The Shroud of Turin: What's Your Opinion?

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Hugh_Farey said:
Even if the radiocarbon corner were a patch, it could not have been from the Poor Clare’s restoration after the 1532 fire, as then it would have dated to the middle of the 16th century, not the beginning of the 14th century. Fr Spitzer should know this. Again, I do not know any other serious source from which Fr Spitzer could have derived this error. It may be another example of simple misreading.
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Hello Hugh, thanks for your comment.

As I understand it the mending involved splicing old and new threads together. The testing was presumably on both threads that were wound around each other and so giving an in between date with more of the thread being from the replaced thread origin.

I also understand that Raymond Rogers has said that when he inspected more closely the sample he had, he found cotton inter-wound with the linen and that this cotton was not present on the main body of the shroud, only on what would presumably be a mended section where his sample (and the radio carbon samples) were taken from.
 
It is irrelevant to me whether it dates from the Middle Ages or from the death of Christ. What is relevant is how the image was created. And science cannot explain that, except when the conclusions are so unlikely as to have only possibly been miraculous.
 
Hugh_Farey said:
You’re such a blatant liar, my dear fellow.

These were all examined carefully . . . and all found wanting."
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In Mr. Farey’s world equating “proven to be untrue” with “examined carefully and found wanting” makes one a “blatant liar.”

This is Mr. Farey’s answer to being caught in a contradiction.
 
nooooby said:
We have Hugh . . . stating the scientific evidence is clearly indicating that it is not authentic and therefore that is his position.
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The only scientific evidence that would indicate that the Shroud is not authentic is the 1988 C-14 dating. As I have pointed out, the analysis of the raw C-14 data was presented by the atheist Prof. Hall as indicting a date of 1260 to 1390 with 95% certainty. Another interpretation of that raw data is possible, and Mr. Farey has admitted to this possibility.

A great deal of scientific evidence was gathered by the STRUP team in 1978. After this data had been analyzed, the team held a press conference. Their answer to the question, “Did you find any evidence that would preclude the Shroud from being the burial cloth of Jesus?” the answer was an unqualified, “No!”

In short, the scientific evidence does not indicate that the Shroud was not the burial cloth of Jesus.
 
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abucs said:
As I understand it the mending involved splicing old and new threads together. The testing was presumably on both threads that were wound around each other and so giving an in between date with more of the thread being from the replaced thread origin.
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The story of the ‘patch’ hypothesis is an interesting tale of bold presentation followed by cautious retraction. There are only a few authenticists who still believe in it all.
First, Sue Bedford and Joe Marino drew a line down the middle of the radiocarbon sample (along one of the ‘spines’ of the herringbone weave, and announced that one side was 16th century and the other side was 1st century. They assumed that each tested subsample consisted of a bit of both sides, so that the combination produced the 14th century date. Two things showed that this was wrong - firstly that there was no consideration of how the two different dates of fabric were fitted together, and secondly that the samples were actually cut up is various ways, so that some should have been 1st century, some 16th century, and only the ones containing both ages could have been 14th century. This was not what was observed.

So the ‘patch’ hypothesis was amended to become the ‘invisible mending’ hypothesis, whereby it was proposed that over the entire area of the radiocarbon sample there were a few (about 35%) original threads, and that new threads (65%) had been woven in among them, according to a skilled and almost forgotten technique called “invisible mending”. Textile restoration expert Mechthild Flury-Lemberg said that such restoration, of which she had personal experience, was visible on close observation on one side, and much more easily visible on the back. Joe and Sue found a company called Without a Trace, who, they said, claimed that by using “invisible French weaving” they could produce a mend which was invisible on both sides. Actually they didn’t claim that, and when I paid for them to produce a sample of their invisible mending it conformed precisely to Flury-Lemberg’s observations.

Undeterred, the stout defenders have retreated to the “invisible splicing” hypothesis. In this, broken threads are unravelled by a few millimetres, and new thread, also unravelled by a few millimetres, is twisted among it to extend it as far as necessary, and all the threads so formed rewoven back together to replicate the Shroud weave. Over the area of the radiocarbon and Raes samples, this would involve the individual splicing of about 400 threads, with such skill that not one ‘splice’ was detectable, all within an area of a few square centimetres. I do not believe this is possible, I do not believe it has even been done, and I have challenged those who support this hypothesis to show that the hypothesis is at all credible.
 
