The Shroud of Turin: What's Your Opinion?

[buffalo]

They did not see the image.

 

[undead_rat]

However, it seems to me significant that even after it was exposed, whenever that may have been, no depiction of the shroud of Jesus, in any painting or carving of the deposition, lamentation, anointing, burial, resurrection or visit of the women to the tomb, shows an image on it. The image on the Shroud, far from figuring prominently anywhere. is wholly insignificant to Christian Art, theology or devotion. Isn’t that strange?

In ancient times a bloody burial cloth was seen as an unclean, spiritually polluting object. Even just to look at such a thing would have been thought to cause the viewer harm. (Ref. Jesus mentioning the horror of stepping on an unmarked grave.) Therefore only the facial portion of the Shroud was ever shown to the public. If anyone actually knew that it was a burial shroud, they kept quiet about that fact. The Image of Edessa was repeatedly described by the two Greek words meaning “not made by hands” and “doubled in four.” In the sixth century it was finally retrieved from its sanctuary in the West Gate, and soon after monks carried reproductions of the Holy Face throughout the Christian world. It was a this time that the face of our Lord took on the appearance that we know so well today. The most famous example is the sixth century fresco of Christ in St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. Note that St. Augustine, writing before the Image became known, remarked that no one had any idea what Jesus actually looked like. But after the sixth century His image became standardized and is reproduced on ancient coins and murals too numerous to mention.

As you know the Image was extracted from Edessa in 944 and taken to Constantinople where it was safe from the Islamic iconoclasm that destroyed almost all of its Edessian representations. Mark Guscin has uncovered only a few after extensive investigation. The Byzantines made hundreds of icons of the Holy face and these are still being made today. So it is not fair to say that no representations of the Shroud were made in ancient times. It is just that these images show only the Holy Face and not the whole burial cloth.

As a corollary we should mention the Veronica that is kept in the Vatican. Its legend dates only from the eleventh century and stems from an icon of the Mandylion (Image of Edessa) being brought to Rome. In iconography a true icon would be one where the painter could actually view the subject of the icon and then touch the finished icon to that subject. Of course for icons of ancient biblical scenes it was impossible to produce a “true” icon, but not so for the Mandylion. The Greek word for true is “vera” and for icon is “iconica.” A true icon of the Mandylion would have been termed a “vera iconica.”

In station six of the Stations of the Cross the Catholic Church has had a representation of the Shroud’s Holy Face for centuries. And despite the fact that “Veronica” is not a Jewish name, there is still a great truth being represented by this station.

 

[Muzhik]

A quote from REPORT ON THE SHROUD OF TURIN:*

(At the public report of the STuRP team in New London, Conn. in the fall of 1981)

"At that point one of the real people asked, ‘Have you found anything that would preclude the Shrouds’s being the authentic?’

"‘No.’

"And that question is not a trivial one. Nothing in all the findings of the Shroud crowd in three years contained a single datum that contravened the Gospel accounts.

YES!!!

I skimmed to the end of this discussion to make this very point. I own a copy of “REPORT ON THE SHROUD OF TURIN”, and it’s one of my most valued books. When I was in Library school I used it as an example in a Classification class to show the “merging” (if that’s the correct term) of science and theology and the difficulties in classification of such works.

I really, REALLY, wish it would be reprinted, perhaps with an update by one of the original STURP members. I’m glad you pointed out (in another post) that STURP members were locked out of the C14 tests. If they hadn’t been, they might have been able to force the C14 teams to choose a different location for its tests. In the book, there is an infrared photo showing what the Shroud looks like in that wavelength. The Shroud is remarkably uniform in color (excluding certain features such as wounds.)

EXCEPT… there is a band of fabric showing as blue on one short edge of the fabric, it is canted left to right (shorter on the left, longer on the right), and there is no explanation offered in the photo caption, although the text consistently reports how changes in color under certain wavelengths bring to light differences in the cloth as well as the image. (For example, under a different wavelength one researcher found the image around the feet was the only part that fluoresced under that wavelength. When he looked at the image under a microscope, he found tiny grains of dirt embedded in the fabric, just what you’d expect from someone who had spent his life walking barefoot.)

So you have a large piece of fabric that is uniform except for one small portion which is clearly different. Three guesses on where they took the sample for C14 testing, and the first two don’t count.

 

[undead_rat]

I don’t know how the pyramids were made, either, but I’m probably; not going therefore to assume that Jesus built them.

Why, then, does it really matter?

If the USA put the same percentage of GNP into the pyramids as the Egyptians did in building them, the USA could not only build them, but also put them into earth orbit! But all the money and science in the world cannot reproduce the sacred Image that we have found on the Shroud.

In this age of science and reason we find more and more books and essays trying to say that Jesus never existed, or that, if He did live, He never worked any miracles, or that Christianity was a Roman invention or a plagiarization of pagan theology, or that God doesn’t even exist at all.

