Sorry, the Shroud of Turin Is Definitely a Hoax

No.

Then it doesn’t exist. As far as we know, or suspect, the Shroud was walled up in the city gate in Edessa during that period, and enclosed in a frame that only exposed the face. It was, at that time, referred to as the “Image of Edessa” after being taken to King Akbar of Edessa to cure him of an affliction. Perhaps what you are thinking of is the cris-crossed grating look of the framework that had an opening to show the face?

This is a very early image of what is purported to represent the Image of Edessa:

It has most of the classic markers for being derived from the Shroud, plus it has the inexplicable dots on either side, and the lattice work image at top and bottom. There is another image of the Image of Edessa that shows the face in the lattice work.

These would have come from a period closer to what you may be thinking of.

Another name for the Image of Edessa was the Mandylion.

No.

Those images of the Image of Edessa or Mandylion are attributed to the 5th or 6th Century.

I doubt it, not even with today’s advancements. Possibly using radiation techniques, which I suspect the “forger” had no access. lol

If there was a radiation source, the evidence on the Shroud indicates it would have had to come from inside the body. That would be very hard for a forger to do. He would have to have access to an injection radiation source. . . and, of course, he’d have to know about its effects. Pretty heavy hill to climb for those who claim that modality.

The passage in the book of John describes strips of linen and a separate cloth for Jesus’ head. From what I have read about these practices, the body was first laid into a single large cloth from head to toe and then the strips of linen were wound around that. Its a stretch, but believers in the Turin shroud can say that this was not mentioned in the Biblical account because it was just understood.

Uh, no, it doesn’t. Not in the original Greek. The original Greek uses the word “ ὀθονίοις” (Othonois) which does not translate to “strips of linen”, but to a “large piece of fine Linen cloth,” a sheet. John, also in the Greek uses with the Grave Clothes description, the word, in Greek, “ ἔδησαν” which means to “bind,” “tie,” “bound.” This comports to the following sentence in John: “As was the custom of the Jews.” According to the Mishnah, the codified writtings of the Oral traditions, wrapping a body with strips was NOT part of the customs. Binding the ankles, wrists, tying the jaw closed, were. . . all of which can be accomplished with small ad hoc pieces of cloth or rope. Covering the body or face with a cloth was an either/or choice depending on the means of the family. If they had a large shroud handy, a separate face cloth would be superfluous and wasteful.

The synoptic Gospels report that Joseph of Arimathea bought a “σινδόνι“ a “sindon”, a large fine linen sheet. Sindon’s Greek base root comes from “sail” implying the size. Matthew’s Gospel uses the Greek word “καθαρᾷ” which means the sindon was “clean, unsullied, pure” before Jesus was covered or wrapped in it. It could not have been were they to have torn it into strips with hands that had carried an unclean bloodied body.

Cloth was a very expensive product in that time, representing a huge expense of human labor and time, and cloth remained so until the industrial revolution and the invention of the power loom. Linens often represented a large amount of the value of an estate. One of my prized possessions is an antique 18th Century Linen chest with a locking side bar to keep the linens from being stolen. Large cloths were especially expensive. When a shroud was used for burial, it was often a used sail.

I see you are one of those *Everyone who came before us is dumber than a box of rocks* types.

WOW! You sure read a lot into what I think when I never said that. Exactly where did I say our ancestors were “dumber than a box of rocks?” Many of the examples I gave were accomplished by people who came before us, just not so far in the past. I just DEBUNKED your and a host of others’ claim they worked wonders we cannot do. They accomplished a lot WE built upon, and we, building on what they did, found BETTER ways to do some of those same things, just far more efficiently.

Frankly, I am amazed at what they accomplished with the tools they had. I just don’t claim that WE can’t do it, when I know a better and the claim they did it better just ain’t so.

I gave you CONCRETE EVIDENCE WE DO IT EVERY DAY, BETTER, FASTER, AND MORE EFFICIENTLY, than those idiotic examples of that linked article.

This claim that people in the past could do things that WE DUMB MODERNS ARE TOO HOPELESSLY STUPID TO FIGURE OUT IS THE REAL BUNK!

You’ve swallowed those assertions uncritically. So apparently when I poke holes in your shibboleths, because you really have no argument to refute my case, you turn around and insult me.

Go on and have your own good day in your willful, but happy, and smug ignorance. You should try and learn something instead, but I am fine if you want to remain ignorant. No skin off my nose. I just refuse to buy into it.

John
	Greek NT: Byzantine/Majority Text (2000)	English: Douay-Rheims
	John 20
5.	και παρακυψας βλεπει κειμενα τα οθονια ου μεντοι εισηλθεν	And when he stooped down, he saw the linen cloths lying; but yet he went not in.
6.	ερχεται ουν σιμων πετρος ακολουθων αυτω και εισηλθεν εις το μνημειον και θεωρει τα οθονια κειμενα	Then cometh Simon Peter, following him, and went into the sepulchre, and saw the linen cloths lying,
7.	και το σουδαριον ο ην επι της κεφαλης αυτου ου μετα των οθονιων κειμενον αλλα χωρις εντετυλιγμενον εις ενα τοπον	And the napkin that had been about his head, not lying with the linen cloths, but apart, wrapped up into one place.

UnboundBible, emphasis mine

ὀθόν-ιον , τό, Dim. of ὀθόνη, A.linen cloth, Hp. Acut.7, Ar.Fr.104, Thphr.HP7.3.5, PSI6.599 (iii B. C.), Plb.6.23.3, Ev.Jo.19.40, etc. : pl., linen cloths, “βύσσινα ὀ.” OGI90.18 (Rosetta, ii B. C.), cf. LXXJd.14.13, Luc.Philops.34, etc. ; towels, Jul.Or.6.203b ; linen bandages or lint, for wounds, Hp.Off.8, al., Ar.Ach.1176. 2. sail-cloth, D.47.20, Plb.5.89.2 ; so perh. in PPetr.1p.79 (iii B. C., pl.). Henry George Liddell. Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by. Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with the assistance of. Roderick McKenzie. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1940. The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.

LSJ

metmom cannot contribute, but produces much noise, just ignore.

Some of us don’t need props to put our faith in.

We just take God at His word and that’s good enough. We don’t need *proof* which doesn’t do anything for the believer and would never convince the unbeliever anyways.

Lack of faith is not a matter of *can’t believe* but of *won’t believe* and all the proof in the world will not convince someone to believe.

The sample tested came from a later mending of the original cloth.
Carbon 14 testing can be thrown off by exposure to fire, to which the Shroud was exposed.
The knowledge of physiology, medicine and anatomy required to generate the image was unknown to people of the Middle Ages.

