Miracle of the Shroud IV - The Phantom Image

[ferd burfle]

If Charles Freeman is correct, and the entire cloth was covered with some sort of size, probably in an organic medium, then a medieval dating of a number of particles of that could be diagnostic, although extracting them would present, I think, currently insuperable difficulties.

It's not at all insuperable. Walt McCrone and his staff picked individual image particles from the tape samples. This is done, by hand, under a microscope using a tungsten wire probe sharpened to a very fine point.Thus the particle of interest is separated from the substrate. It takes some practice and it's painstaking work but you could accumulate sufficient particles for a carbon dating test. Of course, you're going to have some pissed-off physicists when they realize you've given them a sample of inorganic material.


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[abaddon]

Cloth in question? But there are literally hundreds of postings on this thread declaring that there is no question about the cloth at all! Or is the abbreviation pandering to Jabba's authenticist suspicions, or my to inquiries into how, when and where it was made in the 13th or 14th century? If so, many thanks.

Another misreading. CIQ means the particular piece of fabric which is under discussion in this very thread (no pun). It means no more or less. It is not a derogatory term.

Incidentally, for the same reason as the term CIQ, I try invariably to capitalise the term Shroud, to mean the cloth kept in Turin Cathedral, which even the most hardened non-authenticists call either the Shroud of Turin or the Turin Shroud, but which may only be a 'representatio' (back to Pope Clement) of the shroud used in Jesus' burial, and not the actual one, which I would refer to as his shroud.

Your misguided respect for the vatican and it's iconography is interesting. Also, there is no evidence at all for any such individual of that name at that time in history with those attributes. So your capitalisation is simply a mark of respect for a bunch of cross-dressing, money-grubbing pedos and their minions. Good luck with that but do not expect me to have the slightest respect for it.

 

[The Sparrow]

I personally love this thread. Particularly when someone trots something out, like the potassium blood torture idea, which initially sounds.......attractive, but then someone dutifully steps up and points out the errors in science and fact. It is why I joined this board.you can only really learn about something when you have opposing experts reviewing the ideas.

 

[Rincewind]

I personally love this thread. Particularly when someone trots something out, like the potassium blood torture idea, which initially sounds.......attractive, but then someone dutifully steps up and points out the errors in science and fact. It is why I joined this board.you can only really learn about something when you have opposing experts reviewing the ideas.

Indeed!

And welcome!

 

[Craig4]

Why bother with what? If you mean why bother to persuade people interested in the Shroud that it is medieval, then as I have explained I would like their not inconsiderable experience in historical investigation to be added to mine in attempting to discover why, when and how the Shroud was made.

We already have a solid post quem for the Shroud. The image has to have been placed on the cloth after 1290.

We also have a solid terminus ante quem of 1354. So, the Image got on the cloth between those two dates. Carbon dating the blood won't get much, if at all closer given the date range you'd have with the results.

 

[JayUtah]

To be perfectly clear: "...in question..." means "...the subject of...", or "...under discussion...", as the the bit of manifestly medieval linen which is the subject of this set of threads. As I stated, I coined the term specifically to avoid the misnomer, "shroud".

And to be perfectly clear, I never considered "cloth in question" to be disrespectful or pointed in any way, nor "in question" an ambiguous characterization. But then again I've never objected to "shroud" or "Shroud" either, simply because -- however misleading -- they are the terms most recognizably and commonly applied to the artifact. In my profession "payload shroud" is a minority term for "payload fairing," and doesn't immediately bring to mind clothes in which cadavers are wrapped. So I may be in the minority there. Still, to make it plain I do not consider the purported provenance of the Coth In Question to credibly be that claimed by its worshipers, I will most often simply write "cloth" or "alleged shroud."

