The
Turin Shroud
by
TempleofMysteries.com
Copyright 2012 TempleofMysteries.com
Smashwords Edition
The
Mystery
The
Significance of the Shroud
Chronology
of the Shroud
The
Authenticity of the Shroud
The
Theories
Dating
the Shroud
The
Missing Centuries
The
Pollen Controversy
DNA
Analysis
The
Knights Templar
Faking
the Shroud
Near
Destruction
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The
Mystery
For
centuries belief that the Shroud of Turin really bears the likeness
of the crucified Jesus Christ was a matter of faith alone. Then in
1898 it was photographed and the negative image revealed a wealth of
detail. Was this the image of Jesus?
The
Significance
If
the Turin Shroud is genuine, what does it tell us about Jesus and the
origins of Christianity? Although many believe that it would provide
vital proof of the truth of the religion, others argue that it would
undermine some of its central tenets.
Chronology
of the Shroud
The
Turin Shroud's origins and history before the middle of the 14th
century are controversial. This presents a chronology of the main
events of the Shroud's known history.
How
authentic is the Shroud?
The
Turin Shroud bears the image, front and back, of a crucified man,
supposedly imprinted on the cloth when the victim was placed in the
shroud for internment. With wounds corresponding exactly to those
suffered by Jesus, either it really is his burial shroud or it was
faked with the intention of passing it off as such.
Theories
on the Shroud
For
some, the Shroud image is simply the result of a miracle. This view
is even taken by some scientists who have studied the Shroud. A
variant of this theory is that the image is paranormal, perhaps
imprinted on the cloth by psychic means, by the collective will of
the pilgrims who came to meditate upon it.
Dating
the Shroud
When
historians, scientists and other specialists first began to look
seriously at the Turin Shroud at the beginning of the 20th century,
the big question they wanted to answer was: how old is the Shroud?
The
Missing Centuries
One
of the major problems for believers is that there is no evidence that
the Shroud existed before the second half of the 14th century, the
earliest documentary reference being from 1389. As a cloth bearing
the miraculous image of Jesus, and impregnated with his redemptive
blood, should have been the most famous relic in Christendom, this
absence is hard to understand.
The
Pollen Controversy
One
of the most widely-discussed aspects of the Shroud mystery is the
claim of Swiss criminologist Max Frei that, by analysing samples of
pollen collected from the cloth, that he could determine, if not the
age of the relic, then at least where it had been kept during its
history.
DNA
on the Shroud
Although
the process that formed the image of the man on the Shroud remains a
mystery, it has always been apparent that the blood was added
separately to the cloth. But is it real blood? And could recent
developments in genetic science be used to find out anything about
the man in the Shroud?
The
Shroud and the Templars
One
of the most controversial - and undoubtedly romantic - of all the
ideas about the Turin Shroud's history involves the Knights Templar.
Destruction
of the Shroud?
The
most recent mystery about the Shroud was its near destruction in a
fire that engulfed Turin Cathedral on the night of 11-12 April 1997.
Faking
the Shroud
Although
some people believe that Leonardo da Vinci was responsible for faking
the Shroud of Turin, it is British investigators Lynn Picknett and
Clive Prince who have presented not only a full theory as to when,
where and why he did it, but also demonstrated how. But how could a
genius like da Vinci, in the 15th century, really have created an
image that only works in photographic negative?
Image of Jesus or the world's most incredible fake?
For centuries belief that the Shroud of Turin really bears the likeness of the crucified Jesus Christ had to be a matter of faith alone. Then in 1898 it was photographed for the first time, and suddenly the negative image revealed an astonishingly life-like wealth of detail of a tall bearded man horribly tortured with whip, nails and crown of thorns. Virtually overnight, the age-old faith of the pilgrims seemed to be vindicated. Surely this was the very image of Jesus?
Belief and disbelief
To many the authenticity of the Shroud was beyond dispute: all that remained was to persuade the outside world of its miraculous nature. The late 1970s saw an upsurge in scientific examination of the Shroud and an increasing clamour for science to prove its authenticity, fuelled by the phenomenal success of British author Ian Wilson's landmark book The Turin Shroud (1978). Within a decade the lobbying - partly masterminded by Wilson himself - succeeded, and in 1988 three laboratories worldwide took small samples of the cloth and subjected them to the process of carbon dating. This marked a watershed in the Shroud's vexed life - and in the lives of many of its devotees, who term themselves 'sindonologists' (from the Greek for 'shroud', sindon), but are known with more or less affection as 'Shroudies'. There are several major Shroudie societies, such as the British Society for the Turin Shroud (BSTS) and the Australian search.
The carbon dating was a disaster for the believers. Instead of giving a date of origin around the year 33 AD - which would tally with the Biblical story - it placed the Shroud some time between the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 15th century. According to the long-awaited pronouncement of science, the Shroud of Turin was a fake...
The Shroud in focus
However, this was by no means the end of interest in that strangely haunting imaged cloth. The believers, although shaken, largely continued to believe - and devoted themselves to proving the carbon dating wrong - while other researchers became intrigued in it as a unique and inexplicable human artefact. The fact remained, awkward though it was, that the image of the Shroud when seen in negative was so lifelike that it was in a class of its own: no other type of image behaves like that - except for one. Even the Shroudies admitted that the Shroud 'behaves like a photograph'.
This undeniable observation led to the completely independent - but virtually simultaneous - work of the South African Professor Nicholas Allen on the one hand, and British researchers Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince on the other. If, they all argued, the Shroud behaves like a photograph, perhaps that is precisely what it is. Both teams set out to prove that it would have been possible in medieval or Renaissance times to produce such a photograph on cloth - and both appear to have succeeded, using a similar method that involves a camera obscura, or pinhole camera, chemicals and light. The main difference is that while Professor Allen ascribes the Shroud-photo to an anonymous Arab alchemist, Picknett and Prince believe the culprit to have been none other than Leonardo da Vinci whose own face, they say, and not Jesus's, can be seen on the cloth. They claim that the da Vinci Shroud was a substitute for an earlier 'Holy Shroud' and the image was created with subliminal - and profoundly heretical - messages.
Plots and conspiracies
Meanwhile, others - such as American researcher Walter McCrone and 'Skeptic' Joe Nickell - suggested that the image was created by the use of red chalk, perhaps rubbed over a heated statue. In Germany, writers Holger Kersten and Elmar Gruber experimented by pasting a (living) heated body with a mixture of myrrh and aloes and covering it with a linen sheet. They argue that the Vatican had plotted to prevent the truth about the Shroud being known: that it proved that Jesus was still alive in the tomb, and therefore could not be worshipped as a Redeemer.