Miracle of the Shroud II: The Second Coming

[wardenclyffe]

>snip some interesting material<

Ward. I am not sure what the point is here. With hundreds of thousands of relics around in the Middle Ages (see my book Holy Bones,Holy Dust) every known permutation happened somewhere. My reading is that Jeanne de Vergy had the Shroud ( so far as we know her husband Geoffrey de Charny was away fighting and on diplomatic missions until his death in 1356) and was claiming it was authentic. It was this claim that was declared fraudulent as there was evidence that it was actually a painted linen (which does NOT mean that it was originally created to deceive). However, there seems to have been some reason why, perhaps a miracle, Clement VII was prepared to allow its exposition by Jeanne's son, also Geoffrey. From 1390. However, bearing in mind the shenanigans of Jeanne, Clement insisted that it was publicly announced at each exposition that it was not authentic. This is one possible reading.

Here's my point. I think that a painting would be recognized by everyone as a painting, especially if they were common props in Quem Queritis ceremonies. It seems like there would be no question or claim that this was anything but a painting.

The shroud as it appears today, however, might be claimed to be something other than a painting. Clearly that has happened and many people (mistakenly) believe that it is something other than a painting. This suggests to me that the shroud did not look like a Quem Queritis prop in 1390.

This is what I think needs to be worked out.

I think your hypothesis is still worth exploring. I'm just not completely convinced.

Ward

 

[IanS]

Ian S. I agree that there were numerous attempts by STURP members to keep in with the Vatican but ultimately they were kept away from any involvement with the testing of the Shroud. It is important to note that in a strongly argued article to be found at the end of the proceedings of a conference of the Shroud held in Turin in 2000, (i.e. twelve years after the radio- carbon dating), Gonella defended the testing and the date achieved. It appears, if you read his article closely, that he had some difficulty in getting it included, which is why, perhaps, it is tagged on at the end. So at that date, whatever his relationship with individual members of STURP, Gonella was not buying into their view that the testing was flawed. After all he was there at the selection of the samples, was a scientist watching proceedings while no STURP member was present.

His passing on threads of the Shroud to Rogers does seem extraordinary - I wonder whether he expected Rogers to go public on this. It must certainly have been an embarrassment for Gonella as he can hardly have argued that he had a right to keep threads from the Shroud for himself and distribute them to his contacts outside Turin.

Well perhaps in another post I may comment a bit further on Gonella and what sort of "scientist" he was (afaik, Gonella was an active member of the church community in Turin, he was someone with university qualifications in a somewhat obscure field called "instrumentation & measurement", he had held several teaching posts inc. briefly at Turin Univ., and was on that basis offered the role of scientific advisor to the archbishop in Turin). But first, just re. the highlighted part (above) -

- STURP were certainly not "kept away from any involvement with the testing of the Shroud". In fact I don't think you can actually mean what you wrote there.

You mean, I presume (assuming you are familiar with STURP's involvement in the 10 years of C14 wrangling), that throughout all the meetings STURP representatives were trying to claim that their members ought to be personally involved in helping to conduct the C14 measurements! Even though STURP had no members with any expertise in radiocarbon dating, and they were not part of any of the universities involved.

But lets be clear about this - STURP certainly had unique access to the shroud in the years prior to the C14 in 1988-89. And even in those C14 discussions, STURP members were at the same time in the process of agreeing with Turin and the Vatican numerous other "scientific" tests that they planned to conduct on the shroud.

So it's highly misleading, in fact it's completely untrue, to say that "but ultimately they were kept away from any involvement with the testing of the Shroud". In fact the exact opposite is the case, whereby STURP had been granted unique access to conducting their pseudo-scientific tests on the shroud for many years before the C14.

 

[Jabba]

Carbon Dating Doubts/Cotton

Jabba, how has this information shaped your objection to the cotton in the sample? Keep in mind that the CIQ is more or less right in between the two major trading powers bringing cotton cloth into Europe.

