Miracle of the Shroud / Blood on the shroud

[Belz...]

Put material onto a wound, blood will soak into it.

Not in just one direction.

Restoration work is supposed to be invisible.

Not in practice, it ain't.

Refreshing to see someone simply talking common sense

Actually common sense is BS. I'm talking about logic.

 

[Akri]

There aren't any. Face facts; it has been dated and it is medieval. Case closed.

You'd certainly think so, wouldn't you?

 

[AdMan]

It's your fault for citing it.

And a bit naive to think that citing the History Channel would be met by anything more than laughter here.

 

[John Jones]

Having spent some time in the outskirts of the specialist fashion, costume, and fabric University milieu, I have acquired the assumption that it is safer to assume that a specialist working in that field is of dubious competence.

.

Can we see some relevant credentials? Having occasionally helped your girlfriend is laughable. Have you ever given expert testimony? Why is their competence any more dubious than yours?

 

[Belz...]

You're confusing data with reality

I want to keep this one for posterity. That sentence is a work of pure genius. I couldn't come up with this if I tried.

 

[FergusM1970]

Yes JP, but it doesn't matter. The shroud has been carbon dated and is definitely medieval. It doesn't matter what fabric experts say. It wouldn't matter if God Himself appeared and told us all that it's genuine, because it is medieval. The cloth it's made of was part of living plants while the French were being mown down at Crécy. What part of that don't you understand? Just tell me what's confusing you and I will explain it for you.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Right, despite the corpse being wrapped in the Shroud ?

Frankly, what looked unnatural to me -- until I saw the 3D reconstruction -- is the way that the hair seems to reach out on either side of the head ; but this is sensibly explained as a distortion of the linen around the corpse.



Again, those stains are not on the corpse, they are on the linen.

Put material onto a wound, blood will soak into it.

Also, if the corpse is lying down, how is blood going to flow horizontally towards the shoulders, contrary to the expectations of Physics ? That's a bizarre notion.

Have you looked at the "image"? How does the "blood" appear to "flow" on top of the "hair"?

Have you cleaned many corpses?

Not to mention, according to the verse you quoted, Jeshua ben Ioseph, if he even existed, was "bound" in "strips of linen"..oh, right: "as is the custom among the Jews". Unless you are going to repudiate scripture, the True Shroud^TM should be according to Jewish tradition--there were no 'christians', or even "chrestians", at that time...

 

[Akri]

Yes JP, but it doesn't matter. The shroud has been carbon dated and is definitely medieval. It doesn't matter what fabric experts say. It wouldn't matter if God Himself appeared and told us all that it's genuine, because it is medieval. The cloth it's made of was part of living plants while the French were being mown down at Crécy. What part of that don't you understand? Just tell me what's confusing you and I will explain it for you.

"When you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

Any date other than a medieval one is impossible. Thus the Shroud must be medieval.

 

[Olowkow]

Yes JP, but it doesn't matter. The shroud has been carbon dated and is definitely medieval. It doesn't matter what fabric experts say. It wouldn't matter if God Himself appeared and told us all that it's genuine, because it is medieval. The cloth it's made of was part of living plants while the French were being mown down at Crécy. What part of that don't you understand? Just tell me what's confusing you and I will explain it for you.

Waiting for question to be posed or interest to be shown by JP: 1,000,000,000...999,999,999...999,999,998...999,999,997....

 

[Slowvehicle]

... which looks not even **remotely** like the Shroud of Turin.{/quote]

Exactly. the Shroud of Chippewa Falls^TM was, in fact, wrapped around a 3-D (roughly hemispherical) surface. Do take a look at the orthographic distortion that is an innate characteristic of wrapping or draping a flat cloth on a rounded surface...see where the ears are? Now have a squint at the TS.

You DO realise that a post such as yours is colloquially referred to as "internet trolling", right ?

Well, no. You seem to believe that the pictures in middle-class American churches have some relationship to reality--to what a Jewish bachelor would have looked like in the first century, in Jerusalem. What evidence do you offer?

http://www.askelm.com/secrets/sec103.htm
http://www.jerusalemperspective.com/2680/
(food for thought)

OTH, dredging up muck that has been extensively dealt with, without searching the thread, could very well be seen as a style of trolling...

 

[Slowvehicle]

It's hardly my fault that the 3D model of the Shroud Man that I was interested in, in relation to questions about image distortion, was published there, instead of somewhere less blatantly disrespectable instead -- 80-90% of everything else in that programme is unsubstantiated guesswork.