 

[Slowvehicle]

And to be perfectly clear, I never considered "cloth in question" to be disrespectful or pointed in any way, nor "in question" an ambiguous characterization. But then again I've never objected to "shroud" or "Shroud" either, simply because -- however misleading -- they are the terms most recognizably and commonly applied to the artifact. In my profession "payload shroud" is a minority term for "payload fairing," and doesn't immediately bring to mind clothes in which cadavers are wrapped. So I may be in the minority there. Still, to make it plain I do not consider the purported provenance of the Coth In Question to credibly be that claimed by its worshipers, I will most often simply write "cloth" or "alleged shroud."

 

[JayUtah]

We already have a solid post quem for the Shroud. The image has to have been placed on the cloth after 1290.

That's sort of how science works. The only reason to test something applied to an object of known date is in the hope it generates and older date (or an incompatible one) so that there can be ongoing -- albeit scientifically unprobative -- reasons to discount the established date. Dating the cloth is a "cut to the chase" method. The oldest possible thing in the whole assemblage of material that makes up this artifact is the cloth onto which everything else came to be attached. Nothing that makes it up can be older than the cloth. Science knows how to draw strong conclusions by first bounding the problem, then working within those bounds.

 

[John Jones]

And to be perfectly clear, I never considered "cloth in question" to be disrespectful or pointed in any way, nor "in question" an ambiguous characterization. [...]

Same here. I also never saw any indications that others used CIQ as an indication of contempt. I usually use 'CIQ', but sometimes use 'shroud'.

 

[JayUtah]

Same here. I also never saw any indications that others used CIQ as an indication of contempt. I usually use 'CIQ', but sometimes use 'shroud'.

Indeed if I thought the notion of the cloth's authenticity were contemptible (as opposed to merely irrational and unscientific) I wouldn't be participating in the debate in a forum that ostensibly requires civility and consideration. While we can't avoid labels, and we can't avoid what gets read into labels, I think most people here have a higher notion of the debate than to stoop to mere name-calling.

 

[hugh farey]

Well, I'm glad that's all cleared up then. Once I mistyped "scope shroud" instead of "shroud scope" on Google, and found myself directed to waterproof covers for astronomical instruments.

In his "The Shroud Unmasked", David Sox, once secretary of the British Society of the Turin Shroud but a non-authenticist like myself, refers to an article by Herbert Thurston, a Catholic priest and author of 150 articles for the 1907-1914 Catholic Encyclopaedia, but a non-authenticist like myself. It was called "The Problem of the Holy Shroud" and published in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 1924. Sox reports it as follows:

"Thurston maintained: 'One of Chevalier's supporters even asserts that the Turin Shroud is of exact length in which, during the fourteenth century, it was usual at Troyes to manufacture sheets of linen cloth.' This explanation of the Shroud's possible origin has received scant note in recent writings on the subject - and neither has Thurston."

['Chevalier' is Ulysse Chevalier, Catholic priest and Professor of History at the University of Lyon, but a non-authenticist like myself.]

I cannot find Thurston's article online, or any reference to 14th century linen manufacture at Troyes. Can anybody?

 

[John Jones]

Well, I'm glad that's all cleared up then. Once I mistyped "scope shroud" instead of "shroud scope" on Google, and found myself directed to waterproof covers for astronomical instruments.

In his "The Shroud Unmasked", David Sox, once secretary of the British Society of the Turin Shroud but a non-authenticist like myself, refers to an article by Herbert Thurston, a Catholic priest and author of 150 articles for the 1907-1914 Catholic Encyclopaedia, but a non-authenticist like myself. It was called "The Problem of the Holy Shroud" and published in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 1924. Sox reports it as follows:

"Thurston maintained: 'One of Chevalier's supporters even asserts that the Turin Shroud is of exact length in which, during the fourteenth century, it was usual at Troyes to manufacture sheets of linen cloth.' This explanation of the Shroud's possible origin has received scant note in recent writings on the subject - and neither has Thurston."

['Chevalier' is Ulysse Chevalier, Catholic priest and Professor of History at the University of Lyon, but a non-authenticist like myself.]

I cannot find Thurston's article online, or any reference to 14th century linen manufacture at Troyes. Can anybody?

