Turin Shroud may be genuine after all

UPI via The Washington Times ^ | 10/9/2002 | Uwe Siemon-Netto

[SteveH]

GURAT, France, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- The Turin Shroud bearing the features of a crucified man may well be the cloth that enveloped the body of Christ, a renowned textile historian told United Press International Tuesday.

Disputing inconclusive carbon-dating tests suggesting the shroud hailed from medieval times, Swiss specialist Mechthild Flury-Lemberg said it could be almost 2,000 years old.

[Skooz]

Besides, "scientific proof" is not synonymous with "conclusive proof".

Well, Ptolemy proved mathematically that the earth is the center of the solar system. Mathematics is the most exact of the sciences.

[aruanan]

My current thinking is that it is a type of painting where a clay statue is made and then covered with paint. The cloth is layed over the statue and then made to conform to the statue with felt hammers. This accounts for the image being only on the surface and the almost photographic nature of the image.

Your primary hypothesis (your wish statement notwithstanding) is that it couldn't be what it is purported to be. Your secondary hypothesis is the one stated above. You're invoking a secondary hypothesis (for which there is no evidence and against which there is evidence) to rescue the primary hypothesis. Better just to say that it's a remarkable object for which there is, as yet, for you, no satisfactory explanation.

BTW, if a medieval forgery, the forger more likely than not would have referred to then-popular concepts of crucifiction such as nail marks in the palms of the hands rather than in the wrists*. The idea of using a cloth typical of weaves from first century Judea including pollen from that region to give evidential weight to the forgery would have been completely out of such a forger's ken. Such religious con men were often dealing on the level of passing off sheep bones as bones of the saints and chunks of wood as remnants of the cross.

To posit, as some have, a medieval forger using unknown techniques to obtain hitherto unknown results on cloth appropriate to the time and place in question (including pollen from that region), employing unusual characteristics (a Jesus unlike almost anything depicted in that era and wounds to the wrists (part of the anatomy understood by the people of first century Judea referred to as hands*)) for unknown motives quickly gets to be one of those cases--like the resurrection of Jesus itself--in which the explaining away quickly becomes more fantastic than the alleged occurrence.

*For instance, consider Michelangelo's David. It's supposed to be a sculpture of a young David, a Jew, and is done by an artistic genius, yet the statue, either out of ignorance or in deference to current social practices, is of an uncircumcised male.

[aruanan]

Well, Ptolemy proved mathematically that the earth is the center of the solar system.

Precisely the point.

[Mamzelle]

re--"sewing experts"---

Fascinating ancient textile--

Would love to have a look at that "seam" myself. Wonder if it's not a seam at all, but a fold in what very skilled weavers use in a process modern weavers called "double weave." This was how ancient weavers, not having wide looms, managed to weave wide cloth. You weave two layers at once, with a fold on one side and two selvages on the other. You have to string two warps, and keep both layers straight while wefting. Patience, skill, makes for a very expensive garment. The "veil" before the Ark was likely done with a variation of this process. It's written as being very heavy and thick, so I picture muliple warps and wefting most layers right together rather than layering.

Jesus's robe, a prize for the gamblers, is written to be "without seam." You can weave a pullover sleeved garment with no seam, if you know what you're doing.

I, for one, would hang on any word that a textile historian has to say. How accurate is carbon dating on an item less than ten thousand years old, anyway?

[Judith Anne]

That's very interesting, about the seamless garment...clearly you know your subject...I think that the burial cloths were very long--twice the length of the deceased, plus some...I don't know how wide they were, but I'm sure the exact dimensions of the shroud are given on Barrie Schwortz's site, at www.shroud.com. You may find an article there that addresses your area of interest...

[Judith Anne]

As far as the accuracy of carbon dating, well, just look at the thread--even people who claim to know the subject well cannot agree--looks like a p!ssing contest to me.

I do know that those permitted access to the actual shroud are by no means all believers, but are committed to its preservation, as well as its investigation. Most likely, science will have to advance somewhat before accurate, indisputable information about the date is possible. Just my humble opinion. ;-D

[RightOnline]

Nice try. What you demote to "hyper-emotional investment" is nothing of the sort. You made a hand-waving "nuff said" style pronouncement with extremely limited info and are just mad as hell that you got called on it, Physicist. I don't think you're a bad sort at all, and I DID come down you pretty hard in this thread, but damn it........just don't be so impressed with yourself. If you don't care to directly address that which I put in front of you and would rather avoid the topic, fine.

The real shame of this is that you're missing out on some truly fascinating science if you close your mind to all this.

[Justa]

Fascinating.

[Bohemund]

Well, traditional depictions of Jesus with relatively consistent features go back at least 1450 years. See Eastern icons, like the one of Christ Pantocrator from St. Catherine's Monastery, dated to A.D. 550:

http://www.shroudstory.com/art.htm

[reformed_democrat]

If in fact Jesus were the Son of God, who rose from the dead, it is necessarily believable that His burial shroud should be divinely preserved and presented to a later age, as a logical proof of the central fact of Christianity. What more stunning evidence than the meticulous scientific study of that fact, in the age of sceptical science?

