An Open Letter to John Dominic Crossan

Open Letter to John Dominic Crossan

For More Information See: Shroud of Turin Story

In May of 1996, in an Episcopal Teleconferencing Network broadcast follow-up to Trinity Institute’s “Jesus at 2000 Symposium” you, Marcus Borg, Luke Timothy Johnson, N.T. Wright, and Deirdre Good were exploring the topic of the Resurrection. As can be expected when you are present, the matter of Jesus’ burial surfaced in the discussion. Tom Wright had just finished arguing that Jesus’ was in fact buried. The conversation went as follows:

Borg: But surely the reason that didn’t happen amongst other reasons is that Jesus was a peasant and secondary burial in an ossuary simply didn’t happen for peasants.

Crossan: That’s expensive, Tom, that burial you’re talking about.

Wright: It is expensive and the Gospels explain perfectly well how it happened. This is the trouble. It’s very easy to reconstruct something if you take all the bits of evidence off the table and say, we don’t believe any them, then of course you are free to tell any other story that you like.

That may be a fair criticism of your argument that Jesus was not buried. It seems so, but I don’t know. It is illustrative, however, of the problem with the Shroud. We cannot be selective with evidence and simply fall back on best understandings, then wonder about newly crucified models used to address but one of the contradictions. Of course, if the Shroud is authentic, then there is little argument left about whether or not Jesus was buried.

If we are to truly understand this historical artifact, we must look at the preponderance of evidence that contradicts worldview assumptions. We must consider all of it. We must weigh its significance. We must look for patterns of corroboration and examine all problems with any of the evidence. As I said at the beginning of this letter, there has been a paucity of fact-embracing skepticism on the Shroud. The skeptics are selective with the evidence and generally will not go beyond the carbon 14 testing, the d’Arcis memorandum and McCrone’s finding of paint pigments. They may, like Vikan, offer speculative explanations but they don’t address the contradictions. That is regrettable. The crime against Galileo was not that he was arrested or silenced. It was that his evidence, his contradictions, his conclusions were dismissed for no other reason than that they were incredulous to a prevailing worldview. You, Dom, took a step in the right direction in acknowledging the problem of the realism in the bloodstains and the images.

The Shroud is important because it challenges worldview thinking. It challenges what we may think we know historically about the passion sequence, Jesus’ crucifixion and his burial. It potentially challenges what we may think about the resurrection. It challenges biblical scholarship and our modern day distrust of the Gospel accounts. It challenges two centuries of progress in the scholarly quest for the historical Jesus. It challenges the discourse on science and religion. And as Pope John Paul II states — a man keenly aware of intellectual dilemma — the Shroud of Turin “challenges our intelligence.”

It may turn out that the Shroud is a medieval relic-forgery, as you suppose. It may be that the Shroud is authentic and that a perfectly natural explanation for the images eludes us for now. Absent such explanations, we may wonder: did something happen in the tomb? Did something happen within that linen Shroud? Did something happen that was so powerful that an image was translated to the cloth?

Historian Thomas Cahill, perhaps best known for his book, The Gifts of the Jews – (not to be confused with the physicist Thomas Cahill of Cal-Davis who disproved McCrone’s conclusions about the Vinland map) wrote in Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus:

Was this image impressed upon the cloth by the heat or light of new life? No laboratory will ever tell us, nor can any scientists give such questions a scientific answer. The questions are important, not because we can ever hope to answer them with human knowledge, but because they lead us to the ultimate question about Jesus: does his story make sense?

“The bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world,” said the Johannine Jesus. We do not have to adopt the theology of substitution – the theory that God required a spotless victim to make up for human sin – to make sense of the crucifixion … But Jesus’ suffering body is surely his ultimate gift, for it is his final act of sympathy with us…

When they come to Jesus, he seems already dead, so they do not break the bones of this Pascal Lamb without flaw. Just to be sure, however, “one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance, and at once blood and water flowed out” – witnessed, writes John, “by the one who saw it,” the Beloved Disciple. This blood and water, the last drops of Jesus’ wracked body, seem to have flowed copiously, if we accept the visual testimony of that strange Fifth Gospel, the Shroud, which may have been a treasure of the church of the Beloved Disciple, the same church that treasured the evolving Fourth Gospel

To be convinced, skeptical, or merely intrigued are all fair responses to becoming well informed about the Shroud of Turin. To not become well informed is to ignore one of Christianity's greatest mysteries and chance history to the whims of our worldview.

Dom, it is with utmost admiration for the contributions you make to the quest for the historical Jesus, that I am a fan of your work. I am respectfully yours,

Daniel R. Porter

A postscript:

There are many things I have not dealt with in this letter. I have not addressed myself to all of the credible evidence, for it is just too voluminous. For instance, I have not discussed the discoveries of mites on the Shroud which are indigenous to the Middle East. Nor have I discussed mineral encrusted pollen spores found on the back of the Shroud, which were likely formed by the damp cools surfaces of limestone caves or tombs. I have not discussed the discovery of a sliver of oak wood in the region of the back of the head on the Shroud. This is particularly interesting in light of the fact that pollen of an oak species, quercus caliprimus, specific to the Palestine area, was found on the Sudarium.