But I find it a little curious that this opening gambit is followed by a denigration of by far the most qualified and experienced scientist of the whole STuRP team, namely Walter McCrone. He was a by-word in microscopy then, and acknowledged as such today, as witnessed by his continuing achievements, The Microscope, The Particle Atlas, and the McCrone Research Institute. Ray Rogers, who carried out the tape sampling exercise, had taken a course tutored by McCrone, so it was no wonder he first entrusted his tapes to him.

First of all, to my recollection, Ray Rogers did not carry out the sampling via tape on the Shroud at STURP. That is a mischaracterization. That was not his function. Ray was a Pyrology chemist. I would have to look it up who actually did it or ask Barrie. Some of the samples, especially the ones that had sticky material on them were taken by Max Frei with over-the-counter Scotch Tape, not the special tape STURP had made for the purpose. Some others were shocked when another Italian scientist also used an over-the-counter cellophane tape. Barrie tells about that. It is also known that McCrone remounted many of the threads and in his own mounting material when he put them on slides.

McCrone did not get his samples from Ray Rogers. Rogers was not the repository of samples. Once he got them, he refused to return them. There is quite a narrative about the effort to get them returned to STURP custody.

Walter McCrone was never an official member of the STURP team although he claimed he was. He was granted some threads to examine, but he refused to submit his reports to STURP. Instead, he chose to self-publish his findings in his own in-house magazine the Microscopist, published and edited by Walter C. McCrone.

We cannot look at his “continuing” achievements because Walter McCrone has been dead since 2002.

So what of Swordmaker’s claim that his work has been “long debunked”. I don’t think that’s the right approach, and suggests an authenticist bias that I hope is not mirrored by a similar non-authenticist bias on my part.

What part of there is no pigment in the image areas that is associated with the images, when McCrone claimed there was that he could easily see with his light microscope? No OTHER microscopist could replicate his findings. Not one. No image related red ocher, no egg albumin, which McCrone claims to find scads of, no albumin, no other pigments. Electron microscope studies found NO PIGMENTS yet McCrone claimed he saw PIGMENTS. The same with the blood, which turned out to be real blood where McCrone claimed it was paint with scads of Vermillion and Red Ocher, and even specified rouge and depending on the paper or speech, specific makes of rouge, or specific grinds including one invented by a technique as late as 1830. That is what debunked McCrone’s claims.

In his peer-reviewed paper (Acc. Chem. Res. Vol. 23), McCrone publishes several micrographs liberally sprinkled with red dots. It is useless to pretend that they are not there, or that they represent ‘cellulosic bound’ iron oxide associated with the retting process. So why are they ignored by John Heller and Alan Adler (Can. Soc. Forens. Sci. J., Vol. 14)? Rather than dismiss one or the other as an idiot, it is better to try to find an answer.

I disagree that those “liberally sprinkled red dots” McCrone published were ignored by Heller and Adler. I’ve seen those addressed. First of all, as McCrone himself noted these dots are “sub-micron” in size. They are not visible except under a microscope. The are not visible to the human eye, even “liberally sprinkled.” They are environmental Iron Oxide from multiple sources, not associated with the image or blood.

Yes, there are environmental Iron Oxide particles found on the Shroud. Yes, McCrone found some. Those were those dots. They were found both in image areas and in non-image areas in about equal distribution. These particles were NOT associated in any image area or any non-image area, nor in any amount that rose to visibility, nor were they distributed in a coherent fashion, and seemed to be randomly distributed as the result environmental contamination.

Gérard Lucotte and Giulio Fanti have independently identified cinnabar on two different blood stains

I don’t have too much of a problem with the microscopic amounts of Mercury Sulfide found on two very small blood stains found by Lucotte and Fante. It isn’t found in the rest of the blood on the Shroud. It is well known that medieval artists who painted copies of the Shroud of which 26 still exist today, would frequently press their finished artistic work to the original to imbue it with an air of impressed authenticity by contact. Transfer of pigments is a likely consequence of such a practice, even when dried, because such art on cloth sheds.

We STILL have to return the very basic fact there there is simply NO PIGMENT where the image exists, no FIXATIVE for a photograph to exist there, and nothing in the Shroud of that smacks of human artifice. As I said above we KNOW what and where that image exists in. . . what we don’t know is what created that Maillard reaction caused that discoloration in that ~100 Ångstrom thin layer only on one side of the fibril.

It is not obvious to a number of convinced authenticists, such as John Jackson, the founder of STuRP, and Bob Rucker, that there is any anomalous material in the radiocarbon corner. For a start, every single thread can be followed from the main body of the Shroud into the corner. . .

I think Dr. Jackson and you are misinterpreting how “French Invisible Reweaving” is accomplished. Of course each thread ever single thread can be followed from the main body of the Shroud. It’s the way the technique works. Each individual thread is RE-TWISTED into the newly spun and dyed and matched thread to continue it so it the splice cannot be seen. They are not just laid side by side and continued which would make an obvious patch in fine cloth.

. . .there must be at least three times as much interpolation as orignal cloth (that’s 75% / 25%, not 60% / 40%). ‘Approximately equal weights of 16th and 1st century Carbon’ could not have produced the 13th / 14th century date.

It’s 100% as much, Hugh. Almost equal amounts. You are thinking about it wrong. You have to think of it as a contaminant. If the entire sample is the whole, but we are dating the entire 100% of only the half of the sample that is 1st Century, then the other half is 100% 16th Century. I think I will rely on the calculations of Dr. Harry Gove, the inventor of the C-14 test technique that was actually USED in the Shroud testing, who did the calculations who came up with that figure. He was asked what it would take to skew the dates given those ratios. He did the calculations. It really depends on what estimated age the patch material is. I know that the amount actually varied, according to those who were doing the estimating from 40% to 60%. It has been many years since I studied the decay rate of of C-14 to N14, but I still defer to Dr. Gove, not to somebody on line. Several other C-14 specialists also stated that it would take an equal weight of NEW material to skew a 1st Century item to the 14th century.

Comment 109. I’m a skeptic and I don’t claim that. The easiest way to produce the image on the Shroud is to drape it over a damp bas-relief. The areas of greatest pressure result in the areas of densest image. Pseudo-negativity is an inevitable comsequence.

That bas relief technique, as I said above, does semi-work, BUT Hugh, it has one major failing. The resulting product is left with scads of dusted pigments, dyes, or chars if heat was used, neither of which the Shroud evinces in the image areas. It also suffers from the working backwards fallacy, trying to get the result from knowing where you are and going backwards, trying to get back to the result. Knowing it was done, and trying to get a similar result that superficially looks the same and claiming, “There, did it.”

I don’t hold all the answers, but I do follow the science. I don’t toss out the good science due to outlying results such as the Cinnebar findings in a few reports. (The Mercury Sulfide was also found only in sub-micron non-visible amounts) I file it and consider it.

In the interests of openness, Fanti shared another paper where the authors hypothesize that the Cinnebar may have resulted from some medieval artists may have tried to “touch up” the blood stains on the Shroud to enhance the redness of those two locations where it was seen. I find this a stretch.