The Holy and miraculous Image proves that Jesus existed and that He worked miracles, including the miracle of His resurrection.

 

[Muzhik]

As for Heller, clearly, if an artist wanted to paint a picture consistent with the biblical description of the passion of Christ, he could. Many did.

No, they didn’t. The Bible says Jesus was nailed in his hands. After Emperor Constantine outlawed crucifixion as a means of execution, the details of crucifixion would have been lost to memory within a generation or two. Note that crucifixion was so common that the Gospel writers didn’t see a need to detail the process, they simply said that Jesus was crucified. So any depiction after, say 500, would show Jesus nailed through the palms of His hands, rather than the wrists. (Per Heller, Greek at the time Scripture was written didn’t have a word for “wrist”. The wrist was considered part of the hand.) Also, western artists would have considered the Crown of Thorns to be like a western crown, a ring or circle. Instead (again, per Heller), in the East the crown would have been a cap covering the entire head. If the Shroud had been rendered by a western artist that artist would not have known to allow for thorn punctures across the entire scalp.

The fact that the Shroud does the same is not evidence of authenticity. Furthermore, some of his “anatomically correct” details clearly aren’t (the blood on the arms for instance, or the hair), some of his details are disputed even by his fellow authenticists (the dribbles across the back, for instance), and some of the details allegedly conforming to Roman crucifixion practices (such as the scourge marks) are not based on any historical or archaeological evidence.

Again, incorrect. I would recommend that you get a copy of Heller’s book and read it before you make such comments again.

One thing unusual about the Shroud image is that it DOES show the victim to have been scourged. People being crucified were not scourged or otherwise cut or “damaged” if at all possible. The goal was to get the victim to last as long as possible so that as many people can see the fruits of Roman Justice and the results of resisting Roman rule. (Recall Pilate’s surprise that Jesus died so shortly after being crucified.) Pilate had ordered Jesus to be scourged as a way to KEEP Him from being crucified. Once the people saw that Jesus had been scourged, they would be satisfied and the crowd would disperse. This didn’t happen, so Pilate was forced to have Jesus crucified to keep a riot from breaking out.

 

[Muzhik]

I feel like if the shroud actually in Jesus’ tomb had an image of his lifeless body miraculously burned into it, that those there would have noticed, and that it would have figured prominently in the New Testament. In fact, the image is so mysterious that it seems to me it would have been mentioned in the Roman annals as well.

Problem is, there is nothing in there to indicate that an image of Jesus’ body was “miraculously burned into it”. Anyone who has seen the Shroud in person will testify that if you look at it from a distance, the image is so faint as to be invisible; if you look at it too closely the image is lost in the “noise” of the herringbone weave. It was not until photography was invented that the “Shroud as photographic negative” came to be known. To the apostles, who would have gathered it up once they reached the empty tomb (to keep either the Romans or the Jewish leadership from destroying it), As evidence of His Resurrection, they would have kept quiet to keep the evidence and the growing Christian community safe.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

Fair try, but again try not to rely on secondary sources. The nail wound in the hand is not in the palm because the Shroud only shows the back of the hand. Both Fred Zugibe and Giulio Fanti have demonstrated that a nail through the palm could emerge at precisely the spot shown on the Shroud, and, since I think the blood was painted or dripped on anyway the exact spot seems immaterial. If you try some measurements between the ‘hole’ (although there are two or three possibilities) and the knuckles of the Shroud, and then relate them to measurements of your own knuckles, you will find that at least one of the possible holes is between the metacarpals, not among the wrist bones.

Another interesting idea is that “in the East the crown would have been a cap covering the entire head”. This is a common idea among authenticists, but results from blindly assuming that whoever guessed it first must be correct. No contemporary king for hundreds of miles is shown wearing any kind of ‘cap’ on coins or carvings. They all wear a circlet of one kind or another. The word used for’ crown’ in the gospels specifically does not mean a helmet or cap, but a wreath or circlet.

I have a copy of Heller’s book before me as I write. Your guess about Roman scourging is not corroborated by historical evidence, although scourging is recorded as having been a preliminary to execution, not just a substitute. People are recorded as having died from the scourging alone, so Pilate’s surprise at Jesus’s early death suggests that the scourging was not as severe as he supposed. Some theologians have surmised that Jesus chose the time he decided to yield up his spirit, independent of his wounds.

 

[benjamin1973]

Here are the things that any reasonable person would need to agree with you:

1. Proof that the shroud was actually from Jesus, and not from another person.
2. Proof that the shroud was created miraculously, not by some other process.

If you are so eager to believe in the Lord that you will ascribe His participation to objects not known to be associated with him, then you are missing the point: faith isn’t in believing in artifacts. It’s in accepting that we’re all part of a bigger whole, and that our actions matter.

