1/11/2007
"The subject of this book is a mysterious length of old cloth preserved in
Turin Cathedral. It has been called
various names in successive
ages by different people. When I first felt its fascination more than twenty years
ago, we non-Italians usually referred to it by its traditional Latin name of Sudarium Taurinensis, or
sweatcloth of Turin; but other names are more popular today. In Turin and the rest
of Italy it is known to
millions of Catholics as `la Santa
Sindone' or just `la Sindone', and to an ever-increasing number of English-
speaking people throughout Christendom and beyond it is becoming known as `the Holy Shroud of Turin',
`the Turin Shroud' or simply `the Shroud'. There is something apt and familiar
about the simplicity of that
monosyllable, and an unspoken
claim lies in its juxtaposition with the definite article. Other shrouds are
preserved in other places, of course, just as there were other dukes alive in the days of Wellington: but this
one - paradoxically - is unique. The Shroud." (McNair, P., "The
Shroud and History: Fantasy, Fake or
Fact?," in Jennings,
P., ed., "Face to Face with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering
UK, 1978, p.21. Emphasis original)
1/11/2007
"On the face of it, the very idea that the linen cloth in which Jesus Christ
was wrapped in the tomb should
have survived to this day would
seem incredible. It demands even more of human credulity that the cloth
bears a photographic likeness which would seem to be that of Jesus as he lay in the tomb. Yet it is on the
evidence for these two seemingly impossible facts that this book has been written.
The cloth in question is
known by the Italians as the Santa
Sindone, or Holy Shroud. It reposes within Turin's Cathedral of St.
John the Baptist, in the circular, black marble Royal Chapel, designed by Guarino Guarini, which was once
the place of private worship for the dukes of Savoy, former rulers of Italy."
(Wilson, I., "The Shroud of
Turin: The Burial Cloth of
Jesus?," [1978], Image Books: New York NY, Revised edition, 1979, p.13)
6/11/2007
"Pia's glass plates measured 51
by 63 centimetres, and are preserved in the Museum of the Holy Shroud at
Via San Domenico 28 in Turin. He took them home post-haste, leaving his assistants to clear up the
Cathedral, and when he developed the first of them he nearly jumped out of his
skin: in fact he records that
he almost let the plate drop
in his astonished excitement. For under his very eyes had formed something new
and totally unsuspected, a commanding face of calm and majestic beauty which none of the millions of
devoted worshippers in the past had ever seen before. Indeed one of the staggering
facts about the Shroud
is that although to our certain knowledge
it has been venerated as a sacred relic since the fourteenth
century,
the face which we now see reproduced on the cover of this book (and which is so hauntingly
familiar to many of us) was not seen until the small hours of 29 May 1898, just over eighty years ago - in fact
within living memory." (McNair, P., "The Shroud and History: Fantasy,
Fake or Fact?," in Jennings, P., ed.,
"Face to Face
with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering UK, 1978, pp.26-27)
6/11/2007
"The explanation is in one sense simple,
in another sense baffling. It seems that what meets the naked eye in
looking at the Shroud is very like a photographic negative, which, when photographed, becomes positive in
the negative of the photograph, when the scuro turns chiaro and
the chiaro, scuro. The striking
face which
Pia first saw in 1898 is the positive preserved for centuries in the arcane negative of the Turin
Shroud, which awaited the nineteenth-century invention of photography to reveal it. People who maintain
that the image on the Shroud is a medieval fake argue that what has happened here
is the well-attested
process known in the art world as `reversal'.
In a letter to the Observer of 9, April 1978, for instance, Mr
John Parker (echoing the Catholic Encyclopaedia of 1912) claimed that "the yellow colouring that
represented the sweat of Christ has darkened to brown, through exposure to light
and heat, thus converting
the pristine `lights' to present
`shades' and producing the accidental `negative photo' effects." This solution
might be plausible enough if the image of the Shroud-Man had been painted, but I repeat that scientists
have detected no trace of any pigment on the Shroud." (McNair, P., "The
Shroud and History: Fantasy, Fake
or Fact?," in Jennings,
P., ed., "Face to Face with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering
UK, 1978, p.27)
6/11/2007
"Two of the most eminent opponents of the Shroud in the decade after the revealing
negative of 1898 were a
French Canon and an English Jesuit.
