"The Shroud is not a fake" (Scientists say there is no way to falsify or duplicate it)

As a Christian, a scientist, and one who likes history, I always find the Shroud topic interesting.

I recall some anatomy expert commenting on it and how the muscles, tendons, etc. are perfect in the image when it comes to the scourge marks, the rigidity in death, etc. (One of the pieces of information against a medieval forger with no detailed knowledge of anatomy back then.)

And I believe that it was VERY rare for one to be scourged so many times and ALSO crucified. It was usually (always?) one or the other.

I recall an old thread when that TV special on the 3-D recreation of the shroud was made, and there was some older gal that was a physics genius - talking about huge amounts of energy, and relating it to a time-distortion type thing (like a black hole). Not sure if this paper comes out of some of her research, or if it only in part confirms/adds to it.

Interesting stuff.

But there are serious problems with the view that this is the burial cloth of Christ, even if we ignore carbon dating tests in 1988 that showed the cloth may be only 600 or 700 years old.

The 1988 Carbon dating tests have been invalidated. The sample has been proved to have been a PATCHED area of the shroud. It was taken in violation of the protocols established by the STURP team, from an area they identified as not homogenous with the main body of the Shroud in that it seemed to be chemically different from the main body (it fluoresced differently, had somewhat different properties than the rest of the Shroud).

In 2005, it was shown that the sample was cut from an area that had been REWOVEN in the 15-16 Century to repair a frayed area using a skilled technique called French Invisible Reweaving in which new threads were skillfully rewoven into the old threads after being artfully dyed to match the old.

In fact, the C14 test ACCURATELY dated a melange of old, original Shroud FLAXEN LINEN of unknown age mixed with NEWLY added 15th or 16th Century dyed COTTON threads... in a varied proportion, depending on which sub sample was burned of between 40% new to 60% new threads... which skewed the dating severely. In fact, they skewed the dates so much that the resulting tests reported AT THE TIME fell outside the range of confidence of the test between the samples! THE TESTING SCIENTISTS SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THE SAMPLES WERE NOT HOMOGENOUS!!!! In fact, the difference in the reported dating was proportionate to the proportion of the newer material in the subsample.

Harry Gove, the inventor of the C14 testing system used to date the Shroud, when asked "How old would the original material had to have been, given a known date of 15-16th Century and a 40-60% contamination to skew the date to the amount the final tests reported?" He did some calculations and said "Give or take 100 years, 1st Century!"

Three independent researchers approaching the matter using three different methods, reported the findings in peer-reviewed journals. The samples taken from the shroud and tested in 1988 from the ONE SITE the STURP scientists agree should be avoided, were corrupted by 16th century repairs. . . The C14 tests of 1988 are totally invalid! This is now settled science.

Only the skeptics keep pointing to invalid science and ignoring that science has moved on in the 23 years since a mistake was made... because sloppy science was done.

In December 2009, archaeologists announced the discovery of a shroud-like cloth in a cave in Jerusalem that dated to the time of Christ. Unfortunately, it was made with a simple two-way weave — not the twill weave used on the Turin Shroud, which textile experts say was introduced more than 1000 years after Christ lived.

MORE BS! The Egyptians had three over 1 twill used in their mummies' inner wrappings... It is just a finer quality cloth! Rich people could afford to buy better weaves. That is another red herring raised by the skeptics, and it is a lie. There were cloths made of Byssus, too... a transparent cloth that we have difficulty making today... it's made from the hairs from a very rare sea urchin... and is far finer than silk.That doesn't mean our ancestors couldn't weave it. In other words, there were many variations in the quality of cloth 2000 years ago. It all wasn't one over one weave. The Shroud was woven on a wall loom... something that was no longer being used in Europe or the eastern Mediterranean after about the fifth century... But that doesn't mean someone MIGHT have been using one all the way to the thirteenth century. You still see examples of them in use in Africa today. That means nothing too. But there are MANY three over one twill cloths from the first century and before that survive. What's more important is the method of bleaching that was used... it fell out of practice almost world wide in the fifth century. How would a medieval forger know that?

