A Forensic Science CSI to Explain the Pictures of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin
The Forensic
Science CSI Quest for the Historical Jesus
The Longest
Running Forensic Science CSI in History
Sometimes the CSI evidence doesn't make sense even to the best CSI or CSI fan. It is like finding the body of a scuba diver in a tree in the desert outside Las Vegas. The forensic science picture of the Shroud of Turin is every bit as nonsensical.
What follows is an essay that will challenge the best CSI fan. It doesn't matter if you are one of the millions of people who believe that the Shroud is fake or one of the millions of people who think it is real.
The essay that follows is not about religion. It is about CSI methods and CSI-style thinking applied to an artifact or a relic or whatever it is. It is about CSI-style thinking applied to the enigma of the fake or real pictures of Jesus that are found on the Shroud. It is the forensic science CSI quest for the historical Jesus.
Read the Five-minute CSI Challenge:
CSI you say? Crime Scene Investigation? Maybe!
If the Shroud of Turin is fake, then many centuries ago someone forged these pictures of Jesus on the cloth. With forensic science, we should be able to figure out how it was done. If the Shroud is the real burial cloth of Jesus, as many believe it is, then with a bit of CSI-style thinking we should be able to figure out how the pictures of Jesus came to be on this cloth?
Is it fair to call the images pictures of Jesus? If the Shroud of Turin is fake, then certainly the forger intended us to think of the images as pictures of Jesus. We can call them pictures of Jesus just as we do with any artistic picture of Jesus. If the pictures are a natural phenomenon of science, as some scientists believe, or if they are miraculous pictures, then we are on safe ground calling them pictures of Jesus.
Until recently the prima facie CSI-like case for forgery seemed strong. Now, for the first time, we have new forensic science data. Much of it didn't come to light until 2004. And because of this new information, the enigma of the pictures of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin becomes even more intriguing and perhaps more difficult to solve. The fan of CSI, the student of forensic science, and all of us should be challenged to try and figure out what is going on here.
Let's be clear. Let's be clear in forensic science and CSI terms. No one has figured out how these pictures came to be on the cloth; not if it was faked and not if it is real.
Let's also be clear in a forthright CSI way of thinking, the carbon 14 testing has been so challenged by modern forensic science (as recently reported by the Associated Press, the American Chemical Society, Nature Magazine, The New York Times and BBC) that it fails the test of reasonable doubt. The honest CSI is left with no option but to admit that there is no evidence from forensic science that the cloth is medieval.
Read the Five-minute CSI Challenge:
The Big CSI Picture - Pictures of Jesus on the Shroud
Read the Five-minute CSI Challenge:
Please give a link to this web site:
Title: A Forensic Science CSI to Explain the Pictures
of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin
URL: http://www.historicaljesusquest.com
Thank you.
© 2004 Daniel R. Porter, Bronxville, New York
