The Shroud of Turin

The Shroud of Turin???

In the 1990s, I saw a documentary on the Shroud of Turin. I'd been vaguely aware of the Shroud since first learning of it in my late teens, from a newspaper article. The documentary renewed a series of questions I have about the Shroud, and so, I sat down and typed the questions into an e-mail, which I sent to Barrie Schwortz, one of the talking heads in the documentary. I did not expect a reply, but it felt good to finally formalize my questions about this spooky phenomenon that had been on the edge of my pop culture awareness for decades.

That e-mail appears, in full, at the end of this page.

To my surprise, Mr. Schwortz placed my e-mail on his Encyclopedia-Britannica-recognized website, www.Shroud.com. Later, Daniel R. Porter added his edited version of my e-mail to his own website, http://www.shroudstory.com.

When my friend Stuart offered to put up a webpage of various things I've written, and I was selecting what to post on the web, I thought, "Hey, maybe I should put up that Shroud e-mail." And, then, I thought, "No, no, no."

No, because the Shroud of Turin is one of those things that people use to put each other into boxes. If I post even just my questions about the Shroud, people will label me. They'll assume all kinds of crazy things: that I'm a member of Opus Dei, that I believe in Creationism, that I see UFOs or Bigfoot or…Yikes! I don't even want to go there.

But then something happened that made me rethink this whole Shroud thing, and many other things, as well.

I met a successful science author, known for debunking unscientific ideas. I asked him my questions about the Shroud.

The scientific expert did not answer my questions about the Shroud. In fact, the scientific expert completely ignored my questions about the Shroud. He responded, as if by rote: carbon dating proved the Shroud to be a forgery; there is no history of it before the 14th century; there were many faked relics in the Middle Ages.

Man, I was so bugged. I was bugged because this exchange struck me as typical of the language use in discussions between speakers on opposite sides of so many issues lately, from stem cell research to the war in Iraq.

Language can and should be used to get at truth. But language, like any powerful tool, is double-edged; people often use it to barricade themselves from any idea that they haven't already sanctioned, as member of some gated community built around fealty to Thought Brand X.

If you go to Norway, you will hear and speak Norwegian; if you go to China, you will hear and speak Chinese. Just so, members of different camps are adopting their own language to cement their tribal bond with each other, and to erect impermeable barricades, keeping out, not just the physical bodies of others, but others' meaning, as well.

In one encampment, the words are, "partial birth" in another, "late term." In one, there is a "death tax," in the other, it is an "estate tax." In one, you have "balkanization," in another, "multiculturalism." And is it "terrorist," "militant," "insurgent," or "freedom fighter"? Who decides? Karl Rove or George Lakoff?

Comedian George Carlin identified one verbal barricade: seven dirty words you can't say on television. Fans can feel superior laughing at his routine. There are small-minded people out there, Carlin implies, who won't let him say *&^% or $%#@ or !@^&.

Every encampment has its words and ideas that one dare not express. Believe me, if you gathered a group of George Carlin fans together, you might be able to speak the seven dirty words to them, but there are words and ideas that they would burn you at the stake – even if only metaphorically – just for suggesting.

Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken use the same rhetorical strategies to mute alien ideas. There are, for example, ad hominem comments. I explain ad hominem to my students this way: Albert Einstein, some allege, treated his first wife, Mileva Maric, badly. (http://www.pbs.org/opb/einsteinswife/) Whether he did or he did not, does that allegation make the Theory of Relativity any less true? It does not, but the ad hominem barrier still shuts down many listeners' ability to reason.

Ridicule, straw men, fear mongering, red herrings, slippery slopes, misdirection, lies: contestants in the 2004 presidential campaign exploited numerous rhetorical strategies that people use to separate listeners from truth or honest debate. How many of the people who are manipulated by these rhetorical strategies even recognize them when they are deployed? How many students take classes in rhetoric any more? I'm guessing that the answer to both questions is "too few."

Where can you go to escape from gated linguistic communities? Where can you go to ask anything you want to ask, and see it discussed seriously, from stem cell research's scarier implications, to whether there is any connection between Islam and terrorism, to whether or not women, as a group, can or cannot do math and science as well as men, as a group? (Please see: Summers, Larry. Harvard, for what can happen to a man who even mentions that that question is a question that some people ask.)

Hey – how about scientists and skeptics? Wouldn't their communities provide the ideal place to discuss anything and everything in an atmosphere of mutual respect and free inquiry?

