John A. Broussard

OK. Let's deal with it one step at a time.

Since we now have a sample of Christ's blood, authenticated by DNA testing, please give me the source of your information so I can look it up.

I'm looking forward to your answer.

lpetrich

Why this hyperskepticism? C-14 dating is usually very reliable, and C-14 daters usually know what they are doing.

And why not be equally skeptical of C-14 dates for the Cloak of Kandahar and the Tooth of Kandy? Especially if those dates showed them to be much younger than Mohammed or the Buddha.

Here's an article on the Cloak of Kandahar
And here's the official site of the residence place of the Tooth of Kandy

What makes you so sure that the appearance of these alleged imprints is not the result of an overactive imagination?

Let us not forget that a century ago, some reputable astronomers saw lines on the planet Mars which they called "canals". These lines were always on the borderline of perceivability, and other reputable astronomers claimed that they could not see these alleged surface features.

However, the canal question was settled once and for all when spacecraft were sent to Mars -- they do not exist; they were nothing more than false perceptions.

And finally, OF, you still have not given us the Linnaean names of the species of plants represented in the Shroud. We are all waiting.

John A. Broussard

Come back, come back!

This has been one of the more fascinating threads. Your flowers, and x-ray fingers, and nails and teeth and golden earring (oops--that was mine), to say nothing of an imaginary provenance are terrific.

Jesus must have been buried with half of Jerusalem wrapped along with him in his shroud.

More, more!

Orthodox_Freethinker

"The bloodstains, as forensic scientists and chemists now know, are from real human bleeding from real wounds on a real human body that came into direct contact with the cloth. Immunological, fluorescence and spectrographic tests as well as Rh and ABO typing of blood antigens confirm this.

When the stains formed, the man was lying on his back with his feet near one end of the fourteen foot long, banner shaped piece of cloth. The cloth was drawn over the top of his head and loosely draped over his face and the full length of his body down to his feet. Many of the stains have the distinctive forensic signature of clotting with red corpuscles about the edge of the clot and a clear yellowish halo of serum.

Mingled with these large bloodstains are stains from a clear bodily fluid, perhaps pericardial fluid or fluid from the pleural sac or pleural cavity. This suggests that the man received a postmortem stabbing wound in the vicinity of the heart."
http://www.skepticalspectacle.com/images09.htm

"The bloodstains, as forensic scientists and chemists now know, were created by real blood.

Immunological, fluorescence and spectrographic tests, as well as Rh and ABO typing of blood antigens, reveal that the stains are human blood. Moreover, the stains were formed by real human bleeding from real wounds on a real human body that came into direct contact with the cloth. Many of the stains have the distinctive forensic signature of clotting with red corpuscles about the edge of the clot and a clear yellowish halo of serum. The forensic experts have been able to identify that some of the blood flow was venous and some was arterial, indicating that most of the blood flowed while the man was alive and it remained on his body. There are also some stains from blood that clearly oozed from a dead body..."
http://www.factsplusfacts.com/shroud-of-turin-blood.htm

Peace.

Orthodox_Freethinker

"...material intrusion is a potential problem in carbon 14 dating. A classic example is the dating of peat from ancient bogs. Miniscule roots from much newer plants get entangled in the peat -- some roots having decomposed into newer peat -- and this will distort the results. Could something like this have affected the results of dating of the Shroud? As it turns out, chemical and visual analyses, done in just the last two years, show unmistakable proof of material intrusion of new linen fibers -- enough material, by some estimates, to make a 1st century cloth seem medieval. The discovery of alizarin dyes (from Madder root), a hydrous aluminum oxide mordant and plant gum along with twisted-in cotton fibers and spliced threads in the carbon 14 sample region shows that the sample area was discretely repaired. These substances are not found anywhere else on the Shroud."
http://www.skepticalspectacle.com/

The Carbon 14 Sample was Invalid; thus the tests in 1988 were invalid. This is reported in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Thermochimica Acta See: Volume 425 pp. 189-194).
http://www.factsplusfacts.com/carbon-14-now-we-know.htm

What makes you so sure that you would know more than shroud experts on this one? Perhaps you could take their specific observations and explain why they are invalid. Then perhaps you could submit your discoveries to a peer-reviewed science journal.


Pollens and flower images that are unique to Jerusalem and the Middle East
http://www.shroudstory.com/pollen.htm

Links: Evidence of Flowers on the Shroud of Turin
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~brach/shroud.html

Peace.

lenrek

This thread is split from Divine Hiddenness Makes Faith Possible for the discussion of Sround of Turin.

Bobinius

I am not going to criticize the absurdities held by Ray Rogers in Thermochemica Acta. I'll give you whatever you want, just explain to me this one thing:

1. The face of a real man is 3 dimensional. If the shroud would have been on the face of a real man, we should see a distorted image imprinted on the shroud. This is because the surface of the 3d human face has a distorted projection in 2d. The face on the shroud looks like it is seen from usual perspective, but the problem is that it should not look like that. In 2d the lateral parts of the face (which are small in the 3d perspective because of the angle of view), now come in front, and the face is wider (just like the map of the globe).