Ulisse Chevalier (1841-1923) was a distinguished clerical scholar - in
fact he was probably the most meticulous medievalist that France has ever produced. In 1899, 1900, 1902,
and again in 1903 he threw the whole weight of his immense reputation for erudition
into disproving the
authenticity of the Shroud, and at least
his E'tude critique sur l'origine du St Suaire de Lirey-Chambéry-
Turin (Paris, 1900) should be read and pondered by any serious inquirer
today before he leaps to a facile
Turin (Paris, 1900)
should be read and pondered by any serious inquirer today before he leaps to a facile
Turin (Paris, 1900) should be read and pondered by any serious inquirer today before he leaps to a facile
conclusion. At much the same time Father Herbert Thurston, S.J. (1856-1939), weighed
in at a more popular
level of scholarship and voiced the rational
disbelief of many Catholic and most Protestant historians in
Britain.
He concluded his influential essay of 1903 entitled The Holy Shroud and the Verdict of History
with these confident words: `The case [against the Shroud's authenticity] is
here so strong that [ ... ] the
probability of an error in
the verdict of history must be accounted, it seems to me, as almost infinitesimal.'"
(McNair, P., "The Shroud and History: Fantasy, Fake or Fact?," in Jennings, P., ed., "Face to Face
with the
Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering
UK, 1978, p.28. Ellipses original)
6/11/2007
"The irony of those opening years of this century was that some of the top
intellectual brass of the Catholic
Establishment outside Italy
opposed the authenticity of the Shroud, while some of the most distinguished
lay agnostic scientists were openly championing it. On 21, April 1902, for instance, Yves Delage (1854-1920),
a very eminent Professor of Comparative Anatomy at the Sorbonne, who was known
for his
uncompromising stand against supernaturalism, gave
a lecture on the Shroud before the Academie
Française
in which he declared his belief in its authenticity (and jeopardised his career in so doing). In the
same year came out the careful scientific study entitled Le Linceul du Christ by Paul Vignon (1865-c1940),
also of the Sorbonne, but later Professor of Biology at the
Institut Catholique (Paris) and one of the
Shroud's most
convinced and able apologists of this century." (McNair, P., "The Shroud and History:
Fantasy, Fake or Fact?," in Jennings, P., ed., "Face to Face with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon:
Great Wakering UK, 1978, p.28. Ellipses original)
6/11/2007
"Before
the fourteenth century was out, this late arrival on the scene had acquired the two most dangerous
and seemingly best informed - opponents in its entire history. Both were Bishops, and both appear to have
been men of exceptional probity in their generation. It is quite possible that
the Shroud was not exposed at
Lirey in Geoffroi's lifetime,
but it is difficult to unravel the circumstances of its public debut with any
accuracy. What seems reasonably certain is that within a year of Geoffroi's death the Bishop of Troyes,
Henri de Poitiers, was already condemning the cult of this `false' relic; and
late in the year 1389 one of his
successors in the see, Pierre
d'Arcis, drew up a comprehensive memorandum for the Avignon Antipope
Clement VII in which he claimed that the Shroud, far from being authentic, was the work of an artist who had
confessed to the fraud. Here, in Herbert Thurston's translation, is the most
damning passage from this
forthright document, with the original
Latin of some of the key sentences in parentheses: `The case, Holy
Father,
stands thus. Some time since in this diocese of Troyes the Dean of a certain collegiate church, to wit,
that of Lirey, falsely and deceitfully, being consumed with the passion of avarice,
and not from any motive
of devotion but only of gain, procured
for his church a certain cloth cunningly painted, upon which by a
clever
sleight of hand was depicted the twofold image of one man, that is to say, the back and front, he
falsely declaring and pretending that this was the actual shroud in which our Saviour Jesus Christ was
enfolded in the tomb, and upon which the whole likeness of the Saviour had remained
thus impressed