I wanted to see if self-identified skeptics who had debunked the Shroud had addressed questions like mine. A Google search lead me to Joe Nickell. He says that those who see anything worth studying in the Shroud are "Shroud partisans" and "good Catholics" or "the faithful." Well, that's what we English teachers call "ad hominem." In these instances, Nickell is trying to make his case not by adducing evidence to support his point of view, but by discrediting the person of those with whom he disagrees.

And then there's the problem of Nickell's accuracy – "the faithful" don't, for the most part, accept the Shroud. Most Christians I have met have barely even heard of it. I was never told of it in Catholic school; I have never heard it mentioned in a Catholic church. I know about it because the research that scientists did on it gained attention in the secular media.

Barrie Schwortz runs a website on the Shroud; as previously mentioned, it has been recognized by the Encyclopedia Britannica. Here is a quote from their citation: "…our editors have selected your site as one of the best on the Internet when reviewed for quality, accuracy of content, presentation and usability."

Is Barrie Schwortz, as Nickell alleges, a "partisan…Catholic" who came into this research believing in the Shroud? Below is Mr. Schwortz's self-description.

In the earliest stages of my involvement, I wondered whether someone raised as an Orthodox Jew should be a part of such a "Christian" project… I am still Jewish, yet I believe the Shroud of Turin is the cloth that wrapped the man Jesus after he was crucified. That is not meant as a religious statement, but one based on my privileged position of direct involvement with many of the serious Shroud researchers in the world, and a thorough knowledge of the scientific data, unclouded by media exaggeration and hype (Shroud.com).

There was another problem with self-identified skeptic Shroud-debunkings. Schwortz's site includes the full texts of articles that argue that the Shroud is a forgery. It includes links to websites that purport to expose the Shroud as a fraud. I didn't find the full texts of articles supporting the Shroud's authenticity, or links to websites supporting the Shroud's authenticity on skeptic websites.

In other words, a website maintained by a man who argues that the Shroud is authentic includes material supporting the full spectrum of opinion; the debunking websites I saw included only information that supports the debunker's point of view.

Below please find my questions about the Shroud of Turin. Is it a forgery? Is it the burial cloth of Jesus Christ? You know what? In the questions I ask below, I'm not even at that bus stop. Just answer the questions. Or, at least, think about them. There will be a quiz.

E-mail by D. Goska now posted at Shroud.com

The Shroud has been subjected to imaging analysis by NASA scientists, to carbon dating, and to analysis, performed by criminologists and botanists, of the pollen particles found on its surface. Forensic pathologists have analyzed the death depicted on the Shroud. At least since Descartes, the West has come to regard religion and hard science as polar opposite disciplines. It is this very intersection of religion and hard science that intrigues, delights, and perhaps even threatens many, and attracts many to the Shroud story.

In truth, though, and perhaps counterintuitively, the hard sciences are limited in their ability to crack the mystery of the Shroud. This sounds contrary -- science has come to be understood as the source of definitive truth. In this case, though, hard science has failed to provide an answer that satisfies the demands of Ockham's razor.

William of Ockham (1285-1347/49), posited that, "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate;" that is, "Plurality should not be posited without necessity." In other words, Ockham's razor demands that, of two competing theories, the simplest explanation is preferred.

The Shroud compels exactly because there is no simple or easy explanation. None of science's tests, including carbon dating, has changed that. None has produced a simple explanation that meets the demands of Ockham's razor.

One might argue, based on carbon dating, that the Shroud is a simple forgery, dating from the Middle Ages. That theory is not best tested exclusively by hard science. Rather, insights from the social sciences and the humanities are necessary in cracking this mystery.

I am not a hard scientist. I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Folklore Institute at Indiana University. Folklore, like its fellow social sciences, has demonstrated that human expressive culture follows rules, just as surely as carbon decay follows rules. One does not need to be a social scientist to understand this.

Suppose an archaeologist were to discover, in an Egyptian tomb, a work of art that followed the aesthetic prescriptions of Andy Warhol's 20th century American portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Certainly, hard science would argue that ancient Egyptians possessed all the technology necessary to produce such items of expressive culture. Ancient Egyptians had pigments; they had surfaces on which to draw. Hard scientists might see no mystery in a pharaonic Warhol Marilyn.

A non-scientist would have every reason to find such a blasé attitude bizarre. Of course the ancient Egyptians could produce Warhol-like art. The fact is, though, that they simply never did. Ancient Egyptians, like all artists everywhere, followed the artistic mandates of their time and place.

