Just having watched the PBS show “Secrets of The Dead” on the title subject was wondering what people on this board had to say about it.
They seemed to have said the carbon dating was from a piece of the shroud that was sewn to the original. But the program seemed to go back and forth.
What is the straight dope on this? I’m sure this has been discussed thouroughly, but since I can’t search perhaps some kind person can look up a thread or two from here or in Great Debates or whereever for some answers.
It seems like a very convenient argument. In other words, you can’t prove it’s not real without destroying the entire thing. The church never took a stand on whether it was real. It could also have been a divinely inspired work of art, or a forgery that was divinely inspired despite the venality of the forger.
I’ll give you my History Channel inspired take on it:
IIRC it wasn’t that the piece taken was one of the repair areas it was that supposedly there was either carbon from a fire in the 14th century or there was plant material on the shoud dating back to then that was skewing the results. I’d say they were smart enough not to take a piece from one of the repair areas (which are pretty clearly demarked by the fact that they are a different color and consistancy than the rest of the shroud).
Well, on the History Channel’s show they seemed to come down on the side that it was made in the 14th century sometime…i.e. its a fake, though a very good and unusual one. They basically showed how using materials from the time you could make one…in fact one of the guys on the show DID make on that looked pretty much like the original shroud.
Carbon dating was consistant with a 14th century creation as well, though there were a few folks that disagreed (aren’t there always? )…giving the two explainations above for why the results were skewed.
I’m not sure about this one as they seemed to be going both ways. Of course, one of the explainations was that the artist USED real blood in the ‘painting’. There was some dispute though over the color and consistency (basically what Cecil mentioned in his article), but other indications that it was in fact blood.
I don’t see how it really makes a big difference…it could be blood or it could be iron oxide. If it IS blood then its certainly not Jesus’s blood on the thing…or anyone else from the 1st century AD for that matter.
Bottom line for me is that the evidence seems pretty solid its just a rather good and unusual fake. That also seems the most plausable answer using my own Occam’s Razor…its the simplest explaination, doesn’t require a bunch of wierdness, the provenence seems clear (i.e. first mentioned in the early 1300’s IIRC) which is consistant with the carbon dating done, there is a reasonable and plausable mechanism using contemporary tools and materials available in the 14th century that under experiment created an image that is remarkably similar, etc.
The other issue they brought to say it was genuine is that the design of the shroud the herringbone was unique to the middle east at the first century.
The also made the argument is was the “worlds first photograph.”
It seems to me there should be an easier way to see if the blood is real and if you took the testing sample from a repaired part of the shroud.
On the internet for every site that says there is definately blood and no paint, I find one that says just the opposite.
The shroud’s a fake. Even if you discount the chemical tests and carbon dating, just look at the thing. And ask yourself this: if it was draped over Jesus body why is the image so undistorted? Shouldn’t it have conformed to a body, creating an “image” that would look more like a globe folded out onto a flat surface?
Damn. Beat me to it. The last review I heard pointed out this very aspect. The image is as you would expect in a photo. But if it were “burned into” a cloth draped over a three dimensional object like a body, it would only look natural when laying in this perspective position, not when flat out on a table.
Of course you’re not going to find agreement on asuch a charged issue. Conflicting claims on Internet sites isn’t unique to the Shroud. It’s better to go to books, which go into more detail, and have references. You’ll find conflicting books on this, too, but at least you’ll find the arguments in greater depth.
See Joe Nickell’s Inquest on the Shroud of Turin. Among others, he cites Walter McCone, who was the leading authority on microscopic analysis, who proclaimed the blood on the Shroud fake. Nickell also makes the case that a “photograph” generated by a body under the Shroud wouldn’t look at all like a body – the diffusion of rays or particles would smear the image into a vaguely human-shaped blur. That’s assuming you could find a believable process by which something – light rays, odor particles, whatever – would be emittede by the body to produce a visible image in the first place.
Top it all off with a contemporary Chuirch investigation which claimed to have produced the artist who confessed to painting the thing in the first place, and you have a powerful disincentive to belief.