The point of miracles isn’t to convince us of God. Jesus specifically spoke against this view.

 

[benjamin1973]

When Christians were being crucified or thrown to the lions due to their adherence to their faith, I don’t think their protection was really the #1 thing.

 

[undead_rat]

Here are the things that any reasonable person would need to agree with you:

1. Proof that the shroud was actually from Jesus, and not from another person.
2. Proof that the shroud was created miraculously, not by some other process.

These are legitimate questions, and we will answer them starting from number two. The 1978 STuRP investigation carried in about 8000 lbs of testing equipment. This was not a four ton computer as some have suggested. The team spent five 24 hour days gathering data and nothing else. The analysis of the data came later and took nine months to complete. Here is what Dr. Heller wrote:*

"Then, of course, there came the other question that we had been wrestling with for nine months: ‘How did the images get on the cloth?’
"We answered by discussing all the possibilities we had been able to conjure up. And then we explained that we had had to reject all of them, one by one.
“'Where,” we were asked, ‘does that leave you?’
"‘We just do not know!’
"And that is the nub of it. No member of the team had worked in a vacuum. When confronted with a problem, he would discuss it with other colleagues at his own or other institutions. Each of the forty STURP members must have consulted at least ten other investigators who were not part of the Shroud team. Thus, at least four hundred scientists had added their (name removed by moderator)ut. In addition, all of us had given [Shroud] lectures before meetings of Sigma Xi, the scientific society to which most research scientists belong, at chapter meetings of the American Chemical Society, at universities across the country and their alumni groups, such as MIT’s, at meetings of other scientific societies—from physical engineering to the medical sciences. From all of these we had received contributions and suggestions. But on the subject of how the body images got on the Shroud, every suggestion had been invalidated by the data.
“The Shroud remains, as it has over the centuries, a mystery.”

*REPORT ON THE SHROUD OF TURIN, Heller, 1983

A dramatic unusual occurrence (such as a person walking on water) that cannot be explained by an intensive scientific investigation meets the definition of a miracle.

 

[undead_rat]

Here are the things that any reasonable person would need to agree with you:

1. Proof that the shroud was actually from Jesus, and not from another person.
2. Proof that the shroud was created miraculously, not by some other process.

STuRP specifically declined to name Jesus as the person depicted on the Shroud, saying that they had no scientific test that would indicate the identity of that person. Years after that pronouncement another team obtained C-14 dates of 1195 to 1448 (or 1260 to 1390 if you want to go by the British Museum’s statistical data analysis.) Since the miraculous Image on the Shroud represents a crucified human being, we must first look to the C-14 time period to see if we can find such a person. We would think that he would be a person of great religious importance. YHWH doesn’t go to the trouble of working miracles like this on just anybody.

Religious persons were put to death for all sorts of reasons during the C-14 time period, but no one stands out as a possible crucifixion victim. Because of the miraculous nature of the Image, because of the linear 250 year variance in the dates, and because no one seems available as a victim in that time period, we must consider the possibility that the C-14 dates may indicate something other than a date for the Shroud.

Looking back through history, we must ask if there is any tradition of a miraculous image on a cloth of a human being. The answer to that question is a resounding “Yes!” Let us first consider the Veronica which we find unsatisfactory since it is still held in the Vatican and since its existence only goes back to about 1100 AD. But then we find something much better: the Holy Mandylion held by the Orthodox Church. This object vanished during the French 4th Crusade’s invasion of Constantinople. Was it destroyed? Not likely as the French commanders had been inside the city, seen the Mandylion, and seen where it was kept. While the Venetians were after money, the French sought holy relics, and none was holier than the Mandylion. The Crusade commanders had ordered that the Byzantine church complex that held the Mandylion be off limits to any looting or wanton destruction…

According to Frale,* it was the Knights Templar who eventually ended up in possession of the Mandylion. As we all know, the Templar Order was disbanded by the King of France on October 13th, 1307. Just fifty years later the Shroud appeared in a little church in Lirey, France, in the possession of a descendant of the Templar Grand Master. So, for lack of an appropriate crucifixion victim in the C-14 time period, we must conclude that the Shroud and the Mandylion are one and the same. There really is no other viable solution to solve the mystery of who the miraculous Image on the linen cloth represents.

*THE TEMPLARS AND THE SHROUD OF CHRIST, Frale, 2011

 

[Hugh_Farey]

“The Shroud remains, as it has over the centuries, a mystery.”

Well I wouldn’t disagree with you there.

A dramatic unusual occurrence (such as a person walking on water) that cannot be explained by an intensive scientific investigation meets the definition of a miracle.