The implications of the shroud, given the uniqueness of the shroud, deserve respectful attention.

Very well put.

I'm amazed that a piece of cloth could have survived 2000 years intact. Add to that the remarkable image on the cloth, the inability to explain how the image got there (no paint has been detected, according to investigators), and the technique (the image has a three-dimensional quality that could likely have been achieved by having it "wrapped" as opposed to having it flat when the image was produced) all indicate that this is a remarkable object.

I'm curious to know if a similar object could be produced today, and what the method of production would be.

[Physicist]

What you demote to "hyper-emotional investment"

That was over the line, and I apologize.

You made a hand-waving "nuff said" style pronouncement

The arguments on this thread have been nothing but handwaving, with the exception of mine. I showed all my work. I could not have been more explicit.

[eastsider]

Well, Ptolemy proved mathematically that the earth is the center of the solar system.

Ptolemy did not "prove" the geocentric model; he merely demonstrated that the generally accepted geocentric model could be represented mathematically by a system of cycles and epicycles. (To my knowledge, only Pythagoras placed the earth other than in the center of the universe.) Nor did Copernicus "prove" the heliocentric model; here merely demonstrated that the heliocentric model was mathematically simpler than the geocentric model.

[Skooz]

he merely demonstrated that the generally accepted geocentric model could be represented mathematically by a system of cycles and epicycles.

Which was accepted as "proof" enough for 1500 years. I was using the word "proof" in the vernacular, and not as a research scientist would use it.

[Skooz]

True enough, but these representations are just a thin guy with a beard. Nothing else is really consistent. Drurer's portraits became the template of Christ's image around the time of the late Renaissance. All modern (Western) rendetions of Christ are based directly upon Drurer's likeness.

[eastsider]

My apologies for sounding critical. I haven't been following this thread, and your post just caught my eye.

As long as I'm here, I'd like to add that the proofs (in the vernacular sense : ) supporting the geocentric model prior to Ptolemy were common-sense notions, such as, "If the earth moved, there would be great winds sweeping everyone off their feet"; "If the earth moved, then when someone jumped up, he would land in a different spot"; etc.

[Skooz]

One of my Astronomy professors (a physicist, of course) spent half of a class describing Ptolemy's mathematics re: his geocentric hypothesis. He was fascinated with the beauty of the math and marvelled at how Ptolemy had constructed his brilliant model of a geocentric solar system.

He actually shook his head toward the end of the lecture, seemingly disappointed that all that artistic math was for naught.

[eastsider]

He was fascinated with the beauty of the math and marvelled at how Ptolemy had constructed his brilliant model of a geocentric solar system.

[RightOnline]

I've made no hand-waving arguments. Your "exercise" was based on inaccurate......not to mention woefully inadequate........information. What more do I have to say or do or point you to that will get you to see that your physics problem solving had nothing whatsoever to do with reality? Oh well...................

[Delbert]

One can only approach God on one's knees, and never through arrogance. <---That was well said.

[Swordmaker]

"the area it was cut from was an area that had been rewoven in medieval times"

The dog ate the carbon-12.

and a large body of information shows that linen is inherently un-carbondatable

"I wasn't there, Your Honor, and if I was there, I didn't steal anything."

Physicist, you claim to be a scientist but you refuse to look at the data. The data shows that the area the samples were taken from was the one area the research team advised AGAINST using, and their protocols did NOT include, because of differences in the linen from the main body of the shroud however a NON-scientist, at literally the last moment, changed the protocol and had the sample removed from that area. Subsequent examination of both the photographs and of the remaining area on the shroud show that a large percentage of the threads in that area only were spun in a clockwise direction while the threads of the shroud itself were spun anti-clockwise... indicating a different source for the linen. The results from the three laboratories had a date distortion beyond what was expected merely from experimental error... and the distortion differential apparently MATCHES the percentage of anti-clockwise to clockwise threads in the samples provided to each lab.

As to the problem of dating linen, not even once has the carbon date of the linen that wrapped a mummy matched either the carbon date of the mummy itself or the carbon date of the sarcophagus that enclosed the mummy. The discrepency was often hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of years YOUNGER than the mummy and sarcophagus. The use of older linen could have been explained away logically, but apparently younger linen posed a real problem. This discrepency was so remarkable that Egyptologists theorized, against all other evidence and logic (and ignoring, of course, the extraordinary efforts the Pharoahs went to hide their tombs and prevent re-entry), that later generations of priests had, for some unknown religious reasons, disinterred the bodies and RE-WRAPPED them in new linen.

This is the data. Your ridiculing of the research and facts does you no service and adds nothing to the discussion.