I view that 3D image by the digital artist as a technician's study of the image, not as a scientist's, nor a historian's.

Oh. In other words, an artist's rendering of a 3-D representation of a 2-D artifact. That explains many things.

 

[Slowvehicle]

Having spent some time in the outskirts of the specialist fashion, costume, and fabric University milieu, I have acquired the assumption that it is safer to assume that a specialist working in that field is of dubious competence.

In 90% of cases, the assumption will be accurate.

90%+ of those with ANY degree of skill in the discipline go and work in cinema or TV costume departments, or with the Fashion houses.

You know -- where they have something called money to pay people with.

The research discipline is plagued with microscopic funding, an almost complete lack of facilities, petty in-fighting, and petty jealousies.

In Italy, also, the research positions are provided almost exclusively through nepotism.

So: what evidence do you offer to substantiate your implication that Mme. Fleury-Lemburg is incompetent, or that your expertise allows you to cast aspersions upon hers?

 

[JabbaPapa]

You made claims

Questions are not claims.

about contamination affecting the radiocarbon dating result but are unable to estimate how much contamination would be needed. Therefore it's reasonable to ignore your ignorant assertions.

Thank you for your gratuitous decision not to answer my question.

You make claims

Questions are not claims.

Oh I think I can safely say I know vastly more about radiocarbon dating, radioactivity

Well why did you not answer my question then ? Your knowledge is useless to me if you expect me to use ESP to get it out of you.

Desperate back peddling noted.

Rubbish.

And your mechanism for this? And the amount of contamination? I see you still haven't done the calculations.

That is why I asked a question.

And again you're ignoring the examination carried out in 2002 and the availability of micro-photographs. Not to mention ignoring the expertise of those who examined the shroud prior to that.

Accusing me of this or that does not answer my questions -- and people's descriptions of the quality of the first 130-odd pages of this thread do not encourage me to read them.

Nope. Rogers' work was garbage, even many shroudies reject it. It's been dealt with in this very thread previously and in detail so I'm not planning on wasting more of my time on it again.
Furthermore your dismissal of the debunking of his nonsense as "politicised" is disingenuous; it was shown to be flawed and dubious on scientific grounds.

You're mistaken -- I don't "dismiss" it as politicised, I describe it as politicised.

This does not mean that I assume that his science is unassailable -- if I thought so, WHY would I come in here and ask questions -- that's right, not "claims" --- about this dating ?

My only claim was that an alternate dating existed. This is true.

I make no a priori assumptions about its quality, though you seem to have made various a priori assumptions about my own position.

No I dismiss that rubbish on other grounds (and I suggest you created working links in future)

Again, they work at this end. (Oh, I see from your quote, the forum can mess up their html -- I see ; sorry about that, they were correct when posted -- %2f should be replaced with / if it does that)

Let's start with the authors, a pair of biased cranks with no background in science; it repeats Rogers' claims, already dealt with and Benford and Marino's own debunked claims about invisible patching.
Basically it's a collection of innuendo, dubious claims and junk science aimed at the market of shroud believers.

Well, I would certainly agree with your market analysis, anyway.

This is more helpful, thank you for your opinions.

Pathetic attempt to shift the burden.

Deliberate sarcasm actually, trying to try and get you to see how your own dismissive language to me is being perceived at this end ...

No actually you didn't

Yes I did.

No you didn't.

Good grief, you expect me to read back through the thread, but then keep on making these claims that simply demonstrate that you've not read my own comments.

I explained the "why" -- IF any pre-14th century documentary evidence could be verified, THEN this would require a re-evaluation of the dating.

As things stand, they cannot be so verified, therefore the dating is merely contradicted by this evidence, but not so strongly that it must be abandoned.

I find your attempt at patronising me to be rather amusing.

If you hadn't been, and weren't being, so patronising yourself, I would have put things a little differently.

Nevertheless, I *do* doubt that you're familiar with the methodology.

So even you best claim is worth nothing.

"nothing" is an exaggeration. It is of limited value, but I am amused by your expectation that I would think any differently.

Sign. This kind of rant is unfortunately fairly typical for believers in woo when confronted with reality.

...

I note that you've failed to address my request for a failure of radiocarbon dating under circumstances comparable with that of the shroud.

I note that you fail once again to answer my questions, whilst happily denigrating the answers that I provided to your own (grossly leading) questions.

