The Shroud of Turin: What's Your Opinion?

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The image lays on the very top part of the cloth fibres. Nobody in ancient times could do that.

The dating done was in error as it was taken from a medieval ‘repair’.
Actually painting image on top of fibres isn’t that difficult, it can be done with a very thick paint dabbed onto cloth.

And I’m reposting this answer, to another person who advanced the ‘repair’ hypothesis. I understand why you do it, but at this point it has largely been discredited.

"Furthermore following the restoration in 2002, the ‘invisible repair’ hypothesis, was shown to be very unlikely. ‘Invisible repairs’ (which aren’t actually invisible), are very obvious when looking at it from behind, but after the backing of the Shroud was removed no signs of stitches of any kind could be found.

As for the pollen only one of the researchers advanced this claim, but no one has been able to verify the species identification, and its been largely descredited. http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n79part8.pdf "
 
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Firstly, the ‘image’ is not of any known ‘paint’ known to man. If it were, it would have seeped through the fibres deeper than what is shown. The scientific evidence shows the image to have only penetrated the very top most layer of the fibres.

Nobody has ever been able to produce the ‘image’ 100%, EVER!

The date sampling was taken from ‘repaired’ area of the shroud. FACT.

In ancient times, as of today, the only thing that could produce that image was / is a MIRACLE.

Jesus, i believe, left His image for us. There is no other human explanation!
 
Lost4words said:
Jesus, i believe, left His image for us. There is no other human explanation!
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It’s fine if you believe that. Just as long as you don’t claim that Catholics are required to believe it, or that anyone who does not believe it is not a Catholic.

My examination of the evidence has led me to conclude that it is a pious fabrication from the later middle ages. There’s nothing “miraculous” about it.
 
Some interesting ideas; thank you, although most are either misleading, perhaps unintentionally, some are statements of facts with which I am not familiar and will need to check, and some are commitments to a belief which it would be unChristian to challenge.

Very few attempts to replicate the Shroud have ever been attempted. This should not be confused with attempts to copy the Shroud, which of course have abounded since the 16th century. However the two should not be conflated. Replicating the Shroud has been an entirely 20th and 21st century occupation, as before there was any idea about the physics and chemistry of the cloth and its image, any attempt to duplicate it would be a matter of guesswork. Critics of replication rarely comment on whether an attempt actually looks like the Shroud, but concentrate on whether the image lies exclusively on the top surface, what pigment or discolouration technique has been used, and so on.

Those who think that the Shroud existed before the 14th century, and that ‘replications’ were made, apparently ‘very well done’, will be aware that there are no ‘negative’ images of Christ at all to be found before the 14th century, so it is difficult to claim that any image of Christ on a cloth or banner is a replication of the Shroud, in my opinion.

I am not familiar with the ‘fact’ that the Church ordered a copy of the Shroud to be destroyed. I should be grateful for a source of this information. A primary source would be best, but a secondary source will do as long as it has a mention of where its information came from. Otherwise I’m afraid I think it is a misunderstanding of something else.

I may indeed by wasting my time in a vain endeavour to replicate the Shroud because it is miraculous, however it is my time and nobody else’s, and I do not find, and have not found, the investigation to be worthless.

Anybody with a fibre-tipped pen, a biro or a brush of dry powder, can very easily make a sketch on the topmost fibres of a cloth. Anybody with a soldering iron can, slightly less easily, discolour only the topmost fibres of a cloth. Medieval equivalents were readily available. One of the reasons for the Shroud being particularly easy for this operation is that the three/one twill weave results in three-quarters of each surface being of the same direction of thread (warp or weft), so that even if a paint soaks every thread with which it comes in contact, even so only one-quarter of those threads is exposed on the other side of the cloth.

Lost4words’s faith is fine, and faith needs no evidence. Unfortunately, statements of faith are often accompanied with alleged ‘evidence’ which is usually slightly naive. If Lost4words thinks that not being replicated is evidence of a miracle, then I suggest he looks at the Stonehenge, the Great Pyamid of Khufu, and the Taj Mahal. Miracles indeed.
 
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AndrewAxland said:
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Lost4words:
Jesus, i believe, left His image for us. There is no other human explanation!
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It’s fine if you believe that. Just as long as you don’t claim that Catholics are required to believe it, or that anyone who does not believe it is not a Catholic.
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“i have an opinion” might be better than saying “I believe” , because the Shroud will never be a question of doctrine or dogma .

