We mentioned this back in June of last year. At the time the Telegraph and the Daily Mail wrote about it and, not surprisingly, the story died after one day. Now, because of the attention caused by the ENEA report, Marina Tantushyan, a correspondent in Rome for the Voice of Russia, has resurrected the story. It seems that an artist from Treviso, Luciano Buso, has determined that the shroud is actually a replica of Jesus’ original burial shroud. According to Buso, the Italian artist Giotto di Bondone created the replica in 1315:
Here is an exchange from an interview with Buso by Marina Tantushyan:
[Tantushyan:] What is your view of the ENEA tests results that in a way contradict your conclusions? Are you ready to insist on your point of view? If yes, what counter arguments are you going to use to prove your point?
[Buso:] The fact that all theories related to the Shroud of Turin are to be proved invalid to some extent became obvious to me back in 1980s when a group of world renowned scientists who performed carbon dating test on a small piece of the cloth put the Shroud’s origin around 1280-1320. It so happened that even that theory designed by well known scientists who used technology and methods modern for that time collapsed. In my opinion, various theories will always try to deny the existence of the Shroud of Turin. As far as the results of the latest testing that contradict my observations, I can say only this: those who want to doubt my theory will also have to appeal the results of all my work to study hundreds of pictures painted between years 1300 and 2010. In all those I found hidden writing. There is a book about to come out in which I give a precise and detailed account of all examples of hidden writing I have encountered. What I don’t understand is this: what’s the point of denying my theory that proves that Giotto created the Shroud of Turin in 1315 if the existence of these hidden writings is obvious.
This is what you are looking for. It is a stylized “Giotto 15,” meaning of course 1315. And you can find it only by looking at the area just below the chin in an upside down photograph of the shroud, as shown above.
What’s the point of denying?
There are a lot of people who claim they see coins, letters, flowers,…now hidden writings. When they explain it to you, it gives the impression that the coin/flower/writing is truly there……….
Honestly, I don’t know what to think either in this case or in the others because we are far from having enough scientific evidences, but, as I have written in previous comments in this blog, in my opinion, this general issue could be one of the easiest to deal with. Perhaps, someone has already done it, ruled it out, and it is simply that I am not fully aware of all the scientific literature about the Shroud. However, using high resolution images, pixel values can feed rather simple mathematical tests of randomness and using Montecarlo/bootstrap techniques, 95% confidence levels decision intervals could be quite easily assessed. 95% confidence levels are widely accepted in scientific literature as enough to reach conclusions and could help in determining if what some claim they see is just noise or there really exists a discernible pattern.
I also see a lot of claims for things like flowers and writing that I personally don’t see when I look at the shroud or it’s photographic negative. I do see a lot of the details that some people point out, for example, teeth in the mouth. However, I am not quite sure if those teeth are actually teeth that are partially revealed in some way through what I perceive to be closed lips or just noise from the shroud itself. I have a hunch they’re noise but am open minded. I also do clearly see the hand bones but I am not sure why – did Jesus have very little body fat and his bones shown through his hands like I’ve seen with some older folks? That seems plausible to a degree even without knowing the probable mechanism of image creation. The abnormally long fingers on the right hand seems to be a distortion caused be the tenting effect of the left leg being raised. But as for flowers, words and secret symbols I am of the mind that if they are not as plain, visible and discernable as the image of the man himself they are probably just noise.
After reading previous comments on this matter I can’t help saying that I disagree with Gabriel when he asserted that «we are far from having scientific evidences».
When it comes to the Shroud being a painting or not scientific evidences indeed point to it’s image not being a paintig as Dr. John Heller and Dr. Alan Adler concluded in several peer reviewd papers.
The question of the presence of flower images on the Shroud is still a matter of controversy even between sindonologists but their true existence remains a strong possibility.
If someone wants to get real scientific information about the Shroud one of the easiest ways to do it is searching the wonderful website of Dr. Barrie Schwortz http://www.shroud.com scientific articles and papers or «google» Ohio Shroud Conference, http://www.shroudstory.com http://www.sindonology.org and so on.
Don’t forget the Shroud of Turin is the most studied relic in the history of mankind
regards
Maria da Glória
Centro Português de Sindonologia
Maria, just to make clear my point, when I say that “we are far from having scientific evidences”, I refer exclusively to the coins/flowers/writings issue and not the Shroud itself. In this matter -coins/flowers/writings-, to the best of my knowledege, all the claims are far from being widely accepted and remain controversial. In this aspect, apart from Danin, one of the few papers which have undergone a peer-review process and been published in a JCR journal is the one by Marion which I commented in this blog. Even so, his conclusions on the letters he found on the Shroud, are widely dismissed and/or remain highly controversial.