Queries & Comments

018

The Shroud of Turin

To the Editor:

Congratulations for your courageous publication of “New Evidence May Explain Image on Shroud of Turin,” BAR 12:04! Undoubtedly, the article will generate scientific controversy.

To the Editor:

For 600 years, distinguished investigators have studied the Shroud of Turin with increasingly myopic vision until, in the July/August issue, there is mentioned a dimension of a micron—1/25,000 of an inch!

These distinguished groups of investigators should back off about five feet and consider:

1. Would the near shoulder-length hair remain rigidly framing the face as a body was turned this way and that as laid out supinely for enshrouding? No!

2. Would the heads of the two images meet at a point? No! (The artist forgot skulls also have a dimension from front to back.)

3. The shadowed features of the face indicate light coming from the front upper right, perhaps the aura from a lopsided halo?

The cloth—do not call it a shroud—never was imprinted by anyone’s dead body.

To the Editor:

I read the article on the Shroud of Turin in your July/August issue and it reminded me that I have an old feather. My grandfather said it was from an old goose he dispatched.

I offer the feather to any religiously oriented group for scientific study. It may be able to prove that it is really from the wing of the Angel Gabriel.

To the Editor:

I read the article on the Shroud of Turin with great interest, having followed the reports on the research of this fascinating object for many years.

Two very important aspects of the shroud image should be taken into consideration in understanding the images’ formation by any natural mechanism. Granting that the body was placed in the shroud as shown in the picture, any image formed by a natural process would have a continuous representation of the head showing the face, forehead, crown of the head, back of the head and neck without any break if the shroud were in continuous contact with the body. As can be seen from the figure, the front and the back of the head are shown but not bridged by the top of the head.

Secondly, if the shroud were wrapped around the body, the image would be distorted by the many folds and creases that would be caused by the changes in the effective cross section of the body in going from the head to the feet. An image formed on a wrapped shroud should have many distortions when unwrapped and laid flat.

If, on the other hand, the cloth of the shroud were perfectly flat above and below the body at the time of the image formation, there would not be distortion by folds, but the image would be mostly out of focus. The parts of the shroud in contact with the body would produce images in focus, but any point not in contact would radiate its heat spherically. The further the part of the body was from the shroud the larger and weaker the sphere heat would be when it contacted the shroud. The spheres of radiating energy for adjoining points of the body would overlap and produce an image out of focus—the degree of blurring would be greater the further the shroud was from the body. Blurring of this type would also occur where the shroud was wrapped around the body since there would be places where the shroud would not be in contact with the low areas of the body, e.g., around the eyes.

The claim of image formation by body heat by Kohlbeck and Nitowski needs to be studied more critically. It is very likely that an image would form with heat, moisture and limestone, but their claim that the front image is better developed than the back image because the front would stay warmer longer than the back, is only roughly proven by the shroud image. The parts of the body with small mass would cool quickly and would be expected to be more poorly developed than the chest and particularly the abdomen. The image nose and arms of the shroud are nonetheless as dark or darker than the main body mass.

While natural mechanisms were very likely used to form the shroud image, it seems very unlikely the image was made without intelligent help and direction; moreover, the more we find out about the shroud, the less likely it becomes that any human agency could make the image on the shroud even today, let alone centuries ago. Intelligent help other than human seems more likely, but highly mind boggling.

To the Editor:

Is the image on the shroud on the “inside” of the cloth next to the body? I can understand how limestone dust could be on the “outside” of the cloth, but not on the “inside,” between the cloth and the body.

To the Editor:

In reading the article on the Shroud of Turin, I was dismayed to find a citation from “research” done on concentration camp victims in Dachau. What occurred at Dachau was not 019medical research but sadism, torture and murder. It sickens me to think that anyone would use this material to prove a scientific point. To me it makes a mockery of the suffering of those who perished in the camps.

Eugenia Nitowski replies:

It grieves me to learn that anyone would consider my reference to Dachau as capitalizing on a great atrocity. Unfortunately, the text of my paragraph, to which Ms. Keusch refers, is all too brief leaving a harshness to what has been listed, rather than the compassion originally shown by Dr. Pierre Barbet, a French physician who was citing eyewitness accounts of two former prisoners among those who had been condemned to such a death.

Crucifixion is from the distant past; Dachau, on the other hand, is a living memory. My intention was to recall the death of one innocent in an attempt to explain that of another. My own choice would have been to use words of a more compassionate and sublime comparison, but that was not acceptable as either good science or proper objectivity. I apologize for the coldness of science, but I do not apologize for an attempt to compare the deaths of martyrs to the death of One to whom I have dedicated my life. If the past, recent or distant, teaches us nothing—we, not it, become the mockery.

