Replies

More refutal of the idiot skeptic.

Weak evidence (sic) put forward for the authenticity of the shroud:

12: 'The shroud's image appears to show a crucified man'. This is true, but then magicians appear to cut people in half too. Appearances can be deceptive. Even if this was truly a crucified man, there is no way you could prove it was Jesus.

Multiple pathologists and medical doctors have examined the image on the shroud and are agreed it is the image of a dead man who was crucified. They do not doubt that he was dead, that he was human, and that it is a real body. They will agree that they cannot prove he was Jesus of Nazareth, merely from the image.

13: 'There is the exact number of lashes from a whipping on the back as stated in the Bible'. Nowhere in the Bible is the number of lashes that Jesus received mentioned. Thus it is impossible to say that the shroud wounds match that of Jesus. This is pure invention.

It is true that the Bible does not cite the number of lashes Jesus received. However, the traditional number was 39. The sentence was usually 40, but the Jewish tradition was to stop at 39, in case the count was mistaken to avoid over punishment. But, it was a ROMAN soldier—in fact the evidence on the Shroud indicates two Roman soldiers, one on each side, one slightly taller than the other—administering this lashing, so there might be no such compunction to stop at 39 or even 40. The estimates of lash marks on the image of the man on the shroud vary from 110 to 120. A Roman flagrum had three thongs with two lead or bronze balls or cubes at the end of each thong to rip and tear the skin. Assuming three wounds from every strike, and 110 to 120 wounds, then the traditional number of lashes in the scourging is what we would expect... and conforms to the Biblical description and historical accounts.

14: 'The image on the shroud matches the Biblical account of Jesus' crucifixion'. As detailed above, the Bible completely conflicts with the shroud image, so use of this argument is dishonest.

Actually, his details above are NOT accurate and his claim is the dishonest one. The man on the Shroud DOES indeed match the death described in the Biblical account of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in almost every detail. His arguments in most instance are simply wrong or mistaken, both willful or ignorantly.

15: 'We can also see a large blood stain and elliptical wound on the person's right side (remember, in a negative imprint left and right are reversed)'. No, they're not. Left and right are reversed in a mirror image, but not in a negative image. This confusion aside, the Bible says that Jesus was pierced with a spear, but it does not say which side. Thus arguments that attempt to say it does and that this matches the shroud are false.

This is a false dichotomy about mirror and negative imaging... the image is a reversal... with the transfer being a mirror of the original. It is a red herring argument. Think of taking your wristwatch and transferring it from the arm it is on, onto an exact picture of you on the wall... on the SAME SIDE it is on ... so that the watch will now appear to be on the RIGHT WRIST, not the left. Ergo the image is mirrored.

16: 'The shroud shows one wound in the wrist, not the hand. Research has show that this is correct since nails through the hands would not have been able to support a body on the cross. Medieval artisans would not have known this'. It is pure arrogance to assume that medieval artisans wouldn't have known this. They were a lot closer to crucifixion times than we are. Even though artists generally painted Jesus with nails through the hands, they were probably just depicting what was described in the Bible. If the shroud is correct about the wrist, then the Bible is wrong. An authentic shroud means a false Bible. Remember also that artists always depicted Jesus with his genitals covered (and Adam and Eve with fig leaves) when everyone agrees that they were naked.

Artisans? ARTISANS? I think he means artists. He is wrong about artists always depicting Biblical figures as covered. Adam and Eve were often shown nude... it was later that prigs and revisionists and iconoclasts came along and painted or added carved fig leaves on the artwork.
See my response to his claims about the nail wound in number 5 in the previous post above to find out how wrong he is about that "factoid."
Medieval artists did indeed paint or carve the nail holes in the middle of the palm of the hand and out the back of the hand. It matters not how much closer they were to the times of crucifixion they lived... They painted what they thought was being described and would have placed it in the same location on a hoaxed creation such as the Shroud.

17: 'The shroud image is naked, as Jesus would have been, whereas medieval artisans never depicted Jesus naked'. This is true, but as discussed above, the image hides his nudity by adopting an unnatural posture. He is effectively clothed, whereas a dead body wrapped from head to toe in an opaque cloth wouldn't be concerned with modesty.