together with the wounds which He bore. This
story was put about not only in the kingdom of France, but,
so
to speak, throughout the world, so that from all parts people came together to view it. And further to
attract the multitude so that money cunningly be wrung from them, pretended miracles
were worked, certain
men being hired to represent themselves
as healed at the moment of the exhibition of the shroud, which all
believed
to be the shroud of our Lord. The Lord Henry of Poitiers, of pious memory, then Bishop of Troyes,
becoming aware of this, and urged by many prudent persons to take action, as indeed was his duty in the
exercise of his ordinary jurisdiction, set himself earnestly to work to fathom
the truth of this matter. For many
theologians and other wise
persons declared that this could not be the real shroud of our Lord having the
Saviour's likeness thus imprinted upon it, since the holy Gospel made no mention of any such imprint, while,
if it had been true, it was quite unlikely that the holy Evangelists
would have omitted to record it, or that the
fact should have
remained hidden until the present time. Eventually, after diligent inquiry and examination,
he discovered the fraud and how the said cloth had been cunningly painted, the truth being attested by the
artist who had painted it, to wit, that it was a work of human skill and not miraculously
wrought or
bestowed.' [Chevalier, Étude critique,
pp. VII-XII; English translation in Thurston, `The Holy Shroud and
the
Verdict of History' in The Month, CI , January 1903, pp. 17-29] (McNair, P., "The Shroud and History:
Fantasy, Fake or Fact?," in Jennings, P., ed., "Face to Face with the
Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon:
Great Wakering UK, 1978,
pp.29-30)
6/11/2007
"Let us suppose that the carbon 14 test, if and when it is applied to the Shroud, comes up with a fourteenth
century date. What then? Most of us, I imagine, would dismiss
the whole thing from our minds and rue the
waste of time spent
in studying it. But the niggle would probably remain in more than one conscience,
because the scientific evidence of authenticity in fields other than that of carbon dating appears to be so
strong." (McNair, P., "The Shroud and History: Fantasy, Fake or Fact?,"
in Jennings, P., ed., "Face to Face
with the Turin Shroud
," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering UK, 1978, pp.32-33)
6/11/2007
"We are left with no viable alternative: if the Shroud-Man is not the self-signature
of Christ, then it must be
the work of human ingenuity, with
either good or evil intent. And yet, strangely enough, the more we
examine
this third hypothesis - which at first sight seems so much more rational than the direct intervention
of God or Devil - the more it proves the most difficult of them all to swallow.
Let us spare a thought at this
point for the anonymous artist
of genius: who was he? What craftsman during the reign of the first two
Valois Kings had the requisite skills to create so exact a representation of the naked human body? Girard
d'Orleans? Jean Coste? Jean Petit called Jean de Troyes? What we know of their
work would hardly suggest
that any of these leading painters
at the court of King John II conceived and executed the portrait of Jesus
on the Turin Shroud." (McNair, P., "The Shroud and History: Fantasy, Fake or Fact?," in Jennings,
P., ed.,
"Face to Face with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon:
Great Wakering UK, 1978, pp.33-34)
6/11/2007
"In the past, learned historians both clerical and lay have been satisfied
that this portrait was subtili modo depicta and have championed the fake hypothesis. But what is so special about this relic that, six centuries
depicta and have championed the fake hypothesis. But what is so special about this
relic that, six centuries
depicta and have championed the fake
hypothesis. But what is so special about this relic that, six centuries
after Bishop Henri de Poitiers unmasked it for a fraud, both Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Muslims,
rationalists, nothingarians, scientists and even Oxbridge dons are busy discussing
it this year, and most of
them (as far as I can tell) are admitting
that there is more in it than meets the eye? If I had to answer in one
