Shroud of Turin

I need a day or two in order to post an adequate reply.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that your faith rests on the authenticity of the Tuirin shroud, but I don't understand why you would throw out all the evidence against it being authentic. Most of the arguments against the radiocarbon dating that I've seen so far show a distinct lack of understanding when it comes to radiocarbon dating and science in general, even failure of logical thinking.You have said, however, that if Scott's faith doesn't rest on it then neither does yours. What if he changes his mind and declares that his faith does rest on it - are you going to change yours? I don't think you will. From what I've seen, your faith certainly doesn't rest solely on other people's opinions, it's a strong, heartfelt belief. However, in trying to rationalise this belief, you've been quoting pseudoscience which weakens your arguments. You will NEVER be able to prove the existence of God or the reality of the ressurection because both need faith, according to Jesus. You don't need faith if you have proof. For example, I don't have faith in my cooker cooking my dinner because I know for a fact that it will, barring powercuts. Faith is all about sticking to a belief without there being any proof. I'm not talking about blind faith here.There are certain bits and pieces of the Bible which the vast majority of Christians and Christian churches accept as being unlikely or erroneous, based on the fact that they were written by ordinary people like you and me who make mistakes all the time. I wonder if its time to stop trying to prove the validity of some of these dodgy bits and concentrate on the central nugget of the Bible - Jesus died for us so that we can be forgiven for our sins.The theory about the scorching of the shroud by a mysterious holy light falls at the very first hurdle. OK, so some passages talk about a brilliant light when God appears, but others don't - how about the burning bush? How about the baptism of Jesus when the main effect seemed to be a dove descending? Even if there was a brilliant light, you can't say that that's what "scorched" the shroud. How often have you seen brilliant light scorch something? You would have to invoke a special type of brilliant light. So many steps in the theory depend on conclusions thought up only to bolster the argument ie sloppy thinking.I think I might be tempted to sell my PhD thesis too if you can get that amount of cash for it. Sadly, very few people would be interested in it and, to be honest when I look back I can see so many "holes" in it that I think I should keep it under wraps!

Hi All,Well, I can't really see all the fuss about this one. The empirical evidence quite clearly indicates that Shroud was made in the 14th century. By "empirical evidence", I refer to the type of pigment and the carbon dating results. The historical evidence supports the same conclusion -- there is no record of the Shroud before the 14th century. Furthermore, there is no record of what Jesus looked like anywhere -- the fact that the image on the Shroud looks like the common artist perception of the time seems very suspicious to me. I have a hard time believing it is not a fraud. Attempts to discredit the C-14 dating results seem very desperate.But what if the Shroud IS a fraud? All that proves is that there was some charlatan faking relics in the 14th Century. Well, THAT is pretty easy to believe. Unless Peter had 27 fingers or so, not ALL those relics can be real. It says absolutely nothing about whether Jesus did or did not rise from the dead. Given that, not much of a topic for debate, really . . .Ian

Welcome to the forum Ian.Yes, I don't see why the shroud is so important to some people. Personally my New Testament is enough, what's the point in clinging on to a "hope" of the shroud being real? - It's not like it bares any reference to my faith anyway...... Wasn't it a possible Davinci?I heard Leanardo lived at the time of the shroud, and apparently he was so skilled you could not even find brush strokes in his works. It also looks like Leanardo Davinci the image on the shroud.Don't get me wrong there's always a chance it's the real thing, but at the moment science says it isn't - and who cares?[This message has been edited by Columbo, 01-15-2004]

Hi All,Well, I can't really see all the fuss about this one. The empirical evidence quite clearly indicates that Shroud was made in the 14th century. By "empirical evidence", I refer to the type of pigment and the carbon dating results. The historical evidence supports the same conclusion -- there is no record of the Shroud before the 14th century. Furthermore, there is no record of what Jesus looked like anywhere -- the fact that the image on the Shroud looks like the common artist perception of the time seems very suspicious to me. I have a hard time believing it is not a fraud. Attempts to discredit the C-14 dating results seem very desperate.But what if the Shroud IS a fraud? All that proves is that there was some charlatan faking relics in the 14th Century. Well, THAT is pretty easy to believe. Unless Peter had 27 fingers or so, not ALL those relics can be real. It says absolutely nothing about whether Jesus did or did not rise from the dead. Given that, not much of a topic for debate, really . . .Ian

My apologies--I'm not sure how that post got up there twice. Must have hit a wrong button!As for Da Vinci, 14th century would predate him by a bit, I think. And I'm not up my Art History enough to know what famous artists might have painted it. But if we go with the Dada definition of art, a piece should make you question whether it is or isn't art, then the Shroud of Turin certainly qualifies!Ian

Hello Ian C,

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Originally posted by Ian C

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As for Da Vinci, 14th century would predate him by a bit, I think.