No, the body is in rigor mortis. It is bent and the body is not completely flat. This has been demonstrated numerous times by SCIENTISTS using both computerized modeling and actual humans "assuming the position." In that position, the hands easily fall where they are in the image on the Shroud.
In addition, the genitals ARE indeed visible on the man on the Shroud. Barrie Schwortz, the principal light photographer of STURP (a Jew)—apparently one of those devout CHRISTIANS that the author claims every member of STURP is, except for one Agnostic (McCrone, who was actually a self-acknowledged Atheist and not an agnostic!)—told me that under computer enhancement, the genitals of the Man on the Shroud are just barely visible below the hands and that he is circumcised.

18: 'The image of the shroud obviously portrays Jesus'. Rubbish. No one has any idea what Jesus actually looked like. The Bible contains no hints — short, tall, fat, skinny, long hair, bald etc. No details at all, so how can anyone say that an image resembles him? A dishonest argument.

This is indeed a circular argument... as the image on the Shroud is thought to be the source of our idea of what Jesus looked like! If, as is now thought, it is the Image of Edessa, found in the sixth Century when a wall collapsed in 544AD and revealed where it had been placed for safe keeping from iconoclastic movements in Turkey, it would explain the sudden change in all Jesus iconography that exploded from that time onward with many points of congruence with the image of the Shroud.
It is, however, a chicken and egg argument... which came first, the Shroud as source Jesus Iconography, the egg? Or the Shroud as result of a thousand years of iconographic development of Jesus depiction, the chicken? Most scholars who have studied issue believe the Shroud is the source document of fifth Century onward Jesus iconography. Prior to that date, Jesus was pictured as a short haired, beardless youth, often carrying a lamb... post that period, he is as we picture him today, a bearded mustached, man with long hair.

19: 'The apparent bloodstains contain real human blood'. This is contradicted by other scientists who insist that all the forensic tests specific for blood, and only blood, have failed. While there are traces of iron, proteins and porphyrins which are found in blood, these are also found in artists' pigments. However, as already stated, there is no trace of sodium, chlorine or potassium, which blood contains in high amounts and which would have been present if the stains were truly blood. It's also important to realise that even if there was blood on the shroud, whose blood was it? How old is it? Medieval perhaps? The existence of blood proves nothing as we don't know Jesus' blood group nor do we have a sample of his DNA to compare it with.

Piffle. The "other scientists" consist of Walter C. McCrone, a microscopist and chemist, and two police forensic specialists who do not have scientific degrees. They failed to get the blood to dissolve, a difficult task on blood as old as the blood on the Shroud. There IS Potassium, and Sodium on the Shroud as shown by very sensitive tests... Chlorine rapidly disappears into the atmosphere with the presence of any water vapor over time. This is to be expected with old blood... but even it is there in trace amounts. The TRUE scientists are SPECIALISTS in medicine and forensic work who have worked with blood that is over 100 years old before and know how to get it into solution to properly test it. THEY found that it was indeed blood. Look at answer 9 above showing the specific tests done by REAL scientist who worked with the Shroud samples using proper equipment and tested for things like HUMAN immune reactions, and HUMAN Albumin, and Primate hemochromogen tests... and see if you find those in Tempera paints like English Literature graduate Joe Nickell claims you do! Keep in mind these are scientists publishing in PEER-REVIEWED scientific journals IN THEIR FIELDS of blood related study... not popular skeptical journals

20: 'Pollen from Palestine is found on the shroud'. This claim has been discredited as "fraud" and "junk science". The person who originally claimed to have found the pollen on the Shroud was Max Frei, a Swiss criminologist. However the pollens were very suspicious, as pollen experts quickly pointed out. First of all, they were missing the most obvious pollen you would expect, which would be from olive trees. 32 of the 57 pollens allegedly found by Frei are from insect-pollinated plants and could not have been wind-blown onto the exposed shroud in Palestine. Similar samples taken by STURP in 1978 had comparatively few pollens. Also cloth was often brought to medieval Europe from Palestine, so there is no strong support even if pollen was found.