word, I should choose the Italian polysyllable which is in the mouth of so many sindonologists today: i n f a l s i f i c
a b i l e. The more we investigate this fabulous sheet and the ghostly image it bears, the more we
a l s i f i c a b i l e. The more we investigate this fabulous sheet and the ghostly
image it bears, the more we
a l s i f i c a b i l e. The more
we investigate this fabulous sheet and the ghostly image it bears, the more we
doubt whether any fourteenth-century artist could possibly have faked it. The Shroud-Man appears to be
intrinsically unfakeable." (McNair, P., "The Shroud and History: Fantasy,
Fake or Fact?," in Jennings, P., ed.,
"Face to Face
with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering UK, 1978, p.34)
6/11/2007
"Let us enumerate some of the difficulties
which beset the fake hypothesis. First, as we have seen, the
admixture
of cotton with the linen of the Shroud seems to preclude a European provenance for its fabric, and
Dr Max Frei has found that some of the pollen clinging to it came from Asia Minor and the Middle East. But
this in itself is not an insuperable difficulty, because a dedicated deceiver might
have used a length of cloth
brought back by some crusader,
or could conceivably have sought the material for his hoax in Palestine
himself - although such a quest would appear to be a trifle over-sophisticated for his day and age. Secondly,
and much more problematically, how on earth did the fourteenth-century faker project
the image of the
Shroud-Man on to the cloth? Monsieur le Truqueur
painted it on, stated Bishop Pierre d'Arcis in his
memorandum
of 1389, and that sounds commonsensical enough until we remember that there are no
brushstrokes visible on the Shroud, and no vestige of paint or any other known pigment. Another
suggestion (by Dr Joseph Blinzler) is that the hoaxer made a life-size statue of
a man and pressed it between
the upper and nether halves of
the folded linen sheet. But this proposed solution bristles with every sort of
difficulty. In the first place, is there any record or tradition of sculpture to this degree of stark anatomical
realism in mid-fourteenth-century France? (The first Lirey
expositions of the Shroud occurred one
generation before the
birth of Brunelleschi and Donatello in Florence.)" (McNair, P., "The Shroud and
History: Fantasy, Fake or Fact?," in Jennings, P., ed., "Face to Face with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-
McCrimmon: Great Wakering UK, 1978, p.34)
6/11/2007
"In the second place, the mere act of
pressing alone, without pigment applied to the statue, would not have
left any image on the cloth; and, in the third place, even if it had, it would have produced an image not
perfect in proportion but distorted by physical contact, as anyone can confirm
by the simple experiment of
blacking his face with burnt cork
and then pressing his handkerchief all over it. The basic fact remains: we
just do not know by what natural means such an image could have been impressed upon the Shroud."
(McNair, P., "The Shroud and History: Fantasy, Fake or Fact?," in Jennings,
P., ed., "Face to Face with the
Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon:
Great Wakering UK, 1978, pp.34-35)
6/11/2007
"Thirdly, we have to account for the mysterious business of the photographic-type
negative. We have
already seen that it cannot be explained
by `reversal' because there is no paint on the Shroud. Yet there must
be some natural explanation if the relic is a man-made fake. It would be an unusually clairvoyant and
altruistic scoundrel who would perpetrate a hoax so subtle that none of his own
generation, nor his children,
nor children's children down
to the tenth generation could appreciate it with their naked eyes, but which
depended for its full impact and effect on the invention of photography five hundred years later." (McNair,
P., "The Shroud and History: Fantasy, Fake or Fact?,"
in Jennings, P., ed., "Face to Face with the Turin
Shroud
," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering UK, 1978, p.35)
6/11/2007
"But perhaps the most staggering clue to the genius of this hypothetical artist
is that he has depicted Jesus
with the nail-wound in his wrist.
