- The burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth
- The burial cloth of another First Century crucified man
- A relic from Medieval times
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A fraud. I.e. none of the above. Looks like a Da Vinci doesnât it.
Define ârelicâ please.
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Given those three options, âa relic from Medieval timesâ can only mean: An object created in the Middle Ages that is not the actual burial cloth of Jesus and not the burial cloth of any first-century crucified man. In other words, in that poll it functions as the catch-all ânone of the belowâ category, i.e.
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a medieval devotional object,
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perhaps a painted or otherwise manufactured image,
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venerated as a relic,
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but with no direct historical connection to an actual crucifixion in the first century.
Nothing more specific is forced by the wordingâjust: Medieval origin, not an authentic first-century burial cloth.
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Which is why one has to force the obvious. Fraud. Genius fraud.
On a parallel with a conspiracy theory
Some people like to believe it is what is purports to be.
Richard
If we assume certain things about the survey.
It is also reaonable to assume, as there are so many examples out in the real world, that it is a poorly designed survey.
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A remarkably talented man, Da Vinci. Who else could have created a painting a century before being born?
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Absolutely, but it shows what was au courant culturally, in my beholderâs share.
I have long considered the Shroud a fake but have softened on my confidence quite a bit. I donât think conspiracy theory is adequate here.
In 1988, three independent labs put the cloth between 1260 and 1390 via radiocarbon dating. So it must definitely be a medieval forgery right?
This has been challenged by some researchers on the grounds that it was later repairs that were tested and/ it was argued theses dates were influenced by contamination possibly from a fire.
Encyclopedia Brittanica relays the following:
In 2022 researchers in Italy published the results of a study in which they used the technique of wide-angle X-ray scattering(WAXS) to analyze a small piece of the shroud. The study concluded that the structural degradations of the shroudâs linen were âfully compatibleâ with those of another linen sample that has been dated, according to historical records, to 55â74 CE. Environmental carbon contamination was suggested as the source of the discrepancy between those findings and the results of the carbon dating in the 1980s. The 2022 studyâs results bolstered the hypothesisthat the Shroud of Turin truly is from the time of Christ, although the researchers made no conclusion regarding the shroudâs authenticity as a relic and also noted that further testing is needed to confirm their conclusions.
I donât think conspiracy theory is adequate here since the scientific evidence appears consistent with a first-century date. Iâd honestly like to read the 2022 article.
Vinnie
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The intcal carbon dating curve has been constructed using thousands of independent tree ring and varve counted known dates. How many data points did this study use to calibrate x-ray scattering?
Carbon dating has been utilized on anybodyâs guess how many times to date artifacts, and by success and failure the required techniques and limitations are well understood. How widely has x-ray scattering been used, and what has been the feedback?
Here is the actual study: X-ray Dating of Ancient Linen Fabrics
and a follow up: Mechanical ond opto-chemical dating of the Turin Shroud
The work speaks for itself - no need to detail a rebuttal.
I have a similarly rigorous, proven, and completely objective and detached technique of my own. I took some of my newer and older all cotton t-shirts, and fed them to goats. I plotted how long it took for the goat the chew them down, and found that after outliers were removed that the older the shirt the quicker they were eaten. This curve can be extrapolated to date the shroud.
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There are some major problems with the WAXS method.
First, it hasnât been proven to work. At all. There have been no successful tests that demonstrate it can date fibres.
Second, it has been shown that the method produces widely varying results on cloth that has been heated, or exposed to chemicals such as pectin or methanol. The method canât be used to date anything unless the temperature at which the cloth has been stored is known - which for the shroud is not the case. That is particularly true if the shroud was damaged in a fire.
Third, there is no chain of custody for the âshroudâ sample that was used for the WAXS testing. It may not even have been shroud material that was tested (comparing the information in the carbon dating paper on how the samples were transported to the labs with the equivalent information in the WAXS paper makes the differences clear).
Fourth, the actual result of using WAXS on the shroud did not show it matched a sample known to be from ~65AD. It shows it to be much younger than that sample (or would, if it worked), probably from ~200AD. That can be seen from the plot in the paper posted by @Terry_Sampson above. Obviously a cloth dating from ~200AD couldnât be Jesusâs shroud. Which may be why:
Fifth, the researchers deleted the precise dates of the comparison samples from their plot when publishing it in a shroud âjournalâ, instead saying that the ~65AD sample was 2000 years old.
P.S. The claims that the material that was C14 dated were not from the shroud are ridiculous, because (i) the material was chosen by the shroud custodians, who wouldnât have been that incompetent, (ii) no-one mentioned this possibility until after the C14 results showed the shroud dated circa the 14th century, and (iii) those people making this claim are not requesting that the tests be redone with a different sample. The claims that the C14 date was a result of fire contamination are even more ridiculous, because for material to be C14 dated to about a third of its actual age would require not only that the sample material was about two-thirds soot and one-third cloth, but also no-one noticed that they were sending charred and blackened threads instead of clean linen.
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You can have a trillion samples of carbon dating. If the sample of the shroud was contaminated or a newer patch was used, none of that matters. No one is disputing the general reliability of radio-carbon dating
As I said, I wanted to read the newer study. But im not going to pick and choose because I pretend to already âknowâ which one is correct beforehand.
