If the blood soaked through (even a little) it would show on both sides of the cloth, the priest I listened to and saw on TV later,said it was as if Jesus’s ressurected body became light and came through the cloth. There still is the question of why the pate doesn’t show in the stain and why the top of the head and the back touch at the fold.There should be a space for that and there isn’t! That indicates that Jesus must have been as flat as a paper doll!
I didn’t argue any of those points. I certainly don’t think the shroud is authentic. My question remains, why do you think they are showing the outside of the cloth and not the inside?
There’s fakes and then there are things that are not what they appear. I think the Shroud falls into the latter category. The most obvious reason is that if you are faking a miracle in the Middle Ages you fake a Miracle, not something beyond your level of scientific knowledge. Any decent fake would be instantly recognisable as the contemporary image of Jesus (probably nothing like his real appearance if he existed at all) and as like as not signed by all the apostles except Judas (I’m being facetious but the point is that supernatural fakes in a credulous age do not need to be ‘realistic’ - the less so the more miraculous!
There is is the other ‘minor’ detail that if genuine, then it is deepest heresy because the only natural process that could produce it means that Jesus was alive. Not supernaturally come back to life, but sweating a high fever out: implication that he never died, so there was no resurrection.
I have seen a book which shows how the imprint could be produced. Their thesis involves the Knights Templar (Don’t all good mediaeval conspiracy theories?). Whether the shroud can be traced to the torture of their last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay later burnt at the stake does not matter. The fact is that the make a very good and detailed case for its derivation from a man in high fever following crucifixion and lying in a hollow. The proportions are not right for someone lying flat. Of course usually people in a fever that high do stay still for long enough for their evaporated sweat to eat into fibre as is the case the here. Nor do they usually recover but one thing the Knights Templar would have excelled at is dealing with physical trauma.
Since I was earlier this evening listening to an interview with a concert cellist about her time in Auschwitz, that is not to say that somebody was not capable of crucifying some unfortunate to produce the thing, except that it would be unlikely that they would anticipate that result. It is possible that it originated from somebody probably considered heretical of around the century before and was venerated privately as evidence for their holiness and innocence before coming to light. I forget the details but it surfaced in a chateau with strong connections to both Templars and Cathar heretics. In fact the whole of southern France is tied closely to heresy and mystery ancient and modern.
It is even possible (I suppose) that it was the secret ‘Head’ that the Templars were said to worship and from their military experience with bandages might recognise as produced by a living (or dying!) body and therefore led to what of their alleged heretical views can be assumed genuine, such as stamping on the Cross. There is nothing in a surviving Jesus to conflict in words with a resurrected one: in both cases he survived the Cross and returned from the Dead and overcame Death, it is just that the meaning is drastically different.
Nor does the possibility that the Templars may have believed it the shroud of Jesus mean that it was. They were as gullible as anyone else. All the same, shrouds from Roman crucifixions cannot have been common. The usual habit was to leave corpses to rot (which much have contributed mightily to disease!). The only speculation is that this was a case that as far as we know was unusual of somebody crucified for a limited time. There’s nothing to suggest that crucifixion was ever used as punishment but not execution. Then again there’s nothing to say that it wasn’t, or that it didn’t happen unrecorded in the Middle Ages. It’s quite possible that if the shroud was genuine in that sense, then it might have belonged to somebody tortured by Saracens and rescued. Islam required slaves to be returned to any relatives prepared to ransom them.
As for the problem with the crown of the head, it’s unclear just where front hair meets back hair and may be deceptive.
Try doing the same idea with a doll,notice the separation is far greater(In proportion) than the space in the shroud which has a fold. The back and front touch at the fold, not leaving room for the top of the head and pate.
Wow! I have enjoyed reading this thread. I really thought, however, that Monavis had the iron-clad proof of its inauthenticity. IF the front and the back of the head touch, it CANNOT have been laid over a human being! That is indisputable it seems to me. Of course one still has to wonder how the fake would have been made…Still, I looked all over the internet until I could find a clear picture of the whole shroud and when I did finally find one it seemed to disprove that theory. The back of the head and the front do NOT seem to touch. I think Monavis may have been looking at what appears to be a water stain and thinking that it was the outline of the head. However, if you look closely, that would definitely have made the body very disproportionate. The actual back of the head is outlined much further down and there IS room enough to have folded it over a head. Which proves nothing about authenticity but leads me to believe that even if it is a fraud, the artist used a 3 dimensional object to render it.
I don’t think they were trying to fake a miracle - they were just making a fake relic that they could scam some money off of. Sort of like the Holy Grail or pieces of wood from Jesus’s cross, a burial shroud from Jesus himself would be highly sought-after.
Where did you find the clear picture?
I tried to get an image using a doll, there was a space larger than the full picture I once had of the shroud, it was on a holy card that the priest( who used to talk about the shroud every year around Easter) time sent me. Even on TV it looked like it touched. I also couldn’t get any facial pictures of the doll unless I pushed the cloth down around the face etc. because the shroud story I had seen, showed the shroud just being laid around the body. If the cloth was loose some of the images picked up but the parts like the tip of the nose,forehead,chin,or parts that stood out further did leave a spot here and there,but the eyes or any indentation did not show up. I didn’t put a crown of thorns on the head, which would have also kept the head from touching the cloth. And why would they bury Jesus with the crown of thorns on His head?
