Replies

Uh, no, the “evidence” set out in the article are not factual, and easily refuted:

Assertion: The forger who made the Shroud of Turin confessed and the earliest definitive mention of the shroud in any historical source is a record of his confession.
This assertion is false on several levels. First of all, there is no record of an artists “confession.”
There is actually no evidence this “painter’s” claim is true. Pierre de Arcis, the Bishop of Trois, claimed that 25 years earlier,/ his predecessor, Bishop Henri, had written a letter where he claimed he had found the “artist who painted the Shroud”. But, turning this assertion on its head is the fact that Bishop Henri of Trois apparently did not follow through by sending his letter to either the Pope in Rome, or to the Anti-Pope in Avignon, as there is no copy of the letter in the Vatican Archives, and only a rough draft of the letter exists in the archives in Trois. It is possible that Henri may have decided not to send the letter after he had learned the “artist” had perjured himself when an investigation was made. After such a long period of time, there is no way of telling now. Bishop Pierre was, however, placed under perpetual silence on the subject by the Pope in Rome from ever making such a claim, and the Pope allowed the Widow of Geofrey De Charney to continue to display the Shroud at Lirey but she could not claim it to be the true Shroud of Jesus.
However, we now know as a fact of science, by multiple approaches, there was no paint applied on the Shroud to create the image, and never has been, and this has been proved down to the electron microscopic level, including tests at the electron-microspectrographic level which could even discern the type and specific manufacturer of the vinyl baggies the samples were placed in after they were sampled. And, no, it could never have been cleaned of pigments to the extent that such tests would not find them. That is what would be referred to as definitive proof there were never any pigments, ever, on the Shroud for any such artist to have painted the Shroud. It is therefore not a painting of any kind.
As for this skeptics’ claim that Pierre’s finding of the letter being the first documentary mention of the Shroud, that’s also not true. There is lots of documentary evidence for the Shroud’s existance prior to its appearance in Lirey, France, and Bishop Pierre’s finding of that draft letter.
One such piece of documentary evidence is the 13th Century Hungarian Pray Codex in which the Shroud is pictured with its distinctive three-over-one twill weave pattern, an obvious double Christ image, but most importantly the pattern of the burnt “poker holes” which exist on the Shroud. The Hungarian Pray Codex has a reliably known provenance and age.
Another is the 10th Century Sermon of Archdeacon of the Hagia Sofia, Gregory Referendarius, presented on August 15, 944, in the Hagia Sofia in Constantinople, in which a cloth, arguably the Shroud of Turin, the Image of Edessa, was first displayed. Gregory described the image on it, although in very flowery language.
Assertion: The Shroud of Turin doesn’t match the kinds of funerary wrappings used in Judaea in the time of Jesus or the description of Jesus’s own funerary wrappings given in the Gospel of John.
Also false. The only funerary cloth ever excavated from a first century Jerusalem Jewish cemetery actually was the remnants of a full cloth shroud found in a funeral niche that had collapsed shortly after the body had been placed in it after burial, but before the bones could have been collected to be placed wither in an ossuary box or ossuary pit.
The assumption that the Jews of the period wrapped their dead in bandages similar to Egyptian mummies came from English mis-translations of the original Greek words had alternative meanings of bindings were also bandages. The Jewish Mishnah, the authoritative written exegetical record of Jewish oral tradition outlines the proper methods of a Jewish burial and it does not include wrapping a body up in many layers of bandages, but does include binding the arms, wrists, ankles and jaw to with cloth or rope, the “bindings” in Greek, and covering the body. The covering, depending on the family’s ability could be a whole body or just the face and private parts. The Jews would not have wanted the bones to be bound up with unclean wrappings when, a year later, the bones of the deceased would be collected and “gathered” to their ancestors’ bones in a central pit of a family tomb, or a shared ossuary box. This is quite clear in the Mishnah.
Assertion: The linen of the Shroud of Turin has been securely dated using radiocarbon dating to between c. 1260 and c. 1390 AD—well over a millennium after Jesus’s death.
Try to keep up with the latest research. The 1988 C-14 test has be falsified, multiple times, by multiple means, by multiple scientists, in multiple peer-reviewed scientific papers published in multiple journals.
- 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 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.
- Secondly, the sub-samples and control samples were supposed to be sent to the three testing laboratories in a condition of anonymity—i.e. reduced to mere threads or fibers so the source could not be determined by the testing labs. Instead the sub-samples were sent as pieces of woven cloth, easily determinable as to Shroud and control as they were different weave pattern, tainting the blind nature of the testing.
- 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—exceeding the normal statistical test for C-14 testing to be considered to have been from the same sample, even though they were cut from the same master sample—red flags should have told the testers something was wrong from the results.
- 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.
- Fifthly, Oxford University, the project managing lab, impermissibly averaged ALL three labs results, 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, to come up with an averaged dating, 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!
- Sixthly, it has been shown that what was accurately and very scientifically tested was a melange, a mixture, of original Shroud Linen made of Flax, and a 16th Century Cotton Patch material expertly interwoven into the original material across the sampled area by expert French or Italian weavers to repair a frayed corner, using a technique called “French Invisible Reweaving”. This technique was developed on the 13-14th Centuries to invisibly repair expensive wall hanging by dyeing and skillfully Reweaving threads into the original cloths so that they exactly match the original weave patterns and styles in damaged areas.
