WHAT?!? The Shroud of Turin is not the actual cloth then?!?

[BibleReader]

Sherlock:

BibleReader, I’m afraid your theory (or rather, the theory of the researchers) doesn’t account for the presence of pollen from the Middle East or the presence of blood. Also, it seems quite an extravagant and complicated bit of deception: it seems unlikely that someone would go through all of the steps you mention (which would have taken quite a bit of experimentation to figure out), without it being known or mentioned in history, possibly in connection with other fakes (I would think that the producer could have done a brisk business in the saints line—“git yer gen-yoo-wine burial cloth of St. Augustine right here!! And, for a few florins more, I’ll throw in a piece of the burial cloth of St. Peter as well. Step right on up…”). I would think that there would be a lot of these fakes around.

Hi, Sherlock.

**BibleReader, I’m afraid your theory (or rather, the theory of the researchers) doesn’t account for the presence of pollen from the Middle East or the presence of blood. ** It’s a good, really expensive fake: They used good materials: Homespun linen, of which the Middle East was still a major producer, so that in their zeal to generate a wonderful fake, they accidentally imported the right pollens, too. And, they used real human blood, to copy the bloodstains on the real Shroud they were copying, to steal.

**Also, it seems quite an extravagant and complicated bit of deception: it seems unlikely that someone would go through all of the steps you mention (which would have taken quite a bit of experimentation to figure out), without it being known or mentioned in history, possibly in connection with other fakes (I would think that the producer could have done a brisk business in the saints line—"git yer gen-yoo-wine burial cloth of St. Augustine right here!! **There are many shroud fakes. It is regarded as the most valuable religious relic in history. If the main Shroud historian, Ian Wilson, is correct, the Byzantine Empire even sent a large army to surround the Kingdom of Edessa to steal the Shroud from the Kingdom of Edessa – who enlisted forgers to forge at least 3 fake shrouds to trick the Byzantine army into leaving. That would be like America spending a billion or so today to pay for an army to recover the Shroud. Byzantium built an entire Church to house the Shroud.

Note that the one fake which would have nothing written about it would be the only successful fake.

My suspicion is that one of the extremely wealthy European families has the real Shroud in hiding, if it still exists.

** I would think that there would be a lot of these fakes around.** I think a remember reading about 2 dozen.

 

[Mycroft]

there is an article on this site that offers some pretty good information saying the shroud is fake. i would be surprised if the shroud had actually stuck around for 2000 years anyways. and in the long run, it really doesnt matter either way. if it is real its still not something to worship or anything. there is a lot more important things going on that people should focus on.

and hey Sherlock, in the sherlock holmes stories Mycroft is sherlocks brother and hes smarter than him. just thought id let you know.

 

[BibleReader]

Hi, Kurt.

Re 2(c), you’re forgetting that forgers would have copied from the real shroud to make their fake, since the aim would have been to substitute the fake in for the real shroud. They needed no magical information source to know that Jesus was crucified in the wrists – they would have had the shroud, itself to copy from.

Re 2(b), it is believed that the brick-and-mortar camera obscura in Italy was built for one purpose, originally – to generate hundreds of trial fake shrouds, before making the final master fake. Forgers would have discovered early on that it was smart to put on the blood, first.

Re 2(a), there are now dozens of if-you-look-really-really-close-you’ll-see-an-additional-detail claims. I’m not convinced by the skeleton business. They see “skeletons,” but they can’t see the great big sepia focal circle on the bridge of the figure’s nose.

Re 1, proving that the expensive camera obscuras were actually used to do what they were built to do, or that someone mixed pee and egg whites, is such a tiny mental jump that requiring that this be proven to question the shroud’s authenticity is inherently unreasonable. Two camera obscuras exist in Europe. It’s absurd to believe that they were not used precisely what they were designed for.

Again, I really did love the Shroud, but the problems add up to an excessively unmanagable pile of evidence.

