The Shroud of Turin: What's Your Opinion?

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Thanks for the articles, Jim. I like them, but must point out that they are a little out of date on the C-14 issue. We now know that the British Museum abridged the raw C-14 data in order to arrive at a variance that they could live with.** The actual C-14 dates were 1195 AD oldest all the way to 1448 youngest, and the dates showed a linear progression as the part of the sample tested became closer to the image. Amazingly, the dates got younger as the part tested got closer! The obvious conclusion is that the miraculous process that created the Image also affected the C-14 content of the Shroud’s linen fibers.

The people that have a problem with the idea that Jesus worked miracles are engaging in every trick in the book in their efforts to obstruct this correct interpretation, but science will prove them wrong in the end.

**TEST THE SHROUD, Antonacci, 2015
 
It would be interesting if C-14 content could be tested non-destructively. If it were possible to test the entire shroud area, might the C-14 result vary according to distance of the cloth to the body at any given point? But for now that’s just speculation.
 
Hugh_Farey said:
My argument is that if the image of Edessa was the Shroud, then it was in monochrome and with bloodstains. There is no evidence to suggest that this was the case. Quite the opposite, in fact.
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When the Image of Edessa has always been described as 1. “Made without hands,” i.e. miraculous in its making, and 2. as “Folded four times.” Therefore we postulate that only the facial image of the Shroud was ever shown, and it was not generally known that this facial image was just part of a bloody burial cloth. In ancient times one would feel spiritually polluted if one even so much a viewed such a death robe.

Therefore, we postulate, people were unaware of the true source of the facial Image, and legends were fabricated to account for it. One of the first is that Abgar V’s messenger (or his servant) wanted to paint Jesus’ likeness. But Jesus took the canvas, held it to His face, and left a miraculous Image on it. But this legend fails to account for the facial blood. However, it would be in line with the idea that a dirty, sweaty face was pressed to a cloth leaving a brownish, or sepia, image.

A second legend is that when Jesus prayed in the garden the night before His death, He sweated drops of blood and then held a cloth to His face leaving an Image and blood. This legend would also account for the sepia colored image and account for the facial blood as well. But it would fail to account for the bruise under the right eye which almost closes that eye.

A third, and much later legend is that, as He carried His cross, Jesus passed a woman who offered him a towel to wipe His face, and He held it to His face leaving an image and blood stains. This last one would account for both the blood stains and the facial bruising.

If one looks for Veronica images online one readily finds several Veronica paintings that show a sepia colored image on a woman’s cloth that she had offered to Jesus.
 
JimG said:
Two articles about the shroud …
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Thank you. There are so many articles about the Shroud it is difficult to keep up with them all. However, these two are very much op.ed. and do not reference any evidence. Mary Jo makes some strange comments about the ‘radiocarbon corner’.
  1. “Ultraviolet investigations now show that samples used for the C-14 test were taken from an area of the cloth that fluoresces much differently from the main image-bearing portion of the linen.” No they don’t. The only ultraviolet photos ever published do not cover the radiocarbon corner.
  2. “In short, the C-14 samples were from a section that had been patched in the Middle Ages. The fibers in the patched area were spliced to blend old and new threads such that the patch was not visible to the naked eye.” No they hadn’t. The patch »»» reweave »»» splice hypotheses have been successively refuted until there is nothing supportable left.
The other article, by Todd Aglialoro, is an excellent meditation, but doesn’t to present to be authoritative about the Shroud’s authenticity.
 
The image of Edessa has not always been described as “folded four times”. The word tetradiplon occurs twice in a single document referring to the Shroud, and not anywhere else in the whole of Greek literature. Its real meaning and significance is unclear. But I’m sure you knew that: I was just clarifying it for any of our readers not familiar with the literature.

However, your postulations regarding the legend of Abgar are irrelevant to the problem that not a single picture of the Mandylion resembles the Shroud. Furthermore, not a single picture of the Mandylion looks like a ‘sweat image’. The dominant legend of its creation is that it was a miraculous painting. It looks like a painting.

Yes, the Legend of Veronica suggests that Jesus may have also left a picture of himself on a small cloth. This, and several venerated copies of it, still exist. They are not the Shroud, and they are not the Mandylion.

It really isn’t enough just to quote Mark Antonacci. His quotations are extremely selective and many of his conclusions unsupported by his evidence. Primary sources, every time.
 
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Sir, I think that you missed the point of that post.
The idea is that the legends that sprang up to explain the origin of the facial part of the Image of Edessa are compatible with the theory that this facial image was a sepia monochrome with bloodstains and a facial bruise. Observing just the facial image of the Shroud, one cold easily imagine that Jesus pressed a cloth to His dirty, sweaty face and a sepia imprint of His face was the result.

