The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [117]
Father Morelli jumped in. “If you will permit me, I want to add an important point here, before we leave the issue of the coins, even if it means raising some questions about what Dr. Middagh has just explained.”
“By all means, go ahead,” Middagh said graciously.
“In recent years, Dr. Jackson has come to doubt whether the coin information is verifiable. He has raised the question whether minor marks or imperfections seen in the weaving of the fabric might be misinterpreted as having significance—such as seeing coins, or traces of letters and writing of various kinds on the Shroud. Moreover, Dr. Jackson’s wife, Rebecca, a Jew by birth, has objected, pointing out that Jews in the first century would have considered it a religious violation to place anything so crassly related to civil government as a coin on the body of a Jew being buried in accordance with Jewish law.”
“Whether or not there really were ancient coins on the eyes of the dead man in the Shroud seems irrelevant to me,” Gabrielli said.
“Why is that?” Father Morelli asked.
“Simple.” Gabrielli began explaining. “Putting ancient coins on the eyes of a dead Jew could easily have been the work of a brilliant forger. In a curious way, I almost think the Roman coins, if they are over the eyes, prove the Shroud is a fake. Maybe the forger didn’t know Jews in the first century did not put coins on the eyes of dead people being buried. Probably the forger was calculating that someday, someone in the future would discover the coins and be tricked into arguing the Shroud had to be real because no forger would have ever had the forethought to put them there. But if the coins are there and they violate Jewish burial traditions in the first century, then the Shroud has to be a fake.”
Castle thought Gabrielli had a good point.
“In my next attempt to duplicate the Shroud”—Gabrielli said, wanting to make sure his bottom-line point was clear—“I could easily replicate the coins over the eyes, or just about anything else the scientists end up finding microscopically on the Shroud.”
Castle figured that in the final analysis Dr. Jackson was right about the coins. “I’m not sure Gabrielli is right here that the coins prove the Shroud had to be forged,” he said. “But if I follow the discussion, the coins are capable of being seen only through a high-powered microscope and I agree it would be easy to see subjectively what you wanted to see. The weave of the linen appears very coarse. I think that with a microscopic image you could imagine seeing anything you wanted to see.”
Castle once again reached the conclusion that all the research regarding the Shroud, regardless of how scientifically conducted or academically verified it was, was still subject to debate and argumentation, especially by a scientist as clever as Gabrielli.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Friday
Turin Cathedral, Turin, Italy
Day 30
For days, the staff of the Turin Cathedral worked in a side chapel specially designed for displaying the Shroud in private viewings. With the greatest of care, the Shroud was removed from the case in the cathedral where the Shroud is preserved in an atmosphere of inert gas scientifically designed to preserve the Shroud from deterioration. Visitors to a private showing are permitted to see the Shroud directly in front of them, stretched on a frame built to display it, without the bulletproof glass covering that is used to protect the Shroud at public exhibitions.
On Thursday, the day before the private showing arranged for Father Bartholomew, the Turin Cathedral museum staff ushered Fernando Ferrar and his video crew into the side chapel. Cardinal Giovanni Bionconi had given Ferrar permission to bring in high-definition cameras to film the Shroud in advance of the private showing planned for the next day.
On Friday morning at 10 A.M., the hour appointed for the private viewing to begin, the cathedral staff first ushered into the private chapel Dr. Castle and Anne Cassidy, followed by Father Middagh and Professor Gabrielli.