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That it would. However, it has also been suggested that Da Vinci might well have been clever enough to realize that a newly woven piece of cloth would not be the best choice for a convincing forgery. Also, there is just some possibility that an older cloth (perhaps even an alleged shroud sans image) somehow becoming available could have been the catalyst that instigated the scheme in the first place.Namaste'Amlodhi

Agreed.The shroud being a fake doesn't disprove Jesus. In fact, the shroud dating to the first century only proves it is an old cloth. So it wouldn't be enough, by itself, to prove anything either.

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Common sense isn't

On the shroud and painting.Da Vinci could not have painted it - there is documentary evidence of its existance c100 years before his birth.Further, it was declared at the time to be a painting. From here:

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The first historical evidence of the Shroud of Turin dates back to 1389, where it is first written about in a letter from the bishop of Troyes, France to Pope Clement VII. The bishop complains of a piece of linen, approximately 14 feet long and 3 feet wide with the front and back images of a crucified man, being falsely displayed in the village of Lirey since the year 1355 as the true burial shroud of Christ. The bishop continued, stating that the image was cunningly painted and that he had already received a confession from the artist. In a time when forgery of relics was common due to the great money brought in by pilgrimages, the shroud was determined to be a hoax for monetary gain. Pope Clement VII permitted the continued exhibition of the shroud with the stipulation that an announcement was continually made which denounced the authenticity of the shroud as Christ’s burial cloth, referring to it as an artist’s rendition of the crucifixion.

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Please note also the remarks about the prevelance of pious forgeries. I read once that, at the time in question there were about 40 (that we know of) shrouds in existance, and I believe that there are, even now, a few around.

Mark Austin's Message #69 indicates, "The first historical evidence of the Shroud of Turin dates back to 1389, where it is first written about in a letter from the bishop of Troyes, France to Pope Clement VII."The letter from Bishop Pierre d'Arcis of Troyes appealing to the anti-pope Clement VII at Avignon expressing concern regarding the exhibition of the Shroud also indicates it's repository and display to relic-oogling pilgrims at Lirey as early as 1355:"According to the D'Arcis Memorandum, written more than thirty years later, the first known expositions of the Shroud are held in Lirey at around this time. Large crowds of pilgrims are attracted and special souvenir medallions are struck. A unique surviving specimen can still be found today at the Cluny Museum in Paris. Reportedly, Bishop Henri refused to believe the Shroud could be genuine and ordered the expositions halted. The Shroud was then hidden away." [See: http:Shroud History ]The same site offers other interesting information including that:In November 1389, the Bishop of Troyes appealed Clement VII concerning the exhibiting of the Shroud at Lirey. The bishop claimed the Shroud was attracting crowds of pilgrims.In January 1390, Clement VII wrote the bishop ordering him to keep silent on the Shroud, under threat of excommunication. The letter of warning was written the same day as Clement wrote the letter to Geoffrey II de Charny stating the conditions under which expositions could be allowed. That day he also wrote to other persons asking them to ensure that his orders are obeyed. What a great compromiser this pope!There are other sites on the Internet offering the argument that Pierre d'Arcis's allegations that the Shroud was a forgery were motivated by his anxiety regarding the competitive edge the Shroud represented for pilgrim money at Lirey compared to the Arcis's less impressive relics collection at Troyes.Bishop D'Arcis's letter to Clement VII also states that his predecessor, Bishop Henri of Poitiers had determined that the Shroud was a forgery because the image was not mentioned in the Gospels, that an investigation by Bishop Henri showed it to be a clever fake, and that an unidentified artist had confessed to the handiwork.However, neither D'Arcis nor Henri presented any evidence or named the forger, and there is no other evidence that Bishop Henri ever investigated the Shroud's authenticity.You may Google Henri of Poitiers and Pierre d'Arcis of Troyes for additional data that indicates at least to this Googler that the early history of the Shroud is stained by parish politics and the competition for pilgrim's pennies.Ah, that Demon Politics!

