Queries & Comments

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The Painting of Turin

Marisa Urgo writes that many people believe the Shroud of Turin is authentic because people in the medieval period didn’t have the technology to create the image (Queries & Comments, BAR 25:04). Ms. Urgo believes that they did have the technology, adding, “We just haven’t figured out their technique yet.”

Yes, we have figured it out, Ms. Urgo. I made a comprehensive, objective scientific examination of excellent samples from 32 different areas of the shroud and concluded that the shroud was painted in 1355 by an inspired artist using two very dilute collagen tempera paints: one, red ocher pigment in a gelatin solution for the body image; and two, red ocher plus vermilion pigments in a gelatin solution for the bloodstains.

I know how it must have been done, and I have done it myself. One simply applies these very dilute paints to the contact areas that a sheet of linen shows on covering a body. The intensity of the color is based on cloth-body distance, with less and less color as that distance increases.

I sent most of the shrouds I painted and those of Walter Sanford, an artist and a friend, to Turin, but I enclose a photograph of one. [The lower left photo shows the Shroud of Turin; the right photo is McCrone’s replica.—Ed.] It is very important to note that the distribution of paint pigment on the linen fibers is identical with the distribution of pigment on the Turin Shroud at 250–2500× by light microscopy. Tape samples of our shroud image areas cannot be distinguished from the Turin Shroud images by any known analytical technique.

A complete and detailed account of my work over a two-year period proving the shroud to be a painting is available for anyone to evaluate in Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1999).

Copies Look Like Copies

Ms. Urgo calls our attention to the many false relics produced in the Middle Ages, supposedly establishing that the Shroud of Turin is one of them. That is like stating that since there are hundreds of fake Picasso paintings, none are authentic. Modern copies of the shroud prove one clear fact: The copy appears as a copy—without hesitation. If a forger made the shroud, it was forged in such a way that no other forger has been able to replicate it.

The Shroud Proves the Resurrection

Enough already! The articles and readers’ letters regarding the Shroud of Turin seem to have been written by people either so uninformed or so misinformed as to be ludicrous!

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Here are some of the people involved in shroud research: Dr. John L. Brown, electron microscopist; Kevin Moran, optical engineer; Dr. Barrie Schworz, Don Lynn, Vernon Miller. Of these experts, all are convinced that the image on the shroud is not a painting. As to what produced this image, the closest any come to an answer is that it was a form of radiation.

Kevin Moran is of the opinion that the shroud is proof of the Resurrection of Christ. He and others are certain that it was formed in a short time and that if the Resurrection had not occurred, there would be no image. Moran feels that at the moment of passage from death to life, every cell in Christ’s body fired a burst of powerful energy, which printed the image on the cloth.

No medieval artist could have created the haunting image found on the shroud. Don Lynn, one of the investigators, has stated that by focusing on the face of the man of the shroud, you see an expression of profound serenity, all the while contemplating the horrendous suffering evident on the body, and you wonder who could have borne all of that and remained so peaceful? Can’t anyone with an ounce of clear-headedness see that the image on the shroud is none other than the Man of Sorrows, the Lord Jesus Christ!

Material Witness

Beyond all of the controversy over the chemical and carbon tests on the Shroud of Turin, one must consider the textile. The image appears on a linen pointed twill or herringbone twill textile.

I am a weaver with a special interest in Egyptian textiles of the Coptic period (late third to mid-seventh century A.D.). In the past 25 years, I have examined Pharaonic and Coptic textiles in 36 museum collections in the United States, Canada, England, France, Italy and Egypt. I have studied material about other textile fragments found in the Western, Eastern and New Worlds that predate and postdate the Coptic period.

Never, in all of the thousands of textiles in the museums or in the literature, have I found a complex twill textile comparable to the cloth of the shroud. Nor is there evidence during the Roman period for the multishaft loom necessary to weave this twill.

One can venerate and admire the Shroud of Turin, but I cannot believe that this linen textile was woven in Christ’s lifetime.

