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The tentative identification of the coins is limited to one
particular photograph of the Shroud taken by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931. No one has
been able to identify coin images on the highly technical and detailed
photographs taken in 1978 using lighting carefully places to minimize miniscule
shadows in between the cloth's fibers. The lenses used in 1978 produced less
chromatic distortion and the film had a much finer grain. It should also be
noted that the pictures in 1931 required significant contrast enhancement using
orthocromatic film. Such enhancement creates a granular posterizing effect.
There is another problem: Barrie Schwortz, a technical photographers who
photographed the Shroud, explains it this way:
"My personal opinion, based on my photographic experience and my close
examination of the Shroud itself, is that the weave of the cloth is far too
coarse to resolve the rather subtle and very tiny inscription on a dime sized
ancient coin...What he (Filas) saw as inscriptions, I saw as random shapes and
noise. Such is the subjective nature of image analysis. For these reasons
however, I cannot accept these coin "inscriptions" as viable evidence of a first
century Shroud "date"...I do not argue that there appears to be something on the
eyes of the man of the Shroud, and it may well be coins or potshards, since they
were used in some first century burial rituals, but I do not believe we can
resolve coin inscriptions." |
The
scientific study of the Turin shroud is like a microcosm of the
scientific search for God: it does more to inflame any debate than
settle it.”
It is
simply not known how the ghostly image of a serene, bearded man was
made.”
Scientist-Journalist Philip Ball Nature, that most prestigious of scientific journals, that once had bragging rights to claim that the Shroud was fake, responding to new, peer-reviewed studies that discredit the carbon 14 dating and show that the Shroud could be authentic. WHAT WE KNOW IN 2005
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