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"And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth ("sudarium") which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself." ~ John 20:6-7 After a five year absence from public display, the "controversial" Shroud of Turin can once again be viewed by the public in Turin, Italy.  For those unfamiliar with the Shroud (possibly because they have been spent the last few decades living on the moon -- it's hard to imagine some other way someone would be unfamiliar with the Shroud), I defer to the description of the Shroud found at  the official website of the Shroud of Turin :  The Shroud of Turin is a centuries old linen cloth that bears the image of a crucified man. A man that millions believe to be Jesus of Nazareth. Is it really the cloth that wrapped his crucified body, or is it simply a medieval forgery, a hoax perpetrated ...

I had heard that a new Shroud book was on the way this autumn, but I hadn't heard any real details on it yet. The Associated Press has now released an article on at least one main new claim from historian Barbara Frale's book: the identification and translation of scribbled letters in Greek, Latin and Aramaic detected over (or near) the head of the Shroud. The letters (or anyway the appearance of letters) have been known about for some time; the last I had heard, the prevailing theory was that they were due to coins on the eyes: specifically a Roman coin with a shepherd's staff and the Greek inscription TIBERIOU CAISEROS (known to have been minted between 29 and 32 CE) on the right eye, and a Julia lepton on the left eye. (Both coins would be 'leptons' of different sorts.) The AP article, however, reports that high resolution photos of the Shroud taken in 2002 showed no evidence of coins; thus undermining what, until then, had been a long-running theory with a lot ...

Have you ever gone to the kitchen to get a banana or some other healthy snack and found yourself staring smack dab at a big chocolate chip cookie? It is a decadent pleasure -- one that we ought to feel guilty about enjoying, but one that we can't help but sample because it is simply so enjoyable. That's the way I feel about the Shroud of Turin. We are, after all, a serious blog for Christian apologists. We discuss the veracity of scriptures and the meaning of rather in-depth phrases in response to the challenges that we encounter on our trip around the Internet. But then, I see the Shroud. The Shroud of Turin - it is like the chocolate chip cookie. It isn't something that should side-track our effort to establish the truth of the Gospels and the Lordship of Jesus Christ, but it is a fun little side attraction on the way. Over the past few years, I have blogged on several occasions about the Shroud. Let me make this clear: I don't know if the Shroud is the actual burial ...

You can call it an obsession if you like, but I am still fascinated by the Shroud of Turin -- the cloth imprinted with the image of a man that some claim to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ. As I have stated previously , there are good reasons to think that it is real and equally good reasons to think that it's a fake. I personally haven't made up my mind one way or another about the Shroud, for while it is truly a fascinating artifact, if it is ever demonstrated conclusively not to be the actual burial cloth of Jesus it will have absolutely no impact on my faith. Still, the possibility that it is genuine is one of the things that make the Shroud so fascinating. To many, the inauthenticity of the Shroud was sealed in 1988 when carbon-dating experts ran a test on a small portion of the Shroud and determined that the cloth dated from the 13th or 14th Century. Previously , I noted that physicist Raymond N. Rogers believed that the carbon dating gave an inaccurate date for the...

The Shroud of Turin is one of the most fascinating objects related to Christianity. In saying that, I am not saying that the Shroud is authentic -- just fascinating. There are good reasons to think that it is real, but there are also good reasons to think that it is an extremely good fake. I personally haven't made up my mind one way or another about the Shroud, for while it is truly a fascinating artifact, if it is ever demonstrated conclusively not to be the actual burial cloth of Jesus it will have absolutely no impact on my faith. Still, the possibility that it is genuine is one of the things that make the Shroud so fascinating. Coming very soon, PBS will be airing some information related to recent examinations of the Shroud. According to the PBS website's page on Secrets of the Dead: the Shround of Turin : The debate over the Shroud's origins has raged furiously since its first documented appearance in Lirey, France, in the 1350s. Is it an authentic burial shroud, or...

Odds and Ends Heading into Easter Bill Maher -- In case you were unaware, Bill Maher, comedian of Politically Incorrect fame, has made a few . . . uh . . . shall we say, disparaging comments, about Christianity. He has worn his ignorance like a bad tatoo by saying such enlightened comments as "I think religion is a neurological disorder." Well, Scott Pruitt of Pensees has written a rather lengthy response to Mr. Maher which is well worth the time to read. The Shroud of Turin -- One of the shroud experts has now chimed in on the shroud-like images created by Nathan Wilson which I blogged about in my post entitled "Maybe the Shroud is Dead After All (or maybe not)" . In the Associate Press article entitled "Teacher Claims Shroud of Turin Is Fake" , Shroud expert Dan Porter said . . . that while Wilson's theory is ingenious, it does not produce images identical to those on the shroud. "It is not adequate to produce something that looks like the...

Robert Sutherland, author of Putting God on Trial: The Biblical Book of Job: A literary, legal and philosophical study , recently sent me a link to an Discovery Magazine article about the Shroud of Turin entitled "Experiment: Turin Shroud An Easy Forgery" . The article notes that "Nathan Wilson, a fellow of literature at New St. Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho, claims to have successfully created a shroud-like image." Rather than attempting to discover how to darken linen without chemicals or paint, Wilson just did the opposite. "It is not an issue of dark placed on light, but of light replacing dark. The most obvious method for lightening linen is the one housewives have used to bleach tablecloths for centuries and, more likely, millennia. Put the cloth outside beneath the sun," he said. Helped by microbiologist Scott Minnich, an associate professor at the University of Idaho, who provided him with scientific advice on structuring the experiment, Wilson pu...

The Shroud May be a Burial Cloak, but It Ain't Dead Yet For those of you unfamiliar with the Shroud of Turin, here is a brief description from "Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin" : The Shroud of Turin , which many people believe was used to wrap Christ's body, bears detailed front and back images of a man who appears to have suffered whipping and crucifixion. It was first displayed at Lirey in France in the 1350s and subsequently passed into the hands of the Dukes of Savoy. After many journeys the shroud was finally brought to Turin in 1578 where, in 1694, it was placed in the royal chapel of Turin Cathedral in a specially designed shrine. Photography of the shroud by Secondo Pia in 1898 indicated that the image resembled a photographic 'negative' and represents the first modern study. Subsequently the shroud was made available for scientific examination, first in 1969 and 1973 by a committee appointed by Cardinal Michele Pellegrino and then again i...