 

[Spyder1jcd]

To Bible Reader:

Actually, the “sepia focal” circle you are reffering to is a misconception. Medical research has proven that a direct punch to the bridge of the nose, as would’ve been delivered to Jesus by the well-trained and strong soldiers, would’ve caused a circular wound. The bridge would’ve been hit between two knuckles, each one making a semicircular swelling. The circle shape is just a rupture of the blood vessels in the nose. Also, I don’t know where you got your information on this allegged “egg whites and urine photograph” test, but it is a fact that NO ONE has been able to recreate the image on the Shroud down to the exact fibral details. If you (or other nonbelievers) are willing to be open-minded, I would reccomend you to The Resurrection of the Shroud by Mark Antonacci, a former atheist who was converted after years of researching the overwhelming evidence of the Shroud’s authenticity. It presents so much evidence that I am a firm believer that the Shroud of Turin was the burial cloth of the historical and divine Jesus Christ. Chapter 5 of the book, Attempts to Reproduce the Shroud Image, particularly the “Medieval Photography Theory” section, proves that the technology of the Renaissance period could never create this image that even our modern technology cannot recreate.

 

[Chris_Jacobsen]

We don’t know who made the shroud or why it was made. The shroud isn’t the shroud of Christ. This doesn’t mean that the person who made the shroud wanted to create a forgery. He may have had no intention of creating a fake or perpetuating a fraud. Perhaps his intention was to create a work of art which people could use to meditate on the death of Christ.

The best evidence that there was no intention of fraud is that the shroud shows the nail holes in the wrists and ankles. The Bible states that the nails were pounded in Christ’s hands and feet.

 

[Mycroft]

Chris Jacobsen:

We don’t know who made the shroud or why it was made. The shroud isn’t the shroud of Christ. This doesn’t mean that the person who made the shroud wanted to create a forgery. He may have had no intention of creating a fake or perpetuating a fraud. Perhaps his intention was to create a work of art which people could use to meditate on the death of Christ.

The best evidence that there was no intention of fraud is that the shroud shows the nail holes in the wrists and ankles. The Bible states that the nails were pounded in Christ’s hands and feet.

true, and another interesting thing is that stigmatists get the holes in the palms, not the wrists

 

[BibleReader]

Spyder1jcd:

To Bible Reader:

Actually, the “sepia focal” circle you are reffering to is a misconception. Medical research has proven that a direct punch to the bridge of the nose, as would’ve been delivered to Jesus by the well-trained and strong soldiers, would’ve caused a circular wound. .

One still has to deal with the brutal fact that the egg-and-pee linen photo had exactly the same circle on the bridge of the nose without punching.

 

[Numbers2222]

The Shroud Website

****Q: ****In the Bible (John 19:38-42), it says that Jesus was wrapped in linen cloths (plural). There was also another cloth that was wrapped around his head. The Shroud is only one piece of cloth. I was wondering if there was any explanation.

Yes, there is an explanation. It is called the “Sudarium” and it has a known provenance from Jerusalem to Oviedo, Spain.

It is a piece of folded linen cloth pinned with a strip of cloth over the face of a body that hung upright while dead, with the face leaning to one side. It has both blood stains and pleural oedema (fluid that would have leaked out of the nose from the lungs after death while the body was upright and again when being moved).

No image is found on the Sudarium, but the blood spots that would have been present on a thorn-wounded head correspond to those on the Shroud of Turn, as does the blood type (AB). (www.shroud.com/guscin.htm) This article goes into more detail about other things found on the Sudarium such as pollen and residue from what is possibly aloes and myrrh.

Author Janice Bennett has just published a book (on my reading list, but not in my grubby little hands) called Sacred Blood, Sacred Image (Ignatius Press) which goes into more detail.

