Turin Shroud to go on public display [Open]

Telegraph ^ | May 30, 2008 | Malcolm Moore

[Oatka]

A long interesting read. Picknett and Clive propose that the creator of the Shroud used a fresh dead body to create the image - wouldn't be unusual for daVinci (if it was him) as he would visit death houses and watch a person die to catalog the death process.

Whether it was daVinci is up for grabs as the time line is a bit off. But, check out daVinci's drawings of the eye, how it works, the workings of a camera obscura (today's camera) and others on the human anatomy. He SEEMS to be the only guy who could pull this off.

The Open Letter states that the process of creating the Shroud is not known, but P&C seemed to have made a believable copy. I'd like to see a critique of their method, as it appears to recreate all the anomalies of the Shroud.

[NYer]

I don't believe that the shroud is a fraud.

Three Hard Facts

The Shroud may be a first century burial cloth of a Roman crucifixion. As such, given other evidence, it certainly seems to be the burial cloth of Jesus.

Fact: Cellulose fibers that make up the threads of the Shroud's cloth are coated with a thin layer of starch fractions, various sugars and other impurities. This chemical layer, which probably developed when the cloth was washed after weaving, is essentially colorless. However, in some places, this microscopically thin layer has undergone a dehydrative chemical change that appears straw-yellow. The chemical change resembles the change that would occur (and certainly did occur if the cloth is real) from reactive body amines (-NH2 group) and reducing saccharides in the layer.  And it is this straw-yellow color that makes up the image; not paint, not dye, not photographic emulsion, and not miraculously changed linen fibers.

Fact: The carbon 14 dating that concluded that cloth was medieval was done on a medieval repair patch. The area of the cloth from which the carbon 14 samples were cut is very different from the rest of the cloth. The dark brown region, as seen with ultraviolet lighting (black light) was produced by the fluorescence of chemical compounds on the Shroud. It is the mended area. The place from which the carbon 14 samples were cut is in the dark brown area just above the tiny triangular white spot located on the bottom edge.

The carbon 14 area tests positive for vanillin (C₈H₈O₃ or 4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde) when tested with phloroglucinol in concentrated hydrochloric acid. The rest of the cloth does not.  Vanillin is produced by the thermal decomposition of lignin, a complex polymer, a non-carbohydrate constituent of plant material including flax. Found in medieval materials but not in much older cloths, it diminishes and disappears with time. For instance, the wrappings of the Dead Sea scrolls do not test positive for vanillin. Quantitative counts of lignin residues show some large differences between the carbon 14 sampling areas and the rest of the Shroud. Where there is lignin in the sample area it tests positive for vanillin. Other medieval cloths, where lignin is found, test positive.  The main body of the Shroud, with significant lignin at the fiber growth nodes, does not have vanillin. The Shroud's lignin is very old compared with the radiocarbon sampling area. 

Chemical analysis also reveals the presence of Madder root dye and an aluminum oxide mordant (a reagent that fixes dyes to textiles) not found elsewhere on Shroud. Medieval artisans often dyed threads in this manner when mending damaged tapestries. This was simply to make the repairs less noticeable. The presence of Madder root and mordant suggests that the Shroud was mended in this way.

M. Sue Benford and Joseph Marino, in collaboration with number of textile experts, identified clear evidence of medieval mending on the Shroud. A patch was expertly sewn to or rewoven into the fabric to repair a damaged edge. It was from this patch—quite likely nothing more than a piece of medieval cloth—that the samples were taken. From documenting photographs of the sample areas, the textile experts identified enough newer thread to enable Ronald Hatfield, of the prestigious radiocarbon dating firm Beta Analytic, to estimate that the true date of the cloth is much older—perhaps even 1st century.

Fact:  The bloodstains are from real human blood. Different scientists working independently conducted immunological, fluorescence and spectrographic tests, as well as Rh and ABO typing of blood antigens that prove it beyond any doubt. And several experts in forensic medicine and blood chemistry conclude that the stains were formed by real human bleeding from real wounds on a real human body that came into direct contact with the cloth. Many of the stains have the distinctive forensic signature of clotting with red corpuscles about the edge of the clot and a clear yellowish halo of serum.