To the Editor:

I would like to take the time to tell you I thoroughly enjoyed the article, “New Evidence May Explain Image on Shroud of Turin,” BAR 12:04. I still have doubts as to the shroud being a genuine first-century burial shroud, especially that of the Lord. This is not a letter of criticism but one of sincere inquiry from a lay person.

Concerning the limestone dust: would not the shroud have had to have a uniform coating of limestone dust to have received such a uniform image upon it? Nitowski states, “One other point is critical for our purposes—these tombs were cut into soft, moist limestone outcroppings.” Would not a folded piece of linen being brushed against moist limestone receive the limestone in concentrated spots rather than a uniform coating?

A dry tomb could have produced a uniform coating on the shroud as the dust filtered down, but this would have taken many days, possibly weeks, to occur. A wet tomb could have deposited a uniform coating by percolation of the groundwater, but this process would probably have taken years.

The Gospel writers all state that Jesus’ body was completely covered by the burial clothes; Matthew (27:59), Mark (15:46) and Luke (23:53) use the word “wrapped” while John (19:40) uses “wound.” Now if the body was wrapped, would not an image of a panoramic nature have been produced instead of the two views as shown on the Shroud of Turin? In other words, not only the face and back of the head would have produced an image but the sides of the head would have produced one as well. The sides of the arms and legs would have produced an image as readily as their fronts and backs did. Also, the four views would have blended very smoothly from one to the other and not as a draftsman would draw four distinct views. Had the burial clothes been wound around and around the body, as a doctor would apply a bandage, would not a very segmental, panoramic image be displayed? Both of these methods (it would seem) would leave gaps in the image due to folds in the linen clothes.

I enjoy every issue of BAR, most issues more than once.

To the Editor:

The trouble with your “Shroud of Turin” article is the first sentence: “The skeptics 069have been unable to explain how the image on the shroud of Turin was created.”

At least one skeptic, by using a hot-cloth pressing, has been able to reproduce his own images on cloth. Does this make the image that of Jesus of Nazareth? Or does it give the lie to the opening sentence of the article?

In one of those boxes attached to the article, there is proof beyond the method that the shroud is a fraud: the testimony of a bishop that he knew the artist who had done it!

Christianity, when it stoops to fraud to “prove” itself true, becomes fraudulent itself.

To the Editor:

I have just finished reading Kohlbeck and Nitowski’s article on the Shroud of Turin. It is extremely interesting and well written. I can understand how the image may have been formed in the manner they present. However, there is one question that kept occurring to me. As interesting as the shroud is, wouldn’t it be more intriguing to speculate on the body responsible for the image in the first place? What happened to it? Every scholar who has studied the shroud has no difficulty identifying the picture as that of a crucified man; but I have never seen any article relating to the body or the man himself. In other words, we have the burial shroud of a crucified man that everyone under the sun is trying to explain in a natural manner. But we have no body discovered in any tomb anywhere to match with the shroud.

Perhaps we should remember although there are two sites claiming to be the burial place of Jesus and we have a cloth reputed to be His burial shroud, all of them are empty.

I don’t always agree with the opinions expressed in BAR, but that is my privilege. It is an excellent magazine and I look forward to each issue. As a former archaeology major and now “armchair” archaeologist, I depend on your magazine to keep me current on archaeological happenings in my major field of interest, the Holy Land. Keep up the good work.

To the Editor:

What an interesting explanation of the image on the Shroud of Turin is presented by Kohlbeck and Nitowski in the July/August BAR 12:04! And the supplementary essays (signed W.M.—Assistant Editor Wendy Miller, I presume) summarize well the history of the shroud and of the 1978 study by the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP).

It was surprising, however, to find no reference to the most complete and authoritative account of that study, STURP member John H. Heller’s book Report on the Shroud of Turin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984, 221 pp. plus scientific bibliography).

Dr. Heller, some of whose chemical tests of the shroud are cited in your article’s footnotes, produced an unusually readable account of the project and of its exhaustive tests and conclusions. To appreciate fully Kohlbeck and Nitowski’s findings, in my opinion familiarity with Heller’s book is essential.

How the Image on the Shroud of Turin Was Formed

To the Editor:

The article titled “New Evidence May Explain Image on Shroud of Turin,” BAR 12:04, does nothing to support the argument that the shroud is genuine.

The authors reveal their own bias when 070discussing the back of the shroud. They say, “This difference has received little in-depth discussion and is usually not even mentioned, except by those whose aim is to prove the shroud a forgery.” It may never have occurred to them that the aim of scholars such as Robert A. Wild and Raymond E. Brown may be to find out the TRUTH.

