Former Walters director Gary Vikan chronicles ‘the greatest deception in the history of Christianity’ (the Shroud of Turin) [Commentary]

Baltimore Sun ^ | Aug 20, 2020 | Dan Rodricks

[grey_whiskers]

Nope.

First you have some of the personnel at the labs, bragging in advance about how they were going to debunk the Shroud.

Then you have the agreement in advance, not to sample from the repaired area.

Then you have the actual samples taken FROM the repaired area.

Then you have the results -- where all three labs' ages are outside of the error bars of the other labs.

And where the age found by the labs, change in a way consistent with the increasing proportion of new cloth in the repair.

I don't remember all the details, and I last went through all this (I think) six or seven years ago.

Swordmaker might have more details ready to hand.

[TexasGator]

‘The latest was from a repair. “.

What latest? Not even LifeSite has that.

[dsc]

“Documentation states samples were taken from repair-free areas.”

That was the protocol. However, the protocol was not followed. Samples were taken only from the repaired area.

[SkyDancer]

The last carbon dating of the Shroud was taken from a 1300's repair section, immediately after those dates were cited three decades ago, and to this day, the Shroud has been tainted, maligned, disparaged and denigrated while wedded to the descriptions “not authentic,” a “forgery” or “medieval hoax.”

You seem to be hung up on dating but not looking at the fact that something like the Shroud was beyond the capabilities of the period. They knew nothing about biology or photography (the image is a negative).

“In 1989, the results of the shroud dating were published in the prestigious journal Nature: between 1260 and 1390 with 95% certainty. But for thirty years, researchers have asked the laboratories for raw data. These have always refused to provide them. In 2017, a legal request to the British Museum, which supervised the laboratories. Thus, I had access to hundreds of unpublished pages, which include these raw data. With my team, we conducted their analysis. Our statistical analysis shows that the 1988 carbon 14 dating was unreliable: the tested samples are obviously heterogeneous, [showing many different dates], and there is no guarantee that all these samples, taken from one end of the sheet, are representative of the whole fabric. It is therefore impossible to conclude that the shroud of Turin dates from the Middle Ages.”

To reiterate: The Shroud also possesses photographic-negative properties first discovered in 1898, that on the “positive image” clearly show every gruesome, agonizing, torment endured by the “man.”

Additionally, the Shroud displays three-dimensional “distance information” resembling a topographical map but within the cloth’s two-dimensional image of the man. Furthermore, the image depth measures only two micro-fibers with no variation (such consistency is a feat impossible with human hands). And more unusual, the image does not penetrate the cloth but sits on top.

Read more at: https://townhall.com/columnists/myrakahnadams/2019/07/21/shroud-of-turin-new-test-concludes-1988-medieval-hoax-dating-was-a-fraud-n2550263

[Swordmaker]

"The shroud is impressed with the image of the body of a gaunt, bearded man with long hair. "

The author of the article shows he is completely unfamiliar with with the Shroud of Turin with this thumb-nail description. The Man on the Shroud is not "gaunt," he’s been described as muscular and robust, which has been one of the critiques of the Shroud from critics who expect a pansy like Christ. They forget he was raised by a carpenter, which in that age meant working with trees, logs, and large sized timber, not small light pieces of wood. Carpenters had to make the planks and boards they’d use to build with, and then carry it to work sites, so they had muscles.

"But Russian interference was no hoax. The Kremlin, in fact, wanted Trump to be elected. The major U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian spies interfered in our election on orders of their president, Vladimir Putin. We have known this since at least January 2017 when the director of national intelligence released a declassified version of a report on Russian meddling.

Now the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee has released its report on the matter, finding that representatives of the Trump campaign had communicated numerous times with Russian agents and had welcomed their help.

This is similar to the Vikan confabulation of an assumption elevated to a fact. "But Russian interference was no hoax. The Kremlin, in fact, wanted Trump to be elected." There is actually zero evidence that this is true.

The Russian Facebook and YouTube hijinks according to all analysis was equally divided amount ads for both Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump, with a liberal sprinkling of ads touting other candidates, plus ads in general pushing chaos and divisive memes.

There was no general preference one way or the other, but if any were toward Trump, they were to undermine the presumed future President Clinton’s administration because Trump was assumed by all pundits to not have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning, which the Kremlin and Putin had to know.

The Kremlin also had plenty of hooks into HRC already through millions donated to her and Bill through the Clinton Foundation ($145 million leverage for Uranium One), which far exceeded the paltry $200,000 expended in internet ad buys expended by the Russian meddling! Hillary was a known, already owned, bought and paid for Russian (at least leased, along with multiple other "owners") asset. Evidence galore points to that fact.

[AFB-XYZ]

How about that! Had no idea. Thanks for hte additional info!

[TexasGator]

Your link provides no info on the ‘last sample’.

[TexasGator]

Documentation states samples were taken from repair-free areas.

[Swordmaker]

It’s been said you could build a large house out of all the little wood chips and splinters of the cross in cathedrals all over Europe.

It’s been said by a quipping skeptic... and I think it was "a large barn"... and another went whole hog claiming "...the cathedral from the pieces"... but it’s not factual.

A volumetric inventory of ALL of the know pieces of the "True Cross" was undertaken several decades ago by a Catholic priest with an engineering degree who made a years long pilgrimage to examine every confirmed cross relic. Precise measurements were taken of each surviving piece—they seem to be the same species of acacia wood—no matter how small. The various pieces varied in size from splinters to one over ten inches in length. The total volume calculated shows there is enough wood to make up about two-thirds of a standard Roman patibulum, the horizontal cross piece to which the arms/hands would be nailed. That would be a beam of wood about ~6.5’ to ~7’ long by ~6" wide by ~4" to ~6" thick.

