Sorry, the Shroud of Turin Is Definitely a Hoax

Thank you again.

Interesting idea.

You should continue.

I had no idea about the story behind the Shroud. Totally fascinating; thanks for the education, sir.

Again, actual researched science trumps the popular myth-conceptions.

You sound just like the tired old cliche: British Science says....
"Actual researched science"--what IN THE WORLD is that? You made that up!

No, I’m talking about research done by scientists working in their fields of expertise doing actual research. That is not made up. These are actual peer-reviewed research instead of some guy writing an article in a skeptics or popular press magazine from his asserted “scientific expertise” because he has a degree in science, such as geology, making ex cathedra assertions. Another popular source for such claims is one of a couple of failed stage magicians with degrees in non-technical fields such as English Literature. So, when I speak of “actual researched science” I am referring to reproducible, falsifiable results that have been peer-reviewed, published which was done by scientists working in their fields of expertise, reporting on their research or experiments pursuing hypothesis or investigations, based on the historic structure of previously done research and experimentation.

Such scientific work does not just repeatedly ignore that which has already been proved to have been falsified by previous such qualified research, which the skeptics often do, which is why I used the term “myth-conceptions”.

For example, I have lost count of the number of times the skeptics trot out microscopist Walter C, McCrone’s long debunked claims of finding pigments on the image areas of the Shroud, or his claims that the blood on the Shroud were merely Tempera Paint mixed with Vermillion because he saw such obvious pigments in his visible light microscope. He repeatedly claimed this despite his results being falsified by every other microscopic examination of the Shroud, including Electronmicroscopic examination AND Electronmicroscectrograph showing there simply are no pigments associated with either image or blood areas. (That latter spectrographic test is so sensitive it can detect the fact the thread samples were placed in a vinyl baggie and in fact, the particular manufacturer of the baggie.) McCrone even got so unhinged he was claiming he could tell the DILUTION of the pigments by his visual examination, and, at one point, he claimed the Iron Oxide pigments were of a grind type he had observed on the Shroud had been invented in the 1830s, an obvious impossibility, merely by his microscopist’s expert eye!

Yet the skeptical anti-Shroud “scientists” will, to this day, trot out the late Dr. McCrone as a pillar of their cited proofs despite his claims repeatedly being resoundedly proved false. Yet they LIKE his claims, but they never, ever report they’ve been falsified. That’s not objective science, that’s “true believer” irrationality.

When confronted, they accuse those who falsified McCrone, or even point out that falsification, of supporting lying pseudo-scientists, “true-believing Catholics” who are only propping up an icon,” when in fact, many of the scientists who investigate the Shroud, are, as I mentioned, real scientists working within their fields of expertise, PhDs, writing peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, and many are Jewish, Agnostics, a few atheists, Protestant, etc. They cover the gamut.

X-Rays had NOTHING to do with The Shroud!! I said it was ONLY BECAUSE it was X-RAYED that Jesus’s image was able to be seen!

Again, not criticizing, trying to get what you are saying:

I am not grasping what you are getting at. What do X-rays have anything to do with it?

Are you proposing that X-rays emanating from Jesus’ body made the image 2000 years ago? There are a few scientists, who like Dr. Marc Gascin, MD, PhD, a radiologist, whose paper I heard presented, propose that due to the fact that we can see on the Shroud some internal structures of bones in the hands, the orbits around the eyes, and teeth under the lips. But aside from that, we have no proof that X-Rays ever had anything to do with the formation of the image. For all we know, gravitons, neutrons, or a time distortion may have been the cause of the image.

Or are you saying that Secondo Pia somehow X-rayed the Shroud in 1898, thus developing and revealing the image to the world? If that is what you are saying, then that’s flat out wrong.