Vinnie
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True, but as Roy pointed out, it gets pretty ridiculous. All kinds of custody and identity issues could be pulled out of the thin air for the WAXS studies as well.
Legit. I would be interested to hear back.
That reminds me. IIRC, the sample used for WAXS testing was left over from the C14 testing. So anyone claiming both that the C14 date can be dismissed because they tested the wrong piece of cloth or that it was contaminated and that the WAXS date has any validity can just be laughed at.
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Creative relics were the ubiquitous phishing frauds of the medieval day. Gross anatomy of various apostles and saints, a flame from the burning bush of Moses, Maryâs milk, the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch; every self respecting church or cathedral had to have some object of veneration. That the Shroud was just another such fake was recognized at the time, notably by the bishop of Troyes, Pierre dâArcis, and as has recently been published, Nicole Oresme.
Prior to materializing during this heyday, the Shroud had no definite historical attestation. The out of control proliferation of relics was to prove a leading impetus to the reformation. Luther opposed relics on scriptural grounds and ridiculed them as inauthentic. Calvin enumerated a long list of competing relics of duplicate claim in a Treatise on Relics. He then objects to Shroud veneration based on the gospel account.
The same observations are applicable to the tale of the sheet in which the body of our Lord was wrapped. How is it possible that those sacred historians, who carefully related all the miracles that took place at Christâs death, should have omitted to mention one so remarkable as the likeness of the body of our Lord remaining on its wrapping sheet? This fact undoubtedly deserved to be recorded. St John, in his Gospel, relates even how St Peter, having entered the sepulchre, saw the linen clothes lying on one side, and the napkin that was about his head on the other; but he does not say that there was a miraculous impression of our Lordâs figure upon these clothes, and it is not to be imagined that he would have omitted to mention such a work of God if there had been any thing of this kind. Another point to be observed is, that the evangelists do not mention that either of the disciples or the faithful women who came to the sepulchre had removed the clothes in question, but, on the contrary, their account seems to imply that they were left there. Now, the sepulchre was guarded by soldiers, and consequently the clothes were in their power. Is it possible that they would have permitted the disciples to take them away as relics, since these very men had been bribed by the Pharisees to perjure themselves by saying that the disciples had stolen the body of our Lord? I shall conclude with a convincing proof of the audacity of the Papists. Wherever the holy sudary is exhibited, they show a large sheet with the full-length likeness of a human body on it. Now, St Johnâs Gospel, chapter nineteenth, says that Christ was buried according to the manner of the Jews; and what was their custom? This may be known by their present custom on such occasions, as well as from their books, which describe the ancient ceremony of interment, which was to wrap the body in a sheet, to the shoulders, and to cover the head with a separate cloth. This is precisely how the evangelist described it, saying, that St Peter saw on one side the clothes with which the body had been wrapped, and on the other the napkin from about his head. In short, either St John is a liar, or all those who boast of possessing the holy sudary are convicted of falsehood and deceit.
The authenticity of the Shroud may be rejected on historical grounds alone.
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I canât see his replies so I canât comment on what he said. Sure, things could be pulled out of thin air. But if we want to carbon date something, then that sample should not be contaminated (correct?) and the science needs to be done right. Maybe itâs all good on both fronts. Many scientists seem to think so. I havenât dug too deep. I have seen some groups say so and claim the amount of contamination required to change the date so much is absurdly high. I have seen others say the method itself rules out the fire contamination route. But I think itâs part of good science for studies to be questioned. In fact, a number of researchers have seemingly questioned some aspect of the radiocarbon dating:
Riani, M.; Atkinson, A.C.; Fanti, G.; Crosilla, F. Regression analysis with partially labeled regressors: Carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. Stat. Comput. 2013 , 23, 551â561. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
Rogers, R. Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the Shroud of Turin. Thermochim. Acta 2005, 425, 189â194. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
I have seen one scholar quite upset Rogers was published in that chemistry journal. Their claim was that the peer review process broke down.
I found this source as well in an online discussion:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/arcm.12467
In 1988, three laboratories performed a radiocarbon analysis of the Turin Shroud. The results, which were centralized by the British Museum and published in Nature in 1989, provided âconclusive evidenceâ of the medieval origin of the artefact. However, the raw data were never released by the institutions. In 2017, in response to a legal request, all raw data kept by the British Museum were made accessible. A statistical analysis of the Nature article and the raw data strongly suggests that homogeneity is lacking in the data and that the procedure should be reconsidered.Radiocarbon Dating of the Turin Shroud: New Evidence from Raw Data, T. Casabianca, E. Marinelli, G. Pernagallo, B. Torrisi, 2019
its curious at least that the raw data was kept inaccessible for 30 years.
This is a lot of material to vet and comb through. What I think generally happens to regular folk is they immediately form an opinion on this and are drawn to one side, then repeat what they hear in their echo chambers and allow confirmation bias to refute counter arguments For me, I donât think 5 minutes or 2 hours of research will resolve this issue to my satisfaction. I also canât comment on the legitimacy of the 2022 dating method. I donât know enough about it to confirm or dismiss it. Nor am I even knowledgeable about the status of the journal the paper was published in. I just know I first came across it mentioned by Britannica.