Ports of Galilee

How to See the Sea of Galilee

Before and after participating in archaeological digs at various sites in Israel since 1987, my wife, Rita, and I enjoy bicycling from Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv to the dig sites or to other equally exciting locations. Little did I think about the ancient ports of Galilee when we bicycled around the Sea of Galilee in 1994 prior to participating in a dig at Ashkelon. Our thoughts were not directed toward ports or harbors but to bicycling 012counterclockwise around the sea to explore Tiberias, Hamat Tiberias, the Jordan River outlet, Kibbutz Degania, Hamat Gader, Ein Gev, Kursi, Bethsaida, the Jordan River inlet, Capernaum, Tabgha, Nof Ginosar and Migdal.

Having thoroughly enjoyed Mendel Nun’s article “Ports of Galilee,” BAR 25:04, his comment about his “near-ancient bicycle” and the evocative accompanying photographs, I want readers to know that biking around the sea certainly beats exploring it by rental car or tour bus, which we have done in the past. Bicycling gives one more time and enables one to have a more complete understanding of the region and its people. I long to bike again there with the objective of exploring whatever Galilee ports or harbors can be seen and are open to the public. Upon completion, I look forward to reviewing my Galilee ports adventures in a fine restaurant on the Allon Promenade while enjoying my St. Peter’s fish and bottle of Carmen Grenache wine.

There’s One Missing

Congratulations on Mendel Nun’s “Ports of Galilee.” I found it delightful and informative, and it answered many questions I had acquired while walking those same shores on two visits. The photos and map made the article come alive.

Nun mentions “at least 16 bustling ports,” yet his map only identifies 15. I wonder what the 16th port is. I’m also curious why Nun doesn’t identify the town of Bethsaida.

Thanks for an excellent article and cruise on the Sea of Galilee.

According to Mr. Nun, the site labeled Aish is Bethsaida. We mistakenly omitted this second identification. However, other investigators identify Bethsaida with another site. Rami Arav and Richard Freund are excavating a site north of the present-day shoreline that they believe is Bethsaida. They will describe their work in an upcoming issue.—Ed.

What’s in a Name?

In “Ports of Galilee” Kursi is also called Gergesa, Gadara and Gerasa. But Gadara is also another site, southeast of the Sea of Galilee, with Tel Samra as its harbor.

The three names seem to have been confused very early on. Some New Testament manuscripts prefer one, some another.Some even use one name in one gospel and another name in another gospel for the same site.—Ed.

Sacred Geometry

Three Degrees of Separation

According to the figure on page 48 of David Jacobson’s article (“Sacred Geometry,” BAR 25:04), Herod’s architects 013must have been using some kind of non-Euclidean (hyperbolic) geometry!

According to Euclid, the interior angles of a quadrilateral must add up to 360 degrees, but those in this figure add up only to 357.

Hands-On Mathematics

The title “Sacred Geometry” is a misnomer when applied to the diagram of the Temple Mount in the BAR 25:04 issue, unless the Almighty has repealed the laws of mathematics without telling the rest of us. If one of my students had produced this, he or she would certainly have received a failing grade.

The most glaring error in the diagram is that the four corner angles of the quadrilateral add up to 357 degrees, contradicting the theorem (first proved in the Second Temple period) that states that the sum of the angles of a convex quadrilateral is always 360 degrees.

I should add that the description of the use of a compass to produce rosettes is very nicely done and provides a marvelous example of a practical application of techniques that are usually thought of as being solely in the realm of “pure” mathematics.

David Jacobson responds:

The figure on page 48 is a simplification of the actual Haram enclosure. The walls are not absolutely straight, particularly the eastern and northern walls, as I state in the text on the very same page.

Tangential Point

David Jacobson was excited to find that the western and southern walls formed the legs of a right triangle with the hypotenuse making a 60 degree angle with respect to the base. Truly, I think, a significant observation. He goes on, though, to express amazement that the ratio of the length of the western wall to the southern wall is 1.732. This is a necessary consequence of the previous fact, since the tangent (opposite leg over adjacent leg) of 60 degrees is 1.732, or the square root of 3.

No issue of BAR has failed to contain fascinating material. Keep up the good work!

