The most amazing theory I ever read was from The Second Messiah, which is totally fanciful and speculative, but even as a work of the imagination its strikingly impressive.
What they said was that it's not fake, but its not exactly real either, in the sense that its not Jesus. What we're seeing is the image of a man who was tortured the way Jesus was said to have been tortured, including the crucifixion. But the man was a crusading Knight, and the authors even think they can name him: Jaques de Molay, commander of the Knights Templar. After being tortured he was wrapped in his linen shroud (one of the few personal possessions that the template owned) and he recovered to be put on trial and ultimately burned at the stake. The shroud was folded up and put away and then he image formed slowly over years, by some chemical process which the authors explained but I can't remember.
This explains the carbon dating and the apparent mystery regarding the details of the crucifixion injuries: traditionally Jesus is depicted with holes in his hands but apparently that does not actually work. The wrists must be nailed instead, as seen in the shroud.
They also claim to have proven that the mans knees were bent as apparently this is the only way to explain the proportions.
I doubt it was a very scientific assessment but it was still fascinating to read.They even claimed that the shroud first appeared in the possession of someone who might have been a relative based on the name (can't remember the details now)
Sounds like an interesting read, even if it’s largely speculation. The hands vs wrists question is a perennial puzzler, compounded by the fact that nobody actually knows exactly how crucifixion was carried out in that part of the Roman Empire at the time. However I got an interesting perspective on it when getting to know my wife who, as an Austrian from the countryside has a particular regional way of speaking German. One aspect of her local dialect is that she will often use the word “foot” (Fuß) to refer to the whole leg. So it’s not that big a stretch to imagine one particular group of Aramaic, Hebrew or Greek speakers at the time would use the same word for hand and wrist. This time, I am the one who is speculating - apart from the fact that the Greek word used in John’s Gospel to refer to Jesus’ hands (when He shows Thomas the holes) is the same word that Luke also uses in Acts to describe where the chains fell off from Peter [0], and often translated as “wrists”.
That's interesting! I'm currently learning Hindi, and finding that the word for foot/leg is often interchangeable, too. (In Hindi, 'toes' is also usually expressed as 'fingers of the foot,' which I sometimes misapprehend as 'fingers of the leg')
I would be curious what Michael Shermer and others think of some of the more recent scientific investigations, as detailled by Fr. Andrew Dalton on Pints with Aquinas:
I doubt he’d think much of it. I’m about 2/3rds through it. It’s all more of the same and not terribly convincing.
Fr. Andrew Dalton is a Sindonologist(?), somebody who studies the shroud, but not necessarily from a scientific perspective. Sindonology isn’t exactly embraced by Shermer in his article, or, apparently, by the scientific community in general. I hadn’t encountered the term before, but at a glance it seems to have all the scientific rigor of ufology or cryptozoology.
What I’ve heard so far in the video isn’t new evidence, but enthusiastic re-hashing of previous topics that have already been discussed to death. The video offers precisely the kinds of suspicious arguments that Shermer talks about. Exactly, in the case of C14 dating, “French invisible weaves”, and corner-holding-contamination.
I hadn’t encountered the AZ 1 & 2 C14 differences though and I’d be curious to get more details. He only briefly mentions them and doesn’t provide anything further. Fr. Dalton seems to point people to shroud.com which he calls “the most scientific of websites’ - that statement seems dubious at best, and browsing the site doesn’t change my impression.
I do appreciate that towards the end of the video that Fr. Dalton completely acknowledges that there is no evidence dating the shroud to the 1st century. All the other discussion around the “historical facts” surrounding JC, such as the kind of crown we supposedly wore, the kind of cross he supposedly carried, etc. is very eye-brow raising. The discussion of Eucharistic miracles and the prevalence of the AB blood type is similarly…interesting.
At the end of the day the authenticity of the shroud is a matter of faith. Evidence doesn’t seem like it should be important.
Setting aside religious discussion, what I found interesting is that the shroud has a lot of things that we simply cannot explain. For example, we have been unable to replicate the image as it exists (I think he said 200 nm thick), using highly advanced UV technology. If we can't figure it out now, how on earth would someone have created it centuries ago? I found other details, such as the absense of the photo-negative impression where blood stains were, fascinating.
I also thought the debunking of the 1988 "findings" made a lot of sense.
I'm not saying that it is "authentic" in that it is the impression of Christ from the Resurrection. What I am saying is that using our best scientific methods, we still have no explanation for how it came to exist.
I suppose I should ask, what kind of evidence are you looking for that would make something convincing to you?
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.
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.
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.