All Secondo Pia did was take a photo of the Shroud for the first time. No one had ever been allowed to do that before. When he developed the glass plate negative, he suddenly realized that instead of a seeing a normal photographic negative image, he was seeing was a black and white photographic positive image of Jesus, making him the very first person in 1,900 years to look upon the visage of Jesus. He used no X-Rays in making his photograph. Prior to Pia seeing that glass plate in his fixative bath solution in his dark room, everyone else looking at the Shroud had been looking at an inverted light for dark negative image on the Shroud.

No one X-rayed the Shroud until the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) scientists did so in 1978. Unsurprisingly, that X-ray did not reveal anything of much interest.

OMG>>>REALLY....Listen very carefully...one more time.....The SHROUD’s Image of Jesus was ONLY seen when it was put under X-RAY!! The X-RAY EXPOSED the Image, NOT CAUSED IT!!! YIKES!!

Are you saying that there was no headpiece to the burial wrappings?

Thanks for posting the facts instead of opinions, as others are doing.

No.

I doubt it, not even with today’s advancements. Possibly using radiation techniques, which I suspect the “forger” had no access. lol

The passage in the book of John describes strips of linen and a separate cloth for Jesus’ head. From what I have read about these practices, the body was first laid into a single large cloth from head to toe and then the strips of linen were wound around that. Its a stretch, but believers in the Turin shroud can say that this was not mentioned in the Biblical account because it was just understood.

Someone already mentioned stuff in Egypt and the Pyramids.

I am tired of this claim that we could not build a pile of stones like the Great pyramid. We could. It’s a 481 foot tall stacked up pile of rocks. The only thing that stops us is money and will. We’ve built far larger public projects than the Great Pyramid in shorter time. That’s a false analogy.

Boulder Dam alone is taller, longer, wider, and far heavier, and has more cubic volume than the great pyramid and was built in less time. It’s not even the largest dam in the world. That superlative goes to a dam in Pakistan that’s 50% larger than Boulder.

The US Southern Border Wall. . . will be far exceed the construction effort of the Great Pyramid’s volume by about 150 times in just concrete. My back of the envelope calculations for the 1,954 miles of border for concrete alone comes to 50 million tons, compared to the 6.5 million tons estimated weight of the Great Pyramid, before we look at the steel for the bollards. Money and will.

Let’s look at the list you linked to:

Water works, aqueducts, etc.: This is BS, metmom. They did well, but it is a progression of development. The assertion they did better than what we build today is a load of horse hockey. They moved water over a few miles with heavy losses for small populations. We move water, treat it, and clean waste, and re-insert that water into the ecosystem cleaner than we took it out. None of the ancient water system could do any of that.
Steel Damascus Steel swords cutting through other lesser metals was NOT hard to do, considering the poor quality of other iron weapons. Damascus steel was never lost. It’s a method of hammer forging and folding iron with carbonized wood and other alloys which resulted in a better alloy. The Japanese also produced very high quality steel doing the same thing, using different numbers of folds for different parts of the swords for different purposes, edges with hard multiple folds to take an edge, lesser numbers for the body, backs with more to give spring, etc. Look at my FreeRepublic handle. This is an area I know something about, metmom. It isn’t true. A modern steel could cut those “Damascus Steel Blades” without a problem. A modern metallurgist could run rings around a seat of the pants iron smith making his steel in a forge from the past, and do it far more consistently.
Concrete: Another claim without reality. For ever single assertion about ancient concrete lasting 2000 years, there are examples of ancient concrete that failed. Romans did not transport salt water from the sea to make their concrete. When this article talks about concrete that lasts such a length of time, they are referring from the experience of observing that it is still there. But a lot isn’t. A lot of our concrete will be too. We can make concrete that is FAR stronger than Roman concrete. Testing of Roman concrete shows it is actually quite weak, where as we can make concrete that will withstand up to 12,000 pounds per square inch. Roman Concrete would likely fail at much more than 400.
Road Building: ROTFLMAO! Really? They went there??? OK, lets examine that absurdity. The author of that article claims that the amazing Inca Civilization built their non-wheel using people built their road connecting their towns in a hundred years. WOW! I’m not impressed. Their alpacas and Llamas could walk on cobble stone paths! YAY! The Romans built roads with ruts separated by 4’ 8 ½” apart, the exact distance for their chariot wheels to fit in. That resulted in the distance between rails, the gauge, of our railroads today. Speaking of which, when we were building our Transcontinental Railroad in 1875, the record was TEN MILES A DAY, due to the capitalistic competition between the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad companies! In 1955, Eisenhower challenged our people to build the Interstate freeway system across the United States. It was started by act of Congress in 1956 and deemed completed by 1992 with 48,191 miles (77,556 km) completed.

