Impressions on the Shroud of Turin – Story in the Modesto Bee Faith & Values Section
Interesting story, worth reading in its entirety.
Dr. Steve Wunschel, a Modesto urologist, went to see the shroud with his wife, Beka, and their two daughters, Madeline and Liza. They had planned to be in Italy but didn’t know about the shroud exhibit until their pastor, the Rev. Joseph Illo of St. Joseph’s Church, told them about it and offered to get them tickets.
Illo spent nine months in Italy on a study leave and, along with other priests in Italy, had been asked by the Vatican to spend time in Torino hearing confessions for the 2 million people who showed up to see the shroud. This was only the fifth public exposition of the shroud since 1898 and the longest in its modern history.
Illo saw the shroud three times, including one memorable, private moment with only two other priests in the church.
Merilyn Copland, an Old Testament, history and archaeology professor at William Jessup University in Rocklin, was in Modesto last week to give a seminar on the top 10 discoveries in biblical archaeology. The shroud is one of those, and although she hasn’t seen it, she has seen a bronze statue made from the cloth’s measurements and markings. The bronze figure is on display in Jerusalem.
Last week, the Wunschels, Illo and Copland shared with The Bee their experiences and beliefs regarding the shroud:
Read the entire story: Strong impressions from the Shroud of Turin – Faith & Values – Modbee.com
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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
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