There is wide agreement that the bloodstains are from a man laying on his back with his feet at one end of the 14-foot linen cloth. The cloth was brought up over the man’s head to cover his face and the entire length of his body down to his feet. Bloodstains on one part of the cloth indicate a serious wound to the chest. The patterns of these stains show that blood likely flowed from the chest area, down the side of a prone body and pooled near the lower back. Mingled with the large bloodstains in this area are stains from what pathologists believe are clear bodily fluid, perhaps pericardial fluid or fluid from the pleural sac or pleural cavity. All of these findings suggest that the man received a postmortem stabbing wound in the vicinity of the heart.

 

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In response to freeper scrabblehack's question.

The Sudarium of Oviedo and what it Suggests about the Shroud of Turin?

In the northern Spanish city of Oviedo, in a small chapel attached to the city's cathedral, there is a small bloodstained dishcloth size piece of linen that some believe is one of the burial cloths mentioned in John's Gospel. Tradition has it that this cloth, commonly known as the Sudarium of Oviedo, was used to cover Jesus' bloodied face following his death on the cross.

Numerous historic documents tell us that the Sudarium has been in Oviedo since the 8th century and in Spain since the 7th century. It seems, too, to have arrived from Jerusalem. Documents from the late Roman period and the early Middle Ages are often sketchy and prone to chronological mistakes, and those pertaining to the Sudarium are no exception. But from a multiplicity of sources, scholars have extracted core elements of historical certainty and plausibility sufficient for a fair degree of historical reconstruction.

We can be quite sure that the Sudarium came to Oviedo from Jerusalem, and there is some evidence it dates back to the 1st century CE. Its journey to its present location began in 644 CE. when Persians under Chosroes II invaded Jerusalem. To protect the Sudarium, it was moved out of the city to safety. We are uncertain of its route to Spain. It may have been first taken to Alexandria along with numerous other relics (real or otherwise, and stored in a chest or "ark") and from there, in succeeding years, along the coast of North Africa ahead of advancing armies. Some historians have suggested a more direct sea route to Spain, but forensic pollen evidence indicates that the Sudarium was in North Africa, just as the presence of other pollen spores evidences that it was at one time in the Jerusalem environs. Whatever the route, we know that after it arrived in Spain, it was kept in Toledo for about 75 years. For some time after it arrived, it was in the custody of the great bishop and an early-medieval scholar, Isidore of Seville. Then in 718, to protect it from Arab armies, which had invaded Spain only seven years earlier, it was moved northward with fleeing Christians. In 761, Oviedo became the capital of a northern, well-defended enclave of Christians on the Iberian Peninsula and it was to this city that the Sudarium was brought for safekeeping. It has been in Oviedo ever since.

The path of the Sudarium links its origin to the same time and place of the Shroud. Moreover, forensic analysis of the bloodstains suggests strongly that both the Sudarium and the Shroud covered the same human head at nearly the same time. Bloodstain patterns show that the Sudarium was placed about the man's head while he was still in a vertical position, presumably before he was removed from the cross. It was then removed before the Shroud was placed over the man's face.

In 1999, Mark Guscin, a member of the multidisciplinary Investigation Team of the Centro Español de Sindonología, issued a detailed forensic and historical report entitled, "Recent Historical Investigations on the Sudarium of Oviedo." Guscin's report detailed recent findings of the history, forensic pathology, blood chemistry, and stain patterns on the Sudarium. His conclusion: the Sudarium and the Shroud of Turin had been used to cover the same injured head at closely different times. Here are some highlights from Guscin's report:

It seems to be a funeral cloth that was probably placed over the head of the corpse of an adult male of normal constitution. The man whose face the Sudarium covered had a beard, moustache and long hair, tied up at the nape of his neck into a ponytail.