Why doesn't the 2d image on the shroud look like it is coming from a real 3d face? Why does it look like seen from perspective, like a drawing/painting/photo and is not distorted as it should?

2. The face on the Shroud looks like we would expect to see if it was taken from a base-relief. The computer analysis of the image transforms it not into a 3d picture using the information on the shroud, but into a base-relief. There have been many replicas of the shroud using base-relief, cloth and paint. And it looks exactly like the shroud does.

Untill you explain this, you have no point in defending pollen, vanillin dating or patch conspiracy. Because this refutes the source model for the shroud as a real man, and turns it into a base-relief. Hopefully you are not going to argue that Jesus had a flat - face, like a baserelief.

Bobinius

spin

Why is it I always finds these off the wall ravings about the Turin shroud? WTF has it got to do with BC&H? Nothing is the answer. It's always the answer. We find ourselves regurgitating this subject without having consulted the archives.

The new testament is extremely clear on the fact that Jesus and others had their heads wrapped in a cloth called a soudarion and the body wrapped in what we would call bandages these days, oQonion.

See my post here and here, being a rerun from here and even earlier here.

The upshot is that none of these claims and counter-claims so often discussed are worth considering, because the biblical texts make it clear that, as they used the soudarion for the head and the oQonion for the body, the shroud is irrelevant.

Please don't mind me. Just go back to your nattering about this non-biblical thingy.

John A. Broussard

It's all a miracle.

When carbon dating shows the shroud to be a 13th century artifact, that's because god is testing your faith.

When chicken blood is found on the shroud, it's really Christ's blood transformed to fool atheists.

Give me any question about the shroud. The answer is, "miraculous."

JoeWallack

JW:
Even most Skeptics don't realize just how strong the evidence is that The Shroud is a 14th century religious fraud. For the Objective Seeker Walter McCrone's book tells you all you need to know:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/157...lance&n=283155

Here is my review of McCrone's book. Enjoy!:

“In order to get a supernatural explanation out of the “Shroud�, one must be Scientist. But if someone gets a supernatural explanation out of the “Shroud�, then one is not Scientist. But in order to…� Walter, I’m glad to see that my work was not in vain and that the Pursuit of Truth has finally overtaken perceived truth. The title alone, “Judgment Day For The Shroud Of Turin�, is worth the price of the book (30 pieces of silver). The fact that Heller’s book, arguing for the authenticity of the Shroud has long since fossilized in the Apologist’s Hall Of Fame and gone out of print while your book remains popular kind of says it all. The beauty of the book is that while McCrone puts the “Shroud� under the microscope, in a typology which ironically is so crucial to many Church doctrines, McCrone at the same time puts the faith of a Church which believes its leader is infallible but couldn’t even tell you if it was going to rain tomorrow under the microscope as well. So, in addition to presenting overwhelming and then some evidence that the “Shroud� is really a shroud the book becomes a wonderful illustration of the nature of Apologetics. Ignore/deny superior tests for supporting conclusions and create/cling to inferior tests supporting assumptions thus placing the usual scientific process backwards (isn’t this evidence of Satan?). If McCrone is guilty of anything it was baiting the Church into thinking that he was exactly the type of scientist wanted by the Church, top credentials but sympathetic to the cause of the Church and determined to prove the Shroud authentic. In his initial letters to Father Rinaldi, offering his services to research the Shroud, McCrone titled his letters, “Authentication Of The Turin Shroud� and wrote, “The provenance for the Shroud is known dependably for more than 600 years with considerable evidence extending this date back to the time of Christ…The protection of this information through proper channels must remain uppermost in our minds…I sincerely hope we may be able to work on this most interesting project and hope that we will be able to obtain data supporting the conclusion that this linen was indeed the one used as Christ’s Shroud after the cruxifixion.� As a scientist McCrone should have known before he started his testing that the Shroud was 14th century as he was familiar with the extant letters from the Bishops of Lyons (yes, “Lyons�) to the then Pope stating that the creator of the Shroud had confessed that it was a painting (this fact more than any other illustrates the absurdness of the necessity to even test the Shroud for authenticity as the situation is that we have second and third hand evidence that the “Shroud� is a fraud while we have no hand or even foot evidence that there even was a burial shroud of Jesus). Even the supporters of the “Shroud� generally agree that these letters are authentic but they claim that they refer to some other burial Shroud of Jesus near Lyons at the same time (ignore/deny). McCrone had also studied the results of testing by the 1973 Italian Commission, the first group of Scientists, hand picked by the Church, to test the Shroud whose results strongly implied that the Shroud was a 14th century painting. Aside from the conclusive evidence that McCrone found indicating the Shroud was a fraud the Church and Christian scientists involved in the study of the Shroud also came to hate McCrone because they felt that his initial portrayal of being sympathetic to the Church was a false appearance to induce the Church to use him and hid his true belief that the Shroud was a fraud and he wanted to prove that it was to feed his ego and build his reputation as a great scientist. The bulk of the book consists of McCrone explaining the necessity, procedures, analysis and conclusions of scientific testing of the Shroud in terms easily understandable to the non-scientist and this is where McCrone excels as in addition to superior scientific skills he displays supreme communication skills as a teacher as well. McCrone proves through the use of state of the art microscopic technology that the Shroud image consists almost entirely of paint pigments popular in the 14th century. While generally conceding that there is some paint pigment on the Shroud, supporters of the Shroud deny that the image is a painting because there is no evidence of brushstrokes when examined microscopically. To answer this objection McCrone demonstrated that if the paint was sufficiently diluted in a water base there would be no detectable brushstrokes. McCrone recreated shrouds using the same paint materials used on the Shroud and reported that there were no visible brushstrokes on the recreations and that under the microscope the particles were identical between the recreations and the Shroud and challenged any Shroud supporter to try and tell the difference (a challenge which is still untaken). McCrone next demonstrated that there is no actual blood in the “blood� image areas of the Shroud. Dried blood under the microscope is always black but the blood areas of the Shroud were red. Chemical analysis of the blood image areas also indicated that they lacked major chemical components of blood such as potassium. Shroud supporters, such as Heller, conclude that the blood image areas are blood because they contain some chemical components of blood such as calcium and iron but they ignore that paint pigments also contain calcium and iron. When asked to explain why the usual tests for the presence of blood fail here, such as black color and existence of potassium, they explain that the explanation is some unknown process (ignore/deny). These then were the two significant conclusions of McCrone, the image is a painting and there is no evidence of blood. McCrone wrote up the results of his testing in articles for peer reviewed and accredited scientific journals and his results are largely accepted by the scientific community at large. McCrone also deals with claims of Shroud supporters who are then forced to rely on inferior issues to support their beliefs. Regarding the common supporter claim that the “Shroud� is a perfect negative image McCrone points out that the hair and blood images of the Shroud are positive, not negative images. The other popular supporter claim is that the Shroud contains a collection of pollens which support a journey from the Middle East, to Turkey and then to Europe. McCrone notes that his examination of the Shroud indicated that the majority of these pollens were concentrated in one extremely limited area of the Shroud and recognizing that he is not a pollen expert provides a special section in his book detailing the report of a pollen expert who has serious doubts as to the credibility of the Scientist (Frei) who reported the pollen findings. McCrone builds such a strong case for the Shroud being a 14th century painting that when McCrone reports towards the end of his book the results of carbon dating showing a 14th century date (surprise) it’s actually anti-climactic. McCrone also describes his impressive credentials, tools and talent for such a project and is quite merciful in describing the lack of corresponding qualifications of his Christian “scientist� opponents instead limiting himself to objectively describing their limited qualifications and use of inferior equipment. John Jackson for instance, perhaps McCrone’s biggest critic, had the main qualification for studying the Shroud of being a captain in the U.S. Air Force. Generally, the Christian scientists supporting the Shroud have not had peer reviewed articles published in accredited scientific journals. McCrone’s reward for his work was to be ostracized and shunned by the Church and fellow Christian scientists who in addition to obviously not liking his results were incensed that unlike some predecessors who had similar findings McCrone had the courage to make POSITIVE conclusions (“The Shroud is a 14th century painting�) rather than play the Church’s game and avoid positive conclusions indicating the Shroud was not authentic (“I did not find evidence that the Shroud is from the 1st century�). In the face of this persecution McCrone displays a timely and welcome sense of humor during his book giving appropriate placed applicable quotes such as Ambrose Bierce’s “Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.� Walter, Did you ever know you are my hero? You are the cleaning solution beneath my microscope slide. By golly, you and your microscope were right all along. You’ve convinced me and I hope your book will convince others. With best wishes and keep up the good work. Sincerely, Galileo"


JW:
I'll issue my annual Easter challenge to Orthodox Freethinker to formally debate whether or not The Shroud is a 14th century religious fraud. No takers for 4 years now as apparently Shroudies have Faith that I will rip them a New Testament.



Joseph

RELIQUARY, n.
A receptacle for such sacred objects as pieces of the true cross, short-ribs of the saints, the ears of Balaam's ass, the lung of the cock that called Peter to repentance and so forth. Reliquaries are commonly of metal, and provided with a lock to prevent the contents from coming out and performing miracles at unseasonable times. A feather from the wing of the Angel of the Annunciation once escaped during a sermon in Saint Peter's and so tickled the noses of the congregation that they woke and sneezed with great vehemence three times each. It is related in the "Gesta Sanctorum" that a sacristan in the Canterbury cathedral surprised the head of Saint Dennis in the library. Reprimanded by its stern custodian, it explained that it was seeking a body of doctrine. This unseemly levity so raged the diocesan that the offender was publicly anathematized, thrown into the Stour and replaced by another head of Saint Dennis, brought from Rome.

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page