Alas, I no longer have direct, easy access to a University library, so no.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Well, I'm glad that's all cleared up then. Once I mistyped "scope shroud" instead of "shroud scope" on Google, and found myself directed to waterproof covers for astronomical instruments.

OH, I have, even in a professional setting, made google searches that turned up some very disturbing results.

Hans

 

[Giordano]

OH, I have, even in a professional setting, made google searches that turned up some very disturbing results.

Hans

Absolutely. Once I googled the name of a chemical only to get back very pornographic results. For the first time I really looked at the name of the chemical and only then understood that it could be read in a very non-professional way.

Another time I mistyped and discovered the existence of an entire genre of books on Amazon.com that dealt with a type of sexual interest that I had absolutely no idea people might have, let alone that other people would cater to by writing stories about it. Although I view myself as liberal and quite intellectually open, the topic was... um... different from anything I knew or suspected before.

Given the confusion in some people between the intense feeling sex and religion both inspire, I suspect there are views of the SOT/fan fiction I would not wish to inadvertently google.

 

[John Jones]

[...] The question I'm currently answering is how the stains being blood would support the claim of authenticity.

How much longer is it going to take, Jabba?

 

[abaddon]

- I'm not begging the question. I'm answering the question. The question I'm currently answering is how the stains being blood would support the claim of authenticity.

When exactly is it that you intend to answer the question you claim to be answering by not answering at all?

 

[David Mo]

I cannot find Thurston's article online, or any reference to 14th century linen manufacture at Troyes. Can anybody?

Very hard to find it.

I have found no reference of Thurston and the Shroud in the Bibliothêque National de France nor the Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid. Only two volumes about mysticism.
The book about the Srhoud is not in the lists of used books (AddALL).

May be in theological libraries...
But it seems impossible to find it on line.

 

[Jabba]

Blood/What difference does it make?

Unfortunately for the "authenticist" argument, in vivo hemolysis appears to increase serum potassium levels, as lysis releases intercellular KCl into the plasma.

http://www.biochemia-medica.com/2011/21/79

In other words, if, arguendo (and only arguendo) the stains on the CIQ were, in fact, actual human blood, and the actual human had, in fact, been "tortured" to the point of traumatic hemolysis, the stains should show a higher concentration of KCl. (Think of it this way--hemolysis destroys the red blood cells, and leaves the hemoglobin vulnerable to oxidation and degradation--but it does not, it cannot, remove or destroy elements from the blood aggregate.)...

Hugh,
- Superficially, at least, slowvehicle's quote does seem to show that tortured blood would show an abundance of potassium rather than a lack of potassium -- but also, a 100% decrease in bilirubin. I thought that the opposite was accepted scientific fact about bilirubin.
- I'm trying to educate myself in regard to this biology, but it's slow going. Was Adler wrong? Is there anything about the Croation study that makes it not apply to the stains on the shroud? Should the alleged torture of Jesus produce the same results as in vitro hemolysis?

 

[John Jones]

Hugh,
- Superficially, at least, slowvehicle's quote does seem to show that tortured blood would show an abundance of potassium rather than a lack of potassium -- but also, a 100% decrease in bilirubin. I thought that the opposite was accepted scientific fact about bilirubin.
- I'm trying to educate myself in regard to this biology, but it's slow going. Was Adler wrong? Is there anything about the Croation study that makes it not apply to the stains on the shroud? Should the alleged torture of Jesus produce the same results as in vitro hemolysis?

Just worry about providing evidence that the shroud is authentic.

 

[JayUtah]

I'm trying to educate myself in regard to this biology, but it's slow going.

Then you probably shouldn't insinuate that something you don't know enough about constitutes any sort of evidence in your favor. You were the one who claimed that the stains were blood that showed evidence of torture. If you cannot support that claim with facts, then do not press it until you can.

Further, you still haven't addressed why the presence of blood would support your dating of the cloth, other than vague insinuations that your critics would be thus discredited.