First can I guide you to internet sites that thoroughly tackle the evidence of modern material and ancient material being in the C14 tested samples:-Page not found – Shroud of Turin Blog and especially http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/textevid.pdfThere seems to be good grounds therefore for doubting the accuracy of the 1988 C14 test results as representative of the oldest parts of the cloth. The oldest part tested appears to have a date of 200AD.Next can I make my own observation on the available images of the cloth as seen on the internet:-I would say that there are 2 very different images on the cloth and I believe I can see a clear demarcation line between them. Can anyone else?Firstly there is the face. To me this is a negative image of a face lit from above - picking out the hair, brow ridges, nose, top lip and so on, but leaving the recesses dark - such as the eyes and the crease between the cheek and top lip. Most importantly this image terminates in a curved line at the neck. I have not to date seen this remarked on anywhere else. If this image is a chemical change in the surface of the cloth then it could have been created by a camera obscura throwing a "bleaching image" onto damp linen (See Not Found (#404) - Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc. for a discussion of the known effects of light and damp and other simple agents on linen.) There a number of pages detailing how such an image could have been produced in ancient times, even possibly using iodine. See This website was recently revamped for an example.Secondly there is the rest of the body. This seems to be a contact image. I cannot comment on the exact nature of its formation, but I would surmise that sweat absorbed by the cloth could have changed the browning of the surface of the cloth.So why 2 different images? Well, I offer the following line of thought. Imagine you are a medieval archivist in possession of ancient biblical texts that need hand scribing and also of an ancient cloth bearing supposedly Christs image. There are many instances where the scripture texts have been subtly altered over time to better suit the message that it was thought it should be giving. So with the cloth. The body looks OK, but the face is all distorted, over wide. To stir faith a better image is needed. So artists are called. They bleach out the old bad image and cleverly put a new image on that really looks like a human face. The old blood marks might have been on the distorted face, but have now been found located over the hair on the new image. Everyone is happy until modern science tries to unpick the tangled history.

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Richard
London, UK

nealfr

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First can I guide you to internet sites that thoroughly tackle the evidence of modern material and ancient material being in the C14 tested samples:-
Page not found – Shroud of Turin Blog and especially http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/textevid.pdf

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There seems to be good grounds therefore for doubting the accuracy of the 1988 C14 test results as representative of the oldest parts of the cloth. The oldest part tested appears to have a date of 200AD.

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No, only wishful thinking and ad-hoc explanations.We are expected to believe that the samples - three in total - were all contaminated by exactly the amount of material necessary tto produce a date concordant with the first appearance of the shroud, that all samples were contominated to nearly the same amount, that a committee of experts missed the contanination when extracting the samples, that thre separate and independent labs missed it. Let's be blunt. What you are alleging is that these experts and the testers are either grossly incompetent or deliberately attempting a fraud.Look here for a report on the dating:

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The sampling of the shroud took place in the Sacristy at Turin Cathedral on the morning of 21 April 1988. Among those present when the sample as cut from the shroud were Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero (Archbishop of Turin), Professor L. Gonella (Department of Physics, Turin Polytechnic and the Archbishop's scientific adviser), two textile experts (Professor F. Testore of Department of Materials Science, Turin Polytechnic and G. Vial of Muse des Tissues and Centre International d'tude des Textiles Anciens in Lyon), Dr M. S. Tite of the British Museum, representatives of the three radiocarbon-dating laboratories (Professor P. E. Damon, Professor D. J. Donahue, Professor E. T. Hall, Dr R. E. M. Hedges and Professor W. Woelfli) and G. Riggi, who removed the sample from the shroud.

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The shroud was separated from the backing cloth along its bottom left-hand edge and a strip (~10 mm x 70 mm) was cut from just above the place where a sample was previously removed in 1973 for examination. The strip came from a single site on the main body of the shroud away from any patches or charred areas. Three samples, each ~50 mg in weight, were prepared from this strip. The samples were then taken to the adjacent Sala Capitolare where they were wrapped in aluminium foil and subsequently sealed inside numbered stainless-steel containers by the Archbishop of Turin and Dr Tite. Samples weighing 50 mg from two of the three controls were similarly packaged. The three containers containing the shroud (to be referred to as sample 1) and two control samples (samples 2 and 3) were then handed to representatives of each of the three laboratories together with a sample of the third control (sample 4), which was in the form of threads. All these operations, except for the wrapping of the samples in foil and their placing in containers, were fully documented by video film and photography.

