Posted on 01/26/2005 10:37:01 PM PST by neverdem
The Shroud of Turin is much older than the medieval date that modern science has affixed to it and could be old enough to have been the burial wrapping of Jesus, a new analysis concludes.
Since 1988, most scientists have confidently concluded that it was the work of a medieval artist, because carbon dating had placed the production of the fabric between 1260 and 1390.
In an article this month in the journal Thermochimica Acta, Dr. Raymond N. Rogers, a chemist retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, said the carbon dating test was valid but that the piece tested was about the size of a postage stamp and came from a portion that had been patched.
"We're darned sure that part of the cloth was not original Shroud of Turin cloth," he said, adding that threads from the main part of the shroud were pure linen, which is spun from flax.
The threads in the patched portion contained cotton as well and had been dyed to match.
From other tests, he estimated that the shroud was between 1,300 and 3,000 years old.
Didn't say old as Christ, said old as Jesus.
>> absolute crap. Rodgers is a shroud apologist going way back. <<
It's one thing to spin the evidence that supports your view; it's quite another to just make stuff up out of, er, whole cloth. Do you care to support your cussing, or shall we just presume all researchers who find support for positions they've previously held are bald-faced liars
The Gnostic Magic 'Shred' of Turin: Old as Satan?
There's lots of 200 year old paper around. It's fun to read about forgeries. The Salamander Letters are interesting as are the Hitler Diaries and the Brother of Jesus box.
Even if the shroud isn't genuine, it probably is better thought of as art rather than forgery.
They didn't have Photoshop in the Middle Ages...
Thanks for the ping!
I would point out that this is classic begging the question, which is a logical fallacy you learn the first day of philosophy 101, but this guy is a scientist and the scientists on FR tell us that non-scientists are not qualified to criticize the logic of scientists.
So this must be Special Science Logic that falls from heaven into your brain at the moment you are bedecked in your doctor's mantle, like the seers of old.
>> The Flood, which is considered to have happened 8000BC. (Before Christ) <<
Umm... No. Adam and Eve may have been at most 8000 years ago. But if you are taking the presumption that King Solomon lived in 900 BC, than the flood was far more recent.
22 generations separate the flood from King Solomon. The flood happened after God limited human life to 120 years. Therefore, even in the bizarrely unlikely event that each man was 120 years old when he had his children, the flood happened in 3500 BC. Anything older than that is contradicting the bible. Far more likely is a date around 1600 BC. Even that presumes an age of 35 years old for fathers, which is still unusually old, since most of the people in the lineage are first children. How often would someone wait till they are 35 to have children?
You make good points, although I'm not quite sure what you mean when you say "[t]he problem is, what forger could create an image the kind of which would not be known or would not exist until six centuries later?"
Thank you for your comments. That is only the 16,493rd time that someone cared enough to post of Free Republic that he did not care about the Shroud of Turin.
>> I have a two hundred year old book with numerous end pages. If I draw George Washington on one of those pages with two hundred year old ink, is the drawing 200 years old? <<
No-one here is asserting that the fact alone that the shroud is 2,000 years old proves that it must be Jesus. The fact that it was supposedly much younger than that was simply offered as a rebuttal to what had previously been put forward as proof of its authenticity, without explaining away the prior "proof." The fact that the basis for the alleged rebuttal actually supports authenticity certainly is strong eveidence.
>>It's the total amount of the Grants these dudes pocket which interests me. Nothing more helpful than friendly disagreement to help line their pockets.<<
Really? So how much grant money did they receive? Who paid the grants? Do you have any reason to believe there were any grants at all?
>> In the end, no matter what the timetable, it still just an image, not Jesus.<<
A case of "Damn the facts, I'm gonna believe what I wanna believe," eh?
"Because the Catholic Bishop in charge of the Shroud dictated the areas they could take samples from and how much could be taken."
Interesting, so some religious guy in bed with anti-religious guys?
"Obviously, the area tested wasn't believed to be a patch at the time. Because carbon 14 testing is destructive, there won't be any more tests in the forseeable future."
You really believe this, that a tiny tiny patch picked out by a Bishop from a huge piece of cloth was an accident?
Sorry I am not buying that.
>> The statement that it can't be reproduced is absurd. Artists make three dimensional drawings all the time. AB blood and body fluids still exist. <<
Aw, come on. Really, you're not the slightest bit impressed by the fact that the blood comes from the same man whose blood was found on the first-century Sudarium? You really think it's all that commonplace that a first-century scam artists figured out ways to fool technology that wasn't created for another 2000 years? Absolute proof? Nah, these things are beyond abolsute proof. But ya gotta admit, the evidence is pretty tantalizing, don' you?
Apparently there are patches all over this thing, it was bad luck.
It also reveals their dangers:
2 Kings 18:1 And it happened in the third year of Hoshea son of Elah king of Israel, Hezekiah the son of Ahaz king of Judah began to reign. 2 He was twenty-five years old when he began to reign, and he reigned twenty-nine years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Abi, the daughter of Zachariah. 3 And he did the right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that David his father did. 4 He removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah. And he broke in pieces the bronze serpent which Moses had made; for until those days the sons of Israel burned incense to it. And he called it Nehushtan (lit. "a piece of brass").I happen to be among those who believes the Shroud is genuine, but I would rather see it destroyed than become an object of worship. We should be respectful with it, but only as a testimony of the risen Christ, not as an object from which we might derive mirculous power.
Am I wrong about this?
Stradavarius didn't make the cleanest triangle wave by a long shot. In fact, his violins are so treasured precisely because they aren't clean, triangular waves at all, but very irregular waves. Irregular, except for the fact that each violin made the same waves. And because after the fact, people valued the particular irregularity of those waves. So the issue isn't that we can't do something as well as Stradivarius, just that we can't figure out exactly how he uniquely did what he did.
Either that or he is a space alien.
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