The Shroud of Turin has been a source of controversy for many years. In 1988, carbon-dating indicated that the artifact dates only to the Middle Ages but, for believers, it is the actual cloth in which Jesus Christ was buried.

To add even more fuel to the fire, an Italian scientist has now recreated the image on the Shroud using materials that would have been available to skillful hoaxers in medieval times. The original and the recreation are shown side-by-side below (with the reproduction appearing on the right).

I'll say the same thing I said about the Trent or Heflin UFO photos - recreating them may show that they could have been faked - but it does not show that they were faked. There's a big difference.

S

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Here's the story:

"Italian scientist reproduces Shroud of Turin
Mon Oct 5, 2009 11:30am EDT
By Philip Pullella

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake.

The shroud, measuring 14 feet, 4 inches by 3 feet, 7 inches bears the image, eerily reversed like a photographic negative, of a crucified man some believers say is Christ.

"We have shown that is possible to reproduce something which has the same characteristics as the Shroud," Luigi Garlaschelli, who is due to illustrate the results at a conference on the para-normal this weekend in northern Italy, said on Monday.

A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, Garlaschelli made available to Reuters the paper he will deliver and the accompanying comparative photographs.

The Shroud of Turin shows the back and front of a bearded man with long hair, his arms crossed on his chest, while the entire cloth is marked by what appears to be rivulets of blood from wounds in the wrists, feet and side.

Carbon dating tests by laboratories in Oxford, Zurich and Tucson, Arizona in 1988 caused a sensation by dating it from between 1260 and 1390. Sceptics said it was a hoax, possibly made to attract the profitable medieval pilgrimage business.

But scientists have thus far been at a loss to explain how the image was left on the cloth.

Garlaschelli reproduced the full-sized shroud using materials and techniques that were available in the middle ages.

They placed a linen sheet flat over a volunteer and then rubbed it with a pigment containing traces of acid. A mask was used for the face.

PIGMENT, BLOODSTAINS AND SCORCHES

The pigment was then artificially aged by heating the cloth in an oven and washing it, a process which removed it from the surface but left a fuzzy, half-tone image similar to that on the Shroud. He believes the pigment on the original Shroud faded naturally over the centuries.

They then added blood stains, burn holes, scorches and water stains to achieve the final effect.

The Catholic Church does not claim the Shroud is authentic nor that it is a matter of faith, but says it should be a powerful reminder of Christ's passion.

One of Christianity's most disputed relics, it is locked away at Turin Cathedral in Italy and rarely exhibited. It was last on display in 2000 and is due to be shown again next year.

Garlaschelli expects people to contest his findings.

"If they don't want to believe carbon dating done by some of the world's best laboratories they certainly won't believe me," he said.

The accuracy of the 1988 tests was challenged by some hard-core believers who said restorations of the Shroud in past centuries had contaminated the results.

The history of the Shroud is long and controversial.

After surfacing in the Middle East and France, it was brought by Italy's former royal family, the Savoys, to their seat in Turin in 1578. In 1983 ex-King Umberto II bequeathed it to the late Pope John Paul.

The Shroud narrowly escaped destruction in 1997 when a fire ravaged the Guarini Chapel of the Turin cathedral where it is held. The cloth was saved by a fireman who risked his life.

Garlaschelli received funding for his work by an Italian association of atheists and agnostics but said it had no effect on his results.

"Money has no odor," he said. "This was done scientifically. If the Church wants to fund me in the future, here I am.""

I saw this on another forum.
What amazes me is that anyone these days actually thought it was an image of Jesus after the carbon 14 tests showed it was from the middle ages.