The Jewish burial practices were WRITTEN down... just as much of the obligations of Jewish life were written down... and we KNOW what they were. A sindon was used if you could afford one... a sindon was a large Single cloth, a shroud. Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy man. The bible says he bought one... read the original GREEK... a "fine Linen cloth," a sindon. The greek verb "entulisso" includes a definition "to enwrap" which is what a Shroud does... and it also means to twist and wind the cloth around itself... which is what one does when one takes a flat cloth and twists it into a rope like kerchief to make a long narrow strip to bind something that needs tying. Jewish tradition required that the dead be bound at the jaw, wrists and ankles with STRIPS of cloth to prevent the mouth from gaping open and limbs from flopping akimbo. THERE are your strips of linen. They were NOT bound like egyptian mummies. NO Jewish burial has ever been found so bound in multiple swaddling strips. They HAVE been found with wound cloth wrapped around the ankles and wrists and a similar binding circling the skull.

A year after a burial, the family would return to the tomb, collect the bones and place them in the central pit, the ossuary, amassing them with the ancestors bones. This would be much complicated if the body were entangled in a mass of rotting cloth.

The facecloth exists to this day... but it did NOT cover the face... it wrapped "around" the face. It was twisted into a long rope like kerchief and was used to tie the jaw closed, passing under the jaw, around the face, behind the ears, under the beard, and tied at the crown of the head to keep the mouth closed. It is called the Sudarium (sweat cloth) of Oviedo and is kept in the Cathedral at Oviedo Spain. It bears matching blood stains with the Shroud, a bloody hand print where it was used to cover the head of Jesus when he was on the Shroud and carried to the tomb, then taken off, rolled into the binding, which is obvious by the blood stains, and then tied around the face. This is the cloth that was found apart from the burial clothes... just as if Jesus got up... walked a ways and then pulled it from around his face and dropped it.

Then bible may be "authoritative" but it is NOT exhaustive. There are many things done in Jewish burial practices that were not listed in the Bible that were done to Jesus... We know they had to be done... but they were glossed over in a few words of "in the manner of the Jews."

Walter C. McCrone, head of a Chicago research institute and a specialist in authenticating art objects, examined the shroud. He found a pale, gelatin-based substance speckled with particles of red ochre on fibres from the part of the cloth that supposedly showed the figure of Christ. He also found that fibers from the “wounds” had stains, not of blood, but of particles of a synthetic vermilion developed in the Middle Ages. He said the practice of painting linen with gelatin-based temperas began in the late thirteenth century and was common in the fourteenth.

Walter C. McCrone is the ONLY researcher of the Shroud who REFUSED to have his work peer-reviewed despite his agreement to do so in order to be given samples. His ONLY publications on the Shroud were in his own vanity press magazine The Microscopist published by McCrone Research Inc., and sometimes edited by Walter C. McCrone. His findings (the shroud was painted with vermilion [HgS] and red ochre/iron oxide [Fe₂O₃] paint in a dilute egg albumin solution) have been completely DISPROVED in peer-reviewed scientific journals by scientists using far more sensitive instruments than McCrone's optical and polarized light microscopes.

NOT ONE other researcher, and there have been hundreds, looking at what McCrone looked at has seen what McCrone claims to have seen. While there are scattered Fe₂O₃ and HgS particles on the shroud, they are randomly scattered, contaminating both image and non-image areas. At no time are there sufficient concentrations of either to rise to visibility.

McCrone sees the image is formed with quot;paint". This cannot possibly be in agreement with what we now KNOW forms the image:

The substance is a dried carbohydrate mixture of starch fractions and various saccharides (sugars). It is as thin (180 to 600 nanometers) as the wall of a soap bubble. It is thinner than the invisible glare proof coating on modern eyeglasses. . . In some places the coating has turned a golden brown. This is the result of a chemical change: the formation of a complex carbon-carbon double molecular bond within the coating. There are two ways this could have happened chemically: 1) caramelization, whereby heat caused molecular breakdown into other volatile compounds and 2) a Maillard reaction in which a carbonyl group of sugars reacted with an amino group producing N-substituted glycosylamine. An unstable glycosylamine undergoes Amadori rearrangement, forming ketosamines, which then form nitrogenous polymers and melanoidins. Voila, pictures of Jesus.
There is a problem with caramelization. The amount of heat required for browning would also heat the cellulose fiber sufficiently to change its crystalline structure and cause it to change color as well. That has not happened. Where a picture bearing bit of coating is removed, either with adhesive or with a reducing agent such as diimide, the fiber beneath is clear and un-ablated.
A Maillard reaction seems more promising because of the presence of amines needed for a Maillard reaction. Of course, it didn't need to be Jesus; at least chemically. It could have been any recently deceased person.