In France, Italy, Spain and elsewhere I have studied hundreds of paintings,
sculptures and carvings of Christ's crucifixion and deposition from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries,
and not one of them shows the nail-wound anywhere but in the
palm of his hand. It is not until we come to
Van Dyck in the
seventeenth century that we find the first representation of Christ with the nail-wound
through the wrist. His painting hangs in the Palazzo Reale in Genoa, a city in which he lived for some time,
and it is possible that he may have been influenced in this detail by seeing the
Shroud in passing through
Turin. Why did our fourteenth-century
faker, against all the cultural conditioning of his times, place the nail-
wound not in the palm but in the wrist? Anatomy and archaeology have since proved that he was perfectly
correct. Dr Pierre Barbet, chief surgeon at the Paris hospital of St Joseph in
the 1930s, conducted some
revealing if macabre experiments
with corpses and amputated limbs at that time. He established the fact that
the weight of a human body would cause the nail to tear the flesh right up between the fingers if driven
through the palm, because no bone would bar its way; whereas wrist-nailing ensured
that the body stayed
pinned to the patibulum of the
cross when it was hoisted on to the stipes, which was already impaled
in the ground at the place of execution. It is surely no dishonour to medieval artists that they did not know
this gruesome detail, for only in recent times have archaeologists, historians
and medical men begun to re-
discover the horrific techniques
employed in crucifixion - once all too well known in the Roman Empire; but
mercifully forgotten after Constantine abolished this form of capital punishment in 315 AD. Knowledge of
the precise physical pains which Christ suffered had been lost long before any
medieval artist began to
depict them. The Gospels say his hands
were nailed, so painters and sculptors naturally represented the
wound
in the palm. How then did the fourteenth-century faker, who lived a thousand years after the
abolition of crucifixion, know this telling and authentic detail of wrist-nailing? For authentic it was proved to
be just over ten years ago, when the first known remains of
a victim of crucifixion came to light in the
outskirts of Jerusalem
- a man in his mid-twenties called Jehohanan. His heelbones were transfixed by a
single nail and he had suffered the usual crurifragium. Although the nails were missing from his wrists,
they had left on the radial bone their telltale marks of scratching
and levigation." (McNair, P., "The Shroud
and History:
Fantasy, Fake or Fact?," in Jennings, P., ed., "Face to Face with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-
McCrimmon: Great Wakering UK, 1978, pp.35-36)
6/11/2007
"And now for the most amazing detail
of them all, which makes the fake hypothesis virtually incredible: if a
nail pierces the wrist between radius and ulna, it touches the median nerve, which automatically causes the
thumb to flex across the palm, so that it is invisible to anyone looking at the
back of the hand. On the Turin
Shroud we see the back of both
the hands of Jesus Christ, but there is no sign of either thumb." (McNair, P.,
"The Shroud and History: Fantasy, Fake or Fact?," in Jennings, P., ed., "Face to Face with the Turin
Shroud
," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering UK, 1978, p.36)
6/11/2007
"Authenticity
is stamped all over this enigmatic relic, which just goes on springing surprise after surprise at
its mysterious perfection from year to year. The impressive matching of the scourge-marks with the pattern
of two soldiers administering the flogging, one either side, one taller than the
other: the angle of the
bloodflows on the forearm, mathematically
exact for crucifixion: the dimensions of the side-wound, and its
emission
of both blood and water: the stupendous witness of the wounds (in total verisimilitude) caused by
the spiky cap: all these features of the Shroud-Man and many more compel us to admit the harmonious
integrity of this unfakeable image. But it is above all the face which rivets our
responsive gaze - `an
appearance so marred beyond human semblance,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief' (Isaiah 52.14,
53.3)
- yet a face of tranquil dignity, of royal authority, of divine beauty - a countenance in a million million:
unique. If the Shroud-Man looked like this in death, how did he appear in life?