Craig,
- I'm not sure what CIQ means (City in question?), nor that I really understand your question. However, if you're referring to my earlier question about the age of the cotton, I had thought that someone had claimed that this particular cotton would not be found in the middle ages in Europe -- I can't find such a claim now, so I must have misunderstood something...
- Whatever, at this point, I still think that the sample and surrounding area were repaired at some point, and that repair and contamination otherwise, might account for a medieval dating.

 

[Craig B]

- Whatever, at this point, I still think that the sample and surrounding area were repaired at some point, and that repair and contamination otherwise, might account for a medieval dating.

You do realise that this idea has been rebutted here on several occasions, as physically impossible for any conceivable level of "contamination". Why then can you say you "still think" that this explanation us valid, without giving any reason or evidence to support it?

 

[hugh farey]

I still think that the sample and surrounding area were repaired at some point, and that repair and contamination otherwise, might account for a medieval dating.

It's a question of quantity, Jabba.
A handful of stray cotton fibres and a coating of dye simply cannot produce the skew from 1st to 13th century required by the hypothesis. But that is all there is evidence for. Attempts to suggest that new threads have replaced the old, such that two thirds of the radiocarbon sample was medieval, have not withstood investigation, optically or chemically.

 

[IanS]

You do realise that this idea has been rebutted here on several occasions, as physically impossible for any conceivable level of "contamination". Why then can you say you "still think" that this explanation us valid, without giving any reason or evidence to support it?

Jabba will say that there is plenty of evidence and lots of good reason to support his view. In fact he will say that the vast majority of scientific evidence is on his side.

What he means is that he believes what is written on pro-shroud websites and in pro-shroud books. He finds those sources convincing.

That's a huge problem in a current age of free access to information on the internet where anyone can make any claims they wish about absolutely anything. And where fanatical self-interest groups, particularly religious groups such as the various shroud supporting groups, can write books, publish their own "journals", arrange their own conferences and publish the proceedings and talks as "scientific papers" etc.

Unless people have a personal background in at least PhD level research science, they often cannot easily tell the difference between shroud publications of that that sort vs. genuine research papers published in real research journals like Phys rev or JACS etc.

That leads interested amateurs, and especially Christians in this instance, to truly believe that the "papers" and publications from groups like STURP are every bit as valid as anything from any university C14 labs published in Nature ...

... on which basis Jabba and thousands like him truly believe that the weight of science is very firmly on the side of authenticity.

This is not entirely his fault. He is being mislead by people who have a very strong religious interest in wishing, or even “knowing”, the shroud to be genuine.

 

[Dinwar]

"CIQ"=cloth in question

- I'm not sure what CIQ means (City in question?), nor that I really understand your question. However, if you're referring to my earlier question about the age of the cotton, I had thought that someone had claimed that this particular cotton would not be found in the middle ages in Europe -- I can't find such a claim now, so I must have misunderstood something...

To be clear: You are willing to throw out one of the most well-controlled C14 samples--if not THE most well controlled--ever taken, because someone, somewhere--and you can't remember who or where--said--and you can't remember the evidence--that the cotton wasn't available in the Middle Ages in Europe--despite the fact that there's no reason to demand that the cloth was made in Europe.

...I still think that the sample and surrounding area were repaired at some point...

Despite there being NO evidence, and that such a patch would be impossible.

...and that repair and contamination otherwise, might account for a medieval dating.

We ran the calculations several times. It would require more contamination than there was shroud in the sample for this to happen.

 

[hugh farey]

I had thought that someone had claimed that this particular cotton would not be found in the middle ages in Europe

Someone may well have claimed that, Jabba, but that doesn't make it true. Entering "cotton Europe medieval" into Google gives us a choice of articles, many of which refer to the extensive north Italian cotton industry centred around Lombardy from the early 12th century onwards. By the date the Shroud was manufactured, 200 or so years later, German cotton manufacture was seriously damaging the northwards trade in Italian cloth. In Belgium, the records of Bruges for the year 1304 mention both bales of cotton thread and of raw cotton as part of the goods brought by foreign merchants to the city.

 

[Charles Freeman]

The more I think about it the analogy of the Shroud, probably a painted image of Christ on a linen, with an icon, a painted image on a wooden board, makes more sense to me. For the vast majority of wooden icons, no one was pretending that they were anything but painted boards but many had a long tradition of veneration associated with them and often had miracles associated with them.

