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....