Mr. Farey’s analysis in this regard should be respected. He has researched the invisible reweaving hypothesis even to the point of having a sample of this type of repair made and has published an article in that regard.

In 2002 textile expert Mechthild Flury-Lemburg had the opportunity to carefully examine the entire underside of the Shroud and could find no evidence of any repair work, invisible or otherwise. She stated that French invisible reweaving will always be visible on the reverse side.

Some of the photographs of the Shroud’s C-14 samples are of the reverse side and show no abnormalities.

As the part of the C-14 sample tested became closer to the Image on the Shroud, its C-14 date became younger. If foreign material had been introduced, one would expect the opposite effect.
 
abucs said:
I also understand that Raymond Rogers has said that when he inspected more closely the sample he had, he found cotton inter-wound with the linen and that this cotton was not present on the main body of the shroud, only on what would presumably be a mended section where his sample (and the radio carbon samples) were taken from.
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The question of cotton is interesting and not well resolved. Everybody observing the Shroud by sticky tape (the Americans) or by threads (the Italians) have observed cotton fibres all over it. Without examining actual threads, it is impossible to tell if the cotton fibres on a sticky tape are twisted into the threads (and therefore arrived during the spinning process), woven into the cloth (and therefore arrived during the weaving process), or lying on the top (and therefore purely adventitious). As far as I know only three people have attempted to quantify the amount of cotton found in an actual thread, by cutting off a few millimetres, teasing out all the fibres, and counting which are cotton and which are flax. Their results varied from 100% cotton, to 5% cotton, which isn’t very helpful. Ray Rogers did not analyse threads from the main body of the Shroud, only sticky tape samples. If anybody could clearly demonstrate that ‘Shroud’ threads were significantly different from radiocarbon threads in terms of their cotton content, then some serious new avenues of research would certainly open up.
 
I didn’t have the patience to read the three months worth of replies, so my own personal thoughts are thus: God probably wouldn’t want us to have it if it was real, like the Ark of the Covenant (Indiana Jones notwithstanding of course : ) or the wood of the cross. Real, fake, whatever, it never fails to make me appreciate his sorrowful passion. Have mercy on us.
 
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ok thanks again for your thoughts and experience. The topic of the shroud is so multi faceted that discussing the different aspects could go on for some time. As this seems to be a passion of yours are you willing to give your thoughts on a series of questions over the next few days if they are asked in an orderly academic fashion?
 
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abucs said:
As this seems to be a passion of yours are you willing to give your thoughts on a series of questions over the next few days if they are asked in an orderly academic fashion?
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I should be honoured.
 
Beginning context :

As I understand it there are shroud viewpoints from ‘researchers’ from several disciplines which lead people to think the shroud genuine. (If we can define genuine as 1st century shroud of Jesus).

Standing strongly against this is the 1988 radio carbon dating of the shroud at around 700 years old (around A.D. 1300 or so).

So for the researchers above there is a need to explain why the radio carbon dating gave an incorrect finding. One of the theories for this is that the shroud contains contaminants.

One of the further detailed theories for that is that the area tested was mended, and still a further detailed theory for this (which you mentioned above) was that the mending was by French invisible mending.

So sorry for the long original context but if we can start here and perhaps zoom out later.
  1. Are you saying that there is no historical example of this reported French invisable spliced mending (both invisable on the front and back) and that
  2. such suggestions are speculations at best which
  3. have not been created on any cloth with any respectable level of confidence?
 
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The Shroud was proven authentic in 1898 by the discovery that its Image is actually a photographic negative. This authentication was attested to by Pope Pius XI. All subsequent findings must be viewed in this light, especially the 1988 C-14 dating results.
The raw data of these results did not fall anywhere near the year 33 A.D., and, therefore, are not an indication of a date at all, but rather of a process, a miraculous one. That miracle is the movement of Jesus’ corpse into another dimension as attested to in the Gospel of Matthew.