Toi, qui-es-tu? - asked Paul
Claudel, brought face
to face with the Turin Shroud and its haunting image. The answer is unavoidable: it is
Jesus Christ our Lord. In the astonished words of the centurion who saw him die: `Truly this man was the
Son of God!' (Mark 15.39.)" (McNair, P., "The Shroud and History:
Fantasy, Fake or Fact?," in Jennings, P.,
ed., "Face
to Face with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering UK, 1978, pp.36-37)
6/11/2007
"If then this relic is the authentic
Shroud of Christ and bears his imperishable imprint, where was it between
about 30 AD and 1353? The short and truthful answer is that we simply do not know. It was evidently not
displayed publicly in its present form, for if it had been there would surely exist
some record of its display. It
is not impossible that it remained
hidden for a millennium in some remote monastic fastness, like Codex
Sinaiticus before it was discovered by Tischendorf: but this we cannot tell. Of course there have been many
clever reconstructions of its missing history, the most recent and ingenious being
the suggestion made by
Mr Ian Wilson that the Turin Shroud
and the Edessa Mandylion are one and the same thing.' `Mandylion' is
a Greek word which means head-shawl or kerchief, and was applied to a piece of ancient cloth which was
venerated in Asia Minor (first at Edessa and later at Constantinople) until it
vanished without trace in 1204
AD. It was said to bear the
image of the bearded face of Christ, a likeness acheiropoietos, or `not made by
hand'. Mr Wilson argues that the Mandylion was the Shroud of Christ so folded up and protected by
ornamental trellis that only the image of the face was displayed. His hypothesis,
presented with a wealth of
circumstantial evidence, is as attractive
as it is unconvincing; for, although it would have explained so
much,
it is fraught with difficulties which many critical readers will find insuperable. One is purely practical,
and might occur to any housewife. If a linen sheet is folded and protected so that
only a small part of it is
exposed to the air, after several
centuries that part is likely to have suffered discoloration. If the Shroud
spent more than half its life as the Mandylion, there should be a circular area around the face of Christ which
is more yellowed than the rest of the cloth: but this is not the case." (McNair,
P., "The Shroud and History:
Fantasy, Fake or Fact?,"
in Jennings, P., ed., "Face to Face with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon:
Great Wakering UK, 1978, pp.36-37)
6/11/2007
"If the Shroud is authentic, do we need its history before 1353 to prove it?
As historians we are programmed
to answer Yes: any artefact
which turns up in one century purporting to come from another is rightly an
object of suspicion until proved genuine, whether it is Drake's plaque, the Vinland map, or Piltdown Man.
But as logicians we are bound to answer No: authenticity is authenticity, and a
priori we can argue that if
an article is genuine it is
genuine, whether we have history to prove it or not. If I find a Rembrandt in my
attic its authenticity is not altered by the fact that I cannot account for its provenance. A pot, a coin, or a
statue can lie buried for two millennia and retain their integrity: they are what
they are. When I was in St
Andrews last January, the Professor
of Ecclesiastical History took me round St Mary's College, and showed
me a black leather chalice-holder embossed with the insignia of the Virgin Mary and inscribed with Latin
tags. He told me that it was found last year in a college cupboard, where it had
gathered dust unnoticed
since before the Reformation. Improbable,
but true." (McNair, P., "The Shroud and History: Fantasy, Fake or
Fact?," in Jennings, P., ed., "Face to Face with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering
UK, 1978, pp.38-39)
6/11/2007
"The Shroud is such a remarkable thing
that, in the last analysis, there can be only two honest opinions
about
it. The first (which occurs most readily to the Protestant and rationalist in me) is that it is a piece of
fourteenth-century representational art, and therefore probably a fake - an unusual
fake, admittedly, well-
intentioned possibly, ingenious certainly,
but not the shroud in which the body of Jesus Christ was
wrapped;
or, if indeed the length of linen was that shroud, then the image on it has been added later by
human hand as a pious fraud, by some process which even modern scientists do not understand. And of
course if the image is not authentic, then the veneration of it comes perilously
close ta breaking the First and
Second Commandments."
