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The Shroud Of Turin

Wouldn't Jesus the Christ have been about ten feet tall if the Shroud was the real deal?
 
Burial cloth found in Jerusalem cave casts doubt on authenticity of Turin Shroud
By Matthew Kalman
Last updated at 1:08 AM on 16th December 2009

Archaeologists have discovered the first known burial shroud in Jerusalem from the time of Christ's crucifixion - and say it casts serious doubt on the claimed authenticity of the Turin Shroud.
Ancient shrouds from the period have been found before in the Holy Land, but never in Jerusalem.

Researchers say the weave and design of the shroud discovered in a burial cave near Jerusalem's Old City are completely different to the Turin Shroud.
Radiocarbon tests and artefacts found in the cave prove almost beyond doubt that it was from the same time of Christ's death.
It was made with a simple two-way weave - not the twill weave used on the Turin Shroud, which textile experts say was introduced more than 1,000 years after Christ lived.
And instead of being a single sheet like the famous item in Turin, the Jerusalem shroud is made up of several sections, with a separate piece for the head.

Professor Shimon Gibson, the archaeologist who discovered the tomb, said ancient writings and contemporary shrouds from other areas had suggested this design, and the Jerusalem shroud finally provided the physical evidence.

The debate over the Turin Shroud will not go away. Last month a Vatican researcher said she had found the words 'Jesus Nazarene' on the shroud, proving it was the linen cloth which was wrapped around Christ's body.
Barbara Frale said computer analysis of photographs of the shroud revealed extremely faint words written in Greek, Aramaic and Latin which attested to its authenticity.

But the shroud-wrapped body dated to the time of Christ discovered in Jerusalem seems to point in the opposite direction.
The shroud was found around the remains of a man in a sealed chamber of a burial cave in the Hinnom Valley overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem by archaeologists from the Hebrew University and the Albright Research Institute, both in Jerusalem.
DNA tests indicated the man had suffered from leprosy and died of tuberculosis.
That was probably why his burial cave was sealed - a move that preserved the shroud and even some of the man's hair for 2,000 years.

Professor Gibson said the Turin Shroud did not fit what was known of burial practices in first-century Palestine - now confirmed by the Jerusalem shroud.
'The Turin shroud is a single sheet made with a twill weave.

'The twill weave is known from this part of the world only from the mediaeval period, so we're talking about something that's from the Middle Ages,' Gibson told the Daily Mail.
'But the Jerusalem shroud confirmed another local practice which casts even more doubt on the Turin artefact.
'It wasn't one continuous sheet,' said Gibson, pointing out the Turin Shroud is a single rectangular sheet measuring about 14ft by 3ft.
'What our shroud shows is that the practice of having a separate shroud or wrapping for the body and for the head was common practice.

'There was a separate wrapping for the head itself, which was very important because when they brought someone to burial they would place the head wrapping separately on the face in case the person wasn't actually dead and woke up again, they would be able to blow off the face wrapping and shout for help,' said Gibson.
'This did occur quite a lot in antiquity because they didn't have the medical means we have today.
'The idea was that if you enshrouded somebody, you had a separate set of wrappings for the body and a separate set of wrappings for the head,' he said.
Ancient rabbinical writings mention people who woke up, apparently miraculously and lived for years afterwards.

It was the custom at the time for the family to visit the tomb after three days to check their relative was indeed dead.
Gibson said this was probably the source of the Gospel story about Jesus's followers visiting his tomb three days after the Crucifixion, when they found it empty.
The chamber may have been sealed because he suffered from tuberculosis
The Hinnom Valley where the Jerusalem shroud was discovered has long been associated with death. The Gospel of Matthew calls it Akeldama or 'Field of Blood.'

It is dotted with Roman-era burial tombs carved out of caves in the rock face.

In ancient times, pagan tribes burned children alive there as offerings to the god Moloch.

The ancient Israelites called the valley Gehinnom - the Hebrew for 'Hell' - and it was the site where the scapegoat was driven over a cliff on the Day of Atonement in Solomon's Temple.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... z0ZqWt7GQu
 
Ho hum... :roll:

Is this the face of Jesus? Computer artists claim to have recreated Christ's face from Shroud of Turin
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 7:54 AM on 31st March 2010

Computer artists claim to have recreated the face of Jesus Christ using digital technology.
The image was created by taking information and blood encoded on the Turin Shroud - the blood-stained linen that many believe was the burial cloth of the crucified Jesus Christ - and transforming it into a 3D image.
In a two-hour TV special on the History Channel, to air in the U.S. tonight, the computer artists will reveal their image of Jesus in full.

