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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

#61

Post by exe34 »

d_theorist wrote: post #44
codingdave wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they need the specific concept of a photo negative? A negative is just a reversal of light/dark. They knew of such things. They knew primary colors, too. Painting and mixing colors is not exactly modern -- it has been around for many centuries. Artists practice playing with light and color as basic exercises, and have done so for hundreds if not thousands of years. Switching light and dark is a fairly basic…

Why would they have done it?

you can ask this for any non- photorealistic art.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#62

Post by observationist »

appguy wrote: post #20

Something that amazes me about The Shroud of Turin is that if it was created in the 14th century, how did they create a photographic negative 400 years before the first known photographic negative was created in 1826 by Nicephore Niepce. It’s the most studied artifact in history and still no one knows how The Shroud was created.

Bas relief and the play of light and shadow have been used since humans have tried their hand at carving. Seeing the impression a wet face left on dry cloth would be sufficient to tickle artistic inspiration, but actual artists, who spend their time thinking about how things appear and how to capture them in their respective media would have all sorts of opportunities for capturing the negative of an image, even if they wouldn't have thought of it in those terms.

There are plenty of examples of engravings, carvings, intaglia, and so on that used what we consider to be a "negative." There's nothing particularly special about flipping an image, transposing light and dark, inverting the 3d characteristics, or otherwise reversing different aspects.

Specifically, the inverse image might be carved for a wax seal ring or imprint, or it might be carved for a decoration stamp used in cement, or a mold for jewelry or ceramics. There are plenty of examples of things all throughout history that provide opportunity to inspire an inverted or "negative" image; it's simply our context of photography that is novel.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#63

Post by briffid »

stryan wrote: post #60
briffid wrote: post #57

The 14th century theorem has long been debunked, as the Pray-codex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pray_Codex contains strong evidence that the shroud was already known in the 12th century.

The 14th century radio carbon dating is still by far the most accepted dating. Even the wikipedia article you linked describes the Pray-cosex as not being definitive. IMO a plausible theory here is that imagery of Jesus's death with those "distinctive features" was already popular at the time and both artifacts are representative of that imagery.

The best explanation to what the codex depicts, is the shroud. Which could be a copy of an older shroud e.g., but the C14 dating has its flaws (burnt material etc.).

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#64

Post by briffid »

dpratt71 wrote: post #58
briffid wrote: post #57

The 14th century theorem has long been debunked, as the Pray-codex https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pray_Codex contains strong evidence that the shroud was already known in the 12th century.

I don't think you can "debunk" something merely with strong evidence. Besides that, I wasn't aware of this codex, so I'm glad you shared it. Has anyone suggested that (assuming there is a relationship) the arrow of causality might go the other way? That perhaps this image was a reference for the shroud itself?

The C14 dating is one evidence, and there are plenty of contradicting evidence for the 14th century dating. But my main point is that there is at least doubt for the 14th date, and any proper scientific approach should at least mention the codex.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#65

Post by dpratt71 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #28
appguy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientists have recently used a new x-ray imaging technique to date The Shroud to the 1st century. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13758359/amp...

That study [0] is published in a non-peer-reviewed journal with a very low impact factor, Heritage. Additionally, their findings suggests the shroud was kept within a very narrow range of temperatures to support the 1st century hypothesis, which makes it even more suspect. Additionally, their findings contradict a very well established C14 dating technique, in an extremely well documented and thought out study, using…

Believe it or not, it gets worse. The authors of this paper are the same folks who came up with this particular dating technique. And I can't find any evidence the technique has been independently validated. Not that that should count for much from this layman.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#67

Post by InsideOutSanta »

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.

"being capable of creating a photo negative"

You're calling it a photo negative. It's not a photo negative. It's a painting that has shadows and lights inverted.

"the image on the shroud is not made of paint"

It's made of red paint.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#68

Post by d_theorist »

codingdave wrote: post #45
d_theorist wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they have done it?

I have no idea, but that seems completely orthogonal to what technique was used.

It’s extremely relevant to the question, which is what the negative nature of the image has to tell us about the relative probabilities of the two hypotheses (miraculous hypothesis vs fraud hypothesis).

In my view, it is a big problem for the fraud hypothesis because you have to explain why and how it was done. At a time when the idea of a photo negative was entirely unknown, and when there are no other examples of negative images, or even any mention of the idea of making such images, why would the fraudsters seize on the idea of making their fraudulent image a negative? There is no record of anybody even recognising that it is a negative until the 19th century. So, it’s not at all what you would expect given the fraud hypothesis. You would expect a straightforward image.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#69

Post by encoderer »

InDubioProRubio wrote: post #38
encoderer wrote: post #7

The clergy in the 14th century were absolutely unmoored. Everything was for sale. You could pre-pay for absolution for future sins. They sold relics of everything - Jesus hair, even parts of the “burning bush” from the Old Testament. The first crusade brought back real treasures and relics that made the perfect pretense for a century of grifters. That was all pretty much stopped later that century though by a few bad…

Clergy back then basically was a hacker culture- as in you get the suckers to buy some relic or immortality paperwork and have a nice life extracting resources and giving nothing in return.

They sold NFTs and shitcoins basically.

Re: The Shroud of Turin: History and Legends

#70

Post by margalabargala »

d_theorist wrote: post #68
codingdave wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea, but that seems completely orthogonal to what technique was used.

It’s extremely relevant to the question, which is what the negative nature of the image has to tell us about the relative probabilities of the two hypotheses (miraculous hypothesis vs fraud hypothesis). In my view, it is a big problem for the fraud hypothesis because you have to explain why and how it was done. At a time when the idea of a photo negative was entirely unknown, and when there are no other examples of n…

> At a time when the idea of a photo negative was entirely unknown

It was not called a negative until the 19th century when photography came about, because before that a photo negative wasn't a thing. Before that it was just a "painting with light and dark reversed".

> when there are no other examples of negative images, or even any mention of the idea of making such images

There are many examples. See woodcuts, for example. The concept of creating the negative of an image was common.

> why would the fraudsters seize on the idea of making their fraudulent image a negative?

Because they, and the intended consumers of their piece, were not stupid and all were aware of the pattern that a person would leave on a cloth. Presumably it was not more difficult to drape a cloth over a body and observe the staining pattern then than it is today.

> You would expect a straightforward image.

No, you would expect a straightforward image, because photographs weren't invented until many centuries later, apparently.

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