True, art does change, but it changes organically, slowly, and after leaving vast bodies of evidence of change in intermediary forms. For example, as different as it is, art from Greece's Golden Age can be seen to have grown from Egyptian art, in intermediary forms like Kouroi figures.

The Shroud is as much an object of wonder and worthy investigation, in spite of carbon dating, as would be an isolated pharaonic Warhol, or a rock song that had been composed during the period of Gregorian Chant, or a Hopi vase that somehow came to made during the high point of peasant embroidery in Czechoslovakia. Yes, in each case, technology was available to create these anomalous forms; however, as any layman might well point out, humans did not choose to use available technology in order to create anomalous forms.

There are two consistently unaddressed flaws in the arguments of those who contend that the Shroud must be of medieval origin, created by contemporaneously available technology. The first flaw is that even if technology had been available to create an image with all the remarkable features of the Shroud, there is no way to explain why an artist would have done so.

This question must be explored not via carbon dating, NASA imaging, or pollen tests, but, rather, by comparison with other relics from the medieval era. I have not seen research by experts in medieval relics that attempts to compare and contrast the Shroud with comparable artifacts from the medieval era. Does the Shroud look like other relics, or does it not? If, as I suspect is true, it does not look like other relics from that era, then it behooves anyone who argues for a medieval date to explain exactly why. Those who argue this position must tell us why the equivalent of a Warhol portrait has been found among Egyptian artwork where the laws of human expressive culture dictate that it plainly does not belong.

In the writings of church reformers like Erasmus and Martin Luther, one can read descriptions of medieval relics. In fact, many relics once popular in the medieval era can be visited even today. Reformers like Erasmus and Luther expressed open contempt at the gullibility of the Christian masses. Bones that were obviously animal in origin were treated as if the bones of some dead saint. Random chips of wood were marketed as pieces of the true cross; random swatches of fabric were saints' attire.

Why, in such a lucrative and undemanding marketplace, would any forger resort to anything as detailed and complex as the Shroud? Why would a forger resort to an image that would so weirdly mimic photography, a technology that did not exist in the Middle Ages?

Well, one might argue, the forger created the highly detailed, anomalous Shroud in order to thoroughly trick his audience. This argument does not withstand analysis. The relic market is profoundly undemanding. It was profoundly undemanding in the Middle Ages; it is barely more demanding today.

The Ka'bah of Islam, the millions of Shiva lingams found throughout the Hindu world, the venerated sites of Buddha's footfall or Buddha's tooth, the packages of "Mary's Milk" on sale to Christian pilgrims in Bethlehem, are all contemporary relics that attest to the willingness of believers to believe in items that might look, to others, like simple rocks or standard, store-bought powdered milk.

The faith in relics is not limited to the large, world religions; New Age is similarly flush with relics of a provenance, that, to non-believers, may seem comical at best. For example, a speech well beloved by New Agers, titled "Chief Seattle's Speech," has long been known to have been written by a white Christian man living in Texas. This knowledge has not stopped many New Agers from believing that the speech issued, miraculously, from Chief Seattle.

The Shroud does more than not follow the simple rules of relic hawkers. The Shroud not only does not follow the laws of the expressive culture of medieval relics, it defies them. For example, blood is shown flowing from the man's wrist, not his hands. It is standard in Christian iconography to depict Jesus' hands as having been pierced by nails. This was true not only of the medieval era, but also today. What reason would a forging artist have for defying the hegemonic iconography of the crucified Jesus? Anyone who wishes to prove a medieval origin for the Shroud must answer that question, and others, for example:

Items of expressive culture are not found in isolation. They are not found without evidence of practice. If one excavates an ancient site and finds one pot, one finds other pots like it, and the remains of failed or broken pots in middens.

If the Shroud is a forgery, where are its precedents? Where are the other forged shrouds like it? Where is there evidence of practice shrouds of this type? If the technology to create the Shroud was available in medieval Europe, where are other products of this technology? Humankind is an exhaustively exploitative species. We make full use of any technology we discover, and leave ample evidence of that use. Given the lucrative nature of the forgery market, why didn't the forger create a similar Shroud of Mary, Shroud of St. Peter, Shroud of St. Paul, etc.? And why didn't followers do the same?

I'm not attempting here to prove the Shroud to be genuine. I am insisting that hard science alone cannot tell us the full truth about the Shroud, and that ignoring the obvious questions posed by the humanities and the social sciences leaves us as much in the dark about the Shroud as ever.