If I had to choose between (a) an artist who decided to invert the light/dark palette to achieve a dramatic effect or (b) it actually wrapped God and the moment of His death it left pigment on the cloth, I'm going with (a) every time.
If you want to get Bayesian on it, the base rate of confirmed art forgeries and religious artifact forgeries is non-trivial, but the base rate of confirmed creators of the universe manifesting has human form is zero.
It's sort of semi-3D. Reasonably good imitations have been made by molding linen to a shallow sculpture (aka a bas-relief) and dusting it with pigment, which thus picks up peaks and troughs.
Not only a photographic negative, a photographic negative with proper depth that was painted on individual sides of the fibers of the shroud by something (likely heat). The fibers that are colored on this shroud are colored only on one side and they themselves are colored. There is no chemical deposition upon them, at least none visible to an electron microscope.
There's a number of weird things that knowledge of their manufacture has been lost. The lenses of Gotland, Greek Fire and the Chinese Jade burial suits all come to mind.
Anyone who has made the mistake of storing expensive clothing in a closet with a window (/me raises hand) can explain how the Shroud could have been created. An object that blocks sunlight from reaching a dark cloth will leave an unmistakable image of itself.
So the hypothesis here is that they hung a dead guy in front of a dark cloth for a few months, and also made sure that the details of his face somehow made it onto the cloth even though the light was silhouetting him? Or am I missing something here?
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.).
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.
Whether it is 14th century or an authentic relic, I still believe it's simply amazing to behold. We can explain what it's made of and guess at how old it is, and we can guess at its provenance and history, but there's simply no good explanation of how it was imprinted. The photo-negative imprint is nothing short of miraculous to me. Perhaps it's a miraculous forgery--doesn't matter anymore.
The crucifix in a local parish was commissioned just a few years ago, and the artisan who sculpted it in Mexico used the Shroud as a guide for the imagery. The painful stripes of scourging, the dripping of blood, the skinned knees, the pathetic expression on this man's face: they are all quite realistic and they perfectly evoke Christ's suffering for me, and for hundreds of other parishioners, especially the donors who contributed to beautify the sanctuary.
There are plenty of truly authenticated relics -- actual body parts of saints -- and I've come into contact with some of them. It's really amazing to have this connection to holiness. And you need to really understand the relationship of Christians with relics. The relic has no power in itself. The relic is not a miraculous talisman. The relic is simply a physical manifestation of a saint, who is very much alive to us. Though we cannot embrace such a saint, or hear them speak to us, they are present to us through the relic, and we invoke their intercession while touching the relic, because body and soul are one, and will be reunited.
My faith would not be shaken if this were proved fake. I simply don't rely on archaeology to prove my faith. Nobody should. I believe that archaeology and 99% of today's Scripture scholarship is an exercise in futility and misdirection. Live the life or don't live it. Be an atheist if you want. But don't tell us what to believe.
It's perfectly fine to consider it a beautiful and unique 14th century icon, even though its creators were aiming to get money/fame off a fake relic. In that sense, it might be the most remarkable fake in history.
And I also agree that faith shouldn't be based on physical proof or analysis of this kind, which is always subject to the specter of fraud or misunderstanding.
The point of understanding the nature of the Shroud of Turin is not to shake anyone's faith. It is simply to understand the truth (an important concept to any Christian) of an item.
This reminds me of the Star Trek TNG episode "Rightful Heir", where Kahless returned to unite the Klingon people. It turned out he was a clone and not the "real" or original Kahless, but in the end, it did not matter. Faith and spirituality transcends historical authenticity.
That's a fun little plot that extends into Star Trek DS9, in "The Sword of Kahless" they find the sword, but this time it turns out that it actually is the original sword, but instead of uniting over it, it threatens to divide the Klingon people, and so they leave it drifting in space.
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.
Readit News
What they said was that it's not fake, but its not exactly real either, in the sense that its not Jesus. What we're seeing is the image of a man who was tortured the way Jesus was said to have been tortured, including the crucifixion. But the man was a crusading Knight, and the authors even think they can name him: Jaques de Molay, commander of the Knights Templar. After being tortured he was wrapped in his linen shroud (one of the few personal possessions that the template owned) and he recovered to be put on trial and ultimately burned at the stake. The shroud was folded up and put away and then he image formed slowly over years, by some chemical process which the authors explained but I can't remember.
This explains the carbon dating and the apparent mystery regarding the details of the crucifixion injuries: traditionally Jesus is depicted with holes in his hands but apparently that does not actually work. The wrists must be nailed instead, as seen in the shroud.
They also claim to have proven that the mans knees were bent as apparently this is the only way to explain the proportions.