(Her book on the Holy Grail & the recently-found letter of St Lawrence is also on my list of things to read…)

 

[Spyder1jcd]

Mycroft:

true, and another interesting thing is that stigmatists get the holes in the palms, not the wrists

I believe that stigmatists’ wounds are just symbolic, and not actually the ones of Jesus. First of all, if God wanted stigmatists to have the actual wounds of Jesus, they would be walking around with torn flesh and swollen cheeks and noses. If stigmata is supposed to be the actual wounds, where are the wounds from the crown of thorns? Second, it would’ve been medically impossible for one to be nailed in such a position through the palms. The weight of the body would’ve caused the nail to tear out between two fingers, and the victim would’ve fallen right off. According to our archeological evidence, the Romans knew this (though I hope they didn’t learn the hard way). Third, physicians of Jesus’ time and beyond considered the “hand” to be the tip of the middle finger all the way to the elbow. As such, there was no word for “wrist” in the original language of the Bible. Jesus could’ve been, and was, nailed through the wrists, and the Gospel writers would’ve called it the hand.

 

[Br.Rich_SFO]

Paris Blues:

Guys,

And if you check a little deeper into the history of the shroud, you’ll find that it did not turn up until around the 11th or 12th century. And there are documents from a Cardinal or Pope (I forget*just who he was)that tell of the “artist” that made the shroud. The documents don’t tell how it was made, but it does name theman who created it."

Oh my! What’s the deal here and how do we keep up our hope and faith?
*

The Shroud is simply a relic and like all relics is a sacramental. If the last paragraph was actually true. We would not be seeking answers, the case would be closed. By the way the Church does also have the cloth thought to cover the face of Christ.

 

[Ghosty]

Actually, the palm of the hand is a very tight network of bones. If you stretch your thumb out so it’s perpendicular to the hand, the part of the hand follows the base of the thumb across to the other side is technically the palm. You can put all kinds of things through this area without it ripping through. It’s the area just distal to this, in the middle of the hand, between the palm and the bases of the fingers, that many people think of when they picture the crucifixion. The palm is actually a very solid region.

 

[Spyder1jcd]

Ghosty:

Actually, the palm of the hand is a very tight network of bones. If you stretch your thumb out so it’s perpendicular to the hand, the part of the hand follows the base of the thumb across to the other side is technically the palm. You can put all kinds of things through this area without it ripping through. It’s the area just distal to this, in the middle of the hand, between the palm and the bases of the fingers, that many people think of when they picture the crucifixion. The palm is actually a very solid region.

What I meant was that the hand would pull down, and there would be a tear from where to nail was placed to between the middle and ring finger. The muscles just couldn’t hold that kind of weight. It’s scientifically proven. But if the area you described is the heel of the hand, then you’re right. This is the area where the bone is strongest. Sorry if I wasn’t clear, but I didn’t mean the area where one would wear a wristwatch. And this presents more proof the Shroud’s authenticity. When the nail was pounded into the wrist, it would strike the median nerve, which would not only cause extreme pain in the arms, but it would cause the thumb to turn in towards the palm. This is present on the Shroud.

For more information, please read the article at:
catholicplanet.com/articles/article16.htm

 

[Sherlock]

Mycroft,

You wrote: “and hey Sherlock, in the sherlock holmes stories Mycroft is sherlocks brother and hes smarter than him. just thought id let you know.”

Well, Conan Doyle’s Mycroft, then, would have known how to use capital letters and punctuation correctly—something you apparently do not.

For what it’s worth, “Sherlock” happens to be the last name I was born with. I didn’t choose it for a screen name because I thought of myself as particularly skilled at deduction.

 

[Sherlock]

BibleReader,

You wrote: “There are many shroud fakes”.

No doubt, but do these use the same method you describe, producing the same peculiarities of the Shroud of Turin? No.

 

[BibleReader]

Sherlock:

BibleReader,

You wrote: “There are many shroud fakes”.

No doubt, but do these use the same method you describe, producing the same peculiarities of the Shroud of Turin? No.