The vanishing corpse left a very slight residual proton and neutron thermal radiation. The protons caused the Image formation and the neutrons caused the C-14 content to become enhanced. That is why the C-14 dates of the part of the sample tested become younger as the section tested becomes closer to the Image.

www.academia.edu

Role of Radiation in Image Formation on the Shroud of Turin

Formation of the image on the Shroud required three things: a discoloration mechanism, energy, and information. There must have been some process or mechanism that caused discoloration on the top portions of the fibers that make up the image on the
www.academia.edu

The 1988 C-14 dating results do not “stand strongly against” the fact that the Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus. A proper interpretation of these results proves that the Image is miraculous, a fact that was not evident from Pia’s 1898 photo negative.
 
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abucs said:
  1. Are you saying that there is no historical example of this reported French invisable spliced mending (both invisable on the front and back) and that
  2. such suggestions are speculations at best which
  3. have not been created on any cloth with any respectable level of confidence?
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Yes. Exactly that. It would be worth your looking at Mechthild Flury-Lemberg’s article at https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n65part5.pdf and at my article at https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n82part4.pdf, which shows an example of “invisible weaving” carried out by the Invisible Mending Company of London.

Of course, I have been challenged to prove that there are no examples of invisible weaving, but such a challenge is unfair. Proving such a negative is notoriously impossible. I feel the onus is on those who propose such a thing to demonstrate it, not on me to demonstrate it’s non-existence!
 
Thank you. Statements of belief are fine, but must not be confused with statements of fact. Arguments based on statements of belief are only convincing to those who accept the statements, which in my case I don’t.

So, this is a perfectly logical argument:
  1. The Shroud was proved authentic in 1898.
  2. The radiocarbon date is 14th century.
  3. Therefore the radiocarbon date is wrong.
However, as I do not accept premise (1), I also cannot accept conclusion (3).

Similarly, if “The vanishing corpse left a very slight residual proton and neutron thermal radiation”, then various possible effects could have ensued. However I do not think that there is any evidence that vanishing corpses do any such thing.
 
I didn’t say that the C-14 data was wrong. What I said was that the 1988 C-14 dating results are indicative of an event, and that to interpret these results as indicating a date is a mistake (as was made by the atheist Prof. Hall.) Of course Prof. Hall did not understand that the 1898 photo negative proved that the Shroud was authentic.

Science does not have much experience in analyzing what radiation might be left by a corpse as it vanishes. For a number of reasons, some of us believe that the corpse of Jesus did vanish. Since we also know that the Shroud contained His corpse as it vanished, we postulate that this disappearance had something to do with the Image formation. It’s really not that much of a stretch except, perhaps, for those who have indicated that they believe that Jesus “just woke up.” However, none of the Gospels tell of Jesus walking out of His tomb at all, much less still wrapped in the burial cloth, as was Lazarus.
 
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ok thanks. So do you also say for there to be a change in favour of a positive view on the credibility of the invisible mending theory either
  1. someone would have to demonstrate that the quantity of cotton in the THREADS of the c-14 tested section were significantly different from that of the bulk of the shroud (as you mentioned above).
  2. someone would have to produce a historical case of invisible mending in accordance with the theory or at least
  3. create an example today in accordance with the theory.
Would you say all of these are the responsibility of the theory proponents to produce and none of these have as yet been produced in a satisfactory transparent and verifiable manner.

and if correct do you have anything else to add or should we just leave that part of the discussion there waiting for the proponents to change the view, if possible?
 
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ok thanks. Tomorrow maybe we can talk about contamination in general and the quad-mosaic results and what this might (or might not) mean for the c-14 testing.
 
My understanding of the Carbon-14 testing protocols are that to get the best results and to avoid any (potential) contamination :
  1. test specimens should be taken from different areas
  2. test specimens should be representative of the object as a whole
  3. test results should obey a mathematical statistically determined spread
Do you agree and do you think there are any (potential) problems regarding the testing of the shroud in conforming (or not conforming) with these protocols?
 
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