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The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

michaelshermer.substack.com

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Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#121

Post by tsimionescu »

pkphilip wrote: post #76
tsimionescu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, the thing is not a shroud, it's essentially a 14th century painting, created as one of a myriad fake relics for money and fame. Second of all, if you believed it were a real ancient shroud, you would have to explain how the image on it was produced. Corpses don't leave images on shrouds, and even if it were true that everyone in ancient Israel were wrapped in a linen shroud when they died, people certai…

1. There is no known painting technique - even now, for getting this image onto the shroud. There were no pigments or dyes in sufficient quantity to explain the image on the shroud. 2. About the second point - it remains a mystery but that in no way makes the shroud itself a fake.

About the first point, that's true, but mostly irrelevant. There are many niche painting techniques lost to time. Even more so, no one can truly predict the effects 6 centuries of display and exposure and a fire will have on some obscure painting style. We know there are traces of pigments on the cloth, so probably at some point there was much more. It was almost certainly a much less convincing and haunting image at the time it was made, the centuries of wear have just hidden the more obvious marks.

The second point was only in reply to someone saying "but what if it was some random shroud from the 1st century unrelated to Jesus?", and I merely explained why that makes much less sense than even the miracle explanation.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#122

Post by tsimionescu »

nsxwolf wrote: post #103
atombender wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Carbon 14 dating process is not sensitive to pollution from, say, the sweat or sebum on the hands of people handling it. What's more, the sample was vigorously cleaned before analysis. The article (the one that this thread is about, not the study) addresses exactly this. The author makes the point is C14 dating is widely misunderstood by non-experts who still decide it's within their expertise to find fault with…

It's susceptible to contamination from millennia-newer cloth fibers though!

If only there was evidence that any such fibers existed. Alas, there is not.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#123

Post by tsimionescu »

kcplate wrote: post #27
tsimionescu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, the thing is not a shroud, it's essentially a 14th century painting, created as one of a myriad fake relics for money and fame. Second of all, if you believed it were a real ancient shroud, you would have to explain how the image on it was produced. Corpses don't leave images on shrouds, and even if it were true that everyone in ancient Israel were wrapped in a linen shroud when they died, people certai…

> Second of all, if you believed it were a real ancient shroud, you would have to explain how the image on it was produced. Corpses don't leave images on shrouds Well, they have haven’t they? I think you need to put yourself in the shoes of a believing Christian/catholic. There is really no need for them to try and explain scientifically what is explained miraculously. From the miraculous POV the act of resurrection…

I was not talking about Jesus when I said "corpses". The poster above was suggesting that it might be an ancient shroud, but just some random Jewish person's shroud. I was merely explaining that that makes even less sense than the shroud being a miracle relic of the Resurrection.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#124

Post by tsimionescu »

kcplate wrote: post #113
patrickmay wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got the burden of proof backwards there. It is absolutely up to those who claim the shroud is that of Jesus to prove it.

Nah, it’s not a court of law and the burden of solving the mystery lands on the shoulders of the unbelievers. It’s a sacred relic of a specific belief system—sacred to those Catholics who already believe it is real and are further encouraged in the validity of their faith by its existence. I am sure that probably none are Christian just because of the shroud , so even if it was proven to be a 14th century creation, t…

Not really. The "shroud" is just one of a million other relics, some true pieces of saints' bodies, some others medieval forgeries like it . Both believers and non-believers should agree on the scientific evidence about this particular object. The first person to call it a forgery was, after all, a 14th century Catholic bishop, to which the Pope at least partly acquiesced (forbidding the church that housed it from calling it a holy relic, but allowing them to continue displaying it).

The only entity that would lose something by the "shroud" being recognized for what it is is the Savoy noble family who used it in their story of legitimacy, for all that's worth, and perhaps the church in Turin that houses it. It doesn't matter all that much to believers or non-believers otherwise.

For believers, the miracle of the Resurrection is attested in myriad other ways, and a real relic of it would at best be a beautiful holy reminder. For non-believers like myself, the resurrection is beleieved to have never happened through much more convincing arguments, so the shroud can't be anything but a fake. How and from what time exactly is an interesting curiosity, like the Voynich Manuscript, but it is not some grand mystery. It would be literally impossible to scientifically ascertain it was Jesus Christ's shroud, a Holy relic of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, so even if it had turned out that it was not a 14th century forgery but a genuine 1st century shroud, it still wouldn't have constituted proof (or even very convincing evidence) of Christianity.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#125

Post by tsimionescu »

recursive wrote: post #98
patrickmay wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got the burden of proof backwards there. It is absolutely up to those who claim the shroud is that of Jesus to prove it.

The nature of faith rejects the validity of such burdens of proof.

