Yawn! Another Vatican Researcher Sez The Shroud of Turin is Authentic

[stopbush]

Just in time for the holiday season!

Researcher says text proves Shroud of Turin real

By ARIEL DAVID, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 31 mins ago

ROME – A Vatican researcher claims a nearly invisible text on the Shroud of Turin proves the authenticity of the artifact revered as Jesus' burial cloth.
The claim made in a new book by historian Barbara Frale drew immediate skepticism from some scientists, who maintain the shroud is a medieval forgery.
Frale, a researcher at the Vatican archives, said Friday that she used computers to enhance images of faintly written words in Greek, Latin and Aramaic scattered across the shroud.
She asserts the words include the name "Jesus Nazarene" in Greek, proving the text could not be of medieval origin because no Christian at the time, even a forger, would have labeled Jesus a Nazarene without referring to his divinity.

Skeptics point out that radiocarbon dating conducted in 1988 determined it was made in the 13th or 14th century.

On an enhanced image studied by Frale, at least seven words can be seen, fragmented and scattered on and around Jesus' face, crisscrossing the cloth vertically and horizontally. One short sequence of Aramaic letters has not been translated. Another Latin fragment — "iber" — may refer to Emperor Tiberius, who reigned at the time of Jesus' crucifixion, Frale said.
"I tried to be objective and leave religious issue aside," Frale told The AP. "What I studied was an ancient document that certifies the execution of a man, in a specific time and place."
Frale is noted in Italy for her research on the medieval order of the Knights Templar and her discovery of unpublished documents on the group in the Vatican's archives.
Earlier this year she published a study claiming the Templars at one time had the shroud in their possession. That raised eyebrows because the order was abolished in the early 14th century and the shroud is first recorded in history around 1360 in the hands of a French knight.
But her latest book, titled "The Shroud of Jesus Nazarene" in Italian, raised even doubts among some experts.
"People work on grainy photos and think they see things," said Antonio Lombatti, a church historian who has written books about the shroud. "It's all the result of imagination and computer software."
Lombatti said that artifacts bearing Greek and Aramaic texts were found in Jewish burials from the first century, but the use of Latin is unheard of.

Garlaschelli recently led a team of experts that reproduced the shroud using materials and methods that were available in the 14th century, proof, they said, that it could have been made by a human hand in the Middle Ages.
Decades ago entire studies were published on coins that were purportedly seen on Jesus' closed eyes, but when high-definition images were taken during a 2002 restoration the artifacts were nowhere to be seen and the theory was dropped, Garlaschelli said.
He said any theory about ink and metals would have to checked by analysis of the shroud itself.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_italy_shroud_of_turin

[no_hypocrisy]

1. And Barnum "verified" the Fiji Mermaid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiji_mermaid

Paper Moon by Harol Arlen

Say, it's only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Yes, it's only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

Without your love
It's a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade

It's a barnum and bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Oh I am sure it is authentic, as in a medieval artifact

so there, I agree... 14th century or so authentic?

:hi:

But when religion intersects with things like this....

[stray cat]

3. but yet it was worth posting?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. sure, because it reinforces the way that faith in fairy tales do damage to

our world. Take our government, for ex. Without Bush's faith based initiatives, we would have been far better off. Without religion, stem cells would be curing hundreds of conditions and diseases. Without religion, we would not have wasted millions in Abstinence Policies which directly led to an explosion of STD among our yutes.

So when another pure believer says something inane and foolish, it is correct to highlight it and make it known.

[stopbush]

7. It was posted in the Religion/Theology forum,

a forum that - like the DU Lounge - exists to accommodate topics that don't rise to the importance of the General forum (among others).

In that sense, it's just as worth posting as any other claptrap one reads here on a regular basis.

[FBaggins]

5. "I tried to be objective and leave religious issue aside"

You failed.

[DeSwiss]

6. The Shroud of Turin Authentic? Well that would be all fine and dandy....

...however, it might make more sense if they could prove Jesus was authentic first.

