In 55 year I have NEVER heard of another burial cloth of Jesus...where did you ever hear that?
The Catholic Church is very precise on these matters.
It never fails to amaze me that so many of those who consider themselves "faithful" will cling to shoddy hoaxes or Jesus shaped rust stains on a grain silo to bolster their faith. Manufacturing religious relics was a thriving industry in the middle ages, and every wide spot in the road had pieces of the true cross, bones of assorted saints, and a variety of gruesome souvenirs supposedly of divine origin.
What you say is true... there was a lot of money to made from gullible tourists coming to see "relics" of the saints or Jesus. However, that fact actually lends itself to proving the Shroud is NOT a manufactured relic.
First of all, the "gullible" pilgrims would pay just as much to see a paint daubed sheet as to see the superb artifact or work of art of the Shroud. Why would any exhibitor of phony relics bother to create such a sublime forgery when a painted bedsheet would do? Why create an artwork that runs entirely counter to all artistic media and techniques when a regular painting would do? Why incorporate topographical data in the image when it will only be observable in 1974? Why use the appearance of a negative photographic positive when that could only be seen in 1898? Why do all of this in 1325AD??? Especially when the red-daubed bedsheet would bring in just as much money, if that were your motive.
Now add in the fact that Geoffrey de Charney, owner of the Shroud when it was first exhibited, DID NOT CHARGE ANY MONEY... nor did he accept donations. He funded the church he built to house it entirely from his own funds... and ordered his heirs to do the same at his death.
Geoffrey de Charney is also a person of interest. He was NOT a charlatan or conman. Nore was he just some guy with a stained bed sheet. Geoffrey was a Knight, and not just any knight. He was, in fact, the Standard Bearer for the King of France, charged with never leaving the King's side in battle and carrying his battle flag, an honor bestowed only on the best and most honorable. He was also the author of the French Code of Chivalry which required knights to be honest and truthful which was used to in 1350 as the base rules for Mallory's Le Morte de Artur and the Chivalric code of the Round Table. Geoffrey de Charney was not a person to perpetrate a fraud.
Historically, the Shroud of Turin is one of some forty reputed burial cloths of Jesus, although it is the only one to bear the apparent imprints and bloodstains of a crucified man. Religious critics have long noted that the Turin shroud is incompatible with the bible, which describes multiple burial wrappings, including a separate “napkin” that covered Jesus’ face (John 20:5–7).
This is factually wrong. There are more "shrouds" and many of them DO bear the image... because they are COPIES of the Shroud of Turin. Many of them are actually DOCUMENTED to be "TRUE COPIES" in church records, meaning they have been laid on the Shroud and imbued with its "essence" by transfer.
The "Biblical" argument is also wrong. Just because there may have been more cloths utilized in the burial does not invalidate the Shroud. The Bible tells us that Joseph of Arimathea purchased a fine cloth to use as a shroud. It is illogical to assume this fine cloth, representing many weeks of work, would be torn into strips to wrap the body. Early records show that other binding cloths would have been used to bind the jaws closed (passing under the chin and beard and over the top of the head), tie the wrists to keep the hands in repose, and also to keep the legs together. The "napkin" the Sudarium still exists and has been kept in the Cathedral in Oviedo Spain since the sixth century and has a provenance that goes further back. The wounds and blood stains on the sudarium correspond to the bloodstains and wounds on the Shroud.
The Turin cloth first appeared in north-central France in the mid-fourteenth century. At that time the local bishop uncovered an artist who confessed he had “cunningly painted” the image. Subsequently, in 1389, Pope Clement VII officially declared the shroud to be only a painted “representation.”
The Bishop of Troyes supposedly penned a letter claiming to have "found the artist who cunningly painted" the Shroud. There are several problems with this. First, only a rough draft of the letter has been found at Troyes... the vast records of the Vatican does not have a copy of a received letter claiming this. Secondly, any artist claiming to have "painted" the Shroud did so without any pigment... and had knowledge no one of his period possessed. Thirdly, the Bishop supposedly did his investigation 25-27 years AFTER the Shroud was first enshrined in the chapel in Lirey, and any artist who told the Bishop he was the creator of the Shroud would have been at that time either VERY OLD (life expectancy was 40 years) or been VERY YOUNG when he did it. Both unlikely. Finally, the Bishop also had an ulterior motive. A letter from him which DOES exist in the Vatican archives has him complaining about the loss of pilgrims to his Cathedral to this little church in Lirey... and he wanted it stopped. The Pope told him to SHUT UP... and placed him on a perpetual silence about this subject, never to speak of it again. In fact, in a rebuke to the Bishop of Troyes, the Pope actually wrote a letter PERMITTING the continued exhibition so long as it was touted as a "representation of the Shroud of our Lord." Please note, Contrary to CSICOPs article, the word "painted" was NOT included in that order.
Years later, this finding was conveniently forgotten by the granddaughter of the original owner. She sold it to the House of Savoy, which later became the Italian monarchy. Eventually the cloth was transferred to Turin. In 1983 Italy’s exiled king died, bequeathing the shroud to the Vatican.