While I do not think this is an image of Jesus, the reason many people rejected the carbon 14 data is because the shroud experienced events that could easily have caused contamination leading to misreading the age of the shroud.

http://shroud2000.com/CarbonDatingNews.html

Interestingly enough, physicists are whimsically debating which Beatle appears in their high speed lotus leaf water droplet imaging:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/musi ... -leaf.html

The shroud of Turin appears as a crucial aspect of my favorite Christian End Times series, the Christ Clone trilogy:

http://web.archive.org/web/200606181337 ... tClone.htm

http://www.historycarper.com/articles/christclone.html

http://www.christian-fandom.org/oli-jbs.html

Somerville Changeling wrote:
The shroud of Turin appears as a crucial aspect of my favorite Christian End Times series, the Christ Clone trilogy:

http://web.archive.org/web/200606181337 ... tClone.htm

From the article: " The Christ Clone of course turns out to be, not the incarnation of Christ, but the incarnation of the Anti-Christ, who counterfeits the miracles and outward piety of the original Jesus of Nazareth. His name is Christopher, so named not after Christ, but after Christopher Columbus whom the surrogate father/scientist sees as the founder of the New World in the hopes that this miracle boy will walk in the same path."

Gosh, I sometimes think I couldn't make a picture out of you. Haven't you just reconverted to Christianity and now I must hear one of your preferred pieces is this one? Can you elaborate on this?

What do I need to elaborate on? The author is an evangelical Christian and ex CIA agent (what a combination!) who actually thinks the U.N. is not as bad in real life as it becomes in the book. Unlike the meshugge "Left Behind" series, which are poorly written, the Christ clone trilogy is well written. Did you read the interview link?

GS: When you were writing The Christ Clone Trilogy, were there any theological "puzzles" you had to sort through to your own satisfaction before you could continue with the story?

Hundreds of them. The first one had to do with the whole idea that anyone would be stupid enough to take the mark of the beast. I didn't buy the idea that people would take it by accident or not knowing what it was. No one is condemned to hell for a mistake. It has to be intentional.

Even original sin was an informed and therefore defiant choice, not a mistake. Salvation is made to a lost world by faith in Jesus. I do not believe that anyone loses the opportunity to accept Jesus based on a mistake, e.g., taking the mark of the beast because they think it's a UPC or a library card (I speak in jest, somewhat, though I've heard more ridiculous suggestions.) Those who take the mark will know what it is. Some will take it in defiance, some will take it for convenience, i.e., to live a little longer.

Then too, there was the basic framework of end-times prophecy, specifically the seals, trumpets and bowls. Were they sequential, i.e., seals then trumpets then bowls, or was the intent to describe seven events in three different ways? Pretty basic stuff.

Later it got a lot more detailed. For instance, the first trumpet judgment (Revelation 8:7) describes hail, fire and blood being thrown down upon the earth and 1/3 of the trees and all of the green grass being burnt up. Not only did I have to figure out a scientifically sound scenario of how to make this happen, it all had to fit and make sense in the greater scheme, and it had to occur in a way which would not turn people to God. Then there was the puzzle about the people of Jerusalem, who if they were allowed to survive until the end of the Tribulation, would have had to have taken the mark; but if they did then they would have been damned, but if they were damned then why does Jesus go to the trouble of rescuing them? And what about the darkness of the fifth bowl judgment; I mean what's the big deal? So you turn on the lights, so what? that hardly seems worth mentioning, much less wasting a whole bowl judgment on it.

Any way, I was constantly writing myself into a corner with no idea how to get out. I just knew that I was writing it the way it had to happen to fit into the larger picture. I'd struggle over these things for months. Sometimes I'd find the answer while reading a scientific journal. Sometimes I'd get an idea from talking to one of several friends and relatives who are scientists or doctors. Sometimes, just all of a sudden, usually after prayer, the answer would just hit me. This should give you some idea why it took ten years to write the Trilogy.

What I love about the series is that it makes the Antichrist likable until almost the very end, when he's revealed to his foster father for what he is, and then at the very end when the Antichrist's willing followers in rebellion against God realize they've been deceived but only Jews in Jerusalem cut off their hands to get rid of the mark and repent.

BeauSeigneur has caveats in each book not to judge until the end of the story. I can imagine Christians who loved the Left Behind series being totally confused by this one because in book two, you aren't totally sure if the Christopher is truly the evil antichrist and God's witnesses are certainly seen as wanting evil because they're prophesying evil for the world. In one scene, the President of the World Council of Churches goes on television to support Christopher and to urge God to repent of His own sins and accept that humanity is moving forward regardless of what God wants.

The Antichrist will only deceive millions, if not billions, because his message will be appealing. BeauSeigneur imagines it as appealing to New Age spirituality, but it could also be Gnosticism. After all, Gnostics believe that the God of Israel is the demiurge and that Jesus' Father is a god who would not judge the world the way they see the God of the Bible doing.