Or To Put It Another Way …

Thank you for David Jacobson’s elegant and persuasive article on the precise location of Herod’s Temple on the Temple Mount. That the angle at the southeast corner of the Mount, between the south wall and the line of sight to the northwest corner at the end of the west wall, is 60 degrees seems quite significant. More provocative is the “even more startling discovery” that “the ratio of the length of the south wall to the length of the west wall is 1:1.73.” Would you credit me with a still more startling discovery—site unseen, even!—were I to point out that the distance between the southeast and northwest corners is precisely twice the length of the south wall? Or must I defer to Pythagoras, whose astonishing predictions from the sixth century B.C.E. foretell that both those ratios will ever be true of any right-angled triangle that has an adjacent angle equal to an interior angle of an equilateral triangle (provided that neither triangle is large enough to be affected by the curvature of the earth—we’ll save spherical geometry until next semester)?

David Jacobson responds:

Your observation that the length of the southern wall of the Temple Mount is half that of the distance from the southeast corner to the northwest corner is, as you say, a consequence of the fact that we have a right-angle triangle with an included 60 degree angle. The cosine (adjacent side/hypotenuse) of a 60 degree angle is ½. Q.E.D!

Playing All the Angles

David Jacobson should not have been too surprised to find the 60 degree angle in the irregular quadrangle forming the outer walls of the Temple Mount. By his own testimony, equilateral triangles and hexagons (geometric figures with an abundance of 60 degree and 120 degree angles) are found in architectural plans from the same era in the same region. As he demonstrates on page 49, regular hexagons can be constructed with the simplest of surveying aids. We may conjecture that architectural surveyors of the time had simple devices at hand for laying out angles of 60 degrees, much as draftsmen today make use of precut 30–60-90 degree triangles for layout. In the same way, because 45 degree angles are easy to construct, we may look for buildings in the shape of regular octagons.

Accordingly, Jacobson’s discovery that the ratio of the lengths of the west and 066south walls is 1.73:1 is not at all startling. In every 30–60-90 degree triangle, the ratio of the longer leg to the shorter leg is always exactly the square root of 3 (1.7320508). The ratio is, of course, scale independent, accounting for the appearance of a 60 degree angle when Jacobson drew a diagonal across the plan of the enclosure of the Tomb of the Patriarchs. If Jacobson had measured the length of the diagonal he drew across the Temple Mount and divided that length by the length of the south wall, he would presumably have been even more profoundly surprised because that ratio would have been the simple integer relation 2:1! Again, nothing more significant lies in that ratio other than an inevitable geometric relationship in every 30–60-90 degree triangle.

There is an important lesson in this. When numerical coincidences are discovered, they should be ascribed to otherwise undescribed human (or nonhuman) motivations only when all other possible causes have been ruled out.

Thank you for yet another interesting and provocative issue of BAR.

Adjacent Temples

I have followed the debate in BAR surrounding the location of the Temple since it was first raised in the early 1980s. Unless I have somehow missed something, a very logical possibility has not yet been postulated: Perhaps both Asher Kaufman and Leen Ritmeyer are right! All around the United States, there are examples of old rundown churches standing for a while beside bright and massive new church buildings. This arrangement allows worship to continue while the new building is being prepared. Herod the Great was not popular with either his Roman overlords or his Jewish subjects. He survived for such a long time because he was crafty and intelligent. It would have been suicidal for him to have suspended worship in the Temple for the 46 years the Gospel of John indicates was required for the building of the new one. The enlargement of the Temple Mount enabled Herod to build his Temple in the center while not disturbing the rites and ceremonies of Judaism until they could be transferred to his new edifice. I cannot imagine how Herod could have managed to build a new Temple and remove the old one peacefully any other way!

Hershel Shanks responds:

We have never heard this point made before. Incidentally, in a later issue we are going to print comments from Asher Kaufman and Leen Ritmeyer. Readers who wish to review the contentions of these scholars may read the following BAR articles: Asher Kaufman, “Where the Ancient Temple of Jerusalem Stood,” BAR 09:02; Kathleen Ritmeyer and Leen Ritmeyer, “Reconstructing Herod’s Temple Mount in Jerusalem,” BAR 15:06; L. Ritmeyer, “Locating the Original Temple Mount,” BAR 18:02; and “The Ark of the Covenant: Where It Stood in Herod’s Temple,” BAR 22:01.

Mount Sinai

Did He Even Watch?