McCrone’s fatal flaw was he wanted to solve everything with a single tool, his optical microscope. The hammer/nail conundrum. This lead him into several major mistakes of arrogance, not just with the Shroud. He’s declared several other ancient manuscripts to be frauds based on his microscopic examination, when they were later proved authentic. He’s often right, too. But he has to recognize there ARE other tools. His McCrone Institute has an Electron Microscope department but he refused to allow them to see the Shroud samples because he said he didn’t want to solve the mystery by anything except optical means. THAT came from his own ex-employees.

Hugh, thanks for not being one of those like the rabid skeptics, but being a rational, open minded skeptic. Those like you make discussion fun. Skeptics like Habermann and Randi, not so much. I was very sorry to hear that we’ve lost Rogers, Heller, and Adler. . . even McCrone. All of them are now dead.

PS, welcome to FreeRepublic Hugh.

Thanks for a very nice presentation. Again, it depends on the Translation. Look at the Synoptics where the cloth is described as a sindon. . . There are many other sources which report that a sindon is indeed derived from a sail, sheet, large cloth. I am not making this up. Strong’s Concordance defines it as a Fine Linen Cloth.

What it does NOT translate to is “bandages,” “Linen Strips” or any kind of swaddling wrappings. That may be a tertiary definition, but it is not a good translation. One theory I’ve seen is that travelers to the Middle East and Egypt saw old bodies. The only ones that survived were Egyptian mummies, swathed in bandages. The dead in Judea were mere dry bones. The result was an assumption that everyone in the area buried their dead the same way as the Egyptians did. That misapprehension was certainly was reinforced when Europe started importing mummies for fuel for heating and railroads.

The Mishnah does NOT comport with those Egyptian kinds of “Jewish burial practices” where people assume more than is implied and have NOT been found in Jewish customs. Jews are, if anything, a people of strict religious customs. The body must be in the on the day of death. That does not permit time for elaborate preparations of the body such as wrapping in yards of strips. What does work, especially with the need to remove the bones a year after death, is a minimal binding of limbs.

Even your thoughtfully provided Liddell’s Lexicon has as it’s first translation of ὀθόνη as “a Linen Cloth” and also includes “sail-cloth” which implies a very large cloth. It does show the gamut of how the word can be used, but bandages requires, to my reading, the use for wounds. I know that other scholars report that usages in Greek writing ὀθόνη is always in reference to wounds when strips are intended.

So, we ARE pretty much in agreement. What we do have to realize is that none of the Gospels’ account of Jesus’ burial is meant to be a step-by-step, blow-by-blow narrative of what was done. Much was assumed to be understood by the reader, hearer of the story from the phrase “as was the custom of the Jews”

I want to bring to attention the Greek word from Verse 7 “εντετυλιγμενον”, which the Douay-Rheims translates as “wrapped up” and many other Bible translations translate as “folded.”

However the actual Greek word is better translated as “entwined” or “twisted” —εντετυλιγμενον: verb - perfect passive participle - accusative singular neuter of entulisso en-too-lis'-so: to entwine, to roll, i.e. wind up in — wrap in (together)— which supports the contention that this was the σουδαριον [Of Latin origin; a sudarium (sweat-cloth), i.e. Towel (for wiping the perspiration from the face, or binding the face of a corpse) Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance] the jaw binding cloth that kept the mouth closed and was placed around the face, rather than over the face. “Folded” is not supported in the Greek.

The sample tested came from a later mending of the original cloth.
Carbon 14 testing can be thrown off by exposure to fire, to which the Shroud was exposed.
The knowledge of physiology, medicine and anatomy required to generate the image was unknown to people of the Middle Ages.

I know of no method for fire to change the C-14 content of anything. To add enough soot contamination to an object to skew the date would require the tested object to be almost completely outweighed by the soot. It would be obvious as hell. There’d be so much contamination from newer material the object you’d want to date would be buried in it.

A similar argument holds against a microbial contaminant that eats the object to be dated, leaving its poop behind as a contamination. Since the source of the contaminated poop comes from the object itself, it’s unlikely to skew the dating of the object so long as that’s all they eat and poop. If, however, the microorganism eats elsewhere and just returns to your dating target as a litter box to poop and perhaps die while grunting out a big one, then you got a problem, but again to skew the date significantly, all that poop and dead bugs have to mass a lot more than what you’re dating to make a huge difference. . . especially if the bugs have been using your target subject as a latrine and a cemetery for its entire existence because the ages of the poop and dead bugs will range from as old as your target to ten seconds from now when you sterilize it by starting the test.

That went to Shroud a hoax? as well.

Both Heller and McCrone, in their respective books, Heller and Adler, in their Chemistry and Physics paper, and Rogers himself, in his Chemist’s Perspective paper, make it clear that Rogers’s major contribution to the STuRP investigation was his personal acquiring of the specially made tape and the specially made applicator, his personal taking of the samples (about 36), placing them across the edges of glass storage boxes and delivering them to Walter McCrone, who cut them all in two, mounted them on glass slides and gave one set back. Max Frei’s samples were personal to him, taken in a different way, and removed to Switzerland. They have never been investigated by STuRP.

Your large statement that no other microscopist has found pigment needs unpacking. Vanishingly few microscopists have ever looked at Shroud the tapes at all, and those who have have concentrated on individual fibres rather than loose particles. Pigments have been found in varying quantities all over the Shroud by the very microscopists who have been able to look at the tapes, including Heller and Adler, Lucotte, Fanti, and observed spectrographically by Morris. The question is not whether they are there, but in what quantities and why. Even McCrone seems to have changed his mind about whether the image, in particular, was mainly caused by the red particles or the yellowed medium they could have been applied in. The STuRP team said they thought they were due to painted images being spread over the Shroud to authenticate them into third-class relics.

I don’t know where you got the idea that McCrone thought the ochre was ground in 1830. Although it is not impossible that the blood has been touched up several times, he never claimed that either the original image, or the original blood, used a grind from the 19th century. That’s quite a scurrilous slur on his reputation, and although I dare say you were only quoting someone else, I would seriously go back and check your sources before repeating it.

I’m intrigued by what you call “environmental iron oxide”. Are you referring to the “cellulosic bound” iron of Heller and Adler? If so, this cannot describe the unattached particles, and if not, then where does this sprinkling of environmental iron oxide come from? I have not read that anybody else has described it so. As for its distribution, I have already mentioned Roger Morris, who found it, by X-ray fluorescence, in direct proportion to the intensity of the image.

Turning to my misunderstanding of French Invisible Reweaving. I have two books on the subject, with detailed diagrams, and have commissioned two samples of it from the UK and the USA’s foremost proponents of it. The idea that individual threads are unravelled and spliced to new threads is wholly foreign to any known method of invisible mending, there are no known examples of it, modern or historical, and no known documentation on it. I’m afraid that after considerable research and expense, I have formally declared that it is entirely a figment of authenticist imagination, and challenged anybody to prove (or even suggest evidence) that I’m wrong. After two years, I remain unanswered.