No, only the successful fake, the current Shroud of Turin, appears to use the method described.

Do you get my point?

Sit back, relax, and look at the evidence…

(1) The head on the Shroud is about 7% microcephalic. Why? Because it is a separate “photo.”

(2) There is a break between the Shroud head and the body – no neck! Why? To accommodate a head and body which are separate “photos.”

(3) There is a sepia-colored focal circle on the Shroud’s nose. There is, I am told, a sepia-colored focal circle on the solar plexus – the focal point of the body “photo.”

(4) The feet are too long – as they should be, if the focal point of a body “photo” is the solar plexus.

(5) And, of course, there is a camera obscura in Italy and Britain.

 

[Spyder1jcd]

BibleReader:

I used to be the world’s biggest fan of the Shroud. I had multiple volumes on it in my library.

At this juncture, I beliweve it is fake.

(1) A few years ago, two researchers were able to imitate a shroud-like image by mixing human urine and egg whites – not exactly hard-to-find chemicals – and sray the mix onto linen, in the dark, and suspend it in front of a simple giant homemade box camera and generate a shroud-like image.

(2) The faked image looks like the shroud image at the microscopic level – burn marks into the fiibers on the surface of the Shroud.

(3) The fake image had a circle burned into itself directly opposite the box camera’s eye; the shroud has a circle burned into the bridge of the nose of the “Jesus” figure.

(4) The fake image elongates as the image is distant from the circle opposite the eye, which would have made feet in such an image enormously long, because of the great distance, implying that if the circle on the shroud’s nose is the burn on a fake egg/urine image opposite a box camera eye, either (a) the feet on the shroud will be ridiculously long, or (b) the body would be photographed separately from the head, making the feet only slightly too long. Lo and behold, no neck shows on the shroud, and there is a burn circle on the solar plexus, both of which indicate a separate body exposure in a box camera; and, the feet in the shroud are slightly elongated.

(5) A giant box camera, a camera obscura, dating from the Renaissance, can be found in Italy.

Why would somebody have faked the shroud?

To steal the real one from the House of Savoy.

Sorry, but much as I love the shroud, there is too much evidence that it is fake.

Yes, but does this test shroud have traces of radiation in the fibrils? A radiation which can only be found in the image? A radiation which could not have been irradated onto the Shroud by a forger of the time period you claim? The same radiation that made the man’s hair white in the image encoding? In this test peformed, was this mixture the cause of the white hair appearance on this test shroud, which it could not be in accordance with the real one?

 

[Spyder1jcd]

BibleReader:

No, only the successful fake, the current Shroud of Turin, appears to use the method described.

Do you get my point?

Sit back, relax, and look at the evidence…

(1) The head on the Shroud is about 7% microcephalic. Why? Because it is a separate “photo.”

(2) There is a break between the Shroud head and the body – no neck! Why? To accommodate a head and body which are separate “photos.”

(3) There is a sepia-colored focal circle on the Shroud’s nose. There is, I am told, a sepia-colored focal circle on the solar plexus – the focal point of the body “photo.”

(4) The feet are too long – as they should be, if the focal point of a body “photo” is the solar plexus.

(5) And, of course, there is a camera obscura in Italy and Britain.

Very well then, BibleReader. I’ll make you do your homework. If you can prove that this shroud done with a camera obscura has every unique detail of the Shroud I list here, you will have made your point to me.