Elsewhere on this thread I said something to the effect that it is an open question , and always will be for Catholics . I would never say that Catholics have to believe in the authenticity of the Shroud or that if a Catholic does not believe he is in error .

It is my opinion from what i know of the Shroud , and my knowledge is very little compared to Sindonologists whose work of a liftime is devoted to study of the Shroud , that the Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus . I am about 99% certain .

Tomorrow someone may come up with evidence that shows irrefutably that the Shroud is a fake . Then I would have to change my opinion . I would be very disappointed , but that’s life .
 
“Firstly, the ‘image’ is not of any known ‘paint’ known to man.”

Walter McCrone found trace amounts of iron oxide and vermillion on the shroud. Its likely the image originally was painted with something like this. The actual image on the shroud however isn’t caused by paint, or blood, but rather a discoloration of the fibres, which has darkened by what appears to be dehydration and contact with something acidic.

“Nobody has ever been able to produce the ‘image’ 100%, EVER!”

In order to demonstrate the plausibility of it being either a forger or an icon, one wouldn’t need to replicate it ‘100%’, it would be sufficient to demonstrate that the most salient features such as ‘negative image’ (which I take to mean that the details are more readily apperent in a negative image than otherwise) and ‘3d information’, using techniques available in the 14th Century.

Such replications have been done, with those features. They’re not identical, but they have the same features, which shows that those features aren’t strong evidence. They can be reproduced by human beings using normal methods.


Here is an example of a replica made by the art professor Luigi Garlaschelli, like the Shroud of Turin, it has basically all the features you’d care for in terms of photo negativity and 3d-information, and looks very similar.

That being said I don’t think the techniques he used were identical, but I think that’s on the right track to finding out how the Shroud of Turin was produced.
 
“The date sampling was taken from ‘repaired’ area of the shroud. FACT.”

Not it isn’t. That was originally advanced as a possibility. And one chemist by the name of Raymond Rogers argued that there some differences between the corner of the Shroud where the sample was taken from, and the rest. However the problem is, if it was an ‘invisible repair’, then they would have seen it in 2002 during the restoration.

In fact at least one expert explicitly looked for just that and found nothing, which you would have learned if you followed the link I gave you. No backing stitches.

Like it or not, the sample was taken from a piece of cloth, similar to the rest of the Shroud.
 
The Shroid cannot be replicated by man. People have tried but they are far inferior.
 
I’m sure there will always be differences. If someone is asked to replicate the Mona Lisa, then even if a huge similarity is achieved, there will always be minute differences.

The question is are there qualitative differences?

Shroud enthusiasts often argue that specific features “proves” that it is a genuine relic. The two features I have in mind are the fact that details are more apparent in negative than otherwise, and that the image intensity forms a rough height map.

Both of these have been replicated in some of the attempted replications using means only available in the 14th Century. In fact I showed you just such one.

Hunting for anomalies aren’t that interesting to me, the question is if any reasonably skilled artist, armed with a such tools can make something with those features, then why are those features again and again advanced as a serious argument for the Shroud being genuine?
 
Nothing else like the negative Image on the Shroud is found in art history from the 14th century onward. STURP found no evidence of pigment or of silver nitrate on the Shroud’s Image. What pigment there is on the Shroud is evenly distributed and bears no relation to the Image itself. The blood marks have been proven to consist of human blood. McCrone’s studies were all self-published and have been discredited. McCrone refused to attend any STURP conferences to defend his erroneous conclusions. STURP also determined that the Image is not composed of a burn or heat degradation of the linen fibers.

If the so-called “replications” of the Image were to be examined with the same techniques and equipment that STURP used, they would be immediately found out for what they are: the product of a human hand.
 
“STURP found no evidence of pigment or of silver nitrate on the Shroud’s Image.”

Trace amounts of vermillion and iron oxides were found by Walter McCrone. Silver nitrate is used for photography, and the image on the shroud is not a photograph. I expect that it was formed by an artist painting the image onto the linen.

The paint was later washed off for some reason, leaving behind a trace. The image itself is not formed of paint, which has been stated here multiple times.

I do not claim the image is formed of paint.

The image is formed of a darkening of the fibres at the surface, with damage that is consistent with dehydration and an acidic medium. Which paint would be.

The fumes coming from a corpse couldn’t do it. And I severely doubt that proton radiation could do it either.

“The blood marks have been proven to consist of human blood.”

This is definitely not the case. As far as I know those stains definitely consist of blood - even though some chance of ambiguity still exists, it does not appear unlikely to be the case - however to demonstrate that its human blood, there’s a number of techniques to be used and they’re all highly ambiguous when dealing with low quantities. For instance assaying for human immune proteins is very difficult.

