"News and Editorial," Shroud of Turin News, June 2020

Shroud of Turin News - June 2020
© Stephen E. Jones[1]

[Previous: May 2020] [Next: July 2020]

This is the June 2020 issue of my Shroud of Turin News. There were no news articles about the Shroud in June worth mentioning. In their place I will list under news, an old 2007 article about anti-authenticist art historian Gary Vikan's (see the previous month's article) `explanation' of how the Shroud was supposedly forged. My words are bold to distinguish them from the articles and quotes. I now have Vikan's new book, "The Holy Shroud: A Brilliant Hoax in the Time of the Black Death," on which I will begin a series soon.

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News:
• "Demonstration calls shroud into question," Washington Examiner, 7 April 2007, Karl Hille ... Could you look upon the face of Christ? Many believe the Shroud of Turin portrays the death mask of Jesus of Nazareth, despite overwhelming historical and contextual evidence suggesting it was created in the 14th century to drive the pilgrimage tourism industry. Chemist Robert Morton explained at a Good Friday seminar at the Walters Art Museum's Graham Auditorium how a realistic shroud could be made using common scribe's chemicals available throughout human history. Morton prepared linen cloth with an iron solution, and then brought the coloration out with tannic acids -- revealing images of his wife, and his daughter's boyfriend similar to the faint negative image on the shroud. "The more pressure you put on it, the tannic acid moves around on the cloth so you get more reaction," Morton said ... He did not, however, make any claim about whether those methods were used in the shroud housed in Turin, Italy. "I'm a chemist, I make observations," Morton said. Morton and Vikan are ignorant of the fact that STURP found in the 1970s that the iron on the Shroud was mixed with strontium and calcium and uniformly distributed, except for the blood areas, and therefore derived from the ancient process of retting flax in natural bodies of water[2]. And that there was no difference in iron content between image and non-image areas, proving that the image was not the result of the iron[3]. Moreover, the tiny amount of iron on the Shroud was too faint to be visible to the naked eye[4]. Only the blood areas showed more iron, but that is because blood's hemoglobin contains iron[5]. So Vikan's "iron gall ink" forgery explanation of the Shroud's image (pp.88-89, 95, 158, 167, 176) is utterly and completely wrong!

Spoiler Alert! [Left [6].] I read ahead Morton and his daughter Rebecca Hoppe's "Scientific Addendum" at pages 165-183 of Vikan's book and I found there is at least one major feature of the Shroud image, x-rays:

"The frontal image of the man on the Shroud includes under-the-skin x-ray images of his skull, cheekbones, teeth, finger bones, hand bones and the dorsal image his spine"[20Apr17]

that they absurdly dismiss as mere "folds in the fabric" (p.171)! So Vikan's iron gall ink explanation of the Shroud image is at least doubly wrong!

"We don't have an opinion, we speak of possibilities." I have been unable to find by Google anything about Morton. And since receiving Vikan's book, I know why. Morton is a "mostly self-taught" (p.86) chemist who worked for Phillips 66. He appears to have held no academic position and may not even be formally qualified!

Measuring just over 14 feet long and 3 1/2 feet wide, the shroud reveals the image of a naked man bearing all the wounds attributed to the crucified Christ in the Gospel narratives, said Gary Vikan [Right[7]], director of the Walters Art Gallery. "The shroud is without a doubt the most powerful and compelling image in Christianity," Vikan said. However, since its appearance in Lirey, France, in 1357, the shroud has been surrounded by controversy, including a letter from Bishop Henri of Poitiers saying a craftsman told him how it was made. This is false. There was no letter from Bishop Henri of Poitiers. [see 03Jul18].

"This is how the shroud appears for the first time in history being denounced as a fake," Vikan said. This is also false. As I also pointed out in a previous post, that the Shroud first appeared in undisputed history, is not the same as "the shroud appears for the first time in history." There is in fact "objective, historical evidence that the Shroud existed in Constantinople in 1201, over a century and a half (154 years) before it was exhibited at Lirey in c. 1355! And 59 years before the earliest possible radiocarbon date of 1260! Therefore the Shroud appeared in the historical record in at least 13th century Constantinople, irrespective of whether anti-authenticists accept it!"[21Jun20].