The man was dead. The mechanism that formed the stains is incompatible with any kind of breathing movement.

The man was wounded before death with something that made his scalp bleed and produced wounds on his neck, shoulders and upper part of the back.

The man suffered a pulmonary edema as a consequence of the terminal process. The main stains are one part blood and six parts fluid from the pulmonary fluid.

The only position compatible with the formation of the stains on the Oviedo cloth is both arms outstretched above the head and the feet in such a position as to make breathing very difficult, i.e. a position totally compatible with crucifixion. We can say that the man was wounded first (blood on the head, shoulders and back) and then 'crucified.'

On reaching the destination, the body was placed face up and for unknown reasons, the cloth was taken off the head.

The Sudarium contains pollen grains of Gundelia tournefortii, identical to that found of the Shroud that grows only east of the Mediterranean Sea as far north as Lebanon and as far south as Jerusalem.

The blood (stain symmetry, type and other indicators) on the Sudarium matches the blood on the Shroud.
 

In summary, Guscin wrote:

There are many points of coincidence between all these points and the Shroud of Turin - the blood group, the way the corpse was tortured and died, and the macroscopic overlay of the stains on each cloth. This is especially notable in that the blood on the Sudarium, shed in life as opposed to postmortem, corresponds exactly in blood group, blood type and surface area to those stains on the Shroud on the nape of the neck. If it is clear that the two cloths must have covered the same corpse, and this conclusion is inevitable from all the studies carried out up to date, and if the history of the Sudarium can be trustworthily extended back beyond the fourteenth century, which is often referred to as the Shroud's first documented historical appearance, then this would take the Shroud back to at least the earliest dates of the Sudarium's known history. The ark of relics and the Sudarium have without any doubt at all been in Spain since the beginning of the seventh century, and the history recorded in various manuscripts from various times and geographical areas take it all the way back to Jerusalem in the first century. The importance of this for Shroud history cannot be overstressed.

  There is a wealth of information at the following link including Roman coins found over the eyes and embedded pollen from only that part of the world. Ultimately, looking at the image of the shroud, we know from Scripture that Jesus was crowned with a ring of thorns. Those marks are evident. We also know that he was pierced by a Roman soldier. That wound is also present. We many never be able to scientifically "prove beyond the shadow of a doubt" that this is the shroud of Jesus but it is amazing to gaze at this figure whose facial image is identical to that of the Divine Mercy (an image painted at the request of Jesus) in the 1930's.

Shroud Story

[Swordmaker]

Shroud to be put on display... PING!

If you want on or off the Shroud of Turin Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Swordmaker]

Read "Turin Shroud" by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince (1994) isbn 0-06-017224-X. They make the claim that the Shroud is actually the world's first photograph, possibly done by daVinci, the only one smart enough to figure out a way of creating it. I read the book because, while not a Believer, I thought the claim preposterous.

I've read it. It is mere speculation with no basis in fact. None of their conclusions carry any validity. Da Vinci was born 101 years AFTER the Shroud was first displayed in Lirey, France. There are none of the chemicals (or their residues) on the Shroud that Picknett and Prince require to be present to make such a photograph. Any photograph created by the techniques that P&P suggest that Da Vinci could have used, would have long ago faded into nothingness with exposure to light.

Finally, the Shroud is NOT a photograph. It bears only superficial relationship to a photograph. It's more akin to a topographical map. Whatever mechanism created the image on the Shroud did so as a function of distance of the cloth from the skin of the body it covered.

[grey_whiskers]

Picknett and Clive propose that the creator of the Shroud used a fresh dead body to create the image - wouldn't be unusual for daVinci (if it was him) as he would visit death houses and watch a person die to catalog the death process.

So if a freshly dead body was used to create the image...

[grey_whiskers]

Thanks for the ping.

I greatly fear that some deranged atheist type will try to destroy or ruin the cloth.

Cheers!

[MHGinTN]

Will the Shroud be ‘on display’ only at the Vatican? I would love to see it but overseas travel is not likely in my circumstances.

