Botanical findings tell story of the Turin Shroud Thursday, May 6 2010

By Tania Mann

Over 1.7 million pilgrims have already booked their visit to the first public exposition of the Shroud of Turin in 10 years. But is the piece of cloth that so many visitors are flocking to see really  the same one that was wrapped around the dead body of the man Jesus Christ? While many have questioned the Shroud’s true origin, one small book by a widely-respected Jewish botanist provides strong evidence of its authenticity.

In only about 100 picture-filled pages, Prof. Avinoam Danin – professor emeritus of the Department of Evolution, Systematics and Ecology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – tackles the ambitious goal of answering every question he has ever been asked during his 14 years of research on the Shroud. His book Botany of the Shroud: The Story of Floral Images on the Shroud of Turin (Israel 2010:  Danin Publishing, pp. 104) clearly outlines the steps which led Danin to reach a set of highly significant conclusions.

As Danin explains, what has occurred on the Turin Shroud is similar to the process of drying flowers between the pages of a book. Hundreds of plant images have remained imprinted on the cloth. These images thus help to determine facts pertaining to where and when the flowers could have originally been strewn across it.  Also decipherable are the images of: nine thorns (most of which appear around the head and shoulders); a reed laid alongside the body of the “Man of the Shroud”, as he is called; approximately 2,600 fruits that were spread over the body; and partial images of a rope or cord.

The author’s research on the Shroud began when he was shown enhanced photographs of it in 1995.  At first glance, he immediately recognized the images of plants from the Jerusalem area.  The list of this prolific writer’s accomplishments in the field of botany – specifically pertaining to plants in the Middle East – is extensive. Suffice it to say that his 44-year-long career has involved discovering plant species never before found in Israel, Sinai and Jordan; and his work has enabled the creation of a data base from which a new phytogeographical map of Israel was drawn.

Danin’s first conclusion from his botanical findings is that, since the plant images appear in the same locations on photographs produced by different photographic techniques and on the linen of the Shroud itself, they must be real and not artefacts created by one photographic method or another. Of the hundreds of flower images, Danin focused his research on those which are most useful as geographic indicators, as well as on those with the most specific blooming times. He concludes that “the area where the assemblage of the three indicator plants could be freshly collected and placed on the Shroud near the man’s body is the area of Jerusalem to Hebron”. As for flowering seasons, he deduces that “March-April is the time of year when the whole assemblage of some 10 of the plants identified on the Shroud is in bloom”.

Regarding the thorns, Danin suspects that they belong to the plants Ziziphus spina-christi and Rhamnus lycioides, “an important historical indicator”. Both of these are considered among the “most ferocious” plants in Israel, and the thorns of the latter were once “used by Arab farmers to make the ‘knife’ of the plough”, he said.

The cord images on the Shroud show that the ropes were made from plant fibres using the same ancient method that has been used for thousands of years in Jerusalem. This cord is believed to be the one with which Christ was tied to the Cross.

For the Jewish botanist, sindonology – the study of the Shroud –  has always been an intriguing endeavour from a botanical forensic perspective, but Danin says he is completely detached from any religious significance the Shroud might possess. Recounting a conversation he had in 2000 with the then- Apostolic Nuncio of Jerusalem, Danin writes: “I described to him my excitement upon first seeing on the Shroud itself the plant images that I had seen on photographs. I said that I did not feel any particular emotion towards the object revered by millions…. I was a bit apologetic when I was telling him about it. He told me to keep on with my work, because if I were not a Jewish but a Christian botanist, only a few people would believe me”.

Since then, Danin’s years of work as a sindonologist have led him to conclude that the burial cloth already existed in the 8th century CE, and also that “the high similarity of the face of the Man of the Shroud to an icon of ‘The Pantocrator’ in the St Catherine Monastery, Sinai, takes the Shroud back to 550 CE”.

What the botanist calls “the holographic era” of sindonology began in 2007. This involved his collaboration with Dr Petrus Soons, who was responsible – along with his collaborators in the Dutch Holographic Laboratory in Eindhoven – for the creation of three-dimensional holograms of the Shroud. During this period Danin was able to observe that there is “an almost continuous carpet” of more than 300 flowering heads that were arranged in an orderly fashion on the forehead of the “Man of the Shroud”.

Another discovery resulting from his work with Soons was that it was a helmet – not a crown – of thorns that was used to torture the Man. Soons explained that “when he created life-size holograms and displayed them in Regina Apostolorum in Rome, they had to take a ladder to see the top of the head. This part of the body of the Man of the Shroud had not been seen by anybody before”. There Soons observed many small wounds that had been bleeding, whereas these wounds were not visible on the forehead.