  The corner where the 1988 C-14 test was just such an area, having been used to hold the Shroud up for display and carrying over centuries. It had gotten frayed and apparently needed mending. 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. the threads on the Cotton side were of an S twist, while the threads on the Linen side had a Z twist. The Cotton was dyed with a Alum Mordant which did not exist on the Linen side. The two sides of the retained sub-sample cut from the main sample were biologically, microscopically, physically, chemically, and chronologically different from each other. This was definitive proof the sub-samples were hopelessly contaminated with non-original dated material, thus falsifying the 1988 C-14 testing in its entirety.
- Seventhly, the observed bifurcation between the two differing materials changed from one edge to the other such that the amount of older material to younger material would account for the proportional differing tested ages of the other sub-samples if the amounts were continuously extended such that the differences are completely explained if the observed angle across the sub-sample were extended across each adjacent sub-sample and the resultant proportions were calculated to adjust ages. The discrepancies in the Chi-Squared test of the samples is resolved by the resultant adjusted calculations using the proportionate material ages is accounted by the observed mixtures of Cotton to Linen.
- Finally, Dr. Harry Gove, the inventor of the C-14 test technique used on the Shroud of Turin on 1988, when told about the screwed up sampling protocols and the proportions of the mixture, did some back-of-the-envelope calculations when asked how old the original material had to be if the contaminating material was 15th Century in those proportions. When finished, he said “Give or take 100 years, First Century,”
Again, the C-14 accurately test a bad sample and gave a date for a mixture of different aged material resulting in a falsified, worthless test.
Assertion: The figure on the Shroud of Turin does not have anatomically correct proportions and much more closely resembles figures in fourteenth-century Gothic art than a real human being.
This claim was made by one artist who has been completely debunked by multiple forensic pathologists, anthropologists, and computerized actual reconstruction of the body on the Shroud, not just a human-eye opinion of some no-body skeptic with an atheistic axe to grind.
The skeptics do their measuring incorrectly, not understanding the nature of the image and the draping of the cloth, nor the distance of image to cloth, the bend of the legs and body in rigor. When all of these are accounted for, the body is proportional, not the in-proportionate distortions they claim. Every scientific expert, working in their fields of expertise, who has looked at it and measured it has come to that conclusion.
Assertion: The bloodstains on the Shroud of Turin are not consistent with how blood actually flows naturally and they instead appear to have been painted on.
Again, the skeptics have ONE scientist, working outside of his field of expertise, using non-blood, instead using a blood substitute, is making this claims, while the actual science established by multiple experts working IN their fields of expertise which is blood, hemoglobin, and its descendent compounds, and also blood that has undergone trauma and how it flows. These scientists worked with both living human volunteers and cadavers in multiple positions, using real human blood and tracked how it flowed. Sorry, it matched what was seen on the Shroud, not what this guy claimed in his article “debunking” the Shroud using a “blood analogue” used in Hollywood movies.
The bloodstains on the Shroud of Turin are actual blood. Not paint. Not Vermilion (Mercury Sulfide) as the skeptics claim. This has been tested by multiple scientists, who are experts in the field, using multiple tests for human blood, including tests that are definitive for blood proteins, blood not a geologist and a failed stage magician with a degree in English Literature.
Assertion: The fabric of the Shroud of Turin is made with a kind of weave that is known to have been commonly used during the Late Middle Ages, but does not seem to have been used for burial shrouds in Judaea in the first century AD.
Does the logical disconnect between this argument and his first argument strike anyone here as it does me?
First of all, the actual argument the skeptics use is the absurd position that no one in the First Century ever figured out how to use three-over-one weaving, which apparently, they say, was a 12th Century innovation without providing any evidence that is true. Uh, no, it wasn’t. There are multiple examples from multiple cultures of varying patterns of weaving, including two-over-one, three-over-one, two-over-two, and variations as weavers made various patterns in cloth from throughout history, even into a thousand years BC. The problems is that cloth is rare from two thousand years ago, with most only surviving in tombs in Egypt and elsewhere. But examples DO survive.
The idea that three-over-one twill weave is a common weave in the late Middle Ages is a Strawman argument for the Skeptics. It was a weave that was used, but was not as common as they want you to believe. One paid extra anytime one would buy that weave because it required the weaver to use extra time to do it. It was a more complex weave, requiring more expertise and set-up time involvement than a simple one-over-one. One thing they do not tell you about the cloth on the Shroud of Turin is that it is a distinctive Wall Loom, something NOT used in the Middle Ages as frame looms had already been invented by then, but not in the first century. The Flax Linen shows it was hank fullered and bleached. . . Again, something not done in Europe in the Middle Ages but done in the Middle East.

General Observation: Finally, how would a Middle French hoaxer know to imbed Travertine Aragonite dust of the exact type only found just outside the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem into the feet, buttocks, shoulders, and back of the head of the image on the Shroud???

The other question one must ask is: if the Shroud of Turin is a hoax, what would be the greater miracle: that a known miracle worker, the Son of God would leave behind a miraculous image of Himself at the moment of His resurrection from the dead to everlasting life; or, that an unknown, heretofor unknown artist of the 14th Century using unknown techniques, with an amazing ability, utilizing an encyclopedic knowledge of anatomy, physics, chemistry, history, Jewish burial practices, optics, photography, and many other disciplines, created a work of art that has every scholar and scientist in multiple disciplines across almost every known scientific and scholarly pursuit you can name completely baffled as to how he did it six to seven hundred years later, anticipating that they could bring to bear scientific tests, instruments, techniques, and even disciplines he cannot even conceive would be invented? So, which is the greater miracle? Or harder to believe?

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!)