[fproy2222]

There’s a blatant fraud to the shroud. It can never be proved to be Jesus’.

+++++

We will have to wait for Christ to return and ask Him if it was his burial shroud.

[MHGinTN]

Can’t your ‘prophet’/’president’ of LDS tell us?

[fproy2222]

Can’t your ‘prophet’/’president’ of LDS tell us?

++

If Christ tells him.

[Dog Gone]

If it was a burial shroud, why didn't the top of the head leave an impression?

That's a dang good question I've never seen asked before.

In fact, a true shroud would be wrinkled in nearly countless places. The image on the shroud essentially assumes that it was a flat sheet not surrounding the body, but somehow suspended above it.

[onedoug]

Tour? Any details? Thanks.

[Swordmaker]

The latest scientific evidence, according to the above, says that this is not the shroud of Jesus. There is a disclaimer after that testing by some who claim that the testing was not done in a controlled way.

The C-14 test done in 1988 did not attempt to prove that it is or is not the Shroud of Jesus. It merely attempted to show when the linen flax it is made of was grown. The report came up with a date from 1260AD to 1390AD.

However, the 1988 C-14 test is NOT the latest science. The latest peer-reviewed science has totally invalidated the 1988 C-14 tests because the material tested WAS NOT exemplar of the main body of the Shroud of Turin. Here are the pertinent facts as I posted them on several earlier threads:

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The 1988 carbon dating has been invalidated in peer-reviewed scientific journals because it has now been proved that the sample tested was not consistent with the main body of the Shroud and appears to have been a patch rewoven into the Shroud in the 16th Century to repair a frayed corner.

In 2004, Dr. Raymond Rogers conclusively proved—and had his work successfully peer-reviewed, found accurate, and published in prestigious scientific journals—that the sample used in the 1988 carbon dating was inconsistent with the main body of the shroud. Other scientists working from a different direction came to the same conclusion. The samples were NOT physically or chemically the same as the main body of the Shroud—ergo the 1988 C14 testing is proved invalid.

Dr. Rogers worked with photomicrographs, threads from the Raes sample taken in 1973 from the area immediately adjacent to the 1988 sample site, and the sole remaining control sample retained from the five sub-samples cut from the original 1988 sample cutting from the Shroud.

Chemist and pyrologist Raymond N. Rogers, (Sandia National Laboratory, University of California) and, independently, Dr. John L. Brown, (former Principal Research Scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute's Energy and Materials Sciences Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology), have done other research and tests and presented evidence in peer reviewed scientific journals that proved that:

1. The 1988 Carbon 14 Tests were accurate at the current state of the art—on what they tested.

2. The established, agreed sampling protocols were violated. This is well documented and is beyond contention. The sample cut from the Shroud came from only one area in contravention of the previously agreed protocols which required 8 samples from 8 different areas. Instead a single sample from a single area was taken.

3. The sample that was taken was also taken from the one area all involved scientists had agreed should be avoided as it showed the most dirt and handling damage.

4. Another reason the area had been excluded as a sampling area was that it was the one area of the Shroud that generally fluoresced under ultra-violet light, indicating a non-similarity to the main body of the shroud which did not fluoresce.

5. The sample was cut from the corner of the Shroud where the "Raes sample" had been cut 14 years before.

6. The sample was approximately 1 cm by 7 cm in length and was cut parallel to the long side of the Shroud.

7. Approximately “…1 cm² of the new sample had to be discarded because of the presence of different colored threads that were not similar to the main body of the shroud.” (Where did these foreign threads, interwoven into the sample, come from? - Swordmaker)

8. Five sub-samples of approximately 1cm x 1cm were cut from the remains of the single original sample cut from the shroud. (For clarity and understanding, let's designate them A to E alphabetically, from the selvage toward the center of the shroud).

