Since 1983 the Vatican has owned a linen rug with a vague print of a man (see header photo), whose history is also very vague. This dress first appeared as' shroud 'and relic of the biblical Jesus in 1390 in Lirey in France, although before that time there have been allusions to a similar relic (Casabianca 3-4). It was already described as forgery by the bishop of Lirey and his successor, and its exhibition was banned. According to the latter, its creator admitted to having painted it (Meacham 286). Perhaps the (scientific) world would not have heard any more of this' relic 'if not in 1898 a negative of the image was made on the rug with the then still recent photography and it turned out that it gave a dimensional impression (like that of a bas-relief, Schwortz 5). The realism of the 'photographic' image created in this way led to begin with 'sindonology', as the interdisciplinary study of the rug was later called (Hernandez 3-4). In 1988, a C14 dating was carried out for the first time by three independent institutes. This carbon dating pointed to a medieval origin between the years 1260 and 1390 and thus corresponded to the date of the sudden appearance of the rug in France. The results of this C14 dating, including control samples of artifacts with a known age, were published in Nature in 1989 and, according to Damon et al., form “conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval” (614). The result was that now also the media described it as a forgery (Schneider 1) and the research interest in the carpet became less. However, there are good arguments for the theory that the samples dated C14 contain fibres from a 16e-century repair to the rug (Marino & Benford 5). For example, according to Beta Analytic Laboratories, a mix of two thousand years old with 16e-century material results in an average dating in the year 1210 (qtd. in Marino & Benford 5) and corresponds to the ratio of original and 16 observed by Marino & Benforde-century material in the dated samples (5). Because of this contamination of the samples, a new date was made in 2013, which was taken seriously by many scientists and contradicted the date from 1988 (Hernandez 16). However, in 2015, the presence of a Medieval “patch” was considered unproven and referred to as “pseudoscientific” (Bella et al. 3). It will be clear by now that this is a complex investigation and debate...


Sources research and text: Nathaniël

Photo header photo: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shroudofturin_rotated.jpg

#discussion #science #art #history #religion #jesus #writing #education

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