It’s fine to defer to Harry Gove when it comes to the proportions of (say) 16th to 1st century material to produce a 13th century result. In his Relic, Icon or Hoax book, he says: “If the contamination occurred as a result of the fire in 1532, then 79% of the shroud would have been composed of such carbon contamination and only 21% would have been actual carbon from the shroud linen.” That’s four times as much contamination as Shroud, not a 50/50 split. If the contamination was more modern, then the proportion is less, but even if it were added yesterday, you’d still need a lot more contamination than original.

I have to say I’m a little concerned that so much of your evidence does not reflect the primary evidence of the “research done by scientists working in their fields of expertise doing actual research” in their own authored papers, articles and books. I can’t believe you have read ‘Judgement Day for the Turin Shroud’ (McCrone), Report on the Shroud of Turin (Heller), or Relic, Icon or Hoax (Gove), and wonder if you know The Orphaned Manuscript (Adler), A Chemist’s Perspective (Rogers, posthumously) or many of the STuRP papers, all of which are published at shroud.com. Are you getting your information from the secondary sources, such as Ian Wilson or Mark Antonacci? If so then please check all their references, which you will find do not always support their arguments as closely as they hope.

(to be continued, in response to later posts!)

(Still running as fast as I can to stay in the same place!)

Comment 157. Gabrial Vial, Hero Grainger-Taylor and Orit Shamir are the foremost authorities on first century weaving, but all declare that the Shroud shows every sign of having been woven on a four-shaft treadle loom, and not a four-shaft warp-weighted loom, of which there is anyway no evidence whatsoever from the first century. The only examples of textiles showing 3/1 twill from the time are either tablet-woven or damasks, which require equipment or techniques that do not match the Shroud. There are no surviving ancient materials made of byssus, and the word as used by the ancients is usually interpreted as fine linen or cotton. The earliest reliable mention of byssus from a mollusc is in the 2nd century AD.

Comment 159. Very patient of you. I find I no longer have the time to reply to anybody who uses more than one exclamation mark at a time, and an excessive use of capital letters.

Comment 161. The idea that the Shroud and the Image of Edessa are the same has had a good run for its money, in spite of being comprehensively dismissed by almost all leading Byzantine Historians, but is fading in popularity even among authenticists, particularly as more and more witnesses have been discovered claiming to have seen both “the burial cloths” and the image in different parts of Constantinople.

Comment 164. The Mishnah and the Talmud are both online. There is vanishingly little information as to any Jewish burial practice in either of them. Any attempt to reconcile the Shroud, the Mishnah, the Talmud, the Torah, and the rather hurried burial of Jesus as described in the bible is doomed to dissolve away in unsubstantiable speculation.

Right, that brings me to date. Now I must go back to your extensive Comment 74, mostly attempting to discredit the radiocarbon date....

Comment 74. The big one!

Assertion 1. The forger’s confession.

You’re a bit confused about this, if I may say so. There is no evidence for Bishop Henri’s enquiry (c. 1356) other than Bishop d’Arcis’s letter (c. 1390). Whether Bishop Henri wrote up his inquiry or sent anything about it to the pope we have no idea; there is nothing in Troyes or the Vatican. All we do know is that the Shroud was exhibited as genuine in about 1356, then hidden away until about 1390. Then, and from then on, it was not described as authentic for a hundred years. However, it seems that it was otherwise treated as a sacred relic until the Pope prescribed that “as long as an ostentation lasts, no capes, surplices, albs, copes or any other kind of ecclesiastical garments or accoutrements are to be worn, nor any of the solemnities usual to the ostentation of relics performed. Torches, candles and tapers must be kept to a minimum, and no other kind of illumination used instead. And throughout the display of the said image, whenever a large crowd of people has gathered, it is to be formally announced to them, in a loud, clear voice, with no obfuscation, that the image or representation before them is not the true Shroud of our Lord Jesus Christ, but a painting or canvas made in the form of or as a representation of the said Shroud, of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is true that there is some evidence that the image on the Shroud, at least today, is not a “painting” in the normally accepted sense of an artist with a palette and brush, but I think the term could embrace a “staining” with, say, an iron salt, which binds to the substrate chemically and is not particulate. The words “paynted” and “stayned” are largly interchangeable in medieval describtions of coloured cloth.

The Pray Codex.

The image in the Pray Codex is a typical example of “Three Marys” iconography, of which there are literally hundreds of examples from the 9th century onwards. By the 12th century, almost all versions included the following stylisitc elements, a sarcophagus, an oddly skewed lid, an angel perched on it, a crumpled, draped, or twisted shroud, and three women bringing ointments or spices. The Pray Codex image exactly follows this convention. The lid of the sarcophagus is decorated with six or seven designs like stepped pyramids, with their bases along the edges of the lid. It is fanciful in the extreme to see these designs on stone as representations of herringbone weave on cloth, and beyond sanity to see it as the “distinctive three-over-one twill weave pattern” of the Shroud. On the lid there are four circles in the same pattern as the poker holes on the Turin Shroud, and something a bit like them on the sarcophagus itself, but they are certainly not on the crumpled shroud on the lid. There is also no suggestion of “an obvious double Christ image”.

Gregory Referendarius.

Marc Guscin translates two significant passages of Gregory’s sermon as follows: “taking this linen cloth he wiped the sweat that was falling down his face like drops of blood in his agony. And miraculously, just as he made everything from nothing in his divine strength, he imprinted the reflection of his form on the linen” and “This reflection, however – let everyone be inspired with the explanation – has been imprinted only by the sweat from the face of the originator of life, falling like drops of blood, and by the finger of God. For these are the beauties that have made up the true imprint of Christ, since after the drops fell, it was embellished by drops from his own side.” The first is no suggestion of a full body image (let alone two), and although the second may at first sight imply that the wound on Christ’s side had dripped on the cloth, Guscin, a convinced authenticist, later changed his translation, declaring that: “The thrust of the text is that the sweat of agony (like drops of blood) adorned the Image, just like blood from its side adorned the body from which the sweat had dripped, i.e. two different events at two different times.”

Assertion 2. Ancient Jewish Burial Practices.

Remarkably, perhaps, the Jewish Mishnah in fact has almost nothing to say about “binding the arms, wrists, ankles and jaw to with cloth or rope, […], and covering the body”, nor anything about ossuaries. Nor does the Talmud, the Torah or the Old Testament in General. If you truly find that any description of burial practice is “quite clear in the Mishnah”, then I should be very grateful to know where.

