(ORDO NEWS) — In response to claims that the Shroud of Turin is a medieval forgery, one of the filmmakers offered the British Museum a $1 million reward if they could reproduce the iconic artifact.
The bold proposal reportedly comes from director David Rolfe, who has been advocating the possible authenticity of the outlandish fabric for decades.
His latest study of the controversial issue, the documentary “Who Could He Be?”, takes on what was thought to be the iconic 1988 British Museum radiocarbon dating of the shroud. Claiming that their research was fundamentally flawed, Rolph and the film’s producers issued a rather audacious challenge to the institution.
Turning the skeptical argument on its head, Rolf argued that if the shroud is the work of a “medieval swindler”, then British Museum experts should be able to pull off a similar feat in 2022.
“I urge them to repeat the exercise and create something similar today,” the director told The Guardian newspaper, “and if you can, your funds could be worth $1 million.”
While this high-stakes bet may appear to be just a clever publicity stunt to draw attention to the new documentary, Rolph and the film’s producers are serious about it.
On the film’s website, they detail the task, providing a full list of “known and verified characteristics of the image to be reproduced”.
Among the rather nitty-gritty specifics required to make $1 million are “a color penetration depth of 0.2 micrometers” and that images on both sides of the fabric must “have almost the same color intensity.”
In addition, the made image must remain on the shroud for at least one year, and what may be the most difficult aspect of this work, “only known medieval methods and substances can be used.”
If the British Museum accepts the group’s challenge, a “neutral commission” will review their work and determine if it is a replica.
However, while they offered the museum six months to consider the dispute after it was officially published on Easter Sunday, at this point it appears that the organization has no plans to proceed with the matter.
Asked by The Guardian about the bet, a museum spokesperson simply forwarded questions about the shroud to its keepers in Turin. Since the British Museum seems to have given up on the challenge, perhaps the filmmakers will open it up to the rest of the world to see if anyone can make a “wonderful” reproduction.
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