The Golden Gate Bridge. . . Built from start of design to opening to first civilian traffic six years. Total weight of Bridge, anchorages, and approaches (1986)* is 887,000 tons. . . But the bridge is far larger, than the Great Pyramid. Money and will, metmom.
Stone Cutting: There I might cut some you some slack as we don’t know how they cut some of the deep rectangular pockets into the stones. We can do it, and we can actually do it better. The question is would we bother to do it when we have techniques for accomplishing the same thing more economically. Money and will, metmom.
Agriculture: ROTFLMAO! Assumptions based on nose picking archaeology are not facts. There actually very little evidence what was claimed about the success of ancient agriculture over long terms in feeding their populations or even maintaining those populations. The fact is that ALL of these cultures devoted 90% of their populations to agricultural activities. We, on the other hand, feed our populations with only 1% of our people devoted to agriculture. That says it all. Nothing more needs to be said about who does it better.
Walls: A few minor surviving walls is not proof of success or superiority or even better technique. This refers back to Stone Cutting. Again, we could, if we put our minds and resources to doing it, accomplish the same thing. We don’t wish to because we have other ways to do the same thing. Why put in the effort? A high-pressure abrasive water jet would do what we see there. But why do it? Money and will, metmom.
City Planning: ROTFLMAO! The largest ancient city had, at most, 50,000 people. I live in what is considered a small town today and there are 110,000 people today. The author of this article has no clue about what City Planning involves. Those ancient cities lived on top of their own excrement and garbage. They are called Tells because they grow higher as newer buildings were built on the ruins and garbage of older ones, building a hill. Some have nine and ten layers of ruins below them. He’s clueless. Our planned cities of today are self-contained skyscrapers which are planned machines for living.

The Burj Khalifa building, the tallest in the world, took only 5 years to build, required 200% more volume of rock than the great pyramid before we start talking about steel, aluminum, and other materials, and its height is three times, foot print larger, and while I doubt it will last as long, is likely more useful. The entire building weighs 3,500 times more than the great pyramid. Money and will, metmom.
Astronomy: ROTFLMAO! I don’t denigrate their observations. But metmom, talk about a clueless claim. Yes, they did OK in making observations having to do with the movements of what they could see and noting how it corresponded to the seasons they knew, but to claim they could do better than we can today is the assertion of a complete lunatic.
Weapons: Another BS assertion. Greek Fire, Archimedes Mirror are the things of myth. Physics and chemistry limit what can be done with the materials they had available to them in those eras. Bronze and brass do not have the ability to reflect the sun as described in sufficient power to ignite anything. Look at the reports. It’s someone second hand claiming they heard about it. While phosphorus was available to the Greeks and could possibly have ignited the ships, getting it projected TO the ships was the problem. They had limited range ballistas and large scale crossbows, but nothing more in the projectile category. There is no way they “do it better than modern people.”
In 1973, the Greek scientists Ioannis Sakkas set up 70 mirrors with a copper coating, which were pointed at a plywood model of a Roman warship at a distance of 50 meters. When the mirrors were focused accurately, the ship burst into flames within seconds.
While this was widely reported, no one ever has been able to replicate this using even glass mirrors which would be far more efficient reflectors. True science requires the ability to duplicate the experiment. Myth Busters tried it under ideal conditions and could not do it using far more real silvered mirrors which reflect far more energy. One has to be able to hold the focus on a point on the target long enough to raise its temperature high enough beyond its kindling point for it to start a self-sustaining fire. That’s not easy to do.