Ergo, NO paint! This alone COMPLETELY discredits McCrone.

Microscopist McCrone claims "No Blood on the Shroud" McCrone goes further and baldly states the "blood stains" are merely a Vermillion (HgS) and Iron Oxide paint mixture. He also states categorically that the Iron Oxide is "earthen" in nature and could not come from blood. Yet world renowned experts on blood, blood fractions, blood remnants, and forensic blood disagree.

Let's look at other tests done by scientists who don't rely on what they can see through a microscope, say the pyrolysis mass spectrometer tests, much more discriminating that what can be seen through a light microscope, that show that what vermillion (HgS) exists on the shroud is again, random, insufficient to be visible, and not at all associated with the blood stains.

Instead of discredited McCrone, take the testimony of chemist Dr. Alan Adler and biophysicist Dr. John Heller, experts on blood and blood fractions, who state categorically in peer-reviewed scientific Journals, that the blood stains consist of hemoglobin and its derivatives. Aside from light microscopy, Heller and Adler tested for hemochromagen (positive), cyanmethemoglobin (positive), bile pigment bilirubin (positive), and proteolytic enzymes (positive), human specific protein albumin (positive), presence of serum halos around stains (positive), and immunological determination that the blood is of primate origin. Perhaps we should look at Yale University's Dr. Joseph Gall's spectrophotometer tests that showed the blood absorbing light in 410 nanometers... a test that he states is "specific" for blood as "nothing in nature that absorbs light at four hundred ten nanometers that strongly". Or perhaps we should accept the word of Dr. Bruce Cameron, whose "double doctorate is dedicated to hemoglobin in all its many forms", who on reviewing the test results stated "You both should know what it is. It's old acid methemoglobin." (a remnant compound of aged blood.)

Ergo, according to some of the world's top experts on blood, the blood stains on the Shroud of Turin, are exactly that... blood stains. Again McCrone's bald statements are refuted. I could also go into McCrone's attempts to sabotage other researcher's work including preventing his own colleagues from having access to the samples of Shroud threads he had.

You want sources?

Adler, Alan. "The origin and nature of blood on the Turin Shroud" in Turin Shroud - Image of Christ? William Meacham, ed. (Hong Kong: Turin Shroud Photographic Exhibition Organising Committee, 1987), 57-9.
Adler, Alan." Updating Recent Studies on the Shroud of Turin" Archaeological Chemistry: Organic, Inorganic, and Biochemical Analysis, American Chemical Society Symposium Series No. 625, Chapter 17 (1996), 223-8.
Ford, David. "The Shroud of Turin 'Blood' Images: Blood or Paint? A History of Science Inquiry" University of Maryland Baltimore (2000), PDF file, "http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/ford1.pdf", 2/17/2005. Heller, J.H. and A.D. Adler, "Blood on the Shroud of Turin", Applied Optics 19:2742-4 (1980).
Heller, J.H. and A.D. Adler, "A Chemical Investigation of the Shroud of Turin", Canadian Society of Forensic Sciences Journal 14: 81-103 (1981).
Porter, Daniel. "The Chemical Nature of the Shroud" http://www.shroudstory.com/faq-chemistry.htm/ (2005), 2/17/2005.
Rogers, Raymond N. "New Tests Prove 1988 Carbon 14 Dating Invalid: Shroud of Turin Shown to be Much Older". Thermochimica ActaVolume 425: 189-194, (2005).

In the 1980s, Jesuit priest Robert A. Wild expressed surprise that the bloodstains showed no trace of smearing after all the movement and transport the body would have endured. Wild also noted that the hands of the body masked the genitals. He said this couldn’t be right. No matter how you arrange a body after rigor mortis, he said, the hands cannot cover the genitals unless you prop up the elbows on the body and bind the hands tightly in place. Yet this is not what the shroud’s image shows.