I saw another show where a guy used computer modeling to basically show what you are saying here…i.e. that, even assuming there was some plausable mechanism to naturally make such an image that the image on the Shroud could not have been a real body. It was all out of proportion for one thing, with limbs distorted in proportion, the head was not in correct proportion, etc. I wish I could remember what the show was called (one of the myriad Shroud of Turin shows on either DC, TLC or History Channel I’m sure).
There’s really no way to know that. The piece of the shroud that was used in ther radiocarbon dating (which test was actually performed by three separate laboratories with identical results), was destroyed in the process.
I don’t believe that the shroud is an authentic 1st century relic, and I’m pretty comfortable with the evidence that points to the 14th century – although whoever created it did a fantastic job to have us still wondering about it 600+ years later.
I thought I read something about studies finding traces of pollen or plant material native to 1st c. Palestine on the shroud. Has this ever been refuted or satisfactorily explained? Or was the artist just that good?
Not really. The mystique is due primarily to the fact that this relic has been, for the most part, unavailable for scientific study for 600 years, walled up in a church, guarded by a priesthood seemingly dedicated to restricting investigations that would settle the controversy. What we are left with is unscientific speculation. That is why it has persisted for so long. If the entire shroud would available for a comprehensive forensic examination, I have no doubt it would be debunked very shortly.
I thought I read something about studies finding traces of pollen or plant material native to 1st c. Palestine on the shroud. Has this ever been refuted or satisfactorily explained?QUOTE]
Yes. The problem is that the sample was taken by one guy, who anlyzed it all by itself, and didn’t show it to anybody else, if I remember correctly. So, we’ve only this guy’s word for it.
For a start, there’s possible confusion here about what has been sewn on. The documented set of repairs were done in 1534 after a fire had damaged the cloth; 16 patches were stiched over holes burnt into it. These were well known to those carrying out the C14 testing and, indeed, there was much discussion about taking the samples from beneath one of the patches, since they cover ragged edges of the original cloth that could be removed without altering the current appearance of the Shroud. (The negotiations prior to the tests are described in more detail than most people could possibly find interesting in Relic, Icon or Hoax?; Carbon Dating the Turin Shroud, IOP, 1996 by Harry Gove, the inventor of the AMS technique used.) In the event, the samples were taken from an area far from these repairs.
The subsequent argument put forward by some believers in the Shroud’s authenticity is that the samples were taken from an area with an undocumented repair. This page, from the site you’ve already linked to, is a good example of this line of advocacy. Personally, such arguments seem like special pleading. In particular, there was never any suggestion prior to the carbon dating that this area had been tampered with. Furthermore, the “repair” has to be near invisible, involving “medieval” threads stiched in between “original” ones. (Proponents had made such a fuss over the years about the allegedly unique significance of the weave that, despite the efforts to keep the testing blind, some of the physicists in the labs recognised which were the Shroud samples rather than the comparison cases.)
Then you’ve the problem all attempts to explain the C14 results away tend to run into: we’ve got some mix of old and new material and yet it happens to come out with a date that matches the first known record of the artefact. Given that - as mentioned by Cal - contemporaries from that period thought it was a newly forged item, this is quite a coincidence. Unless, of course, it was indeed a fake from that time and the dating is correct after all.
The person who claimed this was a guy called Max Frei; some of the problems with his assertions were summarised in this 1994 article from Skeptical Inquirer by Joe Nickell. Basically, his samples don’t match those taken by other pro-authenticity believers and so there’s the suspicion that they were doctored. It didn’t help his credibility as an expert that Frei, at one point, also authenticated the “Hitler Diaries”.
Has the shroud faded over time? I recall seeing a medieval painting of the shroud, in which the patterns were much darker than seen (on the shroud) today. This would argue that it is a fake. As for the radiocarbon dating-it seems to be pretty conclusive. The fact that three different laboratories did independent tests and arrived at the same conclusion seems pretty definitive to me. The only thing: I’ve always wondered why the shroud is a negative image-wouldn’t a medieval forger have preferred to paint a positive image? :smack:
The artist probably used either a sculpture or perhaps a dead body (doubtful this as the proportions are wrong) to ‘paint’ the thing…i.e. he put pigment on the sculpture then put the clothe over it. Press down and there you go…negative ‘authentic’ image.
)…giving the two explainations above for why the results were skewed.