This book describes the two major fiascos to have afflicted the Turin Shroud in recent years: the C-14 dating of 1988 and the so-called "restoration" of 2002.
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The book begins with the Shroud at the pinnacle of its prestige in the early 1980s, when millions of people, including a respectable number of academics and scientists, considered it quite possibly the actual burial cloth of Christ with a mysterious imprint of His body. This perception changed almost overnight with the announcement in 1988 that Carbon-14 dating had produced an age of around 1260-1390 A.D. for the cloth. The relic was wrongly condemned, however, since the dating was poorly planned, marred by petty rivalries, and scientifically flawed.
The final stage in the desecration was a travesty carried out by aggressive "restorers" in 2002. Valuable scientific data was irretrievably destroyed, opportunities for research squandered, materials taken from the cloth without stringent controls, and repairs dating from 1534 that constituted part of the Shroud's visual heritage were removed. This so-called "restoration" was conducted totally in secret, engineered by a small clique around the archbishop of Turin. It has been roundly condemned by most Shroud researchers as a conservation and scientific disaster. The relic and its study have been altered forever.
These things should not have happened. The reasons behind them are complicated, and I have tried to reconstruct the sequence of events and its causes, based on my own knowledge and notes, plus the accounts of others.
About the Author
Brief CV: William Meacham is an archaeologist specializing in South China. He has written or edited 7 books on archaeology (including Archaeology in Hong Kong published by Heinemann in 1981) and two books on English teaching; attended 18 international conferences; published 51 articles (15 in peer-reviewed international journals) on various aspects of South China archaeology. His other research interests are the origins of the Austronesians, genealogy, and the Shroud of Turin. Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Meacham was educated at Tulane University in New Orleans, the Sorbonne in Paris and the Gregorian University of Rome. He has lived in Hong Kong since 1970, holding positions at the Hong Kong Museum of History and the Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture. Since 1980 he has been a Research Fellow at the Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong. He has directed more than 30 archaeological excavations on government or private contract. The largest of these was the 16-month survey and excavation of Chek Lap Kok island, site of Hong Kong's new airport.
Motivation for book: I became interested in the Shroud in 1981, spurred by an article in Archaeology magazine. This led me to a long study over several months, reading about the Shroud and corresponding with the scholars I could contact, and ultimately publishing a major article on the subject in 1983 in the prestigious journal Current Anthropology. This article received a one-line comment (also published in the journal) from the doyen of Shroud studies in the US, Fr. Peter Rinaldi of the Holy Shroud Guild: "I find Meacham's paper complete, lucid, cogent, one of the finest presentations I have ever read on the subject." The article constitutes chapter 1 of the book.
Having such a lengthy research article published in a prominent academic journal won me recognition amongst Shroud scholars and the Turin church authorities. The culmination for me was in 1986, when I was invited by the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences to attend a conference it was organizing as a consultation on carbon-dating the Shroud. From there, sadly, it was all downhill. It soon became clear that the project to date the Shroud was bogged down in minor disputes, and marked by incompetent planning.
Ironically, maddeningly, the same sorts of mistakes were made again in the 2002 "restoration," for many of the same reasons, by a new set of advisers appointed by a new archbishop. I met Cardinal Poletto and his inner circle in 2000, shortly after he was installed as archbishop of Turin. We had several exchanges of correspondence after that, and it became very clear that my first, positive impression of him could not have been more wrong.
I believe that my knowledge of the key players and my involvement in these major fiascos engulfing the Shroud over the last 16 years give me a unique vantage point to relate and interpret what happened, on the personal, managerial and scientific level. No one else has been involved in both developments up close.
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26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a "must read",
By
This review is from: The Rape of the Turin Shroud (Paperback)
William Meacham, an archaeologist at the University of Hong Kong, is uniquely qualified to critique events surrounding the controversial 1988 carbon dating (C-14) of the Shroud of Turin and subsequent events. He is the author of a book with a somewhat shocking title: "The Rape of the Shroud: How Christianity's most precious relic was wrongly condemned and violated." Meacham obviously speaks his mind, has a fascinating story to tell and does it with passion. His presence at a recent Shroud conference had the organizers so concerned, security was hired to be on hand. But he is far from being a rogue investigator. In 1983, he authored the most comprehensive study of the Shroud ever published in a peer-reviewed academic journal (Current Anthropology). In 1986, he was invited by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Archbishop of Turin to advise on the upcoming C-14 dating. At that time, he cautioned that the C-14 sample should be taken from more than one site to insure that it was representative of the main cloth and also warned against too much stock being put in the C-14 results. Both proved to be prophetic as the AD 1260-1390 dates ascribed to the Shroud, at first given a 95% degree of certainty by those who performed the test, have now seriously been called into question by the findings of a scientist who had been given a leftover 1988 sample and who found significant differences with other samples known to be from the main cloth. In 2000, he was invited by the Turin Archdiocese as a delegate to a meeting of a world congress of Shroud experts. In 2002, an invitation from the Turin Archdiocese was extended to him to preview the Shroud after a so-called restoration of the cloth that had been carried out that summer.
Meacham first gives a broad overview of Shroud research and the book contains a condensed version of his superb 1983 Current Anthropology article. The next section describes the events that lead up to the 1988 dating and subsequent events. Part 3 deals with the 2002 restoration, which was also very controversial insofar as it had been performed in secret by the Turin authorities without any input from other researchers around the world, including those like Meacham, who had previously been consulted about important Shroud matters. The last section looks at the current situation and new research proposals. The book's epilogue deals with the 3rd International Shroud conference held in Dallas in September 2005. It was co-sponsored and attended by several important members of the Turin delegation that had carried out the 2002 restoration and controls the Shroud. Meacham mentions that the conference hired an armed guard. He noted, "One can only reflect on the sad state of affairs that Shroud studies had come to, when an armed guard is employed to impose silence on researchers seeking the truth about a relic possibly associated with Jesus." Politics played a huge role in the death of Jesus. Meacham shows in his book how politics is playing another significant role in Jesus' putative burial cloth. This book is a "must-read" for any Shroud researcher and highly recommended for any reader that has even a slight interest in the subject. Joseph Marino and M. Sue Benford
4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Important background information,
By
This review is from: The Rape of the Turin Shroud (Paperback)
This book contains a multitude of most updated information concerning the state of the research but also the politics around the shroud. A must especially for those, who want to look also "behind the scenes" concerning this most important relic of christianity.
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