There are forces at work today, in the U.N. and out, which hate Christians while being tolerant of any other worldview. They also hate Jews who are Zionists. It's logical for End of an Age prophecies from the Tanach and the New Testament to be fulfilled when they aren't too fantastic to be taken literally (even then they stand for something literal). Read the following quetion and answer on the U.N.:

GS: It seems like the U.N. is always the "bad guy" in Christian fiction (at least written by Americans.) Why did you choose to use the U.N. as Christopher's vehicle?

When I started writing the Trilogy back in 1987, the common wisdom among prophecy buffs was that the vehicle would be the European Common Market. I don't know of anyone who said it would be the U.N. back then.

But I don't really portray the U.N. as the "bad guy." Never do I suggest that the U.N. is evil, not even in an inherent sense. Rather, from the time the U.N. first comes into play and throughout the years of Jon Hansen's long administration, I portray the U.N. as a basically positive force. It is only later that Christopher uses it for evil. This is, of course, nearly(?) always the way evil works – by perverting the good.

Yet, I will allow that there are threads of evil which predate Christopher's arrival – Robert Milner and Alice Bernley, who are evil parallels of Simeon and Anna from Luke chapter 2. But Milner and Bernley are based very very closely on real people at the U.N.: former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, Robert Muller, whom I interviewed for the Trilogy; and Alice Bailey, founder of the Lucis Trust.

Both Muller and Bailey are/were (Bailey died in 1949) extremely New Age in their orientation. When I interviewed Muller I asked him how many people at the U.N. were New Agers, Muller answered, "Nearly all of them, they just don't know it yet." I have an unpublished manuscript that Muller gave me. Some of it is pretty scary. It describes Christians as "evolutionary throw backs."

Christians are evolutionary throwbacks? Probably when they aren't Gnostic or so liberal that they could easily buy into the New Age and accept the mark. The mark is clearly worship of Satan and rebellion against God, but the economic aspect seems to bring in the unbelievers in both God and Satan, the Ayn Rand libertarians, moral libertines and self absorbed "masters of the universe".

My advice to anyone who reads this, regardless of what happens in regard to the Rapture, globalism, ecumenism etc. do not take a mark that's required for buying and selling which involves worship of a deity that mocks God and persecutes Christians and Jews. Don't. You'd be better off losing your life but saving your eternal soul).

New shroud of Turin claim:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091120/ap_on_re_eu/eu_italy_shroud_of_turin

Researcher says text proves Shroud of Turin real

Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, said Friday that she used computers to enhance images of faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the shroud.

She asserts the words include the name "Jesus Nazarene" in Greek, proving the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have labeled Jesus a Nazarene without referring to his divinity.

While faint letters scattered around the face on the shroud were seen decades ago, serious researchers dismissed them due to the test's results, Frale told The Associated Press.

But when she cut out the words from photos of the shroud and showed them to experts they concurred the writing style was typical of the Middle East in the first century — Jesus' time.

She believes the text was written on a document by a clerk and glued to the shroud over the face so the body could be identified by relatives and buried properly. Metals in the ink used at the time may have allowed the writing to transfer to the linen, Frale claimed.

Frale claimed the text also partially confirms the Gospels' account of Jesus' final moments. A fragment in Greek that can be read as "removed at the ninth hour" may refer to Christ's time of death reported in the holy texts, she said.

On an enhanced image studied by Frale, at least seven words can be seen, fragmented and scattered on and around Jesus' face, crisscrossing the cloth vertically and horizontally. One short sequence of Aramaic letters has not been translated. Another Latin fragment — "iber" — may refer to Emperor Tiberius, who reigned at the time of Jesus' crucifixion, Frale said.

"I tried to be objective and leave religious issue aside," Frale told The AP. "What I studied was an ancient document that certifies the execution of a man, in a specific time and place."

This is an exciting find, and whether we believe or disbelieve in the shroud, her arguments are sound. Makes me want to reconsider my dismissal of the shroud as a probable medieval forgery. It's not that I doubt Jesus, or miracles, only that I doubt relics and the culture that surrounds them.