I did not quote Antonacci in that post.
 
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Hugh_Farey said:
The image of Edessa has not always been described as “folded four times”. The word tetradiplon occurs twice in a single document referring to the Shroud, and not anywhere else in the whole of Greek literature. Its real meaning and significance is unclear.
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Prof. Guscin reports:*

“As pointed out above, tetradiplon** is a word used especially for the Image of Edessa, and for no other object. . . .it is clear that the use of this word means that the cloth was reasonable large, larger at least than the amount of cloth needed for just a facial image.
… . this point . . .seems to be absolutely fundamental to understanding its [the Image’s] nature.”

*THE TRADITION OF THE IMAGE OF EDESSA, Guscin, 2016, pgs. 131-133
**"tertradiplon is spelled out in Greek letters here.

Prof Guscin devotes three pages to discussing the meaning and significance of the Greed word “tetradipion” here. Your statements concerning this word are about as accurate as your recent assertion that the boat may have been very close to shore when Jesus walked out on the water to it. It confirms my suspicion that you are making up your assertions and presenting them as “facts,” while, at the same time admonishing others about using “original sources.”
 
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Awww. You were doing so well until your crabby last paragraph.
undead_rat said:
The idea is that the legends that sprang up to explain the origin of the facial part of the Image of Edessa are compatible with the theory that this facial image was a sepia monochrome with bloodstains and a facial bruise.
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No. The legend of the Image of Edessa/ the Mandylion is connected with a miraculous image made by a living Christ on a towel. It was extensively depicted. It looks nothing like the Shroud. The legend of Veronica is connected with another miraculous image made by Christ on his way to Calvary. There were several ‘miraculous’ images known to Constantinople, all different and with different stories to account for them. They should not be confused nor conflated.

My Guscin is from “The Image of Edessa”, 2009. Forgive me if it is not word for word the same as yours.
Me: “The word tetradiplon occurs twice in a single document referring to the Shroud, and not anywhere else in the whole of Greek literature. Its real meaning and significance is unclear.”
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Guscin: "… the Greek word τετραδιπλόη, used only for the Image of Edessa in the whole known corpus of Greek literature. This in itself is highly significant; if a word is brought into being for the sole purpose of describing a specific object, and never used for any other known object, then it must surely reflect a unique property of the object in question. […]
At first sight, the word seems easy to understand; it is made up of two elements, the words for four and fold over in two. However, does this mean … "
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There follow four paragraphs of the possible meaning and significance of the word. All I said was that it occurs twice and that its meaning is unclear. Are these statements inaccurate?

What’s more, the mystery deepens in the context within with the word is used. The Acts of Thaddeus clearly states that Jesus was given a ‘tetradiplon’ to wipe his face with, not that the cloth was folded up afterwards.

I present nothing as fact. I merely quote primary sources. Please use them.
 
Hugh_Farey said:
Me: "The word tetradiplon occurs twice in a single document referring to the Shroud, and not anywhere else in the whole of Greek literature.

All I said was that it occurs twice and that its meaning is unclear. Are these statements inaccurate?
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Inaccurate hardly describes the outright sillyness of your statement. Do I really need to elaborate?
 
Hugh_Farey said:
The legend of Veronica is connected with another miraculous image made by Christ on his way to Calvary. There were several ‘miraculous’ images known to Constantinople, all different and with different stories to account for them. They should not be confused nor conflated.
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I have already explained how the legend of Veronica came about and how it is based on a “true icon” or “vera iconica” of the Mandylion. Must I repeat myself?
 
undead_rat said:
Inaccurate hardly describes the outright sillyness of your statement. Do I really need to elaborate?
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You do, yes. The word tetradiplon occurs twice. That may be wrong, but it’s surely not silly.
The leading scholar of sindonolgy related Greek spends four pages discussing possible meanings of a word, because its meaning is not at all obvious. I say its meaning remains unclear. How is that silly?
I have already explained how the legend of Veronica came about and how it is based on a “true icon” or “vera iconica” of the Mandylion. Must I repeat myself?
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No. please don’t. The word Veronica didn’t exist until hundreds of years after the origin of the story associated with her. In Byzantine literature she is called Berenice (Bearer of Victory), which is not a biblical name. The etymology ‘true icon’ is serendipitous. Either way, her cloth is unrelated to the Shroud, the Image of Edessa or the Mandylion.
 
Jesus never actually performed any miracles and His resurrection in the flesh did not occur.