Some wooden icons did, however, have an extra story - the most common was that theose if the Madonna and Child were painted by the evangelist Luke who, it was said, knew the Virgin Mary when Jesus was still a baby. Of course, this would never have been true ( the iconography gives it away at once) but they were venerated as such. I think the Shroud falls into the same category - a legend added, in this case, by the de Charny family and later the Savoys, to a venerated painted image.

Here in Lucca, where I am for a month, they have the Volto Santo, the Holy Face, a face of a Christ which miraculously appeared on a wooden cross being carved by no less than Nicodemus. Alas, like the Shroud it has been reliably dated to the Middle Ages but still the whole town comes to a halt on its feast day in September as it is carried through the streets. Having been shown last week, a fragment of the True Cross in one of the Lucca churches (they have only had it since about 1500) which sits in an altar without any special protection or even advertisement I remain bewildered by the Italian attitude to relics.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Craig,
- I'm not sure what CIQ means (City in question?), nor that I really understand your question. However, if you're referring to my earlier question about the age of the cotton, I had thought that someone had claimed that this particular cotton would not be found in the middle ages in Europe -- I can't find such a claim now, so I must have misunderstood something...
- Whatever, at this point, I still think that the sample and surrounding area were repaired at some point, and that repair and contamination otherwise, might account for a medieval dating.

"Cloth In Question"

Why is it that You "think" there was a repair (a repair no one who has handled the cloth has ever detected)?

 

[Giordano]

Jabba will say that there is plenty of evidence and lots of good reason to support his view. In fact he will say that the vast majority of scientific evidence is on his side.

What he means is that he believes what is written on pro-shroud websites and in pro-shroud books. He finds those sources convincing.

That's a huge problem in a current age of free access to information on the internet where anyone can make any claims they wish about absolutely anything. And where fanatical self-interest groups, particularly religious groups such as the various shroud supporting groups, can write books, publish their own "journals", arrange their own conferences and publish the proceedings and talks as "scientific papers" etc.

Unless people have a personal background in at least PhD level research science, they often cannot easily tell the difference between shroud publications of that that sort vs. genuine research papers published in real research journals like Phys rev or JACS etc.

That leads interested amateurs, and especially Christians in this instance, to truly believe that the "papers" and publications from groups like STURP are every bit as valid as anything from any university C14 labs published in Nature ...

... on which basis Jabba and thousands like him truly believe that the weight of science is very firmly on the side of authenticity.

This is not entirely his fault. He is being mislead by people who have a very strong religious interest in wishing, or even “knowing”, the shroud to be genuine.

Yes, although I also believe that most of Jabba's arguments come from attempts to damage the credibility of each and every one of the multiple pieces of evidence against the authenticity of the Shroud. Isotope testing? Well, maybe the exact protocol agreed on advance wasn't followed (at the insistence of the pro-Shroud people), and there might have been contamination, and there might have been a gradient in the dates, and there might have been bias on the part of the scientists, ... A Vatican letter indicating that the Shroud was already known as a fraud when it was created? Well, maybe the letter was never sent, or someone lied, or.... Proportions of the image wrong for a real body? Well, maybe it was due to a miracle energy that distorted the image, or ... Etc.

Basically, there multiple, individually convincing (and in sum overwhelming) pieces of evidence against the Shroud being authentic. But if one needs (for some reason) to believe it is authentic, then one does not look at what the evidence actually says, but one instead seeks to poke holes in each piece of evidence to allow one's belief to continue. These "holes" don't have to be plausible- they can even be obviously incorrect arguments. But the purpose is not to believe the evidence at all, but to believe in the authenticity of the Shroud. So the evidence is a barrier to be overcome, not a set of facts to be examined impartially.

 

[Jabba]

Carbon Dating Doubts/Repair&Contamination Otherwise

Hugh,
- I think you gave me general permission in this thread to quote you on the Porter blog. But, if you did, I can't find the permission post.
- For now, the following is what I wish to send to Dan.

Dan,
- I’m having a conversation with Hugh Farey over on the InternationalSkeptics blog. The following is our latest exchange. Hopefully, we believers have a relatively good answer. If so, where can I find it.