The theological significance of Danin’s conclusions is immense. Each of these scientific observations recall Christ’s suffering: his Passion and Crucifixion as they were recently commemorated in the Catholic Church worldwide. Danin’s research – accompanied by that of other sindonologists – can help to reveal a physical reality that points to a transcendent truth: that of Christ’s death and Resurrection. Studies like his help to identify a tangible connection with those mysteries that stretch far beyond the capacity of the human mind.

In the words of Pope John Paul II: “The Shroud shows us Jesus at the moment of his greatest helplessness and reminds us that in the abasement of that death lies the salvation of the whole world” (Address, Pastoral Visit to Vercelli and Turin, 24 May 1998).  Indeed, when Christians speak of the Shroud, they speak of the very cloth that was wrapped around the only human ever to break the chains of death. It is a concrete record of his extraordinarily temporary state of death – the “mystery of Holy Saturday”, as Benedict XVI called it during his Visit on Sunday.

And as his Venerable Predecessor said years ago, “The Shroud thus becomes an invitation to face every experience, including that of suffering and extreme helplessness, with the attitude of those who believe that God’s merciful love overcomes every poverty, every limitation, every temptation to despair”.

© L’Osservatore Romano English edition 05/05/2010

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Interview with Muslim scholar Prof. Mona Siddiqui Thursday, May 6 2010

By Tania Mann

The principal message of the Qur’an? That God is merciful. And according to Prof. Mona Siddiqui, this conviction, along with the importance of belief in God, constitutes a meeting point for the three monotheistic religions. Siddiqui, a prominent Muslim scholar, is Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Glasgow and founder of its Centre for the Study of Islam, which she now directs. She is well-known for her broadcasting work in the British media, and on Wednesday, 5 May, she will come to Rome to give a lecture at a conference on interfaith dialogue at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum). In the following interview with L’Osservatore Romano, Siddiqui speaks on relations among religions and on how innovative ways of thinking about faith can facilitate meaningful exchanges on a wide range of levels.

You are originally from Pakistan, where Christians have accused Muslims of using blasphemy laws to justify discrimination and even persecution. Do problems like these paint an inaccurate picture of Islam?

What faith represents for one person might be very different from what it represents for another. In many countries, blasphemy laws are simply about state control and it’s very easy to use “an offence against Islam” to silence people or deny people basic rights, with the claim that that is exactly what God wants.
For others, they will turn to Scripture and to Islamic theology and anthropology; they will look at interreligious issues. They will look at the march of human rights and democracy, and they will say that Scripture is fluid enough to give us a variety of interpretations which reflect the reality of a pluralist society. Many Muslims countries have forgotten an intrinsic pluralism which can be found in Islam.

Personally speaking, I think it’s really important for people who are interested in how civil society can be visionary rather than reactionary to keep engaged in these debates and to know that oppression in the name of faith can never be good, and is never good.

You have pointed out the need for an Islamic theology that is based more solidly on compassion as opposed to salvation, and that is therefore also more inclusive. Can you elaborate?

Things are changing now, because there is more interreligious work being done both by academics and others so that people are realizing that in many circles we have moved away from being representatives of faith with exclusivist claims.

So if I were to become entrenched in a way of thinking in which I represent Islam in the context of thinking that my path, in simple terms, is the only path to salvation then I would really be closing myself off to interaction with a lot of people.

Because personally speaking, I don’t know that the truth I have is the only truth. There’s no way I can know. I can’t reduce the Scripture and God to a single truth. This is the case especially if I look at my own scripture. Its insistence really is on belief in God. If belief in God is the essential kernel to salvation, then surely ways of expressing that belief must be open to newer, more inclusive ways of thinking about how we do believe in God and also about what good we can do in human society because of our belief.

So the only thing that I can do is to have a view of other people, whether they are believers or non-believers, that is based on compassion and mercy. If anything, the one consistent message in the Qur’an even if you take away everything else is that God is merciful.

Now if God is merciful, how do I live out that mercy in my real life? And it cannot possibly be by starting off either vocally or intentionally or emotionally by thinking:  “Well, I have the full truth and I’m going to start talking to you based on that premise”. That is not a way for me to talk to anyone.

Through your theological work, you have sought to demonstrate that the traditional Muslim perspective according to which the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are considered “corrupt” can be reinterpreted. How?

The theory of abrogation was eventually developed in Islam, that somehow not only are there verses in the QurÆan that abrogate one another, but it was also asked whether the Qur’an abrogates previous Scriptures. And this was based on this notion that perhaps other Scriptures were valid at their time of revelation, but they had been corrupted by their believers.