How many times exactly must I point out to you that I am not a radiologist of any kind ?

I would have thought once would be enough.

I have NO interest in your fantasy interpretations of whatever you imagine me to believe -- your textual interpretation skills appear to be as poor as my radiological ones.

Yes it is I'm afraid.
Pigment and binder traces have been found.

The only analysis I've read of the pigment fragments describes them as existing in minute quantities, principally in the form of minute grains of dust, and that the most likely reason for their presence was contamination from paint dust from nearby works of art, and ceiling and wall paint.

The binder traces I have seen described as products used during repair work and restoration.

The shroud is typical of the artistic style of the period it was created and it has been replicated by painting.

Looking at 14th century religious iconography, it typically appears to be far more stylised than the image on the Shroud.

Are you aware that the Shroud itself was a model for such iconography ?

Your theory depends solely on the dating being accurate -- unless you're going to tell me that you're an expert in Mediaeval studies ?

Untrue.

Right, a mediaeval forger creative a photographically negative image that could only be seen properly when photographed several centuries later, and from which a 3D image of a forensically accurate image of a scourged and crucified man could be extracted using 21st century technology.

That's SUCH a likely story ...

(... or was it Leonardo Da Vinci in a time machine ?)

Certainly. Start with "The Shroud of Turin: Blood or Artist's Pigment?" by Walter McCrone published in Accounts of Chemical Research back in 1990.
He also published two paper on the subject in Microscope detailing his use of microscopic techniques in examining the shroud fibres and the resultsb thereof.

That's an interesting and well-written article -- and I thank you for providing a link to it -- however :

http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/quotes/TSoT/stuc0707.html

"Further undermining the force of McCrone's arguments has been the discrediting of the work which won him greatest recognition, his highly publicised debunking of Yale University's Vinland Map. Just as the Shroud purports to show Jesus's dead body, so the Vinland map purports to show the Viking discovery of North America before Columbus. And although when its existence was first publicised in 1965 its authenticity was attested by a trio of distinguished scholars that included R. A. Skelton, Superintendent of the British Museum's Map Room, [Skelton, R.A., Marston, T.E. & Painter, G.D., "The Vinland Map and The Tartar Relation," Yale University Press: New Haven CT, 1965] when McCrone was invited to examine it in 1972 he quickly came to a quite different opinion. Initially, McCrone's suspicions were aroused by his observing that whoever had drawn the map had first outlined its land areas in a yellow ink and had then carefully added a black line on top of this. Then, when he studied samples of the yellow ink under his microscope, he spotted among these a substance that he identified as anatase, a crystalline form of titanium dioxide only developed in 1920. This identification of the map as a modern forgery [McCrone, W.C., "Chemical Analytical Study of the Vinland Map," Report to Yale University Library, Yale University Press: New Haven CT, 1974] directly led to my seeking his expertise in respect of the Shroud. However, the map's original investigators remained far from convinced, as a result of which in 1985 it was flown to the University of California's Crocker Laboratory, where a promising new analysis technique called proton-induced X-ray analysis (or PIXE) was being developed. This deploys a powerful cyclotron to fire a harmless beam of protons through whatever object is being analysed, generating X-rays by which all elements present can be almost instantaneously identified and quantified without recourse to any analytical eyeball. And whereas all McCrone's microanalytical deductions had necessarily been made from near-invisible scrapings that were not necessarily representative, PIXE was able to evaluate essentially the whole object. When applied to the Vinland Map, it indeed proved a revelation. In 1987 Crocker's Dr Thomas Cahill announced in the scientific journal Analytical Chemistry [Cahill, T.A., et al., "The Vinland Map, Revisited: New Compositional Evidence on its Inks and Parchment," Analytical Chemistry, 15 March 1987, 59, pp.829-833] that he and his colleagues had found the Map to contain 5000 times less titanium dioxide than the amount that McCrone had claimed, and in fact no more than could readily be found in other mediaeval documents of unquestioned genuineness. Arguing that McCrone had been quite wrong to claim that titanium dioxide/anatase could not and did not predate 1920, Cahill showed that when PIXE was used to analyse the ink of an unquestionably genuine fifteenth-century Gutenburg-printed Bible, this too was found to have quantities of titanium dioxide, likewise a string of other authentic early documents dating from between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. As independently discovered by Jacqueline Olin of Washington's Smithsonian Institution, anatase is a byproduct of the green vitoral used in the mediaeval ink-making process. It therefore cannot be used as an arbiter of date, as McCrone had supposed. Without specifically upholding the Vinland Map's authenticity Cahill was thereby able to conclude that McCrone's reasons for identifying it as a modern fake had been fundamentally flawed. Although McCrone has protested with characteristic vigour, insisting PIXE to be unsuitable for objects like the Vinland Map and the Turin Shroud, and that his method is still best, it is Dr Cahill's findings that have carried the day with academia, such that R. A. Skelton and his colleagues' expensive original tome on the Map has recently been reissued by Yale University, accompanied by a new Introduction by the Smithsonian Institution's Dr Wilcomb Washbourn forthrightly declaring that those who have hitherto cried `forgery' must now `assume a defensive role and respond to those previously on the defensive'. [Wilford, J.N., "Disputed Medieval Map Called Genuine After All,," New York Times, 13 February 1996] Quite independently, Brookhaven radiocarbon-dating laboratory head Dr Garman Harbottle, in personal correspondence to me shortly before the carbon dating, commented that `They [the Crocker Laboratory] have demonstrated to my satisfaction that... McCrone was off by a factor of 10,000'.

