The previous two posts have been a more or less blow by blow account of the ‘final’ Conference of the original Shroud of Turin Research Project team, over the weekend of 9-11 October 1981, tapes of which have been made available to us by the kind and painstaking work of Barrie Schwortz and the Shroud of Turin Education and Research Association (STERA), and uploaded to shroud.com (https://www.shroud.com/81conf.htm), where they can all be found in full. The following review won’t make much sense without reference to them, and, since my own view is decidedly authenticist, impartial students of the Shroud are very much encouraged to listen to the recordings themselves.
Until a few weeks ago, the best we could make of this crucial conference at the conclusion of most of STuRP’s observations, experiments and conclusions was John Heller’s ‘Summary of STuRP’s Conclusions,’ which, it turns out, is rather more dogmatic than it should have been. It is true that the scientists generally agreed that the Shroud was not a painting, but successive spectrographers pointed out that the bloodstains looked as if they may have been admixtures. The statement, “We can conclude for now that the Shroud image is that of a real human form of a scourged, crucified man” does not reflect a consensus – even Al Adler insisted that there wasn’t any evidence that the Shroud wrapped a body.
There are also some fascinating insights into the research that to my mind seem to have been lost in the 40 years or so since. I did not know, for example, how important women were to the project. Only Marion Gilbert features as an author of a “published paper” by STuRP, but several others clearly contributed a lot, and Joan Janney’s dozens of experiments with radiation seem to have been detailed and authoritative. Maria Grazio Siliato was another significant contributor, and a couple of other women whom I’ve not identified.
That brings me to another ‘insight’ – the contribution of the Italians. Giovanni Riggi di Numana mostly comes into ridicule nowadays, tainted by his association with the 1988 radiocarbon tests, but his paper was interesting, detailed, well reseached and much appreciated at the time. And 40 years later, new to me, although it was published at shroud.com in 2021. Maria Siliato gave a precisely referenced account of possible archeological and literary relevances to the Shroud, which may deserve further investigation, and Luigi Gonella was also in attendance. There seemed to be others, too, to help with translation, but I couldn’t identify them.
Pervading the whole conference, you can’t help but hear, was the just sub-audible mumbling of the elephant in the room; not just, “Is it authentic?” but, in whispered tones, “Is it supernatural?” The almost tangible efforts by the scientists not to get involved in these questions is a tribute to the determined objectivity of scientists for whom, as Bill Mottern said, right at the end, science and faith can be equally credible.
Perhaps that forced objectivity played a part in the overall rejection of any ‘radiation’ hypothesis for the image-forming mechanism. Even John Jackson, whose measurements elegantly and compellingly established some correlation between putative cloth-body distance and image intensity, shied away from the ‘vertically collimated’ radiation hypothesis prevalent today, while others rejected it completely, offering some kind of vaporograph or contact hypothesis as the front runners. How things change.
Interesting too, was how “non-STuRP” Science didn’t get a mention. History was provided by non-STuRP Ian Wilson and Archaeology by non-STuRP Maria Siliato, but Max Frei’s pollen wasn’t mentioned at all, Francis Filas’s coins only in response to a question at the end, and of course there was no mention of McCrone, in spite of some lengthy and determined efforts to refute his conclusions. At least once, someone thought that no other scientific investigation had been carried out on the Shroud, presumably in ignorance of the 1973 commission, and even of Pierluigi Baima-Bollone’s investigation just before STuRP’s in 1978.
Finally, there was a lot of laughter, and even mention of fun! Heller and Adler clearly made a splendid double-act, Ray Rogers insisted that Black Forest elves be considered a valid hypothesis, and towards the very end, the commenter on the side-strip said, “it doesn’t mean a thing. It couldn’t prove authenticity; it couldn’t disprove authenticity. We wouldn’t know why it was put on, but… it’s fun to think about.” “I agree,” says Jumper, “that’s one of the great fun things; that that might be attached – but it’s of no interest to anyone.” Well, I don’t know that I’d go that far, but if more people investigated the Shroud simply because it was interesting and fun, and less because it may or may not be the fulcrum of balance between science and faith, there’d be a lot less acrimony in the sindonological world.