Surprising new study on Shroud of Turin

You are wrong. The Shroud's image is, intentionally or not, a terrain map.

I see... Well if it's a "terrain map", then how do you explain the fact that your "terrain map" shows that the guy in the shroud image has what look like crab eyestalks prominently jutting out from his eyeballs where his pupils should be?

Hint: It's not actually a terrain map, but flat images recognizable as representations of 3D objects (like a human face, for example) will of necessity contain data that can give a reasonable facsimile of a 3D shape when processed appropriately. However, certain aspects of the flat image (like dark pupils in a light eyeball) will give spurious 3D "data" and break the illusion of an actual "terrain map".

One of the biggest obstacles is the reluctance of the church to allow destructive testing of the shroud. The earliest possible date for it is 1300s, which means it is a minimum of 700 some odd years old. Obviously, the caretaking of the shroud is very important to the people who possess it. Hopefully, non-destructive tests will be discovered that can accurately date it. I do understand the reluctance of the possessors to allow multiple destructive tests to take place would eventually remove significant parts of it.

Part of the history of the shroud falls more into an area where I have a little bit of knowledge, and that's artistic restoration. Prior to approximately the 1930's restoring work meant making it look like new. For this reason, after the fire, etc, when restoration work was done, the restorers attempted to make the shroud look new. Historical accuracy was not one of their concerns, and, of course, they could not have known that future examiners would look at weaving techniques and use some unknown at the time dating system. If the shroud got frayed, it was repaired.

Much of the second half of the twentieth century restorers have been removing the "restoring" of greek and roman statues. It used to be common practice to restore arms, legs, etc., with no regard for what the original looked like. Later restorers removed the repairs. This left many statues without heads or arms, but all the remaining work is now work done by the original artist (think about Ted Turner "fixing" movies like Casablanca by colorizing them).

This is one area where I think some of the scientific researchers have honestly moved into an area where they have less expertise. I don't think they are deliberately trying to mislead, but I do think there are several issues for them, and I think it colors their judgement.

First, many of the researchers assume that the shroud is a fake, and therefore look for those results. Second, finding a date of 1st century AD could be extremely embarassing for them. One of the common tenants of science today, for many, is that it rejects any possibility of the supernatural. Therefore, a naturalistic explanation MUST be found. Third, as I mentioned earlier, several of the researchers were undoubtedly not familiar with medieval restoration techniques, and discounting of these techniques could easily lead even a non-biased researcher to look at restored areas and assume they are part of the original.

That was the point of my original post. If the shroud is fake, it is a fake produced by wrapping the object around a three dimensional item. The glass technique suggested in the original article assumes three dimensional knowledge by a painter that simply did not exist in the 1300s, and use of photographic negative techniques that didn't exist until the early 1800s.

One area I've never seen explored is whether the wrapping technique used was the one commonly used by Jews of the first century, and also whether the cloth making technique was one used during the first century. While not conclusive, these examinations should be non-destructive.

The concept of historical accuracy did not become common until approximately one generation after the invention of the camera. That's why, for examply, you see Renassiance paintings of Jewish slaves dressed like fourteenth century Italian court ladies and Roman guards dressed like fifteenth century French militamen. People simply didn't think in terms of historical accuracy. They assumed everyone had always done things pretty much the way they had.

I've never seen much data on this aspect of the shroud, and I think it could be extremely enlightening.

Is there any action underway to eventually date a sample (or even better, widely separated multiple samples) of the shroud which is indisputably "original"?

The STURP members (although STURP itself has been disbanded) have made repeated requests to the Catholic Church to allow further Carbon 14 testing. Permission is not forthcoming. Some have been informed the church is waiting for more refinements in the procedure. Since the first request for a C14 test, the amount of material needing to be destroyed has decreased from over two square feet to just a few square centimeters. The church may be waiting for the requirement to be reduced even further before allowing testing.

Or if not, what's standing in the way of such tests?

Permission from the Shroud's owner... the Pope.

It might interest you that an unauthorized C14 test of a thread extracted from the Shroud before the STURP study (STURP's permission to have access to the Shroud precluded any destructive testing) was performed without permission. The thread was taken from the same area as the Raes and 1988 samples. The thread in question ran horizontally across both the Raes and 1988 sample locations before they were cut from the Shroud.

