Shroud of Turin

Shroud of Turin

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The Shroud of Turin (or Turin Shroud) is a linen cloth bearing the image of a man who appears to have suffered physical trauma in a manner consistent with crucifixion. It is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, northern Italy.

The origins of the shroud and its image are the subject of intense debate among scientists, theologians, historians and researchers. Some contend that the shroud is the cloth placed on the body of Jesus Christt at the time of his burial, and that the face image is the Holy Face of Jesus Others contend that the artifact was created in the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church has neither formally endorsed nor rejected the shroud, but in 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the Roman Catholic devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.

The image on the shroud is much clearer in black-and-white negative than in its natural sepia color. The negative image was first observed on the evening of May 28, 1898, on the reverse photographic plate of amateur photographer Secondo Pia, who was allowed to photograph it while it was being exhibited in the Turin Cathedral. In 1978 a detailed examination was carried out by a team of American scientists called STURP. It found no reliable evidences of forgery, and called the question of how the image was formed "a mystery".

In 1988 a radiocarbon dating test was performed on small samples of the shroud. The laboratories at the Univeristy of Oxford, the Univeristy of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Techonology, concluded that the sample they tested dated from the Middle Ages, between AD1260 and AD1390. The samples tested have since been questioned and two peer-reviewed articles have contended that they may not be representative of the whole shroud.

Popular books have presented diverse arguments for both authenticity and possible methods of forgery. To date, the creation of the body image visible on the Turin Shroud has not been conclusively explained by science. The shroud remains one of the most studied artifacts in human history, and one of the most controversial.

Description

The shroud is rectangular, measuring approximately 4.4 × 1.1 m (14.3 × 3.7 ft). The cloth is woven in a three-to-one herringbone twill composed of flax fibrils. Its most distinctive characteristic is the faint, yellowish image of a front and back view of a naked man with his hands folded across his groin. The two views are aligned along the midplane of the body and point in opposite directions. The front and back views of the head nearly meet at the middle of the cloth.

Reddish brown stains that have been said to include whole blood are found on the cloth, showing various wounds that, according to proponents, correlate with the yellowish image, the pathophysiology of crucifixion, and the Biblical description of the death of Jesus: Markings on the lines include:

* one wrist bears a large, round wound, claimed to be from piercing (the second wrist is hidden by the folding of the hands)

* upward gouge in the side penetrating into the thoracic cavity. Proponents claim this was a post-mortem event and there are separate components of red blood cells and serum draining from the lesion

* small punctures around the forehead and scalp

* scores of linear wounds on the torso and legs. Proponents claim that the wounds are consistent with the distinctive dumbbell wounds of a Roman flagrum.

* swelling of the face from severe beatings

* streams of blood down both arms. Proponents claim that the blood drippings from the main flow occurred in response to gravity at an angle that would occur during crucifixion

* no evidence of either leg being fractured

* large puncture wounds in the feet as if pierced by a single spike

Recent developments

On April 6, 2009, the London newspape The Times reported that Dr. Barbara Frale, an official Vatican researcher, had uncovered evidence that the Shroud had been kept and venerated by the Templars since the 1204 sack of Constantinopole. According to the account of one neophyte member of the order, veneration of the Shroud appeared to be part of the initiation ritual. The article also implies that this ceremony may be the source of the 'worship of a bearded figure' that the Templars were accused of at their 14th century trial and suppression.

On October 5, 2009, Luigi Garlaschelli, professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, announced that he had made a full size reproduction of the Shroud of Turin using only medieval technologies. Garlaschelli placed a linen sheet over a volunteer and then rubbed it with an acidic pigment. The shroud was then aged in an oven before being washed to remove the pigment. He then added blood stains, scorches and water stains to replicate the original. The image on the reproduction, non peer-reviewed, would closely match that of the Turin Shroud with differences explained as the result of natural fading over the centuries. But according to noted sindonologist Giulio Fanti, professor of mechanical and thermic measurements at the Padua University, "the image in discussion does not match the main fundamental properties of the Shroud image, in particular at thread and fiber level but also at macroscopic level".

In November 2009 Vatican scholar Dr. Barbara Frale announced that she had "managed to read the burial certificate of Jesus the Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth." imprinted in fragments of Greek, Hebrew and Latin writing, together with the image of a crucified man on the cloth. She asserted that the inscription provided an "historical date consistent with the Gospels account" and that the letters, not obvious to the human eyes, were first detected during an examination of the shroud in 1978, with others since coming to light. As with the image of the man himself Frale reports that the letters are in reverse and only become intelligible in negative photographs. Frale further asserts that under contemporary Jewish burial practices, within a Roman colony such as Palestine, a body buried after a death sentence could only be returned to the family after a year in a common grave (though the gospels report that Jesus was buried in a tomb provided by Joseph of Arimathea), therefore a death certificate was glued to the burial shroud, usually stuck to the face, to identify it for later retrieval.

In 2010, three professors of statistics wrote in a scientific paper that the statistical analysis of the raw dates obtained from the three laboratories suggests "the presence of an important contamination in the 1988 TS samples"

A team of graphic artists tried to recreate the real face of Jesus in a special two-hour documentary on the History Channel broadcast for the first time in March 2010. The image was made by taking information and blood encoded on the Turin Shroud and transforming it into a 3D image.

The Shroud was placed back on public display (the 18th time in its history) in Turin from 10 April to 23 May 2010. According to Church officials, more than 2,1 millions visitors came to see the Shroud.

Read more on: http://en.wikipedia.org/