[BroJoeK]

Swordmaker: "Because you guys have re-activated this thread,"

Sorry pal, I didn't intend to "re-activate" anything. Merely responded to some inaccurate insults from Wpin. Wpin, in turn noted that this thread was listed in the "Popular Articles" block (not there this morning), and I further noted nearly 12,000 views. Why Wpin felt compelled after nine months to insult me... well we can only guess.

Swordmaker: "The only "researchers" who claim a 6 ft 2in height for the image on the Shroud are skeptics who have exaggerated the measurements and who haven't bothered to investigate the actual science that has been done and instead prefer to just toss pot shots at the Shroud."

[snip]

Swordmaker: "You use a toss off one line from Wikipedia, which can be edited by any schmoe who chooses to change it, as your evidence of 6' 2", while I provided a complete quotation from TWO peer-reviewed scientific papers to establish my facts which complete refute that claim, and do so with evidence. "

I note your criticism of Wikipedia, and report to you that in this particular case, it is unwarranted.

• The article references as it's source for the Shoud image's height this site: How Tall is the Man on the Shroud?
  
• That site references FOUR different studies which range as follows:
  1. Isabel Piczek, artist specializing in human anatomy. 5'11½" - 6'1"
  2. Fanti, Marinelli, Cagnazzo (tibio-femoral indices calculations) 5'8" - 5'9"
  3. Luigi Gedda (sagittal plane of face applied to anthropometric ratio) 6'0"
  4. * Picknett and Prince (simple assumed face ratio) 6'8" - 6'10"
  5. Picknett and Prince (corrected for logical fallacy) 5'9" - 6'1"
• The very top figure of 6'2" comes from Isabel Piczek:

  "I have approached the question of height from the design point of view - an image which describes a 3D object and vice-versa, including the problem of foreshortening. I have also analyzed body type, muscle structure and proportion.

  "I determined the height to be 5'11½" to 6'1", give or take 1" for linen stretch and shrinking, both of which are possible. Because of the body type, even with shrinkage, the man cannot be under 5'11½". I lean more towards 6'0".

  "Whether Jews in Jesus's time were smaller or larger is not relevant here. Jews were not small to start with, judging by the finds in the 1st century cemetery excavated near the wall of the Temple in the sixties."

In summary: Wikipedia's source here is entirely friendly to your side of the debate. It reported the facts as they are.

Swordmaker: "I did not "argue" that the average Semitic Male of 1st Century Israel was 5' 10" tall. That is a strawman you just tossed in, hinting it is not a fact."

In truth, it is NOT a "fact," but rather an argument -- a sound argument, but only up to a point. The logic of your argument is the following:

Since the average height of 1st century male skeletons analyzed in Jerusalem was 5' 10", therefore the average height of ALL Jewish males of that period was 5' 10".

I would simply point out that those Jews wealthy enough to receive an expensive burial were very likely healthier and therefore taller than your average man on the Jerusalem street. So which category did Jesus belong to -- wealthy, healthy and tall, or poor and significantly shorter?

swordmaker: "That's the science. That's what was actually measured from the shroud. No speculation, no guessing. No arguments. No strawmen. Measurements. FACTS. DATA. No opinion. Do you understand the difference?"

Indeed.

swordmaker: "Anthropologists will disagree with you. "Carleton Coon (quoted in Wilcox 1977:133) describes the man as "of a physical type found in modern times among Sephardic Jews and noble Arabs." Curto (quoted in Sox 1981:70, 131), however, describes the physiognomy as more Iranian than Semitic." ibid Meacham." ."

Pal, I noted this very carefully the first time you posted it. And it seemed to me the conclusion here was so obvious it did not need further amplification from me. Indeed, your willingness to post this particular data convinced me that you (unlike some others) are an honest person.

But apparently I was wrong about the need for amplification: "Curto... however, describes the physiognomy as more Iranian than Semitic." You know, of course, that Iranians / Persians are not Semitic, they are Indo-Europeans, aka Aryans.

And what historical or biblical evidence do we have that suggests Jesus may have come from Aryan ancestry? None that I know of.

swordmaker: "Not quite so "North European" now looking is it?"

Indeed, it's amazing what computer enhancement can do for photographs these days. So I guess the question is: who am I going to believe -- your computer or my own lying eyes? ;-)

swordmaker: "You can choose to ignore the science in favor of the non-science, but you do so without support or evidence to back up your position. . . and you can only do it by mis-representing my arguments and my evidence."

That's odd, because I remember our previous exchanges as being both polite and informative -- decidedly lacking in the all-too-frequent insults or disparagements from other posters. And I don't remember writing anything to bring on the current blasts you guys are throwing around.

[Swordmaker]

• The article references as it's source for the Shoud image's height this site: How Tall is the Man on the Shroud?
  
• That site references FOUR different studies which range as follows:
  1. Isabel Piczek, artist specializing in human anatomy. 5'11½" - 6'1"
  2. Fanti, Marinelli, Cagnazzo (tibio-femoral indices calculations) 5'8" - 5'9"
  3. Luigi Gedda (sagittal plane of face applied to anthropometric ratio) 6'0"
  4. * Picknett and Prince (simple assumed face ratio) 6'8" - 6'10"
  5. Picknett and Prince (corrected for logical fallacy) 5'9" - 6'1"
• The very top figure of 6'2" comes from Isabel Piczek:

Ah, no, that site does NOT reference four different "studies" about the height of the man on the Shroud... it references five different conclusions about the height. There are actually only true three "studies"... and four conclusions with correction to one conclusion that made a basic mistake in fact known to almost every art student.