The event drew a full house, though not everyone was convinced the Shroud of Turin was created using the methods Morton described. Morton is one of "at least a dozen people in the last couple of decades that have created an image in cloth" to explain the shroud, said Bob Lienhardt, who holds a doctoral degree in art history from the Sorbonne University. The tannin ink demonstration did not sway Allen Holden, a self-described scholar of the supernatural with a focus on Catholic Church history and mysteries. "There are hundreds of plant compounds in the shroud," he said, including pollen and plants dating to first century Palestine. Vikan said he did not have expertise in plant compounds but suggested bringing in an expert to discuss those findings at a future date. . I will provide quotes in support of my references above when I get to those points in my review of Vikan's book, which however will probably take a long while!

Editorial
Posts: In June I blogged only 2 new posts (latest uppermost):
"First undisputed appearance was in c.1355: The Shroud of Turin: The Burial Sheet of Jesus! #13" - 30th & "News and Editorial," Shroud of Turin News, May 2020" - 21st.

Pageviews: At midnight on 30 June 2020, Google Analytics [Below (enlarge)] gave this blog's "Pageviews all time history" as 1,201,965:

This compares with 1,075,326 at the same time in June 2019. That is 126,639 pageviews over the year, or an average of ~347 pageviews per day.

Google Analytics also gave the most viewed posts for June 2020 (highest uppermost) as: "Problems of the Turin Shroud forgery theory: Index A-F," Jan 20, 2016 - 280; "Problems of the Turin Shroud forgery theory: Index G-M," Apr 2, 2016 - 234; "Chronology of the Turin Shroud: AD 30 to the present: 1st century and Index." Jul 24, 2016 - 126; "Problems of the forgery theory A-Z: The evidence is overwhelming that the Turin Shroud is authentic!," May 24, 2020 - 122 & "My critique of Charles Freeman's `The Turin Shroud and the Image of Edessa: A Misguided Journey,' part 4: "The Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo" (2)," July 28, 2012 - 118.

Notes:
1. This post is copyright. I grant permission to extract or quote from any part of it (but not the whole post), provided the extract or quote includes a reference citing my name, its title, its date, and a hyperlink back to this page. [return]
2. Heller, J.H., 1983, "Report on the Shroud of Turin," Houghton Mifflin Co: Boston MA, p.174; Murphy, C., 1981, "Shreds of evidence: Science confronts the miraculous - the Shroud of Turin," Harper's, Vol. 263, November, pp.42-65, 54; Wilson, I., 1986, "The Evidence of the Shroud," Guild Publishing: London, p.91; Wilson, I., 1998, "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, pp.80-81; Ruffin, C.B., 1999, "The Shroud of Turin: The Most Up-To-Date Analysis of All the Facts Regarding the Church's Controversial Relic," Our Sunday Visitor: Huntington IN, p.97; Tribbe, F.C., 2006, "Portrait of Jesus: The Illustrated Story of the Shroud of Turin," Paragon House Publishers: St. Paul MN, Second edition, p.149. [return]
3. Murphy, 1981, p.54; Wilson, 1986, p.91; Wilson, 1998, p.81; Ruffin, 1999, p.91; Tribbe, 2006, p.149. [return]
4. Heller, 1983, p.142; Borkan, M., 1995, "Ecce Homo?: Science and the Authenticity of the Turin Shroud," Vertices, Duke University, Vol. X, No. 2, Winter, pp.18-51, 23; Ruffin, 1999, p.91; Guerrera, V., 2001, "The Shroud of Turin: A Case for Authenticity," TAN: Rockford IL, p.69. [return]
5. Murphy, 1981, p.54; Guerrera, 2001, pp.68-69. [return]
6. Extract from Thompson, C., 2018, "Spoiler Alert!," Eagle Nation News, May 14. [return]
7. Smith, T., 2012, "Walters Art Museum director Gary Vikan to step down," 7 March. [return]

Posted: 24 July 2020. Updated: 21 February 2021.