifixion, but if they could manage to take Jesus down from the cross early enough and everything was well planned, it would be possible to keep him alive.
The Sunday following, it is thought that he was led out of the tomb by the Essenes. It is possible that the resurrection tradition in the Bible comes from a source which knew about the efforts to heal Jesus.
It is interesting to note that for the terms "rise" and "coming back to life" which we find in the translations of the Bible originally derive, as philologist and theologist Father Gunther Schwartz shows, from an Aramaic verb which means "resuscitate".
He explains; "The lexical evidence is conclusive: not 'resurrection' but 'resuscitation' is the only meaning possible for these Aramaic words, one of which Jesus would have used. He refers to the synonymous words "achajuta" and "techijuta". both nouns are derived from the verb "chaja"; "life" and consequently mean resuscitation and nothing else".
Inquiries made by the British author Hoare with the experts of the East Midlands Forensic Laboratory, were part of a long line of discussions about whether the image shows a corpse or a living person.
The decisive point which made the scientists decide in favor of a living person was the even distribution of the markings. However it was produced, the image indicates a functioning circulatory system.
The scientists concluded that taking in account all the facts, by the criteria of the 20th century, the body which lay in the linen, was still alive.
The traces of blood on the shroud are of great interest. Two types of bleeding can clearly be distinguished. Firstly there is dried blood visible from the whipping, the crown of thorns, the side wound and from the nails fixing the body to the cross.
Secondly, there is fresh blood which flowed when Jesus was already lying horizontally on the cloth, namely from the wrists and feet and from the side wound which had started bleeding again from the movement of preparing the body. The findings were made by rigorously testing the patterns of the flow, the position the body would have to have been in for this bleeding to occur and strict measurements of the directions of the flow as shown on the material.
Corpses simply do not bleed!
The fabric quickly becomes saturated with the resinous aloe and became thoroughly impregnated with it. This meant that most of the blood was not absorbed into the cloth, but spread out over the surface.
This explains the fact observed by modern researchers that most of the blood marks cannot be seen on the reverse side, even though the material is quite thin.
7. The controversial "Carbon Dating".
Parties for and against the authenticity of the Shroud have confronted each other. Only a definite chronological placing of the time of the origination ofthe Shroud could finally clear the matter up.
In 1988 at the order of the Vatican, 3 groups of experts dated the Shroud to the 14th Century using radiocarbon dating. It was only towards the end of the 1980's that radiocarbon dating had advanced sufficiently to allow only a piece of the Shroud the size of a postage stamp to be removed and studied. So it was that 150mg of shroud material had been handed over to 3 scientific institutions in Great Britain, Switzerland and the USA.
What look initially like a well planned and supervised experiment, actually depended entirely on the honest of just one individual; Dr. Michael Tite of the British museum. It is believed that Dr. Tite, on the orders of the Vatican, was to see to it that the relic was dated to the 14th century.
Apparently, of the 3 samples studied, one came from a cloak found in a French church, dated to the 14th century. The sizes of the samples differed continuously during the reporting of the testing, indicating foul play. The Vatican had stated that there would be solid documentary evidence of the whole sampling procedure.
On the film, one would openly be able to see which piece was removed from the Shroud for sampling.
The removal is clearly seen in the documentary, but during the most crucial phase, when Dr. Tite disappeared into the sacristy with Cardinal Ballestrero and Signor Luigi Gonella, Italy's leading expert on the Turin Shroud, to distribute the pieces of cloth into foil and then into the containers to be given to the 3 laboratories, the cameras were turned off. Everything suggests that this part was intentionally omitted to make manipulation possible.
During this half hour, it was possible to take a carefully selected similar piece, such as a thread from the cape which had the desired date and make it look the same as the original cloth by trimming and weighing.
One of the samples was from an Egyptian mummy said to have died during Hadrian's rule (117-38AD)
That piece did not belong to the mummy at all but to the shroud and was dated precisely at 9BC-78AD.
It was the piece from St. Louis D'Anjou's cape that was used to arrive at the date of the Shroud being from the 14th century, which of course it was!
Questions of the three senior people involved, by the researches, offer only defective observations compounded by false statements. The Vatican it seems had a great deal to lose if the truth of the Turin shroud should be discovered. Their revered and closely guarded shrine had suddenly changed in their eyes. Some day the time bomb would go off and threaten the foundations of Christianity.
Of course the one question which arises is; if Jesus did not die on the cross what happened to him?
Many theories have been put forward to date. Some have him leaving for Southern France with Mary Magdalene to be later buried at Mount Cardou. Other legends have him traveling to India etc..
That leaves us with one further subject; The Ascension.
If we are to believe the evidence suggested here, then we must assume there was no ascension.
To conclude:
Restoration work was carried out in 2002. It was noted by one expert that the workers doing the sewing (replacement panels were put in to cover the burnt panels) did not even wear gloves, masks or dust covers over their clothes, thereby the possibility of contamination with skin oils and epithelial cells is obvious. The lack of care taken with so called restoration work could have damaged the shroud irreparably and could prevent future testing. What did the Vatican hope to achieve with this "restoration" work?
Personally, I'm not sure...the evidence is compelling and knowing the Vatican's history for cloak and dagger tactics, I'm not that surprised.
Let's face it, if the Turin shroud is genuine, and it could be proven that Jesus did not die on the cross,
I can understand the Vatican being worried....it undermines everything they stand for. And they would never allow that!
CDV
My sources for the basis of this presentation is from the book "The Jesus Conspiracy" by Kersten and Gruber. Hollger Kersten studied Theology and pedagogics at Freiburg University. Elmar Gruber studied psychology and philosophy in Vienna and both have studied the Shroud for over 10 years.