If, then, such distinguished academic opinion has adjudged McCrone's analysis to have been in such error in respect of the Vinland Map, clearly his findings on the Shroud can be questioned too." (Wilson, I., "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1998, pp.199-200.)

This episode does not exactly speak in McCrone's favour...

(the whole site is an interesting collection of pro et contra debate concerning various theories of provenance)

"The key question, therefore, was whether the Shroud's linen has such a coating. In April 1993 Dr GarzaValdès travelled with his own portable microscope to Turin, where Giovanni Riggi allowed him to study some of the pieces of the Shroud that he trimmed off from the sample provided for the carbon-dating laboratories ... He has described his reactions on his first studying them: `As soon as I looked at a segment in the microscope, I knew it was heavily contaminated. I knew that what had been radiocarbon dated was a mixture of linen and bacteria and fungi and bioplastic coating that had grown on the fibres for centuries.' [Garza-Valdès, L., in Barrett, J., "Science and the Shroud: Microbiology meets archaeology in a renewed quest for answers," The Mission, Journal of the University of Texas Health and Science Center, San Antonio, Spring 1996] Dr Garza-Valdès was able to return to San Antonio with tiny portions of the sample. With some help from Professor Stephen Mattingly, head of Microbiology at the University of Texas's San Antonio campus, he went on to make a very full and thorough study of this coating and what needs to be emphasised immediately is that the coating really is there. In his Rome talk and subsequent presentations to scientific audiences he has shown slides and diagrams that reveal it as a tube of varying thickness surrounding the Shroud fibres reminiscent of the protective plastic casing around electrical wiring. In early September 1994 Professor Harry Gove accepted Garza-Valdès's invitation to an informal Round Table at the University of Texas San Antonio campus at which he was enabled, along with the others present, to study under the microscope several Shroud threads with this coating. He subsequently expressed himself, in his own words, thoroughly `convinced of the general validity of Garza-Valdès's findings - [that] there was some sort of `halo' or bioplastic coating around some of the threads'. [Gove, H., Letter to Ian Wilson, British Society Turin Shroud Newsletter, No. 40, May 1995, pp.20-22]" (Wilson, I., "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1998, p.224)

"An important factor is that the micro-organisms from which the coating has been formed not only contain carbon, they are rich in it, and thereby in carbon 14. This was one of several points regarding Dr GarzaValdès's argument on which I consulted Dr Thomas Loy of the University of Queensland's Centre for Molecular and Cellular Biology for independent verification. The coating apparently necessarily has a very high proportion of `young' carbon 14 for the very good reason that many of the bacteria and fungi are still alive. As Dr Garza-Valdès explained to my wife and me when we visited him in San Antonio in August 1996, he was able to demonstrate this by putting some of his Shroud samples into a culture medium, with quite spectacular results. In his own words: `What happens is that the bacteria reproduce like crazy for a period of two weeks. So this is the proof that the bacteria are alive. And I have the cultures showing the speed that they grow with the deposit of the plastic. So no one can say that there is no contaminant. No way.' [Garza-Valdès, L., Interview by Ian Wilson, 28 August 1996]" (Wilson, I., "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1998, p.224)

