[Flag_This]

”The image could have been added centuries after the linen was first woven.”

So some guy in the 1300s went to the time, trouble and expense, to purchase a thousand year old piece of linen? Assuming he could even find something like that, why would he do it? To fool people 700 years in the future, using tests he could never even conceive of?

[Boogieman]

Yeah, that’s a good counterargument. Forget this is a religious relic; just look at the history of forgers. None of them made much attempt to acquire materials from the proper time period until tests were invented that could differentiate such materials from simply materials that “looked old enough”.

[frogjerk]

So some guy in the 1300s went to the time, trouble and expense, to purchase a thousand year old piece of linen? Assuming he could even find something like that, why would he do it? To fool people 700 years in the future, using tests he could never even conceive of?

Sounds like a very scientific and believable explanation. That does it, your explanation is now "settled science"

--sarcasm tag required by law

[Beowulf9]

“So some guy in the 1300s went to the time, trouble and expense, to purchase a thousand year old piece of linen? Assuming he could even find something like that, why would he do it? To fool people 700 years in the future, using tests he could never even conceive of?”

I kinda love this answer.❤️

Good one.