(McNair, P., "The Shroud and History: Fantasy, Fake or Fact?," in Jennings, P.,
ed., "Face to Face with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering UK, 1978, p.39. Emphasis
original)
6/11/2007
"The alternative opinion is almost too shattering to the equanimity of most
of us to entertain for more than a
moment or two. It is that
in the Turin Shroud we have not only the linen cloth in which the body of the Lord
Jesus was wrapped, but also a representation of that body portrayed by other than human hands, by some
supernatural process which confounds all explanation. Either way the thing is a
marvel - of illusion if it is a
fake, or of reality if it is
not. But it is my conviction that in this most mysterious thing - embarrassing in its
uniqueness, exciting in its challenge - we face the same reality that confronts us in the Incarnation and
Resurrection of Christ. In both those central miracles of world history was manifested
the splendour of God:
could it be that the radiant incandescence
of that almighty act of love and power when the Son of God `was
raised
by the glory of the Father' has scorched his image and likeness on the Shroud, a sign for our scientific
century which demands scientific proof?" (McNair, P., "The Shroud and
History: Fantasy, Fake or Fact?," in
Jennings, P., ed.,
"Face to Face with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-McCrimmon: Great Wakering UK, 1978,
p.39)
6/11/2007
"As a Christian I must declare my belief that the truth of Christianity does not require such signs as the
Turin Shroud, for its proof is the living witness of the Spirit of God in all who
receive Jesus Christ as
Saviour, Lord and God; but perhaps
from time to time we fallible human beings need such demonstrations of
a reality which transcends our powers of explanation to jolt us out of the complacency of our agnosticism
and confirm our faltering faith. Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief!"
(McNair, P., "The Shroud and
History: Fantasy, Fake or
Fact?," in Jennings, P., ed., "Face to Face with the Turin Shroud ," Mayhew-
McCrimmon: Great Wakering UK, 1978, p.40)
8/11/2007
"There is no longer any question but that the artist's rendition preserved
in the Hungarian Pray Codex [1192-
95 AD] represents the cloth
we now recognize as the Shroud of Turin. Moreover, by that rendition we know
that this is the earliest firmly documented demonstrable viewpoint that the cloth we know as the Shroud of
Turin was the actual burial cloth of Jesus Christ. In color photographs of the
Codex even one set of the
angular flows of blood down one of
the arms is clearly visible-an observation I believe was first made by the
Belgian scholar, Jef Leysen (personal communication, Spring, 1998). And here is shown-as already noted-a
comparatively accurate portrayal of two different sets of holes that represent
the pre-1516 burns at the two
ends of the Shroud. Therefore,
the pre-1516 burn marks are more accurately termed pre-1192 burn marks. But,
most importantly, their existence some 65 years prior to the first bracket of the 1260-1390 radiocarbon date
creates a problem for the 95 percent confidence level claimed by the three labs
because one must
conservatively add at least 100 years onto
the above date to allow for the development of a tradition that the
cloth portrayed by the artist was in fact the burial cloth of Christ. On the other hand it would be
commensurate with a 68 percent level of confidence which expands the window to
a 500 year opening that
would encompass that date. Still, the
labs have insisted that the 95 percent confidence level is the level
achieved by their tests." (Maloney, P.C., "Researching the Shroud of Turin: 1898 to the Present: A Brief
Survey of Findings and Views," in Minor, M., Adler, A.D.
& Piczek, I., eds., "The Shroud of Turin:
Unraveling
the Mystery: Proceedings of the 1998 Dallas Symposium," Alexander Books: Alexander NC,
2002, pp.33-34)
9/11/2007
"Another reason why this relic, of all in the world, has been subjected to
such unusual debate is, I suspect,
because of the awe on the
one hand and the fear an the other which it induces. Those who believe in it, like
those who believe in God and Christ, are filled with awe at the prospect of the possible truth. Those who
profess not to believe in it, who set out to prove its falsity, like those who
are atheists and set out to prove
the non-existence of God,
are filled with an innate tear at the prospect of the possible truth. It is this which
has led to the frenetic challenges to its authenticity: that fear by the unbeliever that perhaps the believer is
right after all. All cynics and sceptics show that sense of
insecurity, no matter what they argue about. When
they go against
the established tide of human opinion and development, particularly of innate concepts,
they display fear. Thus the argument about the Shroud fails into a similar category of insecurity by the
doubters and a calm serenity of security and persistent searching by the believers."