It can be done with computer coordinated mirrors, in fact birds are frequently incinerated by solar generation stations in the deserts of Arizona and Nevada, but there are thousands of focused mirrors at those stations. It is apparently FAKE science.

So, metmom, there really isn’t anything our ancestors could do that we can’t.

I see you are one of those *Everyone who came before us is dumber than a box of rocks* types.

Have a good day.

If the face cloth is gone missing, then the image of His face would be too.

Only if you erroneously assume that the “face cloth” covered the face. That is not what is required by Jewish burial tradition as recorded in the Mishnah especially when we know from the Gospels that Joseph of Arimathea had purchased a Sindon, a shroud, which would cover the entire body. The “around” or “about,” but not “on,” the face the Greek word “Sudarion” ( Sudarium -Latin, sweat cloth) is what it implies. Further the word is not a “napkin” or “handkerchief,” covering the face, those are words in English that are descriptive words for a cloth close in size to what a person reading the Gospel can relate to what size a Sudarium would be.

The Mishnah burial practice does require a jaw binding to keep the mouth closed, which would be AROUND the face, which is what the Greek language word implies. Think of it like this cartoon image but behind the beard and hair, and tied tight, with the knot at the top of the crown of the head. As you can see, the Sudarium would be “around the face,” but not covering it which would not obscure an image, and it meets the translation of “rolled up elsewhere” as some more accurate Gospel translations have the original Greek words rather than “folded.”

Thank you again.

Good compilation of my comments. You’re entirely welcome. If you haven’t found it, a good source of scientific and scholarly papers on the Shroud is the official website of Shroud of Turin Education and Research Association, Inc. (STERA, Inc.), https://www.shroud.com/, maintained by Barrie Schwortz. Barrie, who is a professing and practicing Jew, was the principle light photographer for the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project. He is also convinced that the Shroud is genuine.

The weave used is the biggest clue.

Why is that, CodeToad? What makes you think that a three-over-one weave was beyond an expert weaver in 1st Century Judea? Do you think it is such a difficult thing to pick up three threads instead of one or two? There are surviving examples from that same period and area of woven cloth made of Byssus, the tendrils of a sea urchin, the absolutely finest cloth in the world. Why would a three-over-one twill somehow be beyond the skills of an expert weaver in the same area?

Almost every day I search for new apperances of “Turin Shroud” on the internet, so I’m astonished that this site has clocked up 150 replies since beinmg posted.

I am one of those ‘skeptical anti-Shroud “scientists” ‘ Swordmaker mentions (145), but not a ‘failed stage magician’ nor the holder of a degree in ‘non-technical fields such as English Literature’. However I am a leading researcher in the subject, and find Swordmaker’s comments both the most detailed and the most authoritative (so much so that I wonder if we haven’t met before on the internet) , so I thought I’d reply to him, although obviously my observations apply to lots of other responders too.

Like Swordmaker, I like to study ‘research done by scientists working in their fields of expertise doing actual research’, publishing in ‘peer-reviewed’ journals. But I find it a little curious that this opening gambit is followed by a denigration of by far the most qualified and experienced scientist of the whole STuRP team, namely Walter McCrone. He was a by-word in microscopy then, and acknowledged as such today, as witnessed by his continuing achievements, The Microscope, The Particle Atlas, and the McCrone Research Institute. Ray Rogers, who carried out the tape sampling exercise, had taken a course tutored by McCrone, so it was no wonder he first entrusted his tapes to him.

So what of Swordmaker’s claim that his work has been “long debunked”. I don’t think that’s the right approach, and suggests an authenticist bias that I hope is not mirrored by a similar non-authenticist bias on my part.