Assertion 3. The Radiocarbon Dating

“The 1988 C-14 test has been falsified, multiple times, by multiple means, by multiple scientists, in multiple peer-reviewed scientific papers published in multiple journals.”

Has it really? Would you like to list just a few of these multiples?

Firstly, “the scientists who conducted the ‘88 test failed to follow their own agreed protocols and instead of taking eight samples from eight different locations on the Shroud, instead tested just four sub-samples taken from a single location…”

This is very muddled. The scientists followed the protocol set by the owners of the material they were to test. Those owners had never agreed to various other protocols discussed at several meetings prior to the test. It might have been more definitive to take more samples from more places, but for reasons of their own, probably to do with the possible sanctity of the relic, this was not permitted. Each of three laboratories was given their own sample. The Arizona sample was made of two pieces, but the smaller of those was never tested.

“taken from an area that the scientists who had examined the Shroud first-hand in the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project had all agreed should be avoided for such tests because it was chemically, photographically, and physically not similar to the main body of the Shroud.”

No. By 1988 STuRP as a body of scientists had ceased to exist. The radiocarbon corner had never been “chemically, photographically, and physically” studied.

Secondly, “the sub-samples and control samples were supposed to be […] reduced to mere threads or fibers so the source could not be determined.”

Actually, at the magnification at which the samples were studied by the labs, even individual threads are easy to identify. The decision not to divide the pieces into threads was taken for fear the thorough cleaning process would reduce them to nothing, as, in fact, happened to one of the Zurich control samples.

Thirdly, “the results of each of the tested sub-samples were completely outside of the range of statistical probability of even being related to each other in age”

Every single measurement taken of each of the twelve final subdivisions of the test strip to be dated placed the Shroud firmly in the late Middle Ages. The statistical probability of the Shroud not being from the late Middle Ages is minuscule.

“exceeding the normal statistical test for C-14 testing to be considered to have been from the same sample […] red flags should have told the testers something was wrong from the results.”

The many results from each of the three labs were well matched, so the testers could not have noticed anything wrong, but it is true that matched against each other, they seemed too scattered to represent the same material. This did indeed act as a red flag to the results co-ordinators, who carried out further statisitical tests to confirm the anomaly, and made an effort to resolve it.

Fourthly, “the results, instead of being reported for each labs separate sub-sample test, were averaged, which resulted in spurious dates when samples did not agree. This was especially damaging to the results in the case of the University of Arizona testing where their two sub-samples were completely divergent in dating.”

This is rather confused too. Each lab started with a single piece of cloth to test. Arizona had been supplied with two, but did not test the smaller piece. The three pieces, one for each lab, were sub-divided into three (Oxford), four (Arizona) and five (Zurich) sub-samples which were reduced to carbon pellets each of which was analysed several times. Of course these were averaged to produce an overall result for each sub-sample, and each group of sub-samples averaged to produce an overall result for each lab, and finally to produce an overall date for the Shroud.

Fifthly, “Oxford University, the project managing lab…”

Oxford University was not the project managing lab. The British Museum oversaw the collating and publishing of rhe results.

“…and impermissibly averaged ALL three labs results…”

This was not only not impermissable, it was demanded by the requirements of the whole project.

“…and averaged all FOUR sub-sample results, despite all four sub-sample having degrees’ of confidence NEVER overlapping the next closest date’s degree of confidence at all…”

Confused. There were twelve sub-samples. Between dates 672 and BP 725, seven of them overlapped; between 668 and 734, six of them overlapped, and between 666 and 774, five of them overlapped.

“… despite that averaged date completely failing the Chi-Squared Test for C-14 testing which showed that the samples HAD A BETTER THAN 90% CHANCE OF NOT EVEN RELATED TO EACH OTHER, DESPITE BEING CUT FROM THE SAME PIECE OF CLOTH!”

I’m not keen on shouty capitals, but you do point out a conundrum. In the absence of certain knowledge, it would have been possible and easy to claim that Chi-squared test showed that the three labs had dated three different cloths, but as the heads of the labs had seen the samples being cut, that was not sensible (barring various rather grotesque accusations of deliberate falsification, which I will not entertain here). It would also have been possible and easy to declare that the results were meaningless and that nothing could be determined from them, but since they all fell within a 200 year period, coinciding with the medieval appearance of the Shroud and a thousand years younger than the first century, that solution was also clearly not sensible. Several possible reconciliations of the discrepancy have been suggested.

Sixthly, “French Invisible Reweaving”.

I am very familiar with Invisible French Reweaving. I have two books on the subject, with detailed diagrams, and two samples done for me by the most respected modern practitioners in the USA and UK. It is not invisible. The idea that individual threads may have been unravelled and spliced together with new threads is not supported by any examples, modern or historical, any literature, modern or historical, or any evidence at all, modern or historical. It is a figment of overhopeful authenticist imagination.

“A fifth sub-sample was retained and not destroyed in C-14 testing. Upon examination it was discovered that one side of that sample was made of original undyed linen made of flax, while the other side was dyed COTTON fiber threads.”

No. The fifth sub-sample has never been examined microscopically at all.

“The two sides of the retained sub-sample cut from the main sample were biologically, microscopically, physically, chemically, and chronologically different from each other.”

No. If there had been any kind of intermingling of threads, the two sides would have been largely identical, being a mixture of the two, only differing at the extreme edges, where the modern/ancient threads would have been clearly differentiated. This was not found.

Seventhly. The Chronological Gradient.

Yes. One solution to the British Museum’s dilemma, above, is that there is a very slight chronological gradient along the sample strip. This could be caused by minor contamination, such as by an oil which is difficult to remove by the cleaning methods used. This solution was not considered by the British Museum because at the time they did not know the order in which the samples had been located on the original sample strip.

Finally, “Dr. Harry Gove […] did some back-of-the-envelope calculations. […] When finished, he said “Give or take 100 years, First Century,”

This is nonsense. I’ve no idea who invented it, but Harry Gove never said anything of the kind.

(there’s more, but this comment has worn me, and probably anybody who’s reading it, out!)

Thank you for the text of the Pope’s order to the Lirey Chapel about the showing of the Shroud. I had not seen that in detail before, although I heard of its strictures.

It is true that there is some evidence that the image on the Shroud, at least today, is not a “painting” in the normally accepted sense of an artist with a palette and brush, but I think the term could embrace a “staining” with, say, an iron salt, which binds to the substrate chemically and is not particulate. The words “paynted” and “stayned” are largly interchangeable in medieval describtions of coloured cloth.

My, you make a good argument, but it has flaws . . . from the what I have read of would definitely SHOW any such staining by an “iron salt” bound to the substrate chemically and would have been found by many of the tests performed, especially an microspectrometric examination. It did not show up on any such test for iron.

Again we know where the image exists and it is NOT soaked into the fibers of the flax as would be suggested by such a staining. That shoots down any such modality of creation by your hypothetical “iron salt staining.”