The Max Frei work was only "discredited" and called a "fraud" in skeptical journals. No where else. His work was published in peer-reviewed journals. The claims of discrediting was not. It has later been reviewed and found to be validated by the World's foremost expert on plants of the Paletinian area, Dr. Avinoam Danin, Professor of Botany of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. See My answer #4 in the previous post to see his commentary on what HE found and his claims. He is Jewish.

21: 'Coins dated to the early 1st century are seen over the eyes of the shroud image'. This claim was originally made by Father Francis Filas after examining a 1931 photograph, yet the coins can't be seen in better quality 1978 photos. We are expected to believe that poor quality photos showed not just coins, but enough detail to determine when they were minted. Another problem with the coins is explaining why they were placed on the eyes. There was no such Jewish custom in 1st century Palestine. The claim of some believers to see coins must be weighed against the claim of others to also see nails, a spear, a sponge on a reed, a crown of thorns, a hammer, scourges, tongs, dice, flowers etc on the shroud. Even most shroud researchers reject these claims as simply an example of an overactive imagination, as do I.

I too doubt the nails, spear, sponge, crown of thorns (some say there are two) and other things some claim to see... including a death certificate. It's getting mighty crowded on the Shroud.
However, there is other evidence that the coins are actually there. The Pontius Pilate Lepton on the left eye was reported to have CAESAR misspelled with a C instead of the more correct KAESAR that was expected when Father Filas first reported the coins. Others looking at the enhanced photographs also saw the C as well and decided, because of the misspelling, it was an imagination created coin. However, years later, six Pontius Pilate Leptons, struck in AD29 were unearthed in Jerusalem with the MISSPELLED word exactly matching the coin that is apparently on the eye on the Shroud. Note these coins were found AFTER the discovery on the Shroud... and matched what was seen on the Shroud. There is no doubt about the authenticity of the Leptons. Later a lepton with the same misspelling was found to have existed in the collection of the British Museum for over 100 years.

22: 'STURP scientists authenticated the shroud'. Unfortunately almost all of those that made up this group were deeply religious, and many were not specialised in the field they investigated. The group consisted of 40 US scientists, made up of 39 devout believers and 1 agnostic. The makeup of this group is stacked and very biased towards authenticating the shroud, and therefore their claims must be taken with an extremely large grain of salt. In fact the STURP scientists made some of their "authenticity" statements that people quote from the media before they had even examined the shroud. However they were unable to date the shroud. Even if their conclusions, given the scientific tools they had available at the time (1978), were beyond reproach, science has advanced greatly since then. Carbon dating in 1988, a more invasive and accurate test, dated the shroud to between 1260 and 1390 CE. STURP's results have been superseded. That is the nature of science.

This is a total fabrication. I know of NO ONE IN STURP that has "authenticated" the Shroud of Turin. NOT ONE. The claim that the scientists who made up STURP were 39 deeply religious and 1 agnostic is a lie as well. There were agnostics, atheists, Jewish and Christian, Catholic and Protestant members of STURP. For example Dr. Alan Adler and John Heller, were both Jewish, as was the group's main photographer Barrie Schwortz. According to Barrie, and he has said this many times, the group went with the intent to investigate and falsify the claim it was the Burial Shroud of Jesus Christ. They expected to find pigments. They did not. But they DID NOT FIND any pigments that were present in visible concentrations or that were associated with any image areas.

23: 'The shroud contains a negative of the image, and medieval artisans knew nothing of photography'. The shroud image is NOT a true photographic negative but only an apparent one — a faux-photographic negative. The "positive" image shows a figure with white hair and beard, the opposite of what would be expected for a Palestinian Jew in his thirties. Medieval artisans need know nothing of photography since it's not photographic.

This is a false equivalence. The image is not a negative. It appears to be one but it is not. It is a Terrain Map with three dimensional data encoded in it according to density of the image. The author is erecting a straw man merely to shoot down what is not claimed.

