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... ual whose image is depicted on the cloth has undergone puncture injuries to his wrists and feet, puncture injuries to his head, multiple traumatic whip-like injuries to his back and postmortem puncture injury to his chest area which has released both blood and a water type fluid. From this data, it is not an unreasonable conclusion for the forensic pathologist to determine that only one person historically has undergone this sequence of events. That person is Jesus Christ. " (Bucklin).
When the Shroud was allowed by the Church to be researched by a team of scientists in 1978, most team members were skeptical about its authenticity. Many of them believed that they would be able to walk in, take a close look at the Shroud, see the brush strokes, and go home. They were quite wrong. One of the first things noticed, after they failed to see any brush strokes, was that the blood had actually soaked into the cloth itself-just as one would expect if it was placed over a badly beaten and torn body.
A later sampling taken by sticky-back tape and sent to a lab confirmed that it was indeed real human blood (D'Muhala). Moving to the specifics of the blood, there is a large bloodstain, easily visible, on the side of the torso near the fifth rib. Upon closer inspection, the wound is oval in shape, and exactly matches the tip of a 1 st century Roman lance (D'Muhala). Secondly, large puncture wounds can be noted through the feet and the wrists of the man on the Shroud. This is very important as depictions of Christ in the medieval days show the nails being placed through the hands, not the wrists.
It was not until much later that it was found that nails through the hands of the victim simply would not support the weight of the body, and thus, they had to be placed through the wrists to support the body (Zugibe). Lastly, there are numerous dumbbell shape bloodstains that literally cover the back and shoulders of the image. These shapes for a long time were the targets of much speculation until it was discovered that they perfectly matched the ends of the Roman torchillia. The torchillia was a whip used in the 1 st century that had two balls of metal at the end of each tail that would bite in and tear flesh (D'Muhala). The team also did numerous tests upon the image itself. They placed a light on the Shroud from behind, so that the light shined through the linen, and could still see the blood stains and scorch marks, but the image would no longer be visible.
This clearly showed that it was not a painting as if it were, the paint used (any paint medium would have sufficed) would have blocked the light rays, thus showing the image. A second test was done to see if it was a burn, because many had noticed it resembled the burns on ironing boards. By shining ultra-violet light on the Shroud, the body on the Shroud was once again not visible, yet the burn marks from the fire damage were easily seen-thus proving that the image was not a burn by any means ("In Pursuit of the Shroud"). Scientists were, and still are, baffled at the creation of the image. To date however, scientists have concluded that the color change in the linen fibers, which caused the image, was caused by dehydrated oxidation.
This dehydrated oxidation took place when a large amount of radiation came from the body, as the VP 8 Image Analyzer showed when put in use with the Shroud ("In Pursuit of the Shroud"). The VP 8 Image Analyzer is a device used by NASA in conjunction with images taken by satellites. When an image is placed, if the object has what is known as 3 D coding, the VP 8 will be able to turn the data into a three dimensional model. When an ordinary picture is placed under the VP 8, the image on the screen becomes distorted, and is barely recognizable. When the image from the Shroud of Turin is placed under however, a three dimensional replica of a man's head (and body should it also be placed under) can be seen clearly (D'Muhala). What does this mean?
Simply that the Shroud is not a picture, in the sense as we think of pictures, and that the image was formed while the Shroud was draped over a three dimensional object-namely a body. The body is not the only image on the Shroud of Turin however. Just recently it was noticed that there are what appear to be images of various types of flowers surrounding the body. In accordance with traditional Jewish burial customs, this is not at all surprising as bodies were often adorned with flowers as part of the burial. Alan Whanger of Duke University found all together twenty-eight, life sized images of various flowers. These flowers all had a flowering time of March and April, which was the time of the crucifixion.
Furthermore, many of these flowers are native to the Jerusalem area. Avioum David, Jerusalem's leading botanist, confirmed this and states that the Shroud of Turin had to have been made in the Jerusalem area. But if there were really flowers, one would expect pollen to be deposited on the linen, for pollen can survive large vast amounts of time, and indeed, pollen was found ("In Pursuit of the Shroud"). In 1973 Max Fry took samples pollen to study under microscope. Although he died before he could finish determining all the types of pollen found and publish those findings, many have taken up his work. Uri Baruch, one of Israel's pollen experts, has been studying which plants surrounded the body by the traces of pollen found.
Twenty-eight of the fifty-six plants he found grow solely in the Middle East and around Jerusalem found ("In Pursuit of the Shroud"). But what were most astonishing, if not utterly exciting, were the extremely high counts of Gundelia Tournefortii found around the head of the image. Gundelia Tournefortii is a flower indigenous to Jerusalem and while it is known for the flower itself, it is much more recognizable by the spiny thistle ("In Pursuit of the Shroud"). Mark 15: 17 "They put a purple robe on [Jesus], then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. "Some of the pollen found however, could not be identified, for it was coated with an unknown substance.