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My emphasis. Are you seriously proposing that an incorrect sample was gathered, and that the textile experts would not have been looking for and checking for repairs of known type.The conclusions of the group:

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The results of radiocarbon measurements at Arizona, Oxford and Zurich yield a calibrated calendar age range with at least 95% confidence for the linen of the Shroud of Turin of AD 1260 - 1390 (rounded down/up to nearest 10 yr). These results therefore provide conclusive evidence that the linen of the Shroud of Turin is mediaeval.

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The results of radiocarbon measurements from the three laboratories on four textile samples, a total of twelve data sets, show that none of the measurements differs from its appropriate mean value by more than two standard deviations. The results for the three control samples agree well with previous radiocarbon measurements and/or historical dates.

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Thankyou for bringing my attention to the paper on the carbon dating of the Turin Shroud at Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin. Look at Fig 1. in this page. You will note that the Shroud sample dating has a qualitative difference from the other 3 control samples in that the standard deviations do not overlap.Papers by Remi Van Haelst, an industrial chemist, and Bryan J Walsh, Shroud of Turin Center, Richmond Virginia USA criticise the supposed homogeneity of the tested samples and highlights the statistical problems of the wide scatter of data in the lab results. They point out that the original data and the published data are not concordant and statistical errors were made. Fuller analysis indicates that the data is consistent with the different samples having different amounts of C14 in them. This is prima facie evidence of the tested samples not representing the whole shroud.Testore (one of the two present textile experts defends his opinion in response to the allegation:- I examined carefully the cloth all along the warp and filling of the threads concerned, without noticing any splicing. (Testore). Note that no chemical or microscopic investigations were documented to characterize the sample, only macroscopic appearance.Moving on to the current view - Raymond N. Rogers, a member of the original investigation group published a paper in 2002 detailing his microscopic analysis of the shroud and the samples taken. He detailed many differences between the tested sample and the fibres and analysis of the rest of the shroud. He presented his paper to a conference in Turin in 2001/2002 . As a result of that the custodians of the Shroud made a complete change in policy, no longer referring to the original investigating group but appointing an independent textile expert Dr. Flury-Lemberg of Switzerland to assess and advise on the care of the shroud.Mechthild Flury-Lemberg said it could be almost 2,000 years old. She has found its manufacture to be identical to 1st century linen cloth with features unknown to Medieval Europe. This agrees with the anlysis of Raes some time before.So, the current view of its custodians and experts is that this is a first century object.

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Richard
London, UK

:~ The Devil you say! She has found its' manufacture to be identical to 1st century "linen cloth" I take it. Not the Image portion then ? I am still thinking about bringing my attention around (?) Would you be getting that one too ? Don't you mind, I'm predisposed to the regular splitting of the hair
>This message has been edited by 666_DBz, 05-04-2006 03:21 PM

The Truth is Out .. There
Topic:the "outer most" / "Top most" fibers of the holy Relic have been pressed to WHAT ?!It kills me but I'll go against my better judgement. Here I'd like to bring up something more about the Shroud of Lirey/Chambery - Turin (it's not just tacking something on). A man named Marc Gusin suggests that the Relic as been pressed (directly) to "secondary Relics" renewing speculative explaination(s) of the presence of iron oxide But, can that be the sole cause of traces of medieval pigment (e.g. - [B00K] Judgement of the Shroud of Turin). Perhaps There is something to that argment. Maybe you've never grown-up with this "mysterious object" as a part of your upbringing; and are the poorer for not having this reasoned out to satisfactory conclusions. Post Holland cloth (source: "Journal of Optics of the Institute of Physics" of London. It's an answer not the answer. Hey, I like that someone should use that as a title for a new work P.S.- This is Post the "piece of Holland cloth" being after Apr. 2004 April 14-16, 2004 A new Book titled ..The R A P E of the Shroud is out. I am wondering if it's something to own & still thinking about buying one
>This message has been edited by 666_DBz, 05-04-2006 03:04 PM