But the interesting thing is that the Qur’an does not mention that the previous Scriptures are corrupt and must be abrogated. It talks about people as following wrong beliefs. The prime example would be that with their belief in the Trinity, Christians have divided God, so to speak. Now I’m putting it very crudely but even this debate opened up a whole polemical literature between Muslims and Christians. The challenge for many Muslims is to re-assess their approach to other faiths which is based on reason and compassion

And so for me, even a very cursory approach would be:  at the end of the day, what the Qur’an is constantly referring to is essentially about belief in God and surrender to God.

Therefore if I’m looking at Jewish and Christian thought, they are also submitting to God in their own ways, and if that can be the essential kernel that binds us, then that is a very powerful kernel and not something that we can just brush aside.

In your view, given the current conditions, is the search for a substantial ethical common ground possible among the three monotheistic religions?

There are quite a few things happening in terms of humanitarian work. I know for example that Christian and Muslim organizations have come together. But also groups are working together irrespective of whether they are faith practitioners or just people from different backgrounds.

I think there is real practicable advance in that, because people know that with the effects of globalization, cultures, civilizations are colliding and public space is getting smaller and smaller. Especially over the last 50 years, with the effects of migration, people are already living in such mixed societies that there is an inevitability of coming together at some level. Whether it’s at a personal, professional or social level, it is enriching. And I don’t think we should underestimate the human social level, because that’s really where real change take place in people’s minds.

And at the religious level?

At the religious level, it is of course important to see and hear what religious leaders say. Religious leadership is heard by people of that community and also by people of other communities. And when you have two individual faiths and their leaderships say something irrespective of whether you believe in it you know that it’s going to reverberate across the globe.

So at a symbolic level, I think it’s really important that people see that to be religious today is to be interreligious. You cannot just speak for a community, you have to be cognizant that there are going to be other communities that are affected by what you say. Sometimes people feel distant from it, but sometimes it can really cause a reaction in people. It still has a resonance and it still has a presence.

What of the ethics of gender discourse in Islam?

To me gender is very much about the dialectics between both men and women to make society a more just place. It’s about how society works:  the result of the relationship between the two sexes. The issue of how women have a voice in private, public and to some extent religious life is obviously very important across the faith traditions. Judaism and Christianity have their own struggles; they have a different religious structure. But in Islam I think we’re looking at how women especially Muslim women in the West are trying to find alternative spaces for religious discourses where their voice carries weight, and where their voice is seen as equal to a man’s voice, because society is made up of both sexes. And for them to be silenced on matters of religion and religious sensitivity cannot work for a flourishing society.

What do you think is the most important thing for the West to keep in mind so as not to have a distorted view of Islam?

On various levels, Islam has come under so much focus in recent years. Much of traditional thinking about Islam has been eclipsed by 9/11 and by equating Islam with not necessarily just fundamentalism but a militant fundamentalism. Whereas before it was very much a religion of the other but didn’t really concern the West, suddenly it’s become a predominant concern among both political and civil circles. It has made people rethink what democracy means and what rights people have in democracy.

I think that for the majority of Muslims in the West, they are enjoying life being Muslims in a western democratic context, and they would never dream of returning anywhere else. But I think what has happened is that a lot of Muslims feel constantly on the defensive, because they see that any discourse about fundamentalism or militant Islam is a reflection on them.

And on the other side of the scale you have people feeling, “Well, we cant really talk about Islam in a negative way, because that will upset people”. So that has created a bit of a polarization in meaningful exchanges among people.
As I have said in the past, the way the media talks about monotheistic traditions albeit the events of the last few weeks, but I think over a period of years has been reduced to saying that the Catholic Church is just about child abuse, Islam is just about terrorism, and the Anglican Church is essentially about homosexuality and the crisis over that. So that any story that is picked up which reverberates to their archetype of these religions has become inflammatory. And then people are constantly reacting to these inflamed reflections of their faith.

I don’t mean one bit to say these are not serious issues. But I think they have been amplified so much that we can’t really talk about anything else. And I don’t necessarily mean the good stuff. I mean real critical thinking that needs to go on about how we can live together, how we can talk about social and economic ethics and education.
Religious debate has to be kept alive in the public psyche, but it has to be kept alive in more nuanced ways, so that people are not just reducing religion to something that’s negative in global society.

Has engaging so extensively with the media affected your academic work?

For me engaging with the media has been a way of opening my own way of thinking. Because the media often asks very direct questions that you can’t give very nuanced or long, rambling responses to. And you need to think, “What is it that I’m really saying here?” For many people, the media is their only way of learning about anything in life.
I do feel that when I give public lectures, there is a hunger for theology made simple, that people want beyond media sound bytes, but that they are interested precisely because of these sound bytes to know “What is other thinking around religions?”.

Even if people think that there is no place for religion or for God in life, they also know that we are almost naturally drawn to something which is beyond ourselves.

© L’Osservatore Romano English edition 04/28/2010

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