"Now one major objection that has been raised by Dr Walter McCrone is that if there were any coating of this kind on the Shroud fibres (which he has disputed), this would be bound to have been removed by the stringent pre-treatment cleaning processes that all radiocarbon-dating laboratories routinely use specifically to remove any contaminants and impurities which might interfere with their results. In the case of the Shroud, it is conveniently on record that all three of the participating laboratories used as cleaning agent the same formulation of hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), thereby enabling Dr Garza-Valdès specifically to replicate this and to observe its effect on Shroud fibres bearing the bioplastic coating. He says: `When you clean these with hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide not simply with the concentration used by the radiocarbon laboratories but with six times the strength of that used in 1988, you don't do a single thing to the bacteria and the bioplastic coating. The only thing that you do is to dissolve part of the cellulose from the flax, so that you are going to make bigger the contaminant in relation to the cellulose of the flax.' [Garza-Valdès, L., Interview by Ian Wilson, 28 August 1996]" (Wilson, I., "The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World's Most Sacred Relic is Real," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1998, pp.225-226)

A blatent and rather silly lie. The duplications of the shroud have been dealt with previously. Denying that they happened is just silly and pathetic.

I have not "denied" that some superficially similar artefacts have been created, contrary to your hysterical claim to that effect.

It's common for believers to reject reality when it conflicts with their beliefs; however this doesn't alter reality.

Yes -- I've noticed that you are not taking kindly to even the barest hint that your cherished mediaeval forgery belief might be called into question on the basis of conflicting evidence.

 

[JabbaPapa]

I guess I'm on Jabbapapa's ignore list already.

???

Oh well, just another bizarre claim about me, having nothing to do with reality ... ho-hum

 

[JabbaPapa]

If it wasn't a point worth making in the first place, why did you make it in the first place?

Oh dear, does every single word need explaining or something ?

... catsmate's point ...

And The Face of Christ was not a documentary.[/QUOTE]

It is a documentary about the creation of a 3D image from the Shroud --

 

[Lucian]

c) lack of mention of a miraculously imaged Shroud in any early Christian writings [irrelevant -- the MAXIMUM life expectancy of even the most carefully preserved manuscript is about 1200 years. It is unreasonable to expect that any such evidence could possibly have survived in the first place]

I'm genuinely curious how you concluded that 1200 years is the maximum life expectancy for a manuscript. Also, I'd like to know why you believe 1200 years is the maximum. Certainly, a lot has been lost for various reasons: fire, lack of interest, re-use of parchment, Vikings, the Reformation, to name just a few. A good number of very old Christian manuscripts survive. Most of the ones I'm thinking of are around your maximum age, but that's because I'm a medievalist, and my interest in manuscripts begins in the Anglo-Saxon period. The following manuscripts are from the late seventh to eighth centuries: the Lindisfarne Gospels (survived a fire*); the Stonyhurst Gospel; Codex Aureus (survived Vikings); Codex Amiatinus. All are in very good condition. Stonyhurst still has its original binding (the earliest western manuscript that does). There are several eighth-century copies of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, within decades of Bede's death.

And then there are Egyptian papyri.

In summary, I'm baffled by your comment and crave illumination.

*A real fire. According to legend, it also miraculously survived a dunking in a sea turned to blood, but the evidence for that is slim.**

**Why, yes, I do enjoy litotes.

 

[JabbaPapa]

I see JabbaPapa has published a collection of objections by assertion, rather than evidence. I'm sure these have all been covered in this thread?

A collection of objections that I have seen made by others, actually.

 

[JabbaPapa]

In science if it can't be independently corroborated it isn't evidence.

WHY do you think that I made that caveat in the first place ?

Shall I inform you that the sky at midday is often blue ?

Except that we've got early Christian writings about the resurrection that don't discuss the Shroud. So either writings which included that detail had a higher rate of deterioration, or it wasn't mentioned until later.

... or, EVEN IF it is the real deal, it is still hundreds of times less important than the Faith, or -- comparatively -- to Scripture.

Some very small numbers of copies or fragments of Scripture have certainly survived beyond 1200 years ... but you could probably fit all of them into one cardboard box.

The exception that proves the rule.

Only an infinitesimal quantity of Ancient writings has survived --- the near totality of it by copying.

 

[JabbaPapa]

The fact that you rank the History Channel higher than the actual C14 results shows you to be hopelessly biased

Oh good GRIEF.

HOW many times now have I dismissed the History Channel as unscientific ?

I've lost count ...

 

[JabbaPapa]

capilary action!

OK, I see.