It’s common these days to find religious people who subscribe to that statement. In fact, we have a relatively new religion that purports the above as one of its core values. That religion is the Bahai Faith. Their philosophy that the miracles performed by Jesus were just spiritual allegories stem from some unfortunate statements that were made by the secondary founder of the Faith, Abdul’Baha.
In the 19th century this then very new Faith needed financial support, and the one place that they could get it was from the “rational” European intelligentsia who found Biblical tales of “miracles” hard to believe. So Abdul published “Some Answered Questions” where he “explained” in flowery terms how Jesus was not actually resurrected in His flesh and how he never actually performed miracles.

This ruse worked well enough, and the Baha’i Faith obtained the financial support it needed. Baha’is actually think that Jesus corpse was removed from a temporary tomb to a permanent one somewhere in the Jerusalem area. In this idea they are joined by the respected Christian theologian, James Tabor. The Baha’i Faith, while showing respect to Jesus, regards Him as just another Biblical prophet who is superseded by Mohammed and by their own founder, Mirzah Husayn Ali.

Actual evidence that Jesus’ corpse vanished from His tomb would cut deeply into the core values of the Baha’i Faith. We have had a discussion about Jesus’ resurrection here on CAF with members of the Baha’i Faith. One of these, Servant 19, was particularly skilled at trapping the unwary with leading questions and then “proving” that Jesus resurrection was just a spiritual allegory. The idea that Jesus’ corpse really did disappear into another dimension is very threatening to the Baha’i Faith. I have seen books written by Baha’i authors that go to great lengths to explain how that vanishing did not occur.

While we do not know the faiths of the posters on this thread, I think that we should be aware that some people have a deep-seated aversion to the idea that Jesus actually worked miracles and to the idea that His corpse vanished into another dimension.
 
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I’m happy to announced that I’m a full-blooded card-carrying church-going practising Roman Catholic, and have been so since my baptism aged about a week. Also that no shred of my views on the Shroud has any impact on my faith. I sincerely hope that no posters on this site will have their faith weakened when the Shroud is more conclusively demonstrated to be medieval than it is. That, I’m afraid, would only show that they didn’t really have much in the first place.
 
I have a lot of time for Fr.Spitzer, and respect his spirituality, but his representation of the Science of the Shroud is seriously in error. It would be tedious to list every point, so suffice it to say that not only do I disagree with almost every point he makes, but that I can produce real evidence to support my opinion.
 
Hugh_Farey said:
I’m happy to announced that I’m a full-blooded card-carrying church-going practising Roman Catholic, and have been so since my baptism aged about a week. Also that no shred of my views on the Shroud has any impact on my faith. I sincerely hope that no posters on this site will have their faith weakened when the Shroud is more conclusively demonstrated to be medieval than it is. That, I’m afraid, would only show that they didn’t really have much in the first place.
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Wouldn’t harm my faith in the least if the Shroud is proven fake, but I’d like for it to be Jesus’ burial cloth. It would be a tangible connection to Jesus to be cherished. Even if not Jesus’ it’s a reminder - if one is needed - of the horror Jesus suffered for humanity.
 
Not tedious at all. To say one has evidence and then to withhold it could be a disservice to the conversation. Please do share.
 
Well you did ask.

Here are the first twenty.
  1. The Shroud is not “essentially a perfect three dimensional photographic negative image.”
  2. The Shroud did not change “the entire iconography of Europe after 360 AD.”
  3. The 1978 STuRP team were not convinced that the Shroud was authentic.
  4. The radiocarbon dating did not suggest that the Shroud came from the 15th century.
  5. The radiocarbon sample was not a single strand.
  6. Sue Bedford and Joe Marino did not analyse any sticky tape samples.
  7. No sticky tape tests were done on the Raes sample.
  8. The Shroud is not “triple-thick”
  9. Ray Rogers never suggested that the radiocarbon sample was purposely taken from “a bad part of the Shroud”.
  10. It is incorrect to say that there is no cotton on the main body of the Shroud.
  11. Rogers’s findings have never been validated “again and again and again”.
  12. The radiocarbon corner was not affected by the 1532 fire.
  13. There are no patches from 1534 near the radiocarbon corner.
  14. The radiocarbon sample did not come from a 1534 patch.
  15. The decay of vanillin cannot be used as a dating mechanism. let alone “closely.”
  16. There was no “carbon absorption” during the 1532 fire.
  17. Chemical decay cannot be used as a dating mechanism.
  18. Mechanical decay cannot be used as a dating mechanism.
  19. Max Frei’s pollen identification has been wholly discredited.
  20. The Mandylion was not the Shroud.
 
Could you include your sources for each of your contentions, please?
Thanks so much and may God bless you.
 
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