As mentioned, the hands ARE bound in place... and, ReMomof7, Barrie Schwortz, the principal light photographer of the 1978 STURP project has told me that under extreme computer enhancement, the genitals of the man on the shroud are just barely discernible, not completely covered... and he was circumcised. The genitals are just at the extreme edge of the range of the terrain map data.

Barrie is Jewish, and maintains the primary Shroud.com archive site where all of the scientific and scholarly papers are kept and available for people to see. He took most of the photographs you see of the scientists working on the Shroud in 1978, and the photos of the Shroud that are published on the Web... from that examination. He is in a position to know what computer enhancement has shown.

Interestingly, this date accords with the carbon-14 tests, which dated the shroud to about the first quarter of the 1300s — although some information suggests that this is the date the cloth was repaired, and the repaired cloth was the part that was carbon-dated. The date agrees with art expert Walter McCrone’s estimate of the age based on known painting styles (see 6th point above).

As to "Painting styles" of the 14th Century... that is BS too. No one in the 14th century was painting ANYTHING in this style. NOTHING. period. Many art experts have looked for anything even remotely similar and have found not one similar work. Not one. Jesus was never portrayed nude. Realism of this nature was not a stylistic of the period. So that was more bunk in this article you are citing. There are hundreds of scholars who will call that claim BS. I challenge anyone to come up with a painting from the period that matches the "painting style" of the Shroud from the period. This is just another one of the lies of the skeptics used to rope in the ignorant.

In 2005, N.D. Wilson, a fellow of literature at New St. Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, showed it would have been easy for a medieval to create a 3-D photonegative. Wilson painted faces on glass, put the painted panes on linen, and left it in the sun for various lengths of time. The images Wilson produced look remarkably similar to the Shroud of Turin, although Wilson was the first to admit that this in itself did not disprove the Shroud’s authenticity.

Sorry, Wilson's image was NOT 3D... it was a flat photograph. and had no 3D qualities at all. It also faded quite rapidly with exposure to the sun as the rest of the linen quickly starched to match the rest of the unexposed linen. His work was crude and lacked many of the criteria for "duplicating" the Shroud. It had all been done before in the 1930s, as well. . . and was debunked then. Wilson was also working with a FOREKNOWLEDGE of negative methodology, something a medieval artisan would not have... and was working from a photo negative, duplicating a negative photograph to get his results. Again, a medieval forger would not have had an exemplar to work with. And, again, the Shroud does not fade with exposure to light. Ergo, it was not made this way. We KNOW what the image is made from... and it is NOT a light photograph. So these skeptics are merely dancing, trying to find a way to explain it away.

The brilliant blood shrouds were most likely one or another of the copies of the Shroud that were made by pious artists... there are 27 known copies in existence and some of them, to this day, have brilliant "blood stains" on them, due to artistic license. These ARE painted with red ocher and vermilion. These copies were made, and after drying, were pressed to the Shroud of Turin to give them "sanctity" (this is thought to be the source of the randomly scattered flecks of red ochre and vermilion on the Shroud that is to little to rise to visibility) and then taken out and displayed. Ignorant observers often thought they were seeing the real one... and reported what they saw.

Great post, Swordmaker.

Thanks so much.

I’m not just agreeing with you because I don’t want to argue with a swordmaker....but what I meant is I loved the idea of arguing the shroud based on something provable, something measurable. Some clown who just parrots some Klannish preacher and repeatedly tells people what they believe, even when told it is in fact NOT what they believe, well that’s no basis for discussion. That’s just some mindless parrot using the forum for mindless parroting. Bringing ‘facts’ and figures into the discussion was a welcome event at that point.

The “Shroudies” strike again.

Like a horse race, it’s a matter of opinion, with each side citing “experts” who have their own agenda.

Hear, Hear

Like a horse race, it’s a matter of opinion, with each side citing “experts” who have their own agenda.

There are differences in the weights one should give the "opinions" that are presented. Sorry, the "experts" on the sides of the skeptics you quote are working OUTSIDE of their fields of expertise (Tell me me, what exactly qualifies a BA in English Literature to critique people with multiple doctorates and specialties in identifying human blood in all its antecedents and gives him ANY gravitas at all?) and have never had their critiques published in any peer-reviewed scientific journals. The opinions I provide are from scientists, analyzing the shroud by applying science from WITHIN their fields of expertise, applying what they KNOW, and trying to find answers. If they cannot, they say so. What they find raises even more questions than answers.

