[AnAmericanMother]

Shhhh! Don't say that, you'll stir up all the True Believers.

There are people who seem to have an awful lot invested emotionally in the Shroud of Turin.

The bishop of the time declared it a fraud, and knew the artist. A modern investigator has demonstrated how it was done. The Shroud-ologists go through all sorts of gymnastics to explain those facts away (the bishop was in competition for fees with the monastery that had the Shroud, etc. etc.) but this far removed in time that's the best we're going to get. The contemporaneous evidence is what clinches it for me.

[Semi Civil Servant]

***There are people who seem to have an awful lot invested emotionally in the Shroud of Turin.

The bishop of the time declared it a fraud, and knew the artist. A modern investigator has demonstrated how it was done.***

I'm interested in the Shroud, but agnostic regarding it. Could you back up your claim that a "modern investigator has demonstrated how it was done". I've seen several documentaries on it, some of them quite recent, and have yet to see a replication of the Shroud that duplicated all of its properties. The attempts to duplicate I've seen are generally done by professional "skeptics" who style themselves "researchers" and "debunkers".

[presently no screen name]

There are people who seem to have an awful lot invested emotionally in the Shroud of Turin.

Not sure who has emotionally invested in anything - its' not about emotions, it about The Truth. Emotions change, but The Truth always was, always will be, the same.

The only proof needed is God's Word and He already gave us that. Unbelievers demand proof, Christians already have it with a personal relationship with their Savior.

[Swordmaker]

The bishop of the time declared it a fraud, and knew the artist. A modern investigator has demonstrated how it was done. The Shroud-ologists go through all sorts of gymnastics to explain those facts away (the bishop was in competition for fees with the monastery that had the Shroud, etc. etc.) but this far removed in time that's the best we're going to get. The contemporaneous evidence is what clinches it for me.

Actually there is no contemporaneous evidence about the Shroud being a "fraud". In 1389, Henri de Portiers, the Bishop who wrote the draft letter to the Avignon Pope Clement, approximately 25 years after the first exposition of the Shroud in Lirey, France, claimed his predecessor, Pierre (De Arcis?) had found the "artist who cunningly painted" it... but the Shroud is not a painting.

While there are random flecks of various pigments on the Shroud, the pigments that are on the Shroud are never present in any organized placement and are randomly scattered over the surface of the Shroud in both image and non-image areas. They are never in sufficient concentrations to be visible.

In addition, the Bishop's letter was only a draft that was never sent to the Pope. No copy of it has ever been found in the extensive archives of the Vatican. The Bishop of Trois was known to have been upset that the Shroud was drawing pilgrims and their donations away from his collection of relics. The Pope actually sanctioned the display of the Shroud and placed the Bishop under an order of silence on the issue.

Another fact is that the Shroud has been depicted on a codex (The Hungarian Prayer Manuscript) with a known provenance (1192 AD) in the 12th Century... at least 160 years before the first showing in France. Also an engraving of the Shroud has been found on a medallion from the 11th Century.

Going even farther back, we have the sermon of Gregory Referendarius given when the Shroud was brought from Edessa, Turkey, to Constantinople on August 16, 944, in which he describes the Shroud and the image on it.

There are other documents relating to the Shroud in Constantinople found in the University of Leiden, Netherlands, The Codex Vossianus Latinus Q69, and the Vatican archives, Vatican Library Codex 5696, p. 35. Both of these 10th Century documents describe the Shroud in Constantinople:

[Non tantum] faciei figuram sed totius corporis figuram cernere poteris.

"You can see [not only] the figure of a face, but [also] the figure of the whole body."

Then, going even farther back, we have the "Hymn of the Pearl" found in The Acts of Thomas which have a provenance of 2nd or 3rd Century but are known to have originated in the Edessa area of Turkey. Which is translated as:

Suddenly, I saw my image
on my [burial a] garment like in a mirror

Myself facing outward and inward
As though divided, yet one likeness

Two images
but one likeness of the King[ of kings c] - (Trans.) Reisbach

Or in another translation:

on a sudden, when I received it,
the garment seemed to me to become like a mirror of myself.

I saw it all in all,
and I to received all in it,

for we were two in distinction
and yet gain one in one likeness.

And the treasurers too,
who brought it to me, I saw in like manner

to be two (and yet) one likeness,
for one sign of the king was written on them (both), - (trans.) W. Wright