Any forger responsible for the image would have to have been able to:

*Encode the image on only the most superficial fibrils of the cloth’s threads;
*Transfer an image so low in contrast that it fades into the background when an observer stands within six feet of it;
*Create an image that is pressure-independent so that both frontal and dorsal body images are encoded with the same intensity, even though the dorsal side of the cloth would have had the full weight of a body lying on top of it;
*Use an image-forming mechanism that operates uniformly regardless of what lies beneath it, i.e., over diverse substances such as skin, hair and, possibly, coins, flowers, teeth, and bones;
*Encode the thousands of body image fibrils with the same intensity;
*Create an image that is not soluble in water, remains stable when subjected to high temperatures, and does not demonstrate signs of matting, capillarity, saturation, or diffusion into the image-forming fibrils;
*Encode an image that lacks any evidence of two-dimensional directionality;
*Compose a yellowed body image out of chemically degraded cellulose with conjugated carbonyls that has resulted from processes asociated with dehydration and oxidation;
*Encode the front and back full-length images on cloth of a real human being in rigor mortis;
*Incorporate specific effects of a draped cloth that fell through the body region - such as blood marks displaced into the hair, motion blurs at the side of the face and in the neck/throat region and below the hair, along with elongated fingers;
*Encode a superficial, resolved, and three dimensional image of the closed eye over the different and invisible features of a coin;
*Transfer the blood marks before encoding the body image, yet still place them in the appropriate locations and ensure that the blood marks are not altered when the body image is later transferred onto the cloth;
*Create actual blood marks with actual serum around the edges of the various wounds;
*Reproduce blood marks incurred at different times with different instruments that correspond with both arterial and venous bleeding;
*Encode blood marks on the cloth in exactly the form and shape that develop from wounds on human skin;
*Embed into the cloth the various blood marks leaving the original smooth surfaces between the skin and the blood intact;
*Remove the cloth from the body within two to three days without breaking or smearing the numerous blood marks.

And that’s not all!

 

[puzzleannie]

whatever. either the cloth that has been preserved in Turin is the actual burial cloth of Christ or it isn’t. Scientific evidence is contradictory. Provenance is unclear. Testimony of believers varies. The Church has never pronounced that this is definitely a relic of Christ. You are free to believe whatever you want to believe. Until proven otherwise we venerate and protect the cloth as a moving icon of Jesus and for the possibility that it is genuine. In any case, our faith rests in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who became man, was born, lived, ministered, suffered, died and rose again for love of us and for our salvation. We do not believe in a cloth, a relic, a book, any created thing. No study or pronouncement by any “expert” has any bearing on one’s faith in Christ or in the Church He established on earth.

 

[Spyder1jcd]

Continued from above:

*Employ a mechanism that transfers distance information through space in vertical, straight-line paths;
*Prodcue an image that is a vague negative when observed by the naked eye, but with highly focused and finely resolved details that become visible only when photographed, at which point the negative turns into a positive image with light/dark and left/right reversed;
*Encode accurately proportioned, three dimensional information on a two-dimensional surface that directly corresponds to the distances between a body and the cloth;
*Include realistic details of scourge marks so minute that they are invisible to the naked eye and can be seen only with cameras, photographic enlargers, microscopes, and ultraviolet lighting;
*Encode a line representing the narrow lesion of the side wound that corresponds to the shape of the lancea used by Roman executioners in such a manner that the line would not be visible with the eye and could not be seen until the developement of computer imaging technology 600 years later;
*Distribute an array of pollens onto the Shroud beneath the linen’s threads and fibers that reflected its manufacture and history in Jerusalem and Turkey. To do this successfully, the forger would have to not only be a pollen expert, but also anticipate developement of the theory that emerged 600 years later which asserts that Shroud, Mandylion, and Image of Edessa or the same cloth;
*Encode the subtle appearance of Judean plants in the off-image area of the Shroud that would not be seen for more than six centuries;
*Place microscopic samples of dirt and limestone at the foot of the man in the Shroud that match the limestone found in Jerusalem, but which would not be visible for centuries;
*Encode actual whole blood and watery fluid at the side wound and the small of the back in a uniquely realistic manner and also encode this and all other clotted bloodstains on the Shroud so that they remain red and do not darken over time like all other actual blood;
*Encode the appearance of a Pontius Pilate lepton over the right eye of the man so that only when photography, photographic enlargers and three-dimensional reliefs are invented 600 years later, the motif, letters, and outline of the coin can be ascertained. The forger would not only have to anticipate this technology, but also the development of the field of archeology and the discovery in the late twentieth century that coins were used in burials in Jerusalem and the surrounding area between the first century B.C. and the first century A.D.;
*Encode the wound on the cloth at the man’s left side so that when the image was photographed 500 years later, the wound would be located in the precisely correct location on the man’s right side so that the blood and water would escape from the victim if he received a postmortem wound at this location. To encode these features, our forger would not only have to have understood advanced scientific principles, but also have possessed a knowledge of anatomy and medicine that was centuries ahead of his time. Obviously, it would have been impossible for him to have possessed such knowledge and understanding, but even if he had, somehow, he still couldn’t have seen any of these numerous features to know if he was getting them right. The technology needed to visualize them would not be developed for another five to six hundred years;
*How could a medieval artist have displayed a knowledge of physiology that would not be known until centuries later?
*And finally, how could this medieval photographer have known the exact details of the circumstances of Roman crucifxion, including the nail wounds in the wrists?

