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

[Swordmaker]

What latest? Not even LifeSite has that.

Still the 1988 test. It’s the only "official" C14 test done. I’m aware of at least two "unofficial" anonymous, unpublishable, unauthorized tests that were done on very small pieces of absolutely authentic Shroud linen threads using more modern and better testing. Because the samples were small, the degrees of confidence are commensurately larger. Both returned ages comfortably in the mid-first century range plus/minus 75 years.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

figured out that a combination of tannic acid applied to a human body and iron sulfate applied to linen could create a kind of photographic impression like the man of the shroud.

Ok. So, explain these facts;

• The image is only on the uppermost surface of the fibrils, thus it could not have been formed by chemicals.
• The image shows the whole body, however not all areas of the cloth came into contact with the whole body.
• The image was not produced by vapors from chemicals or vapors from the corpse itself.
• There is a double image on both the front of the cloth and on the back, but no image in the middle of the cloth, implying that the cloth collapsed into a mechanically transparent body.
• You can see inside the body, like an x-ray.

[TexasGator]

“Both returned ages comfortably in the mid-first century range plus/minus 75 years.”

Interesting. Please provide test documentation including labs, radiochemists and source tracebility.

[Swordmaker]

Here’s one, but this one is an architect from 1870, Charles Rohault de Fleury. I ran across another survey by the engineer priest from I believe in the 1960s or 1970s trying to duplicate and confirm De Fleury’s work. De Fleury found and documented enough for "one-third the size of the cross..." referring to a complete cross of patibulum and stapes.

https://newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.com/2013/09/myth-ship-could-be-build-from-relics-of.html

"However, the total volume of the known relics of the True Cross is only about .141 cubic feet."

A cubic foot is twelve board feet. So 15% doesn’t sound correct. One and a half board feet? That’s gotta be a typo. I’d think 1.41 cubic feet is the correct volume for De Fleury’s work. That’s about 16-17 board feet. By that figure, it’s nof enough for 1/3 of a full cross, but about enough for a full patibulum with some left over.

When I first encountered these data it was commented in one of my Shroud books which later I donated to my church library. A few years after that donations and use by many church members, some pious busybody member, a school teacher "Karen", decided they were worthless dreck and purged about $5000 worth of irreplaceable volumes (including some of the pastor’s own contributions, not to mention other church members) and had her husband haul them to the dump in his pickup truck. She thought they were just too "Catholic” and smacked of "idol" and "relic" worship for a Protestant church library. This was all based on her ignorant opinion.

I found out two weeks later when the very angry pastor called me to tell me what this woman had proudly called to tell him of her “having finished her volunteer ministry of clearing out the library of all those unnecessary and objectionable books.” The pastor was livid. "Karen" had zero authority to do anything like that. She’d volunteered to organize them, not censor them.

[TexasGator]

“recreating the exact original as it was, down to the very last detail. “

Interesting that 2th century experts said even in the 20th century we couldn’t do that.

[grey_whiskers]

Burn her at the stake, or drop her off in Tehran.

[Swordmaker]

Interesting. Please provide test documentation including labs, radiochemists and source tracebility.

As I said, these were “unauthorized, unofficial, unpublished tests. As such they cannot be traced, reported officially or ever published. They are only talked about in the Shroud community by word of mouth. The techs/scientists who did them did so without authority and would be excoriated if anyone with official capacity and authority of the keeping of the samples took notice. So the names, dates, labs, and details are obscured deliberately.

We know that someone had a thread portion left over from some other testing and made fibers and/or the thread available unofficially for the unauthorized test as long as it did not get back to him/her where the source of the sample came from. If it did, (s)he’d be excluded from ALL access to any further official research for life. Same for those persons/labs who did the testing. Those who did it felt it was important enough to do the test to find out if it was worth expending the political capital to keep pushing the Vatican and Turin to authorize official tests, or, if the tests came back with some other dates, to just drop it, go on to some other pursuits.

I’ve been around Shroud circles for fifty years. I know there was an unauthorized pre-STURP, small sample C14 test—apparently done in Italy or Switzerland—which returned an approximate first century date plus or minus 150 years. Again, this was a test that could not be publicized due to lack of official status. That one was so clandestine I have no clue as to who, when, where, etc.

That early unreported but whispered test is one of the reasons why people in Shroud circles were so shocked at the 1988 c.1350 test results, especially since it went so much against all the other scholarship that existed showing the Shroud existed in history long prior to that 1350AD date.