The interesting thing is that this thread was cut into two pieces and both were tested... one half reported an age of 1000 years (+/-75 years)... the other half reported an age of 1700 years (same degree of confidence). No record was kept of which end was which or the orientation of the thread in situ. I suspect that the younger half included a large percentage of "patch" while the other only a small amount. The large (150 year) spread of each date is because the thread was much smaller than what would normally be tested to get a higher degree of confidence.

Well if it's a "terrain map", then how do you explain the fact that your "terrain map" shows that the guy in the shroud image has what look like crab eyestalks prominently jutting out from his eyeballs where his pupils should be?

We don't have to explain it because it doesn't have "crab eyestalks prominently jutting out". It is well known that the image on the shroud shows that something has been placed on the eyes, probably to keep the eyelids closed.

First Century Jewish burial practices included such an object... sometimes a potsherd, other times a small coin. Some Shroud researchers claim that under enhancement the object on the right eyelid is a Pontius Pilate Lituus Lepton, minted from AD 29 to AD 32. Others claim what is seen is on the same order as finding bunny rabbits in clouds because of the low resolution and the high noise factor from the weave of the linen.

After publication of the enhanced photographs showing the purported coin's inscription, it was noted that there appeared to be a misspelling in the Latin inscription (CAI instead of the expected UKAI)... this was immediately jumped on as proof of an error by the medieval forger by shroud debunkers. However, AFTER the publication of the photos with the misspelling, six Pontius Pilate Leptons of known provenance have been unearthed with the exact same misspelling.

My position is that I have seen the coin on some enhanced photographs... and not seen it on others. It may be an artifact of the enhancement, although the circumstantial evidence of the identification of a misspelled word that is later shown to be accurate to a very rare version of the coin might lead some credibility to the claim.

Some recent enhancement workers have proposed that the less clear object on the left eyelid is a Julia Lepton, minted only in AD 29 to honor Tiberius Ceasar's wife Juia. They claim 73 points of congruence.

This has been researched and the answer is that they did indeed shroud their dead in such a manner... although usually not with such a fine cloth. Most shroud material was an inexpensive one over one weave. The Shroud is a three over one herringbone twill weave. The threads are handspun. Such a cloth could have taken a master weaver several weeks to produce.

In answer to your question about the technique being used in the 1st Century:

Recently, Mechthild Flury Lemberg, a former curator of the Abegg Foundation textile museum in Switzerland and a leading authority on historic textiles, has found a strong similarity between the Shroud's fabric and fragments of cloth produced in the Middle East about 2,000 years ago. Lemberg has likened stitching on both hems of the Shroud and on a lengthy seam down one side to that on cloth found in the ruins of Masada. Masada was a Jewish stronghold overlooking the Dead Sea and Jordan. The Masada fabrics have been dated at between 40 BCE and 73 CE.

It should be noted that Madam Flury Lemberg was also the moving force behind the ill advised 2002 shroud restoration that removed all the charred portions, ironed it, removed the patches placed on the Shroud by the Nuns of Poor Clare in the 14th Century, and replaced the Holland cloth backing. The purported reason for the restoration was the erroneous theory that the charred areas were still expanding under some kind of oxidation. Her work on "restoring" the Shroud was done under less than scientific methods... she handled the shroud with bare hands, used weights to stretch wrinkles out, trimmed charred areas with scissors and scraped others, power vacuumed the shroud and steam cleaned some soiled areas. Most other researchers were horrified. The wrinkles, soil, and chars were part of the Shroud's history and should have been retained.

Look, believe whatever you wish about the shroud, but if you don't want to bear false witness and misinform others, as well as give critics of FreeRepublic reasons to reinforce the negative stereotype of conservatives as unschooled anti-scientific thumpers, I'm going to have to ask you to either actually learn some science before you spew another great load of nonsense about it, or at least become aware of just how much you don't know about a topic and temper your "pronouncements" accordingly.

Oh you horrible man! How dare you bring verifiable information about the real world into this discussion? Why must you always be so rational? Are you part of some kind of conspiracy of sane people? Why can't you and your ilk just leave the Shroudies alone? You're a big ol' meanie!

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