 

[BibleReader]

Hi, Spyder.

***Encode the image on only the most superficial fibrils of the cloth’s threads;**I saw an egg-and-urine photo close-up. It does do this.

*Transfer an image so low in contrast that it fades into the background when an observer stands within six feet of it; The image I saw a photo of was only afterr a few tries. The authors had not yet gotten their egg-and-urine image up to shroud quality, with their home-made equipment.

*Create an image that is pressure-independent so that both frontal and dorsal body images are encoded with the same intensity, even though the dorsal side of the cloth would have had the full weight of a body lying on top of it;
You are assuming that the Shroud is not an egg-and-urine photo. When one of these photos is made, no one lays on any linen. The linen is hung against the back wall of the camera obscura building, and in total darkness sprayed with a mix of egg whites and human urine. Then a body – first a head, and then a torso – is very carefully suspend, probably on a large black board, outside the camera obscura, facing south, so that the Sun illuminates the body brightly. Then, the aperture on the camera obscura is removed, and the light reflecting off the body produces an upside-down image on the linen.

***Use an image-forming mechanism that operates uniformly regardless of what lies beneath it, i.e., over diverse substances such as skin, hair and, possibly, coins, flowers, teeth, and bones; **
Again, you are assuming that the Shroud is genuine. In my opinion it was produced under what for the Renaissance amounted to “scientific conditions.”

*Encode the thousands of body image fibrils with the same intensity;
I agree that the Shroud image burning is very high quality.

***Create an image that is not soluble in water, remains stable when subjected to high temperatures, and does not demonstrate signs of matting, capillarity, saturation, or diffusion into the image-forming fibrils;
The egg-and-urine photos on linen are like this.

*Encode an image that lacks any evidence of two-dimensional directionality;
The Shroud is in-focus, but there are signs of two dimensional elongation – really, really big feet, not just feet protruding due to rigor mortis, but feet protruding from rigor mortis, made even longer by image elongation as distance from a solar plexus focal point becomes greater.

That is the theory underlying why the Shroud has no neck. The forgers, in doing their forgery, would have quickly discovered in their trial runs that distortion at the edges generated an “inverse cone-headed” figure if the Shroud were one photo, only. So, to reduce inverse cone-headedness, they photographed the face separately, with the bridge of the nose as the focal point, and then photographed the body separately, using the solar plexus as the second focal point. In doing so, they apparently neglected to make the distance between the head and the camera obscura, and the body and the camera obscura, identical – the head is slightly too small for the body, about 7%. Additionally, because the forgers focused on the perfection of the dimensions of the upper torso in the image, elongation distortion occurred at the feet, so that the image has pretty darn big feet. Additionally, the back of the Jesus figure on the Shroud apparently IS one photo. Lo and behold, the length of the front image does not conform to the length of the back image. The forgers got lazy.

**