Unfortunately in science, if the provenance of your samples are not “officially” approved, then the test is not itself officially sanctioned as publishable, not officially citable, and not then “science.” Do you see the insanity of this? That’s the politics of science. The word of the researcher and the provenance of his sample means nothing. Modern Science has “ownership” rights these days... and researchers have to have the permission of the “owners” of research subjects to do the research. Such ownership can be traded and sold.

Existence of samples, no matter when they may have been taken, who has them, who may have custody, matters not if someone now claims ownership of the original source of that sample, the legalisms enter in to who, how, what, when, and to what extent examination can be made of that sample, and often by whom. Politics.

[TexasGator]

“Again, this was a test that could not be publicized due to lack of official status. That one was so clandestine I have no clue as to who, when, where, etc.”

hmmm ....

[TexasGator]

“Unfortunately in science, if the provenance of your samples are not “officially” approved, then the test is not itself officially sanctioned as publishable, not officially citable, and not then “science.” Do you see the insanity of this? “

The insanity I see is posting test results from a test nobody knows when it was done, where it was done, on what it was done on, how it was done, nor who did it!

[Swordmaker]

Interesting that 2th century experts said even in the 20th century we couldn’t do that.

We can duplicate some aspects of the Shroud, but not all of them. . . And when we do, we can always find that the way we do them is distinguishable from the Shroud, so it’s NOT an accurate duplicate. For example we can create a terrain mapped 3D like image that in many ways that looks like the image on the Shroud. To do it we use a pigment that is VERY obvious on the cloth which stains the cloth. Looking at the Shroud we find NO pigment and no staining of the cloth. . . Only linen which has oxidized more than the background linen. Oops. Not duplicated.

Ok, let’s find a way to oxidize the cloth in a similar fashion. We do that. We can oxidize line using a maillard reaction. Fine. Oops. We cannot get the fine detail the Shroud evinces in the image. RATS. Foiled again.

Oh, and it also seeps into the fabric and changes deep into the fabric fibers. The shroud doesn’t show that. More fails.

How about we try heat. . . Ok, you can oxidize linen by heating it. . . Heat it too much and you char it. Charred linen fluoresces under an ultraviolet light. . . In fact, Linen that has been even oxidized enough to oxidize often fluoresces under an ultraviolet light. Our attempts fluoresce. .. the Shroud doesn’t. OOPS! Another fail.

Also, how do we get the heat to reach up to 20cms distance and attenuate properly to produce the image??? Oh, we can’t. Under computer enhancement on the Shroud, it is seen that the Man on the Shroud is circumcised. How did our 14th Century hoaxer DO that detail work at such subtlety???? We can’t, by ANY method.

What energy source attenuates in just 20cms to essentially nothing both up and down but not horizontally with laser like precision, thus seems to be completely collimated with essentially no side scatter? We can think of none. Maybe a light saber??? We haven’t invented one yet.

We can put the blood stains on the Shroud, but we’d have to do it BEFORE we get the image on the cloth, then put the image on, perfectly registered to the locations of the blood stains, because there is no image beneath the stains. This means the image was created post blood stains.

Medical practitioners have noted that the image on the Shroud shows things a mere image should not show, such as the teeth in the maxilla, both upper and lower, the orbital bone of the skull around the eyes, the fingers of the hand look too long because it’s showing the metacarpal bones of the hands. In other words, there are radiographic components to the images. We COULD do this today, but not instantly, and not with all other image components required to duplicate the Shroud as we observe it.

The skeptics do a superficial image that looks sorta like the Shroud and announce “Hey, everybody! Look! I’ve debunked the shroud by doing this modern recreation by doing X. . . It looks like it, if you squint your eyes. I’ve proved the Shroud is a hoax! If you use Cinnabar, and Elmer’s glue spread all over a naked body, and roll on a cloth spread on the floor, then shake it, it looks something like the Shroud on a good Tuesday in November, then the Shroud is a FAKE! FAKE! FAKE” and the news media beats a path to his door, he writes a exposé book, makes several tens of thousands of dollars from his fellow skeptics, maybe gets a History Channel special, and lots of CNN and MSNBC, CBS, NBC, and even NPR gigs to tell how Christianity itself is a HOAX, and appears on Nightline to demonstrate his technique with Michelle Obama. Whoopee.