9. The primary sample and the sub-samples were micro-photographed before being packaged and sent for testing.

10. Sub-samples A and E were sent to the Arizona C14 Lab, B went to Oxford, D to Zurich, and C was retained as a control for future investigation and was untested. [this is the sample Ray Rogers was allowed to test - Swordmaker]

11. The sub-samples, although chemically cleaned were not microscopically examined or chemically tested, nor were the fibers compared to fibers from other areas of the Shroud by any of the labs.

12. The C14 Tests were completed and returned results that suggested an origin date for the flax that was in the cloth of 1260 to 1390 AD, with a degree of accuracy of plus or minus ~25 years on each sample.

13. This spread of possible origin dates of 180 years (1260 minus 25 to 1390 plus 25) should have raised a red flag as the material was supposed to be homogenous and should have all tested within a plus or minus ~75 year spread. In fact, none of the samples' range of confidence overlapped the range of confidence of another in a manner that statistically would indicate the samples were homogenous. This strongly suggested that the samples were, in fact, not homogenous.

14. Sample A tested younger than sample B which tested younger than Sample D which tested younger than Sample E. The closer the sample was to the center of the Shroud, away from the selvage, the older it tested.

15. Sample A and Sample E, the samples with both the youngest and oldest reported ages were both tested by the Arizona Lab.

16. Post C-14 testing and examination of microphotographs of the Primary sample showed a faint demarcation area running somewhat diagonally from the right side of the selvage end (A) to the leftward side of the sample closest to the main body of the shroud (E).

17. Examination of threads from the retained sample (C) show that threads on the left side of the sample have an "S" twist.

18. Examination of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the Right side of the sample have a "Z" twist.

19. Examination of threads taken from main body of the Shroud all have a "Z" twist.

20. Examination of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the left side of the sample are somewhat (3-5%) thinner in diameter, on average, than threads from the average thread thickness of sample's right half or from the body of the Shroud.

21. Examination of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the left side of the sample have Cotton intertwined with the Flax.

22. Examination of threads from right half of the sample (C) and from the main body of the Shroud have no Cotton intertwined with the Flax.

23. Examination of threads from the retained sample (C) show that threads on the Left side of the sample are encrusted with a plant gum containing alizarin dye extracted from Madder Root, a technique developed in 16th Century France.

24. Examination of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the Right side of the sample and from the main body of the Shroud are not encrusted with the dyestuff.

25. Examination of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the Left side of the sample contains up to 2% Aluminum. Chemical testing shows this Aluminum is from Alum (hydrous aluminum oxide), used after the 16th Century as a mordant, a drying agent for retting of cloth.

26. Examination of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the Right side of the sample and threads from the main body of the Shroud contain no Aluminum.

27. Chemical testing of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the Left side of the sample Flax's Lignin shows significant levels of Vanillin (> 40%).

28. Chemical testing of threads from sample (C) show that threads on the Right side of the sample and threads from the main body of the Shroud contain no Vanillin—indicating an age greater than 1300 years.

    From an article in Thermochimica Acta: "A linen produced in A.D. 1260 would have retained about 37% of its vanillin in 1978. The Raes threads, the Holland cloth [the shroud's backing cloth], and all other medieval linens gave {positive results from] the test for vanillin wherever lignin could be observed on growth nodes. The disappearance of all traces of vanillin from the lignin in the shroud indicates a much older age than the radiocarbon laboratories reported."

29. Microscopic examination of the slightly diagonal area of the sample (C) that separated the left side possible "newer" material and the right side material similar to the main body of the Shroud, shows spliced threads, clearly delineating the changes from Left to Right sides of the sample.

30. Skillful weavers in Europe in the 16th Century used a technique now called French Invisible Reweaving to repair tapestries and arras cloths. Contemporary reports state the method was close to "magical" in the ability to repair damaged cloth. This technique involved spinning and dying thread to closely match the original, splicing the new threads into old threads on the cloth, and reweaving the newly extended threads into the material to match the weaving of the original.