I think you’re overstating the confidence in that result a lot, which is again something I see shroud enthusiasts do a lot.

We don’t even know if the blood is of type A or B.

Blood on the Shroud of Turin: An Immunological Review

“If the so-called “replications” of the Image were to be examined with the same techniques and equipment that STURP used, they would be immediately found out for what they are: the product of a human hand.”

Actually the techniques and equipment used by the STURP are irrelevant. Of course its an artifact. It would be made on fresh linen, and wouldn’t bear the hallmarks of ancient linen. Because that’s largely what’s on the Shroud, the marks of history. The image itself is the interesting aspect, the history of the linen less so.

And if the result of an image that appears more detailed to the human eye in negative, and has “3d information” (which I’ve always found to be a problematic statement), can be produced by human hand. Then those two aspects can’t be advanced as “proofs” of the Shroud being a genuine relic.

Proof, of course, has no place in science. The evidence needs to be critically evaluated.
 
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Rob - There is also a more fulsome YouTube presentation by another STURP member, called - ‘The Shroud of Turin - a scientific view’
 
There are genuine relics of the original Shroud that exist to this day and would account for some of the missing pieces that were cut off and account for any reweaving prior to 1532. I have some additional information regarding the Shroud and how pieces of the Shroud that had been cut prior to the fire of 1532. On 20 February,1508,Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy, then owner of the Shroud, drew up her will, giving to the church of Brou, among other relics, a snippet of the Shroud. She died in 1530.There were probably further snippets or cuts from that original cutting ( as relics, such as the True Cross) have often been divided and subdivided over the centuries) as there are relics of the Shroud encased in reliquaries. The House of Savoy, whom she belonged also had a close association with the House of Grimaldi, and the lines were sometimes intermarried. The House of Grimaldi produced several Archbishops and Cardinals, one of whom inherited a snippet of the Shroud which had been passed through the centuries from Margaret. One such relic is housed in a reliquary of the Archbishop. The snippet has the herringbone weave as well. The provenance is evident and excellent at least to me. I know that this is not proof of the authenticity of the Shroud, just an interesting snippet of of it’s history, so to speak…
 
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undead_rat said:
Nothing else like the negative Image on the Shroud is found in art history from the 14th century onward.
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Nor from the 14th century backward if it comes to that. Makes you wonder how anyone could say “many, many replications have been made”, doesn’t it?
STURP found no evidence of pigment or of silver nitrate on the Shroud’s Image. What pigment there is on the Shroud is evenly distributed and bears no relation to the Image itself.
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So they did find pigment. What do you make of Morris and London’s X-ray fluorescence paper, showing a clear relationship between image intensity and iron oxide concentration?
The blood marks have been proven to consist of human blood.
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I think that may be true; yes.
McCrone’s studies were all self-published and have been discredited.
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It is a misfortune that to publish papers in a journal one has founded or is the editor of leads inevitably to accusations of lack of rigor. One thinks immediately of Ray Rogers’s curiously poorly referenced paper in the journal he founded, Thermochimica Acta. Fortunately such is the authority of these two giants of their fields that neither of their papers on the Shroud have been at all discredited.
McCrone refused to attend any STURP conferences to defend his erroneous conclusions.
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McCrone’s findings were publicly decried before anybody except he had even seen the sticky tape slides. It was clear that he was unlikely to get a fair hearing from his fellow investigators.
STURP also determined that the Image is not composed of a burn or heat degradation of the linen fibers.
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Not quite. Like them, I have found that an infra-red ‘scorch’ invariably leaves a fluorescent border around the scorch as soon as it is hot enough to leave a mark, but other forms of electromagnetic radiation may be able to produce scorches without a fluorescent border. I don’t know whether this has been experimented with.
If the so-called “replications” of the Image were to be examined with the same techniques and equipment that STURP used, they would be immediately found out for what they are: the product of a human hand.
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So far, I quite agree.
 
Science cannot replicate the image on the shroud. The only people who know how the image was produced are those that believe it is indeed Jesus Christ. I am one.

I have seen a few programs on the shroud. Nobody can replicate it. Science is dumbfounded.
 
MountCarmel said:
Rob - There is also a more fulsome YouTube presentation by another STURP member, called - ‘The Shroud of Turin - a scientific view’
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This video is a lecture by Paul Bromley, who was not a member of STuRP.
 
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