And only one of the studies is truly a "scientific" study, the one done by Fanti, Marinelli, et al. You might argue that Gedda's study could be science... but it lacked too much really to be science to my mind: the data was a little too "fuzzy" for the conclusion to be reliable. More "scholarship" than science. The Fanti study is reproducible and testable.

Let's look at them.

I know Isobel Piczek and have spoken to her at conferences. I have attended a couple of her lectures on the Shroud. While she is a theoretical physicist. In her work on the shroud, she is mostly an artist and an Art Historian. I would not classify her work on this as "science," it is "scholarship." Her training in Anatomy is as an artist, not as a scientist. However, the thrust of her Shroud research has not been human anatomy. She approached the Shroud image assuming a photographic, optical light approach and attempted to adjust the height by assuming a flat focal plane of the shroud and unfolding object of the body, thus stretching the length of the subject.

Her hypothesis and work, while good, has been found to be not the case when subjected to peer review and testing, was falsified by later science. Your conclusion of 6'2" from Piczek is from the EXTREME top of the range of possibility and is extrapolated from her "give or take 1 inch" for linen stretch and shrinking" to her estimated range: "I have also analyzed body type, muscle structure and proportion. I determined the height to be 5 foot 11½ inches to 6 foot 1 inch" which are all very arty, touchy-feely, very subjective... as opposed to the much more scientific and accurate methods used by Fanti, Marinelliet al., which falsified her hypothesis, presented new facts, and superseded her work. That's the way science works.

You will not find her claiming 6'2"... She says she leans toward 6'. Only the skeptics use the 6'2" figure... and they trot it out regularly to denigrate the Shroud, especially when they use the 5'4" "average height of Jews of the period" canard.

Dr. Luigi Gedda, a Professor of Anatomy, who concluded a 6' height, did his study in 1939, used photographs taken by Secondo Pia from a distance in 1898, and photos taken, also from a distance, by Guisseppe Enrie, as references to make his estimations. The Shroud was, both times was hung with unknown amount of stretch and measurements taken from both sets of photos don't match. They have variations of up to 3% in various directions including lengths of various parts that are attributable to draping, focal length, distance, etc. The measurements were at best estimates and were inaccurate... His work was falsified by accurate measurements by the 1978 1:1 photographs by Barrie Schwortz of STURP and actual contact measurements of all physical points of reference on the Shroud to the best ability of numerous scientists including forensic physicians.

Neither Lynn Picknett nor Clive Prince, authors of a Shroud book that theorized that Leonardo da Vinci created the Shroud of Turin, are scientists... or scholars. They are charlatans. They refer to themselves as "historians." One is a fiction writer. They even fail at that being historians. I'll give them fiction writers. Their absurd theory is patently false since Leonardo was born in 1452, 100 years AFTER the Shroud was first exhibited c. 1352. Their website paints them as "conspiracy theorists" who believe along with Dan Brown in the Priory of Sion, and Da Vinci's membership and Grandmastership as motives for faking the Shroud. They hint that the Shroud's head is "oversized" to indicating the decapitation to point to the priority of John the Baptist over Jesus... Right, sure. Their calculations originally put the height of the Man on the Shroud at 6'8" to 6'10" tall. They are skeptics, hewing to the hoax/skeptic school of thought.

None of Picknett's or Prince's work has ever been submitted for peer review. If it had, everyone of the reviewers would have picked up on the error they made of using a 1:9 head to body ratio to calculate their height. I learned, just as I believe every student who has taken art learned, that the human body average ratio of head to body is approximately 8 to 1.

"They arrived at this height by assuming that the head height to body height ratio on the shroud was 1 to 9 rather than the average 1 to 8. So they multiplied their height of the head measurement by nine."

Fellow Freeper Shroudie, who wrote the article you are referencing, properly corrected Picknet and Princes sophomoric conclusion of 5.8" to 6'10" body height to a more reasonable 5'9" to 6'1".—Source

That's odd, because I remember our previous exchanges as being both polite and informative -- decidedly lacking in the all-too-frequent insults or disparagements from other posters. And I don't remember writing anything to bring on the current blasts you guys are throwing around.

It's "impolite" to point out that you are misrepresenting the argument when you do? The evidence is overwhelming that Jews of the 1st Century were NOT 5.4" tall which you were arguing then, which I refuted with evidence... and which you again were arguing again without proof yesterday, even though I had presented the facts last April that refuted that as untrue. You presented as truth, as though a 5'10" Jew from the 1st Century were somehow an impossibility, making the case that man on the Shroud could not be from that area, despite being presented with the scientific facts before. That shows willful intent to ignore the evidence in favor of untruth. you even posted that clownish picture from Popular Mechanics that was shot down by Anthropologists when it was first published as proof claiming the short stature. I have provided even more confirming data about the stature of 1st Century residents of Israel... but you choose to make assumptions based on unproved non-science. I am still being polite to you. I am attacking your posts, not you.

By the way, the thread was re-activated, no matter what the reason, and the points were interesting. That's why I Pinged the Shroud list.