31. The diagonal demarcation line on the original sample is located so that sample (A)'s suspect (non-similar) threads compose approximately 60% of the sample material. Sample (B)'s suspect (non-similar) threads compose approximately 55% of the sample material. Sample (C)'s, 50% (non-similar) observed and tested. Sample (D)'s, 45%. And Sample (E)'s, (non-similar) 40%. Conversely, threads similar to the main body compose the following approximate percentages of the samples from A to E: 40%, 45%, 50%, 55%, and 60%.

32. The Shroud underwent repairs after the severe damage from the fire in 1532. Perhaps the corner where the Raes and 1988 C14 test samples were taken was also repaired at the same time.

33. Harry Gove, the inventor of the nuclear accelerator technique that was used to carbon date the Shroud, when asked "How old would a the polluting material have to be to skew the C-14 date of material known to be 1530 AD to show an tested age of 1350 if the polluting material composed 50% of the sample by weight?" He did some calculations and stated, "First Century, give or take 100 years."

The conclusion of the peer reviewed article in Thermochimica Acta states:

"The combined evidence from chemical kinetics, analytical chemistry, cotton content, and pyrolysis/ms proves that the material from the radiocarbon area of the shroud is significantly different from that of the main cloth. The radiocarbon sample was thus not part of the original cloth and is invalid for determining the age of the shroud."

Thus, the 1988 Carbon 14 Testing has been invalidated because the person who took the sample, literally, at the last hour, changed the agreed sampling protocols and took the sample from an area that had been patched, probably in 1532, with contemporary prepared linen thread that had been spun on a spinning wheel that had also spun cotton, then retted with alum, and dyed with alizarin dye from madder root, all done with 15th century technology. The tests were accurate for what they tested: a melange of old and newer material that reported a date that is inaccurate for both the old and the new. It is merely coincidence that the false date of the combined old and new happened to coincide with the first display of the Shroud in Lirey France. The repaired area is not the same as the main body of the shroud and tests are invalid.

New C14 testing should be allowed because there are now a lot of loose samples available since the ill advised "restoration" where they cut away the burned edges around the scorches from the 1532 fire.

I can tell you that there was an unauthorized C-14 test done on one of the threads taken during the 1978 STURP examination and the results were 1st Century, with a degree of confidence of 50 years because the sample was so small.

29 posted on 05/23/2008 7:20:56 PM PDT by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)

[Swordmaker]

I heard on Coast to Coast AM a few weeks ago that most of the testing was done on the edges were the burns were ( that would explain the later date that they came up with.).

The burns actually are far away from the edges of the cloth with the test sample was taken. Most of the burn scorches are in the image area.

[Swordmaker]

The Open Letter states that the process of creating the Shroud is not known, but P&C seemed to have made a believable copy. I'd like to see a critique of their method, as it appears to recreate all the anomalies of the Shroud.

Actually, no, they did not make a believable copy. Their copy is loaded with chemicals that bear the image. They are easily detected. The shroud lacks these chemicals. P&P's reproduction does not even touch 90% of the anomalies on the Shroud. Their image will fade with time.

[xzins]

Thank you for posting this. I had seen it before, so I’m familiar that there are proponents of the shroud who discount the previous testing. However, there are those who advocate the conclusions of the previous tests. I imagine both sides are anxious to have newer tests performed to erase any lingering doubts.

As I’ve already said, there is no sane Christian who bases his/her Christianity on the validity of some relic from bygone ages.

[Swordmaker]

Thank you for posting this. I had seen it before, so I’m familiar that there are proponents of the shroud who discount the previous testing. However, there are those who advocate the conclusions of the previous tests. I imagine both sides are anxious to have newer tests performed to erase any lingering doubts.

Both are... but the validity of the tests has been disproved.

[xzins]

Would you stop believing in Jesus if the fibers in the shroud were shown to date from long after Christ?

[MHGinTN]

Well, that answers that, your ‘prophet’/’president’ can’t settle the issue. I wonder, if there were salamander tracks on the shroud, think he could discern something?

[fproy2222]

I think this thread is not a good place for this.