In his peer-reviewed paper (Acc. Chem. Res. Vol. 23), McCrone publishes several micrographs liberally sprinkled with red dots. It is useless to pretend that they are not there, or that they represent ‘cellulosic bound’ iron oxide associated with the retting process. So why are they ignored by John Heller and Alan Adler (Can. Soc. Forens. Sci. J., Vol. 14)? Rather than dismiss one or the other as an idiot, it is better to try to find an answer.

This may lie in Heller’s book ‘Report on the Shroud of Turin’ where he explains that in order to carry out their chemical tests, he and Adler had to extract each fibre carefully from the sticky tape, and to wash away the ‘stickum’ (Heller’s word) with copious toluene. No wonder they did not discover much particulate matter not firmly adhering.

Roger Morris, STuRP’s X-Ray fluorescence tester, identified varying concentrations of iron across the Shroud, including a remarkable correlation between concentration and image intensity across the face; and both Gérard Lucotte and Giulio Fanti have independently identified cinnabar on two different blood stains. All three are convinced authenticists who do not think the Shroud was painted, but their evidence is certainly not so dismissive of the possibility as Swordmaker seems to imply.

Moving back a bit to Swordmaker’s comment 130. Othonia does not mean burial cloths. Sail is not the root of Sindon (where on earth did you find that?).

Comment 129. There is no archaeological evidence that the ‘dumb bell’ marks on the Shroud match any kind of Roman flagrum, and some sculptural and literary evidence that they don’t. The copies made and illustrated, including yours, are based solely on the Shroud itself, so it is hardly surprising they match so well.

Comment 125. It is not obvious to a number of convinced authenticists, such as John Jackson, the founder of STuRP, and Bob Rucker, that there is any anomalous material in the radiocarbon corner. For a start, every single thread can be followed from the main body of the Shroud into the corner (particularly on the X-Ray photos and Barrie Schwortz’s transmitted light photos), and for a second, there must be at least three times as much interpolation as orignal cloth (that’s 75% / 25%, not 60% / 40%). ‘Approximately equal weights of 16th and 1st century Carbon’ could not have produced the 13th / 14th century date. Various ways of ‘invisible mending’ have been suggested and refuted, and the current front runner is that the invisible mending cannot be detected on the Shroud becasue it is invisible. I have to say I find that not credible.

I have no idea what you mean by beta particles being emitted from the carbon monoxide and dioxide while the samples were being tested. The AMS system measures whole atoms, not beta decay. Perhaps you mean something else.

Comment 121. Damaging the median nerve has various effects depending where it is damaged. None of them result exclusively in the retraction of the thumb. Noted pathologist Freg Zugibe declared that the nail hole wasn’t where Pierre Barbet said it was (he was quite rude about him actually) and that the median nerve had nothing to do with the non-appearance of thumbs on the Shroud.

Comment 109. I’m a skeptic and I don’t claim that. The easiest way to produce the image on the Shroud is to drape it over a damp bas-relief. The areas of greatest pressure result in the areas of densest image. Pseudo-negativity is an inevitable comsequence.

Apart from that, I agree with a lot of what you say!

(PS. Just noticed even more comments. Maybe I’ll post again!)

OMG>>>REALLY....Listen very carefully...one more time.....The SHROUD’s Image of Jesus was ONLY seen when it was put under X-RAY!! The X-RAY EXPOSED the Image, NOT CAUSED IT!!! YIKES!

Then you very clearly do not know what you are talking about, Ann. I have been studying the Shroud for over FIFTY YEARS and what you just asserted is complete BUNK! It is FALSE!!

NO X-RAYS were ever used on the Shroud until 1978. How many times do I have to tell you that fact?

Unlike you, I know what I am talking about.

People don’t queue up by the tens of thousands down through the centuries to look at a blank sheet of cloth, Ann. The image has always been there. It did not need to be “revealed” by exposure to X-rays, by anyone. I don’t know who told you that, but they lied to you.