The other problem I see with your Iron Salts is that easily soluble Iron Salts, the ones that are typically named that, are Iron Sulfate, and are not brown or reddish color, but green in color. Nice try, but no 5¢ cigar.

In consideration of the science, I researched your proposal with Iron (III) salts, which are a proper brown/red in color, but from what I can find, and what I recall from decades ago chemistry, they don’t lend themselves well to going into solution to stain, and leave behind larger, clumpy easily spotted particles of iron oxide as a residue. No matter that any staining implies soaking with a fluid into the fibers, covering more than just the front facing soapwort coating. Any modality has to explain why it affected only that during a specific time frame resolving an image portion.

On a personal note, I am assuming that you are the Hugh Farey, third from the left, in this photo from Shroud.com:

If so, my hat is off to your expertise, Hugh. Your arguments are hence given much more weight.

“. . . taken from an area that the scientists who had examined the Shroud first-hand in the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project had all agreed should be avoided for such tests because it was chemically, photographically, and physically not similar to the main body of the Shroud.”

No. By 1988 STuRP as a body of scientists had ceased to exist. The radiocarbon corner had never been “chemically, photographically, and physically” studied.

What did I say that was incorrect, Hugh? I attended several symposia where there were at least two to three STURP members in attendance. They variously told me in conversations that the Raes corner where both the Raes sample and the later C-14 sample had been taken had been photographed, tested and examined threads taken from had been chemically, by the members in 1978 team, and they thought it was different than the main body of the Shroud in several significant factors photographically, physically, and chemically. Ray Rogers stated that. Among those differences was that the area fluoresced under ultraviolet light while the main-body does not. (I did find and read the critique of Miller’s 1978 UV photographic setup, but that merely puts the sampling area’s questioability about the UV photos into limbo, not whether it was a good choice for a main-body Representative sample or not.) This indicates that there is something troubling, perhaps chemical different, in that area, and it should not be considered an area reliably representative of the whole. The STURP scientists who were discussing C-14 testing protocols in STURP had advised avoiding that area if it were the only area to be sampled for testing because it was apparently not representative of the whole body in significant ways. You can find these comments in several written articles, it was suggested that a sample be age tested from that area for the purpose of learning more about why it was different. It does not matter a whit when the STURP scientists made that recommendation, just that they did.

Actually, at the magnification at which the samples were studied by the labs, even individual threads are easy to identify. The decision not to divide the pieces into threads was taken for fear the thorough cleaning process would reduce them to nothing, as, in fact, happened to one of the Zurich control samples.

How would the identify individual threads, especially if cut? I’ve seen photos of threads from the Shroud’s weave and there’s nothing distinctly "Shroud" about them. Also in what way would cleaning make the samples “reduce to nothing.” That makes no scientific or even technical sense.

Anyway, Dr; Tite did not search in the Bock catalogue of the Victoria and Albert Museum. There several 3/1 herring bone linens are registered! Here one must come to the conclusion that the authors of this report have little laboratory sampling experience. In fact, Prof. Gove proposed this sampling method to assure a REPRESENTATIVE sample by taking THREADS from different parts of the Shroud!

As to breaking protocol, those had been reported agreed to prior to the sample being cut from the Shroud. If they had not been, then they should not have proceeded. As I understand it, the change was literally made by the custodian of the Shroud at the last hour, literally opting to cut just one master sample, which would divided into smaller sub-samples and sent to the labs, from the worst possible place, adjacent to the Raes sample. The agreement, which had been worked out with the owners of the Shroud had been to take six to eight samples from both image and non-image areas of the Shroud. Again, as I understand it, those samples could easily have been taken from areas under the sewn on 1532 fire patches so as not to disturb the appearance of the Shroud. The breaking of protocol is bad science. You can disagree, but it is still bad science.

So is reducing the cut cloth to threads. Or further to cutting the threads to smaller pieces. The need for blind testing is important. The idea that cleaning the resulting fibers to nothing I think is a strawman. Linen is tough. . . and cleaning the material is not that destructive. The sample is going to be reduced, cut, and burned in any case. The Shroud samples and controls should have been as anonymous as possible. That did not happen. Again, bad science.

Emphasis in the following quoted excerpted article is mine:

The British Museum, selected the Chi^2 to be the criterion for the assessment of the radiocarbon dating results for the Shroud. The MAXIMUM Chi^2 test value for 95% confidence and (3-1) degrees of freedom is 5.99. Theoretically, if the calculated Chi^2 test value could have occurred only by chance, with a probability LESS than that selected, then the set of data would be considered as being DIFFERENT. In practice : Any Chi^2 test value LARGER than 5.99, excludes the claimed 95 % confidence.

————-
. . . Much documented calculations and published graphs and charts of the 1988 C-14 tests and data

————-

CONCLUSION :
Facts : The Arizona error was arbitrary enlarged from 17 to 31. The Wilson & Ward mean 689-+16 was replaced by the UNWEIGHTED mean 691-+31. The multiplying t-factor for 95% confidence was enlarged from 1.96 to 2.6. The claimed "at least 95 % confidence" for the medieval dating of the Shroud is NOT supported by statistical analysis. One may wonder, why these OBVIOUS facts, were not spotted by the "team of peers" who judge all papers before publication in Nature. Even stranger is the FACT, that Prof. Bray of the "Istuto di Metrologia" of Turin, confirmed that the results of the 3 labs were mutually compatible, and that, on the evidence submitted, none of the means WERE questionable. Prof. Bray declared not to be at liberty to answer any questions. His answer was : "On the evidence submitted, no averaged results APPEAR questionable. The scatter for sample 1 is about equal to the limit." The only possible explanation is, that NOT all evidence was submitted to Prof. Bray. Prof. Bray refused to comment on the "combination from EIGHT to FOUR Arizona dates. I asked the editor of Nature, to compare my calculations with the results given by Damon et al. Following Dr. Laura Garwin (Physical Science Editor) : "You are asking me questions that are beyond my ability to answer. The Damon et al paper was refereed by qualified referees and no dissatisfaction was raised with the assignment or errors." I also asked the advice of Prof. Bene (University of Geneve). "I would like to congratulate you for the quality of your work. You established definitive evidence, that the measurements made on the linen of the Shroud are NOT homogeneous and that they should be rejected." Prof. Jouvenoux (University of Marseille-Aix) : "Van Haelst was probably the first to question the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud in a scientific way."
Note :
These calculations have been verified by : Dr. Leese (British Museum). She argues that the differences are caused by the use of different weighting systems! The French professional statisticians Bouclier de Carbon and Forestier, agreed with my results. Dr. Hedges (Oxford) replied : "I do not need statistics....." Dr. Woeffli (Zurich) and Dr. Damon (Arizona) did not reply. Prof. Evin (Lyon. France) : "Statistics will not change the facts...." This paper has been presented at the CIELT International Shroud Symposium. Rome 1993. (Actes CIELT Rome. ISBN 2.868.39.311X Ed. Fr.X. Guibert Paris. pages 207-218). — Radiocarbon Dating The Shroud - A Critical Statistical Analysis. By Remi Van Haelst, Belgium
Graduated Industrial Chemist, Copyright 1997

Chi² statistical test result is almost 17.5, far greater than the under 6 required by the British Museum’s (you were correct, damn faulty memory, I’m getting too old to rely on my brain’s data base, dang it!) own established degree of confidence in the samples tested homogeneity with each other, despite eye witnesses seeing them cut from the target item to be dated. Such a high Chi² Statistical test result indicates either that the sub-samples are not homogeneously identical or that the samples are randomly and heavily contaminated in some way. Incidentally, this is just one of, I think, three or four statistical and mathematical critiques of the 1988 C-14 testing that independently came to the same conclusion using the raw data provided by the labs, Nature, and the British Museum. There’s one more recent one that went into the even more detailed data.