But the results may surprise some viewers. According to the company that made the image it does not resemble the popularized version of Jesus.
Computer artist Ray Downing, the president of Studio Macbeth, said: 'We 'lifted' the blood and isolated it [on the computer] so that it would sit 'in air' [on a transparent background].'
He explained that because the Turin Shroud was wrapped around, rather than being draped on the body, the blood was transferred to the cloth as it was wound.
Therefore it did not align with the places on the face from which it originated.

The ancient shroud contains a faint impression of the front and back of a human body, along with blood, dirt and water stains.

The year-long project culminated with a team of graphic artists using the newest technology to create a computer-generated image.
'I have a lot of information about that face and my estimation is we're pretty darn close to what this man looked like,' Mr Downing said.
Mr Downing claims that his technique of computer imaging actually uncovered what substance created the image on the shroud and enabled him to see for the first time the actual face of Jesus.
And he said he said he would offer an explanation for how the image ended up on the shroud.

Downing added: 'I will reveal at the end of the show the type of event that must have occurred 2,000 years ago.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... z0jkaBWCme
 
Well then, I'll raise you a Hitler!

Hitler 'wanted to steal' Turin Shroud
The Turin Shroud, said to be the burial cloth of Christ, was secretly hidden in a Benedictine abbey during the Second World War because the Vatican feared that Adolf Hitler wanted to steal it.
Nick Squires in Rome
Published: 10:28PM BST 06 Apr 2010

The shroud was transferred for its safety to the Benedictine sanctuary of Montevergine in Avellino, in the southern Campania region of Italy in 1939 and was only transferred to Turin in 1946.

The current director of the library at the abbey, Father Andrea Cardin, said the reason behind the move was because Hitler was "obsessed" with the sacred relic.

Both the Vatican and the Italian royal family, the Savoys, who were the guardians and owners of the shroud, feared that the German leader, who had an interest in the esoteric, might try to steal the linen cloth.

In an interview with an Italian magazine, Diva e Donna, Father Cardin said: "The Holy Shroud was moved in secret to the sanctuary in the Campania region on the precise orders of the House of Savoy and the Vatican.

"Officially this was to protect it from possible bombing (in Turin). In reality, it was moved to hide it from Hitler who was apparently obsessed by it. When he visited Italy in 1938, top-ranking Nazi aides asked unusual and insistent questions about the Shroud."

Father Cardin, a Benedictine monk, said that after Italy entered the war in alliance with Hitler, and German forces were sent to Italy, the shroud was very nearly discovered in its secret hiding place.

"In 1943 when German troops searched the Montevergine church, the monks there pretended to be in deep prayer before the altar, inside which the relic was hidden. This was the only reason it wasn't discovered."

The shroud, which is supposed to have wrapped Christ's body after he was crucified, was returned to Turin in 1946 on the orders of Italy's last king, Umberto II.

The monarchy was abolished in 1946 when Italy voted in a referendum to become a republic, and ownership of the shroud eventually passed to the Holy See.

While millions of people believe the shroud to be authentic, sceptics believe it is a medieval fake.

Tests conducted 20 years ago dated the fabric of the relic to between 1260 and 1390, although the results have been vigorously disputed.

The linen cloth, which measures 14.4ft by 3.6ft, is imprinted with the image of a man bearing all the signs of crucifixion, including blood stains. It will go on display in Turin Cathedral this weekend for six weeks and is expected to be seen by up to two million visitors, including Pope Benedict XVI during an official visit in May.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... hroud.html
 
Going to Italy?

Visitors flock to see the Turin Shroud as it goes on display for the fifth time in 100 years
By Nick Pisa
Last updated at 11:55 AM on 10th April 2010

The Turin Shroud has gone on display for the fifth time in 100 years.
Those who visit the Turin Cathedral in Italy for the exhibition will be allowed just five minutes to look at the shroud, thought to have covered Jesus Christ at his burial.
Vatican officials, who are ultimately in charge of the 12ft-long linen cloth, have said they are expecting an astonishing two million people to visit the exhibition over the next six weeks.

etc...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... z0khHgw37O
 
New readers start here - a summary of the shroud history, plus an annotated image of it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8615029.stm

Nothing really new, apart from this:
The centre [International Centre of Sindonology in Turin] plans to produce "an accurate map of the cloth" to discern whether it was made from the same cloth or contains repairs. Once that has been completed the carbon dating will be repeated, [Bruno Barberis, director] says.
 