The snide commentary of CSICOP to the contrary, Geoffrey's granddaughter only sold the Shroud after the family wealth was depleted by supporting the church at Lirey. The rest of that paragraph is fairly accurate.
The shroud’s modern history has confirmed the assessment of the skeptical bishop and Pope Clement. Forensic tests of the “blood” — which has remained suspiciously bright red — were consistently negative, and in 1980 renowned micro-analyst Walter C. McCrone determined that the image was composed of red ocher and vermilion tempera paint.
Wrong in its entirety. The claim that "tests for blood... were consistently negative" would surprise World renowned BLOOD expert Dr. John Heller and Dr. Richard Adler. Their forensic tests have not only found the bloodstains are blood, they have proven beyond any doubt that they are HUMAN blood of type AB Negative. These tests have been done repeatedly with the same results! This is a lie by CSICOP.
Walter C. McCrone, a visible light microscopist, claims that in his 100-200x magnification of thread of the Shroud he sees vermillion tempera paint, red ocher and iron oxide particles and then announced to the world in a non-peer reviewed press conference the "shroud is a forgery." Strange that other, much more qualified scientists, using much more sophisticated equipment such as ELECTRON microscopes, Pyrolysis and Mass Spectrometers, X-ray photomicrographs, and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance - published in peer reviewed publications - have found NO SUCH PIGMENTS! These same tests have found human blood components and shown that the image on the Shroud is not a painting of any kind. This proves that McCrone and CSICOP are liars on this subject.
incidentally, did you know that McCrone claimed to be a member of STURP (The 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project) when he wasn't? That kind of impeaches him as well.
Finally in 1988 the cloth was radiocarbon dated by three independent labs using accelerator mass spectrometry. The resulting age span of circa 1260–1390 was given added credibility by correct dates obtained from a variety of control swatches, including Cleopatra’s mummy wrapping.
For C14 dating of a 650 year old piece of cloth, the expected degree of confidence would be plus of minus 25 years... yet these results were reported with a degree of confidence of plus or minus 50 years... and even then the range of ages from the four samples taken from ONE clipping from a corner of the Shroud that was known to have been repaired (A violation of protocol that invalidated the results from the time it was taken!) have reported dates of 1260-1390. This statement alone is misleading... because CSICOP would have you believe the tested date reported is halfway between those numbers... which would give us 1325AD - which, strangely enough has a degree of confidence of plus or minus 65 years!. However, each of those dates is the reported age for a specific sample, in fact they are samples that were tested at the SAME LAB. Applying the liberal +/-50 years, the scientists reported then the oldest sample should have been reported as 1260AD +/-50 years and the age for the youngest sample should have been reported as 1390 +/-50 years! Note that these degrees of confidence DO NOT OVERLAP! This means that samples supposedly identical have C14 dates that DO NOT AGREE! This should have raised lots of red flags.
It has now been proven that the sample taken from the Shroud included TWO distinctly different threads of linen. The original thread has a "Z" twist, the other an "S" twist. The thread from the body of the Shroud averages slightly larger than the variant thread found on the corner where the sample was taken. The Variant thread has COTTON and WOOL intermixed in it... a type of Cotton grown only in Europe. The body threads have neither. The retting process of the variant used chemical agents that fluoresce while the rest of the shroud does not.
Enlargements of the photographs of the sample destroyed in the C14 testing shows that these variant threads exist on one side of the sample while threads that match the balance of the Shroud exist on the other side. The boundary between these two types of linen runs diagonally across the sample such that when cut the four test samples had differing ratios of variant to standard threads. These ratios correspond to the varying dates the three C14 labs reported for their samples. Using an assumed ratio of the observed threads types, assuming the variants were added in the 16th century, only a mix with 1st century thread would result in the dates reported by the labs!
These findings are mutually supportive. The tempera paint indicates the image is the work of an artist, which in turn is supported by the bishop’s claim that an artist confessed, as well as by the prior lack of historical record. The radiocarbon date is consistent with the time of the reported artist’s confession. And so on.
These findings are all wrong... and CSICOP has not bothered to add the latest peer reviewed evidence or findings that show them to be wrong. There IS no tempera paint to indicate the image is the work of an artist, so a claim by an artist that "he painted it" has been impeached, and the Bishop was discredited in his own era by his boss, and CSICOP just did not go looking for a prior historical record. Had they done so they would have found a medallion that has the image of the Shroud with a KNOWN provenance dating from the 11th Century, far earlier than even the oldest C14 date! Thus bring the C14 dates even more into question.
And so CSICOPS' house of cards of Shroud 'debunking' has itself been debunked.
http://www.csicop.org/articles/shroud/index2.html
It looks as if this is the only paragraph in the post that is completely true... yes, indeed, that IS the link to where CSICOPS Shroud of Turin webpage is located.
Might I suggest an alternative? Scientific Papers and Articles - at shroud.com where you will find PEER reviewed papers, research done by real scientists and scholars, and a true open mind with both sides presented. Shroud.com is operated by Barrie Schwortz who was the official visible light photographer for STURP and who just happens to be Jewish.