I doubt it was a very scientific assessment but it was still fascinating to read.They even claimed that the shroud first appeared in the possession of someone who might have been a relative based on the name (can't remember the details now)
[0] https://www.gotquestions.org/nails-hands-wrists.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAbuG-oVq1Q
Fr. Andrew Dalton is a Sindonologist(?), somebody who studies the shroud, but not necessarily from a scientific perspective. Sindonology isn’t exactly embraced by Shermer in his article, or, apparently, by the scientific community in general. I hadn’t encountered the term before, but at a glance it seems to have all the scientific rigor of ufology or cryptozoology.
What I’ve heard so far in the video isn’t new evidence, but enthusiastic re-hashing of previous topics that have already been discussed to death. The video offers precisely the kinds of suspicious arguments that Shermer talks about. Exactly, in the case of C14 dating, “French invisible weaves”, and corner-holding-contamination.
I hadn’t encountered the AZ 1 & 2 C14 differences though and I’d be curious to get more details. He only briefly mentions them and doesn’t provide anything further. Fr. Dalton seems to point people to shroud.com which he calls “the most scientific of websites’ - that statement seems dubious at best, and browsing the site doesn’t change my impression.
I do appreciate that towards the end of the video that Fr. Dalton completely acknowledges that there is no evidence dating the shroud to the 1st century. All the other discussion around the “historical facts” surrounding JC, such as the kind of crown we supposedly wore, the kind of cross he supposedly carried, etc. is very eye-brow raising. The discussion of Eucharistic miracles and the prevalence of the AB blood type is similarly…interesting.
At the end of the day the authenticity of the shroud is a matter of faith. Evidence doesn’t seem like it should be important.
I also thought the debunking of the 1988 "findings" made a lot of sense.
I'm not saying that it is "authentic" in that it is the impression of Christ from the Resurrection. What I am saying is that using our best scientific methods, we still have no explanation for how it came to exist.
I suppose I should ask, what kind of evidence are you looking for that would make something convincing to you?
They were absolutely capable of painting a negative of a portrait.
And, by the way, the image on the shroud is not made of paint, so contemporary proficiency with painting techniques hardly seems relevant.
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.
If you want to get Bayesian on it, the base rate of confirmed art forgeries and religious artifact forgeries is non-trivial, but the base rate of confirmed creators of the universe manifesting has human form is zero.
Strobe lights didn't exist in the 14th century either.
Also, is the implication that undead Jesus was twitching rapidly and flashing on and off? That is kind of cool, perhaps I should get religion.
I don't see that as a reason to Revere any item.
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.
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?
But that video is one month old, so—?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/jesus...
That's the least asinine article I could find. It's even dumber than this article suggests.
The crucifix in a local parish was commissioned just a few years ago, and the artisan who sculpted it in Mexico used the Shroud as a guide for the imagery. The painful stripes of scourging, the dripping of blood, the skinned knees, the pathetic expression on this man's face: they are all quite realistic and they perfectly evoke Christ's suffering for me, and for hundreds of other parishioners, especially the donors who contributed to beautify the sanctuary.
There are plenty of truly authenticated relics -- actual body parts of saints -- and I've come into contact with some of them. It's really amazing to have this connection to holiness. And you need to really understand the relationship of Christians with relics. The relic has no power in itself. The relic is not a miraculous talisman. The relic is simply a physical manifestation of a saint, who is very much alive to us. Though we cannot embrace such a saint, or hear them speak to us, they are present to us through the relic, and we invoke their intercession while touching the relic, because body and soul are one, and will be reunited.
My faith would not be shaken if this were proved fake. I simply don't rely on archaeology to prove my faith. Nobody should. I believe that archaeology and 99% of today's Scripture scholarship is an exercise in futility and misdirection. Live the life or don't live it. Be an atheist if you want. But don't tell us what to believe.
And I also agree that faith shouldn't be based on physical proof or analysis of this kind, which is always subject to the specter of fraud or misunderstanding.
The point of understanding the nature of the Shroud of Turin is not to shake anyone's faith. It is simply to understand the truth (an important concept to any Christian) of an item.
Both the fact that such fine and rare objects still exist, and our incredible techniques for studying the ancient past.
> but there's simply no good explanation of how it was imprinted.
That's a strong claim! You are implying there is a miracle here, something science can't explain.
I can contest that, as you surely know. Imagine I produce an explanation here...
> But don't tell us what to believe.
The problem is that I can't produce an explanation without implying you should believe it: that's what an explanation is.
Dead Comment
I think i saw the word "paint" somewhere.
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...