Shroud of Turin is a fake created by famous master Giotto, claims Italian art expert
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:25 AM on 8th June 2011

The Shroud of Turin was made by medieval artist Giotto, it was claimed yesterday.
The 14ft length of fabric, said to be the burial cloth of Christ, bears a faint image of a man and appears to be stained by blood.

However carbon-dating tests have suggested it was produced between 1260 and 1390.
Now Italian art expert Luciano Buso has suggested that the original cloth deteriorated and Giotto was asked to make a copy.
After months of careful examination of photographs of the Shroud - the relic is kept locked away and not available to be viewed unless on special occasions - Luciano Buso has come up with an idea worthy of a Da Vinci Code thriller.
He says that several veiled appearances of the number 15, hidden in the fabric by the artist, indicate Giotto created the Shroud in 1315 - and that it is a copy of the original which had been damaged and was then lost over the centuries.

Giotto was perhaps the best known artist of his time and was made famous for his decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, the fresco that depicts the life of the Virgin Mary and Christ.

Mr Buso insists that 700 years ago it was common practice for artists to insert partial dates into their works so as to guarantee their authenticity and it was known only to a handful of people so as to avoid forgeries.
His claims, which form part of a new book he has written, would coincide with 1980's carbon dating - which has been dismissed by the Church - and which puts the Shroud's origins in the early 14th century.

Buso, who is based in Treviso, northern Italy, said: 'I have examined extremely clear photos of the Shroud and spotted a number of occurrences of the number 15, in the face, the hands, and in one case even shaped to look like a long cross.
'He wasn't trying to fake anything, which is clear from the fact that he signed it ''Giotto 15'', to authenticate it as his own work from 1315. This was not a fake he was asked to make a copy of the original one.
'This original one was probably so deteriorated the Church asked one of the greatest artists at the time, Giotto, to make a copy and then the original was lost. What we have now is a copy of that one.
'For obvious reasons it was not widely publicised that it was a copy as that would have had repercussions for the Church - who I understand have been dismissive of my theory but I am confident that I am correct.'

No-one at Turin Cathedral where the Shroud is kept was available for comment but Professor Bruno Barberis, director of the Shroud Museum, said: 'I think the theory is ridiculous.
'His claim that Giotto made the Shroud are not very convincing to me and as far as we are concerned it was not made by an artistic method. Many people claim to have seen Greek and Hebrew writing in the Shroud but it's never been proven.
'We believe that the image on the Shroud was made by the body of a man who was tortured and then crucified - however there are still many tests that need to be carried out to prove one way or another what it's origins are.'

Last year Pope Benedict spent several minutes kneeling in front of the linen cloth, after it went on display for only the fifth time in 100 years and he was one of two million people who saw it during a six week viewing.
The Shroud has captivated the imagination of historians, church elders, sceptics and Catholics for more than 500 years.
Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was obsessed by it and wanted to steal it so he could use it in a black magic ceremony, a monk revealed for the first time last year.

The 14ft-long Shroud bears the faint image of the front and back of a tall, long-haired, bearded man and appears to be stained by blood from wounds in his feet, wrists and side.
Originally the Vatican had intended for the Shroud's next display to be 2025 but in 2009 Pope Benedict announced it would be brought forward 15 years.

For centuries debate has raged whether the image is that of Christ or an expert forgery from the Middle Ages but what is certain is that experts have never really been able to explain how the image was made.
Carbon-dating tests were conducted on the cloth in 1988 and suggested it was from between 1260 and 1390, other scientists have since claimed that contamination over the ages, from water damage and fire, were not taken sufficiently into account and could have distorted the results.
As a result of controversy and the fact that dating techniques have improved significantly since the 1988 tests were done, there have been numerous calls for further testing but the Vatican has always refused.
The Shroud was given to the Turin archbishop in 1578 by the Duke of Savoy and has been kept in the Cathedral ever since.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... xpert.html
 
The Shroud is real and it was created by a 'supernatural event', say scientists. Or, was it? Says other scientist.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-say-turin-shroud-is-supernatural-6279512.html

Scientists say Turin Shroud is supernatural

Independent online. Michael Day, Rome. 20 December 2011

Italian government scientists have claimed to have discovered evidence that a supernatural event formed the image on the Turin Shroud, believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

After years of work trying to replicate the colouring on the shroud, a similar image has been created by the scientists.