Sure. medieval forgeries were big business. But to use this to claim any specific artifact is a fraud is --I thinkâa composition fallacy. Itâs like saying most Jews at the time of Jesus were illiterate and uneducated, therefore Jesus was illiterate and uneducated. For me, when you want to reconstruct an individual person, an individual artifact or an individual event, you need specific evidence to that particle person, event or artifact. Generic historical evidence allows you to make generic statements, not specific ones.
Sure, someone at the time thought it was fake. This does not prove that it was fake. They could have been wrong just as I am sure you think the many people who thought it was genuine were wrong. I even heard the Bishop calling it fake was losing parishioners to the rival church that had the cloth. âPierre dâarcy was the opposing bishop to the neighboring town which displayed the shroud . You forgot to mention that he was losing parishioners to the opposing towns church.â I have not investigated this claim. But your argument on this front is lacking either way.
Yup, Calvin argued the gospel authors would scarcely have failed to mention this. Did he argue that for the guards at the tomb missing in 3 gospels, or Mark lacking the virgin birth? Does he doubt these stories? Luther the same. Did they both reject Matthewâs saints coming out of the tomb because it shows up in one and would scarcely not be ,mentioned by the others? Did they reject the I am sayings of Jesus because they only show up in John? Or were Calvin and Luther just inconsistently grinding their axes?
Of course, on another front, Calvin and Luther probably accepted traditional authorship and did not think, like a lot of scholars today, the gospel authors were late, anonymous and making many things up. Why would we assume the gospel authors would know about the burial cloth? A bunch of scholars today think the tomb story was made up. This seems to be an argument against those who accept traditional authorship and is of limited valueâespecially in scientific circles. But I would content that given that they thought Jesus rose from the dead, and was possibly returning soon, the cloth might not have been considered as important as it is today for modern readers looking for supernatural and material proof of the God who gives them a whole universe of such proof at every instant. A lot of other reasons have been suggested.
At the end of the day, this is an argument from silence. And that is a logical fallacy as well. It argues from evidence not in the record not to mention incredulity (I canât imagine how no one would mention this) of an incomplete record.
If we want to claim everyone in the early Church and all the fathers the first few centuries knew about this and said nothing, that could make a better good argument against authenticity. But without knowing the actual history of the shroud and who would have known what and considered what important and when, this argument stalls. If all we had to go on was this silence it would most likely sway me, however. If it shows up late in a time of forgeries and no one ever mentioned it prior, itâd easy to be skeptical. If you add three independent teams carbon dating it to 1300ish then you finally have the smoking gun. But you need the smoking gun to be sure. And it has been disputed by some.
Itâs a lot to read. The article you and @Terry_Sampson linked said this:
Moreover, other dating methods agree in the assignment of the TS to the first century AD [5,10,11,12]. Spectroscopic methods, based on Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy/Attenuated Total Reflectance [10] and Raman spectroscopy [11], date the Shroud to 300 Before Christ (BC) ± 400 years and 200 BC ± 500 years, respectively. The mechanical multi-parametric method, based on an analysis of five parameters, including the breaking load and Youngâs modulus and the loss factor, after an adequate calibration based on the results of two dozen samples of known age, dates TS as 400 AD ± 400 years old [12]. Estimates of the kinetic constants for the loss of vanillin from lignin suggest that TS has an age range from 1300 to 3000 years [5]. A recent numismatic analysis [13] proposes that TS was already present in 692 AD.
Thatâs a lot to go through as they claim there are a number of methods used to date the relic early.
[5] Rogers, R. Studies on the radiocarbon sample from the Shroud of Turin. Thermochim. Acta 2005, 425, 189â194. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
[10] Fanti, G.; Malfi, P.; Crosilla, F. Mechanical and opto-chemical dating of Turin Shroud. MATEC Web Conf. 2015, 36, 01001. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Green Version]
[11] . Fanti, G.; Baraldi, P.; Basso, R.; Tinti, A. Non-destructive dating of ancient flax textiles by means of vibrational spectroscopy. Vib. Spectrosc. 2013, 67, 61â70. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
[12] Fanti, G.; Malfi, P.; Conca, M. The Shroud of TurinâFirst Century after Christ! Pan Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd.: Singapore, 2015; ISBN 978-9814800082. [Google Scholar]
Way too much for me to jump into at the moment and then read counterarguments and counter counterargumentsâŠ
Like I said, I lean medieval forgery by I am no longer fairly certain of that. There is enough doubt and credentialed sources arguing otherwise that keeps me humble. I just donât have all the relevant expertise and unlike a lot of people on the internet, I am not going to pretend I do.
Vinnie
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No expertise is needed, apart from as an average Joe. Knowing the way of the world. Itâs an obvious forgery. And itâs always Joe isnât it. Never Jo. The rabbit warren of ifs and buts and maybes reinforces forgery. The simplest explanation that fits all the facts, of each time.
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Never take a broken believer neo-atheistâs word for anything.
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