As to who invented this technique of C-14 dating, I offer this information:

"Obituary – Professor Harry Gove
Professor Harry E. Gove, emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York State, and inventor of the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) method of radiocarbon dating used on the Shroud in 1988, died peacefully on February 18 this year. He was in his 86th year. —https://www.shroud.com/pdfs/n69part7.pdf

Sorry to be so delayed in getting back to you, we spent the day showing some relatives Zion National Park.

Yes, I’m afraid that’s me, with two ‘giants’ of the Shroud world and Arif Amer, of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, which firmly believes in the authenticity of the Shroud, as it conclusively proves a basic tenet of their faith, that Jesus did not die on the cross! More on this later, perhaps, when I explore the alleged anatomical accuracy of the image...

Funnily enough, it was an original member of STuRP, Joe Accetta, who put me onto the iron stain idea. Joe was the infra-red imaging specialist, but has long thought the Shroud to be medieval. He thinks it may have been stained with iron-gall ink, very common in the Middle Ages. And then a BBC programme from 1982 had attempted to make a copy of the image using Brazil wood (”so popular in the Middle Ages that they even named a country after it”). And then there were experiments of my own involving the degradation of linen by various acids, such as sulphuric, hydrochloric and vinegar. The chemical result of all these deliberations is iron acetate, an easily made stain produced by leaving iron (filings, ‘wool’, a nail) in vinegar. Lightly applied, this will only stain the upper fibres of a cloth, particularly a close woven one such as the Shroud, and explain both the “cellulosic iron” and the “hematite”. Experiments are ongoing rather than complete at present.

Incidentally, it is a common canard that any liquid applied to one surface of a cloth will seep through to the back. Try writing on a handkerchief with a fibre-tipped pen - or indeed. look at the back of almost any watercolour canvas. It doesn’t. I wonder who thought that up, and why almost everybody has seen fit to repeat it?

If you have personal knowledge of the activities of the STuRP team regarding the radiocarbon corner, then I will defer to that, but the detailed maps of all the sticky tap extractions do not show anything being taken from anywhere near it (except possibly the Holland cloth backing) so they could not have examined it chemically, or even microscopically at fibre level. Photographs were certainly taken, but not at any great magnification over that area. Gilbert Raes had hands-on experience of the corner, but had not characterised it chemically or physically (other than to make rather indecisive comments about cotton proportions), and the STuRP team had no access to his sample. It is not true that “the area fluoresced under ultraviolet light while the main-body does not”; if anything the radiocarbon area fluoresced rather less than the main body.

If you look at Barrie Schwortz’s photos of the samples, Shroud and control, retained by Arizona, you will see that if you were given a thread from any of them, you would easily be able to allot it to the correct sample.

You ask, “Also in what way would cleaning make the samples “reduce to nothing.” That makes no scientific or even technical sense.” You might like to refer to the Damon ‘Nature’ paper for clarification, if you have a copy of it. One of the Zurich control samples only has measurements for one half, as “the loose weave of sample Z3.1 led to its disintegration during strong and weak chemical treatments.” The individual filaments were not recoverable. I’m sorry it wasn’t clear, I assumed you would be familiar with it.

The fragments of material acquired from by the British Museum from Franz Bock are largely minute, and I’m only aware of a single 3/1 herringbone fragment. As such, it was certainly not available to be used as a control, as Tite knew very well.

Remi Van Haelst writes almost unreadably in capital letters and over expressive language, and misrepresents the British Museum’s statistics. Others have made the same mistake. Instead of attempting to understand its figures, he used his own methods, came to different results, and declared the British Museum wrong, even mocking the comments by Morwena Leese and Prof. Bray, who tried to explain. It is better to start from the results returned to the British Museum and work out what they actually did and why they did it.

Much is related to the method of determining the average of errors in reported measurements (e.g: the mean of 590±30, 690±35, 606±41 and 701±33). There are two or three methods, giving statistically acceptable, but different, answers. Van Haelst simply did not acknowledge that - he may not even have known about them.

Either way, the fact that the averaged results of the three labs was discrepant was not hidden by the British Museum, which clearly explained that there was statistically only a 5% “probability of obtaining, by chance, a scatter among the three dates as high as that observed, under the assumption that the quoted errors reflect all sources of random variation.” The problem, as I have mentioned before, was what to do about it.

It is not true that “the area fluoresced under ultraviolet light while the main-body does not”; if anything the radiocarbon area fluoresced rather less than the main body.

I confess that I have read that “fact” in many articles, but on examining the photos purporting to show it, I have never seen it and have wondered what exactly I was supposed to see there that I was missing. I’ve even heard Barrie repeat that “fact.” I was deferring to those who were present during the 1978 examination because I know that the human eye can often see a quality in person that a photograph—especially a photograph printed in a book or magazine— will not easily reproduce, the eye being able to react across the spectrum. that one has to use differing films and filters to bring out in a photograph. Thanks for that information.

Incidentally, it is a common canard that any liquid applied to one surface of a cloth will seep through to the back. Try writing on a handkerchief with a fibre-tipped pen - or indeed. look at the back of almost any watercolour canvas. It doesn’t. I wonder who thought that up, and why almost everybody has seen fit to repeat it?

It is still questionable as to how a liquid could be applied that would only affect that soapwort coating on the fibers and not penetrate deeper into the linen fibers. Could a 14th Century artisan have come up with a way to aerosol spray something? Perhaps. . . but what would this artisan use to drill the holes? I am open to the 14th Century creation date, but I do think that then we are faced with an even greater miracle, an unsung artistic genius who created no other similar masterpiece and then hid his candle under some hermetically sealed vault, never to be heard from again.