However, they only managed the effect by scorching equivalent linen material with high-intensity ultra violet lasers, undermining the arguments of other research, they say, which claims the Turin Shroud is a medieval hoax.

Such technology, say researchers from the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Enea), was far beyond the capability of medieval forgers, whom most experts have credited with making the famous relic.

"The results show that a short and intense burst of UV directional radiation can colour a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin," they said.

And in case there was any doubt about the preternatural degree of energy needed to make such distinct marks, the Enea report spells it out: "This degree of power cannot be reproduced by any normal UV source built to date."

A statement by lead researcher, Dr Paolo Di Lazzaro, said: "If our results prompt a philosophical or theological debate, these conclusions we'll leave to the experts; to each person's own conscience," he said.

Luigi Garlaschelli, a professor of chemistry at Pavia University, told The Independent: "The implications are... that the image was formed by a burst of UV energy so intense it could only have been supernatural. But I don't think they've done anything of the sort."
You pays your money and you takes your pick. :)
 
The Telegraph adds:
The research, conducted in laboratories in Frascati, a town outside Rome famous for its white wine, backs up the outcome of tests by a group of 31 American scientists between 1978 and 1981.

The Americans – who called themselves the Shroud of Turin Research Project or STURP – conducted 120 hours of X-rays and ultraviolet light tests on the linen cloth.

They concluded that the marks were not made by paints, pigments or dyes and that the image was not "the product of an artist", but that at the same time it could not be explained by modern science.

"There are no chemical or physical methods known which can account for the totality of the image, nor can any combination of physical, chemical, biological or medical circumstances explain the image adequately."

The US team – which included nuclear physicists, thermal chemists, biophysicists and forensic pathologists – concluded: "The image is an ongoing mystery." One of Christianity's greatest objects of veneration, the shroud appears to show the imprint of a man with long hair and a beard whose body bears wounds consistent with having been crucified.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religio ... -robe.html
 
So it's official - Jesus Christ really was about ten feet tall.
 
Ronson8 said:
I bet all those scientists are dyed-in-the-wool christians. :roll:

I'm pretty sure Christians didn't have a majority in STURP. And disregarding evidence provided by Christian scientists is no different to disregarding evidence by atheist scientists. They both have their axe to grind.
 
gncxx said:
So it's official - Jesus Christ really was about ten feet tall.
Eh, where'd you get that from?

The shroud is 14' long, but it was apparently folded to cover the front and back of the body. Allowing for it folding around the head, plus a bit of overhang at the feet, the body was probably 6' max.
 
rynner2 said:
gncxx said:
So it's official - Jesus Christ really was about ten feet tall.
Eh, where'd you get that from?

The shroud is 14' long, but it was apparently folded to cover the front and back of the body. Allowing for it folding around the head, plus a bit of overhang at the feet, the body was probably 6' max.

I'm sure I read somewhere ages ago that the figure on the shroud was really tall. Must have been mistaken.
 
I´ve read the same thing actually, that the figure on the shroud is much longer than a normal human being. Sadly I couldn´t tell you where.
 
Catholics do seem to love gazing at this image of a tall, muscular, beardy man all whipped and pierced in strange places.

If they Google a bit, they'll find there are lots of them. :shock:
 
Doh! Why didn't I think of this! ;)

Mystery solved? Turin Shroud linked to Resurrection of Christ
The Turin Shroud has baffled scholars through the ages but in his new book, The Sign, Thomas de Wesselow reveals a new theory linking the cloth to the Resurrection.

By Peter Stanford
7:00AM GMT 24 Mar 2012

For centuries the Turin Shroud, regarded by some as the burial cloth of Jesus, by others as the most elaborate hoax in history, has inspired extraordinary and conflicting passions. Popes, princes and paupers have for 700 years been making pilgrimages the length of Europe to stand in its presence while scientists have dedicated their whole working lives to trying to explain rationally how the ghostly image on the cloth, even more striking when seen as a photographic negative, and matching in every last detail the crucifixion narrative, could have been created. And still a final, commonly agreed answer remains elusive, despite carbon-dating in 1988 having pronounced it a forgery.