People want the shroud to be authentic. Since Jesus was said to be dead for only about 36 hours I doubt that the acids etc. leaving a decomposing body could burn the cloth. The priest said it was because Jesus risen body came through the cloth!
Here is a high resolution image of the shroud. The images of the front and back of the head do not touch.
You say that as though you thought he was making a desperate improvisation, but that’s not so: the traditional interpretation of:
is that the graveclothes were somehow left undisturbed. I do not say that I find that interpretation altogether convincing, but it is traditional.
Thanks Fear Itself!
It would be interesting to see how the features turned out like it did, without pushing the cloth on the face to pick up them. When I used the doll,it didn’t pick up enough to make an imprint of the face; if one put the shroud over Jesus as the story pictured it. I also read ,or saw on TV (I do not remember now )but the Jewish person said in those days they used strips of cloth, not a whole large cloth that the shroud shows. Perhaps if it were authentic(which I doubt) and they buried him in haste they may have used a large cloth. However,John Kennedy in the next post uses the scriptures to back up the fact that there was more than one cloth and a napkin for the head, which would also mean the image would not be as clear. And mentioning that there were linen cloths plus a napkin for the head, would make the Shroud even less likely to be the shroud in which Jesus is said to be depicted in the Shroud Of Turin, but more likely a fake!
That must be an old photo, taken before the recent unfortunate accident.
This is a woosh …right? Why would they wash the shroud? I can see why over the years they added things, like coins to the eyes etc. but washing it…come on!
It is an Onion article.
I read an article (again, I think it was by Joe Nickel) that discusses the Shroud’s origin, that said that it was identified by a priest in a letter as a fake shortly after it was put on display, and that the creator confessed. I have not attempted to confirm that story, though I would be interested in finding more details.
Jerseyman said:
First off, how exactly would you demonstrate it as a miracle, if not by being beyond scientific knowledge? But irrelevant. At the time the Shroud surfaced (i.e. became publically known), it was commonplace for holy relics to be displayed for the faithful. Money could be charged for said relics to be prayed over in hopes of getting divine sanction and thus a miracle. There are enough pieces of the Cross to build a fleet of ships. There’s more than one Jesus’ foreskin. There are plenty of saint’s bones and the like. There are several pieces of cloth and shrouds and the like. The Shroud of Turin is just the most well known, in part because of it depicting the whole of Jesus, and in part because of the discovery of the appearance as a photographic negative.
The question that puzzled people and got it such attention was taking a photograph and seeing such a distinct appearance in the negative. That is what made people wonder at the detail and how it could have been made. But if that effect is a byproduct of non-supernatural means, then the mysteriousness it lends becomes irrelevant.
Why would a man with a fever lie with a cloth folded over his body from the head down? Covering his face.
It seems obvious there are two different questions being argued in this thread: (1) Is the Shroud of Turin the actual burial shroud of Jesus Christ, and (2) Assuming the Shroud of Turin dates to the Middle Ages, how exactly was it created?
The scientific evidence–particularly the historical provenance and the results of Carbon 14 dating–strongly favor a “no” answer for (1); perhaps not strong enough to be definitive, but at the very least it makes this a religious question, one perhaps better argued in “Great Debates”.
The second question IMO is far more interesting; was the shroud deliberately created, or did it come about by accident (as Jerseyman theorizes)? Accident seems the most likely choice–a deliberate and repeatable process would likely have produce additional “shrouds” from other famous individuals in ancient/religious history (presuming the process started accidentally, then when the image was noticed the blood et al. was added). So I don’t completely buy the idea advanced in the recent article that an acidic pigment was (deliberately) used. I’d be more inclined to look for some oil or other material used to anoint the dead in the Middle Ages, which when combined with this particular cloth produced the image by accident.
Walter McCrone made claims of finding red ochre and vermilion tempera paint.
What bothers me about simple fakery is that I can’t imagine the mediaeval mind thinking in terms of photographic negative images. They would more likely paint a straight representation or else find something that did have a few stains that the eye of belief would see as a miraculous image. It feels much more likely to me that the imprint is genuine enough but dates from the Middle Ages and somebody along the way decided that if it was anybody’s shroud it might as well be Christ’s.
As if someone along the way wouldn’t improve a faint image by pricking up the red of the blood … and making it more recognizable.
I don’t have a dog in this race, but I have always had serious doubts about the carbon dating … if it has gone through a fire, and probably been washed, and is in direct contact with backing fabric, why cant c14 get mucked around with? molecules are rather migratory over short distances.
On TV they did show the people who claim that the corner used was frenchweaved/frenchwoven in … and I have seen ‘invisible’ repairs done in that manner that I couldn’t see with my bare eye. It would be very plausable to accidently screw up the dating with the repair fabric. They seemed to document it to my nontechnical satisfaction. If it was a jury trial, and the court had agreed that they were competent to be witnesses, I would have to say that it would have made me believe that they were correct.
It would seem that the claim that he “is considered the world’s leading paranormal investigator” is like claiming that he’s the world’s biggest charlatan. The willingness of people to pay people without a resume large sums of money to expound upon that which doesn’t exist always amazes me.
The flaw in the skeptical view of that is that no carbon-14 appeared that had degenerated to the point of possibly being 1950 years old. It’s not like they took a couple molecules off the surface…They tested several square milimeters.
The oldest C-14 from the test dated the shroud to the middle ages.
For this result there would have had to be 100% molecular migration - which, I’m not a molecular chemist, but is impossible in fabric and fiber.