24: 'It's impossible to reproduce an image with shroud-like qualities'. False. Joe Nickell constructed one using a rubbing technique on a bas-relief model, using the pigments, tools and techniques available in the Middle Ages. The statement that we cannot make such an image is simply false propaganda. Faux-negative images are automatically produced by an artistic rubbing technique. Also as noted in the following section of this article, scientist Luigi Garlaschelli made a very convincing reproduction of the shroud in 2009.

No, it is true that no one has made an image that contains ALL of the qualities of the Shroud of Turin. NO ONE. Joe Nickell's bas Relief rubbings is laughable in its primitiveness... as are all the other attempts. None equal or even approach the Shroud. None make the image in the same way as we now know the image is composed on the Shroud. It is NOT a rubbing or any thing similar. To duplicate the Shroud, to reach that level, one must duplicate it in ALL of the aspects, not just one superficial form. None of the attempts have been even partially successful.

25: 'The image contains 3D information'. The quality of this information is often exaggerated or misinterpreted. Also if the image was produced using a bas-relief method, 3D information would be expected.

This is false. The data is neither exaggerated or misinterpreted. The data is there. The image itself is a 3D terrain map, somewhat distorted, it is agreed, but within its limits, extremely accurate. All attempts to get 3D data from bas-relief created methods of been abysmal failures.

26: There are no brush strokes on the image'. Probably true, but if the image was produced by rubbing as for a bas-relief, then there wouldn't be.

It is true... and true also for bas-relief created attempts. But since we know it was not created by bas-relief dabbing, irrelevant.

27: 'The blood flows and anatomical details are accurate and beyond the knowledge of medieval artisans'. On the contrary, as described above, there are serious anatomical problems with the image. Also as detailed above, the blood flows are completely unrealistic. Blood does not flow from a corpse and real blood spreads in cloth and mats in hair. Also medieval artisans would have been intimately familiar with blood and dead bodies compared to the sheltered life that we in the 21st century lead. The Black Death occurred during the 14th century so blood and death would have surrounded those living during this time.

Back to the misuse of the word "Artisans." Medieval art of the period did not use realism at all. The Renaissance artists were yet to make their appearance and Leonard Da Vinci with his detailed study of the human body and muscle groupings was yet to be born (101 years after the appearance of the Shroud)... and art of the period most resembled cartoons, with little anatomical accuracy. The realism of the Roman period was long past.
Contrary to your claim, blood does indeed flow from dead bodies for some time... YOU are the one who apparently has never handled dead bodies. I have... as has anyone who has worked in the medical field. We know better. Blood pools and will flow. Blood that has bilirubin in it also will continue to flow and will not clot for a lot longer than you think.
You claim the blood flows are completely "unrealistic," yet forensic scientists, specialist in blood flow, have tested these exact blood flows and stated they are exactly correct... and when blood, real human blood is placed on both cadavers and living volunteers, it is found to flow in exactly that manner and positioned exactly where it does on the image on the Shroud. That means you are guessing and the science trumps your guesses.

28: References to the shroud can be found prior to the Middle Ages'. This claim usually refers to the 'Image of Edessa', a holy relic allegedly found in 554 CE in Edessa. It was a square or rectangle of cloth on which it was alleged the face of Jesus was imprinted. Some try to claim that the shroud and the 'Image of Edessa' are one and the same. Yet it did not contain a full body image, only the face, and this legend actually began when Jesus was still alive, so it can't be referring to the shroud. Another image in the Hungarian Pray Manuscript is equally problematic. There are no reputable shroud references that don't conflict with what we know about the shroud, prior to 1355 CE.

The Image of Edessa was described as being Tetra Diplong... double folded in four... when you double fold in four the Shroud of Turin, only the face shows. . . and the creases still existing on the Shroud show that was the way it was once folded for a LONG time. Put a frame around it, and you have the Image of Edessa, the Mandylion, which disappeared when the Image of Edessa was transported to Constantinople in 944... and the Sermon of Gregory Referendarius, the ArchDeacon of the Hagia Sophia was given on the day the "Image of Edessa" arrived in Constantinople and he described the full naked body of the savior on it... with his wounds showing in his blood! That was on August 15, 944, a full 408 years before it was put on display in Lirey, France, by Geoffrey De Charney!