- I mean really. You'd think it was a ShamWow® or something.....

[Meshuga]

15. That Church of Waldo Divinity is great!

Thanks for the chuckle! I don't have a DeSwiss trademark smilie to demostrate how funny I thought it was but that is a great cartoon.

[DeSwiss]

17. Thanks!!!

- I'm a collector of satiric religious cartoons and have bunches and bunches of them.

Oh, and while I don't have my own trademark smilie, this one will do in a crunch:

[BurtWorm]

8. What a complete crock of shit!

People actually get paid to push lies like this? Disgusting!

[Bitwit1234]

9. Goes to show how nuts they are.

they either have to believe one or the other. First the fact that Jesus was born about 2500 years ago. Now if they accept that. How can they accept that the Shroud has been tested over and over and carbon dated to be made in about 1100 or so. Which do they believe that Jesus was born in 1100 to correspond with the evidence. Or he was born in 2500 or so as all records are supposed to have proved. Guess you can't please those religious fanatics. Next thing they will tell you that the people in the Bible played with dinasours.

[Braulio]

10. Got a problem with Carbon dating

I guess they can change the date for Jesus getting crucified and wrapped up by 1200 years.

[stopbush]

11. It's a commonly held belief among fundy Xians that carbon dating is highly inaccurate.

The stories are really crazy, like saying that carbon dating proved that a stop sign was a million years old.

Where does it come from? Well, where does Sarah Palin get her idiocies? It comes with the territory of having to defend the indefensible: ie: made-up "facts" to support the make believe world of religion.

[laconicsax]

14. The most common argument I've seen is that it's all guess-work because you don't know how much

carbon-14 the sample originally had. That somehow accurately measuring a ratio cannot be done unless you know an exact quantity of a substance before it began to decay at a predictable rate.

[laconicsax]

13. When your holy book gets the age of the Earth wrong by a factor of 750,000...

1200 years is roughly equivalent to 14 hours. Since the Gospels don't agree on how the whole thing went down, 14 hours is nothing to write home about.

[struggle4progress]

12. Frale is a medievalist, whose work has usually centered on the Templars. She does not seem

to be an expert on image processing, on ancient fabrics, or on the various burial customs of Roman-occupied Palestine. As far as I can reconstruct by websearch, her thesis is: some identifying paper was placed on the face of the corpse to allow relatives to reclaim the body after a year buried in a common grave, and that some ink from the paper transferred in reverse to the shroud

This is a strange thesis: the Roman often allowed bodies to rot crucified, as a public demonstration of Roman power, although sometimes relatives were permitted to claim the body for burial. When relatives were allowed to recover the body, the Romans were unlikely to carefully remove the body themselves, solicitously shroud it, and then carefully tag it for reclamation, using scraps of expensive paper

Researcher: Faint writing seen on Shroud of Turin
By ARIEL DAVID, Associated Press
Fri Nov 20, 6:22 pm ET
... The Catholic Church makes no claims about the cloth's authenticity, but says it is a powerful symbol of Christ's suffering ... She believes the text was written on a document by a clerk and glued to the shroud over the face so the body could be identified by relatives and buried properly. Metals in the ink used at the time may have allowed the writing to transfer to the linen, Frale said ... Frale said her research was done without the support of the Vatican ... Earlier this year, she published a study saying the Templars once had the shroud in their possession. That raised eyebrows because the order was abolished in the early 14th century and the shroud is first recorded in history around 1360 in the hands of a French knight ... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091120/ap_on_re_eu/eu_italy_shroud_of_turin

http://asv.vatican.va/en/pers/personale/Barbara_Frale.htm

[laconicsax]

16. Scotland exists, people die if you cut their heads off. Therefore, Highlander was a documentary.

[Angry Dragon]

18. The church is so weak

that they need all the idols they can get their hands on.

[RagAss]

19. Pathetic. Made up Science from the land of Mother Goose Fairy Tales.