Your very first question is and denigrating ad hominem attack... meant to diminish the value of the scientific work done in the minds of the people who are not familiar with the work. The scientists involved included Christians, Jews, agnostics, and even atheists... most of them entered with an open mind. Most went with the intent to falsify the Shroud. Talk a few measurements, find paint or other obvious evidence of pigments, make a report and go home. Job done... instead they did NOT find that.

Only McCrone claimed to have found it, but none of the other hundreds of scientists who have looked have found pigments. NONE. None of the various, very sophisticated equipment brought to bear has found what McCrone claims he saw with his microscopes and even his own electron Microscope department did NOT back up his claim until he forced them to re-write their report. You want to talk about an agenda? McCrone over the years changed his characterization of the Red Ochre no less than seven times... and in one report claimed it was red ochre that was developed in 1830! Absurd!

Incidentally, McCrone was not an official member of STURP. He was granted access to STURP samples as a courtesy under a specific contract which he violated by not publishing his findings in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, publishing instead in his own vanity magazine “The Microscopist”, refused to return the samples which he started referring to as “my samples”, and the samples had to be physically retrieved by STURP officials.

He told his own employees that he was “going to debunk the shroud by using only a light microscope” because he thought that the microscope was being left behind as a serious scientific instrument!

“Like a horse race, it’s a matter of opinion, with each side citing “experts” who have their own agenda.”

As legendary Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote, “It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.”

That, IMO, is what you are doing. Those on “each side” are not equals.

One side is seeking to find the truth, even if it proves them wrong. The other side is closed-mindedly certain of its position, and has no interest in examining contrary evidence.

The second group are called “skeptics,” although they are not skeptics at all. They are God-haters, burning with a abhorrent lust to disprove His existence and defame His followers.

Catholics and honest scientists do not wish to believe or say that the Shroud is genuine if it is not.

The God-haters are just seagull pseudoscientists: they flap in, make a bunch of noise, crap all over everything, and leave as much confusion as possible in their wake. After all, why bother with genuine inquiry when you already know the answer?

ping

So glad this turned into a, right from the start:

‘You’re not a real Christian!’
‘Yes I am! You are the one that’s not a real Christian!’
‘Dont’t say I`m not a real Christian you fake Christian!’

thread. sarc/

Interesting story. Thanks for posting it. I am a Protestant of the Calvinist variety; and I see no harm in believing the Shroud is genuine. I happen to believe it is genuine. If it is ever PROVEN not to be; I will change my mind. I do not worship the Shroud; though I am sure some probably do. The Shroud is not the linchpin of faith for me and most of the people that believe it genuine. At worst, if it is not genuine, reminds us of the suffering of our Lord. I see no harm in that.

There's a difference between an "idol" and a "sign". For example, there's the sign of Moses ~ a snake on a stick.

Remember, the words you are reading are made up of alphabetical letters that were derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics which are themselves a combination of standard signs, pictures and adaptations of Sumerian stylized hieroglyphics which themselves were derived from signs ~ even shamanic signs, pictures, and so forth.

The Shroud is a sign and a picture. It's a sign in the sense that if you have sufficient scientific knowledge you can examine it and attempt to determine something about the maker.

Idolotry is a totally different topic. It does not derive from the signs, pictures, letters, hieroglyphs and so forth. Rather, it has to do with putting one's self, or a thing, in God's place. Asking "What Would Jesus Say" is idolotry. Asking "What Did Jesus Say" is a request for information from the record maintained in the New Testament.

Oh, yeah, the first, "What Would Jesus Say" requires that you or an associate put yourself in Jesus' place ~ that is, to become God ~ and then try to think a Godlike thought that will give you the ability to speak as God.

Because he couldn’t wait to denigrate it?

There's a difference between an "idol" and a "sign". For example, there's the sign of Moses ~ a snake on a stick.

Moses was at the Minnesota State Fair?

/on a stick>

Cheers!

Good answer.

Imho, these types of responses come from people who are extremely threatened. If it is real and a true miracle from God - what then? It would be too much for them to comprehend and then they just might have to change their world view - and themselves....very disconcerting to a lot of folks. :)