The stapes, the upright post, was normally permanently installed and re-used for multiple executions. It might or might not have a sedulous, a cross plank to sit on, and/or a pedula, an angled piece of wood for nailing the feet on. A titulus, a written indictment of the criminal’s crime(s), could be either affixed on the stapes above the patibumum, or if on a tau cross (T shaped), on a stick stuck on top. A portion of the middle of Jesus’ Titulus is thought to survive to this day, having been cut into pieces in the first millennia for unknown reasons and distributed. The piece is about one-third of the original titulus. .

Artist depiction of original Titulus and
current remnant outlined in .

One thing that tends to lead to the authenticity to the Jesus Titulus is that both the Latin and Greek language indictments are carved into the wood in the same right to left direction as the Hebrew right to left script of the first line is. A C14 test on a very small splinter of the Titulus wood dated it to early first century.

[Swordmaker]

there is a tv documentary which purports to show that leonardo da vinci could have created the shroud...

The Shroud was first absolutely in modern history put on display by the family of Geoffrey de Charney in France in 1352. Leonardo Da Vinci was born in Italy in 1452. I guess it’s possible for da Vinci to do it once he invented the Delorean, the Flux Capacitor, built a road where he could reach 88mph, and get a Mr. Fusion so he could generate 1.21 gigawatts of power, then he could maybe go back and create the Shroud using techniques he never demonstrated during his lifetime.

Picknett and Price sold a lot of books to a lot of ignorant people. . . but their "theory" was a laughing stock to serious scholars.

[dsc]

“Documentation states samples were taken from repair-free areas.”

That documentation lies. It’s a matter of public record.

[grey_whiskers]

Due, you rock.

Source, please, for my own personal use?

[grey_whiskers]

*ahem* *Dude*, you rock.

Source, please, for my own personal use?

[SkyDancer]

I think you're missing the whole point; you seem to be hung up on the carbon dating and totally ignoring the rest.

There is nothing on the "second testing" all articles keep pointing to "inconsistencies" rather than actual re-testing and dating; then too, the fire the Shroud was involved in skewed the testing due to carbon from the fire settling on the Shroud. It's interesting that some article call it a forgery. You only forge something that exists as a real item.

The science is still not settled on its actual age. Perhaps you can explain how something like this could be forged given the technology of that age.

[central_va]

What is never discussed is the fact that perhaps during the resurrection event the energy involved changed the carbon relationship of the cloth itself.

[Nabber]

Thanks so much for your post!

[TexasGator]

“I think you’re missing the whole point; you seem to be hung up on the carbon dating and totally ignoring the rest.”

An item was brought up that I was not aware of. I was asking what it was since it was too vague to tell.

[SkyDancer]

In the seminar I went to, a nuclear physicist gave an explanation on how the image could have happened; when Yeshua arose in the tomb the blast of light given off by Him was instantaneous and the energy was that of a nuclear bomb going off in pico seconds - short enough not to inflame the cloth but powerful enough to leave that image which of course would have been a negative image from the body. The image is on the top fibers of the cloth and not in the cloth as would be if it was somehow “painted” in - plus the image is even meaning that if a human hand painted it somehow just the hand movement would cause wavering brush strokes.

[SkyDancer]

But no test data has been presented; all that’s been presented by science is the fact the data was mishandled somehow.

[Swordmaker]

Documentation states samples were taken from repair-free areas.

Documentation was proven wrong in now six peer reviewed research papers and actual hands on tests of the retained fifth sub sample cut from the single master sample cut from the Shroud.

It was cut from an area the scientists from the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) had to a man agreed should be avoided for C14 testing due to multiple observed anomalies including photographic, both optical and ultraviolet (it glowed under ultraviolet light while the main body of the shroud did not), physical, and chemical.

Multiple statistical experts have come forward now that they’ve finally stopped stonewalling the raw C14 data from the 1988 test, and have stated there were huge red flags in the test data returned. Not a single sub-sub-sample test dating agreed within even its nearest neighbor’s CHI-SQUARED test range! These MUST, or the samples are hopelessly contaminated and cannot be considered as homogeneous with each other, much less as representing the thing to be sampled. In fact, the dating range of these sub-sub-samples, was consistent with their distance from their original location in relation to the cloth’s selvedge edge, i.e. the farther from the edge, the older they dated!

This is consistent with the proposed patch accomplished performed by a technique called French Invisible Reweaving. This technique was developed in the fifteenth century to invisibly repair moth damage to very expensive wall hangings and clothing. The repairs involved actually removing damaged areas, dying threads to match original, attaching the new threads by twisting into the broken old threads, then skillfully reweaving the new threads into the cloth or tapestry, recreating the exact original as it was, down to the very last detail. Such a patch, to the naked eye, is invisible.

However, linen doesn’t take dye well. Cotton does. So these skilled crafts women of the sixteenth century, used starched dyed cotton, retted with alum. Dyed with Alazarin dyes to match the original flax linen thread. These under modern photography, especially electron microscopy, are easy to spot.

It turns out that the tested sub-sub-samples were mixtures of various percentages of added sixteenth century dyed cotton and original Shroud flaxen undyed Linen threads. . . with the percentage of newer cotton higher toward the selvage and older original linen toward the main body. This distorted the age dating by over two hundred years in 5cm.

The C14 test has been completely falsified due to failure to follow agreed sampling and testing protocols when taking the original Shroud sample for C14 testing in 1988. You cannot test something that is not representative of what you’re wanting to test. They ignored the advice of STURP to stay clear of that area.

There were SO many protocol violations in the C14 testing one has to conclude the were not serious in their approach and treated it as a joke. They were sloppy all around.