SO READ WHAT I WROTE! The Shroud has been on display with an image has been seen Publicly since 1354 and most likely since 1352 as an historical fact, when it was put on display at a small chapel built by Geoffrey de Charney, the Standard Bearer of the King of France. The image was visible then. We have evidence that the Shroud was seen WITH it’s image in the 12th Century. In addition, Archdeacon Gregory Referendarius of the Hagia Sofia in Constantinople gives a very good, if flowery, description of the Shroud in his Sermon of August 15, 944 on what is arguably the Shroud’s arrival at the Hagia Sofia as the Image of Edessa. It will be listed in the inventory of the relics of the Hagia Sofia from that point on as the Shroud of our Lord until the Knights of the Fourth Crusade attack and loot the city in the 12th Century. One of the leaders of that Crusade was Geofry de Charny, one of the founders of the Knights Templar, and alsoGreat great grandfather of one Geoffrey de Charney, in whose hands the Shroud turns up in 1352, in Lirey, France.

Copies were painted of it in the 15th and 16th Century, long before the discovery of X-rays. This image of the Shroud of Turin was found in a Prayer Book from prior to the fire of 1532 when the Shroud suffered severe physical damage and had to be patched, and the color recreation depicted in the Prayer Book clearly shows the frontal and dorsal images on the Shroud. This is CLEARLY before the discovery of X-Rays in 1895 by Wilhem Röntgen.

Photo courtesy of Eugenio Donandoni, Christie's Auction House

That first appearance was almost 700 years ago, long before X-rays were discovered by Wilhem Röntgen on November 8, 1895. Three years later, Secondo Pia a lawyer and amateur photographer who was allowed to take several plain old glass plate, black and white, photographs, not an X-ray, of the Shroud of Turin, during the week of May 25 to June 2, 1898, as part of an exhibition of the 400th anniversary of the Turin Cathedral, but opened early to honor the wedding of one of the Savoy family, the royal family of Italy. These photographs had exposure times, under hot electric lights, of between five and eight minutes each. Several times the glass plates broke due to heat. Pia was finally successful on his second day of trying, between crowds, to get two unbroken plates. He already knew from developing the broken plates that the image would be a positive image.

“I wonder why you do do not believe that Jesus was both divine and human?”

G-d is not human. For Him to be down on our level is to be less than divine. That is absolutely NOT to say that He can’t (and doesn’t) use humans to accomplish His goals, or that He cannot directly communicate with us humans...but He, Himself, is not human. To say that is nothing less than blasphemy.

Numbers 23:19 - “God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: when He hath said, will He not do it? or when He hath spoken, will He not make it good?”

That which is Eternal, by definition, cannot be preceded by anything. Hence, the Eternal Himself cannot be preceded by any framework of existence.

Thus, G-d does not - CAN not - exist inside some framework of existence, like our bodies exist in space-time. Rather, He is the existence and also the framework of existence of everything...both things simultaneously. Hence there cannot be anything or anywhere devoid of Him. A body implies some kind of “place” where He is and thus necessarily another place where He is not - and this is impossible.

As for your claims that the “Old Testament” (i.e. the Jewish Bible) was fulfilled by Jesus, that contention relies upon mistranslations of hebrew words and phrases, taking things out of context, or simply making things up.

As for all of those quotes from the Christian bible, I will give you the Jewish perspective on them from Deuteronomy 4:2, as follows:

“Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.”

Either the word of G-d in the 5 Books of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms is true and correct (which I believe), or it is not. If it is, then you cannot have the Christian bible, and if it is not, then you cannot claim anything valid from relying upon it.

If you sincerely wish to understand why Jews do not view Jesus as “a” messiah, let alone “the” messiah, much less divine, take a look at these articles: https://jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/articles/the-jewish-concept-of-messiah-and-the-jewish-response-to-christian-claims/

http://www.answering-christianity.com/sami_zaatri/10_reasons_jesus_not_god.htm