In Catholic beliefs, understanding, intelligence, logic, and reason are significant virtues. The believer is not supposed to be unquestioning of the world and treat everything as a miracle, lest they lose their faith. Instead, they are expected exactly to seek to understand the world, and marvel at God's creation in all their understanding. Especially related to miracles, the Catholic Church has a dedicated office for investigating miracles to ascertain "true miracles" from fakes. Charlatans are not tolerated in the church.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#126

Post by pkphilip »

kergonath wrote: post #79
pkphilip wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. There is no known painting technique - even now, for getting this image onto the shroud. There were no pigments or dyes in sufficient quantity to explain the image on the shroud. 2. About the second point - it remains a mystery but that in no way makes the shroud itself a fake.

> 1. There is no known painting technique - even now, for getting this image onto the shroud. There were no pigments or dyes in sufficient quantity to explain the image on the shroud. It still does not mean that it has anything to do with Jesus. There are plenty of things we don’t know how to make anymore.

I am not saying that it has something to do with Jesus. But if someone is calling this a fake, they should be able to demonstrate how something like this can be created

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#127

Post by ziotom78 »

I welcome well-founded scientific articles about the Shroud of Turin like this, as I have read many unsubstantiated claims, both on one side and another: believers see traces of Roman coins laid on the eyes, and skeptical conjecture phantasies about weird ways a super-intelligent forger could have laid the paint on the Shroud.

However, the article fails to mention some details that make the matter not settled, at least in my opinion.

First, the position of the holes in the hands differs from the common belief at the time. Virtually all Western Art depicts the nails entering the palm, yet the man of the Shroud has holes in his wrists. Experiments on dead bodies done in the XIX century demonstrated that only when the nail is put in the wrist the weight of the body can be sustained, but this was unknown in the XIV century. Moreover, there is a nerve in the wrist that, when injured, causes the thumb to retract; this, too, is consistent with the Shroud but differs from the common imagery used in the Middle Ages. (See, for instance, Grünewald’s Crucifixion [1].)

Second, the article fails to mention a paper by Rogers (2005) [2] that applied a non-invasive form of dating to the Shroud. According to these results, the borders of the Shroud are younger than the part in the center (where the image was impressed) and were probably patches added to repair the damage of a burning. This seems to be confirmed by microscopic analysis of the fibers of the samples used in the C14 tests, which do not match the images of the parts of the Shroud that contain the image. Unfortunately, the author states that his dating technique is powerful for relative dating but not absolute dating because of the large error bars. Thus, Rogers could not provide reliable dating.

The most significant difficulty in believing the Shroud’s authenticity is the lack of documentary sources in the first Millennium. However, unlike the author seems to believe, the question might not have been settled definitively by the C14 measurement.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isenheim_Altarpiece

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00406...

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#128

Post by InsideOutSanta »

briffid wrote: post #100
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They inverted the colors because they were creating a painting of an impression of a face on a piece of cloth. If you put a piece of cloth on your face, the parts of the face that touch the cloth are the ones where color would be transferred from your face to the cloth, and which are therefore darker. The parts of the face that are more recessed, like the areas around the eyeballs, would not touch the cloth, and so l…

A face impression would be very distorted when moving from a 3D face to a 2D sheet. So it is not an impression.

I didn't say it was an impression, I said it was a painting of an impression.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#129

Post by FrustratedMonky »

User23 wrote: post #115
card_zero wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an insult, it's a criticism. The criticism is: your thing is not very good. What you're requesting here is that you should never be told that your thing is not very good. I know the feeling, you're not alone, I, too, hate it when people piss on my strawberries, and sometimes I feel like I have a right to request that they be less negative and more supportive. This is why we have privacy instead of everybod…

Which is funny, because atheism is fundamentally and quite literally irrational. It rests entirely on the premise that reason plays no role in the existence or structure of the universe. That, for no reason at all the big bang happened. Then also for no reason at all, the laws of physics permitted the formation of stars, planets, and so on. And then, also for no reason at all, some of that matter became alive. Of cou…

"Which is funny, because atheism is fundamentally and quite literally irrational. "

This sounds like the 'no you' response.

You didn't make any point.

Just because there are open questions doesn't mean there is a god. There are unknowns -> ? -> Must be god.

All of the same arguments you made also apply to aliens.

Even if I were to follow your argument as "there are unknowns thus god", I'm pretty sure it isn't the Christian God. The god that can create the entire universe, focused down on a few lost tribes and said 'you guys are my dudes, and only you'.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#130

Post by ithkuil »

d_theorist wrote: post #41
InsideOutSanta wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the 14th century were no dumber than people living today, and painters like Duccio di Buoninsegna had a great understanding of shadows, and were capable of drawing amazing portraits. They were absolutely capable of painting a negative of a portrait.

Of course they weren’t dumb, but having a great understanding of shadows is a far cry from being capable of creating a photo negative. They didn’t even have the concept of a photo negative. How would they even have thought to achieve such a thing? And for what purpose? And, by the way, the image on the shroud is not made of paint, so contemporary proficiency with painting techniques hardly seems relevant.

Xylography (woodcut) technique also uses negatives. The technique is ancient in China and it has been attested in 13th century Europe
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