Contrary to the opening statements, nothng in the article points to a first-century date. The earliest historical mention of the shroud is in 1357. There is no reason to assume a date much earlier than that for its manufacture.

In the article is an illustration of a 16th-century painting by Giulio Clovio. The caption says, “ … the scene shows how Jesus’ body would have been wrapped to create the head-to-head image on the Shroud of Turin.” Closer examination would reveal that the painting shows why the head-to-head image would be impossible. If the image was produced by being wrapped around a man then it would have an exploded view of the person showing the front, back, sides and the top of the head. The image we have on the shroud is a back and frontal view of a man, the same as we would expect in a painting. The authors may continue wrapping up medical manikins, but they know that they will never recreate the image that way.

The authors produced good evidence showing that the shroud probably came from the area of Jerusalem, and this is supported by Max Frei’s claim of having found pollen spores native to Palestine on the shroud. However, this does not support its authenticity. The 14th century was rife with religious forgeries brought back from the Holy Land by European pilgrims. This could have been one of them.

In speaking about the red particles found on some shroud fibers Kohlbeck says, “Those particles that had previously measured one or two microns in diameter now appeared to have nuclei.” Two microns is about the thickness of a cell’s membrane, much too small for a nucleus or any other organelle. We do not know what Kohlbeck saw. The conclusion that the particles were “organic rather than inorganic” means little because organic material is often used in paints for coloration.

The authors described a very interesting experiment:

“We made a paste of the Jerusalem limestone with distilled water and then applied this paste to new linen fibers, slightly rubbing the paste into the fibers. The slightly alkaline limestone (aragonite) attacked the outer skin of the fibers, producing a yellowish color very similar to the color of image fibers of the shroud.”

Without knowing it, Kohlbeck and Nitowski may have discovered exactly how the image was made; here is my explanation:

In the fourteenth century a group of forgers in Jerusalem created a positive image using a limestone paste for coloring, highlighting by applying heavier coats over desired areas. This positive image would have little durability and would quickly flake and peel off (however it would last long enough to sell the cloth to an unsuspecting Christian), leaving a negative image as a result of mercerization. Where the paste was thickest the discoloration would be greatest. The “blood stains” were put on using a more permanent paint that may have had an organic substance added for color.

At age seven I once attended a birthday party where a professional magician performed. The magician took off his hat and showed everyone that the top was solid by knocking on it. He then put the hat on his table and proceeded to pull out several objects including a live rabbit. At that age, I really believed that the rabbit came out of the hat. But not knowing did not make it magic, and if there are questions about the shroud which scientists cannot answer, that does not make it genuine. The burden of proof is upon those who claim that it is the burial shroud of Jesus Christ, and they have shown nothing to support that claim.

071

Eugenia Nitowski replies:

It was not the purpose of our article to list all the evidence for or against the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin either as a burial cloth or, more specifically, as that of Jesus Christ. Such a feat would require volumes. Rather, we have attempted to approach the topic from the standpoint of the original tomb environment and explore the role that environment may have played with regard to image formation and evidence of origin. Date is outside the scope of the procedures we used.

To say that anyone approaches a topic with total objectivity is not only ludicrous but naive. It is the ideal that researchers be open to new evidence and proceed in the direction that evidence dictates and not cling tenaciously to previously conceived theories. The authenticity of an object, like the Shroud of Turin cannot be judged by one point alone, but is decided in each person’s mind by the weight of evidence.

Many broad statements are made pro and con about what has or has not been proved but many of those statements will not bear scrutiny, for example, the d’Arcis memorandum. Neither the artist, his name nor any other information was ever produced. Bishop Louis Raguier, d’Arcis’s successor, maintained the shroud’s authenticity in three official documents. The issues involved are not simple.

072

There are several levels of calcium contamination on the shroud. While the greater calcium concentration is found on that side not in contact with the body, contamination also exists on the inside as well. It is not known how either the cloth or the body were handled from the cross to the tomb where such contamination could have been acquired.

The frontal and dorsal images on the shroud provide valuable clues as to the condition of the body at burial, because those images are not perfect. For example, the frontal image is taller than the dorsal, one hip on the frontal image is larger than the other, the fingers seem to be too long, and very little neck is visible. The cloth was wrapped around a body which was in rigor mortis from the cross, as we showed in the drawing, a shape in which the head is bent down onto the chest, almost eliminating the neck, the legs are bent causing the stretching of the cloth over the knees to give a taller frontal image. The wrapping and folding of the cloth around the body is responsible for distortions and dropping-out effects, as can be seen with the lengthened fingers of the image due to the tucking of the cloth under the hands. The gap between the frontal and dorsal head images is caused by folding the cloth at that point (the heads do not meet at a point as was mistakenly claimed in one letter above). The illustration showing the wrapping of the body was not chosen by us, but rather by the publisher. We show a tying of the body in the cloth which, in many places, holds the cloth in close contact with the body. The tying around the neck area along with the head bent downward onto the chest causes the hair to fall forward and 073remain in that position. No doubt the considerable amount of blood shown in the hair on the shroud would cause a matting and stiffening of the hair as well.

