Diogenes the Cynic

The wounds on the shroud appear to be on the wrists.
It has not been confirmed that there is any blood on the shroud. The red stuff has been tested and confirmed as red ochre pigment. I believe there was some sort of blood found on an alleged tape-lift but I don't think it has really been confirmed that the tape wasn't contaminated or tampered with and some blood on an 700 year old piece of cloth which has travelled through so many hands wouldn't prove anything anyway. There's no reason someone couldn't have handled it with a cut hand or finger in all that time.

In any case, the red stuff on the "wounds" is paint.

andrewcriddle

It may be relevant to the question of authenticity that the weave of the Turin Shroud (a 3:1 herringbone twill) lacks any good linen parallels from the late Antique meditteranean.

Defenders of authenticity IIUC woud argue that there are examples from the late Roman Empire of such weaves being used for other fabrics eg woollen fabrics and hence there would not have been a technological problem in weaving the Turin Shroud at that time.

However IMO the absence until much later of good parallels to the Shroud made of the same material does somewhat tell against authenticity.

Andrew Criddle

Amaleq13

Wilson's opinion about the necessity of an actual crucifixion victim aside, neither of these points requires that the object existed prior to the 14th century.

I'm also still interested in an answer to my earlier question since you consider this to be "insuperable problem":

How do you reach the conclusion that there is no image reversal? Isn't the image reversal in photographs made apparent by comparison with the object photographed?

Naked Ape's related question is also interesting to me:

Tell me, how does one achieve this universal left-right reversal that you claim, if you are making a contact print? If you lay the 'negative' on the paper (or shroud), how would this reversal happen?

leonarde

Uh, your first sentence accurately reports Danin and Baruch's findings. As Jewish non-believers in Jesus, they would have no reason to make it up.

Your second sentence is NOT anything that THEY report. Nor does Avatar either make clear that this doesn't belong to Danin and Baruch or give a source for the statement. I have NO idea what "mottled stains" he is talking about.......

leonarde

But why should it be "aside"? A crucifixed victim is most likely to make an impression on a funeral cloth when crucifixion was widely practiced. That means: the 4th Century or before........

It is a collating of ALL the skeins of evidence: the minute details of Roman execution, the Jerusalem limestone, the floral images(question: how do you/WHY do you manufacture floral images in France of the 1350s when the flowers aren't available AND no one can see those images until the late 20th Century when photography has advanced sufficiently?????), the pollen, etc. It is a collating of those skeins of evidence that makes authenticity the only realistic solution.....

leonarde

Though I can see lots of mistakes that the prosecution made (beginning with the venue), I rather think the prosecution overestimated the ability of ordinary people to understand highly technical evidence. Once Cochrane (and others) got the jury to suspect 'racism' at work (though testimony was adduced that the local police routinely asked Simpson for his autograph even when they were called about domestic disturbances!) the jurors assumed that this animus could somehow make Nicole's blood show up in Simpson's Bronco.

The parallel with the Shroud situation that I see is: people don't understand the low level of science in the time frame the 'Shroud forgery' is posited in: in the 14th to 16th Centuries alchemy was still VERY widely practiced. Yet, those scientific simpletons were going to create a multifaceted bogus artifact that would exhibit BOTH the features of Roman punishment (the wounds imparted by the flagrum: see http://www.bible-history.com/past/flagrum.html ) AND botanical and geological (limestone) elements that would fool LATE 20th Century scientists?????? No way.

Sparrow

Argument from Personal Incredulity

20th century scientists aren't fooled - they know it's a fake
Pope Clement VII wasn't fooled - he believed it was a fake
other burial shrouds were touted in the middle ages as being the 'real' burial cloth - their owners thought it was a fake

It was damaged by fire more than once since 1355 - clearly it was not stored in such a way as to prevent contamination
whether or not there is pollen on it is questionable, and more questionable how it got there - where is the pollen from it's other travels?
even though the samples taken for testing were very carefully selected to avoid repair spots, the claim now that three independent labs came back with closely correlated results is that somehow there was a magic invisible repair.
You have no known mechanism whereby a dead body could imprint the cloth and you decry the technology of the 14th century. What about the technology of the second sentury?
STURP is so scared of any further negative results that they refuse to allow any testing, even of pieces already separated fromt he main cloth and in other people's hands.

Amaleq13

It is the subjective opinion of a man who you otherwise claim lacks sufficient expertise to be relied upon in his consideration of the object. Surely you aren't changing your opinion of his reliability for this particular conclusion simply because it agrees with your beliefs?

Assuming that the individual depicted was actually crucified does not require that it took place when crucifixion was widely practiced. This fails to establish the existence of the object prior to the 14th century.

The appearance of details corresponding to the Gospel stories is consistent with deliberate fraud. There is no basis upon which one can assume any portion of the Passion narratives can be relied upon as historical. This "evidence" fails to establish the existence of the object prior to the 14th century.

Even the scientist who discovered this evidence acknowledges it is not conclusive proof the cloth was ever in Jerusalem but, even if we assume it was, this fails to establish the existence of the object prior to the 14th century.

Images that are not apparent to everyone are hardly compelling evidence of anything but, even if we assume these images exist, this evidence also fails to establish the existence of the object prior to the 14th century.

The alleged pollen cannot be considered, by any rational standard, reliable evidence and, even if assumed legitimate, also fails to establish the existence of the object prior to the 14th century.

Are you deliberately ignoring the questions related to the alleged absence of left-right refersal (an "insuperable problem" according to you) or are you researching answers?

Vorkosigan

Certain People don't understand the high level of empirical ability inherent in alchemical exploration. Alchemy speaks to underlying principles of investigation, not ability.

The mocking and flogging scenes are fictions of Mark, in which he presents Jesus' road to the cross as a mock Roman triumph. See TE Schmidt's 1995 article in New Testament Studies. The entire sequence of events is Markan invention. The Shroud depicts events which never occurred; ergo, it is a fraud.

Vorkosigan

leonarde

Well, I and most Shroudies find John more worthwhile on the Crucifixion itself and on the Shroud's immediate post-Resurrection disposition than the Synoptics. That would be John 19:1 on the flogging. And it doesn't disagree about the "invention" with Mark 15:15......

Cheers!