Other then recounting the legend of Abgar and Thaddeus Jude, I have not covered the subject of plausible possibilities for how the Shroud came to be in Edessa. It is a fascinating topic that merits serious historical investigation, one that may shed much light on early church history. Historian and Episcopal priest, Albert R. Dreisbach, has written an intriguing paper, “Thomas & the Hymn of the Pearl.” It merits serious attention by historians and history buffs alike.

I have not covered many liturgical and ceremonial clues that add credence and understanding to the conclusion that the Holy Mandylion of Constantinople is the Shroud of Turin. Two papers, among others, warrant special attention:

· Scavone, Daniel C., "Greek Epitaphioi and Other Evidence for the Shroud in Constantinople up to 1204”

· Dreisbach, Albert R., ‘Liturgical Clues to the Shroud's History”

I have not addressed myself to the matter of the missing years between the sacking of Constantinople and the first showing of the Shroud in Lirey, France, some 150 years later. One theory is that the Shroud was in the hands of the Knights Templar, for at least many of those years. An interesting wood panel, attributed to the Templars, found in Templecombe, England, with a face much like the face on the Shroud, lends credence to this theory. Two books cover the subject well:

· Schwortz, Barrie M; Wilson, Ian, The Turin Shroud: The Illustrated Evidence (London: Michael O'Mara Books Limited, 2000)

· Wilson, Ian, The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998)

I have avoided discussion of significantly disputed evidence, such as the observations of coins over the eyes of the man of the Shroud. The observations may be valid. There appears to be something over the eyes that in a 3D isometric rendering seem round and flat with the proportions of small coins. There is some discernable congruence of detail (like in matching finger prints) between bits of barely discernable image and two ancient coins, a Lituus lepton and a Juolia lepton. The lepta, minted in Palestine, were Roman produced coins for Jewish use. Parts of the inscription UCAI for TIBERIOU CAISAROS (in Greek as it would have been) seems to be almost visible. But it should have been UKAI. Was the C, where a K was expected, a misspelling? This was a problem that seemed to preclude identification until an actual Lituus lepton was found with the aberrant spelling. Several have since been found. The congruence seems extraordinary. But there is a problem. The detail of the coins, discerned in some photographs of the Shroud, is too small to be captured accurately with the orthochromatic film that was used in the photographs. Later photographs, taken with finer grain film, do not reveal the same detail suggesting that the imagery could be random patterns caused by granules of silver compounds in the film’s emulsion. Further research is warranted before this can be treated at definitive evidence.

It has been widely reported, and much disputed, that one cause of contamination in the carbon 14 testing may be microscopic organisms that attach themselves to ancient linen and other artifacts. It is argued that these organisms, which form a bioplastic film of newer material, may help explain why the linen wrappings of some Egyptian mummies test out much newer than the bodies they enshroud. Reportedly, quantities of these organisms were found on the Shroud. It has also been suggested that the documented cleaning procedures used by the radiocarbon laboratories would not have removed this contaminant. Raymond Rogers and others dispute this evidence. It may be, to some extent, that a bioplastic film is a contributing factor in skewing the carbon 14 testing; but, by how many years? More work is needed to solidify this theory before we should say it is a significant factor in the carbon 14 error.

Many useful scientific and historical papers and articles may be found, or links to them may be found, in the wonderful archives of Barrie Schwortz’ Shroud of Turin Website (shroud.com). Some, such as the reprinted articles from Biblical Archeological Review, contain letters to the editor including some that were not published in the magazine. In addition, discussions and commentaries on scientific, historical and theological papers and books about the Shroud are to be found on the site. Schwortz’ editorial policy is to publish responsible and meaningful material regardless of an author’s position on the Shroud’s authenticity. The site has a search engine which is useful in finding particular material. It may also be searched with the Google search engine by including site:shroud.com in any search argument (e.g. site:shroud.com coins, site:shroud.com blood, etc.).

The 1989 Nature article (which by the gracious permission of Nature, may be found on Schwortz’ site) that claimed to the whole world that the Shroud was medieval because of carbon 14 testing was the most significant published paper about the Shroud in the last twenty-five years. It was the scholarly public statement of “proof” that the Shroud was medieval. It shaped the opinions of scholars, the media, and the public at large. The recent paper by Rogers and Arnoldi, “Scientific Method Applied to the Shroud of Turin: A Review,” also available on the shroud.com site, deserves to be equally significant. It is conclusive and should be read.

Finally: In a personal email to me, Fr. Dreisbach wrote: “The conclusion of the moment seems to be that we have an accurate C14 date, but not of the Shroud proper – only of the medieval reweave.” That seems true. Thus we are without a good argument for thinking the Shroud is medieval. Additionally, we have an overwhelming avalanche of observations and empirical data that argues that the Shroud is not medieval. I imagine Galileo would agree.