(Morgan, R., "Shroud
Guide," Runciman Press: Manly
NSW, Australia, 1983, p.30)
9/11/2007
"As the (red ochre) dust settles briefly over Sindondom, it becomes clear
there are only two choices: Either
the shroud is authentic
(naturally or supernaturally produced by the body of Jesus) or it is a product of
human artifice. Asks Steven Schafersman: `Is there a possible third hypothesis? No, and here's why. Both
Wilson [Wilson, I., "The Shroud of Turin," 1979, pp.51-53.] and Stevenson
and Habermas [Stevenson, K.E.
& Habermas, G.R., "Verdict
on the Shroud," 1981, pp.121-129] go to great lengths to demonstrate that the
man imaged on the shroud must be Jesus Christ and not someone else. After all, the man on this shroud
was flogged, crucified, wore a crown of thorns, did not have his legs broken, was
nailed to the cross, had his
side pierced, and so on. Stevenson
and Habermas [Ibid., p.128] even calculate the odds as 1 in 83 million
that the man on the shroud is not Jesus Christ (and they consider this a very conservative estimate). I agree
with them on all of this. If the shroud is authentic, the image is that of Jesus.'
[Schafersman, S.D., "Science,
the public, and the Shroud
of Turin," The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 6, No. 3, Spring 1982, pp.37-56, p.42]"
(Nickell, J., "Inquest on the Shroud of Turin," [1983], Prometheus Books: Buffalo NY, Revised, 1987,
Reprinted, 2000, p.141. Emphasis original)
9/11/2007
"Can the Man of the Shroud be identified?
(Balance of Probabilities) A number of scholars of critical
disposition,
intent on solving this mystery, have wondered whether the image imprinted on the Shroud
might be that of Jesus Christ. Obviously this enquiry too, for it to be of scientific value, must be based
exclusively on objective considerations. Here then is a study on the balance of
probabilities, made by
Professor Bruno Barberis of the University
of Turin, reviving and completing studies by Yves Delage, Paul
De
Gail and Tino Zeuli. The method of research, while of absolute scientific rigour, is based on extremely
simple considerations. The thesis is this: `If you throw a coin up in the air,
the odds are two to one (1/2) it
will land on the side you
have chosen; if you throw a die up in the air, the odds against your getting the face
of the die with your selected number on it are six to one (1/6). If you throw coin and die up at the same time,
since the two events are independent of each other, the odds of your getting the
preselected side of coin
and face of die at the same time will
be twelve to one (1/2 x 1/6 = 1/12). Now let us examine the seven most
significant characteristics common to Jesus of Nazareth (according to the Gospel narrative) and the Man of
the Shroud, and see what the odds are against all these characteristics being found
at the same time in the
same man who had undergone the torment
of crucifixion. 1. Both Jesus and the Man of the Shroud were
wrapped
in winding-sheets after death by crucifixion. Note that not many crucified men can have had a
regular burial. (It was the most ignominious of punishments, reserved for slaves, brigands and murderers,
and extended after death with contempt for the corpse): one chance in a hundred
(1/100). 2. Both Jesus and
the Man of the Shroud had a cap
of thorns put on his head. No historical document mentions any such
usage. Let us limit this very remote probability to one in five thousand (1/5000). 3. The patibulum weighed
heavily on the shoulders of the Man of the Shroud as also on
Jesus's. Only occasionally was the
condemned man made to
carry the horizontal beam of the cross to the place of execution: odds of two to one
(1/2). 4. Same odds (1/2) on the way the hands and feet were fixed to the wood of the cross. They could be
fastened with nails but a simpler and quicker method was to tie them on with ropes.
5. The Shroud displays a
wound on the right side of the Man
who was wrapped in it. John's Gospel (19:33-34) tells how in Jesus's
case `instead of their breaking his legs, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance, and immediately out
came blood and water.' Odds perhaps of ten to one
