Report of the Shroud of Turin

By John Herbert Heller

Book Overview

Report on the Shroud of Turin [Hardcover] John H. Heller (Author) This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395365686
• ISBN13: 9780395365687
• Release Date: September 1984
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
• Length: 225 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

"The physics of miracles"

Report on the Shroud of Turin is the best book I have read so far on the famous cloth that allegedly contains an imprint of the crucified Christ. John Heller was a renown physicist who, along with other expert scientists, tested many samples of the original shroud gathered by a U.S. team of scientists who were invited to study the shroud in Turin in 1978. Heller was a self-professed skeptic of relics who had never even seen a picture of the shroud until 1978 and who was surprised to see an article about the subject in Science magazine. Intrigued by the challenge the Shroud offered, Heller read one of Ian Wilson's books on the subject and was alarmed by Wilson's "awful science" and the poor techniques used to check the shroud for blood. When given the opportunity, he jumped at the chance to do more appropriate tests on the shroud samples. For a scientist, Heller writes in a surprisingly engaging style. He reveals the excitement he and his colleagues experienced when encountering a great new finding to the reader. It sometimes reads like a scientific detective story which, in a sense, it is. He also adds a lot of humor to the work. There are a lot of scientific terms and details in this book, but it is not bogged down by them and is still very enjoyable reading for non-scientific minds like myself. Heller's history of the shroud is very sparse but that is understandable in that he looks at hypotheses that can be tested and is frustrated by historical evidence that cannot be subjected to experiments. He did find historical evidence (however fuzzy) that the shroud was brought from east to west during the 4th crusade which I had not read before (pp. 68-72). What strikes me is how well Heller responds to Joe Nickell's anti-authenticity work Inquest on the Shroud of Turin. Heller does not claim the shroud is really the imprint of the body of Christ as he several times points out the obvious; that there is "no test for Jesus Christ." Heller does, however, shed light on the work of Dr. Walter McCrone whose findings make up a large portion of Nickell's book. McCrone claimed that he did not find any blood on the shroud samples and, instead, found evidence that the shroud was an artist's forgery in tons of iron oxide particles and vermilion (used in pigment). Nickell maintains that McCrone was the most renown expert to study the shroud (Heller does not dispute McCrone's expertise in his field) and that he was "drummed out" of the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) because his findings disagreed with those of other scientists who wanted the shroud to be authentic. Heller's book takes a different look on Dr. McCrone. He reveals that McCrone did not conduct actual tests on the shroud samples but came to his conclusions solely on what he saw through a microscope. McCrone seemed very quick in coming to his findings and, when it was pointed out to him that his discoveries differed from those of the other scientists in the project he respon

Scientific Detective Story

It is a hand-spun, hand woven linen cloth with two faint images of the front and back of a man who was apparently scourged and crucified. Its history is obscure before the 14th century. Forty American scientists spent four years running thousands of scientific tests on the Shroud. These scientists had backgrounds in branches of physics, biology, and chemical sciences. Dr. Heller has a doctorate in medicine and has been a professor of internal medicine and medical physics at Yale. He is a Southern Baptist, and a skeptical scientist. He first heard of the Shroud of Turin in 1978. The image is anatomically correct, the pathology and physiology represent medical knowledge unknown before the 19th century (p.2). The report by forensic pathologists paralleled the Gospel accounts. Investigating a controversial subject could affect your "scientific research" (p.11). What a comment on "objective science"! But Dr. Heller regarded the subject as a rare challenge, and became involved. The Catholic Church has never proclaimed it as the shroud of Jesus of Nazareth. Most major discoveries in science have been made by young investigators (p.23). They are wiling to test new ideas, and experiment. The investigation of the Shroud required a diverse scientific background (pp.36-7). Preparing for the tests in Turin required a test session in Connecticut. Dr. Heller tells of the fortunate coincidences (p.89). Chapter 6 tells of the political machinations from their rivals in Turin; rivalry isn't just in business (p.91). It also describes the technical difficulties in setting up the tests. After the 120 hours of testing in secret was finished, the analysis of the results began. Chapter 9 explains how they tested the 700 picograms of red substance. The Soret band test showed that this was old acid methemoglobin from old blood. Chapter 10 tells of the meeting of scientists in Colorado Springs. To create the older form of gelatin, they cooked rat tails! A lot of time and effort was spent investigating the anomalous claim of one expert. Mankind is no smarter today than 50,000 years ago. Someone could have figured out something that was thought recently discovered (p.169). Was the Shroud a painting? Six different tests, each acceptable in a court of law, prove the presence of blood on the Shroud (p.186). It was human (p.188). The iron oxide on the Shroud did not contain contaminants; it came from retting or from blood (p.196). Contrary claims were never tested chemically (p.196)! Page 202 tells of the difficulties in creating a picture. The Emperor Constantine outlawed crucifixion in the fourth century (p.204). Artistic depictions are medically incorrect, but not the Shroud. The thousand experiments they performed were published by the Canadian Society of Forensic Sciences. An experiment with a glass table simulated the image (p.208). Scourge marks were only visible in UV light (p.210). The STURP team did not find anything to question the authenticity of the Shroud, or the

Excellent for scientist and layman

I highly recommend this book. It was key to my research in writing The Christ Clone Trilogy (Warner Books).

John Heller - sceptic believer

I have had the honour and priviledge of working in Dr. Heller's institute, working under his tutelage and with his team.Heller, while a man of science, was nevertheless a devout man (Southern Baptist). He viewed his task concerning The Shroud with great scepticism; there have been far too many hoaxes in the world of religion.The book describes in great detail the events leading up to the team's conviction that the Shroud was genuine; last - not least - being Heller and Adler's verification of "heme" (blood) and the inexplicable "burned image" of the crucified man.Although carbon dating indicates that the image is not 2000 years old and that the cloth is from the Middle Ages, there is not enough evidence to diosprove Heller's assertion that the Shroud is indeed genuine.