No, it doesn’t, and it is be wrong to exaggerate the comprehensiveness of the STuRP investigations. Those few scientists who published papers all said that their investigations were merely preliminary, and that much more investigation needed to be carried out. Not one of them said that the image could not be explained by science, only that their own investigations had not explained it, which is quite a different thing.

Since the miraculous Image on the Shroud represents a crucified human being, we must first look to the C-14 time period to see if we can find such a person.

No we don’t. The Shroud is not a fourteenth century miracle. It represents Jesus. It was made to represent Jesus. Representations of Jesus were common in the fourteenth century.

The identification of the Mandylion, with the burial cloths of Christ and the Shroud of Turin has been extensively investigated by several people, even a few Art Historians. As there are consistent contemporary accounts that the ‘sindon’ and the ‘Mandylion’ were both in Constantinople at the same time, and specifically referred to as different objects, most have concluded that they cannot be the same thing. Barbara Frale’s investigations are speculative at best, and contradicted by several other authenticist sindonologists.

 

[MonteRCMS]

Could not find photos of the current crucifixions.

The pictures were published for a while but disappeared.

 

[Dorothy]

Thank you for sharing that information. I remember reading about that with regard to the Shroud of Turin.

 

[benjamin1973]

A dramatic unusual occurrence (such as a person walking on water) that cannot be explained by an intensive scientific investigation meets the definition of a miracle.

Some markings on cloth aren’t a “dramatic unusual occurrence.” Also, you’ve missed an important part of the definition of miracle: that it must be supernatural in origin.

For example, scientists have studied the pyramids quite extensively, but still do not know how they were built. The pyramids aren’t considered miraculous, because while we don’t know HOW they were made, we have no particular reason to believe that they weren’t created by mechanical methods within the means of human beings.

Scientists have not concluded that the markings could not have been created by people-- only that they were unable to determine the method.

 

[benjamin1973]

That’s a long string of indirect and obscure connections based on wishful thinking and imagination.

This is not a good foundation for taking the shroud of Turin as an article of faith in the Lord.

 

[undead_rat]

God didn’t want to make things too easy. He wanted to see who would believe in the absence of proof.

That’s a good point. And that is why our Creator has presented His Son’s miraculous image in the way that He has. It’s a wonderful thing to see. First, YHWH arranges to have this holy cloth sunddenly appear not in some great cathedral, but in a humble little church in Lirey, France in 1357. The owners were afraid to say how they had aquired the sacred linen or what its recent history was. Then the local bishop condemns it and says that he has “spoken” to the painter.
Finally, to top all of that off, a carbon fourteen dating of a Shroud sample produces a reported range of 1260 to 1390. Under these dubious circumstances, how can this cloth be the authentic burial Shroud of Jesus?
Well, it can be and it absolutely is.

And this ought to be a sign to us that our Creator is willing to trick those who oppose Him, and we might ask ourselves if there is any other way that mankind might be getting tricked. Jesus said that He would return like a thief in the night. We really do have to pray and stay awake or we will not see Him coming.

 

[undead_rat]

That’s a long string of indirect and obscure connections based on wishful thinking and imagination.

The conclusions of the STURP team were not based on “wishful thinking,” but on rigorous scientific data and analysis. If the Image on the Shroud had been the work of a human being, STURP would have found that out. Skeptics have had 40 years to try to solve the riddle of how the image came to be on the cloth and have failed. I answered your second question, sir. The Image on the Shroud has been proven to be miraculous.
Having reached that conclusion, I then answered your first question regarding the identity of the corpse which produced the Image.

 

[undead_rat]

Some markings on cloth aren’t a “dramatic unusual occurrence.” Also, you’ve missed an important part of the definition of miracle: that it must be supernatural in origin.

Well, if you wan’t to dismiss our Lord’s Holy Image on his burial linen as “some markings on a cloth,” that’s your priviledge. But I have to say that I truly feel sorry for you.

 

[Hugh_Farey]

Well, fair enough. I think undead_rat is alone in thinking that the Shroud has been proved a miracle. None of the STuRP conclusions say so, and many of the STuRP scientists were certain it isn’t. Of course “a miracle” could explain the Shroud, just as it can explain anything at all we don’t fully understand.

The evidence upon which undead_rat’s ‘proof’ stands is based almost entirely on incredulity, which is shaky reasoning by anyone’s thinking, which is probably why so few people agree with him.

Well, if you wan’t to dismiss our Lord’s Holy Image on his burial linen as “some markings on a cloth,” that’s your priviledge. But I have to say that I truly feel sorry for you.

Perhaps the tone was a little over-dismissive, but as miracles go, the Shroud image is less than impressive. The other alleged acheiopoeta were much clearer and brighter, and probably one of the reasons why, for example, there are hundreds of paintings of Veronica receiving her miracle, but none at all of the Shroud receiving its own. It just didn’t capture popular imagination.