From the opening paragraph of his review of The Gold of Exodus: The Discovery of the True Mount Sinai, by Howard Blum (ReViews, BAR 25:04), Ronald Hendel reveals himself to be an iconoclast of the highest order: a professor of religious studies who laughs at the idea that the Bible could possibly be true. If he wants to trash Blum’s book, that’s okay with us. We didn’t care much for it either, and we certainly didn’t use it in our production of The Search for the Real Mt. Sinai.

It is painfully obvious, however, that Hendel didn’t watch our video. If he had, he would have spent some time actually discussing it in his review. He also would have realized that caves and rock piles (not to mention a blackened mountain peak, altars and pillars) do mean something when they are specifically mentioned in Exodus and 1 Kings but are nowhere to be found at the traditional location of Mt. Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula.

Hendel’s puerile tone laughs in the face of your own editor, Hershel Shanks, who has stated, “Jebel al-Lawz is the most likely site for Mount Sinai.” He also defies the conclusions of Dr. Allen Kerkeslager (author of Jewish Pilgrimage and Jewish Identity), who states, “Jebel al-Lawz is probably the most convincing option for identifying the mountain with which Jews identified Mt. Sinai in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods.”

We did not intend our video to answer all the questions necessary to confirm the location of the true Mt. Sinai. It was produced to give people of good will a forum in which to discuss the facts of 067this amazing discovery. It is apparent that Hendel is not the least bit interested in such a discussion. After all, making personal attacks is so much easier than challenging the facts. To deal with facts requires some serious effort. BAR is sadly underserved if it feels the need to employ such disaffected contributors.

Ronald S. Hendel responds:

I’m sorry Mr. Beard was so rattled by my review. I did watch the video, which I thought was well produced and sensationalistic. My main problem with it is the all-too-easy leap from finding a cave on a mountain (for example) to the conclusion that this is the cave where Elijah slept.To determine whether a particular mountain is the “real” Mt. Sinai, one would need to do some real archaeology, not just passionate tourism. A video saying “I visited Mt. Sinai” is just not enough to establish such a claim.

Hershel Shanks responds:

The quote attributed to me is accurate but incomplete. I went on to say that all identifications of Mt. Sinai are highly speculative. A good case has been made that it is somewhere in northwest Saudi Arabia, and Jebel al-Lawz is the highest point in this area.That’s the entire basis for the speculation. The amateur expedition described in Blum’s book added no significant information in the view of scholars who have examined the matter.

Potpourri

Who Clove to Whom?

I found “God as Divine Kinsman,” BAR 25:04, extremely interesting and convincing. But I am puzzled by one statement: “The bride enters a kinship relationship with the groom’s kin. That is the original meaning of the famous passage in Genesis 2:24: ‘Therefore a man will abandon his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and [the two of them] will become one flesh.’”

This sounds like it is the groom who enters into the kinship relationship with the bride’s kin. It is he who abandons his mother and father.

I’ve heard that among many tribal people it is the custom for the male to join the female’s tribe. Could that have been the practice among the early ancestors of the Jewish tribes?

Frank Moore Cross responds:

Marriage customs over many centuries of Israel’s history were not always the same. The Book of Judges, for example, has Samson joining Delilah. However, the social system was normally patriarchal and marriage normally endogamous, the wife coming under the authority of her husband(ba‘al,“lord”) and his patriarch, the head of the wider family group (bet ab). The verse in Genesis cited by Mr. Hoffman is sometimes argued to show that Israelite society was originally matriarchal, but this view has been strongly countered, in my opinion. The first part of the verse, about the husband leaving his parents, indicates that he now assumes responsibility for taking care of his wife. The second part of the verse, about the couple becoming one flesh, is not a reference to sex, as many assume, but an assertion of the new kinship relationship between husband and wife.

Shanks Misrepresents Greek Rhetoric

In his First Person, BAR 25:04, Hershel Shanks misrepresents litotes as merely “indirect statements.” Litotes is an affirmation expressed by using a contrary (negative), e.g., “With regard to ostraca, Eph’al and Naveh are not bad scholars.”

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A Note on Style

B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era), used by some of our authors, are the alternative designations for B.C. and A.D. often used in scholarly literature.

The Painting of Turin