“That’s what first attracted me,” says Thomas de Wesselow, an engagingly serious 40-year-old Cambridge academic. “I’ve always loved a mystery ever since I was a boy.” And so he became the latest in a long line to abandon everything to try to solve the riddle of the Shroud.

Eight years ago, de Wesselow was a successful art historian, based at King’s College, making a name for himself in scholarly circles by taking a fresh look at centuries-old disputes over the attribution of masterpieces of Renaissance painting. Today, he still lives in the university city – we are sitting in its Fitzwilliam Museum café – but de Wesselow has thrown up his conventional career and any hopes of a professorial chair to join the ranks of what he laughingly calls “shroudies”.

“In academia, the subject of the Shroud is seen as toxic,” he reports, “and no one wants to open the can of worms, but try as I might I just couldn’t resist it as an intellectual puzzle.”

For most “shroudies”, though, it is more than just intellectual. It offers that elusive but faith-validating proof that Jesus died exactly as the gospels say he did. But again it gets complicated, for the Vatican, since 1983 the owner of this hotly disputed icon, disappoints “shroudies” by limiting itself to declaring that the burial cloth is a representation of Jesus’s crucified body, not his actual linen wrap. And it has accepted the carbon-dating tests as conclusive.

De Wesselow dismisses those tests as “fatally flawed”. So, although he describes himself as agnostic, he now finds himself in the curious position of being more of a believer in the Shroud than the Pope. His historical detective work has convinced him, he insists, that it is exactly what it purports to be — the sheet that was wrapped round Jesus’s battered body when it was cut down from the cross on Calvary.

But that isn’t the half of it. His new book, The Sign, the latest in a long line of tomes about the Shroud, makes an even more astonishing claim in its 450 pages (including over 100 of footnotes). It was, suggests de Wesselow, seeing the Shroud in the days immediately after the crucifixion, rather than any encounter with a flesh and blood, risen Christ, that convinced the apostles that Jesus had come back from the dead.

If true, I point out, he is overturning 2,000 years of Christian history. But he doesn’t even blink over his teacup. He’s either a very cool, calculating chancer, single-mindedly out to make a quick buck with an eye-catching theory that caters for gullible readers of the likes of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail or Erich von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods, or he’s absolutely sincere. “I am an art historian,” he responds calmly, “not a theologian, so I can approach the problem from a new angle.”

It feels like we’ve reached a moment for laying our cards on the table before we start examining the details of his theory. The exact nature of the Resurrection troubles me, as it does many Christians. Was it physical, against all the laws of nature but as the Church claims, or was it “symbolic”, as the Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins, famously suggested in 1984?

Jenkins’s use of the phrase “a conjuring trick with bones” may have caused outrage – and was, he said later, a misquotation – but his willingness to question a “literal” resurrection did not put him so far outside the Christian mainstream as is often suggested.

“For my part I come from a standard Church of England background,” says de Wesselow (who was raised in Winchester; his exotic surname results from his Frenchified Russian ancestry). “Church was a familiar, likeable institution but it hasn’t impinged on my life too much.” The first challenge he faces is how to place the Shroud in first-century Jerusalem. The standard historical record of the Shroud – broadly endorsed by carbon-dating – traces its first appearance back to the 1350s in rural France, when a knight called Geoffrey de Charny put it on display in his local church. “But where did he get it from?” de Wesselow asks, perfectly reasonably.

He highlights a connection between the French knight and the Crusaders who sacked Constantinople in 1204. “And we have a description of a cloth, that sounds very like the Shroud, that had been seen before that in Constantinople, described as the burial cloth of Jesus, that then goes missing and is never heard of again.” So, de Wesselow’s theory is that it was taken to France by the Crusaders as looted bounty.

But what were the origins of the cloth in Constantinople? This brings us to the oddly named “Holy Mandylion” (man-dill-e-on), a long lost relic in Eastern Christianity, said to be the imprint of Jesus’s face. “The Mandylion was brought to Constantinople in 944,” says de Wesselow. “That is recorded. It was an object of fascination, said not to be made of paint but of blood, and described as a landscape shape, rather than a portrait.”

The legend of the Mandylion is also given a reworking by de Wesselow. That cloth looted in 1204 was, he proposes, also the Mandylion. Its landscape format, he suggests with the aid of diagrams, was the result of it being the top fold of a bigger cloth – what we know as the Turin Shroud.

