Faith or forensics? | SouthCoastToday.com
Here is how Kevin McDonough describes tonight’s Shroud of Turin special on History (previously the History Channel):
If you want to see “The Real Face of Jesus” (9 p.m., History, TV-PG), you must first take in a two-hour meditation on the history, legend and meaning of the controversial Shroud of Turin.
Experts follow the trail of ownership of the shroud over the centuries and discuss its popular following. Interest in the shroud shot up in the early part of this century when an Italian photographer took a snapshot of the cloth and discovered a clear vision of a Christ-like figure in his photo negative. Are shroud followers praying to an image? Or an image of an image?
That is a bad choice of words, those last two sentences. Followers? There are countless scholars and interested people who would describe themselves as just about anything other than a follower. And, I for one, and many others that I know, do not pray to an image.
“Face” meanders into interesting territory when some experts conjecture that the shroud itself might be a kind of cosmic photo negative and evidence of what one calls “a paranormal event.” The marks on the cloth are too faint to have been made by paint or human blood and may be residue from a supernatural blast of light. Proof, some say, of the resurrection.
The final 40 minutes are devoted to the techniques and equipment used to devise a three-dimensional model of the man once wrapped in the shroud. I’ve been asked not to discuss the final, revealed likeness, but I can safely reveal that he looks nothing like Jeffrey Hunter, star of the 1961 epic “King of Kings.”
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Is the Shroud real? Probably.
The Shroud of Turin may be the real burial cloth of Jesus. The carbon dating, once seemingly proving it was a medieval fake, is now widely thought of as suspect and meaningless. Even the famous Atheist Richard Dawkins admits it is controversial. Christopher Ramsey, the director of the Oxford Radiocarbon Laboratory, thinks more testing is needed. So do many other scientists and archeologists. This is because there are significant scientific and non-religious reasons to doubt the validity of the tests. Chemical analysis, all nicely peer-reviewed in scientific journals and subsequently confirmed by numerous chemists, shows that samples tested are chemically unlike the whole cloth. It was probably a mixture of older threads and newer threads woven into the cloth as part of a medieval repair. Recent robust statistical studies add weight to this theory. Philip Ball, the former physical science editor for Nature when the carbon dating results were published, recently wrote: “It’s fair to say that, despite the seemingly definitive tests in 1988, the status of the Shroud of Turin is murkier than ever.” If we wish to be scientific we must admit we do not know how old the cloth is. But if the newer thread is about half of what was tested – and some evidence suggests that – it is possible that the cloth is from the time of Christ.
No one has a good idea how front and back images of a crucified man came to be on the cloth. Yes, it is possible to create images that look similar. But no one has created images that match the chemistry, peculiar superficiality and profoundly mysterious three-dimensional information content of the images on the Shroud. Again, this is all published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
We simply do not have enough reliable information to arrive at a scientifically rigorous conclusion. Years ago, as a skeptic of the Shroud, I came to realize that while I might believe it was a fake, I could not know so from the facts. Now, as someone who believes it is the real burial shroud of Jesus of Nazareth, I similarly realize that a leap of faith over unanswered questions is essential.
My name is Dan Porter. Please email me at DanielRobertPorter@gmail.com
>And, I for one, and many others that I know, do not pray to an image.
Same here. I do not pray to the image on the Shroud, even though contemplating it fills me with the utmost reverence and emotion because I am persuaded by the evidence that it is the image of the body of Jesus who is God in the flesh and suffered indescribable agony and shame for the sins of the world, including mine:
Died He for me, who caused His pain?
For me, who Him, to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That thou MY GOD, should’st die for me?
But even if someone did pray towards the image on the Shroud, I would not judge him/her but assume they would be praying to Jesus who is the God-man behind the image on the Shroud.
Stephen