Home // January 2nd-5th 2007 > Researcher claims fresh evidence of Shroud of Turin's authenticity

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Researcher claims fresh evidence of Shroud of Turin's authenticity

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This week CathNews presents the top stories from 2006. This story was originally published on 31 August.

In a new book, The Shroud Story, Sydney researcher and author, Brendan Whiting, says that the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin is supported by the most recent findings, according to a Catholic Weekly report.

Previous carbon dating of the linen cloth, believed to have been the burial shroud of Jesus, suggested it was from the 14th century, but Mr Whiting's book says the earlier testing was done on samples chemically different to the rest of the cloth - and in fact were actually remnants of invisible mending carried out in the Middles Ages.


He says this information means that there is now no scientific evidence supporting any argument against the shroud, now housed in Turin's cathedral, being 2000 years old.

The carbon dating was carried out in three independent laboratories in 1988. The results were used by skeptics and the mainstream press to label the shroud a fake and a fraud.

"Many people were falsely led to believe that the shroud's life-size image of a naked crucified man is a medieval forgery," Mr Whiting said.

"But recent scientific tests proved the carbon-dating result was anomalous.

"In 2005 the corner of the cloth from which the test sample had been taken was proved [by the late Los Alamos physical chemist Raymond Rogers] to be totally different in chemical composition from the main part of the cloth.

"It was found to contain cotton threads that were woven in the edge of the original cloth during invisible-mending in the Middle Ages, so causing the dating of the shroud to be younger than its true age."

Mr Whiting said this evidence has been ignored by the mainstream media to date.

The book lists the accumulated findings by an international group of 24 scientists that the Shroud of Turin is the surviving evidence of the crucified Christ.

Their studies of the cloth's body-image formation concluded: "the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead cannot be rejected on scientific ground".

Mr Whiting spent four years researching the book which will be launched by New South Wales Minister for Commerce John Della Bosca later this month.


SOURCE
New claims for truth of Shroud of Turin (Catholic Weekly, 3/9/06)

LINKS (not necessarily endorsed by Church Resources)
Official Shroud of Turin Website
Shroud of Turin (Wikipedia)
Shroud Website

ARCHIVE
Italian scientists find image on back of Turin shroud (CathNews, 14/4/04)
Vatican scientists accused of destroying Turin Shroud particles (CathNews, 23/9/02)

4 Jan 2007

 

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Gospel Verse for 31 July 2010
...though [Herod] wanted to put [John] to death, he feared the people, because they held him to be a prophet. [Matthew 14:5]

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