It is an intriguing theory, with plenty of circumstantial evidence in those 100 pages of notes, and even mention of possible sightings back in the mid-sixth century, but nothing more precise. At the risk of sounding like an accountant, that leaves us 500 years short of first century Jerusalem.

“Yes,” de Wesselow replies, with just a hint of impatience, “but we are sitting here in the Fitzwilliam Museum and in its display cases are plenty of objects whose exact provenance includes long gaps. That happens very often in art history. A Caravaggio turns up in the 19th century and we have no idea from where, but we can use science and detective work to attribute it to him.”

In the case of the Shroud, that science includes two tests: one for pollen in the fibres that shows the cloth to be more than 1,300 years old, published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2005 “but ignored despite being good science”: and another by a textile expert, during a 2002 restoration, that found parallels between the Shroud’s warp and weave and those of first century Jewish cloths.

What is becoming plain in our discussion is that in making his claims, de Wesselow has done very little first-hand research himself. His contribution has to be to gather up the work of others, re-examine past investigations (he draws heavily on the digging done by British author, Ian Wilson, a key figure before the carbon-dating tests, now living in retirement in Australia), and then tease out new conclusions. He is, essentially, taking existing pieces of a jigsaw and assembling them in a new and startling pattern.

It is not a description he particularly likes when I put it to him, but neither does he substantially contradict it. Instead he admits to a dislike of the popular “personal quest” genre of books that walk and talk their way through whole continents attempting to solve, among other subjects, the mysterious configuration of the pyramids or the fate of Atlantis.

“That always seems to me a very artificial way of going about it,” says de Wesselow, whose research by contrast was largely done at his desk or in libraries, save for one episode he recounts in the book when the connection between the Shroud and Resurrection came to him in a kind of eureka moment in the garden of his Cambridge house.

Having established – at least for the purposes of argument – the Shroud in first century Israel, it is now time to turn to his potentially even more earth-shaking theory, namely that the Resurrection was a kind of optical illusion.

Christianity teaches that Peter, James, Thomas, Mary Magdalene and up to 500 other disciples saw Jesus in the flesh, back from the dead, in the ultimate proof that he was God. De Wesselow rejects this “divine mystery” in favour of something that he believes is much more plausible.

What the apostles were seeing was the image of Jesus on the Shroud, which they then mistook for the real thing. It sounds, I can’t help suggesting, as absurd as a scene from a Monty Python film.
“I quite understand why you say that,” he replies, meeting me half way this time, “but you have to think your way into the mindset of 2,000 years ago. The apostles did see something out of the ordinary, the image on the cloth.

“And at that time – this is something that art historians and anthropologists know about – people were much less used to seeing images. They were rare and regarded as much more special than they are now.
“There was something Animist in their way of looking at images in the first century. Where they saw shadows and reflections, they also saw life. They saw the image on the cloth as the living double of Jesus.
Back then images had a psychological presence, they were seen as part of a separate plain of existence, as having a life of their own.”

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religio ... hrist.html
 
Full text at link.

Exhibit A in a 2,000-year-old mystery
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/fea ... 82989.html
ARMINTA WALLACE

Mon, Mar 26, 2012

THE Shroud of Turin. A full-length, double-sided, front-and-back image of a crucified man imprinted on yellowed linen. On the respectable sceptic’s list of extremely dodgy propositions, it’s right up there alongside UFOs and Elvis sightings. But that may be about to change. A book published today argues that the shroud really is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ – and that it turns everything we think we know about the Easter origins of Christian faith, quite literally, on its head.

The author of The Sign, Thomas de Wesselow, is remarkably calm for a man who’s about to step into the stormy waters of shroud-spotting. A youthful-looking 40-year-old Cambridge art historian, he is the epitome of diffident Englishness.

“I’m not somebody who naturally seeks attention and publicity,” he says, almost apologetically, as we perch on seats in an upper room at Penguin’s cavernous publishing headquarters on The Strand in London.

“I wouldn’t have done this unless I really thought the ideas were valuable. And I wanted people to know about it. I think when people read the book they’ll see where I’m coming from. It’s all completely rational, and it helps make sense of, well, the history of the whole world, really.”