So what if it’s all been done before and debunked before it was done.

[21twelve]

“Particle physicist Isabel Piczek...”

I recall that documentary. IIRC she is at the top of her field. When I heard that aspect of it being a “mini Big Bang” it makes theological sense too (well, to me anyway).

In the Beginning, God created everything. With Jesus’ resurrection it was the beginning of a “New Creation” - and provides the means that people can be “born again”.

[Swordmaker]

hmmm ....

Frankly, I pass it on, and give it the weight I give all such rumors. About as much as a feather. Those who told me are pretty high up in Shroud circles and do believe it did happen. No reason to doubt them. Maybe two feathers. There NEVER will be any more proof, even though I am pretty certain those who were involved are now all dead.

[21twelve]

That’s very interesting about the sign. Well, the entire thing actually.

[TexasGator]

“And stooping to look in, he [the ‘disciple Jesus loved’] saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.”

[TexasGator]

” Under computer enhancement on the Shroud, it is seen that the Man on the Shroud is circumcised.”

Is this another we don’t know who did it, when, where and how since it is unpublished but told to you by two. high-uppers?

[Swordmaker]

“... and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself.”

You’ve got to remember, Tex, that we are reading an English translation of a Greek document written from an Aramaic and Greek oral recounting of the events that took place. If you read it in the original Greek writing it doesn’t quite say what you read in English. It’s interesting to read the various even English translations that use such words as “towel”, “napkin”, and “handkerchief.”

There was something very important about the burial cloths that impressed themselves on the people who went in to the tomb so much that they were retained. Something was important about that head cloth.

The Greek does not say “on” his head, but rather uses a Greek word that translates as “about” or “around” his head/face. One of the things we know from the Mishnah about Jewish burial practices is that if was and is customary to bind the jaw closed, as well as binding the limbs to keep them from flopping akimbo when rigor mortis passes. This jaw binding typically would pass under the jaw, up and around the ears, and then be tied at the crown of the head, thus closing the jaw shut. If you picture it, it would be “around the face”, not covering the face, as covering the face would be not required with a full body Shroud.

It is thought, with a good deal of evidence, that the face cloth still exists. Today it is referred to as the Sudarium of Oviedo.

The Sudarium of Oviedo

Like the Shroud, it too is a cloth of Linen, only this one is a simple one-over-one weave. The Sudarium, literally “sweat cloth”, a cloth that is often rolled and then tied around the brow or forehead to keep sweat from dripping into the eyes, shares the same stains of a blood type as those found on the Shroud, AB Negative, and also shares many of the same blood stain characteristics as the Face on the Shroud. The patterns of blood stains and wrinkles show signs of being rolled diagonally into a kerchief like rope which would be ideal to make an around the face jaw binding to keep the mouth closed in death.

It is also thought, based on the patterns of blood and fluid stains on the Sudarium, that it was pressed into service to cover the head of someone after dying on a cross, and while being taken down from a cross, and while lying supine, and then while being carried with a bloody hand supporting the head. The hand print has been identified on the face.

Under Jewish custom, anything with the blood of a person who dies by violence, must be buried with that person if at all possible, because of the belief that “Life is in the blood.” It would be natural to bury this bloody cloth with the body, pressing it again into service as one of the binding ties.

As this binding would be one not on the body, but around the head, it’s logical to see a resurrected Jesus, walking away from the niche, leaving behind the other grave cloths, but then reaching up, pulling this last one, the jaw binding, from around his face, and dropping it on his way out of the Tomb, separated from the rest. The series of events support that scenario.

[Swordmaker]

Interesting that 2th century experts

Are those dentists??? LOL!

[Swordmaker]

Is this another we don’t know who did it, when, where and how since it is unpublished but told to you by two. high-uppers?

No, I’ve attributed this multiple times. Quit trying to denigrate me. You don’t do it well. I attributed this in THIS very thread. Go back and find it. I am about through with you and your demands for proof of everything, Tex. I attribute what can be attributed, and tell when it cannot and why. Quit the snark.

[TexasGator]

“but then reaching up, pulling this last one, the jaw binding, from around his face, and dropping it on his way out of the Tomb, separated from the rest. “

And this was. told to by someone that was there?

[TexasGator]

“The Greek does not say “on” his head, but rather uses a Greek word that translates as “about” or “around” his head/face.”

I can buy that. But why was the shroud NOT wrapped as was common.