Under closer examination, this substance was found to be limestone-and not just any limestone. The limestone coating that was found was a very rare form, which was indigenous to the outside of Jerusalem and found in the many burial caves that surround the area found ("In Pursuit of the Shroud"). Should a body be placed in such a cave, the cloth that wrapped the body would undoubtedly have at least some coating of the limestone upon it. According to Scripture, Jesus Christ was placed in a cave during burial. However, also according to Scripture, there was more that just the Shroud to be found in His burial site. John 20: 6 - 7 "Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb.
He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus' head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. "The cloth of Oviedo, also known as the sudarium, which is currently in Spain, is held to be that burial cloth which was once around Jesus' head and later found separate from the linen (Appendix A, fig. 5). The history of the sudarium is very well documented and has an undisputed history that dates before the 600 s A. D. Although the image is not set in the cloth, there is a tremendous amount of blood that has soaked into the cloth, and the marks that the blood has made match the bloodstains that are found on the Shroud of Turin.
Further more, scientists have determined that the blood types are identical on both the cloth of Oviedo and the Shroud of Turin found ("In Pursuit of the Shroud"). In 1988, despite all of this overwhelming evidence, carbon-dating tests set the Shroud around the twelfth century. Three different labs, one in Arizona, Oxford and in Zurich, ran their own tests on the Shroud to come up with the date. Even just after these reports surfaced in Nature, there was some question as to whether or not the variance in all three tests was significant (Van Haelst). However to the layman, all that was seen were the headlines that ran "Shroud of Turin a fake, and science had proved it." Almost all skeptics of the Shroud point to this as indisputable proof that the Shroud of Turin is in fact, a fake. (Meacham par 8) It was not until just recently, that those claims have come under serious question and many now believe that those tests have been skewed radically. The reason?
Microbiologists ran tests on fibers from the Shroud in 1996 and found more than enough coating from bacteria to shift the tests to a younger date found ("In Pursuit of the Shroud"). Harry Gove, the inventor of the Accelerated Mass Spectrometer, which was used to date the Shroud of Turin, confirms this claim. He stated that the up until the point were these new findings were released, those who ran the test did not know of the bacteria and even if they had, the cleaning technique used was not sufficient to remove the bacterial coating found ("In Pursuit of the Shroud"). Currently they are working on a way to clean the fibers and remove the coating so that an accurate test may be run and have also offered to run another set of tests once the technique is perfected (Barret 3) Bacteria however, are not the only things that have, or potentially could have, skewed results.
As the image was formed by some sort of radiation phenomena, the radiation waves could have thrown off any attempt to date the Shroud by using radiocarbon dating. As it is often put, it looks as if the image is an x-ray since one can easily identify the metacarpals, even being able to name all of the individual wrist bones. Secondly, looking closely at the head, one can see a faint image of the skull with all of its major parts visible-even the teeth with their roots can be seen found ("In Pursuit of the Shroud"). The Shroud of Turin is indeed the burial shroud of Christ and there are several things that have shown this to be true.
The first, and quite obvious, is that all evidence cannot contradict what is written down in the Gospel, which is does not. All the evidence agrees completely with the Bible, from manner of death, to means and place of burial. Secondly, there is evidence that points that the Shroud was in fact created in Jerusalem-or at least was in the area during the March and April months and placed inside of a burial cave-exactly the time of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Thirdly, records of the Man dillion, along with art works from the early centuries, point to the fact that the Shroud of Turin was in existence during the time.
Lastly, science has concluded that the image was formed while the linen was draped over a body, and an intense burst of radiation (which may have been accompanied by light) was emitted from the body. In any court, this is clearly enough evidence for a conviction, where as it has easily surpassed reasonable doubt, for the simple truth is that the more it is studied, the more the last of the lingering doubts are removed to its authenticity. All that remains for skeptics to use is unfounded denial. Bibliography: Works Cited Barret, Jim "Science and the Shroud" 1997 Bucklin, Robert "An Autopsy on the Man of the Shroud" 1997 D'Muhala, Thomas, "Shroud Presentation" 1998 "In Pursuit of the Shroud. " TLC, New York Dec. 1998 Markwardt, Jack "Was the Shroud in Languedoc During the Missing Years?" 1997 Meacham, William "Radiocarbon Measurement and the Age of the Turin Shroud: Possible Uncertainties" Pick, Isabel "Is the Shroud of Turin a Painting?" 1995 Van Haelst, Remi "Radiocarbon Dating: The Shroud" 1997 Wilson, Ian "Highlights of the Undisputed History" 1996 Zugibe, Frederick T "Pierre Barbet Revisited" 1995
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Research essay sample on Shroud Of Turin 1 St Century