The technology has to consistently NOT soak through to the back of the cloth or even deeply into the fibers. That’s a high bar to cross. Writing of the period used inks that required blotting to prevent it transferring before it was even stacked on another sheet because it took so long for the liquid carrying the ink’s pigment to evaporate. It wasn’t until sometime in the 20th century that the blotter and blotting paper were really able to be retired as a necessary accessory of writing.

You ask, “Also in what way would cleaning make the samples “reduce to nothing.” That makes no scientific or even technical sense.” You might like to refer to the Damon ‘Nature’ paper for clarification, if you have a copy of it. One of the Zurich control samples only has measurements for one half, as “the loose weave of sample Z3.1 led to its disintegration during strong and weak chemical treatments.” The individual filaments were not recoverable. I’m sorry it wasn’t clear, I assumed you would be familiar with it.

I did not recall that one of the control samples had problems. Even so, the carbon from that sample would have been recoverable.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of it any longer. Some years ago I donated all of my books, articles, and papers I had amassed on the Shroud to the church I belonged to at the time so others could benefit from that collection. The church’s librarian of the period was quite thankful to receive them; I had done a series of classes for the members on the Shroud’s history as it was known up to then and members were very interested. More unfortunately, I learned later that another, later volunteer librarian, an anti-Catholic, decided they were “icon twaddle” and systematically went through the church’s library and, on her own “authority,” culled and threw in the trash everything she did not like, including the entire Shroud related collection! So, as I mentioned above, I am responding working from my flawed memory, and using Barrie’s great repository of documents for citations and links when I can. My own resources are long gone. I am certainly no longer following it as closely as I did ten or even fifteen years ago.

You’re responses are whetting my Shroud info appetites, which I had put on the back burner, to read more of the later articles that the politics of that last three to four years have distracted me from paying the attention they obviously deserve. I have four books on the Shroud I bought in the last year sitting on my desk, unread. That is a direct result of the chaos of the political chaos that has kept me paying more attention to other things. Alas!

Wow! To be recalling all that from memory is a prodigious feat. I spend my time surrounded by piles of documents, not to mention open windows, fact checking everything.

Anyway, my last main response, to the rest of...

Comment 74.

Assertion 4. Anatomical Accuracy.

The fact is that the shroud is too indistinct for any ‘accuracy’ to be worth considering. While numerous pathologists have announced that the image was so accurate it was beyond artistic competence, it turns out that they all disagreed with each other in almost every respect. For many years, especially around the STuRP investigation, the Shroud was a perfectly accurate depiction of a man lying completely flat, with the cloth draped over him. When it was pointed out that nobody can cross their wrists over their groin at the angle depicted on the Shroud, it was quietly assumed that the head was raised, and resting on a ‘pillow’ of some sort. Isabel Piczek, an anatomical artist, saw the legs as being too short and claimed this was due to ‘foreshortening’, which she illustrated at length, while Fred Zugibe, a chief medical examiner for many years, decided that the legs were too long, and for a while attributed it to Jesus having Marfan’s syndrome. Giulio Fanti’s medical team have twice come up with the definitive position of the ‘rigor mortis’ of the man in the Shroud, which is completely different from that of Giulio Ricci some years ago, and the posture suggested by the Sudarium of Oviedo.

The more fanatical non-authenticists enjoy pointing out that the man on the Shroud has no neck, and his head is too deeply sunk on his shoulders, and that his eyes are too close to the top of his head. These anomalies are dealt with in different ways by different anatomists.

Pierre Barbet, supported by Robert Bucklin (Forensic Pathologist, Los Angeles), thought that the hand-nail had gone thorough the ‘Space of Destot’ and damaged the median nerve, while Fred Zugibe (Forensic Pathologist, New York) was frankly contemptuous of their opinion and placed the hole on the other side of the wrist. He didn’t think either would affect the median nerve.

Actual experiments, considering the angle between the knuckles and the nail-hole, will show that the hole is far too close to the knuckles to be in the wrist at all.

Most recently another couple of convinced authenticists have studied the blood marks on the feet, and decided that the front image shows the right foot on top of the left, and the back image the other way round.

An article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine Vol. 99 lists ten different medical specialists, each with a different cause of death.

Kaleem Malik, a trauma surgeon from Chicago, is clear that the Shroud shows a living man, whose temporary heart failure was relieved by a ‘tamponade’ procedure, involving piercing the pericardial sac with a ‘spear’ in order to relieve the fluid pressure.

Anatomical perfection? Yes, no, whatever you like; the Shroud can support it!

Assertion 5. Bloodflows.

Authenticists have much enjoyed mocking Luigi Garlaschelli recently, for using a sponge and an artist’s dummy to reproduce the blood flows on the Shroud, but the problem goes back much further than him.

Most of the problem stems from whether the bloodstains were created on the body while Jesus was alive, dried while he was on the cross, and were somehow re-moistened to transfer to the Shroud some hours later. The flows down the outside of the hair, the arms and the side seem to show this. However there seems to be a trickle of blood off an elbow and foot suggesting a flow after the body was laid in the cloth. Although it is possible for some blood to flow after death, this would not be possible from the head, arms or upper body, as all the liquid would have flowed by gravity to the lower half of the body. Vagues hopes about some kind of enzyme based re-liquifaction have no basis in reality.

A hypothesis about various angles of flow from the nail wounds are not supported by the very minor blood flow observed from modern crucifixions, or any experiments involving volunteers holding their arms at particular angles. (Although I have to say that John Jackson and team are supposed to have carried out some experiments along these lines, which have not yet been published. We look forward to their paper.)

“This has been tested by multiple scientists, who are experts in the field”.

You really must stop saying that. The number of scientists who have worked on Shroud samples of any kind is extremely small. Heller and Adler carried out numerous tests for various blood components, most of which could have resulted in false positives from various other substances, and Pierluigi Baima Bollone may have identified the blood type AB, although there is some suggestion that all blood tends to degenerate to give AB results after much exposure to the air anyway. Electron microscopy has revealed mineral iron oxide and cinnabar.

Assertion 6. The weave.

I think I replied to this in an earlier post. Mere competence at lifting threads could not have produced the Shroud, as analysis of its weaving errors clearly shows. It must have been made with the warp threads all fixed to their respective shafts before weaving started, and cannot have been made by free-weaving, tablet-weaving or damask weaving, as found in archaeological contexts.

General Observation: Travertine Aragonite.

Aragonite has not been found on the “feet, buttocks, shoulders, and back of the head” nor the knees and nose, as is more commonly stated. A single tape from one heel contained aragonite according to Joseph Kohlbeck, and Gérard Lucotte found some among more copious calcite on a tape taken from the forehead. Aragonite is a common form of limestone, albeit not as common as calcite, but can be found in the Aube valley, a few miles from Lirey.

Right. that’ll do for a while, unless you or anyone else demands more information or corrects any mistakes (I do make them.....). However I notice that annalex’s same article is beginning to attract attention at TalesOfTimesForgotten, so I may go and make a nuisance of myself there....