- Hardcover: 225 pages
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (T); 1st edition (June 1983)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0395339677
- ISBN-13: 978-0395339671
- Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 590 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,601,015 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent writing, science, bad theology,
By
This review is from: Report on the Shroud of Turin (Paperback)
The whole subject of the Shroud of Turin is one peculiarly Christian. Of the world's great religions, Christianity alone strives to justify its claims by resorting to non-religious means. In this case, we are faced with an old cloth, the so-called Shroud of Turin which purportedly carries the image of Jesus (seen only through X-ray). The story of the scientific team, how it formed, its purpose and various members was well-written. The internal battles, disagreements and give and take were well documented. But the meat of the book was the plethora of scientific tests run to determine both composition of the cloth and substances trapped in its strands, particularly those checking for the absence or presence of blood or items from that part of the world. (The blood expert, Walter McCrone, subsequently written an article, expanded to a book, claiming that the substance was not blood but vermillion.) The team effort was both laudatory and admirable although some of its findings were later contradicted by a carbon-dating of circa 1300 A.D. (exactly the date claimed by many skeptics). The author, though religious, is at all times scrupously fair and neutral, open-minded and patient. It is not the final judgement that is questionable - someone was crucified and it cannot be determined how the marks were made. It is applying such claims to Gospels that were written as fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy and not as historical events. It is becoming increasingly clear that Jesus thought of himself first and foremost as a Jew. The fact that the central claim in the New Testament (Jesus would return soon) never materialized forced revisions of Mark to account for this failure. This casts a shadow over the stories contained, in particular the Passion stories in which the events were so contradictory. Maybe the real answer to the Shroud of Turin is that we will never know and belief in Jesus as the savior of the world will always be a matter of faith.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.6 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews) 7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Engaging, entertaining, and no-nonsense,
By Matthew Demattei - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Report on the Shroud of Turin (Hardcover)
I first read this book over twelve years ago and my admiration for it has never waned. Unlike many Shroud of Turin theorists whose conclusions rely largely on speculation and/or anecdotal evidence, Dr. Heller is one of the very few people who have scientifically tested actual samples taken from the cloth. He conducted his experiments over a period of several years in an attempt to determine the chemical nature of the "blood" and "image", and how they got on the Shroud in the first place. How the image formed he never determined, but through chemical testing he found it to be the result of acid oxidation of the linen. The "blood" he concluded to be actual blood by over ten different tests including spectral analysis, and chemical identification of bile pigments and serum albumin. The book, however, is not all dry Science. It tells the funny and interesting story of Heller's involvement in the Shroud of Turin Research Project from beginning to end. He doesn't hold the you, the reader, at arm's length--he takes you right into lab itself revealing in detail not just the experiments that he and his collegues performed, but also something of their personalities and motivations. Many scientists and skeptics today either ignore or write off Heller's work in a few curt sentences, but Heller's use of control experiments to test and retest his conclusions give his work credibility. Whether the Shroud is real or fake makes no difference to me, but ANY source skeptical of the Shroud's authenticity who cannot or will not give a convincing, detailed, point-by-point refutation of Heller's conclusions I would consider suspect. Only when such a source comes forward (and I have not yet seen one to date) will the matter be settled in my mind.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Scientist Who Knows How to Write!,
By Homer D Klong - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Report on the Shroud of Turin (Hardcover)
Although this book is old, I mean pre-1988 (when the carbon-dating of the Shroud took place), I think this book should still be required reading for those interested in the Shroud of Turin. Heller does a vivid job of telling how the STURP (Shroud of Turin Project, Inc.) team came into existence, and a detailed account of their examination of the Shroud in 1978. I came to this book with a negative view of the STURP team, gleaned from other books on the Shroud. But Heller shows what a tremendous job they did under unusual and often trying circumstances. Heller is a blood expert and after reading about his hundreds of tests, it makes one wonder why anyone would doubt that there is blood on the Shroud (as opposed to some sort of paint).
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
John Heller - sceptic believer,
By Alexander R. Torok - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Report on the Shroud of Turin (Hardcover)
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. |
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