Historical art puzzles are de Wesselow’s passion. After having spent four years at King’s College, Cambridge doing post-doctoral research on a 14th-century Italian painting which had been denounced as a fake, he reckons he knows a thing or two about identifying forgeries. “Images are meat and drink to art historians,” he says. “We’re used to looking at them in relation to history, and how that’s represented in texts. There’s also a lot of looking at the technical characteristics of works of art. So in a way, this is just a rather unusual form of art history.”

Art history with attitude, perhaps. Few 14th-century paintings have inspired such intense worldwide controversy as the Shroud of Turin. For centuries, people have tried to replicate the effect - using every technique in the art forgery book - without success. Until very recently, meanwhile, scientists conducted exhaustive tests on the bloodstains and other marks on the cloth, as well as on pollen and fibre samples taken from it.

After immersing himself in all the alternatives, explanations and excuses for the shroud over a period of seven years - and reconstructing them in lively fashion in The Sign – de Wesselow completely accepts its authenticity.

“The evidence of the image itself – blood, everything – points to this being a real burial-cloth from first-century Palestine,” he says.

In the book, however, he goes on to make an even more astonishing claim. Having concluded that the shroud really was the burial shroud of Jesus, he found himself wondering why it wasn’t mentioned in the Bible’s Easter narratives. Then he had a eureka moment. “I’m very visual,” he says. “I see problems visually. So I’m thinking about this, and why don’t they mention it in the gospel texts, and then I think, ‘Hang on a minute. The figure of the angel; the details about one, or sometimes two, men being present in Jesus’s tomb. Oh, my God’ . . .”

He believes that the figures – described in the gospels as dressed in white, and luminous – were not supernatural apparitions but, in fact, the shroud itself, as seen through the eyes of first-century Palestinians.
 
No matter how much evidence there is to the contrary, believers will believe and nothing will change their minds.
 
I don't think there is any reason to believe that first century Palestinians were that stupid. That's 21st century arrogance talking.
 
There's a good case that Jesus was not actually dead but was rescued. (See earlier in the thread for details.)

So the disciples might have found an empty tomb, with perhaps the burial shroud in it. But whether they thought what Thomas de Wesselow claims is another matter!
 
There's enough evidence to cast doubt on the carbon dating anyway. And although people have managed to make 'almost' similar images, I've never seen anything that mimics the total details of the Shroud.

Having said that, I don't know why the Shroud's authenticity is immediately tagged onto the question of whether Jesus Christ died and rose again or didn't. For one thing, there's no name on the Shroud. It could be anyone. Whether or not Christ died and rose again, faked his death and spent Easter in a speed boat in the Med, or was or was not the Son of God shouldn't matter. The Shroud is one thing, and Christianity is another.

The Shroud should be examined on its own merits. If it's a fake, it doesn't mean the whole of Christianity is a fake. If it's genuine, it doesn't prove Christianity was right so there.
 
Ravenstone said:
There's enough evidence to cast doubt on the carbon dating anyway. And although people have managed to make 'almost' similar images, I've never seen anything that mimics the total details of the Shroud.
If it was a true image the face would look splayed out as the cloth would have draped over the sides of the face.
 
Ravenstone said:
The Shroud is one thing, and Christianity is another.

The Shroud should be examined on its own merits. If it's a fake, it doesn't mean the whole of Christianity is a fake. If it's genuine, it doesn't prove Christianity was right so there.

And there it is.
 
CarlosTheDJ said:
Ravenstone said:
The Shroud is one thing, and Christianity is another.

The Shroud should be examined on its own merits. If it's a fake, it doesn't mean the whole of Christianity is a fake. If it's genuine, it doesn't prove Christianity was right so there.

And there it is.

There was a huge trade in fake religious relics in medieval times. (As Baldrick pointed out in the first Blackadder series) . Probably there still is. But that in itself only tells us about human greed, nothing about any religions whose holy items are being faked.

I personally think its an obvious medieval fake, though I can't tell you how it was done any more than I can decipher the Voynich manuscript. Knowledge is not a case of uniform forward progress - there are things done as recently as a century ago that we have lost the skills to do now.
 
One theory is that the shroud was created by draping the cloth over a stone bas relief and scorching it with a hot iron.

There are records of a relic called the hand towel, which was marked with a human face-some think this was the shroud folded more times.

Faking relics was a big industry then, people wanted to believe and sometimes the only authentication was an old story or even the testimony of some 'holy man'.

Look up the "Holy Lance'', aka, 'The Spear of Destiny',similar story.
 
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