The passing of a Shroud of Turin novelist
Steve, we would like to read it, shortcomings and all: Suburban Journals | News | POKIN AROUND: The passing of my father; our bond as writers.
What I uniquely shared with my father is "The Shroud." I am the only person to have read his one and only opus. I first read it and typed it more than 10 years ago when it was a screenplay. He unsuccessfully tried to sell it and spent the next decade recasting it as a novel. He loved the work; it was his retirement hobby/job.
Since June I have been typing it for him. I am on page 167 of what appears to be 360 pages. I say "appears to be" because everything is handwritten and I’ve already come across an instance where he mislabeled the page count – going from page 137 back to page 132.
Dad did not use a computer. He used white-out. I can hold a page to the light and count 21 blotches of editing.The novel is big, epic and traces the history of the Shroud of Turin, which some say is the burial shroud of Jesus Christ. Early on one of the main characters is Byzantine Emperor Romanus Lekapenos, a tough old bird with whom, I can tell, my father identified.
I marvel at the parts that are masterfully written. I shared my admiration with my father. But the book has its shortcomings. These, I did not share with him.
In the rush to the emergency room Monday my father, a man with few assets, scribbled a brief will. He wanted his three sons to share equally in any proceeds from the future publication of his literary efforts. I now know, as editor and typist, I had a deadline.
Steve, thanks for sharing your father with us.
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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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