We received an unusually large amount of mail on the Shroud of Turin article. Additional letters will appear in the next issue of BAR.—Ed.

The Case for a Free Market in Antiquities

To the Editor:

Well, the July/August 1986 BAR was another fascinating edition. You’ve done it again!

Everyone should be grateful to you for publishing the words of Avraham Eitan verbatim (“BAR Interviews Avraham Eitan,” BAR 12:04. Could there be a stronger case made for a free market in antiquities?

Perhaps many were shocked by Eitan’s attitude. They should not be. It is the attitude of the monopolist. We have them in government, in the school system and in business where they can get away with it. They all use the same kind of language.

There is nothing like a free press to clear the air. Those who are carping at your antiquities ads are making a good case for a free market even if that is not their intent.

It was also refreshing to have the open debate of [Rudolph] Cohen (“Solomon’s Negev Defense Line Contained Three Fewer Fortresses,” BAR 12:04) and [Israel] Finkelstein (“The Iron Age Sites in the Negev Highlands—Military Fortresses or Nomads Settling Down?” BAR 12:04) directly following the Eitan interview.

Prometheus Books Responds to Criticism

To the Editor:

I note with dismay the letters that have recently appeared in your journal (Queries & Comments, BAR 12:03, and Queries & Comments, BAR 12:04) objecting to advertisements you have carried from Prometheus Books.

I must say that we are shocked at the protests of some of your readers. Prometheus Books has published a large number of books over the years by distinguished and outstanding authors, including Sidney Hook, Isaac Asimov, Martin Gardner and Albert Schweitzer. We have also been publishing the great classics of philosophical literature, among them works by Plato, Aristotle, John Locke and John Stuart Mill.

We have recently embarked upon a new series of books in the area of Biblical criticism. These books represent a fairly liberal viewpoint and are issued under the editorial sponsorship of two noteworthy scholars: Professor Gerald LaRue (Professor Emeritus Department of Religious Studies, the 074University of Southern California) and Professor R. Joseph Hoffmann (Chairman, Department of Near Eastern Studies, the University of Michigan).

If the horizons of free inquiry were to be narrowed in this country, and if unpopular or unfashionable views were not to be heard or read, what a disaster that would be for the free mind and a free society!

We especially appreciate your statement of your “Policy on Advertising” in which you defend the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

We “Recieved” Many Letters Like This

To the Editor:

As many of your other readers will undoubtedly let you know, the correct spelling is “receive,” not “recieve” (BARlines, BAR 12:04).

I love your magazine, and I really don’t care where you put your i’s and e’s.

Our thanks to you and to the many other readers who wrote us about this embarrassing slip.—Ed.

BAR Keeps Him Awake at Night—Finds Flopped Pic

To the Editor:

Thank you for producing a journal of archaeology that keeps me awake at night rather than putting me to sleep! Your colorful articles (in photos and words) and controversial comments make fine reading. You stimulate my brain cells!

I see that I am not the only one who has “flipped” over your layout. In your article “Does the Holy Sepulchre Church Mark the Burial of Jesus?” BAR 12:03, the full-page color photo of the Anastasis rotunda in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was flipped. Having never been to the Holy Sepulchre Church (or even to Jerusalem, for that matter), I was tipped off by three clues (“archaeological evidence,” so to speak). Can you see them?

The clues:

1. Epigraphical—The inscriptions on the front of the reconstructed tomb are in reverse.

2. Glyptic—The relief above the entrance to the Anastasis shows the risen Christ’s left hand raised in benediction. This is not necessarily proof in itself because of “artistic 076liberties” evidenced in many engravings and paintings of Christ.

3. Environmental—The sunlight entering the rotunda seems an odd angle for the northern hemisphere since the photo is supposed to be looking almost due west (perhaps west-southwest). This northern light observation is admittedly suppositional on my part since I have not stood on the spot throughout a solar year.

Reader Barrick from Bangladesh is a careful reader and a careful viewer. He is also correct.—Ed.

The Shroud of Turin

To the Editor:

Congratulations for your courageous publication of “New Evidence May Explain Image on Shroud of Turin,” BAR 12:04! Undoubtedly, the article will generate scientific controversy.