Jabba:
I still think that the sample and surrounding area were repaired at some point, and that repair and contamination otherwise, might account for a medieval dating.

Hugh:
It's a question of quantity, Jabba.
A handful of stray cotton fibres and a coating of dye simply cannot produce the skew from 1st to 13th century required by the hypothesis. But that is all there is evidence for. Attempts to suggest that new threads have replaced the old, such that two thirds of the radiocarbon sample was medieval, have not withstood investigation, optically or chemically.

- OK?

 

[Filippo Lippi]

How about posting some evidence on here? Like you promised

 

[hugh farey]

Jabba, if you were to go to http://shroudstory.com you would find that in the last few posts I have been discussing this very point. Adding what I have said here will simply start everything again at the beginning. Having reached the top page of shroudstory (which is currently entitled "With a month or so to go", scroll down to "Do the Blue Quad Mosaics tell a different story than we think?" and below that to "Tabor: A Distinctive 1st Century Weave" and below that to "John Klotz Delivers the Knockout", and by clicking on the blue "comments" tag beneath these headings, you will be able to read a lot more of my opinions, and a lot of authenticists responses to them.

 

[zooterkin]

- I’m having a conversation with Hugh Farey over on the InternationalSkeptics blog. The following is our latest exchange. Hopefully, we believers have a relatively good answer.

Seriously? You don't know? What, exactly, are you basing your belief in the cloth being the shroud of Christ on?

 

[Jabba]

Carbon Dating Doubts/Repair&Contamination Otherwise

Jabba, if you were to go to http://shroudstory.com you would find that in the last few posts I have been discussing this very point. Adding what I have said here will simply start everything again at the beginning. Having reached the top page of shroudstory (which is currently entitled "With a month or so to go", scroll down to "Do the Blue Quad Mosaics tell a different story than we think?" and below that to "Tabor: A Distinctive 1st Century Weave" and below that to "John Klotz Delivers the Knockout", and by clicking on the blue "comments" tag beneath these headings, you will be able to read a lot more of my opinions, and a lot of authenticists responses to them.

- Thanks. That seems obvious now. I just having been paying attention to the comments.

 

[Craig4]

Craig,
- I'm not sure what CIQ means (City in question?), nor that I really understand your question. However, if you're referring to my earlier question about the age of the cotton, I had thought that someone had claimed that this particular cotton would not be found in the middle ages in Europe -- I can't find such a claim now, so I must have misunderstood something...
- Whatever, at this point, I still think that the sample and surrounding area were repaired at some point, and that repair and contamination otherwise, might account for a medieval dating.

And two experts in textiles didn't notice it had been repaired?

 

[Akhenaten]

Craig,
- I'm not sure what CIQ means (City in question?), nor that I really understand your question.

Your lack of understanding is 100% the result of your adamant refusal to actually participate in the ongoing discussion relating to the topic of this thread.

To put a finer point on it, how would you explain the fact that only one participant in this Aten-forsaken thread has trouble with understanding the jargon, is incapable of pursuing leads, is completely baffled by the concepts of creating and following links, has no recollection of past arguments, totally fails at organising trains of thought, refuses to present evidence, sucks large at creating numerically-ordered lists, ignores any and all requests to define his personal understanding of "reasonable doubt" and yet still pretends that a jury of his peers would find in his favour?

However, if you're referring to my earlier question about the age of the cotton, I had thought that someone had claimed that this particular cotton would not be found in the middle ages in Europe -- I can't find such a claim now, so I must have misunderstood something...

Truly Effective Debate®

- Whatever, at this point, I still think that the sample and surrounding area were repaired at some point, and that repair and contamination otherwise, might account for a medieval dating.

No, you don't think that at all. You simply choose to believe it.

Whole 'nother thing.

 

[Akhenaten]

Hugh,
- I think you gave me general permission in this thread to quote you on the Porter blog. But, if you did, I can't find the permission post.

Why are you on the Internet?

 

[Akhenaten]

- Thanks. That seems obvious now. I just having been paying attention to the comments.

Again, why are you on the Internet?