[Quix]

What idiocy.

1. As a weaver . . . I can attest that single weavers can weave any number of different styles. Twill is not that complicated. Sheesh.

2. It is highly likely that a special weave would have ended up as Christ’s cloth.

3. Jerusalem likely had many weavers from many regions with a great variety of styles.

4. Burial cloths and customs were also likely quite varied. And it would only take varying by say only 2-4 different styles to make the assertions of this article grossly foolhardy.

[phredo53]

If its true that twill was not used there until 1000 years later then there is a problem for the Turin cloth. Not much different than claiming we have the pants Colombus wore: blue jeans.

[Steelfish]

Good point. Thanks.

[Melian]

And don’t forget that the tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimanthea. He was wealthy and since he was donating his tomb to bury Christ, it makes sense he would also donate the linens prepared for himself. They were probably of finer stuff than the typical burial shroud.

[Candor7]

Agreed.

People have no idea just how sophisticated weaving and dying were thousands of years ago. Its the same with plaid , with the Brits saying that it didn’t exist prior to 1500 , when 4000 year old Celtic mummies in Urumchi, China were recently found wearing twill and plaid.

Twill was woven widely 4000 years ago. Thats a fact.

[john in springfield]

[Barber's Prehistoric Textiles] provides all the necessary chapter, verse and photographs to counter the often-voiced argument amongst sceptics that the Shroud's herringbone weave could not date from the 1st century AD. As Barber points out (p.186ff), in the ancient salt mines at Hallstatt near Vienna the miners of the early 1st millennium BC used old rags to light their way. Scraps of these became preserved in crevices from which have come to light more than a hundred pieces of early 1st millennium BC cloth, many of these twill weave, and five specifically of herringbone.

By way of a further example, on p.196 Barber reproduces the remains of a black horsehair sash, found in a bog at Armoy, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, again dating from the early 1st millennium BC, and bearing the closest resemblance to the Shroud's weave. As Barber goes on to point out (p.190), the Hallstatt folk worked with flax (i.e. linen), as well as wool and other fibres. So although this is not to suggest that the Shroud actually derived from the Hallstatt culture, which was broadly Celtic (as in the case of ancient Egypt linens, the Hallstatt fabrics simply survived due to exceptional environmental conditions), it is quite clear that the Shroud's herringbone twill weave represents no obstacle to a first century AD date.

[john in springfield]

The cloth itself has been described (Raes 1976) as a three-to-one herringbone twill, a common weave in antiquity but generally used in silks of the first centuries A.D. rather than linen. The thread was hand-spun and hand-loomed; after ca. 1200, most European thread was spun on the wheel. Minute traces of cotton fibers were discovered, an indication that the Shroud was woven on a loom also used for weaving cotton. (The use of equipment for working both cotton and linen would have been permitted by the ancient Jewish ritual code whereas wool and linen would have been worked on different looms to avoid the prohibited "mixing of kinds.") The cotton was of the Asian Gossypum herbaceum, and some commentators have construed its presence as conclusive evidence of a Middle Eastern origin.

[mdmathis6]

Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man who supplied the tomb and probably supplied a superior cloth for Jesus’ burial.

[dsc]

“2. It is highly likely that a special weave would have ended up as Christ’s cloth.”

Isn’t it true that a well-to-do man provided the tomb?

Why, then, would it be strange if the cloth were up-market?

[netmilsmom]

>>As a weaver . . . <<

This has nothing to do with anything and is very OT, but seriously, you do amaze me!

I’m lucky I can crochet!